Orbus

by Neal Asher

  Vrost abruptly collapses, his legs folded underneath him, claws still held up threateningly, but even they begin to subside as if too heavy a weight to bear. Now Vrell whirls round and studies the wall around and above the doors. Here the armouring is not so thick as on the exterior, and therefore all the systems less well protected. He makes some close adjustments to the focus and power setting of his particle cannon, and aims at a particular point above and to the left of the doors. The narrow beam punches through the wall, cutting a hole just an inch across. For a moment Vrell thinks he has hit the wrong point, but then boiling hydraulic fluid jets from the hole, and the two doors begin to grind shut. It will be hard to get them open later on, but more important right now is keeping the surviving King’s Guard outside. Vrell returns his attention to his victim.

  Vrost is still managing the occasional weak movement, but no more than that.

  ‘Are you dead yet?’ Vrell enquires, turning to inspect the damage to his own back end. One leg is missing, and though he can see the site of the puncture through his carapace, it has filled with a white tissue that is already skinning over. The pain too is diminishing, now becoming more like that he had felt as a child while shedding carapace prior to a growth spurt. He wonders how long it will take for his leg to grow back. Certainly, sight is already returning to lower eyes he blinded only minutes ago.

  ‘Not going to die,’ Vrost manages, and Vrell turns back in time to see him heaving himself up a little, then collapsing again.

  ‘You are right, of course.’ Vrell clips away his particle cannon, then goes over to study the C-shaped wall of pit controls and hexagonal screens via which Vrost controlled his ship, and its crew. Vrost should also possess control units shell-welded to his own carapace and linked into his nervous system–these for greater finesse in control of his drones, certain ship systems and any Human blanks, if he happens to have them aboard.

  ‘Yes, you won’t die,’ Vrell continues, ‘in the usual sense.’ Vrost has ceased either to be able to hear or to reply, for there is no response. However Vrell, having been so long without anyone to really talk to, carries on with his explanation.

  ‘The nanite destroys your nerve tissue, first entering through the nerves directly under your carapace, and then eating its way in. The biggest lump of nerve tissue, your major ganglion, or brain, it will take longer to destroy.’

  The pit controls are genome-keyed to Vrost, encoded and presently shut down because of the damage Vrell himself did above. If he can get out of here to reconnect things up there, whilst avoiding being fried by the remaining members of the Guard who will now be gathering about this Sanctum, the destruct order that Vrost himself almost certainly input would carry on through. That same order would have only been sent via optics, since no Prador would trust such a major function to any kind of electromagnetic means. The control units on Vrost, then–they are the only way.

  ‘Now, with a normal Prador this would result in death and decay, but like me you’re full of the Spatterjay virus, so the virus will begin to transform you into something else based on its eclectic collection of bits of genome derived from the Spatterjay ecology. It will mindlessly try to survive, though how that will work itself out inside your armour I just don’t know yet. Maybe you’ll just turn into a big Spatterjay leech inside there, before lack of nutrients puts you into biological stasis. I’ll be interested to find out.’

  Vrell now goes back over to Vrost and begins minutely inspecting his armour. When a Prador seals itself up in such armour, there are only a few ways to get it open again: either the Prador inside opens it, a superior Prador possesses the codes to open it, or it has to be blown open or sliced apart. Vrost’s superior is Oberon himself, so the exterior-code option is probably no option at all. Vrost certainly won’t willingly open the armour, and probably can’t open it by now. Vrell squats down before his victim and considers how best to approach the problem.

  Within Vrost’s visual turret lies the simple manual option for opening the armour, therefore all Vrost needs to do to get himself out is insert his mandibles simultaneously into two control pits. Vrell stands to carefully survey the Sanctum, wishing he’d taken the time to bring the toolbox down with him, but knowing that even seconds counted and such delay could have killed him. Doubtless Vrost’s own tools reside in the various sealed cavities scattered about here, but all of them are only accessible either through punching the correct code into their pit-control locks or by sending a signal from one of the control units presently bonded to Vrost’s own body. So all Vrell has available is the small abrading tool he still clutches in one of his underhands, as well as the particle cannon, a laser and a selection of grenades. With weary annoyance that no simpler and more elegant approach occurs to him, he moves over to Vrost and climbs up onto his shell.

  The particle cannon, currently at its lowest and most narrow-beam setting, splashes off the dome of Vrost’s visual turret, and in its range of spread sets the far wall of the Sanctum smoking. After a minute its constant bombardment upon the same spot begins to ablate the exotic metal away, turning the beam splash from fuzzy turquoise to a hot red. When Vrell estimates that only a minimal layer of the armour remains, he shuts the beam off.

  Now the abrading tool, which uses up its entire supply of shaped diamond dust to slice out a two-inch circle of exotic metal no thicker than a leaf. Underneath this lie alternate layers of foamed porcelain, s-con grid and inner seal that Vrell simply digs out with the sharp tip of one extended claw, to finally open into a cavity just above Vrost’s head. This confirms that Vrost is of a similar shape to Vrell, for any normal Prador’s immovable head would merely butt up against the seal. However, Vrost’s colouring is very different, in fact distinctly odd.

  The next task is interminably frustrating. Vrell snips off a length of fibre-optic cable leading to his harness CPU, feeds the bare end of it into the cavity he has created and uses it as an internal camera; but only after a great deal of poking round does he get some idea of what lies inside there. He locates both the pit controls and Vrost’s weirdly distorted mandibles, and sees he will need to move Vrost’s head quite a bit to line up the two. This he accomplishes by using the laser to burn holes in the top of Vrost’s skull, into which he inserts the tips of his claws to manipulate it round. Finally, with things properly lined up, he strips down s-con wires, burns further holes through Vrost’s head, then inserts the wires down to the appropriate muscle groups. Though the Prador underneath him is all but dead, and his nerves eaten away, his muscles still respond to simple electricity. The whole business takes hours. The first jerk of those mandibles, as Vrell feeds in power from his harness, completely shifts Vrost’s head out of position. Only when he finally combines abrading tool, laser and the snout of his particle cannon to jam the head in place, do Vrost’s mandibles stab themselves into the required control pits.

  Vrell leaps back as the upper carapace of the armour rises on silver poles, then hinges back. With a crash and explosion of gas, Vrost is hurled up and forwards from his armour, and lands on the floor of the sanctum with a heavy loose-limbed thump. Vrell moves over to study his erstwhile opponent, and wonders if this is what he himself is destined to become.

  There is no way of telling if Vrost is a first-child; in fact no real way of telling, on first inspection, that he is a Prador at all. Certainly he possesses the correct number of limbs, claws and under-slung manipulatory hands, but Vrost is a rosy pink in colour, though dotted with brown burns caused by the nanite, their position mapping out the major nerve groups. His carapace is elongated slightly, and possesses a scalloped dorsal crest running from behind his long folded neck to his short spiky tail. His head, like Vrell’s, is no longer a turret, and even the turret eyes have separated out on their own stalks.

  Now entertaining a suspicion, Vrell steps delicately over and prods Vrost’s carapace. As he suspects, it is soft. Has Vrost spent so long within armour that somehow the Spatterjay mutation has dispensed with his own hard outer layer?
Vrell, normally so cold in his assessment of just about anything, now feels a species of deep disgust. Vrost is soft and floppy like those animals with internal skeletons. Like Humans, in fact. Then comes a horrifying attendant thought. The Spatterjay virus gathers up parts of the genome of its various hosts. Could it be that Vrost is partially Human? And could it therefore be that Vrell himself might have acquired some part within him of those contemptible creatures?

  This is not a notion Vrell wants to pursue, so he quickly applies himself to the next task in claw and, containing his disgust, heaves Vrost up and over to expose the series of six hexagonal Prador control units bonded to his rubbery skin. With the limited tools to hand, and much ingenuity, he begins to remove them. The task is one he did before, aboard his father’s ship, when he fixed a control unit to his own carapace and rooted it into his own nervous system, then later fixed two more. Six units should not be too much for him to deal with, since he has also learnt much about partitioning such units.

  Having thus removed Vrost’s six control units from their rooting modules, Vrell now sets about taking them apart. Each time he encounters a problem that requires a tool, he squats and considers the same problem for a short while, and each time comes up with a solution amidst the limited hardware available. By the time he has the six units sufficiently disassembled for his purpose, his particle cannon and much of his harness, Vrost’s rail-gun and some parts of his armour also lie disassembled and scattered across the floor. Vrell mates the major components of the six units to form three units, subsequently removing his own three units from his own body, but leaving their rooting modules in place. He plugs the three new jury-rigged units into the modules, and sends the internal signal to initiate them. Immediately, a tsunami of data floods his mind and he shrieks and flips over on his back, completely losing control of his body.

  Orbus knows that cored and thralled Human blanks were sold to any Graveyard scum that could afford them, and assumed that Smith Storage was being run by scum of that kind, which might well have included the Layden-Smiths. Upon hearing from the little drone that the owners of this station have been out of contact for a while, and upon seeing the wrecked office and then the corpses that lay beyond, he assumed that some Human criminal must have moved in and taken over. But that the two Human blanks were actually controlled by a Prador did not occur to him, and he now realizes it was a rather lethal error to make. He feels a fist clenching up in his guts, as old horrific memories clamour for his attention. The very shape of the thing standing before him burns deeply into his consciousness.

  ‘Run!’ he shouts at Drooble, but the order is superfluous, for the crewman is already hurling himself behind a big stack of storage boxes.

  The Prador hesitates for a moment, then swings its rail-gun away from Orbus and opens fire. The pile of boxes explodes into shreds of plasmel, foam packing and numerous toy soldiers scattered far and wide. With rage surging up through the well of memory, Orbus raises his machete and, with long experience of handling such blades, throws it just as hard as he can. The point of the blade slams into the Prador’s armoured turret with a resounding clang but, as the Prador swings back towards him, it then simply drops out.

  ‘Bugger,’ says Orbus, his mouth suddenly arid, mesmerized as the monster begins to aim its rail-gun again.

  Now lasers flash through air turned dusty by the exploded boxes, their beams issuing from the seahorse drone as it hurtles into the warehouse.

  ‘Get to cover, you fool!’ the little drone shouts.

  Orbus jerks into motion, a cold sweat suddenly suffusing him, and the tightness in his stomach turning to nausea. He heads off running the opposite way to Drooble as rail-gun fire tracks across the ceiling, raining down shattered metal in a trail behind the speeding iron seahorse. The little drone has momentarily blinded the Prador with what Orbus guesses is merely a powerful burst from a com laser, and that is enough for the drone now to become the enemy’s prime target. Ducking into an aisle between shelves, he continues running, intent on losing himself inside this place, at least for a while. Really, he explains to himself, up against a normal Prador of that size he would have faced some pretty serious problems, but to encounter one in exotic metal armour and armed with a rail-gun? He needs to get himself out of here just as fast as he can, and hopefully take Drooble with him if the man is still in one piece. Then something looms at the end of the aisle, and Orbus skids to a sudden halt.

  ‘Twice bugger,’ he says, and checking to either side of him sees nowhere to dive for cover amidst the crowded shelving.

  He has seen something like this not so long ago back on Spatterjay: a floating sphere of exotic metal ten feet across, its surface poxed with the pits for housing weapons and com equipment. In fact it was something like this that first snatched Orbus and his crew from the Vignette, before sinking that hapless ship. For not only is there a damned Prador here, but one of their war drones too.

  Then a particle beam repeatedly stabs down from the ceiling, cutting numerous holes and searing across the spherical war drone. A massive detonation ensues, its painfully bright fire spreading across a hardfield wall the drone itself has generated. Should have used the missile first, thinks Orbus, as a blast wave picks him up off his feet and flings him backwards.

  As he hits the floor, flat on his back, the Captain watches the drone hurl itself sideways, smashing over a whole row of shelving. Up above it the ceiling now looks like a colander, as beam strikes and missiles slam down through it. The drone is obviously being pushed, for something explodes inside it, almost certainly a hard-field generator, and it spews fire from one of its com-pits. It drops a little, its top glowing white-hot under the impact of further beam strikes, then within a moment it has another hardfield up. Below the drone, unnoticed by anyone but Orbus, something punches up through the floor and, making an odd whickering sound as little steering jets alter its course, it loops round and shoots straight into the drone’s burnt out com-pit.

  Sneaky, thinks Orbus, as a second blast-wave picks him up and hurls him back to deposit him in a pile of twisted shelving. He sees the war drone crashing sideways, fire spewing from all the pits in its surface. It bounces and thunders into another row of shelves, bringing them down, while further explosions inside it shoot jets of flame across the warehouse.

  Pushing a plasmel crate out of his way, Orbus looks straight across, now the shelving is down, towards the armoured Prador. It has shed the tips of one claw and is firing upwards from this with a previously concealed particle cannon, the turquoise beam lancing up through a snow of fire-retardant foam. Smoke and that same foam form a maelstrom, as an atmosphere breach at one end of the warehouse sucks them straight out into vacuum. Then the floor underneath the Prador erupts, and numerous silver tentacles spear up to wrap around the armoured monster. The Prador shoots upwards, a huge nautiloid drone now clinging to it, and painfully bright fire burns from where they lie in contact. Orbus recognizes this newly arrived war drone immediately, for it once tied him by the ankles to the spar of his own ship.

  As drone and armoured Prador crash up through the damaged ceiling and disappear from sight, Orbus feels something like disappointment, but at what he cannot readily analyse. Still tightly wound, he snatches up some twisted shelving metal and crunches it up in one fist, something halfway between a groan and a snarl of frustration issuing from deep within his chest.

  ‘It might be a good idea to get out of here, Captain!’

  Orbus glances to one side to see the seahorse drone hovering there. It points with its tail towards the maelstrom, now sucking entire plasmel cases into its core. Returning his attention to the drone, he just stares at it, slowly opening his hand to drop the ball of scrunched-up metal.

  ‘Captain,’ the drone repeats, backing well out of range.

  Orbus abruptly heaves himself from the battered shelving, glances at the rips in his clothing, then at a big chunk of metal embedded in his right biceps. He tugs this out and flings it away, its flat trajectory s
lamming it with the force of a bullet into one wall, where it shatters. A very small amount of blood wells for a moment as the deep wound snaps closed like a prudish mouth. Orbus reaches up and wipes his eyes, which he can only assume are watering because of the smoke in here, then he goes to find Drooble.

  ‘Little bit fraught in here!’ the crewman bellows over the roar of the wind, as Orbus uncovers him. Drooble is grinning, despite the large ragged hole punched right through his righthand side just above his hip and, not having been infected with the Spatterjay virus so long as his Captain, he is bleeding. However, flat ribbons of tissue worm about in his wound as they slowly pull it closed.

  One-handed, Orbus grabs him by the belt and picks him up, then runs for the door. The pull from the atmosphere breach is now intense and he leans forward into the gale, chunks of the wreckage all around constantly bouncing off him. Once through the big door, he only has to pull it away from the wall against which he earlier flung it, and the suction slams it shut. For a moment there comes a whistling of escaping air, but this is a bulkhead door and the air pressure on this side soon closes it down on its seals.

  ‘This is better than being on the Vignette!’ Drooble exclaims excitedly.

  Orbus glances down at him, noting that his eyes are slightly crossed and his expression definitely not quite right. He surmises that the damage in his crewman’s side must be more extensive than it appears, for Drooble is already being tampered with by the virus inside him–would that Orbus himself had the same excuse. He slings the man over his shoulder.

  ‘You should get back to the Gurnard,’ suggests the seahorse drone, now drifting up the stairway ahead.