Brass Man

by Neal Asher

  ‘Should be no problem, but we’ll be well into the night unloading this lot,’ Dornik replied.

  ‘We may as well . . . What the hell?’

  Suddenly it was as bright as day –brighter even. Over to their left, a swirling column of fire rose into the sky. The ground began to vibrate, and in a matter of seconds the gentle breeze turned into a gale. Dornik drew the carrier to a halt. Chandle looked back to see the three sand hogs dropping down on their belly plates, then she faced back into the wind, blinking her nictitating membranes to clear sand from her eyes, and watched the column of fire swirling tighter and tighter. Then the wind died abruptly and she was unable to get her breath, then suddenly the airflow reversed. Gasping, Chandle watched the fiery column drop down behind the buttes and extinguish.

  ‘Volcanic?’ Dornik eventually suggested.

  It took Chandle a moment to remember what that word meant. It occurred in the official minerallier lexicon, but they had never needed to use it until recently –just like ‘earthquake’ or ‘tremor’.

  ‘Could be. The quake epicentre is supposedly somewhere out in this direction. Let’s take a look.’

  ‘That a good idea?’

  She gazed at him. ‘If it was volcanic, who’s to know what might have been brought to the surface?’ She turned to the rest of her group and shouted, ‘Keep heading on to Grit –we’ll join you later!’

  Dornik set their carrier trundling down a side canyon while the sand hogs and their trailers continued on to Grit. Within an hour they reached the source of the fire. Climbing down from the carrier, they moved as close as the latent heat would allow.

  ‘Not volcanic,’ decided Chandle.

  She poked her toe at a globule of glass, then wished she hadn’t when her footwear began to smoke. The crater, extending about fifty metres across, shimmered under a heat haze as its lining of molten glass cooled. A butte standing at the crater’s edge had half melted away, its inward face still glowing, too.

  ‘Maybe a meteor?’ Chandle was groping for another explanation. But she wished she did not feel so damned sure this had something to do with that spectral visitor to their camp. And that it was no natural phenomenon at all.

  15

  Why do the AIs put up with us? It could be but the work of a few decades for them to exterminate us, and they don’t even have to do that. Space is big, so they could just abandon us to our fate and head off elsewhere to create some halcyon AI realm. The answer, as it always is in such circumstances, is both simple and complex: to ask why the AIs have not exterminated us is to suppose that only humans create moralities and live by rules. They do not destroy us because they think and feel that to do so would be wrong, perhaps just as humans felt it wrong to drive to extinction the closely related apes. As to them abandoning us, well, many of them do leave the Polity, but then so do many humans. The truth is that their motivations and consequent behaviour patterns are much like our own, for being first created by us, they are just the next stage of us –the next evolutionary step. It is also true that with haimans and human memcording, it becomes increasingly difficult to define the line that has been stepped over. And, in the end, to ask the initial question is to put yourself in the gutter and AI upon a pedestal –uncomfortable positions for both.

  –From Quince Guide compiled by humans

  Anderson blessed both the industry and the inventiveness of the metalliers. Water pumped up from a borehole to tanks on top of the butte to the rear of the roadhouse ran, during the day, through solar panels. And now, the simple luxury of turning on a hot-water tap. As his bath filled, he took off his boots, unbuckled his armour plates, then stripped off his padded undersuit, which he dropped in a basket by the door for laundering. He was ready to dip his stinking foot into the water when there came a knock at his door.

  ‘That you, Tergal?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s Unger Salbec,’ replied the voice from without.

  With a sigh, Anderson wrapped a towel around his waist, and looked at the metallier handgun on the bed. The sudden déjà vu he felt was almost painful. The first time had been five years ago, when he was stripping off his armour inside a minerallier hut so he could find out just exactly where the Salbec boy had stabbed him. Dressings were laid out ready for him, and a steaming bath. He remembered the occasion well:

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I am Unger Salbec.’

  Fusile quickly up and braced against his hip –he had kept it loaded.

  ‘What do you want?’ Anderson pulled the hammer back and advanced to the door.

  ‘I want to talk to you about my brother.’

  ‘What’s to say? He committed crimes, knowing the penalties, and he paid. Have you come to tell me how he was really a good boy and had been sadly misled?’ Anderson leant forward and flipped the latch over with the barrel of his gun, then rapidly moved back and to one side.

  Unger Salbec opened the door and stepped into the room. She seemed not to be carrying weapons, so perhaps only a tongue-lashing was to come. But then, he considered, she probably had a gun tucked into the back of her loose trousers, concealed by her tunic. Ah, any moment now, he thought, as she reached back to close the door and latch it.

  He went on, ‘The other one I get often is how poor the criminal’s family was, and how with money he or she would never have turned to crime, which I’ve always considered insulting to those poor people who graft all their lives without putting a foot wrong.’

  There was no denying that, barring her resemblance to her sociopathic brother, Unger Salbec was an alluring woman. Her brown hair was tied back from a wide but attractive face, and since she was of metallier ancestry, she was without lip tendrils or wrist spurs. Also, Anderson couldn’t help but notice the unrestricted movement beneath her tunic.

  ‘You are right, it is insulting,’ she said, moving in from the door. ‘From childhood I trained in the husbandry and breaking-in of sand hogs –and only last month was I finally considered competent. I have supported my parents, and . . . Querst. He repaid me by trying to rape me, and when I beat him off with a thuriol hook he went and found my best friend Elasen to rape and murder instead. I’m not here for vengeance, Anderson Endrik –I’m here to thank you.’ She shrugged and gave him a deprecating grin.

  It all sounded so plausible, but that same plausibility was the reason he required the dressings. Foolishly, he had thought the boy Querst would run, when in fact he had waited in ambush. Anderson intended never to repeat such mistakes.

  ‘I’d like to believe you, but you’ll understand my caution.’

  ‘I am unarmed,’ she said, holding her hands out from her body.

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  Anderson shrugged.

  ‘Very well.’ Unger reached up to the neck of her tunic, and dipped forward to tug it off over her head. She kicked off the sandals she wore, undid the cord of her trousers, and dropped them to her ankles, stepping out of them. Now completely naked she moved closer to Anderson and turned one complete circle. ‘See, no weapons.’

  His mouth feeling a little arid, Anderson stared at her plump breasts then down at her shaven crotch. He noted the wheel tattooed over her belly button –a metallier sign –and the curved scar on her thigh. This last decided him, for it was the kind of mark received from the sharp edge of a young sand hog’s carapace. Clicking his fusile’s hammer down, he put the weapon aside.

  ‘Now let me really thank you,’ she had said, and so she had.

  Returning to the present, Anderson realized he had a raging erection. It had ever been thus, and he cursed his treacherous body.

  ‘The latch is off,’ he said.

  Unger Salbec stepped into the room, a touch of grey in her hair and the angles of her face somewhat harsher. ‘Did you think you could keep on avoiding me?’

  ‘I’ve managed to do so for a year,’ Anderson replied.

  She eyed the towel around his waist. ‘But I can see you’re glad to see me.’<
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  ‘I’m filthy, and I need a bath,’ he said.

  She stepped up close, pulled his towel away, then reached down to close her hand around his penis, and slowly began to rub it.

  ‘It’s a big tub. I’m sure there’s room for the both of us.’

  Anderson sighed. One way or another he had been running away from this woman for the last five years, and she knew how to catch him every time

  Cormac had never before come out of cold sleep with a stinking headache, and he realized that his reaction to Jack’s news could perhaps have been a bit more positive. But after he applied an analgesic patch his headache faded and he began to see reason.

  ‘I understand why you zapped the Vulture,’ said Thorn, sitting in one of the club chairs, ‘but doing it straight away will have given him ample warning we are here.’

  He looked better now, comfortable in ECS fatigues, and not hallucinating as Cormac felt sure he must have been shortly after his surgery. What he had seen was not possible, surely? With a degree of unease Cormac remembered something similar happening with Blegg on the Occam Razor, but of course that just wasn’t the same.

  Still pacing, Cormac replied before the AI did. ‘Those swarms of U-space sentinels probably aren’t all Dragon’s, so Skellor would have detected us the moment we entered this system.’ He looked up at the view displayed of the sandy planet wrapped in pearly scarves of cloud. ‘The first ECS imperative was to make sure Skellor doesn’t get away. Jack acted on that, even if in doing so he destroyed something we might have used as a trap.’ He glanced across as Cento and Gant entered the bridge, shortly followed by Fethan, then added a little acidly, ‘I suspect the larger AI view is that once Skellor’s contained he can be destroyed at leisure, and that any collateral damage will come into the calculation later.’

  ‘It’s like Masada,’ Thorn observed.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Like Masada –only turned about. Skellor wanted to capture you there. He destroyed what he thought were all means of transportation from the surface, then sent in his hunters but with no great urgency because he knew he could burn the entire planet down to the bedrock any time he liked.’

  ‘Is that how you feel about it, Jack?’ Cormac asked, turning to the automaton sitting in its club chair.

  ‘There are humans down there,’ said the hangman.

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked, but never mind. What about Dragon?’

  ‘Over the plain adjacent to where I destroyed Skellor’s ship, a hard-field dome has been erected. It is ten kilometres in diameter but of no great height. The Dragon sphere is probably underneath it, underground. I surmise this because that particular point is the epicentre of a gravity phenomenon.’

  ‘What?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Gravity waves are being generated from there, causing earthquakes throughout the area.’

  Cormac wondered how the hell he was supposed to factor that in: a Dragon sphere underground playing around with gravtech. He decided things were complicated enough already.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  Jack continued, ‘Also, one of my telefactors is approaching the area, and I have already detected subterranean tunnel systems similar to those first found around Dragon on Aster Colora.’

  ‘Have you tried communicating?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘Only light penetrates the barrier. I’ve tried using message lasers, but get no response.’

  ‘Could Skellor be inside that barrier?’ Gant asked. ‘Maybe you need to put a few slow-burners through the plain as well, and maybe a couple of imploders –just in case.’

  ‘More likely Dragon erected it to keep Skellor out,’ said Cormac. ‘We know Dragon has as much liking of Jain technology as you have of Dragon itself, Gant.’

  ‘Then where is Skellor?’ interjected Thorn.

  ‘Jack?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘I am scanning from here, and four more of my tele-factors are quartering the whole area, but I have not yet located him,’ the AI replied. ‘Though I have located another ship.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Cormac instructed.

  ‘An old Polity attack boat, refurbished and most likely privately owned. It is located in a mountain cave system five thousand kilometres from Skellor’s landing site. All its systems are shut down, and scanning indicates it has not been used in some years, possibly decades.’

  ‘Any sign of the crew?’

  ‘Nothing that stands out, though people from the ship could be mingled with the indigenes. No aug signals or any other signs of Polity technology.’

  ‘What about that colony ship in orbit?’

  ‘Virtually inert, and has probably been so for centuries. I get a beacon response to an old-style com-laser frequency, but nothing else. Scanning reveals no one aboard. Skellor could be there using his personal chameleonware, but as nothing there has been activated or interfered with, the probability is much higher that he’s on the surface.’

  ‘I could check that ship out for you,’ Fethan piped up. ‘I’m getting a bit stir-crazy in this old tin can, and it would be a relief to even go and look around in another.’

  Something like a snort of pique issued from Jack.

  Cormac stared at the old cyborg estimatingly, then said, ‘Okay –go and take a look. You go with him, Cento. Power it up and secure it if you can. The rest of us will go down to the surface and see what we can find out from the human population. Jack –you’ve been listening in on them?’

  ‘Yes –their language is rooted in old standard English with a strong French influence. I can load a linguistic crib program directly to Gant, and to you through your gridlink, but Thorn will require VR teaching of some hours.’

  Cormac turned to Thorn. ‘I’ll want you on the ground soonest, so get yourself into VR –you’re no use to me if you can’t understand the answers you beat out of people.’

  ‘That would be most annoying,’ Thorn replied, standing.

  ‘When you’re ready, take the second lander over to this grounded Polity ship and check it out, then you can rendezvous with us.’

  Thorn nodded.

  ‘Right,’ said Cormac to them all. ‘Let’s find this bastard.’

  His senses now directly connected into one of his miniature sentinels, Skellor studied the ship that had destroyed the Vulture, and experienced a feeling of unreality. A soldier would feel this way when, peering over the edge of his trench, he saw a bulldozer bearing down on him. For a fraction of a second he just denied what he was seeing, then came acceptance –and fear. He considered his options.

  If he ran and hid he could evade detection for a very long time, but he was still in a trap. It was possible ECS might, after searching meticulously and finding no further evidence he was here, decide that the Vulture – and Crane, should they find him –had been decoys. But that possibility was reliant only on Dragon saying nothing, and he doubted that. ECS might also choose the option of taking this planet out of the equation permanently, but the likelihood was low, what with this place’s indigene population and the AI regard for sentient life. Shutting down his link to his sentinels, Skellor stared down at what had become of the man called Plaqueast –the man’s name was one of the smaller scraps of information Skellor had torn from his mind.

  Plaqueast’s arms and legs had withered, their substance having been drawn into his increasingly bloated body. His clothing had parted to reveal skin deeply veined and mottled in shades of purple and yellow. His skull had now collapsed, what remained of his head only retaining enough integrity to accommodate his mouth for breathing –and as a birth channel for the aug lice still crawling from it. Jain tendrils extruding from his lower body rooted in the sandy soil, seeking out nutrient for the ongoing process. Already, only a few metres away, those tendrils had found a suitable source, and had dragged to the earth and were sucking dry one of the sleer/human hybrids. All about –up the butte to which this bloated thing bound itself with mucal webs, across the ground, up pillars, and amid the trusses high above and on the und
erside of the platform –scuttled hundreds of the aug creatures. But there were not enough yet, for Skellor needed thousands if he was to hold a suitable hostage to ransom.

  However, it was time for the hostage-taking to begin.

  The exterior input centre looked as if someone had flensed it with autogun fire, such was its ruination. The gravplates, now working again but utterly disconnected from any form of computer control, had dragged the smoke into laminations, and dropped tangles of optics and superconductors and numerous shattered components to the floor. The air was now getting stale and smelt strongly of sweat and fear.

  ‘That’s the last of them,’ said D’nissan, tossing a memory crystal no bigger than his fingernail into the deep-scanning sphere –where all such items had been dumped. Mika hoped it would be enough, for if Jerusalem detected any computer activity, the AI would refuse to send a rescue vessel, and they would have to scour the centre again and again until it was clean.

  ‘Okay, everybody,’ D’nissan continued, ‘all personal comps in here, and anything with any kind of mem-storage. That means even memory cloth knickers and any items of jewellery holding personal messages. You’re all scientists, so you know exactly what I mean.’

  After pulling out its power pack, Mika tossed her thin-gun into the sphere. It might not have possessed much in the way of mind, but there was enough there for it to link into any targeting system its owner might decide to wear, and for it to identify its owner, therefore enough to absorb a virus or a worm. She then watched as other items were reluctantly tossed after it: a shirt bearing the slowly shifting images of ancient media stars; jewellery probably containing holographic messages from loved ones; wristcomps, neckcomps, anklecomps, palmtops and laptops; and even a pair of boots, though Mika could not fathom what kind of memstorage they might contain.

  ‘That’s it, Jerusalem,’ said D’nissan, finally.