Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  This man had died in his bed. I found useful clothing, stripped off my envirosuit and put on a fresh clean undersuit. I also found a stash of etched sapphires and New Carth shillings. I added these to my haul because at some point I hoped to be venturing into the human world. I also added a pack of jerky and some glassy sweets. The next cabin stood empty – no one home and no belongings. I swallowed bile and prepared myself for the last one.

  The two in there had survived much longer than the rest, hence their delayed state of decay. They had tubed their enviro-suits to a single oxygen bottle, and emptied it. A container of water sat beside them, half full, while a few food wrappers scattered the floor. As I picked up the pulse gun lying beside the woman, I studied their wounds. It looked as if she had shot the man through the side of his head before turning the weapon on herself. But what had chewed up their envirosuits? When one of them moved, I jerked back, pointing the gun at them, then saw a familiar creature move out from behind the man. The louse had obviously eaten its fill because it scuttled straight along the bottom of the wall then up it and through a broken plastic vent cover. I tracked its course with the gun, for a moment considering testing the weapon on it, then turned away and inserted the thing into a convenient loop on my envirosuit belt. Oddly, despite having had the things try to feed on me and having fed on them, I felt no urge to kill it.

  As I searched the cabin further I wondered how it had all gone down here. The prador would have been after the ship intact, so would not have employed their usual method of either blowing it to pieces, or cutting a hole to get inside and gutting the place with personal weapons that could stand in for human artillery. I reckoned on an electromagnetic pulse or warfare beam to disable the vessel, but how then did they turn off the air supply?

  Human troops, I thought.

  The clones and I were not the first in the King’s Ship. Likely this kidnapping and experimentation had been going on during and since the war. Certainly the man-thing had been infected with the Spatterjay virus earlier than the clones. Perhaps he had come in here and shut down their air, though it would have been more his style to tear them all limb from limb. But I had only seen this small portion of the ship. Outside of the holds was room for a much larger crew, and the ship could have been retrofitting for passengers too. In fact, that seemed quite likely, since it probably came from the Graveyard where no runcible network stood available to transport people instantly from world to world through underspace. There had certainly been more people here and I had strong suspicions about their fate.

  Along with the gun I found two extra combined power and aluminium powder clips that inserted into the handle, as well as some more luxury items of food and drink, clothing and another toolbox – this one with the facility to levitate over grav-plates – and a rucksack to replace my adapted one. I shifted all these useful items into the empty room, first ensuring the vent cover in there was intact. I used the toilet in the woman’s room, since none of them flushed and I wouldn’t be leaving my shit and piss behind me in a vent tube. I ate some of the chocolate and another block of clone food, washed down with mucky water, then slept in a bed for the first time in my life. It took me some while to drift off even though I was bone weary. Lying down to sleep on something soft was so unfamiliar to me.

  In that half-sleep before waking I felt the ship slide into U-space again and found myself slipping into weird nightmares of travelling through an infinite vent tube folded back upon itself like a Klein bottle. I woke with a new urgency to make preparations for when the ship arrived at its destination, which could happen at any time. I needed to ascertain the prador plans so I could make an effort to foil them. It would be no good to me arriving at some human colony or installation which was in the process of being obliterated or taken over by them. I ate, drank and filled my pack with the tools that might be useful. I felt a bit of a wrench leaving the laser behind, but I no longer needed it since both toolboxes had contained powerful torches, and the gun at my hip served the other purpose.

  Via the dropshaft, I returned to the short length of corridor terminating against a prador corridor with a vent tube running along beside it. A small diamond-head vibro-shear sliced easily through the tube metal and soon I lowered a plate of it to the floor. I ducked inside and shone my new torch in either direction. The vent tube curved out of sight both ways. I chose a direction and climbed in, moving with fast familiarity. At the first turning, I used a luminescent marker to draw an arrow back to where I’d entered and, after a hesitation, added more information: how many vent gratings passed, approximate distances.

  The new tube took me past more vents, doglegged right past another opening into a small prador sanctum, then terminated at an original dropshaft leading up and down. I turned round and headed back to the junction, adding another arrow there with a brief note on what I’d found. The sanctum I would return to for water when needed, the shaft I’d take a look at later. My steady exploration brought me back to the start. The main tube lay in a ring with many spurs leading off to various holds, the large maintenance section before the fusion engines, a couple of generator chambers, the ventilation fans and filters, and other essential items of the ship’s infrastructure. One spur gave me views through vents with motorized atmosphere-sealable louvres into a hold where prador worked in and around an old Polity shuttle. Another spur revealed a newly installed shuttle bay in which sat a large prador war boat. Guns protruded all over from its thick armour, and on its nose a war dock jutted out that could drill its way through the hull of other ships, or through the tegument of a space station.

  During my exploration, I had seen only one sanctum and I guessed who would be in there. I had yet to see where the prador troops were billeted, and still had to think of any way to foil their plans, beyond an attempt at sabotaging the shuttle and the war boat. Prador had been busy around both vessels and any plan I made could not be reliant on the chance they might leave it unattended. I needed something solid. After food, water and a short sleep I set out again. Leaving an empty water container by the vent into the sanctum, which was now, as I had thought, occupied by the small prador in dirty white armour, I moved on to the dropshaft. The climb down brought me to where it connected to another prador vent tube – they were using the shaft as part of the system. Shining my torch along it showed it running to vanishing points in both directions. The ship was a mile long and it would take me hours to explore along here. And I was no further ahead with a plan.

  Higher up, the shaft opened into a human corridor, three cabins lying along one side. Human remains lay scattered here, dismembered. It gave me no satisfaction to have my earlier hypothesis proven. The same disarray lay in the cabins, with weapons burns and punctures on the walls. These luxurious cabins had dark ports on their far walls, so obviously sat at the hull with a view into space when permitted. I found another weapon that clearly hadn’t helped its owner – a QC laser carbine with extra screw-on energy canisters. With this, I no longer felt any need to return to the case of pulse rifles, and I killed the temptation to search further. I had the necessary stuff now; I just needed that plan.

  The corridor terminated against a new prador wall, openings on either side into vent tubes – like the shaft, they were using this corridor as part of the ventilation system. I moved along one of these and finally gazed through a grating at prador, one upon another in zero gravity. Checking further vents revealed more of the same and, after the fourth, I needed to see no more. A large chamber had been carved out in the middle of the ship and the prador were stacked in there like army ants.

  As I headed back, I realized the war boat wasn’t big enough to take all the soldiers I’d seen. So, how was this attack going to run? I’d already surmised the target could be a large ship, space station or inhabited asteroid or moon. It struck me as likely it was something the inhabitants wouldn’t want a ship of this size to go near. The clones and the man-thing were an initial strike force, to be sent over in that small shuttle. Their mission would
surely be to disable defences, whereupon the war boat – much faster and more manoeuvrable than the ship itself – could head over. Perhaps this would be to establish a beach head to allow the ship to dock, or perhaps the prador would just cross over through vacuum in their armour. This last point didn’t matter. The shuttle and the clones were the key because without them the attack would fail – their presence here presupposed that.

  A glance into the shuttle bay showed me prador scattered around in there. Was this because of the clones now present in that place? I saw they were sitting on the floor in one area, eating food blocks and passing round one of those demijohns. Meanwhile, the man-thing sat separately from them, a huge collar around his neck connected to a heavy chain bolted to the floor. Perhaps they didn’t trust the technology installed on his body. Perhaps he’d just escaped the same thing when I first saw him. But no, I doubted the prador were there as guards, for they seemed as somnolent as those earlier, while the clones and the man-thing appeared completely under control. Here was as good a place as any for the prador to wait, either entertaining themselves with systems in their armour, sleeping or in a drugged torpor – whatever prador did in such situations. I moved away to take another look at the war boat. I managed to see inside through an open ramp and prador were packed in there too. I headed away, still with no idea what to do.

  What was my main aim? I had to get off this ship, away from the prador and back into human society. But if my deductions were correct, the prador were probably about to attack a human installation. I realized I needed to go back to my main aim of escape and work from there. And I knew where I needed to look if I was to have some hope of achieving this limited goal.

  Just minutes later I arrived at the corridor leading to the emplacement where I’d found my envirosuit. Such suits were excellent technology and, as the two bodies below had demonstrated, it was possible to survive in airless places in one. However, anyone working out in vacuum, like out on the hull of a ship, would want something more substantial. Radiation would still be a factor, because even though the electromagnetic diverter field of a ship extended some way from its hull, it still let stuff through that was usually dealt with by the metamaterial layers in the hull itself. Exterior maintenance also involved tools like laser cutters, atomic shears and other power tools that could easily hole an envirosuit. No, a heavy suit was needed for that, one with perhaps a monitoring and a doctor system that could save a life or even put someone into emergency suspension.

  I stood below the circular airlock and then turned towards the big cabinet. I had thought little of it at the time, being more intent on the door at the end, but now its purpose seemed obvious. I studied the palm lock for the cabinet, found the nearest door edge and ran an atomic shear down it, hearing its thrum increase and feeling it tug a couple of times. I ran the thing along the bottom and the top to be sure, slicing some more locking bars there. A thump against the door and it swung open on hinges. I nodded on seeing the contents and tried not to feel smug. So, I had my spacesuit, and a way off this ship.

  Back in my selected cabin, I woke to the sound of rattling and scrabbling and immediately knew it issued from the air vent. I looked up at it, saw it still intact, drank the remainder of my water and started in on one of the food blocks. I felt tired and miserable. I’d worked out an escape off the ship, but it just didn’t seem to be enough. However, my subconscious had apparently been chewing the problem over. I needed to go to war.

  I sat up and the cabin light came on as it had before – much duller now with the power supply continuing to wane. I had first thought that the prador must have used an electromagnetic weapon of some kind when they attacked this ship. But I was clearly wrong as all the electronic personal items and tools I’d found in these cabins still worked. Their only problem was that they’d been cut off from the main power supply as the prador installed their own infrastructure. They were on battery backup, though, and I’d found the batteries, taking those out of the other cabins too and using them here. The same applied to the weapons emplacement I’d seen above. It was low grav there, as here, and a glimmer of power in the horseshoe console indicated a fading backup.

  I walked over and picked up the three batteries I’d taken from the other cabins and studied them. Each was a slab six inches by three and a couple thick. Though called batteries, they were actually packed with hundreds of square metres of layered metamaterials and were a combination of ultra-capacitor and battery. I put them down again and made a selection of tools from the two boxes, putting them in the rucksack. I tossed in a couple of adaptive chargers with universal bayonet plugs and, after a further hesitation, picked up the laser carbine – an awkward item to carry but one I was reluctant to leave behind.

  Having got used to moving about in my territory, it now only took minutes to reach the hull corridor leading into the weapons emplacement. I paused at the spacesuit and checked a readout on the back of one heavy gauntlet. The thing had power and a full air supply – no reason why it shouldn’t since there had been no drain on it. I entered the area under the dome; the glass there was still black because we were still in U-space. I first took off the covers on the lower part of the console. Nothing there. Next I turned to the panels and before I’d even got started I saw where one of them stood open, revealing a cube ten inches on its side. Obviously the battery backup here needed to be larger than for the cabins. The moment I disconnected the cube the lights died and the grav shortly afterwards. I clipped my torch to a shoulder mount on the envirosuit and pulled on the battery. At first I thought I’d missed some fixings, then it began to move. It had a hell of a lot of inertia which meant it would be unreasonably heavy once I got over grav-plates again. I’d have to be very careful. I loaded it in the rucksack, put that on and headed for the door.

  Moving a heavy weight in a rucksack in variable grav was no easy task. I also damned my decision to bring the carbine as it kept getting in the way. Every time I halted in zero grav the battery tried to tug me along my course. A sideways pull had me clinging to the rungs of the dropshaft until switching to rungs on the other side, where it shoved me against the wall. By the time I entered the ventilation system, I was sheathed in sweat and my back ached. But I persevered, finally coming to the grating which opened into the prador sanctum, the battery trying to crush me into the floor of the tube. It looked as if no one was home. Quickly undoing the grating bolts, I entered, leaving the carbine behind in the tube. My first job was to charge the battery. Struggling under the weight of it, I rounded a murky pool in the centre and managed to put the battery down, still in the rucksack.

  I caught a breather. After studying the row of sockets in the wall, I took out one of the chargers and clipped it on top of the battery. This freed a thin s-con power cable and bayonet plug, and I quickly inserted it. The charger’s screen lit up as it automatically adapted to both power source and battery, then a charging bar appeared. I sighed and stepped back, then immediately headed over to the vent to fetch the water container I’d stashed there. Only then did I see an archway, opening into another area which I’d not been able to see from the vent. Damning myself for not taking more precautions in entering here, I drew my pulse gun and walked over. I didn’t expect problems, though, since if the prador had been here it would surely have heard me and reacted by now.

  I stepped through the arch and froze. The prador was here.

  I gaped at the dirty white armoured shape crouching against one wall. The creature seemed an awful lot bigger now it stood right before me; the pulse gun utterly ineffectual against this thing. I started to back out, but halted as I noticed, either side of its visual turret, the rows of units it used to control the clones. A surge of anger ran through me. Then I realized I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. The prador hadn’t made a move; surely it should have attacked me by now? Perhaps it was asleep? Perhaps it was in some other state of somnolence like those prador packed in the centre space of the ship? Walking quietly, I headed back out and over to the c
harging battery. I had to keep my nerve. The battery, heavy and difficult to move, needed to be repositioned for a faster escape. Unwinding all of the power cable gave me ten metres of shielded s-con. Thankfully the charger had not been made with a less conductive cable or there would have been much less of it. Trailing the cable, I dragged the rucksack with the battery still inside over to the vent, then heaved the thing up to put it inside, sliding it along so I could get in there quickly. By now the charging bar indicated the thing had reached a quarter charge. But as I turned back I saw them: two stalked eyes coming up out of that murky pool, watching me.

  I pointed the pulse gun at the eyes, but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. It must have been this prador’s armour I’d seen through the archway. It was the one who had done terrible things and would probably do more in the future. It had sliced open one of my fellow clones and allowed Spatterjay leeches into the tanks of the others. Yet, still I could not fire and my fury of a moment ago waned. It wasn’t the knowledge that it would be difficult to kill, having been virally mutated, or that the moment I fired it would probably attack. I felt the same reluctance as I had with the ship louse I’d found feeding on the human corpses: a fellow feeling, empathy, for here was a creature like any, who wanted to live as much as me. The eyes sank away. I decided to leave it be. It might be that I had the knowledge of a distinctly capable Polity agent, but that didn’t mean I had either the instinct or the training to be a killer. I would charge the battery and then get away from here just as fast as I could. Still, best to be prepared. I began groping behind me for the carbine, whereupon the creature took the decision out of my hands.