by Neal Asher
‘How may I help you?’ asked the ship AI
‘Take us out,’ she replied. ‘I need to take some direct ionization readings.’
Opening herself into the ship’s systems she observed the umbilicals detaching like flaccid worms. Auto-handlers had loaded the last few items requested only minutes ago. Clamps detached and the slight spin of the station cast the ship adrift. Now clear of it, she observed the Cassius Station in all its might. Ovoid and gigantic, the thing was 200 miles from top to bottom and 150 miles wide, yet in itself it was but a single component that would be later fitted into the Dyson sphere, along with millions like it. Orlandine focused on the equator while selecting certain crucial programs from her files – only slightly different from those she had used to kill Shoala’s systems. The detonation lay only three minutes away. To delay until after that would be to forewarn this ship’s AI.
‘Heliotrope, here are the parameters of a search, and related data.’ She sent the programs to the AI, and trustingly it accepted them without checking. As the Jain programs isolated the AI and began to take it apart, she watched the station. Precisely on time a brief speck of light appeared on its huge surface. But the mere fact that she saw it without magnification, from this distance on a structure so massive, meant a few thousand cubic yards of the station had been vaporized along with Shoala’s interface sphere, and his corpse. After a moment she picked up signals meant for her, and ignored them while delving into the complexities of entering U-space. The ship AI died just as the ship it controlled dropped out of existence.
With a feeling of extreme déjà vu Thorn walked out along the platform, but that sensation passed as he gazed out across the roiling sea. When Skellor had come here, and for ten shillings picked up his Jain node at a market stall, there had been no sea here at all, but now the terra-forming process was much advanced. The market now absent, large structures had arisen on what must now be described as a pier. A big ship lay magnetically moored to it, and a crane lowered large cargo containers into its hold.
‘Why a ship?’ he asked.
‘That was Aelvor’s choice,’ replied Jack via Thorn’s comlink. ‘For energy efficiency. The runcible is downside so requires the main output of present fusion reactors, thus for planetary transport he is using less energy-profligate means. The output from the reactor aboard that ship would only be enough to lift an AG transport one tenth the size.’
‘Then why not bring in more reactors?’
‘Economics. Aelvor is working within a budget.’
Economics.
Thorn tasted the word. When you worked for ECS it was one you knew about, but also knew only applied to others. The formulae that AIs employed to control financial systems he knew to be as esoteric as those they used to control runcibles. He understood that the profit margins of all concerns were limited by those formulae, as were their rate of expansion and resource demand. This last applied here, too, for Aelvor, the haiman overseeing the terraforming of this place, had been allocated limited resources and was left to assign them as he saw fit. Here then was an attempt to allow a terraformer to create something not quite so homogeneous as many worlds in the Polity. This world was also unusual in having a haiman in charge – the Osterland AI’s power being limited solely to the runcibles and their infrastructure. He wondered how the AI itself felt about that.
Thorn continued along the edge of the pier until he was closer to the ship. Studying one of the containers he recognized on its side the logo of a private biofact corporation. The vessel, he realized, was a seeding ship, and its cargo would probably be released only at specified locations in the sea. Doubtless each container held slow-release canisters of plankton and seaweed spores, as well as fish, crustacean and mollusc eggs, and maybe larger organisms. By the foamy look of the waves and some staining back on the rocky shore, he guessed algae were already taking hold.
‘Okay, we’re on,’ announced Jack.
‘About time too. Why the delay?’
‘Aelvor is high-security status, so has already been alerted to the threat Jain tech represents. He was rather miffed that people, such as yourself, who had come in contact with it, were here on his planet, then extremely reluctant to allow any alien organisms of another kind, draconic in nature, down on the surface. I understand his point of view.’
‘What brought him around?’
‘Osterland and myself pointed out how a woman once sold Jain tech from a stall on that very pier, but what really made him become more cooperative was a promise often per cent extra on his resource allocation should we leave any mess he needed to clear up. I rather think he would now like us to have a small war down here.’
Thorn turned from the rail to head back towards the city which, over the years, had spread across the rocky landscape. ‘What information do we have?’
‘Her name is Jane von Hellsdorf. She has been through adjustment after conviction for selling faulty Sensic augs and blackmarket memcords of “victim-oriented sexual acts, murder and necrophilia”.’
‘Nice,’ commented Thorn.
‘Yes, and that she ended up selling the same stuff here indicates her adjustment did not stick. Probably due to some organic problem.’
‘Yeah, but where the hell is she now?’
‘We have her covered. Aelvor has kept her located for us from the moment he received our message. She is out in the Oaks, in a recently constructed village called Oakwood. It occurs to me that Aelvor could use more imagination in naming places around here.’
‘Get on with it, Jack.’ Thorn now reached the land-side end of the pier. A promenade stretched to his left and right, along which ertsatz Victorian cast-iron street lamps emitted a muted glow in the growing overcast. From this thoroughfare, roads led inland at regular intervals between blocks of four-storey buildings constructed from the local stone, which were roofed with solar tiles, and from which bulged hemispherical chainglass windows like amphibian eyes. Lights glowed warmly inside many of these seafront residences, and Thorn wondered what their inhabitants were expecting of their new world.
‘I have sent coordinates to your palm-com. Scar and his people are down now, and have set up a perimeter. The situation is under control.’
Thorn did not bother to observe that he had heard that one before. He took out his palm-com and flipped it open. It obligingly displayed a map of the town indicating the locations of both himself and his aircar. Droplets of rain were smearing its screen as he closed the device and headed for the nearest narrow street.
Sliding garage doors occurred regularly along the bases of the tall buildings, no doubt leading down to basement parking garages for ground vehicles. Hydro-cars probably – another energy saving on Aelvor’s part. As it began to rain more heavily Thorn pulled up the hood of his envirosuit. The streets were cobbled – very retro and possibly a draw for runcible tourists. Following the course he had memorized, Thorn took a left, a right, then came out into an open arcade around a wide pool, at the centre of which a fountain gushed. Peering into the pool he observed glittering rainbow weed between whose strands swam shoals of small blue flatfish. The shopfronts here possessed those same bulbous chainglass bay windows. A man with a wide fedora and a leashed Dobermann strode past. He raised his hat to Thorn and smiled.
As the dog walker disappeared into a side street, Thorn finally reached his aircar: a replica mini AGC parked on the cobbles. Detecting his presence, the car popped open its door, and he strode over to duck inside. The cramped vehicle smelt of fish. When he first obtained it he had wondered if so small a vehicle was a result of Aelvor’s energy savings or just spite. Now, after seeing more of this town, he thought otherwise. The haiman seemed to have a complete disregard for standardization, as demonstrated by his lack of ergonomic town planning. Thorn rather liked the result.
The mini took off with a lurch and was soon cruising a hundred yards above even the highest buildings. Thorn floored the accelerator and it took off on two fusion burners. To his left the combined runcible f
acility and spaceport looked like some industrial complex close to swamping an ancient town – yet they had been established before the town. Below, once the car passed beyond the final buildings, rose grassy and rocky mountainsides scattered with gnarled trees. Over the peak of this mountain, the terrain dropped away to a river valley. Beyond that lay a forest canopy.
‘He likes oaks, does Aelvor,’ Thorn observed.
‘Evidently,’ came Jack’s reply.
‘Is Scar linked into com?’
‘He is – voice connect.’
That meant Thorn need only first speak the dracoman’s name and the comlink would open to him. ‘Scar, what’s your situation?’
‘Wet,’ came the dracoman’s brief reply.
‘A little more detail would be helpful.’
‘We have surrounded the village and are now allowing no one to enter or leave. One resident has spotted us and shown signs of emotional disturbance.’
‘Okay, just hold your perimeter there.’ He paused. ‘Jack, how does Aelvor know her location?’
‘Through a locator implant she received during her adjustment,’ Jack replied. ‘Now available through your palm-com.’
Thorn peered at the device open on the seat beside him. It showed the map he was currently referring to, with dots on it to indicate his car and Oakwood. He tapped the second dot with his fingertip. A frame enclosed it, expanding to fill the screen with a map of the small village and the precise location of Jane von Hellsdorf within it. Soon he was flying above a gravel road, along which trundled a large auto harvester loaded with oak trunks. The next moment he planed over the village itself: a small conglomeration of timber-built chalets. As he landed on its central green, Thorn scanned around for a moment before picking up the palm-com. He turned the device until the map positionally aligned, then peered through a side window at a chalet located on the village edge.
‘Scar, close in your perimeter now and bring yourself and eight of your boys in. You have the target?’ he asked.
‘I have the target.’
‘We want her alive, Scar – that’s paramount – so just use stunners, and only if necessary.’
He reached behind to take up a short pulse-rifle, then stepped outside the vehicle. The weapon he held fired pulses of ionized gas and possessed a sliding scale, so could deliver anything from a mild shock to a smouldering hole. He chose the knockout setting, at its lowest level, preferring not to use the weapon at all. When he next looked up, he could see dracomen moving in through the drizzle.
‘Scar, I’ll take the front door.’
Scar merely showed his teeth, then he and the other dracomen moved in around the chalet.
As he reached the door, Thorn paused for a moment, about to reset his weapon to blow out the lock. Then he grimaced to himself and tried the handle. Swiftly opening the door he stepped inside and quickly to one side, levelling his rifle at the one figure visible. But Jane von Hellsdorf wasn’t going to put up a fight. She sat in an oak rocking-chair, drooling and rolling her eyes. Thorn wondered if the crappy Sensic aug fitted on the side of her head had left anything inside worth salvaging.
Chaline felt tired after a long shift spent on running runcible alignment checks. Having stripped off her overalls when the alert came through her gridlink, she quickly pulled them back on. She had begun making queries through her link just as Villaeus burst the door open.
‘Come on,’ he gestured.
‘Graham said something about intruders. What—?’
‘No time,’ the Sparkind trooper interrupted. ‘We go now.’
Chaline instinctively glanced around at her belongings, but they were only material things – the most important stuff she stored in her gridlink. And if the likes of Villaeus said, ‘No time,’ he meant it.
As she stepped through the door, he caught her arm and dragged her to one side, behind the cover of two other troopers – Judith and Smith – who were staring down the sights of their pulse-rifles towards the end of the corridor. Chaline noted that they also carried proton weapons slung at their sides, ready to be snatched up. Their initial choice of pulse-rifles was obviously to prevent inflicting too much damage, since the base was merely an inflated dome layered with resin-bonded regolith, and all the interior walls consisted of expanded plasgel which, though enough to block sound and create the illusion of privacy, would hardly stop a determined punch.
‘Back to the chamber.’ Villaeus gave her a shove. ‘U-space signatures all over the base – we’ve got company.’
Chaline hesitantly began moving, glancing nervously behind as the three Sparkind kept up with her. Then she heard pulse-rifle fire, yells echoing and a tearing sound. At that moment Villaeus obviously received directions over com, as he turned suddenly to face down the corridor. Chaline tuned in on the military frequency of Sparkind augs. She could not broadcast that way, but she could listen.
SK5: Confirmed hostile – two civs down in North Section.
SK1: Recoverable?
SK12: In a bucket maybe.
SK11: PRs kill ineffective, but do delay the fuckers, going over to PF.
SK1: Contact, hundred yards, three o’clock on corridor’s twelve.
SK1 was Villaeus himself. Chaline picked up her pace, admiring the way the three others kept themselves focused down the sights of their weapons while moving smoothly backwards. There came a whooshing roar she recognized as a proton weapon firing. A subprogram in her gridlink offered up the news that PR stood for pulse-rifle and PF for proton fire – a more correct definition than the old, and now dying-out, misnomer ‘APW’, since these weapons fired field-accelerated protons not ‘antiphotons’.
SK2: Go PF?
SK1: Civs that way . . . twenty yards, pick it up.
Villaeus turned to her urgently. ‘Run!’
At that moment, a series of swordlike spikes stabbed through the right-hand wall of the corridor, then the wall itself caved in and something monstrous avalanched through. A giant silvery-grey beetle head grazed the ceiling, emerging above a divided thorax. The creature came down with a clattering crash, multiple jointed limbs starring out from its body to tear into the walls, ceiling and floor. Once centrally located, it began pulling itself along the corridor towards them. The three troops opened fire, but it moved horribly fast – seeming almost designed for manoeuvring in these corridors. In the midst of her shock, Chaline recognized distinct similarities between this creature and a manufactured beast whose remains she had seen on the planet Samarkand.
SK1: Concentrate fire on the head.
The shots burned holes through the monster, and smoke came billowing out from it. It slowed briefly, but nubs like globules of mercury filled up the cavities, quickly skinning over, and then it came on as before.
SK2:We’ve got another—
The stretch of wall between Villaeus and his two comrades burst open, and a second creature surged through.
SK1: Fucking PF!
Villaeus rose off the floor, one of the second beast’s limbs tightening around his body like a hawser. He gripped his pulse-rifle in one hand, constantly firing into his attacker’s hideous face. One of his legs suddenly detached at the knee, and in a blurred movement Chaline saw the boot stripped away, cloth, skin, muscles, lengths of tendon, bloody individual footbones taken in different directions.
‘I said run!’ Villaeus screamed. One side of his face had now disappeared, then his right arm and pulse-rifle was jerked from his body. The creature took both rifle and arm apart with equal precision and alacrity. With his left hand the trooper groped desperately for something at his belt. Breaking out of horrified fugue, Chaline turned away as, beyond the monster, purple fire flared again and again, and the roar of proton fire rose and fell. She rounded a corner – to her left more explosions. Then the wall blew in ahead of her and she thought for a moment it was all over, but Judith and Smith rolled neatly through and came quickly upright.
‘Keep moving!’ Judith.
SK1: Detonating now.
The explosion from behind blew Chaline down on her face. Before she could get up, the other two dragged her upright and hurried her on. A sulphurous stink permeated the air, which probably meant a dome breach and the outside atmosphere was leaking in. Time to go.
End it.
Cormac opened his eyes. His heart pounded and he shook with an adrenaline rush. He supposed it no wonder that people once became addicted to such memcordings. You could experience anything: sex of any kind, the actual act of murder lifted from the minds of killers sentenced to death, even the moment of death itself should you so wish. And all without physical danger – though of course some subsequently went mad. Now addiction was simply a matter of choice, for available technologies could root out most of its causes.
‘Chaline’s observation was apposite,’ he observed. ‘It was quite similar to the creature guarding the tunnel down to the Maker’s escape pod on Samarkand. Like that one too, these creatures were designed for just one purpose: to go through that base just as fast as possible and acquire everything there.’
‘One notable difference,’ said Asselis Mika, gazing at him steadily. ‘These ones could heal themselves as fast as those calloraptors Skellor made. That means they were a direct product of Jain technology. The one on Samarkand, I would say was the result of technology learnt at one stage removed from Jain tech – nowhere near as robust, nor ultimately as treacherous.’
Cormac glanced around at her. Her ginger hair was even longer than when he last saw her, and was now tied back so her elfin face seemed thinner. She wore skintight leggings and sandals, a loose blue blouse. But though she had obviously taken some trouble with her appearance, she looked tired, and the blush marks below her ears were a sure sign of someone who spent too much time in full-immersion VR.
