by Neal Aher
“Okay, show me,” I instructed.
The usual images up in the screen fabric—the cold and distant stars and one frame displaying the relay asteroid—hazed for a moment. One of the Polity watch stations next appeared—a great thing like an upright barbell. I saw more activity here than I had seen around these stations before. I recognized a squadron of squid-like attack ships shoaling about it, along with a series of lozenge-shaped dreadnoughts. Also visible was a spherical ship even larger than they were. This might be one of the rarely seen Gamma-class vessels, or maybe something even larger.
“There has been no attempt to suppress information about this activity,” Riss lectured. “But there has also been no attempt to make it generally known.”
I nodded. The Polity didn’t try to suppress stuff on this scale because it was a pointless exercise. There would always be some pair of eyes or some cam watching, and people would always broadcast such activities throughout the AI net. In fact, Polity AIs had learned during the war that trying to suppress information about such activities tended to make the citizens of the Polity more suspicious, and the act of suppression itself tended to make the news spread further and faster.
“Interesting,” I said, wondering what the relevance was to us. I turned to gaze at Riss. “And now you can tell me more, I have no doubt.”
Riss blinked a black eye. “Flute is seeing one side of it—from the Polity. What he is not seeing is that it is a response to other activity.”
“And you have your contacts,” I suggested.
“I have my contacts,” Riss agreed. “And I have images if Flute will allow me to display them.”
“Flute . . .” I said warningly.
“Oh, very well,” my ship AI grumped.
The watch station faded. In its place appeared a sulphur-yellow world that had to be sitting inside some sort of gas cloud, perhaps an accretion disc or a nebula. No stars were visible and the world stood out vividly against this background. Sky blue and dark green were swirled together, interspersed with lines of blood red and odd organic-looking formations of fleshy pink. My brain tried to give all this definition, but the shapes kept eluding it. It was just a gas cloud—no more than that. I blinked at the brightness. Space wasn’t always black.
“So what am I seeing?” I asked.
“It just has a number on Polity maps,” Riss replied, “but the prador call it something like the ‘Feeding Frenzy.’ It was a living system before the war but during it, the Polity blew up a close orbiting gas giant, in fact an object better defined as a pre-ignition proto star. The prador lost a major shipyard, thirty-eight dreadnoughts and many other ships and stations here.”
“Blew up? How?”
“We dropped a shielded runcible gate into it while the gate at the other end was moved into position before a stream of near-light-speed asteroids flung out from a spinning black hole.”
“And why have I never heard about this?”
“No one survived the mission and the Polity AIs don’t brag.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Flute.
“Anyway, that was after your time,” Riss added. “Lying on their border with the Graveyard, it is now a useful place of concealment for the prador. Though obviously not as concealing as they think.”
A frame opened over this bright image, bringing into focus some objects poised over the sulphurous world. I now saw about thirty ships of a design I did not recognize: long golden teardrops with dark grooves running down their length.
“King’s Guard,” Riss explained. “Each of these ships is two miles long.”
I let out a slow breath. I’d picked up on some rumours about the prador King’s Guard during my various searches for data on the Graveyard. They were secretive. No one saw them without their body armour and, like some antediluvian human armed forces, they always took home their dead. They came down very hard on any kind of rebellion inside the Prador Kingdom and occasionally intervened in the Graveyard. They were fast, surgical and without the usual mess and titanic destruction that had been the hallmark of the prador during the war.
“An attack? But against who?” I wondered.
The image faded to black, a frame now closing in on other objects. These I immediately recognized and I felt my back crawling. Eight old-style prador dreadnoughts were sitting in the vacuum of deep space.
“It could be that the King’s Guard is mustering either to make some response to these ships or to join them. This could be preparations for an attack on the Polity, yet there really aren’t enough ships for that.” It sounded to me as if Riss wasn’t particularly displeased with the idea of an attack on the Polity and, of course, the potential for all-out war. “The Polity ships could be mustering in response to these or vice versa.”
“Or all of this,” I said, “could be something to do with Sverl, Cvorn and Penny Royal.”
“Isn’t it arrogant to assume that such events might be related to your main interest?” Riss asked.
“Perhaps,” I said, “but those three characters are the biggest thing happening in the Graveyard now and I don’t believe what we’re seeing here is a coincidence.” I reached round and pulled across the seat’s safety harness. “Flute, take us to that relay right now.”
SVERL
Bsectil, hovering just above the surface of the icy asteroid on which Cvorn had mounted his communications relay, had finished making all the possible close scans and checks Sverl had been unable to make from his dreadnought. The first-child was hesitating now, understandably nervous about descending to the surface.
“Oh well,” he finally said, “it’s been an interesting life.” Emitting streamers of vapour from the impellers of his suit, he dropped to the surface, faster than necessary, and landed with a thump that generated a spreading cloud of ice crystals. There he paused, his sharp feet driven down into the ice, doubtless, as the drone Arrowsmith might have said, kissing his arse goodbye.
“Right, I’m still alive,” he said, heaving his feet out of the ice and towing his tool chest over to the relay.
As Sverl observed him come to a halt by the domed lump of prador metal anchored to the ice, he pondered on how well suited to this kind of environment was the prador form. Glancing at other screens, he observed the humans in Quadrant Four and thought about how much less suited were they. However, they were now all as neatly organized as social insects and scuttling to do Taiken’s bidding. They did have other advantages, it seemed. By now, had it been prador in their situation, there would have been at least a few assassinations, if not some outright battle.
“It all looks suspiciously easy.” Bsectil now had the lid of the relay open and was busily connecting optics and power feeds.
“Probably until you set it to transmit its data,” said Bsorol from down in the drone cache. Aug-linked to Bsectil, he was watching the show while, with prosthetic underhands, simultaneously working inside the openedup armour of a war drone. “Then it will be blam and byebye Bsectil.”
“It will not,” Sverl interjected. “Bsectil will be clear of the asteroid by then and transmission will ensue on a timed delay.”
“Okay,” said Bsorol. “I’ll bet on something blowing when he makes a final connection and if not that, then some nasty virus . . .”
“Quite likely,” Sverl agreed.
Bsectil continued working, then after a few minutes paused with an optic plug held up in the tips of his right claw, the cable from it leading to a simple radio transmitter lying on the ground beside him.
“Here we go,” he said.
Sverl fleetingly wanted to tell him to desist, but Bsectil was quick and had inserted the plug a second later. Sverl analysed why he had not sent that order, because with his AI component there had been enough time. It all came down to his growing suspicions about that relay and its purpose.
“Still alive, I see,” said Bsorol.
“Yeah.” Bsectil launched himself from the asteroid, tool chest in tow, fired up his impellers to distance himself from the a
steroid, then ignited a chemical booster attached under his armour to send him hurtling back towards the dreadnought. Sverl, meanwhile, once again scanned near space looking for any booby traps his penetration of this relay might activate. There was nothing: no physical objects larger than a grain of dust within the reach of his scans, unless Cvorn had used some sophisticated form of chameleonware of which Sverl was unaware. He then again probed the ice and rock of the asteroid. Certainly enough crap sat inside the asteroid, which, with a little chameleonware help, might conceal a CTD, but even a planet-buster would do little more than give his dreadnought a bit of a shake at this range.
Bsectil fired his booster again to slow his approach, used his impellers to guide himself down towards an open airlock and went in fast enough to land with a crash that sent him tumbling into the inner door. As the outer door closed, he righted himself and did an odd little dance.
“It’ll be a virus then,” said Bsorol, always the optimist.
Sverl ignored them as the timer ran out and the radio transmission began. Data began coming in and Sverl studied it pensively, certain that this had just been too easy. He now knew precisely to where the relay was retransmitting the signal from the Rock Pool spy satellite. It couldn’t have been clearer. Bsorol and Bsectil were right. If he had been in Cvorn’s position he would have planted a CTD deep within the asteroid set to detonate the moment something began interfering with the device, or maybe lined up some nasty viruses to transmit the moment a physical connection was made. Maybe both. Perhaps this relay transmitted to another one where such a trap had been set, or even through a whole series of them, but he doubted it. Cvorn just hadn’t had the time to set up that many relays.
“So what’s he got?” enquired Bsorol.
Bsorol, now aware that there had been no nasty virus, had also surmised that the spy satellites around the Rock Pool, and now this relay, were the lure and that where their signal terminated lay a trap. He was asking the next most relevant question. Cvorn had departed the Rock Pool in a prador destroyer that was no match for Sverl’s ship. He had lost his allies when they headed off into the Kingdom in search of prador females and almost certainly would not be getting them back. As the drone Arrowsmith would have it, Vlern’s five children were by now either toast or on the run far from the Kingdom and the Graveyard, probably with King’s Guard in pursuit. But Cvorn had to have something.
What was Sverl missing?
Augmentation?
The thought was like a blow. Cvorn had always been one of the more intelligent father-captains and had clearly demonstrated when he turned on Sverl on the Rock Pool that he had been aware for quite some time of the changes Sverl had undergone. Cvorn was prador enough to have an utter detestation of artificial intelligences, but seeing what had happened to Sverl, he would recognize the distinction between an artificial entity and an augmented natural one. If Cvorn had learned from Sverl and gone down the augmentation route, he would be a lot more dangerous. Sverl was considering what precautions he should take when a U-space link opened through his heavy computer security.
I really don’t need this now, Sverl thought.
“Yes,” he finally said, when it became evident that the communication was voice-only and nothing nasty was queued up to come down the link. “And none of that ‘snickety snick’ nonsense.”
“I got him,” said the Golem.
“You ‘got him’?” said Sverl, “I need more of an explanation than that. And I assume you mean Trent.”
“I listened,” said the Golem.
“And?”
“They simply released him because Penny Royal issued a threat to the Polity if they didn’t do so. The black AI does not like interference in its activities.”
Threat? Now this was interesting.
“Detail.”
The next transmission the Golem sent was a recording. Sverl checked it thoroughly before listening to a brief exchange between the forensic AI the Brockle and some other AI, perhaps even Earth Central itself. Sverl saw how Penny Royal had ensured Trent Sobel’s survival. So the man was part of Penny Royal’s plans and, since he was now a captive of Sverl’s Golem, those plans almost certainly related to Sverl himself.
“Do you have the earring too?” he asked.
“Yes, I have Satomi’s recording,” the Golem replied. “I bring them both.”
Sverl was now torn. He wanted to go after Cvorn but he wanted Isobel Satomi and he wanted his ultimate goal of . . . something from Penny Royal.
“Take yourself to the Rock Pool,” he instructed, since that world lay about midway between the transmission point of the Golem’s signal and his present location. “I must consider this.”
“Okay,” the Golem replied, seemingly unconcerned as it temporarily closed the link.
What to do?
“Father,” said Bsorol, now closing up the armour of the war drone he had been working on, “I’ve been thinking about Cvorn.”
“Me too,” interjected Bsectil, now in the corridor just inside the airlock, trying to straighten out the dented lid of his tool chest.
“And you’ve been thinking about Cvorn in connection with yourselves, haven’t you?”
“Augmentation,” they both said simultaneously.
Sverl was pleased with their reasoning.
“What do you suggest?” he asked.
“One has to go back to first principles and consider why you want to eliminate Cvorn,” said Bsorol.
That was very, very unpradorishly rational.
Sverl glanced at those screens showing the human population aboard and realized that Bsorol had grasped the main point. Sverl wanted to kill Cvorn because of the threat that prador posed to this adopted population. However, Cvorn was likely a bigger threat now than before, and to follow him would probably put this population, and Sverl himself, in even greater danger. But protecting this population was not all of Sverl’s aim. He was still prador enough to want vengeance for Cvorn’s attack on him and for the lives already lost. Still torn, he now considered telling the Golem to come to his present location, so he could take it and Trent aboard and still go after Cvorn. The other prador might or might not have augmented himself and might or might not have set an effective trap. There was only one way—
What now?
His sensors had picked up a U-space signature. Through his AI component, Sverl initiated the chameleonware throughout his ship and took direct control of all its weapons. Was this the jaws of Cvorn’s trap closing?
“Crew, get to battle stations,” he generally ordered, but even as they scuttled to obey, something unexpected materialized into the real.
Sverl studied the old-style Polity destroyer and analysed it as no threat to him, just before he recognized the ship itself. No, this was no attack from Cvorn, but it might be the answer he needed. He opened up a coded U-space link to it—one established long ago to a resource within that attack ship.
“Hello, Dad,” a voice immediately replied. “What can I do for you?”
Sverl updated from Flute’s mind, quickly incorporating all the events that had occurred aboard the ship the second-child mind controlled, sucking the data into his AI crystal in a matter of seconds, meanwhile ensuring he had Flute under absolute control. It was only as that data began to incorporate across the interface to his organic brain that Sverl experienced a visceral reaction. He seized control of ship’s weapons, charged capacitors and even ignited the drive of one missile. He stood just a microsecond away from obliterating the destroyer out there before he managed to get a grip on himself and cancel what would have been a mass attack. To coin a phrase from Arrowsmith, using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.
Riss . . .
That was the drone’s name. That was the name of this snakelike artificial version of a parasite the prador had wiped out centuries ago. That was the very thing that had attacked Sverl all those years ago during the war. Sverl knew because during his exile on the Rock Pool he had used Polity resources to obtain its name, but
had never been able to locate it physically. That was the creature that had laid eggs inside his body; the parasites hatching out and nearly destroying him. The process of removing them had been long and agonizing and left him crippled. Gazing from one of the Polity destroyer’s internal cams, Sverl could not shake his atavistic horror of that drone, and the urge to destroy that ship had not gone away.
“Father?” Flute prompted.
Sverl realized the silence had gone on uncomfortably long. “So Thorvald Spear is following me?” he enquired.
“He is,” replied Flute.
“In the hope that I will bring him closer to Penny Royal?”
Flute took some time replying, struggling against the control Sverl exerted, his loyalties divided. Eventually he gave up. “Yes.”
“The signal should be easy enough to follow,” said Sverl. “You will note that the relay on the nearby asteroid now clearly indicates where it is routing its U-space signal?”
“Yeah, I spotted that,” Flute replied.
“Then follow it, and keep me informed of what you find.”
“You’re not going there?”
“I suspect a trap, and I want to know precisely the nature of that trap,” said Sverl. “Inform me of what you find. If necessary, provoke a response there to clarify the matter. And inform no one aboard of our exchange.”
Flute just emitted a frustrated buzzing in reply.
Sverl’s control of the mind at the other end of this exchange was rigid, and Flute would be unable to disobey, at least for a while. However, Sverl was wise enough to know that a second-child mind with AI enhancements, given enough time, could eventually find some route around rigid orders. Flute would not be given the time.
Sverl now laid in a new course for his ship and opened up his unshielded fusion drive while dropping the chameleonware. However, he did ensure that the other ship could not divine his destination from his dreadnought’s U-space signature as he dropped into that continuum and took himself back towards the Rock Pool.