The Voyage of the Sable Keech s-2

by Neal Asher

  ‘Well, if it’s fucking war they want,’ he sent.

  ‘It is not war,’ the Warden replied. ‘But it seems they very much don’t want Vrell leaving here alive.’

  ‘Seems a bit drastic just for one post-adolescent Prador,’ Sniper opined.

  ‘Yes, it does—and that’s interesting.’

  Sniper began motoring towards the surface. ‘Did they hit him?’

  ‘Not as far as I can gather.’

  Sniper broke through the surface into a hurricane raging below the weirdest sky he had seen in a long time. A low ceiling of grey cloud stretched from horizon to horizon, but wherever it broke he observed the rainbow aurora of high-atmosphere ionization.

  The Warden continued, ‘That was in the nature of a little nudge to drive him from cover. At present no further such nudges will be forthcoming, so I suggest you find Ebulan’s ship before our friend up here gets impatient again.’

  Sniper located himself on his internal map by signals from one of the Warden’s satellites, and realized the pressure wave had carried him eighty kilometres.

  ‘Okay, send me a copy of Twelve’s last ten minutes. That drone he detected was probably heading straight back to Vrell.’

  The package arrived within a second, but it took a minute for Sniper to delete everything irrelevant: including the drone’s boredom with the task in hand, a program it was running concerning the historical significance of seashells, and how it really didn’t want to get splattered when so close to buying emancipation. The residue fined down to Twelve’s exact position when it had detected the Prador drone, that drone’s then position, and its general course before it spotted Twelve. Sniper aligned that same course on his internal map, and saw that continuing it in a straight line brought it to a point on the Lamarck Trench five hundred kilometres from where he was. He tried to start his supercavitating field, but it was then that a swarm of error messages called attention to themselves.

  ‘Fuckit, fuckit, fuckit!’ Sniper repeated as, on tractor drive only, he headed slowly to that identified location, while shifting internal micro-welding heads to repair the breaches in the S-cav field generator.

  * * * *

  As fast as possible, Vrell put his blanks on hold, clinging to the nearest supports and holding onto any breakable items. He shut down all internal systems that could be disrupted by a shock, isolated fusion reactors, and closed all the workable internal doors. The drone made it back inside just in time, and Vrell rapidly closed the cache door behind it. Then he himself clattered over to one side and clung to the uneven wall of the sanctum. The underwater blast wave slammed into the ship, lifting it up off the bottom so the concealing layer covering its upper hull slid away, and grinding it down nose first a few hundred metres along the bottom of the trench. Then the ship settled in a roiling cloud of silt. Debris falling through the water—boiled and broken creatures, boulders torn free from above and the silt itself—would soon conceal him again. But perhaps the time for concealment of that kind had ended.

  Vrell absorbed the download from his drone. It had been spotted by one of the Warden’s drones, but had destroyed that observer just before the blast. But the Warden would now know this ship was close, and so might detect it at any moment. Vrell listened again to the transmissions he had decoded between the Warden and the Prador warship. If Vrell’s ship was detected down here, how long before the Prador captain fired a kinetic missile directly on target? Admittedly the captain had not yet recognized the Warden’s double bluff, for it was fabricated upon the way this very ship had first been brought down. Vrell knew this had been effected by subversion of thrall codes, distracting Ebulan sufficiently for that old war drone to slam both itself and a dead Prador drone down on top of the ship from high atmosphere, with an impact not dissimilar to that of the recently fired kinetic missile. No U-space or gravtech weapons had been deployed—the Warden possessed none. However, Vrell thought it likely that the Prador captain had actually ceased firing because he did not want to cause an incident, and the fifty or so kinetic missiles he might need to work along the entire length of the trench would certainly do that. Just one missile though…

  Vrell then considered why the captain had fired at all. Obviously the Prador King knew what the Spatterjay virus could turn other Prador into, and suspected that Vrell, having survived so long on this planet, might also be infected. The King certainly did not want that kind of competition, nor for anyone but himself and his immediate offspring to enjoy the same advantage.

  ‘What do I do with this?’ asked the drone from down in its cache.

  Vrell came sharply out of his reverie, to look through his brother’s eyes, and through those others’ eyes down below. The drone was holding part of a segmented life form in its claws. Though one end of it was ragged, as if part of it had been torn away, it was still writhing furiously. Vrell picked up the uncoded thrall carrier signals issuing from it and, as he magnetometer-scanned it, realized there was a spider thrall lodged in each of its segments. It was then easy for him to read the carrier signal and program it into the control unit previously employed to run the radioactive blank ejected earlier. This certainly could be no setup instituted by Prador, for they were utterly aware of the interchangeability of control unit and thrall. For if you did not sufficiently encrypt signals to and from a thrall, an enemy might use it to control you instead. This had happened regularly in the Third Kingdom and, adult Prador being even less friendly to each other than to different species, the result was usually extremely painful, messy, and then terminal.

  Vrell linked through with ease, quickly decoded the programs employed, and usurped the partitioned control unit at the other end. He then gazed, through human eyes, out across the ocean, discovering that Taylor Bloc’s mind was a morass of contradictory conviction and frustration. The three partitions were designed for three control channels: one each for two human minds and one for what remained of the creature his drone had retrieved. But the whole system had become scrambled by the feedback caused by the creature’s massive injury. The two human minds were currently offline, somnolent. Perfect, for here then was more processing space for the U-space formulae. Keeping Taylor Bloc unaware, Vrell routed through programming links to those two minds he had controlled, and immediately began using them to run formulae, then he returned his attention to the reif himself.

  Only touching Bloc’s mind lightly, Vrell replayed fragments of his recent memory. In these he observed the launching of the Sable Keech and the subsequent embarkation of Polity citizens. Replaying more recent events he was amused by the thoroughly human drama unfolding. By the signal strength from the control unit he had just usurped, he realized the huge sailing ship itself was close.

  Interesting, thought Vrell.

  * * * *

  Standing on the top of the midship deckhouse, Janer raised his image intensifier to his eyes and studied the distant volcanic island. It was nameless, that place, so on the map called up on his cabin screen bore only a number. Commenting on this island to Erlin, who at that moment was hoisting yet another reif into yet another tank—over twenty of them had gone into the tanks now—she had replied, ‘Flowers in the sea there—a kind of sea lily you find out this way—that’s about all I remember, because I was losing it by then.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I saw it as Zephyr carried me over.’

  ‘I see.’

  Janer moved on then, recognizing impatience in her voice. Zephyr, he thought. There was some connection between that one and Isis Wade, for Wade had been spending a lot of time conversing with the Golem sail up in the rigging. Perhaps it would all come out when Wade made his promised explanation.

  Ah, flowers…

  The island was definitely volcanic—it could not have borne a more classically volcanic shape. And now, in the shallow seas surrounding it, Janer observed masses of lily pads bearing blowsy blue flowers. There were also things swimming amid those masses of vegetation, but it could not discern whether they were rhinowo
rms or medium-sized sea leeches.

  ‘Zephyr has a curious fascination with lilies,’ came a voice from behind, ‘but then he has a curious fascination with anything related to death.’

  ‘You walk very soft, Wade,’ said Janer, removing the intensifier from his eyes.

  ‘I’m no clunking robot, if that’s what you mean.’ Isis Wade stepped up beside him.

  ‘There’s a lot of things you are not. What I’d like to know is precisely what you are.’

  ‘Isn’t that something we’d all like to know?’

  ‘Don’t start waxing philosophical on me. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Explanations?’ asked Wade.

  ‘It’s about time, while this calm lasts.’ Janer gestured to a squad of Kladites marching along the deck below.

  ‘Yes…’ said Wade. ‘Very well, I do represent an ancient hive mind. I in fact do more than that. Have you ever wondered why there are separate distinct hive minds rather than just one mind encompassing the entire hornet species?’

  ‘I can’t say it’s been very high on my mental agenda.’

  ‘I suppose not, and really I cannot clearly answer that question. Perhaps, just like individuality in any species, and the reasons for sex, it is a survival strategy. Perhaps, back before even dinosaurs walked the Earth, there was just one mind. Who knows? What I do know is that now there are many minds, and the way more are created is by the division, the breaking apart, of larger, older minds as the masses of hives that carry them become… unwieldy.’

  ‘The mind I represented was young,’ Janer observed.

  ‘It was: just one fragment that survived of a mind that broke apart during an ice age. Hornets do not cope well with the cold, which is why none of the other fragments survived.’

  ‘No, really?’ said Janer.

  Wade smiled and continued, ‘On Hive it is warm, and on Earth hives are better equipped against the cold, but ancient minds still face that threat of division—death to them individually, or maybe just death to their individuality. The mind I represent is so dividing and would have had to accept its lot, had it not been for human technology. But now there is the possibility of memcording. The mind has managed to hold itself together, in so much as it has so far only divided into two. One half is rational and prepared to memcord itself and accept that as life. The other half is… unbalanced. It will not accept death, believes death an entity to be fought. Nor can it accept memcording as life.’

  ‘Rather like our friends here, who don’t truly consider reification life, merely a kind of purgatory.’ Janer shrugged. ‘Well, something like that.’

  ‘I don’t just represent the mind,’ said Wade.

  ‘What do you represent?’

  ‘One half of the argument.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The other half is Zephyr.’

  Janer just stood there staring as he realized what he was being told. After a moment he asked, ‘Which half are you?’

  ‘The rational half, of course.’

  ‘So let me get this straight.’ Janer pointed above. ‘We’ve got the nuts half of an ancient hive mind up there in a Golem sail. It doesn’t accept memcording as life, yet it is a memcording itself. You are the sane half, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Yes, that’s about right.’

  ‘What do you hope to achieve here?’

  ‘I hope to persuade Zephyr to accept memcording as life—to accept rationality over the visceral or emotional. If it accepts that, a template of its understanding can be transmitted via hivelink back to Hive. This will enable the two halves of my other self to come together for memcording.’

  ‘And if you fail?’

  ‘Then this,’ Wade pressed his hand against his own chest, ‘is the best my other self might achieve, and it must therefore accept dissolution.’

  ‘So no sprine thefts, no attempts at planetary domination involved here, just a bit of literal psychoanalytical projection?’

  ‘There is a further complication, and it does concern sprine.’

  ‘Isn’t there always? Tell me about it.’

  Wade then explained to him why Zephyr was here, and Janer felt himself grow cold. He looked off past the Golem, across the ship to the further horizon.

  ‘That’s bad,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  After a moment Janer realized he could not actually see the horizon, and he also realized that the Sable Keech was heeling over and turning hard. He again raised his intensifier to his eyes.

  ‘And talking of bad.’

  The cloud, laced with lightning, looked like a roller of wild bruised flesh. The wave, hammering towards them below it, was higher than their ship, and looked more solid still.

  * * * *

  ‘Keep us turning. I want us bows-on towards that mess. Zephyr, start reefing all sail right now,’ said Captain Ron. ‘Then get yourself and your friends to cover or in the air—whichever you prefer.’

  ‘Is that a good idea?’ asked John Styx who, without protest from Ron, had taken up position at the coms console. ‘It’ll slow our turn.’

  The Sable Keech was turning slowly while that wave, and the storm riding it, was coming bloody fast. Sideways on, the ship would capsize, and it would probably then stay that way, despite the heavy machinery acting as ballast down in the bilge.

  ‘We’ll be able to make the turn under present momentum,’ Ron replied. ‘If we leave sail on, that might tear out the masts, holing the deck and possibly the hull. We really don’t want holes in this ship right now.’

  Bows on, the Sable Keech might be able to stay on the surface, though Ron thought it likely the wave still would break its back. That way, however, at least the passengers and crew might survive the coming experience.

  ‘Everybody been warned?’ Ron asked generally.

  ‘I’ve been repeating the warning over the ship’s intercom, and putting it up on every cabin screen,’ said John Styx. ‘Others are spreading the word, where they can.’

  ‘Ah, good.’ Ron eyed the others on the bridge. Then, entertaining a suspicion, he turned his attention to Forlam. ‘You got that rudder hard over, Forlam?’

  ‘Certainly have.’ Forlam gazed at the approaching wave with his eyes glittering.

  Ron reached out to grab the helm and tug at it a little, to make sure Forlam was not making any small but possibly fatal mistake, as was his tendency. He found the helm was hard over, however. Forlam gave him a hurt look, then returned his attention to the wave.

  ‘Nearly there. We’re gonna make it, boys,’ said Ron.

  Others on the bridge, looking doubtful, kept clinging to the nearest handholds. Ron himself reached out and closed his hand around a nearby stanchion. Something big had hit: this looked like the wave thrown up by a seaborne atomic explosion, of which Ron had seen his fair share during the Prador war. It might have been seven or more centuries ago, but you tended not to forget stuff like that.

  ‘What do you reckon caused it?’ Ron asked, generally.

  ‘Dunno, Captain,’ came the general reply from the Hoopers.

  It struck the Old Captain that his bridge crew was not overly gifted with imagination anyway, so he turned to Styx. ‘Any ideas?’

  Styx studied the displays. ‘It was an orbital kinetic strike over the Lamarck Trench in Nort Sea.’

  ‘Right. And the source?’

  ‘Prador battleship. A big one.’

  ‘Well, that’s a bugger,’ said Ron, just as the massive wave hit.

  The Sable Keech did not lie completely bows-on to the wave. Nevertheless it rose up and up on a sudden mountain of water only just visible through horizontal rain. Ron looked up at the boiling cliff of sea as it broke round and over the bows, and clung on tight as the floor turned up to forty-five degrees, then beyond that. He looked back, and wished he hadn’t when he saw the seven-hundred-metre drop down the length of the ship into the trough. The stern was now under, cleaving through the sea and throwing up a huge cowl of water that kept crashing against
the deck. Ron tried to ignore the groanings and crackings he was hearing, then suddenly the bows were in clear air, and the angle of the ship returning to normal. But the vessel now turned on the wave’s peak… Then it was over, and sliding sideways down the lee of the wave. Ron found himself clinging to the stanchion with both hands, one foot braced on a console. Forlam was gripping the wheel, his feet wide spread. A screen popped out and a waterfall roared into the bridge as the ship bottomed in a trough.

  ‘Rudder—other way!’ Ron bellowed.

  Forlam started spinning the helm—no strength being required since the rudder operated by hydraulics. The ship started to present its stern to the next, smaller wave, and went up over that one at an angle. Another wave, then another. Now came a shuddering crash as the Sable Keech dropped down in the next trough. It rose again on a wide swell, crashed down again. Staring straight ahead, Ron observed just how much closer the island now appeared. Steam was billowing from its volcanic cone, and where once there had been trees there was now just the wreckage of trees and mud. Eyeing the sea, he observed lily pads bobbing back to the surface and then reopening their blowsy flowers.

  ‘We’re grounded,’ someone announced.

  ‘Yup, I figured that,’ replied Ron.

  ‘How we going to get this ship off?’ the same man asked.

  ‘Ain’t figured that one yet,’ admitted the Old Captain.

  * * * *

  The giant whelk dipped herself back in the sea, but could no longer detect the scent trail of the ship she had been pursuing. Heaving herself back up onto the beach, she gazed towards the horizon with her huge eyes, and experienced a feeling of panicky bewilderment. This sudden loss of purpose caused almost a feeling a deflation in the growing lobes of her brain, and she felt the loss of that, rather than of the scent, as of greater importance to her. But the ship was not gone—itself or one very much like it would be out there. All she needed to do was search, keep on searching, and never stop. It then occurred to her that if she found the same ship, dragged it down and crushed it, chewed on the crew… if she finally achieved her aim, that meant no more aim to achieve. She blinked, caught on the rusty nail of paradox, not knowing it was much the same as faced by all thinking beings. Then she swivelled her eye-stalks to one side, wondering why the horizon there had suddenly risen.