by Neal Asher
‘Um,’ remarks Sniper to both Gurnard and Thirteen, ‘seems there’s something around here capable of tearing apart a Golem android.’
‘I think I can guess who did that,’ says Thirteen.
‘Enlighten me.’
Thirteen sends him an image of two large and bulky individuals climbing into a lift. ‘I thought there was something funny about them and, judging by the looks he was giving them, Orbus does too.’
‘And what exactly is funny about them?’ enquires Gurnard.
Thirteen changes the image to an X-ray view. Where in normal humans only the bones would now be visible, along with any metal items carried about their persons, these two are only reduced to translucence. However, it is possible to see the hardware sitting inside their skulls and the threads of metal spearing down their spines. Sniper at once recognizes what these two are, and knows that two of them certainly could manage to tear apart a Golem android.
‘Warn the Captain about them,’ Gurnard instructs.
‘Without getting into debates about who I am and why I’m here?’ Thirteen asks.
‘I think things have moved beyond that,’ says Gurnard, ‘but try to be subtle.’
‘Subtle, right,’ says Thirteen. ‘Yeah, I remember subtle.’
Outside Reander’s establishment, Drooble stabs a finger towards where the seahorse drone is still hovering above the entrance to the elevator shaft. Orbus nods as he continues over, then, before stepping into the elevator, peers up at the drone and asks, ‘What do you want?’
‘Many many things,’ replies Thirteen. ‘But right now I want to know why so much of this station is shielded, and why two very old men, who once made a brief and traumatic visit to Spatterjay, are keeping tabs on you.’
‘Two very old men?’ Drooble queries, but in Orbus the memory finally surfaces and he now knows precisely who the two heavies are–or, rather, what they were. It is as if someone has just slapped him, slapped him harder than anyone has been able to manage for centuries. Hearing an odd creaking sound, he realizes it is the noise of his own muscles tightening up like knots of steel cable.
‘Anything else you want to know?’ Orbus asks the drone.
‘I’d like to know why a Prador carapace is so important. I’d like to know why Smith Storage, which is, as Reander Asiera guessed, a concern started up by the owners of this station, is bringing in a lot of cargo but transporting none out, and why the owners themselves–the five descendants of the original Layden-Smith family–haven’t been seen for over a year.’
‘And why do you want to know these things?’
‘Because I work for Gurnard and I’m here to back you up.’
Orbus stares at the drone, not sure whether to be amused or angry, then steps into the elevator after Drooble and selects the floor on which Smith Storage lies. Stepping out from the elevator upon arrival, he is greeted at once by the sight of the two heavies waiting on either side of a quite possibly genuine wooden door. Switching his heirodont-hide bag to his left hand, he thereby frees up his right hand and keeps it up ready by his left shoulder, within easy reach of the machete now strapped across his back. He knows that these two will not notice something so obvious as this, though perhaps whoever is looking through their eyes will.
‘Is Mr Smith in?’ he enquires as they reach the door.
‘Fuck,’ says Drooble abruptly.
Orbus glances at him, realizing he’s just caught on. Neither of the two heavies responds, though the door immediately begins to creak open. Orbus realizes that, just after talking to the drone, he should have turned round and headed straight back to the Gurnard for some explanations, or maybe mooched off to buy passage on some other ship out of here. However, the presence of these two at the door stirs up in him a deep reservoir of anger, and a horrible joy at the certainty that here at last he will be able to express that anger.
‘I just go through?’ he asks, pointing ahead and, without waiting for a response, steps through.
A reception office waits beyond the door and, judging by the splash of old blood behind the desk, which itself now lies in two halves on the floor, the receptionist will not be greeting them. Beyond this lies a set of double doors.
‘I guess the storage area is this way?’ Orbus strides ahead.
Drooble glances back at the two heavies, the main door closing behind them as they lurch in to follow. Orbus slams a boot into the centre of the two doors ahead. One smashes back against the wall adjacent and the other goes crashing end over end down the corridor extending beyond. Here they have not bothered to remove the corpses, and two lie on the carpet, stains spread out about them. They’ve obviously been here for some time, being now rotted down to bone and parchment skin. Both of them seem to have their heads on backwards.
‘Probably the Layden-Smiths, or their staff,’ Orbus observes, striding ahead. ‘I’m guessing our two chums originally came in this way.’
‘Hey, Cap’n,’ says Drooble, ‘glad to have you back.’
A further set of double doors leads to a bubble-metal stair running down along the wall to terminate in a small storage room stacked with plasmel boxes. At the rear of this room stands a large heavy door, probably taken from a ship’s bulkhead. After glancing back to see their two companions now picking up their pace, Orbus jumps.
‘Come on, Iannus!’ he yells.
Orbus hits the floor with a crash, denting it, and Drooble lands somewhat more lightly beside him. Behind them, the two pursuers start to negotiate the stairs, probably as they always have done, this method of descent being recorded as a program in what might be called their minds. Orbus doesn’t bother with the handle of the bulkhead door, for he can see it is locked down in its recess and therefore it should only be possible to open it from inside. This area, then, is supposed to be the killing ground. He knows this door is most certainly station property, but surmises that the Layden-Smiths are beyond objecting to the damage he will now cause. Dropping his small bag, he smashes a fist into the metal beside the door, twice, to leave a dent, lodges both hands in this to grab the door and heaves. His Old-Captain strength, grown incrementally over seven hundred years, his body wound so tight with viral fibres that his muscles are as dense as old oak and his bones like toughened steel, is not to be long resisted. Ceramal locking mechanisms snap clean off, and the door swings round to crash against the wall.
Within lies a large darkened warehouse, shelves reaching up to the high ceiling, large cargo containers towards the rear, monolithic stacks of boxes all around, in fact an area little different in appearance to the Gurnard’s hold. From behind come two loud crashes, as their pursuers finally receive instructions not to waste time negotiating the stairs. Drooble, so long in service of his Captain he can nearly read his mind, ducks to one side, drawing a ceramo-carbide hunting knife from his boot.
‘Mr Smith!’ Orbus calls out.
The two come in behind, and without even looking round Orbus draws his machete and spins, the blade describing a perfect flat arc all about him. The tug of contact is hard, of course, for the blade is slicing through flesh and bone just like his own. Along with a rigid chunk of Prador hardware. Now Orbus unhooks his bullwhip with his free hand and lashes it sideways, the snake of flexal coiling around the legs of the second heavy. He pulls, and the man goes down on his back, the big pulse-gun he just drew sent skittering from his hand. His companion, now headless, still stands upright, one hand vibrating at the edge of his severed but utterly dry neck. He hasn’t realized he is dead. He hasn’t realized he actually died seven hundred years ago.
Drooble, ready to snatch any opportunity, skitters over and picks up the pulse-gun, then steps over and begins firing it down into the head of the fallen man. He empties the weapon, firing until nothing remains of the head but a smoking fibrous mass and the glowing metal of a thrall unit.
‘Fucking blanks,’ he spits.
Indeed they are. These two are what Orbus would have become on Spatterjay centuries ago had he not managed to av
oid being cored and thralled, if the war had not ended and rescue finally come. Slowly, like a building demolished by specially placed charges, the headless human blank collapses first onto his knees, then tilts over forwards, before slumping down onto his side.
‘Mr Smith!’ Orbus calls again viciously, turning away to survey the entire storage area.
In a wide aisle between shelves, beside masses of jury-rigged consoles, lies a great brassy-coloured object that Orbus recognizes as basically the same shape as a Prador carapace. For a moment he thinks that this must be what, ostensibly, they came here for. However, it heaves itself up onto its numerous legs and spins, reaches out with one claw to tear down some shelving and cast it aside, then extends its other claw, in which it holds a massive rail-gun.
Orbus begins to shake, but cannot tell whether this is from fear or excitement.
‘I don’t think you’re Mr Smith,’ he manages.
4
The no man’s land between the Prador Kingdom and the Polity, which quickly acquired the name ‘The Graveyard’, did not remain as barren and lifeless as its name implies, but quickly filled with lowlife. Certain members of both the Prador and Human races found it convenient to locate their businesses where, by treaty, warships cannot be sent and where the security services of both sides have limited ability to intervene. Separatists base themselves there, as do criminal syndicates, the makers of black memloads and smugglers of illegal technologies. It is argued that these traders in Human suffering could easily be cleared out without the use of warships. It is also noted that such an environment is a useful one in which to conduct black operations, and that both sides therefore want the Graveyard to continue just as it is.
–From HOW IT IS by Gordon
‘Now what are two Human blanks doing here?’ wonders Sniper.
‘It’s not so unusual as you might think,’ Gurnard replies. ‘Though many were returned to the Polity in recent years, it is certain that many more still remain within the Third Kingdom, and certainly they tend to turn up out here in the Graveyard–usually having been sold to some criminal organization.’
‘So that’s what we’re dealing with here, is it?’ Sniper asks sarcastically, ‘a “criminal organization”?’ Scanning into the dock he now observes something he has noted elsewhere round and about Montmartre: the Layden-Smiths possess their own internal tubeway network and, fortunately, the bubble carriages they use are larger than Sniper himself. Not being one to let such an opportunity slip by, he begins to subvert security systems around the dock so that he can open a door into it–the cargo bay immediately beyond connects into that same tubeway network. He is extruding something like an electronic lock-pick into the door control when he realizes that Gurnard is not going to be forthcoming with a reply.
‘So let me work my ignorant way through this,’ Sniper continues. ‘The Gurnard, a ship owned by the private individual Charles Cymbeline, is sent into the Graveyard to gather up wartime artefacts collected in this area by his agents. There is a problem with the first of these artefacts that it comes to pick up, and Spatterjay Human blanks are involved. Coincidentally I, a Polity war drone, happen to be aboard the Gurnard and, coincidentally, the Captain of the Gurnard is an Old Captain–someone who narrowly avoided being turned into a blank himself and who has every reason to hate the Prador.’
‘It is a large universe,’ Gurnard observes, ‘and the mind, be it AI or Human, with its tendency to search for patterns, will often find coincidences.’
‘Bollocks.’ With the cargo door now open, Sniper slides into the small vacuum bay. The tubeway network beyond, which is also used for transporting the cargoes delivered here, is a vacuum network, and so Sniper enters it easily.
‘I am not quite sure what you’re driving at here, Sniper.’
‘I smell a rat.’
‘A tendency not unknown to Polity AIs.’
‘Are you going to elaborate on that?’
Now actually inside the Layden-Smiths’ realm, Sniper is well within all the shielding, and more freely able to scan the areas about himself. Almost at once he begins to notice Prador metals and technology. This can be explained by the fact that most of this station is built from salvage, but what cannot be explained is why so much of it is not the superannuated technology of the war.
‘Let us say that there is something about King Oberon and his hugely extended family that he wants to keep a complete secret even from the rest of his own kind.’
‘Yeah, I’m with you on that.’ Sniper knows precisely what that secret is, and if he knows, it is certain that Earth Central Security knows too.
‘Let us say that the Graveyard is a very sensitive area, where ECS forces and the official forces of King Oberon must not come into contact with each other, for that might lead to the start of another all-out-devastating interstellar war.’
‘Right, let’s say that.’
‘However, let us also say that King Oberon is being a bit too pushy and for some years now has been infiltrating his forces into the Graveyard, it being a moot point whether this is in preparation for war or to more firmly secure his defences. ECS will not want open confrontation in this matter, but would rather take limited actions to scotch that infiltration.’
‘I’m sort of with you so far…’
‘Having now discovered the major infiltration of a certain space station in the Graveyard, ECS would need to do something about it, but would also want to conceal precisely what they are doing about it. Say they know an agent of Oberon is gradually taking control of the said space station, and they therefore send to that station an item that will reveal, in Polity hands, the secret nature of Oberon’s family. The agent aboard will have to seize said item, and ensure that any knowledge of it cannot be passed on. Those coming to collect the item must also be dealt with and, as we know, when it comes to Prador, “deal with” almost always means kill. However, coincidentally, the privately owned ship sent to collect the item happens to have, in its complement, an Old Captain who, as you say, has every reason to hate the Prador, and also a renegade veteran war drone from the Prador/Human war, currently occupying a state-of-the-art drone shell.’
‘One could guess that some plausibly deniable mayhem might ensue,’ remarks Sniper. ‘Was it also part of the plan that those aboard the survey ship should die?’
‘That was most unfortunate,’ Gurnard opines. ‘They were merely supposed to deliver the item I mentioned and—’
‘You mean,’ Sniper interrupts. ‘The carapace of a Prador, most likely that of a second- or first-child, heavily mutated by the Spatterjay virus?’
‘Yes, exactly–it was assumed that you knew more than you are letting on.’
‘Oh, I’m full of stuff I’m not letting on.’
Gurnard ignores that jibe and continues with, ‘They were merely supposed to deliver the carapace and then swiftly depart. However, it would appear that Oberon’s infiltration here is more extensive than was first thought, and his agents or agent on the spot moved faster than expected.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Sniper draws to an abrupt halt. ‘When you say agent or agents, you’re not talking about Humans allied with the Prador are you?’
Before Gurnard can reply, Thirteen’s urgent summons comes through, ‘Sniper! Get over here now!’ And along with it come some very interesting scan images.
Sniper accelerates, no longer concerned about keeping himself concealed from the various security systems around him. The tubeway isn’t really designed to have a fusion engine fired up in it, but Sniper is not hugely concerned about that. He occasionally crashes into the walls, causing more damage to them than to himself. And as he hurtles through the station he starts running a system check of his weapons which, of course, could not have been any more functional.
The huge Prador looming immediately ahead of Vrell is clad in heavy armour, looks as big as an adult but, unlike most adults, possesses all of its limbs. Sometimes adults do choose to wear armour like this, the limb casings empty bu
t run by small control units grafted into the adult’s empty limb sockets, but Vrost is not such a creature and certainly still possesses all his limbs. Vrell does not give Vrost a chance to do any more than register his presence before he opens fire, the particle beam directed solely at one of Vrost’s legs.
Vrost shrieks and skitters sideways, trying to protect the one targeted limb, as he himself swings up a rail-gun. Vrell leaps straight up, unencumbered by armour, as a stream of solid projectiles shoots underneath him to smash into hot shrapnel in the corridor behind. He catches one leg against the top of the door, spins round and skitters up the uneven wall, yet, even while doing this, still firing the particle cannon, the beam not wavering from its target for a second. The armour on Vrost’s leg turns white-hot and then gives up, something inside exploding and splitting it open.
Still moving rapidly along above the door, rail-gun missiles cutting a groove through the wall just behind him, Vrell redirects his aim at Vrost’s visual turret, but only for a second because missiles then slam into his own back end, taking off one of his legs and punching through some carapace there. He pushes out from the wall and drops, deliberately not turning to land on all limbs, but hitting edge-on with carapace edge directed towards Vrost to present the smallest target. He throws himself into a roll, heading towards Vrost like a huge plate revolving on its edge, rail-gun missiles ricocheting or cutting grooves down the back of his shell. Even while rolling, he redirects his aim for one short burst that slices into the power feed for Vrost’s weapon. This blows, the scon cable arcing to the floor, as Vrell tips over and comes down on all limbs. Vrost now moves back, the spin of the rail-gun’s multiple barrels gradually waning. He makes an odd bubbling sound and staggers whilst Vrell aims again at his visual turret, but Vrell does not fire, for he knows this battle is already over.
Vrost had obviously felt secure enough in here to leave his armour vents open. Now they emit an oily brown vapour. Vrell did not need to break the seals on that armour by hitting the leg, because shortly after those doors began to open, Vrost began to die, the nanite invisibly filtering into the Sanctum and doing its work.