by Neal Asher
‘How much time?’ he asked, still grinning.
‘About as long as Grenant, I should think,’ said Sprage, glancing at Olian Tay for confirmation.
Tay said, ‘A few thousand years of waking in those coffins, before they’ve no mind left to speak of. I want them both to last a little while.’
While Drum laughed, Keech just looked on in confusion, until Olian Tay’s plans were explained to him. He then watched with grim satisfaction as the coffin was opened and the now slowly recovering Rebecca Frisk was laid inside. At one time he had felt that no amount of suffering could be enough punishment for one of the Eight. Now he was not quite so sure.
Captain Ron was on his feet by the time they returned, and he held up his fist in a victory salute when he saw what Ambel was carrying.
‘Grendel is dead,’ said Ambel briefly.
Ron, the only one of them who understood the obscure reference, said, ‘Do you think there’s a mother as well, then?’
‘I hope you’ll explain that,’ said Erlin in mock anger.
Janer started paying attention then. He’d missed the earlier exchange, so deep was he in conversation with the Hive mind: making arrangements for his ten million shillings. He watched Ambel walk up to Captain Ron. Ambel was carrying the two halves of the Skinner’s head tied with the same length of string, and hung over his shoulder like a pair of huge grotesque shoes. He made to give them to Ron.
‘Best you keep it with you. It’ll look good,’ said Ron, then he pointed down the slope, past the scarred rock and burning vegetation, to where the dingle had escaped being flattened. As Janer gazed in that direction too, he saw figures emerging from under the trees. There were many of them, and all clearly Hoopers.
‘The Convocation,’ said Ambel, looking very directly at Erlin. He unhooked the sprine parcel from his belt and tossed it to her. ‘Remember what I said,’ he reminded her.
Janer wondered at that. Surely there would be no problems for Ambel now. Surely he had proven himself beyond doubt? He raised his image intensifier and focused it downwards at those approaching. Keech was walking with Captain Drum and another Captain who was smoking a pipe – something Janer had never before seen in his life. Others walked there as well, and Janer could easily tell which ones were the Old Captains. There was an assurance about them, a certainty.
Sprage, as Janer later learnt him to be called, was the first to test the crust on the cooling magma and cross over, so was consequently the first to reach them.
‘You got his parole?’ Sprage asked Ron.
‘Yes,’ said Ron.
Sprage nodded and drew on his pipe. With fascination, Janer watched the smoke trickling out of his nose.
‘We’ll decide it here then,’ said Sprage, then pointed at the two halves of the Skinner’s head. ‘But first we’ll have us a fire and be well rid of him.’ Only after he had said these things did he look Ambel directly in the eye.
‘You named me Ambel, so you must have known,’ Ambel said.
‘I knew who you were,’ agreed Sprage.
‘You did?’ Ambel asked.
‘Oh yes, I did – as I do now. You’re the same Gosk Balem we threw in the sea, the same one who burned Hoopers,’ replied Sprage.
With the last intermittent faults ironed out of its AG unit, Thirteen rose into the air and surveyed its surroundings. There were nearly two hundred people gathered on the face of the hill. Twenty-three of them were Old Captains – including Drum, Ron and Ambel. All of them worked together to drag together fallen trees and build a suitably dramatic pyre on which to hurl the remains of the Skinner. It did not take much discussion for them to decide who would enjoy this moment, and it was Keech, using the laser he had retrieved from Janer, who ignited the pyre. As afternoon slid into evening, all stood in contemplative silence and watched the Skinner finally shrivel and burn away. There were no unexpected movements, no sudden resurrections, and there would be none. In its memory, Thirteen drew a line underneath this moment, then tried for the nth time to get a signal somewhere, to someone.
‘Warden? Warden? Twelve, do you hear me? What’s going on out there? Sniper? Sniper?’
Again there came nothing over the ether but an empty hiss. Something catastrophic must have happened, for even the Coram server was dragging its heels, and Thirteen could get little of relevance out of it.
The SM at the planetary base was the only one with anything to offer. ‘The Boss broke contact when that ship blew. He was fooling with Prador control codes, so maybe he got some feedback.’
Thirteen acknowledged this possibility, but doubted it very much. Deciding it could do nothing else until contacted, the little drone decided to continue observing and recording the events here. Seeing Sprage and Ambel standing somewhat apart from the rest, as the fire burnt lower, the drone dropped into the trees behind them and moved in close. The two Captains were silent for a long while until, after filling his pipe and getting it going, Sprage said, ‘Decision goes against you, and it’ll be the fire. No one’ll want you coming back again.’
‘Then I must be convincing,’ said Ambel. ‘Why did you say I am Gosk Balem? I have no memory of him. There’s nothing of him left.’
Sprage said, ‘The house may be gutted, even its inner walls and floors and ceilings torn out – but the house still stands.’
‘Very wise, and I’ll burn for that,’ said Ambel bitterly.
‘That’s something to be decided,’ said a voice out of the twilight. Captain Ron walked up to stand to one side of Ambel, then continued, ‘Time for you to tell it all again.’
Thirteen watched as the Captains and crews converged out of the twilight, their flickering shadows cast about by the flames. There was no formality here, and no requirement for it. Most of the Captains were gathered together, so this constituted a Convocation. Anything decided by these Captains, while they were together, would be written in stone. Thirteen rose higher and swung out to get a better view of proceedings, and immediately found that it was being accompanied through the air. That Olian Tay’s holocorder dogged its flight should have come as no surprise at all.
Janer sat on a log with the queen hornet on one shoulder, and with interest watched the gathering. He liked Ambel and certainly didn’t want to see him burned alive, but if the decision went against the Captain, what could Janer do? He glanced at Erlin, who was watching events with something approaching terror in her expression. Janer noted that she had acquired one of the Batians’ weapons, and he wondered if she intended anything rash. If she did, he felt he must intervene – though he was not sure to what end. He turned to Boris and Roach, sitting on the log beside him.
‘What happened to the two mercenaries?’ he whispered.
‘They both got eaten by leeches . . . sort of,’ Boris whispered back.
Behind them a crewman, who could have been Goss’s twin, shushed them to silence. Ambel had begun telling his tale in a flat emotionless voice. Janer knew how effective that telling could be, but he’d heard it before and was getting bored now.
‘Where will you establish the first nest?’ he whispered.
‘The hole into which the Skinner fled seems a viable proposition,’ replied the mind.
‘You don’t sound wholly convinced.’
‘Until two hours ago I was. I have since spoken with an augmented sail called Windcheater, who has offered me a place on the rock where the sails roost. Windcheater has an agenda, I believe,’ said the mind.
‘World domination? Humans go home?’
‘No, Windcheater wants humans and everyone in here. He wants the Polity in. He wants the Hive minds in. He would like the Prador here, if he could get them. He has augmented his innate intelligence and is absorbing knowledge at an astonishing rate. I well understand this, as he has been starved of these things for many thousands of years.’
‘Thousands?’
‘A tentative estimate. The sails themselves don’t really know. They don’t die very often.’
‘One moment,
’ said Janer. He turned to Boris, ‘What happened to that adolescent Prador?’
‘Still looking for it. Reckon it went into the sea,’ Boris replied, and was again shushed from behind. Janer noted that Ambel had not quite reached the end of his story, so returned to his conversation with the mind.
‘Still no answers to the question, why does he particularly want your nests on his rock?’ Janer probed.
‘Windcheater wants us all here because, the more Polity entities there are here, the more opportunities there’ll be for him and his kind. Specifically, I think he wants us on his rock so he can charge rent.’
‘And what form would the rent take?’ asked Janer.
‘Quite simply money – with which he can buy augmentations for all of his kind. AI linkups, high-tech tooling . . . all the trappings of technology. As Windcheater so appositely put it to me, “Spend a thousand years sitting on a rock having conversations that consist mainly of comments on how windy it is, and you’ll have a true appreciation of library computers, walls and solar heating.” I somehow suspect that in the near future Hoopers will have to learn to handle fabric sails and rigging themselves on their ships.’
‘Forgetting that, are you prepared to pay the rent? You could just as easily establish a nest here.’
‘The rock has its attractions. For one it is not easily accessible to Hoopers.’
‘You consider them a danger?’
‘I cannot say. How will they react when they discover that creatures with stings that inject sprine are about to colonize here?’
‘I guess it’d be worth your while to take a few precautions,’ agreed Janer.
Ambel had just finished his story, and now the Captains were asking him questions. What did he remember? Did he now consider himself free of guilt? Did he think there should be a statute of limitations on multiple murder? Would he be prepared to undergo an AI-directed mind probe? Ambel seemed to give the right answers to all these questions, then at the last, a question was flung at Captain Sprage.
‘Why did you insist he is the same Gosk Balem we flung in the sea?’ asked Captain Ron.
Sprage stood up and drew deeply on his pipe. The tobacco’s glow was reflected in his eyes so they glimmered like embers.
‘He’s the man. Memories are gone but the framework is still there. He has the morals, the understanding and the empathy that were Gosk Balem’s. Put in the same position as he was put a thousand years ago, and likely he would do exactly the same things again,’ said Sprage.
‘You’re saying he’d still throw Hoopers in the furnace?’ a Captain asked, eyeing Sprage doubtfully.
‘He threw just the brains and spinal columns of Hoopers into the furnace. The rest of the bodies were sold to the Prador, like empty cups to be filled with metal and Prador thoughts.’
‘Very poetic, Sprage. We all know about coring,’ growled someone in the darkness.
Sprage went on, ‘Gosk Balem was an ECS soldier who was captured by Hoop and his crew. They brought him here to be cored like the rest of their captives, but as he was ECS, and so obviously horrified by what they were doing here, Hoop decided to keep him alive in order to extend his suffering. They forced a slave collar on him, then put him to work at the furnace, burning the physical remains of coring. He had no idea then that those remains were still living and, even had he known, would he have chosen not to burn them? Would any of you?’
Silence met this question, so Sprage continued: ‘The Hoopers that were cored were too recently infected with the virus to have survived long in that ganglionic form. Those that weren’t eaten by leeches would have died or slowly transformed into leeches themselves. He never burned anything that still had a chance at life. He worked for Hoop because he made the choice of survival.’
‘Yeah,’ said Boris. ‘But he didn’t have the slave collar on all the time.’
‘Survival again,’ said Sprage. ‘Hoop removed his collar so as to further extend his torment. He could try to flee into the wilds, but it was unlikely he would have succeeded. Hoop really wanted him to try. Instead, he stayed and he continued feeding remains into the furnaces. And do you know why? Because while he was there, he might find the chance to act against Hoop.’
‘How do you know all this, Sprage?’ asked Ron.
Sprage took a short penknife from his pocket and scraped round in the bowl of his pipe. After knocking out the pipe’s dottle on the palm of his hand, he immediately began to refill it.
‘I know because I saw him doing something then that I only came to understand a few years after we caught him and threw him in the sea. The furnaces were powered by an old fusion reactor Hoop had removed from one of his landing craft. I still had my collar on then, while the virus established itself in me. I was three weeks, a month perhaps, from being cored. It was at that time I saw him carry a piece of reactor shielding and drop it in the moat.’
Abruptly Keech was on his feet, having been squatting by the flames. ‘He what?’ said the monitor.
‘The war was ending and the Prador retreating,’ said Sprage, ignoring Keech. ‘There’d been little chance of rescue during the war, but as it ended there was hope.’ He turned to address Keech. ‘You came here then. It was you who broke the program controlling the slave collars, and helped free those who remained. But how did you know where to come?’
Keech stared at Ambel, who was looking increasingly puzzled.
‘We knew from which part of the sector the coring trade was operating, but we didn’t know which sun or which planet. We swept that area searching for some kind of trace, some sign of spacecraft, orbital stations, field tech – we used all available methods to pick on high-tech usage.’
‘What finally brought you here, then?’ asked Sprage.
‘The distinctive signal from a fusion reactor. Normally you will never pick up on it, but this reactor was completely unshielded,’ said Keech.
‘Bugger,’ said Boris, still sitting beside Janer. He was not alone in his exclamation. There was a sudden surge of talk, till Sprage held up his hands.
‘I called him Ambel when I found him. I’d recognized him right away. I didn’t throw him back and I didn’t tell anyone because they might have voted to throw him back. I let him find his own life, and always hoped no one would ever know. He’s Gosk Balem all right. He’s the one who, over a period of years, stripped the inner casing from the fusion reactor so it would act as a beacon for ECS. He’s the reason every one of us old slaves is still alive. We shouldn’t have thrown him to the leeches in the first place. We had too much hate back then and we did wrong. Let’s not compound that error now.’
With a click, Sprage placed his pipe back in his mouth and then relit it. A roar of talk erupted again, while Keech walked up to Ambel and stood before him. A silence descended and the Hoopers watched. They knew how for centuries this monitor had hunted down and killed off members of Hoop’s former crew.
Keech held out his hand to Ambel, and Ambel solemnly shook it. Boris stood and walked over to his Captain. Other members of Ambel’s crew then emerged out of the darkness. Then Old Captains, and other crews. Hoopers were shaking Ambel’s hand, pounding him on his back. They were shaking each other’s hands and pounding each other’s backs.
Janer looked over at Erlin and saw that she was crying. The Convocation had clearly made its decision about Ambel.
‘Touching,’ said the Hive mind. Janer glared at the queen hornet on his shoulder, then stood and himself went to shake Ambel’s hand. Feeling a slight lump in his throat, he didn’t really want to listen to the mind’s cold analysis. Ambel was grinning as Janer approached. His usual calm had been fractured by . . . happiness.
‘Congratulations, Captain,’ said Janer.
He took Janer’s hand and shook it.
‘What now, lad? You’ll stay around a while?’ asked Ambel, still shaking Janer’s hand.
‘I think so,’ said Janer.
‘Good lad,’ said Ambel, slapping him on the shoulder with his free hand. The C
aptain then turned to Erlin and carefully took her in his arms.
Janer kept the grin on his face as he backed out of the crowd of jubilant Hoopers and went back to sit on his log. He tried to figure out if what Ambel had just done was deliberate. He glanced down at his shoulder and the mess on it that had once been the mind’s colonizing queen. From the Hive link came a buzzing scream, as of a circular saw going into hardwood. Janer grimaced and pulled the link out of his ear, to drop it into his pocket. The transfer had already been made and he now had ten million shillings in a private account. The future looked good.
Thirteen decided that nothing more of any moment was going to happen near the fire, so it rose up over the trees and floated down the slope of the island to the beach. Here it settled to scan something else, so that its record of events here might be more complete. An accurate description might be ‘for morbid curiosity’, but Thirteen did not allow itself to think like that. The coffin had been placed in one of the rowing boats beached here, ready to be returned to Sprage’s ship. Thirteen hovered above it, and tapped the palm lock with its tail, but to no effect. The drone then projected a complex lasered image at the lock, then tapped it again, thus opening the viewing window. These particular actions it would edit from its final record, before allowing that record to go out on general release. It wouldn’t do for the Warden to know that one of its SMs had had been buying and uploading black software normally employed by the less salubrious members of society.
Through the window, the drone observed Rebecca Frisk thrashing her head from side to side and rolling her eyes. Every time her mouth passed underneath the panel, her breath frosted the chainglass. Touching the surface of the coffin with its tail to detect the vibrations, Thirteen surmised that the woman was screaming. Amazing how much energy she had. The drone tapped once on the glass with its tail, and Frisk stopped her thrashing to stare at it bug-eyed. She started to shout, to beg, her eyes filled with tears. The drone linked to the Coram server, trying to find a lip-reading program, but had no time to download the sluggish spurts of information before huge movement in the dingle at the head of the beach distracted it.
