‘Well, that works,’ Nigel said in satisfaction.

Demitri zapped him again. The Faller’s body vibrated, juddering away inside the restrictions of the net, before he finally lost consciousness. His shell vanished. Demitri ’pathed a neuromeme variant to suppress the Faller’s primary thought routines – providing they were close to a human’s. The body relaxed further.

‘Is he dead?’ Kysandra asked anxiously.

Demitri’s ex-sight scanned through the Faller. ‘No.’

‘Uracus!’

‘We don’t have the time to analyse his biochemistry,’ Nigel said. ‘For a start, getting a blood sample would be hellishly difficult. Then we’d have to experiment to find an anaesthetic that worked, and what doses to use. It would be like torturing him. This way is quick and clean.’

‘I know, I know.’ Yeah, you’re right again. Well done.

Fergus quickly slipped a helmet over the Faller’s head.

If anything was torture, it was this, Kysandra thought. Nigel hadn’t wanted to put the Faller into Skylady’s medical module. Not after Demitri got rejected by the egg. He was concerned about the Faller’s nanobyte functionality; the sophisticated molecular clusters of its cells might be able to contaminate and corrupt Commonwealth technology, especially here. So, Skylady had synthesized this, a biononic infiltrator, with active filaments almost identical to the ones in the medical module which had invaded Proval’s brain. Except this was a cruder, stronger, quicker procedure. There was nothing subtle about the way these filament tips breached the skull and penetrated the brain.

The Faller’s body juddered again as the infiltration started, then stilled. His eyelids opened and the eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible.

Kysandra studied her exovision display, watching the infiltration’s progress. A multitude of filaments had made it through the exceptionally hard bone of the skull, to worm their way through the neurone structure. The brain was noticeably different to a human’s. Synaptic discharges were faster, more precise.

‘More like a bioprocessor matrix than our typically chaotic neural structure,’ Nigel commented. ‘I’m guessing that allows for operating a wider range of thought routines. The brain looks like one of ours, but it’s actually quite homogeneous. There are no regulatory centres, and certainly no hormonal triggers. Clever, given the Faller mind will have to acclimatize to whatever animal form they encounter and duplicate. Basic thought routines will be adaptable to manipulate however many limbs they have, as well as interpret the new sensorium.’

‘That’s a dynamic flexibility range,’ Fergus said.

‘They can’t be the primary form of the origin species, not any more. This is the expanded version.’

‘Just like us,’ Kysandra said. She gave Nigel a small smile. ‘You said I was an Advancer. Clue’s in the name. My genome has been changed from the one my ancestors carried. Improved, supposedly.’

‘I was talking about their mentality, but yes,’ Nigel said approvingly. ‘Nobody goes voyaging across the galaxy without modifying themselves to some degree. It’s a bit of a prerequisite among progressive sentient species.’

Demitri coughed. ‘The Ocisens.’

‘I did say: progressive,’ Nigel replied equably.

It took two hours to complete the first sequence of the infiltration procedure, deploying the filaments. Their positioning was guided directly by Skylady’s smartcore, which had to probe and examine the duplicated neural structure they were invading. Ultimately, the filaments were as evenly distributed as the brain’s regimented neural pathways. Unlike the procedure they’d used on Proval, chemical intervention was impossible. They had to rely on neuromemes and subversive thought routines. Over the next six hours, the smartcore began to decipher the Faller’s major thought patterns, distinguishing between active reasoning routines and the deeper incorporated memories that were infused within them, loosely equivalent to a human subconscious.

With the brain’s network profiled, the smartcore constructed a digital simulation, and began downloading the Faller’s thoughts into it.

*

The Faller didn’t have memories in the human sense – the recollection of sights, sounds and sensation with all their associated clutter of emotion; this was more an awareness of being, of purpose. It understood itself thanks to a history that had become the biological imperative of its species, in every branch.

They originated somewhere in the Milky Way. It didn’t know where the birth star lay, nor even when its species began to venture out across interstellar space, though there was an echo of immense distance and time within its identity.

In one form, the species became their own starships, carrying their essence across the gulf of space. Vast creatures that drew energy from spacetime itself, twisting gravitational fields to propel themselves along at a good fraction of lightspeed. Expansion was their destiny now, the very purpose of life.

When they arrived at the bright new stars they’d pursued, they found the biosphere of many planets to be incompatible with their original body chemistry. Rather than tackling the immense task of changing these inimical planets, they pushed fusion with their liberating nanotech further, their bodies becoming even more malleable, adapting easily to their new environments. Morphing into direct rivals to the existing lifeforms who struggled against their conquests.

Innumerable conflicts arose from their implacable colonization, instigating more change, more deviation from their original physical identity. The mimicry ability was born, the pinnacle of their nano-derived evolution, allowing a more aggressive and insidious incursion across fresh worlds. Starships orbited high above the newfound planets, dropping swarms of eggs, which would absorb the form of the natives and give birth to a generation of changelings. When they became dominant, eradicating their indigenous rivals, subsequent generations reverted as close to their true form as planetary conditions permitted and lived their lives as masters of their new domain.

Somewhere amid the expansion wave, a flock of starships was taken into the Void. Adaptation here was difficult, but continued anyway, driven by fear, for the Fallers soon understood the Void’s purpose. As they had merged with and eradicated countless species across the stars, so the Void would absorb them, and in doing so quicken their development to an elevated state suitable for subsumption into its Heart.

Some Fallers adapted as best their nature would allow. They sought out a niche in this new and strange meta-ecology, assuming a symbiotic role for the Heart, guiding worthy entities to fulfilment, assisting newcomers to compatible sections of the Void: these guides were the Skylords.

Others simply carried on as before, deluging the other luckless biological captives with their eggs, devouring lives and cultures until they could emerge as themselves once more. Living out their lives under the Void’s constant pressure to fulfil themselves and contribute their essence to its heart.

One faction of Faller starships struggled against their incarceration. They used their innate ability to warp local spacetime for flight to try and change the nature of the Void, to claw their way out by force. It didn’t seem to work.

‘The Forest,’ Kysandra said softly. She’d joined Nigel out on the veranda. It was close to dawn, and the silver haze of the Forest was visible above the horizon. Nigel was gazing up at it, a brandy in one hand. ‘The Forest is the Faller starships that tried to escape, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it is true,’ she said. ‘Nobody can get out. If they can’t do it with all their power . . .’

‘They messed up. That distortion they generated created some kind of loop in the local memory layer. They’re stuck in the past, or rather what the Forest remembers is the past.’