by Neal Asher
“What the hell is this?” spat Blade.
Trike realized some of what he was absorbing was bleeding over the link. Sampling it, Blade had snapped away like someone tasting poison. Trike cut the spill-over.
“You want this to work, don’t you?” he asked, obscurely.
Blade did not reply. Delving into the data and methods of control, Trike applied what he discovered to himself, through the virus and through the Jain tech woven within his body. Certainly he could now grow, very rapidly, with powerful physical weapons inside him. But he didn’t need those. What he did need, however, were the tools for mind- on-mind conflict, and he found them. Even as he incorporated them, he understood their corollary: aggression was implicit and amplified. All conflict had to reach resolution. Had Angel been before him, he would have killed him without compunction. This also raised another spectre: was his madness and anger a result of being infected with the Spatterjay virus or somehow rooted in his humanity too?
The tunnel veered round to the right. Further along, beyond the three Clade, more of Blade’s units were approaching. Blade was also blocking other points of escape. But in one respect, the set-up of this trap had been a bad thing. It upset a balance throughout the tunnels in favour of the Clade, and Blade had just lost another three components of its scattered being. The fighting in the tunnels was getting hotter and hotter.
Round the corner, the three Clade units immediately chose to attack. Trike, his thinking accelerating, tried to reason why. The Clade had to be aware by now that Trike was no pushover—that just as he had been on the surface, he was a more effective Clade killer than one of Blade’s units, and these units stood no chance against him. Then he understood the thinking of a swarm AI. Sacrificing its members, if to some useful purpose, was acceptable. The swarm was learning Blade, but Trike was a new element it had not grasped yet. It was prepared to sacrifice units to understand him. Or, Trike admitted to himself, it was some form of lunatic curiosity on the part of the Clade.
The Blade unit opened fire, hitting two of the Clade. One of them took strikes along its body and smacked into the ceiling, rucking up splinters of stone. The other one’s head fragmented and it sailed on past—a mindless mechanism. The third unit abruptly halted, its drive blasting up a spray of water, coiled like a comma and spat a length of its tail forwards.
“This is new,” commented Blade over their link.
The tail hit the Blade unit and stuck in place, pouring out steam, followed by smoke as it heated up. A high penetrating whine issued,and the tail section finally exploded, blowing the Blade unit sideways. The Clade unit in the ceiling folded out of the groove it had made and dropped, hitting the water as if to conceal itself. But Trike saw it spearing in towards his legs. He snapped his arm down, like a heron after a trout, closed his hand around the middle of the thing’s body and heaved it up. Meanwhile, the Blade unit was burning. Analysis: that tail section had been converted into an explosive which blew fragments of itself into Blade’s armour. Those pieces were an organo-metal enzyme eating its way through the armour.
The tail-less Clade looped over it and zeroed in on Trike too. It went for his face, tentacles extended like hands on truncated arms. Perfect, he thought. Instead of reaching up to grab it, he waited until it drew close, then snapped his head forwards and bit down, jaws closing on its head. The one he held was stabbing him with its tail and causing damage, but only as much as a blunt axe on seasoned oak. The one caught in his mouth began to beat him around his head with the remainder of its tail. He knew he could crush it in his jaws and spit it out, dead, as well as smash the other one against the wall till it started shitting its components. But no—this was not why he was here. Glancing at the Blade unit, he saw it drop into the water, bleeding an orange chemical sludge as it tried to neutralize the enzyme. Not his concern.
Trike probed with his tongue, feeling out the shape of the head clamped in his mouth. He found one eye and licked over its shifting plates of metal, whose intermolecular bonds the unit artificially weakened to expand them like aerogels. Even as he touched these, the Clade began tightening those bonds. Too late. He stabbed his tongue in, hard, like a metal punch through the layered petals of a rose bud. Once past the eye, he extruded masses of nano-fibres and found a polished sphere of AI crystal in the centre of the skull. As he began to make connections, he thought it interesting how the Clade, a swarm AI made difficult to destroy by the spread of its mind over numerous units, had not decided to distribute the individual crystal “brains” of the units themselves. A moment later he realized why: the more widely the unit’s mind was distributed inside it, the more possible points of access it made. This would massively increase the danger of precisely the kind of breach he was making.
Trike located its self-destruct within the first few microseconds. It was a package stuck to the crystal sphere which generated an infrasound pulse of exactly the correct frequency to turn the crystal to dust. He deactivated it with braided fibres of collimated diamond, stabbing these through to kill it, but in the process reading it too.
Meanwhile, drilling into the crystal, he began downloading fragments of code, which grew larger and larger moment to moment. He also input the worms and phages, the viral programs like auto-surgeons or ever-hungry mouths. Codes were first—the constantly shifting codes that governed the intercommunication of the Clade’s mind. Internally, he built a model of this particular unit, missing nothing. Virtual fibres speared out and connected to other units, and the virtual hooks ensured it could not disconnect him. His integration was local, for this swarm had diverged from the Clade entire. After a moment, sure he was in, he crunched and spat out the unit. Now he understood the Clade. And he knew it to be truly insane, because he recognized himself.
Thoughts, aims and intentions were impulses generated randomly amidst its units and taken up by the whole. It might think that blowing up a sun would be interesting, but then grow bored and find greater fascination in counting the grains of sand on a beach . . . or counting the same grain again and again and again. Though this swarm was running different com codes and partially disconnected from the Clade entire, it did receive telemetry updates. He understood from this that it delighted in chaos and order equally. In the Graveyard, a swarm of eight hundred units was fomenting war between two factions of humans aboard a large space station. Meanwhile, a few light years away from there, three hundred of them were building a structure out of molybdenite crystals that had been free-floating in vacuum. It had no use—it was just neat. The proposition the Wheel had presented to the Clade entire had fascinated it, and so it assigned a large portion of itself to that end. Trike could only suppose that the Wheel had penetrated this particular swarm of the Clade as he had, else it would not have carried through the Wheel’s plans to their conclusion.
“You are nothing,” he said.
It became aware of him and formed a virtuality in which to communicate, where trees floated upside down in a pink sky wrapped in a ring of rock. He allowed himself to be drawn in. The Clade presented itself as a pink axolotl by his feet. He put his foot on it and crushed it. Giggling, the virtuality retreated. He realized then that madness was its choice and that it could also decide to be sane. And it sometimes did, if the democracy of its mind allowed it. The reflections in himself were painful. He recognized that he had made his choice too, but was unsure if he had the mental integrity to carry it through.
“The Clade here is no more,” he said to Blade. “The rest of it you will find at these locations.” He showed Blade the places: the crystals, the fomenting war, the moon wrapped in weird, convoluted factories that manufactured Clade units in its core. The other places, the stray lone units, the ones that thought they were men, or Golem, or thought not at all. Then he sent the signal that turned hundreds of AI crystal spheres to dust. Focusing on what was in front of him, he saw the unit he held issue a puff of dust from the rear of its skull and slump. He dropped it into the current.
18
O
ne could believe that, unlike the past, the prador war would not fade from human memory. Humans have lifespans that are now mostly a matter of choice rather than biology. So many who fought and lost friends are still around. However, humans bury old memories under new, and the weight of the passing centuries makes the war vague to them. Also, memory is a matter of choice now too, and many of those whose experiences were traumatic have had the worst of it edited from their minds. The Als, by contrast, never forget or choose to forget. Our AI rulers always “learn the lessons of history” and can in fact recall them in eidetic detail. They also understand that the prador were not an enemy once under the influence of some toxic ideology. It is their biological nature to be aggressive and xenophobic, and that is not something that can pass away in a generation. Their medical technology and gerontology is not at the level of the Polity because that requires a degree of cooperation and submission to physical examination by their fellows which they find abhorrent. However, they are still long-lived, and many of those who fought are still alive. Therefore the AIs perpetually monitor the Prador Kingdom. Weapons developed there will always have a counter in the Polity. The stock of Polity warships is always high. And, it is certain, interventions are often made. This is just plain good sense. Because even if the prador do not become warlike again, we may yet encounter another race like them.
—from Quince Guide, compiled by humans
ORLIK
Orlik had apparently accepted the necessity for the complete destruction of the remaining eighty ships. But Diana knew there would always be a big question mark over what had happened here. And she knew that King Oberon would be thinking very deeply on the matter.
“They will come to the conclusion that Clade units penetrated those ships,” said Hogue out loud.
“It’s only logical,” agreed Seckurg, adding, “First.”
“Perhaps I should have said that to them,” said Diana, “rather than suggesting a Jain-tech infection aboard.”
“Nah, better to let them work it out and feel clever,” said Jabro. “They’ll then assume that the Clade got aboard those ships before they came here.” “That may well be the case,” said Seckurg. “Yes, the Clade is quite capable of discovering the loophole in the bounce gates, but your assumption that it used them to break on board may not be correct. The Clade would have needed to use a runcible gate of some kind to access those gates. Therefore the units had to be already aboard one of their ships or . . . maybe one of ours.”
“You are correct,” said Hogue abruptly.
“About what?” asked Seckurg.
“Confirmation has just been made,” said the AI. “Data have become available to me. When the legate Angel visited his base of operations before departing to the Cyberat world, a reaver was present, which departed before Angel. It seems likely Clade units were aboard and that this reaver joined Orlik’s fleet before it came here.”
Nobody said anything and Diana felt herself first grow cold and then angry. This was something she should have known about and it was certainly something Earth Central had been aware of. The ECS agent, Captain Cog, had transmitted telemetry and reports whenever he could. The only time he had gone silent was under the USER disruption around Cyberat. So what was the game here? She realized it must still be the old one. When the fleets had been sent here it was because Orlandine had been, ostensibly, murdered. No one knew anything of U-space blisters and hidden ships. “A police action,” said Jabro slowly. “Another sharp reminder.”
He was thinking along the same lines as her.
Earth Central had probably decided that the objective of the Wheel, Angel and the Clade had been to put the Kingdom and the Polity at each other’s throats. It would have surmised the purpose of the reaver in that.
Perhaps even that Clade units were aboard and aimed to seize control of more prador ships and have them fire on Polity ships. It had not prevented this nor warned Diana. She could only assume that the intention, just as Jabro said, had been to allow a limited military action to go ahead. It had been certain at that point that her fleet would have won. The arrival of the Kinghammer had screwed those calculations. She winced. It was like the war. Though it would have been a pyrrhic victory thereafter, still the prador would have received a bloodied nose and again been reminded of Polity military supremacy. Also production supremacy. The king would have lost a substantial portion of his forces, while the Polity only a small percentage of its many warships.
“Like training an animal not to shit on the floor,” Jabro added.
Exactly.
Diana tried to dismiss all this from her thinking. She had to deal with the now, not the past. First she viewed telemetry from the Polity fleet, noting that the prador ships were moving out of formation. It seemed the alliance had ended and she gave a tight, bitter smile at that. She then turned her attention to casualties and damage.
The ships were scattered over a wide swathe of vacuum. Wreckage tumbled between but also spread in a cloud away from the fleets. Those ships that had been hit by the disruptor beams had completely fragmented, with nothing left larger than the occasional structural beam or hull plate. Collision lasers flashed all across, vaporizing fast-moving chunks that might cause damage, and it seemed as if all the ships were in the midst of a thunderstorm. Occasional detonations occurred from free-floating and ruined munitions. Damage was still occurring out there, and loss of life.
“A salutary reminder of the results of warfare,” said a voice.
She had been aware of a presence moving in close to her, as close as Hogue. The comlink to Earth Central had always been open to transmit telemetry and other fleet data, but that AI had remained remote for some time. Now it seemed to be breathing in her ear.
“You knew about the Clade,” she said.
“If one has the capacity, one must focus both on detail and upon the big picture. This is something Orlandine has been receiving some painful lessons in, and which, I was sure, you had learned long ago.”
“Oh, I learned,” replied Diana. “But that does not mean I am comfortable with the knowledge.”
“Neither am I, but my discomfort is ameliorated by my perfect recall of what happened during the war, as well as my predictions, whose accuracy can of course be questioned, of what will happen if such a war occurs again.”
“Interesting justification,” Diana said flatly.
“Look out there and multiply it by many orders of magnitude. Include worlds denuded of life and the deaths of many billions of humans and prador,” said EC.
Larger wrecks were visible where ships had not been wholly destroyed by the U-space weapon the Species ship had deployed. She watched a Polity dreadnought turning end over end as it fell away from the fleet, hollowed by fire and still burning inside. Checking other views, she saw hold doors open on her own ship, the Cable Hogue, and extra-vehicular activity units shooting out. The things were like giant crabs and resembled the armoured prador out there in vacuum—some either dead or without the motive power of their suits. Others headed under chemical drives to the prador ships that would take them in. Her EVA units were on their way to collect up survivors: AIs, Golem, drones and humans who had managed to eject from their ships or were blown clear. The artificial intelligences were secondary to the suited humans, because their survival time was measured in centuries, whereas the humans, depending on the nature of their suits, had a more limited life span. She watched one EVA unit in pursuit of a heavily armoured human soldier who was dropping back towards the accretion disc. The front of his suit was open and his ruptured intestines spread like tentacles.
“Understand that the king of the prador will only go to war with us if he has some chance of victory,” EC continued. “It is my job to ensure he is aware he has no chance, and to perpetually remind him.”
“I understand this. I don’t like it but I understand.” She felt calm and cold now. Of course she understood—she wouldn’t have been allowed to captain such a massive engine of destruction as the Cable Hogue
if she did not. It was all as surgical as warfare, and the prevention of warfare, could be. The prador inclination towards battle was an abscess that periodically had to be drained. The prador, just as Jabro had said, needed to be trained not to shit on the floor. She also wondered, sometimes, if the present king of the prador was complicit in all this. He and his mutated family seemed more concerned about the advancement of the Kingdom and were fighting their own battles against the xenophobia and self-destructive impulses of the bulk of normal prador kind.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Orlandine is alive and reaffirming her grip on the reins of power here,” said EC. “You will remain while the prador fleet remains too, and will only leave when she requests that you both leave.”
“That I assumed . . . but there’s something else, isn’t there?”
“There is the Client and there are anomalies. I assume you are aware of these?”
“I am.” Diana grimaced. “If the sole aim of the Wheel was to have us destroy that Species ship, why did it hold those two hundred Clade- controlled prador dreadnoughts in reserve? I must suppose that those ships had another purpose and were only used when the bombardment by the platforms failed. The only other purpose I can presently think of is to put prador and Polity at each other’s throats. If so, why?”
“That is my conjecture too,” EC replied.
“And the Client?”
“Very powerful.”
“It would take all our firepower,” Diana stated.
“So is not at present feasible.”
“Why?”
“Because you would need to move your fleet to the Jaskoran system, which is inadvisable at this time.” EC paused for a moment, as if waiting for something, then growing impatient, said, “I will withdraw—you are there because I wanted someone on the scene whom I trust to make the correct decisions. You now need to take a close look at the accretion disc.” Earth Central blinked out of her consciousness with a sound like a glass stem snapping.
