by Neal Asher
There were no further guards either in the bottom of the valley where a stream wended its way between the trees, nor on the slope leading up to a rift of stone in which the dark mouths of caves were clearly visible. Cormac paused twenty yards below the caves and scanned his surroundings. He soon saw Crean and Travis coming down the cliffs like orange spiders and Gorman, mosquito still walking at his heel, coming up through the trees to his right. Gorman came over to him while the two Golem waited up by the caves.
"Were there any other guards?" Cormac asked.
Gorman pointed upslope. "Travis found a watch tower, but it was automated for air defence—no problem for us." He glanced back behind him. "I found another hide just like your one. Not a problem either." Gorman pointed a finger up the slope and set out. Cormac fell in behind him and soon they were up with their backs against the rock wall between two caves.
Travis gestured with a thumb to one cave. "This one—the other two only go back about ten metres. There's an autogun about five metres inside."
Gorman tugged at his fatigues. "Will this get us through?"
Travis shrugged. "One way to find out." He stepped in front of the cave mouth, then ran inside. There came a cracking sound then a fizzing as from a severed cable. After a moment he strolled out lugging a primitive auto pulse-gun trailing various cables.
"Apparently not sensitive enough to pick up chameleoncloth," said Travis, driving the gun barrel-down into the earth.
Gorman now turned to the mosquito. "Stay," he said. The mobile weapon took a few paces back, tilting its body up towards him like an obedient hound watching its master. Quite odd the way weapons like this sometimes behaved, which was apparently due to their original Tenkian design. The four entered the cave.
Gorman and Cormac took point, Gorman holding his machine pistol casually at his hip, slowly swinging it back and forth. Cormac copied him, the targeting frame in his goggles veering from wall to wall of the cave. Gorman doubtless saw a targeting frame too, though did not wear goggles since the mods were actually in his eyes. They stepped past the autogun tripod and followed the cave round to the right. After a moment Cormac had to knock down the light amplification of his goggles, for the cave was lit ahead. Twenty yards further in they reached a junction of three tunnels. A woman stepped out of the right-hand one. Cormac brought his frame over her as she turned: black hair, wiry frame and apparently quite young. He triggered once and she slammed back against the wall, spun and went down.
"Fuck," said Gorman via aug.
"It wasn't her," Cormac replied.
"Michele?" someone called, stepping out of the same cave shortly after her. This man must have seen her abruptly fall, but had heard no shots nor the impacts of any bullets. He gazed down at her for half a second before shots from Gorman abruptly flung him on top of her.
"Crean, Travis," Gorman sent, "take the side caves."
Cormac and Gorman moved past the caves, checking that no one was in sight, then the two Golem ducked in quickly behind them. Stepping round the corpses, Cormac took another look at the girl's face. No, definitely not Sheen. It occurred to him that he should feel something about killing a young woman. He felt nothing at all.
They moved deeper and deeper, Cormac constantly needing to reduce the light amplification of his goggles, until, feeling stupid, he called up the menu related to the goggles and set them on automatic. Shortly after that he heard the murmur of voices from around a corner ahead. Gorman held up his hand, halting them.
"Remember—check your targets."
At that moment, the familiar sound of pulse-gun fire echoed from behind them—obviously one or both of the Golem had been spotted.
"Fast now," said Gorman out loud.
They broke into a jog and rounded the corner. Here the cave opened out and against one wall set a stack of crates beside which a group of three people stood smoking cigarettes. Beyond them, the cave sloped down, lined along one side with regularly spaced doorways from which the light shone. Cormac tracked the arc of a cigarette as it curved towards the stone floor. Reaching for the pulse-gun at his hip the smoker squinted back up the tunnel towards Cormac and Gorman. The man could not actually see them, but he could see something and those shots had made him suspicious. His two companions were reaching for pulse-rifles resting against the crates. Two machine pistols purred and the three went down as if someone had instantly removed alternate bones throughout their bodies. Now shadows loomed and flitted as people began exiting what appeared to be rooms carved into the rock.
Gorman slowed to a walk. "Let's not get overexcited," he said. "You check the first one."
Someone came out of a room and sprayed pulse-fire up the cave. Gorman nailed him immediately and Cormac wondered about checking identities now, but then realised the collapsing figure was too big to be Sheen. More pulse-gun fire from around a door jamb five doors down. They both slammed back against the wall, then Gorman tossed a small spherical grenade down that way. It went off with a smoky crump and hurled sooty fragments all about the corridor and through the open door. Somebody groaned and a rifle clattered to the floor. Cormac moved to the first door pulling a similar grenade from his belt and tossed it in ahead of him, waited until it went off, then immediately ducked in. A big man, wearing only a pair of shorts, was staggering from a bunk. At once Cormac realised the man could hardly see to aim the thin-gun he was holding, even if Cormac had been clearly visible, for the neurotoxin in the grenade worked fast. Cormac knew. Now, for the first time, he hesitated. There was no need to kill this man for, in a moment, he would be unconscious.
"Pramer," he said in surprise, now recognising the real reason for his hesitation.
"You," said Pramer, abruptly swinging his gun towards the doorway where Cormac stood.
A slight pressure on the trigger and the machine pistol hummed contentedly to itself, and Pramer staggered back, shots stitching up his front. A cloud of vaporous blood and bits of flesh and bone exited his back as he crashed against the bunk beds, then he abruptly sat down as if suddenly very weary. Blood gouted from his mouth. Cormac brought the targeting frame onto his head, triggered again and watched the top of Pramer's skull disappear, then turned to exit the room. Now he was suddenly angry, and not entirely sure why.
Gorman stood poised by the next door.
We've got her, Travis informed them all.
Gorman leant around the door jamb and fired twice. "Okay," he said, "we're out of here—fast."
Gorman was past him and heading back along the cave at a run before Cormac realised it was over—they'd got what they'd come here for. For no reason he could quite fathom he ducked back into Pramer's room, studied the man for a short moment, then picked up his thin-gun. A trophy? He felt that to be so, but no trophy of any victory. He turned and followed Gorman, for a moment feeling utterly bewildered. Pulse-gun fire issued from behind. He turned, fired, saw someone fold up. No need to check targets now. In moments they reached the junction where Crean stood firing intermittently back down the way she had come. Travis stood there with a body slung easily over one shoulder, nodded to Gorman and Cormac, then broke into a fast run for the exit. As they followed him out, Cormac noticed Gorman removing a short black cylinder from a pouch on his belt. He primed this with his thumb then sent it skittering back into the cave. Cormac recognised the item: gas grenade, probably Hazon. In a moment they were outside and moving back into the trees, the mosquito still poised at the cave entrance behind them to finish any that made it that far.
"Good work, people," said Gorman.
Cormac wondered who would come here to clear up the mess. Certainly someone would come, for there might be information in there useful to ECS. He wondered momentarily if the cave would then be sealed. Probably not; they'd just take what might be of use and burn the bodies.
As they headed down into the trees Cormac heard yelling, and the mosquito opening fire. He didn't look back.
It being imperative the prisoner stayed alive, no lethal weapons were to b
e put within her reach, so Cormac and Gorman armed themselves with stun batons only. Cormac thought it all a bit over the top, but then he had been a captive too, and look what he had managed to do. Gorman was smoking one of his big cigars, the contented look upon his face as he digested the huge chicken madras he had eaten, tempered only by the fact that he had been unable to wash it down with numerous beers. But later, he said, they'd drink some beer later.
"We normally don't get to see this side of things," he announced.
"Then why are we seeing it now?"
"This is for you," Gorman replied. "I've seen it before and know what's involved, but you haven't and ECS likes its Sparkind to be thoroughly aware of the consequences of what they do. None of this 'I didn't know' or 'I was only following orders. You can choose to leave the military at any time, you know."
The cell block corridor appeared little different to how such corridors had looked for hundreds of years, though someone from a past age might have mistaken the pendent ceiling drones for light fittings. They halted at an armoured door with a screen display fixed centrally. Gorman tapped the screen and it came on, showing the interior of the cell and reassuring them that the prisoner wasn't crouched beside the door ready to jump them. Though it seemed unlikely she would be in any condition to do so, since she would still be suffering the aftereffects of stun toxin and a robust scanning routine. Gorman pressed his hand against the side palm-lock and the door swished open silently, and they stepped inside.
A bed, wash basin and toilet were provided. The bed was fixed to the floor and the wash basin was a flimsy thing that folded down from the wall. Neither provided an opportunity for the prisoner to hang herself, just as the bed possessed no sheets that could be turned into ropes and the paperwear she wore consisted of a tissue that turned powdery when torn. Also, there were no sharp edges to be found in here, nor anything that could be turned into a sharp edge. Via pin-cameras positioned in every upper corner of the room the prison submind kept perpetual watch, and other hardware in the walls monitored the prisoner's vital signs. ECS did not want its captives to die here, though it had been known to happen. Gorman had already related to Cormac a story of the man who managed to drown himself with his own urine, though he was revived shortly afterwards, and a story about a woman who tore out her own jugular artery.
"Hello, soldier Cormac," said Sheen, easing herself upright and swinging her legs off the bed. He noted that she looked bruised, with a couple of raw spots on her bare arms. However, no one had beaten her, for the marks were a result of the full-spectrum scan she had undergone, just to be sure she had no pieces of syntheskin attached about her body. They had learned their lesson with Carl.
"Stand up," said Gorman, then removing his cigar butt from his mouth, dropping it to the floor and crushing it out.
"No civilities then?" Sheen enquired.
She still looked like a teenager, but the information they had available about her put her age at fifty-two. Her present appearance was the result of cosmetic work, perpetually maintained by whatever suite of nanomachines she was running.
"You heard the man," Cormac said. "You can walk out of here or we can carry you out—makes no difference to me."
"Ooh, tough talk."
"Zap her on the tit—that usually gets their attention," said Gorman.
Cormac began to step forwards, but Sheen abruptly lurched to her feet. He and Gorman moved in on either side of her, Gorman closing a hand just above her elbow, his stun baton held in his other hand casually down at his side.
"Let's go." He marched her towards the door, Cormac, as instructed earlier, falling in two paces behind Sheen.
"You have to keep them off balance," Gorman had also told him earlier. "If they're untrained you usually have no problem because they continue to maintain the hope that somehow they're going to survive, to get away with what they've done or that ECS might be forgiving if they cooperate." He had paused for a moment to lave a piece of poppadom with lime chutney and chomp it, washing it down with a swallow of fresh mango juice. "This one isn't going to be like that. She's trained and she's wily, and she knows that no one is given amnesty by ECS. Ever. She'll go for one of us once we leave the cell corridor and step outside the range of the security drones, and she'll fight for her life knowing that if she loses, her life is certainly forfeit."
At the end of the cell corridor the door stood open. Gorman turned her into the corridor beyond. Sheen lurched sideways as if losing balance, then turned, her foot coming up in an arc towards Cormac's head. It was smoothly done. Perhaps she hoped Gorman would lose his grip and that she would have time to relieve Cormac, obviously the least experienced of the two, of his baton. Gorman's grip was iron. He turned slightly, dragging her truly off-balance whist planting a foot against the back of the foot she kept on the ground. As she started to go over backwards, her kicking foot coming well short of its target, Gorman casually touched the baton to her chest.
Sheen gasped, then hit the floor on her back convulsing, her spine arched. Gorman and Cormac stepped forwards to grab a wrist each, and they dragged her the rest of the way, leaving shreds of her paperwear clothing in the corridor behind.
Sheen never truly lost consciousness, though she did lose some awareness of what was happening to her and where she was. That awareness only returned once she was strapped on the surgical table. She focused first on Agent Spencer, who stood at her head fiddling with a pedestal-mounted autodoc, then on Gorman and Cormac who stood beside the door.
"I'll tell you nothing," she said.
Gorman grinned, then groped about in his top pocket for a cigar, which he lit with an old petrol lighter.
"As you have recently experienced, Cormac, when an aug is installed," Agent Spencer continued the explanation she had been making before Sheen's interruption, "the patient cooperates in the interfacing process, enabling the aug software to recognise its targets and thus guide in the nanofibres to synaptic connection."
"Which takes me back to my previous point," said Cormac. "It's a difficult process to first install an aug, even with the recipient's cooperation, then a lengthy learning process afterwards to get it to work properly—the recipient's mind learns how to use the aug and the aug itself learns how to interpret the recipient's mind."
"So I'm just meat now," said Sheen. "You're just going to ignore me?"
Agent Spencer picked up an item from a glass tray mounted on the side of the autodoc. It was a large, translucent plastic plug with a hole bored through the centre, attached to a skin-stick strap. Spencer kept it from Sheen's sight, which was easy enough with the Separatist's head secured in a clamp.
"On the contrary, Sheen," she said. "You are a very valuable piece of meat and you are going to receive my utter attention over the next few hours."
"You can't—" was all Sheen managed before Spencer leant across, clamped a hand on her chin, pushing her jaw down, and shoved the plug deep into her mouth, pressing the skin-stick strap down on her cheeks. Now all Sheen could do was make sounds from deep in her throat.
"It's to stop her swallowing her tongue," Spencer explained. "Or biting it off." She now moved the autodoc into place beside Sheen's skull.
"You were saying?" Cormac enquired.
As he understood it, the process was easier to conduct if the subject remained conscious. He understood that some would find all this rather distasteful, cruel even, and feel it something those of a civilized society should not do. Trying to feel some sympathy for Sheen, since they had fought together, he only felt cold. Criminals like Sheen tortured and killed with utter abandon, they ruined people's lives and, when they wanted information, they got out the blow torch and disc grinder.
"Yes," Spencer continued, "interfacing with an aug is an act of cooperation. Limited synaptic contacts are made and both mind and aug learn to use the communication channels they provide. Increasing the amount of contacts can lead to problems: destructive feedback, destructive synergy of the kind that killed Iversus Skaidon when he in
vented runcible technology and, of course, organic damage. In this case we are worried about none of these."
Cormac noted the sudden look of panic on Sheen's face. She'd just realised what Spencer intended doing to her. Perhaps she'd expected interrogation under drugs and torture, or maybe just a plain old execution, but ECS was more civilized than that.
"We'll be making multiple nanofibre connections, recording synaptic and neuro-chemical data all the while. The process records the structure, both architectural and neuro-chemical, of her brain, meanwhile building up a virtual model of it. It takes an AI then to deconstruct that model and interpret the data from that deconstruction as thoughts, images and memories."
"And Sheen's brain?" asked Gorman, watching Cormac as he asked.
Spencer glanced up. "It's mush afterwards. We maintain the connections to keep the autonomous nervous system going and the body is handed over to ECS Medical. I think they're trying for direct download now of recorded minds."
Sheen's eyes were wide as she stared sideways at the autodoc. Terror? Maybe, though Cormac doubted she would be so scared of death. More likely she was frightened about all she was due to betray.
"Download?" queried Gorman. "I'd heard it's theoretically possible…"
"I'm told the physical and neuro-chemical structure of the brain has to be changed to accept the mind in waiting," said Spencer. "It is actually restructured by nanomachines throughout the download process and takes several months."
"Interesting," said Gorman. "I've been thinking about getting myself a memplant." He tapped the side of his skull."
"Even more interesting if you ended up occupying the body of your killer," Spencer quipped. She now tapped a control on top of the autodoc and it immediately extruded a probe like a chrome-and-glass tubeworm against the side of Sheen's head. She started yelling from the back of her throat, the sound made into an odd whine by the aperture of her mouth plug.
