by Neal Asher
KNOBBLER
In the outer Jaskoran system, Knobbler watched activity go up a gear following Orlandine’s order to complete construction as quickly as possible. The tug resembled a titanic ancient engine block, a convoluted solid lump of technology, tough and resilient and in fact almost all engine itself. It was poised on a long ribbed fusion flame, and strained in a net of braided monofilament cables; this web of cables stretched across the ring frame of the smaller runcible. The cables were stretching but they would not break. Knobbler was as sure of this as he was of the assassin drone aboard the tug getting the job done. But still, banter was required.
“Right, you know what you’ve got to do?” he sent.
“Yeah, we think so,” replied Harlequin sarcastically. “Drop the runcible into the accretion disc and launch an attack on the defence sphere, wasn’t it?”
“I thought we were going to drop it in a sun,” another voice piped up. This was from one of the many drones still scattered about the larger hexagonal runcible, which hung black against the pale swirled face of the gas giant there.
“No, I thought he was taking it into the Kingdom to sell it to the king—that’s what you said, Harlequin,” said another.
“Sssh, he wasn’t supposed to know that.”
“One megaton of diamond slate—no less. We’re not cheap.”
“Hey, maybe we can rope in EC and get a bidding war going?”
“Nah, EC will get all tactical on our asses.”
“Got no sense of humour, Polity AIs nowadays.”
“Just don’t fuck up,” Knobbler interjected as the exchange got more uproarious. He then let it run as he watched, crouched on a plane of the high-tech armour that formed the hull of the larger runcible. The ring continued to move out. Harlequin, an assassin drone who had once enjoyed penetrating prador nurseries and turning young second-children into walking bombs, was a small machine who resembled a brushed aluminium tick. His intelligence was formidable, however, and he had a reputation for getting things done with a precision the others sometimes lacked. Soon the smaller runcible was beyond the area where the nearby moon’s gravity might affect its carefully balanced drive. It began flickering, as if numerous camera flashes were going off. The tug seemed to stretch out ahead, extending itself infinitely, with the monofilament cables extending too. The whole then snapped back together, and runcible and tug were gone in a U-jump that left a swirl of light and a stuttering series of afterimages.
“Right, work,” said Knobbler to himself.
Numerous support ships and supply vessels shoaled around the remaining runcible, while robots swarmed across its surface. Knobbler wanted to get all this on the move too but logistics were such that he needed to await five more supply ships that had departed one of the gas giant’s moons earlier. They were now arriving and loaded with materials that would be turned into grav-motors by two of the factory ships floating in attendance. This process could continue throughout the ensuing journey.
“Begin closing in now,” Knobbler instructed.
“No, really?” one of the other drones replied.
Even so, the two factory ships had already begun to dock against the runcible and the robots were being recalled. Knobbler watched an army of spiderbots scuttling across the hull and disappearing inside maintenance ports. Big surface handlers, like giant water skaters, moved to their niches and secured themselves. Bulbous handlers sprouting numerous limbs dragged floating materials—stacks of armour sheets, construction beams and other items—down to the hull and secured them too. Knobbler, meanwhile, contacted a drone ensconced deep inside the runcible frame. Aphid was a large machine whose name aptly described him—in many ways he resembled Cutter’s companion Bludgeon.
“How is it going?” he asked.
Aphid sent data, then replied, “The U-space engines are fully balanced and we have the watts now. Afterwards, the run through the Harding system should give us time to recharge.” He paused for a second, then continued, “Ready to fire up fusion on your order.”
The two factory ships reported secure docking while other support ships fell into position. Movement around the runcible began drawing to a standstill. Knobbler waited, containing his impatience until all the ships were docked, the last robots tucked away and all extraneous materials secured. It then occurred to him that there was one item yet to secure itself, and he perambulated across the hull to a hole where structural beams had yet to be clad with armour. He gazed down into an interior packed with stress girders, power cables and reinforcing field engines. His tentacles snaked out and took hold, then, just to be sure, he grabbed on with his claws too.
“Okay, move us out,” he ordered.
A light flared over to his right as the nearest of the six big fusion engines fired up. The kick jerked him sideways and the continued thrust heaved against him. The runcible began to turn and the horizon of the gas giant rose up beyond the fusion torch, the ruby and pale green swirls from its many gas storms becoming visible. Acceleration continued for two hours, the gas giant hardly seeming to recede at all. Finally, the runcible attained its required position, clear of tidal forces that might disrupt the six balanced U-space engines. Then the fusion torches went out.
“Engaging,” said Aphid.
A meniscus drew over the runcible sky, stars shimmering, the gas giant somehow seeming to invert and become a hole into infinity. Knobbler felt the lurch throughout his being and next gazed upon the silver-grey storm of underspace. As he watched this, he tried to understand why it might drive humans mad, then shrugged at the limitations of minds created by straight-line evolution.
The runcible fell through something endless, but where there was no distance at all. What Knobbler could see was both infinite and tucked in close around him. The beams he gripped were tactile and real, but also dark cavities cut endlessly down through greyness. An eternity passed, and no time at all to external perception, though Knobbler’s internal clock counted on the seconds of just over an hour. Then the grey grew bright and shattered, and they were once again falling back into the real.
The Harding system.
A white dwarf cast actinic light across its planetary neighbours. One—a planet five times the size of Earth—was whorled with iron and wreathed in blue and brown methane clouds. A belt of asteroids was all that remained of another planetary neighbour, which had been destroyed by the third. This was an object that reflected no light at all, and which all the others orbited. At nominally seven solar masses the Harding black hole was small in interstellar terms. But it was perfect for Orlandine’s requirements because at the moment it wasn’t eating anything. No debris field surrounded it. Also, its spin was low, so the tidal forces were . . . manageable. Its Schwarzschild radius was just over four miles—its event horizon a sphere eight miles across. It should fit neatly through the runcible, presupposing the dense tough materials and field reinforcing could take the load. Orlandine’s calculations said so, but then calculations could sometimes be wrong.
The fusion engines fired up again to take them towards this object—one of the most dangerous in the universe. Once they had applied the correct vector they finally shut down.
“Right,” Knobbler broadcast, “get your asses moving.”
THE WHEEL
Just for a moment or two, as it connected to its backup in U-space, it seemed that the soldier might win. But finally it acquiesced to the command routines that were part of the Wheel’s very being. Now, encysted in the dark tangled interior of the wormship, it fed upon a steady flow of materials, microscopic and sub-microscopic machines, and power. And it grew. Already the thing was twenty feet long, had lost its lobster appearance and now looked more like a giant hover fly, but one that was a by-blow with some antediluvian fighter jet, coated with metallic growths. But further growth and change were required and the thing had all but depleted some of the wormship’s resources.
Falling into the real, the wormship paused for a second then descended on an icy planetoid. There
was no finesse to its landing. It hit hard, spreading on impact, blowing out a crater and throwing ice, melt-water and steam into vacuum. At once the Wheel spread its worm-ish body further, burrowing into the surrounding ice and tracking down the resources that had been cached there while humans were still banging rocks together. Meanwhile, it opened out around the soldier, depositing it on the surface.
“If you seek vengeance, prepare two graves,” the soldier said, using one of the phrases from its extensive stock. The Wheel had tried to eradicate these from the soldier’s mind, but it stubbornly clung onto them. In the end, so long as it did what was required of it, they did not matter. But the Wheel could not help but speculate what this one meant. Vengeance was a strange human word, separating something out that was implicit in Jain psychology. As for graves . . . why waste useful materials by burying them in the ground . . . present circumstances excepted.
One worm found a cache—an egg containing exotic matter held in a liquid suspension. It opened an electromagnetic pipe through itself, penetrated the egg and began sucking on it. The gleaming deep purple matter from this routed through one of its numerous glassy supply feeds to the soldier. The Wheel tracked the flow of this inside, seeing it take on structure which then folded infinitely down. Other elements of it acted as compactors and compressed conventional matter into super-density. Another cache rendered packages of nano-machines, some of which the Wheel retained and set to work replacing the inferior versions in the wormship. Others went into the soldier too, sucked up hungrily and immediately set to work.
As the soldier altered itself further, its temperature rose steadily and it began to melt down into the ice. It stabilized with internal grav, but after a while, much of the ice boiled away and it floated above a cavity, still sucking in and compacting materials. In just a few hours it would be ready to make its attack run. The Wheel turned its attention outwards to the bright eye of the accretion disc in the cold starlit sky. Orlandine would respond as expected—in the only way feasible from the data that had been made available to her. The one doubt had been the response of another alien intelligence, but thankfully the lure of data had been too much for it to resist and it had fallen into the trap . . .
TRIKE
Ruth looked like she wanted to get up and run, but there was nowhere to go. Trike understood how she felt, but did not feel it himself. After all they had been through, he’d thought that they could tag along with Cog and just see this through—learn what the hell had been happening, with little danger.
“Well that was unexpected,” said Trike as he pulled himself upright. He noticed a hint of a crazy smile twisting his mouth and suppressed it. He shook his head in irritated acquiescence as he returned to his chair.
Through the bridge screen organic red masses shifted in semi-dark. Cog hit a control on his chair arm and the scene outside lit up in all its lurid glory. Ahead lay a wall of intestinal tubes scattered with organs like giant fleshy beach balls. Over to one side, a long tentacle roped with raw muscle extended towards the hull of their ship. Cog threw up a frame in the screen laminate and, scanning, sketched out an image. The ship sat inside a cavity within Dragon, held in place by many of those tentacles.
“So what the fuck does it want?” Trike asked.
“Does anyone ever know that?” Ruth wondered.
Cog leaned back, groped for his pipe, then grimaced and lowered his hand. “Well, we know that it’s very interested in Jain technology.” He turned to look at Ruth. “Do you have any idea what Angel was up to?”
Ruth stared at the images, obviously thinking furiously.
“Angel wasn’t clear about his plans,” she began, then paused. “He took me to a gas giant moon. He had allies there . . . prador . . . also some kind of swarm robot called the Clade.”
Cog was momentarily startled, and this time he did take his pipe out of his pocket, but then just toyed with it. “We saw that reaver. We were there when it fled, as did Angel.” He looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, then continued, “While we were tracking you, I had a Polity black-ops attack ship trailing me for backup. It arrived at that gas giant afterwards. Apparently, the Clade was still there and it attacked the ship, disabling it.”
“And is that ship still following us now?” Trike asked angrily. “It was heavily damaged by the Clade’s attack . . . so I don’t know.” Cog shook his head. “This gets us no closer to knowing why Dragon is here.”
“Look,” said Ruth, pointing.
The beach ball organs were dividing into segments, opening out like star fungi to reveal white, coiled-up worm-like masses. One of these unravelled and stretched out. It was one of the cobra-like pseudopods they had seen earlier. As it speared in towards the ship, others unravelled and sprang out, all curving round to the right, blue eyes gleaming. The ship shuddered with impact, and a warning frame appeared in the laminate.
“It just opened the hold door,” Cog stated.
He again used the controls on his chair arm and a cam view popped up showing the ship’s small hold. The ramp door was down and pseudo-pods swarmed in. Cog stood up.
“Let’s go and see what Dragon wants,” he said.
Trike followed Cog, then looked back at Ruth staring at the image. Finally she turned to him. “Is there air in the hold now? Remember, I’m no hooper.”
Trike glanced at the screen warning. “It’s breathable.”
She closed her eyes for a second, obviously having some problem with this.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She gestured at the image. “Reminds me of the inside of that worm-ship.” She sighed, undid her seat straps and stood, following him out.
When they reached the airlock door into the hold, Cog opened it and stepped confidently through, saying loudly, “I don’t remember inviting you into my ship.”
Trike went in next with Ruth close behind him. The air was warm and smelled of something spicy, but also slightly putrid. Immediately there was a taste in his mouth that reminded him of cloves. The main mass of pseudopods was poised over the cases that contained Angel’s remains, but one broke away, swung towards them and hooked over them, blue eye gleaming as it studied them.
“Cogulus Hoop,” said a voice that was musical and feminine, and seemed to issue from no particular source. Dragon continued, “The soldier must fail. This is certain.”
“Soldier,” Cog repeated. “That thing that destroyed the Cube?”
“That thing,” Dragon confirmed. Which, as Trike understood it, was more helpful than Dragon’s usual answers. But then it continued, “The trap must be sprung so the hunter underestimates its prey.” Seemingly back to the usual Delphic nonsense.
The ‘pods stuck the flat undersides of their heads against the two cases holding Angel’s remains then sent the lids bouncing across the hold. Next, they hauled out the reinforced bags and swiftly opened them. They juggled with the two damaged halves of the legate and brought them together, upright.
“What do you want with Angel?” Ruth asked.
Trike glanced round at her, surprised by the protectiveness he detected in her tone.
“Answers,” Dragon replied.
Pod heads gathered around the break in Angel’s body, and extruded masses of metallic filaments from splits along their undersides. These writhed together forming a cage that filled the missing portion of the legate’s body and knitted it together. Two of the heads began traversing back and forth like matter printers, somehow filling the space inside the cage with dense technology. Angel raised one arm and opened and closed one long-fingered hand. At this point, other pseudopods stabbed in and connected all around his body, lowering him to stand on the floor like some nightmare rendition of Kali. Angel opened black eyes.
“Speak,” said Dragon.
“There is no need,” said Angel. “You have my mind.”
“Speak,” Dragon repeated, “for the audience.”
Angel shuddered, his mouth opening wide as if silently screaming. It then snapp
ed shut and he waved a hand, gesturing at something distant, gazing at a scene they could not see. Ruth took a step forwards, but Trike closed a hand round her bicep.
“Wait,” he said calmly, but fearing Angel’s previous control of her.
She showed a flash of anger, but he knew it wasn’t about him, just her own reaction to the situation.
“The Wheel entered my mind when I was on that moon,” said the legate. “It took my mind when I returned to my wormship. I never realized it had become the wormship . . .” He paused, now making some shape in the air with both his hands. “I gathered forces to me, the renegade prador Brogus and the Clade. All to be used to strike a blow against the Polity, against the prador, against all life that was not Jain.”
“The plan,” said Dragon.
“Never clear to me. Never coherent. The prador needed U-jump missiles to serve their part. I don’t know what that is. The Clade . . . there to stop Polity forces, to delay AI comprehension of the full plan . . . to distract and delay others.”
“The plan,” Dragon repeated.
“Unclear to me.”
He jerked as if electrocuted, his body arched and he made a weird whining sound. At last, his voice cracking, he shrieked, “I don’t know!”
“What is this?” asked Cog.
Angel relaxed and hung limp.
“The Clade,” said Dragon. “I see.”
Pseudopods disconnected and Angel dropped down onto his knees.
“I was Golem once,” he said, staring into nothingness.
The pods abruptly retracted towards the door. Meanwhile a low vibration, which had been hardly perceptible, turned into a steady shuddering. Trike felt the universe around him twisting out of shape. Dragon was initiating a U-jump. The ship jerked, sending them staggering, and the sensation of the world going out of kilter intensified.
“Something’s wrong,” said Cog.
He turned and left the hold at a run as the last of the pseudopods retreated. Trike released Ruth’s arm, watching her. She in turn watched as Angel fell onto his side and coiled up in a foetal position. She nodded once, then went after Cog, and Trike followed her out.
