Orbus

by Neal Asher

  ‘Very well,’ he says, ‘bring down the big portables. We’ll deal with this problem once the equipment is out of the way.’ He does not add the need for alacrity, since they are all aware of the limit to their lifespans.

  Ebror rises into the air again and retreats behind the cutter and the enormous clawjack, then ascends through the drop-shaft. Already some of the Guard are moving towards the shaft entrance above, towing behind them equipment of a rather different nature. With some satisfaction he eyes the missile-cluster launchers, thermal mortars and particle cannons, all of them perfect weapons for combating drones confined by corridors.

  ‘Don’t wait for further orders,’ he instructs those carrying these weapons. ‘Just destroy them as quick as you can.’ Stopping beside a group of eight of the Guard who are burdened with weapons, he says, ‘Bring those and come with me.’ Then, as he heads off with the same eight in tow, he explains his plans to Agreen.

  ‘Understood,’ his junior replies.

  The intruder, Vrell, Ebror realizes, is obviously a seriously clever and dangerous individual who has used his only recently acquired knowledge of the ship layout to perfect advantage. Ebror intends to do much the same.

  ‘This way.’ He waves a claw towards a side tunnel, which in turn leads to a corridor running back parallel to the previous corridor. In his armour CPU he pulls up ship schematics and begins to analyse precisely where he wants to be. As he finally leads the eight into an empty storage room which, by the lingering smell, was obviously once full of food, the rumbling and crashing of weapons fire issues from below.

  ‘Why are we here?’ asks one of the eight.

  ‘We are here because drones are stupid,’ Ebror explains. ‘You two’–he points a claw at the two carrying missile-cluster launchers –‘stand here, and here.’ He directs them to either side of an empty patch of floor, then reaches over and takes a pack of thermal mortar bombs from another Guard and, twisting off their safety caps, places them one by one evenly spaced in a circle on that floor. ‘When they start to drop through, launch your missiles straight down.’

  Ebror now sends an internal signal through his armour, whereupon the tips of his right claw drop away. Pointing the twinned throats of his particle cannon at the mines he planted, he sets it for wide dispersal–enough to turn them white-hot but not enough to blow them out of position–and then fires. Within a second all but a few of the thermal mines ignite with a sun-bright glare, turning into balls of heat intense enough to cut through just about anything. They begin sinking into the floor, which begins to sag. Even before Ebror can give the order, the two Guard step over this inferno and fire their cluster missiles downwards. Seven missiles from each launcher punch down through the softened metal and detonate below. The massive concussion throws the floor up, hurls all the armoured Prador waiting there up against the ceiling in an eruption of debris, then they crash down through the weakened floor into the corridor below, and Ebror has the satisfaction of seeing the drone positioned outside the Captain’s Sanctum rolling aside, now just a shell of armour hollowed out by fire.

  ‘Agreen!’ he calls. ‘Situation?’

  ‘The one at the drop-shaft access is down,’ Agreen replies.

  ‘That way!’ Ebror shouts to his comrades, firing his particle cannon towards where the surviving drone is retreating towards them, its hardfields up before it, under fire from the other end of the corridor. Immediately a hail of thermal mortars and clusters of missiles hurtle towards it. The drone has no time to defend itself from behind, and the non-stop blasts fling it forward, its hardfields failing, straight into the attackers before it. The back-blast picks Ebror and his companions up off the floor and flings them back too, but that’s what their armour is for and they soon recover. Some of those the drone crashed into are not so fortunate, and Ebror sees that a few of them have fallen.

  ‘Get that equipment down here now!’ he bellows, all too aware of how quickly his time is running out. Less than an hour remains of the two hours which, he estimates, is how long it will take to break into the sanctum–unless this Vrell has even more surprises for them.

  Those still mobile quickly drag aside their comrades who are either stunned or dead, then roll back the big drone shell and push it down into the drop-shaft. Soon they draw the particle-beam cutter into view. Running on big heavy wheels rather than maglev, it looks like a sawn-off version of the weapon used in warfare, with its cooling fins, massive power supply and numerous armoured scon cables leading to a straight and simple barrel. As soon as they position it before the double doors and lock its wheels, Ebror clambers up behind it, inserting his claws into the guide-pits. He swings the barrel off to one side of the doors, meanwhile checking ship schematics via his CPU, then targets the shaft of one of the big hydraulic cylinders within the wall.

  The beam appears with a thump: a rod of blue light lancing between barrel and armoured wall. At first it splashes–hazy violet fire spreading down to the floor and up to the ceiling–then, when the thick metal there hits the right temperature, a mass of molten globules explode from a steadily deepening hole. Soon he is through the thick armour, and the hydraulic shaft is visible. This, being composed of a simple steel alloy, evaporates under the intense blast, and a crash and explosion of sparks issue from the hole as the cylinder drops inside the wall. Three more hydraulic shafts follow, then Ebror cuts two large holes in the middle of the doors, on either side of the diagonal line where they meet, into which the jaws of the clawjack can now be inserted. He clambers back down to the floor.

  ‘Move it!’ he bellows, when it seems several of the Guard here are getting a bit tardy, but then he sees one of his fellows staggering to one side and collapsing, and realises the nanite is beginning to kill them.

  Those still able to function unlock the short-beam’s wheels and help Ebror move it aside.

  ‘Agreen, the clawjack!’ Ebror instructs.

  ‘I am sorry,’ says the junior, his legs giving way underneath him.

  ‘Get the dead ones out of the way and fetch that clawjack in here,’ Ebror orders those who are still able. Most obey him instantly, but he notices others just turning round and heading off to find somewhere quiet to do their dying. Ebror himself even considers doing the same, but does not relish the prospect of contemplating his end in silence.

  Soon they draw the clawjack, which is simply a giant hydraulic claw, into position and insert its tips into the holes Ebror has cut. Its driving motor begins humming and its hydraulic cylinders drive the claw apart. Freed of their own hydraulics in the walls, the two heavy doors begin to part.

  ‘Prepare yourselves,’ Ebror instructs needlessly.

  He looks around to see about fifty of the Guard now cramming the corridor, but even some of these are starting to sag and collapse.

  ‘You two.’ He gestures two of them towards the doors, and they move into position unlimbering heavy rail-guns.

  The moment the gap draws wide enough, the beam of a particle cannon stabs out from inside, hitting one of the two directly. Both retreat, one with his armour smoking. The beam lances out again, hitting the clawjack, while one of them pokes his weapon through the gap and fires at some target Ebror cannot see. The firing ceases abruptly. Can that be it? Has Vrell been hit? When the doors draw far enough apart for an armoured Prador to enter whilst tilted on its edge, the first Guard goes in, rapidly followed by the second. Ebror scuttles up behind them, wondering why his legs are beginning to hurt; then, checking his time display, he understands. The two ahead of him open fire again, but only briefly, then Ebror is in behind them.

  Vrell is dead.

  Ebror walks unsteadily over to the black monster that crouches immobile against one wall, to inspect the great wet cavities gouged in its body by rail-gun fire. Since, like all the children of Oberon, he has been instructed directly by his parent to never remove his armour unless in absolute privacy, Ebror has only ever seen his own mutation. How his fellows look inside their armour is a mystery to him, and he t
herefore wonders if any of them look like this. Vrell is horrible, for there seems something soft about him.

  Ebror now turns to Vrost. ‘Captain?’ he asks tentatively.

  He expects no response and receives none. Either Vrell managed to somehow penetrate Vrost’s armour, or the nanite did his work for him. Ebror’s legs give way. Now his entire body starts to burn and he bites down on a scream. Aware of how the nanite works, he knows the pain will be intense for a while, but even now it is drawing in a numbness behind it as it destroys his nerves. Already he cannot feel his legs.

  Other members of the Guard enter the Sanctum, some to prod at the black mutated Prador corpse, one or two collapsing, others wandering off to find somewhere else to die. After a little while the only movement is from flames issuing from a hole in one wall as hydraulic fluid burns. Smoke sits in a flat fog against the ceiling. Then some sensor comes back online, or some system repairs itself, and cold gas extinguishes the flames. Ebror has now receded to a small point of awareness. Most of his body feels like dead meat and his eyes ache and start to grow dim. Hearing a hiss and crump, and seeing an armoured suit opening, he feels only vague curiosity until it impacts on him that the open suit is Vrost’s. The Prador now standing before the suit is hard and black and lethal-looking. Vrost?

  ‘I wonder if you can hear me?’ the figure says.

  Ebror can’t respond; does not want to respond.

  The black mutated Prador continues, ‘I was right to assume that none of you even knows what Vrost looks like. All you did know was that a black mutated Prador came in here, so it was a small enough task to give Vrost’s corpse a black coating, arm him with a particle cannon, and then fire it remotely.’

  Ebror continues fading…and ceases to care.

  With internal flesh parted, three pairs of egg sacs lie exposed in a gullet-like cavity. As Sadurian steps forward, the two chrome-armoured third-children move respectfully to one side. She stoops to the sacs and presses her fingers against them, checking the tension of their surfaces to ensure they are fully charged with Oberon’s sperm, for sometimes a mating can be unsuccessful, with the female ending up dead and disembowelled before the King concludes his business. These sacs are certainly full, so next Sadurian pulls an ultrasound micro-scanner from her belt and places it against one of them, pulling up an image on the screen of eggs shaped like Human blood corpuscles floating amidst a mass of strange objects like fleshy tuning forks.

  Some of the two-pronged sperms spear their targets and are gradually drawn inside–as is usual in a normal Prador mating–but others spear eggs and merely suck the substance out of them. These sperms are actually eating the eggs they attach to. Running a program through the scanner, Sadurian calculates the proportion of each kind of sperm, then pauses to observe a new phenomenon: sperms attaching themselves in reverse to eggs and using them as a base to attack other eggs and sperms. She isn’t greatly surprised, because there is always some new phenomenon like this at each mating, what with the King’s sperm being just as vicious and adaptive as the creature that produces it.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘we’ve got about twenty per cent hostiles.’ She turns to just one of the two Prador. ‘Delf, get it collected and down to the laboratory as quickly as you can. Use autobot separation for the first hour, then nanobots thereafter. But do it in batches of just half a litre–we don’t want a transferable mutation this time.’ They’d lost the product of an entire mating last time when using little nano-robots to hunt down and kill the hostile spermatazoa. The Spatterjay virus had caused a rapid mutation in one sperm enabling it to chemically kill nanobots and then, within minutes, this mutation had spread virally to all the other spermatazoa, including those that weren’t hostile. It was a disaster and Oberon had not been greatly pleased since: though he enjoys mating, it is not something he can indulge in very often, what with females physically suitable for him having to be grown and then surgically altered especially for the purpose.

  The armoured third-child Delf now punctures each sac in turn with the spout of a vacuum collector–the spout resembling a female’s ovipositor and the collector a small magnetic pump connected to twin chainglass collection bottles. With a sucking gurgling sound each sac deflates and the bottles fill with a pale orange fluid. When Delf is finished, he detaches the two bottles and carefully places them in a padded box, before inserting the pump and spout of the collector into a sterilizing sheath. Then he quickly retreats with his prize and heads off through the aseptic corridors. No other Prador will stand in his way and if any should foolishly assume he is a normal third-child who can be treated with violence, that foolish Prador will soon end up eating the hot end of a particle cannon installed in Delf’s armour.

  ‘Yaggs,’ Sadurian addresses her second Prador assistant, then points towards the dead female. ‘Eggs sacs, oviduct and ovipositor and required muscle groups. We’ll use these this time rather than the machines–make it all as natural as possible.’ Of course Prador cannot pick up on the Human sense of irony, though they have plenty of a sense of their own.

  Yaggs quickly turns to the droge, removing gleaming surgical tools from its numerous compartments, and begins cutting out the required items. They need to be utterly scoured of hostile sperm before they can be used; after which the egg sacs can be refilled with fertilized eggs for the initial growth stages, then inserted into a birth mollusc. It is all a very complicated process, but the King’s juice is a lethal thing. Even in the early days, when females could still survive the actual matings with him, his sperm would eventually spread throughout their bodies and consume them like some flesh-eating virus. In fact the stuff has been used as a method of execution for those who displease the King sufficiently, though it only consumes those uninfected by the Spatterjay virus. The King’s own children it doesn’t kill, though after a long period of suffering what remains of them has to be destroyed.

  Making a last cut around the back end of the female, Yaggs withdraws a great muscular sac and, as he does so, the attached spike of the ovipositor is pulled out of a hole in the rear of the female’s armour. This oviduct and ovipositor, with the muscles that drive the fertilized eggs from the former through the latter, the third-child now places in a refrigerated compartment within the droge. Next he moves on to cutting around the flaccid eggs sacs, then suddenly pauses before going down flat on his stomach. As a huge shadow draws across this diorama, Sadurian feels a shiver run up her spine. There comes a heavy crump to one side and she glances over to see a complex armoured foot indenting the floor, serrations running in triple ridges up the leg above it, to the first heavy joint.

  ‘We’ll be done here soon,’ says Sadurian, without looking up.

  The foot rises and withdraws from view. The King is obviously in no mood for conversation, for he does not reply, but just moves away. Later, Sadurian knows, he will return to the dead female, and when the King is finally done, and the ship-lice after him, there will be nought to clear away but a few remnants of hard carapace.

  6

  In the past, gold, platinum and precious stones were the substances whose ratio of value to volume was the greatest, but as it became possible first to manufacture precious stones and then to mine asteroids and other worlds–some worlds where gold is as common as iron is on Earth–their value fell. The items of the greatest value then became complex electronic chips, AI crystal–in other words, small objects requiring intensive manufacturing. But the techniques employed in making these continually improve, and now the greatest value-to-volume ratio is attached to rarity: Prador diamond slate (thus far mined on only one world), unique organic molecules, or Human and alien antiquities for which there is a thriving black market…

  –From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans

  ‘So this is what all the fuss is about?’ says Orbus, peering at a large package resting on the floor of this particular grav area of the Gurnard’s hold. For a moment he half-expects Drooble to comment on the sarcasm in his boss’s tone, but the crewman is presentl
y in the ship’s small medbay, strapped to a slab and with an autodoc force-feeding the required nutrients into his reluctant mouth.

  Orbus is calmer now, managing at last to accept the futility of bellowing threats at an AI whose location within the ship he has not been allowed to know, though he has left numerous fist-shaped dents in the Gurnard’s walls. Perhaps he still possesses some hard, stubbornly sane core deep inside him that can still make itself heard.

  ‘Ostensibly, this is what all the fuss is about,’ replies Gurnard.

  ‘Nice word that…“ostensibly”,’ says Sniper from where he currently rests on the other side of the package from Orbus. The drone spears out one big spatulate-ended tentacle, which emits a high whine as it runs across the object lying between them. Dust rises into the air from the contact point, then the drone reaches in with several thinner tentacles to pull the package apart. Within a minute he is piling chunks of crash foam to one side, and then he strips away an inner layer of plasmel to reveal the contents.

  The carapace, which extends three metres long, is oval, dished like a crab’s and slightly segmented across the back. It isn’t as deep as the Prador carapaces Orbus has seen, and possesses no visual turret, though there is a large natural-looking hole lying just ahead of the turret’s usual position on the shell. Even so, looking at this thing, he feels it trying to insert itself in that burnt and nightmarish place within his memories.

  ‘That ain’t Prador,’ he says doubtfully, not even sure whether he wants it to be.

  ‘He doesn’t know, does he?’ says Sniper.

  Orbus glares across at the drone. Yes, he wasn’t in his right mind when he occupied the position of Captain of the Vignette on Spatterjay, but he still hasn’t forgotten the humiliation of being hung from the spar of his own ship by his ankles by this very drone. Admittedly this same drone then rescued him and a few of his crewmen from Vrell’s ship as it rose from Spatterjay’s ocean, but that just seems to add insult to injury.