Orbus

by Neal Asher

  ORBUS

  Also by NealAshe

  Agent Cormac series

  Shadow of the Scorpion

  The Line of Polity

  Polity Agent

  Line War

  Spatterjay series

  The Voyage of the Sable Keech

  Novels of the Polity

  Prador Moon

  Hilldiggers

  Short story collections

  The Gabble

  NEAL

  ASHER

  ORBUS

  NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  An Imprint of Start Publishing LLC

  New York, New York

  ORBUS Copyright © 2009 by Neal Asher.

  First Night Shade Books edition 2013.

  First published in the United Kingdom by Tor,

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan,

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Night Shade Books, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

  Published by Night Shade Books,

  an imprint of Start Publishing LLC

  New York, New York

  Please visit us on the web at

  www.start-media.com

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-520-9

  For the big 50s.

  You know who you are!!

  Acknowledgement

  Cheers to the new guard at Tor Macmillan who seem to have snatched up the baton and taken off as if their feet are on fire, these including Julie Crisp, Chloe Healy, and many others besides. Also to Peter Lavery who, despite retiring, cannot quite give up his scary pencil and continues editing. My best wishes to others working diligently at Macmillan selling foreign rights or copy-editing, including Liz Johnson and Eli Dryden; in fact to all there who help bring this book to the shelves. Further thanks must go out to all those running numerous websites across the Internet who, for bugger-all payment, take the time to review my books with such precision and care, and, of course, to all those who buy them–without you I’d need to get a proper job! And, as ever, thanks Caroline for the steady supply of coffee, for accepting that my time ranting on the Internet is research…oh, and for being my wife!

  1

  It’s well known that the spatterjay virus optimizes its host for their mutual survival, sometimes causing weird transformations in the said host when this survival is threatened. However, there is still much debate about the extent to which it can alter the structures of the human brain. With some Hoopers, as the residents of Spatterjay are called, long-term viral infection can result in the brain becoming hard-wired so that those affected become incapable of learning anything new or reacting usefully to any situations arising outside of their normal day-to-day lives. Yet it has also been shown that in some other Hoopers the virus is perpetually tampering with the brain, actually connecting to cerebral structure, and that information is exchanged between mind and virus. Some of this information, it would seem, cannot arise simply from that mind’s own experiences, and scientists speculate that, as well as storing an eclectic collection absorbed from the genomes of the creatures it has been hosted by, the virus is capable of storing mental information too. Those who enjoy this close connection between mind and virus also seem to possess greater mental capacity, remembering a great deal of what they have read and experienced. This should not be surprising of course, since one of the greatest instruments for optimizing the survival of a Human is that organ lying between his ears.

  –From HOW IT IS by Gordon

  A varied collection of interesting crates, boxes, storage cylinders and oddly shaped objects wrapped in crash-foam is strapped securely in the quadrate cargo scaffold of the enormous zero-gravity hold space of the Gurnard. Numerous aisles run through this scaffold to provide access for the autohandlers, which are machines like giant grey earwigs presently crouching in recesses in the distant walls, their job completed some days ago. Amidst the latest cargo to be loaded rests a big plasmel crate, and now, emitting a high whine, a silvery blade stabs through the surface from inside it and cuts round, splitting the crate in two. Then, spreading metal tentacles, the object within the crate pushes the two halves of it apart.

  The war drone Sniper blinks open his crystal orange eyes and peers about himself in the darkness, which isn’t actually darkness to him since his sensorium spans so much wider than the limited Human spectrum.

  ‘Do you think they’ll find out?’ his small companion enquires, as it drifts from the depths of the crate alongside him.

  ‘I don’t reckon so,’ says Sniper. ‘By the time they realize we’re not still hiding in a sea cave, we’ll be well away.’

  While trapped in a static position as the Warden of Spatterjay for ten years, Sniper watched that same world changing, and guessed it would soon no longer be such an exciting place for him. There he obtained this new drone shell for himself–a gleaming nautilus three metres in diameter, constructed of highly advanced ceramal and diamond-fibre composite, which in turn was plated with nanochain chromium, and contained enough lethal weaponry to obliterate a city, or two–and considered heading elsewhere. However, shortly after loading his mind, essentially himself, into this shell, events unfolding upon that world–with the Prador Vrell trying to escape, and the Prador Vrost arriving in a massive space dreadnought to stop him–once again drew him in and allowed him to exercise his special talent for mayhem. But that’s all over and the whole world now seems set to become more civilized; perhaps too civilized for a drone who specializes in blowing things up.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ says his companion.

  Sniper peers at Thirteen, an erstwhile submind of the previous Spatterjay Warden, which now occupies a drone body in the form of an iron seahorse with topaz eyes. The little drone wraps his tail round one of the cargo-frame struts as he studies their surroundings.

  ‘No such thing as fair,’ Sniper snorts.

  Despite his heroic efforts in fighting for the Polity, Sniper is considered a bit of a loose cannon, or rather several loose cannons rolled into one. In fact, many of the Polity’s controlling AIs consider him plain dangerous or, him having obtained that very high-spec drone body, even positively lethal. At the end of the conflict involving Vrell and Vrost, Sniper rescued a Prador war drone containing a downloaded copy of Vrell’s mind. The AIs hadn’t liked that either and, though Sniper made some alterations causing the Prador drone to switch loyalties to the Polity, they nevertheless confiscated it for ‘further study’. Next came the order for Sniper himself to report for ‘assessment’, at which point this seven-hundred-year-old veteran of the Prador/Human war, and numerous subsequent conflicts, decided it really was time to be elsewhere.

  ‘But you’re a free drone,’ Thirteen complains, ‘just like me.’

  Sniper ponders the old and much-abused concept of ‘freedom’. Yes, he is indeed as free as any other citizen in the Polity, and is also given a great deal of freedom of action when it comes to dealing with its enemies. However, he is now very powerful and dangerous and if, just for one moment, the controlling AIs feel his mind is too unstable, or that in some other way he might become a threat, they will be down on him like a falling space station. He doesn’t really understand what it is about his recent behaviour that has impelled them to order him in for assessment, but he has no intention of waiting around to find out.

  ‘Let’s take a look around in here.’ Sniper pushes himself out from between the two halves of the crate to enter the nearest aisle. Propelling himself forward, and steadying his course with deft touches of his tentacles against the surrounding framework, he begins scanning. Thirteen pushes off after him, lowering his tail dow
n onto the bigger drone’s shell and sticking there.

  The cargo immediately around them was loaded along with their own crate and consists of numerous items acquired on Spatterjay: some big crates of whelk shells; one small crate of wartime artefacts including slave collars, a couple of spider thralls, a complete Human skeleton with something metallic in its skull from which metal threads run down the spine–a full thrall unit, in fact–and a couple of very old pulse-rifles. Sniper recognizes all these illegal exports instantly, because at one time he himself turned a tidy profit by finding and selling such artefacts. Also here rest three cylinders with enviro-control consoles affixed to the exterior. Scanning inside, Sniper observes slow writhing movement and recognizes that each one contains a tangled mass of Spatterjay leeches.

  ‘I wonder who wants them,’ wonders Thirteen.

  ‘Always a market for immortality,’ Sniper replies.

  ‘Yeah, but who wants that kind?’

  Though the bite of a Spatterjay leech infects its victim with the primary virus of that world, the longevity it imparts is a mixed blessing. Reinfection at constant intervals is necessary and, if the one infected is injured or starved, the virus can take over completely and turn him into something no longer really Human. This might once have been considered a small price to pay for what amounts to virtual immortality, but with present Polity technologies making it possible for anyone to extend his lifespan indefinitely, it is one most are no longer prepared to pay. More likely those buying a bite from these leeches are attracted more by the idea of turning into something like an Old Captain: a nearly unkillable superhuman capable of bending iron bars with his eyelids.

  Next along from these containers is one enormous item secured in another longer and wider cylinder. Scanning inside this, Sniper identifies a creature like a whale with mandibles, its body temperature reduced to just a little above zero, while being held in stasis by chemical and electrical means. Someone, somewhere, must actually want a living ocean heirodont? Maybe that same someone is putting together an aquarium based on the sea-life of Spatterjay, and this and the leeches are intended for that. Such an aquarium would clearly have huge entertainment value, but its owner would have to be damned careful when cleaning the glass.

  Beyond the Spatterjay cargo are packed other odd and disparate cargoes. One area contains tons of wood that Sniper tentatively identifies as English oak, boxes full of jars containing either black or green olives in brine, living oysters held in stasis, a hydrogen-powered trial bike, a mass of limestone blocks, some gel-sealed barrels of whisky, living prawn eggs also held in stasis, and much more besides. He surmises that some of these cargoes have been stored here for a very long time while awaiting an opportune moment to be sold–a moment that has never come so far and, in some cases, probably never will.

  ‘Oops,’ says Thirteen abruptly.

  Sniper notes movement from the autohandlers and now one of them peels itself out of its wall recess, and impelled by gas jets, begins drifting up the aisle towards them. The big war drone trains a high-powered laser on it, but otherwise does not react, since he has been expecting something like this. The handler does indeed look like an earwig, albeit one ten feet long, its rear pincers jointed and overly large in proportion to its body, its legs similarly longer and ending in two-fingered grabs, and its head looking more like that of a huge fly. As it draws near, it squirts its gas jets to bring itself to a halt, then reaches out with one of those two-fingered grabs to grasp a nearby stanchion of the cargo framework.

  ‘I only recollect one time in the past when stowaways were found aboard,’ it declares. ‘The Captain at that time wanted to eject them out of an airlock and, though I thoroughly agreed with his feelings on the matter, I could not allow it. The same Captain went off for mental adjustment shortly after that, his penchant for black mem-loads having caught up with him.’

  ‘We’re not stowaways,’ Sniper announces. ‘We’re cargo–check your manifest.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says the Gurnard’s AI. ‘Crate SPJ15 containing wartime data in secure storage and also a seahorse sculpture. Very amusing.’

  ‘Well,’ says Sniper, ‘my mind is that same data, and my body the secure storage, and Thirteen here is a fine piece of artwork.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Sniper,’ says Thirteen.

  Gurnard ignores this exchange. ‘Whilst you remained in your crate, I could overlook your presence aboard, but you have now made the transition from cargo to stowaways, or even passengers. If you return to your crate and seal it up, I will forget I ever saw you. If you remain outside of your crate, there will be a further charge to pay.’

  ‘How much?’ Sniper and Thirteen had been ensconced in that crate for many days and, though he could easily scan far beyond it, he had reached his boredom threshold.

  ‘Since you do not require food, or air to breathe, the charge will be no more than a third more than the cargo payment,’ the ship AI decides, ‘though your presence aboard would have to be registered at any Polity port we should arrive at.’

  ‘I see,’ says Sniper, wondering what the ‘however’ is going to be. Gurnard has to be fully aware that Sniper and Thirteen are fugitives from Earth Central Security.

  ‘However,’ says Gurnard, predictably, ‘should you sign on as members of the crew, I need provide no further details than that two free drones are aboard.’

  Sniper is sure there is no rule about listing passengers, because their presence would be registered the moment they left the ship at any Polity destination, so why does the AI of this ship want to sign them up?

  ‘And, to answer the question you are doubtless asking yourself,’ Gurnard continues, ‘after a brief visit to Aerial Space Station, your presence aboard might be very helpful, for we then head off for some less salubrious destinations in a particularly notorious sector of space.’

  ‘That being?’

  When the AI tells them where the Gurnard will be going, Sniper joyfully spins on the spot like a coin.

  ‘Sign us up,’ he says.

  Before becoming a sea captain himself, Orbus spent a century of wandering and crewing on the sailing ships of others, followed by a decades-long period of suicidal wildness, before he finally built his own sailing ship. He vaguely recollects that, at about that same time, he experienced optimism and joy when, knowing he was practically immortal, he decided to properly relish his existence. He is not sure when things then started to fall out of shape, though he knew the cause lay further back in his past, in his long and brutal journey to the world of Spatterjay, from which even now he remembers the first taste of raw Human flesh.

  Centuries of violence ensued, during which–aboard two separate ships, for the first was burned down to the keel while in port–he gathered about him a crew amenable to his personal tastes. A sadist ship captain in charge of a crew of masochists–really, who could object to that? But often it went too far, and some innocents were hurt because they joined the crew without really knowing what kind of ship they were joining.

  One of Orbus’s longest-serving crewmen stands beside him now, not this time aboard a wooden sailing ship upon that savage ocean, but aboard the old space-hauler the Gurnard, travelling deep in vacuum. Currently they occupy the bridge, which, with its faux-Victorian decoration and high-tech controls cleverly concealed in polished brass, cast iron and wood, might well have been designed by Jules Verne himself.

  ‘I don’t like your name,’ says Orbus abruptly, a bitter worm coming back to nibble at his mind.

  His crewman, who has answered to the name Drooble for longer than most people have lived, squints up at him while trying to think of something provocative to say in response. He finally gives up and asks, ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  Orbus represses a surge of irritation because he isn’t even sure why he spoke. Being less than candid, he replies, ‘It sounds like a blend between dribble and droopy, or trouble and…it’s a silly name.’ Then his feeling of irritation is back, redoubled, because of the utter pointlessn
ess of this exchange.

  Drooble’s expression screws up with the effort of setting his thoughts along unfamiliar courses, so all he manages is, ‘Well, what about the name Orbus?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that name,’ says Orbus, trying to quell the familiar and horribly attractive anger growing inside him. ‘What’s your first name?’

  The crewman again squints in deep and painful thought, then tentatively replies, ‘Iannus…I think.’

  ‘Then that is the name I will use to address you from now on.’ There, conversation over, no need to get annoyed. Orbus takes several long steadying breaths and tries to shunt it all aside.

  The vessel they occupy, along with its reserved and spooky artificial intelligence, is four miles long and precisely the shape that its name implies: it is a spaceship fashioned in the shape of a bottom-dwelling fish, steely-grey in colour, like some chunk of rococo decoration inadvertently snapped off a cast-iron gate. The two men, these two tough, durable and incredibly long-lived Hoopers, gaze out upon blackness through the chainglass window forming one fish eye. Orbus stands a full head and shoulders above his companion, possesses arms as thick as most people’s legs, a rhino-thick body, a grey queue of hair trailing down his back and a sad expression behind a flattened nose. He wears clothing fashioned of heavy canvas and heirodont leather, since any less durable fabrics he would inadvertently tear like wet tissue paper, and coiled at his belt hangs a flexal bullwhip to remind him of the time when he was not such a nice person.

  By comparison with his captain, Iannus Drooble is small–yet he is bigger than the Human average. He wears a white cloth shirt and baggy canvas trousers, hobnail boots and a headband. He was infected with the Spatterjay virus some centuries after Orbus, and therefore was not one of the original prisoners of Jay Hoop, but it will not be so long before he, too, will need to start seeking out more durable attire.