by Neal Asher
The thing had vertebrae that were solid lumps of its version of bone, green and whorled like old wood. Their solidity told me no spinal cord had run through it. Its ribs were of a double diagonal arrangement, like a trellis, and what looked like organic rivets had held them together. The skull, mostly jaws and teeth, had sockets for six eyes – two large ones at the centre and smaller ones either side. Its claws looked as if they could slice through metal. I had no idea what it was, perhaps a siluroyne from Masada, or a trigon from Parsis, but I guessed it had not eaten vegetables. It had also clearly been no match for the thing that’d killed it, scouring its bones and leaving them laid out like something you might find on an archaeologist’s table. I stood over what would become of me if I fell victim to a hooder.
‘Well at least it’s neat,’ I said out loud.
The buzzing intruded again, even though I hadn’t put up my hood or visor. Suddenly intensely irritated by the sound, I sat by the skeleton, found the clips that detached the collar with integral hood and visor, and took the thing off. A first visual inspection revealed nothing, but when I opened up the hood and looked inside I saw the even arrangements like a weave in the fabric, and two flat circles of metallic material at about the level of the ears. So that’s what it was. Quickly snapping the thing back into place on my suit and closing it up, I said, ‘Allow comlink – visual.’
‘Ah, so you’re alive,’ said Suzeal after a short delay.
‘Thus far.’ I tried to be casual.
‘You surprise me, but then perhaps you inherited certain characteristics,’ she replied – again after a delay. ‘The prador put their ship down in the most infested part of the planet. I counted at least twenty hooders on the thing.’
‘You did warn me to get away from the ship …’
‘Yes, because the hooders generally don’t range out from the area they occupy – something about the cyanide compounds throughout that jungle helps them survive the high atmospheric oxygen. I didn’t expect the ship to land right in the middle of that lot.’
It didn’t escape my notice that I could take her reply in two ways: she wanted me away from the ship because hooders would be drawn to attack it, or she wanted me away from the ship where I’d be more vulnerable to an attack from them.
‘I’m surprised to find such creatures here,’ I said, suppressing my urge to reveal that I knew her name, that I remembered her exactly.
‘He didn’t expect even half of the creatures to survive when he put them down there. The prador had obliterated the colony with crust busters and the dust in the atmosphere shoved it into a brief Ice Age. But he had no choice – Polity forces shifted his station here and wanted it as a weapons platform and repair depot, while the prador were on their way back.’
‘I’m sorry. Who is “he” and why did he keep hooders?’
‘Oh I see.’ After a long pause she explained, ‘My great-great-grandfather Eric Stratogaster built this station to house his collection of creatures. They were taken from many worlds, usually the nastier kind, and this station was once called Stratogaster’s Zoo. Anyway, he would have had to dump them out at some point. The armoured containment was losing against the hooders in their section, while the droons were steadily acid-burning their way out of theirs.’ This, apparently, wasn’t quite enough, because she continued, ‘Sleers were in the air ducts too, mud snakes in the ground of the human park and a siluroyne sometimes preyed on occasional visitors.’
Finally information I’d learned earlier dropped into place. The soldiers she surrounded herself with were the SGZ and their decals read ‘Strato-GZ’.
‘So your name is Stratogaster?’ I asked.
‘Well, I’ve confirmed that for you, and of course you know my first name,’ she replied. So my attempt at ignorance hadn’t fooled her.
I felt suddenly tired. ‘Can you get me off this world?’
She smiled. ‘Whatever makes you think I would want to do that, Jack Four?’
‘Because I prevented the attack on your station.’
‘Ah, but Jack, I knew about the quantum storage of your mind in the initial sample – I ensured everything I found was there. I knew you’d re-emerge into the hell of experimentation aboard the King’s Ship. It amused me, and I found it satisfying that you would experience such a horrific death. But I must admit I didn’t expect to see you again after I put you there.’
‘I am not who you think I am,’ I stated. ‘I understand that the knowledge I have is unusual, possibly arising from a Polity agent of some kind, but all I have is his knowledge. I don’t have his memories, I don’t have his complete mind.’
She appeared unsettled by this, then said, ‘And I’m to believe this after all you’ve done?’
I considered my reply for a long moment. ‘Would the person whose corpse you took my genome from have prevented the prador from disabling your railgun?’
She stared at me, then repeated, ‘Corpse.’
My mind leapt on that. I’d made an assumption which might not be true. Perhaps the original, Jack Zero, wasn’t dead. But also, in making that assumption, I’d gone some way towards proving I wasn’t a pure copy of him because, surely, I would have remembered dying.
‘Very well, I accept that you might not be the Jack I knew, though it appears you operate with the same … flare.’
‘I want to survive,’ I replied. ‘I have no memory of this past “Jack” nor any inclination to pursue his goals. I just have knowledge. Perhaps that knowledge could be useful to you …’
Her silence was telling, but finally she said, ‘We have a problem here.’
‘Please elaborate.’ I wanted to laugh at her problem.
‘The prador are dug in at the space dock and have set up railguns there, though admittedly of low power. We’ve managed to stop everything thus far and are preparing to make an assault, but otherwise nothing is flying – they took out every vessel that tried to depart.’
I now understood the short delay to her replies – she was still aboard the Stratogaster station and there was a transmission delay from there.
‘I’ll get to you as soon as I can,’ she added.
I couldn’t quite fathom the look on her face, perhaps wistful, perhaps annoyed.
‘You may be too late.’
‘Maybe … Look, night is falling where you are so I suggest you hide up somewhere till morning. Then head towards the sunrise. That’ll take you up into the mountains where it’s a bit safer. Keep going. If I don’t get to you, you’ll eventually reach one of our installations down there. I’ll give you the code to get inside.’
‘Right.’ In the time we’d spent talking the sun must have dropped over the horizon and a hot red twilight ensued. ‘How far is this place?’
‘About four hundred miles.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll speak to you again tomorrow. Busy up here.’
A click signalled the end of the exchange. I nodded. Good, it seemed she was coming and, if I survived, this would take me one step closer to carrying through the promise I’d first made to myself aboard the King’s Ship. Suzeal would pay for what she had done to me and my fellow clones, and I’d stop her horrific trade. Even as I thought this, I wondered if what I’d told her was entirely true. Perhaps I did now possess more than I thought of my original self.
Ahead of me, where the ground was more open, boulders were scattered here and there. They offered the only cover, however. Turning round, I retraced my course until I found another boulder drowned under thick briars. I crawled deep inside and made a nest, curled up and hoped I wouldn’t be an even arrangement of bones on the ground come morning.
During the night a hooder came past my hideaway then turned and came back close on the other side. I remembered then that the sensors down the sides of their bodies detected complex molecules in the air, vibrations and infrared. I hurriedly sought out the controls for my suit’s cooling system and shut it down, since it radiated excess heat through wires in the outer layer of the f
abric, and lay there still and sweating. After a time, with no movement detected, I opened the visor and closed down the hood, imagining steam jetting out from inside the collar. This seemed to exasperate something else big out in the darkness, because it huffed cavernously. I held up my carbine in readiness but nothing happened.
Sleep came eventually, intermittently, broken by surges of panic. The possibility that I was developing an anxiety disorder was not unreasonable. Later on something whickered nearby and came closer with a sound like sandpaper over rocks. I hoped it was just passing by, but then it started to rip at the brambles. I pointed the carbine again and took out my torch, hoping to light a clear target. When I flashed the beam on, it revealed an utter horror. A thing like a giant scorpion, but with a long spike of a tail, mandibles like pickaxes and other eating cutlery such as jointed saws, was tearing its way towards me. It froze and whickered again, focused on the light with three compound eyes, then began pulling at the brambles more eagerly. I was about to fire when, with a sound like someone hawking up a gallon of phlegm, a sheet of white slewed out of the night and hit the creature. The sheet – a great mass of mucus – engulfed the thing and it froze again. Steam began to rise off it, with the mucus bubbling. The creature emitted a high hissing squeal and, when it turned, demonstrated a physiology that wasn’t remotely terran. Its segments revolved independently to tumble it back out of the brambles. Something large and high up huffed as if in boredom and I only glimpsed the massive two-fingered claw that snatched the smaller creature away because by then I’d thought to turn off my torch. The hissing retreated and died. All movement stopped for a while and I smelled burned chicken. A short while later, I heard a sound as of someone huge sucking the dregs from a plastic cup with a straw. I closed my hood and visor and decided to bear the heat.
Morning twilight, red as blood, saw me awake and carefully crawling out of my hideaway. I scanned all around for movement, then began trudging towards the open ground. I soon found the remains of the creature from the night before, recognizable only by its pickaxe mandibles and some scraps of carapace. I moved out past the giant asparagus, then stopped under the shade of oversized rhubarb leaves to survey the terrain ahead. A plain now stretched for as far as I could see, scattered with occasional boulders. I waited and watched, feeling that with night being the most dangerous time, I would set out across there the moment I saw the sun. I sat down with my back against a thick fibrous stem, collapsed my hood and closed down my visor, then turned on the suit’s cooling system. Opening my pack, I took out one of two remaining food blocks and the water. I’d finished the block when a diamond ignited on the lip of the world and began to etch out a chunk of it. There lay the sun, and beyond those mountains the installation where I would be safe, supposedly. I packed my things, shouldered the pack, and held the carbine across my stomach. The hooder chose that moment to begin nosing into view from the jungle. It froze, raised its spoon-shaped head and swung towards me.
I ran, well aware that I had no chance of getting away from the thing. I’d reach one of those boulders and just try to use it for cover. Shoot the hooder. Even as this plan formed, a dry and cold part of me noted that I didn’t have a missile launcher and the carbine could be put to a better use. No, I would not accept that. The dry narrator informed me that I would, once that hood began to come down on me. Yes, I admitted, but only then would I put the carbine under my chin and pull the trigger.
I reached a small boulder and stopped to catch a breath, glancing back. The hooder seemed hesitant and, having reached the stand of rhubarb, it advanced no further. Perhaps I could deter it? I aimed the carbine carefully at the hooded head presently hovering about five feet up, level with the ground, and fired. The beam stabbed across and struck its nose, splashing there. When I took my finger off the trigger I could see no damage to it, merely a fading hot spot. I’d really done the wrong thing, though. It suddenly reared, raising its spoon head fifty feet above the ground, and I could now get a good look at the underside. Comparisons arose. It had the appearance of a horseshoe crab, though there were tentacles there too, and two vertical rows of glinting red eyes. In eerie silence it came down again and began heading towards me, smooth as a swimming eel. I turned and ran, heading towards a larger boulder.
But that boulder began to rise into the air, the ground erupting all around it. Earth fell away, revealing a primary thorax with four limbs held close against it. I saw that what I had first taken to be a boulder bore the shape of a ziggurat. It was a head and when it opened the two distance eyes on its top tier, the earlier version of me found recognition.
A droon.
It rose up out of the ground on the four legs extending from its secondary thorax, reached up with one two-fingered hand to brush caked earth from the underside of its head, then opened its orange mouth just below the upper eyes, as if smiling. I halted, no idea how I could survive the hooder, let alone this monster.
It came clear of the earth now, lashing a long jointed tail behind, rising further than its previous thirty feet as if taking in a huge breath, mouths opening in every ridge of its head, which stretched and extended higher and higher. I dodged left, running for another boulder. I saw the monster track my course, before I nearly fell over a rock and so concentrated on where I was going. I heard the cavernous huff then a moment later the sound of it hawking up its acid phlegm. Perhaps my envirosuit would be resistant? I thought not: the enzymatic acid spat by a droon could eat through ceramal battle armour. I dived and rolled, then rolled again behind the rock, just in time to see its spit hurtle through the air, stretching out as it did so. But then it splashed on the hooder, just behind its head. The hooder flinched, its back humping up, then shook itself with a hard snapping sound. Some of the mucus flew away but most stayed in place, spreading out like an amoeba to engulf a whole segment of the creature as it began writhing with steam rising from it. Its struggles flung a boulder weighing tons into the air and it inadvertently struck it on the way down again, shattering the thing. Its body scythed through the giant rhubarb, bringing the lot down. I gaped. It just didn’t seem possible something so large could move so fast and violently. Then I returned my attention to the droon.
The monster now stood completely clear of the hole in which it had concealed itself. Its strange head swung towards me and rose, then pumped up and down like a bellows, emitting a sound like a faulty piston engine starting up. Impacts threw grit in the air in a line towards my rock and I ducked out of sight. One struck the rock and two more hit beyond it, the first just a few feet away from me. The splash there bubbled and turned black as it etched its way into the ground. I risked another look. Its tail thrashing, the droon had begun to advance on the hooder which, meanwhile, seemed to be coming apart at the point the acid had struck – sheets of carapace bubbling up and peeling. I considered my position for half a minute. It seemed the droon’s attempt at me had been half-hearted and more of a dismissal than anything else. I rounded the rock, keeping well away from the acid, and ran away from the scene as fast as I could.
With my body aching and breath coming hard, I looked back. The droon and the hooder were a mile or more away now and still fighting in a chaotic tangle, a cloud of dust spreading around them. Even at this distance I knew I hadn’t found safety, for both creatures could move fast and range far. But I took a drink and reduced my pace to a jog because I simply couldn’t keep running at full pelt. I felt grateful then to my earlier self for being the source of my body. It had taken a great deal of punishment yet still kept going.
It soon became evident that the wasteland must be the droon’s hunting ground, for I saw other remains of the thing that had visited me in the night scattered around. They were clearly not as uncommon as I would’ve liked. Piles of half-dissolved bones marked the site of one mass killing. The bones were pearly grey and flat like blades, ribcages interlocking like segmented carapace, while the skulls were small strange things with far too many holes. The remains of a smaller droon – mummified and un
touched by acid – elicited further buried knowledge in my mind: droons were highly territorial and fought off interlopers of their own kind too. It seemed that for a while I would be safe from other droons, though not their prey which, apparently, included hooders.
Some while later I slowed to a walk. Looking back, I could no longer see the two combatants. I speculated on which I’d prefer to be the winner, that being dependent on how I preferred to die: slowly dissected in darkness or dissolved in acid. I hoped the droon had won because it looked slower than a hooder, but I also hoped it had been injured by its prey. Ahead, a band of vegetation stretched before the mountains and I wondered what horrors might await me there. Movement, just in front of this, had me ducking behind a boulder. Buzzing started from my collar again and I cursed it, then decided to allow the comlink.
‘I’m trying to decide whether or not you are highly capable or unreasonably lucky,’ said Suzeal.
‘You can see me?’
‘Oh yes. I have satellites all around that world. It has all been highly entertaining for us up here. I expected the sleer to drag you out of those brambles. Did you know the droon was there?’
Of course, if she had satellites they would likely be able to detect all sorts of radiations, so night wouldn’t conceal me.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, if you knew it was, you made a clever move in firing on the hooder to draw it over the territorial line. If you didn’t, firing on the hooder was a dumb move.’
I could now see a herd of creatures moving out from the tree line, inevitably directly towards me. If I broke from cover they would spot me. If I stayed put they might not, depending on how close they came to the boulder. Then again, my thinking was just a bit too prosaic. They might not have eyes, but might be able to detect my breath in the air, or sense my heart beat.
‘So what’s happening up there?’ I whispered, also aware of just how good many creatures’ hearing was.
