by Neal Asher
‘Any idea of what they are doing there?’
Jerusalem showed him another view of six wormships, these ones partially unravelled and wrapped around a chunk of stone a hundred miles across. The stars of fusion drives were currently igniting all over the stone’s surface, their ionization slowly forming into a cometary tail. Evidently the wormships were intent on moving the asteroid.
‘Bombardment?’ Azroc suggested.
‘It seems likely,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘Or else they are using it as just part of an attack plan. If its vector is right, even breaking it up will divert a lot of the Polity fleet there and many of our ships will have to run cover to intercept any of the chunks heading planetwards.’
‘I see,’ said Azroc again, but he wasn’t feeling entirely sure that he did. He flicked back to an overview of the Line area under attack, and closely observed the positions of the target worlds. He then ran an overlay of Polity logistics, supply routes, major population centres, weapons caches and major manufacturing centres. Though these worlds formed a pattern, he could not see how that strategy related to an attack on the Polity as a whole.
Another world under attack: here wormships and Polity ships swirled about each other like two distinct species of fish, and every now and again space seemed to distort when some craft on either side managed to position itself satisfactorily to use some directed gravity weapon without taking out other ships on its own side. The planet currently being defended had already suffered numerous strikes, and since the last time Azroc looked its colour had changed. A massive CTD had landed in the world-encompassing ocean, hit a subduction zone in an oceanic trench and cracked it right open. The ocean was now boiling, pouring up billions of tons of water into the atmosphere in the form of steam. Another strike had turned a minor oceanic city, with a population of eight million, into a boiling ruin. And now the wormships seemed intent on dropping something on the main population centre here. Meanwhile, the Polity ships were hamstrung by the need to intercept missiles instead of attacking their source.
Azroc tried to remain cool in the face of this, as he said, ‘Here, as at eight other worlds, Erebus seems intent on total destruction. So why is he putting ground forces down on Ramone? What tactical importance does that world have?’
‘None known,’ Jerusalem replied.
Was this attack seemingly as lacking in logic as Erebus’s first attack outside the Polity, or would it, like the attack on Hammon, turn out to have some particular reason, however strange that might seem? The attack on that minor world had apparently been cover for the murder of two human beings by a legate. But, even then, what possible relevance could the deaths of two people have to a conflict on this scale?
‘How go the evacuations?’
‘Slowly,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘The runcible network is functioning at full capacity — ‘ Jerusalem paused, which was always significant in a major AI, then continued ‘ — and, as is to be expected, it will not be possible to evacuate even a few per cent of the total populations of those worlds.’
‘Could Erebus’s aim be to overload the runcible network?’ wondered Azroc, utterly sure that this idea was the reason for Jerusalem’s pause.
‘That might be the aim, but for what purpose, if any, is unclear.’
‘Right.’
Azroc returned to his viewing of the destruction currently being wrought out on the edge of the Polity and tried to integrate the whole with what he hoped was a unique perception. Maybe Erebus had been deliberately making apparently illogical moves in order to camouflage some deviously cunning assault. Or maybe that melded AI was as mad as a box of frogs and no pattern would ever emerge. Azroc spent hours studying all that he was able to study, and came to the conclusion that Erebus was preparing for ground assaults to capture about eight worlds, while the rest were to be depopulated or destroyed. He could still see no logic here. If these eight worlds were essential to some plan, why not use greater forces to take them swiftly? As to the rest of the worlds, their depopulation or destruction could serve no purpose at all beyond the sheer carnage wrought there.
‘One thing is evident,’ he abruptly said. ‘We’re seeing only a small percentage of Erebus’s known forces here. So where are the rest?’
‘That is something we would all like to know,’ Jerusalem agreed.
* * * *
Cormac was glad to be back once again in realspace. The trip through U-space had seemed even more testing this time, for there had been moments, especially alone in his cabin, when it seemed the King of Hearts completely dissolved around him and he was stranded alone in void. Then, almost like someone who has been suddenly dumped into deep water, he could feel himself beginning to make swimming motions, though in this case the muscles involved were between his ears. There had been other weird moments too, when he found himself in other parts of the ship and could not remember getting there. Had he stepped through U-space?
Frustratingly, he retained no memory of doing so either in his mind or in the memcording facility of his gridlink. This was doubly worrying, since if he had managed to move himself through U-space or had just walked from one location to another, his gridlink should have recorded either activity. That neither had registered might mean the hardware in his head was failing, and he thought he would soon have to get himself checked out. He was not keen on that, however, since he didn’t really trust those who would have to do the checking: Polity AIs.
Later, he told himself. When absolutely necessary.
Now standing in the bridge of the King of Hearts, Cormac tried to put that unreal time out of his head. He glanced at the two chairs and one saddlelike seat provided by King, and wondered why the attack ship AI was at last making some concessions to its passengers. He then concentrated his attention on the magnified image of the nearest hammerhead troop carrier, the torch of its drive spearing out behind it like a focused cutting flame, and the drives of all the other Polity ships beyond it flaming into life too.
‘Weird design,’ he commented, as he felt through his feet the rumbling vibration of the King of Hearts’ own fusion drive igniting
The troop carrier seemed to possess all sorts of vulnerabilities, like that extended ‘neck’ leading up to its ‘head’. What was that all about?
‘Designed by a human,’ King replied with a deliberate lack of tone. ‘Those two ships out there were to be cruise liners before Jerusalem requisitioned them.’ There was a definite sneer in ‘cruise liners’.
‘What kind of alterations were made to them?’ Cormac asked, for he could see now that, as passenger ships, they would have possessed a certain tranquil grace. Accessing further information about them he found one was called The Swan, which seemed perfectly apt, but the other was called Bertha, which seemed slightly absurd.
‘Jerusalem grabbed them before their construction was finished. They now contain electable re-entry units for the troops, particle cannons and hard-field projectors.’
How long since Jerusalem had become the de facto commander of ECS forces in this Line war? Six months now? Or had these ships already been in the process of being refitted for military purposes before Jerusalem grabbed them?
‘Quick,’ he commented.
‘As you are aware,’ said King, ‘wartime installations have been put online.’
Cormac had once seen one of the eight massive factory stations that had been mothballed after the close of the Prador-human war. It sat out in interstellar space like a giant harmonica; forty miles long, twenty miles wide and ten deep, the square holes running along either side of it the entrances to enormous construction bays. He recollected Mika standing beside him saying, ‘This place was built in only three years and churned out dreadnoughts, attack ships and war drones just about as fast as the construction materials could be transmitted in. It could not keep up with demand during the initial Prador advance, since on average one medium-sized ship got destroyed every eight seconds during that conflict.’ Admittedly that same station was being used to house refugees
when he and Mika had observed it, but if the others were now online, taking six months to refit The Swan and Bertha might be considered rather slow.
He continued staring at the two hammerheads, suddenly angry at the glib explanation King had given him, and which he had been quick to back up with his own memories. Abruptly he found himself questioning the kind of AI explanation that up until recently he would have been content with. Yeah, if those massive factory stations were up and running again, then it wouldn’t take so long for them to refit existing ships or turn out something new. However, it should have taken a considerable amount of time to get those stations back up to speed, so when had Earth Central, and the hierarchy of AIs below it, come to the conclusion that there was enough of a threat to the Polity for them to reactivate those mothballed stations? Theoretically there should have been no awareness of a Polity-wide threat until the appearance of Jain technology, which had been signalled by the biophysicist Skellor, and surely that threat could only have become classified as major after the events on Coloron a year later? Yet it seemed the AIs had been preparing for something big for some time, quite possibly even since before Skellor had come on the scene.
In the past Cormac had put this sort of almost prescient behaviour down to the superior intelligence of the AIs. So why was he doubting now? He realized such doubts stemmed from logical inconsistencies. On the one hand the Polity AIs had been preparing, yet on the other, now that Erebus was attacking, they seemed only to be reacting. These were major intelligences working consensually, yet it seemed Erebus had them totally flummoxed. Or was removing this threat not actually at the top of their agenda? He shook his head. He didn’t have time for this right now, but was damned sure he was still going to get some answers.
‘Can you give me a view of the Cable?’ he requested.
A rectangular frame immediately expanded to encompass starlit space in which Centurion-class attack ships hung like a shoal of barracuda, their drive flames like white-tailed stars behind them. The frame greyed over for a moment, then the massive Cable Hogue expanded into view. In one respect the warship was less impressive than the hammerheads, since it was a simple sphere, but closer inspection revealed something almost like a cityscape utterly encompassing it.
Cormac had only recently begun accessing the information available about this monster. It employed rail-guns that fired projectiles the size of attack ships. It possessed gravtech weapons, one of which could throw a wave out through space to sweep away just about anything in its path. The throats of its particle cannons were as wide as mine shafts… but would it be enough? He imagined so. The problem, however, was that Jerusalem possessed only one ship of this size and power, while Erebus was attacking numerous worlds in separate solar systems.
‘How much longer?’ Cormac asked, then glanced around as Scar, Arach and Hubbert Smith entered the bridge.
‘We’re going to U-jump in just three minutes, when our realspace speed is sufficient for insertion,’ King explained. ‘I suggest that you make yourself secure, as I may have to divert some power from internal gravplates to weapons.’
How thoughtful of the AI, or maybe it just didn’t want then splattered messily around its pristine interior. Cormac dropped into one of the seats and pulled the safety straps across him. Field technology could have held him in place, but even the power for that might soon be needed elsewhere. Hubbert Smith sat down next to him, and Scar took his place on the strange saddle-like affair that accommodated his ostrich-like legs. Arach settled down behind them and, on hearing a clonking sound, Cormac glanced round to see the spider drone engaging its sharp feet in recesses specially made in the floor.
‘Should be interesting to watch the Cable Hogue in action,’ said Smith.
Yes, interesting, thought Cormac. But they would be lucky if King could maintain this stable outside view throughout what was about to come. EMR levels would be high, and the ship’s sensors would be blocking much of it to preserve themselves. King would be switching rapidly to whichever electromagnetic band gave the best view of events unfolding, so just might not have the time to convert that input into a pretty picture for the rest of them. Considering this, Cormac used his U-sense to gaze beyond the attack ship at the fleet surrounding it, then, because it was the kind thing he normally would have done, he also applied to King through his gridlink — going after data direct from King’s sensors. Surprisingly, King gave him access immediately.
‘Better to see it this way,’ said Smith. ‘Almost puts you inside the mind of an attack ship.’
‘Not sure I’d want to be in the mind of this one,’ said Arach.
‘Not as sane and balanced as you, then,’ suggested Smith.
Arach made a clicking sound suspiciously like a bullet being fed into a breech. Smith just grinned and closed his eyes.
So, that meant the two of them already had access to King’s sensors. Cormac then glanced across at Scar and watched the dracoman closing his eyes and baring his teeth. Was he too now viewing the same sensory data? Probably yes, since Dragon had given its creations all the advantages of human augmentation, and then some.
Now gazing out on the surrounding ships, with the view supplied not only by his own new perception but also King’s sensors, from which he could pick and choose across the electromagnetic spectrum rather than be confined to that usual narrow band between infrared and ultraviolet, Cormac dug his fingers into his chair arms, for it was all so much more immediate now and the input seemed almost too much. He felt overexposed and shut down that other sense, though it seemed reluctant to go offline. It annoyed him to think how King would have had no problem with such input, since the AI possessed a far greater ability to process it than did any mere human.
‘I have to wonder how Jerusalem knows there will be a legate down on Ramone,’ he said — maybe searching for a distraction from the cold reality looming beyond the ship.
A thrumming sound suddenly issued through the body of the King of Hearts. It was clearly preparing to drop into U-space, though he guessed this sound was not from the U-space engine but from numerous weapons charging up in readiness. Cormac slackened the tension in his fingers and tried to prepare himself again for an experience that now seemed to be becoming unwholesomely attractive to him, almost like a growing addiction.
‘It is understood that the major wormships are captained by partially distinct entities, which are sub-minds of Erebus. Maintaining a meld of AI minds over such distances is not feasible, hence some self-determination of Erebus’s sub-units must be allowed,’ stated King.
‘Didn’t you just make a little slip there?’ enquired Hubbert Smith. ‘When you said “Maintaining a meld of AI minds” didn’t you mean “Keeping these AI minds utterly subjugated”?’
‘Quite,’ replied King.
‘Putting aside Smith’s quite relevant point,’ said Cormac, ‘how does Jerusalem know wormships are controlled by “partially distinct entities”, and that those entities are in fact legates?’
‘The chances are high that at least one of those controlling a wormship down on the planet is a legate, since the proportion of Golem and other viable minds that fled the Polity after the end of the Prador war is high.’
‘So Jerusalem is supposing that each of these ships is controlled by one of those “Golem or other viable minds”, though now subjugated to Erebus’s will and quite possibly since remodelled?’
‘Your orders were sent by one of Jerusalem’s subordinates, but even so Jerusalem is supposing nothing, since that wormships are captained is accepted fact across the AI nets.’
‘Which brings me back to the original question: how does Jerusalem know?’
‘The information became available.’
‘From where?’
‘I don’t know,’ King admitted.
At that moment Cormac observed the image of the Cable Hogue seem to stretch in some indefinable direction — then disappear. Even though he was trying to keep his U-sense repressed, he saw it entering U-space lik
e a moon dropping into some vast sea. The time for questions had just ended, since the short hop insystem would take only moments. He then felt the twisting shift as the King of Hearts dropped into U-space. The apparent dome over them turned grey, and many of the ship’s sensors he was accessing now registered zero input. But again he was there, alone, in that same vast sea, feeling its currents and knowing that he could push a little there, move there, just a little effort and… Again that weird twisting sensation as the King of Hearts surfaced like a submarine, but Cormac felt as if the ship was leaving him behind. It took an effort of will for him to stay with it.
However, unlike a submarine, this ship — along with all the others — surfaced at the same speed at which it had entered the ‘sea’. Immediately the grey in the dome screen was replaced by starlit space filled with the flashes of munitions. Then abruptly it blacked out. Cormac closed his eyes, tried to ignore the slick sweat on his palms, and concentrated instead on what he was seeing through King’s sensors. The attack ship veered past a clump of three interconnected rod-forms, all radiating far into the infrared before one of them exploded to send the other two tumbling. Something crashed against the hull and bounced off, the impact of it rumbling through his seat, but the object rapidly tumbling away hadn’t been ejected by the nearby explosion. Instead, Cormac recognized a box-like segment — a piece of a wormship. A particle beam, stabbing out behind, lit it up briefly and it burst into vaporizing fragments.
The two hammerheads were moving side by side, Centurions arrayed all about them to intercept any attack, while, ahead of them, the Cable Hogue led the way in. Cormac observed five Centurions breaking away to intercept one of the lesser ammonite spiral ships. Going into high-gravity turns, the Centurions released a swarm of missiles. Impacts on hard-fields blotted the targeted spiral from view for a moment. As these faded, he watched the vessel remain utterly intact for a moment, then suddenly fragment in multiple explosions. The quantity of attack missiles had overloaded its hard-field generators, and those coming after had finished the job. As Cormac understood it, there had been fifty of the major wormships located here, but none of these ammonite ships. Then, as King directed its sensors at some distant object and brought it into focus, he found an explanation. There a wormship was unravelling, its long segmented components then coiling up again to form three of the spirals.
