Brass Man

by Neal Asher

  We have no back-up, Gant observed from the lander. Perhaps we should pull out until we find out what’s going on.

  Gant had also been unable to get any response during the night. There had been none even from Fethan and Cento, and Cormac wondered if they were dead or just staying low profile because of some sort of danger up there.

  In morning twilight, with two metallier guards nervously leading the way, Cormac headed towards the roadhouse. Kilnsman Astier had instructed both men to do exactly as Cormac asked, and no longer be so trigger-happy. They now both carried their weapons slung and with the safeties on, and seemed disinclined to disobey Astier’s order –probably because they had faced an unkillable man who, underneath his skin, seemed to be made of metal, and witnessed how dangerous was the weapon at Cormac’s wrist. But also because their kilnsman had been returned to them miraculously alive. One of the two accompanying guards kept checking his own right hand, and flexing fingers that the previous day had been lying severed in the sand. It had been a very minor task for the autodoc aboard the lander, but Cormac understood how something like that impressed less . . . advanced cultures.

  To Gant, Cormac sent: We’ll assess the situation here, and do just that. Catching Skellor has always been problematic –like hunting in a woodpile for a poisonous snake.

  With a blindfold on, Gant reminded.

  Yes –his chameleonware.

  Cormac didn’t really need that reminder. He was starting to get edgy now: he didn’t know enough about what had happened and, with the vital resource of the Jack Ketch and that ship’s telefactors unavailable, could only judge things by what he learned here on the ground. He had set his gridlink to try and crack the encryption Jack used in his signal to his ’factors, but there was no guarantee of success or that the telefactors would become available again any time soon.

  As the two men led him up the stairs to the roadhouse, Cormac considered what he had learned both last evening and this morning. Astier, and the man who had lost his fingers, had been endlessly curious; hungry for knowledge –an inculcated metallier trait, it would appear. But while Cormac regularly answered their questions, he also probed and learned much.

  The metalliers were standard-format humans, and must have been descendants of the colony ship’s crew. Others here were ’dapt colonists, and a small number was a mixture of both –mostly mineralliers who lived in both metallier and colonist domains. This lack of interbreeding, Cormac soon discovered, was the result of opinions of racial superiority on both sides. The colonists rightly considered themselves superior because they were hardier, though it amused Cormac to discover they thought they were pure-bred humans. Interestingly, it was the metalliers’ physical inferiority that had led them to evolve a more technical society, not their vaunted mental superiority. However, Cormac was surprised to learn that the prevalence of weapons here was not the result of interracial conflict, but because conditions, until recent technical advances made by the metalliers, had been very harsh. And the present apparent militarism was a direct result of orders from Chief Metallier Tanaquil. Someone had warned that personage about Skellor, and Cormac really wanted to know who. But right now he needed to talk to someone who might have actually seen Skellor.

  ‘Mineralliers Chandle and Dornik?’ The two awaited him at a table in the roadhouse refectory. He noticed that the man, Dornik, was a full ’dapt, whilst the woman, Chandle, showed only a hint of genetic adaptation –whenever she blinked down nictitating membranes.

  The male seemed about to blurt something out, but the woman rested a hand on his arm to silence him and asked, ‘And you are?’

  ‘Ian Cormac.’

  Just as if saying his own name provided some sort of key, he felt something slide into place in his head, almost with the sound and feel of a piece of a 3D puzzle fashioned out of lead blocks. A communication channel opened, and he felt great relief, but only momentarily. It was not Jack. Cormac was now in contact with the telefactor earlier sent to Dragon’s supposed location. In doubled vision, he now observed two of the strange mounts these people used bolting riderless along the edge of the hard-field wall. He would have to come back to that, however, as the woman was now staring at him, awaiting some reply. Diverting to storage the information he was receiving from the factor’s sensors, he then replayed the last few seconds recorded in his gridlink:

  ‘A strange name, and a very brief answer to my question,’ the woman had said, gesturing to the window and towards the lander outside.

  ‘I am from what is called the Polity, and am here hunting the same person as these fellows.’ Cormac indicated the two guards.

  ‘You’re a policeman from Earth?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Damn.

  A second signal keyed in from a telefactor lying tilted on a mountain slope. Even though the machine was half blinded, Cormac still saw a vision of hell: molten rock and glowing embers, fires consuming seared vegetation in a deep valley and throwing up columns of black smoke. Then a third signal keyed in from one high in the air over endless desert, and a fourth from a ’factor slowly tracking through tumbled stone ruins. He shunted all they were sending to storage and awaited the fifth signal –from the telefactor investigating the nearby city –but it stubbornly refused to come. He returned his attention to the woman, who sat there seemingly at a loss as to how to continue after his affirmation.

  He enquired, ‘Kilnsman Astier questioned you about any unusual people you might have seen. You said you did see someone, but were apparently reticent about exactly what you saw. Could you describe this individual to me?’

  ‘I’m not even sure he was real . . . things I saw . . . but now . . .’ She gestured towards the window again.

  ‘Tell me it all,’ said Cormac. ‘Leave nothing out –and be assured there’s not much I won’t believe.’

  Chandle then told him about her encounter with a man who could make himself invisible: what he said, how he looked, when it occurred. As she went on to talk about the explosions in the Sand Towers, he held up his hand. ‘I know about that. Can you tell me any more about this man?’

  She shook her head. ‘He just disappeared –heading towards the city.’

  As Cormac stood from the table, Chandle asked, ‘What is he?’

  ‘Something horrible,’ Cormac replied.

  Heading towards the city.

  As he left the roadhouse Cormac looked up as a shadow drew across him, and observed the first of two blimps descending between him and the lander. He picked up his pace, speculating that the blimps had to be hydrogen-filled, as he doubted they possessed the technical capacity here to refine that quantity of helium. In his gridlink, he skimmed an overview of that sort of primitive technology, and discovered he was right. Drawing closer, he saw the armed metalliers stepping out of the suspended cabin, noted their raggedy look –and the objects clinging behind their ears.

  Idiot!

  It was like a slap to him when he recollected exactly why his gridlink had been deactivated not so many years ago: it interfered with his functioning as an agent of Earth Central, crippled his humanity and his ability to assess human situations. And like an addict coming back to his favourite drug, he had taken to it again oh so quickly, and had so quickly forgotten. The telefactor at the city was not functioning. Skellor had gone there: a man more ruthless than any AI and possessing a technology capable of turning people into mere extensions of himself. Cormac broke into a run, circling the figures now disembarking from the balloon’s cabin and flinging Shuriken up as a guard between himself and them.

  Gant! He’s here! he sent to the Golem.

  Gant was into the lander and then out again in a flash, a pulse-rifle up and aimed. Weapons fire slammed into him, knocking him back staggering. He returned fire, killing several metalliers running towards him. Of those coming towards Cormac, one spun round, his body cut cleanly in half at the waist, and another toppled with his head separating on a fountain of blood. Shuriken was whickering in sharp mechanica
l delight. The other blimp was drawing overhead and Cormac ran in its shadow. He reached inside his coat and drew his thin-gun, for its shots burned whereas Shuriken only cut. Suddenly a cloud of light erupted, washing heat across him, flinging people along the ground. Gant had acted on the idea before Cormac did, and the first balloon was now explosively on fire. Shielding his face, Cormac reached the lander and ducked through the door. He recalled Shuriken, and it flashed inside to thrum above him just before Gant too dived through the door. Cormac palmed the lock plate as Gant leapt into the pilot’s chair.

  ‘Get us out of here!’

  The lander began to rise, tilting to miss the second blimp. Cormac ignored the sound of small-arms fire, because it could cause no damage, but he felt a sinking sensation when something heavy hit the hull.

  ‘We’ve got a passenger,’ observed Gant leadenly.

  Ten of the twelve landers departed Ogygian, the remaining two being unable to break away from the frozen docking clamps. Fethan shaded his eyes, more out of long-acquired habit than from any need to protect them, just as a second lander detonated far ahead and to his right. Clinically he then observed the remains of an ion-drive nacelle go gyrating past, and listened to the patter of other debris against the hull.

  Cento? he queried.

  It had been the Golem’s idea that they go down in separate landers, so spreading the odds that one of them might reach the surface intact and survive to tell the tale.

  No, I wasn’t in that one, the Golem replied over their internal radio link. They could not use the ship-to-ship communicators because that would have alerted Skellor to their presence. Just as, much to Fethan’s chagrin, neither of them could interfere with the landers’ automatic systems to make corrections. Though if it was a choice between that and dying in a conflagration because the vessel hit atmosphere at the wrong angle, then interfere he would.

  Any clue where we’re going to put down? he asked.

  Too far out to calculate vectors, but I’d guess the target is that city and that, once we’re close enough, a landing program will cut in and bring us down in the flatlands right before it. Certainly, no auto-program would attempt a landing in the terrain lying behind it.

  If those programs work.

  Fethan sat back, feeling the perished synthetic padding of the seat cracking and breaking as he shifted against the frayed strap holding him in place, and wondered what they would do once they did reach the surface. Maybe by bearding Skellor up here Fethan and Cento would have been risking their lives pointlessly, but merely surviving to tell ECS what had occurred here Fethan did not like either. Maybe he was mostly ceramoplastics and metals, but that did not make him just a damned recording machine. He thought then about the other, even larger, battles.

  Ships –ECS ships –had entered the system, employed a USER, then proceeded to attack the Jack Ketch. Instinctively he felt that these attacking ships had to be renegades, but he could not even be sure of that. Maybe Jack had somehow stepped over the line, and ECS had sent these ships to destroy him? Fethan suspected the chances of actually arresting a warship were remote. Whatever, that was a conflict completely beyond his own capabilities, one in which the ships would employ moon-fragmenting and AI-mind-bending weapons in some huge lethal ballet where nanosecond decisions vitally counted. Down on the surface there was perhaps some other conflict in the offing? Skellor was probably still in the city, operating the message laser, and Cormac was almost certainly closing in on him. The agent needed to know everything Fethan now knew.

  We’ll have to go into the city to see if we can link up with Cormac and Gant. Maybe we’ll be able to deal with Skellor before it comes to the kill program back at the ship springing its trap.

  Perhaps it would be better to pull back and let Skellor come. The interference to Cento’s signal, as much as the actual words, told Fethan he had been duped.

  You’re still aboard Ogygian, aren’t you? he said.

  More distant now, Cento replied, My feelings are all emulation, but still I feel the need for vengeance. Skellor must pay for . . . ayden, Hou . . . and . . . ss.

  Who?

  . . . burnt them . . . them all . . . no . . . be so cruel.

  What are you talking about?

  Cento spoke more, but Fethan understood none of it, as the transmission now broke up completely.

  The thing about watching watchers, Vulture felt, was that no one had invented a greater exercise in futility. She was bored out of her avian skull and beginning to do the most ridiculous things to keep herself entertained. Baiting sleer nymphs out from under the rubble pile located on the opposite side of the outcrop to where the telefactor rested had not been the brightest idea, but at least she had only lost a few feathers. The current game was one recalled from her inception memory banks, and was another pointless exercise almost Zen-like in its futility. Having drawn out the grid on the flat surface of the slab using a piece of natural chalk with an attractive greenish tint deriving from local copper compounds, Vulture picked up a pebble in her beak, tossed it ahead of her, and proceeded with her game of hopscotch. Within a few minutes she was wondering about making the whole thing more interesting by using a sleer nymph rather than a stone. It was then that a shadow drew across her.

  ‘If your tunnels extend all the way out here,’ she grumbled, ‘then why am I out here watching that lump of fucking scrap? One of your pseudopods could have done it as easily.’

  The Dragon head above was not very forthcoming. It tilted for a moment to inspect the hopscotch grid, before returning its attention to Vulture. ‘You like games.’

  ‘The alternative was twiddling my thumbs.’ Vulture stretched out her wings and gave a loose-jointed shrug.

  ‘I have a new game for you to play. Win it and you die, lose it and someone else begins to live.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all just plus points for me then,’ said the ex-ship’s AI acerbically.

  ‘Do what I want and I will consider all debts repaid, and you will then be free.’

  Vulture wondered for the nth time about just flying away, but was not so stupid as to be fooled by her apparent freedom –no doubt there was some sneaky little program sitting inside her, ready to press in the point of a dagger when she did not choose to cooperate.

  ‘How about if I say screw you?’ she asked, just to be sure.

  Dragon tilted this one head, milky saliva dripping from one side of its mouth. ‘Then I take back the flesh you have borrowed, even though it has no thumbs.’

  ‘Okay.’ Vulture hopped back along the length of her grid; one talon, two talons, then a beat of her wings to carry her up on top of the rock she frequented in order to check that the telefactor had not moved. ‘Tell me about it.’

  Dragon described a game –a kind of three-dimensional chess and Rubik’s cube all in one –and how Vulture must play it. The description came across in no human language or machine code previously known to Vulture, but she understood it, was fascinated, and a little horrified by what it all implied for an AI like herself. It meant there was a hell for her kind.

  ‘But why?’ Vulture eventually asked. ‘Why not just destroy the damned machine?’

  ‘Because I can,’ Dragon replied cryptically.

  Cormac held up his arm and, with merely thought, recalled Shuriken to its holster. Okay, he’d found the snake in the woodpile; now the trick was to pull its fangs without it biting him, blindfolded. ‘Set it on auto –the direction we’re going.’

  Gant did as instructed, then scrambled from his seat.

  Cormac stepped over to a plastic box secured along one wall and opened it. Inside, neatly packed, was equipment he might need. He quickly found two APW carbines and tossed one to Gant.

  ‘Narrow focus, and try not to hit anything that’s keeping us in the air.’

  Gant adjusted the weapon accordingly and peered at the ceiling.

  Cormac placed his own carbine at his feet and from the box removed a smaller brushed-aluminium case. He opened that to reveal the th
ree innocuous-looking cylinders of CTDs. Taking one out he studied its detonator: a programming miniconsole and a single touchpad. Pressing his thumb against the pad, he got ‘Ribonucleic coding . . .’ on a little screen, then ‘Accepted’ and the miniconsole activated. Just then, violet light ignited inside the landers as Gant punched holes through the ceiling where silvery filaments were growing in the metal. The lander filled with smoke and with flares of disintegrating metal.

  Cormac dredged calm from deep inside himself. Setting the CTD for timed detonation, he gave it one minute and shoved it under a folded environment suit. He then took out two AG harnesses.

  ‘Here, put it on.’ He tossed one harness to Gant, then took up a carbine. Just then came the whoomph of the door seals disengaging. Instead of using the carbine, Cormac drew his thin-gun and fired at the locking mechanism, turning delicate components into a bubbling mess. Then, on narrow focus, he used the carbine to punch holes randomly around the door.

  ‘Now, that’s not fair,’ came a familiar voice from the com console.

  He’s into the system, Cormac sent to Gant.

  Get your harness on, Gant sent back.

  Cormac quickly obliged. Something was now worming through the holes in the roof: a woody member jointed like an insect’s leg. As he again took up his carbine, Cormac saw something else scuttle for cover across the floor.