by Neal Asher
“I wish we could extend their lives,” I said.
“Why?” asked Harriet, completely baffled.
“Four years and two days seems to be the point beyond which returns diminish,” I replied. “I wonder if that limitation is why the Polity scrapped the idea?”
“The Polity?” wondered Harriet, her thinking even slower in these periods of inaction.
The thetics had been an attempt by the Polity to produce large quantities of disposable soldiers—a project with which I felt sure the Client and I had been involved during the war. Or perhaps we weren’t? There had been other researchers, scientists, and experts of every kind on that ship sent to that first meeting with the Client, so perhaps the thetics were the result of some research by one of them? Perhaps when the Client had run, just after the farcaster had been broken up, it had stolen data and equipment too? How else had it obtained the samples with which to rebuild all this here? I shook my head, frustrated by the confusion. Where the thetic technology had come from and what my involvement had been were questions that would probably remain unanswered—they probably lay in that portion of my mind taken away by the accident.
Unfortunately, as well as the thetics’ life-span being limited, both the amount of programming they could take and the damage they could withstand was limited too. Smart-plasm was all very well for quick production of disposable hominids, but on receiving damage under fire such constructs tended to quickly revert to their original form, and crawl out of their uniforms like particularly nervous slime molds.
“Golem chassis,” I said as I walked on through the cauldron room toward the back corner.
My own body was an amalgam of a Golem base frame, smart-plasm, and an early form of syntheskin outer covering—as a whole a more rugged combination. I wasn’t entirely sure what human parts I had retained: perhaps my brain, perhaps only part of my brain, maybe just some crystal recording from that original flesh. I wondered if it had been a bioweapon that had taken away the rest of me, and wondered if it had been one I had designed.
“Golem chassis,” Harriet repeated, with less intelligence than a parrot.
I decided not to bother making a suggestion I had made before, of giving her prosthetic Golem hands to replace her unwieldy claws. She wasn’t interested when her mind was at a high point, and would be less interested now.
A smaller door at one rear corner of this chamber took me into my private laboratory. Here I felt the tension begin to ebb. It wasn’t as if I could somehow be disobedient here, ignore the Client’s orders, or cease my endless search for farcaster elements, but somehow its grip on my existence seemed less rigid in this place. Perhaps it was because here I occupied those parts of my mind not concerned with that search— those being the parts wholly focused on my original interests so long ago.
Oddly, the effect seemed the same for Harriet, though she had no alien entity controlling her mind. Her interest perked up as she surveyed all the complicated equipment, peered at nanoscope screens, and clumsily tried to pick up objects made for human hands and not claws painted with shocking pink polish. I say oddly because elsewhere her interests didn’t often stray into the scientific.
I checked on a brain worm first; version 1056 and now a long way away from the parasite that forced ants to climb to the top of stalks of grass when a sheep might be strolling by and thus pass itself on to said sheep. This particular beauty would make a prador, if it was aboard a spaceship, suffer terminal claustrophobia. Not only would it want to get out of the ship, it would be completely unable to wear any kind of protective suit. Of course, prador could survive in vacuum for an appreciable time, but still the victim of this parasite would eventually die. I’d yet to test it out, and didn’t think I ever would.
Next to the bug was one that caused a prador’s carapace to grow as soft as sponge, and the next was a fungus that dined on their nerve tissue. I only checked on them briefly before moving on to the latest version of my favorite fungus—perfect now in every detail and perhaps a precise copy of a fungus that the Client possessed. Thus I occupied my spare time pursuing my interests in parasites and biological weapons. Thus, by pursuing the lines of research I had followed with the Client, I tried to restore some lost memory. Staring at the latest nanoscope images and latest computer models of the function of this last fungus, in all its different genetic settings, I tried to remember seeing them before, but there was nothing.
“The gun?” queried Harriet.
“One day,” I said.
Really, it should be tested, but I needed some victim deserving of such an end. Perhaps, during this latest search, if all the data was correct, I would find such.
The Graveyard lay in the intersection point of two spheres of interstellar occupation, everything beyond its edge being called the Wasteland or the Reaches, or having no name at all. As the Coin Collector heaved out of U-space I knew we had arrived upon sensors picking up high amounts of space debris across many light years and upon gazing at a screen image of the devastated world called Molonor.
This world possessed its own orbital ring of debris that had once been space stations and, also orbiting it, its small moon was half subsumed by a base that seemed a conglomerate mass of that same debris. I eyed the ships orbiting that moon, along with the various ground-based coil-gun emplacements, then, after a short contemplation, focused in on one of those ships. Here was an in-system cargo hauler the shape of an ancient shouldered rifle bullet sitting in a U-space carrier shell like a hexagonal threaded nut. I pinged it and got a confirmation of identity: the Layden—one of Gad Straben’s haulers. Straben was my target now—the Client had made that abundantly clear during one of our frequent drops out of U-space to let the Coin Collector’s engines cool and realign.
“Harriet,” I said, opening com. “Where are you?”
“The Cauldron,” she replied.
“I’ll be with you shortly.” I considered how like a dog being taken on a familiar walk she had rushed ahead, then I experienced a moment of puzzlement. Harriet didn’t often get this far ahead of me, usually stayed by my side, so she had to be very eager. I shook my head, dismissing the thought before inputting a course to take the Coin Collector down into close orbit, conveniently close to the Layden. With that done, I stood up and headed out of the captain’s sanctum, finally arriving at the door outside the Cauldron.
“Gad Straben,” said Harriet, dancing from clawed foot to foot. “The gun!”
I nodded solemnly, perhaps so. Gad Straben was evil enough.
Through its various other contacts about the Graveyard the Client had learned that, after the disappearance of a black AI called Penny Royal, salvagers had finally plucked up the courage to venture to the AI’s original home base. This was a wanderer planetoid wormed through with numerous tunnels. As always, they had gone there for technology and, before some event burned up everything inside that small world, it was rumored that Gad Straben had managed to obtain some objects of value, things that might be elements of some wartime weapon, and he had begun to put out feelers, make inquiries. . . . The Client wanted those objects. The Client hoped pieces of the farcaster could at last be obtained.
“But scraping the barrel,” Harriet opined.
I studied her carefully. It must be one of her good days, because she was showing a lot more intelligence than usual.
I nodded. After searching for so long it seemed increasingly unlikely we would ever find any part of the farcaster, or that it even existed at all. This item supposedly obtained by Gad Straben might even be our last shot and I might be recalled at last. My hand strayed down to my hip, fingers tapping there for a moment. I noted Harriet watching closely and quickly withdrew it.
“Yes, we are,” I agreed. “The Client has less chance of finding what it wants now than before.” I paused for a second, then shuddered, feeling a little stab of the Client’s influence over my mind. It was time to start acting.
Straben’s organization was a criminal one, salvage being a mere sideli
ne, and he was as paranoid as all who ran such concerns in the Graveyard had to be if they were to survive, so I had to both act fast, but take care. There were risks associated with getting too drastic in the Graveyard. It might be styled as a kind of anything-goes no-man’s land, but that wasn’t true. It was a volume of space in critical balance; a buffer zone between the Polity and the prador, and both sides watched it intently.
“Do we have enough for Hobbs’ Street?” Harriet asked.
I nodded. “One hundred ready to go,” I surveyed the twenty thetics in the corridor, now no longer somnolent, but not really showing any inadvertent movements associated with real life.
“Have you spoken to John Hobbs yet?” she asked.
I looked at her again. She had suddenly become a lot more coherent, a lot more intelligent, just like the Harriet I used to know. She was asking the right questions now when all I had come to expect of her was child-like demands for her version of fun.
The Molonor moon base, until thirty years ago, had been essentially lawless, but then one salvage hunter became much annoyed with protection costs and damage to his operation by the constant squabbles between the criminal elements there. After a particularly rich find he used his newly acquired wealth to hire in some hoopers to make the place more amenable to his operation. After a brief year of chaotic readjustment, which resulted in many crime lords ending up being processed into fertilizer, John Hobbs became the ruler. He allowed criminals to come and do business, spend their wealth, establish their bases, but did not allow them to bring their fights with them.
“He was surprisingly helpful.”
She tilted her head slightly to one side, waiting for an explanation.
“He could have been a problem, but for his hoopers and our old association,” I explained. “Hobbs tolerates a lot, but some of the criminals down there he doesn’t like at all. He’s only too willing to turn a blind eye to anything that might happen in Straben’s headquarters.”
Still that tilted head.
“Coring,” I finished.
Harriet straightened up. “I see.”
“Meanwhile,” I continued, “we might not have to go to Hobb’s Street at all, since a less risky opportunity has presented itself. I’m taking us into orbit close to one of Straben’s ships, the Layden, which is here.”
“Sphere Two?” Harriet suggested.
“Certainly,” I nodded, then stabbing a thumb toward the twenty thetics. “These are programmed for basic obedience and combat—nothing fancy. They’ll do.” I now turned to face the thetics. “Automatics should have the rest ready for Hobbs Street should we need them.”
The thetics hadn’t been humanized, but that was not necessary for what I intended. I checked the colored bar codes on their combat armor, then selected the commander of this unit.
“Bring your men with me,” I instructed.
The commander, unable to speak, dipped its head in acquiescence. When I mounted my scooter and set off the whole unit turned neatly as one and broke into a jog to keep up. By the time I reached an access tube to Sphere Two they were panting and their white skins shone with sweat. Harriet wasn’t out of breath at all. I dismounted and walked over to palm the control to the tunnel door. As it slid open I stepped to one side and again addressed the thetic commander. “Enter and secure yourselves in the acceleration chairs.”
The thetics trooped inside.
“Are they necessary?” Harriet asked.
“Straben’s carriers usually have a crew of between five and ten.” I glanced at Harriet. “I know that’s not too many for you and me but I want to be sure. Also, if we don’t find what we’re after here this can act as a test of this new batch so we can be sure of them before we hit Hobbs’ Street. You remember the last time?”
Harriet dipped her reptilian head in acknowledgement. I’d sent a group of armed thetics against a single prador first-child—one of the many renegade prador in the Graveyard—guarding a store said to contain a Polity weapon, from the war, as usual. The moment the first-child fired on the thetics they had collapsed into a bubbling mass. Unstable plasm, and a perfect demonstration of why the Polity might have dumped this technology. I took out the prador with a particle cannon blast from the Coin Collector, but it had all been yet another waste of time. The Polity weapon had been the carcass of some insectile war drone—its mind burnt out long ago.
I turned away from Harriet, glad she had bought the lie I had just told her. The reality was that I didn’t want her going first into that ship. She might be fast and deadly but armed only with claws and teeth she might well end up on the bad end of a pulse-rifle in such an enclosed environment. It hadn’t happened before, but the feeling I had that things were somehow coming to an end was making me more protective of her.
Moving aside, I now gazed through the slanting windows overlooking the bathysphere bay. Bathysphere Two—the Coin Collector had only two of these vehicles— had first been adapted for inter-ship travel, its line detached and chemical boosters affixed all around its rim. Its second adaptation had been mine: a big metal mouth extending around its main door, a leech lock. This could attach to the hull of any ship, its rim digging in with microscopic diamond hooks and making a seal. It had come in very handy over the years.
Harriet followed the thetics in and, after a pause, I followed too. Inside, the thetics were, as instructed, sitting down in the concentric rings of seats and strapping down tightly, their rifles slotted into containers beside them. I headed over to the single seat before the adapted prador controls, sat down, and hit the release button. Even as I secured my own straps the bathysphere jerked and set into motion. I turned on the screens and observed the space doors opening, then laid in the correct course. Harriet, meanwhile, squatted down beside me, her claws clenched around the floor grid.
“Shouldn’t be too bumpy,” I said.
“One I’ve heard before,” Harriet replied.
In a moment, we were out in vacuum, the chemical rockets firing to put us on the pre-programmed course. I glanced over to the door leading into the leech lock, hit a control, and the door irised open. Within this, running on rails around the inner face of the lock, was a robot cutter that wielded a carbon-titanium thermic lance, tubed for feed-through of laser heating, oxygen, peroxide, and catalytic nano-spheres. It was the fastest way to cut through just about anything. I closed the iris door again. It was also messy, producing thick searing smoke and poisonous gases.
“Approaching vessel, what is your purpose!” a voice demanded from my console.
“I’ve got something for Gad Straben,” I replied, now calling up an image of Stra-ben’s hauler on my array of hexagonal screens.
“Identify yourself!”
I turned on the visual feed and gazed at an unshaven face displayed in just one of the hexagons. The man’s head was partially submerged in a half-helmet augmentation, and the one eye I could see widened in shocked recognition.
“I’m Tuppence,” I said, just to be sure.
“Gad Straben is not here,” said the man.
“Not a problem—I’ll leave his gift with you.”
“You are not to approach this ship. I will not allow docking!”
I lined up the boost and paused with my finger over the control to operate it. “Don’t be so hostile. I’m sure Mr. Straben will be very interested in what I am bringing him.”
“I know exactly who you are, Tuppence,” replied the man. “If you approach any closer you will be fired upon.”
Of course, many in the Graveyard knew of me, even though I’d been away for a couple of decades. Many had dealings with me, some coming off worse and some better. The likes of Straben had generally been the former kind.
“Oh well,” I said, and hit boost.
The sudden acceleration tried to lever me sideways out of my chair, but I locked my body in place. Behind me a couple of the thetics made an odd warbling sound. At the same time I saw the Layden fire up its own engines to move away and two flashes on it
s hull marking the departure of two missiles. I watched them curve round and head toward Bathysphere Two, their drive flames growing in intensity like angry eyes.
“Incoming,” I stated.
“No shit,” said Harriet.
Gee forces now tried to throw me into the screens as the bathysphere turned to present its thickest armor to the missiles. They hit one after the other with shuddering crashes. The screens whited out for a second, then gradually came back on with sparkles of burning metal shooting past. It would take a lot more than what the hauler had available to penetrate even ancient prador armor. The Layden was now up very close, still trying to accelerate away, but just having too much mass to shift quickly. I pointed at the screens with one finger and drew a target frame over part of its hull just behind the carrier shell.
“Impact in three, two, one . . .”
The force of the crash bent the supports of my chair so it hung sideways. A thetic, emitting a short squeal, slammed against the curved wall opposite the leech lock, then, as the bathysphere rocked into stillness, dropped to the floor with a soggy thud. I checked on Harriet and saw that she’d torn up some of the floor grid, but had still managed to hang on. I unstrapped myself just as the thermic lance kicked off behind the iris door, roaring and hissing like some trapped demon. Standing, I checked on the rest of the thetics. One of them was reverting, its face now a shapeless mass, one of its gauntlets on the floor below and a white worm oozing from the sleeve of its combat armor. Another of them had completely deliquesced. Its suit was empty, a milky pool scattered with pink offal around its boots.
