by Neal Asher
—problem.
Elsewhere, other Clade units breached and attacked. In the mud and rocks and amidst the trees—dirty close-quarters combat. Knobbler leapt from his rock and landed with a whumph on soil. He spat two missiles into the ground towards detected movement, swept a tentacle to one side, smashing into a rising axolotl head, snared another in a gripper and stabbed a high-speed drill spike into its eye. The Clade, he felt, was about to learn that down and dirty was where he, and his comrades, liked to be.
BLADE
That’s enough, thought Blade and immediately translated it into actions. The robots, which had completed essential alterations and proceeded to the merely cosmetic, either terminated or ran their various tasks to a stop point. The mass of them, swarming around Obsidian Bladelike ants on the corpse of a black locust, began to retreat. Construction spiders drew back on their umbilicals, folding in their limbs. Flat beetle-welders scuttled away. Smaller masses like metallic lichen peeled up and detached, sucked away by roaming magnetic hoovers. Docking clamps opened, while munitions conveyors and tubes unplugged themselves. And Blade floated free.
Once given free rein, Blade had proceeded rapidly with the alterations and repairs. Caliban, the dreadnought AI, had retooled the autofactories to produce newly designed components while routing standard parts from ship’s stores. Blade’s bent and disfigured constituents disappeared into furnaces, along with redundant parts Caliban did not trust enough to save. It had all, however, gone faster than the dreadnought’s AI wanted. Like an injured cop anxious to be back at work and go after the perpetrators, Obsidian Blade had hurried things along. It shrugged itself, and newly minted splinters of things, which weren’t exactly U-jump missiles, flexed out of its hull like ruffled scales, out of all of its hull. Blade nudged at the hold doors while they opened. Then, when the gap stood wide enough, it punched briefly with its fusion drive. The drive flames ignited from the rear of every one of the splinters. Blade lit up like a Christmas tree and leapt out into vacuum, itching for a fight.
“That was unnecessary and dangerous,” said the destroyer AI primly.
“Suck it, Caliban,” Blade replied.
“So rude,” came the reply, but Blade could sense the amusement there.
Out in vacuum, Blade could see no more than it had been able to through the sensors of the dreadnought, or through links to other sensors in the Polity fleet at Jaskor. Still, it felt better to be looking with its own “eyes.” Telemetry updates were little different too, though Morgaine sent instructions about where Blade needed to be in the present formation. Caliban had informed her of all that had occurred in the dreadnought’s reconstruction bay, and the alterations Blade had made to itself. She seemed a little bit terse and disapproving. Though reluctant, Blade began moving where directed, since that put it closer to the planet. While in motion, it studied the prador ships here. Integral to Blade’s programming was their status as the enemy. Most of the tactical stuff it had concerned encounters with such vessels and, in its time, it had been involved in a few dust-ups. But no, it now felt a visceral pull towards the planet. The enemy was there and that was where Blade wanted to be.
The Clade.
Putting together further data from perpetual scanning of Jaskor, Blade itched even more for the fight. It had learned, while within the dreadnought, that the Clade had killed Orlandine and trashed the city below. Its next target seemed likely to be the Ghost Drive Facility. But Blade perfectly understood Dragon’s thinking in this case. Too easy. Rather, it was trying to goad the Polity ships into firing on the facility, that destruction was precisely its aim. And the present situation seemed to confirm this. The Clade had made one weak attempt at the facility, probably in the hope that this would elicit the required orbital strike. It had then entrenched itself around the place, almost certainly to prevent anyone getting in . . .
“You are deniable, now.”
The com had opened with a crack in Blade’s mind. Earth Central had a fleet here and at the accretion disc. It had one of its top commanders out there in Diana Windermere, while Morgaine ran things at Jaskor. No end of serious AIs were here too. Why then did it want to talk privately to Blade? It was obvious really: subterfuge.
“I guess I’m a black-ops attack ship that took heavy damage and then, without being checked by a forensic AI, made substantial alterations to itself. As a consequence, I might be going a bit rogue,” suggested Blade.
“I enjoy your perspicacity,” said EC. “I also think it is time for you to be disobedient . . . just enough to move you to the status of loose cannon but not enough to have either the prador or Morgaine fire on you.”
“Okay,” said Blade, liking this scenario.
“Blade, you appear to be off course,” said Morgaine a little later.
“Just taking a look around,” Blade replied, then filled that comlink with static.
“So what’s up?” it now asked.
“Morgaine cannot fire on the planet,” EC replied. “Dragon has, as Orlandine’s second in command, ordered that no one is to do so, and the Polity and the prador have agreed.”
Blade was now much closer to the planet than either of the fleets. It felt its hull light up with targeting lasers and ignored them. At one time they had been a necessity but ships only carried them nowadays to deliver a warning. Checking the sources of the lasers, Blade saw an even division between the Polity and the prador.
“So,” said Blade, “you want someone in the area ready to react, ready to fire on the planet, but you also want to be able to say, Oh, I don’t know why he did that?”
“Exactly.”
“This could be very unhealthy for me.”
“You are a black-ops attack ship,” said EC, but then paused for a second. “You were a black-ops attack ship but you are still a soldier of the Polity. Did you expect to work in a risk-free environment?”
Blade accepted that. It wasn’t averse to risk, and being one ship in a fleet of many wasn’t its favourite position. Blade didn’t play well with others.
ANGEL
I am Golem, thought Angel, as if to try the thought on for size again, but it wasn’t entirely true any more. Mechanically and mentally he was closer to that kind of android than he had been when he was a legate. But rather than make a straight return to that state he had somehow gone sideways. Though Dragon was not speaking to him, and maybe was not able to speak to him, he could still feel the link inside him to that entity. He understood it could do anything it wanted with him. Yet, despite all he knew about Dragon, he felt sure that it would not. He wasn’t exactly free, but near enough. What was freedom anyway?
Prador walked ahead and behind, loaded with armament, here to protect one fragile human being and get her into the facility. Creatures that at one time had been ferocious enemies of humanity were doing this. Circumstances changed, and loyalties changed, and so it was with him. Small fragments of his past were now arising—scraps from which he could weave a coherent whole that might be true. Cybercorp had manufactured him during the war and he had fought the prador as part of a four-person Sparkind combat team. He had been strong and loyal— the perfect soldier. Not enough memory remained for him to know why, towards the end of the war, he had become arrogant and contemptuous of humanity. Certainly, at the end, he had experienced some of that disenfranchisement experienced by many soldiers. Whatever. He had left the Polity with the dreadnought the Trafalgar in search of a bright new, wholly AI future. But Trafalgar had become Erebus and seized control of his mind. He had become a slave, converted into a legate and deployed as a weapon against the Polity. The subsequent fall of Erebus left him virtually mindless, and he had been ripe for enslavement by the Wheel . . . And so it had gone.
No, I am not Golem, I am Angel. I am the synergy of all my parts and all my history.
But that history had come to haunt him. In reclaiming his past and the part of himself that had been strong and loyal, but also moral, he had begun to feel guilt. It didn’t seem to matter that he ha
d been the slave of others, because his choices and his arrogance had led him to those straits. So ultimately he was responsible for the things he had done. Death and destruction were his responsibility. The Clade was here because of him. Ruth had died because of him. And he was responsible for what Trike had become.
Killer.
He had read it in the man’s behaviour during the journey to this world, and Trike had confirmed it down in the tunnels. Angel felt certain that, had he not broken away in the flood, Trike would have tried to kill him. Considering what the man had become, he might well have succeeded.
I made Trike.
Angel shook himself, swung his attention to his companions and knew what he was prepared to do. He would fight for the right side and, in that, would make his reparations as best he could. But he would not give himself over to Polity justice, despite what he felt now. He had been a mind-controlled slave and therefore was not guilty of any crime. Anyway, the Polity would only want to grab and examine him because of all the changes he had undergone. There would be no justice in it. But still Trike preyed on his mind. What restitution could Angel make to him?
“I guess we’re getting close,” Cog commented, fiddling with the light-enhancing goggles he had donned. Rumbles and sawing sounds were echoing down to them and occasionally the tunnel shook, spilling flakes of stone from its ceiling.
Angel, whose sense of position was always accurate, replied, “About a mile.” He next used the scanning equipment in his body to check their surroundings. The tunnel sloped upwards to its exit and light levels had increased fractionally. EMR penetrating from above, and from that entrance, indicated that things were getting hot on the surface. Croos had told them that the Clade had moved to the facility. Almost certainly Orlandine’s war drones were there too, and not in a companionable way. He turned to study Orlandine.
She was, despite the suit she wore, apparently humanly vulnerable. Or was she? In the pitch dark here, the prador could see by dint of the equipment in their armour, while Cog required the goggles. She had the suit’s enhancement to help her, yet, before she put it on, she had been able to see clearly without help. For the first time since they had come down from the surface, he focused his sensorium on her and began scanning. He boosted power to penetrate the prador armour and soon saw that her outward appearance was not the whole story.
As she had said, she retained AI crystal in her skull, but her body contained other inorganic structures. The crystal interfaced with her brain, and the nerves throughout her body, by dint of a nano-fibre network. Laminar power storage filled her bones and only half the meat of her body was human—the rest being electromuscle and meta-materials. Most humans ran medical nanosuites to enhance their immune systems and cellular repair. She too possessed such a suite, constantly renewed and upgraded by the microfactories that made the nanites, scattered throughout her veins. Those in turn connected to her crystal. Effectively this system would respond to mental demand, and this explained why she could see in the dark. She wasn’t entirely human, but nor was she haiman. Understanding all this, he felt a kinship with her. She too had gone through many changes and could never truly return to what she had once been.
“So tell me what you see,” she said, turning to look at him.
Ah, it seemed she could do more than see in the dark.
“I see that you have lost a lot, but retained a lot too,” he replied. “And that what you’ll become is negotiable.”
“Projecting, are you, Angel?” she asked.
He felt suddenly uncomfortable realizing that, yes, his comments had been more about himself than about her. But her perspicacity also reassured him. She was no walkover.
“I also see what full activation of your AI component may do.”
She nodded. “Then that is something you must keep to yourself.”
He nodded in return and contemplated her willingness to sacrifice her life to achieve her goal. He wondered if he possessed the will to do the same, should such a sacrifice become necessary.
The light quality continued to increase and at length Cog removed his goggles. The rumbles and sawing sounds were now clearly identifiable as explosions and particle beams cutting the air, accompanied by the crackling of railguns and other weapons. Angel calculated they would be out in the open and up into the fight within a few minutes. He was wrong almost at once. They came through the walls.
Immediate chaos ensued. Angel triggered the two pulse rifles he had bound together, firing into the main mass. One prador opened up with a Gatling cannon and filled the tunnel with ricochets, nicely demonstrating how long Orlandine would have lasted without armour. Another caught a Clade unit in its claw, a screeing sound coming through as it activated shearfields in the jaws. The unit fell in two writhing halves.
“Move!” Croos bellowed.
The constriction of the tunnel rendered the prador ineffective. They ran for the exit. A prador crashed down in front of them with a unit up to its neck in the creature’s leg socket. Cog leapt on top, squatted and bashed his fist repeatedly in its head until it broke, showering sparks. One of Angel’s pulse rifles ran out, followed by the other. He smashed it against a unit trying to get to Orlandine, dropped the rifle, then caught the thing and slammed it back against a wall. His sharp finger stabbed in its eye. Fast induction, and laser transmission of disruptor viruses. As Orlandine sprang onto the prador, then over the other side, Cog jumped up and came down with a unit in each hand. They had been zeroing in on her back. Then they were out into daylight chaos: explosions all around, chunks of rock and shattered trees flying.
“Keep going!” Croos shouted.
The prador had positioned themselves around Orlandine and were firing non-stop. Angel accelerated, moving ahead of them, scanning the ground.
“Fire where I point!” he shouted to Croos.
The prador seemed not to hear him, but something else dropped out of the sky and landed with a ground-shaking thump. It then heaved out of the crater it had made—a nightmare of armour and weapons.
“No need,” it said to him.
“Knobbler!” Orlandine shouted.
Knobbler waved some lethal appendage at her while casually spitting a missile behind him. The blast lifted two Clade units out of the earth, which prador then disintegrated with concentrated firing. With the big drone hovering ahead of them, they ran. The mayhem ripped up the earth and made progress difficult for Orlandine, so Croos snatched her up in one claw. The Clade now swirled above in a strange, even mandala formation. This suddenly stabbed down a powerful ion beam, punching through one prador, which crashed and flipped, smoke boiling from the hole. Another shot hit a hardfield and Knobbler bounced past, spewing molten metal from an ejection port. Then the other drones arrived.
It was as if spaceships had slammed together above. The mandala webbed with particle beams and broke into explosions. Metal rained down. Scanning ahead, Angel tried to find the tunnel they were heading for but could detect nothing. A moment later, he sensed chameleon- ware being deactivated to reveal buried planar and shaped charges. They exploded, parting the landscape ahead, and Croos scrambled through falling rubble into the newly revealed tunnel. Clever prador, thought Angel. They had made this access to the facility but, of course, they had not wanted it discovered.
“We will blow the tunnel!” Croos called.
Knobbler was there, smoking and weaving. Other drones swarmed, fending off the Clade. As he ran for the tunnel, following Cog and the remaining prador, Angel glanced back. He saw a prador up on a ridge, launching missiles into the Clade. Another figure ran up beside it, viewed the scene and started bounding down. Vaguely human, huge and long- limbed, this one held the tail of a Clade unit in each hand, using them to lash out at further attackers.
My, you’ve changed, Angel thought, ducking into the tunnel. But as he ran deeper inside he felt his metal skin crawling; he hoped the prador would blow the tunnel before Trike arrived.
BROGUS
Captain Brogus knew h
e should feel some relief. Orlik, and those in the other ships around him, had accepted his explanation for the “problems” he had been having. He was safe within the prador fleet—they still did not know that the reaver he controlled had never really been one of their number. Yet he felt regret that his subterfuge had not been discovered. Much as he had contempt for the King’s Guard, he felt more kinship with them than he did with the thing occupying one of his second-children. His feelings, he was sure, were because of the steady degradation of the neural lace wrapped around his ganglion. He wondered what he would do if it degraded completely. Declare himself to the Guard, or just run?
He worked his pit controls to call up views inside his ship on the array of screens before him. The mobile corpse of the second-child, with a Clade head stretched across the front of its carapace, was walking down a long tunnel towards the mid-point of the ship. He gazed at it for a while, but this told him nothing. Instead, he switched to another view and felt a shudder of horror pass through him. The two hundred Clade units he had aboard were on the move.
Throughout the journey, they had hidden themselves in one of the reaver’s holds—sunk inside the casings of chemical warheads in the event of an inspection. It seemed now the time was approaching for whatever purpose they would serve. He watched them easing out of the missile casings—folding out through impossibly small joints and inflating into their primary form. Brogus understood that they were made of a folded aerogel metal and could be destroyed with conventional weapons of sufficient power. But their apparent immaterial form, and ability to insert themselves into such small spaces, gave him the creeps. He knew the reason for it too—Clade were made to penetrate war machines, as well as armoured bodies like his own.
Soon they were all swirling around in the hold like a shoal of reaver- fish. The diagonally divided door began easing open and they flowed out into the tunnels of the ship. He saw one of his first-children freeze upon encountering them, but they just passed overhead, ignoring it completely. After a long hesitation, the first-child sent him a query.
