by Neal Aher
What the hell was that?
The maintenance hatch Bsorol had used had popped open again, and out came that first-child, sans armour, hurtling across the hot ground. He was moving as fast as he could, which was not so fast with his twisted limbs, but faster than the woman. As he headed towards her, she stumbled to a halt, stared at him for a moment, then turned and began running back towards the city. Bsorol came up behind her, closed a claw around her waist and snatched her off her feet, then, skidding and kicking up flakes of rock, he turned and headed back. In a minute, he was back at the maintenance hatch and inside, the hatch closing behind him.
At that moment, the dome of Carapace City collapsed as if under some giant invisible foot, spewing debris in a cloud towards the dreadnought. The ship groaned, pressure readings outside climbing exponentially, and the blast front closed to a point. The ship rocked and Sverl staggered, closing one prosthetic claw on the edge of a pit control to steady himself. Damage reports began to stream on one screen, and outside a pillar of swirling air like a tornado rose, sucking on the wrecked city like some giant leech. The storm raged. Carapace City ceased to exist and the wind flung boulders the size of shuttles into the sky. Lightning seared the ground and, with a roar, the pressure peak began to collapse—winds generating outward from this point whipping spume off the ocean. But this was a prador dreadnought wrapped in exotic metal armour. It was the kind of ship that had nearly been the death of the Polity because it was so difficult to destroy. Though it complained, it stood firm.
“Why?” Sverl asked through one PA speaker.
“You ordered the rescue of them all,” Bsorol replied simply as he prodded the woman in the back with the tip of one claw and sent her staggering along that particular corridor. He was taking her to one of the sealed doors into Quadrant Four, so Sverl unlocked it for him.
“I don’t find that explanation satisfactory,” said Sverl.
“Okay,” said Bsorol, shifting his body in a puzzling way, until Sverl understood it was a very human dismissive shrug and that the first-child was going to offer no further explanation.
Sverl realized that he must take the time to pay more attention to his children, and more closely inspect how they had changed. Meanwhile, however, he had resolved his quandary concerning these refugees and the danger to them from Cvorn. In the end, the only answer was a prador one: Cvorn had to cease being a danger.
TRENT SOBEL
Blite and the crew were a strange lot. Something very odd about their behaviour definitely had a connection to their time spent in proximity to Penny Royal. But they were easy enough for him to read, and he knew that they didn’t like him very much.
They were honest traders or, rather, they only strained the bounds of Polity law a little, whereas Trent had worked for Isobel Satomi and she had run a coring and thralling business in the Graveyard. This meant kidnapping human victims, infecting them with the Spatterjay virus to make them improbably physically rugged. It meant next cutting out their brains and part of their spinal columns and replacing these with a prador thrall unit. And it meant selling on the resulting animated meat to the prador. He hadn’t been involved in the kidnapping and cutting, his role having been that of an enforcer since Satomi employed him and his partner to stamp down on other criminal organizations that tried to infringe on her territory. Still, even if his victims were the kind who would have done the same to him, he had tortured and murdered people, and he was culpable in the mass murder of Satomi’s coring trade.
The crew had gone dockside from The Rose to have a celebration, and well they might. Here at Outlink Station Par Avion Captain Blite had turned over thousands of memplant crystals to the station AI and subsequently received a payment that had made him and his crew extremely rich. On top of that, they were to receive a reward for handing over two other items they’d picked up on the way out of the Masadan system. Since he was one of those items, Trent Sobel wasn’t in the mood for celebrating and stayed in the small cabin they had allotted him.
While sitting on his bed, he reached up and fingered the new earring provided by Penny Royal. The purple sapphire now contained the memcording of Isobel Satomi’s human mind—extracted from the hooder war machine she had become, but the jewel had previously belonged to his dead sister Genève and remained his only link to her. Blite and his crew had only rescued him from the wreck of the Moray Firth as a favour to that same black AI, and now, in bringing him here, they had as good as killed him.
Redeem yourself, Penny Royal had told him when presenting him with the earring. How the hell could he have done that, even if Blite hadn’t brought him here into Polity territory? What the hell had the AI been playing at—surely it could have predicted that Blite would have entered Polity territory to offload that memcrystal? How the hell could he redeem himself now he faced either mind-wipe or immediate execution of the standing death sentence on him?
“Sobel,” said a voice from without—one he didn’t recognize. “Come out of that cabin—hands on your head and no weapons. You know the drill.”
This was it. The moment The Rose left the Graveyard he’d known he was in danger. The moment it had docked at Par Avion he’d known the Outlink Station AI would learn he was aboard. Doubtless it had issued the warrant shortly after that and now, outside that door, Polity police were here to take him in. He reached down to the gas-system pulse-gun holstered at his hip. Really, it was a case of die now or die later, doubtless after having every bit of useful data auged out of his mind. He drew the weapon and inspected it. Maybe he could take a few of them down, but there were almost certainly Golem out there, and the fight would not be protracted.
What would his sister think?
The question wasn’t verbal—more of a feeling rising from the understrata of his mind. He shivered and checked around his cabin, looking for a black diamond materializing out of the air. But no, Penny Royal wasn’t here.
So what would she think? Genève would have been disgusted with him. On Coloron, it had been difficult to have a life much above that of dole status without getting involved in some criminality but she had always stayed honest. She’d tried to keep him honest too but had failed. If he had not become involved with the criminal gangs and separatist organizations, would she still be alive? Could it be that if he’d stayed honest the jewel his sister always wore at her throat would not have come to the notice of certain types, and that they would not have murdered her to acquire it?
Trent abruptly stood up and tossed his weapon down on the bed. He walked over to the door, palmed the lock and, placing his hands flat on his head, stepped out. A hand immediately came down on his shoulder and propelled him into the opposing wall, but he managed to turn his head to avoid breaking his nose. Someone kicked his legs out from under him, wrenched his arms round behind him and used a squirt of hyper-glue to stick his wrists together. An inhumanly fast body search ensued, then a buzzing and he felt the hot wash of a powerful body scanner traversing him from head to foot.
“Clean,” said the first voice, and then the one who had glued his wrists hauled him to his feet.
There were four of them. The female with the long black hair standing to one side of him with her hand on his shoulder was stunningly beautiful, but by the way she had handled him he reckoned she was Golem. The two men were heavy and thickset—boosted—so unlikely to be Golem because Golem needed no extra muscle. The fourth one was a momentary puzzle to him. At first sight, he thought this individual was some sort of amphidapt, until he moved and Trent saw that his legs hinged like those of a chicken. This one was a dracoman, Trent realized. Then he noted something else: none of them wore the uniform of Polity monitors or station police.
“Bit dumb coming here, Sobel,” said one of the men, now turning to head towards the airlock. This stood open since the station AI had instructed the crew to take The Rose inside to one of the pressurized docking areas.
“Yeah,” Trent agreed, as the Golem woman pushed gently against his shoulder and he tramped
after them.
When he had learned that Blite was coming here, Trent had argued with the man at length and then, getting nowhere, had wondered about trying to take over the ship. They’d foolishly allowed him to retain his weapon and he was quite capable of killing them all, but then what? The ship’s mind wouldn’t obey him and would take him just where it chose. He could destroy it, dumping the ship out of U-space in the process, then would come a long conventional space journey to some place in the Graveyard—a journey that might be longer than his lifespan, but would certainly result in his lifespan being longer than it was now destined to be. But he owed Blite for rescuing him, the crew weren’t the scum he was used to dealing with, and he rather liked them even though they didn’t like him.
He hadn’t been able to do it. What was wrong with him?
Outside the ship, on a short polished metal floor before a line of cargo and personnel dropshafts, Blite awaited alongside the other item he had picked up beyond Masada. Whether picking it up had been part of the favour Penny Royal had asked of the man Trent didn’t know. All he did know was that Blite had abruptly changed course to intercept this thing. The big, skeletal and weirdly painted Penny Royal Golem that Satomi had taken from the mafia boss Stolman on the Rock Pool was sprawled on a grav-sled. It had been inert when Blite picked it up and had remained so ever since. Blite, now seeing his captors shoving Trent out of the ship, walked over.
“What’s going to happen to him?” the captain asked, indicating Trent with a nod. Behind him the dracoman activated the grav-sled, using the small console on a control column jutting up from it, and sent it sliding along the dock.
The Golem woman replied, “Usually his sort would be cut-auged for data—his mind wiped in the process. However, those under such a sentence who have encountered Penny Royal go to a forensic AI.”
“And then?”
“Sentence on him will be executed, but he’ll be taken apart more meticulously—nothing will remain.”
“You know, I’m standing right here,” said Trent.
“So you are,” said one of the men, “very much unlike the hundreds you murdered.”
“I wasn’t involved in that side of the business,” said Trent.
“Just obeying orders, hey?”
Trent decided it was pointless arguing, so fell silent. Blite stepped closer to him and studied his face intently.
“Of course,” said the captain, “Penny Royal’s almost certainly not finished with you. Not at all.” Blite stepped back and nodded once, a weird disconnected expression on his face, and moved off.
What did that mean?
Another shove against his shoulder sent him stumbling. He realized he wasn’t being taken across to the dropshafts but along the dock. They brought him to the ramp leading into another ship. He studied this small powerful-looking vessel as the Golem woman clamped a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place. It was a single-ship—designed for solo delivery missions and rather like an in-system fighter. But it had extended nacelles on either side at the rear that looked like a twinned U-space drive, and another large nacelle extending downward and looking like a weapons pod.
Ahead of him, the dracoman guided the grav-sled up the ramp into a small hold where it locked itself down. One of those behind shoved Trent up the ramp after it, past the sled, through a bulkhead door into a narrow corridor, then across to another small hold converted into a cabin.
“The glue binding your wrists will be broken down so you should be able to feed yourself,” said the Golem woman.
Trent turned to gaze at her. “So you’re not coming with me?”
“Oh no.” She shook her head and smiled. Behind her, the two men exchanged an unreadable look while the dracoman just turned and headed away. “Even the good guys like us don’t want to get too close to that thing. It can be . . . disturbing.”
“Thing?”
“The Brockle,” she replied, before stepping out and closing the door behind her, locks engaging all around it with leaden thumps. Trent just stared at the blank metal, not sure what to make of that, then turned and walked over to the bed and sat down. He had been sitting there for maybe half an hour, testing the glue sticking his wrists together, when a voice issued from the intercom.
“Are you sitting comfortably?”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Brockle Submind Three,” the voice replied.
“Yes, I’m sitting comfortably.”
“Then I suggest you lie down.”
A high-pitched whistling ensued, and the glue on his wrists abruptly debonded. He felt motion—an odd sideways pressure—and realized that the cabin had reoriented. He lay down on the bed, resting his arms at his sides. After a little more manoeuvring, acceleration came down on him like a giant invisible boot, pressing him deep into the mattress. It ramped up and up, and his consciousness faded out.
GARROTTE
“That is Cvorn,” said Penny Royal, doubtless meaning the father-captain occupying the ancient prador destroyer. It had just surfaced from U-space, leaving a photonic trail, twenty light minutes out from the binary system—a green sun orbiting a hot blue star that was well on the way to collapsing into a neutron star. Almost certainly, the prador destroyer had yet to see the ST dreadnought awaiting it. Yet still it fired up its fusion engines to take it directly towards the dreadnought’s location, which probably meant this was a pre-planned meeting.
“Cvorn?” Garrotte prompted, just before yet another package unfolded in its mind like an origami sculpture, neatly depositing information directly into its eidetic memory. Garrotte now knew much more about the events on and around the Rock Pool from the moment Sverl had established himself there. It now knew of Sverl’s changes, of his steady grotesque transformation. It knew Cvorn’s use of Polity technology had given the five young adults in the dreadnought the advantages they had recently made use of. But still Garrotte did not understand.
“Cvorn has allies in the Kingdom,” Penny Royal stated. “His hatred of humans and of us has, if anything, been exacerbated by his use of our technology. Consider his aims.”
Garrotte began thinking, and deeply. Perhaps something about the presence of Penny Royal aboard this ship had some effect on Garrotte’s thought processes, because soon it began to see an ugly pattern. Yet, this pattern still would not come together, not until Penny Royal provided an image feed . . .
Garrotte found itself gazing through some sort of cam directly into the nearby prador ship’s sanctum. Here it saw an old legless prador—one of the blue-shells, in fact, who claimed direct lineage to the first king of the prador—hovering before his pit controls and hexagonal screens.
“Observe,” Penny Royal instructed.
Garrotte studied the scene, and then studied it a lot more closely. The father-captain, who was presumably Cvorn, had the usual set of prador control units welded to his carapace, but next to them was another control unit with its cover and most of its internal circuitry removed. Sitting inside this was the bean-like shape of a Polity aug. Only this was no ordinary Polity aug, for it had scales like a lizard. It was partially alive, a biotech aug. Only one organization made these things: Dracocorp. All AIs knew the danger of Dracocorp augs for they were mechanisms quite similar in their action to those control units Cvorn wore. The one with the prime aug, such as Cvorn in this case, could come to mentally dominate those wearing subordinate units. Crime lords often used them to take full and utter control of their own people.
“Thrall technology,” Garrotte stated.
“Yes,” Penny Royal prompted.
“The prador children think he gave them a soft location and augmented mental capacity so they could snatch female prador,” Garrotte continued, “but the ST dreadnought they stole for Cvorn was the real target there. I don’t know what reason they gave themselves for coming back here, rather than just heading off and leaving Cvorn behind. But in reality they have had little choice in the matter and have come back to be slaves.”
“A
nd his next target?”
“Sverl,” said Garrotte—it was obvious now.
“Cvorn has left just enough clues, just enough data for Sverl to pursue and thus fall into a trap. Sverl, even having rescued the people of Carapace City, will respond, because Cvorn, while he lives, will always be a threat.”
“And despite everything, Sverl is still a prador,” said Garrotte.
“Yes.”
“And prador tend to kill their enemies rather than avoid them.”
“If all goes according to Cvorn’s plans, he will gain the evidence he needs of Polity perfidy, which is Sverl himself.”
“Prador don’t accept recorded data—too easily falsified or tampered with.”
“An ST dreadnought will be quite capable of disabling Sverl’s ship . . .”
Cvorn hated both the Polity and the new king of the prador for ending the war. He had allies in the Kingdom who would react very strongly to the physical proof of the transformation of a prador into an amalgamation of prador, human and AI. Very strongly indeed. This was the kind of stuff that could bring thousands of prador to Cvorn’s side. It could lead to civil war in the Kingdom, or even to an attack upon the Polity and the renewal of the war. Which was precisely Cvorn’s aim.
This was, as the saying went, serious shit.
“You have to stop this,” said Garrotte. “You’ve just shown me how easily you can penetrate Cvorn’s ship. If you want redemption, if you want forgiveness, then stop him. With this you can come home. We will accept you back into the fold.”
“That is not my aim,” Penny Royal replied.
“No, you have to—”