Dark Intelligence

by Neal Asher

  Trent looked at the autodoc as it closed up his hand and considered shutting it down. He still might have time to get to an airlock and out. Even if things were about to blow up with the prador, his chances of survival out there still might rate higher than they were in here aboard the Firth … with a captain who might even enjoy being a hooder. He was still procrastinating as the ship engaged grav and began to ascend.

  BLITE

  “Well, we wanted to go to Carapace City,” commented Brond.

  Blite glared at him then said, “Leven, do you have any idea of our precise destination?”

  “No,” the Golem mind replied, “but unless Penny Royal wants to destroy a few buildings when it puts us down, there’s a clear area right beside the Carapace itself.” The mind paused for a second then continued, “That’s presupposing our ultimate destination is Carapace City and not somewhere beyond it.”

  Blite tried to weigh all the options, but just couldn’t see his way clear. Penny Royal had demonstrated how it could descend from this ship to a planetoid and Blite had no doubt it could travel in the same way down to a planet. In fact, since it had showed itself capable of manipulating U-space, he wondered if it needed his ship at all. So why, upon allowing him to descend to the Rock Pool, had it now diverted his ship? Surely it could have abandoned it at any point to head wherever it wanted to go?

  He braced himself angrily for whatever might ensue, sorted and rejected questions to ask and settled on, “Penny Royal, what the fuck are you doing?”

  There was no reply, verbal or otherwise.

  “Greer,” said Blite, “any ideas?”

  Greer, who had been monitoring general coms as they descended, just in case there was any unfortunate response to their presence, turned to look at him. Blite thought she looked ill.

  “There’s a com exchange being broadcast throughout the city, between the father-captain under the sea and Taiken Asmolus,” she said.

  Blite groped for a moment to remember. “Oh yeah, the shellman boss here. What’s it all about?”

  “I’ll transfer it to your screen,” she said woodenly.

  Blite swung his attention back to his screen, as it divided to show Taiken on one side and a prador father-captain on the other. Blite took it in and by the time the list of nominated embarkation points had appeared, he felt precisely how Greer looked. So, some sort of power shift under the sea. Father-Captain Sverl was either stepping down from his position of power, something prador only did on the way to a disposal pit, or was being usurped. And apparently the new guys weren’t anywhere near as tolerant of humans as Sverl, in whatever form.

  Beginning to feel sweat beading on his brow, Blite reviewed what he knew about the situation under the sea. Sverl occupied a prador dreadnought, while other prador occupied three destroyers, but little was known of them other than that. All four vessels were likely undamaged and carrying something close to the full complement of armaments, for surely they’d have been repaired and restocked over the many years since the war. That stock would include continent-busting kamikazes, a wide variety of other CTDs and atomics, particle cannons and near-c railguns. There was enough firepower sitting under the sea to take out not only Carapace City, but this entire world. He had thought earlier that if Penny Royal clashed with the prador, the result could be a real danger to him and his ship. Now he just felt the overpowering urge to giggle hysterically. The AI hadn’t really needed to do anything more than bring them here.

  “Is Penny Royal somehow involved in this?” wondered Greer.

  The question abruptly sobered Blite. The AI hadn’t departed this ship, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been interfering down there in some way. Maybe it had been talking to the prador? Maybe it had taken sides and helped set one side against the other? It was rather a strange coincidence that all this had blown up on the AI’s arrival here. Perhaps events here were all perfectly in keeping with Penny Royal’s plans, whatever they were.

  “I’ve no idea,” he hedged.

  “Damn,” said Brond.

  “What is it now?” Blite asked tiredly, as they rapidly drew closer to Carapace City.

  “A ship just took off from the space port,” Brond replied.

  “I’d hardly think that surprising in the situation,” said Blite, but then grudgingly added, “It’s probably evacuating people—we know some of those transports were taking people to the port for that purpose.”

  “No, they were to take people to the two shuttles there, but there was also a spaceship down,” said Brond. “I didn’t think to run an ID check on it until I spotted it launching just now. It’s Isobel Satomi’s Moray Firth.”

  Blite just stared at him.

  “Strange it being here,” Brond added.

  “Her wanting to come here isn’t strange at all, since this was her next most likely port of call after we visited her,” said Blite. “But her U-drive was trashed before Penny Royal popped across for a visit.”

  He shrugged. It seemed Isobel Satomi was part of the black AI’s plans too, but since he had no idea what those plans were, he had no clue what part she might have to play.

  SPEAR

  As Riss and I descended to Masada in the Lance’s shuttle, specific instructions arrived about what I must do with my ship’s erstwhile crew. I was also able to aug into the local AI net, though Amistad himself still wasn’t talking to us. My aug immediately began updating its science files and, even though I was impatient to get to other data, I allowed it to do so since it wasn’t as if I was wasting any time. Astoundingly, the update lasted a full twenty minutes as it loaded new advances in my areas of interest—in adaptogenics, micro- and nanotech and biotech. Then, as we descended to land at the space port, which sat on a foam-stone raft on a plain of flute grass, I linked through to their main war history database. Here, I checked to see what changes might have been made concerning Panarchia. Updates had been made to the space battle’s casualty rates for this planetary system, since some supposedly destroyed drones had been discovered. They were found in the list of those who’d joined the AI diaspora after the war. However, the number of casualties reported on Panarchia itself remained exactly the same at 8,078. Apparently, there were still no survivors reported. Did the AIs doubt my memories as much as I now did?

  Next I checked my own military file, which was something I hadn’t really done in any detail before. Why should I? I remembered it all. There I found my service record and discovered that I had indeed served with Jebel U-cap Krong before Panarchia. I’d been severely wounded and transferred in a stasis pod to a hospital ship. After my recovery, I served with Berners’ division and died with it on Panarchia. If all this was true then, plainly, my memories of being thralled by the prador were false. The horror of what ensued was false and even the psychosomatic itch I sometimes experienced at the back of my neck was false. In fact, it seemed that everything that had driven me this far was based on a lie.

  As the shuttle landed—without any intervention from me since this was controlled by some small portion of Amistad’s mind—I took a look at news updates concerning Penny Royal. There was a whole new file available concerning my salvage claim on the Puling Child, its confirmation and name change, along with a surprising amount of detail about its prior location and condition. Absorbing this, I felt my mouth go dry. I had been led to that ship by false memories, because apparently I had never interrogated a first-child to find its location … I shook my head, not wanting to pursue that, then returned to the data. I could see that my dealings with Isobel Satomi, the purchase of Flute and my subsequent visit to Penny Royal’s planetoid were detailed too. I was about to call back to the ship and ask Flute just how much he’d told that attack ship AI. Then further information was flagged for my attention and, absorbing it, I started to get angry. Penny Royal wasn’t even here anymore.

  “It’s not fucking here,” I said out loud.

  “I can see that now,” Riss immediately replied. “Seems it left here at just about the same time y
ou were taking control of the Lance. Did you also note the subsequent location traces?”

  I had noted them, and I was quite frustrated about that. Penny Royal had seized control of The Rose, and a sighting of that ship had been reported by a member of the very same salvage crew I saw. They’d also been visiting the AI’s wanderer planetoid in the Graveyard. If I had waited around there for just a while longer, the AI would have come to me. Thereafter, no further reports—Penny Royal had disappeared again. I turned my attention then to local news and data. I wanted to gather whatever I could find about a small salvage and smuggler ship called The Rose and its crew, and all available detail on Penny Royal’s sojourn on this planet.

  “We may well be wasting our time here,” I suggested, as we reached the airlock.

  “We need data,” opined Riss. I was still angry, but I did agree.

  I donned a breather mask and we disembarked, then I stood watching as an auto-handler trundled over to a small cargo door in the side of the shuttle. It was there to take away the ship’s dead crew finally, along with their non-human fellow. I felt a momentary reluctance, because there might have been something yet to learn from the Golem Daleen—then I auged an instruction to open that door. The handler inserted big spade-like hands and, one by one, took out three cylindrical cold-store coffins and loaded them onto its cage trailer. Next it took out the smaller container—about the size of a pressure cooker—in which resided Daleen’s AI crystal.

  “Daleen will be encountering a forensic AI soon enough,” said Riss.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you pick up anything on the others?”

  “Forensic AIs in their future too,” Riss replied. “The remaining relatives, if having any interest at all, have agreed to an attempt at brain reconstruction.”

  I wasn’t surprised—Polity AIs would want to extract every scrap of information available about the events aboard my ship a hundred years ago. And still I was surprised at the hands-off attitude towards me and that ship itself. I turned away and, with Riss in tow, headed over to the edge of the space port platform. I rented a gravcar, then headed out to the coordinates Amistad had provided, which took two hours.

  The observation tower raised its platform high above the lethal wildlife here, while a tough ceramic conveyor engine deep in the muddy ground drove it along. As we approached in the rental gravcar—the only way of getting out here safely, what with recent hooder activity—I stared at the platform, puzzled by how wrong it appeared. A brief aug search showed me how it had been much expanded from its original form, which did look right to me. Again some hint of someone else’s memories. Something else, which looked like another tower in the making, was being constructed nearby. Perhaps the aim was to raise a number of similar towers to support a mobile city.

  A simple locator frame flicked into being on our car’s screen, outlining a small gravcar platform. This came into view to one side, just before the intelligence down there took control. I released the joystick and sat back, taking in the view: the gas giant Calypse was poised on the horizon in the aubergine sky and the chequerboard of squirm ponds gleamed distantly. They were now worked by robots rather than slaves of the Theocracy. I could also see a long tubular building to one side, made of woven flute grass. This contained the corpse of a giant albino hooder that had apparently been called the Technician. Beyond that lay a convoluted structure of similarly woven grass, which was the home of the newly sentient gabbleduck.

  “I suppose my own particular concerns aren’t considered important, in the light of what’s happened here,” I said grudgingly.

  Masada was a world used to being at the centre of major events. Until just a few decades ago there had been a ruling theocracy here, with the majority of the population enslaved to constant labour on the planet’s surface. Then had come rebellion involving alien technology, followed by Polity intervention and quarantine. After the quarantine, an alien attack ensued, shortly followed by the resurrection to sentience of one of the creatures here—a gabbleduck. This was apparently descended from one of the great extinct civilizations: the Atheter. Since then the world had been reclassified as a protectorate, with a Polity warden in charge to prevent more chaos. I’d studied this history with interest, but over the last few hours my focus had been mainly on very recent events. Because the present warden of this world, Amistad, had of course brought Penny Royal here.

  “You shouldn’t assume your concerns don’t count,” Riss replied from where she was coiled on the seat beside me, her head up and nose pressed against the screen. “Penny Royal is taken very seriously indeed.”

  “More seriously than million-year-old biomechs, resurrected aliens, Jain technology and Dragon?” I wondered.

  Riss turned to peer at me, her black eye open and sparkles appearing in its depths. This was a second outward sign of the huge amounts of data the drone had been processing ever since we boarded the shuttle. The other sign had been an increase in her body temperature—such that I knew it would be dangerous to touch her nacreous skin.

  “Penny Royal is in the same category,” the drone said.

  “That being?”

  “A potential gigadeath weapon and paradigm-changing intelligence.”

  I didn’t pursue that, since it made my quest for vengeance seem like a rather petty and irrelevant detail.

  Our car descended slowly, as if the one controlling it wanted to give us plenty of time to take in the rather intimidating view. As it settled, a map appeared on a small console screen courteously informing me of my destination. This gave me the option to upload it to an aug, gridlink or portable hardware. I just memorized it and stepped out of the car, sniffing at the damp air before pulling on my breather mask. However, I had no need of the map as Riss shot out after me and writhed on ahead, leading the way. A door at the rear of the parking platform swung open as we approached, to reveal a couple of people clad in flute grass camouflage combats. However, they abruptly stepped aside when they saw Riss. We moved on inside as they headed out towards an armoured troop transporter, one of them commenting, “One of his wartime buddies, I bet.”

  Riss headed up some stairs and I followed, feeling the waft of an air differential but seeing no sign that the interior air was breathable. By way of a long tubular corridor and another set of stairs, we came to a doorway. This gleamed with the glassy lemon scale of a hardfield, which blinked out as we approached. A further two steps brought us up onto the original observation platform. Amistad turned to face us, his polished chrome legs clattering noisily on the scarred metal.

  “You don’t need the mask,” he said.

  Amistad was bigger than the gravcar I’d arrived in, a perfect rendition of a scorpion in gleaming metal. That outer shiny coat was doubtless nano-chain chrome vanadium alloy, which was resistant to just about any weapon that didn’t need mounting on a tank or some larger vehicle. I removed my mask and hung it at my belt, annoyed at yet another false memory—that upon first meeting Amistad, I felt I was back in the presence of some long-time comrade in arms. The feeling diminished as I walked out to stand before him, as I found myself checking either side of the platform for a spiny shadow.

  “By now you know that Penny Royal is no longer here,” Amistad observed.

  “So I understand,” I said. “It was last sighted in the Graveyard.” “And is quite likely to still be there.”

  “But what I fail to understand,” I continued doggedly, “is why that creature ended up here in the first place and why it wasn’t recycled through a scrap-metal plant ages ago.”

  “You know the story by now, Thorvald,” said the warden of Masada. “The data is available and I know you have been accessing it.”

  “I do and I have,” I said. “You resurrected Penny Royal after its encounter with the same Atheter technology that caused problems here. But you reawakened it without the supposedly bad part of its eight states of consciousness. Upon discovering that eighth state, Penny Royal destroyed it and now all is forgiven—all the thousands tortu
red, maimed and killed. Seems to me that, just like in any human society before the Quiet War, the law doesn’t apply to the rulers.”

  “You know the story,” said Amistad, “so you must know why amnesty was granted.”

  “I know the reasoning,” I said. I crossed my arms, suddenly feeling cold. “You classified Penny Royal as eight separate intelligences and considered the destruction of the eighth state execution of sentence. But of course that kind of ruling doesn’t apply to a human with some multiple personality disorder, does it?”

  Amistad snipped a claw in the air, and his eyes gleamed red for a moment. I realized this wasn’t a threat, just annoyance.

  “And, of course,” said Riss, rising up beside me, “in the case of Penny Royal you screwed up.”

  “That is as yet to be determined,” the scorpion stated.

  “Face up to it, Amistad, Penny Royal played you,” said Riss.

  I turned to peer at the drone, not sure what she was implying. Was she talking about Penny Royal escaping on Blite’s ship? The AI had made its move while Amistad had been dealing with some difficult compromises on Masada—arising from this human-occupied world now containing a sentient alien autochthon. This autochthon would have been quite within its rights, under Polity law, in ejecting the whole human population. But, going back to Penny Royal, whether the AI had committed some crime in boarding The Rose hadn’t been proven. For me there was no doubt: the crew of that ship had probably been killed by the AI or transformed into something terrible. I considered what was running inside the fossil I now carried in my pocket.

  “Not so. Penny Royal was free to depart at any time it chose.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” said Riss. “The data, as you said, is available. This includes all the files pertaining to your encounter with Penny Royal on the edge of the caldera.”

  While the assassin drone and erstwhile war drone settled to glaring at each other, though perhaps there was more going on than I could see, I again accessed that same data and quickly ran through it. Penny Royal had learned the location of its missing “eighth state of consciousness” at the bottom of the sea here, seized it and brought it back inland. Amistad had tracked it down to the edge of a caldera where, in a dramatic diorama, Penny Royal had destroyed the container that housed its eighth state. I was still none the wiser.