by Neal Aher
Blite shrugged as he sat down. He’d used ship’s sensors to scan Penny Royal’s activities in the ruins and the data were unclear. The AI had found two objects that it had immediately destroyed. They appeared to possess roots like some weird plant, with their tendrils spreading out through the ground for miles around. But beyond these facts, he knew no more.
“It’s studying the ruins I guess,” he said.
“And with no explanation offered,” said Greer flatly.
“None,” Blite agreed.
“I’m getting sick of this,” she said. “Perhaps we should have just stayed in the Polity and submitted to whatever examinations the AIs wanted to make.”
“Perhaps.”
“You don’t agree?”
“I don’t, and neither do you.” Blite reached out to call up a view of the AI and noted that it had changed shape. Its spines were all pointing upwards as if, like a flower that responds to daylight, it was closing up for the night. This was now due, as the hypergiant sun was falling behind the horizon.
“No, you’re right,” said Greer, staring up at the screen.
“This is unfinished business—we all felt that at Par Avion. We’ve allowed Penny Royal to drag us along with it, and we’re seeing and experiencing wonders. We don’t understand some of them and no clear explanation is offered when we demand one, but the wonders are still there.”
“And there will be a resolution,” said Brond, stepping into the bridge.
“You’re sure of that . . .” said Greer, looking round.
“We’re just not seeing the whole picture as yet,” he said. “I don’t understand why Penny Royal delayed the King’s Guard from getting here—but is now making no effort to stop them doing what they’re doing.”
“The delay was to prevent the king being involved and getting killed, apparently,” said Blite.
“Yeah.” Brond moved over to his seat and sat down. “But it now seems we’re going to see Sverl and all the rest simply being annihilated. That doesn’t seem like quite the right climax to the kind of manipulation we’ve been seeing.”
“I agree,” Greer replied. “But then, what do we know?”
Brond called up a large frame on the screen to display the King’s Guard attack upon Factory Station Room 101.
“I was studying this earlier,” he said. “Every now and again a shield generator blows on the station. And if you were conducting a bombardment, this would seem like the perfect opportunity to concentrate fire on the weak point. However, it’s not happening. Every time one of those projectors goes, the Guard concentrates their fire on the next strongest point.”
“They could be knocking out defences ready to board,” Blite suggested.
“Maybe,” said Brond. He waved a hand at the screen helplessly. “But why would they do that, if their aim is to eliminate Sverl as a threat?”
CVORN
From fifty light hours out, Cvorn studied the huge Polity factory station sitting in orbit of the hypergiant, then used his aug to check historical files. He quickly absorbed everything available about Room 101, but Sverl’s choice of this destination still puzzled him. Further research revealed that Sverl had been in the prador fleet that had previously attacked the thing, but that was the only connection he could find. What did it mean?
After hours of frustrated speculation, he finally abandoned further research, tuned his sensors up to maximum and waited. Within the next few minutes, he predicted, he should see Sverl arrive here. The other prador had already arrived in this system but of course the light from that event had yet to make its slow crawl out to his location. This was good, though, because now he would be able to see exactly what had happened there. He’d be able to see what had fired on his old destroyer. He waited, scraping his mandibles together, his stomach complaining. He trotted off to get some more stomach remedy, only to spill it on the way back when his system sounded its alert.
His gaze fixed on his screens, with recorders running and sensors ready to focus where they were directed in an instant, Cvorn saw Sverl’s dreadnought arrive. Shortly after that, his own now-defunct destroyer arrived—out by the red dwarf. Sensors refocusing, he watched it begin to orient, then throw up protective hardfields between it and the suddenly revealed threat. When Cvorn saw what was coming up out of the EMR haze around that sun, his stomach complained even louder and seemed to try to escape out of his rear.
King’s Guard . . .
They had been hiding close to the sun, which demonstrated the superiority of their armour and cooling systems. Studying data, Cvorn noted numerous firings of lasers, but they weren’t directed at any particular target. These were quantum-cascade refrigeration lasers to expel excess heat. His old destroyer did the best it could, but was thoroughly outmatched. The Guard just chewed it up and then U-jumped. Cvorn tracked back to Sverl’s ship, because that had to be their real target. Now he saw Sverl’s ship was coming apart, but surely it hadn’t been hit by anything yet? Then he saw the Polity destroyer accelerating away from the ship—just as the King’s Guard materialized and opened fire. The drama played out next at the factory station, now under bombardment from the Guard. Sverl had no doubt been aboard that destroyer and was now underneath those defences . . .
Cvorn champed with frustration. The king had recognized the danger Sverl posed and moved to destroy him. Cvorn could do nothing but watch this play out. And if, as seemed certain, the Guard destroyed that station, all his plans would come to nothing. His allies in the Kingdom would not move if Sverl escaped the Guard’s grasp—because they knew that they would be unable to convince other prador of Polity perfidy without hard physical evidence. In fact, infighting would ensue and their new alliance would probably break up. Cvorn had no doubt that some would look for advantage by betraying the others to the king, and slaughter would follow.
New data came in: an open com message from the Guard to the station. And Cvorn listened to the ultimatum the Guard delivered to its new occupants. So, there were humans on the station with Sverl, and the Guard were trying to turn them against him. That might work, but whether it did or didn’t, Cvorn had already lost. Sure, if the humans killed Sverl that would achieve the Guard’s aims just as well. But, either way, Sverl was dead, and all Cvorn’s plans in ruins.
SPEAR
Yeah, using a spine from Penny Royal, I’d brought down a hostile robot. But it had been something all but mindless and was nothing like my new aggressor. Even as I dropped down into a darker area, my visor having to reduce its filtering, and tried to wield the thing—something snatched it out of my hands. I saw Grey in glimpses, propelling me along with touches, shoves, and the occasional tight grip about one of my limbs. I was helpless, and I realized this was something I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. I didn’t like it at all.
He took me along a maintenance duct running parallel to the tunnel Trent and I had walked along. Then we switched through numerous changes of direction. I kept track of all this on a schematic I’d downloaded from the memory of a maintenance robot.
“Spear? What’s happening?” asked Trent over suit radio.
“Seems I’ve been grabbed by Sverl’s Golem,” I said. But I wondered. Grey was a Golem Sverl had apparently freed, so he could be taking me anywhere. I tried to contact the father-captain, but he wasn’t talking. I then tried to talk to Grey, but he ignored my queries.
“What do I do?” asked Trent. “I managed to follow you a little way but you were being moved just too fast.”
Grey was slowing, soon dragging me into a recently cut hole in a yard-wide pipe. He finally released me inside what looked like an empty fluid tank. I tumbled out into this, hit metal and bounced away, then managed to use my wrist impeller to stabilize myself. I propelled across to one curved surface, where I engaged my gecko boots. Immediately, I felt the station shaking through my feet and wondered if the King’s Guard were growing impatient.
The pipe I’d entered through seemed the only way in—other connected pipes were
too narrow to offer an escape route. I now turned to face Grey.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked through a channel I’d left open.
Grey crouched against the wall of the tank a few paces away from me, watching me intently, and did not reply. He was holding the spine close to his torso. I auged out and, through the sensors of a small palmbot checking superconducting cables for faults, I found Trent at a maintenance duct junction. I then used my aug to replay my chaotic memory and map my route on the schematic—while simultaneously radio-pinging Trent to get his location.
“Trent,” I said, “turn on your suit cam and send me its feed code.”
“Gotcha,” he replied.
A moment later, on our communications channel, his feed code arrived. A moment after that, on a virtual screen in my aug, I was seeing what he was seeing.
“Head to your right,” I instructed him. “When you reach the next junction I’ll instruct you further.”
Trent headed off. Meanwhile, as I checked out his route through the sensors of various robots, I began to locate those that might be a problem. Unfortunately, some of them had now moved into the route I had taken, as if attracted by the commotion. I needed to send Trent on a different course.
“You cannot stop it,” said Grey, communicating at last.
“I can’t stop what?” I asked.
“The solution,” Grey replied.
Ensuring the Golem was hearing nothing of my instructions to Trent, I said to the man, “See that tube above your head?” Trent looked up at it. “That’s it—along that about twenty feet you’ll find a hatch. Go through that.” Trent propelled himself up into the narrow tube and began crawling along it.
“What solution?” I asked.
“To Riss and Sverl,” the Golem replied.
“So what is Sverl doing?” I asked.
“Hiding from his fate.”
“You’re not working for Sverl, are you?”
“You are the random factor.”
“It’s a reactor room,” I told Trent, seeing he’d now opened the hatch. “Go round it to the door and just wait there for a moment. Don’t go through the door.”
“Trent Sobel,” said Grey, “is now positioned for his shot. In a moment you’ll have him step through that door and fire up at the pipe junction.” Grey pointed to where a smaller tube opened above us just a few paces away. “You hope to escape before I can react.”
I stared at Grey. He’d either penetrated our communications or was reading my mind. I realized I hadn’t been thinking clearly. The thing about Golem was that they had superior senses. I had no doubt now that, like me, Grey had tracked Trent through various robot sensors. I had no doubt that the Golem was picking up his heat signature and other emissions from his suit. I could not simply bring him to me in this tank in the expectation that the weapon he carried would be enough. But something didn’t add up.
“You are offering me no clear explanation of your actions,” I said to Grey. “I understand now.” I began to walk towards him. “You’re still working for Penny Royal and what that AI intends here is plain: Sverl is a problem it wants to solve. The solution is Sverl’s death.”
“Stay where you are,” said Grey, all calmness, but he rose to his feet.
I began to get some intimation of what was wrong now. Penny Royal had instructed Grey to stop me from interfering. However, he was treating me like something extremely dangerous and not simply a weak human being with mental augmentation. I considered how I had killed the robot. No, it wasn’t that. I considered what had just been playing out. Grey had allowed me to think I might have a chance with Trent. Delaying tactics. Physically, Trent and I were no match for this Golem, so it had to be something else. And Grey held it.
I reached out for the spine, for that connection, and felt the synergy of thousands of minds working in consonance. I probed deeper into the thing, beyond storage and into its underlying function—the same function that had earlier enabled me to change its shape. I found its geometry and threw myself forwards as I changed it. The spine shattered into a hundred knives and shoaled from Grey’s grasp, reforming as I came up to seize it and sweep it round. It caught one of Grey’s groping hands, tugged only slightly, and sent that hand gyrating away. Now my contact was closer and the multitude of links clear to me. Grey was there too, inside the thing. It perpetually recorded him, perpetually controlled him, and I severed the link. With a snap, silent in vacuum, he folded up, foetal.
“Trent,” I sent, transmitting directly from my aug, “step through the door. A coolant tank sits up to your right on your present orientation. You’ll see a pipe extending from it to the left. Fire on the point where it joins the tank.”
A second later, fire erupted from there, metal falling apart like wet paper and hot gases billowing. The beam cut through—turquoise, and violet at its heart—then shut down.
“You will be too late,” said Grey, slowly unfolding.
“I’m now coming out of there,” I told Trent, just in case he decided to fire again. I launched myself down between the glowing edges of the hole.
“Was it your idea to have the spine in there with us?” I shot at Grey. It was my escape route and, to prevent my escape, Grey should have further separated me from the thing. Perhaps he had managed to subvert the black AI’s control of him just a little, his intent being that I should cut his link to the spine and thereby cut Penny Royal’s control of him. Or perhaps everything had played out here just as the AI had intended.
“We have to move fast,” I told Trent, as I caught hold of one of the tank’s bracing struts and propelled myself towards him. “We have to stop Riss.”
RISS
Coiled in an air vent over a corridor made for humans, Riss gazed out through the grating. She was watching the second-child guarding the end. She stayed utterly still as she used her inducer hardware to probe both the sensors positioned along the wall and the computing in the child’s armour. Like a safe-cracker listening for clicks, she slowly and carefully shut down some sensors, then tuned down the sensitivity of others. Next, she worked on the second-child’s armour. It had a lot more defences than the prador armour she had encountered during the war—the modifications almost certainly due to Sverl. However, Riss meticulously worked through them, cracking codes, shutting down motors, severing communications.
The second-child, which had previously been fidgeting, grew still. Riss engaged her chameleonware and flew at the grating like a released spring. It tore free on one side and she shot out to hit the opposing wall, stuck there for a moment, then slithered down to the floor and along that to face the prador. It could still move its eye palps and had seen the grating tear open. Almost certainly, it now knew that Riss was here.
Riss gazed at the thing. Though the armour was highly modified, it still possessed the vulnerabilities of the old prador armour to her. She could now dive underneath the thing and, bracing against the floor, drive her collimated diamond ovipositor straight in through one of the leg sockets’ weak points. The enzyme would dissolve the thing in no time at all—fluids and gases spurting out of pressure valves. Then, after a few hours, there would be nothing left but a shell full of liquefied remains. Riss knew precisely how it went, because she’d used hydrofluoric acid before against a prador. The parasite eggs, should she choose to use them, would take longer to act, and the process would spread the parasite to many other prador in this child’s vicinity. But was there any point in killing this second-child? In fact by immobilizing it, rather than just moving straight in to attack, had she already decided not to kill it?
Riss shook herself, not liking where her thoughts were taking her. Her mission objective was Sverl, so there was no point killing this creature. Anyway, her supply of the enzyme and the eggs was limited . . .
She slithered underneath the second-child and up to a corridor junction, scanning ahead all the time. At the junction, knowing what lay around the corner, she squirmed up one wall and along the ceili
ng. The corridor, though it did possess a ceiling and a floor—oriented by lights in the former and a stain-eater carpet over the latter—was zero gravity. Predictably, the prador in the coin-shaped monorail station at the end was oriented as if the grav-plates were on. Riss knew that all organic creatures found it difficult to shake their attraction to the ideas of up and down. The concepts were integral in both human and prador thought and language.
Riss slithered on until she was just about to enter the monorail station and there halted. The sensor equipment the prador had positioned here was a lot more sophisticated and Riss had been in error—grav-plates were in fact on. Here the prador had designed things precisely to trap her. If she stuck herself to any surface, remora fashion, there were vibration sensors programmed to detect her particular form of locomotion. If she used her internal grav-engine, or maglev, that would be detected too. Usually she could subvert the computing attached to the grav-plates. However, the prador here, most likely Bsectil, had installed some very different hardware that wouldn’t allow that. Riss could penetrate it, but its coding was changing randomly and it was perpetually reprogramming itself too. Bsectil, meanwhile, was heavily armoured and difficult to scan; he had a Gatling cannon in one claw, and the tip folded down from another claw to reveal a particle cannon.
“I know you’re here,” said the first-child over open com.
Something else was happening. The second-child behind had just started moving again—its armour unfreezing. Riss tried another penetration back that way, but coding changes and reprogramming were occurring there now too. Analysing signal traffic, Riss spotted her error. The vibration sensors had been set to tune out certain things, but when one of those things didn’t occur, they broadcast an alert. The thing that had stopped had been the movement Riss had thought was the second-child fidgeting. This then had been a perfectly designed trap.
“Reveal yourself and nobody has to die.” Bsectil waved a claw at something lying on the floor nearby—another collar.
