by Neal Asher
“Watching you even now,” Flute replied. “You seem to have a problem.”
“I want you to take control of the shuttle and bring it over here—bring it down on the plateau above.”
“Launching now,” Flute replied.
We reached the base of the cliff, where the clamberer hesitated as if silently wondering if we were sure. It found a grip with one of its limbs, reached up with the other, then began hauling us up the cliff face. In a moment we were pressed back in our seats, the clamberer tearing out a chunk of rotten stone as it scrabbled to get a grip with its lower limbs.
“He’ll know what you’ve got now,” I said.
“And?” Riss enquired.
“If you leave something on the rock face for him he’ll probably go round it.”
“Yes, I thought of that.” After a pause, during which I suspected Riss was considering other possibilities because she hadn’t thought of that, she said, “I’ll put a charge on the leg of his vehicle.”
“All the legs would be better,” I suggested.
“Not enough for that,” she replied.
The clamberer began steadily making its way up the cliff face, scaring from a nearby crevice a thing looking like a bat fashioned out of glass. I looked round to see Pace’s clamberer quickly drawing in below us and watched as it pursued us up the cliff with greater agility than our vehicle. We were about halfway up when Riss unpeeled from the glass.
“Wish me luck,” she said as she departed.
I tried to track her but soon she disappeared as her chameleonware engaged. When we were three-quarters of the way up, with Pace’s clamberer just ten feet behind us, Riss returned, landing against the glass with a thwack. I looked back in time to see the explosion, halfway up the right forelimb of Pace’s vehicle. With a crump the limb parted, the glare of the explosion leaving afterimages in my eyes. Our clamberer lurched in the blast and hung on, while the one below peeled away from the cliff face.
“We got him?” Sepia asked, concentrating on her controls.
“Sort of,” I replied.
I watched as his clamberer swung back into the cliff and continued to climb, slower now because it had lost a limb. As we came over the cliff top I could see the glare of atmosphere rockets haloing our approaching shuttle. But I knew it would not be quick enough.
“Put us down, now,” I said.
She peered at me. “We’ll probably be safer inside . . .”
“But then I wouldn’t be able to use this vehicle to stop him,” I replied.
She held my eye for a second longer then settled the clamberer down. Meanwhile, I was in the vehicle’s computer system, searching for a way to control it remotely. There were safety blocks I couldn’t get past just using my aug, but almost without thinking I accessed the spine and the memories of Penny Royal’s victims, many of whom knew ways to subvert systems like this. As we spilled out into a cold drizzle, stone slippery underfoot, I mentally seized control of the vehicle and had it standing and turning just as Pace’s vehicle reached the cliff top. Sepia turned and opened fire with her carbine, the shots leaving glowing holes in Pace’s clamberer without really slowing it.
“Run!” I shouted, seeing that the shuttle was coming down a few hundred yards away. Sepia glanced at me, picked up through our connection on what I was doing, then turned and sprinted, moving cat-fast, of course. As I followed, a portion of my focus remained in our clamberer. I sent it forwards to slam into Pace’s vehicle, subverted its usual safety routines and had it grab the other clamberer’s forelimbs and struggle to push it back towards the cliff edge. Poised there for a moment, they looked like grappling robotic wrestlers. Ahead, atmosphere rockets slowing it, the shuttle came down. Even as it settled, Sepia opened the door and darted inside. Meanwhile, Pace had opened the door of his vehicle and thrown himself out. Behind him both clamberers toppled over the edge of the cliff, but he hit the ground running.
I followed Sepia inside, ran through into the control cabin as we launched. Glancing at the screen, I could see we weren’t going up quickly enough. Snapping out of the system of the clamberer, which had yet to fall all the way to the bottom of the cliff, I slid next into the system of the shuttle, making instinctive calculations and firing up one steering thruster. The shuttle lurched round, sending us both staggering inside and a second later I fired up one of the atmosphere rockets. The shuttle slewed and dipped, its nose grinding against stone, but subliminally, through an exterior cam, I saw Pace blown backwards across the plateau in the drive flame.
“We’re good,” I said, as we rose and I finally got to a seat.
A fraction of a second later I saw five bright stars streaking towards us through the night and felt the bottom fall out of my world. I had some very effective abilities, I could think fast and react fast, but what the hell could I do about missiles launched from Mr Pace’s castle? I might be able to evade one or two, but not all five. The night then lit up in a series of detonations and I glimpsed one missile spiralling down out of control to blow a crater in the side of a nearby mountain.
“You could have done that earlier,” said Riss, shimmering into existence on the console, peering out at the rising cloud of burning debris.
“Certainly,” Flute replied from the console, “but I didn’t want to interfere in case there was some purpose to all this running around.”
As I clipped across my strap I felt stupid. In the heat of the moment I’d completely forgotten that I had an armed Polity destroyer sitting in orbit, and that just with a thought I could have had it obliterate Mr Pace. But through the sheer relief I felt as I slumped back in my seat I also felt puzzled. Surely Mr Pace had known that too?
Sverl
“Drop everything but your weapons!” Sverl ordered. “Get to the runcible now!”
But, even as he delivered those orders to his children, Sverl knew he might already be too late. Hadn’t it been naive to think that the Polity AIs had obeyed their own laws and removed their military from the Masadan system? Wasn’t it naive to think that they might not have a CTD or two to sling through at him? No, Penny Royal could never be described as naive. It felt inevitable that Sverl must open this runcible to Masada, while he felt sure that the black AI would never open what it was building here to such an obvious possibility of destruction.
Black spiky objects sketched a line down the meniscus before a large shape came through and began flailing about in zero gravity. The great bulky creature was almost comedic . . . Almost. Sverl gaped at the gabbleduck, at this resurrected Atheter called the Weaver, then suddenly realized that it had stepped through from the pressurized base on Flint straight into vacuum and might be dying. However, as he was about to change his orders to Bsorol and the rest, the beast abruptly stabilized, folded up its back legs and sat there, pyramidal in vacuum as if some invisible surface had materialized beneath it. A brief scan brought back some very odd results, but there was a bubble of air around it, under pressure, though the method of containment was beyond baffling. The surface of the bubble was constantly writhing . . . in fact it was weaving itself together.
Sverl felt his panic subside. So this was what Penny Royal had intended . . . His calm lasted for just a second until the other shape came through. Had the black AI intended this too? It was a gleaming scorpion, immediately stable in zero gravity and revolving slowly to take in its surroundings. This was marginally better than a CTD but could be worse than an assault force. The scorpion was Amistad, a war drone of the old school, upgraded to the status of planetary AI certainly, but doubtless still retaining his old weapons. He was densely packed with technology, possessing the kind of power supply that could run a small attack ship, deploy particle beams, cross spectrum lasers; he probably had a high-spec railgun and a wide selection of missiles and mines . . . things could be about to get very nasty, very fast.
“Runcible link to the Masadan moon Flint is now closed,
” said the runcible AI.
“Very good,” Sverl replied.
“Hello, Amistad,” he sent.
“Sverl,” Amistad replied. “Don’t get twitchy on any triggers—I’m just here as a tourist.” The drone now drew to a halt facing what had been the nose of the station. “Interesting view.”
There were now gaps through the body of the station, and the light of the hypergiant glaring in was reflected in shades of gold from the seemingly organic inner structure of the hemisphere. Even as Amistad watched, the facing side of the final construction bay adjacent to the hospital began to disappear, letting in more of the glare. Sverl, the whole station effectively transparent to him as he gazed through surviving station cams, saw that the device had returned from weaving around the edge of the hemisphere to rip up and digest more materials. Checking the progress of the work it had done, he could see that the hemisphere was more than half done, and the device would soon be on the way back to complete a sphere.
“And what will your Polity masters think of that—the ones who sent the fleet that has been attempting to destroy this station?” he asked.
Amistad waved a dismissive claw. “I would dispute that I have any ‘masters’ since I submitted my resignation before I stepped through this runcible.” He paused for a second, then added, “Anyway, seems to me that fleet might be redundant now. My ‘masters’ didn’t want you getting your claws on wartime weapons production. Yet that seems to be rapidly disappearing.”
Amistad now turned and tipped up, his front end pointing directly to where Sverl squatted on a beam. Just then Bsorol, Bsectil and Sverl’s remaining second-children rounded the runcible, spread out through the space beyond, forming themselves in a loose sphere around the scorpion drone and the Weaver. Sverl was impressed by their discipline. They had intelligently assessed the threat and moved to contain it but without being ordered to, had not fired a shot.
“Remember what I said about triggers,” Amistad reminded them and, perhaps just to drive the point home, the space all around him and out to Sverl’s children briefly filled with the flicker of targeting lasers. In response, a few Gatling cannons began spinning and targeting lasers flickered again, this time from the prador.
Sverl remained undecided. If he kept his children there, despite their apparent adulthood, the chances of a slip-up would keep rising, but if he withdrew them that might just be what Amistad was waiting for. No, in the end he decided to trust in Penny Royal’s plans, uncomfortably reminded, as he so decided, of Spear’s comment about him having found something to believe in.
“Bsorol, Bsectil, withdraw and carry on as before,” he instructed. “Move your stuff to the hauler.”
Throughout all this the Weaver remained squatting in vacuum, turning its head occasionally to gaze either at Amistad or out at one of the prador. It was as if the creature considered itself a spectator and not a vulnerable organic life form sitting right in the middle of enough hair-trigger armament to flatten a major city. Sverl also sensed from it, he wasn’t sure how, a degree of suppressed amusement, as if at any moment it might bellow with laughter. But then, as the prador began to break up their formation and move off, it too, moved.
It began drifting away from the runcible and turned to face towards the device it had been instrumental in creating. The device began jerking like some beast being stabbed. Then all at once the device just stopped.
Sverl transferred his attention back to the Weaver, who was heading, like some insane alien Buddha, for one of the gaps broken through the body of the station. It had raised an arm and held some intricate but flimsy artefact in one of its heavy claws. Sverl had no doubt that it had just shut down the Atheter device, but what now? He decided he wanted to take a closer look—see with his own eyes. He ran along the beam, launched himself, fired up his internal grav-engine and planed after the Weaver. As expected, Amistad was soon travelling beside him.
“Can you do anything about that fleet?” Sverl asked.
“I’m talking to Garrotte right now,” Amistad replied. “He’s not happy about me being here and seems to think he can give me orders. I guess that’s what happens when you stick an attack ship mind into a dreadnought. Napoleon complex.”
They came in behind the Weaver as he floated through one of the gaps, in the bright glare almost lost even to Sverl’s sensors. Checking, Sverl found that it wasn’t just the light from the hypergiant he was having to deal with but also radiation in some odd bands across the EM spectrum from the station structure: infrared and microwave, gamma radiation and for some reason a singular high spike in the ultra-violet. Some sort of tenderizing process the device used on the matter it was shortly to ingest, Sverl supposed.
“So why do you think he’s here?” Amistad asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sverl hedged.
“Yes you are,” Amistad replied. “This is Penny Royal’s payment for providing a bio-mech war machine. But the Weaver’s presence here perhaps tells us something else.”
“Like what?”
“Do you think that Atheter device required any form of actual intervention from the Weaver?”
“No,” Sverl replied. Atheter technology looked as if it might be more advanced than that of the Polity. It didn’t seem likely the Weaver’s presence was required, unless it was for some obscure cultural reason.
“The deal’s not done,” said Amistad.
“Ah . . .”
Now that would explain things. The object steadily being constructed here might be part of an ongoing transaction. Perhaps the Weaver was here to see the deal through to completion. He had probably left out something essential, or was retaining control until Penny Royal made the final payment.
“I wonder what that final payment might be,” Sverl said.
“Me too,” said Amistad, distracted.
“Do you think Penny Royal will be coming back here to make it?” Sverl asked, sure that the answer was yes. “And to collect the final product?”
“One might suppose so,” Amistad replied. “But whether there will be a final product here to collect is open to debate.”
“What?”
“I just got warned by Garrotte that I have one solstan day to leave this place,” Amistad replied. “And now he’s sending me an image feed.”
Even as Amistad spoke, Sverl’s sensors were warning him of further U-space signatures: more ships arriving. Amistad wanted to widen their com channel and Sverl was instantly suspicious, because this could be a method of attack. But he dismissed those suspicions. Amistad had weapons to deploy, so he didn’t need to use informational warfare. He opened up the channel.
Ships slid into the real far-out past the hypergiant sun. Sverl recognized the long lethal-looking things at once as those of the King’s Guard returning. For just a brief second he hoped these might be a problem for the Polity fleet, but then knew that wasn’t so. Garrotte would not have given that warning and sent this feed to back it up. It seemed the Kingdom and the Polity were now allied in some sort of response to what was happening here. Sverl counted twenty King’s Guard ships, but there was another ship as well. This he recognized too: a great bulky mass like a titanic clam with big old nuclear drive engines to the rear and massive grabs spread to the fore. He had seen such vessels in Kingdom shipyards during the war. They were tugs made for shifting great masses like enormous damaged ships coming in for repair, a bit antediluvian now but still good for their job.
“This doesn’t look good,” commented Amistad.
“Quite,” Sverl agreed.
The Brockle
The moment the High Castle surfaced from U-space, the Brockle began delving into all available data channels and quickly learned some interesting facts. It had missed Thorvald Spear by a matter of days. The man had come here to visit Mr Pace and had only narrowly managed to escape with his life. Whether this was due to Mr Pace’s tendency to kill his visitors
or because Spear had done something to further upset the man, the Brockle had no idea. It was, therefore, time to investigate.
Focusing sensors on the planet below, the Brockle studied the man’s castle. There was damage to the entryway, and some positively antique robots were repairing it, while on the roof a shuttle was being fuelled and loaded with crates. The Brockle withdrew its attention momentarily to focus on a ship in orbit: a large egg-shaped craft with three U-nacelles extending from its equator. A brief probe revealed that the thing was going through test routines. From what it had learned upon its arrival here it knew this spaceship belonged to Pace. He was preparing to go on a journey. The Brockle returned its attention to the planet below.
Auto-handler drays were driving up a ramp in the side of the shuttle and depositing the plasmel crates inside. And Mr Pace was there, watching, his arms folded. The Brockle used passive sensing on him at first, but got no readings off him at all. He was like a mobile stone. Active sensors revealed a body with a strange molecular structure. Pace was tough, but pliable—the material of his body a nano-layered composite of metallic glass that was tougher than the advanced armour on those pieces of the Black Rose still sitting in the science section aboard the High Castle. There were AI crystals in there too, distributed so his brain wasn’t located only in his skull. Strange forms of carbon abounded, including diamond films. Graphene and molybdenite processing nodes were scattered throughout, while his nerve impulses were transmitted by nano-lasers. This was all very interesting but didn’t get the Brockle any closer to what it wanted to know.
Suddenly Mr Pace turned and looked up, straight towards the location of the High Castle. Unclear as to why, the Brockle felt a stab of fear.