by Neal Asher
As this devastation continued, Orlandine finally gained access to all the weapons platforms and deleted the directive from every one. But still they kept on firing. Should she stop them now? She wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do—the ship still presented an unknown threat.
“You no longer have to do this,” she said, but did not make it an imperative order. The previous directive had been an error, she realized, related to her own paranoia about Jain tech. She should have trusted that a mass of intelligent AI minds was capable of making intelligent decisions. However, she penetrated their minds on other levels to see what she had wrought. Soon it became apparent that, though the directive was gone, it had affected their thinking. They were still seeing dangers and not yet incorporating a larger picture. She persuaded, citing information about the Species—peaceful only until attacked. They replied that they had now attacked. The exchange took microseconds.
Then it came.
From emplacements all over the giant ship’s hull, like extending glassy spines, energy beams speared out. Where they reached the hard- fields they shifted to open gaps, and the lines of glass continued on.
Orlandine recognized them at once. The Jain soldier that had attacked the defence sphere had used these and she knew their effect.
Some struck attack pods and she saw them simply shatter, turning into lines of debris scattered through vacuum. She had no idea why they didn’t cause any CTDs to explode, because surely the pods still contained some. Perhaps the very nature of antimatter was that it repelled whatever energy or mechanism caused other materials to fall apart? Most of the beams continued towards the weapons platforms. One struck a hardfield, hesitated, the point of impact growing black, then it pierced through. It hit the weapons platform like a drill going into brass, and a moment later stabbed out the other side. It then winked out. Telemetry from the platform gave her detail. The thing had ripped through the platform, causing anything in its path to smash apart. The damage was bad in terms of a single strike, but not crippling. However, the effect did not end there. A slow energy wave began spreading from the point of impact. I-beams splintered, and bubble-metal warped, spewing its closed-cell structure in micro-bead dust. Ceramal cracked, superconductors withered, and optics died and blackened. As this surge continued, the whole platform began to warp with the materials’ stresses. Exploding gas tanks blew materials out into vacuum. Breached armouries, laminar power storage and hypercapacitor shorts, as well as any other item with high power density, started to tear the platform apart.
The AI ejected in an armoured canister, leaving behind spreading ruination. In the time it had taken the platform to disintegrate, another eight had been struck and were following the same path. Some platforms managed short evasive U-jumps, but with the present U-space disruption worsening, that was dangerous. She watched as one platform rematerialized with part of its mass inside another one. The ensuing explosion blew them away from each other—falling apart like two chunks of one beast that had been torn in half. Another that jumped suffered a detonation at one end, uprooting rail- and coilgun towers and shearing away megatons of armour. It had obviously materialized in the same spot as one of its attack pods. Meanwhile, the alien ship was still firing. Orlandine came to a decision.
The platform AIs were right. By firing on the ship, they had initiated hostilities and it was replying. She could allow this to continue, and maybe the platforms could destroy the vessel, but it was certain that many of them would not survive the encounter. Yes, Jain tech was within the ship, and it was now a slightly less unknown danger, but a danger nevertheless. That was beside the point. Her platforms had launched an unprovoked attack on a vessel containing a species that, on the data she had, was not inherently hostile. Tactical and threat assessment had to go to one side. This was a moral issue.
“Cease firing,” she ordered, and she made it a directive.
The firing did cease, at once, from them. She waited a few minutes to assess the reaction. In that time other platforms fell into ruin, but she felt that was an acceptable loss, since no lives were lost—the AIs were sensible enough to eject before the destruction reached them. The alien ship did not stop firing. Why should it? It had been attacked and the attackers remained out there, in its path.
“Return to initiation site,” she ordered and made that another directive.
The platform AIs calculated for longer jumps and began sliding out of the real. Attack pods started shooting away too. She delivered another order, and some platforms left behind attack pods to act as watchers for her—her eyes there. Minutes later, new stars winked into being in the skies of Jaskor—over six hundred of them.
BLADE
Within a few seconds it became obvious the Clade had decided it could do nothing more at the facility. Taking fire from Blade, the sentinel drones and the ships in orbit, it was not able to organize itself for an ion-beam strike. Nor could it get closer to the building beside which Trike and the war drones lingered. It therefore switched over to ghost chaff and induction warfare, trying to confuse sensors, and succeeding. Blade did not see the remaining thousand-plus units group together in one mass until it was on the move. A railgun strike, exploding against a hardfield the Clade mass had created, resulted in a surge. The clumped units, whose shape resembled a bacterium, shot away from the facility and down—a very powerful combined grav and EM drive propelling it. Blade, immediately firing up its own multiple and widely spread fusion drives from the erstwhile splinter missiles on its surface, turned like a snake and followed. It recognized that somehow the Clade had shunted feedback energy directly into its drive system. But the fact it was running meant it could not do this for long.
The Clade hurtled into the valley in which the facility sat and on into the mountains. It was weaving and still using ghost chaff and induction warfare to make it difficult to nail down. Perhaps it hoped for some reluctance on Blade’s part—any misses would hit the planet and contravene Dragon’s stricture. But they were beyond that now. Licking out with one particle beam, Blade created an explosive path, shattering rocks and trees and carving a burning trench. Contact had the Clade sliding to one side, skimming the tops of trees and leaving a trail of burning leaves.
“There are people in these mountains,” the Clade noted.
Yes, there were, but Blade had them located. The sudden proliferation of sensor data showing extra people in the valley was a weak ruse. Just to drive this point home, Blade fired railgun slugs. One hit a hardfield and sprayed a sheet of fire where some of these people were ostensibly located. Another punched into the ground—a white-hot cavity through rock, followed by an eruption that geysered tons of rubble into the sky.
“We are impressed,” said the Clade.
“You are going to die,” Blade replied.
“Oh really?”
The ghost chaff faded and Blade got accurate targeting. Another railgun strike this time hit an angled hardfield. Surge of EM and grav. The Clade shot into the side of the valley and hacked a trench upwards. Part of the face of the valley exploded outwards and, in the ensuing dust storm, the Clade disappeared. Blade upped scanning. Ground radar revealed a cave snaking through the mountain and it realized its opponent had prepared for escape—it had known about this cave.
Time now? Blade wondered.
Further scanning. The cave opened on the other side of the mountain, so it wasn’t yet time to reveal its full capabilities. On grav, and a side blast of fusion, it turned, hit the same slope and ricocheted upwards, then looped over the mountain. Analysis: the Clade stayed low because orbital strikes were still a threat. With the fleets out there, it would not be able to make it off-world. Its apparent aim seemed simple survival. But whether the time frame of this related to events at the accretion disc, Blade did not know.
The Clade exploded out of the other side of the mountain and twisted down. Here in another valley lay a deep, long lake. It hit the surface hard but did not create the expected explosion of spray: obviously low-frict
ion meta-materials of its conglomerated bodies, complemented by electrostatic fields. Scanning, Blade picked up water-filled caves and again contemplated its own capabilities. However, the Clade speared down deep and kicked in with a cavitating drive to take it along the bottom of the lake. Blade matched its position above and pondered railgunning the thing. But the slugs would lose too much of their energy penetrating that deep to be effective. This was a good survival ploy on the part of the Clade, but a limited one. Blade calculated its chances of success if it splintered off parts of itself and sent them down. But anything that could damage the Clade would raise tsunamis on the lake, and residences stood along the shore. And where was the urgency?
Blade had accepted its mission profile: it must track down and neutralize the Clade. The best way of doing this was, of course, destroying it. But there was no guarantee it would get the whole swarm AI, because it was most likely not all here. Blade needed location data. That meant capturing a Clade unit and accessing its mind, because surely it would know where other parts of it were. So a second-best way of neutralizing it was in order for now—keep on harrying the thing and picking off its units. Sure, this would involve a lot of destruction and casualties, but letting the Clade do what it wanted could result in much worse.
It exploded from the end of the lake and began to take a fast, writhing course down a series of waterfalls. Blade waited until it was half a mile clear of the lake before rearranging geology. Two railgun strikes shattered a massive stone slab, the wave of fast-moving debris slamming into the Clade and partially breaking its conglomeration. Once again, most of this was taken by a hardfield. But feedback blew two units away from the main mass and they hit a lake at the base of one waterfall, where the water boiled around them. Pausing to scan, Blade found them burned out and falling apart—no data to be had there. Scanning ahead revealed the last waterfall pouring into a large pool and from this a river, fast-moving through wild lands, and then a slow-moving canal through croplands. Distantly, the city was visible.
The Clade had chosen to run there because it knew that negated some of the more effective weapons in Blade’s armoury. Caves in the mountains were few, while the croplands and the city sat on a thick layer of limestone wormed through with a mass of caverns. These were accessible via the city flood drains, as the prador had demonstrated. Blade calculated that the Clade would break up, go underground and disperse, sure that a black-ops attack ship would be rendered impotent by the tactic.
The Clade was in for a surprise.
Another railgun strike. This time the missile hit a slanted hardfield and the Clade generated a magnetic bottle so powerful it shimmered in the air. The swarm AI had computed it just right. The railgun slug vaporized off the hardfield into the magnetic bottle and emitted as plasma flame two miles long. This struck a crop storage silo and the thing distorted and collapsed, trailing fire. A nearby harvest robot was flipped onto its back, while the blast sent the people next to it tumbling. Scan. Three humans and two Golem, armed and probably refugees from the city. The two Golem would be fine and would tend to the two humans blown into the nearby field. The third human, who had been flung back against the harvester, had been impaled on its comb. Maybe she had a memplant . . .
“Oops,” said the Clade. “Houses ahead . . .”
Blade felt a tight, sick rage, but no inclination to desist. Casualties were to be expected and, in cold AI calculation, their number would be smaller while it kept the Clade running. An overall calculation concerning the swarm Al’s growth was factored in too. While fleeing, it would struggle to expand itself. A stark reality was that it could grow from a few units capable of destruction on a local scale into something with the ability to depopulate planets. The Clade had to be stopped.
Nevertheless, Blade switched over to beam weapons. Lasers kept the thing running. Occasional particle beam strikes could overload some of its units, without the danger of deflection that the lasers had. The swarm AI snaked along at high speed above the river, along which were the most human habitations, its shockwave raising spray behind it. As it drew closer to the city, Blade saw its structure expanding, loosening. It was preparing to go to ground.
“Goodbye, attack ship,” it said, and over the city broke into its individual components and dropped. Some disappeared into structures all across the city, but even in them they worked their way down. Others went straight down into the storm drains.
“And hello,” Blade sent, bristling like a pine cone and then detaching the radically redesigned splinter missiles that made up the entirety of its hull. Blade, swarm AI, followed the Clade down.
ORLIK
As the last of the weapons platforms faded from existence, Orlik noted the com request from Diana. Thinking, What now? he opened the link.
“Time for you to be updated,” she said perfunctorily. “I now know why the Client is here—I have been talking to it.”
“That would be interesting to know,” said Orlik tightly.
“Are you prepared to accept a data package from me?”
“Sprag?” Orlik enquired, cutting Diana out of the exchange. “Tactically inadvisable,” Sprag replied. “Circumstances have changed drastically and they want to send you a data package . . .”
Sprag was, he realized, behaving like the prador AI she claimed to be, with that kind of paranoia.
“We’ll accept it and route it to secure storage for scanning,” he stated. “You’re the boss,” said Sprag.
“Send it and I’ll get back to you,” he said to Windermere.
While waiting for Sprag to check out the package, he watched the ship out there. As it cleared the accretion disc, his scanners revealed much activity on its hull and inside. It had begun to sacrifice portions of itself in an orderly manner. Small internal detonations blew away wedges of its structure. Once they fell clear, the milky orange beam of a particle weapon lanced out and vaporized them. Mobile hot spots inside sometimes appeared on the hull as travelling, glowing veins. Structural shifts revealed themselves on the outside too, when whole sections of hull twisted in place or shifted over to a new position. Other areas of hull flowed to close up impact strikes. As a whole, the ship appeared to be clearing out dead or diseased tissue—healing itself.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think the platform strike against it kicked it into higher gear,” replied Sprag. “It’s almost as if it wasn’t quite awake, and now it is.”
“Not so good.”
“No . . . and I have just looked at the data package Diana sent to you. I suggest you look at it at once.”
Orlik pondered his own prador paranoia. This might well be the opportunity Sprag was waiting for . . . if she was still a shill for Earth Central. But he no longer believed that. He no longer felt that. What point was there to him if it wasn’t instinct? Without the need for that organic, evolved response, ships might as well be controlled by AIs only.
“Okay, send it to me.”
It arrived via his interface just a second later, but it took him some time to absorb its content. So, that was no Jain ship but one of the Species—the Species whose civilization his own kind had tried to annihilate. The sensible thing to do, from the prador point of view, would be to eliminate the threat. Certainly, Diana Windermere knew all this, and that his response might not be a good one. So why had she sent him the package? He decided to ask.
“You must realize what the logical prador response should be to this,” he said.
“Oh, I understand, but you’re not quite a normal prador, are you?”
“So what do you expect my response to be?”
“I expect you to note how that ship mauled the weapons platforms. I expect you to look at the Species from your new perspective, and in relation to the data in that package. The Wheel has, all along, compelled us to attack that ship. Why? Because it is an enemy of the Jain—we’ve been dragged into a war that’s millions of years past its sell-by date. But consider this: the fact that the Wheel tried to manipul
ate us into attacking that ship means the Species is not inherently hostile—it would not initiate hostilities on its own, but only respond to them.”
“But hostilities have been initiated,” said Orlik.
“By the weapons platforms, which have been withdrawn. Do you see that ship firing on us now?” She paused for a moment, then added, “And do you see what it is doing?”
The data had just arrived from Sprag. Yes, the ship was still rebuilding itself but it had changed course. It had turned onto the best route possible to take it away from the fleets, while not returning to the accretion disc.
“Have you managed communication with it yet?” Orlik asked.
“I have not.”
“What do you suggest?”
“My readings indicate that the ship is presently ejecting and destroying the Jain infestation it has aboard. This was either acquired in the disc when it left the U-space blister, or before during some battle. It has only responded to our hostility. It doesn’t want a fight. I suggest we leave it to the Client who, incidentally, did not destroy you when she could have.”
It was a hard decision and Orlik knew he needed instructions. He temporarily blocked the link to Diana and opened another he had not seen fit to use until now. A delay ensued. U-space effects, time dilation, or maybe the king was busy. Then, “I am assessing.”
