by Neal Asher
As the great ship finally passed through the cloud of enemy ships, and began to go into a curve around the ice giant planet, it seemed from a distance to be leaving a vapour trail behind it. Closer viewing revealed this phenomenon as a mass of pursuing ships. While Azroc watched, an enemy-subsumed Polity dreadnought evaded the few remaining mines and slammed itself into the armoured side of the huge ship. The impact knocked the Battle Wagon sideways, tore away one of its coil-guns, and scattered a line of wreckage through space. On other displays Azroc could see the ship radiating, unable to disperse the heat from the continuous beam strikes made upon it. Three CTDs, or maybe plain nukes, struck it all at once, shattering weapons turrets and spraying debris and boiling fire from glowing craters. All around the Battle Wagon, this intense assault obliterated all those attendant ships that guarded its attack run. Like a wounded buffalo it lumbered on, now swinging round above the ice giant’s rings, adding its own substance to those rings as it shuddered constantly under strike after strike. Ahead of it rod-ships swarmed in the process of forming a wall, holes continuously punched through it by the Wagon’s remaining weapons. But in the end there were too many of them. Soon it lay at the centre of another storm, but rod-ships now reached its surface, melting in, and spreading through its systems.
A comment from the Battle Wagon’s AI came over general com. ‘Mmm, I should have done this earlier.’
The view blanked—no sensors able to handle any longer the sleet of radiation emanating from that direction. Two, three, four seconds… then, finally able to discern something through the sensors of Brutal Blade, Azroc saw the Battle Wagon was gone, a massive cloud of incandescent gas spreading in its place. Even the ring system of the ice-giant planet disrupted, losing its definition and blurring around that orb. Though the destruction of enemy ships was high in number, more than eighty per cent of them still remained. Meanwhile over half of the Polity ships had been destroyed, and Azroc estimated that only an hour of life remained to those surviving.
* * * *
The shuttle bay inside the King of Hearts contained few comforts, and the AI had locked them out of all its systems. From this it seemed evident that King did not relish the presence of humans aboard, nor apparently did the AI enjoy conversation with them for, after its initial communication, it had said nothing more since its escape from the planet, nor during the drop into underspace and their subsequent violent expulsion from that continuum.
‘I take it your U-jump was curtailed,’ said Cormac.
No reply, yet again. From where he sat with his back against a cold ceramal wall, Cormac studied the few survivors contained with him in this armoured hold: four dracomen including Scar, the four Sparkind: Andrew Hailex and three Golem, besides Arach and himself. But out of how many originally? The figures lay easily accessible in his gridlink, but Cormac felt no urge to inspect them. He just knew that far too many lives had passed through the meat grinder. Rather than inspect the past to find errors of judgement so he could revel in guilt, Cormac concentrated his attention on the now. He tried again to communicate with the King of Hearts’s AI using his gridlink, and when that channel again ended up against a blank wall, he inspected in detail the personnel files recorded in his gridlink.
The three dracomen, other than Scar, were called Pick, Anan and Scythe, and without using cognitive programs he could not tell them apart. But, then, these three being no more than a year old, they had yet to acquire distinguishing characteristics like Scar possessed. The three Golem were named Ursach Candy Kline, Bellmouth and Hubbert Smith. The former two had the appearance of human females: the first blonde and elfin to the extent of possessing pointed ears, the second with cropped yellow hair and lacking one side of her face—gleaming skull exposed underneath. Hubbert Smith was in an even worse condition, now being completely devoid of syntheflesh—just a shiny ceramal skeleton, whose emulation had been male. Cormac classified all three similarly: strong, intelligent, loyal… product. He turned his attention to the larger file concerning Arach, and there found much to amuse and sometimes dismay him over the ensuing hour. Then, without warning, an armoured iris door squealed open in one side of the hold.
Hubbert Smith ducked his skull through it then after a moment turned back to address them. ‘Facilities provided. It would seem King does not intend to let you die.’
‘That would rather defeat the object of rescuing you all in the first place,’ replied the AI itself through a telefactor that now drifted in from the room beyond.
Cormac studied the machine: a cylinder floating upright, manipulators now folded against itself, and sensory apparatus mounted at each end, top and below. He recognized the rather battered machine as the same one that had disarmed them earlier, though it now lacked its caterpillar tracks. Easing himself to his feet he asked, ‘Why did you rescue us?’
‘I’m rather impulsive. It tends to get me into a lot of trouble but not, I might add, in as much trouble as some of my fellow ships are at present.’
While the others moved past the telefactor and into the other room, Cormac asked, ‘Will you explain that statement?’
‘It was a simple and effective double-action trap: you lure out a small force, ambush it with a larger though not overwhelming force, giving members of that prey time to yell for help before trapping it with a USER.’ Cormac followed the others into the room and looked around as King continued. ‘In the ensuing battle you allow some elements of that smaller force to get to the USER and destroy it, thus allowing the large reinforcements to come in — in this case a fleet of Polity dreadnoughts, attack ships, and one capital ship. The impression having been given will be of an ambush that went wrong. You then activate a second USER, too distant to be destroyed, and proceed to slaughter the rescuing reinforcements with the the huge reserve you kept hidden in plain sight. Polity super-intelligences made to look like mugs—rather frightening actually.’
Cormac felt sick. ‘Can you give me details?’
A channel opened to his gridlink so he could observe events light hours distant. Yet, even as he watched what was happening, he could not fathom the purpose of it all. Yes, Erebus was giving the Polity a thrashing, but it must still know it only engaged a fraction of the Polity forces available. Why deliberately poke needles into an elephant? Annoy it enough and it is bound to turn around and step on you. The chaos he now witnessed did not seem at all like the logical actions of superior AI.
The adjacent room contained hastily constructed human facilities: a shower unit, toilet, a row of bunks and a food and drink dispenser. Fairly Spartan, but then what did he expect? Hailex took one of the bunks while Scar and the other dracomen took possession of some of the others. Cormac chose one and sprawled himself on it. Almost immediately weariness hit him in a wave, but he did not allow it to drag him under.
‘What do you intend to do with us?’ he asked.
‘An interestingly debatable question, and one I will consider in depth if by any chance I manage to survive a conflict that is only a few light hours away and currently spreading towards me.’
Cormac drifted off for a moment, then snapped back to consciousness as he felt the vibration of the ship’s fusion drive starting up. ‘You are moving away from the conflict?’
‘I am. There is some wreckage nearby and resources I might possibly utilize.’
‘Wreckage of what?’
The King of Hearts’s, AI gave him no reply.
* * * *
Through Heliotrope’s sensors Orlandine observed some machine, shaped like a fifty-foot-long flatworm fashioned of copper, come oozing from the bunker structure. Within fractions of a second she assessed the situation: obviously the chlorine build-up in the methane sea below her had been detected. Plotting currents and distribution, whatever was responsible for the detecting had now worked out its probable source and had sent something to investigate. She needed to speed things up. Shutting down power to the mycelium, she instead supplied full power to the larger drill, then instructed all but two of
the mooring harpoons to detach. Under the impetus of the drill, the ship swivelled slightly, drawing the cables taut. Relentlessly the bit bored down—only fifty feet to go. She started the pump that would increase shaft pressure behind the CTDs to force them down. As they began moving she loaded programming to the small impellers constructed to drive them through liquid methane and into position.
Forty feet.
The worm-thing reared up, its top section twisting into a helix. Detection. It knew her location now. Orlandine targeted it with Heliotrope’s cutting lasers. At this distance they would not hurt it, but that was not her intention. The helix snapped back down to its flat ribbed shape and, on either side of it, two jets of gas appeared. Orlandine targeted the apex of each gas stream as they abruptly sped towards her. Picking out the beams, lased green light flickered on ice dust in the almost non-existent atmosphere. Two incandescent explosions followed and a confetti of iron-hard ice rolled out before the blast waves. More missiles followed.
Twenty-five feet.
The CTDs now rested firmly behind the drill bit, but the quantity of chlorine down there might not be enough. It lay in a grey maybe area, for she could not know one hundred percent the efficiency of the mycelium. She damned Heisenberg.
No more missiles headed her way. Heliotrope bucked as blast waves struck it, and even inside the interface sphere she could hear a hail of ice against the hull. The attacker now started to head towards her ship. Whatever controlled it probably now fully realized the danger. Below, through the mycelium, she observed numerous rod-shaped objects emitted from the USER station and speeding up towards her like T-cells.
Fifteen feet.
The copper flatworm crashed its way through a last barrier of contorted ice out onto flat ground, and accelerated towards the ship. It was all about energy here. During the long journey from Cassius, Orlandine had prepared weapons systems for Heliotrope — two particle-beam projectors and a rail-gun that could operate up to near-c to fire solid projectiles as well as deploy the selection of esoteric missiles she had constructed. But now she did not possess a sufficient profligacy of energy to utilize them.
Ten feet.
Only one option remained. Initially she intended to inject the CTDs, seal the drill shaft, and fire up her ship’s fusion engine to escape before detonating them. Not a tenable option now.
The worm surged within fifty yards of the ship when Orlandine allowed the two harpoon cables to slacken. The drill’s torque turned the ship around precisely as far as she had calculated.
Five feet.
She fired up the fusion engine and two sun-bright blades of flame stabbed across, low above the icy ground, and struck the approaching worm. It held for a couple of seconds, then parts of it began to ablate. Abruptly it began to coil upwards, then it just flew apart. Orlandine shut down the engine.
Four feet.
‘Come on!’
Four feet.
‘Fuck, fuck!’
The drill shaft, being fed down in hollow sections behind the independently operating drill head, could clearly advance no more. Diagnostics screamed the reason at her: the force of the engine burn had bent one of the drill-shaft sections right below the ship. And the ship’s detectors now picked up seismic disturbances not caused by the drilling—more visitors. Orlandine began racking up pressure in the shaft and the drill bit began turning again as that pressure pushed it down further, but then it stopped again. No joy—and Orlandine knew what she must do. She resupplied power to the mycelium, then quickly detached herself from the interface sphere. No time for delay, no time at all. In the hold she donned a heavy-duty assister frame and spacesuit, then headed for the airlock, meanwhile maintaining EM contact with the ship’s systems.
The lock popped open on a settling snow of iridescent ice flakes. She glanced over towards where the engine flames had scorched the terrain and saw the remains of her attacker: its individual segments melted down into the ice, vivid rainbow light flaring and swirling around them—a low-temperature photoluminescent effect.
Stop admiring the view, Orlandine reprimanded herself, and scuttled down from the lock, clinging upside-down to the hull underneath the ship. Just four damned feet. The bent shaft-section now became visible. Over beside it she dropped to the ground and, using the same tools she had used on the Dyson segment to cut ice blocks, sliced down around it and began levering out chunks of ice. Minutes passed before she removed enough to clear a gap down around the shaft by four feet—minutes she could not now afford. Almost incidentally, still watching through the ship’s sensors, she fired the lasers at rapidly approaching objects.
‘Multi-tasking!’ she shouted triumphantly, as she turned to head back inside, and wondered not for the first time if she was going insane.
Spheres of fire ignited on the horizon as she reached the lock. Just as she was closing the door behind her, a storm of razor ice impacted the hull. Something tugged at her thigh. Glancing down she saw air gusting from her suit, then a sudden explosion of breach sealant closing up the rip. She ordered the drill to start working again as the lock cycled, gave some slack to the mooring cables. The bent shaft of the revolving drill began to slam Heliotrope about, but it was working again, boring down.
Two feet… through!
Stumbling back inside the ship, Orlandine sent the signal to detach the drill bit. Under pressure the five CTDs shot down into liquid methane. Orlandine ordered emergency detach from her assister frame and it clattered to the floor. She felt slightly sick and dizzy.
Cables… detach from shaft…
For a moment she could not figure how to do that, then, as she finally reached the interface sphere, remembered how and sent the required signals. As the ship detached from the drill, the pressure within the drill shaft exploded underneath Heliotrope, hurling it up and away from the planetoid, and throwing Orlandine to the floor. Not enough to move the ship far, but the constant blast of methane following it out through the open shaft continued the job. More missiles coming in now, and the ship’s lasers, now underpowered, were having problems hitting them all. Orlandine dragged herself to her feet and connected to the interface sphere, immediately gaining a greater perspective. Heliotrope steadily rose on a large methane geyser. The CTDs below were slowly moving into position, the bacilliform objects still shooting up towards them. The exhausts of all the missiles speeding towards her surrounded the planetoid like a cage. By now the reactor had nearly built up enough energy to fire up the fusion engine again, but not yet because of the drain from deploying the lasers.
No more time.
Orlandine sent the signal to detonate. The glare from below shone blue-green through the ice in the crust, and then the crust itself heaved up. The methane geyser became gigantic, accelerating Heliotrope further, and hurling up boulders and bergs behind it. The final flash followed a few seconds later, then… nothing.
Not enough chlorine?
Not so, the planetoid became increasingly luminous, began to stand out more visibly from the darkness of space. The first crack opened up a hundred miles from her landing point, and out of it glared bright white light. More cracks appeared rapidly, and Orlandine observed a chunk of rock and ice the size of Gibraltar lifting away from the planetoid on a swirling explosion of arc-light. Next, in seeming slow motion because of the sheer scale of the blast, the planetoid came apart. Over there a continent-sized piece of the crust departed almost with balletic grace, but which had to be travelling at thousands of miles per hour. Below her, a rising swarm of boulders that could grind up Heliotrope like a sardine tin thrown into the works of some huge engine. And there, a gust of flame stabbing out like a solar flare.
Fusion start.
Instantly onlining the engines, Orlandine flung her ship towards safety. Only then did she notice the warnings from her physical diagnosticer. She had lost about a litre of blood, which must now be washing around inside her spacesuit. She would have to attend to that later. To herself she half smiled, half grimaced, as the USER cea
sed to function—roasted in white fire.
* * * *
Another dreadnought, pounded until it looked like a maggot-chewed apple, self-destructed rather than allow itself to be subsumed by the rod-ships settling on its burnt and pitted hull. The more manoeuvrable Polity ships seemed to be standing up better, perhaps because the alien ships concentrated their fire on the larger ships whose heavier weapons could actually destroy them. Once the enemy had dealt with all the dreadnoughts, they would doubtless mop up the rest.
In a nightmare fugue, Azroc watched the battle and tracked the logistical projections to their conclusion. One small part of those projections predicted the destruction of the Brutal Blade within the next half hour—this fact appearing as inevitable as a sunset. The Golem observed the ribbons of fire burning through space as high-energy weapons swept across gas that had escaped from shattered vessels. He saw old-style attack ships fighting a losing battle in the disrupted ring system, playing hide and seek behind tumbling boulders. He observed a tenacious assault on an enemy ship by a dreadnought similar to Brutal Blade, how that other ship peeled away snakish structures and fired missile after missile as it closed in. Rod-ships dotted the dreadnought’s hull like clinging leeches. It did not slow, but rammed the enemy ship, detonating all its weapons simultaneously. A brave but futile act, human almost.
Then Azroc’s eye fell upon other minor scenes: a shuttle being subsumed by a rod-ship, and spacesuited figures jetting away from it with painful slowness. Gusts of flame and gas as the shuttle’s laser targeted then incinerated each of these figures. Were they evacuees from this very ship? The Golem calculated the chances of that, and of one of those figures being Karischev. Azroc had by then shut down those parts of his mind concerned with the emulation of human emotion, though, as he did so he considered whether it was emulation, when copied so perfectly, or the thing itself? Perhaps the mere fact that he could disconnect himself from it did make it emulation. Such thoughts he concerned himself with as he waited for his own destruction.