by Neal Asher
“New coordinates,” he said abruptly, and sent them to Ruth. “Relay these to Trike.”
“You have a problem there?” she stated.
“An irritation. An inconvenience,” Angel replied.
A tendril within the egg penetrated one of his hands and he took full control of its system. But it was sluggish and not as easy to operate as before. The great mass of organic movement outside began to slide away as the egg rose, and he was soon looking down on that area of the small island. It was heaped with the big albino forms, their jointed neck-limbs waving angrily. He sent the image to Ruth’s mind, although was not sure why he did so.
He shifted the transport egg a couple of miles from its original location—above a great mass of tulip-like growths. Through his sensors he could now see a speck in the distance as Ruth’s shuttle drew rapidly closer. But then he saw other objects in the sky and realized his plan to use this egg as a diversion later on would no longer work. The Cyberat were coming and doubtless scanning—they would find out if he was not in the transport egg.
Surveying his new surroundings, he chose a big slab of rock jutting out below the tulip growths. It was a better location anyway, since there was room for Trike to land his ship now. It occurred to him that he should have planned for this before, that he wasn’t thinking clearly. He descended, the transport egg settling with a crunch.
Ruth’s shuttle came in to hover over the slab and she brought it down on the other side of the egg from where the tulip things were. Angel climbed out of the egg and the surface crunched under his feet, coated with objects like black barnacles. He walked out for a little way, surveyed his surroundings, then moved over to the edge of the slab and gazed at the view. Lower down he could see the creatures that had swamped the transport sphere moving inland in a wave of fleshy bodies. He next raised his gaze to the haze out at sea and saw the objects there. One of them was Zackander’s slab-like ship, others seemed to be a variety of grav-trans-ports while there were smaller objects he could not make out. But now they seemed to be hanging back, circling the island like sharks.
“Who are they?”
Without looking round at Ruth, he replied, “The Cyberat.”
Why were they holding back? He looked up. “And here comes Trike.”
The rumble of unbalanced grav-engines reached them, and the flash of steering thrusters put the shadow of the ship over them. Angel watched it descend and land, the slab shuddering under his feet. He felt almost tired—perhaps due to the malfunctions throughout his body—and it occurred to him that perhaps he would not be leaving this place. A ramp lowered to the rock and a tall man stepped out onto it.
13
Madness: Where Polity medical technology prevails, the mental maladies of the past remain there—firmly in the past. Most inherited organic failures of the brain now only exist in the data files of medical historians, while subsequent failures that cannot be corrected by nano-suites can usually be dealt with by autodoc or, if necessary, by an AI surgeon. Complex problems caused by circumstance and environment, like PTSD, can be handled by mental editing. However, madness is still with us. The standard human brain has, for example, no coping mechanism for a nearly endless life, hence the “ennui barrier” people reach at around about their second century. Other problems arise from mental enhancements, usually from the integration of disparate mental components. Even AIs are not immune—those who specialize too far turn inward and lose themselves in their own mental worlds. Existential angst is often a problem for both AIs and enhanced humans. Then there are the effects of alien environments and organisms. The hoopers of Spatterjay are a glaring example—the viral fibres tangled in their brains have a damping effect like the amyloid plaques of that ancient disease Alzheimer’s, but also make synaptic connections and hugely increase the density of neural networks. The phrase “defies analysis” is too often used but applies in this case. No one can decide whether hoopers have been made stupid or brilliant by this, but all agree that they are, to varying degrees, crazy.
—from How It Is by Gordon
TRIKE
Trike gazed at the egg-shaped transport resting on the slab of rock and then at the two figures standing over near the edge. He stared at Angel. Though the legate looked more humanoid than before, he still retained his silvery skin. He recognized Ruth at the core of his being and when the legate moved over and grabbed hold of her arm, he took an involuntary step down the ramp, anger boiling up inside him.
“Steady,” said Cog. “We go down and talk first.”
“Talk?” Trike spat.
“It gets us closer,” Cog advised.
Trike peered down at the laser carbine he was holding, then glanced aside at Cog, who held his own weapon in one hand.
“Okay,” he managed, and tried to think clearly about what Cog had said earlier. “We talk and, if we can, drive him over the edge, grab Ruth and run.”
“You’ve got it, boy.” Cog grimaced at the view out to sea. “If the Cyberat hold off. Let’s go.”
They strolled on down the ramp. Trike kept his finger on the trigger of his carbine but didn’t think he could take a shot at this distance without some chance of hitting Ruth. He watched the legate carefully, how he held Ruth’s arm and then took a pace forwards. Angel turned and looked out to sea, and Trike raised his own gaze to see that the Cyberat, who he and Cog had seen on the way down, were now coming in. When they reached the bottom of the ramp, heavy boots crunching, Angel looked past them to the right, and Trike glanced over. Some big squid-like life form had clambered up onto the slab there, and was soon followed by another.
“I don’t think we’ll have much time to—” began Cog.
Trike raised his carbine and fired, tracking the swiftly moving silver figure running to their right. The beam crackled in the air, visible as a line of gleaming red spots as it vaporized whining flies. He was sure he hit Angel four or five times, but to no effect. Then he himself ran towards the prostrate form of Ruth.
“Trike!” Cog bellowed. His weapon then spat out a violet-blue particle beam.
Trike caught a glimpse of it striking the legate and flinging him backwards, while he squatted by Ruth, who was already pushing herself upright. She looked round at him and their eyes met. It just didn’t seem the same, with her eyes being black now. And those eyes widened as she looked at him.
“Leave me,” she said. “He’s going for your ship!”
“No, get aboard,” Trike said, then was up and running.
Angel recovered, and Cog hit him again with the particle beam, but this time it just splashed off the legate and he kept moving forwards. Beyond the legate Trike could see the wave of creatures coming in, but many of them were not getting far. The tulip things were moving frenetically, rising on stalks and thumping down to the ground. They snatched and lifted up the creatures trying to pass, then tossed them back like herons swallowing frogs. Only these things did not appear to have gullets—they just closed up around their prey, then descended out of sight.
Angel was moving steadily towards the ramp now and Cog had backed up onto it. His weapon was smoking in his hands and seemed to require at least a second or so to cool down before he could use it again. During those seconds Angel moved quickly, but while Cog was firing he slowed to a leaden pace, his feet seemingly stuck to the ground. All around him the stone was smouldering and Angel himself seemed to be glowing a dull orange. Trike ran straight at him, rage bubbling inside him and a roar rising out of his chest, but also an element of cold calculation working in his mind. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the android, and it was like hitting a solid iron post. Trike was an old hooper, however, and even iron posts had their limit.
Angel tumbled sideways, lumps of rock stuck to the soles of his feet. Trike rubbed at his smoking shoulder and strode forward as Angel picked himself up. Roaring, his tongue sticking way out of his mouth and open at the end, Trike double fisted the legate as he began to rise. Something crunched inside Angel as he turned a
backward somersault and landed on his face, but he shot up again almost immediately. Trike was on him just as fast, throwing himself into a dropkick that sent the legate back. Angel fell on his backside, coughed out a spray of smoking fragments, but then sprang up to confront Trike again. Trike straight-armed him to send him staggering, then spun and slammed his boot into him to push him back further. Angel looked somehow bent and there were splits in the front of his torso, but he staggered very little this time, and managed a ghastly smile.
“You think you can hurt me?” he asked. He held out a hand towards Trike, a glowing disc igniting in the palm. “I can burn you to ash where you stand.”
At that moment, a large parrot beak came down like a pickaxe and clamped onto Angel’s shoulder. He turned and snapped the head away from the jointed limb that had wielded it, then lifted the attacking creature up and over so it came down on its back, flat starfish feet waggling in the air. Angel was slower turning back, though, and Trike realized he had actually managed to damage the legate.
“Was that the plan?” Angel asked.
“No,” said Trike, pointing upwards. “That was.”
One of the big tulips closed down hard on Angel, wrenching him from the stone and up into the air. As it tossed him around, getting ready to drop him into its interior, Trike turned and ran for the ramp. He knew the thing would not hold Angel for long.
He made it to the foot of the ramp where Cog waited.
“Ruth?”
Cog stabbed a thumb back inside the ship, and Trike stepped onto the ramp as a blast ripped over the slab. It hurled him skidding across the stone on his chest, with burning debris tumbling past him. He shook himself, ears ringing, and turned into a crouch. Angel was walking out of the smoking remains of the copse of tulip things. He held out one hand and a bright blue particle beam stabbed out, which he swept across the mass of squid-like creatures. He did this again and again until they were a steaming, burning heap, falling in writhing chunks. Then he broke into a steady trot towards the ramp.
Trike checked to see where Cog was and saw him groggily rising to his feet beside the ramp, one hand still clamped onto it, the metal crunched up like straw. He had lost his weapon, which lay some feet behind him. Trike readied himself to run at Angel again, sure now that he would be eaten up by that particle beam just as quickly as the creatures were, but hardly caring any more. Then something else hit the legate, and hard.
Angel staggered in a flash of light, a fire trail stabbing from his side and stone exploding to vapour where the trail ended. The slab rocked and shifted ominously, and Trike saw that the legate had lost a chunk out of his side. Angel looked down at the hole there, mouth opening and closing. He was hit again, with what looked to be a railgun slug, and Trike realized the Cyberat had decided to do something. He gazed at the legate who was now missing most of his abdomen, the upper part of his body supported by an impossibly thin sliver of torso. Angel folded and collapsed, shuddering a little before he grew still.
A shadow now fell across them and Trike glanced aside to see Zackander’s spaceship home descending. It did not land on the slab but went down past it and out of sight. But even as it did so something shot out from it and came towards him and Cog. The circular grav-platform was loaded with armament, while Zackander sat upon a pedestal amidst this. Perhaps the Cyberat had used one of the weapons from there against the legate, Trike had no idea. Other members of the Cyberat began to swarm in on an array of different vehicles. Two large platforms, with even heavier armament aboard, hovered over the severed form of Angel, the silvered throats of particle cannons pointed down. Zackander detached from his pedestal and floated over on the glass ball of his lower body.
“We did not want to fire while he was near Ruth,” said the old Cyberat. “And with you running around it was also difficult,” he added, looking at Trike.
Trike was aware that Cog had come up beside him, but his eyes strayed as Ruth came walking back down the ramp. Now, with the danger apparently over, he felt monstrous—like he had too much anger to spare. He felt a sick lurch as he heard distant giggling, and shadow forms joined the descending Cyberat. He fought it and concentrated on looking at his wife, feeling the anger diminish somewhat. He clenched and unclenched his hands. Breathed.
“So we are done here,” he said.
Another vehicle landed beside Zackander’s. This was a larger rectangular grav-barge and the form squatting amidst the weaponry and other devices was the torso of a young man grafted onto a giant metal spider. This rose up to expose heavy Gatling cannons attached on each side.
“We are not done yet,” he said.
He turned and the cannons fired; thousands of high-powered rounds slamming into Zackander’s grav-platform. The thing flew apart and tumbled across the slab, while Zackander spun in midair, raising his arms as if in protest. A yellow beam stabbed out from one of the hovering Cyberat and hit his glass ball. The glass did not break but things started burning inside, blackening the glass. Zackander dropped out of the air and bounced, then spun and went down, his upper torso sprawling on its face.
“We needed him out of his ship,” said the other Cyberat, climbing down from his grav-barge. “He seemed to think we did not know whose dangerous interest in Jain technology led to what has happened on our world.” He came to stand over Zackander. “He seemed to think he could just sweep it all to one side and return to his position as our leader. He thought wrong.”
“Is he dead?” Ruth asked.
Doshane looked up from Zackander and gazed at her. He looked furious. “No, he is not dead yet,” he spat. “And don’t think I don’t know who sold him the last batch of Jain technology he was playing with. You are as guilty in this matter as him!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought him capable . . .”
“None are, when it comes to this evil.” Doshane nodded a head towards Angel, then held up a hand. The Cyberat who had brought down Zackander shifted his platform over. The yellow beam stabbed down again to strike Angel’s egg transport, spiralling round and round over it. The thing crackled and burned, leaked molten metals and slumped, black smoke pouring away from it. When it was finally a molten pool on the rock, Doshane raised his hand again and gestured to the remains of Angel.
“Wait,” said Cog, stepping forwards.
“What?” asked Doshane tersely.
“A Polity forensic AI will want to examine that.” Cog nodded to the erstwhile legate.
“And why should I care?”
“Because even cyborgs do not annoy Polity AIs,” said Cog reasonably.
Doshane glared at him, but after a moment nodded. “Very well. Take that with you.” He next surveyed all three of them. “Now, you will get off our world. I will give you one day to get the hell out of here and if you are not gone by then—” he paused and looked up at the sky “—enough orbital defences remain to put a missile in your ship. Do not come back. You are not welcome here.” He turned and headed away.
THE CLIENT
Reavers and attack pods tested each other’s defences, as railgun missiles and particle beams scribed across vacuum. The Client studied the battle front for just a short time before leaving it to well-established programming. She could think of nothing clever to do, no special tactics she could apply. This stage of the battle seemed to be just about brute force. She turned her attention to the U-space drive of the weapons platform.
The big treaded robot was now manoeuvring the super-dense ring into place in the drive. Other robots were also fitting components and linking them, testing the whole system in stages. It would take another hour before the drive was workable. The Client studied the statistics again, in greater detail. Then she turned her attention back to the battle as another of her attack pods exploded into a cloud of plasma. It would be over long before she could fire up the U-space drive and it was looking increasingly like she would be on the losing side. She had to do something . . .
Her attention strayed to her remote, and then to the
data she had taken from the library—now distributed throughout memory storage in the weapons platform. Almost instinctively she began running searches on tactics and weapons that might apply to the situation she was in. As knowledge sank into her conscious mind, she damned her stupidity of just a few minutes before because she had lost so much. Ten minutes later, once the super-dense ring was secured in place, she fired up all the conventional drives of the weapons platform and set it diving towards the sun. Behind her the attack pods fought a steady retreat, while they fell into an odd tubular formation.
“The humans have an interesting expression,” sent the prador in charge of the attacking fleet. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
“I see the analogy,” she replied, “but I do not find it interesting.”
“Oh it interests me because I have a strange fascination with their odd habit of half-burning fresh meat before eating it. I did try it once—only because a human corpse came my way after being partially broiled by a laser.”
“And what did you think of it?” As she asked the question the Client finished constructing a guidance program for the attack pods. This was to control their hardfields and electromagnetic effector weapons, which were usually used for induction warfare.
“It was interesting,” said the prador.
The sun loomed ever bigger in the Client’s perception, and the temperature in the weapons platform climbed. Soon it reached a temperature uncomfortable even for her and a long unused cooling system kicked in within her cylinder. Various views throughout the platform gave her glimpses of exterior components flaring and burning away, structural beams beginning to glow. Maintenance robots scuttled for cover on the outer hull, darting inside quickly opened hatches. Further cooling was required. She ramped up the photo-electric hull to its full potential and most of the platform now seemed like a hole into midnight. She routed the power surge from this to every laser available, all pointed towards the prador reavers.