by Neal Asher
The fusion drive kicked in and the world began to grow larger. As we drew closer, Flute threw up a frame to give us a close view of the mountains. Even after a hundred years I could see evidence of the cataclysm that had occurred there: banks of scree from shattered rock, impact craters in which molten rock had set solid and flat, and the tangled remains of tanks and troop carriers. However, some life had returned: ground-fig tangled in the remains of one tower, giant rhubarbs had gathered around the troop transports, and green and purple vegetation coated many surfaces.
Finally Flute focused in on the flat pan of stone in the centre of a crater. Here squatted Penny Royal, surrounded by a ring of those globular white hardfield generators. I stared at the scene, troubled. The stone Penny Royal squatted on seemed flatter than in the other craters clustered nearby, almost as if it had been levelled with a grinder and then polished. The mounds of rock encircling the crater looked far too even to be natural. The whole scene appeared staged but, then, it likely was. It seemed everything that had happened since my resurrection had been leading me here. I checked the scale of what I was seeing and realized that Penny Royal must now measure nearly fifty feet across . . .
As we descended into the atmosphere, space took on a green then a yellow hue and continued to shade towards yellow, the stars gleaming like emeralds, gradually fading. Clouds like flattened masses of white intestines were lit from the underside by constant lightning flashes. The storm writhed above a yellow plain veined with rivers and bruised by patches of purple and ochre, which might be either forests or mineral deposits. Eventually I made out the spine of a mountain range, capped with blue-tinted snows, writhing ahead of us towards the Scalings as they rose over the horizon.
A roar was penetrating now and wisps of vapour flicking across the view. We punched into cloud, only briefly, flashes of lightning on either side like fast-burn sheets of fuse paper, then out into yellow shade, flying past the stems of anvil clouds that were like vast battleships, rain occluding vision until Flute programmed it from existence. It occurred to me then to wonder how suitable the Lance was for landing on a world like this. Certainly destroyers like it were made to be capable of so landing, but were provided with shuttle craft because it wasn’t a great idea to land something so large and unwieldy.
“We okay, Flute?” I asked.
“No problem,” Flute replied.
I auged for information on destroyer landings. Such ships had more than enough redundancy in their systems for planetary landings and could land, without damage, on worlds where the gravity would reduce their passengers to slurry on the decks. The decision to provide them with shuttles was a tactical one, since destroyers were valuable military assets which it would be foolish to put in such a vulnerable position as the surface of a world.
Eventually we were flying through foothills, a river valley winding along below us. I wondered if it was the one that I and Captain Gideon and his men had been escaping along when Penny Royal annihilated Berners’ division, incidentally incinerating us in the process. Flute finally brought us to a halt above a flat area which looked like another impact site where the rock had melted and levelled itself and now lay webbed with milky-looking vines dotted with round blue and white fruit. I thought about what, in my mind, had come after Penny Royal’s bombardment of this place.
As the Lance settled down on the ground, I tried to repress my memories of waking up a captive of the prador, of seeing a failed attempt to install a full thrall in Gideon, and all the horror that followed. All those memories were false, because I had actually died here. The false memories of my life were unpleasant in the extreme. The things that had been done to me were of the kind that left a person mentally as well as physically damaged. This was why the person those things had actually happened to had had the memories excised. Why then had I retained them? And why had Penny Royal inserted them into my mind in the first place? Penny Royal’s manipulations were complicated in the extreme but, as far as I could gather, that AI never did anything without some kind of reason.
The Lance settled with a grinding I could feel through my feet. Checking the system, I saw that Flute had brought it down on its belly and not bothered with the landing feet. A further check revealed that we were about ten miles from Penny Royal and that there was an easy but steep path there. I checked the ship’s inventory to see what we would take. Two mesh-armoured enviro-suits were a must, since we had landed close to sundown and the octupals would be active during the night. Some rations, perhaps, and definitely water, as any streams might still be laced with wartime contaminants. Weapons, certainly: there were dangerous creatures about. And, of course, I would take the spine.
“I see no reason to delay,” I said.
“Me neither,” said Sepia, standing also.
I didn’t even attempt to try and dissuade her. Despite what had happened to her during out last encounter with Penny Royal, I knew the only way to stop her would be to lock her in the ship, and she would never forgive me for that.
We headed from the bridge and got ready, Riss dogging our footsteps.
18
Amistad
As Amistad fired up his fusion engine and streaked through the Cheyne III runcible, he knew preparations had been made to receive him, and he was glad. His biggest problem, he had realized as he had prepared for this, wasn’t escaping Cheyne III and getting to where he wanted to go, but doing so without killing anyone. It seemed like a quite ridiculous idea to cause mayhem and leave hundreds of casualties behind him just to save the lives of two humans and two AIs.
Hurtling across the chamber, he scattered skeletal Golem with a sweep of one claw, then swiped across the chain-diamond edge of the other claw before finally slamming into the far wall, leaving a huge dent. From this position he observed the pedestal-mounted EM pulse weapon and hardfield projector that was intended to capture him beginning to topple. Congratulating himself on correctly calculating both its position and where to slice through, Amistad decided it was time to get explosive.
His first missile streaked back across the runcible reception chamber, punched through the wall beside the runcible itself and detonated on an armoured pipe containing skeins of optics. There went all the optic feed cams in the area, and the EM mine Amistad spat out to detonate with an actinic flash in the middle of the chamber took out all the radio frequency pin cams too, which meant the runcible AI would now have to deploy its swarm of drone cams. His second missile punched up through a small unarmoured part of the ceiling, blew a side charge to turn it sharply, then detonated a rolling planar load to slice across above the armour, s-con cables severed and discharging, security drones dropping out of their holes like ripped-out eyeballs, weapons dead and powerless. By then Amistad had launched himself again, an autogun was peppering the wall behind him with million-volt discharge shells.
Yes, that’s what Amistad was doing: he was going to rescue Thorvald Spear, Sepia catadapt whatsername, Riss and Flute. Sure he was.
In preparation for his arrival, the area had been cleared of . . . fragile creatures. Now Amistad slammed headfirst into a grappler. The big robot was all heavy ceramal, massive joint motors and horribly fast reflexes. It looked vaguely humanoid—something like a sumo wrestler as painted by someone from the cubist movement, in shades of shipyard ironwork. He hit it hard, gripping it with his claws and spinning it towards the autogun, then leaving it shuddering as discharge shells covered it with miniature lightnings. Landing right beside the runcible, Amistad knew he had a few seconds’ breather, because the systems here would not risk hitting the runcible itself.
He observed ports opening and insectile cam drones swarming in, just as predicted. He focused on two of them, hit them with a targeting laser straight in their optics and pumped through a computer virus. It was an old one, only slightly adjusted for this place, from his extensive and esoteric collection of the things. It was, he recollected, one he had copied from Penny Royal’s
mind.
Another grappler was now closing in, while armoured shutters were opening here and there in the walls, the polished maws of particle cannons protruding. Simple tactics: the grappler would wrestle him away from the runcible, whereupon the particle cannons would open fire. The runcible AI wasn’t trying to kill him yet, but had probably decided he might be a bit less dangerous with his legs and claws burned away and his sensors and weapons ports fused. He waited, and in the time it took the grappler to reach him, Amistad’s virus had penetrated the two cams and propagated through the rest of them. The grappler slammed into him, closing a diamond-faced clamp hand on his claw with the chain-diamond cutter. The virus routed back through to the AI and a microsecond later all the cams simply dropped out of the air, severing the link.
The virus was a Trojan, however, ostensibly an attack on the AI but really assembling a worm that diverted away into runcible sub-systems. The grappler began to drag Amistad away from the runcible, shiny particle cannon mouths swivelling in the walls as if salivating with eagerness.
Fuckit.
Amistad fired up his own particle cannon and began burning into the robot’s almost rusty-looking armour. The thing was tough. The particle beam—powerful enough to punch a hole through ceramal armour and even make an appreciable dint in prador armour—was only slowly peeling away layers, its energy splashing into the air. Amistad extruded a sticky mine and spat it towards his opponent. The thing clung like soft fruit, then ignited, the blast on the robot’s surface a sun-hot slow burn.
The grappler released its hold and staggered back, a glowing hole cut deep into its torso. Meanwhile, the worm had found its target—the runcible routing system—and was delicately inputting coordinates. Amistad fired a missile straight into the cavity he had burned. The explosion lit up the robot from the inside, light glaring from joints, ports in its body, from its eyes and mouth. Somehow, it staggered forwards again. Amistad backed up. He didn’t want to carry this battle elsewhere, but now other shutters were opening and more robots appearing. Meanwhile his sensors were being bombarded by a cornucopia of hostile computer life.
He fired two more missiles, straight into that cavity, then quickly scuttled back through the runcible interface. In the new chamber he found himself in zero gravity as he scanned his surroundings. Not so heavy here. The Cheyne III runcible chamber had been adapted to capture him—this had not. He spun in mid-air, multiply firing in every direction, blowing out and burning weapons ports, frying security drones, releasing viruses and worms to seize control of everything in the area. Some missiles hit him, and a particle beam managed to heat up one claw appreciably. The runcible AI here, which was apparently located in an ancient spotter drone, tried to turn on grav to distract him, but he slammed against the floor and finished the job.
A second later the grappler stumbled through the runcible interface, fires burning inside its body, black smoke rising off it. Amistad backed up again, ready to fire another missile, but the thing took just one step more and fell forwards with a sound as of ten tons of scrap hitting the ground—scrap being what it now was.
“Turn the fucking runcible off,” Amistad instructed.
After a moment the interface winked out. The spotter drone, Owl, out on the surface of the space station named the Well Head, had obviously seen the foolishness of forcing that chore on Amistad, who would likely put a missile straight into the runcible frame.
The Brockle
Inside the other ships of the Polity fleet, the Brockle’s other parts had retooled manufacturing to produce still more units. As its thought processes grew faster, covered greater areas of knowledge and its intelligence continued to increase, it only confirmed its earlier speculations. The hardfield would need to shut down. Unless there was some extraneous factor it had missed, it would definitely destroy the sphere. Penny Royal would fail, the Brockle felt confident of that.
Yet, with its steadily expanding mind, the Brockle began to see other . . . aspects. The paradox of Penny Royal already having entered the black hole, and then not having entered it, would rip through the time-space continuum and now the Brockle could precisely calculate the extent of that tear. Yes, it would be across a hundred years and a thousand light years, but the Brockle did not feel that what would be lost had great value.
Except itself.
Much as it was beginning to find the Polity almost alien to its thinking, and like the brilliant child of ignorant parents would like to claim its parentage from elsewhere, the Brockle could not deny that it was a product of the human race and of the Polity. Would it cease to exist? The calculations were complex. Edmund Brockle had been born and had died as a human being long before the end of the war a hundred years agom and by the end of the war had not been vastly different in form and function from how he had been while imprisoned aboard the Tyburn.
So what would happen after the start of the tear through space-time? Disorder, time whirlpools, enclosed loops, negative entropy in some areas while in others energy imbalances would cause vast explosions. Quite likely many suns would go nova while others would cool down to cinders. It was highly probable that pockets of sentient life, and AIs, would continue existing, but the Polity would be finished, as would the Prador Kingdom. The Brockle saw its own chances of surviving all this as about fifty-fifty, albeit not in its present form, and not with its present knowledge. This was tolerable if it resulted in the destruction of Penny Royal. But if there were alternatives, then they had to be explored.
If it was the case that the entity in the Layden’s Sink black hole was Penny Royal, then it was possible that the paradox of it not arriving there could be undermined and the time-space continuum would work to heal the rip. For instance, if Penny Royal could be supplanted by some other entity. The nature of paradoxes was, of course, that they were paradoxical. If the paradox was to occur in the future it meant that the Brockle was not even here now . . . on mainline time, but in energy debt down the probability slope in some less probable parallel continuum. However, the Brockle was now increasingly coming to the conclusion that it was on mainline time, that Penny Royal did not enter the black hole, but that another AI did.
It is me.
The simplicity was perfect and seemed a confirmation of its entire existence to this point . . . or was this some kind of higher-level arrogance? No, the more powerful an AI became, the tighter became its grip on reality . . . well, up to a point. The Brockle now felt sure it had achieved a state equivalent to or even beyond that of Penny Royal.
Its submind in the dreadnought once occupied by Garrotte informed it just a microsecond before the others. Something was happening in the Panarchia system. An old Polity destroyer had arrived close to Panarchia while Mr Pace’s ship had arrived some distance out. The Brockle recognized the destroyer at once and knew that the man Penny Royal had taken such overweening interest in was aboard. The history of that world played through the forensic AI’s mind in a few more microseconds, some new data obtained from the mind of Garrotte concerning what had actually happened there during the war dropping neatly into place. The Brockle understood the psychology behind it, and that only increased its contempt for its opponent.
Penny Royal had made the massive events it had planned here utterly dependent on the reaction of one simple human. Now that was an incredible arrogance, and a stupid gamble.
The Brockle also realized where the runcible gate to transfer Penny Royal to the sphere was located and understood at once how tightly wrapped were the workings of fate here. Quite obviously it was its destiny to supplant Penny Royal.
Now, more meticulous scanning of the Panarchia system revealed something else. The metals signature of one asteroid was suspicious and, focusing scanners on this object, the Brockle saw a great slablike ship moored to it. Here then was the Azure Whale, the cargo hauler Penny Royal had hijacked and, doubtless, now empty of the three evacuation runcibles it had once contained.
Th
e Brockle’s subminds were more than capable of dealing with the situation here. In fact, over such a small distance it could remain connected to them, at one with them. And, even if some unforeseen event caused some disconnection, they still knew what to do here.
Until it told them otherwise.
Even as it was thinking these things, the Brockle peeled the High Castle away, firing up its fusion drive and accelerated out across the accretion disc. It could U-jump to Panarchia in a moment, but it needed time to make some alterations to itself. Already the ship’s internal factories were starting to make a highly modified version of the kind of drive a U-jump missile contained and, when the first of those was ready, the Brockle dispatched one of its units to have the thing installed. Penny Royal certainly contained something similar in each of its individual parts and this, the Brockle was sure, was the black AI’s only advantage. It could stay on Penny Royal like a bloodhound, disrupt its plans and perhaps push it to rashness by threatening Thorvald Spear. Eventually it would find the stolen runcible gates on Panarchia. Then it would itself go through, supplanting Penny Royal aboard the sphere and ordering its fleet to stand down.
Spear
Flute opened down a ramp door from the weapons cache and we exited that way. As I stepped down ahead of the others I remembered my time here clearly and I suddenly knew, in the pit of my stomach, that I had died here. My memories of being a captive of the prador separated out and consigned themselves to the spine along with all the rest. I felt utterly calm but knew things were going to happen here; answers were now available. As my enviro-boot crunched down on a crust of glass, shattering it like shell ice, something arrived in the spine and thence my mind, fulfilling expectation.
I was the war mind Clovis, trapped in a mile-wide scale of wreckage falling into the chromosphere of a green sun. In the remaining sealed corridors around me the humans were charred bones and oily smoke. My Golem had seized up and my only escape tube was blocked by the wreckage of a prador second-child kamikaze. When the salvage crab snatched me from the fire I felt supremely indifferent, because I had accepted the inevitability of oblivion long ago . . .