by Neal Aher
I really don’t need this now, thought Cvorn, aware it wasn’t a new thought. He eyed a counter in one of his lower screens and, with a further thought, banished the present views in preparation for those outside the ship, rattled his feet against the floor and spat some acid gathering in his gullet. Belatedly he linked to a cam view showing his own sanctum—the only way he could get a good look at himself—and focused it in on his visual turret. His left palp eye was lying over, some pustule having burst underneath it. He reached up with his claw and gently took hold of it and tried to move it back upright. More pus oozed out round its base, then when he released it, it fell forwards and popped back out of its socket. It tumbled down his visual turret, bounced off his mandibles and landed on the floor. Cvorn stared at it, at its withered tail of nerves and veins, then turned away as a ship louse came out to investigate. He returned his attention to his screens. It didn’t matter. He had more important concerns.
Now Sverl, now you’re mine.
SPEAR
The new screen fabric within the Lance glimmered. It formed a bright circle, expanding from a point at the centre of the ceiling, then spreading out and settling down the walls. With a horrible twisting sensation, probably due to damage Cvorn had inflicted earlier, Sverl’s dreadnought dropped into realspace. As the view was revealed I thought that something had gone seriously wrong. But, updating from Sverl’s system, I understood that we had surfaced actually inside the ring of dust and gas. That was why it looked like some ancient city smog out there.
“You’ll have to enhance the view,” said Riss.
“No, really?” I said, wondering why I had been growing irritated with the drone lately.
Sverl’s sensors were bringing in a lot more than mere human visual data, so I started to make use of that. The smog cleared on the screen and the stars came back into view, but none of this made me any wiser. I ran the data through a program in my aug and routed it back to the screen fabric, truncating distances and bringing the trinary system about us into the human compass.
The white and black dwarf stars orbited each other far out to my left, whilst the red dwarf sat over to my right. I made a slight adjustment to bring the ring of dust and gas surrounding the white dwarf, in which we sat, into view. This gave the odd effect of sitting inside a massive tunnel that curved off into the far distance. Scattered inside and outside this were asteroids and asteroid clusters, while sprinkled along the ring were planetoids, smoothly spherical after billions of years in this stellar tumbling machine. The whole scene would have been a bit too much computer model and not enough reality, but for the processing I was also running in my aug. This truly gave me a sense of scale and of being there.
“U-signature,” observed Riss.
I was already on it, because the drone had only picked it up through my aug connection to Sverl’s system. I etched out a frame beyond our tunnel and there, rucking up a trail of generated photons like fairy dust, Cvorn’s ship scored itself into the real. I brought the frame closer for more detail. This was my first real look at this ST dreadnought and it was fearsome indeed. However, I also saw, straight away, the mistakes that had made this design of ship vulnerable to the Polity. Packing all those weapons in one area wasn’t a great idea.
“Putting all your eggs in one basket, so Arrowsmith would say,” Sverl told me, revealing the breadth of his abilities, for surely in such a situation all his concentration should be on Cvorn.
“The prador have such a saying?” I asked out loud.
“Similar,” said Sverl, “a direct translation is ‘putting all your seed in one female’ but the meaning is the same.”
Cvorn was opening fire already. A swarm of railgun missiles began to depart his ship while, on one side, space doors had opened to allow something to nose out. All appeared to move in slow motion. Even when Cvorn fired his particle cannons, the beams groped out at the speed of mercury in a thermometer dropped into boiling water. Finally, the object drew clear of those space doors and I recognized a prador destroyer.
“Cvorn’s original ship,” Sverl updated me.
Twin particle beams crossed vacuum towards us, while a single beam drove back the other way, its hue turned violet by the dust and gas through which it was passing. Even without my link into Sverl’s system, I could tell we were under heavy fusion acceleration. The Lance was shuddering and internal ship’s gravity was failing to compensate for the drag of acceleration. I could also grab detail on the other things Sverl was doing, such as firing his own railguns and now opening up two sets of space doors in his hull, but I wanted it laid out before me. I ran the incoming data through another program and displaced myself, which was easy enough to do with the data. The scene flickered, major objects not changing position very much but some closer asteroids whipped to different locations. Now I appeared to hang in vacuum ten or twenty miles out from Sverl’s ship.
I watched protective hardfields spring into being, dust swirling behind them as they interfered with ancient currents here. Upon reaching the perimeter of the dust ring, the twin particle beams turned violet too, but against the hardfields they splashed ruby fire. Meanwhile Cvorn’s old destroyer was accelerating off at an angle and beginning to fire a series of missiles. Turning my attention back to Sverl’s destroyer, I saw the first kamikaze leave one bay, while the old attack ship he’d kept was steadily heading out of another. I understood Sverl’s aim here and knew Riss had not—but felt no inclination to keep the drone informed.
Even though Sverl’s dreadnought was under full acceleration, Cvorn’s ST dreadnought was moving fast and closing. Ahead of it, its first railgun missiles began to impact against our hardfields and I felt a steady shuddering thrum through my body. Next, a ball of fire exploded from some port in the side of Sverl’s dreadnought—a hardfield generator burning. All the energy it had absorbed had been converted into heat and motion, but thankfully it was expelled through a disposal port. A short while later fire exploded from other ports and continued burning inside. Sverl hadn’t had a disposal tube lined up for that one and, checking the ship’s system, I saw that it had burned a half-mile course through the ship’s interior.
“He has designed his weapons well,” Sverl noted.
“Not too well, I hope,” I replied.
“We shall see.”
The first kamikaze and the old attack ship were now clear and accelerating.
“Good luck,” I sent, expecting no reply.
“I hope not to need it,” Flute told me.
I saw two more hardfield projectors go, and the storm of explosions against our protective fields created a thousand-mile-wide cloud of red and orange fire. A particle beam licked through and began grinding against the hull like a hot iron on wood. Railgun missiles followed, and Sverl responded with anti-munitions lasers. These laced the cloud like the threads of a spider’s web under the glare of sunset. All were accurate, but with energy spent on gas and dust, they did not instantly destroy the missiles. Instead they tracked them in the hope of melting or otherwise weakening them to soften their impact. Inevitably, some found their target.
I staggered as three struck, massive plasma explosions reaching out into space, leaving glowing dents in the exotic metal hull armour. One had hit close to the space doors from which one of the last two kamikazes was departing. This sent the craft tumbling, steering thrusters firing to try to stabilize it. Sverl had already closed the space doors Flute and the first kamikaze had used and now hurried to close the doors the last two had utilized. They were a weakness; if just one of those missiles had passed through them, the damage inside would have been massive.
Missiles fired by Cvorn’s old destroyer were now turning in towards our flank. Given time, these would force Sverl to redirect some of his defences, thus weakening his main defence against Cvorn. With his superior firepower, Cvorn would eventually break through and tear Sverl’s ship apart. Sverl, of course, could flee. He could drop his dreadnought into U-space and run. But, with incomplete shielding,
he could not hide his U-signature and Cvorn would follow. Wherever Sverl arrived next, the same scenario would play out, only each time Cvorn would wreak more damage on Sverl’s ship. Sverl had known this right from his first encounter with this ST dreadnought—hence his new tactics, hence the kamikazes and the old attack ship.
“How long?” I enquired.
“Minutes only,” Sverl replied.
Minutes were a long time with shoals of railgun missiles bearing down and two particle beams tearing at the hull. I noted that the tumbling kamikaze had stabilized and was accelerating to position. The three other vessels spaced themselves out evenly around the dreadnought and matched acceleration. They were ready.
More railgun missiles came in, exploding continuously against the hull. Anti-munitions lasers began stabbing out at the other missiles fired by Cvorn’s old destroyer and now powering in under their own drive. I found myself perpetually having to regain my balance and finally went down on one knee with a hand against the floor. The screen fabric was flickering now and black spots were appearing, because the assault was steadily destroying Sverl’s sensors. The illusion was failing, and it finally dissipated with the smell of smoke. I was left kneeling inside a near-useless Polity destroyer, inside a prador dreadnought taking a hellish pounding. Suddenly I felt very mortal. If one missile got through to my location, I was dead. If one knocked out Sverl’s U-space drive, I was dead. If the odds of four to one in our favour didn’t work out, I was dead.
Viewing via my aug now, I saw the last kamikaze reach its required position just as Cvorn’s ST dreadnought entered the dust ring. The dreadnought started firing a series of railgun missiles—marked as somehow different by the hue of the glow they created as they heated under friction. I didn’t need to analyse spectra or talk to Sverl to know that the killing blow was on its way.
“Now,” said Sverl.
I felt reality lurch and twist around me, drag at me, trying simultaneously to pull me apart and crush me down into singularity. My body reported agony, but it was too intense for me to even scream, and I negated it with a pre-prepared aug program. This effect could have been due to damage to our drive or its shielding, but was also one I could not distinguish from something that had been described as happening during the war. Ships sometimes U-jumped while clustered too close together. It was never a good idea to jump when U-fields could interfere—the ships had a very good chance of surviving, but the crews had a very good chance of dying. This was due to the intense internal electromagnetic disruptions. But sometimes the choices were stark when under heavy attack, during which survival was a matter of decisions made in seconds, or microseconds.
It passed and the screen fabric turned grey swirled with nacre, where it was still receiving data. Now it was time to test those four-to-one odds.
“Where are we heading now?” I asked Sverl.
“Room 101.”
“Surely another location—” I began.
“That was my best shot just now,” said Sverl. “The only option I have left to try, if Cvorn manages to follow us, is to lead him straight into that station’s automated defences.”
“Which we would not survive anyway,” I said.
“Quite,” said Sverl.
I blinked, set the screen fabric to emit just a plain white light, and stood up. I could still smell smoke and the ship was still shuddering as damaged structures realigned. I could hear distant crashes and clangs and at one point the rumble of an explosion. I focused on Riss, most of her body coiled on the floor, ovipositor sticking straight up, head raised and black eye open as she watched me.
“Do you understand the strategy now?” I asked.
“Yes,” Riss replied, “I understood the moment that first kamikaze launched, when it began to power up a U-drive set to generate an unfeasibly large U-field. The kamikazes and that old attack ship are decoys, and Cvorn won’t know which U-signature to follow.”
“Good.” I nodded.
“I also get that Sverl hasn’t worked out the one survival option that remains open to us, should things go tits up.”
I noted that “us.” Riss wasn’t particularly concerned about Sverl’s survival.
“Then perhaps you should elaborate.”
Riss swung her head around, inspecting our surroundings.
“Think of Station 101’s automatic defences,” said the drone.
I understood at once. “Sverl, listen to this . . .”
“Of course,” Riss added, “it’s a survival option limited by the space available . . .”
THE BROCKLE
The micro-fibres had penetrated throughout the Tyburn like the mycelium of some fungus. They had attached themselves to pin cams everywhere, though even that wasn’t entirely necessary. Where they terminated at surfaces in the old prison hulk they had grown microscopic nodules, much like fungal fruiting bodies but packed with sensory equipment. These nodules were especially prevalent in the dock and the rooms the Brockle chose for interrogation. Their terahertz scanning could record and transmit the functions of the Brockle’s shoal body entire, and other scan bands could render close copies of the forensic AI’s thought processes. However, the watcher allowed some privacy, since that depth of scanning generally shut down when the Brockle had no one to interrogate.
The Brockle stood and walked slowly to the interrogation room that contained the comatose Ikbal and Martina. It paused outside the door, aware that deep scanning had not shut down in there. However, in this tunnel it would be at low ebb—just registering that the Brockle had arrived. It reached out and rested one hand flat against a wall—replicating an inadvertent action of the human it mimicked—and at a microscopic level it inspected the scan nodes under its palm. Each node was a highly complex chunk of nanotech, but the micro-fibres feeding back to the watcher’s location were simple photon tubes to convey data in that form.
The Brockle now sweated nano-machines from its palm—simple locators with laser drives to convey them where required. These penetrated the points where the micro-fibres attached to the sensory nodules and began propelling themselves back along the photon tubes. These would not be detected, for they were simply too small to interfere much with the data flow.
Lowering its hand, the forensic AI stepped back and waited patiently. In its mind, it located the position of its nano-machines on an old schematic of this ship and traced their progress. Until now, it had never really made an effort to locate the watcher and it observed the progress with interest over the ensuing hours. The nano-machines passed through various junctions and began heading towards the ship’s nose—where the colonists had slept in their hibernation capsules. It felt vaguely surprised about this, because it had expected the watcher to be nearby. The machines were just beginning to head up through the connecting stalk of the ship when abruptly they ceased to move. This could mean that they had reached the watcher’s location, or it could mean that it had shut down the relevant micro-fibres. No matter—the Brockle knew where to go now.
It turned away from the interrogation room and headed towards the dock, opening one of the rear doors and stepping out onto the metal grating. Here it paused to gaze at the vacuum-dried remains of its last victim and decided that it wouldn’t bother clearing up here after all. Turning right, it went through a smaller door into the short tunnel Trent had entered before he left. It closed the door behind it, because the section lying beyond the next door was unpressurized. Here the signs of decay were more evident and, as it walked, it detected that one of the portals was developing a small atmosphere breach around its rim. No matter.
At the end of the tunnel, it squatted down before the second door, which was welded shut. It reached out and touched a finger against a weld, issuing high-vibration microscopic diamond cutters from its fingertip. Drawing its finger round, it turned the welds to dust, finally, after a couple of passes, revealing the rim of the door. It next turned the handle, having to exert more pressure than any human could possibly have managed. The door cracked off a d
ecaying seal and air began to hiss out through that. The Brockle began to heave the door open, the seal tearing and flapping in the blast of air as the tunnel it occupied evacuated. By the time the door stood open, all the air was gone.
The tunnel beyond stretched straight along the stalk connecting the drive-section to the colonists’ section—a place that might still contain their hibernation capsules. No grav here. The grav-plates behind were a recent installation, for the ship had been built before such technology existed. The Brockle pushed itself through and, using handholds jutting from the walls, propelled itself along the tunnel. It paused beside a name etched into a wall, Freedom, and considered the irony of the new name this ship had acquired. Next, it pondered the idea of separating into its individual units, for in that form it could travel faster and be more effective. But in an odd hat-tip to the history of this place, it decided to retain its human form.
The door at the end of the tunnel led into an airlock. Upon opening this, it discovered the seal to be a more modern Polity version and, once it stepped inside and closed the door behind, the airlock pressurized. Just for a second the Brockle wondered if the watcher might be some living creature that needed air, but under analysis the gas turned out to be a mixture of argon and the kind of preservatives usually sprayed into museum cases. With the lock charged, it opened the inner door and pushed itself through.
The colonists’ section still contained the honeycomb frames to take hibernation capsules, with tubeways running through each collection of six for inspection. But for a scattering of capsules, the frames were empty, so perhaps the occupants had reached their destination. Those capsules still in place—cylinders of early chain-glass with metal end-caps and trailing fluid tubes and skeins of wires—still contained their fluid. It was no longer pale green, but dark brown with the emissions of decay. Passing by one of these, the Brockle spied bones inside. It paused, and decided it was time to scan.