by Neal Asher
The planet was vaguely Earth-like but with one-and-a-half times the gravity. Humans lived here, and one of them had something he required. He considered his options. The humans occupied fortified houses scattered across the surface of the world. Their colony was small—the population was little more than ten thousand, and very specialized. As with any other world outside the Polity, Angel could simply have landed and taken what he wanted, killing anyone who got in his way. Why not? whispered the Wheel in his mind.
He ignored it and continued his pondering. He had now learned that the item he wanted—the one Ruth sold to an individual here amidst a collection of other Jain artefacts—was quite special, and the humans here were not such a walk-over. They left during the first Diaspora from Earth with a very specific aim in mind. They wanted to be left alone to pursue their fanatical interest in physical and mental enhancement. They were cyborgs and they were dangerous. It would not do to underestimate them in the same way he had underestimated Captain Trike.
Angel now turned his attention to the objects in orbit. There were satellites and a couple of space stations. Some distance out hung an oblate station that apparently contained paired singularities and a variety of particle accelerators—this was where the Cyberat conducted their research into U-space technology. Ships were here from all over. There were trader ships like Trike’s out of the Polity and out of the Graveyard. He even recognized two Prador Kingdom destroyers sitting in the Lagrange point between this world and one of its four moons, watched over by a heavily armed space station. A variety of people were drawn here because, when not making interesting alterations to their bodies, the Cyberat traded in information and technology. Most of this took place in the Cube—the large stone castle sitting on the shore of an ocean green with algae, and swarming with those that fed upon it, and on each other.
Softly, softly, Angel decided.
With the wormish structure tight and unmoving, Angel’s ship did not look too unusual, while the shuttle from Trike’s ship was of course indistinguishable from others ferrying people down to the landing field beside the Cube.
Go, said the Wheel.
No, he replied.
It did not matter how Angel looked, or that his ship had not been identified, or what shuttle he used, while retaining his dense-tech inner workings. The Cyberat were not stupid and possessed a great deal more than the usual array of human senses. And because of his research and interests, the one he sought, Zackander, was a cautious fellow. The Polity had a bounty on Zackander’s head, while the prador also wanted to have long, interesting conversations with him—undoubtedly involving lots of sharp or hot implements. He would not let anyone get close to him without deep scanning them. He would certainly not let something like Angel near.
But Angel had this information from the data download and the Wheel knew it all too. As his thinking improved, Angel realized that, though he did not know what the Wheel was, he certainly now knew what it was not. It was not a Polity AI, not even a rogue one. It was highly intelligent yet it completely misjudged certain things in this milieu as if it had failed to understand the basics. So, what was it and what did it want? An alien or an alien AI? Maybe a Jain AI?
Do not delay, it said.
Angel shook his head then turned his attention to Ruth. He needed a foil, a distraction, and a way of locating Zackander. Good that he had her for this mission, though his reasons for keeping her had nothing to do with that. He now understood that subconsciously he had known what the Wheel was doing to him and in his efforts to escape it she had been something to cling to, a small, initial rebellion against its control.
“You are ready?” he said directly into her mind.
She had just finished eating something from the shuttle’s supplies and was returning to the cockpit.
“And if I say no?” she asked.
“It will make no difference,” he replied. “You are going now.”
She sat and strapped herself in. He opened a hole through the wormship for her shuttle and, without much in the way of hesitation, she moved it out.
TRIKE
The closer Trike got to the Cube the more it looked like a castle. A channel had even been cut to the sea to supply water for a moat. There were buttresses up the sides, with castellations around the protrusions and turrets. As he and Cog strolled down the path from the landing field, heavy packs on their backs, Trike eyed the moat. There were things moving down there in the thick algae. Segmented backs turned like tyres and the occasional stalk-eye protruded from the surface. It quite reminded him of home. But his thoughts soon went back to something else.
“Is Angel’s ship moving?” he asked.
Cog took an object like a jeweller’s glass out of the top pocket of his shirt and popped it into his eye, adjusting something on the side of it.
“Still where it moved to geostationary above,” he replied, “but a shuttle just left.”
“It’s got the U-mitter with it,” said Trike. “Its position is changing.”
“Why would he do that?” Cog wondered.
Trike halted and looked back towards the landing field. A sudden wild hope surged up inside him. He took a step in that direction but Cog caught hold of his arm and held him in place. “What are you doing?”
“I have to go back. I have to see.”
“And do what?”
“Maybe she’s still alive.”
“You saw her die,” said Cog, with something in his voice Trike did not like at all.
“Easily falsified,” said Trike.
“Yet you tried to blow up Angel’s ship knowing that?”
Why hadn’t he thought that what he saw could be falsified? Why hadn’t Cog thought of it too? “Ruth could be alive,” he stated stubbornly.
“And you’ll just charge in there and rescue her?” Cog shook his head slowly. “I’m a lot older, wiser and stronger than you, Trike, and I would not put myself up against that thing. It would take me apart only marginally slower than it would you. It’s a legate, a creature based on Jain technology. Face up to it now and it will own you.”
Trike fought against the Old Captain’s grip but it felt like a docking clamp. He then grew still and enforced calm, breathing deeply, slowly. He had to concede that Cog was right. “So what’s the plan?”
“We go back,” said Cog, “but to see a friend of mine.”
Cog released Trike’s arm and began strolling back up the path. Trike followed, frustrated and angry. He wanted to do something, but he had to be calm. Maybe, after another century, he would possess the composure of an old one like Cog, but it didn’t feel possible right now. In fact, the only time it had ever felt possible was when he was with Ruth. He eyed the rocky ground either side of the track and considered the possibilities of ambush. Angel would have to walk down here—as everyone from the landing field did. Maybe he could hide behind that rock over there . . . And do what? In his pack he carried a QC laser handgun, a machete and a handful of marble grenades. Cog had some more serious weaponry in his pack in the form of a hand-held particle weapon with a few giga-watt power supplies, but none of these were enough to deal with a creature like Angel. It would detect them hiding in a moment and, according to the data Trike had seen, carried more weaponry in just one arm than they possessed altogether. It probably wouldn’t even need to use its weapons. That thing could move so fast it would be on them before they could cause it much damage.
Soon they arrived at the gate into the landing field. But instead of going through it using the pass card they had been issued by the auto-guard, Cog turned right and strolled along the ring-link fence. A small spider remote on the inside of the fence scuttled along to keep pace with them. After a moment Cog delved into his pack and took out a squat glass bottle, which he held up and shook towards the drone. The remote seemed to think this over, then it shot up the inside of the fence and over the top, dropping to land in an explosion of dust.
“This way,” said the voice issuing from it.
It led them in the same direction they had been going and finally to a tower incorporated into the fence, its top a hexagonal structure with windows all around. A door popped open in the stem of the tower and the remote scuttled off.
“What coordinates do you have on the shuttle now?” Cog asked.
“About ten miles up,” Trike replied.
Cog nodded and led the way inside the tower, where a steep ramp stretched upwards. It seemed impossible to climb until Cog stepped on it and began walking, his body tipping almost at right angles to Trike’s. Trike felt the pull now and realized the ramp was grav-plated. He stepped onto it too, feeling a sickening lurch of perspective as he walked up. Soon they reached the hexagonal room of the tower. Consoles ran around it below the windows, and in the centre of the room was a woman, well, most of a woman. Trike got his first look at one of the Cyberat. “Hello, Lyra,” said Cog cheerfully.
Lyra clattered round to face them. Her skin was blue and her head hairless. Below the waist her body was a segmented mechanism that looked like a steel centipede, only with longer limbs which terminated in just about every manipulator or tool imaginable. Around her head clung a thick metal band with either sensors or guns on each side—Trike had no idea. Her eyes were orange, her ears pointed. Her long delicate fingers had sucker pads on the ends.
“Oh boy,” she said. “Sea cane?”
“It certainly is,” replied Cog, holding out the bottle.
She clattered closer and Trike found himself taking a step back. She grinned at him, took the bottle and lowered it to one of her manipulators that extruded a corkscrew and removed the cork in a second.
“Just to try, mind,” said Lyra.
Cog turned to Trike. “Lyra went to Spatterjay a hundred years ago,” he explained. “She enjoyed the sea-cane rum and, since her return here and her—enhancements—she’s been after a sample ever since.”
Lyra downed about half the bottle. Lowering it, she licked her lips with a pointy purple tongue, and the manipulator quickly reinserted the cork, as if the bottom half of her body disapproved of what the top half had done. She looked thoughtful as she tilted her head to one side.
“Complicated,” she said. “Alcohol, of course, and fusel oils—furfural, tannins, aldehydes and volatile acids as expected—also sea salts, some strange proteins and damned me if there aren’t living microbes in it.” She held the bottle up and eyed it. “If I hadn’t already drunk a boatload of this stuff in my lifetime I would have been very wary about drinking this. Spatterjay microbes are floating around in there and, if I know anything about life on that world, it is hostile and usually wants to eat you.” She lowered the bottle. “Barring you, of course, Captain Cog.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Cog, grinning broadly.
Lyra blushed and looked down as the manipulator squirrelled the bottle away inside the lower mechanical half of her body.
“You’ll be able to synthesize it?” Cog added.
“All but the microbes, but I should be able to breed them from the sample I have.” She smiled. “Now, is there anything I can do for you?”
“We’d like to tarry a while, and watch a recent arrival . . . arrive.” Cog gestured to Trike. “Sorry, let me introduce my friend. This is Trike, a hooper as you can see, but a child of the space lanes now, like me.”
Lyra clattered forwards and Trike stepped forwards this time too. She held out one hand with the sucker-tipped fingers and he shook it without flinching. She turned his hand over and gazed at the two ring-shaped scars, raising an eyebrow. Now she was closer he could smell a mix of lavender and machine oil. She was an attractive woman, he realized, his gaze sliding down from her face, over her bare breasts to the point below her belly button where she became all machine. He couldn’t help but wonder about sex then, especially after Cog’s comment. And then he was sharply reminded of his first years on Spatterjay. While gazing at carvings of mermaids on the cabin deck of one of the sailing ships, he’d jokingly asked the sail similar questions to those occurring to him now. The sail, a huge batlike creature, was what hoopers used instead of spread sheets of canvas. These natives of the world were paid crewmen, as such. He remembered it, with its long neck coiled down around the mast, raising its crocodile head from the deck and peering at him. He now suppressed a slightly hysterical laugh at the memory of the filthy reply it had given him.
“Always pleased to meet a friend of Captain Cogulus,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you too,” said Trike, now staring at her intently. After a moment that went on too long he realized he was still holding her hand, and released it.
She swept away again and gestured elegantly. Three of the windows, which obviously contained display laminate, flicked to three different views of a descending shuttle.
“Yes, that’s the bugger,” said Cog.
“Funny that you’re interested in this one,” said Lyra. “That shit Zackander is using more than his usual bandwidth to watch it too.” She glanced round and smiled at them again. “Just like he did to watch you two arrive.”
“Zackander,” said Cog, glancing blank-faced at Trike.
“I think his interest in that shuttle has a lot to do with this.” Another gesture brought starlit space up on one screen, a spaceship hanging there like a metallic human brain, with a cluster of pipe-like fusers sticking out the back. “It looks so plausible,” she continued, “until you realize that those fusion engines are fake, the outer hull is not one discrete item, and that in fact there is no outer hull.”
Trike concentrated on the shuttle, and in one of the views the sea was now visible. He moved over to another window and, resting his hands on the console, gazed out over the sea, spotting the craft rapidly approaching. Was Ruth aboard, or maybe just the U-mitter? Did Angel know Trike was here, and was he using it as bait? After a moment Trike raised his hands and looked at the blue tinge they had taken on. He then noticed the dents he had left in the console and casually stepped to one side, away from the damage.
“And your analysis?” asked Cog.
“The same analysis as everyone else here,” Lyra replied, “which is why just about every weapons system we have is powered up and why Zackander has made a deal, ostensibly very much in their favour, with the captains of the two prador destroyers. You must have seen them up there. Of course, he did neglect to mention to them that if things turn nasty they might end up against a wormship.”
“Ah,” said Cog. “And Zackander made that deal to protect the citizens of this world?”
Lyra snorted contemptuously. “As ever, he’s protecting himself and his research. A Jain-tech vessel arrives in orbit of this world, whose most notorious resident possesses a wealth of Jain artefacts and has made it his life’s work to research Jain technology.” She tapped a finger sucker against her skull. “Coincidence? I think not.”
The shuttle now swept in over the landing field, neatly positioned itself with a spurt of chemical thrusters, then descended on a grav-engine. Something about the style of this landing pulled at Trike’s memory, but he couldn’t nail it down. He moved back to look at the other windows activated as screens, for they showed a close-up view of the shuttle.
“And now,” said Lyra, “what can you tell me about that ship and its passenger or passengers, and what is your interest in it?”
Cog glanced at Trike. “We gain no benefit by keeping secrets, do we?” Trike shook his head. “If you think so.”
Turning back to the Cyberat woman, Cog continued, “The owner of that wormship is a legate called Angel. He kidnapped Trike’s wife who, incidentally, was an archaeologist. He wanted to locate the person she had sold Jain artefacts to.”
Lyra stared at him, waiting, and when he didn’t continue she turned to Trike. “What happened to your wife?”
“Dead,” he replied, “or not.” He watched the two of them. Why did their conversation seem somehow forced?
Lyra now raised one hand to the band around her head and a grid appeared briefly ac
ross her orange eyes. She lowered her hand and said, “Ruth Ottinger.”
Trike nodded. “Yes.” He was absolutely sure now that there was something off about the interplay between these two, but couldn’t think what.
“So how did you get involved?” Lyra asked Cog.
“Ruth had excised memories about the Jain tech and Angel sent Trike to see if there was a recording of them. Trike is of course not stupid and knew that he probably wouldn’t get Ruth back and that Angel would try to kill him.”
“So he didn’t find them and didn’t return?”
“He found them and returned to Angel with the memcording.”
Trike saw the sympathetic look on Lyra’s face and turned away, focusing his attention back on the display. Anger and regret were at the forefront of his mind but something else boiled underneath. The shuttle was now lowering a ramp and he concentrated on it.
“But he returned only after contacting me,” Cog continued. “We made a plan—a simple ruse to kill Angel once Trike confirmed that his wife was, as he suspected, long dead. We controlled his ship remotely and rigged its engines for detonation. Trike stayed aboard my ship, talking through a relay. After Angel received the memcording he moved his ship to seize Trike’s. We detonated the engines once it was inside the wormship.”
“Angel did not detect your ship?” Lyra asked Cog.
Trike returned his attention to them.
“No,” Cog replied, now unshouldering his pack and delving inside.
“Your ship must have highly sophisticated chameleonware,” she said archly, but there was something insincere in the glance she shot towards Trike. “It is evident that the wormship was not destroyed, however.”
“Maybe forty per cent of it,” Cog agreed. “It reconfigured, stopped off at Angel’s base, then came here.”
“How did you follow?”
“Twinned U-space transceivers in Trike’s and his wife’s skulls.” Again, Lyra shot him that look of sympathy. Trike shook his head as if to dispel an irritating fly.