Dark Intelligence

by Neal Asher

  Those minutes dragged past, while the vista around us opened out—into low flute grasses and muddy channels dotted with islands of taller grasses. There were also occasional stands of orange and black whiptails. Perfect, I thought—no cover. But in reality, tall flute grasses couldn’t hide us from the senses of the two above.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked, thinking that we’d have to abandon our destination, although I wasn’t quite sure why I didn’t feel much disappointment.

  The ATV abruptly decelerated and, glancing at Riss, I wondered if she’d come up with a strategy. Then casting my gaze forwards, I saw why she was slowing.

  It stepped out of an island of flute grass, briefly stood up on its hind legs to peer in the direction we were heading, then looked back round at us. Coming to a decision, it settled down into its seated pyramidal form and extended one of its arms. Most of the claws were folded but one protruded upwards. In a manner that any human was culturally programmed to recognize, it waved this repeatedly in the direction we were going.

  The ATV kept on slowing, finally coming to a halt.

  “Your mouth’s open,” said Riss.

  I abruptly snapped it closed but, really, gaping was justified. Here, out in the wilds of the planet Masada, sat the single resurrected example of the Atheter race, the Weaver. Or, to put it another way, I was seeing a gabbleduck thumbing a lift.

  ISOBEL

  The new Isobel felt firmly and utterly in control, even as something violently knocked the Caligula and her other three ships out of U-space. Her immediate conclusion was that an enemy had deployed a USER, but subsequent analysis of the data indicated otherwise. Each of the four ships had suffered from localized effects, if such terms could possibly be used within such a continuum. That meant four targeted devices had hit, perhaps U-space missiles or mines of some kind. She processed that, considered the likelihood of other enemy elements here, but remained resolute about her mission objectives.

  “Snickety snick.”

  The communication came from a channel under her control. She briefly queried it, vaguely concerned about such unnecessary transferences of data. Information came back from the Golem, who had moved very quickly to insert itself in the Glorys old-style ejection pod.

  “Sverl sends his regards,” it said.

  Isobel reached out for answers, clarification and obedience, but she just slid off the mind. Next it ejected the pod from the Glory, hurtling away under an acceleration no human occupant could have survived. She immediately targeted it with the Caligula’s weapons, but it had timed its ejection perfectly. For in the next instant she detected a black spike of a ship out there, splintering off missiles and launching them towards her vessels. Suddenly she had nothing to spare except for defence.

  “Gloves off properly this time,” said this new aggressor.

  The intelligence’s missiles were in pre-jump, she realized, even while targeting them with her own missiles and beam weapons across four ships. She coiled tighter, generating a subspacial twist through the extended mechanisms of her body. This manifested as a gravity wave-front ahead of the Caligula. Two missiles jumped just a moment before the gravity wave hit the bulk of them, before it flowed on towards that black ship. Missiles still in pre-jump shattered, igniting like small suns as the anti-matter flasks they contained breached. The twist took out a further missile, U-space disruption flinging it out into the real, where it followed its detonation program. Then one of her other ships, the Glory, disappeared in a massive flash. Nothing material of it remaining as it was instantly transformed into light-speed plasma.

  Necessary sacrifice.

  More missiles splintered towards her, beam weapons webbing space. Throwing her remaining ships into a massive fusion-drive acceleration towards the centre of this system, Isobel then shut off all safety limiters. She generated a twist in all their drives and micro U-jumped them a hundred thousand miles. Immediately the Nasturtium came under fire, hardfields snapping on around it to deflect particle beams—but pseudo FTL matter twists in the beams themselves chewed into those protective fields. And the black ship was still with them.

  “Not that fucking easy, Satomi,” said the Garrotte.

  Next the Nasturtium blew a hardfield generator, which exited that ship’s hull as glowing wreckage. It crashed through the craft on the opposite side to a beam strike. Her Moray Firth wasn’t being hit so hard, but soon would be targeted more fiercely. The seemingly endless supply of U-jump missiles from that black ship had simply to complete their microseconds-long warm-ups. The Caligula now began taking more fire, just to keep its defences occupied, Isobel felt—the black ship was just ridding itself of the irrelevancies before fully concentrating on her.

  A second micro U-jump brought them within a hundred thousand kilometres of Masada. Enemy weapons revealed themselves there as a whole spectrum of energies howled out from orbital installations. The Nasturtium fell next, a final hardfield collapsing and a particle beam sectioning it from end to end like some hellish milling tool. It peeled open like a banana, then one of the U-jump missiles annihilated it. Isobel sent a twist towards her antagonist, but the black ship micro-jumped itself. Microseconds dragged as slow as days, then years, as a gravity wave weapon fired from Masada’s orbit. Isobel saw her choices abruptly whittled down to one and something inside her hurt at the sacrifice she had to make.

  She made the Moray Firth micro-jump at precisely the same moment as she reached out again to try and twist that black ship. She plotted U-space as she jumped the Caligula too, a large percentage of her war mind running the calculations, and they were at once close to Masada. The black ship and the Moray Firth surfaced behind her, just outside the gravity well while she was within it. They didn’t surface in precisely the same place, but close enough. They fused and hull melded into hull. But, as they were travelling under differential vectors, they at once tore apart again. This ripped open the hulls of both ships, strewing debris across vacuum. Within that cloud, anti-matter flasks breached and the two ships were lost in multiple detonations—even as the Caligula hurtled down into the atmosphere of Masada.

  Trent gone, thought the human part of Isobel. All three ships gone. Her organization was all but dead now because, despite her bases on various Graveyard worlds, its heart had been those ships and the people aboard them. All that remained was her and the Caligula.

  But of course it wasn’t over. Isobel uncoiled, fast, unstoppable, pink fire rippling down her length as she gripped the very fabric of space. She tore out of the Caligula’s side, even as an island-burner particle beam stabbed down from its orbital installation. She fell out through fire, the Caligula carved in half and tumbling. As the beam quickly tracked across to her she U-jumped herself, leaving twists behind her to defeat any known tracking. Isobel snapped back out of it deep within atmosphere, just twenty feet above the ground—then her initial impetus reasserted itself and flung her down at a forty-five-degree angle. She was travelling at just over two thousand miles an hour.

  In the fractions of a second between surfacing into the real and impacting with the ground, she scanned and linked and sucked up data. Hood first, she hit, already knowing both Penny Royal’s and Thorvald Spear’s locations. The latter was heading towards the former, which was convenient. Her impact carved a slot through a foot-thick layer of the rhizome surface and punched her down a hundred feet through wet mud. That rhizome mat split open behind her following the subsequent eruption of mud. A momentary strong feeling of nostalgia stilled her for a second, then she applied herself to burrowing. Even though she’d probably defeated any tracking, those satellites above would doubtless have picked up her impact point. She needed to be deeper, so the catastrophic effects of any weapon capable of reaching her would be unconscionable for the Polity. At first she used the simple hooder method of burrowing, but then applied other forces, accelerating. A coned force-field spread ahead of her and hardfields extended from her limbs like paddles.

  “Hello, Isobel,” said a voice in h
er mind. “Do you understand now?”

  She did, because now the whole pattern became clear to her. She had been tempted and lured into bringing all her forces here to inevitable annihilation. Penny Royal’s manipulation had been perfectly couched to fit her personality and the changes it was undergoing, tied in with the transformation of her body. She felt sick with rage at her own gullibility, and at how easily the black AI had played her.

  “Why?” she asked, clamping down on that rage.

  “Because you are a problem I caused, and one I am solving.”

  “I’m coming to kill you,” she replied. “Then I’m going to gut Spear.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Penny Royal, “these are your intentions, but are they actually what you want? Are they what you want?”

  “No more games, Penny Royal—this ends now, today.”

  “Doubtless,” the black AI replied.

  SPEAR

  I unstrapped myself and stood up, heading back into the ATV’s cargo area, where I surveyed the copious space available. Perhaps a fully grown gabbleduck would fit. But the vehicle’s conveniently large size reinforced my deep distrust of reality and the workings of my own mind. As if to affirm that impulse, déjà vu engulfed me again—then someone else’s memory used that moment of distraction to slide into my mind.

  The cargo area shrank and was now packed with plastic crates and cylinders on pallets—a shipment of arms.

  The enclosed space was lit by the fast-passing light of a moon and outside, somewhere, a gabbleduck was muttering to itself. I’d spread my blanket between two of the pallets and was sitting on it. Having taken off my boots, I was now proceeding to pull down my combats.

  “We’re good,” said Slater from the cab. “No activity being picked up.”

  The new chameleonware on the vehicle’s roof would keep us concealed from Theocracy satellites, but only if we remained stationary. The window in that surveillance would open in about five hours. Now it was time to conclude something that had been growing between us for some weeks now.

  “Sure,” I replied, taking off my top.

  By the time Slater came back into the cargo area I was naked, lying back, my arms above my head-

  No!

  Somehow I shut it down and snapped back into the moment, staggering as present reality cracked back into place around me. I wasn’t a prude, but really, right then I didn’t need a memory of Renata Markham’s sexual adventures. I also had to wonder what the increasing frequency of these flashbacks might mean. As I shook myself out of it I realized the cargo door was opening and lowering to form a ramp and Riss was beside me.

  “So what was it this time?” the snake drone asked.

  “Nothing important,” I said, donning my mask and heading for the ramp.

  The flute grasses outside stood as high as my waist and at the edge of the ramp I hesitated. I remembered that mud snakes lurked underneath the rhizome and snatched down prey passing above. Then I stepped down, the layer unsteady beneath my feet, and waded through the grasses to bring the Weaver into sight. It still sat there, but was no longer waving what could only inaccurately be described as its thumb. It now held a device I recognized—the one it had used to detach penny molluscs from a rock during our previous encounter.

  “I take it you’re going our way?” I suggested.

  It nodded in solemn agreement, then peered up behind us. I turned to see those two cylinders hovering about fifty feet up in the air and about the same distance behind the ATV.

  “We’re right on the edge,” said Riss. “Another hundred feet and they’d have carried out their orders and fused our vehicle’s drive. Luckily Leif Grant was watching and he’s now changed their orders—they are to follow and keep watch only.”

  However, Grant’s problem was that the Weaver had other ideas. The device it held made a clicking sound, just that, nothing spectacular. The two cylinders dropped out of the sky like the heavy lumps of metal they were and thumped straight down into the boggy ground. One of them steadily sank out of sight while the other managed to keep its top end above the grass line. The barrel of a coil gun centred on us and small sensor dishes whirled. Another click ensued and the thing squawked, that barrel swung aside and its sensor dishes grew still. It too then began to sink.

  I turned back in time to see the Weaver putting away its handy little device and heaving itself back into quadruped position, whereupon it ambled over to us.

  “I need a ride,” it said. “There is now some urgency.”

  “Urgency?”

  “Do you feel it?” it enquired, raising a forelimb and stabbing one claw down towards the unsteady ground.

  I could feel movement, like a constant earth tremor, but I’d put that down to the massive beast before me and the recent unexpected landing of two heavy drones. It then occurred to me that I’d felt this even on the ramp—before the Weaver had started moving and while the drones were still in the sky.

  “The engine?” I suggested, nodding towards the ATV.

  “No, something moving, down deep,” said Riss. “I can only surmise that it’s something big because of the soil displacement, otherwise it’s impenetrable.” The snake drone looked up. “Some sort of mudmarine?”

  “You could say that,” the Weaver replied, then proceeded towards the ramp.

  I moved hastily aside, while Riss just turned and shot back up the ramp ahead of the creature. The moment the Weaver stepped on the ramp the whole ATV tipped over towards it, then automatically tried to right itself by expanding its cage wheels on this side and collapsing them on the other as the creature entered. I then climbed up to the doorway but upon peering inside felt suddenly vulnerable. Here was an intelligent being who we were giving a lift, but it now occupied most of the cargo area. I’d have to squeeze past it to get to my seat and, intelligent or not, it was big, possessed huge black claws and very sharp teeth.

  “Does human air bother you?” I asked, moving inside.

  “Invigorating,” said the Weaver, waving a dismissive claw that passed just a foot over my head with a sharp swishing sound.

  The ramp closed up quickly and the scrubbers cleaned up the air in just a few seconds. There hadn’t been much bleed-in since the ATV maintained a marginally higher internal air pressure than that outside. I squeezed past the gabbleduck, taking off my mask as I did so. Immediately my nostrils were filled with a smell akin to that of a big dog that had been chasing sticks in the sea, along with an underlying hint of reptile house. This close to the gabbleduck, I could see the elephantine wrinkles in its skin, subtle diamond patterns and what looked like multicoloured capillaries. Little nodes were scattered here and there, but I didn’t know if they were part of the skin or some sort of parasite. Some areas also possessed an odd oily iridescence, while others were translucent and revealed quadrate patterns of black threads—like a form of carbon electronics. I was fascinated, and grateful not to find any familiarity here. I guess that no one in my available memories had come this close to a gabbleduck and had survived thereafter to become one of Penny Royal’s victims.

  “Ahem.”

  I looked up, nearly hitting my nose on this gabbleduck’s bill, and backed off, staring into its green eyes.

  “Do you mind?” the Weaver said.

  “Sorry,” I replied and quickly went to take my seat, even as the ATV moved off.

  “It’s heading in the same direction as us,” said Riss, “and is now angling up to surface where The Rose came down.”

  “What?” I asked, distracted.

  “That thing under the ground,” Riss explained.

  The ATV was just trundling along while Riss doubtless used her senses to probe the ground below us. She was also probably weighing the pros and cons of arriving before or after this unidentified object.

  “Some speed would be good,” said the Weaver from behind.

  Riss accelerated.

  20

  BLITE

  “You would be safer inside your ship,” said Penny
Royal, abruptly sucking its silver trunk inside and expanding into urchin form, a black star seemingly nailed to the air.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Blite, eyeing the AI then casting a glance out towards the nearest hooder.

  “She comes,” Penny Royal added, “faster than calculated, more capable than supposed because she has attained an unexpectedly stable unity.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Blite said again, now actually starting to feel a bit worried. The AI had initially been a lethal threat, but proved itself otherwise. Thereafter, the threats had arisen from the situations into which it had dragged them. However, it had always appeared utterly sure and in control and Blite had come to trust it on some level. Even the encounter with that black ship, which he’d felt sure would kill them, had confirmed Penny Royal’s capabilities; the black AI’s superiority. Yet now it seemed unsure. Could it have miscalculated?

  “How can Isobel be any more dangerous than these?” he indicated the three visible hooders. Even as he did this they all broke off from their circling patterns and began heading away. They were suddenly moving a lot faster than they had been, really motoring, leaving clouds of ripped-up grass fragments behind them.

  As if they’ve been spooked, Blite thought, then wondered what the hell might spook such creatures—other than the AI floating above his ship. As he watched, he suddenly realized one of them was heading straight for the ship, so turned and reached down to grab up his particle cannon. But it was stuck, locked to the hull of his ship.

  “No danger,” said Penny Royal.

  Blite glanced at Brond and Ikbal, who looked sick with fear, and noted that they hadn’t raised their pulse-rifles. Sensible really, since those weapons would only succeed in pissing off the creature storming towards his ship.

  Blite took a calming breath, believing in Penny Royal and sure that at any moment the creature would turn aside. It didn’t. As it approached, it raised its spoon-like head from the ground and he could now see all those horrible manipulators underneath, and the two rows of glittering red eyes. It hit the side of the ship, rocking it, and scrambled up over it. Blite threw himself to one side as the thing came past him like an express train, its hard feet clattering against and actually scoring the hard hull metal. It simply kept going and, just a few seconds of thunderous noise later, the spike of its tail disappeared over the other side of the ship.