by Neal Aher
Trent had never seen real prador without armour, but he had seen plenty of image files of them and had even ventured into a few VR scenarios that included them. The prador down on the floor was big, sans artificial armour, and he knew at once that it wasn’t right. Its shell was a mottled blue and black whorled through with grey. It looked like a model of prador fashioned out of a fossil conglomerate, and the modeller hadn’t got the legs right at all. It was also carrying quite a lot of hardware that wasn’t of the expected kind—no Gatling cannon clamped to one claw, no ammunition box and dangling ammunition belt and no shiny-throated particle cannon. It had metal inlaid in its carapace, visual amplifying visors over some of its eyes, a motorized tool-head attached to one claw with a flexible pipe feed leading to a cylindrical carousel mounted on its back. Most of this hardware looked like some sort of amalgam of Polity and prador technology, though the aug seemingly riveted down beside its visual turret was definitely the former. Trent swallowed drily and walked down the ramp after Mr Grey.
“Trent Sobel,” said the prador.
There had been no clattering or bubbling to feed through a translator, so the prador must have spoken mentally through its aug to the speaker residing under a grille beside its mouth.
“Yes, I am,” Trent replied.
“Father will see you now,” it said, “come with me.”
It turned rapidly, feet scraping the metal deck, and headed towards the rear of the bay. Trent glanced at Grey, who gestured that they should follow and they tramped after the prador. Now further out into the bay, Trent saw stuff that definitely wasn’t of the Polity. Over to his right, clamped to the far wall, one above the other, were two blunt-nosed craft with ring-shaped drives to the rear. He identified them as prador kamikazes. Below them on the floor were a series of racks that seemed packed with prador, all back to belly, but these brassy objects were motionless and he recognized prador armour. Glancing to his left, he could not see the far wall. Mega-scale racking stretched from floor to misty ceiling and it was loaded with boxes and cylinders whose contents weren’t identifiable. Amidst them, however, he did spot heavy ground-assault weaponry, including some mobile railguns on caterpillar treads, along with the only recognizable Polity item—what looked to be a partially gutted attack ship.
The door at the rear of the hold was definitely of prador design too. The big oval divided diagonally, the two halves revolving back into the wall on either side. The first-child, because that’s what it had to be, went through and turned to the right. Trent and Grey stepped after it into an oval tunnel that curved away into the distance on either side. It was well lit—Polity lighting panels stretching in lines along both ceiling and floor. Notable too was the lack of rock effect on the walls, the remainder of which someone had been in the process of removing to expose underlying honeycomb plates. Trent stumbled to a halt when he saw something exit a circular hole in the floor to scuttle across and pick up a small chunk of gnarly carapace.
Polity cleanbots?
Where were the prador ship lice? Where were the luminescent growths sprouting from the walls? Why did this place look as if humans had taken over?
A long walk along this tunnel, through similar smaller tunnels, then along one that was even larger, brought them finally to what Trent recognized as the heavy armoured doors into a captain’s sanctum. These revolved aside with an ominous rumbling, whereupon the prador leading them here stepped aside.
“You may enter,” it said.
Trent looked to Grey, waiting for the Golem to lead off, but Grey waved him ahead. “He wants to speak to you alone.”
Right, now I’m going to die, Trent acknowledged to himself.
Same situation here as with the forensic AI—no point in running, and he just needed this to be over. He shrugged himself straight, held his head up, and marched through those doors.
The inside was little like the captain’s sanctums he’d seen pictured, or depicted in VR. It was bright, to start with. Sure, this place had its stacked array of hexagonal screens and the pit controls, the two surgical telefactors attached to one wall, the doors into surrounding stores and the dangling mechanisms used to dismantle and assemble equipment and sometimes to dismantle a father-captain’s children, but unexpected items were here too.
Suitcase manufactories were racked along one wall with shiny insectile Polity robots to either work them or remove their product, while amniotic tanks near them contained squirming and clattering life. Agribots tended a garden full of weird and wonderful plants, some enclosed in chain-glass enviro-bells and, prosaically, a row of tomato plants. Damn it, even trailing geraniums grew from a trough running high on one wall. All about lay the busy movement of robots, conveyors, fluids and contained life forms, as well as the shifting internals of assembly shells big enough to fit gravcars inside.
Trent just stood there with his mouth opening and closing, then the sanctum door ground closed behind him and something huge began to perambulate out from behind a long rack packed with disparate hardware. The shape was wrong, more wrong even than the prador outside. Finally, on gleaming prosthetic limbs, it stepped out into view.
“Welcome, Trent Sobel,” said Father-Captain Sverl.
“Fucking hell,” said Trent, which seemed the only sensible response.
SVERL
Trent Sobel was frightened, but covered it well with his apparently brash demeanour. Sverl studied him for a moment longer, but only with a small portion of his attention. He waved a claw towards a nearby trestle.
“Sit down,” he instructed. “I will get to you shortly. I have something to deal with.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” Trent asked.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” said Sverl, suppressing the urge to snipe. “It is your own kind here you should fear . . .”
Sverl’s focus of attention was via cams on a stunned second-child lying in the corridor outside Quadrant Four, as two of its armoured kin approached it. The creature had gone a little crazy, tearing at a door down there as if it had wanted to rip through with its claws, even while a simple pit control lay within reach beside the door. The other two, who had used a powerful ionic stunner to bring their brother down, were fine, since they were breathing their own air supplies and not the dangerous pheromone-laden air that had leaked from Quadrant Four.
“So what to do, what to do?” asked Mr Grey via their private channel.
The Golem now outside his sanctum was another focus for Sverl’s attention. Mr Grey was a bit of a puzzle and though his aim seemed to be some encounter with Penny Royal, Sverl sensed a deep confusion in the machine. He suspected that the Golem, having only recently returned to full consciousness and free will, was still trying to decide what it really wanted.
“I have now locked all doors in and out of Quadrant Four,” Sverl replied, still watching Trent, who had seated himself. He could not hear this exchange and was now toying with that sapphire earring. “I have also engaged the atmosphere seals on those doors and isolated the air supply in there.”
“The question, the question, the question,” said Grey.
Only because of his direct linkage to Grey’s mind did Sverl understand what the Golem was getting at. It wanted to know what Sverl intended to do about the problem that had impelled him to seal Quadrant Four.
“The reason the second-child reacted so is due to his old biology,” said Sverl, knowing he was procrastinating, “and because of the strange biology of the pheromone itself. My stunned child down there smelled the pheromone produced by one of his own brothers turning into an adult. Since new adults usually turn on their brothers and kill them, my child felt in extreme danger. He also sensed a human element in the pheromone that he could not process.”
“The question,” Mr Grey repeated.
“I saved them from Cvorn,” said Sverl. “Does this mean I must now save them from themselves?” Grey was silent, so Sverl continued. “They have been changing themselves into prador so it was inevitable that one of the
m would take the next step and try to become an adult prador—an adult with my genome since that is the one they used to change themselves. I am unsurprised that it is Taiken who is now issuing adult control pheromones.”
“There will be death,” said Grey.
“Yes, isn’t there always,” Sverl replied, now moving over to Trent, who was fidgeting and looking impatient.
“So you want this?” Trent asked, holding up the jewel. Sverl gestured again with one claw, this time towards a nearby work surface. “Place the jewel into the interlink.” He expected some kind of rebellion, but Trent just looked tired as he stood, walked over to the work surface and inspected the set-up there. He found the two polished surfaces of the interlink—a miniature version of the kind of device used to clamp AI crystal in place aboard Polity ships. He held the jewel between them and used the manual lever to close the surfaces together, clamping the jewel.
The connection was immediate and strong; Sverl felt it down to the pit of his being. There were no difficulties here. The identification was clear, options available and absolutely nothing to bar him from delving into the recorded mind of Isobel Satomi. With a thought, he began downloading a copy of the mind the jewel contained and, as that began, he came to some other decisions.
“They are all recorded by Penny Royal,” he said, just to the Golem squatting outside. “What is physical death when this is so? I will not intervene with the shell people, nor will I intervene should you decide to do something about them or—” he glanced at Trent, who was once again seated “—if anyone else should decide so.”
Without a word the Golem, Mr Grey, stood up and moved off down the corridor, heading directly towards Quadrant Four. As he observed this, Sverl moved closer to Trent and settled on his belly before the man. The copying process would take about an hour and Sverl suspected Trent would not leave here without having his jewel returned. Time then, perhaps, to learn some other things . . .
“So, Trent Sobel,” said Sverl, “tell me all about how Isobel Satomi ended up recorded in your earring.”
Trent glanced up. “It happened over Masada,” he said indifferently.
“No, don’t start there,” said Sverl. “Tell me first about that jewel and how it came into your hands.”
Now the man looked haunted and gazed at Sverl with long suspicion.
“How can I know what’s real here?” he finally asked. “You could be just another method the Brockle’s using to catch me off guard, to get information.”
“How can any of us know what is real?” Sverl countered.
“Should I start at the beginning then, again?”
“Yes—that seems the best place.”
SPEAR
A light hour out from the system I studied the images projected in the screen fabric from Flute’s optical scanning, while lightly inspecting the data from more intensive scans in my aug. The world was the Rock Pool’s twin, even down to its collection of moons. Life, of a primitive kind, burgeoned down there too, and the atmosphere was actually breathable for a standard human being, or prador. However, this world had not been prador-formed and there was none of their reaverfish in the sea, just a vast population of creatures very much like trilobites.
“Anything?” I asked.
“I’m still scanning,” said Flute grumpily, still out of sorts after our near-encounter with Sverl’s dreadnought.
“But no sign of Sverl—I thought he would be here ahead of us.”
“Don’t forget that chameleonware,” said Riss.
I felt stupid because I had forgotten the chameleonware, and had half expected Sverl to have materialized here and gone straight in to attack whatever he found. But Sverl wasn’t really prador any more, so would certainly approach this situation with more caution. He was probably somewhere close by, out here with us, I thought.
I continued to stare at the images presented but started fidgeting and felt impatient.
“The problem out here,” I said, “is that you’re passive-scanning stuff that’s an hour out of date. We really ought to move in closer.”
“A-a-dvise against . . . that,” said Flute, as if speaking the words actually caused him pain. “My kind can be . . . tricky.”
I glanced at Riss, who simultaneously swung her head round to gaze at me, then blinked open her black eye. This wasn’t for me. I guessed she was now inspecting Flute’s activities very closely.
I too paid closer attention, feeling there was something wrong about Flute. Data I had previously only been casually looking at I now reviewed and inspected more carefully. In a short while, I found something. Studying neutron flows, Flute had found an object deep in that world’s ocean but had then seemingly decided not to examine that data closely, and instead widen his search. He was now focusing intently on a particular land mass as if sure it concealed something lethal. I was about to mention this, but Riss communicated with me directly through my aug.
“Flute just sent a U-space transmission,” she said. “From what I could catch, it looked like a situational update.”
“What do you reckon?” I asked.
“It’s the father-captain. He gave the second-child mind crystal augmentation. I suspect Flute’s loyalties are not all they should be.”
“But then you would say that.”
“I am just speculating on the data,” said Riss sniffily. “Who else could Flute be updating?”
“Penny Royal?”
“Possible, if the AI got to him, but unlikely. Penny Royal already has its spy aboard.”
Riss was of course referring to the spine and its other connections elsewhere. Again, here was proof that I could trust nothing that Penny Royal had or might have touched. I dithered, wondering what the hell to do, then decided on direct confrontation.
“Flute,” I said, “it seems you have found Cvorn’s destroyer and have neglected to inform me.”
“The scans are not clear,” said Flute.
“That neutrino lensing effect looks very much to me to be the kind you would get from a functional but inactive U-space drive.”
“There could be . . . something . . . else,” Flute managed.
“Flute, who did you send that situational update to?”
After a very long pause, my ship mind replied, “I . . . cannot.”
“Were you, or are you, in communication with Father-Captain Sverl?”
Again, the long pause then, “I cannot.”
“You have scanned that world and found nothing but that object down at the bottom of the ocean,” I said. “You are just completing your scans of the moons and they are just rocks.”
“I suspect . . .”
A prador destroyer down at the bottom of that ocean was no danger to us. It would take time to drive itself to the surface and the only weapons it possessed that could be effective against us from down there were missiles, which would also take time to surface. We could be gone from here long before they became a problem. However, I couldn’t ignore Flute’s painfully expressed fear. And there was something else I couldn’t ignore. I turned to Riss.
“Presupposing Cvorn is aiming to capture Sverl and present him as evidence of Polity perfidy to his Kingdom allies,” I said, “I have to wonder how he’d manage it.”
“This has been something of concern,” said Riss.
I continued, “Sverl is aboard a dreadnought. Cvorn just has a destroyer . . .”
“I can only suppose that Cvorn is acting as bait for Sverl, and that the moment he knows the father-captain is here he’ll send a signal to bring in his allies. The present position of his destroyer is a good one if he intends to delay Sverl. It would take many days for Sverl to either safely destroy it down there or root it out, which might be enough time for those allies to get here.”
“Safely?”
“He can do the job a lot quicker if he enters the ocean, but a multitude of traps might be concealed down there: dormant torpedoes and mines are easier to conceal in brine.”
So, Cvorn was in fact
here, but Cvorn was not what this was all about. My priority was to keep tabs on Sverl, who I hoped might lead me to Penny Royal. In fact, it occurred to me that the best option to my ends would be to talk to that father-captain. I pondered this for a moment, then something else occurred to me.
“Flute, why did you use a U-space transmission to update Sverl?”
Flute made a sound like a duck trying to quack through a glued-together beak.
“One would suppose,” I said, “that if Sverl was here concealed under chameleonware, then some other form of communication would be easier.”
“Sverl isn’t here,” said Riss.
“That would be my guess,” I agreed. “I think we should withdraw and check other sources for data.”
Via my aug, I also sent to Riss, “I also think we should disconnect Flute and take a long, hard look at his protocols.”
“Agreed,” Riss replied. “Never trusted the little fucker.”
“If necessary, can you adapt yourself to running a U-space drive?”
“If necessary, yes.”
“Flute,” I said out loud, while checking data in my aug, “take us to Golon. I understand it is the nearest inhabited world.”
“I . . .” Flute managed, then began emitting a sound like an angry wasp trapped in a tin can.
“Another U-space communication,” said Riss.
It took much longer than was entirely necessary for Flute to fire up our U-space drive. I strapped myself in, just in case, as I remembered someone dying in circumstances quite similar to this. But it was the unwelcome visitor aboard that dead victim’s ship that had killed him, while the object he had been cautiously heading away from had been Penny Royal’s planetoid.
Flute took us under, the screen fabric turning grey, then flaring back to life with a world looming large before us. That had just been too quick, and I knew the world I was seeing was not Golon, but the oceanic world hiding Cvorn’s destroyer.
“You fucker,” said Riss out loud, whipping round and heading for the door so fast she was a blur. Before she reached it, the bulkhead door slammed shut and locks clonked ominously into place.