The Soldier

by Neal Asher

  12

  Reavers: In the aftermath of the prador/human war came a time of self-examination for the prador although, it has to be said, not all of them. For many the treaty was anathema and they should have won. They itched to start fighting again, while some of them abandoned the Kingdom feeling betrayed by their new king. But cooler heads prevailed or, rather, the new king and his extended family (which formed the King’s Guard) were smart enough to know that the Polity could crush them, and so violently weeded out those prador still in denial. But even while this was ongoing, the king ordered all prador scientific establishments to begin deconstructing and incorporating Polity technology. This resulted in a massive upsurge in computers and robotics. It also drove a renaissance in prador weapons technology, one result of which was the reavers. These ships supposedly incorporate the best of both worlds. They are two miles long and shaped like extended teardrops rather than prador carapaces, as had been the fashion. Their armour is similar to the newest Polity ship armour, which in turn was based on the earlier prador armour with its exotic metal component. Their weapons and defences match those of modern Polity destroyers and it is rumoured reavers can even deploy U-jump missiles and carry bounce gates as a defence against them. Reavers are fast, rugged and dangerous warships yet, because the prador refuse to incorporate AI in them, they are still outclassed by even our older attack ships.

  —from The Weapons Directory

  BLADE

  After being heavily damaged by the Clade’s attack on it, the stealth black-ops attack ship Obsidian Blade hung in space, opened up like a badly splintered piece of mahogany. Beneath jutting shards of the ship, the silver intestines of workings poked out, and these were surrounded by swarms of microbots like blow flies. Blade felt very vulnerable this way and did not relish the sensation at all, but it had been necessary for making full repairs. Now, at last, its U-space com was back online and it began to receive messages.

  Messages from Cog were mostly text as he had tried to keep a close eye on Trike—a man who, it appeared, was undergoing drastic mutation by the Spatterjay virus. Detail was sparse concerning events on and around the world of the Cyberat, but it seemed the wormship was gone, along with some kind of Jain-tech drone, while the legate had been effectively betrayed by its own ship and was left stranded on the planet. It was an odd situation, but still there was a chance to seize hold of a legate and take it apart for whatever data it would render. However, Blade, ever the dutiful soldier, sought orders from higher up the chain of command.

  “How long will it be before you can travel?” asked a voice Blade immediately knew was that of Earth Central itself.

  “Some hours yet,” replied Blade, but sent a more detailed assessment as an information package.

  “Doable,” said EC.

  “I have no chance of going after that wormship without coordinates,” Blade replied, “maybe this legate knows where it is going?”

  “This is a possibility, but I very much doubt it,” EC replied. “The indications are that the legate was under the control of some other entity, which has now abandoned it. An entity that can seize control of a legate, and a wormship, is hardly likely to leave a signpost to its next destination.”

  “Another entity?” Blade repeated.

  “Numerous complicated factors have come into play,” said EC, which was no answer at all.

  “Oh, right . . .”

  “One of those complications is Dragon . . .”

  “Oh, right . . .”

  “Dragon has been involved in some questionable events recently that I have yet to parse.”

  This, Blade felt, was an astounding admission from Earth Central.

  An information package arrived and Blade studied it. So, an alien life form had seized control of an accretion disc weapons platform and taken it into the Kingdom. The probability was high that this alien was a reification of the Client, a creature who had more than enough reasons to be pissed off with both the prador and the Polity.

  “The data indicates,” EC continued—which Blade basically understood as meaning “I know stuff you don’t and I am not going to tell you it”—”that Dragon allowed the Client to escape with the weapons platform after destroying the U-space backup to its mind.”

  “U-space backup?” Blade began, but then understood. This version of the Client was a reification. It would not know as much as the previous version of itself.

  EC continued, “This has impelled the Client to seek out information from a library moon of its species in the Prador Kingdom, which likely seems was Dragon’s intention.”

  “Surely this will then make it a more dangerous loose cannon to have roaming about in the Kingdom with one of our weapons platforms? The best option would be to destroy it as soon as possible?” Blade was now hoping for reassignment.

  “No, you are not going after the Client,” said EC.

  “What then?”

  “You will go to the system of the Cyberat,” said EC.

  “I assumed as much,” said Blade smugly. “You want me to grab the legate anyway and see if I can find out where that wormship went?”

  “No, you are a black-ops attack ship and do not possess the requisite abilities.”

  Blade felt the urge to grumble about this but it was true. Its speciality was major destruction, not capture and interrogation.

  “So what do I do there?”

  “Whatever controls that wormship did not destroy the legate though it was fully capable of doing so. The legate is a potentially huge source of data and, as such, is also a large lure.”

  “You suspect some kind of trap?”

  “I do, but for my agents, or for something else, I do not know. However, it strikes me that there is only one entity with the capabilities of closing that trap.”

  Blade only felt confusion at the convoluted reasoning here, which kind of confirmed that attack ship AIs like itself weren’t really made for much more than watching and pouncing.

  “What entity?” it asked.

  “I think you already learned that,” said EC.

  Blade felt a surge of anger.

  The Clade . . .

  “What are my orders?”

  “You will keep watch and report,” replied EC. “You will act as you deem necessary, and you will gather information.”

  “I deemed it necessary to go after the Client,” Blade pointed out.

  “You will not.”

  “Then I deem it necessary to destroy the Clade.”

  “Quite so. Carry out your mission as I have instructed,” said EC, and cut the link.

  Blade sat in vacuum chewing it all over. There were always other factors that impinged on how Earth Central reacted to any situation. It could see how the ruling AI of the Polity might think it a good idea to have a weapons platform running rogue in the Kingdom: “Sorry, Oberon, but an alien stole one of our weapons platforms and entered your territory. Would you like us to send help?” Such a platform would be a deniable reminder to prador in the Kingdom, including the king, of Polity military superiority. And, if the king did ask for help, which was unlikely, anything the Polity sent in would be a further reminder.

  Also, Dragon allowing this alien to escape from the accretion disc with the platform indicated a Jain technology connection. EC was obviously loath to act without full understanding of the situation, which was never easy when Dragon was involved. No matter. Blade was a soldier and had the probable location of a target—it would stick with that.

  Repairs were almost complete and Blade began closing up the ship’s hull—snapping it shut in annoyance. It knew, for sure, that when this was all over it might understand the general shape of EC’s plotting, but it wouldn’t understand it all. This was presupposing it didn’t end up as burned fragments strewn across the Cyberat system.

  THE CLIENT

  The Client tried to concentrate on this last task to the exclusion of all else. But she occasionally eyed her remote, sitting at the base of the cylinder and gently expiri
ng. It still held the data crystal containing the forbidden history of the Species, but the other information the library had loaded to the remote’s mind now resided in multiple carbon lattice hard-storage drives throughout the platform. During the journey to move the platform towards the sun, the Client had been hugely tempted to begin searching through the forbidden data. But she knew this would interfere with her planning of, and responses to, the tasks in hand. In this situation, any delay could be a fatal one. No, the data would have to wait, especially now . . .

  The moon returned to the system, its U-space drive ripping up the quantum foam more than necessary and generating an explosion of light. It was almost as if the Librarian wanted to be noticed. The Client immediately focused telescopes and other detectors on the thing and soon saw the damage. The moon was radiating, new craters in its surface glowed in their depths, and it had carried through momentum from its last jump and hurtled across the system at one quarter light, leaving a trail of vapour behind it.

  “You are back,” the Client noted.

  The Librarian replied with that shriek across the EMR spectrum. This time she acted fast, certain it required some response, recording it to storage not already filled with library data. But before she could even take a look at it, space rippled around the moon and it elongated before disappearing in another flash of light. Again the Client tried to get a lock on its U-signature but, again, got nothing. However, the way it had appeared and disappeared inclined her to think that maybe the Librarian had not hidden its destination when it made its last jump . . .

  Weapons Platform Mu was hot. Energy levels were high now, with solar radiation raising the temperature of the platform and its remaining attack pods to what the Client maintained inside her cylinder home. The platform itself had returned to its original shape, and was in an advanced state of internal repair. Meanwhile twenty-five attack pods were inside the platform also undergoing repairs while sixty-two, in close orbit of the sun, were in full working order, which included being U-space capable. Only Weapons Platform Mu was not yet so capable. This was not due to lack of power, materials or slow manufacturing, because autofactories aboard had made all the required components; the delay was due to the logistics involved in transporting rings of super-dense copper from a factory to one of the U-space drive nacelles.

  The Client took in the entire situation and reacted a microsecond later. Upon her order, the pods accelerated up from the sun in preparation for U-jumping. She next focused on the super-dense ring. Currently a huge robot, running caterpillar treads against the walls of a long transport tube, was pushing it towards the U-space drive nacelle, which lay three miles away. The Client ordered the robot to let go and the ring continued along its course. Next, after a series of rapid calculations, the Client repositioned two steering thrusters and fired them up. Internally it looked as if the ring had started accelerating down the transport tube, when in reality it was the platform that was on the move. The robot sped after its charge, shifting its treads over to one side and sinking its main body between them. This brought its body down just enough for it to slip past the ring and dash on ahead of it. It then moved its grabs to its rear end, adjusted its treads too, and kept going while the ring continued to accelerate. In a minute, ring and grabs made contact with a clang and the robot pulled in its treads as it took a grip, pressing them into the walls to brake. They were smoking as it finally slowed the ring towards the end of the tube. And that’s when they appeared, out there, where the moon had arrived and then disappeared.

  The Client felt no gratification being proven correct about the Librarian’s intentions, just weary acceptance and a degree of puzzlement. Why had it done this? Surely it understood it was behaving without logic? And why that weird challenge, that shriek?

  Forty ships speared into the real in perfect formation. The things were massive spikes, rounded to the rear and gleaming gold. Within seconds they reacted as one, firing off steering thrusters and igniting fusion drives—becoming golden ovals from the Client’s perspective as they zeroed in on the weapons platform. The Client was impressed. It took them very little time to realize that there was no U-signature from the moon which they could follow, and that another threat was here. But what were they? A brief search of stolen memory rendered the answer. These ships were reavers—warships of the King’s Guard—and they were prador. The Client found this surprising because she had no memory of the prador operating with such precision and efficiency. And it seemed they had also lost their overbearing self-regard and designed ships suitable to requirements, rather than fashioned in the shape of their bodies.

  Just a second after the reavers turned, the platform’s attack pods made their own jump, each sending out light ripples. They came out of U-space in a wall between the reavers and the platform.

  “This is contrary to the main agreements of the truce,” someone said.

  The Client was about to respond, in fact, to reveal herself, but then she stopped, understanding the opportunity now present. She hated the prador for the extermination of the Species and their murder of her original form. She resented the humans for their betrayal. So wouldn’t it be perfect to set human and prador at each other’s throats?

  However, she had to be careful and make it plausible. Even the pra-dor she had known would not be fooled into thinking that the arrival of this platform here was a precursor to some kind of all-out attack. And these modern-day prador seemed a lot more efficient, and might even be a bit smarter. Also, from what she understood of the Polity now, it could wipe out the prador, although the most likely method would be to send in a heavily armed fleet loaded with U-space missiles across a wide front. Dropping something like this platform into the middle of the Kingdom as a precursor to war wasn’t sensible . . . unless for provocation. Yes, nobody in the Polity wanted war again, but if the prador started attacking the Polity it would perforce respond. It was plausible that Earth Central had decided it was time to deal with the threat the prador posed and provoke them until they did something which required a larger response.

  “The word ‘truce’ implies a cessation of conflict between two closely matched forces,” the Client replied.

  “It does not,” said the prador aboard one of those approaching ships.

  The Client tried again. “Semantics. This long and antiquated agreement is now all in your favour, since we could squash you like the bugs you are. Just be grateful we have refrained from doing so for so long. Now go. I have Polity business here that is none of your concern.”

  “Leave prador space at once or we will be forced to take action,” said the prador.

  “Little fly, buzz off or I will squash you.”

  The sudden release of railgun missiles from the reavers implied that these modern-day prador, though they might be smarter, still adhered to the basic prador ethos. The Client now delved into the mind of Pragus and from its knowledge studied a number of attack and defence plans. But they were hardly necessary. The platform’s attack pods possessed U-jump missiles while the prador did not. She selected three of the reavers for three of the attack pods to target, and launch tubes rose from their backs, each spitting out one arrow-head missile. These moved slowly in comparison to the approaching swarm of railgun missiles, but then, just a few miles out, disappeared in a flash of photons. The Client waited the long half-second it would take the missiles to materialize inside the three reavers and detonate.

  Nothing happened.

  Now she frantically checked data. The missiles had arrived at their targets, but had then fallen out of the real, back into U-space. The pra-dor must have internal bounce gates themselves and so a defence against U-jump missiles. That might mean . . .

  Ten of the attack pods exploded, and a second later the Client turned on the platform’s own defensive internal runcibles. Another five attack pods exploded before she managed to get the rest to activate their bounce gates.

  “Big mistake,” said the rapidly approaching prador. “Huge mistake.”

&
nbsp; EARTH CENTRAL

  “The weapons platform missing from the accretion disc has turned up,” said the king of the prador.

  The father-captain, whose form Earth Central bore, clattered his mandibles in surprise. EC was aware that the king knew he wasn’t talking to a prador and that the surprise had been manufactured in the mind of a very large and smart AI. EC regretted the silly impulse at once and stopped moving his mandibles.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “It arrived at the location of a xeno-extermination committed by the one whose form you bore previously.”

  EC acknowledged that with a tilt of his carapace. In his present form he had lost the old king’s coloration, made the body smaller and styled his body language to be more obsequious. Irritating the present king of the prador now would not result in more data but an abrupt termination of contact.

  “And?”

  “It will be dealt with.”

  So the Client had, as expected, gone to its home world and the king’s forces were responding. As ever in these conversations, both of them were giving away as little as possible. EC decided that the only way to accrue further data was to give some out.

  “Apparently an alien entity seized control of Weapons Platform Mu,” it said. “It is thought this entity is a resurrected form of the Client.”

  The king considered this for a moment. He did not have instant recall and was undoubtedly accessing some external database. Or was he? EC had yet to plumb the extent of the king’s mind and what it might encompass.

  “How unfortunate that a weapons platform—an item that is mostly Polity technology and run by an AI, even if it is under Orlandine’s control—should end up in my kingdom.”

  “Has it caused any problems?” EC enquired.

  “It has necessitated a response.”

  The king’s forces would of course have demanded the complete surrender of the platform. Since the prador had annihilated the Species, EC felt that the Client would be unlikely to surrender. If the platform and its attack pods were not too damaged it would be quite a fight, and that would be beside whatever else the Client could do—the Polity, in allying with that creature, hadn’t found it particularly restrained or meek. EC found itself liking the situation. It was always a good idea to keep the prador aware of the superiority of Polity weapons technology and, with the Client in charge of a weapons platform, here was a nice plausibly deniable reminder. But of course the king knew that.