by Neal Asher
“Give it to me,” said Dragon.
“We must touch and be one,” said the Client, feeling almost overwhelmed by the need to rip into Dragon and take everything it had.
“Yes.”
Dragon fell silent, which compelled the Client further. She used every method available to reach out: induction warfare beams, shaped BIC lasers carrying a cornucopia of computer life, terahertz scanning, radar and X-ray radar, reception of emitted radiation from the gas giant that passed through the entity, even neutron emissions. She now saw the thing as clearly as was possible. It had been hollowed out by fire—burned internally down to its bones—yet it was still functional. It was sucking inside the materials it was drawing off the giant and changes were occurring. Perhaps these were repairs and growth—the black smokes from its surface the waste from that process.
The Client saw huge data. Wealth. Utterly suitable amalgamation.
“At the heart of all things Jain is that driving impulse,” said Dragon.
“What do you know of the Jain?” the Client immediately asked.
She saw a sprout uncoiling in its internal spaces, miles in length, to spill out of the giant hole in its exterior. This thing then began to expand, turning into an intestinal tube. She saw it moving, peristalsis travelling along its length, shifting some growing object along it inside. Closer examination revealed an embryonic creature but detail remained unclear.
“I know much that is general . . . specifics needed.” After a pause Dragon then added, “The accretion disc.”
“Tell me things I do not know,” said the Client. She was not prepared to share her knowledge about the accretion disc and how it was formed until some closer contact could be made. That contact was imperative; the amalgamation and theft, the ripping and discarding.
“The Jain were powerful,” said Dragon, “constant warfare over millions of years . . . yet . . . local.”
“Local?”
“Why did they not spread to occupy the whole galaxy?”
She reviewed the Librarian’s memories and the forbidden data. This fact had not impinged upon her; had not roused any questions until now. The Jain had occupied a portion of the galaxy larger than the Polity, but they could have had everything. Their technology was such that they could even have spread beyond the galaxy. It made no sense.
“Do you have the answer to this?”
“You do,” said Dragon, “when you can see beyond the need.”
Somehow Dragon understood what was now driving her, but beyond that its statement was baffling. She focused on the thing it was making. It had grown to the size of a grav-car and was near the end of the peristaltic tube. She felt a glimmering of understanding and that driving need once more. And so she began altering the next birth in the chain of her being. Another part of her, with distant curiosity, recognized that she was generating a creature like the one she had recently dissected.
The peristaltic tube finally opened at its end, like an anus, to squeeze out the object from within. It tumbled into vacuum, squirming and amorphous, then slowly began to expand into its true form. It was red and bloody, as it folded out jointed limbs ending in spikes and claws from a trumpet-shaped body. The narrow end whipped out in a long jointed tail, culminating in a slicing blade, while the wide mouth spewed numerous tentacles—triangular-section tentacles. It was a challenge—a warrior from an opposing army stepping out to brandish his weapons and shout insults. The Client’s response was frenetic feeding and the rapid growth of nutrient veins into her terminal womb. She began instituting further alterations to the form growing there, laminating armour and the addition of other cutting tools. The more distant part of herself noted that she was matching the challenge but not exceeding it.
Growth was rapid—dangerously fast and hot. With a thought, she opened valves and the hot atmosphere inside the cylinder roared out into vacuum, creating a plume of vapour ten miles long. Maintenance robots scuttled in with trailing hoses, and focused jets of cooling nitrogen on her terminal form. She knew this birth would kill that form, but it was necessary.
Finally the new birth oozed out, its mother form collapsing behind it, burning. She shed it with a snakish shrug of her entire body. The sacklike caul throbbed and expanded as it dropped. She shut off grav but it continued to fall. Then a limb ripped through the caul, flicked against the tree and propelled it up and away from the base of the cylinder. Overhead she opened a hatch on hard vacuum. The new form tore away the rest of its caul to reveal a black, multi-limbed monstrosity. It bore some resemblance to a terran scorpion, but with a mass of the data-ripping tentacles fountaining out where its head should have been.
And she was in—utterly ferocious and intent on prey, as she squatted atop her life-support cylinder and gazed towards the distant Dragon. She wanted to launch herself and get this started. But it was futile wasting the energy to propel herself through vacuum while the platform was taking her closer. She would need the energy for the coming fight, the coming . . . amalgamation.
But still, she shrieked her challenge across vacuum, recognizing it was again the same as the one the Librarian had shrieked at her. Dragon replied to it immediately and correctly with a scream of his own, and she finally lost herself.
“I need data. You need data,” Dragon added—the previous exchange just the inconsequential blaring of trumpets. “This was always their way.” She barely heard.
TRIKE
The old ship settled with creaking and occasional cracking noises from beyond the bridge. They’d made all the repairs they could and, apart from the lack of an AI and a U-space drive, the vessel was sound. The creaks and groans were just unfamiliar, and Trike grew angry at his tendency to flinch and look for something to break at every sound.
He was angry at everything.
He turned, unable to look at Angel even as he addressed him. “So where the hell are we going to deliver this message, and why couldn’t it be sent by com laser or radio?”
“The recipients have gone dark,” Angel replied. “With the Clade down here, any form of com could give away their location.”
“So how do you know where these recipients are?”
Trike looked to Cog and knew for sure that Cog had been told and this information was being kept from him. “And who are they?” They didn’t trust him. He stepped towards them. Maybe if he squeezed Cog’s neck just a little . . .
“Do you see?” Cog asked mildly.
Trike halted, it impinging on him why they might not trust him.
Cog continued, “When we get out there it’s almost certain we’ll run into the Clade. What happens with you then? Can I trust that you won’t go completely off your trolley and chasing after them? If we tell you who we’re going to see and where they are, what happens when the Clade finally brings you down?”
“They’ll get nothing from me,” Trike growled. He dipped his head, trying to conceal what he felt sure was written on his face. That the reason he might go “chasing off” had more to do with getting away from Angel than going towards the Clade.
“It’s good that you’re so sure of that. I’m not.”
A crunching sound ensued. Trike realized he had put one of the bridge seats between himself and the other two, and his hands were now imbedded in the composite. Forcing control, he unclenched his fingers and lifted his hands from the chair. Pieces fell to the floor.
“I would rather leave you behind,” said Cog. “But we both know that’s not going to happen.”
“Okay.” Trike nodded. Cog was right, because Trike didn’t know what he was going to do when he got out there. “We go—I’ll try to stay with you.”
“And being covert was something else we were aiming for,” Cog warned.
“Okay.”
“Time to go,” said Angel.
Trike stepped back to the door where he’d dumped his things. He picked up his pack, took out his laser carbine, as well as some grenades that he put in his pocket, then put the pack on. He turned, with the carb
ine in his left hand and his machete in his right. He had enough control and calm to note how Cog flinched at the sight of him so kitted out. Cog and Angel were also armed. Cog had his particle weapon with a gigawatt energy canister screwed in place, while Angel had somehow obtained two pulse rifles he’d wired together. Doubtless this ship contained stores Trike didn’t know about, but he suppressed the angry questions he wanted to ask about that.
“It changed nothing,” said Cog.
“What?”
“You used the memtab.”
Trike stared at him, momentarily at a loss. Something had changed but it was difficult to express. He’d shut his madness away behind a door in his mind, but that door was not impermeable. The madness leaked out as rage. What had Cog’s excised memories done? They had reminded him
of his insanity so that now, underneath the rage, arose fear too. This was not helpful.
“It’s time to go,” was all he said.
Cog shrugged and turned away.
Angel led the way down from the bridge and into the hold, the ramp door already folding down to reveal morning gloom. Rain plinked on metal but apparently the fierce storm of the night was ebbing. Tramping down, Trike searched on all sides for enemies. The ship sat on a road leading out of the city. A few ground cars were scattered here and there, while a gravlev cargo truck lay on its side across the road. In the distance he could see a stream of ground vehicles moving away from the city, but no sign of movement close by.
“Over there.” Angel pointed.
An enclosed pedway ran alongside the road, its movable floor stationary since an explosion had blown open a chunk of it. But Trike could see how it would offer them protection into the city. As Cog and Angel headed over, he didn’t follow. If they stayed under cover the Clade might not see them, then how could he—
“Trike!” Cog bellowed.
Trike forced himself into motion, catching up with them as they climbed up through the tangled debris from the explosion. For a moment there, he’d felt a kind of freedom. But with them he was constrained again—back in his constant battle to keep his anger under control and trying to stop himself attacking the android. Soon they were in the tunnel, gazing down at two corpses, ripped open, of a man and a woman. Whether the explosion had done this or the Clade was debatable.
“Why is no one helping?” Trike asked, trying to engage with his surroundings.
“The Polity is keeping out for tactical reasons. Emergency response here is holding back because of the Clade,” Cog replied, obviously not happy about that.
“Tactical reasons,” Trike repeated dully.
“Quite,” said Cog.
They moved on and Trike soon saw that the two corpses behind weren’t unique. Bodies in various stages of dismemberment were scattered all the way along the pedway and in one place carefully mounded, as if some Clade units had become OCD about neatness. A hundred feet in, Cog shrugged off his pack.
“I don’t know why the Clade isn’t here yet,” he said, “but it’s certain it’ll come.”
“Maybe we’re not relevant,” Angel suggested.
Cog nodded as he took an item out of his pack. Trike recognized the limpet-like object he stuck to the side of the tunnel. It had a yield that would do to the tunnel what had been done further back.
“Air disturbances,” Cog explained. “But exclusive of anything walking, or running.”
It took Trike a moment to catch up with what Cog meant. The Clade would have seen their ship land, and that units hadn’t come immediately was puzzling. If or when they did, they’d go to the ship first then into the tunnel. The mine Cog had just laid would detonate on detecting air disturbances and destroy Clade units when they got close. But any human or Golem who wandered into the tunnel wouldn’t trigger it. Trike felt glad of that but also found it unsatisfying—better to rip the Clade apart with his own hands.
“Okay,” said Cog. “Let’s move properly.”
They set off at a steady distance-eating jog. Cog set charges every few hundred yards, waving them on, then running to catch up. As they travelled, Trike gazed through the glass sides of the walkway. He could see pillars of smoke in the city, patches of wreckage, fallen buildings and everywhere lay dismembered bodies. At one point he saw a building twist, as if some god had grabbed its top and tried to undo it like a jar, and then it went down. But mostly, he focused on the occasional glinting shapes he saw moving through the sky and his grip tightened on his machete. Surely the Clade flew there. Finally, after an hour of this, Angel turned into a walkway station like one of many they had passed before.
“Here,” he said. “Nearest access to the storm drains.”
“This is where it might get dodgy,” said Cog, eyeing Trike. “No point telling you to be ready, is there?”
Trike gave a sharp nod of agreement.
Access to the beltway was via a series of belts running in parallel, which brought pedestrians up to the speed of the main beltway. They weren’t moving, though a motor below ground out smoke and the smell of burned metal. Passing between monitor bollards, they moved out into a wide shopping precinct. Wreckage here had been strewn by a big hover transport which had come down and torn through the buildings on one side. Trike spotted a group of about twenty people making their way through it, some of them heavily armed. One raised a hand in acknowledgement but the group moved swiftly on.
“Some change,” said Cog, pointing.
Trike peered up into the sky and, when he saw the hundreds of Clade units sweeping across, he worried about his own senses. He had been watching for them constantly, hadn’t he? So how had he missed them?
“The access cover is at the end there.” Angel pointed further up the precinct.
Trike stared at the Clade. The swarm AI resembled a shoal of thin fish, quite similar to species he had seen on his home world of Spatterjay. Each unit was perfectly aligned and the whole mass swirled round and round in the sky. This appeared to him like preparation for departure, which was disappointing. Then a nasty grin twisted his face as one part of the shoal separated from the rest, turning towards the street, and began to descend.
“Move!” Cog bellowed.
Trike ran with the other two. Why not? He knew they wouldn’t reach the end of the precinct before the Clade arrived.
BLADE
Blade was in a million pieces, as if it had exploded in the reconstruction bay. But the million pieces were interwoven with robots, ranging from the microscopic to construction spiders the size of trees. The sub-AI reconstruction system stood ready with the attack ship’s original schematic. Materials had been routed, replacement components in the dreadnought’s stores had been requested and autofactories were ready to make other parts. The dreadnought’s AI, Caliban, had waited till now,when Blade was completely open and vulnerable, before sending it. Blade had expected this and was prepared.
The forensic AI bore the appearance of a crinoid or “sea lily,” a ter- ran echinoderm. Its shape was that of an accumulation of undulating feathers, whose stems connected at a central point. Those feathers were metallic grey and gold, and consisted of millions of probing nano-tendrils, shearfield-edged chain-glass ribbons and atomic deconstructors. The thing was a mass of intelligence, discrete processing and horribly efficient tools ten feet across. Their purpose was to take things apart, if necessary to a molecular level, to see how they worked. Or, in this case, to see what had been done to them. Of course, Blade understood the necessity: Blade was not operating as per usual and its mind had obviously been seriously damaged. It had been in close contact with a hostile swarm AI and actually been inside a seriously dodgy alien. Blade was a danger that had to be investigated, probed, analysed.
“Well, you can fuck off,” said Blade.
“I am Mobius Clean,” said the AI. “There is nothing to fear.”
“Yeah, that’s why you waited until I was in pieces before coming.” “That was because of what I might have to fear.”
“Uhuh.” Blade now drew rou
nd on a jointed arm one component that had not been dismantled. “You mean sort of like this?”
The chunk of technology was five feet across, from the mirrored throat of its barrel back to the charged particulate loader at its other end. It was a mass of pipes, superconducting coils, pressure vessels and laser injector rings. Big, heavy and nasty.
The crinoid forensic AI halted, just outside the tunnel it had travelled along to get to the bay. Its feathery arms no longer undulated gently but stuck straight out and vibrated. Blade was reminded of a frightened dog’s hair standing on end.
“I am not sure what you hope to achieve with this,” said Clean.
“I want to speak to my brief.”
“Archaic and amusing,” commented Clean. “You understand that I am fully capable of repairing crystal—you can be what you were before.” “I like me just the way I am now, thanks, and I still want to talk to my brief.”
“Communication failure . . . please elaborate.”
“Since telemetry from this fleet is constantly being transmitted to Windermere’s fleet and thence back to Earth Central, that will become clear soon enough,” said Blade. “First there is this.”
Blade opened a connection it had made earlier to the reconstruction bay sub-AI. In there, it reached into the schematic of its original form of a black-ops attack ship. The schematic was read only, but Blade soon altered that and began feeding in changes. Many related to the program it had loaded from Dragon, while others were its own design. The radical alteration took a whole minute and Blade was aware that both Clean and Caliban were watching intently.
“Interesting,” Clean said when the changes were complete. “This still does not negate the fact that you must be examined.”
“Are you sure about this?” asked Caliban.
“Never been more sure about something,” Blade replied. “And no examination is necessary.”
As if in response to that, Mobius Clean moved further into the bay, feathery tendrils undulating again. Blade realized that the forensic AI was no longer concerned about the particle cannon. The reason why became evident a second later when a shearfield activated and sliced through the jointed arm supporting it. A construction spider swept in from the side and snatched it away. Blade made no response—just waited. It was all delaying tactics anyway. The attack ship AI was waiting for that telemetry update to go through and hoping for a response. U-com from here to the fleet, and thence to Earth, was not exactly instantaneous, but not far from it.
