The Soldier

by Neal Asher

  “Give me updates,” Angel demanded.

  “The work progresses well,” replied the prador, settling to the floor again. He reached down with one claw into a pit control in front of him to send a report. Angel immediately integrated this into his mind and studied it, momentarily losing himself in detail. Then, flashing and turning in his mind like a ring of icy blades, the Wheel was back. He briefly understood that he had felt it impinging on him earlier, but thoughts about that fled in the face of absolute certainties.

  Now it was time to fully assert control, and set the prador upon their course. Inspecting the schematics of the prador’s much-feared reaver, he saw that despite further work needing to be done, it was ready for flight.

  Moving. . . .

  “Brogus,” he stated. “It is time for you to transfer yourself aboard the reaver.”

  “It is not yet complete,” the father-captain replied.

  Angel engaged further, connecting to the neural lace he had installed in the old prador’s main ganglion—his brain. He sensed Brogus’s reluctance to depart the secure sanctum on his ship, so he exerted pressure.

  “As you will,” said Brogus.

  “Good. You must prepare for departure.”

  Angel tried to remember the things that had been bothering him prior to and upon his arrival here, but they seemed vague now. His mind strayed to events after Trike blew up his ship and thence to the living passenger he had aboard.

  Kill her.

  It wasn’t even a verbalized thought, just a feeling. He felt glassy blades turning somewhere at the edge of perception, then a sudden panic.

  “No,” he said out loud, not even sure who he was speaking to. He flicked his attention to his ship’s internal sensors, and to Ruth’s neural lace. He felt the nascent intention to murder fade. It didn’t matter if she lived or died. He controlled her absolutely. She was irrelevant to his plans but might also come in useful. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

  Ruth sat in a chair aboard the shuttle, her mind shut down and her body alive but at its lowest possible functionality. The thought about simply disposing of her briefly surfaced then submerged again. Angel woke her up and, through the neural lace, peered into her mind. She woke with a start, and immediately leaned forwards to try and obtain data through the shuttle’s instruments. As he watched the interplay of her thoughts, Angel felt some surprise. They had last spoken when he returned her to her newly repaired shuttle. She had been checking all its systems and thinking frantically about whether to blast out of the wormship, until he put her to sleep again. Now, upon waking, she dismissed that idea to wait for a better chance of escape.

  “We have reached my base,” he said, directly into her mind.

  She froze, looked around the shuttle cabin, then in a leap of logic said, “You put something inside my skull.”

  “A neural lace,” Angel replied. “I can reprogram your mind any time I choose. Otherwise you are completely subject to my will. I could, if I so wished, force you to eat all your own fingers, or maybe have you use that knife you found in the shuttle’s stores to skin yourself.”

  This suddenly seemed like a good idea, but again panic arose and the idea faded.

  “What do you want with me now?” she asked.

  “You will be useful to me.” Angel paused as his ship drew past the reaver, sudden confusion assailing him. “Though I wonder how useful.”

  “What do you want of me?” she asked, persisting.

  Panic again; his mind scrabbled to find a purpose for her.

  “Artefacts.”

  “What about them?”

  “You will be useful in helping me obtain them.”

  “How? You know where they are. What do you need me for?”

  “You will be useful . . .” he repeated, doubt in every word.

  After a long pause she asked, “Do you not know your own mind?”

  “I know my own mind,” he asserted. How dare she question him? Why should he tolerate her for one moment more? Anger surged in him, but it didn’t feel real, didn’t feel like his own. He abruptly shut her down, suddenly terrified of what he might do—or what something might drive him to do.

  COG

  Captain Cog gazed at the representation of U-space in the screen laminate, thinking about his past—there was a lot to remember. He thought about his insane brother, lost somewhere on Spatterjay, and though he felt a deep regret about that unfinished business, he suspected it would be best to leave others to finish it. They had more motivation where Janus was concerned.

  He considered why his thoughts were straying into territory he had tried to leave behind centuries ago and the answer immediately arose: Trike. The boy was so like Janus. During their ten years together on Spatterjay, Trike had appeared to be calmly logical, but Cog had seen that as a sheen over an inner turmoil. Later, during their catch-up communications, he had seemed happy with Ruth. Whether he had changed then, Cog did not know, but now the old Trike was back—a man forever fighting to stay sane. His mind sat on a precipice and he spent much of his time clinging there with all his might. Maybe something had happened in his past, before he came to Spatterjay and sought out the bite of a leech. Maybe he had simply been born wrong and that had never been corrected.

  Cog sighed and rested back in his throne. He filled his pipe with tobacco, firmly concentrating on his actions, and lit it. Puffing out a cloud of smoke, followed by a perfect smoke ring, he then flipped a control on his chair arm to throw up a frame in the laminate. There sat Trike, on his bed in his cabin, hands loose and cupped beside his hips, head sagging occasionally then snapping upright. His eyes were closed, and his expression steadily cycled from calm repose to flickering grimaces, and the occasional snarl. Under his closed lids his eyes were in constant motion, like in REM sleep. Cog knew this wasn’t sleep, however, but the outward expression of the man’s constant battle with his own mind. There were physical effects too. When Trike was under a lot of stress, as he was now, he ate more—a lot more. Cog had used the ship’s sensors to check on the results of this and found that Trike’s weight just kept on increasing, though his size did not. This indicated worrying things going on in his body, related to the Spatterjay virus—things that Cog had seen before.

  The Old Captain pushed another control, locking the door to Trike’s cabin. It wouldn’t stop the man if he wanted to leave, but would certainly delay him for an appreciable time. Cog hoped Trike would not get up at an inconvenient moment and trigger awkward questions about the locked door. But it was a precaution he felt compelled to take at a time like this. He then gestured, sending the frame to one side, and opened another one.

  “Get Blade online, Janus,” he said, still, after all this time, uncomfortable using that name, and still unsure of why he had named his ship AI after his brother.

  “Connection made,” the AI stated.

  Something appeared distantly in the frame, black on white, then surged forwards. The face wasn’t the usual AI icon. It was midnight black, the eyes pale green with pinpoint pupils. Depending from its ears were small silver daggers. Cog supposed it was as good an icon as any to represent the black-ops attack ship Obsidian Blade.

  “Where are you?” Cog asked.

  “In U-space, where do you think?” replied Blade.

  Cog sighed. He had no intention of getting into a discussion about time and distance where U-space was concerned with an AI ship. “How long till you reach the coordinates I sent you?”

  “Two days—your time.”

  “Mmm.” Cog sucked on his pipe. “Let’s hope you arrive quickly enough. We don’t actually know what we have here. Any historical detail?”

  “The coordinates are just on the edge of the main action that took place against Erebus,” Blade replied. “We speculate that the legate survived there during Erebus’s self-destruction—probably EM-blocked from that AI’s mind. The system is uninhabited and marked as only having potential for H4 mining.”

  “That doesn’t give us
much of a clue as to why the legate is heading back there.”

  “We are inclined to think he might have a base or something else there. It is an ideal location just outside the Polity, and Angel might have established something on what he feels is familiar territory.”

  “I see,” said Cog.

  “And why else would he travel out here?” Blade added.

  “Why indeed.” Cog ground his teeth for a moment then got to what he really wanted to say. “Now, we are agreed that, if it is at all possible, you will retrieve the body of the woman Ruth.”

  “I have my orders and you have yours.”

  “Still—” Cog paused for a second “—if her body is intact it is running a nanosuite that will keep it preserved. Resurrection is a possibility.”

  “I will endeavour to retrieve it if it is still intact and if, with tactical considerations, that is a possibility.”

  “Good,” Cog replied, feeling slightly uncomfortable and glancing at the frame showing the image of Trike.

  “But you know how unlikely that is.”

  “Yes.” Cog nodded grimly.

  “I see you are slightly off coordinates,” Blade observed.

  “Yes, I thought that safest,” Cog replied. “More chance of detection if I get close.”

  “Quite.”

  “So I guess I’ve done all I can for now.”

  “You have done all you can, Captain Cogulus. This Angel represents a dangerous threat to the Polity. The life of one woman must be weighed against this creature’s potential for destruction and other lives lost.”

  “Cold calculations.”

  “You’ve known that for a long time, old friend.”

  Blade cut the communication. There was nothing more to say, really. Cog sat back, freeing the locks on Trike’s door, and at that moment the man opened his eyes. The locks were silent, so surely he could not have heard them? Then he closed his eyes again.

  Cog sat back and pondered recent events. It had come as a surprise to him to be contacted by Trike after so long. Focused on his own particular business at the time, he had been inclined to fob the man off, until he heard the story. He then sent a message to those above him, and their response had been immediate: “Help Trike, stay on this—we want Angel and that wormship.”

  Trike had already retrieved Ruth’s excised memories and there was no time to get the Obsidian Blade to Trike’s meeting with the creature. Anyway, the detail of Cog’s orders was to watch, since there might be others like Angel and something that could be hit with more effect . . .

  Trike opened his eyes again and stood up abruptly. Cog checked the timer running at the bottom of the screen laminate. Just as on other occasions, Trike got himself on the move precisely eight minutes before the ship was to surface from U-space. Cog wasn’t really sure how the man did that. Trike headed to his sanitary booth, so Cog cut the feed and waited.

  “We should be there soon,” said Trike, as he finally stepped onto the bridge, thick black coat on and buttoned up to his neck again, as if it could hold in the madness.

  “Did you sleep well?” Cog enquired, wondering if it was his imagination that Trike appeared taller.

  “Like a bird,” Trike replied. Cog wasn’t entirely sure where the expression came from but understood the implication. He wondered if

  Trike had lied to Ruth about this when they slept together, or if she had known, or even if he actually did sleep when he was with her. Trike seated himself in another chair, observing the instrumentation readouts along the bottom of the screen laminate. “Those are not the coordinates I gave you.”

  “A precaution,” Cog replied. “We’ll arrive two light days out. Softly, softly.”

  Trike grunted, whether in agreement or otherwise it was difficult to tell.

  They sat in silence until a chime rang. Cog felt his ship surface from U-space—a familiar tug and twist almost like nostalgia. The slow grey and silver swirls in the main bridge screen cleared to reveal deep black vacuum sparsely scattered with stars.

  “Gathering data,” stated Janus.

  Frames began opening across the main screen. They showed a gas giant, closer images of its moons, the wormship, a reaver and a prador destroyer docked to it.

  “You took a good precaution,” Trike stated. “It’s like you knew.”

  “You learn a thing or two by the time you get to my age,” Cog replied, his voice flat.

  “Yes,” said the man. “What do we do now?”

  “We move closer and we stay hidden,” said Cog. “And we wait.” And in two days we see all hell break loose.

  ANGEL

  The Wheel was back and hung in Angel’s mind like a lead weight in jelly. He noted via cams Brogus entering the reaver, the legless pra-dor father-captain buoyed up by grav-engines and floating along a ramp, two heavily armed second-children scrambling along behind, towing grav-sleds loaded with the old prador’s personal belongings. But Angel could not focus on this because his mind felt out of balance. “Do you know your own mind? Do you know your own mind?”

  Ruth’s words just kept repeating in his skull, but he understood they were not the problem because he found himself clinging to them. It was as if she herself was some kind of anchor for his mind. He felt he needed her, that without her he would lose himself. Her existence maintained a link, and it seemed an essential one, to all the doubts and insecurities he felt just after Trike damaged his wormship. After he lost the Wheel . . .

  What am I doing here?

  The Wheel now gleamed with hard light and spun frantically inside him. Ruth’s words began to break up and under an unnatural wash of calm his doubts began to dissipate. He stubbornly fought it, but the imposed order and calm was difficult to resist.

  It doesn’t matter . . .

  Move . . .

  He sighed—there was still atmosphere in the ship—his mind falling into a new shape. He held out his hands and tendrils attached. Clarity descended like a guillotine as he began incorporating further data on the reaver. The Wheel spun hard, slicing away the extraneous, allowing him to concentrate. Angel watched Brogus install himself inside the reaver and begin familiarizing himself with its systems, while some of his children transported further supplies across from his destroyer. The latter ship would be controlled by one of the father-captain’s first-children and was meant to follow the reaver, so Brogus could transfer back to it once his task was done. Angel knew this occurrence was unlikely, though it was not clear to him what Brogus’s mission was and why he would not survive it.

  Other children of Brogus cleared construction paraphernalia from about the reaver. The Clade units that had been working there were streaming away like a shoal of sand eels towards their main mass in the clouds of the gas giant. Angel had no idea why and no idea what to do with the swarm AI. He tried suggesting it go aboard the reaver and join the two hundred Clade units there, but simply received no response. This had happened before. The Clade would react at a later time, or not at all. Yes, that’s what would happen.

  All was running smoothly. The reaver would penetrate a kingdom fleet. And Brogus would do what he would do—when the time was right.

  Except . . .

  Angel shook his head. None of this made any sense to him. He could see only the shadows of plans in his mind. What was the purpose of Brogus? Why was he doing this?

  The Wheel spun strongly and he remembered something. What was it? Yes, the Cyberat. It was to one of them Ruth had sold the Jain artefacts. Angel would go to their world, where the cyborg humans traded in technology away from Polity or prador interference, to retrieve an item. Then . . . The thought dissolved and seemed to lead nowhere. He was struggling with this when an alert attracted his attention. One of the numerous detectors he had spread about this system had finally accrued enough data to take it above the alert threshold. Though heavily shielded, there had been a radiation pulse identified as a U-space signature out there. The detector could find nothing at the estimated location of that signature. Perhap
s Trike had obtained sophisticated chameleonware and followed the signal from the device in Ruth’s skull?

  Move, said the Wheel.

  It felt as if it was responding not so much to potential danger but to Angel’s own confusion about his purpose here. The Cyberat . . . his thoughts stubbornly returned to that and he probed memory. A scientist on the Cyberat world possessed a certain useful item. Deployment of this item would result in cataclysmic disruption, the destruction of the defence sphere around the accretion disc and then . . .

  Then why all these other preparations? Why Brogus?

  The Wheel spun and spun, slicing in his mind. The whole plan started to fall into a logical structure, yet on some level he felt it was not logical at all. He needed to sort this out. He needed to understand perfectly what he was doing here—

  Move!

  The instruction slammed hard into his mind but he held himself rigid, stubbornly trying to hang on to his train of thought. He needed stillness and time to sort out the confusion—

  MOVE!

  This time the order was undeniable.

  Go, he told Brogus.

  Where? the father-captain enquired.

  He was about to berate Brogus for asking such a stupid question. To the defence sphere of course, to the accretion disc . . . to . . .

  No.

  The grip was rigid in his mind and there was no fighting it this time. Coordinates fell into his consciousness and he knew he had not thought of them. He repeated them to Brogus and enforced the order to depart. Even as he did this he understood, for sure, that none of these plans were his own. It was a moment of painful epiphany. The Wheel had been controlling him since it first appeared in his mind. It wasn’t always as strong, subtly allowing him to think that all he had wrought here was his doing. But in reality he was a slave.