Prador Moon: A Novel of the Polity

by Neal L. Asher

  They’d been given a screen display aboard the troop transport—almost a documentary. It had taken a swarm of Polity attack ships and drones to drive the Prador dreadnought down into atmosphere. The linear accelerator that had finally done for its engines had been sited down the length of a deep mineshaft in the ground. That mineshaft had become a crater itself shortly afterwards. The dreadnought, suddenly gaining the aerodynamics of a million-ton brick, had dropped, attempted AG planing, then ploughed into the ground below where Cormac stood.

  “Comunits on,” said Olkennon. “Let’s go.”

  “This is to give us an authentic taste of soldiering,” commented Carl, as he gazed out through his monocular into the darkness.

  Cormac squelched his feet in the mud in the bottom of their foxhole and surmised, from his reading, that an authentic experience should include leaky boots. Carl’s cynicism could be wearing at times. He raised his own monocular and peered from his side of the foxhole. The infrared image he saw showed him leggy things with bodies about the size of a human head crawling about on the slopes below. They’d been given no warnings about anything dangerous … then again, maybe that was part of the learning process, maybe they had been supposed to find this out for themselves.

  “Are you seeing these beasties?” he asked.

  “Scavengers,” Carl replied. “Called cludder beetles. They’ll eat anything organic.”

  “I thought the inland ecology was Terran.”

  “Imports—the eggs probably came in on the bottom of someone’s boot.”

  That accounted for Carl knowing about these things, for to Cormac’s knowledge he certainly hadn’t done any research on this place.

  They kept watching into the long hours of the night. The stars here had a reddish tint and there were no recognisable constellations. About three hours into their watch a group of four asteroids tumbled up over the horizon, flashing reflected sunlight then falling into shadow as their course took them overhead. When he began to feel weary, Cormac took out a packet of stimulant patches and pressed one against his wrist. In moments his bleariness cleared and he abruptly realised one of the cludders was now only a few yards downslope from him. He pointed his monocular at it and brought it into focus.

  “Fancy a swap round?” he suggested to Carl.

  “I’m fine where I am,” his companion replied.

  The cludder looked horribly like a human skull without eye-sockets and with eight arthropod legs sprouting from where its jawbone should have been. He could hear it making sucking slobbering sounds as it drew a skarch twig into some unseen mouth.

  “About these cludders—” Cormac began.

  A flashing, like someone striking an arc with a welding rod, lit up their surrounding, and this was immediately followed by the stuttering of pulse-rifles, then the clatter of some automatic projectile weapon. Cormac turned and located the source as lying behind a mound to his right, possibly down in the crater itself. His comunit earplug chirped, and obviously addressing both himself and Carl, Olkennon said, “Have you had a nice sleep there, boys?”

  Since Carl outranked Cormac by a couple of points, it was his prerogative to reply. “We have not been asleep, Commander.”

  “Then perhaps your monoculars have malfunctioned or maybe even your eyes?”

  When Olkennon got sarcastic, this usually meant someone had seriously fucked up.

  “If you could explain, Commander,” said Carl primly.

  “Well, it seems a commando unit of six rebels just tried to get into the Prador dreadnought. Luckily they were running a small grav-sled—probably to take away a small warhead on—and one of our satellites picked that up on a gravity map. I’m looking at that map now and previous recordings. They came in right past you.”

  “Were they caught?” asked Carl.

  After a long delay, Olkennon replied, “Hold your positions and stay alert. Four of them were taken down but the other two are heading back your way. If they arrive before I get there, try for leg shots or try to pin them down, but don’t hesitate to kill if necessary. Out”

  “How the hell did we miss them?” wondered Carl, bringing his monocular back up to his eyes.

  “Some sort of chameleonware?” said Cormac, doing the same.

  He scanned the nearby slopes then concentrated in the direction of the crater. As far as he understood it the only portable camouflage available for a soldier was chameleon-cloth fatigues—the same cloth the outer layer of his envirosuit was made from and which turned it to the colour of the mud he was lying in. And such cloth did not conceal one from someone looking through a monocular set to infrared, which was why they had dug in—that, and the possibility of gunfire.

  “Maybe they slipped past while you were studying cludder beetles,” Carl suggested.

  Cormac immediately felt a flush of guilt. He’d only been distracted by the creatures for a moment—nowhere near enough time for someone to get past him. Then he felt anger. Carl’s accusation seemed not only unjust but spiteful. Had Carl himself fallen asleep or not been following the required scanning patterns? Was he now trying to find a way to shift the blame onto Cormac? The anger existed in him for a short time, accelerating his heart-beat as he searched for a sufficiently cutting reply. Then it seemed to hit a cut-off, and he abruptly re-assessed his situation.

  “Maybe they did,” he said without heat.

  Aren’t we on the same side? He thought. Carl might want to step on people’s hands in a scramble up the promotional ladder, but no matter. Cormac had joined to do a job, and do it well. He abruptly felt an utter coldness towards his companion, a detachment. It was if the man had suddenly become a malfunctioning item of machinery he must account for in his calculations. He would watch Carl.

  Following his search grid training, Cormac continued to scan the slopes on his side of the foxhole. Carl was doing the same. A belligerent silence fell between them.

  “I’m half a mile from you and will be there soon,” Olkennon informed them through their comunits.

  Carl, as if in response to this, abruptly stood, bringing his rifle to his shoulder while flicking up its infrared sight screen. Cormac spun, monocular still to his eyes. The rifle thrummed, spitting an actinic broken beam into the darkness. It fired again, then again.

  “Got ‘em,” said Carl.

  Olkennon had specified leg shots, or keeping the two escapees pinned down, probably because someone in ECS wanted to interrogate these people. What had Cormac seen? Two people struggling towards them, one supporting the other, obviously wounded. The light from the pulse-rifle tended to blank infrared viewing for brief periods, still, Carl’s shots had all torn into upper bodies and heads.

  “I fucked up, okay? I fucked up.” Carl turned and gazed out the wide window of the troop transport. Other soldiers aboard gazed across enquiringly and Cormac felt this best a conversation to have at some other time.

  “But that’s not like you,” Yallow insisted.

  “End of conversation,” said Carl, without looking round.

  At that point Olkennon rejoined them after speaking with some grizzled sergeant seated towards the front of the transport. She gazed at them for a moment then sat, and it was difficult to tell whether she could read the unpleasant atmosphere. Cormac wondered if Golem could sense such things … probably, though by picking up pheromones and reading the tensions in facial expressions. They probably used some sort of formula.

  “The barracks adjoin a temporary township down by the coast adjacent to the old city,” she said without any ado. “You are located in Theta bubble. Cormac, your room is 21c, Yallow, 21b and Carl 21a. Get yourselves settled in then use the local facilities—I doubt we’ll have any re-assignment until after the enquiry.”

  Carl grimaced and turned to gaze out of the window again.

  “We get our own rooms?” asked Yallow.

  “Certainly,” said Olkennon. “There’s no shortage of living space and no limitations were put on the size of the township.”

 
Without any hint of a change in her expression of mild interest, Yallow looked across at Cormac. It had been over a month now since they’d had their own rooms and certain activities had been neglected. He felt a pleasurable anticipation seat itself in his groin.

  Within a few minutes the troop transport descended and landed on an area of grated plasticrete over mud. A short walk away bonded-earth domes stood clustered as if the earth had bubbled. The domes were a uniform grey brown, scattered with green and the occasional flashes of red, which only as the four of them were walking over did Cormac identify as some adapted form of geranium gaining a root-hold in the bonded earth. There were numerous windows inset in the lower floors of the domes, though fewer windows in the upper levels since they were mainly used for storage. Some of the domes had large hatches open in those upper areas and extending below them landing platforms for military AG cargo drays.

  They departed the landing area onto a path of the same grated plasticrete leading across churned mud sprouting skarch shoots like blue asparagus.

  “Not difficult to find our dome,” said Yallow, pointing. The main entrance to each dome had one letter of the Greek alphabet incised above. And even as they approached these buildings, Cormac picked out the letter theta.

  “You go on now,” said Olkennon, waving a hand at them and turning onto a path heading off around this collection of buildings. “I’ll contact you when we have our next assignment.”

  As Olkennon departed, Yallow returned her attention to the barracks and the surrounding area. “Doesn’t look a whole lot of fun.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Carl sneered.

  Cormac gazed at him steadily, but Carl did not meet his eyes, merely accelerated his pace to pull ahead of the other two. That just wasn’t like Carl—it seemed utterly out of character, worryingly so.

  Carl entered the building foyer well ahead of them, and by the time they arrived at their rooms he had dumped his stuff and was on his way out again.

  “There’s bars in the township,” he told them as he hurried past. “I’m going for a drink.” Then he paused and looked back. “I’m sorry to be such a pain, but it seems I might be looking at the end of my military career.” He moved on, and Cormac could not help but think that his explanation seemed so stilted, so wrong.

  “Let’s get ourselves settled then,” said Yallow, watching Carl depart. She then turned to the door to her room and opened it using the simple mechanical handle.

  Cormac opened his own door and entered to look around: simple bunk; combined shower, sink and toilet cubicle—the sink folding up into the wall and the toilet seat telescoping from the floor; net access on a narrow desk, more of a shelf really; and a window giving a view of the bonded-earth curve of the neighbouring dome, on which, fortunately, some of those red geraniums had taken root. Entering, he dumped his pack and his pulse-rifle on the bed, then immediately proceeded to strip off his envirosuit. Beside the shower he then noted a small sonic cleaner box and, after stripping the suit of its detachable hardware, shoved the suit inside and set the device running. He then stepped into the shower and luxuriated in needles of hot water, washing himself thoroughly with a combined abrasive sponge and soap stick. It had been many days since he had been able to do anything more than wash himself from a small bowl. After shutting off the water a warm air blast ensued, complimented by a towel from a dispenser actually within the booth, and once dry, he inserted the towel back into its dispenser for cleaning, then stepped out.

  His skin feeling almost like it was glowing he walked over to his bed and opened his pack, taking out fresh underwear and uniform shirt and trousers. These he laid out neatly on the bed, and before dressing proceeded to pack away everything else in the cupboards. Shortly after having completed this chore, while he was checking round to see if there was anything he missed, there came a sharp rap at his door. He stepped over, opened it a crack, and saw Yallow standing there all but naked, holding one of the small towels about her hips where it didn’t stretch far enough.

  “Well let me in,” she demanded.

  He opened the door and she stepped in, still holding the towel in place. Even as he closed the door his cock felt like it was a steel rod. He gazed at her. Her chameleon-effect skin now looked very little different from the skin of any normal woman, apart from a slight scaled effect which he knew that though visible, could not be felt. The skin wasn’t adapting to her surroundings at the moment, for she possessed conscious control over it. He focused on her breasts for a moment, which weren’t large since that would have interfered with her chosen profession. She was athletic, as muscular as a man but very definitely not a man. Abruptly tossing away the towel she then reached down and closed her hand about his penis. He looked down, her mons was bald, since pubic hair could be a problem when trying to stay clean out in the field. He realised, only after the fact, that he’d made a grunting sound as her hand closed.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I don’t think you’re going to last very long, and I’m going to need your undivided attention for a good hour.”

  Sometimes Yallow could be hard work. He knew that she possessed enough control to hold off on her orgasm, and that she liked to do so because the longer she held off, the bigger the multiple explosion at the end.

  Releasing his penis she strode over to the bed, swept his clothing aside—an act that offended his sense of neatness, then climbed on her hands and knees. Looking back over her shoulder at him she said, “Time to get you into a state when that will last,” then parted her knees and stuck her arse out at him.

  She was right, he didn’t last long the first time. Over the ensuing twenty minutes she dictated to him his every lick bite and caress as his youthful hyperfit body returned him to the state she required. Next came a marathon that had sweat running into his eyes, and when she came, her hands clenching in the bedding to stop herself tearing the skin off his back, she lost control of her chameleon skin, and blushed with bursts of red blue and yellow like a slow firework display.

  “There’ll be no enquiry,” said Cormac, as he and Yallow strolled from the barracks along the short curved track to the adjoining military township. Somehow he felt the need to return focus to things military, despite the fact that his legs felt wobbly and he really wanted a beer.

  “Carl is in the top percentile for marksmanship,” Yallow observed, gazing at him with an amused quirk to her mouth.

  Cormac took a slow breath of the cool evening air, which for a change right then tasted clean. The urge for a beer being utterly understood, he also felt utterly relaxed, and understood the reason for that too. He felt the need to pause for a moment—not to hurry on to the next thing. Halting, he gazed at the nearby skarch trees. These were young examples of the plant that had managed to get a root-hold on many worlds. He walked over and rested a hand against a fibrous surface and peered at little green beetles gathered like metal beads in a crotch where one of the thick leaves sprouted from the stalk, or trunk.

  The young trees stood a mere ten feet high with trunks the thickness of a man’s leg. They were a tough terra-forming hybrid of the kind sowed on worlds to rapidly create biomass for the production of topsoil, and therefore grew fast in even the most extreme conditions, rapidly increasing in height and bulk. As he recollected the plants were a splicing of maize, bamboo and aloe vera. It occurred to him then that this was the first time he had seen them up close, though he had seen distant examples on the spoil hills about the Prador ship and pieces of them rotting underfoot in those same hills. This was what it was all about: actually being here, seeing and experiencing—not gazing at a picture on a screen.

  He turned back to Yallow, who had halted too and was watching him.

  “It is understood,” he said, “that in his first fire-fight a soldier may not perform to standard. They thought he got a bit over-excited and just blasted away.”

  “Young soldiers do tend to get over exited and blast away,” she said, grinning.

  He half frowne
d half grinned and waved dismissive hand at her.

  She shrugged and continued, “Well, he won’t be blasting away at anyone back there now.”

  Too true: the cases arrived on the morning after the shooting, and they spent most of the day unpacking and assembling their contents. Carl, whose speciality seemed likely to be weapons tech, had been in charge whenever Olkennon was not around. Assembled, the mosquito autoguns walked on four gleaming spidery legs, fat bodies loaded with ammunition and a mini-toc power supply, tubular snout for firing rail-gun projectiles at a rate capable of turning a man into slurry in a second. With them now guarding the perimeter around the Prador ship there would be no more mistakes. The guns had been programmed to go for leg shots, though whether there would be anything left of the legs after the shooting was debatable.

  Yallow gave the Skarch grove a long suspicious look then began striding along the track again, and Cormac followed, guessing she was thinking about how many enemies such growth could conceal

  “Where’s he gone, anyway?” Yallow asked, jerking her chin towards the military township.

  “As you may have noted he’s not very talkative lately, so he didn’t tell me,” Cormac replied. “Who wants to talk about their screw-ups? Maybe we should give him some space.”

  Yallow glanced at him. “He has spoken some to me, though it always strikes me as a bit false. He probably doesn’t talk so much to you because you’re a hard act to follow sometimes. When was the last time you screwed up?”

  Cormac was surprised. He had always admired both Carl and Yallow and thought them likely to be better soldiers than him. He shrugged, of course he screwed-up, didn’t he?

  “Let’s go get that drink,” Yallow added, after an embarrassed pause.

  The township, was again comprised of bonded-soil domes with plasticrete gratings over the mud lying between them. The place swarmed with soldiers, and those locals who had come from the partially ruined city nearby to sell their wares. A number eateries had been established, along with a number of bars that were already gaining a reputation as not the best place to visit and be sure to retain your teeth. ECS command here could have clamped down on that, but felt that allowing the troops to blow off steam here was one of the better alternatives to prescribed drugs and cerebral treatments. It was also true that there were many veterans here too, who preferred this old-fashioned approach. They took the view that busted heads and broken bones could be repaired, but that naivety could kill.