Orbus

by Neal Asher

  ‘We have a problem?’ Orbus enquires.

  ‘Yes,’ the asymmetric creature continues, and Orbus realizes its voice cannot now be issuing from it personally, for it is also using its mandibles to operate all these swarming machines. ‘You perhaps understand that if I had intended to kill you both, you would already be dead by now. However, if what is now attempting to take over this ship succeeds, your deaths, and mine, will become a certainty.’

  ‘The Jain,’ says Vrell.

  Even as he delivers the words, his whole body jerks as his new legs extend, splashing down through the water to the floor, green blood suffusing them and their outer layer rapidly blackening and hardening. He swings round towards the Golgoloth, splashing up water while squatting as if about to spring, but then, between them and the Golgoloth, the air shimmers and Orbus notes a line of division cutting through the water below it, as if a sheet of glass has just dropped into place. It seems the Golgoloth has thrown up a force-field between itself and them, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Your weapons are in the container sitting to your right,’ it declares.

  Vrell eases himself back up into a fully standing position, then swings his head towards the direction indicated. The top half of an upright cylinder splits diagonally, hinging its upper section down into the water. Within the cavity now exposed rest Vrell’s weapons, Orbus’s multigun, and also the weird sculpture of his folded suit. He wades over to inspect these items more closely. The suit is battered, partially melted in places, cracked, too, and has been cleanly sliced through with something used to open it. He picks up his multigun, unplugging its armoured lead from the belt port and putting it aside, then turns the suit over to access the two flat power packs inset at waist level on the back. Toggling a manual control inside the suit releases them, whereupon the universal plug of the multigun’s cable plugs neatly into one power pack’s port, and he inserts this pack into one pocket–the other going into his other pocket–then hefts his weapon. He won’t have the targeting and finesse of control provided by operating it through the suit, but he can still inflict plenty of damage.

  ‘You expect us to fight these Jain for you?’ Vrell enquires, snatching up his rail-gun and particle cannon just as Orbus moves aside.

  And abruptly that fact comes home to Orbus: those creatures severely fucked over a war drone Orbus would not himself like to go up against even with an attack ship.

  ‘I am fighting the subversion software now, but the Jain remain somewhere inside the planetoid–for the moment at least,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘However, their attack has caused some other problems inside this vessel that I am not currently able to deal with, and twenty-eight of them are heading here directly. They are my children and they are adequately armed.’

  ‘Order them to desist,’ says Vrell.

  ‘I do not have the pheromonal control of normal Prador, and have never really needed it until now.’

  ‘Why should we fight your children?’ asks Orbus. ‘And why are your children such a danger to you?’

  Vrell clatters a Prador laugh and Orbus realizes his second question was a stupid one. Prador children usually only obey their father because he controls them pheromonally, and because the alternative to obedience is death. However, Orbus still needs an answer to his first question.

  ‘You have little choice in the matter.’ The Golgoloth takes time out from its frenzied activity to gesture towards a door opening into an adjacent corridor. ‘You are between them and me, and they will be arriving here soon. Do you think they will go round you to get to me instead of through you?’

  Vrell finishes plugging in the power leads to his weapons and he now clutches one in each claw. Turning his head carefully, he inspects their surroundings, and Orbus guesses he is wondering how he can get to the Golgoloth.

  ‘This is a big ship,’ Orbus observes. ‘If that thing’s children can get here, then the internal defences must be offline. Let’s just get as far away from our friend here as we can, and let him settle his own family disputes.’

  ‘There will be a good reason why we shouldn’t,’ observes Vrell.

  ‘Of course you are correct, Vrell,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘As I told you, I am fighting subversion software. If I die, that software wins, and then either the Jain arrive here shortly afterwards or this ship will be destroyed. In the unlikely event that neither of these scenarios applies, it will take you, Vrell, a long while to get control of this ship and fly it out of here–time enough for King Oberon to arrive.’

  ‘And if we defeat these children for you, what do we gain?’ asks Orbus.

  ‘You stay alive.’

  And that seems to be the end of the discussion.

  Vrell rapidly scoots towards the door, and Orbus wades laboriously after him, making a selection on his weapon’s display. Vrell moves ahead of him out into the corridor, swinging his head from side to side to check out each end of it. Orbus then moves out, too, feeling the tug of a current against his calves. Water is rushing down drain gratings positioned along the base of the walls, and heaping detritus there which is crawling with ship-lice, tangled with lengths of optics and various organic-looking pipes, and scattered with insectile machines. Orbus is interested to note these last, for they are the kind of robot you find aboard Polity ships, but which Prador tend not to use. Somehow, because it uses robots, he now feels better about the Golgoloth than any other Prador, except perhaps Vrell.

  ‘Here they come,’ says Vrell, now retreating towards the doorway.

  By its size, the creature splashing into view at the end of the corridor is a third-child version of the Golgoloth: a pathetic limping creature which doesn’t seem to know what it is doing. It freezes upon seeing them, makes a chittering sound, then turns and flees. Orbus sights on the point where it disappears, and moves over into an alcove on the opposite side of the corridor.

  ‘Maybe they won’t attack,’ he suggests. That creature hadn’t looked particularly aggressive–in fact, Orbus feels an ambivalent pity for it. Who would want a parent like its own?

  Vrell laughs again–he seems to be doing a lot of that lately–then launches himself up onto the uneven surface of the wall and climbs to the top, stopping just below some air vents.

  The second-child that appears next seems wrapped in silvery tubes and holds some kind of wide flat weapon. It fires it once down the corridor, then flings itself out of sight. Multiple impacts cut a broad line of splashes through the flood, then a series of explosions ensue, filling the air with flames, whickering fragments of metal and great sprays of water. Orbus turns his head, only to feel something thump into his back. Reaching round he levers out a chunk of shrapnel, then squats to sight again along the corridor. Another second-child appears and he hits it twice, then has to duck back as it fires its weapon before advancing. It calmly takes aim again, seemingly unaffected by his shots though they have punched through its carapace. Orbus ducks further out of sight as the stretch of wall adjacent to his alcove explodes into flinders.

  Damn, fuck-up.

  He has made the stupid and automatic assumption that these creatures are infected with the Spatterjay virus, yet sprine bullets do not affect them. Nothing from Vrell yet, as the Prador carefully edges along just below the ceiling. Orbus hurriedly alters the setting on his weapon for rail-accelerated P-shells packed with a high-pressure explosive fluid, but the creature will not let up sufficiently for him to lean out far enough to fire. He will just have to take some hits, then. Using the uneven wall surface, he climbs higher inside the alcove, then lunges out. Something smacks into his thigh, partially spinning him round. He shoulders into six inches of water, then rolls and comes up seating his multigun against his shoulder. A short burst of four shots slam into the Prador’s mouth, sending it staggering back, then they detonate inside the creature, bursting it into fragments like a shattered coconut. Orbus glances down as chunks of the second-child bounce off the walls or spatter them. His own thigh is sliced open to the bone. Reaching down he clamps
the wound closed with one hand, waits for a moment, then takes his hand away. The wound remains closed but he can still feel its weakening effects. Orbus limps forward and fires just as four third-children scuttle across the junction ahead. One slams against the wall with half its side gone, then slides down into the water and is washed against one of the drains.

  Where the hell is Vrell?

  Glancing up, Orbus can now see no sign of him, but he doesn’t want to search too long as that might give away Vrell’s position to these attackers. More second-children appear, carrying something between them. A detonation over to the right, and part of the wall collapses like shattering stone, to expose a grid underneath and pipes leaking a fluid like bile. Orbus fires, shakes off his limp, and charges towards them. Numerous rapid detonations send one of them up into the air, spinning and shedding limbs, and split another evenly in two. Orbus reaches the survivor before it can bring its weapon to bear. He kicks it hard, lifting it up off the floor and feeling carapace breaking under the impact of his boot, then catches hold of its bigger claw and cannons it into the nearby wall.

  Ahead a whole second-child host swarms into view. He drags his latest opponent before him as a shield, and aims over it, firing short bursts to horrible effect. It is odd that though these crippled oddities are trying to kill him, he still feels sorry for them–but only until his second-child shield disintegrates under returned fire, while the walls all around explode with flinders and spray fills the air. Then suddenly a powerful rail-gun opens up, and he recognizes the sound. As he hits water on his back and skids, he sees the crowd of second-children disappearing as if being fed from the front end into an invisible shredder. From this lower position he can also see that a grating in the ceiling has been torn open. So that’s where the bugger went.

  Ears ringing, Orbus lies half submerged in cool water and wonders just how badly injured he is. Are his guts hanging out? Will he soon be growing a leech tongue as the virus starts making drastic changes to his body? He doesn’t feel any damage, however, other than the stiffness in his leg. No time for idle speculation, so he jerks himself upright and again raises his weapon, checking its display before inspecting himself. He is covered in green gore and gobbets of flesh, while chunks of Prador carapace, sharp as shattered porcelain, are embedded in his chest. He pulls them out and discards them and, seeing no damage more serious than that, he stands up.

  The corridor is now a charnel house. Vrell must have killed twenty or more of the creatures with that prolonged blast. Bits of them heap about the drains, spatter the walls, or float in water turned peppermint-green by their blood. Some are still whole, some still moving. As Orbus advances, one of them pulls itself to its feet, eyes him for a moment, then, with a clattering, gobbling sound, turns and flees. With his multigun up against his shoulder he tracks its progress to a turning at the end where it ducks out of sight, then he lowers his weapon and switches it over to laser, for only few of the explosive bullets remain.

  ‘What are you doing, Vrell?’ he wonders out loud.

  Advancing, he reaches the turning and abruptly steps round it. Ahead stands another crowd of both second- and third-children, some armed with cobbled-together projectile weapons, the rest carrying only items of metal to use as clubs. The whole crowd, which was advancing cautiously, comes to an abrupt halt. Orbus considers his chances. He is covered with blood and bits of their kind, and has just come through their better-armed advance force, of which nothing much now remains. He roars and charges towards them, and the whole crowd just turns and flees, disappearing into side corridors, through gratings or scuttling up walls to get out of his way. Orbus grins to himself, then turns to head back to the Golgoloth’s Sanctum. But by no means is this all over. For there were no first-children amidst those attackers, and certainly Vrell is up to something.

  15

  When Humans went into space it did not take long for their vessels to be occupied by unwelcome stowaways. Modern ships possess subminds whose sum purpose is pest control. Microbots patrol ducts to laser down fleas, mosquitoes, sandflies and houseflies. Slightly larger robots are deployed to catch and digest a mutated cockroach that is capable of existing on a diet of plastics, whilst mice and rats can usually be exterminated by general ship-security systems. Other unwelcome visitors include more alien forms: the blade beetle–a creature with razor-sharp edges and a penchant for laying its eggs inside anything large, warm and soft; sugar worms which seem to have acquired a taste for the organic dust of skin cells which Humans perpetually shed; and sheeter colonies that spread like coral whilst busy metabolizing aluminium. The list is endless and also includes numberless microscopic forms, blooms of nanomachines and even ‘wild’ robots, so it is therefore unsurprising to discover that Prador ships are similarly colonized. However, those crablike aliens approach the problem in an entirely different way. Whereas Humans perpetually try to clean house, the Prador let their small passengers clean house for them. Their ships swarm with decapod crustaceans, ship-lice, who clear up the remains of their meals, and such remnants as are left by their frequent violent encounters with each other.

  –From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans

  The ceiling space extends into darkness on either side, but is only just deep enough to accommodate Vrell, who is now inching forward on his belly, occasionally having to pause to carefully and quietly tear out a supporting strut that is blocking his way. He assumes the first-children moving ahead of him stand no real chance of creeping up undetected on the Golgoloth, for surely the old monster would never have allowed such a hole in its defences. However, the three first-children are trying this route anyway, dragging with them thermic lances and plasma cutting torches, and maybe they will provide Vrell with an opportunity to exploit.

  Vrell pauses by a ship’s eye that is dangling before him on a single wire, then turns his head as an orange flicker cuts through the darkness, leaving after-images in his harness mask. The lead first-child is carrying a scanning device and a powerful gas laser, to detect and then destroy all the sensors in the vicinity. It seems these three know they cannot hide their present position from their parent, but are trying nevertheless to conceal precisely what they are doing. Perhaps, given time, they could cut their way through to the Golgoloth, but Vrell suspects that either they will not be allowed enough time, or a reception is already being prepared for them.

  The three finally reach a curving wall and begin setting up their equipment. Vrell carefully eases back to put himself out of range of the light they will shortly be generating. He settles down and adjusts his mask to a reactive setting so the glare will not blind him, even temporarily. As expected, a plasma torch flares into life and one of the three begins cutting through the lower part of the ceiling space, beside the wall. The one with the scanner and gas laser stands guard, as lopsided and pathetic-looking as its fellows.

  Vrell sets his harness to quiet running, just in case the scanner is sensitive enough to pick up its electrical activity, but when the laser suddenly flares and leaves a macula in his mask, he assumes for a moment that this precaution was not enough. However, something then flares behind him and, slowly turning his head, he observes the remains of a small robot burning and folding its legs up like a dying spider. The Golgoloth obviously decided to send some mobile eyes up here to watch the proceedings.

  With a clang, a circular section of ceiling drops out of sight and the plasma torch gutters out. First down through the hole is the one with the scanner and laser, and numerous flashes ensue as it knocks out any ship eyes found immediately below. As the other two first-children follow it, Vrell eases himself into motion again and heads over to the hole they have cut. He then pauses. The gap itself is too small for him, and following them directly will only lead him straight into whatever reception the Golgoloth has prepared for them. Better that they work as a distraction. He eyes the curving wall ahead, remembering precisely how he gained access to Vrost aboard the dreadnought, then edges his way round it to put some distance between
himself and the hole the first-children have made, but not so far as to come within the compass of any still-functioning ship eyes. Then, abruptly, he stabs out with one claw.

  Its sharp tips punch through a layer of light aluminium alloy, before he closes the claw, tearing through the metal, and pulls away a chunk of it. As he expected, this layer was put in place merely for containment, so that the space between it and another wall further in could be injected with insulating foamed porcelain. Vrell opens his claws wide, stabs in just one jaw, then works it round like a can opener, finally tearing out a section of metal sheet that is wider than himself. Next he begins working on the porcelain, which being old and brittle quickly breaks into chunks. After a few minutes of frenzied activity, he makes a hole large enough to insert himself, right through to an inner wall of ceramal armour. He pushes himself inside, then, like a crustacean forcing its way through sand, uses all his limbs simultaneously to tear chunks of the surrrounding material free and push it behind him, steadily working his way upwards.

  It is slow and methodical work, and meanwhile Vrell begins mulling over everything that has happened so far. It seems that the peak of his achievement since leaving Spatterjay has been to seize control of Vrost’s dreadnought, but thereafter everything started going downhill, yet it isn’t the major events–like the Golgoloth forcing him to crash-land or the resurrection of Jain super-soldiers–that cause him the most mortification. His response to those was simply inadequate because he lacked sufficient resources, and even retrospective analysis of his actions causes him no shame. No, it is some of his un-Pradorish behaviour that bothers him, and its unintended consequences.

  It would have been eminently sensible to have ejected both Sniper and Orbus from the dreadnought at once, either that or to have used the Guard to eliminate them immediately. Certainly the drone would have taken some killing, but with the forces then at Vrell’s disposal he could have managed it. However, even though his decision at the time should have been wrong, Sniper later saved his life. Then Orbus: the Human tried to kill him once, then contemplated it again, so surely Vrell should have eliminated him? But Vrell just did not want to kill him. Am I becoming a soft-shell? he wonders. It seems so, for what Prador other than a puling coward would feel such fear upon encountering these Jain, and then feel such terror when encountering a mythical creature used to scare him as a third-child? Vrell decides the time for fear is at an end; it is time for positive, violent action.