Line War

by Neal Asher

  But I am alive…

  Yeah, but there was no air left inside the sphere, and its self-contained power supply was down to half. At present the mycelium was feeding her oxygen cracked from the molecular make-up of the sphere’s insulation, and of course its ability to do so was limited by that power supply and by the other limited power resources within this interface sphere.

  Erebus didn’t kill me…

  Her first thought, as the blast lifted her interface sphere from the war runcible, had been, That went well, but it could have gone a lot better. Her sphere then tumbled away through vacuum and the approaching swarm simply ignored her, for to them this sphere tangled in scaffold was just a lump of debris. Their main target remained, however, and it was still firing at them. Some half an hour later the last of the wormships passed quite close to her, continuing to ignore her. She had time to breathe a sigh of relief just before the blast wave of debris struck.

  ‘So what now, Orlandine?’ she asked herself out loud.

  ‘I think you die,’ a voice replied in her head.

  He must have escaped the virtuality. She had no idea how and cared less.

  ‘Ah–I’d forgotten about you.’

  ‘Well, you’ve had a lot on your mind,’ Randal replied.

  Despite her tendency towards being a loner, she almost felt glad of the company in the present situation.

  The last of the Jain-manufactured scar tissue drained from her largest wound, which only an hour ago had been a three-inch-wide hole caused by a piece of Jain coral punching straight through her torso, through her liver, then out through her back to lodge in her carapace. She now set the mycelium to clear away those fatigue poisons. In a moment she felt optimism returning, but it was leavened by the hard cold practical realities of her situation.

  ‘I don’t think Erebus stands much chance now of getting through ECS defences in the solar system,’ Randal observed.

  ‘So your vengeance and my vengeance have both been achieved,’ said Orlandine as she began to analyse how best to use her remaining resources. ‘Doubtless ECS will now not rest until what remains of Erebus is hunted down and obliterated.’

  As she saw it, she had only limited options. She could use her remaining energy to place herself in stasis until such time as the underspace disturbance died down, then call for help. The only problem with that was that ECS ships would certainly be the first to reach her, and in the Polity there was no statute of limitations on murder, there were no mitigating circumstances, and there was no way of obtaining absolution for such an act unless you could resurrect the dead. Also the AIs would never trust someone who controlled Jain-tech. If they didn’t execute a death sentence upon her immediately, that would only be because they wanted to study her first.

  ‘You are almost as arrogant and stupid as Erebus,’ said Randal.

  ‘Oh, thanks for that,’ she replied distractedly.

  She could place herself in stasis and use her remaining power to sort data from the inert sensors on the sphere’s surface, then, if a ship happened nearby, she could raise herself from stasis and direct to the ship her call for help. The chances were that she could then overpower her rescuers. Unfortunately, the statistical chances of a ship coming within range before her power supply ran out–a ship that was not a part of ECS, since they would be the ones primarily traversing this area in the near future–were just about a Planck length above zero.

  ‘Of course, to call Erebus arrogant and stupid is merely to damn myself.’

  That got her attention. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘If you could explain?’

  ‘I’m not really Fiddler Randal,’ replied Randal. ‘I’m based on a copy of him but I’m really that part of Erebus that disagreed with everything it was doing. I call myself Erebus’s conscience. I guess, that being the case, it could be argued that Erebus really did murder your brothers.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Even as she spoke the words, she understood what the presence in the sphere with her was actually saying. Immediately she began running diagnostics and searches within the sphere’s hardware and software, then prepared HKs, worms and viruses: all the killing and deleting programs at her disposal. Oddly, she located the distributed code that was Randal very easily, as if he was making no attempt to hide.

  ‘I was able to control parts of Erebus–of the other part of me, that is,’ said Randal. ‘I sent the wormship to Klurhammon, and it was I who gave its captain his instructions.’

  ‘You manipulated me?’

  ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head.’

  There seemed nothing more she could say. She felt

  stupid, frustrated, and grief began to well in her throat. Briefly she considered capturing Randal and enacting some hideous vengeance upon him, but she was not some psycho and that was not how she operated. She launched those programs and quietly watched as they wiped Randal out. He began to fade from her consciousness and, as he went, he said just two words: ‘Thank you.’

  He was finished. He had achieved his aim and now there was nothing else for him. He had manipulated her right to the end.

  She realized there was something moving across her cheek, reached up and touched it, then peered at her moist fingertips. She should rebalance her neurochemicals, restore calm, return her mind to its dry analytical state. But she didn’t want to.

  The sphere was now getting colder inside, which would make putting herself into stasis so much easier. She set the mycelium to use the last of the power supply to build photovoltaic cells on the surface of the outside skin, rather than scan for unlikely passing ships. When the sphere finally came within range of a sun, the power from them would then wake her up. Making calculations based on her present trajectory and the trajectories of stars lying within her probability cone she deduced that her chances of coming close to even one of them lay maybe two or three Planck lengths above zero…within this galaxy. Thereafter those odds did not improve in the slightest. She calculated her chances of entering another galaxy were somewhere in the region of one in fifty billion of this happening within the next billion years. Of course, she would eventually run into something, but by then it seemed likely there would be no more Polity or any of its AIs, but by then it was also likely there would be no suns left hot enough to power those photovoltaic cells–if they had not been ablated to dust by micrometeorite impacts over such an immense timescale.

  Orlandine began to shut herself down, knowing, with what was a practical certainty, that this was the end for her. But it was a less certain death than most faced, and she had been here once before, before she was born.

  19

  ECS dreadnought Trafalgar was built halfway through the Prador–human war at Factory Station Room 101, before that station was destroyed by a Prador first-child ‘Baka’–basically a flying gigaton CTD with a reluctant first-child at the controls, though slaved to its father’s pheromones and unable to do anything but carry out its suicide mission. Records of the Trafalgar AI’s inception were therefore lost, but it seems likely, considering its actions after the war, that it was a war AI of the twentieth generation or above, incorporating all those traits which, through a process of war-selection, had become useful enough for the faults to be ignored. In other words Traflagar was aggressive, full of guile, horribly pragmatic and sometimes cruel: it knew how best to kill the enemy and was very good at a job it enjoyed. Evidence that this AI’s faults might become a problem can be found by studying war records, but then twenty-twenty hindsight will always spot things that ‘should have been known’. Shortly after one battle, in which Trafalgar, Cable Hogue and other vessels broke a blockade around a world and obliterated entrenched Prador, Trafalgar is on record as saying, ‘We should have crust-bombed.’ The world in question was of greater tactical importance to the Prador than to the Polity, so on the face of it, destroying it would have been to the Polity’s advantage. However, there were four million human soldiers and support personnel down there.
More revealing perhaps is another onthe-record comment upon Trafalgar’s arrival at Divided Station, where an out-Polity human enclave had managed to capture numerous Prador stranded on a nearby moonlet. The humans had spent two years torturing the Prador to death purely for entertainment and thereafter turning their remains into ornaments–recordings of those deaths and the ornaments themselves both being for sale. ‘We should nerve-gas the lot of them and start again,’ said Trafalgar. It is relevant to note that at this point there was only one Prador left alive.

  –From HOW IT IS by Gordon

  The sensation of falling had been an entirely mental one, for Mika was still floating a pace back from the chair containing the remains of Fiddler Randal, the toes of her boots just brushing against the floor. The blue-eyed remote was wrapped around her hand, which she could not feel. She felt physically sick and her head as if it had been scraped out with a rusty knife. She had memories of memories in there, but everything Dragon had loaded into her seemed to be gone now, leaving a raw hole

  ‘What do you mean you never expected me to succeed?’ As Mika jerked herself down to fully engage the gecko soles of her boots with the floor, the remote unfolded and with a puff of vapour slid aside, trailing cobwebby strands. She gazed at her hand, which was bright red and missing much skin but covered in some transparent iridescent layer like plastic. She half expected that if she tried to move it there would be no response, but this was not so. It moved easily, though it was still numb.

  ‘Precisely what those words imply,’ said that voice in her head.

  ‘So what was the point in coming here at all?’ Mika took hold of her glove from where it depended on a wire attached at her wrist, pulled it on and then engaged the seal. Glancing round she saw Randal’s silver aug hanging in the air behind her, slowly turning.

  ‘Did you think such a massive problem so easily solved?’ Dragon enquired, somewhat fiercely, Mika thought. ‘Did you think a deus ex machina could just be lowered onto the stage to remove such a threat?’

  ‘That was what you implied,’ she snapped. Dragon’s didacticism could be severely irksome sometimes, and that the entity was now showing some degree of emotion worried her.

  ‘It was only a possibility, and a very remote one at that. Four highly advanced alien civilizations–that we know of–were obliterated by Jain technology. Did you think that, by making contact with the Jain AIs, we were doing something that at least one of them had not already tried or considered?’

  The thought had never even occurred to her, but of course it was valid. The Jain first, then the Csorians, subsequently the Atheter and the Makers. Polity researchers knew little enough about these cultures, but certainly they must have all been highly advanced, since they were spacefaring races.

  ‘So if you didn’t weaponize both your spheres to make such a dangerous journey here because of that reason, why did you come then?’

  ‘Curiosity drives me more than any wish to save the Polity.’

  ‘That was all?’

  ‘I have learned much.’

  ‘You’re being evasive, yet again.’

  ‘Consider what I have learned, and what you have learned.’

  Mika understood then. ‘This is about him then’–she gestured at the seated corpse–‘and it’s about that attack ship out there. In fact it’s about Earth Central. Were you here simply looking for a lever?’

  ‘You do me an injustice.’

  Mika could not help but let out a foolish giggle. Here she was misunderstanding an alien entity weighing millions of tons and capable of trashing wormships. She was misconstruing the doubtless saintly motives of an entity which had caused thirty thousand deaths at Samarkand–an entity who had once claimed to be God.

  ‘I didn’t think that was funny,’ Dragon sulked. ‘And there was me thinking you had such a great sense of humour.’

  ‘I told you that curiosity drives me certainly. The curiosity that drove me here concerned the Jain AIs and Erebus’s beginning here, but…’

  Mika waited for something more to be said. She gazed over at the remote, but it was just a biomech with unfathomable blue eyes, just a thing constructed by Dragon.

  ‘You must return to your craft–and to me–as swiftly as you can.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘My other half is experiencing difficulties.’

  The remote flapped and then jetted vapour to propel itself towards the door, its stalked eyes peering back at her as if to say, ‘Are you coming?’ She quickly followed it, snatching Randal’s aug from where it floated as she went.

  ‘You were saying?’ she prompted.

  ‘Do you recollect Ian Cormac’s frustration and bewilderment with the lack of Polity action after the retreat of the remaining fleet to Scarflow?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Though I felt no frustration, I did experience bewilderment. There was much more ECS could have done than merely retreat to a defensive position, gird its defences elsewhere and wait for Erebus’s next move.’

  Mika noted slow sprouts of Jain-tech needling out from the opposite wall and, by shoving against the door jamb, pushed herself quickly beyond them and after the retreating remote. ‘I assumed their lack of response was due to the inability of the AIs to predict what Erebus would do next, this in turn being mainly due to the illogic of its initial attack.’

  ‘That is quite simply unfeasible,’ Dragon lectured. ‘Do you think Polity AIs could not have seen this as a simple ruse precisely intended to mislead them? Do you think the kind of mind power extant in the Polity could not have seen far beyond that?’

  At the end of the corridor the blue-eyed remote turned to the left, which was not the way they had come in. Before she could question this, Dragon pre-empted her: ‘My remote is leading you out via a different route–the heat and light output of your suit has stirred up activity behind you and the Jain technology there has accessed those energy caches we discussed.’

  The new corridor was crammed with Jain growth, the branches of which at many points had coalesced into distinct lumps. The place looked like it was full of bones.

  ‘Whether it was a ruse or not,’ said Mika, ‘the AIs certainly had no idea what Erebus intended to do next.’

  ‘Were they trying to find out?’

  ‘There were scout ships out and everyone was keeping watch.’ Even as she said it, Mika realized how pathetic that must sound.

  ‘You yourself have been greatly curious about the war with the Prador. You know the kind of industrial and information-processing capacity available to the Polity. Why weren’t industrial stations churning out millions of basic drones to keep watch? Why also weren’t AIs formulating plans and covering all possible methods of attack? Why, in the end, were they not even looking beyond that initial attack?’

  As she negotiated drop-shafts and further corridors–the distinction between the two difficult to make out with them being so swamped with Jain technology–she found no answer to that.

  Dragon continued: ‘There were many things ECS and its AIs could have done, but they were then sitting on their metaphorical hands–only following through on actions initiated by humans. I made some enquiries, but was shown without any doubt that my questions were unwelcome and my interference would not be brooked. When I suggested this attempt to contact the Jain AIs, Jerusalem immediately approved it. So I think it and others back there were glad of the opportunity to be rid of me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I knew there was more to this attack and to this Erebus business than was being revealed.’

  ‘You’re saying something stank.’

  ‘The Polity AIs would give me nothing, so I came here in search of information. My pseudopods have now explored much of this structure and penetrated many of the entrapped ships.’

  Mika now understood that those pseudopods had been spreading behind her for more than just defence.

  ‘I expected a number of things,’ Dragon continued. ‘I expected tha
t the AIs’ taciturnity was due to there being some master plan in motion to deal with Erebus, and that I was not being told anything about it simply because I was distrusted. I came here not only to prove my trustworthiness, but also because I expected to find some dirty secret, some cover-up concerning the original exodus–something, yes, that I could use as a lever, and perhaps something that would give me an insight into whatever that master plan was.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t know that there was no master plan. I didn’t know that Earth Central considers human development frustratingly slow and in need of a push, and that it considers Erebus the perfect tool for supplying that push. I didn’t know that Earth Central sent humans here just so Erebus could use them to initiate Jain technology–that it effectively sent them to be murdered.’

  ‘You don’t consider this sort of information a sufficient lever?’

  ‘I exist in the Polity only under sufferance,’ Dragon replied. ‘Some dirty little secret, perhaps about errors made during the Prador–human war, or perhaps about the slipshod manufacture of war drones costing lives, I could have used as a lever. Knowing that Earth Central is culpable in the murder of its own personnel and in instigating a conflict that has certainly now cost millions of lives is the kind of knowledge I could do without.’

  Mika now began to understand Dragon’s display of emotion.

  ‘I am certain now that, though it is entirely possible Jerusalem knew the purpose of allowing Erebus to attack the Polity, it did not know about Fiddler Randal and his crew and that Earth Central had actively connived in facilitating that attack, else it would not have allowed me to come here where evidence of that crime was certain to be found. The decision was made quickly, without consultation. But it is certain that Earth Central will soon know I came here.’

  ‘You’re scared?’ said Mika.

  ‘If I return to the Polity I will be hunted down and blasted into component atoms.’

  ‘We have to tell someone about this.’