Line War

by Neal Asher

  Time to get back to the ship.

  He pulled up his shooting stick, which was an apt description for it also served as a weapon, then quickly headed back towards Harpy. However, just then, a strange sight gave him pause. He aimed at this thing with the stick and tracked its course to the ground.

  A bird?

  In a flurry of feathers it landed amid the smoking and strewn remains of the Zil’s passengers and began pecking up bits of flesh.

  A vulture?

  Yannis vaguely recollected something from childhood lessons on Terran ecology.

  But how was that possible? The air here could not support Terran life, and whatever large life forms survived crawled through tunnels in the ground scraping up rock sulphur and digesting primitive forms of algae out of it.

  Then something else caught his eye and he looked up.

  Standing over by the Zil was a big big man wearing a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat. As if Yannis seeing him had been some kind of signal, the man began taking lengthy strides towards him. Harpy gave him an outline which immediately began flashing.

  Golem.

  Yannis read the side display: Golem Twenty-Five prototype, ceramal armour, further modifications unknown. Rescan. Rescan.

  Hit it.

  A text reply flicked up in his visual cortex: You are within target acquisition frame.

  Yannis quickly stepped to one side, but the Golem suddenly moved horribly fast, almost a subliminal flicker, and was then strolling in from a different direction.

  You are within target acquisition frame.

  He moved again.

  The Golem moved again.

  Rescan. Rescan. Rescan. Viral return—

  The display in his visor shut down. He stepped aside again, but the Golem just continued striding in.

  Hit it! Hit it!

  Nothing.

  Yannis turned and ran, but before he’d even managed two paces a big brassy hand slammed down on his shoulder, spun him round, closed on his neck and hoisted him from the ground.

  He heard, ‘Particle weapons leave a metallic aftertaste.’ The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere below him. It was not the Golem talking for he was looking straight into its implacable face. Around his neck he felt something creak, then his neck armour collapsed with a cracking sound like thunder to his ears. His last thought as his head, now disconnected from his body, thumped to the ground, was, Metallic aftertaste?

  Gazing out through Heliotrope’s sensors, it was with a feeling of bitterness that Orlandine contemplated the massive object sitting out there in vacuum. This was not the kind of project she’d had in mind upon her return to the Polity, but now circumstances had changed. The computer virus from the wormship had changed them, for it had provided her with a definite purpose.

  Her purpose was vengeance.

  When, by destroying a massive USER based on an icy moonlet, Orlandine had opened the trap holding both her and the Polity fleet that Erebus first attacked, she had been leaving the Polity for pastures new. Somewhere, towards the inner galaxy, she had intended to build something grand with the fantastical technology she now controlled. Procrastinating for some time, she then realized that, no matter how grand it might be, the thing she built would be worthless with only herself to appreciate it, and so she had returned to the Polity. The remote place where the wormship found her had been her selected construction site. Not any more.

  Using every devious precaution she could think of, she studied the computer virus transmitted by the wormship and came to the conclusion that it bore some similarities to a memcording. Then, because it possessed all sorts of strange visual, audio and seemingly sentient components, she allowed it to run in a secure virtuality. Immediately, in this virtuality’s albescent space, something manifested and spoke.

  ‘Well, hello, Orlandine,’ said the entity, the virus.

  Orlandine gazed at the scruffy-looking man and knew that this could not be a human being.

  ‘What are you?’ she asked, while on other levels she investigated the structures of information that had caused this apparition to appear.

  ‘Me?’ He pointed with both forefingers at his own unshaven face. ‘I’m a seriously pissed-off dead man.’ He grinned. ‘The name’s Fiddler Randal.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Well, I want something to die–the something that killed me–and I want your help.’

  ‘Ah, and coincidentally you were transmitted to me by a wormship.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve managed to spread myself throughout Erebus.’

  A dubious contention, Orlandine thought, but nevertheless asked, ‘Why should I help you?’

  ‘Because that same something manipulated you; intended you to be a weapon it could use against the Polity.’

  ‘So you want Erebus to die–the same entity of which you seem to be a part,’ said Orlandine. ‘Now why should I try to kill it? Despite Erebus’s manipulation of me, it still gave me the greatest gift I could ever have wanted.’

  ‘Like making you a murderer?’

  Orlandine felt distinctly uncomfortable with that statement. Without doubt, Randal was referring to her partner, Shoala, whom she had killed while covering up traces of her escape with the Jain node that had been Erebus’s ‘gift’ to her.

  ‘That was my choice,’ Orlandine replied. ‘It’s one I regret, but it was mine alone. I cannot blame Erebus for that, only myself.’

  ‘Then you’re much more forgiving than Erebus is,’ said Randal. ‘You see, you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. Admittedly I had a hand in that, as I’ve had a hand in a lot of Erebus’s fuck-ups. But Erebus, for all its power both mental and physical, is a petty being.’

  ‘Are you ever going to get to the point?’

  ‘The point is this.’

  He slid to one side and the virtuality changed. With a spasm of nostalgia, Orlandine gazed upon the landscape of her homeworld. She recognized the fields of plants drastically altered to supply biomodules for high-tech Polity industries. She recognized the purple-blue colour of the sky, and could almost smell the complex pollens in the air. Her memories were clear, because even way back then she had undergone the physical alterations, including the fitting of a gridlink, that were the starting point to becoming a haiman. In those days there had still been much debate about the morality of choosing a child’s future at so young an age, but at that time, to enable someone to become a haiman, it had been necessary for the first alterations to be made while still very young. The AIs had allowed her mother to change her, and now, as an adult, she understood why. The AIs had wanted humans to climb a bit further out of the primordial swamp.

  Her brothers, the twins Aladine and Ermoon, had attained full haiman status before her, but then they were both twenty years older. Their mother, Ariadne, had been single-minded about the future she had planned for them all. She could never understand the boys’ later objections to what she had forced upon them, and had been greatly disappointed when, after the divorce of Ariadne and their father, the boys refused to make the move to Europa. She also clung on when Orlandine had made the move to the Cassius Project–always the constant stream of messages, the proprietary interest and the gifts that Orlandine felt sure were sent to assuage Ariadne’s sense of guilt.

  And, look, there were the twins.

  The data flow increased and she began to sense the scene as if she was actually there, standing over them. They were bound to the ground in some kind of organic cage, fighting to free themselves. Briefly a long-fingered metallic hand swept into view right above them, and both of them began to scream and struggle harder. Wisps of smoke rose from their clothing as it began to blacken, and Orlandine could smell melting plastic. Flames burst through the fabric and the two young men began to burn. Their screams became something almost unhuman, fading to agonized gruntings and gaspings. A smell like seared pork permeated the air as the flames grew magnesium-bright, consuming the two bodies and the entire structure encaging them. Finally it wa
s over, and nothing remained but ash. In a blink the scene was gone…and Fiddler Randal was back.

  Orlandine used every method available to her to keep her emotions under control. She altered the flow of neurochemicals in her brain, modulated the balance of her blood electrolytes and sugars and artificially stimulated precise patterns of synaptic firing. She did not allow herself shock or grief, or anger.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked with robotic calm.

  ‘One of the problems with Jain technology is that with such huge processing space available it is possible for much to exist in the gaps without interfering with its basic function,’ said Randal. ‘I’m part of Erebus–a ghost in the machine–and as such, while I evade being trapped and erased, I can know Erebus’s mind and see all that it does. I therefore saw this.’

  ‘Supposing that these images are even true,’ said Orlandine, ‘what was Erebus’s purpose in doing this?’

  ‘Plain vengeance. As well as not letting Erebus’s gift of Jain technology overwhelm you and then turn it on the Polity, enough information was transmitted for Erebus to know it was you who destroyed its USER, thus allowing the Polity fleet to escape. For my host it was the smallest diversion of resources to kill your two brothers like that.’

  ‘I see.’

  After a long silence, Randal asked, ‘So what are your plans now?’

  In the cold emotionless place Orlandine presently occupied, she felt no urge to plan anything. However, she was a haiman, and having sought and found the synergy of the human and the machine, she could not totally deny her human side. Still remaining analytically cold, she reasoned that if she verified those images, upon re-establishing normal emotion she would grieve–and then grow angry, appallingly angry. All other thoughts and aims would be swept aside.

  ‘You could easily be some agent of Erebus sent to manipulate me again,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I could.’

  ‘How can you help me?’

  ‘That depends on what you intend to do.’

  ‘If these images really show the truth, then I believe I intend to destroy Erebus.’ But of course she already understood that Randal knew this would be her answer.

  ‘Okay, that being the case, I can show you in detail how Erebus intends to bring down the Polity. Or at least I can show you what his plans were just before I transmitted myself to you.’

  ‘So you’re a copy of the original version of yourself still existing within Erebus,’ Orlandine observed. ‘Surely you would do better to give this information to the AI Jerusalem, who I understand is in command of the present defence?’

  ‘It is the nature of all Erebus’s plans that they contain a glaring flaw ready to be exploited by an enemy. I should know because I am always the cause of that flaw, just as I am the flaw within Erebus.’

  Orlandine wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. ‘Do go on.’

  ‘Unfortunately, were I to inform Jerusalem of Erebus’s present plan, it would then be countered, but in such a way that Erebus would escape mostly unharmed. However, if its present attack plan is carried through, someone else exploiting that flaw could, with sufficient resources, obliterate Erebus. You must understand that there are those who welcome Erebus’s aggression and its…consequences.’

  Orlandine pondered that statement for a moment. ‘You’re saying there are those within the Polity who are on Erebus’s side?’

  ‘It’s not a case of sides. Erebus’s present aggression is considered useful by some very high-up Polity AIs. But you don’t want to know exactly who–trust me on this.’

  This was not so surprising, Orlandine supposed. There had often been AI rebels in the past.

  ‘Then show me this attack plan,’ Orlandine instructed.

  Randal made a packet of information available to her. After taking sufficient precautions she opened it and absorbed all it contained.

  ‘You see where, with a suitable weapon, you can bring Erebus down?’ Randal pointed out.

  ‘I do,’ Orlandine replied.

  ‘But when the time comes for this, you’ll need the updated codes to enable you to configure your chameleonware to Erebus’s scanning format–to hide yourself.’

  ‘You’ll provide these?’

  ‘I cannot here and now, because they’ll have changed, and I am no longer in contact with my other selves.’

  ‘So how do I obtain them?’

  ‘In my estimation you cannot, since your task will take all of your own resources,’ Randal replied. ‘However, I have prepared for this, and another individual will bring these codes to you at a prearranged rendezvous.’

  ‘This individual is?’

  ‘Highly capable and…motivated. And more than able, with the technology he possesses, to take on elements of Erebus’s forces even without the codes and chameleonware to conceal him. He will follow a predicted and vengeful course sure to eventually bring him into contact with one of those elements, somewhere, whereupon one of my other selves will contact him.’

  ‘Who is this individual?’

  Randal told her.

  ‘That is…dubious.’

  ‘It is the best I can offer,’ Randal supplied firmly, and Orlandine had to be content with that.

  Later, after taking many precautions, Orlandine connected to the AI nets of the Polity and learned more about the attack on Klurhammon, her homeworld, where she was born. Still there was part of her that did not want to believe what Randal had just shown her. Desperately trying to obtain detail about what had happened to the population back home, she learned only that millions had died. She decided to take another more dangerous risk, accessed her inbox on the AI nets only to find ten quite large messages all labelled ‘A gift from an admirer’ and snatched these from under the nose of the ECS hunter-killer programs that had been placed in the vicinity to track her down. Nine of the messages were exactly the same, each showing in startling detail the horrible scenes she had already witnessed. The tenth contained something she recognized at once as a virus, another Randal–which she deleted.

  She believed it all then, and hatched her plans, which led her here to this all but empty reach of interstellar space–empty but for that one massive object out there: a war runcible.

  *

  ‘Well this brings us no closer to knowing why Erebus ever came here,’ said Cormac.

  Smith had a medical pack open and was positioning a field autodoc over the injured woman’s arm stump. With a nerve blocker in at the shoulder and her severed veins being sealed, the woman already looked better and was gazing up at her and her companions’ rescuers with curiosity. Cormac, meanwhile, studied the other two rescuees.

  One was a young man, maybe a teenager, though of course someone’s precise age was a difficult thing to divine when one’s appearance could be chosen. The other looked older, but of similar appearance to the younger, with jet-black hair, dark almost-joined eyebrows and a hatchet of a nose that had certainly not been the beneficiary of cosmetic surgery. Like the youngster he was a haiman–the man was shirtless so Cormac had already seen the connector sockets down his spine–but unlike the youngster he did not wear a carapace. The more youthful one had a carapace clinging to his back like a giant iron woodlouse. He also wore a full assister frame, which provided additional limbs extending at the waist.

  Cormac allowed that other new perception some play, and detected Polity technology laced through their bodies: the gridlinks capping their brains inside their skulls, the numerous optics and wires threaded along bones, and the electro-optical nerve interfaces studding their flesh. The sight of it disturbed him on some deep level, for perhaps it was just too much like those snakes in the flesh he had seen earlier, so he quickly returned to gazing upon solid reality.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the older one.

  ‘It’s what ECS is for. What’s your name?’

  ‘Carlton Egengy.’ He gestured to the other. ‘My brother Cherub.’ Then he glanced down to the woman lying on the floor. ‘We didn’t have the time to get acq
uainted.’

  ‘Jeeder Graves,’ she supplied.

  ‘Out on the Chester Flats?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s the place.’

  Cormac could not help but feel a little irritation at this exchange. It was inconsequential and did not advance his mission at all. Then abruptly he felt himself focusing back on it. At the end of his last mission he had regretted not getting to know those around him, those many soldiers who had died, some of them protecting him from the suicidal impulse he had felt after seeing his colleague Thorn incinerated right before him. He deliberately ran the names of the three before him, internally, through his gridlink, to see if he had anything on file. Nothing came up. Next he took the risk of attempting to query the local server, routing any reply he might receive through sealed processing space filled with programs for dealing with Jain worms and viruses. As expected, there were a few attempts made to get to him through the link, easily dealt with by his new defensive software. But there was nothing else–nothing at all. A further query rendered an interesting result. Yes, there was a great deal of corruption from all the Jain-tech in the area, but that should not have randomly erased everything. All Klurhammon’s files, all the information stored here about this world, were totally gone. He shook his head. He had allowed himself to be more human, and that had rendered the clearest intelligence of all. Serendipity? No, luck.

  ‘King, the whole net for this world seems to be down,’ he sent. ‘Much that is pertinent to this place has been deleted.’

  After the usual delay, the AI replied, ‘I see. I had not noticed that since I was deliberately avoiding any connections to the local servers. I suggest that henceforth you do the same.’

  ‘No pain, no gain,’ Cormac sent back, feeling some satisfaction that he had been first to spot the lack of retained information here.

  In reply he received something that sounded like an electronic snort.