by Neal Aher
Just a minute of induction detection located a power nexus ahead. The Brockle continued along the tubeway to reach a honeycomb frame that contained just one capsule. In this the fluid hadn’t degraded—was still that healthy pale green—while the body inside looked intact. The Brockle moved to inspect it more closely. The naked corpse of a man floated inside. The Brockle stared at it in puzzlement, not quite sure why this body bothered it so, until it saw the chewed-out wrists.
Antonio Sveeder.
Here lay the corpse of the Brockle’s only innocent victim, dead but preserved by old hibernation technology. The presence of this corpse here made no sense. Why had it been moved here? Why had Earth Central installed it in this container? Then the forensic AI saw that green preserving fluid was not all that surrounded Sveeder. Masses of semi-transparent micro-fibres ran through the fluid, penetrating the body throughout. This was the watcher? How could a dead man be a watcher? Abruptly the Brockle felt a surge of irritation, lost its human hue and absorbed its ersatz clothing, then broke into a hundred units shoaling round the hibernation capsule. One of the penalties of taking on human shape it found was that, when in that form, it tended to think like a human being. Perhaps it was because that was precisely what the Brockle had been. In distributed form, it could think more clearly, and now it needed to act.
Touching the chain-glass with one of its units, the Brockle forced a decoder molecule into its surface. The glass turned white, then the cylinder exploded, a pressure differential propelling fluid and decoded chain-glass out from the body. The Brockle waited a short spell, observing the body just hanging there with great globules of the fluid still clinging amidst the skeins of micro-fibres, then moved two of its units into contact. Injecting fibres of its own into the dead flesh, it began exploring the body, soon understanding what EC had done, but failing to understand why.
Polity AIs had interfaced Antonio Sveeder’s brain with an organometal substrate, quite similar to the Brockle’s own, to create a sub-AI system based on the man himself. It was a pointless exercise because now little of the man’s own brain remained. Tracing connections to the substrate, the Brockle found a larger than normal data optic leading across the honeycomb frame to the wall, then spearing towards the nose-cone of the Tyburn. It sent one of its units to follow it. That unit shortly reported that the optic connected into a U-space transmitter, so the Brockle immediately severed the optic. Delving further, it quickly put together the entire function of this watcher. Then with a feeling almost of betrayal, it noted an anomaly with the remaining, and quite badly decayed, organic brain.
The man had possessed a memplant!
Damn, this meant that Antonio Sveeder had only died an organic death and now probably resided in a new body of some kind. Surely this also meant that the Brockle’s sentence for murdering him wasn’t—
The Brockle froze. Some sort of sub-system had activated when it severed that connection to the transmitter. Electrical activity occurred in the body, neuro-chem was flooding some areas of organic brain, and nano-fibres throughout were writhing as they stretched and contracted. Antonio Sveeder’s chest rose and fell, ejecting fluid from his lungs and, after a moment, he opened his eyes.
“So you have chosen to breach the terms of your confinement,” he said in a phlegmy voice, but one instantly recognizable by the unit that had interrogated him. “Think very hard before you go any further. Do you really want to become an outlaw? Do you really want us to hunt you down?”
Stupidly over-dramatic, the Brockle felt. But because Earth Central had designed this set-up, it stabbed to the core of the forensic AI’s being. The Brockle responded in kind. Its entire shoal being fell in on the corpse, exuding meniscus blades and hard little limbs, and tore it to shreds.
16
CVORN
Cvorn stared at his screens in disbelief, at the swirling dust and gas, at the particle beams punching through and the swarms of missiles closing on a target that was no longer there. He had expected Sverl to U-jump before receiving too much damage to be able to do so. He had expected then to follow Sverl to another location and some desperate harpooned-fish defence, and there peel his ship like the shell of a mollusc to get to the soft centre. Now he wanted to rage, shriek and tear something apart.
The data. The damned data.
Cvorn ran it again in his aug, and again. Here was the hole he hadn’t seen. Here was the option he had been unable to cover. The Polity had done stuff like this during the war when the prador had centred on a major target amidst minor ones, like a dreadnought amidst attack ships. They had intersected all their U-fields, then twisted and changed them so that the attack ships threw out fields large enough to be considered a dreadnought. During U-jump transition, mass readings became indistinguishable, and then all ships headed off to different locations.
Cvorn ground his mandibles together, backed off from saddle and screens and turned full circle, stamping his feet against the floor in frustration.
Damned data.
Sverl’s shielding was so damaged he had had no chance of preventing Cvorn obtaining his ship’s U-signature and thus his next destination. He had known that, and so confused the issue. Cvorn did not know which field related to which ship. The five vessels had also headed off to destinations all at wild variance. He now had a one-in-five chance of choosing the right one, unless he got smart and figured something out.
Cvorn still wanted to tear things up, but instead he shut down his weapons and issued recalls to those missiles he could call back. Meanwhile, he headed across to the other side of his sanctum and pulled open a medstore. He took out a sausage of smart cement, snipped a piece off and slapped it over where his left palp eye had been. As the cement softened and deformed to ooze in and fill the hole, leaking analgesics and pathogen killers, the pain there died and Cvorn began to get over the urge to throw a tantrum.
“You,” he said, opening communications with the second-child aboard his old destroyer, “recall what missiles you can and return.”
“Sure thing, Father,” said the second-child. Cvorn studied its image down in one facet of his screen array and wondered if it was time to have the child replaced. It had perhaps spent too long away from its family, and certainly too long away from the airborne pheromones that enforced obedience. Then, while he gazed at the second-child, he realized the odds had changed. He could send the destroyer the child occupied after one of the five vessels, and have it report by U-com the moment it found out which it had pursued.
This glimmer of hope, on top of the pain in his visual turret fading, raised Cvorn’s mood and he began to think more positively. Returning his attention to the U-signatures, he began to try gleaning what he could from their minor differences. He related them to astrogation and soon learned that every destination was a planetary system. He now began examining these closely.
The first he checked, because it had at once seemed familiar, turned out to be the world where Cvorn had originally set his ambush to catch Sverl. Now, supposing this signature related to Sverl’s dreadnought, why would he go there? It seemed an odd choice—did that make a more likely one? That might be the case, so Cvorn marked that world as a definite possibility.
The second signature related to a binary star system at the far edge of the Graveyard. Examining data available on this, Cvorn could see no way in which it could give Sverl any kind of tactical advantage. But then perhaps that was the point.
One more signature was to a hypergiant sun. This lay outside the Graveyard and, with its complex collections of surrounding astronomical objects, offered possibilities for Sverl. Cvorn began analysing the system and at once saw that it did offer more such advantages than the other two, and so listed the destinations in order of advantage to Sverl. However, even as he did this, he felt a leaden depression, knowing that the system with the most advantage might mean Sverl was heading there or that it was the most likely decoy. Then there were the two remaining destinations, which were highly problematic.
One lay inside the Polity and one lay inside the Kingdom. The first Cvorn felt he did not need to study at all because Sverl would most likely not get there. He’d be picked up by a Polity watch station—then be knocked out into the real either by its USER or by a U-space mine or missile deployed by one of the new Polity attack ships. Perhaps that was his intention. Perhaps he intended to scream for help from the Polity, hoping to turn Polity defences against Cvorn, and see Cvorn destroyed. Then at least he might survive as a captive of the AIs.
The Kingdom did not have quite such efficient U-space defences, but it did have detector gear. Sverl would probably get through there and head just beyond the secondary and much tighter U-space minefields surrounding the home world. When he arrived he would almost certainly be surrounded by the home world King’s Guard squadron just moments later. Cvorn was sure the king would be aware of the threat to his rule that Sverl represented. He would therefore annihilate his ship without further ado. This destination struck Cvorn as the least likely. But then again, did that in turn make all the others more likely decoys? What would Sverl gain by heading there? He would die. But if Cvorn followed, he was certain to die too.
Frustrated and feeling that he was getting nowhere, Cvorn struck the Polity and Kingdom destinations from his list and focused on the others. Now he examined the U-fields more closely and compared their parameters to a recording he had made from Sverl’s ship during its last U-jump. None of them matched completely. This could be because of the mass Sverl’s dreadnought had shed by sending out that old attack ship and kamikazes, also because of the damage Cvorn had inflicted. The closest match was the one heading to the ambush world, while the one most at variance was the one heading to the binary system. He studied the parameters over many hours, glancing at the alert that told him all the self-drive missiles were back in their weapons cache. Then he noticed the alert informing him that his destroyer was ready to dock, to which he briefly responded by telling the second-child aboard to stand off and wait. Nothing revealed itself—nothing to change the odds. Then, despite striking them from his list, he ran a U-fields comparison for those vessels heading for the Polity and the Kingdom. It was with a feeling of inevitability that he studied the results and found they were the closest match to Sverl’s original field.
In the end, it came down to a very simple reality. The hypergiant was the one that gave Sverl the greatest tactical advantage, and was the most likely decoy. Sverl was very smart, so in a way Cvorn felt that the other prador might exclude the hypergiant. Sverl might head to a location that was neither the most likely decoy nor the most tactically advantageous. After all his checking, all his calculations, all his thought on the matter, Cvorn realized he could rely on only one thing, and that was instinct. He liked the ambush world; just its sheer oddity as a choice made him feel that this was where Sverl would head.
“Child,” he said to the second-child aboard his destroyer, “you will at once head to this destination.” Cvorn sent the coordinates of the hypergiant. “Upon your arrival open constant U-com and keep me updated with what you find there. I will pick up on it when I surface from U-space.”
“Will do, Dad,” said the second-child.
This reminded Cvorn that he definitely needed to straighten that child out, but he wouldn’t do it yet.
He next sent the coordinates of the ambush world to his ST dreadnought’s ship mind, and ordered immediate pursuit. The dreadnought accelerated on fusion, since even it did not possess the tech for a standing jump into U-space. Twenty minutes later Cvorn watched his destroyer disappear, and ten minutes after that he felt a wave of distortion pass through his body as his own ship submerged into that baffling continuum.
TRENT
“So what’s this all about?” asked the catadapt woman, Sepia.
“I’ve no idea,” Trent replied, observing the prador moving towards them. He turned to Rider Cole. “You?”
The mind-tech was squatting over the shellwoman whose body was complete, but who had lost an outer prador carapace. She now wore a skin of silver grey. He had attached a reader induction ring around her head and was studying data on a touch screen. He looked up.
“No idea either,” he replied, his expression slightly lost.
Trent had not liked the idea of letting Cole make even a cursory examination of the shell people, because the man might be tempted to start tinkering. But what choice did Trent have? He needed to do something to stop these people committing slow suicide. Cole was assessing them for any organic damage, caused either in the past or by the recent hormonal control. He had said that he couldn’t do much anyway while they remained in such a state of somnolence. Trent didn’t believe him.
Cole abruptly shook his head and stabbed a finger towards the approaching prador, scattered about a grav-sled bearing a large bulky object into Quadrant Four.
“But that thing looks old and it looks like human manufacture.”
Trent eyed the thing. It was a huge squat cube decorated with thick pipes, power sockets and exterior tanks. It had sets of cooling fins both on its surface and as separate components sitting on coils of superconductor. One face was clear of such items and inset in this was a ring, punctuated all round with circular hatches. With all the exterior gear and attachment points, it looked like some large component extracted from a ship, or maybe an autofactory. He recognized something about it, but couldn’t nail it down.
As it drew closer, Bsorol moved over, leading a small party of second-children. Trent knew that the first-child was all right, but he didn’t like the idea of second-children milling about so many somnolent and vulnerable human beings. He headed over, Sepia falling into step beside him. But Cole remained intent on his studies of the shellwoman’s brain structure and slow neural firings.
The sled arrived beside the line of shell people laid out on the floor, and immediately one of the second-children went over and picked up one of them. Meanwhile, other children were opening power ports in the floor, reeling out cables and plugging them in, and the object on the sled started to emit puffs of vapour.
Trent broke into a run, heading for the second-child now cradling a shellman sans legs and with a deep sealed cavity where his intestines had been. “Wait! What the hell are you doing?”
Bsorol clattered something and the second-child dropped its load heavily on the floor and rapidly backed up. Trent stooped down by the man, turned him over onto his back and checked the small circular monitor attached to his chest while Bsorol clattered some more then cracked a claw against the second-child’s back. Trent flinched even at this common violence of prador society. The second-child bubbled grudgingly and went off to help its fellows with the power lines. The monitor showed a mild concussion that the man’s nano-package was already repairing. And, even as Trent watched, the man stabilized and settled back into hypersleep. Trent stood and headed over to Bsorol.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Father’s orders,” Bsorol replied, waving a claw towards the thing on the sled.
“I think I know what that is,” said Sepia.
“What orders?” Trent asked.
“He wants them to survive and we have to prepare,” said the first-child.
“For what?”
“You need to talk to Thorvald Spear—he will give you detail.”
“It’s a zero freezer,” said Sepia.
Bsorol turned slightly to face her. “It has the capacity to deal with all of them, whereupon they will have to go into insulated containers with independent refrigeration.”
“What?” said Trent. He now recognized the thing—not the whole of it because he had never seen one entire, but the hatches. Polity Medical had used these things in some hospital ships during the war, when casualties had been coming in too fast for capacity. Trent, who had been born after the war, had visited some of the highly popular war virtualities. In one he had seen a freezer like this being used.
“You’re going to freeze them?” he asked.
Ther
e were dangers, especially in freezing people as damaged as these. Trent wanted to object, to stop this, but was also attracted to the idea of putting the problem that these shell people represented on hold.
“Spear has more information, you say?”
“He will explain,” Bsorol confirmed, now turning to the second-children. Having plugged the zero freezer into the ship’s power, they were now gathering before him. “This child will take you to him.” Bsorol gestured to the second-child he had earlier berated.
Trent eyed the creature. He hoped that it was too frightened of Bsorol to do anything nasty, but did not think for a moment that anything beyond fear, or a large gun, might stop it. He groped down towards his hip where once he had holstered his pulse-gun and wondered if the empathic feelings Penny Royal had burdened him with applied to prador. He didn’t need to think for long. He had winced when Bsorol hit that second-child earlier. He had felt its pain.
“Are you coming?” he asked, turning to Sepia.
“You’re going to see Spear?” she asked.
She appeared nonchalant about it but Trent guessed her feelings were otherwise. In him, when they were in the cage, she had seen someone she had categorized as an operator, accustomed to violence, and just the kind of ally she had needed. Perhaps she had, briefly, considered him as someone she would have liked to know better. But he hadn’t behaved as expected, and when she saw how he was with Reece, she’d become distant. However, the moment she and Spear got close to each other, it seemed the air between them fizzed. Trent understood that his earlier self would have been jealous, even though he had no claim on Sepia. That wasn’t the case now.
“Yes. Spear,” he said.
“Yeah, sure,” she replied. Next, glancing at the second-child, she dropped a hand to the pulse-gun she wore. She’d also found a laser carbine that she carried slung on her back. Perhaps her disappointment in Trent as protective muscle had made her more careful about her own safety.
