Orbus

by Neal Asher

  –From HOW IT IS by Gordon

  The war drone is easy, for Sniper has much experience in dealing with them. They aren’t particularly bright and tend to over-focus on the current attack, so the distract while putting a missile up the tail-pipe routine works in eight out of ten encounters. There is also, he feels, a deep underlying psychological problem with Pra-dor war drones: for, being run by the surgically excised and then flash-frozen cerebral matter of first- and second-children, and being utterly subject to the will of the Prador controlling them, it is impossible for them to pursue their evolutionary imperative to finally become adults and themselves reproduce; they can take no pleasure in the basic things in a Prador’s life, like eating and bullying their juniors, and they will never be anything but war drones until the day some enemy missile shafts them from behind. In essence, he suspects war drones possess no hope and that deep down they want merely to die. However, this armoured Prador most certainly does not want to die.

  The moment he wraps his tentacles about the beast, Sniper immobilizes its most dangerous limbs, namely the ones wielding its rail-gun and particle cannon, then pulls himself in close and begins extruding a thermic lance. This method of penetrating exotic-metal armour was used in close-quarters combat between drones during the war, and Sniper engages close like this because he wants the Prador to think he is trying to avoid combat that resulted in large burning holes throughout Montmartre and lots of bloated Human corpses floating about in vacuum, which is precisely the case, though Sniper is also being sneaky again.

  As the Prador struggles to bring its particle cannon to bear, Sniper hurls the two of them on antigravity upwards through the ceiling. He strains against the claw, the motors in the Prador’s armour seeming to evenly match the strength of his tentacles. Smashing through the ceiling, they enter a cavity where smoke and debris sketch lines towards where Sniper cut his way in from the tubeway, causing the atmosphere breach, and the gale of escaping air now draws them towards the tubeway, just as Sniper wants. As they enter it, he apparently manages to stick a small mine to the Prador’s armour. The blast flings them both along the tubeway in one direction, but the mine is too small to do anything more than score the Prador’s covering. Sniper, however, had not intended it to do any more. Now, with a flickering of a com laser, the Prador tries to open communication.

  Sniper prepares himself for any computer viruses or worms, and allows com.

  ‘The moment you penetrate my armour, you’re dead too,’ the Prador informs him.

  ‘Really.’ Sniper is thoroughly aware that armoured Prador like the one he is grappling contain tactical fusion bombs to completely obliterate them. On Spatterjay he witnessed Vrost’s armoured guard either destroying themselves or being destroyed remotely by Vrost, whenever there was danger that an opponent might defeat them, and thence possibly discover what their armour contained.

  ‘If you persist I will be forced to fire my particle cannon,’ says the Prador coldly. ‘I will not hit you, but Human casualties will result.’

  It is trying to plumb Sniper’s apparent weakness and he shuts off the thermic lance, though still holding it in place. ‘So, what do we do now?’

  ‘You must release me.’

  Not a chance. Letting this bastard go free would be like releasing one’s hold on a rattlesnake and expecting it not to bite. At that very moment they ricochet off the side of one of the tubeway transports parked along this section of the route. It is enough to dislodge the stalemate and the Prador now brings its particle cannon partially to bear on Sniper’s shell. For the first few seconds the beam simply bounces off, then it begins to penetrate the layer of nano-chain chromium, and burn. Sniper reignites his thermic lance.

  ‘We can come to some arrangement,’ says the Prador.

  Just words, Sniper knows. The only accord they can possibly reach from this point onwards is that in which only one of them remains alive. Prador do not deal, especially those of them like this one, which is not an adult and certainly under orders it cannot disobey.

  They hurtle out of the tubeway into a small dock, smash against the hull of a small private transport, then fall out and away from Montmartre. Now, having kept the Prador distracted long enough to get it out of the station, to where its self-destruct won’t kill a few thousand inhabitants, Sniper decides it is time to stop playing around. Scanning all about himself, he sees the Gurnard’s shuttle dodging shots from a rail-gun fired regularly but inaccurately from the station–one of the big ones shooting off missiles weighing in at four hundred pounds each. The Gurnard itself is now accelerating in towards the station, firing a powerful maser that is turning at least a few of those lethal missiles into lines of burning gas. Briefly igniting his fusion drive, he sends himself and the Prador hurtling towards the firing line of the big gun, meanwhile factoring in Orbus’s manoeuvres and the tracking of the throat of the rail-gun, whereby he makes some quite esoteric ballistics calculations–something he is very very good at.

  ‘Okay, let’s come to an arrangement,’ says Sniper.

  He extends his tentacles, now applying their true full strength, stretches out from the Prador and turns his fusion drive right round towards his opponent’s visual turret, ignites it at a precisely judged moment, and finally releases his hold. The two hurtle apart, and the Prador, thoroughly blinded, tumbles back towards the space station, shrieking, while firing both its particle cannon and rail-gun randomly about it.

  ‘I’ll arrange for you to meet Mr Big-Fuck Rail-Gun,’ jibes Sniper.

  The missile, travelling at one quarter the speed of light, slams into the Prador and turns the creature, and itself, into a hot cone of plasma reaching rapidly out into space. The fusion bomb inside the thing’s armour does not even get a chance to explode, but it still makes a big enough firework display.

  Sniper now abruply swings himself round. The rail-gun is still firing and still a danger and, even if it were to result in the death of the operators of the great weapon, that would not have influenced his subsequent actions. However, he knows the loading and firing mechanisms of the gun are automatic, and that it is actually being aimed from some remote control-room. Between spates of firing, the missile he launches enters the throat of the big gun and detonates, spewing molten metal out into vacuum. It does not fire again.

  Sniper accelerates past this geyser of molten metal, abruptly changes direction and shoots back inside the station structure. Whatever else they were here for, the ostensible primary task has not yet been accomplished. Soon finding the dock, he once again enters the tubeway system and works his way back to Smith Storage. He rather doubts that what he seeks still exists, for surely the King’s Guard he just killed must already have destroyed the evidence? The warehouse is now in complete vacuum, and grav is out. Ruination lies within, much of the contents of the warehouse floating about in big clumps of debris. Sniper carefully begins to scan all this, and very quickly finds a large package sprayed over with crash foam. Perhaps, for its own obscure reasons, the Guard did not follow orders? Sniper grabs up the package and rapidly heads back out of the station, for even at that moment station staff are fitting an airlock to the other side of the bulkhead door.

  It feels to Vrell like his brain is boiling and, through the haze of pain and confusion caused by the data overload, he now understands his mistake. He foolishly assumed that, though not a normal Prador adult, Vrost was handling data at the rate of one, for he held the position of an adult. Vrell has badly underestimated Vrost, because the Captain of this ship was processing data at about twice the usual rate–at the rate Vrell himself found himself able to handle back on Spatterjay. But after doubling up Vrost’s control units to insert them into three rooting modules, Vrell is now receiving four times the data density of a normal adult.

  It hurts.

  Lying on his back with his legs waving in the air, for a little while he is just too confused to know what to do. Then, through the haze, he manages to regain some self-control and extend an underhand to gr
ab one of the doubled-up control units and pull it free. Even with this relief of the pressure, the density of data flowing into his mind is almost too much but, determined not to sacrifice another unit, he concentrates first on just flipping himself back onto his legs, then on encompassing the data.

  Slowly, through the units, he begins to assimilate just what now lies under his control. Turning, still a little unsteady, he sends a particular coded signal, and in response all the alcove storage units along one wall pop open. They are packed with equipment for Prador, since even the captains of vessels like a large selection of tools close at claw.

  Through these units he can also get visual and audio feed from about a hundred and fifty of the King’s Guard, and knows a further fifty-four feeds are absent because he is currently receiving requests for Vrost himself to respond from two hundred and four sources. The war-drone cache aboard also lies within his compass, though all but three of the drones are somnolent and can only be activated through the pit controls of the console. Access to many other ship systems, like diagnostics and damage control, is his too. However, through these units he cannot detonate the fusion tacticals in the armoured suits of the King’s Guard–those being offline, since the Guard are inside the ship–and he cannot control the ship’s weapons, life-support or anything else of use against the Guard. Obviously Oberon learnt the lesson of the war: that transmitted com can be intercepted, decoded by AI, then turned against his kind.

  Gazing through the sensors of various suits of armour, and through the ship eyes, Vrell sees that the group of Prador originally ordered to recover some part of Vrell himself from the highly radioactive area of the ship–in fact one of the many highly radioactive areas of the ship, he now finds–have just ceased work. Normal Prador, unless ordered to do otherwise, will continue with their task until it eventually kills them all. These ones know something is up and are waiting to find out what.

  ‘—optic com to local broadcast is out,’ the leader of their unit is announcing. ‘No response via ship broadcast. We did not get him here.’

  The reply from a Prador only a short distance from the Sanctum is, ‘Currently investigating.’ That particular Guard is not visible, so doubtless it is now in the part of the ship Vrell previously occupied up above the Sanctum.

  ‘Optic feeds cut,’ the Prador confirms. ‘He heated the hydraulic fluid to force the door cylinder.’

  ‘He is inside the Sanctum?’ the other enquires.

  ‘One Guard disabled outside the Sanctum currently dying–nanite penetration of his suit–currently seeking confirmation.’

  Besides that one group comprising nearly thirty of the Guard, it seems the rest of the Guard occupy the area all around the Sanctum, so really Vrell does not want to send any self-destruct orders, because such a concentration of blasts will kill him too.

  What to do?

  Though Vrost was communicating with those outside via the optics Vrell severed above, the Captain also possessed the option to talk to them through the control units–the ‘ship broadcast’ mentioned. This is an option probably only used when communications do not need to remain utterly secure. However, with Vrell still not knowing the full convoluted extent of Vrost’s security measures, which almost certainly extend to how communications are couched, the Guard will soon realize he is not Vrost. Noting that the disabled Guard in the corridor outside has been dragged off into a side corridor to be interrogated by two of his fellows, Vrell listens in.

  ‘Dropped from…wall panel,’ the dying Prador manages.

  ‘Is it Vrell?’

  ‘Do not know shape…Vrell.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Mutated…black.’

  ‘It is Vrell,’ the two interrogators confirm to each other at the same time.

  Further questions receive no answer as the Guard member finally expires.

  Damn, Vrell needs more than just these control units, he needs the pit console, and that is disconnected above him. He squats down to mull the problem over.

  Of course, once the nanite penetrates the glathel seals of all those suits out there, which, according to Vrost, will now take less than two hours, the remaining Guard will cease to be a problem. However, the dying Guard having confirmed that Vrell is in here with their Captain, the rest at once begin shifting some of the heavy equipment previously being used to repair the ship. Vrell recognizes most of the machines they bring towards the Sanctum, and knows that the big short-beam cutter, which is based on the same technology as the particle cannon, and the massive hydraulic clawjack, will be enough. If he does not find a way to stop them, they will be in here within their remaining time. That they will die shortly after finishing him off is no consolation.

  The drones…

  The three war drones, apparently detailed to search the ship for him, still follow a search grid, so are not in the communication loop with the King’s Guard. War drones are usually quite dumb, and stubborn to a terminal degree, so Vrell decides to try something.

  First sending Vrost’s pheromonal signature, he orders them, ‘Secure…com,’ whilst deliberately breaking up the signal. ‘King’s Gua…mutiny…attacking Sanctum…protect.’

  Even if the drones fall for this ruse, it won’t be enough to stop the King’s Guard, but maybe it will delay them for just a little longer. Vrell focuses his attention on the alcove storage and quickly scuttles over. After a brief search he finds precisely what he wants: a spray gun for putting protective coatings on different surfaces, and containers filled with a selection of such coatings, in different colours.

  Ebror watches carefully as his fellows bring the required equipment down the drop-shaft leading to the corridors located on the same level as Vrost’s Sanctum.

  ‘Take the cutter down first,’ he instructs.

  Ever since Vrost fell out of communication, authority has devolved on Ebror as, at three centuries old, he is the most senior second-child remaining alive after the appalling carnage Vrell wrought here. Like all of the King’s Guard, Ebror possesses a greater degree of self-determination than normal Prador children. This is because, though all the Guard are utterly incapable of disobeying their father, and are in fact pheromonally and psychologically locked into obedience, there being so many of their kind it is very infrequent that any one amongst them will receive a direct order from King Oberon. Ebror’s orders come from the next one up in the hierarchy from himself, which in this case is Vrost, and he can always question, within limits, the source of those orders. It is also the case that the Guard are more intelligent than normal Prador, and not faced with the prospect of being killed by their father once they begin to mature. Ebror has been a second-child for three centuries and knows that, because of the virus matted through his body like river weed, he will never become a first-child.

  ‘When you get those doors open,’ he instructs, ‘we go straight in.’

  Of course, it is now a certainty that he will not remain a second-child for much longer. Checking an internal display he studies the counter that numbers the remaining minutes of his life. Briefly, he wonders why he is bothering, and feels a momentary surge of irritation at Vrost for not at once enabling the Guard to detonate their own fusion self-destructs. He knows why, though: Vrost hopes to stay alive, somehow, and does not want the Guard, should they somehow find out about it, obeying the order to destroy the ship which Oberon has almost certainly sent. Right now, a destruct order sent to every suit aboard would do the job nicely.

  ‘Ebror,’ reports one of those now moving the big cutter out of the drop-shaft, ‘one of the war drones just turned up.’

  Ebror feels another surge of irritation. He does not like dealing with any Prador who is not a member of his own family, and members of Oberon’s family are never turned into drones or ship minds. The drones in the cache here are part of this ship’s original complement and older even than him, in fact they date from the war. They are run by the flash-frozen brains of the children of some Prador adult who took the wrong side when
Oberon usurped the previous King. That adult, the previous Captain here, was taken alive and sealed up with crash-foam in some wall aboard. It has always been a matter of debate amongst the Guard which wall that might be.

  Ebror descends the drop-shaft and exits behind the moving mass of machinery. Engaging antigravity in his armour, he ascends to the ceiling and passes over above it all and, descending on the other side, spots the war drone hovering at the end of the corridor, both its side-mounted rail-guns directed towards the team that is moving the machinery.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Ebror asks. ‘You were ordered to grid-search for the intruder.’ None of the Guard had bothered to tell the three drones to stop searching, really, they were a bit superfluous anyway and only of use in any action occurring outside the ship.

  The drone simply says, ‘Protect Sanctum.’

  ‘Who ordered you to protect the Sanctum?’ asks Ebror, already guessing.

  ‘Captain Vrost.’

  ‘Listen, drone,’ Ebror hisses. ‘The order you received comes from the intruder, who even now is inside the Sanctum with our Captain.’

  ‘Protect Sanctum,’ the drone insists stubbornly.

  Damn, if the Guard continue trying to bring the equipment through here, the drone will attack them. Ebror has no doubt that he and his fellows can destroy it, but meanwhile, the equipment might get damaged. He swings round to the team moving the machinery. ‘Take it down there for now.’ He points with one claw into a side corridor then, shutting off the outside address, opens a private channel to one of those ranking directly below him in the Guard hierarchy. ‘Agreen, what’s the situation now?’

  ‘One drone at each end of the main sanctum corridor, and one sitting right before the doors,’ the Prador replies. ‘They’re not listening.’

  Ebror again feels one of those familiar surges of annoyance. The drones are simply stubborn robots following orders, but he cannot help but feel resentment at the knowledge that for them time is not an issue here. Being of a different genetic heritage to the Guard, they will not die even if the nanite does penetrate through to their microscopic frozen brains.