by Neal Asher
“It’s becoming common knowledge now,” said the black AI, almost with a mental shrug. “If you’d checked further on your recent visit to the Well Head you would have seen that Owl was in the process of building one. The Brockle has also understood, and they are being built within the Polity even now. It will, however, be many many centuries before they are commonly used, because of the implications of the technology.”
Penny Royal was being chatty.
“I’ll just ask Spear to send his ship to intercept me,” Amistad tried.
“By which time,” the AI replied, “Thorvald Spear and his friends would be dead.”
The comlink extracted and barbs folded without leaving damage, but the experience left Amistad with a profound sense of his own vulnerability. He was obviously part of Penny Royal’s plans and as he considered what he had just been told, he knew for certain the source of those earlier U-signatures. He had to get there first. Immediately he began running the schedule, his internal manufactory at once beginning to make new components to fit in the schematic. He completely powered down his main hardfield generator and began work on it and its backup, disconnecting them because while a lot could be done inside his body, final assembly would have to be performed externally.
Next, turning his attention to his U-space transmitter, he paused, reluctant. This could all, after all, just be a way to disable him completely because, if it didn’t work, by diverting resources in this way, he would have no way of slowing himself down at all. And once he took his transmitter apart he would have no means of talking to anyone. He sent a single U-com request with identifier and it was accepted.
“Well, how did you get out?” asked Flute.
“Long story,” said Amistad, “this is my situation now.” He sent a précis.
After a brief muse over the information, Flute said, “So if the hardfield generator doesn’t work, you want me to intercept you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need some mining equipment.”
It took Amistad a brief moment to get that and he fired up steering thrusters to swing himself round, then his fusion drive to shift his course slightly. Now, rather than punch through the crust of Panarchia, he would slingshot round it—if the new hardfield generator was not a working option, that is. This was risky, because now he’d further limited the time he had available to get the thing working.
“Better,” said Flute. “I can’t get through to Spear at the moment, but Riss tells me she sees no reason why we would not intercept you after this is all over. If we’re all still alive then, that is.”
“Okay, got to go. Work to do.”
Amistad shut down U-com and began taking apart the transmitter. By now the two hardfield generators were completely disconnected, as much in pieces as they could be inside him, and the first of the new components had been installed. He paused, as if to take a breath, and, being unable to stop himself, checked all around for enemies before ordering an opening sequence. His thorax armour divided, then split across five of its segments, hinging open like bomb-bay doors. The first hardfield generator exited, propelled by internal ’structor tentacles: a sphere segmented like an orange into four, held together only by optic and power connections. The second one followed it shortly afterwards, and then the transmitter—a thing like a stack of coins—parted slightly, the gaps between them distorting reality. To a human they would have seemed at once both microns wide and over a foot wide, shortly before said human got a severe headache.
Amistad ordered another opening sequence, still unable to do so without checking all around for enemies. It was instinctive, because now he was as vulnerable as he could be—just as he had been when he had opened himself on Masada to be checked by that forensic AI.
The upper tang on both his claws split lengthways, opened, and extruded further ’structor tentacles and micro-manipulators. Now juggling all the pieces of the puzzle before him, Amistad disassembled them further until they were a glittering cloud. Some parts of this puzzle he fed back inside—their materials turned into other components. By the time that cloud was coming together in one bright intricate mass, he was shooting past Mr Pace’s ship. He noted that its drive was down, no active sensors operating. He tried laser com, but got no response.
Panarchia had visibly expanded by the time his internal factory began feeding out the slivers of a bone-white ceramic meta-material for the outer casing. Quickly fitting these into place, then beginning the laborious task of connecting them together with nanoscopic precision, Amistad eyed the thing completing before him. The white casing made it look more like one of the generators Penny Royal used, but the oblate sphere was a lot flatter. It also possessed an optic port open in its side through which Amistad should be able to control it, and a power socket that seemed far too small.
Amistad installed it inside him in a prepared framework that seemed much too flimsy. Sure, he knew that it didn’t act against the real and that the framework didn’t need to be strong. Sure, he knew that once it was fired it generated its own power from the forces exerted against it. But still he preferred things to be built a lot tougher than this. Finally, he retracted his extra manipulators inside his claws and closed their armour. He then with a feeling of deep relief closed up his thorax armour. Internally the power connection went in, then the optic connection. Data loaded and he understood it. The initial field would be small, so he folded his claws down against his thorax, his legs in and his tail down and in. He folded up like a woodlouse, a pill bug—the main prey of some terran scorpions.
On command, the field generated around him and, probing it with his sensors, he found it good. Whether it would maintain on impact he wasn’t so sure. The energy should route through the much-adapted U-com transmitter, generating a twist in the underlying continuum—a twist that could in turn be bled to strengthen the hardfield. Amistad shut it down, repositioned himself with steering thrusters, then fired up his fusion drive for the heavier burn required this close to the world. While that was ongoing he further checked all he understood about the hardfield and it was only when he was centred on Panarchia again that he saw how, in the mathematics of the thing, it was possible for that U-space twist to go just a bit too far. The result would be Amistad compressed, if but briefly, down into a singularity.
“Forgot to mention that one, Penny Royal?” he muttered.
Then he balled himself, turned the hardfield back on and tried to ignore the calculations. However, his mind just kept working at them. He soon realized that if the full kinetic energy of the impact was converted through the field he was toast or, rather, a brief pinhead of super-dense matter. It wouldn’t. Only direct impact energy would go into the twist while all the tangential energy would go into surrounding environment, just as it had been with that near-indestructible missile he had fired at the High Castle. And there would be lots of it.
Amistad really wished he’d checked his impact point to ensure it wasn’t close to, or right on top of, Thorvald Spear and his party, but as the hardfield glowed and then blackened as it hit atmosphere, he realized it was a little too late.
Blite
Hah, fuck you, thought Blite with satisfaction as he watched the plume of plasma expanding. The perpetrator must have been the alien ship, while under concealment. It represented a danger to them. But still, it was undeniably good to see his and Greer’s tormentor being fried. Greer thought so too.
“Well, bye-bye, the fucking Brockle,” she said.
“Query,” interjected the ship’s mind, “do you refer to the Brockle forensic AI?”
“I do,” began Blite, annoyed that he felt like a naughty child caught in some nefarious act, but he didn’t get a chance to finish. The joyous satisfaction he felt on seeing the destruction of the High Castle fled as something thumped, jerking what he was now mentally calling Prador Lady, and simultaneously seeming to cast a shadow in his mind.
“Intruder
alert!” the ship mind shrieked. “Intruder—”
The screen went blank grey and all the control holograms over the organic console dropped back into it like collapsing skyscrapers. Via his aug Blite now felt the intruder in the ship expanding into his consciousness like a cancer, even as he reached round and snatched up his pulse-rifle. He glanced across at Greer, who looked pale and frightened as she too picked up her weapon and stood.
“No fucking way, not again,” he said.
As they headed for the sphincter door at the back of the bridge, grav went off with a lurch. They managed to propel themselves towards the door and as they got close, it opened. Blite almost wished it hadn’t. The lights dimmed and through his connection he felt the fusion drive gutter out. Other systems were dropping offline too and yet, despite this, the single fusion reactor was ramping up to maximum burn. Something was drawing a massive amount of power, and Blite felt sure he knew precisely what it was.
The dropshaft outside had extruded handholds from its walls. Blite led the way down to the circular chamber below. He could feel it sitting in the body of the ship. Like a cancer. Or a great black hole drawing energy down inside it. As he reached the second sphincter door, which opened into that chamber, he hesitated. The thing was not opening automatically and he wasn’t sure he wanted to activate the touch control beside it.
No. He reached out and pressed his hand into a soft cavity and the sphincter gradually began opening, pausing all the way as it used up the meagre available power. He was invested in this ship now; it was his and he just had to do whatever he could to defend it. Finally, in a rush, the door opened all the way and he pulled himself through.
“Oh hell,” said Greer from close behind him.
Hell indeed, thought Blite.
The great writhing spherical mass was nearly twenty feet across, its base on the floor and its apex touching the ceiling. The Brockle, he could see, had changed. The worm-like units of its shoal body were much bigger now, possessed more hard edges and general solidity, and seemed to contain heavy bulky masses. They seemed less like planarian worms now and more like big heavy eels. The air stank like a machine-shop of hot metal, energy, the exudations of plastics and carbon and the coagulation of meta-materials. Blite shouldered his pulse-rifle then, after a moment, lowered it and inspected its display. The thing had gone cold in his hands, in fact frost was appearing on its surface, and its displays were dead.
“What do you want?” he finally asked.
“I have it,” the Brockle replied, its voice booming in the air as all Blite’s connections to the system went down and even his aug stuttered and died. A moment later that sphere of writhing pseudo-life shifted to the brink of U-space, twisting Blite’s and Greer’s minds, trying to tear them from their skulls. Blite tried to interpret what he was seeing, saw the Brockle briefly poised on the lip of some bottomless pit, closed his eyes. But it didn’t help. A thunderclap sounded, and he was snatched forwards. He knew it was the space the Brockle had occupied collapsing as he found himself tumbling through the air. When he opened his eyes, the forensic AI was gone.
Blite drifted to one wall and caught hold. He felt a tug at his ankle and looked back to see Greer there hanging on.
“Refuelling stop,” she said.
All he could do was nod mutely in agreement. Did the Brockle’s visit mean they were dead? Maybe not, he realized, as his aug’s power-up levels climbed and the lights came up again. A short while later grav began to power up too, and he began to find himself able to open a channel into the ship’s system. He found that the fusion reactor was still functioning.
He and Greer drifted to the floor as grav increased, finally standing facing each other. Blite checked his pulse-rifle. It was still empty; its energy canister somehow drained.
“I really do not want to ever see that fucking thing again,” said Greer.
Blite nodded agreement.
“As I explained,” interjected the ship’s mind, “it is dangerous here. We should leave.”
Blite found himself delighted to hear again its slightly prissy and dogmatic voice. But he replied, “No, not yet.”
20
Spear
“What were the orders?” Riss asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, annoyed that even my experience of Penny Royal’s early time here had been edited for effect.
The experience had been intense, its power beyond anything an unadjusted human mind could withstand. I had understood what it felt like to be an AI, what it felt like to have no choice but to obey orders even though those orders caused so much pain because of my maladjusted emotions. I had experienced the intensity of the relationship between Penny Royal and its dark twin, how they were only separated by slivers of mind crystal and scraps of programming. I had felt what it was like to be a ship, to control such complex systems, to programme nano- and micro-machines to destructively download human beings, and felt the terrible grief of that act. I had learned that a machine could feel things with a depth and intensity far beyond that of a human being. And yet, I did not know the orders that were the cause of all this.
I had to dip into memory again. I had to run this to its conclusion. I was about to do so when a flare trail cut the night sky beyond the mountains ahead. This wasn’t like any meteor. It appeared with a flash, cut down through the night in an instant, piercing cloud where it turned red, and another flash ensuing beyond those peaks.
“What was that?” Sepia asked.
I glanced at Riss, who, just like me, had experienced the war. The snake drone gazed back at me, black eye open, then turned to gaze back towards that flash.
“That looked like an orbital railgun strike,” I said.
“It was not,” said Riss. “That was a friend arriving.”
I was just about to query that when the sound and the blast wave arrived. The roar was intense and just too familiar in this place with my history here. A wind picked up dust and debris to blast them past and sent Sepia and me staggering, while Riss coiled around a rock.
“Friend?” I asked, as the wind began to die.
“We’re in trouble,” said the drone, now turning her head to gaze back the way we had come.
From where we stood I could no longer see the plain or the Lance, but that anvil of cloud had drawn closer, dark and ominous, almost like a giant wave bearing down on us. At first I could see nothing, then spotted flecks of light shoaling before that breast of cloud. Via my aug, I initiated image enhancement in my visor, picked those flecks out in a frame and focused in. The things gleamed there, reflecting the light from the glow along the horizon, from Layden’s Sink lying beyond.
“That’s no life form I remember being here,” I said.
They looked like metallic moray eels swimming in the sky, as if chaotically picking up floating titbits. But they organized, the whole shoal aligning, with every eel body parallel to every other one, then they swung like a thousand compass needles to point directly towards us so that each, from our perspective, turned into a metallic nub. Figures flickered below the frame and from them and, as magnification adjusted, I knew these things were now heading straight towards us.
“That is the Brockle,” said Riss.
“Shit,” I said. “What does it want with us?”
“Amistad is updating me . . .”
“Amistad?” I then understood that the earlier light we had seen must have been the scorpion drone arriving in some spectacular fashion.
“We know the Brockle went rogue,” said Riss. “After seizing control of the High Castle, it . . . oh damn it. Too slow!”
An AI package arrived in my mind with the force of a punch. Sepia let out a gasp even from the bleed-over but I could now handle such communications easily. I updated. I learned about what Room 101 had become and where it was going. I learned about the Well Head and the data issuing from it, the possible temporal rift and
Penny Royal’s attempt to seek redemption and how, in the end, so much was dependent on me.
“This is crazy,” I said. “If Penny Royal wants something like this from me, then why would it allow us to be endangered like this?”
“Let the die fall where it may,” whispered a voice in my mind and right then I couldn’t tell whether it had issued from Penny Royal or from me. I unshouldered the straps keeping the spine to my back and held it out before me, gazed again at the approaching entity and reached out towards it.
I would just shut it down. As I could shut down Riss, and as I could shut down Penny Royal itself.
But no, the Brockle squirmed in my grasp, its consciousness distributed among its many parts, leaving no single entity—nothing I could grasp. Then I was away, falling into the past.
And I was my Dark Child and me, and both of us fracturing further as the massive acceleration, deceleration and ten-thousand-gravity evasive manoeuvres developed cracks in our crystal. I was our disrupted mind as we made two unbalanced U-jumps and saw, internally, the crystal recordings of our crew fracturing to powder—dead truly.
Over Panarchia we hit atmosphere, breaking inside, slowing fast over eight thousand Polity soldiers gazing hopefully at the skies. In those same skies, human in some small part, in the present. I saw a scorpion shape etched red against the stars, spewing missiles and probing with twinned particle beams. Wormish creatures burning . . .
Look at the orders . . .
It was why I had been told to preserve, at all costs, that part of my weapons cache. Even as my being shattered, I made a tactical assessment of the best distribution, the surest way to ensure that every human down there died, even those in the outlying scouting parties, like that one over there, with its bio-espionage expert Thorvald Spear . . .