by Neal Asher
Orlandine had intelligently deployed USERs but the thing had shown resistance to the U-space disturbance. EC calculated that if it had been a bit sneakier and less inclined to attack, it could have got through the defence into the accretion disc. But it could be argued that it needed the energy from the weapons platform weapons to make its transformation. Only in this transformed state was it capable of detonating the dead sun at the centre of the accretion disc. On that basis Musket Shot had been its intended target, and the fact that Orlandine could gate a black hole at it just dumb luck. But that made no sense. The thing could have dumped itself on some planet close to a sun, far away from the accretion disc, where similar energy and materials were available. It would then have arrived transformed, easily smeared the defence and gone in.
No, just as with Dragon, a deeper game was being played here. The fact that the players or player could deploy something like that soldier meant the danger had ramped up orders of magnitude. However, EC could not yet see what it was.
“Something further is coming,” said a voice.
The comment immediately propelled part of EC’s consciousness into virtuality as a prador adult.
“No envoy?” EC commented.
“Petty games,” replied the king of the prador. “The Client has taken Weapons Platform Mu into the Graveyard. It was pursued there by the moon of the Species home world. This is apparently some kind of ship and led us to the weapons platform in the first place. It is also, so I now understand, a store of data.”
“I would be interested to know how you know it is a data store,” said
EC.
“Your secrets are not as safe as you suppose,” said the king. “My agents obtained a copy of the full file concerning your dealings with the earlier iteration of the Client during the war.”
EC absorbed that and immediately sent out an alert to all the minds and agents concerned with keeping a lid on that information. It had supposedly been utterly secure and it was worrying EC had not immediately known a copy had been stolen.
“So, you accept that it is the Client aboard that platform?”
“It initially pretended to be a Polity AI but did not hold the façade for long,” replied the king. “Subsequent communications with it, and with the entity in that moon, soon exposed the lie.”
Entity in the moon?
“I would be interested to know about these communications,” said EC, avoiding asking the question it really wanted to ask.
“Yes, I’m sure you would . . . Anyway, confirmation that it is the Client came for me when it fled to the Kingdom. It caused some damage but came close to being destroyed itself, so did not demonstrate Polity weapons superiority. And if the intended target was the data in that moon then a Polity AI aboard the platform would not have led it into the Graveyard.”
After a pause EC asked, “So we’re good?”
“We are not at war,” was all the king would concede, “and matters arising from what happened at the accretion disc are more concerning. I have studied the tactical data about the attack of this Jain soldier.”
“So you’ve seen it too?”
“I have.”
“Your extrapolation?”
“Precisely what I said at the beginning: something is coming.”
“Do you know what?”
“The Jain,” said the king simply.
It really had to be the answer. Everything that had happened with the wormship, the soldier, the mind let loose was all about the Jain. It was logical to assume that it had all been groundwork for . . . but then it fell apart. The Jain had not been in existence for five million years. If something capable of making things like that soldier had been present in the galaxy, EC was pretty sure the Polity would have known about it by now. Something key was missing.
“We are prepared,” said the ruling AI of the Polity, “but perhaps we must prepare further. We have seen one soldier.”
“I agree,” said the king. “And the focus is the accretion disc.”
In its mind’s billions of eyes, Earth Central watched further reavers arriving at the prador watch station. But it also watched war ships across the Polity responding to orders it had issued just a few moments before.
“When the time is right we must move together,” said the king, fading from view.
EC did not reply.
ORLANDINE
Awareness returned without any sense of self. She was without sufficient data because sensors all around her were dead, and so she stretched out to grasp it beyond the system she occupied. At first there was resistance as she encountered limited technology and programming languages that were neither Jain nor Polity. But she encompassed that resistance and it broke down. Subliminally she understood that there was an awareness where she reached. It had fought her at first but was now moving things out of her way.
Data. Now she had data.
Orlandine processed logistics, statistics, analysed damage wholly in the world of data, the world of AI. She made connections to a larger whole and encompassed the defence sphere. She saw this as a mathematical problem for which she must calculate the best solution—to re-establish it with the resources available. She studied the interplay of AI minds as they made similar calculations and talked in microsecond pulses. Focusing closely on some of these conversations, she observed them deciding how to rescue minds from the defence platforms still falling into the Harding black hole.
Vision returned.
Gazing through cams inside one of the defence platforms she saw a translucent block of AI crystal, wrapped in a talon of grey metal, being hoisted up in the arms of a robot. The thing was mainly rocket motor and at once shot away through the burning structure of the platform. It hurtled along, giant beams twisting around it, bubble-metal walls buckling, flaring cables snaking through vacuum. Finally, the robot deposited the AI on a conveyor leading into the throat of a railgun.
The most logical solution.
Elsewhere she saw a series of attack pods launching from another platform, courses plotted. She calculated that the pods would easily intercept eight of the AIs. Another six would take a long arcing course out into interstellar space, where they could be picked up later, maybe centuries later. Four would go into the accretion disc where their odds of being rescued was just over 60 per cent. Another three would fall back into the black hole unless some other way of grabbing them could be found.
“Orlandine?”
The Harding black hole was just entering the misty borderland of the accretion disc, but already its effect was visible. To a simple human mind the disc looked static—just the black hole falling into it—but this was not the case. A great swirl had appeared below it, bulging up at its centre as if the disc was reaching out towards the approaching object. On a gravity map of the system she could see that proto-planets and asteroids had shifted and were changing course. Even the dead star at the centre was on the move. Were it the case that the disc was nailed in place in vacuum, then the black hole would just punch straight through it and head off into interstellar space. But no, the hole was more massive than the disc, and the disc was falling into it. She calculated it would take five months before the hole ate the dead star, somewhat longer for it to suck in everything else. Supposing the star did not ignite . . .
“Orlandine!”
Yes, she was Orlandine—a distinct entity whose central locus was a human body. She withdrew her perception nearer to her physical location, confused about the source of the communication. A prador destroyer hung in vacuum and she saw it from outside and within. Updating, she realized it had come here just before the soldier arrived but she had been rather too busy then to notice it.
“You must come back!”
Vision through her human eyes now, and her other human senses engaged.
Ruby light lit the interior of her interface sphere, where lianas of Jain tech tangled the packed Polity hardware. A brighter light cut a line alongside her and she heard the crump of her interface sphere opening.
She turned to watch as the forward hemisphere rose up then hinged over, revealing a big mantis head, mica glittering compound eyes and coiling and uncoiling antennae. The head clacked mandibles, then spoke.
“You really made a mess in here,” said Cutter.
“A prador warship here is an infringement of the agreements,” she stated.
“That’s the first thing you say?” said Cutter disbelievingly.
“Thanks for saving me,” she allowed.
She tried to sit up but something was holding her in place. Tilting her head as much as she was able to, she looked down at her body. She was drowned in Jain tech outgrowths. They had fountained from the splits in her sides, punched out of her legs and arms. Flicking to a cam in the open upper half of the sphere she got a better look. Her head was like that of Medusa now, and skeins of tendrils had also poured from one side. She tracked them out then switched to cams in the hold of the destroyer—cams Orlik had only just turned back on. She realized that Bludgeon, whom she now understood had been speaking to her earlier, had turned them off in an attempt to stop her seizing control of the ship through them. He had failed because Jain tech was strewn across the floor, punched into the walls and spread throughout the vessel. It had even linked back to the EVA unit she had used to interrogate the Wheel submind. And now, as she gazed upon all this, she felt some minuscule part of herself screaming its objections.
Orlandine sank back and closed her eyes. The small human part of her being was utterly buried, but even her perfectly logical and emotionless AI self knew that what had happened was not a good thing. Barely conscious, she had seized everything around her—her Jain self had taken full control and sequestered the ship. Had she hurt anyone? She checked. Bludgeon had taken a mental battering, and two of Orlik’s crew would have to regrow legs after trying to cut through the spreading tendrils, which had responded like monofilament whips. Orlik himself had taken a mental hit as well, but had managed to detach his interface plate before she’d taken his mind. Thankfully no one had died. But she needed to get control.
She began disconnecting by activating the constructor nanites spread throughout her structure to reverse the process. She retracted from the ship’s mind—it was intact but not thinking straight, as though it was drunk. Tendrils began unplugging themselves throughout the ship’s system and reeling back into thicker growths. These growths began to shrink back too, where they could. Behind them they left grooves and holes like acid burns, where they had mined surrounding materials for their growth. Some thicker tentacles that had ceased to be capable of movement turned brittle as their contents destroyed themselves. Others made up of more durable materials deactivated, but remained unchanged—it would take the prador some work with grinders and cutting lasers to be rid of them. Stage by stage Orlandine pulled herself back out of the ship, until at length all her physical being occupied was the hold.
“Better,” said Cutter, tilting his head to one side and peering around himself.
As she pulled back in the hold, bands of discolouration, like heat oxidation of shined metal, spread along the tendrils and tentacles strewn across the floor. As these died she began working on others around her. Those that had spewed from her body were wet, organic and mobile. They detached from the more solid growths lying beyond and began to retract into her body, shedding lumps of material like slugs as they did so. She dropped those issuing from her skull, their stumps retreating inside and skin sliding back over the lumpy shifting mass until it settled and her head regained its shape. Others either broke off or slithered inside her, dependent on where materials needed to be replaced. Finally, her sides zipped closed and her body shifted and jerked as it reassumed the form of a human woman.
Within her being, Orlandine steadily disconnected from the Jain tech. One portion of herself wanted to keep the connection, while her AI and human aspects understood that this was the reason she returned to human time. If she did not pull back like this she would lose herself. There was a reason humans decided to be haiman. They chose to carry their humanity into the AI realm rather than only record themselves to crystal and become fully AI. They were a melding who aimed for eclecticism. The objections inside herself became stronger and stronger and, like an addict forgoing her drug of choice, she took herself all the way down to the minimum level: just enough Jain tech to support the link between her AI and human selves. Then she disconnected her spinal power supply.
“I’ll need some help,” she said. “Lift me out of here.”
Cutter moved closer, looming in over her. Showing delicate precision, he reached out with his forelimbs, turning them so their razor edges were to the side, and lifted her out. He deposited her on the floor, where she lay exhausted. Her body chemistry fought to realign, as parts of her human body that had been effectively dead came alive again. Jain tech withdrew from her head, depositing bone behind it to reform her skull. Her shrunken and damaged brain expanded into place as Jain tech and medical nanites made their repairs. Now materials were shedding from her pores as a black fluid, pooling around her, an excess she no longer required. At length it was done and, amidst the tendrils strewn across the floor, she sat up in the sticky black pool like a filthy newborn.
“And now you are back,” said Cutter.
She nodded tiredly, but slowly even that weariness faded as her internal chemistry returned to the state it had been in before she heightened her Jain tech to interrogate the worm fragment. She pressed her hands against the floor and stood, peering down at her filthy body. It was unlikely that the prador destroyer possessed a shower, so she altered her skin chemistry to initiate a low friction gel to ooze from her sweat glands. She shook herself and the muck slewed from her skin. She then touched the disc at her collarbone, mentally reprogramming it so her ship suit slithered out over her body with its pure white monofilament material. She did not know why she had made that choice, and did not want to examine the decision too closely.
“So, what now?” Cutter asked.
“I need a new ship,” she replied. “And I need some time on Jaskor.” Cutter reached down and snapped up a section of brittle Jain tentacle. He eyed it for a second then discarded it. “For human time,” he said.
“Yes, for that.”
Why did she feel disappointment and dissatisfaction in the steadily strengthening human component of her being? It was wrong to feel so negative now. Yes, she had briefly lost control of the Jain tech inside her, but no one had died and she was regaining balance. Many defence platforms had been destroyed and her work of the last century had received a terrible blow. But look at what she had achieved! Extruding her sensory cowl and opening it behind her head, she made a conventional connection, via Bludgeon, to the optical array of the prador destroyer. She could see straight away the great maelstrom in the accretion disc where the Harding black hole had entered it, and the slewing of the entire disc as it began its slow drag into the hole. She had won. Perhaps her disappointment was due to the hole this had left in her. Over the ensuing months the threat she had guarded against for a century would be neutralized and the defence sphere would become superfluous . . .
Yes, this was why she felt as she did. It would pass.
“Come on,” she said to Cutter. “It’s time to go.”
TRIKE
Trike startled awake, briefly confused until he understood what had woken him—the kick and drag of the fusion drive starting up. Just for a second he felt relief because his sleep had been haunted by inchoate nightmares. But then nightmare reality quelled the feeling. Ruth had been dead, then miraculously alive and he had rescued her. Just as he had been beginning to think they had a chance together again . . . a machine of the Clade had ripped open her spine and her heart. Why? He and the others aboard this ship had been peripheral actors in some plot hardly even relevant. It seemed to him the strike on Cog’s ship had been an act of spite; that the Clade had attacked just because it could.
Trike was angry, very angry.
When he had returned fro
m the store room he had been nauseated. He no longer felt as if he was about to lose control, but the anger had not gone away. He had trudged up to the door into his cabin, tiredly undoing the seams of his space suit. Cog and Angel had remained to handle the damage about the fusion drive, and Cog had dispatched him here to rest. He’d stepped inside and sprawled on the bed, reaching out to the empty space beside him, and that was the last he remembered.
Sitting up, he realized that he had fallen into natural sleep, without being knocked unconscious, for the first time in an age. He checked a display up on the wall and saw he had been out of it for four hours. Was that good or bad? He sat on the edge of the bed, grinding his teeth. Then after a moment he stood up and quickly discarded his clothes, heading for the shower. He would consider it a good thing, despite the fact that it was almost certainly due to the sprine killing off a mass of viral fibres in his body. He would also consider the core of rage that sleep seemed to have crystallized inside him a good thing, because he wasn’t crazy—his anger just needed direction.
After washing, he dressed in clean clothes but for his heavy coat buttoned up to the neck, and then headed for the bridge. When he stepped through the doorway he saw that Cog occupied his throne while Angel was standing back from the acceleration chairs. He supposed it didn’t matter to the android whether it stood or sat. The floor was clear of debris and the remains of the Clade units.
“Better?” asked Cog.
“Better but never best,” Trike replied, taking his usual chair. He shot a glance at Ruth’s chair and saw that it had been cleaned of blood too. “The drive?”
Eyeing data scrolling in one screen frame Cog smiled. “Looking
good.”
“So we could get back to the Cyberat world, then?” Trike suggested.
Cog looked at him, assessing, then pointed to the frame. “On those figures it would take ten months.” He gestured to the other frame showing Dragon well clear of the sun and obviously moving fast. “But in just a few hours we can hitch that ride.”