by Neal Asher
‘Only thing to stop them fighting themselves to death would be a bit of Skellor’s reprogramming,’ said Fethan with satisfaction.
‘There’s nothing to stop him doing that remotely,’ Apis stated.
‘I doubt he can do it from underspace,’ replied Fethan with a grin.
‘He’s gone? Skellor’s gone?’
‘That’s the word, boy. That’s the word,’ Fethan replied.
Apis could only believe it as he watched raptor after raptor land outside and enter the building, only to be torn apart by the waiting dracomen, and as what had been a desperate fight in the open devolved into a slaughter – an extermination.
Lyric II spun out of underspace, exciting a photonic trail, before its fusion engines ignited to decelerate it down into the system. Being identified as one of the numerous large cargo ships that usually arrived at and departed from the sprawling structures coming into view, its AI was soon queried by a local AI, its presence noted and directions given, then it was all but forgotten. Aboard the ship, Cormac sipped hot coffee and tried to shake off the last dregs of cold-sleep that seemed to clog his head with wet tissue-paper. So much would depend on what happened in the next few minutes that, in his present debilitated state, he was finding it difficult to accept it all as real. Eyeing Stanton and Jarvellis, he saw that they were having no such problems accepting reality: she appeared white and ill, while her partner wore an expression of grim determination.
‘He may not be prepared to take any more risks with us.’ Stanton at last voiced what they were all thinking. ‘If he fires on us as soon as he surfaces, that’s it – all over.’
‘But he won’t,’ said Cormac with a confidence he did not feel. ‘He’ll want to gloat, if only for a few minutes, and while he does that we’ll be sending our message on ahead. I would even bet he’ll open communications with us in the hope of getting some response out of me.’
‘And our response to that?’ said Jarvellis.
‘I will talk to him,’ said Cormac. ‘Every second we gain . . .’
‘In that respect,’ said the captain of Lyric II, ‘it’s time to start counting.’
The Occam Razor slid out of underspace a thousand kilometres behind them, so that it seemed a tangled, dead thing, wrapped around something glorious and precious, was folding out of blackness there. Observing the great ship, Cormac was struck this once by how strangely beautiful it was. Perhaps this was because it would be the last time he ever saw it.
Through the myriad senses at his disposal, Skellor observed Lyric II like a fleck of matter against the sprawling backdrop. He studied the cylinder worlds like displaced towers, and the fragile chains of habitats, the huge manufactories and refineries, and the swarms of ships. Here was another place open to subversion, to takeover – throughout it he could feel the presence of Dracocorp augs, in loosely aligned communities each held together by the creeping dominion of one of their members. His arrival at Masada, and what he had found there developing under the Hierarch, had made him understand the subtle route Dragon had used to dominate humans – a route Skellor had very unsubtly ripped wide apart. But that was all something he must return to later, for here he was much too close to the Polity, and already could feel the U-space probing of a runcible AI. No, the one ship ahead of him he would take, and that would be all and enough. He opened the bay from which he had earlier ejected the raptor-piloted lander, and accelerated down onto Lyric II. As he descended, he spread himself out through Jain structure, substructure, architecture in a kind of rapturous stretching as of some creature extending great wings and claws.
This is it, Agent. I have you now.
Horrible laughter then echoed within him – and it wasn’t his own.
You are dead, he told the source of that laughter.
You made me, replied the ephemeral voice of Aphran. He tried to find it, encompass it, smear it out of existence, but he was chasing mere shadows through the vastness of himself.
You haven’t seen it yet, have you?
I haven’t seen what? he asked, hoping this time that when she spoke again he would be able to nail down exactly where she lurked.
The light, Skellor. The light.
Standing in the sharp blue shadows of his favourite cyanid, Dreyden drew hard on his cigarette, its glowing tip reflecting off his chromed aug, then blew out a cloud of smoke over the exposed yellow convolutions inside one of the plant’s opened pods. The convolutions all immediately zipped themselves up like a swarm of worms passing over the surface of this alien flower, then after a time unclenched again.
It was only here that Dreyden truly felt he could relax. Or perhaps he was kidding himself that relaxation was even possible for him: he had been described as being ‘taut as monofilament’ from his childhood – full of crazy hopes and numbing fears which he felt were the driving forces of his success. He knew that sometimes his fears strayed into the irrational, and it was good that he did know this, for Lons and Alvor would never tell him: Lons because Dreyden’s sanity or otherwise was not a matter of interest to him; and Alvor because he was always looking for an angle, for a way to manipulate his boss, to scrabble another couple of rungs up the ladder.
Across the ground before him a flattened worm of jelly oozed with slow ripplings that caught the lights from his apartment. To his right he saw that a plasod-erm’s grey seedcase had hinged itself completely open, and that the object crawling before him was the last of its slime-mould spore carriers to be released. He threw his cigarette butt into the empty seedcase where it hissed out in the damp interior. The accuracy of his shot gave him a second’s satisfaction before his whole world collapsed on him.
There was no alarm mode in his aug, as he considered that for anything that urgent he wanted no delay. His connection, which had been a low buzz of activity in a place impossible to point to, suddenly slammed back with such force that he staggered against the lethal edges of the cyanid leaves.
‘Battle stats and alarm to all areas lock down and seal gate connection break . . .’
Alvor was rattling off instructions so closely auged in that he became part machine himself for that brief moment. Lons had already moved beyond the verbal and was dealing in logic blocks and prestored sub-programs. Below Dreyden’s hands, virtual consoles flicked into existence, and all around him flat and holojected displays folded out of the air. There he observed huge transfers of information as the bulwarks of his empire were automatically dropped into safe storage. However, his attention was immediately riveted on one small screen. A touch at the non-existent console expanded the screen to reveal the huge Polity dreadnought bearing down upon Elysium.
‘Lyric II pursued. Message coming in from John Stanton.’
Dreyden had not needed Alvor to tell him this. He was on top of things now.
‘Dreyden, you’ve got to cover me. He is seriously pissed about those drones,’ said the holojected image of John Stanton.
Dreyden felt his insides clenching in a brass fist as he studied the man – Stanton seemed scared, and that was a first.
‘What about the drones?’ he asked.
‘Signal code broken. Signal code broken.’
Dreyden pressed his hands together to stop them shaking, as Stanton flickered out of existence and was instantly replaced.
‘Donnegal Dreyden,’ spoke a hated image. ‘This is Ian Cormac of Earth Central Security. You have thirty seconds to transmit all your control codes to this Polity dreadnought. If you fail to comply I will be forced to fire upon you.’
Something was wrong with all this, but Dreyden could see no way to discover what, nor had he been allowed time.
‘You know what my reply has to be,’ he said, not believing he was speaking these words, nor knowing what else to say. ‘I did warn you last time you were here.’
‘Do you really think your pathetic mirrors will manage to cut through the armour on this Polity dreadnought before it destroys them?’ And now Cormac’s expression turned furious. ‘Do you really th
ink that ECS can countenance you supplying terrorists with high-tech Polity war drones?’
‘But I—’
The link cut off and Dreyden was left staring at darkness.
‘He can’t be that stupid.’
Dreyden was in complete agreement with Alvor’s assessment: Agent Cormac of ECS had to know the mirrors were capable of raising in seconds the temperature of anything to that of a sun’s surface. The agent must want to die aboard that great ship, and Dreyden did not have the option to persuade him otherwise. Already he was sending the signals that would give him total command of each mirror. Before him a depiction of Elysium sprang into existence, and each mirror gained a shimmering halo as it came under his control. His hands moving across and through the consoles, he spidered the air with bright lines as he plotted trajectories and sent further commands. In that moment he moved into the language of machine code, and felt himself connecting more deeply into his own realm. He knew that, like those images of consoles and screens around him, the feeling itself was illusion, but he felt the glide of massive hydraulics, the acid fire of thruster motors, and the huge shifting of mirrors at his command. Subliminally he noted a grabship caught in momentary focus, turning mercury-bright then transforming into a ball of light expanding and dispersing. Then plotted trajectories intersected on what was even now becoming visible through the glass dome above.
The Occam Razor gleamed then glared in sunlight – a strange gem flashing into existence over Elysium. To one side Dreyden saw the hologram of someone appear and turn puzzled bloodshot eyes towards him. It was recognizably human but horribly tangled, and melded with both the organic and the mechanical.
‘Subversion access! Subversion access!’
He didn’t need to be told, as he was already fighting to prevent it killing the tracking programs in the mirror-guidance systems. The figure was screaming now as the heat delved down to it inside the dreadnought, white light all around it and holographic smoke filling the imaging area. Equally, the Occam Razor was howling across the sky with fire flaring across its surface and Jain structure ablating away into space. Then it rolled, bringing to bear another surface as yet untouched by sunfire. Dreyden felt a huge surge of energy through solar collectors and, with a thought, folded out a screen to view one section of Elysium itself. He saw an expanding mass of wreckage: burnt and burning habitats, domed forests falling out into blackness, human bodies . . . and a line of fire tracking across, searing and smashing and killing.
‘You bastard!’ he shouted, not entirely sure whom he was cursing.
The fire died as the weapons exposed on this new face of the Occam Razor collapsed into the boiling plain of its hull. To one side the image of the man-thing flickered out, and the ship seemed suddenly to alter its shape. For a second everything blacked out as a safety system cut into the visual feedback, then it cleared on the red eye of an explosion, and spreading sheets of molten metal and incandescent gas.
Epilogue
The sun had overtaken Calypse and, preceding the gas giant behind the horizon, had thrown it into partial silhouette – its whorls and bands of colours turning the hue of ancient cathedral paint. Out over the more vivid colours of the flowering flute grasses, Ram and Rom reflected nothing but this colour from their polished cases as they slid silently through the air. Seated on a cold mollusc-studded rock with Eldene pressing close to his side, Apis wondered if he would ever become inured to the fantastic sunrises and sunsets here – and hoped not. He then transferred his gaze to the approaching vehicle that the two war drones guarded.
‘I wonder if she found her hatchery,’ Eldene said.
‘I doubt she had the time.’
They both watched the ATV come out of the grasses and into a lane of black plantains, against which the multicoloured pollens splashed all over its surface showed up clear like a strange camouflage.
‘Here come the others,’ said Eldene, pulling closer so that he would put his arm around her. Obliging her he glanced aside at the encampment from which Lellan and Fethan approached. Lellan had long been essentially the dictator here, but then Fethan had pointed out that when ECS came to help them, and once it established a runcible on one of the Braemar moons, there would be another dictator and it would be made of silicon. She had not seemed particularly averse to the prospect.
The ATV drew to a halt on an area of crushed-down rhubarb that abutted the river winding out from the foothills. First out of its door was Gant, carrying Mika’s huge sample case. Next came Thorn – very nimble on his feet since one of Mika’s ‘little doctors’ had established itself inside him, but then Apis knew exactly how that felt. Thorn, like himself and Mika, no longer wore a mask. Sometime soon Apis hoped Eldene would follow the same route, for if they were to become true Masadans they must learn to live on the surface, not merely exist.
‘Let’s get down there,’ said Apis, removing his arm from Eldene’s waist.
‘Oh, all right,’ she pouted, mock angry.
They clambered from the rock and side-by-side walked down the scree slope towards the vehicle, as next emerged Mika and Scar. Lellan and Fethan joined them and the four approached it together.
‘Did you find the site?’ Fethan asked.
‘Yes, fragments of shell from where they burrowed their way out of the ground,’ said Mika. ‘I’ll need excavators to dig down deep enough. The whole thing will have to wait until ECS gets here.’
Apis noted her distraction as she stared upriver to a shuttle that rested half in the water. This craft bore some resemblance to a huge U-shaped section of grey pipe, but with thruster motors and guidance fins attached.
‘I don’t think I’ve seen one like that before,’ she remarked.
For enlightenment, Lellan and Fethan looked to Apis, who said, ‘It’s a good century out of date.’ When Mika just stared at him, he explained further, ‘We studied landing craft on Miranda. It was one of our more academic subjects.’ He shrugged, very aware that much had since ceased to be academic to him.
Turning to Lellan and Fethan, Mika stated, ‘You have been inside it.’
‘Door’s open,’ said Fethan. ‘We had a look then decided to leave it until you got here. No telling what it might do.’
Mika’s expression showed both curiosity and irritation. ‘What might do what?’ she asked, wincing at the clumsiness of her question.
Fethan gestured towards the grounded craft, and the group of them began walking in that direction.
‘What more do you think ECS will find . . . when they get here?’ Lellan asked, studying Scar as she brought the conversation back to Mika’s recent jaunt into the wilderness.
Mika shrugged. ‘I’ll probably only get confirmation. Dragon converted most of its own mass into eggs hidden underground, out of which eventually hatched the dracomen. It’s the same method employed by Skellor for his raptor creatures.’
‘Very similar technology,’ Lellan observed.
‘Very,’ Mika agreed, ‘though the raptors were not intended to breed.’
‘Pardon?’ said Lellan.
Mika glanced at Scar. ‘Oh yes, the dracoman population here is set to rise – and I think that maybe that will be a good thing.’
‘Your idea of a good thing might differ from everyone else’s,’ muttered Thorn.
Shortly they reached the craft and, staring at the open door with its extended ramp, Apis could not repress a shudder. He too had seen the Polity and Jain technology melded to the mutilated calloraptor. So he and Eldene held back with the others as Mika followed Thorn and Gant inside. Apis listened to the creature within’s painful hissing, and its truncated struggle in attempting to pursue its programmed instinct to attack. Shortly, the interior of the craft was filled with the viridian arc-welder flashes of Gant’s and Thorn’s APWs, a sound like the exhalation of a giant snake, then stillness. Exiting the craft, Gant and Thorn wore grim expressions, and even Mika’s perpetual curiosity seemed tempered.
Nodding half to herself, Mika said, ‘Dracomen
. . . any of them really. I think we’re going to need all the allies we can find.’ She gestured back into the craft. ‘It’s out of its box now and I don’t think there’s anyone who can put it back.’
Apis knew she didn’t mean the creature itself, but the technology it represented.
A woman danced in space, surrounded by diaphanous white material. Close focus now revealed that she had floated out from the shade of a shattered habitat, and the last vital fluids were boiling from her body. The silver-haired man shut off close focus before the child on his knee decided to ask him a question about the revealed image. Observing at a distance the broken bodies desiccated by vacuum into rolling woody statues, the mass of shattered biodomes, and the habitats melted into grotesque baroque shapes, his expression turned utterly cold.
The boy reached one pudgy hand towards the screen. ‘Dead?’ he asked, his eyes wide.
‘Oh yes,’ said the man. ‘Certainly that.’ He paused for a moment, then in a bitter voice explained, ‘You see, this is what is called a Cadmean victory.’
Pulling his hand back, the boy put his finger in his mouth as he stared at the screen. After a moment his attention wandered to those toys of his scattered on the floor.
Abruptly he swung back to the man. ‘Story now?’
When this elicited no reponse, the boy began to fidget. Eventually the man reached across and picked up the storybook from the chair beside him. Opening it, he observed a heroyne, caught in the damaged memory fabric of the page, in a cycle of perpetually swallowing the same priestly individual. He closed the book and returned his attention to the main screen.
With his gaze fixed, and his eyes hard as nail-heads the man began, ‘Once upon a time . . . on a planet far far away . . . there lived a Dragon . . .’
