Dark Intelligence

by Neal Asher

  “It is also quantum entangled,” Riss later added, even as we fell into orbit around the planet Masada.

  “Probably with Penny Royal,” I suggested.

  “I am suspicious by nature,” Riss told me. “And measuring the spin states of atoms is no easy task because it requires some intricate work with U-fields. However, I have managed to do some of that work using adaptations of my own U-space transceiver, and I am now considering whether or not I should kill you.”

  I turned towards the drone which, as usual, was coiled at the end of the table. Her head was raised to gaze at the arrays of scanning devices we had built around the spine.

  “What?”

  “I can’t say for sure what the Golem Daleen saw that drove it to attack you, because its mind was obviously damaged and reformed by Penny Royal. But I’m guessing it saw you as an instrument of the AI that all but destroyed it.”

  “If you could elaborate,” I said, taking just a small pace back.

  “The spine is quantum entangled with a ruby memplant—the one that resides inside your skull.”

  13

  TRENT

  Trent had been here before. He’d lost count of the number of beatings he’d received as he worked his way up through the Separatist movement on Coloron. And if it came to counting which of his bones he’d had broken, it would have been easier to count the unbroken ones. Still, it hurt like hell and Stolman’s men had been especially vicious. He reckoned that came down to the desperation they felt at being trapped here in the Rock Pool, and the need to take it out on someone.

  The pain from his testicles still made him feel sick and the ribs down one side of his chest were all busted. So was his right forearm, many of the fingers on his left hand and the bones in the arch of his left foot. His insides felt a mess too and he knew that if he didn’t get to an autodoc soon he would be pissing blood, if not dying. As for his jaw—definitely broken, over on that patch of floor where most of his teeth lay. How the hell Stolman expected him to reveal everything about the Moray Firth’s security now he didn’t know. He could hardly speak.

  “I do hope Satomi realizes what a loyal soul she has in you,” said Stolman.

  Trent just grunted. Even with everything he could tell Stolman about the Moray Firth, the man stood no chance. After any attempted attack, Isobel would just head for orbit and call in reinforcements. Stolman would end up as meat paste and quite likely, if he was still alive, Isobel would come after Trent because she wasn’t the forgiving sort. As it was, he knew his only chance of survival now was to keep quiet for as long as he could. He could hope Stolman would tire of torture and resort to the cut aug on the table beside him—and that afterwards he would allow Trent to live. Then, when Isobel came to crush Stolman, there was at least a chance she would forgive Trent. He could rightly claim he had fought not to reveal anything that could be a danger to her, until unable to conceal everything in his mind.

  “Cut off his clothing.” Stolman sat back and waved a hand airily. “Let’s see how much more cooperative he gets when we start grinding off his skin. Oh, just out of interest, Trent, the longest anyone has lasted is to the knees.”

  Wonderful.

  Trent strained against the glue sticking him to the crates. A lot of it had been smeared on his clothing, so if they started cutting that away then maybe he could pull himself free. Almost certainly he would lose the skin off the backs of his hands and part of his scalp, but that would be better than what was coming.

  “What?” Stolman abruptly stood up, his chair crashing over behind him. Further behind him Penny Royal’s former Golem, which had been standing against the back wall, abruptly stepped forwards. “Cover! Weapons!” Stolman bellowed, just as explosions detonated outside.

  Hi, Isobel, thought Trent tiredly.

  Another detonation blew smoke and debris into the room via an access corridor. Stolman’s men quickly pulled out a wide selection of lethal hardware in response and took cover. Glancing at Trent, Stolman reached for a hand laser at his belt, but the instinct for survival had taken over and he was already running before he could pull it. All sorts of weaponry ended up directed towards the corridor’s entrance, including the two autoguns, just as a second explosion sent a disc-shaped security drone bouncing inside. Next, a mosquito autogun came through the smoke, spitting pulse-fire. This picked up one man and flung him back, shredding him at the same time. Trent thought, And that’s for my balls, you fucker. A protruding arm caught two shots next, the owner shrieking, but the gun moved on to a more immediate target, its shots splashing and ricocheting from ceramal bones.

  Another explosion sent crates tumbling from a stack even as Stolman’s autoguns concentrated on the mosquito. The thing moved across the floor at high speed and took out one of the other guns, but then ran into the blur that was the Golem. It just picked the gun up and smashed it against the floor before discarding it. Yet another explosion brought sheets of chain-glass raining down. Incendiaries began filling the area with boiling smoke. Pulse-fire stabbed down five times, each time finding a target—then the red slash of laser carbines and one proton beam speared upwards towards a hole in the roof. Trent eyed the source of that proton beam, which had to be the greatest danger. Its operator was crouching behind a loading robot, but the next explosion tipped the robot over to crush the marksman.

  A little messy, thought Trent, but acceptable.

  Just then, some force tried to suck him away from the wall of crates, then slammed him back into it. With his eyes watering, Trent watched an I-beam clang end-on against the floor, then topple. When he looked up it was at sky, since most of the roof was now gone. Something dropped through the hole, a proton beam stabbing down from it repeatedly, like a cutting torch slicing through confetti. A man tumbled through the air, trailing fire, then two more men just burst like ignited hydrogen balloons. How many? Trent had lost count.

  Isobel descended like some Aztec goddess, spewing fire all around her and writhing in returned fire almost as if relishing the feel of it. After the initial fusillade, her firing grew intermittent then finally stuttered to a halt as she drew to a stop in mid-air. Then she abruptly slid sideways to crash through a simple glass window into an internal office. She came out clutching a figure, Stolman, and descended to the floor.

  “And thus,” declaimed a voice, right beside Trent, “do the scales drop from my eyes.”

  He looked into two luminous dark blue eyes. The Golem held Stolman’s atomic shear up in one hand. Trent just stared at it, and waited for the end. Suddenly it swung round in front of him, vibrating under numerous autogun impacts, light flashing all around it and a hot metal stink filling the air. Trent looked up as Isobel’s proton beam stabbed out again and took out this remaining autogun, which had obviously been damaged but had managed to restart itself. Why hadn’t it shot at Isobel? Obvious: Stolman must have realized she was all but invulnerable to its shots and so directed it against Trent. Petty vengeance. But why had the Golem stood in the way of those shots? Because it was moral now? Stolman’s Golem? Or Penny Royal’s Golem?

  “It’s not listening to you any more, Stolman,” said Isobel.

  The Golem moved closer and used the atomic shear to cut behind Trent with infinite precision.

  “Snickety snick,” it said, “doubly quick.”

  So accurately did it cut, that when his left hand dropped away from the crate only a thin layer of glue and plasmesh coated the back of it. Eventually he fell away, landing on his knees and supported by his one good hand, biting down on a yell. After a moment he again looked across at Isobel. She was hanging over Stolman, who she must have knocked out, like a snake about to strike.

  “So what do you think we should do with him?” she asked.

  Something involving a lot of pain, Trent felt, but right then he was more concerned about the damage to his own body. He wanted nerve blockers and an autodoc, pronto. When he didn’t reply, she turned slightly to gaze to one side at the Golem, who now stood motionless, the li
ght gone from its eyes. It shifted slightly as if in response to some unheard signal, but this movement took away its balance and it fell to the floor like a sack of scrap.

  “Damn,” said Isobel. “It’s inert again.” She dipped her hood to inspect Stolman, “But maybe that won’t last.”

  Rearing up again, she next moved her variety of limbs in a smooth rippling twist—the end result was her grav-harness coming off and skidding across the floor towards Trent. He reached out and took it up, standing mostly balanced on one foot, and slowly and methodically donned it and tightened up all the straps. Isobel watched him, alien, unknowable. It was going to hurt like hell when it took his weight off the floor.

  “Go back to the ship,” she said. “Get yourself fixed up.” Then she dipped her head downwards to look at Stolman, who had just emitted a low groan and was recovering consciousness. “I have some fuel to buy,” she added.

  Trent studied the harness controls, then tapped in instructions with his good hand. The harness slowly took his weight, his broken ribs grinding.

  “What …‘bout …’ im?” he managed through his shattered mouth.

  “I’m hungry,” Isobel replied.

  Trent was up through the roof and sending himself towards the space port when he heard the first muffled scream.

  SVERL

  Sverl just couldn’t keep still. The fight at Stolman’s place had triggered some remaining prador instinct in him, and he’d just wanted to be in on the action. And Isobel Satomi? He was utterly fascinated by the changes she had undergone. After Trent exited through the warehouse roof, Sverl increased his control of his Golem. Very carefully, because Isobel was haiman and might notice, he deliberately blocked the affectation of glowing eyes and made it turn its head for a better view.

  Isobel fed like the hooder she’d become; stripping away skin and flesh while Stolman shrieked in agony. She’d sliced away his face, the muscles around his neck and had peeled away the clothing on his upper body. She started in on his chest before he fainted. Then, obviously bored with this game and with better things to do, she drove tubular feeding mouths into exposed but undamaged arteries in his neck and spent the next ten minutes draining him dry and finally killing him. As she did this, Sverl felt her tentatively reach out to his Golem via some virtual Dracocorp aug, but then withdraw to concentrate on her feeding.

  She ate faster now, picking Stolman up off the floor and simultaneously turning him and stripping him. Bigger chunks of muscle, fat and sometimes bone went into her larger mouth. Sverl recognized her ravenous appetite. What prador wouldn’t? Obviously this had distracted her from her intent to try and seize control of the Golem, and now Sverl realized he had a decision to make. If he wanted to now become active and go in pursuit of Penny Royal—though to what end he wasn’t sure—here was a golden opportunity. Satomi was intent on going after Thorvald Spear who was intent on going after Penny Royal. Following either of these would lead Sverl to the AI. He should allow Isobel to take control of the Golem and use it to maintain his link with her. Eventually, when she caught up with Spear, Sverl could establish contact with his second-child mind. After all, it wasn’t as loyal as a buyer might suppose …

  After consuming all his soft tissues, Isobel left Stolman’s harder parts scattered over the floor—his larger bones and skull. Sverl felt a moment of panic, not sure if he was ready to relinquish control of the Golem. But she didn’t try, for Stolman had obviously not satisfied her appetite. Picking up a stray human leg on her way, she went over to drag a partially intact corpse from the rubble. After finishing the leg, she began devouring that. As he watched her, Sverl sent an instruction to Bsorol, his nearest attendant first-child. He immediately set off and, by the time Isobel was discarding the remnants of the second corpse, had returned with the carcass of a small reaverfish. Sverl didn’t hesitate. He chopped the fish in half with one of his claws and, retaining the tail end, he held it up to his mandibles like an ice-cream cone. Sverl munched away happily as he watched the show.

  A third corpse now—was Isobel going to eat them all? This one was badly burned and after a moment she discarded it, moving on to one that had merely been decapitated, which was obviously preferable. Along with her human form, had Isobel lost that strange human inclination to enjoy cooked meat? Sverl was thankful it wasn’t one he’d acquired along with his other human characteristics. The prador here in the ocean looked askance at his odd behaviour anyway, so would definitely see such a change in tastes as dangerously aberrant.

  Isobel finished with the third corpse and that, at last, seemed to be enough. Though it was difficult to understand the behaviour of alien creatures, Isobel was certainly easier to read in this form than her previous human one. She was obviously dazed, now coming out of a feeding frenzy. Quite probably her insides ached and certainly she had expanded—gaps showing here and there between the plates of her chitin carapace. Isobel straightened up abruptly, then turned and faced the Golem. It was decision time for Sverl and suddenly it was no decision at all. Of course he would allow her control of it.

  She reached for it through her virtual aug, opening up the bandwidth and reading how to control it while incorporating the correct degree of autonomy. Sverl allowed it its own responses because, in the end, it wasn’t just a telefactored machine. It was a distinct being in and of itself, though strange and quirky even in prador terms. Its eyes glowing, it stood up.

  “Snackety snack,” it said, swinging its head from side to side as it surveyed the carnage, then, “I love you, Isobel.”

  Sverl was baffled by this, until he realized that some of his own feelings must have been leaking through—and he had, just in the last hour, acquired a deep feeling of kinship and affection for her. Isobel also seemed puzzled by this statement, for she hesitated for a long drawn-out moment before issuing verbal instructions.

  “Follow me,” she said through her voice synthesizer, “I have fuel to buy.”

  Outside the warehouse an armoured car had arrived, along with a fire robot, which wouldn’t now be required since the flames had failed to take hold. Armed shell people enforcers had disembarked from the car, but hesitated to do anything more. In Carapace City they enforced a limited degree of public order because chaos was bad for business. As Sverl finished the first half of the reaverfish and picked up the next, he tuned into their communications. They knew this was Stolman’s warehouse and were aware that he had made some sort of play against Isobel Satomi. They also knew what she now looked like and, as she exited, with Stolman’s Golem behind her, they made the sensible decision to stand aside. The shell people had little love for Stolman—he’d been getting far too powerful and arrogant.

  “Is Stolman dead?” asked one brave soul as she passed through them.

  “He is,” she replied simply, and moved on.

  Sverl now noted another watcher in the area. The battered-looking Polity drone was hovering up by a nearby warehouse’s second-storey loading hatch. Through the eyes of his Golem, Sverl observed it for a short while, but decided there was nothing to be done. The thing presented the persona of a reckless erstwhile war drone, taking a tour of the backwaters and rough houses of the Polity line. But it had been here too long and its subtle interventions betrayed it. The thing was almost certainly a watcher placed here by Earth Central Security. Sverl had considered sending one of his own prador drones to destroy it, but success was not a foregone conclusion. Moreover, even if it worked, ECS would only send something more difficult to spot.

  Isobel moved on to Taiken Fuels. Taiken himself would doubtless suffer one of his problematic bowel movements, brought on by his own radical physical changes, before he realized there was money to be made. Sverl was about to turn his attention to other things when something intruded on his connection with his Golem.

  “You really need to keep your eye on the ball, Sverl,” said a voice.

  Sverl immediately traced the communication to the ECS watcher, then ramped up his com security at once.

  �
�What are you talking about, drone?” he enquired.

  “Well, while you’ve been having a grand old time watching Isobel smear Stolman and having a lunch break, you haven’t been paying attention to your other feeds.”

  “If you could elaborate,” suggested Sverl, frantically checking his screens and alerts.

  “Your Beta satellite,” the drone explained. “You really should check out the view.”

  Sverl inserted his free claw into a pit control even as the alert made itself known. He dropped the remaining reaverfish and came close to experiencing a problematic bowel movement of his own.

  This changed everything.

  BLITE

  Great, the Rock Pool, thought Blite. It was another place he’d decided he never wanted to visit. Any place occupied by a large group of people turning themselves into prador had to be a bad place to go to. The prador the shell people worshipped were here too. To be frank, the entire Graveyard had also dropped off his “desired destination” list a number of years ago.

  Blite grimaced. Sure, there were fortunes to be made here. Some collectors paid premium prices for wartime artefacts, and salvaged technology always had a price, despite being antediluvian in Polity terms. There was even money still to be made in rescuing people or memplants. However, the dangers were greater too. Betrayals were frequent, non-payment and other underhand practices could occur and transactions could get bloody. The Graveyard was full of nasty people like Isobel Satomi and legendary villains like the indestructible Mr Pace. This was why Blite had stuck to the Polity in recent years. Yes, he had tended to push the borders of legality, but not in ways that might get him dead.