by Neal Asher
What’s this?
A humanoid he first took to be an ophidapt grabbed a questing tentacle and shoved back the soldier it was originally groping for. The tentacle proceeded to inject nanofilaments into the reptilian body. The humanoid should have been instantly paralysed. Instead it fired a proton weapon into the wall, frying the substructure from which the tentacle extruded, then it flung down the severed tentacle and incinerated that too. Thellant focused intently on a recording of this event—replayed from one of the many computers spread throughout the Jain architecture like grains of salt. He discerned that Jain nanofilaments had instantly come under attack, managing to penetrate no more than the upper layers of the reptilian’s skin. In fact some kind of viral assault shot back up them, paralysing the structure in the wall just instants before the… Thellant consulted other sources… before the dracoman incinerated it. So, not just Polity AIs—he must contend with these things as well.
‘Thellant.’
What, what now?
The source of that flat voice disappeared even as he groped for it. Perhaps some program injected from that dracoman, now propagating back? Gone now, yes. But it was also time for Thellant to disappear. The area opposite him was secure for him now. He stepped into the open and headed across the bottom of the trench. The Jain substructure they might be able to hold back, but he intended to slip past.
On the other side he passed the black pit of a mineshaft plummeting down into the bedrock. Spilling out of this, like silver worms, were foot-wide peristaltic pipes issuing from the robotic boring machines far below. Some of these pipes were split open, spilling slurries of powdered haematite, bauxite and malachite. All of them entered a pumping machine, and from that normal pipes of half the diameter ran down one side of a maglev tunnel spearing into darkness. Parked in the mouth of the tunnel, a boring machine lay like some massive steel grub with a cylindrical head overly endowed with teeth. Thellant walked past this and on into the tunnel’s darkness. All around him via the substructure he observed further disquieting scenes.
The substructure was attempting to return soldiers it now controlled to Coloron’s forces, but the dracomen spotted them instantly and destroyed them, for it seemed these creatures could detect Jain growth even at a distance. Elsewhere, Coloron’s drones or Golem soon detected other returnees and their fate was the same. Fortunately no dracomen were searching in his current vicinity. He reached a curve in the tunnel and halted. Because the substructure spread through the wall cavity beside him, he knew the enemy awaited ahead.
Five arcology monitors and four drones occupied the tunnel, armed respectively with proton weapons and pulse-guns. A proton cannon floated above the maglev rails. It fired one shot, lighting up the tunnel, and demolishing a section of affected wall. They were now retreating, targeting the larger masses of growth as they went. Thellant pressed his hand against the wall, injected filaments from himself to make full physical connection. He halted all local growth, causing it to curl up and apparently die. He began shifting energy and resources to an area twelve miles to his left instead, and started a massive push there. This sort of thing had been happening for some time, as the substructure constantly probed for weaknesses. The opponents ahead ceased retreating—with the brute growth occurring elsewhere they could now recoup their resources. He waited five minutes before breaking into a trot and rounding the bend.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘They’re coming!’
None of those already controlled by Jain tech spoke, which gave him an edge.
‘Hold it there!’ one of the monitors ordered.
‘They’re coming!’ he shrieked.
Seconds only before the cannon swivelled towards him, but by then he drew opposite the blast hole in the wall. He stepped into it, fast, then accelerated along the wall cavity. Ducking below masses of fused optics, he ran faster than any normal man could run when upright. Behind him, red flame exploded along the cavity, pulse-gun fire punching machine-gun holes everywhere. He was hit five times, but only his human body suffered and he did not let that affect him. Proton flame seared the skin on his back. Then to his right: another wall hollow, cutting up through numerous levels. He climbed. Fire now below him, then tracking on past. Two levels up, he stepped out through a service door and into an empty corridor on the other side of Coloron’s main line of defence.
Thellant paused and inspected himself. His back was totally charcoaled, the rest of his naturally dark skin mottled with still darker patches, as if bruised all over, and hard metallic masses pushed against it from the inside. Also his electromagnetic linkages to the substructure hazed the air around him with energy spillover. He began to make cosmetic alterations: withdrawing the tech deeper inside him, repairing the damage to his human façade. Eventually he stood unflawed, with a skin tone like that of his healthy negro ancestor, no fat on his body, his musculature less flabby than at any time since his youth. He reached up, peeled the dead Dracocorp aug from behind his ear and cast it aside. Moving on, he searched for and eventually found a suitable corpse, which he stripped of clothing to replace his own damaged garments. However, he did not yet feel ready to break his link to the main substructure. First he needed to learn the disposition of Coloron’s forces.
The dracomen were nearer now: five of them just a mile to his right and three levels above. He already knew how fast they could move and felt them to be too close, so took the first exit to his left and headed down one level. Other dracomen occupied levels far above and some far to his left and higher still. What lay ahead, outside of the current purview of the substructure, he did not know. He would take as straight a line as possible, lose himself in the general population, find a way to escape. Now was the time to make the break.
It was so hard to cut himself off, almost like fighting an addiction. The electromagnetic transceivers inside him fought against his will like rebellious adolescents, and would only cut his connection when he physically used the structure inside himself to sever their power. Even then they tried to reconnect themselves until he killed each one remaining inside him. Thereafter came an agonizing hammer of withdrawal, dullness of mind, blurring of his senses. Stubbornly he fought this too and tracked down its root causes. These feelings he experienced were a human thing. It seemed that his breaking of contact with the main substructure had pushed much of his awareness back into his organic brain and out of the grain-sized computers lodged inside him. He forced awareness back, regained clarity and enforced a straight neurochemical reprogramming of his organic brain, and filled it with nanofibre control systems. This achieved, he realized how he was no longer that petty being Thellant N’komo, but something else entire.
* * * *
The hologram displayed a section of the arcology, transparent, shimmering four feet off the floor like something fashioned of glass. In this, a handsbreadth away from one ragged edge of the circular trench cut down into the arcology, appeared a blinking red dot. Surrounding this, and closing in, were twenty-one green dots. The red dot the bad guy and the green the good guys, supposing Scar and the other twenty dracomen could be described as good.
‘He just broke with the main substructure,’ said Thorn, relaying a message from the HK program routed through Jack. ‘The HK can’t track him any longer.’
Scar replied, ‘Closing now on his last location.’
‘Jack,’ enquired Thorn, ‘does the HK have any idea of his intentions?’
The AI replied, ‘Escape from the arcology—he knows it will be destroyed.’
‘He’s heading outside then,’ said Thorn, ‘but which way?’
Jack replied, ‘He avoids dracomen, apparently. He must be aware of how ineffective Jain tech is against them.’
‘That’s good. If we can locate him we can probably shepherd him the way we want.’ Thorn looked up from the hologram to the screen wall of the projection room—presently divided into many subscreens displaying multiple views inside and outside the arcology. ‘Coloron, he may have changed his face, but then again
that might not even have occurred to him. Are you searching?’
‘I am not searching,’ that AI replied.
The screen wall flickered, became a single view into a concourse along which crowds trudged. A frame picked out one individual in the crowd, focused in.
‘Thellant N’komo,’ Coloron informed him.
‘Racial type through choice?’ wondered Thorn, eyeing the tall negro.
Coloron replied, ‘Twenty years ago he traced one line of his ancestry back to one of the negroid races, then had himself cosmetically altered. It was his contention that he must look like those ancestors of his who, in the seventeenth century, were transported as slaves to Jamaica to cut sugar cane, because he feels he is a slave to the likes of me.’ The AI paused, then continued, ‘He was a very wealthy slave, however, and there seemed a notable lack of whips, chains and endless grinding labour in his enslavement.’
Thorn grinned to himself: it just went to show that even big-fuck planetary AIs were not above sarcasm. ‘Scar, he’s moving along Brallatsia Concourse, with the crowd heading for exit Fifty-two—ground level.’ He glanced at the hologram. Most of the green dots began moving, very fast.
‘Don’t crowd him,’ said agent Thorn. ‘We don’t want him to do anything drastic…. Uh, Coloron, you’ve got him targeted?’
‘I have,’ the AI replied.
‘Another reason not to crowd him,’ Thorn added.
How many would die, he wondered, if the AI fired its orbital particle cannon right now? Certainly few of that crowd in the concourse would survive, for the firestorm would blast all the way along to exit fifty-two itself. There were also thousands jammed into the levels above and below this one.
‘Should we try and clear some of the people beyond the exit?’ he asked.The death rate would be lower outside—perhaps less than ten thousand.
‘Inadvisable,’ said Coloron.
‘Agreed,’Thorn admitted. ‘We do that and he’ll probably guess what’s happening.’ It still did not make him feel great about risking tens of thousands of lives just to capture this one individual.
‘Dammit.’ He picked up his weapon and headed off to join the dracomen. Overseeing the operation here just gave him too much time to think of the consequences of it going wrong.
* * * *
‘Keep moving. Keep moving. Food, drink and accommodation will be supplied outside. Rescue personnel one mile ahead of you. If you require assistance…’
Thellant tuned out these continual announcements. He felt angry. As the surrounding mass of humanity jostled him it took him an effort of will not to simply kill all those about him. But the moment he did something like that he would reveal himself and he doubted even the proximity of so many innocent citizens would prevent him becoming a viable target, so he kept his head down and kept shuffling along. An AG platform hovered above and drones buzzed through the air like head-sized wingless bluebottles. An occasional AG ambulance sped high overhead, after picking up the injured or those just collapsing from plain exhaustion. The bars and shops on either side were completely empty but, every hundred yards or so, temporary drinking fountains had been installed. He supposed the comfort offered by them was deliberately limited because Coloron did not want any delays to the exodus. The AI clearly wanted to get as many inhabitants as possible outside in the shortest period of time.
Inside him the Jain tech lay quiescent, but he knew it would be spotted if he came under direct scan. It seemed, however, they did not perform scanning here as back at the main line. Another AI calculation no doubt: the minimal delay for scanning individuals would accumulate into something untenable for just the tens of thousands surrounding him, let alone the millions presently departing the arcology.
It took five hours for him to traverse the six miles of concourse to the arcology edge. Here, shops, bars, and the walls behind had been torn out either side of Exit 52 to widen it to the full breadth of the concourse. When he finally stepped outside night had fallen, and the sky glittered with stars and orbiting ships. He looked to either side into the seething mass of humanity and saw drop-shaft exits from the levels above and below also spewing a steady stream of inhabitants. AG transports regularly departed like bees from a hive, depositing their passengers some distance ahead, then returning for more. Thellant trudged on, adjusting his eyes to night vision, then ramping up the magnification as he scanned his surroundings. Presently he could not see much ahead, since he walked upslope, but to his left, two miles away, he focused in on one AG platform and saw that it held a human and a dracoman, and to his right over by 51—a larger exit—there seemed a heavy concentration of drones. It seemed he was in absolutely the right place.
As he reached the top of the slope, the vista opened ahead of him, and he felt a surge of excitement upon seeing a huge lander at rest, with people filing inside it. He tried to speed up, but those not sure where to go now, slowed, and many crowded around an open-sided transport from which self-heating ration packs were being distributed. He glanced back, saw two dracomen moving through the crowds back by the exit. He moved faster, pushing people out of his way when necessary, quickly sliding past them otherwise. Those jamming in after the ration packs deflected him to his left. Glancing up he saw the AG platform drifting closer. Ahead, the ramps of the big lander rose. He swore in frustration, but pushed on anyway.
The ramps closed up into the entrances of the huge vessel, then a low thrumming transmitted through the ground as the craft ascended into the night sky.
‘Bastards,’ snarled a man beside him. ‘You can bet they’ll blow the arcology before we see another one of those, and even if they don’t that shit will be out here after us.’
By listening in on the conversations of those around him, Thellant gathered that everyone now knew what was happening. The conventional server network was already back up to speed, and announcements on public screens and address systems continued non-stop.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. The man wore an aug so probably was more up-to-speed with current events than Thellant.
‘Last one,’ explained the man. ‘The Britannic is full, and its three landers will be just held in orbit along with their passengers.’ The man stepped closer. ‘But then maybe we’re the lucky ones—if anyone in those ships turns out to be infected, I don’t suppose they’ll be landing anywhere.’
Thellant turned away from him. The lander rose high enough to open up the vista ahead. The sheer quantity of people stunned the mind. The multitude stretched for about two miles ahead, whereupon it filtered into encampments of bubble tents. To his right and left the throng stretched for as far as he could see. Returning his attention to the refugee camp beyond, he noted numerous ships positioned down on the ground. Some of them, he recognized, were not just landers but spaceships capable of entering U-space.
‘Seems they’re setting up another camp,’ said the man, his fingers resting against his aug. He gestured with his chin. ‘Two hundred miles out, and the quarantine perimeter has been extended. I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the arrival of an ECS dreadnought at all.’
Thellant looked at him enquiringly.
The man explained. ‘Coloron’s orbital weapons are limited — not enough to contain us. A dreadnought should be able to fry anyone who tries to break quarantine.’
Thellant moved on. More such ships would arrive. He needed to escape now. Scanning about himself again, he saw the AG platform drawing even closer, but he could no longer see the dracomen behind him. He adjusted his course accordingly, picking out a small quadraspherical ship—ECS Rescue by its markings. He could see that the vessel was firmly closed up—probably to prevent panicked citizens sneaking aboard—and that ECS staff worked from a row of inflated domes nearby. Within an hour he reached the first of those domes, glancing inside at rows of beds. All of them were occupied, some of their occupants being tended to by autodocs. Rescue staff had set out their stall outside as well, where they were treating the walking wounded. A flash lit the sky—
the third one since he chose this ship. Apparently the dreadnought had already knocked out a gravcar and gravtransport, both trying to escape to SA. Finally he came up beside one of the Rescue ship’s four spheres, next to an airlock.
Thellant pressed his hand against the mechanism, injected Jain filaments to subvert the locking mechanism. The door crumped open.
‘Hey, what you—?’
Backhanded, the woman flew three yards through the air and hit the ground, her skull shattered. Inside, then closing and sealing the outer hatch. Through the inner hatch, to find this cargo-sphere empty. He moved on into the next where from outside he had seen the flight deck. He needed to move fast. His hand slammed down on the console, filaments injecting, sequestering systems, taking over the ship, searching out its AI. He found it, closed it off before it could scream for help, then took it apart. Dropping into the pilot’s chair he initiated AG and watched through the cockpit screen as the ship began to rise.
‘Lassa, why are you launching?’
A query issued from some AI above—probably the dreadnought. Thellant learned from information subsumed from the AI, Lassa, that this ship had been due to launch in one hour. He answered through Lassa.
‘Unnecessary delay. All cargo and staff unloaded, and all cold coffins filled.’
Only in that moment did he discover that one sphere of the ship contained twenty coldsleep containers, fifteen of them now occupied by people severely injured.
‘Very well, you are clear to make orbit.’
As easy as that? Thellant grimaced to himself. The Polity was far too dependent on its damned AIs and in this case that was a mistake. He settled back in the seat, his hand still on the console and with himself still linked into the ship’s systems. As it continued to rise he entertained a sudden suspicion and ran diagnostics on the U-space engine, but it was fine—no problems at all. He put it online, ready to drop the ship into underspace the moment that became possible. An hour of flying later the sun picked out gleaming ships in a blue-black firmament, before it broke over the planet’s curve. He shut off AG and started the fusion drive to finally pull him clear of the well. Then a stuttering flash, and something hammered the Rescue ship, violently tilting his horizon. Then again that flash, which Thellant now identified as a high-powered laser. Through his link into the ship’s systems, he felt the U-space engine not only go offline but completely disconnect, as if it had disappeared. The second hit had taken out the fusion drive plate. As the ship tilted up into starlit darkness, another vessel passed overhead, glittering like oyster shell.