by Neal Asher
“Truth? You want truth?”
“Of course.”
“This is not now.”
That brought her to a halt. Just for a moment, she did not understand. But then, reaching out to the distributed components of her being, she found it. She wasn’t actually speaking to Dragon. The entity had come to Jaskor, terribly injured, to deliver terse instructions about the Ghost Drive Facility and then departed. However, it had left this for her lodged in the facility: a submind of itself.
“What happened to you?”
“I went to the world of the Cyberat seeking data,” the Dragon submind replied. “This was simply a lure—the Wheel wanted me out of the way so I would not interfere with your response to the Jain soldier. It wanted me dead.”
This played out to her inner vision. She saw the USER activated in the Cyberat system, the attack upon Dragon by the Clade, and then by the wormship which, it seemed, though apparently controlled by Angel, had been where the AI the Wheel had rooted itself. She saw the pursuit around the sun there, the black-ops attack ship Obsidian Blade destroying the wormship, and consequently the Wheel, but Dragon severely damaged and burned. Subsequent events too: Dragon picking up Cog’s ship, Blade pursuing the Clade outsystem and the final result of that. Now she was updated on those events, but some things really needed explaining.
“Tell me about the Client,” she said.
“The Client was always about data,” said the Dragon submind. “I put her aboard Weapons Platform Mu and I drove her to a source.”
In another place, Orlandine saw prador ships bombarding a massive ring structure around a world—the world of the Client’s kind, the Species. A block of data fell into her consciousness, giving the history of their extermination, and she saw the library moon falling away as the prador finally destroyed the ring with their kamikazes.
“I knew the library data predated the accretion disc . . .”
“How?”
After a long pause the mind replied, “I do not know . . . perhaps Dragon does.”
“Continue,” said Orlandine.
“I learned that the Client has indeed accessed the library and that she will have discovered what happened here. The Client is key, and I have gone to find her . . .”
“Outdated data,” said Orlandine. “The Client is now at the accretion disc and you . . . or rather the mind that created you, are not here.”
“I was damaged,” said the submind. “I would be ineffectual.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything useful?” Even as she asked, she began reaching for the submind. She would interrogate it properly and learn everything it knew. However, as she did this, she sensed it beginning to break apart. Then she was falling once more, sick with anger because, again, Dragon had given her minimal data to work with. There had to be answers, solutions and a logical course of action, and she must find them herself. With simple human consciousness, she would have thought that Dragon, as ever, was just playing games and being deliberately obscure. But her consciousness was more than that. Her anger faded as she understood that for her to resolve the problems she faced she needed to find and understand that resolution in the first place.
Out of virtuality she fell, down and down between glassy towers. She hit and spread, found herself making connections to the facility’s hardware all around her. She had no awareness of a human body now, but a perfect sense of the all the pieces laid out on the interstellar chessboard. One thing she knew she had to do at least. Of one thing she was certain: the Clade could not achieve its aims.
DIANA
The Kinghammer was on the move, slowly heading out of the prador formation. Diana watched it through the Hogue’s sensors and felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She had a good idea what this was all about.
“They’re taking down weapons lock,” said Jabro.
“What?”
“The prador ships, they’re—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said in irritation. Not only were those ships taking down weapons lock, the whole prador formation was orienting towards the accretion disc. One thing at a time, she decided. “What about that platform? Seckurg?”
“Difficult to scan,” replied the Golem. “The alien technology has amalgamated discrete systems. I detect linkages between the U-space drive, defences and weapons—this is generally the direction Polity weapons tech has been heading. Also, when it arrived it caused a definite entropic effect. It’s quite possible . . . something temporal . . .”
Why not? thought Diana. Things seemed poised on some catastrophic knife-edge, so why not time travel too? Why not play with the space-time continuum and start blowing up suns, rearranging star systems and erasing civilizations? She felt the urge to giggle, and suppressed it.
“And the nature of that alien technology?” she asked.
“Very much like the hostile tech we call Jain tech, but its U-signature is out-parameter.”
“Outside of the parameters the weapons platforms used to define Jain tech,” she said flatly.
He glanced round at her. “Yes. Outside.”
“So I can’t use it as a lever,” she stated.
The arrival of Jain tech outside of the weapons platform defence sphere, around the accretion disc, might have been a bargaining chip she could use in her constant debate and argument with Weapons Platform Rhodus. Then again, perhaps not—its definition of the directive of the platforms was pretty clear.
“The Kinghammer is going under,” said Jabro.
Diana focused back on the prador capital ship as it seemed to stretch and shimmer, then snapped out of existence. No need to guess where it had gone. Its U-signature told her and its short jump was already over— confirmation would come in eight minutes. The prador Orlik had gone to Weapons Platform Mu, which was a greater threat to him and his fleet than it was to hers. It made sense, and she would have done the same in his position. The Client was a creature whose race the prador had exterminated, who had tried to bring about the extermination of the prador in return and who, more recently, had caused mayhem in the Kingdom. To Orlik it would be something he needed to stamp on at once.
“Orders?” wondered Jabro.
What could she do? An alien-controlled weapons platform had arrived and the prador were dealing with it. The prador had also backed off and focused where she should be focused: on that alien ship.
“It’s time to move,” she said.
The initial positioning of the fleets had been random. Tactical considerations had then resulted in the current formations, triggered by the fleets reacting to each other. However, the alien ship’s predicted departure point from the disc was a third of a turn around and parallel to its axis—the ship was taking the shortest route out. Via Hogue, she delivered her instructions. First to go were the dreadnoughts, some flashing straight into U-space and others, with less modern drives, requiring a run-up. They began to appear in new positions opposite the departure point and a few minutes later destroyers followed to slot in.
“Dangerous tactically,” commented Jabro.
He was right. The whole fleet could not move at once, since the U-drives of the various ships tended to interfere with each other. Moving them piecemeal meant dividing the fleet, which, if you were paranoid, gave the prador an advantage. But she trusted that Orlik wasn’t crazy enough to start something now. He would still be in contact—
“They’re moving,” said Jabro.
Prador dreadnoughts were falling out of formation. The reavers started first, going smoothly into U-space, flashing back into the real fifty thousand miles to the side of where Diana’s fleet was grouping. The older dreadnoughts followed—these having to get moving on fusion before making the leap.
“We’re good,” she said.
Shifting...
The Cable Hogue thrummed with power and Diana felt the dislocation like a wave passing through her body, a sense of impossible speed and an instant of epiphany. A moment later, the giant ship surfaced into th
e real and epiphany faded. It was always the same. When the ship went under, she felt some truth lay within her grasp, but then it just went away again. Seckurg said that was spill-over from Hogue—nothing to get excited about.
In the new position, with her fleet forming between her and the disc, she felt at last that she was doing something, not just reacting. Both fleets formed up as they had before, which was not ideal. She decided that when Orlik returned, this was something they must address. If he returned. She focused her attention on the alien ship from this perspective.
The thing was under constant acceleration and would soon be leaving the accretion disc. She linked fully into the Hogue AI and went back to communication with the weapons platforms, from verbal exchanges right down deep into AI data, even though she could see no way out. They perfectly understood the details of the situation but their interpretation of it was completely different. They could not get past their directive— it was like a subconscious influence on their reasoning. She felt, while talking to them, as if she had fallen back centuries to the time before the Quiet War, when AIs were made to obey their human masters absolutely. These entities were highly intelligent and informed, but they were slaves to the will of Orlandine and the directive she had given them. Diana understood the imperative that had driven this, but it was one that could lead to disaster in this situation.
“What if it is not a Jain ship?” she asked, in more than just words.
“It possesses Jain U-space signatures, which are our only measure,” replied the AI of Weapons Platform Rhodus, who had been designated spokesman.
“Then explain why a Jain AI would want us to fire on it.” She, of course, had her own answers to that but wanted to know what the platform AIs were thinking.
“It seems likely,” replied Rhodus, “that the Wheel was one of the AIs lodged in U-space, enabled to escape by Dragon’s attempts to communicate and acquire data. Dragon provided them with energy to that end, and it is not unfeasible they used this energy to allow one of their number to escape.”
“Still does not answer my question. Why would a Jain AI want us to fire on a Jain ship?”
“You are being simplistic, Diana Windermere,” said Rhodus pedantically. “We do not know the circumstances that resulted with the AIs in U-space or this ship trapped in the U-space blister. The Jain were very powerful and, judging by their technology, very warlike. The most likely explanation is Jain internecine war.”
More or less what Hogue had pointed out. She could not argue the point because it might well be true. Perhaps, in the end, her objection was not about the probability of hostile intent on the part of the Wheel and the Clade towards the Polity, but simply to being manipulated.
“And still,” Rhodus continued, “the fact remains that dangerous Jain technology is about to leave the accretion disc. For the survival of the Polity and the Kingdom, we cannot allow that to happen.”
There it was again. She had gone round and round with this and it came back to that every time. She turned her attention back to the data being transmitted from Jaskor, hoping that Orlandine had survived and that she could do something to stop the weapons platforms.
But what then?
“I have made contact,” said Hogue. “Sending language and translation files now.”
Diana sat up as if electrocuted, finding some hope at last. Now they could talk to whatever resided inside that giant ship.
13
The term “Jain tech,” in common usage, describes the kind of sequestering technology that arises from a Jain node upon it connecting with an organic intelligence. The only time, as far as is known, when Jain tech connected with a non-organic intelligence, was when it did so with the AI of the dreadnought Trafalgar, which subsequently became the entity known as Erebus. Even then, it is rumoured that theTrafalgar AI used humans to initiate the technology And it was not sequestered by it, but melded with it. However, Jain tech in this sense is a bit of a misnomer. The Viking Museum on Earth’s moon contains items of the technology from this ancient race and they do not try to seize control of things (though safety measures are in place should this judgement be incorrect). Many technological items produced by “Jain tech” itself are often incapable of sequestering, but they are clearly the same technology It would be better for this stuff to be defined as “Jain sequestering technology.” It is the nature of human language, however, that usage is only described, and attempts to dictate it tend to fail.
—from Quince Guide, compiled by humans
BROGUS
The Kinghammer had headed out to face the threat posed by the arrival of the Client and her weapons platform. Brogus had gleaned most of the story about that platform from status updates, as well as a conversation he had engaged in with one of the other captains. This last had been risky, because he had come close to revealing how little he knew. But he had to know. He could almost feel the neural lace unsticking from his major ganglion and its control over him waning. He was now able to think about taking some actions for his own ends, and his own survival.
He was also utterly confused about what was occurring here. He focused on his screens, on the ship coming out of the accretion disc, at the empty bounce gate chamber on his own ship, and at the new orientation of the prador fleet.
What was the Clade doing? He had assumed it must be aboard to launch some sort of attack against the Polity. Even though it had taken him a while to get his mind in motion due to the lock of the lace, he had come to the conclusion that the Clade units were now aboard numerous prador ships and had seized control of them. So surely, with the Kinghammer gone and the Polity taking their own weapons lock off the prador, it was time to attack? No, even as he considered this, he realized he was conflating its aims with his own. He was a rebel who had deserted the Kingdom because of the truce the new king had made with the humans. It was his wish and his aim for hostilities between his kind and the humans to recommence. The Clade was working for the Wheel and all its actions were centred around that ship coming out of the accretion disc. The Polity and Kingdom ships here were a factor, just a factor . . .
His ganglion aching, he worked through scenarios. He came up with a possibility: the Clade was here to deal with the fleets if they opened fire on that ship, which surely the Wheel had wanted safely out of the U-space blister and free? No, the ships would not be here if the Clade had not killed Orlandine. Because only her death had compelled the king to send his fleet, and the Polity to respond. Something about the weapons platforms here also related to Orlandine—he’d picked up on parts of it while listening in to conversations between other captains, but the connection remained unclear. He lacked information, so he must work around those gaps.
At some point, there would be action. If the Clade turned prador ships against the Polity, that would be good. It might not. The Clade would do as it wanted, and whether Brogus himself was here to witness it would not affect the outcome one way or another. However, his presence here seemed likely to result in his death. With a sudden painful wrench, the father-captain felt something fall within his control. He could now disobey the constant restraints of the lace, which had been holding him back from doing anything. He engaged his grav units and rose off his saddle control, swivelled round and drifted across his sanctum. The relief was immense—even this little action was at the behest of his own will. However, turning back, he saw something on the screens.
The Clade unit that had earlier occupied one of his second-children was oozing out of the mind case attached to one of the bounce gate support struts. He moved fast, back to his saddle control, and dropped on it heavily, inserting claws in pit controls to access ship’s systems. Meanwhile, he opened up com to all his children.
“Intruder alert!” he announced. “There is a Polity assassin drone in the bounce gate chamber. Proceed there at once and destroy it!” He felt a hot flush of fear passing through him. He had done it now.
Through various cams, he saw his children scrabbling to obey. Some were already a
rmed and began heading where he’d directed, others were quickly arming themselves. He concentrated on further resources at his disposal—internal defences.
“Father. I have seen this drone,” said one of his first-children cautiously.
“It is now the enemy. Destroy it,” Brogus replied perfunctorily.
Inside the tunnel which the bounce gate chamber opened into, turrets dropped from the ceiling with twinned particle cannons on each. He set them to fire at any movement, any disturbance, barring each other. One immediately opened fire and a second-child, who had entered at the end of the tunnel, retreated shrieking with one claw burned off and its armour smoking. Brogus clattered his mandibles in irritation then updated his children with a tactical map. Meanwhile he altered the programming of the cannons—giving them the armour beacon signals of his children and instructing them not to fire on them. Through cams, he saw his children gathering at each end of the tunnel.
“You broke it at last,” said the Clade unit.
Its voice possessed a tinny echo and he felt its will scrabbling at the walls of his mind, then falling away. He experienced a surge of joy, knowing that it had no power over him. A surge of panic swiftly ensued, which he fought down. There was no going back—the Clade unit would now try to kill him.
“Yes, I broke it,” he replied.
“We expected this,” said the unit. “Prador biology and your age. The receptors in your ganglion which at one time responded to the hormones emitted by your father have been dying ever since you became a father yourself.”
The thing had moved out of the mind case and was coiled around the strut. After a moment, it steadily peeled away from there and squirmed through the air towards the door, which opened ahead of it.
“You cannot escape there,” Brogus stated.
“We are unconcerned. This unit is an element of a whole whose aims will be achieved,” the unit replied.
Brogus felt some hope, because if that was the case then this unit did not care whether it lived or died.
