by Neal Asher
'I don't know what it was you intended, but that you intended something with Jarvellis I have no doubt. I trusted you, John. I even liked you,' said Pelter.
Stanton said, 'You like no one but yourself, Pelter, and even that has changed. Look at what you've become.'
Pelter reached up and touched his face, realized what he was doing, and snatched his hand back down. Behind him Crane eased forwards. Stanton noted that the briefcase was on the ground. So that was the way it was going to be. What use would he have for a pulse-gun or his knife?
'Because I thought you were a friend, John, I'm letting you go. Just go - get out of my sight,' said Pelter.
Stanton looked around. He was certainly dead. He wondered if Pelter would even let him get to his gun's charge before sending Crane after him. He holstered his gun, turned, and set out at a jog across the spongy growth. Already the survival instincts that had got him through many a bad situation were taking over. He almost felt ashamed of them, but did not have the strength to resist. In a minute he reached the spread of green growth. Helicopter seeds, not hornets, were scattered all about. The charge was caught in an intersection of two thick leaves, which had the appearance of molten plastic. He took it up, drew his gun, and slapped the charge into place. Glancing back he saw that only Dusache, Corlackis and Mr Crane were in view. Corlackis was now holding a laser carbine, its butt resting on his hip. The message was plain. Stanton turned and headed for the distant forest, picking up his pace all the time.
The further he got from the lake the firmer became the ground underfoot. Ferns and the other weird green growths were displaced by what appeared to be low heather. Between the growths of this were narrow animal trails. Stanton reached a cluster of three monolithic boulders and rested his hand against the crystalline and fossil-etched surface. A glance back showed him no action at the lake. Some of them were standing watching him, but from this distance he could not identify which of them. He ran on. He had to keep up his speed and get as far away as possible, before Pelter got bored and sent Crane in pursuit. Then, again, maybe he would not? Stanton snorted at this momentary flash of uncharacteristic optimism.
The trees of this forest had to be some kind of coniferous adaptation. As he drew closer Stanton saw that they had the shape of pines, but bore translucent red fruits the size of a fist. Closer still and he saw needles that were flat blades, and trunks that had the appearance of sections of laminate wood. Running between these square-section trunks, he glanced back. A tall figure was loping towards him from the lake. It surprised him how much reserve he managed to call up from his boosted muscles.
On through the trees, the fallen needles a crunchy grey carpet underfoot. Stanton considered pulling his pulse-gun and triggering it under his chin. He did not know what Pelter had in mind, so that option would at least be quick. He rejected the idea. The gaps between the trunks were wide, and the ground an easy surface to run across. Stanton scanned for somewhere to hide, then wondered why the hell he was doing so. Crane would hear his ragged breaths, even his heartbeat. Ahead he heard the sound of rushing water, and accelerated when he thought this might offer him a chance of escape. Beating up-slope now, he glanced back. No sign of Crane, but the android might be circling round. Stanton could not change his course now. In a straight run he stood no chance: Crane was faster than him and just did not need to rest. The river was his only hope. Soon he crested a ridge and saw the heavy swirl of glassy water below. The roar came from his left. He jogged down the slope to where stone slabs shelved the edge of the water. Here the conifers were displaced by blue oaks, their acorns scattered on the ground like bird's eggs. A glance back gave him more impetus. Crane was loping along under the conifers, kicking up masses of needles at every step as his huge weight sank into the ground. That was it: the weight! When he reached the slabs, Stanton turned and drew his pulse-gun. It had its full charge: over fifty shots. He aimed very carefully and pressed down on the trigger.
White fire cut a stuttering stream between Stanton and the android. Crane was taking another loping step as it hit, and the fusillade flung him back, thumping into the front of his coat, smoke and flame and pieces of burning cloth flying in every direction. He landed and slipped, shots still hitting him, and then he went over on his back. A few seconds at most it had given Stanton. He did not wait to see if the android would get up. He knew the answer to that as he dived into the river.
The water was icy, but Stanton hardly noticed. He struck out with a powerful crawl stroke downstream. Behind him there was a huge splash. He glanced back and saw a hat floating on the surface and found himself grinning maniacally at that. Crane had tried to follow him, neglecting to take into account the fact that he was made of case-hardened ceramal. Stanton hoped the water was deep. He swam harder, a sudden vision in his mind of Crane striding along the riverbed after him. Ahead of him the roar grew in volume. Happy day: a waterfall. He tried to strike out for the edge of the river, but the current was too strong now. It dragged him to a green-slimed lip of stone and tipped him over into white water. He went feet first, hoping thus to absorb some of the impact of whatever might lie below.
A cold, deep pool greeted him, and he was dragged and tumbled through water fizzing like tonic. Gasping he came to the surface beyond the fall, and looked back again. Something hit the water hard behind him. He looked ahead, to where the river spread wide over slabbed stone, then struck out - only to have his hand slap down on that stone. A few strokes and the water was too shallow to swim in. He stood, drew his gun, and waded as quickly through the water as he could. He slipped at almost every step. Perhaps now was the time to put the gun under his chin. One shot was all he needed, and he had about ten left. A glance behind showed him a bronze hand coming up out the water and snatching a hat from the surface. Crazy android. Mr Crane walked up out of the pool, straightening the brim of his hat. Stanton turned and faced him.
There was nothing to say. Pelter might be watching through Crane's eyes, or not, but Stanton was damned if he was going to beg. He was damned if he was going to give up either. Trying to recover his breath he waited for Crane, his gun down at his side. Crane looked from side to side in that curious birdlike manner.
When he was only a few metres away Stanton lifted his gun and fired his remaining shots. Crane leant into them. Each pulse of ionized aluminium just caused a momentary glow on his armoured chest, maybe a little pitting in the surface, but the glow quickly disappeared as the heat was dispersed through die's-con network imbedded in his armour. When the gun was empty, Stanton threw it at the android. A brass hand snatched the weapon, shattered it, and tossed the pieces aside. This was it. Crane stepped in and Stanton tried a stamp kick on his knee. He might more easily have tried to knock over an oak. Crane grabbed the front of his jacket, hoisted him into the air, and threw him. Stanton came down on his back in the shallow water with slimed rocks cracking against his spine. Crane came striding in again as he tried to stand. A backhand slap laid Stanton across the damp needles on the shore. What was the use? A boot like a ram flipped him over onto his back. Crane stooped over him, black eyes giving nothing. It might as well have been a slab of metal that was killing him. A huge brass hand closed around his throat and he was lifted once again.
Maybe the eyes. Maybe he could at least damage this toyofPelter's?
Stanton nicked the Tenkian ring round with his thumb. He felt the tug at his trouser leg as the dagger came out dirough the rip it had made before. Forest light glittered off the yellow chainglass blade and the handle slapped into his hand. He swung at Crane's eyes, and the android's other hand snapped up and caught his wrist. The point of the blade was a hand's breaddi from those black eyes. Crane blinked and did nothing while Stanton choked. Abrupdy, he released Stanton's throat. Stanton yelled as all his weight came down on his right shoulder. Crane pulled the blade from Stanton's hand and then, in a moment, just discarded him.
The lights in the Tenkian were flickering as it no doubt tried to give Mr Crane a shock. Crane w
as oblivious to the electrical charge, but not oblivious to the pretty lights and the beauty of the weapon. He held it between his two forefingers and studied it for a long time. Stanton just lay there, recovering his breath. His right shoulder felt like it was dislocated, and he'd definitely cracked a few ribs. There was no point in running now. He just waited for the inevitable.
Crane finished his long study of the Tenkian dagger, then slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He glanced at Stanton, lifted a forefinger up to his metal mouth, held it there for a moment, before stepping over him and walking off into the forest.
Her left leg hurt like hell, and felt warm and sticky inside the suit. In a way she wished that the sealant layer sandwiched between the armour and the inner suit had not done its job so well. Had it not, she would not face the prospect of suffocating in about twenty minutes from now. The Lyric was gone, John was either dead or soon would be, Pelter would see to that, and the safety lock on her suit even precluded her opening the helmet to vacuum. Jarvellis hung in space over Viridian and watched pieces of her ship flaring in atmosphere below her - when she could see through her tears.
The old ring station was perhaps a few hundred metres away behind her. Straining round she could see a light deep inside it, behind exposed structural members. That option wa§ closed to her as well. She had used up all the fuel in the suit's impellers in order to escape the blast. 'Get out,' John had said. She had heard him clear, even as she had blown the airlock door and fired-up the impellers. The disc of fire had cut below her, then the debris cloud riding the blastwave had slammed into her back and tumbled her over and over. No doubt the piece of the Lyric that had punched into her thigh had been a fragment of chainglass. It had been one of many hits she had felt, and nothing else could have penetrated the ceramal armour.
Eventually her tears dried and Jarvellis tried her comunit again. Again she just got silence. The EM pulse from the explosion must have burnt out the suit's radio. Planar explosives had been used, and they did not produce such a pulse. It had come from one of the secondary explosions, either when the pile went or when the disc cut the underspace engine in half. There would be recovery ships up from Viridian in time, but they would come too late for her. Rescue was not an option, and only two others remained: either she died slowly in the suit or… Jarvellis reached down and undipped the solid-state laser clipped to the suit's utility belt. It wouldn't work through the helmet, as the chainglass would automatically polarize. She needed to hold it over her heart. She estimated it would take about a minute to penetrate the suit.
No more grief now. Everything was gone and now there was just her. Then… then she remembered the other life starting inside her, and that only made everything seem worse. She looked down at the laser in her heavy glove. It was just a matt cylinder with a button on one end.
Oh, John…
She put the business end of the laser against her chest and pressed the button. Red light ignited at the point of contact and vaporized ceramal flared away in an orange fog. Any moment now she would be through. There would be sudden pain, then quick death. The laser broke through, but there was no expected pain. The explosion slammed at her chest and flung her hand away. As she hurtled back, she saw the laser tumbling through space on a trail of glittering fragments.
'Oh, fuck you. Fuck you!'
Fifteen minutes of air left, and the display was still heading down. She had achieved the end she required, though not by the expected method. She knew exactly what had happened. The sealant had hardened on exposure to vacuum. The laser had cut through it and then it had broken under the air pressure in her suit. But it went further than that, which was the reason these old suits had been replaced. The epoxy-based sealant, once hardened, lost its flame-retardant properties. Under the blast of air, white-hot epoxy had exploded.
'Goodbye, John,' Jarvellis said, and thought that perhaps the shadows she was seeing at the edges of her vision were due to the sudden drop in air pressure.
Abruptly she realized this was not so, she was seeing a framework of structural members silhouetted against Viridian, a second before she slammed into a wall inside the ring station. As the counter dropped to zero, and she gasped on nothing, she had enough humour left to appreciate the irony of it all.
21
Antiphoton Weapon (APW): In this case the term 'antiphoton' is a misnomer attributable to the propaganda core of the Jovian Separatists (either that or hopeful thinking). The beam projected from this weapon is a proton beam, the protons having been field-accelerated to near-light speed. The distinctive purple flash or beam, is not, as some fictional sources would have us believe, the fabled 'darklight'. It is fluorescence caused by proton collision with air molecules. In pure vacuum the beam is invisible. The aforesaid fictional sources would also do well to remember that the firing of a proton weapon is a serious matter, the usual result of which is isotope contamination. The bad guys don't just disappear in an elegant purple flash.
From How It Is by Gordon
Mika was watching a screen showing a view down the shaft towards the artefact. In the picture Cormac recognized the rear view of Cam, Cormac himself, Gant and Cento. The guardian creature was coming up the shaft. 'Jesus!' yelled Gant.
Cormac waited for his shouted instruction for them to 'Hit it'. Mika froze the picture at the point when the creature was in fullest view. Cormac's recorded shout was stillborn.
'I downloaded this copy from Aiden's memory,' said Mika, widiout turning.
'What do you make of it?'
'Terrifying, fascinating.'
'All of diat,' said Cormac dryly.
She turned to him. 'If I hadn't known the shaft had been made by melting and rock-compression, I would have said that creature hollowed it out somehow; that it was its natural home before the temperature dropped. The shaft is perfectly designed to accommodate it. But for the ice, it would have moved up much faster.'
'And you are saying?'
'The reverse: the creature was specially designed for the shaft. It was a guardian created for that place.'
She walked past him to a bench on which were laid the pieces of the creature which Thorn had brought back. She picked up the end of one silvered leg.
'There is no real defence against energy weapons, but what defence there is this creature had: reflective skin and an effective mediod of heat dispersal. It was also armoured enough to deal with most projectile weapons.' She pointed at the screen. 'Its dimensions were perfect for the shaft.'
'Machine or living thing,' said Cormac, remembering a previous conversation, 'it didn't evolve.'
'No, it has no means of reproduction. It was definitely made? She glanced at him again. 'And its construction is strikingly similar to that of the dracomen. It does not have DNA; it used protein replication.'
Cormac diought about that for a moment.
Dragon again?
'You just said, "Its natural home before the temperature dropped." What did you mean by that?'
Mika put down the silvered leg and picked up another piece of the creature: a flattened ovoid with ribs along one side. 'This is one of its feet. It's very like one of the toes of such lizards as the gecko on Eardi or the srank on Circe. It would have been perfectly designed for gripping onto the rock of that shaft if there was no ice there.' She dropped the foot. 'Also, from what I have discovered thus far, it was reaching the edge of its survivability. Had the temperature gone below one-sixty Kelvin it would have become somnolent. Much lower than that and it would have died.'
'But the dracomen were managing,' said Cormac.
Mika gazed at her collection of body parts. 'This creature was not so complex as them. It did not have the ability to adapt…'
'Questions occur,' said Cormac, looking back at the screen.' Why was that artefact being guarded? And what put the guard there? Whatever did, it did not know the temperature was going to drop. The creature was placed there before the runcible went down. Yet, the dracomen… Were they sent here to retrieve the artefact
? Was that Dragon's purpose?' He shook his head. 'If so, why was the runcible destroyed?'
'I believe some other alien is involved,' said Mika.
Cormac turned to her. 'Why?'
'Because of the artefact. I've been checking through the Dragon/human dialogues and other papers. Remember, when you went to Aster Colora - that two-kilometre perimeter? Dragon has no use of machines. Everything it makes is more complex - living. That artefact is not a product of Dragon's technology.'
'Yes… maybe… but the guardian? We run in circles. Every clue leads to more questions… Hubris, what is Dragon doing now?'
'Dragon is still destroying things on the planet. We have no picture now, since one burst destroyed the probe.'
To Mika, Cormac said, 'That's where I hope to get some answers, no matter how cryptic they may be.'
'Dragon tells lies,' Mika observed.
'You can learn something even from lies,' said Cormac, then left her to her work.
Cormac looked down into the huge main bay, at the rows of bubble-metal crates, superconductor cable and sheet, in reels and rolls, the massive shapes of the Skaidon horns in their shock packaging, one of which had killed the technician working on it, and at the two hemispheres of the containment vessel. He watched the technicians moving about the bay, checking this, taking readings here. They were not checking the runcible itself - as that would not be necessary until it was assembled -rather, they were checking the huge amount of equipment that would be used to install it. Most of these technicians carried notescreens. Others carried esoteric equipment, or were followed by robots doing so. The belly of the giant heavy-lifter, its loading hatches open, walled the back of the bay.
