by Neal Asher
“Very nice,” she said.
He was glad she sounded sincere because he really didn’t want to point out how few such items like this remained in the barracks and how quickly they were being snatched up. She turned and gazed at him very directly. “Let’s eat.”
It was utterly strange and disconcerting for him to sit at a table with a woman and two children. The last time he remembered sitting round a table like this had been with Gabriel and Spear aboard the Moray Firth. A lot had happened since then. They ate in silence at first: opening the soup beakers and bread packets and just concentrating on that. Robert was the first to break the silence.
“What games have we got?” he asked.
“They’re very old.” Trent shrugged. “I don’t recognize them, but they’re mostly about blowing up prador.” As he finished saying it, he wished he could reverse time. These were people who had lived in a society whose members had wanted to turn themselves into prador. He looked at Reece, worried, but she was biting her thumb, trying not to laugh.
“Good,” said Robert, with feeling.
“But there’ll be no games for you right away,” said Reece. “Sleep first.” She studied Ieran, who, having eaten half his soup and a large chunk of bread, was now sitting with his head bowed, swaying slightly. “For both of you.”
“Do you want some ‘mummy time’?” Robert asked and, tired though he looked, still ducked fast enough to avoid the lump of bread she threw at him.
“Right, bed,” she said, it being evident that they had finished now. She stood up and herded them to their room and, while she dealt with them in there, Trent finished his soup and then tidied up the mess, dropping it into a disposal chute that folded out of the wall. He felt baffled as he did this; could not quite equate this domestic scene with its location and everything he had gone through to arrive here. As the chute closed and machinery in the wall ground up the waste and piped it away, he felt the overpowering urge to head for the door and go. Yet, at the same time, he also felt rooted in this place; events just out of his control.
“Do you know how long it’s been for me?” Reece asked, returning from the boys’ bedroom.
“What?” asked Trent, turning from his contemplation of the wall.
“Four years,” she replied, then holding up her wrist, “and no nascuff.”
“What?” Trent repeated, wondering why the addition of conscience and empathy seemed to have also lumbered him with gauche embarrassment.
“Don’t be thick, Trent.” She ran a finger down the stick seam of her shirt to reveal those pert little breasts he had seen in the hospital, but of course the situation was very different now. After shedding her shirt she pushed down her trousers, kicked them off, then balled both items in one hand. “Are you getting the message now?”
“I think so,” Trent replied, feeling some return of his usual calm.
She wrapped herself round him and kissed him, running the fingers of one hand through his hair. After a moment she pulled back, took hold of his hand and began leading him to her bedroom. At that point he decided enough was enough. He swept her up and over one shoulder carried her into the bedroom and tossed her down on the bed.
“Ooh, aren’t you big and strong,” she said, tossing her clothes across the room. She then turned over and poked her arse up at him. “Have I been bad? Do you think you should spank me?” Over the ensuing hours he soon learned that Reece was nowhere near as delicate as she looked, and a lot more aggressive.
Sverl
As Bsectil disconnected the cable from within Sverl’s skeletal body, Sverl felt the spine trying to re-establish connections electromagnetically, and denied it. While the thing had been a very useful tool and could continue to be very useful, he no longer needed it. It didn’t belong to him and it fitted in Penny Royal’s story in the hands of Thorvald Spear. Sverl also felt glad to be rid of the thing because he felt sure that the power it offered, just as with all such pivotal artefacts, came at a price.
“Take it to Spear,” he said, handing the thing over. “And hurry.”
Spear had to leave this station, and soon—he felt certain of that too. Meanwhile, he had other, bigger concerns. He now linked to and gazed through a telescope array on the station’s hull. The images it brought to him were perfectly clear, but of course that was to be expected even with only the intensity of visible light out there, and this array used more than that. The two dreadnoughts were lozenges of gold-coloured metal two miles long sprouting sensor spines and towers, picked out in the halo of the glare from their drive torches. The twenty attack ships were more difficult to make out since their material was just a spit away from being a hundred per cent light absorbing. Remembering Arrowsmith and his love of human analogies, Sverl felt these ships resembled crows, with wings folded back as they dived towards some tasty carrion. This Polity fleet, a small one by wartime standards, had appeared some distance out and was now approaching on fusion drive. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to put themselves straight into the middle of this system when there might still be King’s Guard about. Or maybe the captains and AIs controlling the fleet were just being sensibly cautious. But it was also worrying just how easily they were taking this. It seemed that while they considered Sverl—in control of Room 101—a threat, they were confident enough of dealing with him at their leisure.
“Report anomalies,” Sverl now instructed the station’s new runcible AI.
“Spoon fluctuations and constant requests for connection,” the AI replied.
Sverl peered through cams in the area. Within the giant octagonal frame of the old cargo runcible a meniscus now shimmered. The requests for connections were just an automatic protocol from runcibles in the Polity, so Sverl wasn’t reading anything suspicious into that just yet. Nevertheless he would allow no connections because once made they would be onerous to break and, what’s more, the AIs of the Polity would become aware of this new destination. After that, the next travellers likely to come through would be heavily armed war drones and Sparkind, or a world-busting CTD.
“Nothing else?” Sverl asked.
“No local jump anomalies,” the AI replied.
So those ships hadn’t yet fired any U-jump missiles. Perhaps they were waiting until they were within a properly effective firing range for their other weapons, which would be in twelve hours. Or, more likely, they had monitoring buoys in underspace and now knew that such missiles would be ineffective. If they fired them the result would be a brief U-space disturbance here and the reading of a mass departure through the runcible as the missile dropped through it into non-existence.
Twelve hours . . .
Sverl’s attention now strayed to that tank, once used for foaming up molten metal and inert gases to make bubble-metal, but now used for an entirely different purpose. The thing hung at the intersection of eight I-beams, and numerous pipes and power feeds, and was now crawling with most of Sverl’s second-children as, under Bsorol’s instructions, they hastily installed thermal convertors to draw off some of the heat being generated by the esoteric processes occurring inside. As Sverl watched, the thermal glass pipe, which had been intended to convey foamed metal to moulds and extruders in an adjacent factory and which had been severed just twenty feet from the tank, extruded another egg. The black crusty mass tumbled out into a space recently opened in the beam-work, and began peeling.
The layers of graphene and diamond laminate came off like the skin of an apple to reveal hard yellow foam. This foam then cracked into four pieces like the shell of a seed pod to reveal the gleaming squashed white sphere of its seed. The moment this happened, the white sphere, the hardfield generator, applied for instructions and found its place in the program in Sverl’s mind, before shooting off through the station to find its way outside and its position in the growing network of such objects. A braided mass of tentacles then groped its way into the space it had occupied, individual tentacles opening
’structor pods to snap up the remnants of the thing’s shell and, even as it did so, Sverl knew that twelve hours would not be enough. To complete the network and entirely wrap this station in self-feeding hardfield would take twenty hours.
So what’s the answer, Penny Royal? Sverl wondered, because he felt sure there had to be one.
Perhaps the station weapons already being reinstated would be enough to fend off attack until the network was complete? No, Sverl did not think so. All the Polity ships out there were modern and would have modern weapons. That meant gravity waves, sub-AI missiles with fusion-burst acceleration, a whole spectrum of beam weapons and probably other things he didn’t know about. Those ships were approaching slowly and confidently because those aboard knew they could make mincemeat of this station.
Sverl paused in his speculations, abruptly aware of a request for U-com. He accepted, but only limited bandwidth.
“So, Sverl,” said a voice, “you do have complete control of Room 101.”
“Depending on your definition of complete,” Sverl replied. “Who is this?”
“My name is Garrotte,” replied the AI communicating. “My definition of complete is that you control all the station’s remaining AIs, even so far as having one of them reactivate a runcible. Our scan readings also indicate that you are rapidly making repairs to a hundred years of damage and that soon you may have the U-space drive operational.”
Sverl paused for a microsecond before replying as he pondered just how good their scanning had to be. “Yes, I have control, but I would still argue about that definition of ‘complete’. There are still dead areas within the station, there is still a great deal of wild nano- and micro-tech, and there are still independent intelligences here.” In fact, Sverl wanted to argue about as much as possible so as to delay the inevitable attack by this fleet.
“That was just a conversational gambit,” said Garrotte.
Now, why did he know that name? Sverl wondered. An instant later he had the answer. Micheletto’s Garrotte was the name of the attack ship running interceptions in the Masadan system. It was also the one that had gone AWOL there—Penny Royal having somehow stowed away aboard it—and the remains of which had been melded with The Rose to form the ship Blite had named the Black Rose. Perhaps there was an angle here Sverl could work . . .
“I take it you have a new body now?” he enquired.
“Perceptive of you,” replied Garrotte. “And I have a new mission that no amount of talk can divert me from. We cannot allow a prador, or rather an erstwhile prador, to control such a major asset as Room 101. You therefore have twelve hours—a time you have doubtless already calculated—to abandon that station.”
“Well that’s a bit unfair,” said Sverl. “Surely this station comes under the same salvage regulations as applied to the Puling Child—now named the Lance. I therefore claim this station as my own under those regulations.”
“In a perfect universe,” said Garrotte, “all laws would apply equally to all and would be inviolate. We don’t live in a perfect universe but one where potential threats must be countered before they lead to disasters.”
“In a perfect universe,” Sverl replied, “Penny Royal would not have escaped a death sentence by apparently sacrificing the part of its mind supposedly guilty of the crimes. What are your feelings on that matter, considering how close you got to that AI?”
“We can chat like this for as long as you like,” said Garrotte. “However, no amount of chat is going to change that twelve-hour time limit.”
“I don’t have a ship any more,” said Sverl, “so how am I supposed to abandon this station?”
“The Lance is still there.”
“Not my ship. And Thorvald Spear will be leaving in it shortly.”
“We have discussed this matter and another option is available,” said Garrotte. “We understand that at your heart you are still a prador adult and your psyche is such that you want to be secure in your own, usually large, vessel. Though we cannot accept you controlling Room 101, we are quite prepared to allow you to depart that station aboard one of the Polity dreadnoughts remaining in the final construction bays.”
“Very badly damaged,” said Sverl.
“At least one of them should have viable fusion drive to get you away from the station. Materials and components can be provided from the station once we have assumed control of it.”
It was a tempting offer: no need for any kind of fight, a dreadnought of his own again, large enough to be modified to his needs. But there were problems. Did he trust this fleet not to fire on him once he was clear of the station? Sverl was no Polity citizen and even once away from the station was still a potential threat, especially because of his known association with Penny Royal. Also, it wasn’t beyond feasibility that they had struck some deal with the king of the prador concerning him. Then, of course, there was Penny Royal.
The black AI had provided a way to make a hardfield defence. It had also lodged a piece of itself in the core of every AI aboard this station. If Sverl abandoned this place he feared he would be reneging on some unspoken deal. He felt sure that despite his own story having been resolved he still had a part to play in the black AI’s plan.
“I will have to consider your offer very carefully,” Sverl replied. “It will take me some time to move myself and my people aboard one of the dreadnoughts.”
“Please be reasonable, Sverl,” Garrotte replied. “If I hold off for a hundred hours and you refurbish that station to pristine condition you still have no chance against us. Even if you upgrade that station’s weapons and defences with the kind of technology we know you know about, you’ll still lose.”
How very interesting, thought Sverl.
“I take it your new body is not one of those attack ships, but one of those dreadnoughts?” Sverl asked, meanwhile again checking on the production of those hardfield generators. He decided to bring the whole network much closer to the hull, where it could be hidden by the Byzantine growths out there. It was clear to him that Garrotte had not detected or identified them, which was understandable since their emissions were no more than that of any other technology in and about the station. They would be to all intents and purposes invisible, until the network fired up.
“Curious question,” said Garrotte, “to which the answer is yes, my new body is now that of a modern dreadnought.”
Ah, thought Sverl, that accounts for your overconfidence, then.
“With dangerous knowledge comes greater power, it seems,” Garrotte added.
You know something about Penny Royal, thought Sverl.
Garrotte continued, “And, being at the centre of such power, I am thoroughly aware of how quickly I can convert Room 101 to a spreading cloud of vapour.”
In a moment of inspiration Sverl added, “Along with the two thousand or so Polity citizens we have aboard.”
A long silence ensued, during which Garrotte doubtless did some fact checking. The dreadnought AI sounded slightly peeved when it finally replied, “The shell people.”
Sverl sent imagery from the hospital and the steadily filling barracks aboard, and waited.
“The shell people were citizens who abandoned the Polity,” said Garrotte.
“Yet they are still citizens, are they not?” said Sverl. “Please forgive my ignorance if this is not the case. Doubtless if they are not considered citizens their wholesale slaughter is just a small matter . . .”
The communications link closed, emphatically.
Spear
I set my aug to knock me out for a few hours in the hope that after sleeping I would have a new perspective on my situation, but I was disappointed. I woke to the same feeling of inertia as before, and sprawled on my bed staring at the ceiling, I tried to figure out why I was feeling just the same as I had before we left Masada.
After much thought, I decided it came down to having
no clear goals. Perhaps it was time to give up and head back to the Polity. There I could live like anyone else. I could return to research, or the military. Once I had achieved whatever my vague goal happened to be, wouldn’t I have to do something like that anyway?
The answer, from the core of my being, was a “no.” A lack of clarity was slowing me down, making me indecisive but, until I reached some sort of resolution with Penny Royal, I could not turn my attention elsewhere. The black AI defined me. I decided it was time to change my mind. Within the extensive library of my aug I found a suite of programs which I’d never felt the urge to use before. As I researched I realized how far technology had come recently, because what Cole was doing with that bulky, complicated-looking equipment in the hospital, I could now do just lying on my back in bed: I could edit my own mind.
I was wary at first because, though I wanted to change how I weighed things emotionally, I really didn’t want to lose any memories. However, I soon found the option there for instant restoral. I checked and there was nothing for me in partitioned memory to restore. So I hadn’t used this before.
I next tried a simple test. I set it to automatically restore after a period of thirty seconds: I removed my memory of travelling from Sverl back to my ship. After numerous checks to see if I was sure the program did as instructed, I then spent thirty seconds of confusion, sure that Sverl must have hit me with a stunner, and had me carried back here because he wanted to keep the spine. When memory returned, I spent some time contemplating my tendency towards paranoia and decided editing out memories was not for me.