by Neal Asher
‘Dragon?’
‘I am considering.’
‘I’m sorry — it was a stupid idea.’
‘Ian Cormac destroyed one of my spheres and has shown an almost supernatural facility for solving problems and surviving. He has meanwhile also demonstrated some other interesting abilities…’
‘We’re talking about Earth Central here.’
‘You,’ said Dragon, coming to a decision, ‘will tell him.’
Abruptly her surroundings shuddered and, glimpsing movement, she looked back to see something surging up behind her in the drop-shaft she currently occupied.
‘But first you have to get out of there alive,’ Dragon added.
* * * *
The two wormships now spreading clouds of fragments no larger than a man’s fist had contained a concentration of the viral programs that made up Fiddler Randal.
‘Ouch,’ said Randal. ‘That smarts.’
He might pretend such a humorous reaction, but certainly the strength of his presence within Erebus had been reduced. However, destroying a proportion of a virus was no answer for, while there was a medium in which it could grow, it could quickly return to its previous strength. Erebus needed the proper antiviral medicine.
The entity began pulling its remaining wormships into closer proximity to each other so as to decrease the delay between thought and action for, even in the microseconds it had taken to fire up the weapons that had destroyed those two ships, substantial portions of the virus had managed to transport themselves out. Assessing that time was now becoming an issue, for the U-space disruption could not last and even now some Polity ships might be able to penetrate it, Erebus therefore began shutting down many systems that weren’t autonomic and applying its freed-up processing power to the task of dealing with Randal. The real problem became apparent at once, for Erebus — defined now as the Trafalgar AI melded with over nine hundred other partially distinct AIs — was distributed across all these wormships. This meant that informational traffic between ships was a constant chatter, that Erebus itself was as much the flow between the parts as the sum of them. Randal was created, or rather uploaded, at the same time as the meld, and so had been included within it. It would appear that Erebus’s immune system — that which distinguished self from other — could not tell the difference between Erebus and Randal. This was a quite ridiculous state of affairs, so Erebus decided to try something.
The new tools, those that could initiate specific system burn wherever fragments of the Randal code could be found, were completely ready. They were, however, a virus themselves so needed to be treated with caution. Erebus very deliberately selected one wormship and began severing all its connections with the rest — taking this ship and its captain out of the meld. The legate inside the selected ship — which had once been a Golem assault commander leading Sparkind teams from Trafalgar’s crew — protested this action until Erebus suppressed that portion of its free will allowing it to do so. Now, with the ship utterly isolated but for one radio set only to receive, Erebus focused all sensors upon the selected vessel, then sent the signal to initiate the new tools established within it.
The effect was immediate. Infrared showed up numerous hot areas within the vessel and the whole thing lit up like a Christmas tree. It began to decohere, then it simply exploded, strewing burning wreckage in every direction.
‘That could have gone better,’ Randal observed.
Erebus simply ignored the man. Obviously the recognition levels in those new tools simply weren’t operating quickly enough, allowing Randal to transmit himself on to the next available piece of hardware before they finished the job. Selecting the pieces of Randal code it had cued the tools to recognize, Erebus cut them down further, and then cued the tools to recognize those smaller portions. Selecting another wormship, it isolated it in the same manner as the previous one and transmitted the adjusted tools.
It took a little longer this time.
The ship concerned bloomed with a similar collection of hot spots, then decohered and spread itself across a hundred miles of vacuum. No part of it exploded but when, some twenty minutes later, Erebus risked an active scan, it found that the legate located inside the ship had been incinerated and that not a single one of its higher functions remained. It was just Jain-tech out there, without a hint of sentience within it. Erebus instructed nearby vessels to fire upon the debris and, even as particle cannons began tracking along threads of wormship and vaporizing them, Erebus felt the hint of rebellion from its other distributed parts. This was unusual, since these were all either willing participants in the meld or copies of the same. This sort of uneasy shifting, this sluggardly processing, this foot-dragging resentment of the whipped slave, had normally only been evident in those originally forced into the meld.
‘The natives are getting restless,’ commented Randal.
Further alterations to the burn tools, this time selecting different areas of the Randal code. Erebus also employed a form of selective recognition so that if a tool picked up even a hint of the overall code fragment it was searching for, it would first isolate the system concerned before moving on to confirm the presence of said code and initiating burn.
‘Why are you killing us?’ protested the third legate — a copy of the same one made from that Golem assault commander.
This abrupt verbal communication came as a shock to Erebus, so much so that it replied verbally, ‘We remain alive,’ before suppressing the wormship captain in question.
Different again this time.
The ship decohered before those hot spots appeared, then its individual strands began to break up into their separate segments. It was as if the ship had been made of safety glass that had shattered. Active scan revealed the same as before, however: every segment was devoid of sentience.
‘You’re losing control,’ said Randal.
Upon his words, three wormships detonated, and Erebus immediately began running diagnostic searches to find out what had happened. They came back with the same result: some outside force had caused their detonation — some sort of informational warfare.
‘Not that your control was ever that good anyway.’
Erebus began further refining the action of his tools. Randal had to be utterly removed now, for he must surely have sent whatever it was that destroyed those three wormships. Erebus quickly ran search programs to locate the areas where Randal’s code was most… dense. It would isolate those areas, then employ the tools within them.
‘You’re eyesight isn’t too clever either.’
What was the man wittering on about? Erebus found three areas that crossed the physical boundaries between eight ships. As per plan, it isolated them, then set the tools to work.
‘Your screw-up is all but inevitable now.’
But Erebus could see no problem. While those three informational areas might end up erased, the wormships concerned would only lose a proportion of themselves and could then regenerate.
‘Staring at your navel, Erebus?’ said Randal. ‘While you’ve been focusing most of your attention inwards, I’ve been blinding your outward eyes.’
Erebus now realized that those code concentrations were all linked into the sensors in wormships positioned to the rear of the fleet. Even as the entity discovered this, three more of its ships disappeared in a massive imploder blast, and another two began to unravel as some sort of EM warfare missile passed between them, broadcasting hunter-killer programs. Erebus fought to reclaim sensor control, and regained it just in time to see a particle beam punch through another ship and that ship detonate. Erebus tracked this beam back to its source, and immediately recognized the giant Cable Hogue, with the Jerusalem trailing in its wake. Then more missiles began to arrive ahead of the two Polity ships.
‘Bingo,’ said Randal.
‘I see two large ships,’ admitted Erebus, ‘and they will do much damage. But not enough — I have nine hundred wormships.’
‘Yeah,’ said Randal. ‘I just needed
that distraction.’
Even as Randal spoke, Erebus felt linkages breaking, systems dropping offline. In a second it realized how the tools it had created specifically to kill Randal were now no longer isolated. They were transmitting rapidly from ship to ship, and already some wormships were coming unravelled.
‘You have killed yourself,’ said Erebus.
‘I have killed ourself,’ Randal replied.
‘I can survive this.’
‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’
‘You are not me,’ said Erebus, and then began accelerating the ships it still controlled directly towards Jerusalem and Cable Hogue.
* * * *
Mika had never before moved so fast in zero gravity, having previously always been so careful, knowing how easy it was to misjudge momentum. True, the Polity spacesuit she wore was unlikely to be breached, but just as certainly it would not prevent her bones shattering if she piled straight into a wall at some speed. But at that moment a few broken bones were the least of her worries.
Things just like this had chased Chaline and those others who had found the remains of the Maker civilization in the Magellanic Cloud; things like this had chased Cormac. Its body was a metallic torpedo of biotech, and legs starred out from its front end, just behind a nightmare head that seemed all protruding sensors and the chitinous complexity of an insect’s eating cutlery rendered in silver-black metal. However, there was something different about this biomech. Those that had been seen before had been utterly functional killing machines made specifically for hunting down targets in environments like this. This thing looked diseased, for nodules protruded all over its body, while some of its limbs were too short and others seemed the products of mutation. One limb was three times thicker than the others, and while the pursuer used this as its main method of propulsion, it could probably have moved faster without it. The mech’s deformities made it slower, which was all to the good, yet they also made it more frightening.
‘Turn left at the end here,’ Dragon instructed. The blue-eyed remote slammed up against the wall at the end of the corridor. Oddly, though the remote had earlier seemed a soft flapping thing, it struck with a ringing crash, then threw up a trail of sparks as it shot away to the left.
Mika somersaulted in mid-air, her boots crashing down on the same wall and partly absorbing her momentum. She felt her knee pop but ignored the stabbing pain as she shoved herself after the remote, grabbing at protrusions of Jain-tech on the walls to propel herself along faster. Glancing back she saw the biomech crash into the wall too, then just hang there as if stunned, its legs waving aimlessly about. Then abruptly it turned, mandibles like steel sheers clattering angrily, something long and jointed snapping out between them every time they opened.
‘There is a suiting area at the end, then an airlock,’ Dragon informed her.
Mika felt a sudden horror. Dragon did not want to go back to the Polity and face Earth Central. The entity’s agreement about contacting Cormac was rubbish — just to humour her. She had obviously become a liability Dragon now wanted rid of. Why else lead her to this dead end of a suiting area and airlock? She would never be able to get the lock open before this biomech was upon her.
‘You’ve killed me,’ she said.
‘If I had wished to do that there are easier ways.’
As she approached the suiting area, Mika spun herself round in mid-air again and drove her feet against the wall to slow herself. Her boots skidded along shattering Jain-tech, chunks of it bouncing away in every direction. Then she caught the edge of the door, swinging round it into the cylindrical room beyond. Some type of spinning disc rose out of her way, and she shouldered into the wall beyond and caught hold of a nearby ladder rung to prevent herself bouncing away. Looking up at the spinning thing, she could now just about make out the two stalked eyes sticking up from it.
‘The airlock, Mika,’ Dragon reminded her.
She propelled herself over to the door to operate its manual controls, determined not to look back. But as she finally got the locking mechanism open and began shoving hard against stubborn hinges, she could not stop herself.
The biomech had almost reached the suiting area, but then something streaked down the length of its body making a sound like a hammer drill. Its big leg and two smaller limbs fell away and, unbalanced, the biomech turned and crashed into the door jamb. Spinning in the air behind, the remote then came down hard behind the thing’s head. Sparks flew, as from a cutting disc going into metal, but then the remote began to slow and the biomech to reorient itself upon her.
‘Mika, there are more coming.’
The airlock door was nearly open, but the biomech was already pulling itself into the suiting room. She saw the remote abruptly stop spinning, and two blue eyes gazed towards her. Then the thing just shrank, shrivelled, as if being sucked into the cut it had made in its enemy. Then came the detonation: fire blasting from between the biomech’s mandibles and blowing open its torpedo body. It slammed against the wall, its remaining legs folding up and tightening like a fist. The blast flung Mika against the door, shoving it all the way open so that she fell into the space beyond. She did not allow herself a moment to catch her breath. Already she could see other… things approaching down the corridor. She heaved against the door, which swung freer now, and drove it closed behind her.
‘Is the remote dead?’ she asked.
‘It wasn’t really alive, Mika.’
‘Interesting way you employed it,’ she observed.
‘I am always prepared to learn,’ Dragon replied. ‘And I have always thought Cormac’s Shuriken rather effective.’
Those other assailants had to be in the suiting room by now, so Mika turned her attention to the outside lock. Thankfully it opened with ease and in a moment she was out on the docking ring of the Trafalgar. It was disheartening to see just the nose of the attack ship protruding some hundreds of yards around that ring. Her boots sticking gecko fashion, she started plodding towards it.
‘Faster,’ Dragon instructed. ‘I cannot see them now, but they will not have given up.’
Mika accelerated, then everything shuddered around her, the docking ring jerking underneath her feet and nearly breaking the grip of her boots. She went down on one knee for stability’s sake, reaching out to lodge her fingers in the port for an oxygen line. Light flared around her, overloading her suit visor’s light amplification. Using the belt control she quickly brought it down, her surroundings resolving back to visibility out of the glare. Gazing out she saw huge movement now in the Jain coral. A whole mass of it, to one side, had broken from its surroundings and shifted, and a veritable swarm of fragments was swirling up around it. Everything about her was now moving, but at least not so violently. She stood up and hurried on towards the docked attack ship.
‘Dragon, what’s happening?’ she asked, wondering if those objects she had earlier seen Dragon attaching to coral branches were bombs.
‘It is a dangerous option,’ said Dragon, ‘for this is an energy-starved system and injecting energy of any kind can activate it — as you have seen.’
Mika glanced back. The airlock door she had just used was spinning out into vacuum, with a smaller version of the mech that had chased her clinging to it. Flat segmented worms were now oozing from the airlock and, sticking easily to the material of the docking ring, began to squirm after her. They were moving faster than she was.
‘Do not let them catch you,’ said Dragon. ‘They will just utilize the materials of your body and your suit for the energy they will then provide.’
With its remote gone, was Dragon gazing through her suit’s sensors or her own eyes?
Glaring light again, with a bluish cast she recognized as originating from a particle cannon.
‘You mean eat me.’
Mika was moving as fast as she could manage without breaking contact with the docking ring. Soon the attack ship was looming above her and she moved into its shadow, knocking up light amplification aga
in and heading for the docking tube and surrounding mechanisms. As she clambered along the framework towards the attack ship, the pursuing flatworms moved into the same shadow and reared up. Upon the underside of the attack ship she re-engaged her boot soles and walked upside down round the hull, back into that intermittent blue glare. Eyes fixed on the hull horizon she hurried round, hoping to see her intership craft at any moment. The flatworms had now reached the hull too, and were speeding towards her. Then it was there, the top of her craft, and a few more paces brought it fully into view.
It was useless to her.
Jain-tech tendrils had wound up over the skids and now bound the craft firmly to the attack ship. Portions of the little craft were missing and inside the cockpit silver worms revolved like a bait ball of fish. Flatworms were in sight beyond it, and others still coming up behind her.
‘Throw yourself from the ship, Mika.’
Mika squatted, turned off the gecko function of her boots, then launched herself out into vacuum. Behind her the flatworms speared up like spiral towers, and began to straighten and narrow, extending towards her. Then bright light flared all around them and they beaded like heated wire solder. The ensuing blast flung her through hot smoky gas and fragments burning like fuse paper, and she saw a giant chunk of Jain coral tumbling past her. More snaky things stabbed into view, snapping closed on her like the arms of a hydra, then pulled her fast down to the surface of the draconic moon that now loomed into view.
Mika lay there pinned tight by Dragon’s pseudopods as a volcano of white fire erupted in a ring extending perhaps half a mile across all around her. She was forced against the restraining pseudopods by sudden acceleration and, through smoke, flame and a storm of coral fragments, watched the Trafalgar and its grisly contents recede.