The Soldier

by Neal Asher

  Trike awoke with a throbbing head and various other aches and pains throughout his body. He lay there experiencing the novel sensation. It had been many years since he had felt anything like it. The last time he had suffered pain was when he lost half his torso to a giant sea leech over a hundred years ago. He strained to open his eyes, which were gummed shut, and his eyelids parted with a ripping sound. He gazed up blurrily at a white tiled ceiling as if through a window rimmed with sulphur crystals.

  “E fuck wa’ ‘hat?” he managed.

  There was something wrong with his mouth. It felt arid and he didn’t seem able to control his tongue. He tried to reach up to touch it but found he couldn’t move his arms, then soon realized he could not move his legs or head either. He strained against the restriction, expecting whatever was holding him to give at once, but experienced another surprise. He had been bound with something very strong.

  “I find it a little concerning that you had restraints like these easily to hand,” said Cog.

  “One must always be prepared for any eventuality,” replied the Cyberat woman, Lyra.

  Now Trike remembered: Ruth.

  He fought against the bonds and felt some give in them, but only so far, and when he paused to take breath they tightened again.

  “Take it easy, son,” said Cog.

  “Fuck ‘ou!” said Trike.

  “Just no respect in the younger generation,” said Cog. “Stop struggling and I’ll bring you upright and explain.”

  After a further few seconds of straining, Trike recognized the futility of his struggle. He lay there panting, too angry to speak for a moment, then managed, “Okay.”

  A motor whirred and brought him up into a sitting position. Whatever was clamping his head loosened to allow him to move it, but within limitations. He looked around the room in which he found himself. Cog was moving back from him, the device he had used to knock him out clutched in his hand. Obviously, the Old Captain did not trust the bonds as much as Lyra, who now stooped close. “Stick out your tongue,” she said.

  “Uck opf,” he told her. But as if it had received her instruction without the intervention of his brain, his tongue squirmed in his mouth and protruded.

  “Fascinating,” she said. “Should I inject him now?”

  “Uck,” said Trike. “Basarzz!”

  “Yes, now would be good.” Cog moved back over. “Let me first explain, Captain Trike, what has happened to you. The weapon I hit you with is about the only thing that can render one of us unconscious. It does this by inducing micro-ruptures throughout the victim’s body. Use it on a normal human and that person would be a sticky puddle on the floor, but we retain most of our physical integrity. You are now repairing that damage. You know how it is, you need foods of a particular kind.”

  Trike did know. When the big leech had taken a chunk out of him, he had eaten copious amounts of foods that would suppress viral growth within him. Garlic was good for that, as were some spices. Even so, he’d been a little bit more crazy than normal and his tongue had opened a leech mouth at its tip, just as it had now.

  “However,” Cog continued, “I don’t have the time to nursemaid you through a long recovery so we’ll be using something else.”

  Glancing aside, Trike saw that Lyra had brought over a huge bottle suspended from a wheeled stand. Inside slopped a deep purple glutinous fluid. She uncoiled a pipe from it, with something like a small handgun attached to the end of it. She triggered this and with a crack it extruded a hollow injector the width of a man’s finger.

  “This—” Cog waved a hand at the bottle “—contains highly concentrated nutrients with an active nano-machine delivery system. It also contains a very low dose of sprine.”

  Trike immediately began to struggle. Sprine was produced by the bile ducts of the giant oceangoing leeches. Because of their size, the leeches’ mouths were too big to plug-feed on their much smaller prey, so they swallowed it whole. Since that food was infected with the virus and reluctant to die, the leeches used sprine to kill it in their guts. Sprine was of great value to hoopers: a way of dying, quickly, did have great value when you were physically immortal. However, Trike really didn’t want to die right then, he wanted to kill.

  “Hold still, you idiot!” Cog snapped. “I said very low dose of sprine. The amount is microscopic. All it does is paralyse the virus for a while. It will allow you to heal rather than the virus turning you into something nasty.”

  Trike continued to struggle. He simply did not believe Cog any more. The man had changed. His speech patterns were different and he no longer seemed like the “Old Cog” Trike had known. But Trike’s struggles availed him nothing as Lyra pulled his shirt out of his trousers, pressed the gun against his stomach and triggered it. He felt the hollow needle go in deep. After a moment she clicked something on the side of the device and pulled it away, leaving the tube entering his body just above his navel. He stared at the purple fluid in the pipe, then felt it flowing inside him.

  “Is there more I can learn from him?” asked a voice.

  Trike felt spreading heat in his guts, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

  “Believe me,” said Cog. “He won’t be cooperative. And I’ve given you all the detail you need. It’s a legate and it wants those Jain artefacts.”

  Trike now felt quite relaxed. His belly started bubbling and he felt a satisfaction in his lungs he hadn’t experienced since he smoked—a habit he gave up when he arrived on Spatterjay three hundred and one years ago. He also felt drugged and dopey—another sensation he had not experienced in all that time. He turned his head and saw that someone else had joined them in the room, and stared at the individual in puzzlement.

  The top half was a wizened old man, hairless, wrinkled and thin. His torso was scattered with scars, each a couple of inches long with a series of dots on either side—like those left by stitches. Lower down, about his midriff, numerous pipes entered his body through pink, apparently open, wounds of the same size as the scars. These pipes all came from a metal disc a few inches thick which his body, above the waist, sat on like a half statue on a plinth. This in turn rested on top of a floating glassy ball three feet wide. Inside the ball, depending from the top plate, hung a collection of mechanisms like metal sculptures of internal organs.

  Trike giggled.

  The old man didn’t spare him a glance, continuing with, “Lyra, get more detail from this Captain Trike when you’re able. I have to go.” With that, the man shimmered and disappeared. On one level Trike thought, neat trick, but on another he knew he’d been looking at a hologram.

  8

  Spatterjay is a dangerous world. The well-known leeches can be found on land and at sea, and range in size from that of a masonry nail to a blue whale. Every one of them will want a piece of you. And these are not the kind to painlessly suck your blood. They really do want a piece—their slicing mouths able to excise a circular plug of flesh in seconds—and since those mouths can be anything up to three feet across . . . Then there are the whelks that look like something dreamed up by a crazed cartoonist—things like by-blows of shellfish with frogs, octopuses, squid and, in one case, a brick hammer, all with ridiculously sharp teeth or beaks, and some big enough to eat a gravcar. It should then be no surprise to understand that the human residents of this world are tough, dangerous and just a little bit nuts. But these hoopers, as they are called—a name derived from the first and most infamous resident of that world (Spatter) Jay Hoop—can become a source of more danger after the aforementioned creatures have done their damage. The virus that has turned them into something often tougher than a Golem android, goes rogue in their bodies when hoopers are injured. The physical transformations they then undergo can result in something worse than one of the leeches or whelks. Rumours abound of monsters which, as ever, are human . . .

  —from How It Is by Gordon

  ZACKANDER

  Evidently Ruth’s presence in the Cube and Angel’s follow-up was a ruse, a dist
raction, bullshit. Somehow Angel had used the com connection to trace Zackander’s location, and now two hundred of his automated patrol robots were blown. He felt a thrill of fear but also some hope. If this legate was so inept as to get caught out by that setup, then maybe Cogulus had been exaggerating about how dangerous this thing was. Maybe without its connection to Erebus it just wasn’t that bright?

  Zackander grimaced. No. He should not allow himself to relax his guard at all. The legate may have blown up the robots through ineptitude but that did not mean the technology packed into its body was inactive. It also might have destroyed them because it didn’t care if Zackander knew it was coming—didn’t consider his knowing to be an issue. He turned from the polished quartz window, which gave him a view across the land around his spaceship home, towards where the robots had been destroyed. Plumes of smoke were rising into the air.

  Still connected with his security system, which was now on high alert, he searched for further signs of the legate’s presence. An artificial fly buzzed over the location of one of the destroyed robots. All it found at first were scattered legs, and one or two fragments of the thing’s main body. Zackander sent it to inspect one of these more closely and quickly made an assessment. Some kind of high-intensity short-burst particle weapon had been used and, considering how many times, this Angel must be packing the serious kind of power Cogulus had mentioned.

  Zackander floated across to the tube down from this viewing tower and back into the body of his spaceship home. He turned off his grav-motor and dropped and, so preoccupied was he, he almost forgot to input the security code. Remembering it at the last moment rescued him from being ejected into a nearby boulder outside. He floated out into his home and looked towards the door leading into his collection, tempted to go there right now. But he didn’t need to, and if he initiated the Jain soldier it would be better not to be too close. He had planned things precisely if he went that route, and would be well out of the way when the situation turned nasty. No, he had one other option—maybe not an overly effective one but one he should at least try. He floated over to a bank of screens, turning them on with a thought.

  Three screens now displayed the land this legate would have to cross if it was coming in from where the robots had been destroyed. The fourth screen remained grey for a few seconds then switched on as an individual at the other end of the comlink allowed a cam feed. Zackander peered into what looked like a sea cave in which high-tech telefactors had been abandoned, except the main device he was seeing was a half-hemisphere surgery—a device operated by a creature wildly different from a human and generally used for techniques that had little to do with repairing injury or curing illness. There were also somnolent robots shaped like water scorpions—obviously of Polity design. A shape moved in front of these and stared out of the screen with spider eyes behind a clear visor.

  Zackander studied the prador. He had only confirmed there was something wrong with the arrangement of its eyes after running a comparison with wartime files on prador. The two central eyes for binocular vision looked like those of a goat rather than polished rubies, as was usual. Those to either side ran in lines curving up rather than down and were white, as if blind. But these possessed pin-head black pupils which, on studying a recording of a previous communication with the creature, he saw did contract and dilate.

  “Orlik,” said Zackander. “You have received the agreed payment?”

  There were other odd things about this prador. Orlik wore what seemed to be a normal suit of armour over his carapace, but it was, unusually, bone-white, and running from the back of it to somewhere up above was a skein of optics.

  Orlik waved one claw dismissively, in a curiously human gesture. Doubtless it was now bubbling, rattling its throat membranes and grating its mandibles in prador speech, but a translator delivered its voice as a soft baritone.

  “Delivery is complete and has been checked—all the items are there.”

  Orlik had driven a hard bargain for his services but, as Zackander understood it, he was accustomed to such bargaining. He and the prador in the other ship were mercenaries. Maybe a hundred years ago they had fled the Kingdom into the Graveyard, that buffer zone lying between the Kingdom and the Polity. Why they had done so was unclear. Sure, such exoduses had been common as the new king had established his power base, and prador who had strongly disapproved of his truce with the Polity had made themselves scarce. But they had dwindled to nothing within fifty years of the end of the war. Perhaps those optics running from Orlik’s back explained why he was a renegade. It was as if he was somehow plugged into his ship. As well as AI, it was the kind of technology frowned on in the Kingdom. And then there was the drone, of course . . .

  “Well, now it is time for me to collect payment,” said Zackander, his eyes straying to the item just to the left of Orlik.

  On a bracket jutting from one wall sat a circular plate. Seemingly nailed to this was an odd-looking drone with a long body, long paddle limbs, and a head resembling a bird’s skull. When he first saw it, Zackander had thought it some kind of trophy, perhaps collected during a prador reaverfish hunt. Recording an image of it and running a search revealed that its form was that of an extinct prador parasite, except for the extra black turret eye, which told him what it really was. The thing was a Polity assassin drone used during the war, and undoubtedly had done extremely nasty things to the enemy prador—its hosts. Perhaps keeping something like that around was frowned on in the Kingdom, or demonstrated an attitude to technology that was unacceptable there.

  “I thought it might be,” the prador replied. “No doubt the wormship you have sitting in orbit here has become a threat?”

  Zackander concealed his surprise, though was not sure if he needed to—uncertain if prador could read human facial expressions. The prador had known about the ship, yet they had stayed. Surely they must also know how dangerous it could be?

  “Yes, it is a threat,” he said. “I want you to attack it and, if possible, destroy it.”

  “Then you will need to deactivate the defence station you have watching us,” said Orlik. “I don’t want to go into action with that thing at my back and perhaps some itchy fingers on triggers.”

  “I am sending instructions now,” replied Zackander, instantly ordering one of his transmitters to send the deactivation signal.

  “Interesting,” said the prador. “That you can do this so quickly confirms what I suspected. There is no ruling council here—just you.”

  Zackander ignored that, though was very uncomfortable with it. Why would these prador find it interesting that he was the de facto ruler of this world?

  “I will also send instructions to have the station back you up,” he said. “Are you capable of making a tactical interface with it?”

  “Of course.” Orlik paused for a second, then continued, “And other orbital assets?”

  This prador was very capable—not at all like the previous renegades from the Kingdom. In his dealings with them, Zackander had entertained the notion that they might not be renegades at all.

  “Communication satellites and orbital manufacturing.” He paused, considering other assets up there, in particular a large oblate station. “The U-space research facility would be of no use to you either.”

  “Interesting station,” Orlik commented.

  Zackander wondered if the prador knew something. The facility was for U-space research, but the paired singularities it had aboard were also the basis of a USER. It could be used for defence to disrupt under-space and make travel or communication in that continuum impossible. However, it was a bit late to use it since the wormship was already here.

  “Interesting, but of no use to you right now. I will send you code for linkage to the defence station,” he said. “Understand that I can shut it down with a thought, should it go after anything other than that wormship.”

  “Of course—I did not think otherwise.”

  “Begin as soon as you are ready.” Zackander sent t
he code and was about to cut the link but Orlik had already cut it from the other end.

  Now gazing through cams on the station, and on other orbital installations, he saw that the prador ships were on the move, in fact already firing railguns. They were moving fast—also sending instructions to the station for it to launch CTD space mines and fire its particle weapons—very fast . . . That optical connection Orlik had with his ship, perhaps? No matter. By threatening its wormship, Zackander hoped to draw the legate, this Angel, off this world. Maybe it would return to whatever transport it had used to get here.

  Even as he thought this, Zackander dismissed the idea. Angel would be quite capable of controlling his ship from down here, while the ship itself surely possessed enough autonomy to respond to the assault. This was a distraction at best. He turned and looked at the door again, then swiftly back to his other screens. Something else was happening out there amidst his defences on the surface of the planet.

  ANGEL

  The fence stood twelve feet tall with gun towers spaced along its length at regular intervals. It was made of a ceramal mesh coated with semi-superconductor and carried a charge capable of melting a ground car. The towers sported particle cannons and compact million-round carbon-bead railguns. All this was capable of stopping a concerted attack by a ground force. But Angel was puzzled. Air attack was more likely. If the Polity or the Kingdom came in here after Zackander they would just fly in with armoured gunships, and land troops that way. There had to be some other purpose here . . . just like there had to be some other purpose to that attack on the wormship by the two prador destroyers. Surely they knew they stood no chance of succeeding?

  Angel concentrated on the wormship, trying to review its automated response to the attack. He found he could not establish full contact. This could be the result of the EMR storm up there, but the fact that the ship was doing things outside of its programming was not. He realized he was no longer in full control of it, that the Wheel was directing things up there. No matter. He returned his attention to his present circumstances.