Orbus

by Neal Asher

  Orbus continues to gaze pensively upon the blackness, until a sudden light glares up from below, whereupon he peers down to watch an entire world rise into view, with their destination, the Ariel space station, silhouetted before it like a massive iron cathedral displaced into vacuum.

  Back on Spatterjay his mutually sordid relationship with his crew came to an end when a renegade Prador called Vrell, who had been hiding under the sea for ten years, sank the captain’s ship and kidnapped the lot of them to turn into slaves. They were thralled–implanted with Prador enslaving technology–and then forced to work upon the wrecked spaceship that once belonged to Vrell’s father. But something else happened too for, deprived of certain essential nutrients, Orbus and his crew came close to being transformed by the Spatterjay virus infecting them into irretrievably unhuman creatures. Later rescued and fed the required diet, they returned to Humanity. In Orbus’s case, it was a return to an earlier self, one not quite so bitter and sadistic. However, now he wonders about the permanence of that change; and if habits acquired over centuries are so easy to banish.

  ‘So who is it we’re here to see?’ Drooble asks.

  ‘One of the co-owners of this ship, a certain Charles Cym-beline.’

  ‘So y’gonna stay with it?’

  ‘It’s a second chance for us, Iannus,’ replies Orbus succinctly.

  After being rescued back on Spatterjay, he knew he had to get away. He had lost his sailing ship, even his love of inflicting pain, and the majority of his crew had undergone a transformation similar to his own–in their case losing their love of the pain he inflicted, which was the only thing that made them feel alive. Staying in that familiar environment, he knew he could easily fall back into his old pointless existence, so when Captain Ron offered him the position of Captain aboard this spaceship it seemed sensible enough to accept, but now he is having second thoughts. During this first crossing from one star system to another, there seemed altogether too much time for reflection…too much time for nightmare memories to resurface.

  ‘You have permission to dock, Captain,’ states a sepulchral voice. ‘Do you wish to take this vessel in yourself?’

  ‘You do it, Gurnard,’ Orbus replies. ‘It seems pointless me relieving you of a task that you can perform well enough alone.’

  He has wondered what was even the point of an AI-controlled ship like this having a Human, or nominally Human, Captain. He himself isn’t needed to pilot it, and many of his tasks just seem like make-work. However, during some long conversations with Gurnard, he has begun to discover there is more to it than that. The AI controls handler and maintenance robots, and one or two survey drones, and though they can deal with much inside the ship, there is also much they cannot manage. Some cargo items require special handling, even certain maintenance, sometimes feeding. Whenever the Gurnard reaches port, Orbus’s job will be to leave the ship and deal with the officialdom at those destinations that aren’t themselves AI-controlled. Also there is the task of obtaining new cargoes, or securing payment from reluctant recipients of existing cargo. All those Human interractions to consider…However, these do not seem like jobs for a Captain, and with some technological upgrades, Gurnard could probably handle them. He rather thinks that, this being a privately owned vessel, someone like himself is the cheaper option. He also knows that AIs often deliberately include Human crews simply for company, to keep them grounded, to keep them from disconnecting totally from the material world. And then he wonders if he and Drooble are really the best choice for that role.

  The Gurnard shudders slightly and, back towards his right, Orbus glimpses a glare of white light as a fusion drive ignites, then knives of blue flame from steering thrusters. The space station swings around until it lies directly at the ship’s nose, thus visible in neither of the adjacent big eye windows, though now centred on the viewing screen positioned on the wall opposite the Captain’s large reinforced chair. Orbus wanders over and plumps himself down in it, whilst Drooble takes the seat positioned inside a horseshoe console just to the left of him. From here, in the unlikely event that the ship AI should cease to function, they can control the ship, though the option of dropping it into U-space would be lost to them.

  As they draw closer to the space station, it grows and grows until once again visible in both eye windows. Checking some readings on a touch-screen that flips up from the ship’s slab currently resting on the arm of his chair, Orbus is amazed to see they are still a hundred miles away from the space dock.

  ‘Big old place,’ comments Drooble.

  Orbus is impressed because, as he understands it, Ariel Station is, in Polity terms, considered a rather provincial and unimportant place. For many centuries he was not really paying much attention to events or progress away from his homeworld, or really anywhere beyond his old sailing ship, the Vignette. Obviously quite a lot has changed since, and maybe he now has the chance to make some remarkable discoveries. Perhaps being the Captain aboard this ship might really be a good thing for him, after all? Perhaps.

  After some minutes, the forward fusion drive ignites, underscoring all their views with its white glare and lighting up the station ahead, then, as that cuts out, they come in over a massive platform and slide underneath what looks like a series of Gothic arches fashioned of iron. Beyond this the ship eases into a great quadrate framework, steering thrusters firing rapidly to position it. About them are docked other ships, though mostly of a more immediately functional design than the Gurnard. Snaking between them, from big fuel tanks, umbilici twine like vines, and docking tubes run to station access points hanging amidst this tangle, like great metal flower bulbs on thick stalks. With a crash and a shudder the ship halts, and echoing through its interior can be heard the sound of the station’s docking hardware engaging.

  Orbus finds himself urged to his feet by an unaccustomed excitement, and for a very brief moment feels truly alive without there being any pain involved, either that of others or his own. He picks up the ship’s slab from the chair arm, its texture like slate against his calloused fingers, then turns to Drooble. ‘Remember, these people ain’t Hoopers, so be careful with them. They’re delicate.’

  Drooble grins weirdly and nods. Orbus studies him for a moment, not convinced that this crewman has lost his love of pain, and feeling certain he is neither safe nor stable, then heads out the back of the bridge located in the Gurnard’s head, Drooble trailing along behind him.

  ‘A representative of Charles Cymbeline will be waiting for you by the drop-shafts at the far end of First Port Concourse,’ intones Gurnard. ‘You will require no paperwork or other verifications of identity, since all the required information has already been forwarded from Spatterjay.’

  That gives Orbus pause for thought as he wonders just what information about him has been sent. It isn’t as if either his history or his reputation is particularly good.

  The spine corridor actually curves down into the main body of the ship, but because the floor is grav-plated that curve cannot be perceived. A twenty-minute walk brings them to a point behind the Gurnard’s head, from which they take a side corridor leading to one of the airlock stations in the ship’s docking ring. Drooble starts whistling tunelessly through his teeth; a sound that in previous centuries always annoyed Orbus, but which he now forces himself to ignore. Through the airlock they enter a ribbed docking tube, then after that pass through another lock into a brightly lit cylindrical room, where a reception committee awaits.

  ‘Your name is Jericho Lamal Orbus,’ states the Golem.

  Captain Orbus gazes at this machine fashioned in the shape of a Human, and surmises it is a late-series model, then he eyes the eight port-security officers standing behind it. They wear what look like bulky envirosuits but which he guesses, by the odd bulges here and there and by the cyber-assisted gauntlets, must incorporate exoskeletal armour. They also carry slammer rifles and wear pepperpot stunguns holstered at their hips. They certainly aren’t taking any chances with him, but then again
, why should they? His reputation has preceded him.

  ‘Haven’t heard my full name in a long time,’ he says, chest tightening.

  ‘Bit of an odd name, if you ask me,’ comments Drooble, at his side.

  Orbus glares at him, resisting the impulse to slam the back of one hand across the man’s face, and Drooble grins back at him. The Golem studies both of them but, not having heard their previous exchange about names, is left guessing. Orbus returns his attention to the machine-man in front of him.

  The Golem, who appears just as big and heavily muscled as Orbus himself, shrugs briefly. ‘We obtained your full name from records that pre-date the destruction of Imbretus Station, but obviously what concerns us most here is the information forwarded to us about your life after that event.’

  Orbus does not remember much from the time before the Prador seized Imbretus Station and herded himself and so many other Human captives aboard their ship. He knows that, because they subsequently hit the station’s reactors with particle beams, the destruction was so complete that no one in the Polity even realized that captives had been taken. Of course, during the height of the war the AIs could not spare the resources for a rescue, but that did not leaven the bitterness he still feels. The brutality and horror of the ensuing journey is never completely clear in his memory, but it gives him nightmares even now, seven centuries later. He knows that he did terrible things in order to be one of the few survivors to reach Spatterjay alive, where he and those remaining were handed over to the pirate called Jay Hoop. And, once on the planet he now calls home, he clearly remembers being made to walk through tanks of leeches to ensure he was infected by the Spatterjay virus and, later, other unsavoury games.

  ‘Would that be directly afterwards?’ he asks, peering down at his right hand, which has begun shaking. ‘I don’t think there was much recorded about that time.’

  Humans thus infected by the alien virus became incredibly tough and practically immortal, but Jay Hoop wasn’t giving this to them as a gift; he was simply ensuring they were durable enough to withstand coring and thralling, a process whereby most of their cerebrum was chopped out and replaced by Prador thrall technology. All the Human captives were destined to become mindless slaves of the Prador. Orbus himself managed to avoid that process, but still hates to recollect, even vaguely, the things he did in order to survive until ECS police action on Spatterjay freed him and many like him after the war was over.

  ‘Our greatest concern is your more recent record–namely information recorded since Spatterjay has been under the remit of an AI warden.’

  ‘Spatterjay is not a Polity world,’ Orbus growls, ‘so anything that happened there is the province of those who rule it.’ Old Captains, like himself, and the living sails that occupy the spars of their ships.

  The Golem nods polite agreement. ‘I am not here to arrest you, or to hold you to account for anything you did on your homeworld. I am merely here to deliver a warning.’

  Orbus folds his arms to still their shaking, the ship slab still clutched in one hand.

  The Golem continues, ‘Whilst you are here aboard Ariel you will be watched very closely, and if you attack anyone, if you resort to violence of any kind, we fully understand that we cannot afford to limit our response. You are one of the original Old Captains, and we are well aware of your capabilities.’

  Orbus closes his eyes and dips his head in thought for a moment. Steady, even breaths. Steady. ‘I get you, but that seems a bit unfair. What if someone attacks me?’

  The Golem ventures an amused grin as Orbus looks up again. ‘Old Captain Orbus, I don’t think we have anyone aboard who would be that suicidal.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Orbus. ‘Message understood.’

  The Golem turns and nods to his fellow security officers, and they begin to filter away towards the drop-shaft at the rear of the room.

  ‘What’s your name, sonny?’ Orbus asks the Golem.

  ‘Triax,’ the Golem replies.

  ‘Well, Triax,’ says Orbus through clenched teeth, ‘you might find this hard to believe, but I’m a reformed character now. You won’t get any trouble from me.’

  The sincerity of that statement is somewhat undermined by crewman Drooble’s snigger.

  The Prador Vrell is now hardly recognizable as one of its own kind. The transforming effect of the Spatterjay virus has converted this new adult from an enormous crablike creature with a body shaped like a vertically flattened pear into something much more sleek and dangerous-looking, almost evil. His colouring, once a combination of purple and yellow, is now entirely black. His carapace has grown disc-shaped, with the concave surface underneath nearly following the convex line of his back. His visual turret–at what was once the apex of the pear shape–and his mouthparts have detached from his main body and now extend on a long muscular neck, while his numerous limbs are longer and sharper. However, none of this is visible at the moment for, now aboard the ship the Prador King sent to hunt him down, precisely because he knew Vrell was likely to make such a transformation, he is concealed inside thick and heavy armour.

  When Vrell tore out the previous occupant of this metal outer shell, he discovered it possessed a body shape vaguely similar to his own. It seemed that the Prador, the ‘King’s Guard’ aboard Captain Vrost’s massive dreadnought, had also been transformed by the Spatterjay virus, but wore armour whose exterior appearance more closely matched the normal shape of their kind. They were all part of the Prador King’s extended family, while Vrell’s crime was simply one of genetics. He isn’t part of that family and, with the viral transformation also producing a massive increase in his intelligence, the King considers him too dangerous to live.

  The King is right.

  As Vrell clatters through the wide corridors of the huge vessel, he pauses to eye a collapsed King’s Guard who is clad in armour like himself. It possesses the exterior shape of armour worn by a sizeable first-child, but Vrell knows that what lies inside is a second-child heavily mutated like himself. It seems that only because, throughout his own transformation, he was severely starved can he manage to fit himself into the same-size armour, for he is a mutated adult.

  The fallen Prador waves a claw weakly as oily smoke trickles from its armour’s vents. Vrell has seen others like this still showing signs of life, but they are in the process of dying and many more are already dead. The replicating nanite he fashioned to destroy the nervous systems of those with a particular genetic code–their genetic code, not his–has been very very effective, but Vrell does not intend to allow himself any complacency. Though most of the King’s Guard switched from their armour’s air supply as soon as they arrived aboard, and thus started breathing in the nanite, there is no guarantee all of them did so, and certainly there will be those still working in damaged areas open to vacuum who did not. Also there is the matter of how fast the nanite spread. If any fast-thinking individual had acted quickly enough, many areas of the ship might easily have been sealed off. And then there is the Captain himself. It seems likely that, shortly after the ship dropped into U-space, Vrost would have ascertained something was seriously wrong and sealed off the Captain’s Sanctum.

  At the end of the corridor, a drop-shaft leads down into the ship’s bowels where the Sanctum is located. The shaft is currently not functional, but whether that is due to the recent damage Vrell inflicted on the ship by crashing his own craft into it at Spatterjay, or to some security measure, he is uncertain. He hesitates. Enthusiastic after his success with the virus, it was his intention to head straight for the Sanctum–but maybe that is not such a good idea. If Vrost has not succumbed, he will now be totally on his guard and doubtless in control of some lethal security measures.

  Entering the shaft, the ship’s schematics already memorized from his armour’s CPU feed, Vrell rapidly clambers upwards. The pull from various grav sections of the ship is disorientating, but not enough to slow him down, for he knows he could be in danger here. Massive gravity immediately engages within the
shaft, an irised gravity field slamming down upon him like a falling boulder, but he throws himself up against it and in a moment drags himself away from its pull and into another corridor.

  ‘So, you survived,’ a familiar voice observes.

  ‘Are you a child, Vrost?’ Vrell enquires, meanwhile considering other schematics of this ship, the likely death toll aboard and the presently recorded damage, and then beginning to formulate his plans. Ever since boarding, he has been running his armour’s CPU at maximum capacity and rapidly absorbing information in audio, visual and pheromonal form. He now, if his guess about Vrost is correct, probably knows more about this ship than its Captain, though not the secret security protocols of course.

  ‘So you are not a child,’ Vrost remarks, his tone deliberately devoid of emotion.

  So, thinks Vrell. I now understand the situation fully. King Oberon was the first adult Prador to have been transformed by the Spatterjay virus. The Prador dying around Vrell are the King’s second-children and third-children, also transformed but still fully controlled by Oberon. Also, considering the sheer number of the ‘King’s Guard’ spread throughout the Third Kingdom, Oberon must also have found a way to continue breeding such useful offspring.

  ‘You are a first-child,’ Vrell decides.

  Though all of the King’s children have been similarly transformed, Vrell realizes that the change in them is not exactly the same as in him, being an adult. Vrost has made errors he himself would not make–because Vrost is simply not as intelligent. Only the King, Oberon, is therefore Vrell’s equal. However, it would be stupid to underestimate Vrost, so what would Vrell do now if he was currently in the Captain’s situation?

  Working with his present knowledge of the ship, Vrell begins making a statistical analysis. It seems likely that with the damage the vessel sustained, at least a hundred of the Guard are currently in secure armour, while making repairs in the evacuated sections. Judging by the speed of the nanite dispersal, and Vrost’s likely reaction time, a further two hundred would probably have managed to close up their armour in time to save themselves. Vrost, being a first-child, should have little regard for his personal safety, and so will have sent all the remaining Guard in pursuit of Vrell. Then there is another problem: the war drones aboard this ship, being run by the frozen brains of adolescent Prador, will all have survived as well. The situation, he feels, is about to get a little fraught.