by Neal Asher
A voice issued from the console. ‘Gotcha.’
11
The development of the laser as a weapon began way back at the start of this millennium and it has been with us ever since. However, for ship-to-ship conflict, improvements in reflective and s-con heat dispersal armours have all but rendered ineffective as weapons lasers in the range of infrared to ultraviolet. Move outside those spectra, however, and you have masers, which can be used to sufficiently penetrate missiles—which will not have the heat-dispersal capacity of a large ship—to destroy them, and at closer range actually can destroy ships. The same rule applies to xasers and grasers, but in all cases the range and destructive potential of these weapons is limited, especially in fields of conflict often lightyears across. And, in reality, we learnt from the Prador how negligible is their effect, in the arena in which they are usually employed, when compared with the numerous other varieties of particle cannon. As you are all aware, the ubiquitous pulse-gun is just a form of particle weapon, the particulate matter ranging from powdered aluminium to a gas—
(audience interruption)
Pardon
(audience response)
I will state again that there is no such thing as an APW! What you are referring to is a proton weapon—highly destructive and tending to spread isotope poisoning wherever used. The APW, the antiphoton weapon, the dark-light gun, is a fucking fictional creation!
(moderator query)
Yes, thank you. I’m fine.
— From her lecture ‘Modern Warfare’ by EBS Heinlein
The sphere composed of two-foot-long metal ants rested in the centre of the Feynman Lounge, individual ants occasionally detaching to be off about their assigned tasks. This new conceit of Polity AIs, in choosing to locate themselves in increasingly bizarre body shapes, elicited the Legate’s contempt, but not sufficiently for it to consider outright confrontation. In retrospect it was a good thing it had not tried taking information from the two women investigating the explosion site. The two ant drones accompanying them—which the Legate had initially discounted—were dangerous, being part of this forensic AI.
Via fibres inserted through a nearby wall, the Legate observed five humans, two haimans and three Golem, all wearing ECS uniforms that identified them as members of the forensic team. The others in the lounge, three advanced haimans sporting carapaces and sensory cowls, were part of the Cassius project. They sat silently, two together on a couch and one in an armchair. The rigorous interrogation they underwent was conducted via optic linkages plugged into their carapaces, the cables snaking back to the AI itself. But within minutes this session ended, whereupon the haimans detached the cables and departed.
The Legate withdrew its spying fibres from the wall and turned round. The room it occupied belonged to a man whose mental capacity was only complemented by a cerebral aug, so it had been easy to enter while he slept and put him into a deeper sleep. After scanning through the information contained in this particular individual’s aug, and by linking into the public com systems of the station, the Legate learnt what was generally known about the incident that occurred here. The explosion had resulted in the death of a haiman called Shoala, and subsequently the rumour mills ground away. Many on the station knew Orlandine’s and Shoala’s relationship to be more than just a working one. Orlandine, though a superb overseer and sublime scientist, was generally considered too focused, too haiman, too unhuman. Much of the current speculation concerned the possibility of her having suffered some paranoid identity dysfunction, that being the expected, though uncommon, madness affecting her kind. The Legate did not believe that theory for a moment. It had studied her for a long time and knew that in this case madness did not come into it. Yes she could kill, but for perfectly logical and, in Polity terms, immoral reasons.
Still concealed by chameleonware, the Legate moved out into the corridors of the station and made its way down to the concourse leading to the Feynman Lounge. Within a few minutes it recognized one of the forensic team: human and possibly gridlinked. The man, a thickset individual with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, strolled along with one of the ant drones scuttling beside him. They chatted like old friends.
‘I just don’t see it,’ the man was saying. ‘She had everything: power, status, family, friends… She could easily re-engineer her personality if she was having problems. She almost certainly ran regular sanity-check programs.’
‘Madness by choice, then,’ the ant suggested. ‘Those who achieve and obtain so much often feel they have lost something indefinable along the way.’
Behind the man, but invisible, the Legate extended its forefinger into a narrow needle, primed with a particular narcotic. It pressed this into the man’s neck, injected, then withdrew it just as the man reached up to scratch the sudden itch.
‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ the man continued. ‘If you’re haiman, you’re about as pragmatic as it gets. Every organic feeling is quantified and analysed, and if it doesn’t fit underlying drives it’s discarded. All haimans know it’s just neurochemicals.’ The man stumbled briefly. ‘Just…’
The Legate stepped in again and pressed a hand to the back of the man’s neck, injecting fibres through the numbed skin, seeking out and connecting to his auditory nerves. The drug dulled him just enough to edge him into fugue, his state slightly mesmerized.
Precisely mimicking the ant drone’s voice the Legate asked the man directly through his auditory nerve, ‘Where is the evidence being kept?’
‘The old oxygen store, level eight sector three,’ the man replied out loud—not even wondering why the forensic AI would ask him about something it had organized itself.
‘What’s that?’ the genuine ant asked, turning to look up at him, antennae waving.
‘Um?’ The man halted as the Legate withdrew. He rubbed his face. ‘Shit, I’m tired. Unless you’ve got some critical use for me, I’m going to sack out.’
‘I wouldn’t use you in a critical situation if you were tired,’ the ant observed.
The man waved a hand and moved on. The ant remained behind, its antennae still waving. It turned its head slowly, beginning to make probing scans of its surroundings. The Legate quickly retreated. Its chameleonware was the best, but no such ‘ware was perfect.
The map of the station which the Legate had already obtained from the sleeping man’s aug precisely located the oxygen store but, even more cautious now, it took the entity some time to reach that place. It waited until others opened doors ahead of it, then turned on an internal gravmotor to bring its weight to zero and used sticky fibres on its feet and hands to propel itself along, just in case some search program should run through the station’s gravplates. It avoided using drop-shafts for similar reasons. The double doors to the oxygen store were heavily armoured—designed to contain any explosion occurring inside. The forensic AI had probably chosen this place to contain the evidence because such stores were generally no longer used—station and ship oxygen now being supplied by machines that split carbon dioxide and merely needed to be emptied of blocks of carbon, and bottled gases for suits being compressed by the suits themselves while aboard the station.
The main doors were multi-locked, but the door of the adjoining storeroom was not. The Legate slipped in there and drilled through the dividing armoured wall. Good thing it chose this route because it soon found inert gases filled the oxygen store, which also doubtless contained detectors to monitor their mix. It injected nano-optics and through them focused on an upright chainglass cylinder containing pieces of blackened memory crystal locked in a web of plasgel. Certainly a recording of everything they contained now resided inside the forensic AI, for the crystal was packed in readiness for transportation to some other evidential cache. The Legate now widened one hole through the wall and extruded from its palm a larger diameter cord packed with nanotubes which it could contract and stretch at intervals of a half inch to guide itself to its target. The cord oozed through the hole, stretched down the wall and g
roped across the floor towards the chainglass cylinder. Fortunately the cylinder’s end caps were of a thick plastic it could easily cut through by using diamond saws the size of skin cells. Once inside the cylinder the cord frayed into thousands of nanotubes and spread like cobwebs. The Legate connected, injecting power or, where required, light, and began copying the stored data.
So, it seemed Orlandine had been showing an unhealthy interest in Shoala, and apparently tried to scrub out the evidence of that. Fragmentary results revealed relationship problems between them, and that she had tried to re-engineer her personality. All a classic, almost hackneyed, scenario and, without certain other information, entirely believable. However, there was nothing in here about Jain technology or Jain nodes, so as evidence it was all constructed, false. In the end, if the forensic AI did not believe this preferred scenario, it might choose from many others, but none of them involving Jain nodes. The Legate assumed Orlandine had shared information about the node with this Shoala, or maybe he found out, and that led to her killing him. From what was here, the forensic AI would never know. The police arm of ECS would no doubt do their best to find her, but that was entirely the point: only the police arm would bother to do this. Any investigation would not involve major AIs like Jerusalem, because to ECS this was just a sordid little murder.
Orlandine panicked, grabbed the first available U-space capable spaceship, and then fled the Cassius system. Or so, the Legate gathered, went the consensus of opinion here. The entity itself felt that such behaviour just did not fit the haiman’s profile. She did not panic. She felt a huge attachment to the Cassius project, which was one of the reasons she was chosen to receive a node: she would stay put and utilize the item from here, where it would cause the most damage. Had they been wrong about that as well? The Legate disconnected from the stored crystal, withdrew its cord, and sealed the hole through the wall. Understanding that much information about the functioning of this place lay in the public domain, and therefore easily accessible, it headed all the way back to the room it had originally invaded to spy on the forensic AI. The room’s occupant still slept, so the Legate ignored him and searched, eventually finding an old computer terminal that folded down out of one wall. The work of just moments gave access to the humdrum workings of this station, and in one moment more the Legate found the manifest for the Heliotrope, and the loading times.
Orlandine took the time and trouble to refuel the Heliotrope, and load some extra supplies, before supposedly fleeing in panic. The Legate noted the nature of those supplies: a molecular catalyser, an autofactory for synthesizing polymers, sheet rolls of laminated radiation shielding. This last material interested the Legate most: just what you would need to conceal your activities from detection, not what was needed if you intended to flee somewhere remote from detection. The entity now called up on the screen a positional map of the multitude of objects orbiting the Cassius sun, stared contemplatively at this for a moment, then closed the terminal back into the wall and departed.
Once more ensconced in its ship, drifting away from the station, the Legate opened a U-space communication link. At once its mind became a submind of something very much larger, which scanned and recorded its thoughts and recent discoveries.
‘Continue with mission to solar system?’ the Legate enquired.
‘No,’ Erebus replied. ‘Find her first.’
The link broke leaving the Legate momentarily stunned, then its individuality reasserted and it felt angry frustration. Find her? Then what?
* * * *
Coloron observed the Skaidon warps blink out in Runcibles 5 and 6, as their spoons—their inclusion into U-space—retracted. Around Runcible 6 the crowds had thinned considerably—fewer than 10,000 people remained and they were departing the area very quickly. This was certainly due to the runcible’s proximity to the arcology’s north wall, which reduced its catchment area and therefore put exits to the outside within easy reach. However, over 50,000 people were still crammed into the departure lounges of 5, despite announcements of the runcible’s imminent closure being broadcast through public address systems, displayed in big glaring letters on the bulletin boards, and transmitted continuously through the aug network. The AI was loath to start a panic, since in so large a crowd that would result in deaths, but anyone remaining in this area within the hour would be dead anyway. It amended the announcement to: PROCEED TO RUNCIBLE SEVEN. FIVE TO BE DESTROYED IMMINENTLY! YOU HAVE THIRTY-SIX MINUTES TO CLEAR THE AREA. DETONATION ESTIMATED AT TWO POINT FIVE KILOTONNES. Coloron then started the klaxons sounding, red warning lights flashing and, just to drive the point home, created a feedback loop between the runcible and its buffers, so it started to emit a whine, increasing in frequency at a rate just discernible to the human ear. That started them running. The AI was about to turn its attention elsewhere, when a secure channel opened from above.
‘We have Thellant,’ announced Jack of the NEJ.
‘My joy knows no bounds,’ replied Coloron.
‘This has not slowed the advance of the Jain substructure,’ Jack observed.
‘If anything it seems worse.’
‘There may yet be a way to slow it down.’
Coloron immediately worked out what that way might be. ‘Your spy in the camp?’
‘Yes, Jerusalem’s hunter-killer program has maintained contact. It is presently propagating itself through the Jain informational architecture. Apparently it cannot change the rate of growth but it is, as you say, a spy in the camp, so can relay the disposition of enemy forces and resources.’
‘Link me.’
The ensuing communication with the HK program was nonverbal, and Coloron’s analysis dissected it on many levels. The AI immediately began constructing a virtual map of the substructure overlaid on a map of the arcology. Further analysis revealed stashes of materials behind the line of advance, currently being made ready for easy conversion; energy being bled from fusion reactors and stored in laminar structures, both capacitors and batteries; sneaky mycelial extensions heretofore undetected; and subsumed humans armed and massing for advance. Coloron now checked the disposition of its own defences, and issued orders.
‘Azroc, that’s close enough, pull your forces out.’
The Golem was presently accompanying those of his forces busy incinerating the Jain tech spreading along the walls and through the floor of a long hydroponics chamber. Smoke layered the air from burning vegetation, and fluids pouring from broken tanks onto hot metal boiled up in dirty clouds. Within sight, figures still human in shape but no longer entirely human tried to work their way through. Squatting beside a small proton cannon standing on four insectile legs, Azroc glanced back towards the drone through which Coloron spoke.
‘You’re going to blow it?’ he asked.
Coloron replied, ‘Thellant has been captured, and now new tactical intelligence has become available. The substructure is massing for a push very near your current position and it could reach Runcible 5 within half an hour.’
‘Where do you want us now, then?’
Coloron transmitted directly into the Golem’s mind a simple map of the present situation. The infestation had started thirty miles in from the shore, and fifty miles in from the northern edge of the arcology. Runcible 5 lay the nearest to it, with 4 and 3 spaced evenly along the shore to the south and the same distance in from the sea. The AI did not want to send any more inhabitants to those runcibles as there were crowds enough there already, and Jain tentacles moved faster along the shore wall than elsewhere. Forty miles in from that row of three runcibles, again evenly spaced, lay 6, 7, 8 and 9. Another fifty miles further in lay 1 and 2. Runcible 10 was located well out of the way, in the recent north-eastern extension. On the map the Jain tech had completely taken over the north-west corner, and now lay only three miles from 5 and twice that distance from 6. Azroc’s forces were currently arrayed in a line cutting off that entire section—those last two runcibles at their backs.
‘Pull back to seven now. I will
destroy five and six the moment the substructure reaches them. You have a minimum of thirty-four minutes.’
‘Okay.’ Azroc began signalling to his section commanders.
‘And, Azroc’
‘Yes?’
‘I am about to begin some sterilization.’
‘Understood.’
Coloron knew of some, either Separatist related or suffering from severe troglodytism, who were not obeying the evacuation order. Many of them remained inside the infested area, within reach of Jain tentacles, and many had already been taken over. Little could be done for any of those. From cameras on the particle weapon geostationary above, the AI studied the circular chunk of arcology it had initially excised in the hope of containing the Jain tech. The cavity near the centre of this, made by the Coloron’s first satellite strike, looked like a bullethole filled with steel maggots. The trench cut to separate out the piece of arcology in which this hole lay also squirmed with movement as Jain tech increasingly bridged the gap.