The Soldier

by Neal Asher

  “One must live in the moment,” said the soldier, its voice close, as if speaking right next to him.

  It was using the force-field that pinned him as a method of communication, Angel realized.

  Interesting. It wasn’t so much a word as a vague diffuse attitude from the Wheel.

  “This is a very new moment in a very different time,” Angel said, speaking only in his mind. It was meaningless babble but it served a purpose. He understood that the Wheel somehow wanted access to this super-soldier and the sooner he facilitated that, the sooner he would be free of the thing.

  “Yes, a very different time,” the soldier replied. “But orders are orders.”

  There was feedback coming through the field entrapping him, and via this a means of access to the soldier itself. Angel started testing it by bringing up particular pieces of code in his speech centres. They were questions as such, and received replies. Verbal communication was not all the soldier used, but was the most evident. In warfare, communication was always another way of reaching the enemy. In ancient human conflicts it had been done via propaganda and misinformation, but as warfare advanced and computing was increasingly used, it became a method to penetrate an enemy’s systems. And now, a method to access a mind that Angel was realizing might not be entirely sane.

  He began to check through his extensive collection of computer warfare weapons—the viruses, self-assembling worms, and other items of malicious computer life. The Wheel, meanwhile, closed up into a tight knot in his mind, then folded away. Abruptly, the field pinning Angel fell away and he was free. Did this mean the soldier now intended to destroy him? He focused on it, high in the sky above the smoking remains of Zackander’s home. It was swivelling back and forth as if searching for something, then it shot away.

  “Where are you going?” Angel asked, firing a tight-beam radio signal at the soldier to communicate.

  “You get to live a little longer,” it replied. “Primary threats must always be eliminated first.”

  The Wheel landed back in Angel’s mind, disorganized, in a swirl of pieces, then began to reassemble, slowly regaining its former coherence. Angel realized it had tried something, but what, he did not know. And it had failed.

  “Bring it to me,” the Wheel managed.

  ORLIK

  Orlik gazed at the image of the wormship. The thing was unravelling and losing its current disguise. The particle beams fired by the Cyberat defence station chewed over hardfields the thing started projecting. Then it moved—no drive flame visible but its acceleration huge. The railgun slugs, arriving moments after the particle beams, just passed through the space where it had been. Orlik studied a tactical map in his mind—relayed to his implants from his ship’s sensors via its mind—and realized that his plan to drive the wormship towards the steadily spreading field of space mines was futile. Through the tactical interface Zackander had allowed Orlik to set up with the station, he shut down its weapons. This would be fast, and though he could get the station to respond quickly, he didn’t want to make it a primary target for the worm-ship just then, but keep it as a point of retreat.

  “How do you estimate our chances of surviving this?” asked Cvallor, the captain of the other destroyer. Cvallor was Orlik’s prime first-child whom he had transferred to that destroyer when they had seized it in the Graveyard fifty years ago. He had undergone changes due to the lack of suppressants to prevent him making the transition into adulthood. Though distinctions between first-child and adult were hazy for such as them . . .

  “To use a human expression: a snowball’s chance in hell,” Orlik replied.

  “So the purpose of this action is?”

  “Educational,” Orlik replied.

  As instructed, they were constantly transmitting, through U-space, every possible scrap of data on this attack. Now, with the wormship heading directly towards them, Orlik’s and Cvallor’s ships parted, railguns firing constantly. A few seconds later, the slugs began hitting the worm-ship’s hardfields and it disappeared in a fireball, leaving a long trail of flame and burning debris. But the fields showed no sign of weakening. Then the fireball collapsed, a brief U-signature detected. “Fuck,” said Cvallor.

  New imagery. The wormship had made a short U-jump and now reappeared directly in the path of Cvallor’s destroyer. Its hardfields again took fire but a moment later that ceased as Cvallor erected his own defence. The fields of both ships hit with an intense green flash and the prador destroyer immediately began spewing burning hardfield projectors. Something then exploded in its rear, the blast so powerful it even peeled up a large plate of exotic armour. Orlik checked the tactical feed from the other destroyer, though it was breaking up now. When he saw what had happened he felt a stab of fear, then a calm acceptance.

  “U-gate,” he muttered.

  Via his implants he issued instructions directly to his U-space technicians, who scrambled to get something working he had foolishly not thought necessary before. It took them a couple of minutes, but they managed to fire up the internal runcible. This U-space bounce gate was not a standard addition to prador ships but it was a necessary one now the Polity had developed U-jump missiles. Just as this wormship apparently possessed, if the tactical feed was correct. The internal explosion had not been some part of Cvallor’s destroyer overloading and exploding, nor had it been any of the munitions he carried. Also, nothing had penetrated his ship’s armour.

  Cvallor’s defensive fields collapsed and a moment later the worm-ship shut down its own, descending on his ship like an amoeba on a bacterium. Writhing there, it began ripping his ship apart, lasers and sheer fields flashing, worms tearing away chunks of armour and plucking out gun emplacements like iron eyeballs. Orlik saw one such worm-form rip out an internal component shaped like a section from an octagonal rod. It shook it like an animal ripping prey. Shearfields flashed all around the thing in an even pattern, like the spokes of a turning wheel, and the object came apart. The worm flung away the fragments and dived back into tearing apart the ship.

  “Cvallor?” Orlik enquired, but the connection was dead. Orlik cursed himself for even enquiring. He had just seen the other captain’s sanctum ripped out of the ship and destroyed. Cvallor was certainly dead now.

  “Fire on that thing now,” he instructed his gunners.

  “But we’ll hit—”

  “Now!” Orlik affirmed. “They’re dead.”

  Such an enquiry from the gunners was as unusual aboard a prador ship as the runcible bounce gate, but then the prador of this ship were not the usual kind, just as Orlik himself was not the usual father-captain. But he cursed himself for that piece of delegation—he should have used his implants to fire the weapons. He guessed he still had a long way to go getting his prador mind to adapt to the technological integration of himself, his ship mind and all his ship’s systems.

  Particle beams stabbed out, mostly hitting the wormship but occasionally stabbing past it to tear into Cvallor’s destroyer. Railgun slugs hit a moment later. Orlik felt a surge of joy when he saw worms sliced in half, exploding and ablating in sun-hot particle streams. It was short lived, however, as hardfields came up again and the wormship began to pull itself back together. Maybe, Orlik thought, those fields were directional? Maybe their strength was greater on the side directed towards a threat? Even as he thought this he used his implants to accelerate his ship around and out, firing constantly.

  The wormship came back together completely and abandoned the wreck it had made of Cvallor’s destroyer, which tumbled away through vacuum, shedding debris and prador—some maybe still alive. The worm-ship then began accelerating towards Orlik, again disappearing in a fireball as his railgun slugs impacted its fields. Now, through the tactical interface, he sent his instruction to the defence station.

  The station fired everything it had at the wormship, from behind. Eight particle beams struck first. Railgun shots followed, four of the beams having to shut down so they didn’t burn up the approaching swarm of slugs Cv
allor had fired, or the slower CTD moving missiles that followed them. A portion of vacuum a hundred miles across filled with intense fire. Orlik lost some cam imagery and slewed his ship aside to avoid a storm of fast-moving white-hot debris. But he continued firing on the predicted path of the wormship. Then something slammed into his hardfields and just hung there as if clinging to them. A large piece of the wormship was out there. They had destroyed it!

  No. The worm began moving, its end now against the hardfield. Stress readings rocketed and Orlik’s ship began auto-ejecting burned-out field projectors. For two minutes Orlik managed to maintain his defence but then the field the worm was attacking went out and was not replaced quickly enough, allowing it to fall through. His gunners tracked it with a particle beam. It ablated, then jerked and writhed as close-firing chemical propellant antipersonnel guns hit it with super-dense iron bullets. But, still intact, it landed on his destroyer’s hull.

  Now the CTD missiles reached the predicted location of the worm-ship in the firestorm. A succession of intense detonations followed, balls of light expanding and blasting the fire away. Orlik saw this, but most of his concentration was on the worm on his hull. It was chewing on exotic metal armour with shearfield teeth but making little headway.

  At his instruction, antipersonnel weapons designed to deal with attacking armoured prador rose out of the hull, swivelled on their posts and began hitting the thing with sharp-pointed exotic metal bullets. These punched inside it but didn’t slow its traverse across the hull. Soon it would reach one of the necessary gaps in the armour where a ball-mounted gun emplacement sat. Maybe it could get through there or, if it moved beyond, it might go around the back of the ship and try to wreck the engines. Orlik sent new orders, some to automatic systems and some to his crew, then focused his attention back towards the wormship.

  The incandescent gases and hot debris were clearing. Just one look told the captain that most of the debris were the remains of railgun slugs, though perhaps some were from whatever kind of hardfield generators the wormship used. The thing itself looked undamaged as it accelerated out of the storm, then disappeared inside another fireball as more railgun slugs from the defence station hit it. For a few minutes, Orlik thought it was coming directly for his ship, but it diverted and he saw that its course was taking it to the station. He felt a little relief at this, but knew it would be short lived.

  His instructions were followed, and new canisters of rounds arrived at the antipersonnel guns where autoloaders slotted them into place. The guns paused for a few seconds during this process, in which time the worm reached the gun emplacement. It attacked with new vigour and Orlik saw chunks of the hydraulic system falling away from his ship. All connection to the emplacement shut down, though a feedback power surge blew out two nearby generators. Exterior view showed a bright-white arc light issuing from the front end of the worm. Automatics behind the emplacement activated to put out a spreading fire and Orlik watched in horror as the worm started to pull the whole thing out of his ship.

  The antipersonnel guns began firing again, their loads of an entirely different and quite antiquated design. Copperhead armour-piercers hit the worm, their impact blasting white-hot copper vapour inside. The worm took hit after hit as it finally levered out the emplacement and batted it away, before beginning to slide into the ship. Now moving to meet it, armoured prador swarmed down surrounding corridors. Soon they reached the face of the thing and opened up with particle beams and Gatling cannons.

  The intensity of fire brought the worm to a full stop, while outside the copperheads continued their work on its main body. Inside, it replied—a short-burst particle weapon whose beam was violet-white lancing out. It was devastating, and punched straight through each pra-dor it hit, leaving a floating dead suit of armour spewing hot gas and boiled flesh. Then came another attack . . .

  Orlik first only felt it as a presence—a shadow in the computer architecture and mind of his ship. The viral attack came next, knocking out automatics, swamping internal communications, sowing confusion in the mind and corrupting Orlik’s connection. He fought back, utilizing stolen Polity anti-virals, shutting down those portions of the system near the worm fragment, using electromagnetic warfare and launching his own viral assault on the fragment. He also issued further orders to his crew.

  Soon other prador arrived sporting missile launchers. Orlik had been reluctant to approve these but knew they were needed now. The missiles were much like the bullets hitting the worm outside. Five shots into the thing’s face ripped it apart and the short-burst particle weapon died. Outside, the rest of the fragment was now filled with fire and moving sluggishly.

  “Keep hitting it hard,” Orlik instructed, feeling he was also making headway in the informational war, but was aware of the regenerative capabilities of such technology. And, the data he had on wormships, which was sparse, indicated that a piece of one should do no more than physically attack, so this thing was more capable than expected.

  “Get loaders in and push the thing out of my ship.”

  He released five flying handlers outside his ship. They bore some similarity to a prador, with elliptical bodies and big heavy claws to the fore, but rather than legs they possessed heavy swivel-mounted rocket motors. Such devices were usually used to clear battle debris, and of course such was the case now.

  Meanwhile the wormship had crashed straight into the station’s hardfields, while it was already spewing out lines of burned and burning projectors. It resisted for a little longer than Cvallor’s destroyer, but still the fields failed. The ship motored in, hitting the station so hard it sank some way into its armour, altering the station’s position enough to have it dropping out of the Lagrange point orbit of the Cyberat world. Here the mismatch in scale was evident, for the wormship was about a tenth the size. It now spread out of the dent it had made and around the station, then inside it when its worm parts found or made access. Debris tumbled out and fires ignited inside. Orlik saw escape modules blasting away and realized that the small human crew had abandoned hope. As he watched the wormship chew through the station he was reminded of decaying bodies and the things that fed upon them.

  The flying handlers had now arrived at the worm on his own ship, closed their claws on whatever they could grip and were heaving it up. Meanwhile his crew had brought in a heavy munitions loader and were pushing its front end out. Even as they were doing this the worm ceased to move. Orlik stared at the thing, a leaden feeling inside him. How much Jain tech had it spewed into his ship? Would it be active or later activate to subsume this small part of a technical civilization—its chosen prey? And did such future eventualities matter? When that wormship had finished with the station it would come for his vessel and the end result would be foregone.

  “When it is at a safe distance,” he instructed his gunners, “destroy it completely.”

  Another few minutes passed as the front end of the worm slowly ground out of his ship—a particularly stubborn barb in its flesh. Then, direct to his implants came a demand for communication, and it was one he could not refuse.

  “I am here,” he replied after opening the link.

  “Cancel your instruction to your gunners,” said one who had contacted him via U-space from a very long way away.

  “Belay that order,” Orlik immediately sent to his gunners. “Do not destroy the worm. I repeat: do not destroy the worm.”

  “What do you want?” he now asked privately.

  “It is enough,” said the other. “The destruction of you and your vessel by that wormship serves no purpose. I have enough data to assess its battle capabilities. Data now on its structure and the technology it contains is of more interest to me.”

  “You wish me to return with this item?” Orlik asked, suddenly feeling hope but still, at the heart of his being, prepared to obey unto death.

  “No, don’t return here. You will take the worm aboard your ship into your hold,” said the voice. “You will pull away and head to the coordina
tes I give. When you arrive there, an ally will contact you. She will communicate with you via this link to give you detail concerning the quarantine and security measures you must take.”

  “Very well,” said Orlik, about to say more when the other cut the comlink.

  He sat there pondering, looking at the coordinates that had appeared on one of his screens. He was a first-child, though somewhat changed from the normal version, and supposedly must obey his father without thought. But obedience arose from his pheromonal indoctrination and after many years he had started to go his own way, started to have thoughts unusual for a prador.

  “Prepare yourselves,” he broadcast to his entire ship, still pondering on those thoughts, and subsequent sins. “We are leaving.”

  Why the aversion to mentally interfacing with computers? Why the aversion to AI? Both had brought demonstrable advantages to the Polity during the war. And so Orlik had developed the hardware to connect himself to his ship. He had gone further, making a copy of his then failing ship’s mind—the flash-frozen ganglion of a first-child whose mental growth was crippled and incapable of original thought—to AI crystal. Its abilities increased, and it came close to actually being an AI. Under prador law what he had done was worthy of a death sentence. But his real sin, he learned when his father, the king, found out, was the risk he had taken, without orders, of connecting the king’s family to technology abhorrent to most normal prador—such a thing could foment rebellion amongst them. He had expected death to be his punishment but his father had surprised him. Orlik would desert the Kingdom as a renegade, but obey his father absolutely. In this way, he would become a deniable asset able to go to places—like the Graveyard—where other prador warships could not.