by Neal Asher
‘Very well.’
Seven transmitted the coordinates and the precise time when the link went off. The Warden scanned the memory of the satellite eye concerned—it was memory they held for a few days before deleting. The coordinates centred on a cloud mass, which immediately aroused the AI’s suspicions—if anyone wanted to hide their actions from it, they would perform them underneath such a mass. Searching through the range of the eye’s scan, the AI found very little until moving into infrared. There—the vague blob of the ship, an explosion then a fire, then the heat flickering out, along with that blob itself, as the ship no doubt sank. An accident? Hoopers were not particularly prone to them, though they did carry gunpowder, explosives and sometimes Polity weapons aboard. Moreover, the Vignette’s record was not a good one. The Warden ruminated over the response it would give, before reluctantly packaging the relevant information and transmitting it.
‘Sniper, check this out will you,’ the AI also sent—then fretted that it might be sending napalm to put out a fire.
* * * *
The industry of the Golem and other Cybercorp machines was fast and frightening. Ron had earlier expressed an interest in being involved in the construction, but Bloc had told him no humans were allowed on site—it was just too dangerous for them. As he saw a skeletal Golem rush past with a ten-metre beam on its shoulder, halt abruptly, spin the beam round then throw it up through a gap in the hull planking, Janer now understood why. A moment’s inattention might result in a human ending up smeared into the woodwork.
‘You note, they are not only using wood,’ said Wade, pointing through the perimeter fence.
Janer scanned the site, noting composite beams resting on a row of trestles nearby. A spiderlike robot was hauling a sheet of some sort of metal up the side of the ship. The huge rudder, which even now was being swung into place and hung from a crane located on the deck above, bore the logo of a company Janer knew specialized in the production of bubble-metals—alloys foamed with inert gas and cast in zero-G so the bubbles remained evenly dispersed. The air around him was also redolent with the smell of fast-bonding epoxies.
‘Not a nail in sight,’ he commented.
‘Even Hoopers don’t use nails in the construction of their ships,’ said Wade, turning to walk along the perimeter. ‘They use pegs and dovetails and mortise joints, and that has not changed even since abundant metals have become available to them.’
‘You know about shipbuilding?’ Janer asked.
‘That’s just plain woodworking I’m talking about. However,’ Wade tapped his own forehead, ‘I have recently loaded much about the craft.’
Janer paused to consider that. Humans could load information directly into their minds, but to do it they required some kind of hardware in their heads. The process was very much easier for Golem. Just in this short walk down from the compound, Janer had almost forgotten what Wade actually was.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
‘Why are you?’ Wade countered, studying him. He then went on, ‘I’m a free Golem, I go where the interest takes me… Now, that looks like a weak point.’ Wade pointed, and it took Janer a second to realize the Golem was indicating at a join in the fence beside one of the pearwood posts.
‘Yes…?’ said Janer cautiously.
Wade gave him an unreadable look, reached out and shoved his fingers through the fence mesh. Janer smelt hot ozone, then Wade pulled, and, sparking and crackling, the fence parted.
‘See, shoddy workmanship,’ said Wade. ‘Shall we?’ He gestured through.
It was certainly dangerous in there, but Janer had always found that avoiding danger usually resulted in danger blindsiding him. Anyway, he was already bored with the prospect of sitting around with the rest of the Hoopers, seeing if it was possible to drink the rum as fast as Forlam could distil it, for they seemed intent on doing little else. That was, he realized, a sign of them having accepted immortality: they were able to be still for long periods. He was not.
‘Okay,’ he said, ducking in ahead of Wade.
The Golem soon overtook him and led the way into the site. Janer hung back for a moment.
‘You still gone?’
No response from the hivelink. He quickly caught up with Wade.
Now, drawing closer to the big ship, Janer began to get a better impression of its sheer scale. The side of it was like a cliff ahead of him; its bows rested on the beach and its stern abutted the first slopes ascending to the peak at the centre of Mortuary Island.
‘How are they going to launch it?’ he asked.
Wade pointed to the bottom of the hull, which was largely concealed by construction materials and machinery. ‘There’s a ramp under there, and a few hundred motorized pallets on which they laid the keel.’
As they passed a stack of timber, Janer peered through a gap to see the gleam of a metal caterpillar track in the undershadows. They moved on past an open container half-filled with pipe fittings and prosaically domestic plumbing items. Another container just behind it contained electrical equipment and next to this rested a half-used reel of insulated and combined five-core S-con and fibre-optic cable. Seeing such standard items here was a bit of a disappointment to Janer—until Wade gestured to something on the hull itself.
‘I knew it would be here,’ said the Golem.
In the side of the ship was a large open portal containing the kind of iris door more commonly found on space stations. It would be submerged, Janer realized, below the waterline. As they drew closer he saw that inside, resting on a ramp leading to this door, was the flattened-torpedo shape of a large submersible. Around the door itself were the familiar arc-shaped sections of black metal that were the business end of a shimmer-shield generator. Of course a shimmer-shield was perfect for this, since it could let the craft out without letting the water in.
‘Not quite what I would have expected,’ he said.
‘To the letter of Windcheater’s laws, though not exactly in the spirit of them,’ explained Wade. ‘That sail wants only sailing ships on the surface of the ocean, and no AG vehicles at all in the sky, but no other technologies have been proscribed.’
‘Why do they need this, anyway?’ Janer wondered.
‘That’ll be Lineworld Developments. No doubt they originally had some profitable enterprise in mind.’ Wade shrugged. ‘Of course they’ll not be pursuing it now.’
Just then a paint-bespattered skeletal Golem stepped in front of them.
‘You should not be here,’ it said. ‘It is unsafe.’
Wade ignored it, just walking on past.
‘Yeah, you’re telling me,’ said Janer, following his new friend.
* * * *
Someone hammered him hard on the back, and Orbus responded by spewing the sea water from his lungs and taking his first shuddering breath of frigid stinking air. He opened his eyes and immediately wished he had stayed drowned, but that was unfortunately an impossibility for any Hooper over a century in age.
‘This is not a nice place,’ said Drooble, going on to smack his fist against the chest of another crewman to bring him ungently back to consciousness.
There were ten of them confined in the dank space. The cable bag was now hanging from one weed-covered wall which seemed to be scaled with rough slabs of metal. Orbus guessed that one of the crew had broken the frayed strand he could see, to spill them all out on the floor. Certainly their captor or captors would not have thought to free them, for Orbus recognized, from old memory, what this place was.
He had been only fifty years old when the Prador had seized Imbretus Station and herded human captives aboard their ship, before targeting the station’s reactors with particle beams to leave it a spreading cloud of debris and incandescent gas. The brutality and horror of the ensuing journey was not so clear in his memory, though he did know that he had done terrible things in order to be one of the few survivors to reach Spatterjay. But once on the planet he now called home, he clearly remembered being made to walk throug
h tanks of leeches to ensure infection by their virus, just as he still felt the shame of how he avoided coring by being ready to play an active part in the sinister games of the Eight…
Orbus stood up, a little shakily, and probed the rip across the front of his plasmesh shirt. The harpoon wound was sealed now—just a star-shaped indentation in his solar plexus. He felt around his back and ran his fingers over lumpy nuggets of scar tissue. He was starving—injury hunger. The others, similarly injured, would feel the same. Drooble had probably been one of the first to rouse, because the drone had captured him without harpooning, his only injuries being those Orbus inflicted earlier with a lash because of the man’s disobedience—and the drowning, of course. The Old Captain looked around. Most of his crew did not look so good. They had bled, and some of their wounds were still raw and red. One of them remained unconscious despite Drooble’s pummelling, and all of them appeared thinner. Their skin was now blue, but not with cold.
‘Well, Cap’n, what do you reckon?’ Drooble asked.
Orbus reckoned that his own brain had not been working right for a large portion of a thousand years. The other Captains were right: there was something wrong with him. He must have been mad not to have recognized a Prador war drone the instant he set eyes on it. But then, even if he had, what more could he have done?
‘I reckon we’re fucked,’ said Captain Orbus.
Drooble turned and gazed at him. ‘No shit?’
It was a typically provocative response from a crewman who enjoyed being punished, but Orbus felt too weary to respond to it.
‘If Prador take prisoners, it’s for one of two purposes,’ he said. ‘That means we’re either to be the main course, or we’re going to be cored and thralled.’
‘Prador?’ someone murmured incredulously.
‘You want pain, Drooble?’ Orbus asked. ‘Well you’re going to find more of it here than you’d ever think possible.’
As if to emphasize his words there came a crack from behind him. Orbus stared at Drooble, saw the horrible avidity in his expression, and wished he felt the same inclinations, but for a sadist pain only holds any attraction when it is someone else’s. He turned and eyed the wide door constructed for a shape that certainly was not human. It had split diagonally and now the two halves of it were revolving in opposite directions into the uneven wall. He stepped back amongst his men, noting they possessed the same avidity as Drooble, yet with some hint of doubt. Perhaps their wiring was not quite so twisted as his.
Then it came through the door and Orbus could not help but gape. This was no Prador he knew. It was fully limbed, like an adolescent, but no adolescent grew to this size. This one was black rather than the lurid purples and yellows of that kind. Its main body was no thicker than its vicious claws; its visual turret, palp eyes and underslung mouthparts had detached and risen higher on a corded neck, which seemed to be in the process of growing ringed plates of armour. Orbus slid a hand down to his belt, found the handle of his skinning knife and gripped it. He would go for the neck; that seemed the most vulnerable part.
‘If we all go for it at once, we might be able to bring it down,’ he hissed.
No reaction for a moment, then Drooble stepped forwards. The distorted Prador reached out almost gently, and closed its claw around the man’s waist. Drooble gasped as the pressure came on. It merely picked him up and backed to the door.
‘We should attack it, all of us together,’ repeated Orbus, stepping forward.
But not one of them moved with him.
He turned to them. ‘We’ll die here!’ he said urgently.
They just stared at him glassy-eyed, then turned away as behind him the door swiftly ground shut.
Perhaps they had found something more alluring than him.
* * * *
Ambel was quite puzzled, and beginning to feel a little annoyed. They had sighted three turbul shoals over the last few days, then moved the Treader to intercept them, and on every occasion the shoals had veered aside.
‘That’s bloody odd,’ said Peck. He was standing with his bait plug cutter in one hand and his new boat line in the other. The line and related equipment was of Polity manufacture: braided monofilament with a breaking strain of tonnes, ceramo-carbide hooks, an electric reel powered by a laminar battery which in turn could be recharged by sunlight, attached to a stubby fishing rod with a big solid rubber-grip handle. Peck had been wanting to try out his new toy for a long time, but it seemed rather excessive to use it just for catching apple-sized boxies.
Ambel slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, we’ll hit some of the lads soon.’
Even so, Ambel could not understand why the three turbul shoals had turned away like that. Were they learning to avoid Hooper ships? He had heard nothing of it. Or was there something leaking down in the hold, causing some scent to emanate through the hull and put them off.
‘Just keep an eye out. I’m going to check below.’
Ambel headed for the ladder leading into the hold itself, climbed down inside and looked around. When he thought about it, there was not much on board that would put off turbul. Most of the stores here would do just the opposite. Maybe leech bile, but he had none of that, as he had refined it during the journey so as to take only a yield of pure sprine to Olian’s. And, anyway, having just come from there… Perhaps there was something else he had missed? Just then, while he was puzzling, there came a loud thump against the hull.
‘Turbul! Turbul! They’re coming under!’ came Peck’s excited cry.
Ambel rushed back on deck as his crew began casting their lines. Anne was the first to hook one, and pulled up a two-metre-long specimen with a shiny tubular body, randomly spaced blue fins, caiman head and whiplike tail ending in a hatchet fin. She snatched her hook from its jaws, and it landed thumping on the deck. With an apologetic look she kicked it sliding and struggling across to Ambel, as he was the one who always dealt with anything this large. He stamped his foot on its lashing tail, clamped its jaws shut in his right hand, then placed his left hand behind its head. Releasing the tail he pulled with his right and pushed with his left. With a sucking crunch the head came out half a metre, the fins disappearing into its body. He heaved again, and the quivering tube of flesh slid off across the deck, so he was left holding the head, the long spine and attached bag of internal organs. From the spine, fins sticking out all round at the end of jointed bones flicked and quivered, and at the opposite end the tail still thrashed. He cast this remnant over the side and watched it swim away, while the rest of the crew continued pulling in more of these piscine creatures, but smaller ones. The shoal, he saw, was heading under the ship then turning abruptly away to port. Something was definitely spooking them. Perhaps there was a big deep-sea heirodont somewhere nearby, which accounted for the behaviour of the previous shoals? But he dismissed this thought as he baited his hook with a plug of rhinoworm steak, cast his line, and immediately hooked another turbul.
Soon the deck was littered with their tubular bodies and glistening with slime. Anne brought over a turbul, leech-scarred and painfully thin, which told them they were reaching the tail end of the shoal.
‘Barrels and spiced vinegar,’ he told her when she unhooked this sorry creature and cast it back over the side.
‘Bugger me,’ said Peck. ‘This’n’s a big bugger.’
Ambel glanced across at the crewman, who was leaning back against the pull of his line, which, now humming like a power cable, angled down at forty degrees into the sea. Peck, Ambel knew, was not exactly a weakling, so it would take a seriously large turbul to give him any trouble. He coiled his own line and moved over behind the man, while other crew members, discarding leech-hit rejects, coiled up their lines and turned to watch.
‘Bugger,’ said Peck again—it was his favourite word.
Ambel eyed the short composite rod, which now actually had a bend in it. Peck’s knuckles were white around the handle. For anyone else, Ambel would have suggested they had snagged the seabed,
but Peck knew when he had a live one on, and the way the line was moving in the sea also confirmed this.
‘You might have hooked a heirodont,’ Ambel suggested.
Peck was now beginning to slide against his will towards the rail. Ambel stepped forwards and hooked an arm around his waist.
‘Not… getting me bloody… tackle.’
Peck’s torso was as rigid as stone, and even Ambel had to strain to prevent him going over the side. A turbul body slid down against his feet, then another one. The deck was tilting.
‘Any suggestions?’ Ambel asked generally.
‘Switch… on the side…’
Ambel peered round at the reel. There were three switches there. Suddenly the line cut round to the stern of the Treader. As it chopped into the rail, Sild threw himself sideways to avoid being decapitated. Then the line began to drag down, till it was cutting into the deck. Ambel had visions of it going through the ship like a cheese wire. He reached round and clicked a switch.
‘No… that one!’
The reel started droning, pulling them towards the edge, their boots tearing up splinters from the deck. Boris grabbed the back of Ambel’s belt and held on, but found he was being dragged along as well. Ambel reached out and clicked another switch. The sound was a kind of slither; that of a very sharp knife cut hard through air. The three men collapsed in a heap as the tension abruptly came off.
Peck was the first to his feet. ‘Breaks the line where it’s weakest,’ he explained.
Ambel stood and eyed the man’s new fishing gear, wondering if he would be wise to throw it over the side right then.
‘Fuck me,’ said Boris.
They turned to look at him and he held up the stump of his hand. His fingers were lying scattered on the deck at his feet.
‘Peck, fetch your needle, lad,’ said Ambel mildly. ‘Then I think we’re going to have a little chat.’