by Neal Aher
Garrotte waited for Penny Royal to add something more about the young adults from the Rock Pool but then just focused on the battle when the AI didn’t respond. Lasers now—green lasers picked out by the gas and debris of the explosions there. They hit the missiles and tracked them, and one after another, the missiles either died like flames starved of oxygen or detonated. Particle beams next, two of them, blue in vacuum but hazing and turning purplish as they penetrated atmosphere. They each struck the nose of an ascending attack boat and held there, each boat now generating a tail of fire as its armour ablated. An instant later the pilots of those vessels decided on survival, shut down their drives, threw themselves aside on steering thrusters and turned, accelerating back down towards the ocean.
The fast shuttle bucked in the blast front, then tumbled. It next seemed to fire its steering thrusters at random, but Garrotte noted the sequence was perfect to stabilize the vessel for its ensuing decelerating burn in towards the dreadnought, which was turning. The big ship had opened space doors onto a large shuttle bay. What ensued was more of a crash than a docking manoeuvre, but prador were tough and those aboard the shuttle probably survived it. The dreadnought swept the shuttle inside, ramped up its drive to take it back out from the world just as U-signatures began generating all around the area. It submerged into U-space and was gone, before a whole fleet of destroyers and four other dreadnoughts appeared.
“So,” said Garrotte, “apart from that interesting file, are you going to offer a further explanation?”
“Access to prador females,” Penny Royal hissed.
Garrotte got it at once: “It is amazing what organic creatures will go through just for the opportunity to mate.”
“Yes,” said Penny Royal.
Garrotte continued, “So, let me sum up: a renegade prador called Vlern joined another prador called Sverl in the Graveyard. He had five first-children and when he died, choking on flesh-paste, they began to make the transformation into adults and to fight amongst themselves. Sverl, however, who has some odd inclinations for a prador, forced them to live together peaceably, to cooperate over many years. During that time, they learned a great deal from Sverl—some of which he was utterly unaware of, like how it is possible to enhance a prador mind—and they learned a great deal from another prador called Cvorn. Finally abandoning Sverl, they came here into the Kingdom for what they have wanted ever since they made their transformation from first-children: prador females.”
Just then, Micheletto’s Garrotte submerged itself into U-space. This was probably a good idea because U-space signatures were now appearing out here as prador ships turned up, doubtless to investigate the Garrotte’s unscheduled visit. Yet another file arrived in Garrotte’s mind—obviously, Penny Royal wasn’t the talkative type. The five first-children came here, apparently to surrender themselves to the captain of that ST dreadnought, but once aboard released a bio-weapon they had fashioned to kill the entire crew. They took over the dreadnought, then three of them went down to the surface of the world, disguised in armour, to requisition some females—a mission that hadn’t gone quite to plan.
“Did they get them—the females?”
“Yes.”
“So renegade adults have stolen both an ST dreadnought and prador females?”
“Yes. In the shuttle.”
“This is not good.”
“Quite.”
“King’s Guard will get involved?”
“Almost certainly,” said Penny Royal.
Garrotte knew it was babbling when it filled in, “I’m guessing the new king of the prador will not tolerate an enclave of breeding renegade prador, especially prador capable of doing what we just saw. The king will send units of his Guard to deal with the problem. Where do you reckon that dreadnought is going now?”
“The Graveyard.”
“Ah,” said Garrotte. “If the King’s Guard enter neutral space—the Graveyard—the Polity will respond, and that will almost certainly lead to some . . . friction. So, what now?”
“You will have to tolerate me as a passenger for a while longer.”
Like I’ve got a choice, thought Garrotte.
SPEAR
As we ascended to the parking orbit of the Lance in our shuttle, I glanced through the side window back down towards Masada and wondered if I was leaving a place that was about to turn into a war zone. Had Penny Royal known that the Weaver would resurrect that massive hooder war machine, the Technician? Was this another of its messes in the making? Supposedly Penny Royal’s delivery of the changing Isobel Satomi had been about creating a power balance here, though one not in the Polity’s favour, but maybe it had just made the situation more dangerous. I shook my head—I couldn’t concern myself with the Polity’s problems because I had to remain focused on my own goals. Also, as we drew closer to the Lance, I could actually feel Penny Royal’s abandoned spine reaching out to me as it waited inside the ship. It was like a black nail in my consciousness, and as it drove deeper I experienced a wave of déjà vu sickening in its intensity.
“You asked Amistad to accompany us,” I said to Riss, trying to distract myself. “Why?”
“I thought it unlikely he wouldn’t—whether in our ship or by some other means,” Riss replied. “I was wrong.”
“You mentioned Amistad’s history?” I queried, fingers driving into the arms of my acceleration chair as I fought against what I knew was coming.
“Yes, that history is the reason I thought he would come.”
“Tell me.”
After a long pause, which simply couldn’t have been due to Riss collecting her thoughts since her AI mind worked faster than meat like me, she said, “Amistad was a war drone whose mind hadn’t been sufficiently desensitized to its task. He was in partnership with a human being whom the prador took, and cored, and this combined with the other horrors of his war drove him insane and he went AWOL for many years.”
“A sensitive war drone,” I stated.
Suddenly I was seeing two different scenes. I was aboard the Lance’s shuttle, but experiencing a memory dropping into my mind from the spine. I was also aboard something larger, with two companions, sitting in one of four seats behind the cockpit. We were silent as our craft took us into orbit, daring to hope we had escaped that thing inside the old prador supply ship crashed on the surface. Unlike Mesen, who on the way down had occupied the now empty seat.
“Yeah, go figure,” said Riss.
“So he was cured?” I managed.
“No, he found the cure for himself during some resolution with the son of his human partner. Thereafter he was assessed as no longer being such a danger, and went his own way; pursued his own interests.”
Ahead, the space doors into the shuttle bay opened—my ship’s AI, Flute, welcoming us home.
“And what were those interests?” I cancelled Flute’s attempt to take control and guide us in and took hold of the joystick myself. I wanted to be doing something to distract myself from the scene playing out in my head. I wanted to keep it at a distance and stay in the present, my present.
“Madness,” Riss replied.
I turned to the snake drone, noting that her black eye was once again open as she inspected me with her enhanced sensorium. Again, she was seeing my interaction with the spine.
“Madness?” I said, feeling that other time receding at least a little.
“Amistad was interested in all aspects of madness—the shape of it, its methodology, its causes and its cures, and how it is defined. An interest that, in itself, was a kind of madness. It led Amistad to Penny Royal, whom an ancient Atheter device had attacked and left on the edge of extinction. It led to him repairing Penny Royal and then attempting to understand and cure the black AI’s madness.”
“Something of a severe fuck-up.” Ahead of me lay the Lance, but overlaid on that was another ship rather like Captain Blite’s vessel. I jerked in my seat as something thumped into the rear of the shuttle, but I had remained sufficiently disconnected t
o know this had happened to the other shuttle.
“True, perhaps,” Riss dipped her head in acknowledgement. “It also led Earth Central to select Amistad as the overseer and then Warden of Masada because here was the world of a race that had apparently gone insane and committed suicide. Who better to understand such a race?”
I ruminated on that for a moment as I manoeuvred the shuttle into its bay, and as the space doors closed behind. As I groped around for further distractions, an odd bit of data—just a memory of something I’d read once—surfaced in my mind for my inspection.
“How was the name Masada selected?” I asked.
“It was chosen by the first hierarch of the theocracy that established itself here. They felt themselves to be akin to the Zealots in the ancient fortress of the same name—their world a bastion of their faith.”
“Strange coincidence, considering those same Zealots committed mass suicide rather than surrender to Roman rule.”
“Yes, perhaps.”
Riss’s use of the word “perhaps” was beginning to irritate me. “I still don’t see why you expected Amistad to come with us.” I unstrapped and stood, heading for the airlock as, with a thump, docking clamps engaged around the shuttle. Opening the inner door, I checked the exterior atmosphere reading, waited until the warning light flicked from wasp-stripe amber to pure green, then opened the outer door.
“Because madness is Amistad’s overriding interest,” said Riss from behind, “and Masada seemed a saner place and of less interest to him. I expected him to join us because we’re heading towards a greater madness.”
I paused for a moment, waiting for it, and Riss did not let me down.
“Perhaps,” the snake drone added.
“Do go on,” I said, noting how this discussion of madness equated to my present problem. Did I have multiple personality disorder? Maybe. Other memories intruded again, as Penny Royal’s spine tightened its hold. I was Garton, a killer for hire taken on by this salvage team only a few months ago because the team that found a prador supply ship had encountered some problems—had lost personnel and had had to abandon the site. They had assumed they might find another team working there, or maybe a stray surviving prador. But not the thing we found in that ship . . .
“I expected Amistad to join us for his own confrontation with Penny Royal. I did not expect him to interfere with your aims, though while it seems you understand your purpose, your true aims are not clear. Do you still seek revenge?” Riss paused to let that sink in. It did, hard. I felt anger at Penny Royal and a need for vengeance so strong it was a taste like iron in my mouth, but was this anger truly mine?
“Back at you with that,” I said. “What are your aims and what is your purpose, then?”
Riss shook her cobra head, her black eye closing.
“Penny Royal, it appears, is trying to heal the damage of its past crimes,” said the drone, “but that AI is more complicated and dangerous than that. I too wish to make some . . . corrections. I have to cogitate on taking revenge for what was done to me, and decide if what was done to me requires it.”
I found myself waiting for a “perhaps,” then shook myself and headed for the door into the ship proper, ghosts all around me, panicking and pulling out their weapons as a shadow flowed out from behind their shuttle.
Another voice then spoke up: “So, I am the mind of a ship with a Polity bio-espionage officer aboard, an assassin drone and I just came close to having a war drone aboard too. Do we have any room aboard for a Golem soldier? Maybe you’d like to oust me and replace me with a Polity attack ship mind?”
“You missed out the word ‘erstwhile,’ Flute,” I said, really irritated now. “We were enemies of the prador but now we’re not. Perhaps you might like to ponder on who chopped you out of your original body and installed you in the case you now occupy.”
Flute just made a snorting sound over the PA.
“You have those coordinates I sent you?” I enquired, turning to head straight for my cabin.
“I have.”
“Then take us there.”
“Very well,” Flute replied.
I entered my cabin and firmly closed the door, went over and threw myself down on my bed, and let the vision come. Laser carbine fire filled the shuttle bay in my mind but, as Garton, I knew this was pointless light and colour. We’d hit this thing down on the surface and inflicted no damage at all after it had grabbed Mesen.
The shadow etched itself into reality as a swarm of black sword blades rose up like snake heads atop silver tubes. It came forwards as we moved back towards the airlock and I knew it would be on us before we could all cycle through. I turned towards the airlock, intent on being the first inside as one of those blades pierced Anderson and hauled him screaming from the deck. I glimpsed his face, the flesh shrinking and darkening over his skull and his eyes sinking away as if the blade was sucking all the juice out of him. I struggled with the airlock controls, shitting myself in an envirosuit not made to process it and feeling embarrassed despite my terror, then felt agonizing pain from front to back. Looking down, I saw the point of a black blade protruding from under my breastbone and began screaming as it hauled me from the floor. But that wasn’t the worst. I felt the blade sucking everything I was, both physically and mentally, in towards itself, whirling down in an agonizing and terrifying maelstrom towards . . . nothing. Just screaming and screaming as I went.
“Spear! Thorvald Spear!” Flute was shouting over the intercom, just as my cabin door opened and Riss entered—the lock obviously no problem for the snake drone. I guessed I had become a bit vocal during that particular nightmare.
“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely, sitting upright.
I reached down and rubbed at my chest, still feeling the hard sharpness of that thing skewering me; still feeling Garton’s death. I wasn’t all right. Garton’s skewering equated to the spine nailed into my mind and I just knew that there were thousands clamouring to tell me their stories through it—the unquiet dead were demanding to be heard.
FATHER-CAPTAIN CVORN
As the latest images and data came in from his spy satellites, Cvorn felt a great deal of satisfaction, but tempered by a degree of chagrin. Cvorn, a huge crablike prador, floating on grav-motors because he had long ago lost his legs and claws, crunched his mandibles together before the visual turret at his fore. He could never have misled Sverl so thoroughly before. Cvorn could never have achieved such an intricately balanced and perfectly targeted piece of destruction when he had been a normal prador father-captain.
When Cvorn had gone to the Rock Pool he had been as baffled as Sverl by the victory of humanity and the AIs over the might of the Prador Kingdom, and he had felt the new king’s betrayal of the prador race just as deeply. Making peace with the humans should not have been an option. Unlike Sverl, however, Cvorn had not gone seeking answers by allowing himself to become the plaything of a black AI. He had brooded, and he had made his plans for vengeance. Meanwhile, over the years, it became apparent that Sverl was changing in some strange way. Affronted by the restraint Sverl steadily placed on him, Cvorn began investigating this, and soon obtained answers by way of ship lice, their tiny brains surgically altered and their carapaces dotted with pin cams, inserted via a sea-floor robot recalled into Sverl’s dreadnought.
Cvorn’s first reaction was a visceral horror and he had almost set in motion one of the many plans he had been toying with for an attack on Sverl. It wasn’t that he had resented Sverl when he first made these plans—all father-captains made such preparations. At the last moment, he stopped himself. He had been thinking long and hard at the bottom of that ocean and, though Sverl had changed, it was notable how his deployment of Polity technology, amalgamated with prador technology, had led to greater efficiencies. Sverl had become very smart and seemed to be on to something. Perhaps Cvorn needed to show some restraint, and to learn.
Sverl was turning into something monstrous—some horrible combination of both prador and human—
but this wasn’t the source of his increased intelligence. It took Cvorn many years of watching to realize that Sverl wasn’t just part human, but augmented too. A partial confirmation of this came from a careful study of Sverl’s behaviour, such as how he controlled things around him, like that horrible Golem, and from a further study of all the intercepted computer code. Final confirmation came from an X-ray photograph of Sverl, the X-rays apparently generated when a louse ate into the shielding of a piece of ship equipment. Unfortunately, shortly after the confirmation of Sverl’s augmentation, Cvorn lost access when the other father-captain exterminated all his ship lice and started using Polity cleanbots for the same purpose.
AI crystal was growing around Sverl’s major ganglion—crystal precisely matching that of the Polity AIs. Sverl was turning into the enemy he had wanted to understand. Cvorn, who had always been a little bit brighter than most of the rest of his kind, even understood the irony of that. He also understood that in reality the prador had not been defeated by the humans, but by that glistening thinking rock.
Cvorn tried an aug, designed for the prador ganglion, on one of his second-children. The results had been astounding and Cvorn even began to feel threatened by this child, until he tore off all its limbs, opened up its carapace and ate the contents. The nanoscopic connections in the child’s ganglion had delivered an odd piquancy of flavour. Next, not being too averse to surgical connections to his own brain—he did, after all, have three prador thrall units on his carapace to control his two human blanks and sometimes to control his war drones directly—Cvorn tried an aug on himself. Again, the results were astounding, so he tried a second aug, and then some heavily buffered AI crystal, and fast became addicted to enhancement.
However, Cvorn soon reached the barrier to infinite enhancement: the burn-out of the organic brain. He shivered when he remembered how close he had come to that point. When an organic brain and AI crystal fall into a synergy, intelligence ramps exponentially until the organic brain fails like a first-child attached to the full output of a fusion reactor—something Cvorn had once tried, just for entertainment. He had disconnected and discarded the crystal, and wondered just how Penny Royal had enabled Sverl to survive it.
