by Neal Asher
Jebel eyed the gleaming Golem lower arm and hand in the case as Urbanus snapped it closed. He pushed himself from the table, as Lindy did from hers, and they followed Urbanus to the door.
Something exploding much nearer shuddered the corridor as they entered it. He heard the sawing sounds of energy weapons of the kind that should never be used inside a space station, and wondered if they were being fired in defence or by the attackers.
"What about the others?" he asked.
"I believe seven of them made it out with the main crowd, though I cannot be sure of that," Urbanus replied.
Jebel felt a sick lurch in his stomach, but realised his reaction was muted by the antishock and analgesic drugs washing around inside him. Eighteen of his team dead, just like that, and fuck knows how many others killed in that chamber. What he wanted now was that arm attached so he could employ some lethal hardware. A proton carbine would do the trick, or maybe one of those nice compact missile launchers. He really felt the urge to make some crab paste.
Shortly they reached a drop-shaft that ran at an angle into the station body, but the irised gravity field was out—either damaged or shut down for security reasons. Urbanus peered up the shaft then turned to study Jebel.
"I will have to carry you."
"Can't you fit that arm now?"
"It would take too long."
Lindy led the way up the slanting ladder, Urbanus, with Jebel on his back, rapidly followed. As they left the shaft the depleted shock wave from an explosion below washed up past them. They traversed more corridors, one of them with its grav-plates malfunctioning, though luckily grav did not fluctuate above one standard gee. Finally they entered a wide boulevard lined with shops and residences, and a line of station forces awaited them: ceramal shields a metre thick raised up like lids on treaded vehicles, two portable flat-field generators, and behind these a row of tanks sporting missile launchers or particle cannons. The station security personnel were in full combat gear and Jebel saw that ECS forces also joined them. As he and the other two came to this line and were waved through, Jebel's aug informed him that net connection was reinstated—security procedure, then. His aug sent the cued message to Cirrella, and he set it to inform him the moment she contacted him.
* * * * *
Captain John Varence gazed out upon the firmament and knew it to be his home. He studied those points of light out there… what were they… stars… and something niggled at his memory. Something about them, some connection, but he couldn't quite…
"You are human" the other part of his consciousness reminded him. "You were born on a planet called Earth orbiting a star called Sol."
No, that couldn't be right. Wasn't being human something to do with arms, legs and rather wet messy biology? He knew something about that, though was not entirely clear how he did know. Nothing to do with him. A fusion drive moved him omniscient and omnipotent near those glittery points, and U-space engines took him underneath the vastnesses between. He gazed out on it all with sensors capturing everything in the electromagnetic spectrum, felt the vacuum on his adamantine hull and bathed in the balm of hard radiation—his body, a massive, golden lozenge spined with sensor arrays, four kilometres long, one and a half wide and one deep. The body was his own for he felt the immediacy of all sensation within and at its skin. When damaged he suffered, when repaired he was healed. It stood under his utter control, its systems at his beck—
It was moving again…
Yes…yes he had decided to travel to those coordinates for he remembered starting the fusion engines with that other part of his mind. Why go there? Though omniscient, as part of the Polity, John served its purposes. And the Polity is the…
"John, it is time—this ship is needed."
Some agreement with his other half, some contract made over a decade ago. He couldn't remember what that had all been about, though on some level there grew a tired acceptance.
U-space now, sinking into a somehow unreal continuum that came over only as grey to his multiple senses. The other made the calculations and the subtle alterations, it spoke with other entities of a similar kind, and now he could feel its steel-hard precision and something else there… sorrow.
"Why am I sad?"
"Because evolution does not prepare its products for ending, and the finality of death can never be acceptable. I too, in a sense, am a product of evolution."
"I know I am."
"John…"
Communication faded away from him, the grey he viewed reflected in his mind. Word and sensation blurred and lost meaning. Time passed. It does. A lurching twist snapped him out of reverie into the black and glitter of realspace.
"What's that?" he wondered.
"The shipyard—our destination."
The Occam Razor drew in towards the spaceborne construction site, but being too massive to dock, held off a hundred kilometres. The structure was kilometres long, scaffolds spearing out into space, structural members like iron bones. Steely dots zipping around close seemed like flies around a corpse, but the shipyard was visibly growing under their ministrations. With childlike curiosity John Varence watched vessels smaller than himself heading over, docking themselves to his body, though he only vaguely recollected allowing that. Internally he watched those wetware creatures called humans coming aboard, and wondered what purpose they might serve.
"I will be gentle," said the other.
John did not comprehend why he felt suddenly numb and that numbness seemed to be increasing. It was very strange, but he could no longer feel the fusion engines. The confusion did not last, within a minute he did not know what fusion engines were. The U-space drive was easier to forget, for he did not understand it anyway. He felt all his other senses somehow receding to a point inside his huge body—discomforts, a nagging ache and slight nausea localized there. Sensors, confined to a narrow part of the emitted spectrum between infrared and ultraviolet, came online within his larger body's bridge pod. He did not like them very much for they seemed dim and gummy, organic, even. Vacuum no longer touched his hull, rather air blew cool over febrile skin. No, he did not like this at all. Vision through his other senses remained and he forced a return to them, spying blackness again and vaguely familiar points of light.
"What are they?" he asked.
"Stars, John," his other half replied.
All faded now to that central point as a solid scaffold of AI programming slowly withdrew. John shrank down into a shrivelled body on a throne, tugged and pushed slightly as optical and electrical connections detached and folded away.
"Rest now," said the other.
John did not hear, already fading to a smaller and much stiller point in his ancient skull.
2
So they took it away, and were married next day—
Newsnet services she auged into carried the same incredible comic-book stories. That all the newsnets seemed to be carrying the same story was probably one indication of the fault. Seated in her apartment, with her travel bag at her feet, Moria felt a clammy sweat grow on her body. The images she saw were just too cartoonish, too ridiculous, so the only explanation seemed to be that her aug was somehow scrambling up the newsnets with a fantasy virtuality. The programming of such a virtuality would certainly iron out inconsistencies and give the gloss of veracity to what she saw. She needed to do something about this before her brain ended up scrambled too.
MESSAGE MODE >
RECIPIENT > AUBRON SYLAC
MESSAGE > I NEED AN APPOINTMENT AT ONCE. MY AUG IS PRESENTING A FANTASY VIRTUALITY ON NEWSNET CHANNELS.
ATTACH > NIL
After a short delay she received the reply RECIPIENT NOT FOUND which seemed to confirm that her aug was malfunctioning. But what to do? She was due on a shuttle flight back to the Trajeen runcible complex in two hours. Should she just head over to Sylac's surgery first and hope he could do something in the limited time? No, she would have to try to put this right herself.
OFFLINE NETLINK>
WARNING: SERVER STORED INFORMATION WILL BE LOST.
WARNING: COMLINK BOOT CODES—
With a grimace Moria input her instruction: OFFLINE NETLINK> CONFIRM.
It seemed, suddenly, as if a silence fell inside her head.
MEMSTORE> DELETE
CONFIRM?> YES
YOU ARE COMPLETELY SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE YOUR MEMSTORE?> YES!
REPEAT MEMSTORE DELETE X3> DELETE DELETE DELETE
CONFIRM>YES!!!
MEMSTORE DELETED.
That took care of anything nasty she might have picked up via her netlink, which was not unheard of.
DIAGNOSTIC RUN FROM PARTITION SIX, THEN REPEAT IN DESCENDING ORDER FROM EACH OTHER PARTITION.
DIAGNOSTIC RUNNING—ONE HOUR TO COMPLETION.
Moria sighed—this at least would track down any bugs in the aug, unless of course there was also something wrong with the diagnostic program. The time delay also wiped the idea of going to visit Sylac before heading for her shuttle, since he would be unable to do anything while the diagnostic ran. Now she had an hour to kill before driving to the shuttle port, which was only ten minutes away. She stood and walked into her kitchenette, drew off a cup of tea from her hot drinks dispenser—obstinately ignoring the bottle of greenwine open on the counter—then returned to her living room.
Leaning back in her chair she felt it adjust for her comfort. But comfort did not seem enough for she immediately began to miss her aug. Sipping her tea she looked around for something to occupy her mind, and her gaze fell on the remote control for the holoprojector lying on the chair's side table. Eyeing it she noticed the dust on its controls, for since Sylac installed her aug she had felt no need to use her holoprojector. Picking up the remote, and observing the imprint it left on the table, she frowned, and punched in the number for the building submind.
Hovering just a couple of metres from her face, a black hole appeared. Out of this scuttled a large rat to squat upright in midair. "Moria Salem?" it enquired, tilting its head. Why the building's submind chose to represent itself as such had always been a matter of debate among some of the residents. Moria did not think there was much to discuss—like many AIs it simply possessed a distorted sense of humour.
"My cleanbot doesn't seem to be doing its job," she told it.
The rat looked over to one side as if inspecting something, then replied, "That's because you recently transferred the controls of your apartment from this unit to your new aug, and failed to input instructions." The rat shrugged. "I could have done something about this, but we AIs much prefer it when humans try to use their own brains."
"Er… thank you," said Moria, "that's all."
The rat turned and scurried back into its hole and the hole snapped shut. Moria grimaced, since there was nothing she could do now while the diagnostic ran. Instead she punched in the number for the newsnet service she used before obtaining her aug, and recently used via her aug. Time now to find out what was really going on in the world.
The huge multi-legged monster rose out of the floor before her, claws spread and mandibles grating over her head. Black holographic saliva dribbled down upon her body.
"Aaah!" Moria flung herself from her chair and was backing away on her knees before she started to feel really foolish.
"This creature, this Vortex," the announcer was saying, "could be a different species, larger kin, or perhaps just a differently developed version of the same species as is a soldier ant in a nest of ants."
Moria tuned the rest out because she had already heard it via her aug. In the subsequent hour she learnt from simple screen links to friends and associates and by scanning all the newsnet services that no, her aug had not malfunctioned, and yes, big exoskeletal hostile aliens were attacking the Polity, and the fuckers ate people.
* * * * *
The antishock drugs and analgesics were beginning to wear off, but Jebel did not ask for any more since there were others in this medical unit with a greater need, and he wanted his mind to remain clear while auged into the station network, and while he watched through its camera eyes.
Docked to the ship like some huge golden parasite, the Prador shuttle yet showed no sign of departing, and the station AI wanted to do something about that. Through exterior cams, when the bandwidth could be spared, Jebel observed a pan-pipes missile launcher squirting its load out into space. No point tracking them, so he focused back on the shuttle. The missiles returned too fast to be seen, and the flash of the silent impacts blanked vision for a moment. Fire rolled across the station skin, and Jebel grabbed the head frame of the cot he sat upon as the medical unit shuddered all around him. As the view cleared he saw the disheartening reality: the shuttle remained untouched. Now linking in and picking up what he could of AI com to ships beyond the station, he understood that the weaponry required to destroy the shuttle might destroy the station itself. AI minds then discussed the idea of slicing through the station to remove this alien tick. But it was not the resultant loss of human life that scotched the idea. Quite simply, though a Prador attack force operated from the shuttle, that vessel might be all that prevented the mother ship from attacking, and against that they could mount little defence.
"How are you?"
Jebel saw Urbanus enter the medical unit, but only now turned his full attention to the Golem. "Sick and in pain."
"Well that won't last—you're going into surgery now. Any personnel with combat training get priority."
"That makes me feel all warm inside."
"Come on." Urbanus tossed him a drug patch, which Jebel peeled and stuck on the side of his neck. As he pushed himself from the cot he experienced a momentary dizziness and found his missing hand begin to ache. Seconds later the patch's contents did their work and he felt suddenly euphoric.
"What's happening?" Jebel asked. "I just watched the AI try to take out the shuttle, but aug com inside the station is censored when it isn't going down."
"About a hundred of them have penetrated the station and cut off the section between the Green Transept Arcade and the Delta rim locks. People are escaping via the runcible within that area, but that cannot last."
Despite the drugs, Jebel's guts knotted up. Cirrella's apartment lay within that area. "What… cannot last?"
Remorselessly Urbanus replied, "The AI will have to destroy the runcible to prevent it falling into Prador… claws."
Jebel's nausea returned, but what else could the AI do? What could Jebel do in his present condition? He needed to return himself to fighting fitness to help her.
They exited the medical unit into a corridor busy with station personnel, many of them guiding grav-sleds stacked with munitions. Towards the end of this corridor he saw another packed full of civilians slowly edging their way along it. Many of them carried small holdalls or other items.
"From the area they took?" Jebel suggested.
"No, evacuation. All the runcibles are open port and the AI is getting people out as fast as it can." He glanced at Jebel. "ECS dreadnoughts out there. You know what will probably happen when they engage that Prador mother ship, and there seems little doubt that they will."
Jebel understood: a station, in close proximity to whatever battle ensued, would be highly vulnerable—a liability. That did not, however, make him feel any better about it.
A row of med bays lay just down from the unit. Urbanus drew to a halt before one door, stood gazing at it for a moment, then stepped aside pushing Jebel back. The door opened and an auto-stretcher planed out—-the woman upon it unconscious and clad head to foot in one of those tight suits Jebel recognised as the kind normally worn after major skin replacement. Urbanus guided him through the door to where two med-techs oversaw five surgical slabs and five menacing autodocs. Three of the slabs were occupied and on one of them a vaguely human figure was being tugged about by two of the docs. Jebel spied shattered ribs splayed out, blood-filled tubes and a lung inflating, legs gone at the knee and charred, weeping skin. The rest was a blur of gleaming appendages, the low
droning of bone and cell welders, hissing, sucking and crunching sounds. He directed his gaze elsewhere.
"This is him?" asked a thin, blonde-haired woman who poised over another autodoc, reprogramming it. She shot a glance at his missing arm. "Yes, I see it is." Turning, she picked up the case Urbanus had brought from the other med bay, opened this and took out the Golem hand and forearm. "Up on the slab."
Jebel hesitated, feeling this was going too quickly.
"On the slab now!" the woman bellowed. "I've people dying out there!"
Jebel obeyed, guilty because his wound could have waited, and because he was receiving treatment ahead of others in greater need. And why? Because he had been trained in causing precisely the kind of injuries this woman must now treat. He lay back, felt the nerve blocker go into his neck without further delay, and his body turn into a numb piece of steak from below there. Then the autodoc whirred into place over his arm stump as if preparing to dine. Jebel closed his eyes.
* * * * *
Moria gazed up at what was now a familiar image to her, this time appearing on the public screen aboard the shuttle taking her back to the Trajeen cargo runcible: the big Prador chopping the human ambassador in half. Now the presenters were waxing lyrical in reference to this attack on the Polity's Avalon as that story slowly began to be displaced by stories of other attacks.
"Well," said Carolan Prentis, from the seat beside her, "xenobiologists have been crying about the lack of sentient aliens we've encountered. I wonder how they feel now?"
Still feeling a little shaken, and thoroughly annoyed with herself, Moria glanced at her companion. Carolan wore her blue runcible-technician overall with the same pride as Moria, though her project ranking was lower. Her elfin face, which was undoubtedly the product of cosmetic surgery, reminded Moria of something out of a VR fantasy game (Moria grimaced at the analogy—who was she to know the difference between fantasy and reality?), though Carolan's dark brown eyes with their green flecks and her incongruous cropped blonde hair seemed likely to be the product of genetics. Undoubtedly some ancestor of Carolan's had undergone genetic redesign, for on each wrist a wheel tattoo overlaid scars where spur fingers had been excised.
