by Neal Asher
Vrell abruptly opens up communication. ‘Continue along your present course until you reach the bulkhead wall. Turn to your right and proceed along the wall until you reach the bulkhead door, which I will open for you.’
‘That you, Prador?’ asks Orbus.
‘Who else did you expect?’
‘Sarcasm from a Prador?’ says Orbus, glancing at the drone.
‘Seems so,’ Sniper replies.
‘Do not let any of those mutated third-children into the rest of the ship,’ Vrell warns. ‘And please desist from destroying them completely, as I am currently studying them.’
‘Right,’ says Orbus, switching over to standard explosive bullets.
They proceed as directed by Vrell, the Old Captain shooting one or two more of the attacking mutants, but Sniper keeping them at bay mainly with his tentacles. Vrell meanwhile orders two of his mobile corpse crew down to wait on the other side of the bulkhead door, then sends the instruction for it to open just as Sniper and Orbus reach it. Orbus goes through first while Sniper bats away persistent mutants, then Sniper goes through, slamming the door quickly shut.
That King Oberon is agitated seems plainly evident. The envoy from one of the powerful but normal adults in the Prador Kingdom was granted a personal audience with the King and, as is usually the case when the King gives a personal audience to those who must not know what he has become, the luckless envoy did not survive it.
Sadurian gazes around at the resultant mess. The King has torn off all the envoy’s limbs and strewn them around the nice white floor of the audience chamber, then opened the envoy’s carapace horizontally to eviscerate it. Sadurian peers down at one palp eye lying detached on the floor a few inches from the toe of her right boot, then abruptly turns away. The ship-lice will deal with most of this carnage, then the King’s staff will come and remove the indigestible shell. Thereafter, the absorbent material of the floor will suck up the stains and self-bleach, returning to white sterility. Why the King favours all this open, eye-aching whiteness around him when all other Prador prefer their stinking caves remains a puzzle to her.
Sadurian heads for a distant door–one only large enough to allow access for herself and the armoured third-children that serve her. Beyond this she mounts a spiral ramp, moulded with long step-like indentations, and keeps climbing till finally stepping off onto a long gallery that runs across a sheer chainglass screen as high and wide as a cliff. She glances out onto the busy vacuum lying between Oberon’s ship and the accompanying dreadnoughts, then halfway along the gallery seats herself in a single padded chair. After a moment she opens her visor and takes a slow breath, before removing her helmet and gloves.
Though slightly lacking in oxygen, Prador air is as breathable for her as air on any high mountain on Earth, but Sadurian usually keeps her visor closed while moving about the ship, because her suit’s enclosed air supply keeps the more unpleasant odours from her nostrils–a frequent occurrence, since the Prador tend to leave their dead and the remains of their meals to the ship-lice, only cleaning up remaining carapace, bones or whatever when they become an inconvenience. Her armoured suit she wears constantly because, around Prador, it is all too easy for a soft Human to receive the most severe injuries through simple accident. But up here she is relatively safe, for this place is visited only by herself, her two servants and the occasional adventurous ship-louse. Unhooking her palmtop from her belt, she begins updating her journal, pausing occasionally to gaze at some distant dreadnought, or one of the smaller ships busy shuttling between the assembled dreadnoughts and the King’s ship.
The ripped-up envoy, a first-child, arrived from the Kingdom on one of the dreadnoughts and was then ferried over by its captain. Apparently there is trouble back home: a feud between two adults, whom the King has managed to keep from attacking each other for many years, exploding back into life now the King is out here at the border. One of the adults has been slain and now the remaining one is squabbling with the King’s Guard about the ownership of certain territories on the homeworld and also certain vessels in orbit about it. The King’s irritation is understandable, for normal Prador simply behave like vicious children once he isn’t nearby to keep watch over them, but that was hardly the first-child envoy’s fault. Sadurian feels a degree of pity for the victim, but this is tempered by her years in the Kingdom and the non-stop vicious brutality she has witnessed here. Perhaps, Sadurian thinks, the time has come for her to return to the Polity and reacquaint herself with her own humanity…
Almost as if this last thought had initiated it, Sadurian’s comunit speaks into her right ear. ‘I need to see you,’ says the King, speaking perfect Anglic with vocal apparatus grown inside his body nearly fifty years ago and supported by surgical alterations to certain structures of his brain.
Oberon is the only Prador Sadurian knows who can speak Human languages and understand the precise meaning of the words he uses. Most Prador struggle with translator machines that simply delete vague Human terms like altruism, philanthropy, friendship and love, or substitute them with some concoction like ‘beneficial alliance’. The King certainly understands these concepts, though he doesn’t give them much credence. He feels Humans are too often blinded by such words created in their primitive past, and which fail to accurately describe evolutionary reality.
‘Where are you?’ she enquires.
‘Above you, on the main gallery,’ Oberon replies.
Putting her palmtop away and pulling on her gloves, Sadurian heads over to the spiral ramp and climbs further. As always she feels a slight frisson of fear when heading for an audience with the King for, even though he has never attacked or even threatened her throughout many such encounters over the last century, that does not guarantee he will not do so this time. This seems especially true just lately, what with the King’s behaviour becoming more and more erratic.
Departing the spiral onto the wide, heavily reinforced and, of course, white main-gallery road, Sadurian gazes at her patron. Perhaps the King likes to surround himself with all this wide-open whiteness because he feels it serves to de-emphasize his sheer size? Perhaps so, but nothing can de-emphasize the primal horror he inevitably inspires in any individual, whether Prador or Human. With the light so bright and the surroundings so white, his dark chitinous angles, the dark red, green and black of his carapace, stand out in utter contrast.
The King turns, his great complex feet crumping down on the gallery road, causing slight indentations, so that Sadurian can feel the reverberations under her own feet, then he abruptly surges forwards to loom over her. Sadurian gazes up into the massive angular outer mandibles and sees how green Prador blood still stains them, and she listens to the sound of his inner mandibles sharpening themselves against each other like glass sickles.
She quickly closes up her visor. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asks.
‘Prador are the problem,’ declares Oberon, his voice issuing breathy and wet-sounding from a slit just below his main mouth. ‘How can they ever advance?’
‘You have,’ Sadurian observes.
‘I wish that were true,’ the King replies. ‘I now struggle to attain the next stage without losing myself.’
Never ever has the King been clear about what he is intending. Whereas all the Guard take viral inhibitors, stick to a rigorous diet of foods that also inhibit viral growth, and strive, at the King’s instruction, to retain some integral Pradorishness, the King does not. He eats viral meat–homeworld food animals long infected with the virus–and regularly experiments on himself with chemical and nanomechanical control of the virus, using robotic surgical equipment taken from a cache of the Golgoloth’s long before Sadurian even entered the Kingdom, so as to install in himself machinery and organic grafts of his own design, and somehow he now possesses a species of conscious control over the virus growing inside his body. But to what purpose?
‘What is this next stage?’ Sadurian asks, utterly sure she will receive no reply.
‘The sta
ge when I become what the virus has intended to make me.’
Sadurian takes a pace back, dumbfounded. Is the King at last going to reveal his aims, and will Sadurian herself be allowed to survive that revelation?
‘And what will that be?’
The King’s inner mandibles grow suddenly still. ‘Do my latest children grow satisfactorily?’
Sadurian feels a deep disappointment. ‘Yes, Oberon–one third of them have survived to implantation and, going on past experience, we should lose less than ten per cent of them afterwards.’
‘And my third-children can continue this process?’
‘They can.’
‘Take this.’
Oberon twists his massive body suddenly, and something lands with a wet crack on the floor below him. Sadurian gazes at a segmented object the size of her own forearm–some part of the King’s hugely mutated underhands. She has seen this sort of thing before because, over the years, as the King’s form has perpetually changed, he has shed numerous chunks of himself, as if running through all the various mutations the virus can cause, then abandoning them. Swallowing drily, Sadurian steps over underneath the monster, glances up at the regular pattern of carapace on his underside, then stoops to pick up the deposited object before quickly moving back out of the shadow.
‘What am I to do with it?’
‘Study the viral form and then bring me your conclusions.’ Oberon turns away to gaze back out into space with eyes the colour of obsidian.
The two armoured Prador both bear particle cannons. Glaring at them, and conscious of that horrible churning in his stomach, Orbus finds it difficult to accept that what stand here are merely two corpses wrapped up in mobile suits of Prador armour. Perhaps his earlier feelings upon seeing that dead Prador inside the moon should be re-examined: a good Prador is indeed a dead Prador, but only if it exhibits the generally accepted signs of death–like not moving around.
‘I guess I should be used to seeing the walking dead,’ he observes, trying to keep his voice level.
The two of them part, and one gestures with its weapon along the wide corridor. For a moment Orbus expects to be disarmed, but the two undead make no other move.
‘These ain’t reifications,’ says Sniper. ‘No minds of their own and, if you think about it, they’re not really dead.’
‘Not dead?’ Orbus repeats. ‘Yes, quite.’
The Guard are virally infected so, despite having their nervous sytems burnt out like strands of fusepaper, whatever now resides inside those suits certainly isn’t really dead. The virus will be perpetually trying to mutate them into something more able to successfully feed it, just like those mutants inhabiting that part of the ship behind them, yet contained like this it will perpetually fail. Then, without nutrients will it finally die, devolve to some basic form, or become dormant? He feels this last option to be the most likely, for he knows that virally infected life can hibernate for centuries. He just hopes that whatever writhes inside that metal cage doesn’t figure out how to get out, because if it does it will be very very hungry.
Checking the exterior atmosphere display on his arm console, Orbus notes that it is at the Prador norm, and so he thumbs the control to open his visor. It is a mistake, for the smells inevitable aboard a Prador ship of this size hit him hard, driving dire memories to the surface. Suddenly predominant in his mind is the clear sharp image of Humans, crammed into a corridor like this one, being herded forward by second-children, those at the rear regularly being jabbed by claw tips. On that first occasion, as they were driven from Imbretus Station onto the dreadnought, those same claws were often used for their usual purpose, which resulted in torsos split open and bulging out their contents, arms and legs shattered, and the occasional crushed skull. Dying and dead were then dragged off by the second-children, and Orbus remembers two of them fighting over the corpse of a man and tearing it in half.
The Captain quickly closes his visor. However, it seems that those smells, having once entered his nostrils, will not go away. It is as if, like some organic key, they have unlocked some unwanted part of his consciousness. Wasn’t it at a junction like the one just ahead that the first-child appeared to watch the screaming crowd being hustled past, and picked out those showing any obvious signs of injury for immediate extermination? Hadn’t Orbus shuffled past and seen the mound of corpses behind the Prador, and seen how it stood in blood an inch deep on the floor?
While negotiating the numerous corridors, every surface, angle or item of Prador technology continues to impel horrific memories back to the surface of Orbus’s mind. They finally enter a wide-open area, where all around can be seen the bones of the ship. Orbus feels some relief now, for he never witnessed a place like this in that other ship, just similar corridors and finally that low-roofed chamber into which they were all crammed for the duration of the journey to Spatterjay…surviving on Human flesh.
‘The drone will remain there,’ says Vrell, speaking from one of his undead servants, and even as he speaks, further armoured Prador enter from side tunnels or from other gaps in the structure all around them.
‘Not sure I like that idea,’ says Sniper.
‘Nor am I sure,’ Vrell replies, ‘that I like the idea of you getting any closer to me. I have now scanned deep enough to detect that you possess the armament sufficient to penetrate armour, and have much else besides concealed under internal chameleonware.’
Sniper spreads his tentacles helplessly. ‘Sorry, I can no more disarm than a Prador can lose his claws.’
‘Captain Orbus alone will accompany my Guard,’ Vrell states.
‘Not a problem,’ says Orbus, walking after the pair as they head for a nearby tunnel. But it is a problem, for they are once again entering parts of this ship that seem all too familiar. How long did it take that other ship to get to Spatterjay? The likely figure is two or three months, though it then seemed like a lifetime. Of course, upon arriving on that world the nightmare did not end.
The two Guard lead him to a long wide corridor, large enough to be used by adult Prador. He notes a burnt-out war drone lying against one wall, disfigured by weapons damage and scorch marks, while nearby lies a burnt-out suit of armour obviously in the process of being cannibalized. Then within a moment they stand before a wide set of doors that he guesses must be the entrance to the Captain’s Sanctum. Very shortly, it seems, he will be face to face with Vrell.
The doors grind open, rolling back into the walls from their diagonal split, the two Guards moving over to either side of them, and Orbus enters. Further signs of battle damage in here, and some huge piece of hydraulic equipment parked off to one side. Nearby stands a single highly modified suit of armour, closed but motionless. Then there is Vrell himself, turning away from an array of screens and pit consoles to face him. And Vrell wears no armour.
Orbus gazes at this monster, and is conscious of heat rising up through his own spine and sweat breaking out on his skin. Abruptly he distinctly remembers Vrell coming for him and his crew and then, one after the other, dragging them off to be enslaved. He remembers when his own turn came, a claw crushing his torso as Vrell dragged him away, then the surgical equipment slicing into his neck, and the spider thrall burrowing into his flesh like a huge iron tick. He feels a surge of livid anger, yet behind it a weird kind of tired acceptance and, almost without thinking, finds himself raising and pointing his multigun.
Vrell bubbles and clatters his mandibles, while the disembodied voice of a translator says, ‘Captain Orbus.’
Orbus’s finger tightens on the trigger. Yes, they could negotiate, offer an amnesty, whatever, but wouldn’t it be better if Vrell just went away? Here he is standing directly before Orbus, a virally infected Prador out of his armour; and here stands Orbus holding a multigun that fires sprine bullets. Orbus just cannot find any holes in his reasoning and, further, this might be the only opportunity he will be presented with. He pulls the trigger, though for a brief second it is not entirely clear to him that he meant to.
A stream of explosive bullets hammers across the sanctum, taking Vrell straight in the mouth, but then passes through him to detonate on the far wall. Unable to accept what he is seeing, Orbus switches to the sprine particle-beam and fires again, but the red blade of that passes straight through Vrell too, turning into a hazy cloud beyond. Finally accepting he is merely shooting at a hologram, Orbus turns round, knocking the gun to another setting, drops to one knee and fires at the closed suit of armour now already turning towards him. Conventional explosive bullets detonate all over the suit, but to little effect. The real Vrell lunges forwards, tears the weapon from Orbus’s hands and its power feeds from his suit, then hits him in the chest with his other claw, to send him sprawling.
‘Now I understand the basis of our negotiation,’ says Vrell.
‘I fucked up,’ Sniper,’ Orbus sends via com.
‘Yes you did,’ Sniper replies. ‘I am watching.’
Orbus sits up, taps his wrist display on, and calls up the menu for his suit’s Lamion assister motors.
‘What did you expect?’ he asks Vrell. ‘That I’ve forgiven you for what you did to me? What you did to my crew?’ But somehow his vehemence has gone, and he feels merely foolish. As Vrell slowly advances on him, Orbus glances at the menu, spots a certain power setting, and with a flick of his finger pushes it all the way to the top. He springs to his feet, feeling as if he wears no armour at all and his body has lost half its mass, then hurls himself towards Vrell, only to be smashed to one side by a swinging claw and sent crashing into a wall. Before he can even slide down it, the side of Vrell’s claw slams against him again, pinning him to the wall.
‘What are you doing, Sniper?’ he sends.
‘Oh, I’ll be there when I’m ready,’ Sniper replies. ‘I’ll just give you girls time to sort out your differences while I figure out what to do about the fifty armoured ghouls now surrounding me.’
