Orbus

by Neal Asher

‘That I can still obtain a response from your U-space communicator means you have disobeyed me,’ says someone. Vrell studies the complex pheromonal signature and, though recognizing some of the organic compounds as having a Prador as their source, know these are but a small proportion of the whole.

  ‘Father,’ replies Vrost, ‘I wish to ascertain that Vrell has either died aboard this ship or still remains aboard it when I detonate.’

  So, that signature is King Oberon’s. Vrell studies it more intently, identifying those same distortions he saw in the signature of that member of the King’s Guard, but seeing even further distortions and a huge complexity that goes way beyond any mutation he has so far observed or himself experienced. However, does this mean anything more than that the King is making sure his signature is difficult to copy? Vrell feels it does. He does not know how old Vrost or any of the Guard here are, but certainly the King is over seven hundred years old. Who could know what he has become in that length of time?

  ‘If you had detonated, as instructed,’ replies Oberon, ‘Vrell would certainly have been inside. Obviously, throughout the long period of your watch over Spatterjay, you have gained a degree of independence from me and are able to disobey. This is now more than evident since the remote detonation code I sent to your ship from here has not worked.’

  ‘Father, Vrell cannot escape.’

  ‘Have you at least disabled all the U-space escape pods? Please tell me that you were able to follow that simple order?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  Vrell allows himself a Prador smile, which consists of twisting his mandibles to a particular angle normally used to gut a certain kind of crustacean considered a delicacy on homeworld. He is ambitious for a lot more than simple survival, and did not even consider taking that escape route; he will seize control of this ship or die.

  ‘Presently we are searching for traces of his remains, since he—’

  The King interrupts. ‘I have studied the data. You will find no traces, for Vrell is almost certainly still alive, and probably even now somewhere near you.’

  In the midst of this conversation comes a spurt of a very complex code. Vrell studies it intently but finds himself struggling to make any sense of it. He works at it harder, applying more and more of his mental capacity. Slowly he begins to make some headway and realizes that, oddly, this intricate code only contains a very simple message.

  ‘So, Vrell, doubtless you have intercepted this.’

  Vrell suddenly feels very insecure and rises up higher on his legs, unclipping his particle cannon.

  Oberon continues, ‘Despite my constant cautions to Vrost, he has become both arrogant and independent. He does not realize what you are and that, now you are aboard his ship, he cannot hope to survive. Though he disabled my option to destroy his ship remotely, he will certainly attempt to destroy both himself and his ship the moment your nanite penetrates his seals. But that’s not enough, is it?’

  Thinking very fast, Vrell yanks the optic interface away. But he is not quick enough, for the virus the King now sends propagates through his CPU and blooms on the screen of his mask. His mind, having been closely applied to the previous code so as to uncover the message, is therefore receptive to the thing that now enters through his eyes and penetrates his brain. Vrell tries to control a sudden impulse to turn the particle cannon upon himself, then tries to disrupt the self-assembling worm in his head that starts his limbs jerking while it causes other organic reactions actually inside his body.

  Managing to swing the cannon across he fires upon two particular superconducting cables, severing them so that their massive discharge of power arcs towards the floor. Knocking his mask aside, he directs his lower turret eyes at the hideously intense arc-light of the discharge, and shrieks as the front of his head smokes and his optic nerves burn out. Now, seeing only with his palp eyes, he closes a claw around the optics before him, tears them free, then smashes that same claw into the casing of one of the components of the Sanctum’s distributed computer network. That should now delay any destruct signal Vrost might send.

  The worm in Vrell’s head, disrupted by the intense flash of light and the pain, starts to fall apart, and he shuts down selected parts of his mind to ensure this, though the rest of his mind notches up a number of gears and starts operating so fast it feels like it is beginning to burn. All the schematics he has memorized come to the forefront of his consciousness: all he understands about Prador technology, the materials of the ship around him, in fact just about everything he knows resurfaces for conscious perception, and he processes it to find a solution.

  Swivelling round, Vrell reaches up and tears off the casing of another of those computer components, then tries to bring his limbs sufficiently under control so that he can reach inside with a small abrading tool clutched in one of his manipulatory hands. Finally, with delicate precision, he cuts across two miniature gold wires and presses them together, before turning again to grab up one of the superconducting cables by its insulating layer and then slam it into the side of a hydraulic fluid reservoir. Now he fires the particle cannon beyond the same container; aiming precise shots at twenty-three different locations on the wall, before hurling himself at it. The panel, its twenty-three rivets incinerated, collapses under his charge, and he falls through and down towards the floor twenty feet below. Even as he falls, he opens fire on the King’s Guard standing at the end of the corridor, concentrating on the magazine of a missile-launcher strapped on its back. The subsequent detonation slams the Guard into the side wall, but Vrell’s aim does not waver even as he lands, and further detonations send the armoured Prador tumbling further down the corridor, where it comes to rest, probably still alive but with its suit’s systems knocked out and the nanite doubtless already penetrating various damaged seals.

  Vrell spins towards the big heavy doors of the Captain’s Sanctum and watches as, despite Vrost’s efforts to make sure they stay firmly closed, the doors begin to vibrate. Simple hydraulics: the power surging into the reservoir is heating it up and expanding the fluid, forcing it the wrong way against valves, then something finally gives and high-pressure fluid slams into the door cylinders, and the doors crash open. But, even as Vrell hurls himself forwards, some part of the worm still inside his head collapses into a different shape. It loses its impetus and becomes simply a message.

  ‘Next time, then, Vrell,’ says the King of the Prador Third Kingdom. ‘But now I’ll allow you to deliver my displeasure to Vrost.’

  It takes away some of the pleasure of victory for Vrell to know that his real opponent is possibly even more lethal than himself.

  Gazing up through the hollow core of Harper’s Cylinder, towards internal elevator tubes and a stair winding up around the internal wall, Orbus surmises that this cylinder was once the spin section of a very old ship–one built before grav-technology advanced sufficiently to become usable. Now, as part of this space station, it is like a tower block with grav operating from the lower end and with all sorts of commercial establishments lining the interior. Smith’s front office–with access to the storage area he owns, which is positioned just outside the Cylinder–lies somewhere near the top. However, Orbus has some business to conduct first at a place halfway up.

  ‘There’s a drone watching us,’ says Drooble.

  Experiencing a moment of déjà vu, Orbus glances at his companion, then follows his gaze up and over to one side. There is indeed a drone up there, one made in the shape of a seahorse and presently clinging to the stair rail by its tail, but whether it is actually watching them is debatable. Now studying the thing, Orbus feels it is somehow familiar, but then everything possesses a degree of familiarity once you’ve been knocking about for over seven hundred years. More likely this is something Smith himself sent to watch them and, hopefully, that is all the two behind them are here for too.

  ‘Iannus,’ he says, ‘I think we should worry more about them.’ Orbus stabs a thumb over his shoulder at the tw
o rather large individuals who have been trailing them since shortly after they boarded this station.

  There is something he very much does not like about the way they move: a sort of wooden gait but with no unnecessary movement of any other parts of their bodies. He suspects they might be early-series Golem or some other make of android, but something niggles at his memory, some rather black areas of his memory.

  Drooble glances over his shoulder at their two shadows. ‘Do you reckon we should go and have a word with them?’

  Orbus heads for one of the elevator shafts. He doesn’t like drop-shafts but this should be okay because at least he’ll have something solid under his feet. ‘What will be achieved by having a word with them?’ He hits the call button and the doors ahead slide open. Stepping inside with Drooble close behind him, he quickly selects the floor he requires. The two big men pick up their pace, and Orbus studies them more closely through the still open doors. Both of them wear long heavy coats, baggy trousers and large boots. They also wear gloves, and pork-pie hats pulled low on their foreheads, and though gazing directly at both Orbus and Drooble, their meaty features express a kind of dead indifference. Orbus feels something crawl up his spine and for a moment that errant memory nearly surfaces. Then the elevator doors close, and he and Drooble are whisked upwards through Harper’s Cylinder.

  Arriving at the floor they want, Orbus soon locates their first destination by the Anglic script scrawled above the double chain-glass doors, and even as he heads over, the doors slide open at his approach.

  ‘Captain,’ says the individual inside as, with a sigh of exoskel-etal motors, she stands up from a very old-fashioned computer console. ‘You will understand, I hope, if I don’t shake your hand?’

  Her skin is a yellowish orange, her long hair a silvery white, while her eyes possess a metallic glitter. Even the bulk of her exo-skeleton cannot disguise how thin she is, for she is an Outlinker: a Human adapted to living in zero gravity, usually aboard one of the outlink stations that border the Polity. People like her can survive for an appreciable time in vacuum, being able to store a great deal of oxygen inside them and seal their bodies against zero pressure. However, her bones and muscles possess very little strength, so her fear of an Old Captain’s handshake is utterly comprehensible.

  ‘Not a problem, Reander,’ says Orbus with rote politeness, before reaching into his carry-all to pull out the ship’s slab.

  She points to a small round table beside her console, then turns her attention towards Drooble, who is peering down into a glass-topped display box.

  ‘If you see anything you’re interested in, I’m sure I can give you a special price,’ she informs him.

  The place is packed with hardware stowed on shelves that retreat into cobwebby darkness, while the mezzanine floor above, with steel stairs leading up to it, is stacked to the ceiling with boxes. There seems likely to be something here to excite interest in just about anyone.

  While Reander is using an optic cable to connect the ship’s slab to her console, Orbus eyes a large reinforced-chainglass machete. He doesn’t require such an item to chop through the thick dingle of Spatterjay, but something deep down is telling him it might come in very useful, and soon.

  ‘Iannus,’ he warns. ‘Keep an eye out.’ He nods towards the door, and Drooble heads over that way, ostensibly to study a display case full of laser lighters just beside it.

  Reander watches this exchange just for a moment, then returns her attention to the screen. ‘Dear oh dear, that ship is full of junk,’ she observes. ‘However, I think we can do business on at least some of the cargo.’

  Orbus steps up beside her, trying not to notice how she flinches away from him, and peers at the ship’s manifest currently displayed on her screen. Upon first boarding the Gurnard, he had taken a stroll through the grav-plated areas of the hold and been astounded at the sheer quantity of goods stored there, also by their variety and, in many cases, their sheer age. Some of the stuff is even in the process of making the transition from junk to antique. And yet the grav-plated areas of the hold contain only half the total available storage space.

  ‘These.’ Reander highlights some of the cargoes on the list: fifty tons of Bishop’s World onyx and three crates of toy pulse-guns. This space station couldn’t possibly have a use for such a quantity of onyx, but doubtless she has a customer to sell it on to who will then transport it elsewhere. Though curious about its possible destination, the Captain does not let this concern him too much. He picks up the ship’s slab and, so Reander cannot see, checks the minimum price these two cargoes must be sold for, adds 20 per cent, and allows the price to display on her screen. She sighs and they begin the ancient Human pastime of haggling, but the Captain’s heart isn’t in it and he soon lets her buy the goods for only 5 per cent above minimum.

  ‘So what can you tell me about Smith Storage?’ he asks, as she now sits down to carefully work her way through the rest of the manifest.

  She glances up. ‘Still got problems with that carapace?’

  She herself was the intermediary aboard Montmartre who found a place for that item to be stored.

  ‘Still got problems,’ Orbus confirms.

  ‘That’s odd.’ She frowns. ‘Anyway, that question is one being asked a lot around here lately.’ Now she does look up. ‘They’ve been in business for only a year, but they’ve bought up a lot of station space and have been bringing in a lot of goods, yet they don’t seem to do much business. They did, apparently, sell the new exotic armour you can see out there to the station owners, and they’ve done a bit of smaller trading, like with your particular item, but it still doesn’t seem enough to cover their expenses.’

  ‘What’s the general station consensus on them?’

  ‘They’re arms traders who’ve been sold a special licence to operate from here, or they’re a big Polity concern preparing to move into the Graveyard, or they’re a Separatist cover company, or else they’re the owners, the Layden-Smiths themselves, gradually reacquiring full control of the station.’ Reander now begins highlighting various food cargoes held in stasis.

  ‘Your own opinion?’

  ‘The last,’ she says. ‘Business has picked up in the Graveyard over the last twenty years and I reckon the owners want a bigger share of the profits. They’ve been operating for a long time so they’ll have the contacts, and I also don’t think it’s coincidental that the new concern is called Smith Storage.’ She shrugs. ‘It seems a sensible move–though I still don’t get why they’re being so awkward about one Prador carapace.’

  After a pause she adds, ‘It seems they undercut all the other storage companies to get the business.’

  ‘Cap’n,’ interrupts Drooble.

  ‘They here?’

  ‘Just the drone.’

  ‘Keep watching.’

  ‘You’re being followed.’ Reander abruptly stands up. ‘I’ve got just a small business here and, for readily apparent physical reasons, I cannot afford to get involved in anything nasty. The station grabship will head over to the Gurnard for the items we’ve agreed upon. You’ll now inform your ship AI?’

  Orbus taps a finger briefly against the ship’s slab, before unplugging it and dropping it back in his bag. ‘Already done–there’s a direct link.’ Abruptly he realizes it wouldn’t be fair on her if those two heavies broke in here and caused a problem, for minor violence that might bloody any normal person’s nose could crush her skull. ‘One last question?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she says.

  ‘Cymbeline’s agent delivered the carapace to you for storage. Do you know what happened to him afterwards?’

  She shrugs. ‘He left–that’s all I know.’

  Turning towards the door, Orbus pauses by the chainglass machete. ‘How much for this?’

  Reander walks over, meanwhile pulling a plastic sheath and shoulder strap for the blade from the shelf behind. Tossing them to him she says, ‘Take it with my compliments–I was always nervous about having that thin
g in here anyway.’

  Orbus picks up the big blade and weighs it in his hand. Reander cringes back, so he slides it into its sheath, nods to her briefly and departs.

  The little survey ship is not even concealed behind any shielding, merely docked at one of the Layden-Smiths’ private docks. It is a simple bullet-shaped craft with a small hold and exterior twinned U-engine nacelles, of the kind used all across the Polity, so Sniper would not have even bothered scanning it had he not noticed the damage. The vessel has been hit with a high-intensity laser burst from the dock’s defences, the beam punching through the hull in a very particular area to the rear of the crew compartment. Here, the old war drone knows, was almost certainly where the ship’s AI, if it had one, would be positioned. Scanning inside the vessel, he sees that it had indeed possessed an AI, but that entity is now merely a slag of shattered and molten crystal. Scanning further, he finds that the rest of the crew has done no better.

  ‘The survey vessel belongs to Charles Cymbeline’s agent in this area,’ Gurnard confirms, after Sniper tight-beams an update back out of the station.

  ‘Well,’ says Thirteen, also listening in, ‘that solves one riddle.’

  ‘And he’s still aboard,’ Sniper replies.

  The corpse in question is well on the way to skeletonhood, but Sniper possesses more than enough knowledge of human anatomy and forensics to know what has been done to him, especially when taking into account certain other items scattered on the floor about his feet. Someone glued him to a wall and tortured him. They used an autodoc on him, so they could deliver the maximum amount of pain and still keep him alive. They used psychotropics, pain inducers and a good old-fashioned bit of bone breaking and electrocution, and even relieved him of all his fingernails. The final finesse was the use of a specially-adapted augmentation to ream out his mind. Obviously, whoever did this wanted to learn everything the agent knew about something, and there is no doubt they obtained that information. As for the rest of the crew, they received similar treatment. Only one was not interrogated, for quite likely it was essential to take him out of action as quickly as possible. And how.