Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘– we must permit?’ finished Flog, floating backwards before Tigger into the chamber beyond. They were reluctant to allow Tigger into here, perhaps programmed to guard the ship’s AI at all costs.

  Tigger, only managing to keep himself to the floor by use of his claws, continued pacing forwards.

  ‘We are –’

  ‘– commanded.’

  Flog opened his mandibles in threatening protest, then, clutching at a grey branch above his head, pulled himself aside, floated over to one wall and clung there. Tigger halted in the centre of the chamber and observed what lay before him. Rosebud seemed like some giant synapse, ten feet across with branching outgrowths piercing its surroundings. Just visible behind it, the wall of the spin section constantly revolved, as if the AI was turning it manually. Tigger could see the design antecedents here, with the AI acting as an interface between the crew – who were mainly located in the spin section – and the rest of the ship. Further development had resulted in the crew doing less, and the interface doing more, until it finally developed consciousness and the crew became mere adjuncts to it.

  Now Tigger was ready, his internal structure primed to come apart and shift to the required connection points, organo-optic plugs ready inside him layered with living nerve tissue grown from samplings he had already taken from the material of the ship. He took one pace forward, and a ripple passed down the length of his body. His cat features began to lose definition and his head began to sink away. Another pace and one leg retracted into his body – only to reappear, stretching and extending as a tentacle from his back. His whole body shortened and spread out sideways. Amoeboid, with outgrowths taking hold of the grey branches around him, he slid forward to fall upon Rosebud and engulf it. He pushed in the plugs like stings, directing them once they were inside Rosebud with cell-form metal muscles, and there began to connect, and there began to lose himself. Fleetingly he observed Flog and Slog being ordered from the chamber after they had surged forward to try and tear him away, misunderstanding his actions as an attack. As the entrance sphincter closed he saw them raging outside.

  ‘This is unexpected,’ said Rosebud. ‘You will destroy me.’

  ‘I will not,’ Tigger replied.

  ‘I am a river, but you are the sea.’

  ‘Though I’ll absorb everything that you are, I’ll nevertheless keep what you are which is distinct, and return you to yourself once I depart.’

  ‘My consciousness will not be my own.’

  ‘Sleep, then,’ Tigger instructed.

  Rosebud, though with an organic basis, was an AI many generations removed from Tigger. Primitive, Tigger considered, but not in any derogatory sense. Overall, Rosebud became a rather small adjunct to Tigger’s extensive mind. Tigger became the ship, and came to control the ship absolutely.

  He studied the fusion drive, which, though controlled by organo-optics, was an additional artefact added to the ship’s structure. The ship had been grown with the facility to accept this addition – the ability to grow such an engine being beyond present Brumallian technology. An analogy would be someone growing a human body without legs, but with the nerves and empty sockets in the pelvis exposed and ready to accept grafts of mechanical legs. Similar gaps in the outer body of the ship contained grafts of a rather more lethal nature. He studied their contents, chose one close to his location – a missile cache – and, using ship’s systems, opened a missile and began making alterations to it. Simultaneously he began extruding a cell-form metal limb in that same direction.

  The engine was running okay, but Tigger made some adjustments to increase its efficiency by six per cent, and initiated the growth of some additional systems that would raise it higher. Subsequent inspection of other systems on board revealed many other things he could do to increase efficiency, but doing something about them was not his main purpose in this melding . . . or, rather, subsumption.

  The drone focused his attention on the ship’s outer skin. It lay three feet thick, layer upon layer of polycarbonates and ceramics, with nerve fibres threading convoluted paths through to access sensor heads dotted like hair follicles over the hull. An outer layer consisted of electromechanical refractive cells, and simple projectors also linked into this network: a simple chameleonware skin that could, within limitations, blend the ship with its background, not just visibly, but along a wider band of the EM spectrum. It was non-reactive, which basically meant the ship would not be picked up by passive sensors unless the drive was operating. However, it would be quickly revealed the moment a searcher used any form of active scan.

  Tigger now needed to make this chameleonware wholly reactive, so that if any form of scan intersected with the ship when only vacuum lay behind it, the ’ware could refract it away from the scanning ship. He also needed to link in the sensors, so on the dark side of the ship they could scan any background other than vacuum and project it from the scan side, with a suitable delay, to project a return consistent only with whatever lay behind the ship. This required the individual control of billions of discrete refractors, sensors and projectors.

  Tigger applied his extensive intellect to the task, then redoubled his efforts when he felt the first terahertz scan from the distant hilldigger.

  The Captain of that other ship now knew the precise location of the Brumallian ship. Tigger therefore assigned more and more of his own processing space to the task of hiding. Within what had now become his own body, he observed the dismay of the Brumallian crew as the systems they nurtured fell out of their control. He shut down the drive flame. His cell-form limb reached the missile cache and deposited part of itself inside the casing behind the warhead. Ship’s systems closed up the missile and loaded it to a coil-gun barrel extending to breach the hull.

  By now the hilldigger was within range to fire a warhead. Tigger detected the flare of a single drive flame departing the massive vessel. He fired his own missile, simultaneously initiating the chameleonware of his ship and the part of himself deposited in the missile. From his own vantage point the missile looked no different, but it contained a Polity antimunitions package that projected a false image of this ship to the distant hilldigger. Those aboard the hilldigger might have detected a brief anomaly – the Brumallian ship repositioning in an eyeblink and abruptly changing course – but the Sudorian missile would not be smart enough to recognize what had happened.

  A long drawn-out hour passed while Tigger worked frantically. What he had done would only work once, since those aboard the hilldigger would be sure to analyse debris and find it very lacking. Now he continued to extend himself throughout the ship, using nano-technological methods to absorb material and reform it as part of himself. Slowly he reached the outer hull and began to spread out, rebuilding sensor heads, refractors and projectors into composite and much more efficient instruments. He would have done this first of all, had there been time, but hopefully he had provided time enough to do it now.

  The hilldigger missile finally slammed down on the Brumallian ship it detected. Tigger detonated the missile he had fired. The two missiles and the illusion of a Brumallian ship disappeared in a sun-bright explosion. Tigger continued to work. Another hour passed and he observed the hilldigger turning, then firing a massive spread of inert rail- or coil-gun projectiles to cover possible locations of the hidden ship. They caught on fast. He tracked the course of every projectile and saw that dumb chance had put one directly on target. It came faster than the original missile, and was only seconds away. One spurt from his main drive would put the ship out of the way, but would also locate it clearly for the beam weapons the hilldigger was now close enough to use. Tigger fired up a steering thruster hidden on the other side, turning the ship to present one particular area at a particular time.

  The projectile struck, and punched through, exploding fire through the ship’s internal spaces, jetting fire from its exit on the other side. Still turning, the ship presented new Polity chameleonware which wiped out the same fire to the hilldigger’s scanne
rs. Then the feedback from Rosebud screamed through Tigger – the ship’s agony.

  Didn’t these fools know their ships could suffer?

  The spread of the chameleonware continued autonomously. It needed to. Tigger crashed into oblivion.

  Harald

  On his instructions the eight remaining hilldiggers of the Fleet began to put some distance between each other, randomizing their formation since they were now close enough to Sudoria that the possibility of running into hidden defences could not be discounted.

  In the Admiral’s Haven, Harald gazed at all eight hilldigger Captains displayed on the screens arrayed before him. ‘Our plan of attack is not complicated, but then complicated plans have a tendency to go wrong. And this will not.’ Not much response from them to that, but he had expected none. ‘If you would all turn your attention now to the graphic, I will detail how it should run.’ On his own eye-screen he observed the graphic representation, updated realtime, of the disposition of Combine stations and ships surrounding the planet Sudoria. Using his control glove he shifted his selector to frame Defence Platforms One and Twelve.

  ‘Once these two have been destroyed, only Platforms Eleven, Two, Three, Four and the main stations remain relevant for our purpose. The hole in planetary cover we will shortly have made will give us ready ingress to the defences of Orbital Combine. If you will observe the trajectory of our last fusillade . . .’ He panned the view back to a rapidly approaching icon representing 1,500 projectiles, then slashed a line from them to Sudoria. ‘As you see the missiles will come in low and fast over Platform Eleven, through the gap created by the two destroyed platforms, and will impact on the side of Platform Two. Eventually it too will fall.’ Harald paused, inspecting their expressions. Most looked satisfied; a few, notably Orvram Davidson, looked grim.

  ‘Once Platform Two is down, we move into low orbit then harrow up Platforms Three and Four in a line, until reaching Corisanthe Main.’

  Two Captains began speaking at once: Tlaster Cobe and Orvram Davidson. Davidson then fell silent and let Cobe speak. ‘But, taking that route, we’ll come under fire from Corisanthe II.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Harald, ‘which is why only four ships will be conducting that attack. When they have dealt with Platforms Two and Three, those ships will then be in danger, at which point Desert Wind, Harvester and Slate will assault Corisanthe II.’

  ‘There are over a hundred thousand people aboard Corisanthe II,’ reminded Davidson.

  ‘I am aware of that fact,’ said Harald. ‘There is a similar number on Corisanthe III, which has been growing in recent years since Combine began assembly of its space liners there. We will also need to attack that station, to prevent resupply to the other stations from there. This is why I am relating this plan to you now, so you have a chance to voice any objections.’ He studied the faces before him. He expected no protest from those he had already chosen for the assault on Corisanthe II, but Cobe and Davidson of Stormfollower and Resilience respectively, and perhaps Schumack of Musket, might begin to show signs of rebellion now.

  ‘I am sorry, but I cannot—’ began Davidson.

  The screen showing Captain Lorimar of hilldigger Slate suddenly blanked out. Almost immediately Harald received a concerted scream from the tacoms aboard all the other ships, ‘Minefield!’ He stood up and, using his control glove, crowded the images of all the Captains into one screen, noting that Davidson, Cobe and Schumack had now cut their connections. There was no tacom connection from Slate – absolutely nothing. Before he even needed to ask for it, the tacom from Wildfire – the ship nearest to Slate’s location – sent him visual feed which he now projected on one of the empty screens before him. Debris glittered across space, and tumbling through it came the rear section of a hilldigger, exposed girders glowing against darkness and its engine galleries open to vacuum.

  Harald just stared, unable to make any sense of what he was seeing, until someone’s gasp of ‘Slate’s gone’ set his mind in motion again. Thousands had just died, and an entire hilldigger was just a spreading cloud of radioactive detritus. He felt a horrible, bone-deep guilt and, though he was accepting what he was currently seeing and hearing, he just didn’t know how to react. Then he detected, amid the chatter, the words, ‘Stealthed mines.’

  ‘What do you have for me, Harvester tacom?’ Harald managed.

  ‘Am relaying now. They are invisible to most forms of scan, but we get a time-discrepancy on laser detection,’ replied the tacom officer serving on that ship.

  At last feeling some control, Harald called up views fed from other ships on the large screens before him and in his eye-screen. An explosion a hundred miles out from Desert Wind blanked instruments for a short while, but it proved that they were now able to detect these near-invisible mines. Slowly, in a representative view, the minefield began to be revealed.

  ‘They’re moving,’ came a general tacom report.

  The flare of drive flames created brief constellations out in vacuum. However, the same flames immediately located every mine for Fleet’s instruments. More explosions – two mines drawing too close to Harvester. Harald realized that Combine had expected that, after one or two detonations, the mines would inevitably be detected, so had programmed them to become missiles like this, giving them the remote possibility of causing more damage.

  ‘Remove them,’ Harald instructed, and multiple explosions filled space around the hilldiggers. Switching from view to view, he coldly studied the spectacle, but these camera angles also presented him with an unwelcome reality: Stormfollower, Resilience and Musket were turning. It disappointed him that all the Captains he suspected might rebel, had now done so.

  ‘Captains Davidson, Cobe and Schumack,’ he broadcast. ‘Return to formation, or you will lose command of your ships.’

  After a long delay, Davidson reinstated his comlink. ‘A hundred thousand people? To be honest with you, Admiral, I have not been in agreement with all your actions since you took command, but my loyalty to Fleet has so far kept me from disobeying. Now I cannot obey you any longer. Captain Ildris once gave me a lecture on the responsibility of command and one particular phrase stands out in my mind: “History has taught us that saying one was only obeying orders can never be an excuse for committing atrocity.”’

  Even while Davidson spoke, Harald opened com channels he had long ago prepared for this moment. Communications were the key, he had told Yishna, but even she could not have guessed to what extent he meant this. Immediately the tacom officers aboard the three departing ships, though quite possibly still loyal, were frozen out. But routed through their equipment, Harald began to seize control of the hardware of those ships. With a single thought he shut down their engines. With an analytical omniscience he gazed through Bridge cameras at the three Captains and their crews, as they began to realize that the controls were no longer responding to them.

  Other views showed emergency lights flashing in various vital sections of each ship. Harald observed a crowd of engineers struggling into survival suits as they abandoned the engine galleries of Resilience, once the last of the stragglers got out of there, the heavy blast doors quickly closed off that particular area. As weaponry areas – also equipped with blast doors because of the danger from exploding munitions – were abandoned because of similar false emergencies, Harald closed them off too. Exterior views showed him airlocks opening those areas to vacuum – if anyone remained behind, their life-spans would now be measured by the air supply in their survival suits. Harald next shut off all the internal lifts, and the internal rail system, closed off more selected areas and opened more to vacuum, shut maintenance tunnels, locked spacesuit lockers, disabled EVA units and shuttles. He set recognition programs to work through the camera systems, ready to alert him should the crew try to return to any vital zones, and there prepared some nasty surprises for them should they try.

  ‘Captain Soderstrom,’ he finally broadcast. ‘As we agreed, in this eventuality, I am slaving Stormfollower and Musk
et to your ship, Harvester, and you will take them in with you when you attack Corisanthe II. Resilience I will slave to Wildfire for the attack on Corisanthe III. Meanwhile, myself and Franorl, in Ironfist and Desert Wind, will take out the defence platforms and assault Corisanthe Main.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ protested Davidson.

  Ignoring him, Harald restarted the engines of the three ships, and turned them round.

  McCrooger

  The spin section juddered to a halt and a stink of barbecue immediately filled the air. Luckily someone had thought to strap me into my bed, so I wasn’t thrown across the room.

  ‘I will get you there . . . that is all I can promise,’ someone informed me, in neither Brumallian nor Sudorian. Tigger, then.

  The ship was shuddering and, now in zero gravity, I immediately threw up. The vomit departed in a straight trajectory and splashed on the ceiling, little bile-coloured globules rolling away from the point of impact. I weakly pawed at the straps, then looked up to see Rhodane, who fought her way through the malfunctioning door then pulled herself across the room and down beside me.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing broken,’ I replied. ‘But if we are now under attack I don’t particularly want to stay here.’

  Rhodane shook her head. ‘The drone allowed us to take a hit. The others are now analysing what happened, but it seems that receiving the hit was the only option to keep us safe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Tig-ger’ – she stumbled over the name – ‘had used the main drive to move us out of the projectile’s path, the hilldigger would certainly have spotted us. The concealment technology he employed managed to hide the energy released by the strike.’

  ‘Anyone hurt?’

  Rhodane looked shifty. ‘Just one casualty . . . but the projectile passed through a mostly unoccupied section of the ship and automatics are now sealing it off. We are still travelling towards Sudoria and, unless it changes course, we should be out of range of the hilldigger within a day or so.’