by Neal Asher
“What do you want?” I asked over a general com frequency.
Grey just hung there, staring.
“Come on,” said Riss.
I hesitated, not wanting this Golem at my back without some explanation of its presence. Then, realizing there wasn’t much I could do about it anyway, I reluctantly followed Riss. As we travelled, I glanced back several times to see the Golem keeping pace with us.
Activity increased as we drew closer to the autofactory-cum-mausoleum-for-Sverl. Next, in corridors made for humans, a spiderbot, on an umbilicus disappearing up through a hole in the ceiling, crashed into our path like some giant hand slapping down to deny us. I halted, Grey coming up beside me fast, then skidding to a halt too, and turning to gaze down at Riss.
Riss peered back, her black eye flicking open. “So I wasn’t the only one.”
“No,” said Grey, “though I was willing.”
“What’s this?” I asked. Surely they had some explanation, why else include me in their communication?
“Back up round the corner,” said the assassin drone. “There’s going to be shrapnel.”
I hurriedly retreated, glancing at Grey, who walked with me, as I went.
“What the hell was that about?” I asked.
“Observe now,” replied the Golem, “how a number of key AIs aboard this station recently died.”
At the corner I watched Riss squirm towards the spiderbot and then fade into invisibility. The bot raised two of its limbs and swung from side to side, confused about the disappearance of a potential threat. Riss abruptly reappeared, heading rapidly back towards me, just as the spiderbot disappeared in a bright hot flash. I ducked back, just in time, as chunks of hot metal carved into the wall opposite and a limb bounced past.
“Before you ask,” said Riss, coming round the corner, “explosive gel.”
“How much do you have left?” asked Grey.
“I’m optimistic about things now,” Riss replied. “I’m half full rather than half empty,”
“Good—we’re going to need it.”
As we advanced we encountered further robots. Some completely ignored us, some were fighting each other, while still others attacked on sight. Grey took a hand when a series of bug-like mechs swarmed towards us, hurling himself in their path and snatching them up one after the other and simply stripping their legs away. I ducked back when some shot past the Golem, while Riss just faded away. I crouched down, arms over my helmet, as a series of explosions ensued. Feeling impacts against my suit, I threw myself further back, caught a handle, and pulled myself towards an alcove, thinking I would be safe there, only to find another spiderbot, this one sans umbilicus, charging at us from behind. Bracing in the alcove, I waited until it drew close and leapt at me, then I drove the spine into its main body, levered it up and rolled out underneath it, something hard scoring down my back. Programming then fell into my compass via the spine, confused for a microsecond with my suit’s error reports, then I realized I was seeing the structure of my attacker’s mind. The thing bounded out of the alcove, impaled on the spine, hit the opposite wall then threw itself at me again. My reaction was instinctive: as if with some invisible hand I reached into that mind to find motor controls, and tore them out. The spiderbot closed up into a fist and I stepped aside to let it tumble on past, completely inert.
“Like that,” said Riss, reappearing.
This then was the AI resource the assassin drone had referred to earlier. I hesitated and cast wider with the facility I’d used to penetrate the spiderbot’s mind. I studied the complex structure of the mind before me. I’d known that I could penetrate Riss this way, which was why I’d hurried to Sverl when I’d learned the drone’s intent. I had the coding that would have instructed Riss to eject the enzyme acid she had stolen, but Penny Royal had intervened and stopped me. What I hadn’t realized was that I could do so much more than that. I now knew I could simply shut down Riss’s motor functions if I so chose.
I also found I could read her recent memories and, in just a few seconds, I learned of the tactical AI that had taken control of her and sent her to assassinate key station AIs. I could read more if I wished, but there was a lot there, some of it formatted in ways that even with this new ability I found difficult to understand. Did I really want to know? Transferring my attention to Grey, who had just dealt with the last of those bugs, I found a mind even more difficult to read. Yes, I understood that under the instruction of the same tactical AI Grey had been destroying station AIs too. What I didn’t understand was Grey’s willingness to obey and, when I delved deeper, I found a tangled intelligence I could penetrate, but which repelled me.
I paused. Perhaps I didn’t need the help of the prador? Perhaps I could just go back to my ship and shut down the things that had managed to get aboard? Perhaps I could just shut down E676? I decided that, yes, that was what I would do. However, we were closer now to the prador and I really did not like the look of the list of errors my suit was reporting, especially the red text informing me that I was losing air.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping over to the spiderbot and pulling out the spine.
As we continued I probed our surroundings. Some robots heading directly towards us I simply shut down. In others I made simple alterations to send them off on a different course. An island of calm began to prevail around us in the chaos of the station, but it was a small island. Whenever I touched a surface I could feel it vibrating and shuddering, and ranging out with my aug, I could see the various conflicts all around, either visually or on a coding level. Soon we came into an area where I could see the flashing of particle cannons and feel the deck jerking under my feet. We passed a pile of half-melted robots still emitting vapour, then, before I stepped round the corner of a T-junction ahead, Grey caught hold of my shoulder and halted me.
“Second-child,” was all he said, crackles of EM interfering with com.
“Bsorol?” I enquired over com.
After a long pause the first-child replied, “He will not fire on you.”
I moved ahead and peered round the corner at the second-child. It stood frozen in the middle of the corridor brandishing some kind of beam weapon I didn’t recognize. Around it I saw glowing wreckage, melted walls and glimpses into station structure. Despite Bsorol’s assurance I still did not want to step out, so reached out for the second-child on another level. It was no AI, but its armoured suit did possess a level of computer control. When I looked into that I found that someone had already been there before me.
“I’ve shut it down,” explained Riss.
I looked around for the drone but she had disappeared. Before I stepped out, Grey moved ahead of me and marched round the corner towards the prador. I followed. The prador remained frozen as we came up to it and passed it. A short while later we reached a space that had been cleared around the autofactory—the whole pill-shaped structure now heavily armoured and held in place by narrow bubble-metal beams. Around its surface were the blisters of gun emplacements occupied by second-children, firing on robots hurling themselves from holes torn through surrounding structure. That space was filled with tumbling pieces of them, and splashes of molten metal writhing in vacuum. Bsorol waited on a platform before a main armoured door, urgently gesturing us over with one claw while firing a particle cannon from the tip of another. Grey launched off ahead of me and I followed, feeling debris impacting against my suit and, in a moment, the armoured door was drawing open and Bsorol moving ahead of us into a prador-scale airlock. As I followed, I mentally reached out again, confirming that Riss was still nearby, also sensing her freeing the lock on that second-child’s armour. Very thoughtful of her . . .
As the airlock pressurized, something slammed into the outer door and I wondered if I had made the right decision coming here. Surely, the prador could not keep up this level of energy and munitions expenditure? The inner door admitted us into the auto
factory itself and now, with atmosphere all around, the racket of battle boomed and hissed in my ears. Here further changes had been made. Sverl’s ceramal skeleton was no longer underneath a dome, and the dried-out slick of his organic remains had been cleaned away. The skeleton, which was a spherical ribcage up on prosthetic legs bearing prosthetic claws and mandibles, looked like a living entity in itself. It stood on a pedestal now, the floor surrounding it cleared of detritus and polished flat. I didn’t like this at all. As far as I had gathered, the prador had none of that insanity called religion, but this was looking suspiciously like the start of one.
The inner airlock door closed with a crash and, after checking the constituency of the atmosphere on my visor display, I folded down both visor and concertinaed helmet and winced at the noise and the reek. The air here smelled of hot electronics, burning metal and prador. Glimpsing movement above, I looked up to see weapons turrets extruding from various ports. The place obviously had internal defences too, though why they had been deployed now made the skin on my back creep. Were those things out there about to break in? Bsorol moved up beside me, then past me, abruptly swinging round to face me.
“Killers so often return to the scene of their crime,” he said, in perfect unaccented English.
Something thrummed, all the way through me. A visible meniscus passed through the air and I felt my aug go down. Even Grey was affected, abruptly collapsing to the floor and folding up foetal—some kind of EM weapon. Bsorol reached out with one claw and I staggered back, but rather than snatch at me the claw closed on something beside me. Bsorol held up a long and snakelike form.
“You’re going to burn for what you did,” said the first-child.
His words were hollow and seared of emotion, but maybe that was just the effect of the translator. Riss was a machine who could experience pain, but only if she chose to. Bsorol could deliver no punishment beyond her destruction; no fit payment for what the drone had done here to this first-child’s father. I just stood there staring as Riss writhed weakly in Bsorol’s claw—obviously damaged yet again—as the prador opened the tip of his other claw to bring his particle cannon to bear on her.
“Desist,” said a voice seeming to issue from all around. “Put Riss down.”
3
The Brockle
“The culprits have been apprehended,” said the Brockle, in its guise as the AI of the High Castle. “No connection with Penny Royal has as yet been found. It seems this was just an attempt to damage a Polity warship.”
“Oh, that’s a relief then,” said Grafton sarcastically, looking round at the four other crewmembers on the bridge with her. However, she believed every word. Why should she not, when they came from the trusted AI, whom she had known for many years, and who ran the High Castle?
“However, as you are now seeing, I did receive other orders from Earth Central before our last U-jump.”
“Well, yes,” said Grafton, glancing at the star field on one of the bridge screens, “I did spot that.”
Their route was supposed to have taken them to a point one lightmonth out from the hypergiant system in which Room 101 resided. There they were to record the progress of events about that station up to the point when the King’s Guard ships departed, then to follow the attack ships in. They weren’t to take part in the attack—just record it, then bring in their science team, with military support, to analyse the results. However, because of Penny Royal’s involvement, they were to assume command if anything went wrong. Disappointingly, though Penny Royal had been involved, this had turned out to be all about preventing the military asset Room 101 falling into the wrong . . . claws. However, they now found themselves in an area of space in that region that could neither be defined as the Graveyard—that zone lying between the Prador Kingdom and the Polity, nor the Reaches—an area of space lying beyond these.
“And,” the Brockle added, “it is now time for you to know the true nature of our mission and be acquainted with the fact that at Par Avion we took on board a passenger.”
“What?” said Grafton, suddenly angry.
The Brockle studied the bridge crew, looking for signs of suspicion and doubt.
“Let me first acquaint you with some facts,” it continued. “As you are aware, the High Castle is very well armed for such an initially science-based mission, and some of those weapons are U-space disruptor missiles. It is no accident that they are aboard.” That was true as far as it went. It had only recently been decided that any ship of a military nature that ventured on missions outside the Polity but close to the Graveyard should carry such missiles. This was simply because any such mission probably involved hunting down some rogue ship and that the option should be provided to prevent such a ship fleeing where Polity military could not follow—the Graveyard. Grafton and her bridge crew did not know that. The Brockle had already absorbed all the High Castle AI’s memories and knew that there had been no exchange on the matter.
“And?” Grafton prompted.
“We are to use them,” the Brockle replied, then before Grafton could ask further questions, continued, “A certain unique AI has managed to map the full extent of Penny Royal’s data traffic across known space.”
The Brockle was puzzled about this. The watch satellite near Room 101 that had recorded events out there, which in turn had led to the Polity fleet being dispatched, had recorded the U-signature of the Black Rose as it left. It was strange that Penny Royal, aboard such a modern attack ship, had not concealed that signature. And it seemed doubly strange that the Polity AIs, now knowing the AI’s course, felt disinclined to send anything to intercept.
“From this map,” the Brockle continued, “it has been possible to divine Penny Royal’s most likely route, aboard the Black Rose, from Room 101 back into the Graveyard. Our mission is to intercept the Black Rose, knock it out of U-space and destroy it.”
“The fuck?” said Grafton.
The Brockle couldn’t think of an appropriate reply to that, so continued, “We lay U-space detectors across a wide region of that continuum.” The Brockle disliked that description but it was the best fit to human language. “That will give us a mass reading on anything approaching and we launch a disruptor missile at anything matching the Black Rose’s mass. The disruption that knocks that ship out into the real will hamper Penny Royal’s ability to deploy, in time, the new form of curved hardfield it has developed.”
And that was another thing: why had Penny Royal developed a kind of hardfield that cyclically rooted itself in U-space and had practically infinite potential? What kind of energy was such a hardfield built to withstand? Moreover, where were those three runcibles the AI had stolen and what was it doing with them?
“It being the case that the attack ship also used up its U-jump missiles against Room 101, the danger to us should be minimal. Ensuing particle beam strikes should destroy both ship and AI,” the Brockle finished. A CTD would have been more certain of destroying the ship, but the EMR that a contra-terrine device produced would make it harder to confirm that it had been destroyed.
“That simple?” Grafton asked. “So what’s this about a passenger?”
“The passenger is the AI that discovered Penny Royal’s most likely route,” replied the Brockle. “It is a forensic AI called the Brockle.”
After a long silence, Grafton said, “I would like to see these orders.”
The Brockle sent the orders, of its own devising, to Grafton’s console.
“Forgive my ignorance,” she said, frowning. “But I thought the Brockle was . . . confined? I thought that because of certain aspects of its behaviour it was considered unsafe in civilized company, though useful in the company of those not so civilized.”
“This is very true,” said the Brockle, suppressing irritation, “but a special dispensation has been given by Earth Central to allow it to investigate as well as direct certain aspects of our mission. It has a uniq
ue perspective and is much better equipped to deal with the likes of Penny Royal than any other AI available.”
“I can’t say I’m comfortable having that thing aboard.”
“You see the orders.” The Brockle really wanted to just tell her to shut up and do what she was told, but that would be out of character for the presently somnolent High Castle AI. “Sometimes extreme circumstances require an extreme response.”
“I take it the Brockle came aboard with our supplies at Par Avion,” said Grafton. “Why all the secrecy?”
“I think you can work that out for yourself, Captain Grafton.” Only when it had finished speaking did the Brockle realize it had spoken in a way utterly out of character for the AI it was posing as. No matter.
“Because Penny Royal can penetrate Polity data traffic?”
Good, she hadn’t noticed.
“Exactly so,” said the Brockle. “This is also why I have kept U-space com shut down. Penny Royal must not learn about our mission. We have this one chance to eliminate a severe threat to the Polity and we must take it.”
Grafton chewed this over, but it wasn’t the lack of U-com that was bothering her. “So where aboard my ship is this Brockle now?”
“It has installed itself in our Tuelin Suite of rooms.” The High Castle often took on more crew and passengers, such as the collection of researchers in the suite of rooms on the other side of the ship at this moment, but the Tuelin Suite was most often used for planetary dignitaries and as such had been partially isolated from the rest of the ship so such visitors would find it difficult to go wandering around the working sections. It was also a well-armoured area without any weapons installations nearby, and comfortably distant both from this AI sphere and the ship’s U-space drive. The Brockle was no coward, but if things went wrong during the attack on the Black Rose, then Penny Royal’s reply was likely to be focused first on the location of the High Castle’s AI, then on the weapons and then on the drive.