Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  ‘Are you ready to do that again?’ Marcus enquired.

  He ran towards me as another hooder came through the wall behind him, where he’d opened the door. The hooder I’d mined was still going crazy, writhing like an electrocuted snake. It smashed against the walls and tied itself in knots – just a great balled mass of segmented carapace turning like a series of conjoined wheels. But the one ahead showed neither hesitation nor inclination to shoot off target. It spat a pink meniscus that hit Marcus like a sheet of lead and slammed him against the side of the tubeway, pinning him there. A moment later, it turned towards me. I immediately felt as if I was running through porridge, the air turning rose hued all around. The meniscus picked me up and threw me against the wall too, just a few yards away from Marcus. As the creature flowed clear of the wall, I saw it was one with all its control hardware intact and firmly attached. Had I now, through delaying us here, just killed us?

  The thing reared before us and, despite the cacophony in the tubeway, I heard the comlink chime and saw the request come up. I couldn’t move to answer it and felt little inclination to talk to Vrasan. Then the meniscus over me loosened, and I had second thoughts – the longer I could keep Vrasan talking the better.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘Again you interfere!’ he raged. The translation to Anglic was very good because his human voice did sound angry. Or perhaps he could speak it, not strictly having the physiognomy of a prador.

  ‘You mean I had the temerity to try and survive?’ I enquired. When he didn’t reply, I continued, ‘If you’re calling me to talk about further dire punishments I think you’ve mined that one as deep as you can go.’

  ‘Interfere,’ he managed, then, ‘human.’

  His image appeared in my visor in a chaos of turning red carapace shot through with blue lights. I gathered the display reflected his problems with the hooders in the real world. Even so, I should have been terrified but wasn’t. I’d been through so much damage and pain by now, and so many near-death experiences, that this all seemed to be the inevitable termination of my brief life. Because he’d caused the hooder to release some of its hold on me, I reached down to my sidearm, managing to draw and point it inwards and up towards my heart. But my hand froze and the force around me tightened. It pushed the weapon out again, then flicked it from my hand.

  ‘Not so … easy,’ he said.

  Another crashing sound issued from my right, past Marcus and, peripherally, I saw the third hooder had arrived in the tubeway. I also noticed the racket to my left had died. The hooder before us turned its spoon head in the second direction, just as the hooder whose thrall I’d damaged speared in. They crashed together hard – it was like standing just a few paces away from a train wreck. The force holding me in place died and Marcus reached over to grab my shoulder, pulling me. We scrambled along the tubeway, just as the edge of a hooder body dug into the wall where we’d been. The two were in a knotted mass fighting each other. Then the third one hammered in too. In a moment, the whole area turned into a slow-motion explosion. The tubeway disappeared and debris surrounded us, the writhing hooder bodies entangled together. Marcus grabbed me again, his hand a hideously strong clamp around my upper arm. He launched himself hard, near dislocating my shoulder, and we fell into a space surrounded by sharp metal, with chunks of insulation snowing through the air. He quickly jammed us into a smaller space under some I-beams as two hooder bodies, wound together like a DNA spiral, drilled through the previous space. As this happened, I saw a thrall segment tumble clear, and another one. Then the hooders were back where, nominally, the tubeway had been, tearing at each other. We just crouched, hoping the things wouldn’t come our way again. It occurred to me that perhaps this scene had already played out once – in that gulf where we’d seen the first damaged hooder. Then, as if someone had hit an off-button, it ended.

  A great chunk had been torn out of the interior of the space station. At its centre sat the three hooders, all knotted together but now slowly unravelling. Chunks of metal, composite and other items fell through the air all around, then, abruptly, all this debris started orbiting the hooders. A giant flash bulb ignited at their core and the creatures turned translucent, like pink glass, as they continued to separate. I was riveted. The danger here was horrifying, yet the scene so utterly beautiful.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ said Marcus, as one of their spoon-shaped heads appeared and then swung round towards us.

  I scanned around for some place to run, but compacted wreckage closed everything off. It slid towards us, the light going out, all the hooders returning to their oiled machine appearance. The hood turned up to cover the top of the space we occupied. I looked up into the face of hell as the rows of red eyes observed us. Heat grew at the centre of my body, spreading in a wave. The thing was scanning us. It then suddenly pulled away, paused for a second, and speared into a wall of wreckage and through it. As its tail disappeared from sight, I realized it was the last to depart. No hooders remained nearby.

  It took us half an hour, and the application of one of Marcus’s sticky mines, to get into a station corridor. We travelled along this until we found a turning towards the rim. All the while, rumbling movement and then distant explosions and sounds of weapons fire reached us. I assumed the hooders had headed straight back to Vrasan and hoped they would give him serious trouble. The rumbling grew to a steady vibration as the corridor turned right ahead of us, after a short distance ending against an atmosphere door. As Marcus worked the console on this, I put my hand on the thing and felt it vibrating.

  ‘What’s the situation?’ Marcus asked.

  Again he included me in the conversation and, checking the links, I saw the Hamilton highlighted.

  ‘Temporary truce,’ replied someone in a slow drawl.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The king wanted his hooders but now it seems Vrasan has lost control of those he had, and the king is no longer sure they’re worth the price.’

  ‘For now,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Oh, you humans are so cynical,’ said the voice. ‘Catch you later.’

  ‘The Hamilton AI?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said tartly, returning to the console.

  I could still feel the vibration through the door, and now realized it wasn’t due to anything happening outside the station. The door slid aside and revealed the cause.

  Beyond lay another tubeway, along which a force of prador were moving fast. Amidst them, a heavily armoured tank bristling with weapons ran on sticky treads. I recognized a prador implant tank which, at a stretch, compared to a Polity war drone. Since the prador didn’t like AI, they used the excised and flash-frozen ganglions of their children to control such devices. As I identified the thing, one of the accompanying prador swung towards us. I threw myself aside as a particle beam lanced out, smoking the air and melting a hole through the wall at the turning. Marcus hit the control and the door slid shut, in time to bulge with multiple dents from Gatling slugs, then peppered with holes from those that punched through. We hit the floor as further slugs cracked through the walls. I began to crawl away, ready to get up and run.

  ‘Wait,’ said Marcus, holding up a hand.

  The firing ceased a second later.

  I nodded. ‘Recalled?’ I suggested.

  ‘Looks that way,’ he agreed, standing.

  We’d shown our faces and one of the prador had responded as expected. However, it seemed likely that Vrasan had recalled his forces to the hub to deal with the hooders. They’d be under strict orders to get there fast and very likely none would be coming after us.

  ‘What’s happening there?’ asked Marcus, again including me in an exchange with Salander.

  ‘They’re withdrawing,’ she replied.

  ‘Trouble at the hub,’ said Marcus.

  ‘The Polity coming in?’ she asked.

  ‘No, my friend here disabled a hooder’s control thrall with a couple of sticky mines, which led to them attacking each other and disabling
all their thralls. The hooders are headed back towards the hub. I think they might be unhappy with Vrasan.’

  Salander laughed, long and hard, with a hint of hysteria in it.

  ‘Well thank you, Jack Four,’ she said finally. ‘You just saved thousands of lives.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ I replied, feeling a bit of a fraud since my actions had resulted in the prador being here in the first place. But this had also been Marcus’s plan originally, which I’d followed through.

  ‘Trecannon is ready for you,’ she added.

  Over the next twenty minutes the immediate noise and vibration died away. I finally put my eye to a split in the door to see the tubeway beyond standing empty. Marcus stepped up and inserted his hands in that split. He heaved and one half of the door broke away, falling with a crash to the side. We went through.

  The tubeway now lay empty in both directions and my map showed that it led directly to the rim at Sector Seven. Grav was out, even on the central walkway, so we propelled ourselves along the near wall, ready to dart back into available side corridors should any more prador put in an appearance. None did, and we travelled for a couple of hours into the eye of the tubeway before we saw signs of action at the rim. Here the walls had been shredded by weapons fire. An implant tank sat with its top blown away, revealing a mass of electronics and thawing organics, while the remains of prador armour floated about, further organic slurry painting what remained of the walls. Movement over to one side attracted my attention. There lay a prador with all its legs gone and only half of a claw limb remaining. It kept pointing the stub of a limb at us and, I had no doubt, had its Gatling cannon or particle beam weapon still been attached, we would’ve been paste.

  ‘Still alive,’ commented Marcus.

  The prador, it seemed, weren’t much inclined to collect up their wounded. The humans, however, were. As the barrier came into sight, we saw doors open in the side of the tubeway and people loading others onto grav-stretchers.

  ‘Trecannon?’ Marcus asked.

  A woman in a hazmat suit soaked with blood waved us towards the barrier. ‘He’s down there.’

  The barrier consisted of slabs of ceramal and I-beams welded across the tubeway. At regular intervals, the barrels of heavy weapons protruded, while a row of mosquitoes squatted in front of it, along with a larger mobile weapon I identified as a rail beader. Salander’s troops were here too, welding up breaks in the barrier, shifting debris, cutting weapons from gutted suits of prador armour. One bulky man floated high on the face of the barrier overseeing all this. Marcus must have recognized him because he launched up towards him. I stayed surveying the wreckage. The barrier had obviously held but the walls of the tubeway all around were utterly shredded and tunnels had been blasted into the surrounding structure of the station. No doubt the barrier would have continued to hold while the prador went round it. A flash of data arose in my mind of an ancient war on Earth where people had made a similar mistake depending on their armoured defences. I jumped and sailed up the barrier to catch hold of a protruding barrel beside Marcus and the man.

  ‘So this is him?’ The man turned towards me.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marcus. ‘This is Jack Four.’

  Trecannon wore an armoured spacesuit. His head was hairless and his skin an unnatural pink, with whorls in it as if covered in scar tissue from deep burns. More knowledge, not my own, surfaced and I recognized him as an adapt known as a krodorman. He grimaced at me and shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know whether to thank you or put a bullet in your head,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not reassuring,’ I replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘You destroyed the railgun and let the prador in. That gave us more time to get people out when Suzeal recalled hers. But maybe we could’ve held against Suzeal’s lot – we certainly couldn’t have continued to hold against the prador.’

  ‘He did what I was going to do anyway,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Good little soldier, eh?’ Trecannon continued to study me as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of me.

  ‘He did what was necessary.’

  ‘Up to and including attacking a hooder with a couple of sticky mines?’

  Marcus shot me a glance. ‘That was an interesting tactic.’ He swung back. ‘Now, that escape pod?’

  ‘Just go through to the ring corridor and head right. EP234 is the one you can use.’ He pointed down to the right of the barrier. ‘There’s a way through down there.’

  Marcus nodded, inverted himself and kicked against an I-beam, sailing down in the direction indicated. I moved to follow but Trecannon caught hold of my shoulder.

  ‘You don’t have to go,’ he said. ‘I know you did what you thought was best in the circumstances and, really, we could use anyone who would even think of attacking a hooder.’

  ‘Suzeal …’ I began, not sure what to add.

  ‘He can probably take her down without your help. You stay with him and he’ll likely get you killed.’

  ‘You saying I’d be safer here?’ I asked, loath to point out that it didn’t sound like it, if I was the kind of man he could use.

  ‘A lot of people have died because of him.’

  ‘But did he kill them?’

  ‘Some, but it’s not that. His kind don’t think like soldiers. They look at the big picture and sometimes little people get lost in the paintwork.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said, and propelled myself after Marcus.

  It was then that some knowledge and speculations about my companion, which had been fermenting in the back of my mind for some time, began to surface.

  20

  Refugees crowded the ring corridor and rooms on the station side. We walked to the sound of announcements telling those with certain numbers to head to variously numbered escape pods. Some officious-looking types with orange armbands organized the queues leading to circular inward bulging hatches, checking numbers printed on their hands and taking away large bags of belongings.

  ‘How many times do I have to say this?’ one of them was saying. ‘You’ve got room for one small bag, and not your fucking wardrobe!’

  Piles of such bags lay on one side of the ring corridor and, even though this was a matter of survival, some were prepared to argue the matter.

  Windows sat between the doors leading into the escape pods and I paused by one to take a look out. The pods were brick-like objects, with a slight curve to them to fit them to this part of the station rim. One of them detached with a blast of air and fell away into vacuum. There it fired up thrusters to stabilize and slid into a formation steadily receding from sight. Putting my face up against the window, I got a view towards the planet and there saw hundreds of black dots silhouetted against its face. Should Vrasan decide to fire on them they would make easy targets.

  ‘Where can they go?’ I wondered.

  ‘Salander has told them to move around the other side of the planet,’ said Marcus. ‘Problem is she has no control once they’ve left. A lot have gone for the space dock and many are just hanging around the station in the hope that things improve.’

  I stepped away from the window. ‘You talked to her?’ I couldn’t help but feel a bit of resentment that he hadn’t included me this time.

  ‘I wanted some idea of what we’re flying into,’ he explained. ‘It’s good that a lot are heading for the dock – that’ll give us cover if Suzeal is watching.’

  I reflected on my brief talk with Trecannon. Those pods were heading towards a place that might still be occupied by prador – a dangerous place where civilians could end up dead. Since Marcus was aiming to kill one individual he held a grudge against, I didn’t see this cover the civilians provided as part of any larger picture. Then again, perhaps Suzeal represented so much of a danger that casualties were permissible to prevent her escape. It might not be all about vengeance, I thought sourly.

  Finally we came opposite one of the circular doors with EP234 stencilled on its surface. Two guards stood before it remonstrating
with one of the armband crew and a group of people.

  ‘It’s not to be used,’ said one of the guards.

  ‘Saving it for more important people, are you?’ sneered a woman in seared clothing supporting an arm in a reactive cast.

  ‘It’s for us,’ said Marcus peremptorily, walking up.

  ‘Just two of you?’ said a young woman. ‘That doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Life isn’t,’ he told her.

  The young woman turned to me and I recognized her. ‘You,’ said Betan.

  I felt a surge of joy in seeing her smudged face. Then a tightness in my stomach when I saw she was alone.

  ‘You made it … Tanis?’

  She gestured vaguely. ‘He’s around here somewhere. We’re waiting for our pod.’

  Since Marcus didn’t seem inclined to diplomacy, I decided I should be.

  ‘We’re heading for the space dock to apprehend Suzeal,’ I told them all. ‘She’s there with some of her soldiers and prador are there too.’ I didn’t know whether that was true but thought it a good idea to throw it in. ‘Meanwhile the prador here are retreating to the hub – they’re being attacked by their own pets.’

  ‘Hooders?’

  I looked round at Tanis.

  ‘Glad you made it,’ I said.