by Neal Asher
“Someone is watching,” said Tagger—an ant-like machine the size of a grav-car. The speciality of this drone had been to rip up prador shells, fast-install a control system and a bomb, and then to send the slaved prador back amongst its own kind to detonate where it could cause the most damage. His job was more prosaic now: data crunching logistics with one part of his mind, but mostly just keeping an eye, or other sensors, on surrounding space.
“There are usually Polity watch stations around black holes,” Knobbler observed.
“This is no watch station,” Tagger replied, and then sent an image
feed.
Something hung out there in vacuum. It was a metallic ball about four feet across like a compressed mass of wreckage. Studying the data that came with this feed, Knobbler saw that it consisted of the kind of alloys used in the manufacture of himself and his fellows. It seemed like some detritus spat out by a wartime factory station. Then he noticed that the metals were aerogel folded—a collapsed form—and that there was a heavy signature for wartime meta-materials. Also detectable were sensors, and the kind of distortions that related to U-tech. Further scanning and extrapolation revealed that the ball was in fact three forms tightly wrapped around each other. Then he found one of the heads, out on the surface—like a chrome model of some amphibian.
Knobbler routed through the runcible frame to send an inquiry: “Who the hell are you?”
“We are so glad you are here,” came back the reply.
“It’s fucking Clade!” exclaimed Tagger.
A particle beam immediately lanced out from the runcible, but the image feed showed the ball explode into its three forms, the beam only scoring through where they had been. For a microsecond Knobbler had no idea what Tagger was talking about, but then deep memory surfaced. The Clade was a product of one of the smaller factory stations. The individual units were drones produced as sequestration devices. They had been made to seize control of just about anything by inserting their snakish bodies and spreading nano-fibres and software: prador war machines, ship minds and drones. They could even take over organic life and enslave a prador, just as Tagger had once done with those control systems. But something had gone wrong during production. The minds controlling each of these drones were copies from an experimental intelligence. Even as they came hot out of the matter printers and presses, they were marked for disposal. Individually that would have been no problem, but they linked their minds and formed a swarm intelligence. This swarm AI murdered its way out of the factory station that made it, seized a ship and escaped. Since then it had demonstrated itself capable of controlling Polity machines and humans. No one knew what drove it, why it did the things it did. It was marked “kill on sight.”
“Happy, happy day!” the three Clade units exclaimed.
The particle beam tracked and two more fired up. One beam nailed a Clade unit which writhed in fire, ablating, then a power supply exploded in its body, cutting it in half.
Over com Knobbler heard deranged laughter, then an emphatic, “Ouch! That stung!”
The two remaining units abruptly slammed back together and knotted. A beam stabbed at them, but they disappeared in a cloud of sparkles, exclaiming, “So rude!”
By now Knobbler had made a U-com connection and immediately dumped data into it concerning this encounter.
“I do not like that at all,” said Orlandine.
“Me neither,” said Knobbler. “You get any data on the Clade from that Jain submind?”
“No, there was nothing.” She paused for a long time in AI terms then added, “Search locally for anything else odd, but otherwise continue as per plan.”
Knobbler had not expected otherwise, but was now very uneasy. The Clade being here was an extra complication they didn’t need, and checking historical files he saw that anything involving the Clade tended to get messy. Perhaps it was just coincidence that they had stumbled on it? Or in its deranged way it was merely interested in what they were doing? Yeah, he would try to convince himself of that.
Two days passed with Tagger on the highest alert, and deep scanning even the smallest wisps of matter in the vicinity, but he found nothing else unusual in the Harding system. At the end of that period, hanging out in vacuum ensconced in his cage control, Knobbler watched the two factory ships detach from the runcible and depart. He then inspected the work. It was all but done now and what remained could be conducted at a distance through the runcible’s onboard robots. He watched as the fusion drives of the massive construct winked out precisely on time to the microsecond. Just a little while later, he detected silvery movement as his fellow drones swarmed out of the runcible frame. Many launched from the hull under their own drives, others clambered aboard a variety of smaller vessels and took them out. It looked chaotic, but was all per plan—the drones even in their own vessels departing precisely to the second.
Knobbler now reached out with two of his limbs. He had removed the de-shelling levers and underslung devices like cattle prods from these, replacing them with large data plugs, whose optics routed back into his mind. He inserted these into the requisite sockets in the various interlinked black boxes attached to the cage all around him, which glinted with multi-coloured ready lights. As data flooded his mind he acknowledged that one of his fellows had been right in describing him as the Grinch hanging in the Christmas tree.
He could now read the mass of runcible data and control it absolutely. However, it was still running on the program Orlandine had designed so he just observed. Under its initial momentum the device was heading precisely on course towards the black hole. Already he was reading gravity distortions throughout the frame, but nothing yet that required any field enforcing. Next, precisely on time again, the fusion motors fired in reverse to slow the runcible down.
“The problem,” he remembered Orlandine saying, “is balance.”
It certainly was. The runcible needed to fall over the black hole, with its field reinforcing fully powered up enough to keep it in one piece to gate the hole through it. However, if it was allowed to just fall, it would be like trying to drop a paper hoop over a spinning rotor. Too many forces were in play: the gravity, the spin of the black hole, errant tidal effects resulting from gravity eddies beyond the event horizon. Like that paper hoop, it needed to be held rigid and pressed over its target precisely in position. The problem with that was that the hole would start putting huge stresses on the runcible. And it could only withstand those for a limited time.
Balance.
The runcible slowed and the strain on it increased. Within just a few hours Knobbler found himself having to make adjustments when these went outside of Orlandine’s program. This did not bode well for the future, because it could only get worse.
Field reinforcing kicked in next, to strengthen the runcible beyond the incredible toughness of the meta-materials that formed it. Then came flashes of light and a red glow throughout surrounding vacuum. No matter how carefully they had cleaned up the region of space around the runcible, it was inevitable they would miss some of the detritus produced by its construction. Drifting there were scraps of matter from welding, pressure melding, small blobs of hyperglue, maybe the odd microscopic components from the drones and robots. All these were being twisted and ripped apart as they drew closer to the event horizon of the hole. And, because of their flaring, that horizon was now visible. It wasn’t black, but a misty white layer where the matter was being ripped down to the atoms of a plasma, before falling through. Forever falling through.
As the runcible progressed, now just a thousand miles out from the hole, more protection became necessary. Just half a second before the program, Knobbler turned on its exterior hardfields. The runcible disappeared under a metallic scaling, burning stored energy at an appalling rate. Hundreds of fusion plants struggled to keep up with the load.
TRIKE
The feed from Dragon now showed the distant space station drawing closer. Trike occasionally watched but his attention kept straying b
ack to Ruth, who was studying Angel intently. The legate had seated himself on the floor on the other side of the hardfield and was just waiting. What would happen to him now? Most likely Cog would lock him in the hold and then hand him over to the AIs when they got back in the Polity.
“So everything he did, he did while under the control of this Wheel?” Trike muttered to her.
“If we are to believe what he says,” she replied.
“Do you remember what he did to you?”
“Every detail, but he took something away, some emotional component, so it doesn’t hurt me.”
“It still hurts me,” Trike observed.
She gazed at him and appeared uncomfortable. He realized that despite the creature’s terrible treatment of her, some connection had been made.
“You never could resist the hopeless cases,” he said.
She smiled. “I just think it must be true that legates are Golem androids that Erebus seized control of and bent to its own ends. If he is returning to being what he was before then is it fair that he ends up being dissected by a Polity forensic AI?”
“One must consider what he was before,” Trike observed. “Any Golem that ran with Erebus before it took up Jain technology probably had no love of us.”
The artificial intelligences that fled the Polity with Erebus had been leaving to start something new, something free from the albatross that was humanity. That they were then sequestered and turned against the Polity did not change that.
“Something’s happening,” said Cog.
Trike felt it a moment later—a tension in the air and then the entire ship shifting. It lurched and the ropey tentacles holding it outside began detaching. They lost their image feed beyond Dragon and were once again in an organic twilight.
“What’s happening?” asked Cog, turning to Angel.
“Dragon has the information he requires,” Angel replied. “He is about to attack that space station and is putting us out of danger.”
Everything outside blurred into motion and Cog’s ship was on the move. Grav-plates compensated, but still Trike could feel the drag to one side.organic walls slid by and then with a thump they were out of Dragon and in vacuum.
“Janus . . .” said Cog.
The ship stabilized and they had a view of Dragon slowly receding, the hole they’d come from knitting closed in its surface. Cog reached into a lower cavity in his chair arm and pulled up a joystick. The flickering glare of thrusters lit up the outside view as he swung the ship away, then Trike felt the slight tugging of a grav-engine kicking in. Dragon continued to recede, but Cog muttered a curse and clicked a button on the joystick. A bigger glare lit up from the fusion drive and the ship surged forwards, bringing the oblate space station into sight beyond Dragon.
“Maybe an idea not to get between the two,” said Trike.
“No, really?” said Cog.
He steadily accelerated his ship, speeding to catch up with and run parallel to Dragon, keeping both objects in sight. Even as they moved closer, Trike could see that another split was appearing on the surface of the sphere pointing towards the station. Dragon heaved and light glared in that split—the start of a white laser shot reflected off whatever vapours the entity emitted. The laser lit up a hardfield some distance from the station. Almost immediately, that collapsed and the burning star of a melting generator shot from an exit port of the station. Part of the station hull distorted, vapour boiling into space, then exploded outward, under internal pressure, highlighting the white laser as it began cutting inside it.
“Is this a good idea?” asked Ruth. “Dragon’s intention was to put us out of danger.”
Cog glanced at her and shrugged. “I don’t think distance will help if we become a target.”
Next, station weapons replied. Two particle beams drew royal blue lines across space to Dragon, and then railgun slugs flashed on its skin. Dragon belatedly erected its own hardfields, perhaps just to show willing, because the station weapons seemed to have no effect on its hide. The station was outmatched, Trike realized. This would not last long.
Dragon’s second laser strike carved another hole, and a blast inside peeled up a great chunk of the station’s hull. Venting atmosphere, the thing began to turn as if to present fresh areas for destruction. The beam carved a trench, then flicked back to hit the same spot and held there till it stabbed straight through the station and out the other side. As this happened, thousands of silvery objects fled out into space, like silverfish spilling from a grain sack. These swirled around the station then shot towards Dragon, travelling incredibly fast.
“That’s the Clade,” said Cog, bringing up a frame to show one of the things writhing through vacuum. Trike stared at the feed, uncomfortably reminded of the hallucinations he had recently experienced.
From around the split in its hide, Dragon fired a shifting and probing mass of particle beams. Every single unit of the Clade was a target; Trike focused his attention on the frame showing just one of them, as the beam struck. Except it didn’t—it passed straight through the Clade unit as if it wasn’t there. The thing then just faded out of existence. Returning his attention to the main image he saw the shoal seem to shift position as it now drew even closer to Dragon.
“What just happened there?” he asked.
“Ghost chaff and chameleonware,” explained Cog. He peered down at his console, then up at the screen as a frame opened along the bottom showing a data stream. “The fuck?” The ship bucked and Trike caught hold of his chair arms as the impact lifted him up out of it. A glare opened up to one side and he felt the drag as the view slid away. Burning debris struck the screen as three distinct hard impacts resounded through the ship.
“Hull incursion,” said the ship’s AI, Janus, matter-of-factly. A second later the lights flickered and the two particle cannons jutting up from the floor powered down and dipped. Hard, fast rattling movement resounded all around them and something thumped—a low deep detonation within the ship. The rear door of the bridge buckled, spewing smoke around its frame. This smoke was then sucked back out and Trike’s ears popped as atmospheric pressure dropped. He looked round, seeing Angel lurching to his feet, the hardfield separating them flickering for a second, then going out. The ship lurched again and began shuddering like a faulty engine. Grav began fluctuating as Trike pulled himself up out of his chair.
“Damn!” Cog released the joystick and stared at it. “They’re screwing everything!”
“Cog?” Trike stepped towards Angel, unsteady in the changing grav, hands clenching and unclenching, just as the first Clade unit exploded from the wall.
Trike jumped, the power he exerted leaving a dent in the floor. He slammed into the unit in mid-air, grabbing it in a hug as his back smashed against the ceiling. The thing coiled around him as they fell, hooping its sharp pointed tail up beside his head. It stabbed down at him, the spike going in below his collar bone and deep into his chest. He grabbed hold of its body, but could feel the spike ripping through his lungs as he closed his other hand on its head and tried to hold on. It was like wrestling with a mobile hawser. Struggling, they hit the floor and bounced, Trike coughing purple blood with its load of viral fibres. Debris flew through the air. Another of the Clade crashed up through the floor, but this one did not come out all the way before a big meaty hand closed around its neck.
“Mess up my ship?” Cog bellowed. “You fucker!”
He then proceeded to smash its head against the floor. Grav went off completely, maybe from the damage he was causing. Cog began to rise from the floor but reached down with his other hand, dug his fingers into the metal, and continued to smash the amphibian head. As Trike fought the unit in his grip, he saw Ruth drifting—some piece of debris hitting her shoulder and sending her spinning. The third unit ripped off the back door and came in headfirst at her waist, grabbing her with its head tentacles. As they tumbled through the air its body hooked up and round, the sharp point of its tail hovering just up from her head, moving sli
ghtly from side to side as it sought the perfect target beside her neck. Trike fought furiously to free himself of his opponent as she tried to fend off her attacker and escape the spike, but it stabbed down. Then Angel crashed into her and the three of them hit the forward screen. The android reached up blindingly fast and gripped the thing higher up. He wrenched and tore, snapping the unit’s spine.
Trike felt metal giving under the pressure of his hand, and groaned in pain as he started to pull the spike from his body. The thing was moving inside him, tearing him up. Also, what breath he had was leaving his body in one continuous exhalation. Through the forward screen, space was misting as the ship shed its atmosphere. Chunks of crash foam also swirled out there, then a moment later pieces of it filled the bridge like spindrift. He turned head over heels, finally managing to extract the spike. Something shattered inside the Clade unit’s head and it went limp. He discarded the thing, kicked off from the floor and launched himself at Ruth, catching her arm. He looked into Angel’s black eyes briefly as the android pulled her Clade attacker away, then grav came back on and they all fell hard to the floor.
Crash foam now mushroomed from the hole in the wall, hardening. Trike carried Ruth over to his chair which, like the others, had automatically issued a breather mask. She was rigid, her hands shaking. He grabbed the mask and slapped it over her face. Her hand came up to it and she stared at him with those black eyes. Her nose was bloody and she had blood in her ears, as well as around her mouth.
It was the air pressure . . .
He himself could feel the lack of air and the low pressure, but it was simply uncomfortable. A hooper like him could survive vacuum for many minutes. He could even be revived after being vacuum dried and frozen, though what would be recovered would not necessarily be human. However, the greatest danger to him was the injury the unit had inflicted. The wound was closing and the damage inside him doubtless healing, but already he could feel something hardening in his tongue. He ignored this and looked at Ruth again.
