by Neal Asher
“Is my husband still there?” Ruth asked behind.
Gemmell flinched a little at that and dismissed the evacuation stats from his gridlink. Ruth and Trike had twinned U-mitters in their skulls that told each the location of the other. She had provided the coordinates to which they were heading. He did not like to examine too closely why that irritated him. Or why it pleased him now that, since U-com had gone down, she had lost her connection.
“Yes, he is there,” said a silky, whispering voice. “Angel is not.”
“I thought you said Angel had reached him?” said Cog.
“I did,” said Clean. “And now I see him clearly from the ECS satellite.”
“And Angel?”
“Is not there.”
Gemmell made no comment on that, though he felt sure Clean was concealing something. He made his own search in the ECS data sphere and found the satellite Clean was probably using, since all its sensors focused on one point on the coast ahead. Clarity was good. The cams on that satellite could image objects smaller than a human fingernail. He saw then that Clean was both correct and wrong. Angel was not there, and he was.
The canyon wound through a rocky landscape, its walls gradually falling away. The river grew wider and then opened out in a shingle beach. Gemmell brought the military transport to a steady hover. He took a tight breath. This was probably going to be ugly. He turned to inspect his passengers. The crinoid forensic AI, Mobius Clean, rested behind the other two, now a balled-up mass of metal strips and white cords. Cog’s wounds had healed and he had lost the bluish tint from earlier. Gemmell’s gaze came to rest on Ruth, sitting beside the man. She met his look and he felt sure, more than ever, that his attraction to her was reciprocated.
He shook his head and returned his attention to flying. He knew the time had come for him to cut himself away from Morgaine. She would never be what he wanted, and there would never be a return to the relationship they had had before. So was he already feeling the loss and trying to replace it? Was he suffering from transference? The moment he had met Ruth, he had seen a young version of Morgaine, and it had tweaked something inside him. He now realized the similarities were only vague.
Easing the joystick down, he brought the craft in over the spit of shingle and landed. Looking over towards the boulders, he could see Trike perched on one of them like a large blue and grotesque gargoyle. He hit the door control, unstrapped and stood up. Cog reached the door as it began hinging down into a ramp, and Clean started unfolding and rising too, issuing static discharges. As Gemmell moved forwards, Ruth stepped in beside him. It seemed quite natural to place a hand on the small of her back as the ramp finally crumped on the shingle, and she didn’t object. But at the head of the ramp she froze.
“Trike,” she said, leadenly.
Only now did Gemmell realize that though she had seen recorded imagery and was up to date on all that had occurred since she ended up in a cold coffin, this was the first time she had seen him in the flesh since his transformation. She walked on down the ramp and he thought it a testament to Clean’s repairs of her body and mind that her reaction was so muted.
They all moved out across the shingle, Clean rolling ahead like a stray beach ball with Cog hurrying to catch up. Ruth did not hurry, her pace remained reluctant and slow. Trike meanwhile swung his nightmare head towards them for a moment, then back to look out to sea. He continued doing what he had been doing, which was to skim flat stones out across the swell. Gemmell followed the course of one as it hit the water with a sonic crack and continued for an improbable distance. Finally, he and Ruth came up behind the others.
“What the hell have you done?” Cog growled.
He’d seen, and now they could all see. At the foot of the rock lay the remains of Angel. Trike had torn the android apart. He had strewn the limbs here and there and folded the torso in half. A short distance away from this, the head lay on the shingle, eyes gazing sightlessly up into the tumbling sky.
“I’m sorry,” said Trike, turning to peer down at him like some prehistoric raptor considering its next meal. “It was unavoidable.”
“How the fuck was that unavoidable, boy?” Cog demanded.
Trike stared at him. “I am not a boy.”
That seemed enough to silence Cog as Trike now focused on Ruth. Gemmell felt her lock rigid beside him. “You’re alive,” he said in a dead voice.
She squeezed Gemmell’s arm, then abruptly moved forwards. “Trike and I need to talk,” she said. “Alone.”
Gemmell felt his hand drop to his sidearm and saw Trike’s head twitch towards him. He slid his hand away. Stupid to be so defensive of a woman he had just met, and really, what could he do? This Trike, who had once been a man, had, so he understood, gone head-to-head with the war drone Cutter and snapped one of its limbs. Shots from a gas-system pulse gun were hardly likely to have any effect.
“Do you think that’s safe?” asked Cog.
“You won’t hurt me, will you, my husband?” Ruth asked Trike.
He bowed his head. “Angel and I had something to resolve. It is now resolved. There will no longer be any unnecessary violence.”
“So this was necessary?” Cog asked, obviously still livid.
Ruth put a hand on his arm. “He won’t harm me.”
Gemmell watched this interplay, then turned around and walked away. Sitting on the shingle, he himself started looking for flat rocks. A moment later, Clean and Cog joined him, while Ruth climbed up onto the rock to sit beside Trike.
“What do you think they’re saying?” asked Cog, slumping down on the shingle.
“No idea,” said Gemmell.
“Clean?” asked Cog.
“Human stuff,” said the AI. “Prosaic.”
“What do we do if he decides not to go back to the medship with us?” asked Gemmell, utterly sure that was the decision he wanted Trike to make.
“That is not really viable,” said Clean. The AI moved down to the edge where waves slopped in strands of pink weed like sodden Christmas decorations.
Gemmell skimmed a stone out across the waves beside the AI. It bounced once and sank. The AI picked up a stone in one tendril and skimmed it. This stone shot out with a sonic crack like the one Trike had thrown. It somehow seemed an omen of what might occur. “Not viable” meant Trike would be coming back with them whether he wanted to or not. Gemmell looked across at the remains of Angel. Ugly, very ugly. He dipped his head and started sorting further stones.
“She’s done,” Cog noted.
Ruth climbed down from the boulder to march back across the shingle. Gemmell reached her first and saw her wiping her eyes. She halted and gazed at them all.
“He’s not coming back,” she stated. “He says he needs some time . . .” She abruptly stepped round Gemmell and headed back to the transport.
“We’ll see about that,” said Cog. With Clean rolling behind, he headed towards Trike. Gemmell was torn for a moment. He wanted to go back to the transport, then cursed himself. He had been out of human company for too long and was responding like an emotional adolescent. Hand on his sidearm, he followed the other two.
“So you’re not coming back with us,” said Cog. “Decided to sulk for a while because your excuses for anger and violence have gone and it’s time to return to your life?”
Trike swung his head round and gazed at Cog for a long moment, then pushed himself up and dropped down off the boulder. His landing scattered stones all around and he sank to his ankles. This showed just how heavy he must be, but he moved smooth and fast.
“There is no returning to my life,” he said. He gestured with one claw, first towards the remains of Angel, then towards the transport. “That’s gone now.” He pointed to himself. “And what I once was has gone too.”
“But it can be returned to you,” said Cog, indicating Clean.
“You are assuming I want it back,” said Trike.
Trike spoke with perfect rationality, Gemmell thought, but still he had felt the ne
ed to take a step back when the monstrous man came down off the rock. He looked like a monster because of the changes the Spatterjay virus had wrought in him, but Gemmell couldn’t dismiss the idea that the look reflected the inner reality. All he needed to remind himself was a glance down at Angel’s severed head.
Trike swung round to stare at Mobius Clean. “For my own good?” he enquired.
Clean crackled with energy and shot forwards, the feathery tendrils reaching out like the tentacles of a hunting squid. It struck Trike and engulfed him. A flash of power ensued and flung Gemmell flat on his back. He felt as if he had been hit in the chest with a shovel. After another concussion, chunks of smoking rock rained down. A moment later, Cog stooped over him, reaching down with one hand. Gemmell grasped it and Cog hauled him up.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
“Seems Clean underestimated him,” Cog replied, gesturing.
Gemmell studied the balled-up form of the forensic AI. Its tendrils were shifting weakly, smoke issuing from between them. He transferred his attention to Trike. The man-monster seemed undamaged but for a couple of pink whip marks across his chest. The boulder behind him lay in steaming chunks.
“Orlandine thought it best for me,” said Trike, “and made an agreement with this AI that I should be taken back.”
He was peering out to sea, towards the plume of smoke from the Sambre volcano.
“But I choose what is best for me now,” he added, turning to look at them.
“You’ve changed, boy,” said Cog.
Trike made a coughing sound that might have been laughter. He shrugged and abruptly strode down towards the sea. He waded out into the waves and just kept going, finally submerging and then gone.
DIANA
It took ten seconds for laser com to establish across the fleet.
“Seems Orlandine won’t be coming,” said Orlik.
“Seems like,” added the voice of the prador’s distinctly odd AI. Diana made an instant decision: “We go in—steady and wary.”
“No more wait and see?” enquired Orlik.
“What would your king say?”
“Yeah, okay,” the prador admitted.
Fusion drives ignited throughout the fleet. With U-space disrupted, it would take some time before they could even see what was occurring at the accretion disc. In fact, conventional sensor arrays still showed the two fleets there and would do so for two hours. They would have no new scan data on the cloud until then. It would also take them a lot longer to get there. As their acceleration increased, Diana felt something creeping up her spine. What exactly had happened?
“What have we got?” she asked. “What data before the disruption hit?
Seckurg replied, “Before it collapsed, something came out of the U-space blister. Through Hogue I’m collating scan data from all our ships—from the prador ships too.”
“Another Species ship?” she asked.
Seckurg shrugged. “Who knows?” He then added, “I have something now.”
An image came through from collated scan data. It tracked the skating U-jump of the object that had left the black hole to materialize in the outer ring of cloud. That cloud reacted to it at once, as to a stone dropped into immiscible fluids. Swirls generated all around and the whole mass seemed to be shifting. Seckurg tried to focus in on this object, but the closer he got the more blurred and insubstantial it became. There just wasn’t enough data for a clear image. Diana grimaced and turned her attention to the fleet.
The ships had arrayed themselves in a neat, close formation—with even spacing between them all. She counted them in her mind—how many were already gone. If what they found in the cloud was another Species ship, then fine—they would just let it go. But this manipulation of the cloud, of the Jain tech there, made her think otherwise.
“We have to do better this time,” said Orlik. “If battle is necessary.”
“I concur,” Diana replied, studying his ship. Already a girder structure was stretched across the great hole in it, and armoured prador and robots were there making repairs.
“Suggestions?” Orlik asked.
“We need to loosen our formation, but in groups of ships to cover for that disruptor,” she stated. Only that layered hardfield and imploder defence worked against this weapon. She sketched out a tactical map in her mind and Hogue at once firmed it up.
“This is supposing what comes next possesses such a weapon.” He added, “And uses it.”
“I would say that only the second case applies, and we must be ready.”
“Your tactical map needs some adjustment.”
Diana reviewed it and could not see what he meant. “Why?”
After a long pause Orlik reluctantly admitted, “Only reavers carry imploders, and not very many.”
“Then it is time for you to properly tie your telemetry with ours,” Diana suggested tightly. Obviously the telemetry they had been receiving had been . . . edited. Trust was still apparently an issue.
“Very well,” said Orlik.
As Hogue began to receive the corrected data, it changed the tactical map: groups of three or four ships now, with every group containing at least one Polity vessel loaded with imploders.
“Seckurg?” she enquired.
He did not need her to ask any more to know what she wanted. “I’ve analysed the induction warfare the two hundred C— . . . the two hundred prador ships were using. Transmitting to all our vessels now, and the Kinghammer.”
“You mustn’t call them crabs. Not while Orlik is listening,” said Diana.
Seckurg rolled his eyes and cracked the palm of his hand against the side of his head. He hadn’t been about to say “crabs” but “Clade.” It was a quite glaring error for a Golem to make.
“Anything else?” Diana asked, also putting the more detailed query through Hogue and thus across the fleet. Hundreds of analyses flooded in and Hogue incorporated them in battle plans. They all related to the Species ship, which was everything they had to go on—the places to hit and the weapons that would cause the most damage. How that central portion that the Client had snatched away should be the main target. A crucial analysis Diana noted was about the disruptor beam. It showed this might contain a heavy data component related to the atomic forces of varying materials. And in turn that an induction warfare strike might be able to counter it.
Diana watched as the ships began shifting position into the new formation. She kept checking telemetry as their systems linked for the disruptor defence. An hour went by, and then another. When the time disparity passed and she saw, through Cable Hogue’s EMR arrays, the fleets departing the cloud two hours in the past, she focused on it again. For a moment, nothing new revealed itself. Then a surge hit every sensor, every receiver across the emitted spectrum, and even came over U-com, despite the disruption. This shriek, this data scream reverberated in the ship all around Diana, in the air, in her, in her bones and blood. It felt utterly primal and seemed a challenge, a demand, and a question all in one.
“What the fuck is that?” she asked.
“Communication,” Seckurg replied. He was Golem but wincing like a human, his hand claw-like on the console before him.
“Warfare,” Jabro slurred. Deep into the ship’s systems, and taking the full brunt of that shriek in his mind, his eyes were glazed and his mouth hanging open. Diana quickly cut him out and he jerked, as if waking from nightmare, and shot her a grateful look.
“It is an intellectual challenge,” stated Hogue.
Diana put up mental defences and delved into the periphery of the thing where Hogue began interpreting it. The data were highly compressed and unravelling them took up masses of processing space, but she could see some of what Hogue indicated.
It consisted of a series of problems and questions: open-ended U-space formulae, unsolved mathematical equations where pi was a perfect number, questions about particle physics that devolved into Mandelbrot complexity. It required solutions for quantum impossibil
ities, probability theory paradoxes and chemical equations. And all of it was posed in a language that itself needed to be cracked: speech from something that used light, sound and huge biological molecules for communication.
“From the Jain tech?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Seckurg.
“And it’s not just fucking information,” Jabro added.
Diana had to agree: she knew it was more than that. She could separate herself from the sensory input via her interface, yet the shriek would not go away.
“It’s the thing in that cloud,” said Seckurg. “Getting transmissions from our attack ships and sensors on site now.”
Imagery came through clearly. Around the object that had appeared in the cloud, the swirling spread and then began to tighten inwards. A whole mass of the cloud, millions of miles across, started to detach from the rest. Next, from within it, came high-intensity EMR flashes, and the sensor probes they had left behind began to malfunction. A view from the sensors of an attack ship gave her a view of one of those probes. The round-ended cylinder, five feet long, flamed along its length and boiled away, quickly turning into a smear of hot vapour.
“Gamma-ray lasers,” noted Jabro.
Next, a stealthed Polity attack ship, invisible until a beam found it, glowed like hot iron. It hurtled across vacuum emitting streams of plasma as it tried to cool. A disruptor beam speared out from the cloud and nailed it. The thing shattered into black, glassy debris interlaced with spreading guts of molten metal. She tracked across sensor feeds as another attack ship went, then another. In both cases, the gamma-ray laser found them initially, then the disruptor beam took them out. After that, it seemed their attacker had found a way to find them through their chameleon- ware without lasering them first, because disruptor beams flowered from the cloud and turned the rest to expanding vapours of scrap.
“The dreadnought,” said Jabro leadenly.
That ship lay further out than the attack ships, and around it crowded surviving prador in armour, three ejected prador sanctums and excursion robots toting AI mind cases. A disruptor beam hit it on the nose and tracked down its length, like the point of a knife stripping fish scales. The ship began to break up. But it seemed that was not enough. An object hurtled out of the cloud at sub-light speed and struck it dead centre. The strange detonation seemed without explosive force. Fire flared at the point of impact, blue-white, electrical. It began eating up matter, extending around the ship to consume more and more. It then flicked out tendrils like lightning strikes, touched armoured prador and incinerated them, burned through the captain’s sanctums, hit the excursion robots and mind cases. Finally it went out, leaving a tumbling mass that looked like fractured charcoal.
