by Neal Asher
Returning her gaze to the glyph, she tried for a long time to understand it. It was important and related to the drive for survival that had compelled her to enter the drainage system in the first place. Finally, the meaning became clear in a language of scraping, clicking and a sibilant hissing, with a gurgling deep undercurrent. The glyph was a position locator and direction indicator. In human language it simply meant, “You are here. Go there, then there, then there . . .”
She nodded, as if in agreement with it, then slid into the water and swam for the other side of the tunnel, with the current taking her. A hundred yards further on, she turned into a side tunnel and here had to swim against a slow current. Another turn into another tunnel and it ran with her again. She checked further glyphs as she went along and then came to areas where the water lay still. These had been cut through rock and soil—sprayed foamstone retained the walls, which gave the tunnel the shape of an oval resting on its side. Something big passed underneath her—slimy and slightly warm—but she knew what it was and felt no fear. A little while later she swam to a ramp where another of its kind lay. The huge mudfish bore an appearance similar to the terran mudskipper, though with ribbing to its body that gave it an insect appearance. Something had gutted it.
She walked up the ramp and entered further oval passageways. At one point, the tunnel quivered and she rested a hand against the wall, suddenly frightened. Then the answer rose up inside her: an earthquake from the Sambre volcano and nothing to concern her. Further along she found another glyph, but did not need it to tell her where to go. While walking along the tunnel she observed a louse-like creature, as long as her arm, scuttle out of a small burrow. It ran straight for her feet and, with a surge of horror, she kicked it away. She was vulnerable, she realized, and then knew fear again. This increased as she realized that something was coming along the tunnel behind her. The worm, she thought, clearly recollecting the squirming object she had seen on the street before she fled into the storm drains. But no, the thing behind her was too big. Glancing back, she saw gleaming eyes, a big claw and large scuttling limbs, all seemingly rendered in brassy metal. She wanted to run, but the deeper part of her mind told her not to, because she was here for this.
The monster moved out of the shadows, grating large mandibles together as if in anticipation. But she understood this was probably for the mudfish it had picked up on its way past the ramp. Perhaps it couldn’t eat the fish until it was out of its armour? No. The armour possessed a mouth hole.
The mandibles stilled and then the thing spoke from a device attached below them.
“Orlandine,” said the prador.
She gazed at it for a long moment, tasting the name, puzzled by its familiarity.
“Am I?” she asked.
GEMMELL
The dreadnought Morgaine’s Gate was an old vessel—a slab of a thing with an uncanny resemblance to a gravestone, four miles long and packed with weaponry and defences. But despite its age, it was constantly in a state of upgrade. Gemmell, as he climbed from his gel stasis pod deep inside the ship, saw signs of this at once. The storage area for the onboard marines had changed shape and, as he began updating through his gridlink, he found the complement had increased from three to four hundred. All were quite like him: enhanced, boosted, somewhere between human and Golem, with a hint of war drone thrown in. Most of them were humans who had fought in the prador/human war, all of them approaching or just past their ennui barrier, so a couple of centuries old. And they were all people who’d chosen to sleep out the ages until the next spell of action. Bored with the Polity and all the luxuries it offered. Itching for a fight, when fights were few and far between.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Morgaine through the intercom. When Gemmell had first joined the ship there had been a distinction between its interfaced captain and its AI. The Morgaine’s Gate AI had spoken for itself, while the captain, Morgaine, had taken time to disconnect her interface from it to be a human, and even left the ship. That was when Gemmell fell in love with her. She was another reason he stuck around. But it was a futile love slowly withering over the ages as she left the human world behind and became one with her ship and its AI.
“I always have hope,” he replied, the meaning double.
Now, via his gridlink, he updated himself on the situation. It had been fifty years since he went into gel stasis and they had travelled to the other side of the Polity from the location of their last mission. The Morgaine was part of a first-response fleet, put together should a situation concerning the accretion disc require it. As he absorbed the detail, Gemmell saw that a situation had indeed come up. He walked over to the door from the stasis chamber and waved a hand over the control pad. The door hinged open and he stepped through, making his way along a grav-plated walkway. This was suspended through the reinforced framework of the ship, where its engines, weapons, power supplies, internal factories and other paraphernalia were braced and buffered. He noted changes as he reached the foot of a dropshaft and stepped inside, but nothing radical.
“So we are here to keep watch and if the Clade gets to this Ghost Drive Facility we hit it from orbit,” he observed as the irised gravity field wafted in through the ship.
“Correct,” replied Morgaine.
“So why am I out of storage?” Gemmell stepped out of the dropshaft into a tubular tunnel winding its way around, inside the hull of the warship. Occasional windows gave him a view.
“Diana has ordered us to stay out of the planetary situation,” said Morgaine.
“And what about the people down there who need help?”
“The situation in the south is now stable,” she said blandly. “There were Separatist elements active and they have been suppressed. Mostly.”
“But not in that main city . . . what’s its name?”
“We have our orders—we stay out for the present. The main city doesn’t have an official name—it’s just called the city.”
“A lot of destruction and casualties down there. And, of course, the Clade.”
Morgaine emitted a sigh, then said, “The bulk of the population are not citizens of the Polity and therefore not our responsibility. Yes, I know that many Polity citizens came here to work for Orlandine. However, the present casualty rate is low in comparison to what it would be if Polity marines were to drop in and go head-to-head with the Clade.”
Gemmell grunted an acknowledgement, though he didn’t like it.
Morgaine continued, “There are also emergency medical teams in the southern cities, a small military, along with a continental disaster-response organization. This was set up because of the danger of tsunamis and earthquakes here.”
“And they’re moving in?”
“No. I have advised the pro-tem government to keep out since they do not have the kind of firepower to deal with the Clade, which would likely attack any responders who went in.”
Gemmell glared at the source of Morgaine’s voice as he stepped out of the tubeway. He marched along a cageway running beside spare rail- gun carousels which were like the humped backs of great beasts.
“Not an ideal situation,” he said tightly.
“The situation might be about to change and, as a consequence, orders can change,” Morgaine stated.
Gemmell nodded to himself. He more or less expected her to say something like that, but it didn’t stack up. If these orders changed then the requirement would be for at least a platoon of marines, not just him.
“And I missed you,” she added—one of those frustrating comments that had kept him lingering for years. Yeah, she missed him . . . after fifty years.
“What about the situation up here?” he asked, trying to ignore her comment.
“Elaborate.”
“There are many stranded out there . . . Oh, I see.”
Thousands of people were in orbit around the world: humans, Golem AIs and a few drones without their own drives. The Clade’s sabotage had stranded some and left many injured. Morgaine, obvio
usly having anticipated his question, had routed information to his gridlink. He saw she had rendered assistance. However, fleet ships had sent autonomous craft loaded with supplies and autodocs, their missions programmed but then com connections to the fleet severed. The craft were to transport refugees to the nearby weapons platform only. Communication remained minimal—very low bandwidth. He didn’t like it but understood the reasoning: there still might be Clade units out there awaiting their chance to penetrate the fleet.
The cageway curved into a shaft that apparently went up at ninety degrees, leading to the bridge pod. This looked like a metallized heart, held at the intersection of shock-absorbing rams. Skeins of optics and power leads spread out from it all around. Grav-plating on one side of the shaft meant Gemmell only had a shift in perspective as he walked up the curve of the junction. Finally, he reached the door into the bridge, which for no apparent reason was a diagonally divided one, like those found aboard prador ships. It opened ahead of him and he stepped through.
The only visible mechanism, a half-cup interface sphere, sat at the centre. Layered screen fabric, on the bridge floor and domed ceiling, gave the illusion of the half-cup floating in vacuum. He walked out on the invisible floor with the planet Jaskor below him. The view was spectacular. Once past the interface sphere, he noted indicator tags scattered all around. Assuming that everything worked as it had before, he reached out to grab a cluster of them and pulled. Numerous objects expanded into view, so that after a moment it seemed as if a distant fleet of prador reavers hung in vacuum just a few miles from him.
“The situation is slightly precarious,” Morgaine noted. “And, as I said, about to get more so.”
He turned and studied her. She sat almost buried in tubes, data leads and interface technology. She was naked and he still felt a twist in his guts seeing the woman he had once made love to. But that initial feeling faded quickly, since she was much changed. A Medusoid mass of optics plugged into her skull where once there had been long black hair. Her blue eyes were now blind white with gridlines across them. A feeding mask concealed the lower part of her face, running tubes down into her stomach. Other data connections ran out of her sides like spilled guts. Transparent tubes entered her body here and there, running variously coloured fluids, while implants jutted from her skin like rogue nanite growths of bone and metal. She was wrinkled too and sagging—obviously the support mechanisms she used for her interface, and to keep her alive, had little to do with aesthetics.
“About to get more so?” he repeated numbly.
“Observe.”
He waited for something, then realized she would have gestured before, but now her arms lay slack against her sides. He turned and watched as the reavers retreated from view and another tag drew something in. For a second he thought he was seeing the Cable Hogue, but as the object drew closer, and more detail became apparent, he realized otherwise.
“Dragon,” he said.
Burn damage scarred the alien sphere and a hole gaped in its side.
“It arrived in our system just before I woke you and is coming in fast.”
“And pissed off because Polity and Kingdom warships are here?” he suggested.
“It has said nothing.”
“So, by ‘complicated’ you’re not just talking about the tactical situation but the political one.” Gemmell quickly reviewed the treaty concerning the accretion disc. “Orlandine is apparently dead and Dragon was absent, so both the Polity and the Kingdom were within their rights to send ships here and ensure . . . stability. What does Diana say?”
“We hold where we are and obey our mission orders until the prador ships leave.”
Gemmell winced. “And doubtless the prador have received similar orders.”
“Doubtless.”
Again checking through his gridlink, he saw that there were five dreadnoughts, eight destroyers and thirty attack ships at Jaskor. Matched up against these were forty of the newer reavers, along with a handful of old-style prador dreadnoughts and destroyers. Fifty years ago, this would have been a mismatch, the Polity winning any spat with ease. However, he’d learned that prador reavers now carried U-jump missiles, so the odds were about even. Out at the accretion disc the situation was similar, though on a larger scale. He pondered that. It kind of meant that the king of the prador and Earth Central were equal in the resources they had deployed and their expectations of what might happen here. This was worrying. Why hadn’t Earth Central sent overwhelming force?
Ah.
He understood now. Both EC and the king must have been watching each other. They had decided to match each other’s forces, neither trying for superior strength, so as not to trigger a dangerous arms race.
“So we watch and wait, for the present,” he said.
With a whining noise, something seemed to rise out of vacuum ahead of him, but he realized it was a chair coming up out of the floor. He walked over and sat down, grateful that his back was to Morgaine. Via his gridlink, he ranged through the ship, checking on the marines and seeing that their gel stasis had been altered to fast wake-up. He checked on intercepted and decoded transmissions between the prador and listened in on the conversation Morgaine, who was in charge of the Polity force here, was conducting with the lead prador. It was all very cautious and laden with veiled threats but boiled down to: I don’t know what you’re going to do, but be careful, because I’ll react badly. And he watched Dragon steadily cruising into the system.
“I have com with the black-ops attack ship Obsidian Blade,” Morgaine announced later. It took him half a second to retrieve data on that.
“Where is it?”
“Inside Dragon and about to leave—it will join our formation here.”
“Anything interesting to say?”
She didn’t reply for a while and he turned to look at her. What he could see of her face showed a puzzled frown.
“Problem?”
“There is something odd about Blade. Its mentality is all over the place—and I’m getting mental echoes and mirroring of data. I think its mind has been damaged.”
“Interfered with by Dragon?”
“Maybe, but the little data it gives is good. Dragon used Blade’s calculations to track the Clade here, though it seems likely Dragon would have come here anyway. I don’t know. Dragon is still not communicating with me.”
He watched the attack ship up on the screen slide out of the hole in the big alien. He then called up a schematic. Black-ops attack ships had upgraded radically since the last time he saw one but, reflecting on that, he remembered nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed since then. However, Obsidian Blade did not match the latest schematic. It had taken a severe beating, lost a large chunk of its nose, and its remaining hull hung in distorted pieces that exposed its interior workings. It moved as if it was broken into parts, only loosely connected. That movement gave it the eerie appearance of a great armoured worm. No matter. Checking telemetry on it, he saw it was heading for the reconstruction bay of the nearest dreadnought and would soon be back in one piece. He also noted that Morgaine had sent instructions. Obviously worried about its fractured communications and sojourn inside Dragon, she had scheduled an inspection of Blade by a forensic AI. He returned to more critical matters.
“What are the prador saying?” he asked.
“To me, not a lot, though it seems they are communicating with Dragon. No idea what it’s about.”
Dragon drew closer and at length fell into orbit around Jaskor. While Gemmell watched, an old attack barge slid out of the hole in its hide. Aware of tactical assessments and scanning data, he could guess that many fingers and claws were taking up the slack in various triggers. He also knew that if either the prador or his own side opened fire all hell would break loose. He felt the tension, then deliberately eased his grip on the arms of his chair.
“What ship is that?” he asked.
“Cogulus Hoop,” replied Morgaine.
His search rendered him detail.
“What?”
Gemmell reached up and grabbed indicators to bring Dragon into closer view. It was now moving away from the planet. The hole in its surface gaped and, focusing on the charred mess inside, he wondered how the thing was still alive. Morgaine allowed him to listen in on the conversation.
“You will not fire on the planet,” said Dragon.
“My orders are to destroy the Ghost Drive Facility should the Clade seize it.”
“It will not be easy for you to destroy. Matters are in hand. The destruction of the facility is what the Clade wants.”
“Why?”
“Because she can change the orders.”
It was all very terse, Gemmell felt, as if Dragon was having trouble communicating.
“I don’t know what you mean—my orders stand.”
“Under the agreement . . . you have no jurisdiction here. If you fire on the facility the prador will fire on you.”
“I’ll have to seek clarification on that,” said Morgaine, and Gemmell recognized by her tone that she was seething.
“Clarification is all we seek,” said Dragon.
The image of the entity shimmered, and it disappeared into U-space.
KNOBBLER
Knobbler assessed his army. The collection of assassin and plain war drones here, in the outer Jaskoran system, numbered eighty-seven. All of them were lethal in their own particular ways, especially the likes of Cutter, but some were far too specialized for the task in hand. All of them wanted to come, however.
“We don’t take the transport,” said Cutter, moving at high speed across the surface of one of the gas giant’s moons. He had abandoned his previous destination, the refining facility, to head for his and Bludgeon’s vessel—a thing that was mostly fusion drive, steering thrusters and U-space engine. Bludgeon had plugged in as one component of the craft, while Cutter would find his own niche between fuel tanks.
Floating out in vacuum in a control cage, Knobbler replied, “Obviously—too easy a target. However, it will be useful as a distraction.” Scanning the immediate area of space and down on the moons, Knobbler watched the drones rushing to get ready. He possessed his own jump engine actually inside his body and was anxious to be gone. But if they each arrived piecemeal at Jaskor then more of them would be destroyed before they reached the planet. Apparently, at Dragon’s behest, the prador and Polity fleets had agreed not to fire on the planet, though reluctantly.
