by Neal Asher
The other was leaving him and going in, he knew this. Orlandine convulsed and he felt the fibres disconnecting. Her eyes became bloody red with something metallic shifting in the pupils and irises. She shoved him and unbelievably managed to push him back. Their mouths parted and his tongue snapped out of her mouth. In that moment, the drone struck, grabbing him again and hurling him aside. He felt the veins from his hands tearing and breaking, and landed hard on his back. He immediately flipped up into a crouch, facing the drone, but felt no further urge to get to Orlandine. He looked past the thing at her.
What have I done?
Orlandine was sitting upright. She shrieked, veins twisting thick across her face. Then her head tilted unnaturally to one side with a horrible cracking sound. She jerked upright, as if hauled up by a rope, and her head started to shrink down into the suit, which cracked open to release her. Something vaguely human staggered out, a skeleton clad in dissolving flesh and snakes. It lasted just a moment and then collapsed into a writhing mass. This sped like a swarm of flatworms across the ground to the nearest building. The glass there rippled and formed a hole, and it went through. Seemingly in slow motion, the suit collapsed and fell apart.
It’s gone?
Trike stared down at his hands but the veins were still there. The other was still in his mind. But it seemed to be dissolving as a presence, incorporating . . . Coming back to himself, he looked around. The Clade was retreating, shooting out of the facility like silverfish fleeing a bag of grain. More war drones had arrived, but they weren’t going after the Clade. Every one of them had something lethal pointed at him. One-on- one he might be able to defeat a war drone now, but he stood no chance against this crowd. He listened to power supplies humming and the metallic clacks, which he knew were completely unnecessary, of missiles and railguns loading. The image of Orlandine’s body dissolving into the writhing mass repeated in his head. He thought again, What have I done?
THE CLIENT
Weapons Platform Mu shuddered and vibrated in U-space, as the moment it would surface into the real drew nigh. The Client gazed upon the terrain of that continuum and noted the waves of disruption. She mapped them and made her calculations. From this she was certain that the Harding black hole had reached the sun at the centre of the accretion disc, and that the event had occurred. Reaching into the newly formatted U-space drive of the weapons platform, and thence out to those of its attack pods, she began to alter things.
It was a fact, with the U-space tech of both the Polity and the Kingdom, that a destination was usually set the moment a ship entered that continuum. This was why it was possible to read a ship’s signature when it went under, to know its destination, as well as its signature on surfacing, to identify its departure point. Trying to recalculate while in transit created too many variables. Attempting to alter the function of a drive while it was under power could be disastrous. But it went beyond that, because it altered the time flow within the ship in transit. It created a supposedly unresolvable paradox.
However, the Client’s drive was no longer so simple. It was part of a system that included the weapons and hardfield defences of the platform and its attack pods. A lot more was possible. She made the calculations to subtract two light hours from the initial impetus and applied the solution to the drive. Everything within the weapons platform shuddered to a halt and then, finally, she surfaced into the real.
The Client knew, with utter certainty, that out of the options available, she had chosen an arrival point two light hours out from the accretion disc. But she also knew her own mental capabilities and those of her new drive system, so she checked the local gravity map and related U-space readings. Meanwhile, the weapons platform showed a high power drain at the point of exit that none of its instruments could locate. Entropic wave. She realized that during the journey, she had changed the arrival point. Initially she had planned to surface right next to the accretion disc but had changed that to two light hours out, probably because of the U-space disruption she was detecting. She accepted this, though she had no memory of it.
Now to her sensor arrays. The Harding black hole had swallowed the sun at the centre of the accretion disc, and it was plain that this had opened the U-space blister there. She focused in on the giant ship that had exited, as it looked two hours ago. Its resemblance to an ammonite, or a terran snail, was no coincidence. The Species had built the main crew compartment first—a fully functional ship in itself just fifty miles across. Thereafter the thing had steadily grown, adding weapons, defences and power supplies in an expanding spiral around that central compartment.
My people, the Client thought.
The ship was supposed to be a practically invulnerable war craft. It was, when the Librarian had initiated it. But that particular Jain had separated itself from its kind for a long time. It had not been part of their continual fights and amalgamations, their constant mating. Consequently, the Jain it faced in that final battle had been armed with the technology the humans so feared, whose remains inhabited the accretion disc and seeded into Jain nodes. This technology had, the Client surmised, eventually done to all Jain what they did to each other individually. It had merged and transformed them, to their own destruction as a race of thinking individuals, into an interstellar parasite which fed on ensuing civilizations. With this technology, the attacking Jain had been able to raise weapons from sterile regolith and had nearly annihilated the Species. In fact, it would have done so had not the ship the Client gazed upon now been able to trap it in that U-space blister.
The Client surveyed the situation. Two fleets there at the disc—one of the Polity and one of the Kingdom. The ships weren’t scattered but faced off against each other in slowly shifting battle formations, as each side tried to find some tactical advantage. Having obtained data from Dragon, perhaps only because that entity had allowed her to, she knew that this was the response of the two realms to the death of Orlandine. It was a very dangerous collection of ships, even for the Species warship, but they were not the greatest danger. Because of her absorption of Pragus, the platform’s AI mind, she understood how those platform AIs were hardwired to their prime directive. The hundreds of weapons platforms around the accretion disc were the main threat. They would identify the Species ship as Jain because it would give that signature.
During the battle, the newer civilization-destroying Jain tech had penetrated it. Perhaps not to the central compartment, but certainly into most of that seven-hundred-mile-wide main body. Dropping itself and its opponent into the U-space blister had been a last desperate sacrifice to save the rest of the Species. It did not matter if the weapons platforms knew this history—they would still not allow that ship to leave the disc. And, almost certainly, the two fleets out there would join in with the destruction. Perhaps she should at least contact the two fleets and apprise them of the situation.
It was time to move closer.
ORLIK
The U-space disruption which the Harding black hole had caused by doing . . . whatever it had done was high. But it did not make travel in that continuum impossible. One dreadnought had left the prador formation because its captain had turned out to be edging into senility and, in return, the king had sent two. Windermere had sent an attack ship away from her fleet, apparently to map the extent of the disturbance. This was why, when another U-signature generated far out, it wasn’t the immediate focus of Orlik’s attention. When it moved from two light hours out to eight minutes out, it became more of a concern. Eight minutes later Sprag showed him the new arrival.
“Like we need some more complications,” she added.
Orlik gazed upon Weapons Platform Mu and its remaining attack pods. He knew all about its visit to the Prador Kingdom, of course.
“Analysis,” he said out loud.
Sprag replied, “It looks like someone initiated a Jain node in there, and though I’m getting a signature, it’s not quite the same. Fuck knows. Final analysis: it’s a big fucking weapons platform, probably h
ostile, and it’s behind us.”
The signature stuff was a quantum thing, apparently. When matter was organized down to pico-scopic levels, it created a signature in U-space. Since some Polity technology was now close to being organized this way, and also caused a signature, their AIs had felt it necessary to define parameters around what was a Jain-tech signature, and this wasn’t it . . . not quite. However, he had to agree with her about the effect. The platform looked wrapped in a growth of metallic vines, as well as being half melted, so that what had once been individually identifiable units of its structure blended into each other.
“So what’s it going to do?” wondered Sprag.
“Indeed,” said Orlik.
He had to agree with her final assessment and, yeah, it was a complication they didn’t need. Now they had an alien with some serious firepower at their backs—one that for perfectly understandable reasons had no love for the prador. Orlik observed Sprag’s recalculation of battle tactics and probable outcomes. If they went head-to-head with the Polity, they would lose only if that platform slotted itself in on the Polity side. But would it? The Polity AIs might not have ordered its assassination but they had betrayed it. How should he respond to this? What was the Client’s objective in coming here?
“I think I need to talk to her,” he said.
“Which her?”
“The one with the fewest legs.”
“Opening com,” Sprag replied.
A moment later, Orlik was gazing, mentally, at Diana Windermere. Neither of them said anything at first, both studying images of each other that neither could really read, then Orlik said, “A new development.” “Quite,” said Windermere.
“I have informed my fleet to assist you in the Jaskoran system. It is evident that what is happening here is not the result of some Polity power play, though . . . some power games are being played.” “Unfortunate politics, in the circumstances,” she allowed.
“How do you see this situation at present?” He then added, “Excluding the recent arrival of the Client.”
“I will have to simplify.”
“Do so.”
“A hostile Jain AI facilitated the release of this ship from the U-space blister. That same AI now wants those weapons platforms to fire on it.” “That is a large and almost certainly very dangerous vessel,” said Orlik. “Yes, but do we want to fire on it?”
“The fact that the ship is large and very dangerous indicates that we should.”
“Prador thinking,” said Windermere. She leaned forwards in her seat, her face expanding in Orlik’s vision. He felt the urge to push her away. She continued with a question, “Where did the Wheel come from?” Orlik thought about that long and hard. Her way of seeing the situation was exactly the way he saw it, and it made no sense, unless he was missing something. He considered what that might be, then replied, “It seems likely the Wheel is an AI released from those trapped in U-space and this ship is its enemy.”
“I have considered this, but then why release the ship in the first place?”
“For obvious reasons,” said Orlik.
Her face changed and Orlik knew enough to recognize that she had smiled.
“Different ways of thinking,” she said. “If I had an enemy who was trapped eternally in a U-space blister, I would consider that quite enough and leave him there. But to a prador, like you . . . unless that enemy is dead and dismembered the fight is ongoing.”
“Of course.”
“We have your way of thinking and my way of thinking, but neither of those are necessarily close to the way the Wheel thinks.”
Orlik gurgled in frustration. This conversation was making his ganglion ache.
“Whatever,” he snapped. “We are here, neither the king nor Earth Central wants us cracking carapaces, there is danger, how are we to respond?”
“I am currently attempting to prevent the weapons platforms from firing on that ship when it leaves the accretion disc. I am also trying to talk to it,” she said.
Orlik chewed that over for a short while, then replied, “Those are certainly options.” He felt slightly baffled by the answer and moved on. “And now the Client has arrived.”
“The new development you mentioned.”
“What are we to make of that?”
“The Client is certainly hostile to the prador and has reason to have no love for the Polity either,” Windermere stated. “We need to watch our backs.”
Orlik digested that and realized this woman had no idea what to make of it.
“Could it be that the Client is the prime mover in all this?”
“No. Reports show that the Client was resurrected aboard Weapons Platform Mu after the Wheel seized control of the legate Angel and the wormship.”
“Resurrected here, aboard a weapons platform. There has to be a connection.”
“Undoubtedly, but until we know what it is, we cannot react.” She paused for a second, turned her head as if listening to something else and Orlik saw the data leads plugged into the base of her skull. He knew in an instant that she was conducting more than just this conversation. “However, I would prefer not to be reacting, but acting . . .”
Orlik felt a sudden burning frustration because she had dug to the root of it. They were sitting here second-guessing major events and how to respond to them. He really wanted to do something. It was, he realized, the frustration of command. All the way through this they had been a step behind an aggressor. And, crazily, they weren’t even sure who that aggressor was. All they had encountered thus far were agents of this shady figure.
“Then perhaps it is time to act,” he said. “To begin driving responses.”
Windermere focused on him completely. “What do you suggest?”
“I will consider this and communicate my thoughts with you later.” Mentally he sent a command to Sprag, who a second later severed the comlink.
“And how will you respond?” enquired Sprag.
“My instinct is to let those weapons platforms open fire and, if necessary, assist them,” he said. “But of course, as Windermere would doubtless point out, I am thinking like a prador.”
“And will you follow your instinct?”
“In that respect no, but in another I will.” He paused, wondering if he was being too hasty, then continued, “Inform the other ships that the Kinghammer is about to move out of formation. Update tactical, but break weapons lock on the Polity ships—they are not now the enemy here.”
“Where are we going?” asked Sprag.
“To see an older enemy,” Orlik replied, meanwhile sending tactical instructions to his fleet should anything occur while he was gone.
ORLANDINE
Orlandine fell from the balcony and she fell down the side of a building. Both impacts of both Orlandines were simultaneous, but became one upon the rocky plain. It was raining from the pink sky, droplets splashing like blood on the white boulders, patting the dust, beading on the arm of her monofilament suit when she held it out for inspection. She knew this place: it was the world called Aster Colora, where the humans had first found Dragon. For a moment, she thought Earth Central had made contact and dropped her into a virtuality, but everything was clear in her mind and all but some moments of her complete memories were back. Those memories of the last scenes in her apartment with Tobias were only human, and vague, since prior to them the link to this backup had been broken by the Clade. The Jain tech Trike had returned to her had loaded one of her backups from out in the Jaskoran system. It had then loaded her—destructively recording her to itself, storing some of the substance of her human body throughout its growing mass of tentacles and tendrils.
Her omniscience had returned too. She could see and experience more than just one single human being, with her various links and dispersed mind. So she also gazed from the mountains down on the Ghost Drive Facility, as the Clade swirled endlessly about it. She watched the massive ship moving out of the accretion disc, and her weapons platforms preparing to rain annihila
tion upon it. She saw Diana Windermere lost in doubt for the first time in centuries, poised over decisions she did not want to make. And in juxtaposition to her, out in vacuum, she observed Weapons Platform Mu, with its attack pods positioned around it and the Client within, trailing its tether to millions of years of history. And in the centre of these events, she saw Trike, kissing her, his alien tongue entering the mouth of her dying body and making a violent connection that seemed to draw everything else she was seeing into a logical web, a totality.
“So where are you?” she asked.
“Neither here nor there,” Dragon replied.
Ahead, the four spheres of Dragon sat upon the plain, cloud clinging to their upper curves. The ground began shaking and nearby a pseudopod broke from it to writhe into the sky and loop over. White muscular flesh, as thick as a man’s torso, topped with a cobra head, but with a glowing sapphire eye where the mouth should be. More and more of them broke from the surface until two rows marked her path to Dragon itself.
“Crazy street lamps..” a voice ghosted.
“Not my memory,” she said. “I’ve never been here.”
“They sent an ambassador,” said Dragon. “I lied to him as I have lied about many things, often to myself. Or perhaps I did not lie to him . . . I no longer know.”
“You’re rambling. Where are you?” Orlandine began walking along under the blue gaze of the pseudopods.
