by Neal Asher
I fumbled in the darkness for a tool out of my pack and used it to bore a hole in one side of the box. As the tool broke through, it hit another surface, so I tried the other sides and, on the last go, light shone in. I widened the hole just enough to get my eye to it, only in time to see a prador lifting another box into place and blocking my view. I sighed, made myself comfortable and just listened. I heard what must be the ramp close up and much later the fusion engines roaring into life. I didn’t even notice the vessel actually leaving the King’s Ship and guessed it had used maglev or grav to take it through the doors and outside. These were either not noticeable, or compensated for by internal grav. The roar of the fusion engines continued for some time and was certainly compensated for, because I didn’t feel any motion. Listening, I drifted off for a while, then woke with a start. I panicked at the sense of something missing, then realized I’d woken without a ship louse trying to take a chunk out of me.
The time had come for me to get out of this box and reconnoitre. I pushed up against the lid and felt something shifting above. Then, suddenly, I wasn’t sure where ‘above’ was as my entire existence seemed to twist off in a direction I couldn’t point to. Panic returned and I shoved harder. The weight above fell away and I heard an awful crashing that somehow, in my mind, translated into flashes of light. I stood up, swaying in the darkness. Belatedly, even as it faded, I realized my perceptual distortion was due to the ship entering underspace. Its journey had properly commenced. Activating the laser torch, I looked down from a mountain of boxes at one split open on the floor, cylinders rolling and some open and spilling their contents. I needed to make a swift departure in case a prador came to investigate the racket. I just hoped they would blame the fallen box on it having been inadequately stacked.
The small human construction hold had a prador door installed, taking up most of one wall. Operating my torch intermittently to save power, I studied the diagonally divided heavy slabs and then the pit control to one side. Maybe I could operate it with the bar in my backpack, but did I really want to wander about in the prador section that lay beyond? I needed to find something like the ventilation system of the King’s Ship but the human-scale system here would be too small to crawl through. I also needed to see if I could find anything useful before leaving this place. I began opening boxes, again being careful about the power usage of my torch as I looked inside each.
Many of the boxes contained prador food. Useful knowledge surfacing as ever told me the steaks in fluid were from mudfish, while a large box contained whole carcases of reaverfish wrapped in transparent plastic. Then I found a box containing recognizably human food. Blocks of the stuff I had first eaten aboard Suzeal’s ship were stacked like bricks wrapped in thin tissue paper. Certainly packed with all the vitamins, proteins and fats a human body required, just the sight of them started me salivating even though I was dehydrated. The smell then hit me and it took all my will not to snatch one of them up and gobble it right away. If I took just one or two the prador might notice them missing, so instead I took the whole upper layer and put it into my pack, hoping this would go undetected.
I opened more boxes, still fighting the urge to eat, but intending to only when I’d got somewhere safe. They contained more food items and demijohns of fluid I didn’t recognize. I walked around the stack, noting that a net lay rolled up to one side ready to secure the load, and I guessed this had been forgotten. The prador might return to spread it over the boxes and tighten it down. I hurriedly scanned the walls looking for a vent cover, and instead found a human-sized door of the original vessel.
The holds of such ships were of a modular construction for atmosphere security. The door had no power running to it but as a security feature had a manual wheel. It turned easily enough but the door was jammed and I guessed this was the result of alterations distorting the internal structure here. My bar came in useful again, first inserted in the wheel as a lever, then in the side of the door as a crowbar.
Another hold lay beyond, where the netting had been spread over heavy cases. Having struggled to close the first door behind me, I found another on the further side and went over to try it. This one was jammed too, but I didn’t need to use the bar. Beyond it a diffuse light penetrated. A short corridor terminated at a curved metal wall with a yard-wide pipe running along it horizontally, while the light came through a join between two sections of that wall. I walked in, flashed my torch into a space to the left and lit the entrance to a dropshaft. At the curved wall, I peered through the gap into a prador-sized corridor with the kind of ridged floor their feet preferred. It seemed they had only torn out what they needed to install their own infrastructure and not bothered to remove the rest. Stepping back, I gazed at the pipe. It had not been familiar to me; even though I had seen a lot of them, that had only been from the inside. Despite my earlier doubts, this ship did in fact have a prador ventilation system. I returned to the hold, leaving the door open – my exit.
A simple button slackened a cable coming up out of the floor, and at its end a hook pulled the net down taut. I released a few of these to get to a large case with a lid secured by the same bolts used for the ventilation gratings in the King’s Ship. Inside, packed in expanded foam, lay a particle cannon. I found it almost painful to close and seal the lid on such a destructive weapon, but I had to be practical – it was too heavy for me even to pick up. Its presence excited me, however, because it indicated what other things might be here. I ignored further cases of a similar size and moved on to a smaller one. The familiar shape of a Polity armaments case revealed itself under the laser torch, the lid secured by a lock whose code needed to be input through a panel on the side. Reading what had been printed on the surface gave me pause: ENERG 4.2MW AL-PULSE. As I studied this the lights abruptly came on. No time. In panic I pulled the netting back down and secured it even as the door-locking mechanism clonked in the wall. I went through the open human door and closed it just as the prador door ground open.
In the short corridor I sat down, quietly, with my back against the wall. Grav was low here, the pull from the plates in the hold giving me the illusion of sitting on a slope. Almost without thinking I took out a food block and started eating, too fast, because I bit my tongue. I forced calm and ate more slowly, speculating on what I had seen.
So, they had human weapons aboard – that case had contained military-issue pulse rifles. The only humans aboard, as far as I knew, were the clones and, arguably, the reconstructed man-thing. There had to be more going on here than grotesque experiments involving the Spatterjay virus. It looked as though the prador had used it to toughen up a group of humans and were now transporting them somewhere, along with weapons for their use. They were a weapon. Why would the prador need them? Perhaps a furtive attack on a human installation, I surmised. Prador trying to penetrate such a place would be spotted at once. Unreasonably strong, rugged and apparently human troops could move in such an environment with ease and cause serious mayhem. The beginning of an attack on the Polity? I thought not. The clones were simply too small a force for that and, anyway, this ship would have no chance of passing the watch stations along the border. That left one likelihood for where we were going: the Graveyard.
4
The Graveyard buffer zone lay between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom, a no-man’s land scattered with settlements of humans and prador. In this lawless place those from both sides had found a home. The likes of Suzeal and her crew operated there, and prador who disagreed with the truce their king had agreed to had found refuge in it too. But everyone conducted all sorts of covert and black operations in this place. Both sides sought control there, while being careful not to break truces or inadvertently push the two realms into fullblown war again.
As I listened to movement in the nearby hold, I ran through my analysis. It all seemed to make perfect sense, but I realized no normal human citizen would have the strategic knowledge to think this way. It seemed, yet again, to be the reasoning of some kind of a
gent. Also, though it would surely mean more violence to come, I felt grim satisfaction in drawing nearer to my goal. I’d got out of the King’s Ship, would soon be out of the Kingdom and in the area of space where I might eventually find Suzeal and her crew. But that was supposing I managed to survive aboard this ship, and all it might entail to escape it. Seeing the larger picture didn’t presuppose I would achieve my current objectives, such as simply finding something to drink.
I stood up, headed for the dropshaft and peered into its darkness. Up or down? It didn’t really matter. I had to explore, find water, and other secure places to hide, as well as acquire the tools to help me survive. Yet, as I reached out and grasped one of the rungs and began to descend, I felt happy. Only a moment’s thought told me why. Yes, I advanced towards my ultimate goal, but the happiness arose from being in a place where I could simply stand upright without any immediate fear of ending up blown to pieces by a prador Gatling cannon, and where I might be able to wake up without my ship louse alarm clock.
The drag of grav dropped to zero as I descended, then for a little while it pulled me to one side before zeroing once more. It climbed again until I came down on the upper surface of a newly installed prador corridor. That was it: a dead end at the bottom. I ascended, quickly passing my entry point to come opposite another entrance, and shone my light in it. Here there was a corridor with doors down one side and sliced off at its end by a new wall. Rather than explore there, I continued climbing, grav waxing and waning all the way. The shaft terminated. I experienced the odd dislocation I had felt just before I broke out of my box, and realized the shielding from the effects of U-space wasn’t as good here, so perhaps I was near the hull. I took the side tunnel presented. Low grav again – the plates were probably only powered by a fading backup.
On the right-hand side of the tunnel stood a ladder with a tall cabinet beside it. I climbed to a circular atmosphere door, wiped dust off a small window and peered up into an airlock. I had reached the hull. Dropping back down, I walked on to a bulkhead door at the end. The door opened towards me – I would not have been able to open it if vacuum had lain beyond. Another ladder led up into a small circular room, where I discovered that, as well as not removing a lot of the infrastructure of the ship, the prador had failed to remove all of the crew.
A black dome capped this area – I assumed it was reactive laminated chain-glass blocking a view into a continuum said to drive humans insane. Panels lined the low wall, many of them pulled off to reveal the packed paraphernalia of electronics. An acceleration chair was positioned inside a horseshoe console and in the chair sat the corpse of what I assumed to be a man. Distinguishing sex wasn’t possible with the body’s state of mummification. I made the assumption ‘him’ due to size but, considering the size of Suzeal, it might well have been a false one. I inspected the hollow eyes and exposed teeth, the pale cropped hair and the metal aug stuck behind his ear. I reached out to touch the device but quickly snatched my hand back. There was no sign of how he had died so a bioweapon could have killed him, and its spores, or whatever, might still be active.
Studying the console, I saw screens and hologram projectors but not much in the way of manual controls. I assumed he had auglinked into the system before him to control … whatever he had controlled. Again scanning my surroundings, I didn’t see much of use to me and returned my attention to him. I studied him for a long moment, then transferred that inspection to myself. The overalls which Suzeal and her crew had provided me with had a slice down the side, with the laser wound underneath still healing. It was filthy, stained and worn through to the strengthening wires, while my slippers were falling apart. I decided that if a bioweapon had killed him I had probably already breathed in the dust of its remains anyway, and hauled him out of his chair.
He had on an envirosuit with heavy boots, gloves tucked into pockets in the sleeves, a fabric hood concertinaed to form the back collar and a transparent visor similarly folded down at the front. I took my time stripping it off, finding an absorbent undersuit beneath that had soaked up most of the exudate of decay. There wasn’t much of it so he had clearly been vacuum-dried here. Perhaps vacuum had killed him, though I would have thought, if this place had been losing air, he’d have had time to close up his suit. When I tried to take off his boots I found that the press of a button loosened them, showing that the suit still had some power. As I finally pulled him free of the thing, certain anatomical features confirmed my previous supposition. I tore off the least stained piece of his undersuit and wiped out the interior of the envirosuit, then stripped and put the thing on. Some adjustments at shoulders, knees and waist with thread motors had it fitting perfectly, while the boots adjusted and tightened automatically.
‘Thank you,’ I said to him hoarsely. ‘And I’m sorry.’
Suddenly the place had the quiet feeling of a crypt and I wanted to get out of there. I turned to head for the door. But I suddenly felt the dislocation of transition from U-space and, a moment later, the black glass dome cleared.
Blue stars gleamed across hard vacuum, and a huge ship out there drew my attention. I recognized it at once. I had seen its like scattered distantly around the King’s Ship and, of course, knowledge of old-style prador dreadnoughts resided in my mind. We were not yet in the Graveyard, for such a ship’s presence there would be a truce breaker. Stretching miles across, the thing resembled the body of an adult prador, a bridge on top much like such a creature’s visual turret, but the body below was more spread out, giving it the look of a fat manta ray. The bridge wouldn’t contain this vessel’s father-captain – he’d be deep inside in an armoured sanctum – but it would contain a lot of the ship’s sensors and perhaps a crew of his children. A red light issuing from ports there gave the impression of eyes, looking at me. Perhaps they were. I quickly went over and sat in the chair. Any queries from there about a human underneath a bubble on this ship’s hull would be answered with a dismissal: just one of the previous human crew, dead of course.
While I watched, a port opened under one of the side wings and objects began to stream out – a swarm of wasps leaving a nest. They glinted in reflected sunlight from a sun I could not see. As they swirled closer, I soon identified them as prador, all heavily armed and clad in armour of a uniform khaki. These were not King’s Guard but the unmutated kind; utterly vicious and lacking in even an ounce of empathy. Continuing with my previous speculations, I reckoned the clones were the initial assault force, whose purpose would be to go in, to open the way for the main force: these prador.
The bulk of these alien troops arrived in an ordered stream, the vessel shuddering as they boarded. But others patrolled at a distance, commanders perhaps. I froze in place with my head tilted back while a shadow crossed the hull outside as one came to hover directly over me. I hoped the exterior was mirrored and that it could not see inside, or that it wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between me and the corpse on the floor. I then panicked about that corpse. What if the prador reported two humans up here? It drew closer and closer, glare reflecting off its armour as the nearby sun rose over the ship, which had begun to turn. Missiles sat on the creature’s back and it had a Gatling cannon attached on the underside of a claw. The tip of one jaw on its other claw hinged down to expose a shiny throat. It could see inside, and now it had readied its other weapon too. It drew closer still, then tapped on the glass with its cannon. I remained immobile. After an interminable pause, thrusters fired from its armour and it swept away.
I started shaking, then reached up and wiped away the sweat beaded on my forehead. Heaving out of the chair, I considered putting the envirosuit back on the corpse and returning it to its place. But my filthy overalls luckily nearly matched the colour of the envirosuit, so I hurriedly dressed the corpse in that and returned him to his chair. About to head out, I noticed something on the hull nearby. There stood a weapons turret with a particle cannon protruding in the middle and missile clusters on either side. So the man here had controlled t
hat. With all its missiles still in place, I guessed the thing hadn’t been much help. I got out of there and back into the dropshaft.
Whenever I touched a corridor wall I could feel the rumbling vibration from the movement of the new prador aboard. By the time I reached out to the first door in the unexplored corridor it had settled a little and I assumed they were now quartered.
The door opened into a standard cabin, the light coming on then fading to a dull glow. I quickly stepped over another corpse lying on the floor and went directly to the sanitary unit, took out one of my water containers and put it under the shower head, punching the start panel. Water came out for just a short time, then turned dirty and stopped. Despite the stuff having turned dirty brown, I drank it all and found it delicious. I headed out quickly, closing the door so the light would go off. Power here was obviously low – maybe in a battery backup – and I didn’t know how long it would last. In each of the cabins I went straight to the shower, nearly filling both containers, and in the last I had to do this hurriedly because of the stink. Time now for a more leisurely inspection.
The woman on the floor in the first cabin had mummified and not vacuum-dried like the man above – a large stain had spread out on the carpet around her. I could still smell a hint of putrefaction. I searched lockers inset in one wall, finding her clothing which, at a stretch, would be useful to me, but I left it since others had occupied other cabins. I tried not to let the sad remains of a life affect me, but they did. She had a personal unit that powered up but was coded to DNA scan. Maybe it would work if I put her finger against it, but did I want to read her personal musings and look at pictures of her family and acquaintances? I found a bottle of rum and slab of chocolate frosted with age and put them on the bed. Next I dragged out a large toolbox from a low locker and opened it. Plenty of human tools, many with working power supplies, and I guessed her to be a ship’s engineer. Everything in her cabin would have been very useful to me when I’d been in the ventilation tubes of the King’s Ship, but now I needed to be selective. I moved on to the next cabin.