by Neal Asher
“Recognized,” said a prador, using human speech.
“I am glad to hear that, Orlik,” Orlandine replied, closely monitoring the comlink. “You have a problem.”
There were hints of suspicious code coming across in voice-only com which she routed into a scrubber, fragmenting them completely. She opened the image feed to see what else might transpire.
The big prador before her, clad in bone-white armour, wasn’t right—she recognized that at once. Swiftly analysing the image, she saw the problem with the eyes. Polity data, collected over the centuries since the war, explained this, as did some corpses that had been obtained. There was something odd about the king’s family, the King’s Guard. They were mutated and generally kept their physical appearance hidden in armour, never leaving one of their own behind after a fight. Romantics in the Polity thought this a sign of brotherly love, but those who knew understood that the Guard did not want anyone examining their kind.
These were King’s Guard then—she was sure of it. Other data she picked up indicated they had been working under the cover of being renegades. Nothing unusual there—the Polity quite often used the same techniques in black ops.
“A problem,” said Orlik flatly.
Now, with the image feed, she could see it, and further fragments of code were coming through. She consigned these to a secure store and watched them begin to assemble into viruses, then coagulate into informational parasites, worms, and other forms of toxic computer life. She examined them closely with a larger component of her mind while continuing her conversation with the prador.
“Yes, you have a problem,” she replied. “It probably started as just irritating errors in your ship’s system, but now those errors are causing failures. This has stopped you making repairs to your ship while you try to trace the faults.”
Orlik stared for a long moment before saying. “Incorrect. It did not start as a few irritating errors but as an all-out viral attack the moment the fragment was through my ship’s hull. I managed to suppress this but since we came out of U-space the problem has returned.”
Orlandine was taken aback. A wormship fragment launched an all-out viral attack and a prador managed to suppress it? There was something here she had yet to understand.
“I also have no doubt that your ship’s mind is starting to malfunction,” she said, while thinking furiously.
“It said it was hungry,” said Orlik.
Frozen brain-matter had no real need of food . . .
“Your ship’s system is doubtless being subject to induction warfare from that piece of wormship you have aboard. I want you to open a full bandwidth link to my ship across the frequencies I will send.”
“Bludgeon, are you ready for this?”
Cutter’s partner was down in the bowels of her ship, his front end plugged into her system almost as thoroughly as she was via her interface sphere.
“Oh, am I ever ready,” the drone replied. “Such toys!”
Orlandine had made available to him, even as they set out, all the informational warfare stuff she had. There was the Polity data but, since her own personal conquest of Jain technology, much more besides.
“Open a full bandwidth link,” Orlik repeated, obviously not much in love with the idea.
“You received instructions from your king about me?” Orlandine asked.
“I did.”
“Then I am waiting.”
Orlik blinked goat eyes at her, yet normal prador did not possess eyelids. “Very well,” he said reluctantly.
“It’s opening up,”said Bludgeon.
Orlandine rode with the drone into the destroyer’s system, but an instant later things got complicated.
“Well that was unexpected,” said Bludgeon.
Orlandine had to agree. This was no normal prador ship, nor was it a normal ship of the King’s Guard. The mind, which she had assumed was the frozen ganglion of a prador child, was close to being AI, though admittedly not a very smart one. Also, this Orlik was interfaced with his ship, which all explained why he had managed to fend off what must have been a serious informational attack.
“But doable,” Bludgeon added.
The old drone went through it all like a laser through aerogel, building a model of its workings in just a few seconds. It was simpler than the same operation aboard a Polity destroyer, but a lot more complicated than what would usually be found aboard a prador vessel. There were two main control nexuses—one was the ship’s mind, and the other was Orlik himself. The mind controlled only the U-space engine, the fusion drive and steering thrusters, and other subsidiary items related to them. Orlik controlled just about everything else, or rather could control everything else—there was a lot more automation here than was usual, in things like environmental controls and maintenance. The ship even possessed its own collection of maintenance robots that weren’t much different from those used by the Polity.
“Nasty,” said Bludgeon.
She saw what the drone was getting at. Peering through cams inside the destroyer, she saw the piece of wormship in the hold. It was cylindrical, six feet wide and the metallic hue of magnetite with light ribbed down its length. Protruding from its broken-off end were fibres, tubes, ducts, broken cables, nodules, things that looked like metallic spinal vertebrae. The other end was more closed off. She could see familiar shearfield generators, tool heads fed by half-seen carousels, the noses of iron-burners and lasers. Scanning both ends Orlandine saw that it all did bear a close resemblance to Jain tech, but to the human part of her mind there was something more logical to it. This would bear later investigation.
It had first been strapped down to the floor, then a series of docking clamps had been moved in to secure it in place. There were scanner heads all around it, as well as two heavy particle cannons focused on it. The scanners were the problem. The worm had used Jain induction techniques to penetrate them, building viruses in their carbon storage which had then been breaking away to spread to other parts of the ship.
“Shut down the scanners in your hold,” she instructed Orlik. “And when I say shut down, I mean fully. Cut the power to them.”
“That thing in there needs to be watched,” Orlik insisted.
“Your scanners do not have sufficient security and that thing in there has gone through them and into your system without even consciously thinking about it.”
“Oh, I see—cutting power now,” the prador replied.
“Also, you yourself need to disconnect.”
“I can be of assistance . . .”
“Yes, maybe you can. But you might also end up being sequestered.” She paused to drive the point home. “Jain tech does not limit itself to manufactured mentality. Perhaps we can save your ship’s mind, perhaps not. I do not want to be thinking the same about you.”
“Very well,” said Orlik reluctantly.
Bludgeon’s work in the system now gave her access to a cam in the captain’s sanctum. Orlandine saw Orlik shrug and a slab of optic interface detached from his back, rising up into the ceiling on its optic cables. He then inserted his claws into pit controls and summoned up what he had likely been seeing through his implants on the screens before him. She also noted something else in there: a Polity assassin drone apparently nailed to a plate and mounted as a decoration on the wall. But that really wasn’t her concern . . .
“Bludgeon?” she enquired.
“Power’s off and Orlik is out of the circuit,” the drone replied. “Killing the incursions now.”
She watched as the drone first isolated all portions of the ship’s system, except for his own feeds into them. He then began systematically scrubbing those areas infected with viruses, turning everything into a morass. Orlik would doubtless be unhappy about this since the whole system would need to be reprogrammed. Next Bludgeon turned his attention to where the viruses had assembled into something more toxic in the ship’s AI. Here the drone sent in predatory computer life copied from Orlandine’s files, and they attacked the wo
rms and other nasty creations, ripping them apart . . .
Something wrong.
It took Orlandine a microsecond to throw up a hardfield, and her ship jerked under the impact of railgun slugs. The destroyer had just fired on her. She began a steady swapping of hardfields to keep her projectors cool, but it wasn’t entirely necessary because the superconducting heat-sink network was as near to perfect as it could be. She targeted the single railgun port the slugs were issuing from, but held off from firing. It seemed likely this was the worm trying to defend itself, though Bludgeon’s system map had not shown anything in the controls of this railgun, and now the gun was isolated from the rest of gun control.
“Orlik?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied, running through data on his screens at a phenomenal rate.
“On automatics?”
“Two second-children in there. I don’t know why.”
The firing abruptly terminated and Orlandine saw that Bludgeon had shut down the reactors supplying power to Orlik’s weapons. The pra-dor would not like that either.
“Cutter,” she said. “You’re going across.”
“Told you so,” Cutter replied delightedly.
ANGEL
Below the sphere the land masses of the Cyberat world petered out to be supplanted by pale green ocean. Though he could exist in any environment, Angel realized that the seas below would not do for his purpose. Yes, they would cushion the sphere’s impact, but the algae destroyed visibility and quite a lot of the creatures here at the top of the food chain, which started with that algae, were hostile. He needed to come down near some kind of landmass, and he needed to be visible so Ruth could find him.
Scanning ahead, he picked out a chain of volcanic islands and adjusted his course to bring him down near them. Next he braced himself inside the sphere, sinking his limbs into the technology that surrounded him and causing it to harden around them. He then considered the plan that lay inchoate in his mind.
Ruth still had that U-mitter inside her skull and, at some point, Trike was sure to come for her. Angel only hoped he would arrive before either Polity or prador forces did. With her under his control he could compel Trike to take him off this world. Another factor in his calculations was the remaining Cyberat. They certainly wouldn’t be happy with Angel, so he needed to give them a diversion, a distraction, and the sphere could serve this purpose. It was damaged and weaponless but still mobile. He would board Ruth’s shuttle and compel her to answer, to his benefit, any questions the Cyberat might ask. Meanwhile he would send the sphere off around the world, setting it to evade any attempt to seize or attack it. The Cyberat might eventually destroy it and stop looking for him, which was all to the good.
The sphere drew closer to the sea—a flat green plain below it, breakers visible here and there over slabs of coral just below the surface. Finally it touched, kicking up spray and clouds of steam, then bounced a few times and rolled across the surface of the ocean. Automatics attempted to stabilize it but it bounded up then slammed down, again and again. This went on for some minutes and Angel received the full list of hull integrity warnings. But the sphere held together and skidded along the surface before sinking deeper and slowing almost to a stop.
As the steam cleared, Angel gazed through exterior cams at scabs of rock scattered across the sea ahead. He used grav-planing to propel the sphere towards them. More detail became clear as he approached: white beaches were webbed with black and masses that looked like piles of giant tulip flowers—pink and green—were slowly opening and closing. There were rock formations like giant mushrooms that were probably dead coral, as well as creatures scattered on one of the beaches—great blubbery lumps that at this distance resembled albino seals.
Freeing himself from the surrounding technology, Angel cruised the sphere in towards one of the beaches. Rocks grated against it underneath and other things thumped higher up against the hull. Through exterior cams he caught a glimpse of a long-jointed limb which terminated in something that looked vaguely like the head of a parrot.
The sphere finally thumped onto the beach and he used grav to take it up further, cutting a groove behind. He popped the hatch and clambered out, noting he wasn’t quite as nimble as he had been before. He dropped down onto what he had thought was sand and sank up to his knees. Reaching down, he grabbed a handful of the stuff. It was like soggy tissue and he realized the beach was a drift of dead algae, while the wide black streaks running across the surface were some kind of slime mould feeding off it.
Angel trudged up to the top of the beach, sat down on a flat rock and reached out to Ruth again with his mind, to send coordinates. As soon as he made contact he found her talking to someone else and now saw that the fruition of his plan could be sooner than he thought.
Meanwhile, a great white seal-like body heaved itself out of the sea. At its front end it possessed six of the jointed limbs Angel had seen on the way in. He observed numerous white flat feet underneath it, perfect for getting the thing about on this surface without its body sinking down too far. It humped up like a caterpillar, the parrot-head forelimbs pecking at the drift of dead algae and sending clumps of it flying, as though it was making a challenge. After a thoughtful pause, it then shot up the slope of this strange beach, straight towards Angel.
TRIKE
“Ruth,” said Trike, staring at her image on the screen. “We are coming for you.”
Her image had taken hold of him the moment Cog opened com with the shuttle, and all the craziness had fled. He now felt like he had been suffering from a very bad glister high, which was a crustacean hoopers caught on Spatterjay. It had psycho-active chemicals in its mouth and brainpan which were released into the creature’s flesh when they were killed prior to cooking.
Ruth stared at him with tears in her eyes, then reached out with one hand as if trying to touch his face. He saw that something wasn’t quite right, and after a moment realized her eyes were no longer hazel, but black. What did that fucking legate do? Anger surged up inside him and he looked down at his clenched hands. The two blue circles of leech scars on his right hand were livid, while the rest of the skin there had a blue tinge. And did his fingers appear longer? He looked up and around, expecting further hallucinations.
“I cannot,” she said, and lowed her hand to the controls before her.
“She’s taking the shuttle out of orbit,” said Cog from behind him.
“Ruth, what are you doing? Wait there—we’re coming for you!”
“He is in my mind, Trike—I cannot disobey.”
“Angel,” Trike stated, the anger in him growing.
“Steady, boy.” Cog rested one meaty hand on his shoulder.
Trike grabbed it and flung it away from him, to which Cog made a grunting sound and swore. After a moment Trike looked round at him. He was standing a little way back rubbing at his hand, his expression speculative.
“What?” said Trike and turned his attention back to the screen.
“He says come,” said Ruth. “If you want to see me alive again.”
The connection closed.
“Aaargh!” Trike smashed his hands down on the console and the facing shattered, his hands disappearing inside. He pulled them out of the fizzing electrics and stared at them. Yes, his fingers were definitely longer. He stood and turned towards Cog.
“We go down! Now!” he said, taking a step towards the captain.
“You know what will happen if you try to face up to . . .” Cog didn’t continue. He dipped his head and stared down at Trike’s feet. Puzzlement briefly overcoming his anger, Trike looked down too. His trousers now ended halfway up his calves, and his shins were blue. Even as he looked he could hear something tittering in the back of his mind.
“Fast,” said Cog.
“What?”
“The transformation was much slower with Jay,” Cog explained. “But then maybe Jay wasn’t quite as crazy as you.”
Trike just goggled at him.
Cog folded his arms. “I’ve been watching you. You’ve been eating like a pig and your muscle density has been climbing. Now you’re getting a growth surge.” Cog stepped closer and Trike realized he was looking down on the man from a greater height.
“You were always on the edge, Trike, always clinging on for control. The damage to your body healed and the sprine kept this transformation at bay at first,” said Cog. “But there’s a mental element in there. I don’t know the cause, but I do know that past a certain point it becomes a matter of choice.”
Trike shook his head. The tittering was getting louder and the ghosts of Spatterjay fauna were beginning to impinge upon his reality. He had to keep it under control and focus on his present goals.
“We go after her,” he said.
“And if I say no?”
Trike took a pace forwards, and Cog took one pace back.
“Yes, we go after her,” Cog conceded. “It’s risky and quite possibly we’ll both end up dead.” He paused and smiled bleakly. “But if I try to stop you I doubt there’ll be much left of this ship to take away from this world.”
The tittering became quieter and the ghosts faded, just a little. Trike grimaced, and felt himself shaking. But Cog . . . Captain Cogulus could break hull metal with his hands . . . Trike raised his hands and studied them again, and tried to get some grip on his chaotic thoughts.
“You could use that weapon against me again,” he said.
Cog shook his head. “If I use that again it’ll now just accelerate what is happening to you . . . what you are letting happen to you.”
“Choice?”
“Yes.” Cog turned back to his throne and plumped himself down in it. “Somehow you can choose to stop, simply stop. You can be Captain Trike again and struggle with your demons, or you can let them defeat you and turn into a crazed monster.” Cog worked the controls in his chair’s arm and the ship shifted. “Janus, follow that shuttle down,” he added.