by Neal Aher
“Someone’s talking,” said Riss.
“Let me hear it.”
“I cannot locate you,” said a voice. “Flute informs me that you are out in vacuum.”
The Polity rescuer? It seemed very unlikely.
Something shimmered over to one side of us and I saw a black line whip out. A giant grapple slammed into the Lance and closed, tearing up the hull as it did so, and began to draw the ship in. I tracked back along that line to its source as the shimmering dissipated to reveal a massive old-style prador dreadnought, from which I could see armoured prador hurtling out into space.
“Fucking prador,” Riss hissed. “Sverl’s here.”
“Drop your chameleonware,” I instructed. “We’re out of choices.”
Riss emitted a hissing growl, but must have obeyed me because the nearest of those armoured shapes swerved abruptly on a powerful chemical rocket and hurtled towards us. It decelerated on that same rocket as it drew close, abruptly silhouetted by a distant explosion. As the creature closed a claw about the both of us, I realized that Sverl’s defences were now failing, for something had got through to detonate against the hull of his dreadnought. Even as our rescuer, or captor, opened up its rocket again and sent us speeding towards a cavernous hold, I saw the emissions of internal explosions. From wartime experience, I knew that these were from hardfield projectors overloading as the shielding took a battering.
We entered that hold, crashing down on a grated floor just as a particle beam got through. Other prador landed as heavily around us, while out in the glare of that beam I saw still others blacken and just evaporate. The beam played into the hold just for a moment, carving a molten trench through the grating, then punching in a plasma explosion through the back wall. But then massive armoured doors slammed shut with a crash that bounced us all from the floor, and cut it off. I watched those doors begin to glow cherry red, as the beam did some damage, then U-space took us.
CVORN
As anchors detached from the surrounding rock and the fusion drive ignited inside the moon, turning rock molten behind and punching out through the crust there, Cvorn champed his mandibles and danced around in irritation on his new legs. The trap had been a complete failure. The plan had been for Cvorn’s old destroyer to lure Sverl to the planet. He was supposed to have dived down into its atmosphere and then the ocean in an effort to destroy it. At this point, Cvorn, in his ST dreadnought, could have easily disabled him. Next, after he had steadily and meticulously annihilated all Sverl’s defences, Cvorn had initially considered either a ground or undersea assault. That would have depended on where Sverl went down.
But, after fully investigating the weapons available to him, he had changed his plan. All he would have had to do was move in close and, using lasers, explosives and particle beams, peel that ship down to the core, revealing Sverl’s sanctum. He could have hauled that in, just like Sverl had hauled in that wrecked Polity destroyer out there.
Damn those humans and their ship, Cvorn thought. But he knew that the failure of the trap had been down to his own eagerness to attack the Polity vessel. He should have simply ignored it and continued waiting for Sverl.
However, Sverl had rescued Cvorn from complete failure simply by not behaving like a prador. And now, as various programs confirmed the data he was seeing, growing excitement supplanted Cvorn’s irritation.
Sverl hadn’t gone to the planet. Probably because of what he was turning into, he had taken the time to attempt to rescue the passengers on that Polity destroyer. Not only that, he’d spent time harpooning the ship and drawing it into his own. Perhaps there had been some survivors aboard who Sverl felt were worth saving. Cvorn had no idea—he didn’t think like a human.
Whatever. Cvorn had directed the firepower of his ST dreadnought against Sverl’s main hardfields and left the partially wrecked destroyer alone. He’d quickly realized he could keep Sverl here longer by not completely destroying that other vessel, and it had worked. He’d had time to burn out enough of Sverl’s hardfield projectors to leave gaps in his defences. Through those gaps he’d then set about destroying anything on Sverl’s ship that looked as if it might scramble or shield U-jump signatures. And that had worked too, for Cvorn now knew Sverl’s next destination.
“Bring my destroyer up,” Cvorn instructed the second-child now appearing on one of his screens. Though the trap had failed, one benefit was that the old destroyer he had left down on the planet as bait had been left unscathed. He had fully expected Sverl to gut it before the trap could be sprung. “When you are clear of the world, bring it to these coordinates.”
No time to lose. If Sverl jumped again shortly after arriving at his next destination, Cvorn wanted to be there soon after, since a U-signature tended to dissipate and the rate at which it did so depended on eddies and tides in that continuum—occurrences that could only be described with exotic mathematics. Admittedly, this ST dreadnought had more power to punch through U-space than Sverl’s craft, although in essence it was contracting time to do so rather than going speedily across a distance, as distances didn’t exist as such in U-space. However, Sverl’s child mind, if that’s what he used, seemed able to calculate and make jumps rather more quickly than normal.
The ST dreadnought was now clear, so Cvorn sent instructions using his aug. The same coordinates went to the first-child mind controlling the twinned U-engines. Smooth as a blood slick, the ship dropped into U-space and was on its way. Cvorn settled down. He could do little more now. The ship was already prepared to chew up Sverl’s when it got into range, and most of Cvorn’s children were ready on the spot to take control of any essential systems from which battle damage might cut him off. But first, many days of travel lay ahead.
Cvorn stared at his screens for a while, took a wander round his sanctum, restless and angry, not knowing what to do with himself now. He was on his second circuit of the sanctum when he abruptly halted. Perhaps now was the time to try something he had been considering ever since boarding this new ship . . .
Cvorn rushed back to his screens and brought up views of the five young adults squatting in the small first-child sanctums to which he had confined them. After a moment, making sure he had identified him correctly, he turned off the feed showing Sfolk and studied the four remaining screens. Though he knew the names of these four, and could identify them via Dracocorp aug connection, he still could not distinguish between them visually. Their markings were quite similar, but it wasn’t just that. Perhaps the lack of visual input from his missing palp eyes was the problem. He selected one screen at random and turned off the rest, establishing aug ident just from the location of this young adult in the ship.
“You,” he said to it, “come at once to my sanctum.” He was met with a hint of rebellion because no adult prador went willingly to the sanctum of another adult, at least, not without a great deal of firepower. Cvorn pushed in the small Dracocorp network he had established and felt the creature succumbing to his will. With leaden steps, the young male headed to the door from its sanctum.
Continuing to track the male via aug, Cvorn turned away from the screens and headed over to the body of the dead father-captain still occupying this sanctum. The control units had now been removed and attached to Cvorn, and he’d found it quite simple to link all his units into an array thence controlled via his aug. It meant he no longer needed to access a particular unit to control a particular blank, war drone or piece of robotic equipment.
Under his instruction, his blanks had split the body of the father-captain around its circumference and hinged over the upper carapace. Cvorn brushed aside a couple of ship lice and then tore out a chunk of the musculature around one old leg socket and fed it into his mandibles. As he munched this he sent his instructions and watched his blanks detaching various items, including a carapace saw, from the surgical telefactor hemisphere. He knew that what he intended had been done before, but still found himself wincing at the prospect. He also knew that it had not been done very often, be
cause, having lost certain urges, old adult prador generally didn’t feel inclined to reclaim them. He swallowed, then peered more closely at the interior of the old father-captain. The meat was tasteless, aseptic. Sure, decay had set in a little, but that usually added to the flavour.
There . . .
Cvorn soon ascertained that much of the flesh he had been chewing down was artificial carbon lattice, electro-muscle and collagen foam. This father-captain had been badly injured in the past and had lost a large amount of his interior body mass. This was puzzling because Cvorn did not recollect the exterior carapace being heavily scarred. Suddenly he realized what this might indicate and switched his gaze to the interior of the upper shell. There he saw the tracery of worm burrows—a neat pattern like a picture of a tree etched into that inner shell. Cvorn staggered back, immediately regurgitating the chunk of flesh he had just eaten and wishing he could bring up the father-captain’s major ganglion, which he had dined on some hours ago.
“Vrom, get in here!” he yelled.
The first-child, who waited in the annex to the captain’s sanctum, always ready to respond to Cvorn’s command, came quickly through a fast-opening side door, a Gatling cannon clutched in one claw already whirling up to speed.
“Father?” Vrom enquired, now lowering his weapon as he saw no immediate danger.
“Get this out of here,” said Cvorn. “Drag it into your annex right now!”
“Yes, Father,” said Vrom, never inclined to question an order.
As the first-child began laboriously heaving the huge corpse to the annex door, Cvorn wondered if he should move out of here for a while and have the place completely sterilized. No, he was being foolish. The parasite infection this father-captain had suffered and survived probably happened during the war. In fact, knowing just how paranoid those who had been infected tended to be—he had after all known Sverl before he paid his visit to Penny Royal and began to change—the chances of there being parasite eggs or nymphs here were lower than for just about anywhere else.
“And when you’re done,” Cvorn added, “I want you back in here when I let our friend in. I’m not sure if my control of him via his aug will be enough. You know what to do.”
Cvorn now turned to the two blanks who were waiting for his orders. He had a program lined up for them to follow. He wondered for a moment whether he was being foolish in what he was about to do. He already knew he was as susceptible to prador pheromones as any child, but in this case he had been enjoying their effect. Perhaps he was behaving irrationally and should have them filtered from the ship’s air supply? No, he would keep them. And he would go through with this.
Setting the blanks’ program running, he turned his back on them, settled down and raised his rear end. They closed in, carapace saw and drill injectors whirring. As one of the injectors went in, what had used to be one of his most sensitive areas went numb. He tried not to think about what the blanks were doing, even though he had reviewed every detail of the procedure. Tapping a little tune with his mandibles, he eyed Vrom as the first-child finally got the corpse into the annex.
“Close the door and be ready,” he instructed, not sure why he didn’t want Vrom here for at least this part of the operation.
A saw went in—the smell of powdered carapace filling the air. He felt various tugs and wished he could close out the squelching sounds that followed. Something thudded to the floor and one of the blanks picked this up and carried it away while the other continued to prepare the socket. Unable to resist, Cvorn now did a status check. He saw through the eyes of the blank behind as it installed nano-nerve interfaces in the large dripping hole in his back end. He saw through the eyes of the other blank as it carried away a chunk of shell with a fleshy mass behind, trailing veins and thread nerves. The face of this shell had indentations where the two injector prongs and coitus clamp had once resided. Cvorn’s worn-out and useless sexual organs were destined for disposal.
The work continued for some while, the second blank returning with cold preserved cartridges of Cvorn’s seed. These it emptied into an artificial testicle and it installed this where his old shrivelled item had been. Meanwhile the young male he’d summoned arrived outside the sanctum door and just settled there—terrified to be at such a location but unable to flee.
“Vrom, come in now,” Cvorn instructed.
The socket was ready and the blanks moving back to stand against the wall. Vrom entered, atomic shear generators fitted to the bases of his claws, the glimmer of their output visible along the internal edges of those claws. Cvorn knew that with these devices Vrom could remove the limbs from any prador in just a few minutes. When the young adult was in here, and thus immobilized, the procedure could continue. Of course, Vrom would have to use the surgical telefactor for the more meticulous work involved, as he removed the young male’s fresh and vigorous sexual organs.
SPEAR
I’d watched the Lance take heavy damage while we were floating in vacuum, and wondered if Flute might have survived. Before he rescued us, Sverl had told us that Flute had informed him we were out in vacuum. Had Sverl received that information before that particle-beam strike, or after?
As Sverl’s armoured prador surrounded us, Riss unwound herself from me.
“I have to go covert,” she said, her snakelike form shimmering.
“Is there any need?” I enquired as Riss’s chameleonware engaged and she disappeared completely. “Though I don’t like how it happened, we’re where we need to be.”
“You are not going covert aboard my ship, parasite,” said another voice over my suit radio. I was surprised—Sverl had penetrated our com very quickly.
Six hardfields flickered into existence to form a rough cube a couple of yards across. Where they intersected along the edges and at the corners they glowed and emitted sparks. I’d seen similar capture boxes used, but only to confine large prey like prador. They couldn’t escape between the inevitable gaps between the hardfield discs. I’d never seen hardfields actually intersecting and touching like this, because such proximity tended to create feedback loops that blew out their projectors. During the war, curving hardfields had been considered impossible. But I had learned of the spherical hardfield Penny Royal used to protect Carapace City. So the technology had unlocked potential yet.
Riss reappeared, hovering and writhing inside the translucent box. Ignoring me, the armoured prador in the hold gathered around her for a moment before abruptly scuttling off to one side. They returned, dragging something they’d retrieved from a floor-to-ceiling rack. It was a box big enough to contain a prador: its sides were sheets of chain-glass and its edges made of heavy ceramal. Once out of the rack, it rose up on either a grav-motor or some form of maglev. They pushed it out over beside the hardfield trap, then opened one side of the thing. Now, hissing and throwing out sparks—noticing which, I checked my visor display and realized the hold was filling rapidly with air—the trap collapsed until just a yard across, with Riss coiled tightly inside. It then shifted over and in through the open side of the glassy box. One of the prador closed up the side, and the hardfield trap flickered, then shattered. Chunks hurtled out in every direction, evaporating harmlessly into nothingness as they went.
“Bring them both to me,” Sverl instructed over ship comms.
The cube rose up and began heading for the rear of the hold where a large door was rattling open—making such a racket probably because the section of wall it revolved up into was near where the particle beam had punched through, buckling it. It jammed for a second but the armoured prador leading the way gave it a solid whack with one claw to set it in motion again. I felt oddly reassured by the sight of a prador treating temperamental technology in so familiar a manner.
“I guess it’s payback time,” said Riss via my aug.
“Payback?”
“Sverl was one of my early victims, but managed to survive the experience.”
A prador behind gave me a violent shove that sent me sprawling. I
stood up and looked back at what, by its size, might have been a second-child—hard to tell with that armour. What was definitely a first-child, just behind it, brought an armoured claw down hard on the first creature’s back, the clang so loud I was sure something must have broken. The second-child merely went down on its belly, then scrambled up and out of range. The first-child clattered something at it, then turned to me and waved a claw towards the door.
“Keep moving, human,” it said.
I was sure I had just seen a second-child berated for its treatment of me, which struck me as decidedly odd for prador. But this was Sverl’s ship and I knew that the father-captain had changed in strange ways. Had I just seen an example of his altered morality passed on down through his children? I followed Riss’s prison out of the hold.
“Yes, you mentioned that before,” I said to Riss.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Will he recognize you?”
“He recognizes what I am, which is probably more than enough.”
I was about to say something about prador morality and the changes this Sverl was supposed to be undergoing, but found I didn’t have the energy to pursue it. Prador were vicious bastards but, as I had noted before, that description could fit plenty of humans and AIs too. And any of the three could be justified in being a bit miffed after having had done to them what Riss had done to Sverl.
Now I surveyed the distinctly aseptic corridor, the Polity cleanbots scuttling here and there and all this in an illumination unexpectedly lacking in the sepulchral quality I knew, from memories not my own, usually to be found inside such ships. Memory surged for a moment, but I ignored it and it waned.