The Soldier

by Neal Asher

  Perhaps he was over-thinking things after his stupid encounter with the robots back there. Doubtless Zackander had the detectors and weapons to account for any air attack. This fence was simply here to keep thieves and spies out, and Zackander had not really thought things through.

  Angel squatted and then jumped, his electromuscle delivering such force that his feet sank up to the ankles in the hard ground as he launched. He shot up and forwards, his trajectory taking him ten feet above the fence, then, at the peak of his arc, he hit something. It tipped and twisted him over, and he fell, tumbling to the ground on the other side. Monofilament. Why hadn’t he scanned more intensively? Why had he been so stupid? The all-but-invisible mesh tangled around him, dragging down the transparent helium-filled micro-balloons used to support it. Half a second later a particle beam from one of the towers hit him. He felt his skin ablating under the storm, but also distributing and absorbing the energy—routing it to internal storage. He used that supply a moment later, his own particle weapon replying from his palms, the business ends of two towers fragmenting in violent explosions.

  Half a second later, high-velocity diamond-hard carbon beads struck him, ripping at ablated skin and in some places penetrating. He fired again, slagging two more towers, then continuously, hitting everything within line of sight. Towers erupted, flinging debris in every direction, with burning gobbets of plastic and composite raining down. An energy burst that he tuned through his skin turned the monofilament to dust all around him and he landed down on his feet. On a mine.

  The blast flung Angel into the air again. Now he was seriously annoyed. He ramped up scanning and induction warfare, disabling all the mines and other devices hidden in the earth. Two blasts from his particle weapon took out proton-weapon turrets rising from the ground, then further blasts dropped drones, which rose like wasps half a mile ahead. Angel landed running, aware that his chameleonware was now malfunctioning and he was visible to the old Cyberat.

  It was time to end this.

  ZACKANDER

  Zackander felt a sinking dread in the remains of his guts, and something of inevitability as he saw the legate running towards his home. He sent three codes in quick succession, shutting down computer connections to the Jain soldier and only watching it through nearby cams in the zero-freezer. A hot air blast fogged the interior while a swift injection of molten sulphur drove coolant gases out of the outer casing. The temperature inside the compartment went from a degree above absolute zero to fifty degrees Celsius in a few seconds. Other feeds began pouring in water heavily laden with a precise mix of metals and other substances from the table of elements. A second later the Jain soldier was moving.

  It skittered around, its armour popping open. Intricate hardfield and shimmershield manipulation patterned the water around it into eddies and streams, feeding into it in some places and shooting out in others. The soldier’s own body temperature climbed rapidly. It was absorbing what it needed, also cracking the water into hydrogen and oxygen and pressure storing it in nodules throughout its insides. A second later, scanners outside the freezer detected a power surge. The thing had just fired up its fusion reactors. And now, with absolute certainty, its lethal collection of weaponry was coming online.

  It was time for it to leave, and for Zackander to leave too.

  Clamps disconnected all around the zero-freezer, and at the far end of a tube a cap blew away. Zackander directed all this with his mind, as well as with hand and arm gestures picked up by motion sensors all around him. He hovered there as if he was conducting some invisible orchestra. His home moved in the ground and turned, pointing the tube towards the approaching legate. The freezer dropped and, engaging with two rails, accelerated. Zackander was unsurprised to see that the hard acceleration did not affect the soldier at all, and then the cam feed from the freezer cut.

  Grav-engines now. Zackander’s home began to rise, shrugging off the earth that concealed it. Through exterior cams he saw the zero-freezer shoot out, its course perfectly on target. It hurtled along just grazing the ground, throwing up a spray of earth and rock, until it slammed into Angel. What happened next demonstrated the sheer weight of the legate because the freezer tilted and tumbled in an explosion of earth.

  “Deal with that,” said Zackander, trying to smile, but failing.

  THE CLIENT

  Energy levels slowly rose as the Client drew the weapons platform and its subsidiary system closer to the sun. It had nearly straightened out its twist, and more and more weapons and dead mechanisms were springing to life all the time. This was good because, even though enough time had passed for the Client to know the prador here had not been able to send a distress call before it destroyed them, still more pra-dor ships could arrive at any time. It was while constantly scanning for danger, as well as hidden prador installations or watch posts, that she found the moon.

  The thing was now alone in an erratic orbit about the sun. The prador bombardment of the home world must have flung it out of its orbit there. The Client had thought it destroyed but now assumed it must have been looted by the prador and its internal installations ruined. Nevertheless, she sent one of her attack pods to chase the thing down and scan it more intensively. Some hours later she began to receive up-to-date data and imagery.

  The surface of the object was much as it had always been—a swirled crust of rock and iron over layers of a dense form of obsidian. Many in the Species had debated how the moon had formed. Certainly, it had been subject to intense heat and gravity stresses, but not the kind that naturally occurred in known space. It seemed likely to be a product of some ancient war, but none that the Client herself knew about. Carefully studying the surface, she saw there were a couple of new impact points. But they weren’t near the entrances, all four of which she found intact. They were metal rings, thirty feet across, set in the regolith and enclosing circles of metal just ten feet across at their centres. There seemed to be no damage to indicate the prador had entered. Other signs would have been evident too, because only a member of the Species could enter without activating the internal defences.

  The Client felt a stirring of great excitement. Yes, Dragon had destroyed her backup in U-space and she had therefore lost a great deal of her memory—much of her previous knowledge. But if this place was intact, a wealth of learning would be available to her. Here was the library of the Species—the sum total of all the civilization’s knowledge stored in millions of data gems. This was also the repository of forbidden knowledge for, sometime in the far past, the progenitors of the Species had decided that their earliest history should be concealed. She felt a deep stirring of curiosity, then a conflicting abhorrence . . .

  Stabs of fusion fire diverted the course of the weapons platform to intercept the moon. The Client meanwhile began making alterations to the next birth in the long chain of her being. She chose a format still retained in her memory, cut and snipped her own genome to the correct shape, then altered the nutrients being fed into the womb of the creature segment at the terminus of her conjoined body. The altered clone grew rapidly, as was usually required when one of these was going to be deployed. However, the Client’s curiosity about the Species’ secret history was winning over her abhorrence. She now began, in a vague indeterminate way, to see the need for some additions to the new clone and made alterations: hard substrates to be laid down, an inorganic power supply, a single weapon and a method of concealment . . .

  All along her length the Client fed voraciously, routing nutrients down to that terminal creature. Over the next hours it grew noticeably fat, and was soon heaving as it gave birth. The creature emerged in one long slimy bundle and dropped—not fully attached like its forebears but merely hanging on a long cord. It unfolded: a waspish body with four legs, its mandibles positioned back from its head and extending into long arms with complex manipulators. The head itself was crowded with three compound eyes and bundles of sensory fibres. The hole of a mouth was there but not connected to anything behind. Still hangi
ng, it took in nutrients through its birth cord, packing its body with dense fats. This was the only time it would feed. Once it reached full growth, its life thereafter would be measured by how quickly it used up those fats.

  While the Client watched, the creature’s four wings expanded and hardened. At this point, because those wings were its aerial, the Client linked with it and the creature became as much part of herself and her mind as the others in her long body. Now for transport.

  The various vehicles aboard the platform were either made to be flown by humans, or were controlled by the platform AI and had no room for pilot or passengers. Choosing one that was undamaged and quite small—she wasn’t sure if sending a bigger shuttle down there might activate something—she sent in robots to make alterations to it. Few changes were necessary because the Client’s remote was more than capable of handling human controls. The vehicle was elliptical, with manipulator arms to the fore. It had been made for collecting materials at some distance from the platform, so possessed a fusion drive, which would be needed for its excursion to the moon.

  The remote was nearly ready, now extruding a protective gel layer over its body so it would be able to move about in vacuum. It was also taking in the oxygen and chlorine needed to burn its fats. Finally, it snapped its cord and took flight. The Client experienced a feeling of freedom within it, as it winged about inside the cylinder. She recollected past occasions inside remotes like this, and considered things that had not occurred to her then. The Species was more than capable of taking on any form it chose, so why the static conjoined form she presently possessed? What was the reasoning behind that? What was the history? Why why why? She felt a deep frustration with the puzzle, then saw how it might be resolved. When the remote entered the library, she would learn the forbidden histories. Surely what had once been prohibited no longer mattered, now she was the last of her kind? Nevertheless, she was realistic. The automatic systems in the library would forbid, and she had to be prepared for that. Then she realized that the alterations she had already made to her remote were precisely that preparation, and resolve hardened inside her.

  After stretching her wings, the facet of the Client that was the remote settled down to the bottom of the cylinder, and an airlock hatch opened below. Folding in her wings, she passed through it and began making her way through the platform to the shuttle. The Client whole now focused her attention on the moon, which was close, and fired up platform thrust-ers and fusion drive nacelles to match its course. Scanning again, she found the thing as impenetrable as before. Doubtless this was why the prador had ignored it. One wandering moon was of no interest to them once they had finished their extermination.

  The remote reached the shuttle and swiftly scuttled inside, dropping onto a saddle in front of the human-format controls. The Client waited some hours until the platform was much closer and fully matched to the moon’s course, then opened the space doors and launched the shuttle. The remote gripped two joysticks in hands that resembled black spiky hydras and gazed at the instrumentation before it. Now fully within the remote, the Client felt the limitations of this technology. All she was using were its eyes, acoustic receptors and a partial amount of the feeling in its hands. She decided then that she would begin altering all controls aboard the platform and its attack pods to suit her more extensive senso-rium. Perhaps it was also time to create more remotes like this, but longer lived and capable of feeding themselves? Back in the Client whole she felt a great reluctance to do this. It occurred to her then, that if she had managed to load her backup mind, this idea might not have arisen. There would never have been the need for this remote, nor the alterations that she had already made to it.

  As the shuttle descended towards the moon, repairs aboard the platform continued apace. An autofactory that had been infrequently used by Pragus finally came online and drew tremendous amounts of power as it began making pseudomatter components for U-space drives. Final repairs to the gravity press also put that online, and it started making super-dense components for the same drives. By the time the shuttle sped above a landscape of whorled grey and black towards one of the entry portals, the first components were already going into place. The Client estimated it would take a further five days for the platform to be U-space capable. Thereafter, another ten days would bring the attack pods up to spec.

  The remote brought the shuttle to a hover over one of the entry portals, then descended beside it. It raised a slight mist of dust from the surface of the moon as it landed but otherwise did not disturb the hard ground. The remote soon exited the shuttle and moved in a series of long hops in the low gravity to the portal. Now the Client was remembering all the protocols involved for entering the library. Only one of the Species could do it, or do it without some sort of violent response.

  The remote positioned itself in the centre of the portal. After a long wait, which the Client was sure was not usual, a column rose up beside it and the remote inserted its long-fingered hand. A spike went into one finger to extract material for further reading. After a moment the column began to descend and the Client, now fully engaged in the remote, extracted her hand. The disc she was squatting on soon began to move down too, into the moon.

  She had gained access and now started thinking about the data she was hoping to retrieve. Certainly she wanted to know how to build farcasters again and had already made a list of a great deal of technical data, but now she definitely wanted more. She finally understood that by not loading her former self into her mind, she possessed a curiosity that her other mind would have suppressed. She wanted to know the history of the Species; she wanted the forbidden knowledge. Maybe this was Dragon’s purpose in destroying her backup? No, that was a speculation too far . . .

  The circular plate dropped into a huge cavern deep within the moon, air pressure shooting up as a hardfield closed off the hole above. It descended on internal grav-engines and settled towards the floor in a space between tall hollow triangular-section monoliths. The lights came on—an intricate interplay over many surfaces and one aspect of the Species’s language. Holograms sprang into being and the Client tasted data in the air in the form of long complex organic chains. She communicated her first request, for data on the farcaster, by issuing a similar chain into the seeming chaos around her. This caused a reaction through the chemical language, and the library replied with a series of light patterns. There were theories stored there that allowed for the farcaster, and there had been some research into it. The Client saw that the research had in fact been made by her earlier self. But no theory had ever proved out and an actual device was never made. The Client felt disappointed, but she understood. The library had no knowledge of the farcaster because the device was a product of the Client’s own research in the intervening centuries between the extermination of the Species and the prador/human war.

  She moved on to other matters, requesting technical data and knowledge she knew would fill certain gaps in her mind. After a long delay, chain molecules wafted back to her and she snared them in sensory fibres, where they slowly unravelled, feeding the data into the brain of the remote. The remote then sent the data and access codes to the roof of the cavern where transceivers collected it, and retransmitted it from their surface component to the Client whole. This safety measure prevented the theft of forbidden data, with a filter mind in the roof of the cavern checking the data before retransmission. As she reacquired knowledge she had thought lost with her earlier self, the Client felt some gratification.

  She moved on next to a less risky option than her final request and ordered the Species science database. The lights immediately warned of the storage capacity required for this, so the Client whole set the knowledge she would receive to be diverted into the storage of the weapons platform, rather than laid down as permanent memory in her own mind, which did not have the capacity. The data came to the remote in numerous different forms: chain molecules, microwave transmission, light, some sound, and the interrelation of all of these. This took its
senses to maximum capacity. Its transmission out was also slower since, only using microwaves, its brain was constantly at the point of overload. The database took hours to come through, and the Client whole was completely occupied in rerouting it into storage, only able to steal glimpses of the knowledge she was receiving. There was a lot there but her main interest was in what could be used for destruction. She was, after all, a weapons developer.

  Finally, the last of the science database was collected in storage within the weapons platform. The Client now requested the history of the Species and began receiving much of what she already knew. This history stretched back, growing increasingly sparse, for hundreds of thousands then millions of years, and stopped at five million years in the past. During that time, the Species had been physically little different from when the prador had found it. Primitive in the beginning, it had occupied only the home world, and had been millions of years away from building the world ring. There was only speculation about what had gone before by those of the Species who had lived within the five-million-year span. But there was also forbidden data that could be requested in the heart of the library. This was permitted only for researchers whose results, based on knowledge of the data, could be published or used, within limitations. However, the data itself could never leave the library and any remote that received it would not be allowed out of the library alive.

  The Client had decided to change this outcome.

  TRIKE

  “You’ve reported all this?” Lyra asked.

  The two of them had been talking for some time but Trike hadn’t really been following it. His mind had been wandering, remembering times with Ruth, his early years on Spatterjay and, for no apparent reason, a particularly long party scoffing boiled hammer whelks and quaffing sea-cane rum. Dream, memory and reality blurred together, but he felt himself coming back into focus. What was happening in this room was bright and substantial, and not like a dream at all. Even so, the sound of hammer whelks kicking against the side of the cauldron in which they were being boiled stayed persistently in his ears.