Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  ‘Will you require anything more?’ asked the waiter.

  Without looking up, Suzeal waved a dismissive hand. I looked at the slab of meat on my plate, the vegetables being more of a decorative trim than anything substantial. I noted a slight halo around the meat and, looking up, saw other objects had acquired this too. My stomach bubbled loudly and Suzeal snorted laughter. I assumed she must be getting as high as me, and I dug in, hoping that the food would kill some of the effect. I had another reckless impulse to ask how long a person ended up under the thrall for assaulting her SGZ. I suspected no limitation on the time. Having polished off half the steak and beginning to feel a bit less as if I might say something stupid, I searched around for a safe subject.

  ‘The prador,’ I said.

  ‘What about them?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re still in negotiations with those on your docking moon?’

  She ate a lump of meat and scribed some shape in the air with her fork. ‘Not with them – I’ve been speaking through a relay to another prador in the Kingdom. It’s going slowly. He doesn’t believe I’ve given them all the families I traded with – and I haven’t. He’s dickering over the prices on the hooders and methods of delivery and wants Vrasan overseeing all of that. Negotiations stopped when I hit the facility from orbit.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘Apparently not. I completely destroyed the facility but the little shit had tunnelled up from underneath. No sign of dead prador or hooders.’

  ‘But still no negotiation?’

  ‘Oh that’s continuing – more demands have come now and he wanted my promise not to try hitting Vrasan again.’ Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘I think he’s either deliberately delaying or has to run everything past the king.’ She looked over to one side. ‘Time for the show.’

  I peered into the park and felt as though the drink was screwing with me again. A shimmering wall had appeared. I realized that a lot more people had arrived, all sitting at tables and looking towards the wall. A bright spot appeared at the centre of it, opening out into another place. Holographic projection. There tall walls enclosed an area like one I’d crossed with Marcus. Flute grasses grew in abundance, but in a different state of growth from those on the planet – large wiry branches from them were covered in flower buds of red, yellow, violet and white. A platform stood in the centre of the grasses, just a few feet off the ground. All stood clear, then clearer still as the view focused in on that platform. A transparent cylinder descended from above, and down through this dropped a shape. I only saw the man as the cylinder ascended again. Down on one knee, he wore body armour and a breather mask. He stood up abruptly, holding what looked like a quarter staff.

  ‘I’m betting on seven minutes,’ said a familiar voice from nearby.

  I glanced over to see Brack sitting at a table with the man I’d heard called Frey when I was first sold to the prador. They were with others of a similar type. He had women on either side of him clad in strappy creations of black leather and metal that concealed very little. The blonde on his right had a black eye and bruises all up one arm. The brunette on his left turned her head to look at the display, revealing a thrall unit on the back of her neck like the one the waiter wore. He gazed at me with some amusement, then away again to watch the projection.

  ‘Ten minutes and he’s free,’ said Suzeal, her gaze fixed on me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

  ‘Hunstan was not sufficiently obedient,’ she stated.

  The man whose apartment I’d woken in after my operation whirled around to face movement in the flute grasses. My gaze strayed away for a moment, taking in the others now gathered here and I saw that many people were wearing thralls – not the mercenary types but servants, slaves and the like.

  ‘A couple from Brack’s harem?’ I asked, indicating the two women, and staying away from the subject of the man in the projection.

  ‘Yes,’ she said contemplatively. ‘He probably has the right idea. It’s difficult to trust a partner when you’re in our trade.’

  ‘Very difficult to get close to anyone when they’re slaves, though?’ I suggested.

  ‘That is not a necessity,’ she said.

  Rapid movement in the grasses drew my eye back. Something tried to get to Hunstan over the edge of the platform, but it was difficult to see. I got the impression of a transparent bulk, briefly etched by the fading impression of flute grasses, and then I realized. Hunstan swung his staff and it connected with a red flash. As the shape dropped away, I got a clearer look at it. In two deep dark eye-pits glittered eyes like faceted grey sapphires. Its huge head had the appearance of a bovine skull patterned with flute grass stripes and trailing two flat-tipped feelers from its lower jaw. The teeth, when exposed, had no camouflage and gleamed like hatchets of blue bone. Its long wolfish body had clawed forelimbs similar in structure to those of a gabbleduck. This was Suzeal’s captive siluroyne.

  ‘Harsh punishment indeed,’ I commented. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to thrall him?’

  Suzeal shot me a puzzled glance. Maybe at last I was making some headway.

  ‘He knew my laws and, as a free citizen and candidate for the SGZ, knew he’d be subject to harsher punishments.’

  I contemplated ‘free citizen’ as the monster bellowed and reared, its multiple forelimbs opening out in silhouette against the background like a huge clawed tree. Hunstan hit it again and red fire flashed down its body, revealing its heavily ribbed torso. It grunted and dropped, but didn’t completely abandon the platform. He struck it on the head as its legs scrabbled in the grass and mud behind, then rolled aside as it surged onto the platform, dragging the tip of his staff down its side, sparks and burning matter flaring away. The thing next rolled on its back, simultaneously flicking great clods of mud and flute grass rhizome at him. He staggered back and its foreclaw flashed out, closing around the staff. The creature shrieked, as fire flared around its claw, but it still pulled the staff away and sent it arcing into the grasses.

  ‘Four minutes,’ Brack noted.

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ Suzeal returned.

  Hunstan backed to the edge of the platform as, hissing and snapping its jaws, the siluroyne stalked towards him. He looked over to where his staff had landed, jumped, but the siluroyne jumped too. It caught him in mid-air and slammed him down in the flute grasses, then dragged him by the legs back onto the platform. He fought hard as it sat back on its haunches. For a moment a knife flashed in his hand and he delivered a series of stabs into the forearm of the claw holding him. But the thing reached in, snapped his wrist, and the knife fell away.

  ‘Who gave him that?’ Brack called.

  This raised much hilarity.

  The animal then started to tear off his armour, like a glutton peeling a prawn. He shrieked in pain and terror; he was obviously a tough man to have remained silent until now. He continued fighting, flailing at its looming head with his broken arm. It caught this in its teeth and stripped off the flesh, then turned him, naked now, and began stripping the skin off his legs. I watched in numb silence, aware Suzeal was watching me. After the thing had eviscerated him, Hunstan finally died. The siluroyne began crunching up his bones, biting down on his head and feeding on his spine. Once finished, it scoured the platform for any bits it might have dropped. I just sat still, knowing I couldn’t pretend nonchalance or acceptance.

  ‘That probably doesn’t provide it with all it needs,’ I managed.

  ‘We give it necessary supplements,’ said Suzeal. ‘Also required antihistamines to prevent a reaction to human flesh – too many oxides in it.’

  ‘Perhaps you could provide it with what it needs,’ said Brack at my shoulder, and I felt something cold against my neck. Peering down, I saw the blade of his machete there.

  ‘When I no longer have a use for him,’ said Suzeal, gazing at Brack severely.

  I wondered again at the distance she’d reimposed since we left the apartment, and I
knew I’d failed some kind of test. Any hint there’d been of her starting to trust me seemed gone completely. Something touched the side of my head. The charge from his stun baton convulsed me as he took the blade away, and everything turned red, laced with white lightning. My knees hammered up under the stone table then I fell from the chair into blackness.

  I woke in a cell feeling sick, aching from head to foot and naked, strapped down on a bench. Bronodec stood over me, steadily sponging down my body. Nearby, on the floor, lay a pile of my clothing, the smell of shit and piss rising from it.

  ‘I told him not to use the stun baton,’ said Bronodec conversationally. ‘Luckily there’s nothing the nanosuite won’t be able to handle. It’s an illusion that modern surgical techniques leave no damage. The repaired tissues can be quite delicate for a while.’

  He continued washing me down until, finally satisfied, he stood back, dropped the sponge into a bowl on a trolley and from there picked up a multiple needle injector. The large thing, with its chromed finger grips and glass body, looked almost antique, and a metallic fluid swirled inside. He pressed it against my neck and triggered it. I felt the needles go in, then further movement as they sought out the correct veins and arteries. A moment later the injector hummed and the fluid drained away.

  ‘Of course, this is not the nanosuite entire. The solute contains micro-factories wrapped in cell membranes, with attached guide vesicles, programmed RNA, immune suppressors and reprogramming viruses. They have to find the correct locations in your lymphatic and vascular systems, and in your liver.’ He paused contemplatively. ‘In fact I can’t think of anywhere the micro-factories don’t seat themselves.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, voice hoarse.

  ‘She doesn’t want you dying of something easily preventable, and she wants you fit, healthy, and sexually at a peak far above standard. She also likes the muscle you acquired on the planet so boosting has been programmed in.’

  ‘She wants me alive?’

  ‘For now … Right, as I was saying, once the micro-factories attach, they begin producing, as some would have it, the nanotech that floods out into your body. The description “nanotech” is a bit of an artefact from the days of the pure nanotech revolution. In reality, the factories themselves are partially organic and produce a lot of organics. These update your immune system to cover most maladies. They destroy senescent cells and promote autophagy and apoptosis, as well as recognize just about every pre-cancer and eliminate them, promote stem cell renewal and much else besides. Once the nanosuite is in operation in a couple of days, your lifespan is potentially limitless. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  ‘My impression,’ I managed, ‘is that my lifespan will be as long as Suzeal’s interest in me.’

  ‘True,’ he said, ‘but we can’t have everything.’

  I lay there trying to sense the effect of the injection, but only felt the constant ache and nausea. Bronodec stood shifting from foot to foot as if uncomfortable.

  ‘Is there anything you would like to ask me?’ he finally said.

  ‘Boosting?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ As ever a question delighted him. ‘It used to be done over a period of weeks and often surgical techniques were required to weave in dense artificial muscle and sometimes electromuscle. Now, with the modern nanosuites, the changes can occur in situ. The suite promotes the growth of dense muscle fibres that are immune negative, so they won’t be rejected by your body. They cause a similar toughening and densification of bone and cartilage. Other alterations are of course necessary for the support of these: increased platelet count, a mitochondrial upgrade, faster processing of ATP, nerve optimization and oxygen transport. Over a period of a few weeks, you’ll get markedly stronger. You will put on bulk but not so much as you see in the older versions of boosting, a lot of which were really cosmetic.’ He rambled happily but stopped when he saw my reaction to what he said next. ‘Of course these will not be necessary for fitting – just the nanosuite establishing will be enough for that.’

  ‘Fitting?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Your thrall. They do cause a degree of trauma and a standard human being can have a bad reaction from the nerve connections and flood of nanomachinery, though my design is not the death sentence the usual prador version would be.’ He paused, again lost in thought. ‘It was interesting to see that Vrasan used some of my techniques, though I did have to deal with a lot of damage from his procedure.’ He focused on me again. ‘But the nanosuite will be programmed to ameliorate most effects.’

  ‘Thrall,’ I repeated.

  ‘You won’t be cored,’ he continued hurriedly. Then he paused. ‘Well, not at present – you would need to be infected with the Spatterjay virus for that to happen and I have received no instructions in that regard.’

  I tested the straps holding me down but couldn’t budge them. After a moment, I turned my head away from him and closed my eyes. I tried to persuade myself to be positive. I wasn’t dead yet, after all.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Bronodec. ‘The suite should take a day or two to establish.’

  ‘Yeah, you do that,’ I replied.

  I lay there listening to him shifting from foot to foot still. Then he moved off and the door opened. After a short pause he said, ‘Oh!’ then something crashed into the room. I whipped round to see the trolley over on its side and him lying on the ground, clutching at his head. Blood ran from a wound in his skull and his visor had been torn away. At the door stood a big mercenary clad in a patchwork armoured suit, visor closed down. He stepped in, dragging one of Suzeal’s SGZ, whom he deposited on the floor before heading out to drag another in. He stood upright and closed the door, inserted Bronodec’s torn-away visor into a belt pouch and then raised his own.

  ‘Hello, Marcus,’ I said.

  His face had almost returned to human shape, but the skin was still blue and webbed with red veins, while his nose was a beak and his eyes deep set and black. He walked over and tugged at one of the straps holding me, then, after a moment, began to undo them. Perhaps his steady return to humanity had lost him some of his strength because I would have expected him to break them. I sat up, head swimming, then swung my legs over the side of the table.

  ‘Clothinzzz.’ He pointed at the guards.

  I got unsteadily from the table, tottered over to one of them and began stripping off his uniform. Slowly my head began to clear and I dressed, pulling on the boots. Marcus ducked out for a second and returned with two pulse rifles. I strapped on a sidearm, took the other sidearm from the other guard and then searched their pockets. Bronodec groaned and rolled over, and Marcus quickly stood over him.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘let him live.’

  Marcus turned to me, an odd look on his face I finally interpreted as a smile. He took a short cylinder out of his pocket and pressed it against Bronodec’s neck. The man slumped, breathing heavily, and Marcus hauled him up and slung him over one shoulder. Holding a pulse rifle in his free hand, he gestured to the door.

  ‘We go,’ he said.

  I moved ahead of him to ease the door open cautiously, realizing that Marcus had had no intention of killing Bronodec. Remembering he’d put the man’s visor in a belt pouch, I saw that Marcus’s being here might have nothing to do with me at all. I reconsidered. It had perhaps been his intention to grab the man and my presence had motivated him to do it in this place and at this time. What did he want the doctor for? Perhaps to return him further to his humanity?

  We moved out into the corridor and Marcus led off at a swift pace. I looked around for some way we could move Bronodec less conspicuously and, when we entered an area where a wheeled gurney stood, I pointed them out.

  ‘No.’ Marcus shook his head.

  He led the way around a corner where two personnel, both clad in white hazmat suits with the hoods down, were moving someone on a grav-gurney. They stopped and stared, but Marcus marched straight on past them.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ I said.

  They didn’
t seem particularly troubled and, glancing back, I understood why: both of them had thralls gleaming on the backs of their necks. Another corner and then another until two of Suzeal’s SGZ stepped out of a dropshaft. Almost with casual indifference, and not slowing his pace at all, Marcus opened fire. His shots traversed the chest of one then the visor of another. They staggered as armouring in their uniforms deflected some of the energy. Marcus kept firing until they dropped and he marched straight past them, with smoke and the smell of burned flesh and plastic filling the corridor. One of them was groaning rhythmically and scrabbling at the floor with burned hands, the other inert, his headgear burning.

  At the dropshaft, he input the destination quickly. We descended, whipping past floor after floor, decelerating, coming to a stop, then dropping abruptly about ten feet to land on a net stretched across the shaft. Marcus grabbed rungs on the side of the shaft and directed me to do the same, then sliced the net with pulse rifle fire. He shouldered the strap of his rifle and, releasing Bronodec, though keeping him balanced on one shoulder, climbed down through the hole. As I followed, I realized the grav felt lower, and different, and slightly at a transverse to us. I could feel the spin of the station.

  Two floors down, we entered a dilapidated corridor. The walls were scratched by the transit of people and their paraphernalia, the floors worn, rubbish strewn here and there, and many of the light panels out. Shrugging Bronodec to a better position, Marcus raised a hand to his ear and only then did I see the small coms unit inserted there. He gave a brief nod and marched on. We took many turns, went through a series of bulkhead doors, climbed down through deactivated dropshafts and deeper into darkness and areas of the station obviously unused. At length, we halted at another corner and Marcus listened to his coms unit again. When we rounded it, I saw two mosquito autoguns sitting in a corridor in front of a bulkhead door. The door opened, a woman with cropped black hair peered out, then she gestured us in.

  14

  The woman was their leader, that seemed evident. Her soldiers filled the section of the station they had temporarily fortified. They addressed her as ‘Commander’ and saluted when she passed.