by Neal Aher
“We’re dead anyway,” said the drone.
Cvorn’s trap had not involved summoning reinforcements as we had supposed, for they were already here in some form, but I didn’t entirely agree with Riss’s assessment of our chances, and confirmation of my suspicion occurred just a second later. The Lance hummed and juddered as Flute opened up with our railguns to send a swarm of missiles towards that moon. Almost certainly, our opponent’s laser defences and anti-munitions would stop every single one, but they would buy us time. Next, our own particle cannon fired, stabbing through that swarm of slower-moving missiles to splash on an abrupt scaling of hardfields just out from the moon.
“What the hell are we fighting?” I asked.
“A prador ST dreadnought,” Flute replied.
“And you led us right into its firing line,” Riss spat.
Flute was finally speaking clearly now, but this wasn’t the time for recriminations or explanations. Nor was it the time, even if the corridor outside the bridge had not been filled with flame, for Riss to tear the second-child’s mind apart. Right now Flute was our only hope of survival.
“Initiate interface manoeuvre,” I said. “But you need a way of shutting our attacker down at least for a minute.”
It was dangerous to try to enter U-space this close to a gravity well because the chances were that if you actually managed to reenter realspace, you and your ship would be turned inside out. That danger ramped up even higher when you were under attack. Isobel Satomi had somehow managed such manoeuvres while descending on Masada but, at that point, she had been part of an Atheter war mind—an entity capable of doing some seriously weird stuff with U-space. We needed a break, a breather, and there was a chance we could create one.
When I’d been intent on bearding Penny Royal in its lair in that wanderer planetoid, I’d instructed Flute to manufacture the means of expelling the AI from that lair, in burning fragments. Flute had used kiloton CTDs stolen from Isobel Satomi as a detonating package for fissile plutonium-239, transmuted aboard this ship from uranium-238 sieved and enzyme extracted from asteroid dust, the whole wrapped in hardfield-contained deuterium. The result was a fusion bomb in the multi-megaton range.
I was reluctant to use it.
“We have a way of shutting him down,” said Flute, referring to our super-weapon.
“I know,” I replied, still hesitating, but also aware that Flute was now deferring to me rather than acting on his own.
I didn’t want to use that bomb because it was my ace card—the one weapon I had that just might be capable of killing the black AI. However, as I heard another of our projectors go, I decided that actually surviving this encounter might be a good idea too.
“Use the bomb, Flute.”
Flute must have had the thing lined up for firing in an instant. I heard and felt the alteration in the tone of our railguns as one of them powered down for a low-speed firing—he could not fire such a device at the speed usual for inert missiles, because the acceleration would tear vital components apart. Up in the screen fabric a red circle marked the until then invisible course of the bomb heading towards the moon. Timing was everything. Cvorn, if it was that prador aboard this ST dreadnought, would soon recognize the threat of a slow-moving object coming towards him. He probably wouldn’t react to it right away because even a gigaton CTD would have to get very close to cause any damage. Flute had to judge when to send the detonation signal—with luck, just moments before Cvorn opened fire on the bomb.
The destroyer’s particle beam speared out again, not towards the bomb but at us. Our last projector went out with a crash and doubtless Cvorn, fully knowledgeable about the kind of equipment an old destroyer like the Lance would carry, was relishing this moment. He wouldn’t fire on us right away—he’d want us to have time to be fully aware of our imminent destruction.
The Lance was shaking now, the planet looming huge across the screen fabric opposite our view of that militarized moon. I felt some satisfaction on seeing a red circle now enclose something rising up from that city of weapons. Cvorn had been dismissive of the approaching bomb and merely fired a missile on an intercept course rather than use some beam weapon. He’d given us more time.
The two circles drew closer together and, at the last moment, I was sure I saw a flash of blue as Cvorn’s particle beam stabbed out. But it could have been my imagination.
Detonation.
Bright light flared inside the first circle, then a black macula briefly blotted it out as exterior cams polarized to prevent the flash burning them out, and as the screen ceased to transmit something that could have blinded me. The explosion was spherical, quickly expanding to the size of that moon and beyond, encompassing the moon even as the ship inside it erected a hardfield wall. Over the ensuing minute the sphere began to distort, seemingly sinking at the poles as its waist continued to expand, ionization appearing like St Elmo’s fire above those poles. Our energy levels climbed; our fusion reactor fed depleted storage to give us enough to power our drive. I felt our U-engine engaging, and the harsh drag away from the real induced a cyclic scream in my skull. The bridge I was sitting within became just a veneer over something my mind could not grasp and I knew that a lot of our U-engine shielding must be gone. The screen fabric turned grey, and we jumped.
In this situation, Flute could not set coordinates far from the action—just make a brief jump permissible with the power available. Reality slammed back into place as I heard something howling from the engine room and smoke began filtering through the hole Riss had carved beside the door.
“What’s our status?” I asked, suddenly all calm.
“U-engine is down, munitions depleted, fusion reactor running safe shutdown,” was Flute’s businesslike reply.
“Or to translate,” said Riss, “we’re about ten minutes from annihilation.”
I saw what the drone meant when our screen fabric came back on. We had jumped, but just two hundred thousand miles out from the world, to the other side of the moon which, even at that moment, was revolving that city of weapons towards us.
TRENT
It had been a seriously odd encounter, and a dangerous one, but Trent had survived, and that was all that really mattered to him right then. With any luck, he would keep on surviving. With any luck, the distorted first-child currently conveying him deep into the bowels of this dreadnought would not be taking him either home for lunch, or to some prador cold store. No, having encountered Sverl, Trent did not think so. Sverl had dispatched him to join the shell people whom he claimed to have rescued from the Rock Pool.
“Father found you interesting,” said the first-child.
Trent stared at the creature, surprised it saw any need to speak. He reached up and flicked the earring now depending from his ear. “He found this interesting. I was just the delivery boy.”
“Father’s interest in Isobel Satomi is relevant to his own condition,” the prador stated.
Was this big ugly monstrosity trying to start a conversation?
“What’s your name?” Trent asked.
The prador made a hissing gurgle that was quite close to the name its translator then issued.
“Well, Bsorol, I now know that your father-captain paid a visit to Penny Royal and is undergoing his own transformation, so understand his interest in Satomi, but I fail to understand his interest in me.”
“Why you?” Bsorol asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did Penny Royal save you?”
“To act as a delivery boy,” Trent suggested.
“No. Penny Royal loaded her to the gem in your ear. The AI could have transmitted her directly to my father. You were not necessary.”
“Penny Royal told me to redeem myself . . .”
“Yet there are many like you.”
“Then it probably saved me on a whim.” Trent was starting to get uncomfortable with the idea that he might have some further role in Penny Royal’s plans. “Tell me, what exactly did Sverl want
from Penny Royal and what exactly is he turning into?”
“He wanted to understand the enemy in order to thereby defeat him,” said Bsorol. “Penny Royal has given Father the ultimate in understanding, by transforming him into that enemy.”
“He’s turning into a human being? Seems to be going about it in a rather odd fashion.”
“And an AI—he is growing AI crystal around his major ganglion.”
Trent absorbed that for a moment, snorted dismissively, then stated, “That’s not possible—attaching AI crystal direct to an organic brain burns out both brain and crystal. It’s what happened to Iversus Skaidon when he invented runcible technology.”
“It’s what happens to a human brain when directly attached to AI crystal,” Bsorol explained patiently. “The prador major ganglion is more distributed, rugged, better supplied with oxygen and nutrients, and in many other fashions is a superior organ.”
“Yeah, shame it wasn’t superior enough to win the war.” The words were out before he could stop them and he warily studied the first-child, prepared to duck and run if it took a swipe at him. Bsorol, however, just perambulated along beside him, grating his mandibles together.
“There is an organo-mineral substrate acting as a buffer to the crystal growing on Father’s ganglion, which also works to prevent that synergistic burn-out. My father is rather like a prador version of your haiman: a combination of human and AI. Which, of course, further enhances his interest in Isobel Satomi.”
“Yeah, I guess—”
Bsorol abruptly whirled round, his claw spearing in and closing around Trent’s chest, hoisting him up and slamming him back against the near wall.
“The prador did not lose the war,” said the first-child, “and the humans did not win it.”
Trent gasped for breath.
“Yes, I perfectly understand that we were losing the war when the old king was usurped and the new king negotiated terms with the Polity,” Bsorol continued. “I also perfectly understand that if the Polity and the Kingdom were to go to war now, we would definitely lose. However, the Polity AIs are responsible for that, not the humans. Had it been just humans and prador fighting, we would have crushed you entirely, just like I could crush you now.”
Bsorol released him and he dropped heavily to the floor, sinking down on his backside. He sat there, gasping for a moment as Bsorol backed off and waited. Finally hauling himself to his feet, he couldn’t resist, “So you’re fairly new to the art of conversation?”
“I am fairly new to controlling my instincts,” said Bsorol. “Come.”
The prador turned and continued up the corridor. Trent followed, pondering the idea of prador adopting AI and augmentations. He wondered just what that might mean in the future for his own kind.
“Here.” Bsorol finally brought him before an oval door. It was large enough for a first-child but definitely too small for a father-captain. The door hissed off a seal and rolled into the wall on one side. “Perhaps here, so my father tells me, you may be able to find some of that redemption,” the prador told him.
“Redemption?”
Bsorol just turned and moved away.
Trent stepped through into a short tunnel, terminating at yet another door. The first door closed behind him, seals sucking down, and then the second opened ahead. He walked through and out into a huge hold space from where he could gaze across at a small city of enviro-tents and the other panoply of temporary human occupation. A woman, seemingly clad in helmet and body armour, beckoned to him. As he walked over, he saw that both helmet and armour were actually part of her body and were her carapace.
“I’m to take you to Father,” she said.
Father?
Peering beyond her, Trent recognized the altered body forms of the people moving about in the encampment. The woman was just a less extreme version of one of the shell people here. He nodded companionably and stepped forwards, only at the last moment hearing movement behind him. He whirled, damning the softening of his instincts, in time to see one of the more heavily altered shell people raising a pepper-pot stunner. The cloud of micro-beads struck him on the chest and sent him staggering, then blackness took him.
BLITE
“They just jumped,” said Leven, referring to a host of giant prador ships.
“No, really?” Blite replied sardonically, stamping on the urge to titter.
Penny Royal simply wasn’t talking, and Leven’s attempt to turn them around and flee had failed. Blite had just watched a total of thirty modern prador ships blink out of existence. Then, moments later, he didn’t need any sensor readings to tell him where they were. One of the behemoths was filling his screen as it drew past. The damned things were shoaling all around like giant sharks.
“Penny Royal,” he tried. “I’m really not so sure being here is a great idea.” It wasn’t a question, so perhaps he was safe from having his brain turned to jelly.
“Listen and learn,” the AI hissed in his ear.
He whirled round, but no black diamond was present. As he turned back, another frame opened in the screen fabric to display an armoured prador squatting in some gleaming sanctum.
“You came,” it said.
“I don’t really know why I’m here,” Blite babbled, but he was obviously out of the com circuit because it was Penny Royal’s reply the prador heard:
“I came,” agreed the AI.
“The ship is interesting,” said the prador. “My tactical assessment is that it could destroy at least five of my vessels before I managed to destroy it.”
“Seven of your vessels,” Penny Royal corrected. “You failed to incorporate the inducers and their effects on your systems.”
“An irrelevant point,” said the prador. “You would still be dust.”
“As would you.”
“That does not concern me—service to my father and king does.”
“Which is why you have not attacked.”
“Yes.”
“I have data,” Penny Royal indicated.
“Yes.”
“It details the future your father and king must pursue to avoid extinction.”
“Extinction can be avoided?”
“For many centuries, yes, but in the end it is inevitable, Gost.”
“I will relay this data to my father, when I receive it. But you wish for something in return?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me.”
So why can’t you talk to me as clearly? Blite wondered. Then it occurred to him he was hearing this exchange in language he could understand when both of them could have been speaking the prador tongue . . . or rather the prador mandible, or bubbling throat membrane. Penny Royal had to be translating for the benefit of him and his crew. Perhaps the AI had decided to be a little less obscure after all . . .
“Sverl will contact you again, as he must,” said Penny Royal. “He will be seeking data on the location of Factory Station Room 101.”
“The place where you were created,” said Gost.
“Yes,” was all Penny Royal would allow.
“This data can be supplied,” replied Gost. “We have known the location of that place ever since one of our exploration vessels came upon it half a century ago. The vessel concerned managed to transmit at least that before it was destroyed.”
“And you did not send a force there to in turn destroy the factory station,” Penny Royal noted.
“Our first attempt to destroy it during the war was costly enough and it would be a pointless exercise now. Its continued existence is also a source of amusement to Father—a reminder to Polity AIs of their fallibility since it went insane and fled the conflict.”
“Polity AIs who also know its location . . .” the black AI suggested.
“A select few of them at the top of the hierarchy are aware of this. Those who have discovered its location accidentally either disappear or end up under AI lock. This means they know the location of the station, but cannot pass on that knowledge.”
“Yes, just like them,” said Gost. “So you want me to give these coordinates to Sverl?”
“No, I want you to give Sverl the list of names and identification numbers of those who escaped the station, and nothing else.”
Gost spent a little time chewing that over, then asked, “Why?”
“That is not your concern.”
“But it is,” Gost asserted. “Everything you do is of concern to my king and therefore to me. He perfectly understands the danger you represent, which has already been demonstrated by the readings I took from your U-signature upon your arrival here.”
“I represent no danger to the prador,” said Penny Royal.
“Your U-signature indicates temporal distortions, which are a danger to us all.”
“All U-signatures indicate temporal distortions.”
“This is a matter of magnitude, as you well know,” said Gost. “And it is precisely because of this kind of dangerous meddling that I need a reason to allow you to leave this place.”
Ah fuck, thought Blite. The whole conversation had been going so swimmingly, but unless Penny Royal came up with something, it looked as if they were about to be creamed.
“I have sent you the data I promised,” said Penny Royal, “and ask again that you do not give Sverl the exact location of Room 101 but do provide that list.”
“I am still waiting for that reason,” said Gost.
“They’re moving to surround us,” said Brond, “and one of them just deployed something that looks suspiciously like a Polity USER.”
Just to make sure we don’t jump away, thought Blite, now gazing at the screen view Brond called up of some object, almost like the carriage of a train, issuing from a port in the side of one of those vessels.
“Penny Royal’s up to—”
The Black Rose surged under fusion drive, the air turning amber about them in response and freezing them in position. The USER out there exploded, even as another surge passed through the ship, the one taking them into U-space.