by Neal Asher
‘You’re going to blow it?’ he asked.
Coloron replied, ‘Thellant has been captured, and now new tactical intelligence has become available. The substructure is massing for a push very near your current position and it could reach Runcible 5 within half an hour.’
‘Where do you want us now, then?’
Coloron transmitted directly into the Golem’s mind a simple map of the present situation. The infestation had started thirty miles in from the shore, and fifty miles in from the northern edge of the arcology. Runcible 5 lay the nearest to it, with 4 and 3 spaced evenly along the shore to the south and the same distance in from the sea. The AI did not want to send any more inhabitants to those runcibles as there were crowds enough there already, and Jain tentacles moved faster along the shore wall than elsewhere. Forty miles in from that row of three runcibles, again evenly spaced, lay 6, 7, 8 and 9. Another fifty miles further in lay 1 and 2. Runcible 10 was located well out of the way, in the recent north-eastern extension. On the map the Jain tech had completely taken over the north-west corner, and now lay only three miles from 5 and twice that distance from 6. Azroc’s forces were currently arrayed in a line cutting off that entire section – those last two runcibles at their backs.
‘Pull back to seven now. I will destroy five and six the moment the substructure reaches them. You have a minimum of thirty-four minutes.’
‘Okay.’ Azroc began signalling to his section commanders.
‘And, Azroc.’
‘Yes?’
‘I am about to begin some sterilization.’
‘Understood.’
Coloron knew of some, either Separatist related or suffering from severe troglodytism, who were not obeying the evacuation order. Many of them remained inside the infested area, within reach of Jain tentacles, and many had already been taken over. Little could be done for any of those. From cameras on the particle weapon geostationary above, the AI studied the circular chunk of arcology it had initially excised in the hope of containing the Jain tech. The cavity near the centre of this, made by the Coloron’s first satellite strike, looked like a bullethole filled with steel maggots. The trench cut to separate out the piece of arcology in which this hole lay also squirmed with movement as Jain tech increasingly bridged the gap.
The AI checked all the systems of the toroidal satellite, finding it was up to power, with plenty of fuel available for the fusion reactor of which most of the satellite consisted. Even at that moment, a tanker craft was approaching from a recently arrived cargo carrier. One of its three tanks contained hugely compressed deuterium in the metallic state – further fuel for the reactor – the other two were filled with cupronickel dust to provide the particulate matter for the cannon itself.
I am procrastinating.
That system check had been an unnecessary delay.
‘Firing particle cannon,’ Coloron announced.
The turquoise beam stabbed down through atmosphere and struck the already fire-blackened chunk of arcology just off centre. The beam cut through its various levels like a thermic lance through a beehive. Fire and smoke fountained half a mile into the sky. The cannon satellite, adjusted by the gravplate ring on the fusion-reactor torus, incrementally tilted and began to revolve. Down below, the beam began to cut spirally outwards from its initial strike point. Viewing the scene in infrared, Coloron estimated the extent of the firestorm now exploding through the levels below. Within minutes the beam reduced the originally excised piece of arcology to glowing slag at the bottom of a huge pit. Shutting off the cannon the AI then contemplated what it had done. It had just obliterated about ten cubic miles of arcology and killed thousands of inhabitants, and that seemed likely to be only the beginning. Now checking the map relayed by the HK program, Coloron saw energy flowing away from that same area, and Jain tech material resources being transferred. The substructure, Coloron realized, could be herded.
‘I suggest you cut a line down to bedrock,’ sent Brutus the AI controlling the dreadnought above, which, unusually, bore a different name: the Brutal Blade.
‘That is my intention,’ Coloron replied. ‘With what happens next, such a division will certainly be required.’ The AI viewed the dreadnought through various sateyes arrayed above the particle cannon. It was a utile vessel looking nothing like a blade. Two miles across at its widest point, it bore some resemblance to a gigantic lump of metallized liver, with many organic tubes opening to space – heavy armour gave it its shape and those tubes were its weapons systems. ‘CTD imploder, lowest yield, take out this fusion reactor,’ Coloron ordered, sending the location of the mentioned reactor.
One of the tubes, a linear accelerator, spat out a black sphere that hurtled down into atmosphere, glowed red, then white, and began to ablate. Ten miles up it shed two burning hemispheres. The missile it contained slammed down through a wheat field, igniting a small fire around the surface puncture. A microsecond later, the field bulged up into a hill; it started smoking, then abruptly combusted. Flame jetted from arcology vents within a mile of this, then smoke from those lying beyond them. Crowds of people still moving away along the north-west shore gazed back at debris blasted from the numerous exits in the arcology’s edge. Coloron measured the spread of heat, observed the substructure’s reaction to this latest strike, then sent a map selecting the positions of other reactors, and locations of those enemy materials and energy stores.
‘Interesting,’ commented Brutus.
‘After I have cut the division,’ the Coloron instructed, ‘you must take out all those targets at once.’ The AI knew that, on some level of awareness, the Jain substructure would realize the disposition of its forces had been discovered. It would probably find the HK, but by then the damage would be done.
Incrementally again, the particle cannon tilted. The turquoise beam hit the sea this time, evaporating billions of cubic yards of brine. It sliced into the arcology wall then began to burn across. From orbit a cloud mass could be seen forming in its trail. While still metaphorically holding a finger on the firing button, Coloron noted monitors and Rescue staff loading into AG ambulances those injured by the departure of the crowds at Runcible 5. On the map updated by the HK program, the AI saw that the Jain substructure now lay only a mile away from there. The immediate blast radius around 6 was clear of people, though there were still some stragglers within areas likely to be devastated by the Shockwave. The Jain tech lay a mile and a half away from Runcible 6. Coloron waited.
Half an hour passed, then an access panel for an optical junction sprang away from the wall on the furthest edge of one of Runcible 5’s lounges. Something like a long-fingered stainless steel hand groped out, and began to extend its fingers down the wall. On another wall steel buds grew through sheet-bubble metal and squeezed out grey tendrils. The last three ambulances departed, whereupon some other ambulances tried returning, because there were still people alive in here. Too late, because Coloron began closing blast doors behind the departing ambulances. Now humanoid figures began appearing, their clothing burnt and hanging in tatters, their bodies blackened, and pinkish slithing movement visible through their wounds. The AI began shutting down systems as soon as it felt informational intrusion – as it had been doing all along throughout the advance of this feral technology. Soon its total perception of the area became limited to a few scattered cameras. Then came the expected intrusion into the systems of the runcible itself.
The runcible buffers held a huge charge, permanently topped up by the fusion reactor located on the floor below the runcible itself. With safety circuits offline, Coloron released this entire charge into the runcible. A warp generated, tuned out of U-space, tried to create space of its own, bounced out into realspace, then collapsed. It sucked in the horns of the runcible, the dais, the fusion reactor, several bodies – some still alive – and much of the surrounding complex, crunching everything down into a spherical superdense mass. At the centre of this mass: fusion.
From the cannon satellite Coloron observed t
he subsequent explosion flinging millions of tons of debris into the air. A briefly stabilized fusion reaction dropped a yard-wide white sun straight down to the bedrock. As the smoke cleared, the AI observed a glowing two mile-wide crater cut into the top half of the arcology. Eight minutes later a similar crater appeared in place of Runcible 6. Twenty minutes after that, the particle beam cut its way out from the north wall of the arcology.
‘Now,’ Coloron sent to Brutus.
Missile after missile departed the Brutal Blade; a vicious insect swarm hurtling down towards the planet. Coloron almost flinched. The harsh reality of its mind did not permit ignorance of how many had died during the last hour, and of how many were about to die. Yes, Jain technology controlled most of them, but they were people nevertheless. No fewer than 110,000 of them. And even then the advance would continue, for the AI only slowed it down, inconvenienced it.
The planetary system consisted of an immense green gas giant the size of Jupiter, but half as far again from the sun as that Jovian. Further from the sun than it lay a ring of icy planetoids and asteroidal debris, while around it orbited more still. Within its orbit were four planets: one icy world three times the size of Earth and bearing its own ring system, one orbiting close around the sun, and two that lay within the sun’s green belt. The inner of the two green-belt planets was a hot world similar to the one where Erebus had destroyed its rebel faction. King dropped telefactors to study this living planet, for it seemed perfect for a base, yet already King guessed this place to be empty of intelligent life.
Dense red jungle cloaked its land masses. The island that King first studied was swamped with plants very much like cycads. Below these, fast moving vines writhed when in hot sunlight but grew still in shadow. Tripedal saurians patrolled under massive red leaves as thick as mattresses, shooting out jointed tongues in quest of shivering globular prey. Those prey managing to escape ran screaming and wobbling to the safety of sunlight, where they burst in wet explosions spreading some kind of organic sludge. Reproduction probably – King did not have the time or inclination to investigate.
The seas also swarmed with life: armoured arthropods and large floating bivalves, masses of purple bladder weeds that shot out tendrils to drag in prey, a giant legless arthropod with a square mouth the size of a cruiser construction bay, ever sucking up those masses of predatory weed. But here it detected no clear evidence of any Polity technology: no wreckage, no traps. Hollow cubes found on one mountainside were certainly the product of intelligent life, but of ancient origin, and not what King sought.
The AI attack ship recalled its telefactors, returned them to their cache, then turned its attention to the other, cold, world, which also bore life. Such instances of two living worlds existing in the same planetary system, this close together in the green belt, was not exceptional. If one world produced life, it became almost a certainty, over the vast timespans involved, that vulcanism or the debris from meteor impacts would eventually hurl the spores of life over the relatively short distance to the other planet.
This place was frigid and the only liquid water existed around volcanic vents a mile underneath the ice sheet. From these hidden warm seas, wells spiralled to the surface, and by tracing a surface trail from one of these, King came upon a great furry serpent heading out from one of the landmasses towards them. On the land itself grew forests of trees resembling pines in their strategies for surviving cold, though lower in stature, with thicker denser trunks and fruits like cut diamonds. Flying mammals fed upon the latter, while the furry serpents reared up high to graze on the needles. King found no large predators, but soon discovered the reason – the parasites growing inside the many varieties of creature in the forests kept populations down by taking gradual control of their hosts and forcing them down the ice wells, where young parasites could hatch out of their drowning bodies in the warm water below. Closer scanning revealed swarms of the adult form of these things climbing continually up out of the wells. They resembled a minuscule version of the screaming wobbling thing seen on the adjacent world. Here again, deep under the ice, were some of those hollow granite cubes, but still no sign of Erebus’s presence. The AI felt both disappointment and relief as, continuing its straight-line course, it once again dropped into U-space.
A breath of cold wafted from the neck ring of D’nissan’s hotsuit and Mika wondered if it was only that which made her shiver.
‘Who?’ She nodded to the image on the screen.
‘No “who” involved,’ the ophidapt replied. ‘We suppressed cerebral growth in the amniotic tank. Our friend there is lacking in everything but autonomic functions. He possesses less intelligence than that of your average insect, and what he possesses is only by dint of hardware implanted in his skull.’ D’nissan glanced at her. ‘And by that I mean singular insects – not hives of them.’
The shaven-headed man in the isolation chamber stood naked, and utterly still. He bore no expression and his face seemed characterless. However, this did not make Mika feel any less uneasy about what D’nissan intended doing to him.
‘Implantation was successful, then?’
‘Apparently, though we’ll see soon enough if it works.’
Directly opposite the man stood a small tripod-mounted autogun.
‘Test one,’ said D’nissan.
The gun fired and a pulse of ionized aluminium slammed into the man’s chest. Smoking gobbets of flesh exploded from his back, spattering the wall behind half a second before he himself hit the wall and slid down leaving a bloody trail. Mika swallowed drily, waited. After a moment the man reached out, pushed himself to his feet, and took three paces forwards. The hole in his chest, the size of a fist, still smouldered, but a ball of veined pink flesh was oozing out to fill it and extinguish the embers. The man turned slowly, presenting himself dutifully to all the scanning heads arrayed around the isolation chamber. The hole in his back was rather larger, and one shattered rib protruded. The flesh welling up there bore the appearance of brain tissue.
‘That shot would have destroyed his heart,’ Mika noted.
‘Yes. But the little doctor can grow its own replacement of any major organ destroyed. Right now it will be constructing something a little more efficient than the human heart, while dilating veins and arteries to prevent bleeding and keeping essential parts of the body oxygenated via nanotubes,’ D’nissan explained.
‘Nerve damage?’
‘The mycelium can re-route around most of it.’
‘So this is not really repair but replacement with something different?’
‘Yes, all it does is provide support to whatever remains, and even that is limited.’
‘How far?’
D’nissan nodded at the screen. ‘This is about the maximum damage it can sustain. If the victim was hit three or four times like this, his body would die and his little doctor would die along with it. Remember, that though dispersed, the mycelium is being hit as well.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s like an ordinary human body, without a little doctor mycelium – it can only survive so much.’
‘What about bones?’ Mika asked. With this constant barrage of questions she was trying to distance herself from what she had just seen, and to reacquaint herself with her customary scientific detachment.
‘They’re easy to deal with. It pulls them together and lays down calcium glue within seconds.’ He went on. ‘Essentially, anyone carrying this mycelium would need to take a number of direct substantial hits to be killed. Wounds that before would have resulted in him ending up under an autodoc will now only inconvenience him briefly.’
‘And Jain nodes?’
‘None at all. This technology is clean.’
‘Who will get this “little doctor” treatment first?’
‘Soldiers,’ replied D’nissan bluntly.
Mika gave him a fragile smile then moved away. She had stopped here, on her way to the shuttle that would ferry her over to Dragon, meaning to ask D’nissan his thoughts on augmentation, but after witnessin
g this test found she could not. The man was doing important work, supplying ECS with what might be a vital advantage should Jain technology once again get loose in the Polity.
‘Test two,’ announced D’nissan.
With some disquiet Mika departed.
Tick tick tick . . .
The sheer immensity of the ancient shipyard could not be fathomed when viewed from space. High up in a chainglass viewing blister, Cormac stood and gazed down into one construction hold. Far below him, silver bees of robots erected partition walls, floors and ceilings in layer upon layer like the cells of a hive. Now rising a hundred yards up from the original floor, the completed accommodation below them was already being occupied. The logistics of all this were frightening: how do you feed and water so many people, and what about sanitation?
Tick tick tickity tick . . .
The runcibles inside the yard now all remained online, transmitting in resources from so many different locations. More than a hundred hold spaces, originally used for the construction of dreadnoughts, were being similarly converted. Millions of refugees were encamped on acres of ceramal flooring in the other holds. As things stood, the shipyard was now full, more refugees trickling in only to fill accommodation as soon as the robots built it.
Tickity tick tick t—
‘You can stop that noise now or I’ll leave you behind,’ snapped Cormac.
Turning from the view, he eyed Arach as the spider-drone drew its foreleg back from where it had been tapping the sharp point against the chainglass. Grimacing, Cormac turned away, again considering how the last few days with Mika had affected him. Only a few hours ago he had been reluctant to leave Jerusalem. A doorway into possibility had opened and he began thinking of things that before he always pushed to the back of his mind: the possibility of a settled relationship with someone, his family, his own purpose, and whether it might be time for a change in direction.