by Hank Davis
One question had been then whether the alien would be aware of the device’s importance to it. Danestar thought now that it was. The other question was whether it had learned enough from its contacts with humans to realize that, cornered and facing death, they might destroy such an instrument to keep it from an enemy.
If the alien knew that, it might, in the final situation, gain them a little more time.
She would not have been surprised if the barrier indicators had blazed red the instant after she opened the valise. And she would, in that moment, which certainly must be the last of her life and Wergard’s, have pulled the gun trigger.
But nothing happened immediately, except that the segments in the streets outside the building went motionless. That, of course, should have some significance. Danestar waited now as motionlessly. Perhaps half a minute passed. Then the rattling pickup signal of the shortcode transmitter on the table suddenly jarred the stillness of the room.
Some seconds later, three spaced words, stolen from living human voices, patched together by the alien’s cunning, came from the transmitter:
“I . . . want . . . it. . . .”
There was a pause. On Danestar’s left, Wergard made a harsh laughing sound. She watched the barrier panel. The indicators there remained quiet.
“I . . . want . . . it. . . .” repeated the transmitter suddenly. It paused again.
“Six, Danestar!” Wergard’s voice told her. He added something in a mutter, went silent.
“I . . . want—”
The transmitter cut off abruptly. The force field indicators flickered very slightly and then were still. But in the viewscreen there was renewed motion.
The segments in the street to the left of the building lifted like burning leaves caught by the breath of an approaching storm, swirled up together, streamed into and across the building beyond. In an instant, the street was empty of them. In the street on the right, ghostly fire shapes also were moving off, more slowly, gliding away to the east, while the others began pouring out of building fronts and down through the air again to join the withdrawal. Some four hundred yards away, the swarm came to a stop, massing together. Seconds later, the paving about them showed the familiar purple glitter and the gleaming mass of the Pit creature lifted slowly into view from below, its minor emissaries merging into it and vanishing as it arose. It lay there quietly then, filling the width of the street.
The situation had been presented in a manner which could not be misunderstood. The alien mind wanted the instrument. It knew the humans in this building had it. It had communicated the fact to them, then drawn back from the building, drawn its segments with it.
The humans, it implied, were free to go now, leaving the instrument behind. . . .
But, of course, that was not the real situation. There was no possible compromise. The insignificant-looking device against which Danestar’s gun was held was the key to the Pit. To abandon it to the alien at this final moment was out of the question. And the act, in any case, would not have extended their lives by more than a few minutes.
So the muzzle of the gun remained where it was, and Danestar made no other move. Revealing they had here what the creature wanted had gained them a trifling addition in time. Until she heard Wergard tell her he had locked in the seventh and final setting on the diabolically tiny instrument with which he had been struggling for almost twenty minutes, she could do nothing else.
But Wergard stayed silent while the seconds slipped away. When some two minutes had passed, Danestar realized the giant fire shape was settling back beneath the surface of the street. Within seconds then it disappeared.
A leaden hopelessness settled on her at last. When they saw the thing again, it would be coming in for the final attack. And if it rose against the force fields from below the building, they would not see it then. She must remember to pull the trigger the instant the barrier indicators flashed their warning. Then it would be over.
She looked around at Wergard, saw he had placed the instrument on the table before him and was scowling down at it, lost in the black abstraction that somehow had enabled his fingers to do what normally must have been impossible to them. Only a few more minutes, Danestar thought, and he might have completed it. She parted her lips to warn him of what was about to happen, then shook her head silently. Why disturb him now? There was nothing more Wergard could do, either.
As she looked back at the viewscreen, the Pit creature began to rise through the street level a hundred yards away. It lifted smoothly, monstrously, a flowing mountain of purple brilliance, poured toward them.
Seconds left . . . Her finger went taut on the trigger.
A bemused, slow voice seemed to say heavily, “My eyes keep blurring now. Want to check this, Danestar? I think I have the setting, but—”
“No time!” She screamed it out, as the gun dropped to the table. She twisted awkwardly around on the chair, right hand reaching. “Let me have it!”
Then Wergard, shocked free of whatever trance had closed on him, was there, slapping the device into her hand, steadying her as she twisted back toward the detector and fitted it in. He swung away from her. Danestar locked the attachment down, glanced over her shoulder, saw him standing again at the other table, eyes fixed on her, hand lifted above the plunger of the power pack beside the carbine.
“Now!” she whispered.
Wergard couldn’t possibly have beard it. But his palm came down in a hard slap on the plunger as the indicators of the entire eastern section of the barrier flared red.
Danestar was a girl who preferred subtle methods in her work when possible. She had designed the detector’s interference attachment primarily to permit careful, unnoticeable manipulations of messages passing over supposedly untappable communication lines; and it worked very well for that purpose.
On this occasion, however, with the peak thrust of the power pack surging into it, there was nothing subtle about its action. A storm of static howled through the Depot along the Pit creature’s internal communication band. In reaction to it, the composite body quite literally shattered. The viewscreen filled with boiling geysers of purple light. Under the dull black dome of the main barrier, the rising mass expanded into a writhing, glowing cloud. Ripped by continuing torrents of static, it faded further, dissipated into billions of flashing lines of light, mindlessly seeking escape. In their billions, they poured upon the defense globe of the ancient fortress.
For three or four minutes, the great barrier drank them in greedily.
Then the U-League Depot stood quiet again.
Neal Asher
The military team had pulled off their mission and now their problem was to get off the planet again while staying alive. They were only worried about human enemies who might be on their trail. That was a big mistake . . .
Neal Asher is one of the brightest of British science fiction writers (though many of his stories are more dark than bright), and has been very prolific since his first story was published in 1989, publishing fifteen novels and three short story collections (one of which was later reprinted in an expanded version), and numerous novellas and short stories. Most of his works (including “The Rhine’s World Incident”) are set in a future history called the Polity Universe. His stories have no shortage of action and violence and have been described as space opera with a cyberpunk sensibility (I would have described them as hard-boiled space opera, but then I’m not a critic). His stories, “Suckers” and “Mason’s Rats III,” were finalists for the British Science Fiction Award. Among the earlier novels in his Polity series are Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, The Skinner, Brass Man, and Polity Agent. For more information about the series, and his non-Polity works, see his website, http://freespace.virgin.net/n.asher/. Many of his short stories and novelettes fit nicely into the horror in space category, so picking one for this anthology was not easy. I finally decided that this one made me more uneasy than the others.
THE RHINE’S WORLD
INCIDENT
/> Neal Asher
The remote control rested dead in Reynold’s hand, but any moment now Kirin might make the connection, and the little lozenge of black metal would become a source of godlike power. Reynold closed his hand over it, sudden doubts assailing him, and as always felt a tight stab of fear. That power depended on Kirin’s success, which wasn’t guaranteed, and on the hope that the device the remote connected to had not been discovered and neutralized.
He turned towards her. “Any luck?”
She sat on the damp ground with her laptop open on a mouldering log before her, with optics running from it to the framework supporting the sat dish, spherical laser com unit and microwave transmitter rods. She was also auged into the laptop; an optic lead running from the bean-shaped augmentation behind her ear to plug into it. Beside the laptop rested a big flat memstore packed with state-of-the-art worms and viruses.
“It is not a matter of luck,” she stated succinctly.
Reynold returned his attention to the city down on the plain. Athelford was the centre of commerce and Polity power here on Rhine’s World, most of both concentrated at its heart where skyscrapers reared about the domes and containment spheres of the runcible port. However, the unit first sent here had not been able to position the device right next to the port itself and its damned controlling AI—Reynold felt an involuntary shudder at the thought of the kind of icy artificial intelligences they were up against. The unit had been forced to act fast when the plutonium processing plant, no doubt meticulously tracked down by some forensic AI, got hit by Earth Central Security. They’d also not been able to detonate. Something had taken them out before they could even send the signal.
“The yokels are calling in,” said Plate. He was boosted and otherwise physically enhanced, and wore com gear about his head plugged into the weird scaley Dracocorp aug affixed behind his ear. “Our contact wants our coordinates.”
“Tell him to head to the rendezvous as planned.” Reynold glanced back at where their gravcar lay underneath its chameleoncloth tarpaulin. “First chance we get we’ll need to ask our contact why he’s not sticking to that plan.”
Plate grinned.
“Are we still secure?” Reynold asked.
“Still secure,” Plate replied, his grin disappearing. “But encoded Polity com activity is ramping up as is city and sat-scan output.”
“They know we’re here,” said Kirin, still concentrating on her laptop.
“Get me the device, Kirin,” said Reynold. “Get it to me now.”
One of her eyes had gone metallic and her fingers were blurring over her keyboard. “If it was easy to find the signal and lock in the transmission key, we wouldn’t have to be this damned close and, anyway, ECS would have found it by now.”
“But we know the main frequencies and have the key,” Reynold observed.
Kirin snorted dismissively.
Reynold tapped the com button on the collar of his fatigues. “Spiro,” he addressed the commander of the four-unit of Separatist ground troops positioned in the surrounding area. “ECS are on to us but don’t have our location. If they get it they’ll be down on us like a falling tree. Be prepared to hold out for as long as possible—for the Cause I expect no less of you.”
“They get our location and it’ll be a sat-strike,” Plate observed. “We’ll be incinerated before we get a chance to blink.”
“Shut up, Plate.”
“I think I may—” began Kirin, and Reynold spun towards her. “Yes, I’ve got it.” She looked up victoriously and dramatically stabbed a finger down on one key. “Your remote is now armed.”
Reynold raised his hand and opened it, studying with tight cold fear in his guts the blinking red light in the corner of the touch console. Stepping a little way from his comrades to the edge of the trees, he once again gazed down upon the city. His mouth was dry. He knew precisely what this would set in motion: terrifying unhuman intelligences would focus here the moment he sent the signal.
“Just a grain at a time, my old Separatist recruiter told me,” he said. “We’ll win this like the sea wins as it laps against a sandstone cliff.”
“Very poetic,” said Kirin, now standing at his shoulder.
“This is gonna hurt them,” said Plate.
Reynold tapped his com button. “Goggles everyone.” He pulled his own flash goggles down over his eyes. “Kirin, get back to your worms.” He glanced round and watched her return to her station and plug the memstore cable into her laptop. The worms and viruses the thing contained were certainly the best available, but they wouldn’t have stood a chance of penetrating Polity firewalls before he initiated the device. After that they would penetrate local systems to knock out satellite scanning for, according to Kirin, ten minutes—time for them to fly the gravcar far from here, undetected.
“Five, four, three, two . . . one.” Reynold thumbed the touch console on the remote.
Somewhere in the heart of the city a giant flashbulb came on for a second, then went out. Reynold pushed up his goggles to watch a skyscraper going over and a disk of devastation spreading from a growing and rising fireball. Now, shortly after the EM flash of the blast, Kirin would be sending her software toys. The fireball continued to rise, a sprouting mushroom, but despite the surface devastation many buildings remained disappointingly intact. Still, they would be irradiated and tens of thousands of Polity citizens now just ash. The sound reached them now, and it seemed the world was tearing apart.
“Okay, the car!” Reynold instructed. “Kirin?”
She nodded, already closing up her laptop and grabbing up as much of her gear as she could carry. The broadcast framework would have to stay though, as would some of the larger armaments Spiro had positioned in the surrounding area. Reynold stooped by a grey cylinder at the base of a tree, punched twenty minutes into the timer and set it running. The thermite bomb would incinerate this entire area and leave little evidence for the forensic AIs of ECS to gather. “Let’s go!”
Spiro and his men, now armed with nothing but a few hand weapons, had already pulled the tarpaulin from the car and were piling into the back row of seats. Plate took the controls and Kirin and Reynold climbed in behind him. Plate took it up hard through the foliage, shrivelled seed husks and swordlike leaves falling onto them, turned it and hit the boosters. Glancing back Reynold could only see the top of the nuclear cloud, and he nodded to himself with grim satisfaction.
“This will be remembered for years to come,” he stated.
“Yup, certainly will,” replied Spiro, scratching at a spot on his cheek.
No one else seemed to have anything to say, but Reynold knew why they were so subdued. This was the come-down, only later would they realise just what a victory this had been for the Separatist cause. He tried to convince himself of that . . .
In five minutes they were beyond the forest and over rectangular fields of mega-wheat, hill slopes stitched with neat vineyards of protein gourds, irrigation canals and plascrete roads for the agricultural machinery used here. The ground transport—a balloon-tyred tractor towing a train of grain wagons—awaited where arranged.
“Irrigation canal,” Reynold instructed.
Plate decelerated fast and settled the car towards a canal running parallel to the road on which the transport awaited, bringing it to a hover just above the water then slewing it sideways until it nudged the bank. Spiro and the soldiers were out first, then Kirin.
“You can plus-grav it?” Reynold asked.
Plate nodded, pulled out a chip revealed behind a torn-out panel, then inserted a chipcard into reader slot. “Ten seconds.” He and Reynold disembarked, then bracing themselves against the bank, pushed the car so it drifted out over the water. After a moment smoke drifted up from the vehicle’s console. Abruptly it was as if the car had been transformed into a block of lead. It dropped hard, creating a huge splash, then was gone in an instant. Plate and Reynold clambered up the bank after the others onto the road. Ahead, awaiting about the tractor sto
od four of the locals, or ‘yokels’ as Plate called them—four Rhine’s World Separatists.
“Stay alert,” Reynold warned.
As he approached the four he studied them intently. They all wore the kind of disposable overalls farmers clad themselves in on primitve worlds like this and all seemed ill-at-ease. For a moment Reynold focused on one of their number: a very fat man with a baby face and shaven head. With all the cosmetic and medical options available it was not often you saw people so obese unless they chose to look that way. Perhaps this Separatist distrusted what Polity technology had to offer, which wasn’t that unusual. The one who stepped forwards, however, obviously did trust that technology, being big, handsome, and obviously having provided himself with emerald green eyes.
“Jepson?” Reynold asked.
“I am,” said the man, holding out his hand.
Reynold gripped it briefly. “We need to get under cover quickly—sat eyes will be functioning again soon.”
“The first trailer is empty.” Jepson stabbed a finger back behind the tractor.
Reynold nodded towards Spiro and he and his men headed back towards the trailer. “You too,” he said to Kirin and, as she departed, glanced at Plate. “You’re with me in the tractor cab.”
“There’s only room for four up there,” Jepson protested.
“Then two of your men best ride in the trailer.” Reynold nodded towards the fat man. “Make him one of them—that should give us plenty of room.”
The fat man dipped his head as if ashamed and trailed after Kirin, then at a nod from Jepson one of the others went too.
“Come on fat boy!” Spiro called as the fat man hauled himself up inside the trailer.
“I sometimes wonder what the recruiters are thinking,” said Jepson as he mounted the ladder up the side of the big tractor.