by Neal Asher
Diana nodded slowly to herself. These were not the actions of something intent on escape. It had destroyed the watchers with methodical precision and left the easy target until last, as if it wanted to take its time, play with its weapons and relish their effect. Focusing her attention on that great mass of cloud, she could see it was now very definitely on the move around the object, or vessel, at its centre. The cloud began flowering, stretching out tendrils that scanning from the Hogue’s arrays showed consisted wholly of Jain-tech objects. It reached like some titanic, clawed hand, out and out, towards her, towards her fleet. At the centre, it began to clear, revealing at last what lay there.
“So, not a Species ship,” Jabro commented.
The thing was a leviathan—on the same scale as the Species ship— but of an utterly different construction. Its bulk, measuring over a thousand miles long, resembled an immense leaf-like and grotesque mantid, fashioned out of smoky quartz. It appeared to have limbs folded against its body, but they were melded there and immobile. Perhaps they were just decoration or, more alarmingly, the trace remains of the growth of this thing. From its head end, sprouting from a thin neck, jutted great black pincers capable of grasping small moons. It also seemed it had possessed an outer tegument that had decayed and split, shrinking back to reveal the underlying crystal structure. Massive clumps of organic technology clung to its underside, like copepod parasites that had fed too well, or perhaps they were its children. These alone were bigger than most of the ships of the combined fleet.
Like the shriek now dying away, this thing elicited in Diana a repulsion, a fear—something primal. None of them had said it, but it had been implicit right from when the cloud started to move and when they realized something was directing it.
“My king was right,” said Orlik.
“Really?” said Diana, next taking a steadying breath—trying to think coldly and logically about weapons and tactics in the face of this thing.
“Seems the Jain have arrived,” Orlik finished.
NEAL ASHER is a science fiction writer whose work has been nominated for both the Philip K. Dick and the British Fantasy Society awards. He has published more than fifteen novels, many set within his Polity universe, including Gridlinked, The Skinner, and Prador Moon. He divides his time between Essex and a home in Crete.
