Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  ‘Come back to me now!’ I shouted.

  ‘She can’t get away!’ he snarled back.

  ‘And you won’t get past that thing intact! Think! The ramp controls are out here!’

  After a short pause, the gunfire started up again, throwing splinters of metal and shreds of plasmel through the airlock. A moment later, Marcus came rolling through, jerking as a heavy slug ripped into his bare side. I risked another look to see the drone was well up the ramp door, then hit the control. The firing continued, but now hit the hold floor as, with a steady whine, the ramp closed up. Marcus crawled from the line of fire. He was a mess, Brack’s armour all but gone, and his body riddled with holes and burns. But even as he stood, his woody, virus-infested body shed pieces of metal and oozed clear fluid that quickly scabbed. The firing ceased abruptly. A scrabbling sound ensued, followed by a heavy crash. I looked in and saw the drone on its back, but even in that position, its legs folded right down to bring it up again, and it turned to bring its weapons back to bear.

  ‘Come on!’

  We ran into the ship, a missile streaking through the airlock then past us to explode ahead. I ducked down, metal fragments zinging all around me, then came upright again, amazed that none had hit me. We reached the stairs and climbed, a fire burning ahead of us. Another missile shot by below and exploded, but through the airlock the drone couldn’t target us. As we reached the original ship’s corridor, it began crashing against the airlock. I would say it was furious its prey had escaped, but I didn’t think it bright enough for that.

  We exited the ship through the airlock up from the now-closed ramp door. The drone must have been scanning for us because the door shuddered as the thing slammed against it. I don’t know how Marcus chose to run left, but I followed him anyway. The tube doglegged ahead, which was handy because targeting lasers lit us up from behind just as we reached it. I glanced back, expecting to see the drone free from the hold, but instead saw prador coming up the tunnel. Why targeting lasers and not their usual fusillade of heavy slugs and sweeping particle beams? The answer seemed obvious: Vrasan had arrived and he wanted us alive. Clearly, in the brief time they’d seen us, they’d not been able to get a clear shot at a leg, or been able to deploy some non-lethal weapon.

  Rounding the first turn of the dogleg, a view through a side window showed larger ships docked ahead. We rounded the next bend into a bigger tubeway, boiling with smoke. Targeting lasers flicked again and a figure appeared ahead with a launcher shouldered. I threw myself aside and rolled up against the hatch of one of the exterior maintenance airlocks, seeing the laser flare on Marcus as he broke into a run. The launcher cracked, flinging out a jet of fire behind. Everything seemed to slow down to me and I even saw the missile clearly as it sped towards him. The long, spear-like thing had a barbed point and flight fins to the rear. It struck him hard in the chest, punching right through and juddering him to a halt. He didn’t go down. I expected it now to explode but it just sat there, skewering him. He reached up, grabbed it and tried to pull it free, but the barbs jammed in his back. When he released it, the thing snapped back into position, opened slots in its sides and folded out hooks to engage with his back and his chest. He groaned and went down on one knee, his head bowing over.

  ‘We sometimes use them to bring down the virally mutated,’ said a familiar voice.

  I turned, back braced against the hatch and fired the slammer at the half-seen figure. She staggered back, dropping her launcher, while the recoil juddered me back against the hatch and put my aim off. Then she advanced. I managed to brace the weapon back against the rim of the hatch to deal with the recoil and hit her again and again. But her armour was simply too tough. For every pace I blew her backwards, she took another three forwards, smoke and the burning dust load of the slammer wreathing her each time. When she reached me, she simply stooped and wrenched the weapon away, sending it skittering across the floor. I tried to get up, pulling the sidearm from my sling and managing three shots at her visor before she slapped that away.

  ‘Stay down or I will break your legs,’ Suzeal ordered me.

  I resorted to talk, because the longer that lasted, the longer I might live. ‘I never saw that weapon used against the escapees.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied, standing upright. ‘They’re specifically for hunts. They’re good at keeping my people sharp and always entertaining.’

  ‘Sprine in them,’ I said.

  ‘And some other synergetic paralytics.’

  Before I could reply to that, she turned away and said, ‘I have them.’

  The smoke, which had obviously been deliberate, began to clear, revealing further soldiers in the tunnel – all pure SGZ in black and white and strewn with decals and decorations. This was notable, since those aboard the ship had mainly been her employed mercenaries. She turned back to me. Three of them, I saw, had launchers like the one she’d used. If her shot hadn’t brought Marcus down, then theirs would have. I glanced to the right and saw the two prador that had targeted us coming into view. I considered my location – my back against an airlock – and, using blink control on my HUD, opened up a comlink to give it access to everything I could hear and see. I just hoped Marcus had been right about what was out there.

  ‘I was going to blow the dock, but the two of you suddenly became valuable,’ she said, turning back. ‘When you both entered the ship it became obvious I couldn’t bring him down in such close confines.’

  ‘You’re telling me this because you want me to understand how clever you’ve been?’

  She lowered her visor and now I could see her expression clearly. She didn’t look victorious, but grim and just a bit worried.

  ‘I set the drone to delay you.’

  ‘It didn’t delay us for long enough, did it?’ I carefully eased myself to my feet, glanced at the rip in my envirosuit shoulder, then down at my belt where a patch kit was attached. I continued, ‘You needed access to a vessel and you don’t have that yet.’ I glanced left and through the clearing smoke saw more than just the two prador approaching. ‘One the prador might struggle to board,’ I added.

  ‘You think you’re clever now,’ she said, glaring at me. ‘You destroyed my railgun and you brought hell to Stratogaster.’

  I gazed at her steadily. ‘Hell was already there.’

  She took a pace towards me, bunching her hand into a fist. I couldn’t survive a punch from her in that suit. But she paused, looked over to Vrasan, and stepped back. Forcing a smile onto her face she said, ‘I gave him the rest of the Old Families I traded with but he wanted to be sure, so he demanded me too. This trade gets me off the hook. You’ll be going back to the King’s Ship and I expect you’ll spend a long time dying there.’

  I bowed my head as if in defeat, but with my head down studied the airlock console. A menu sat on the screen but I didn’t need that, just a big green button below it. Looking up again, I studied her. It seemed, despite all the terrible things she’d done, she did have some code she lived by based on exchange, trade and a twisted form of honour that must have grown up over her years on the station building the SGZ. Perversely, it seemed she expected others to adhere to it too. But the prador lived by their own code: prador first and everyone else dead. How the hell did she think this would run?

  ‘Vrasan!’ She turned.

  The white-armoured prador advanced out of the remaining wisps of smoke, reached out a claw and closed it around the dart through Marcus. With a wrench and a flip, he simultaneously pulled the thing out and flung Marcus aside. He crashed into the wall next to me, and I didn’t think that coincidental.

  ‘You have them,’ he said, coming closer.

  ‘And our deal still stands?’ said Suzeal.

  Vrasan seemed to mull that over. I meanwhile noted how his prador had positioned themselves. Suzeal sat in a trap, diverted with some hope she could bargain her way out. I looked down at Marcus and he looked back up at me, managing a slight painful flexing of his legs. I nodded my hea
d back at the airlock hatch behind me. He blinked – I wasn’t sure if he understood.

  ‘I am, as I have always been, loyal to my father, my king,’ said Vrasan. ‘We tried to obtain hooders for advantage but now the Polity is here. Trying further to obtain them will result in war and, anyway, the ones I did obtain beat their thralls.’

  ‘So a brief setback,’ said Suzeal brightly. ‘But that dreadnought didn’t kill all of them on the planet and their young will still be hatching out underground. I’m sure we can find a quieter way to go about this.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Vrasan agreed cordially, ‘but at present we must take what we have and retreat.’ He turned towards me. ‘You, human, have been a bane of my existence. You told me once that my king effectively informed you how to free yourself from your thrall, and now it seems his whims persist. You have one very small chance, then you are mine. Do I have to say anything more?’

  I shook my head.

  Suddenly a man screamed, high up and clamped in a prador claw. Gatling cannons fired, flinging bodies, with armour fragmenting in every direction. A particle beam sawed, tossing another back through the air. Vrasan snapped out a claw and closed it around Suzeal’s waist. I hit the button and reached with my good arm down to Marcus, who’d just managed to get his feet underneath him. I pulled and it was like trying to haul up a tree root, but he came. We fell into the airlock and I kicked the door closed, managing to get to it and spin its wheel. Leaning against it, I peered through the chain-glass window. Suzeal had pulled a weapon from her back – some kind of rail beader by the sound, which was audible even through the hatch as she shot it into Vrasan’s body. This didn’t last. With his other claw, Vrasan plucked the weapon away, then he slammed her to the floor, hard, and brought a couple of his armoured feet down onto her. He turned then, looking directly at the airlock, and began to reach out with a claw.

  ‘Damn, all the way,’ I said, scrabbling at the patches on my belt.

  I got one out and slapped it on the hole through the shoulder of my envirosuit. The thing wasn’t made for vacuum but it could keep me alive at least for a little while. Marcus looked up at me.

  ‘You’ll survive this,’ I said. ‘You did before.’

  He reached up and grabbed my belt as I turned to the console for the exterior hatch and overrode the safeties. Explosive decompression blew us out into space, tumbling end over end past a ship like an iron segment of an orange. My suit ballooned around me from its internal pressure. I looked at Marcus, jetting vapour from holes in his body, eyes freeze-drying.

  ‘If you’re going to do something, do it now,’ I said into the open comlink. ‘This suit will give me maybe five minutes of air.’

  Horribly, there came no reply for long minutes, then seemingly out of nowhere, a black surface, shot through with weird glittering facets, came up to meet us. The surface parted and we fell inside, thumping into an explosion of crash foam.

  ‘Gotcha,’ said a voice I didn’t recognize. ‘Pumping air in now.’

  Apparently the black ops attack ship had been hanging around the dock for some time. It knew Marcus and, as best it could, had been keeping track of him. And, of course, it knew me by very close association.

  Epilogue

  The autosurgeon was far in advance of the one Bronodec had used. I climbed onto the table and lay back, felt the touch of something against my neck, then after a brief hiatus sat up from the table clad in a white shipsuit, all my ills repaired. Looking round, I saw the surgeon folded back into two gleaming pillars. A door opened ahead.

  ‘Go left and keep going till you reach the viewing gallery,’ said the voice of the Hamilton AI. ‘He’s waiting for you there.’

  I got off the table and followed the instructions. The interior of the ship – at least this part of it – was all aseptic and white. Only the carpet grass, inset decorations on the walls and the occasional weirdly twisted sculptures set in alcoves dissuaded me from spooky comparisons with the King’s Ship. At the end of the corridor wide steps led up into a gallery with a panoramic chain-glass window. The gallery, and the window itself, curved round out of sight in both directions. Over to the right stood a group of people whom I presumed to be refugees from Stratogaster who had decided to take up the Hamilton’s offer to return with it to the Polity. A man in ECS uniform stood with his hands behind his back, taking in the view. I walked up and stood beside him.

  Stratogaster station sat close below us. Much damage was visible and steering thrusters were firing to correct its position. Escape pods swarmed around it, coming in to dock.

  ‘It’s still there,’ I said.

  ‘Interesting development,’ said Marcus smoothly. ‘The AI was going to demolish the station with imploders to ensure nothing of the hooders remained. But they came out.’ He raised an arm to the window and sketched a frame over the station, touched a slider along the bottom and drew it back. An image now showed me the station as it’d been some time ago; perhaps when the autosurgeon was bone-welding my broken arm. I saw particle beams flash down towards it – careful strikes that still demolished substantial parts of it near its hub. Then, out of fire turning to wisps and fizzling out, out of the spreading clouds of hot debris, the three hooders writhed. They moved through space, rippling with pink light and were soon well clear of the station. I expected some apocalyptic weapon to hit them but the light went out and they coiled up together in a single mass. This drifted across the face of the planet in silhouette. Marcus pushed the time slider forwards and we got a view of this mass kicking out a tail of fire, as the hooders fell into atmosphere.

  ‘The AI let them go?’ I asked.

  ‘No indication of active Atheter technology on any scan.’

  ‘Still, it is alien technology.’

  He glanced at me. ‘I don’t try to second-guess the decisions of AIs.’ He wiped his hand across to dismiss the frame. ‘Salander and her people?’ I asked.

  ‘Going back to rebuild on the station,’ he replied. ‘She’s got supplies going over from the Hamilton to help with that, but then we have to get out of here. This is still the no-man’s land between the Polity and the Kingdom and even though there have been some … problems, the truce returns in force in just a few hours. That means no warships from either side here.’

  I looked up past the planet towards the reavers. No doubt departure would be simultaneous, down to the second.

  ‘And the hooders down there. What about them? They’re still a danger.’

  ‘Salander has agreed to keep watch and intends to establish bigger and more permanent bases down on the planet. The prador may try again, who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘This shit happens all the time. It’ll be described as a brief police action – a swiftly resolved border dispute.’

  ‘And what about you? What next for you?’

  ‘A long holiday until I get bored, then the next mission.’

  I nodded, nerving myself because something else still needed to be touched on.

  ‘So what do I call you? I can’t keep calling you Marcus …’

  He looked at me with a slightly twisted smile. ‘You know exactly what to call me. I don’t intend to give up my name just because someone else has it. It is quite a common one, you know.’

  I grimaced at that, uncomfortable with it. ‘So how did you end up on the King’s Ship?’

  ‘After Suzeal had handed me over to Brack and Frey and they’d finished with me, they stuck a leech on me and threw me in the pens. I went with others to one of the Old Families, only it was one the king brought down shortly afterwards. He destroyed the slaves that had been cored, but kept me, handing me over to Vrasan. Vrasan tried all sorts of techniques to rid me of the virus, but the damned thing mutated stronger than ever. I saw it as torture and lost my mind. Vrasan controlled me with thrall tech but, well … You saw the result.’

  ‘I thought Suzeal destroyed the recording of your mind inside you?’

  ‘She did, but she didn’t destroy the original or extract all the quantum cry
stals. My mind recorded back to them and kept reloading, along with the same knowledge base you had, and stabilized eventually.’ He paused. ‘So what about you? What will you do now?’

  I thought about what had driven me in the beginning. Brack and Frey were dead and in Vrasan’s claws Suzeal had entered the kind of hell to which she had consigned others. That was all over now, and it was time for a new beginning.

  I shrugged. ‘Up till now I haven’t had the time to give it much thought.’

  ‘I think ECS would be quite happy to take you on.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

  ‘You do that, Jack.’

  ‘And you enjoy your holiday … Jack.’

  He snorted a laugh, turned away and walked back into the ship. I didn’t laugh but my amusement was similar, of course.