by Neal Asher
* * * * *
Jebel observed Lindy and Urbanus returning to the ship well within the time he allotted them, but a glance at the screens in this Control Centre only confirmed the message just received from the dreadnought captain: the Prador ship was accelerating massively, and now the Boh runcible lay well within its sensor range. Plans needed to change.
Jebel accessed the blueprint of this runcible complex in his aug and searched for a likely place of concealment. Much of the structure was missing and the complex here was nowhere near as large as the one at Trajeen. He checked corridor plans, the layouts of various accommodation units, then finally settled on a secluded garden, not because it was the best place to hide, but because it lay under a chainglass dome and would present them with a grand view of near-future events. Of course, an airlock lay nearby as well.
"Urbanus, Lindy, when you get back inside, grab armament and all the chameleon ware you can find, and head for this location." Via his aug he sent the relevant map references. "You should be able to get there quicker by going outside again. Oh, and bring another spacesuit."
"The reason for this?" Urbanus enquired.
"The Prador ship accelerated and now we are well within the range of its sensors. We can't leave."
Silence met this, and Jebel knew what the other two were thinking. If they left the runcible now, this would result in their probable destruction by weapons fired from the Prador ship. Their presence here would make Immanence infinitely suspicious, so he would ensure that no booby traps lay aboard the runcible. But most importantly he would also regard Conlan's information as suspect, because Conlan had told the Prador this runcible was secure. The ship docked outside did not matter, since it could have been abandoned during the evacuation, but their presence did. Jebel realised they were now utterly committed to Moria's plan, and must conceal themselves from the Prador to see it through.
"I am not sure that I relish the prospect of staying here," Conlan opined.
"Live with it," Jebel spat.
Conlan stood. "If we don't run now we'll be found, and if we are not found we'll end up inside that ship with all your mines. That wasn't part of the deal. I didn't sign on for a suicide mission."
Jebel considered violence, and rejected it. He still needed Conlan to speak to the Prador captain again. It might be a critical key, considering the level of Prador paranoia. He turned to the man, nodded to the door and with his thin-gun waved Conlan ahead of him.
"I don't for one moment think that Immanence, given time to check things and properly secure his position, will allow those mines inside his ship. So we are going to panic him. Right now there's a Polity dreadnought heading here. You will send a message to Immanence telling him that those controlling the positional drives intend to open up the Boh runcible, wide, to present a larger target for the Polity dreadnought's weapons." Jebel halted, spotting something on one of the screens. The Prador ship was now visible, as was the shuttle now departing it.
Conlan turned, glanced towards the same screen then focused his attention back on Jebel. "I'm not sure I see the point of such a message."
Jebel waved him on towards the door. "Immanence will try to protect all or part of the runcible. This means he'll get close, perhaps close enough to be damaged by those mines. He may even risk grabbing all or part of the runcible. In which case we have him."
Jebel considered the explanation he had just given. Not bad on the spur of the moment. He did not want to risk telling Conlan the whole truth until the last moment—didn't want to give the man too much time to think about it and see all its holes, then maybe slip something else into his message to the Prador.
"But where will we be when this happens?"
Jebel mulled his answer over for a moment, then decided to go right to it. "I promised you a chance to survive this, and I will stick to my word. As you heard: the others will be bringing a spare spacesuit for you."
"And?" Conlan asked.
"Though my dislike of the Prador drives me to do things some would consider suicidal, I do actually want to continue living," said Jebel. "You'll make contact with Immanence, tell him what I just told you, and once that's done there's no more reason for us to remain here. If we tried leaving by ship, that would alert the Prador. So we don't leave by ship."
"What?"
Jebel continued: "There's one horror for anyone who ever goes EVA in a spacesuit. It's the idea of your line breaking or you being flung away into vacuum. What happens then? You float through space and gradually run out of air, dying a pretty horrible death."
"But that doesn't happen," said Conlan.
"Precisely," Jebel replied. "When in that situation you can now initiate the suit's injector pack. The drugs throw you into a hibernation state in which you use less than five per cent of the suit's oxygen. Out here your power supply would run out before the oxygen, and in that hibernation state you would freeze. People have actually been revived from that."
"You're insane," said Conlan, coming to a halt.
Jebel shook his head. "If we stay here, we die either when the mines detonate or the Prador find us. Leaving through an airlock we just might slip under the radar—too small to notice. At least this way we'll have some chance, not much different from the chance I offered you before, Conlan."
"Freezing in a suit is not quite the same as being put in suspended animation in a cold coffin."
Jebel shrugged. "Tough," he said, and prodded Conlan in the back with his gun barrel to get him moving again.
As he walked, Conlan realised Jebel Krong had not revealed all his plans, but he just could not fathom the rest. It sounded good—initiating an action to drive Immanence into grabbing the mined runcible without thoroughly checking it—but stood no chance of success. The Prador were winning. Why would Immanence risk his entire ship just for the dubious gain of this technology? It all seemed just too desperate. The Prador hammer was coming down and he, Krong and Trajeen itself were sitting on the anvil. Time for him to alter things in his favour.
A shuttle now approached from the Prador ship. Having loaded the plans of this complex while linked in with his aug, Conlan guessed that shuttle would dock at the largest access point—a small embarkation lounge about three-quarters of a kilometre from where he stood. He modelled his own position on those plans and considered imminent actions. His chances of escaping once he and Krong joined the other two would drop to zero, not simply because there would be three of them, but because one of them was a Golem and could move very fast when required.
Linking into this complex's systems was easy, and he had done it in parallel while he spoke to Immanence. Of course he possessed no executive control, for that operated from Trajeen and whoever held the reins there. But he did not need to control the runcible itself—nothing large like that—all he needed was the level of system control available to a maintenance technician. Ahead, lay a crossroads. The right-hand corridor led to a storeroom, the left-hand one terminated at a drop-shaft leading either up or down to further levels. In his aug Conlan set up three instructions: one a simple radio transmission to a junction box a little way ahead of him, the other to set in motion a light-intensifier program to run the moment he sent the first signal, and the third to signal another critical junction box in the left-hand corridor. Conlan sent the first signal and put out the lights.
The shots cut the air overhead as Conlan dropped and flung himself forwards. He rolled into the left-hand corridor as further shots slammed into the wall next to him, their impact sites leaving black shadows in his aug-intensified vision. Within a few strides he reached the drop-shaft and hit the panel to initiate the irised gravity field to take him upwards, and dove into the shaft. Jebel pursued closely, and one pulse from his thin-gun took off Conlan's boot heel as he rose out of sight. Now Conlan abruptly reached out and grabbed a maintenance ladder beside the shaft. Jebel, into the shaft below, spinning round to aim up at him. Third signal. The drop-shaft's power cut out, and the grav-plates on lower levels exerted
their pull. Jebel yelled and dropped. There followed a sickening crack Conlan easily recognised as the sound of bone breaking, and another yell. Conlan began climbing just as fast as he could. Thin-gun shots threw sparks up the shaft as he exited on the next floor. Conlan ran.
* * * * *
Immanence watched as the shuttle, containing Gnores and the second-children, decelerated towards the Boh runcible. Under a similar decelerating burn his own vessel shook and grumbled all around him. However it carried a great deal more inertia than the shuttle and relative to its mass its engines were smaller, so it needed to lose velocity around Boh before coming back into position between the runcible and the approaching Polity ship. Immanence champed in frustration, once again belched acid, and damned all humans. While the deceleration continued he summoned Scrabbler and one other to him.
"Are you ready to take on the position as Prime?" he asked the first-child.
Scrabbler danced about a little. "Yes, Father. Yes I am."
"The Polity ship may fire on the Boh runcible. In the unlikelihood that I do not intercept all its missiles, it is quite possible that Gnores will not survive. You will then be Prime. I'll want you to ready the second shuttle for a similar mission to the Trajeen runcible. One has to prepare…"
"Now, should I do it now…Father?" Scrabbler could hardly contain his glee.
The second individual Immanence summoned now reached the doors into the sanctum and waited there indecisively. Immanence waved that one in with his claw. Scrabbler turned and eyed this second-child—one grown slightly larger than usual.
"XF-458, come before me. Scrabbler, you may depart."
Scrabbler turned and headed for the doors with uncertain steps, his eye-palps quivering, and perhaps now he had some intimation of the extent of his father's preparations.
Staring down at the thriving second-child before him, Immanence pondered how many times he had done this before. Scrabbler would be his forty-third Prime… or was that fifty-third?
"XF-458, you will henceforth be known as Gurnax," Immanence began. Later, when he dismissed the new first-child, who was not quite grown enough to assume that title, he checked other likely candidates amongst the remaining second-children and sent instructions redirecting them to different food stores within the ship. He then ordered some third-children to be thawed out and placed in the nursery. Preparation was everything.
By the time the runcible rose back into sight around Boh, the shuttle had finally docked. Immanence chose a course to bring him between Boh and the runcible, then to a stable orbit between the runcible and the approaching Polity dreadnought. With an inner smile he noted launches from the other vessel—a swarm of rail-gun missiles.
Should have fired those earlier, he thought.
Some tinkering with steering thrusters brought him much closer to the runcible, so the Polity ship could obtain no clear line of sight to that structure. The rail-gun missiles, hurtling in at a terrific velocity, could not change their course. A few hours later they began impacting on the exotic metal hull. Immanence noted minimal damage and a steady increase in power available to his particle cannons. Then he detected launches of self-powered missiles from the approaching vessel. These would be more of a danger because they could be programmed to swing round and come in from any direction, and could even shut down for a little while, drift, then start up their drives again for a renewed attack. Immanence drew his ship even closer to the structure and onlined masers and meteor lasers, then sent an order to another part of the ship: "You will intercept and destroy any missiles that get past this ship. I am sending you each your areas of deployment. Nothing must get past. Is that understood?"
A concert of voices replied, "Yes, Father."
Gazing through sensors in the drone cache, Immanence watched the nine spherical war drones accelerating out through the triangular space door. Checking designations he noted Vagule was the last of them. This must be just chance, for Vagule could now have no sense of trying to extend his span. Via exterior sensors the captain watched them speeding away, the proximity to the runcible being such that Boh cast a weak shadow over them and the ship. Now Immanence returned his attention to the approaching enemy.
"Bring it on human," he bubbled in the Prador tongue. "Just come a little closer."
* * * * *
Gnores hurtled from the assault docking tube punched through the skin of the station, and scrambled to a halt tearing up carpet in the embarkation lounge. He swung in a circle, rail-gun, particle weapon and a laser brought to bear on the branching corridors around him. He felt rather reckless and quite relished the prospect of a fight. It was a first-child trait, and another reason why first-children tended to need replacing. He knew this, but still could not feel any other way, just as he knew that his father might be preparing to remove him, and could do nothing but obey.
Fifty second-children now poured in, similarly armed but also carrying high-powered scanners. No attack revealed itself—not a human in sight.
"Follow the search pattern precisely. Those who deviate, unless required to by combat, will not be returning to Father's ship," Gnores told them. But if there was anything to find he did not expect it to be within these human accommodation units. The other fifty second-children, suited against vacuum and now spreading out around the entire structure, would be the ones to find booby traps, because if they were here, they would certainly be on the runcible device itself.
Gnores replaced all his weapons in his harness, then while walking around the embarkation lounge, listened into the com-chatter of the second-children, and to those channels open back to the ship, which kept him updated. Moving over to a wide window—something unthinkable to a Prador for here would be a weakness in its armour—he gazed at his father's ship, clearly visible just out from the runcible. The ship stood silhouetted against gaseous incandescence on its other side, and through those channels Gnores learnt it was intercepting a rail-gun attack.
"Gnores! Gnores! Gnores! A human!"
Gnores whirled around and accelerated across the lounge to the branching corridors on the other side. Many of them were far too small for him to enter. Besides, he did not know which one he should enter anyway.
On the com unit he now held in his claw, Gnores traced who spoke, reaching forward with one of his finer under-hands to manipulate the complex controls. XG-12, one of the batch raised to second-childhood shortly after they set out from the Second Kingdom. According to the map he should be a hundred metres over—
The human charged into sight with XG-12 snapping claws at his heels. Gnores drew and aimed his rail-gun, but then realised the human was unarmed. The creature paused, seeing him, then abruptly ran towards him, making all sorts of strange noises and waving about its soft upper limbs.
"Desist, XG-12. Return to the search."
The second-child slid to a halt, perhaps remembering Gnores' earlier threat and realising that this might not be defined as a combat situation. It turned away and ran off. The human staggered to a halt before Gnores, gasping, and still intermittently making those noises. Gnores realised it was trying to talk to him, only he carried no translator. He reached out and closed the tips of his claws on its lower torso and picked it up.
"Father, I have found a human. It is trying to speak to me but I do not understand it," he sent via one of the channels to the ship.
After a moment Immanence, having viewed Gnores' prize through the cameras mounted on the first-child's carapace, replied, "Gnores, it is not trying to speak to you. It is making those sounds because it is in pain. You have damaged it."
Gnores abruptly realised he had squeezed too tightly, for the lower torso of the creature split open and organs were bulging out. There also seemed to be a lot of red liquid dribbling onto the floor. Gnores dropped the human at once. He observed it coiling on its side and trying to push its internal organs back inside.
"I was sure it was trying to speak to me a moment ago," he said.
"Why do you not have a translator with
you?" Immanence enquired.
Gnores felt a sudden flash of embarrassment. Though having brought every variety of hand weapon, scanning gear and equipment for accessing human computer systems, he had entirely forgotten about bringing a translator. Then came the fear. Father would severely punish such a lapse. Such a lapse would probably ensure his removal as a Prime. And there was only one way Primes were ever removed.
"But this place was supposed to be empty! My mission here was to scan for booby traps and secure—"
"Upon your return, Gnores," said Immanence, "we will discuss this further."
Gnores sagged as the comlink broke. He stared dimly into his future and realised it did not extend very far. Damned human! He sank into a fug of self-pity and wondered if his father was already ordering a drone shell to be brought up to his sanctum, or if all of Gnores would be food for second-children. The human—some payback there… Gnores forced his attention back to his surroundings. He would keep the human alive. He would be much more careful this time.
Maybe he could make that pleasure last until Immanence recalled him. He peered down at the floor and saw a bloody trail leading over to a nearby corridor, the human just dragging himself from sight. Gnores charged over and crashed into the corridor mouth—his shell too large to allow him ingress. For a moment he tore at the walls with his claws, but then the human opened some kind of access hatch and began pulling himself inside. Gnores drew his rail-gun and fired, but too late, for the human escaped.
Gnores stood grinding his mandibles together and drooling black saliva. After a moment he pushed himself back and whirled away. No matter. It wouldn't live very long with such injuries. They never did.
* * * * *
Now. The time was now. Moria restarted the positioning drives on the Trajeen runcible, and observed the massive gateposts separating from each other, slowly at first then accelerating, drawing out the Skaidon warp, the drives' white blades of flame pointing inwards over the meniscus surface. In her real-time model Moria observed the Occam Razor hurtling down towards Boh, and the Prador vessel dropping lower and lower to keep itself between its opponent and the runcible. Some of the Polity vessel's missiles came close to hitting the runcible itself. That would spell disaster, but, equally, revealing to the Prador that the Boh runcible was not the Polity ship's intended target would be disastrous too. But just maybe there lay a way around that. Moria accessed the runcible's meteor collision lasers and routed through to them a military ballistics program uploaded from the planet. Maybe that would be enough.