by Neal Asher
Morgaine again: “Orlandine has just approved your mission and says we can secure the city and offer aid. I’ve dispatched more personnel— medics, autodocs and submind airfire drones for cover.”
“Feeling a bit peeved, my darling?”
“She is peremptory.”
“Used to being the boss here, I guess . . . What about her drones?”
“Rising from the facility to work in orbit.”
Complicated. Why Orlandine had decided to dispatch that kind of firepower to work up there he wasn’t sure. But then the drones had a lot of expertise and had built her two runcibles capable of shifting a black hole. As for himself, Gemmell decided he would just focus on limited objectives. An enemy was down on the surface and citizens were in hiding. Obsidian Blade was hunting down the Clade, but it could resurface and start wreaking havoc again. He must be ready to respond to that,meanwhile protecting the citizenry. He glanced back at his soldiers and allowed himself a tight smile. They were all tough, boosted veterans in motorized combat armour, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry. A hundred of them at the moment, but more on the way.
“Disaster Response?” he now asked.
“Still holding back until you clarify the situation in the city. Once you secure things above ground, and only if you think it a good idea, you can call them in. The link is in the data sphere,” Morgaine replied.
Gemmell used his gridlink again to access the ECS data sphere, ran a brief search and found the link. It provided other detail: number of medical teams available, demolition and excavating equipment, search robots—all the paraphernalia of Disaster Response, where it was located and how quickly it could be on scene. He slotted all this into his plans. He then noticed a light go out on the console—Morgaine had turned her attention to other matters.
“She’s had her nose put out of joint,” said Trantor from beside him.
“She doesn’t like losing control,” Gemmell replied.
“True.” Trantor nodded. “Even of the things she no longer has a use for.”
Gemmell grimaced because Trantor was talking about his longterm “relationship” with Morgaine. He found himself wondering what Orlandine would think of it, since according to AI net tittle-tattle, she apparently indulged in what she called human time. But then, from the data they had, it seemed Orlandine had just lost her human component. He shook his head, concentrated on the task in hand, calling up telemetry and the most recent update of the situation in the city from his gridlink.
“Two-thirds of the population has fled the city,” he stated loudly. “They are not our immediate concern, since ships and shuttles have been sent to pick them up and move them to platforms in orbit. Here . . .” He sent them all schematics of the city, highlighting various points. “We get as many people out as we can, or to those areas I’ve shown which are more distant from the storm drain system and more easily protected.” He meanwhile found a link back to what was now coming down.
The airfire drones were highly weaponized lumps of technology. He gave his instructions—they were to watch the more exposed points of access and hit the Clade if it tried to come back up into the city there.
Anywhere else, they would cause too much damage. He and his men would move the citizenry to safety, secure other points of access from below as best they could and just do their damned job.
“Our job is to protect the people,” said one from behind.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Gemmell, knowing what was coming now.
“Threat assessment on the Clade is not good,” said another. “It was highlighted by Earth Central while we were boarding.”
“No, it’s not . . .”
It was there in their augs, gridlinks and crystal minds: the cold AI calculations.
“We want it stated outright,” said Trantor, glancing at him. “About casualties.”
Gemmell grimaced.
“Okay,” he said. “Your primary aim is to destroy Clade units if they surface.”
He said no more. They all knew that meant that killing Clade units was more important than saving the lives of citizens, and if they got in the way . . . Gemmell didn’t like it but the Clade was dangerous, very dangerous, and could not be allowed to escape, whatever the cost. He felt a prickling in the back of his neck, as it only now occurred to him that Morgaine had not seen fit to mention this. Maybe because she had a CTD imploder up there with this city’s name on it.
TRIKE
The fallen bridge where prador had died fighting the Clade was no barrier to him. Trike leapt from one tilted slab of foamstone to another and soon scrambled up onto the road. He had never felt such power and strength, and knew he was travelling as fast as a ground car. But as he ran, he began to question why he was running.
His hatred of the Clade was driven by the urge for vengeance—for killing his wife—but as Angel had pointed out, she was not beyond resurrection. He had been unable to accept that. Yet he was starting to think differently. Carrying Orlandine’s backup had affected his mind in many ways. Not least of these was that he still seemed to have a connection to her, to her entire body of knowledge, as if a submind of hers had rooted inside and become part of him. This gave him her haiman outlook—her acceptance that a sentient being was not just something confined to a physical body, and that the loss of the flesh did not mean the loss of that person. He realized that now he could accept Ruth’s resurrection. So why was he running to fight the Clade when he could have her back?
He worked through it logically. The Clade unit had ripped her apart. He would have been out for vengeance even had she still been breathing and being put back together by an autodoc. The Clade was also integral to the whole shitstorm that had led him here. And then, finally, he had changed.
Trike didn’t see a way back for himself—back from what he had become. The thought of Ruth alive again, and looking at him, filled him with doubts. Could she love him now and, the thought arose like the slimy spectre of his madness, could he love her? But that was not the whole of the explanation. Again, in rushing towards the Clade he had avoided Angel. However, like so many things in life, the problem he had run away from was keeping pace with him, in this case literally.
Trike glanced round. While Cog struggled to keep up, Angel paced easily at the side of the Old Captain. Looking again at Angel, Trike found the bitter anger in response still twisted up inside him. Something about it had changed, though, for he found himself accepting it rather than fighting it.
Spires of smoke rose from the city ahead. Fires burned in fields on either side of the road and Trike glimpsed people peering at him from behind a low wall, then ducking out of sight. He supposed he wasn’t someone they would want to pass the time of day with. Huffing and grunting, Cog came up beside him.
“We . . . can bring . . . you back,” Cog managed.
Not in the slightest bit out ofbreath, Trike replied, “I’ve changed beyond anything seen, I’m still wound through with the Jain tech I carried. And my mind . . . my mind is as much Orlandine’s as my own. Are you sure?”
“Sprine,” said Cog.
Trike didn’t believe him and the new knowledge he possessed backed him up. Sprine was a poison that killed the Spatterjay virus or, in diluted form, retarded its growth. How much of him was still composed of that virus and what would stunting its growth do? Make him a little less blue or lose those spines down his side? Also, he could see a point of no immediate return—with so much of what had been human about him gone, a large die-off of the virus would also kill what remained. Perhaps by taking it at a low dose over a long period he had a chance. But, of course, it would have no effect on the Jain tech wound through him.
“Some later time,” he said, feeling this was his constant response on so many matters.
The city loomed and Trike recognized the scrapyard he and Brull had earlier debarked from. Above the city hovered a narrow grey object, lumps and protrusions down its length. Via his connection to Orlandine’s data, he recognized it as the spine o
f what Obsidian Blade had become. The attack ship had rebuilt itself for the purpose of hunting down Clade units. Its whole outer structure had turned into units themselves and had gone down into the storm drains to hunt their prey. Blade had become a kind of swarm AI, though one that possessed a queen floating above.
They entered the city and ahead, in a street choked with rubble spilled from a burning building nearby, Trike spied the grating of a storm drain. He slowed, then came to a skidding halt beside it and looked back at Cog and Angel.
“There is still time to change your mind.” Cog pointed into the sky and Trike glanced up to see a large military medship coming down. Yes, he could change his mind and take his wife to the AI surgeon aboard that ship, see her finally wake so she could look into his face. But Cog didn’t understand at all what drove him. Trike snarled and ripped up the grating, then dropped down inside. Hitting the water, he began wading, senses no longer human, ranging out to detect the greater concentrations of activity underground. A splash behind. He glanced back to see Angel following him and felt a surge of anger. He hurried ahead, trying to keep away from this unwelcome companion.
DIANA
Just for a second, Diana had not been able to believe what she was seeing. The impacts came as swarms of railgun slugs from the pra- dor slammed into those intermittent hardfields of the alien ship. Many got past the defence, jerking the thing, sparkling across its surface, some blowing glowing holes right through the ship. Particle beam strikes began cutting trenches and boiling away material. Jabro dumped an analysis across to her. The initial strike was far below what the weapons platforms had delivered, but the ship’s hardfields, despite it apparently trying to service itself, were not as effective as before. The attack was delivering more of an impact.
“Induction warfare,” said Jabro. “The prador ships are using some new format that’s knocking systems out in that ship.”
“How can they possibly have anything effective?” she asked.
“Beats me,” he replied.
“Orlik?” she demanded.
“I have told them to stop firing and am trying to penetrate their systems . . . I am having difficulty,” the prador replied.
“How do you explain this induction warfare?” she asked.
“I cannot.”
A swarm of missiles quickly pursued the first attack. She did not need Jabro’s next analysis to know that this too would be more effective than the missile attack the platforms had made. What was happening here? Diana increased mental demand through her link to Hogue and accelerated her thinking. Her perception of time slowed, as she often required when in a critical situation like this. She watched a particle beam carving a valley a quarter of a mile deep, internal explosions ripping up hot hull metal along its sides into glowing, thorny sculptures. It punched deep at the end of its run and hit something critical—a generator or energy supply of some kind that took out a hardfield. This was no lucky shot. A fast, meticulous search of the data over the last few minutes revealed similar strikes that statistically were unfeasible from a random general attack. Those two hundred prador ships knew what they were shooting at.
“Another deployment,” Jabro stated, his words seemingly long and drawn out to her in slow time.
Was this subterfuge on the part of the king of the prador? It could be that the prador fleet had been supplied with knowledge gleaned about the Species from the prador annihilation of their worlds. The king had ordered his prador to attack and destroy a potentially lethal enemy while it was vulnerable, and Orlik was lying and obfuscating to prevent Orlandine from acting.
“I will have to destroy my own ships,” said Orlik.
The rest of the prador fleet and the Kinghammer were turning on the rogue ships and preparing to fire. If they did not in a few seconds, she would know that Orlik was lying. He didn’t need to suggest doing this right now if his intention was the destruction of that ship. Also, the behaviour of Orlik and the prador up to this point did not tie in with her earlier conjecture. If destruction of the ship was his aim, then why hadn’t he thrown his fleet forwards when the weapons platforms attacked? The combination of this new induction warfare, apparent knowledge of prime targets on the ship, Orlik’s fleet and the platforms, would have destroyed the thing very quickly. So why a limited number of prador ships firing now?
Something has seized control of them.
The thought was both her own and Hogue’s at the same moment.
The Clade. The bounce gates.
“Do not destroy those ships!” she said to Orlik. “Go over to laser com!”
Her crew were looking round at her, puzzled.
A moment later, the deployment Jabro had mentioned detonated. U-com dropped out as hundreds of U-space mines detonated. And the alien ship turned to head straight towards them.
She had always known about the bounce gates, but the knowledge in her fleets here, and at Jaskor, was limited to Hogue and herself. Earth Central had introduced a fault to the technology it had allowed the prador to steal. It was a final option if things got seriously out of control. And that really meant, only to be used if the Polity ended up in all-out war with the prador. She could only suppose that the Clade had somehow managed to glean this knowledge and board a prador ship. Then via that ship, boarded others and seized control. It was also the entity’s vulnerability now. She could attack those ships via their bounce gates and, if they shut them down, use U-jump missiles against them to the same end. But should she take that step now?
No, stated Hogue in her mind.
Missiles slammed down on the alien ship—massive CTD detonations slapping it through vacuum and peeling off vast chunks of its structure. They broke away another thousand miles of its outer coil but, even so, the thing was now returning fire. Just for a second, she hoped it would be selective. But when one of those beams struck and bored through a Polity dreadnought, she knew that the Clade had won. It had initiated a situation whereby the weapons platforms would open fire on the ship, while always having a backup plan. With the departure of the platforms, it had now put that plan in motion, making two hundred ships fire on the alien vessel. And that ship saw the attack as one coming from the entire fleet. The Clade had trapped them here with U-space mines for at least an hour until their disruption stilled. They could flee on fusion, but the thing was after them now and she could not see them outrunning its beam weapons.
But why not use the two hundred in the weapons platform attack?enquired Hogue. It was rhetorical really. The two hundred were not just the Clade’s backup plan to ensure the destruction of the Species ship. They must have had some other purpose present circumstances had negated. Perhaps the aim had been to set the prador and the Polity at each other’s throats, though for the life of her she could not see why. Still, things were happening here she did not understand and she didn’t like that at all. Checking tactical, she saw how to destroy those ships easily. They were located now. She could dump CTDs through their bounce gates, while complementing that with a blast of U-jump missiles should the gates close . . .
No, Hogue repeated.
Diana allowed herself to comprehend the AI’s denial. She simply could not afford to destroy the Clade-occupied ships.
“Something else,” said Jabro.
A microsecond later, she saw five massive detonations across the fleet. Two Polity destroyers, three reavers and then the final hit: the Kinghammer. The whole ship didn’t go but the explosion tore out a quarter of its structure and sent it tumbling. Analysis: a combined gravity and U-space weapon had generated a twist within the ships, then released the energy into the real. And they didn’t know if that, and the beams, was the limit of the armament the ship possessed. She watched a reaver, flung by a blast wave, trying to stabilize and alter course. Nose-first, it collided with a Polity dreadnought. The collision looked slow, as millions of tons of armour and technology crashed and compacted—the reaver disappearing into the other, larger ship in a continuous flowering of debris and fire. Then a blast
silhouetted the dreadnought from the other side. Almost in shock, she returned her attention to the Kinghammer. It was falling out of formation, one large chunk of its hull peeling up and away.
No, Hogue had said, because the situation the Clade had caused forced an alliance, brief as it might be.
“Are you alive?” she asked.
Laser com gave an appreciable delay they did not need, as two more reavers exploded and twenty Polity attack ships came apart under beam strikes.
“Alive,” replied Orlik.
“We only have one option,” said Diana. “We must destroy that ship, or we are dead.” She sent tactical data to her own fleet, backing it up with the verbal instruction, “Open fire.”
And hell rained down on the Species ship.
COG
Cog clumped past a smoking mound of wreckage. A robot vaguely resembling a giant wolf spider, all painted in hazard stripes of orange and black, with an ECS emergency decal on its thorax, was lifting away beams and chunks of rubble. Its main body was covered like a mother spider with eggs, only these things were what troopers called stop coffins, and were commonly known as stasis cylinders. Cog peered at them, trying to remember why that was important.
Around the spider, Golem and human personnel were working. Medics were carefully pulling a woman from the rubble and sliding her onto a crash stretcher. This immediately closed its appendages to immobilize her, then injected various tubes and wires, before rising up on grav once clear of the wreckage. Cog’s gaze strayed to two more stop coffins on the ground to one side. In the far past, those would have been body bags but, since the termination of life was now a very movable feast, the apparently dead went into such coffins to prevent further tissue breakdown—holding them in a state of preservation. Cog remembered why they were significant: Ruth, Trike’s wife. He turned to go but, spotting him, two soldiers ran over.
“You’re to go to Congress Hall,” said one of them.
