by Neal Asher
‘And the essence of the message?’
‘Vulture is managing to retain some independence by shifting herself into a memory sector not occupied by a Jain thrall program. Each time she does this and initiates some independent action, the program occupies that sector, forcing Vulture to move on. Obviously there is a limit to how many times she can do this. She also detailed the events on the asteroid –which we had already surmised.’
‘Is there anything to suggest where Skellor is going?’
‘All she knew was that he went to Viridian to obtain a “pathetic metalskin” to “complete”. These are Vulture’s words, though I gather the information was obtained by translating Jain code bleeding directly from Skellor’s nonverbal thought processes.’
Cormac was surprised. He had expected the pursuit to be a ship-borne one rather than one through the Polity runcible network, because if it was true that Skellor was after the Dragon spheres, he’d more likely find them on the Polity border or beyond.
‘You can get hold of metalskins anywhere in the Polity,’ said Gant.
‘Viridian seems an unlikely place to go looking for one,’ Thorn added.
Cormac looked at Mika, waiting for her opinion. She appeared ill to him, but perhaps that was imagination after all that she had told him.
In measured tones she said, ‘Viridian is where we encountered the Maker. It is also where you killed Arian Pelter. There was a metalskin Golem there with Pelter –that brass killer of his called Mr Crane.’
‘That’s true,’ said Thorn, ‘but Cento and Aiden seriously fucked up that one.’
Cormac glanced at him. ‘You’re right, they tore it apart and then shattered its mind. There should be nothing there for Skellor. However . . .’ He turned and looked towards the runcible. ‘Flint, I need you to reset to Viridian. I have to go there to find out what this is all about.’
‘Unfortunately I cannot do this until after your companions have departed. They must go to Elysium, where precautions have been taken, and then on to the Jack Ketch.’
It made sense: Mika or Thorn could rush at the interface, once it was reset, and end up on a world where no precautions had yet been made against Jain-tech subversion. Earth Central was now taking precautions over anyone who had merely come in contact with that tech, but those two, who definitely carried it inside them, the AI was treating like possible plague carriers.
‘Okay.’ Cormac turned to his companions. ‘Mika, once you’re on the Jack Ketch, get aboard what you require –it can be sent by robotic craft from the Jerusalem. Make sure you get everything, as we’ll likely be in for a long haul afterwards, without further physical contact with any Polity worlds.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘The Jerusalem?’
‘It’s there at Elysium, grabbing anything Jain-related –I’ll explain later.’ He turned to Thorn, who also, he thought, looked unwell. ‘Thorn, no fuck-ups during transit, as I’ll bet that any breach of the precautions will result in atomic sterilization.’
Thorn nodded.
‘Flint, is there any restriction on trooper Gant?’
‘None that I am aware of. Like yourself he has been scanned and found to contain nothing . . . anomalous.’
‘Okay. Gant, you’ll come with me.’
Cormac stepped to one side and waved the others ahead of him. Gant moved to his side and watched them go. Mika glanced round, still looking thoughtful, then stepped up onto the dais and approached the shimmer of the Skaidon warp contained between the bull’s horns of the runcible. She stepped through it and was gone. Thorn then guided the gravsled ahead of him, causing it to rise higher and positioning it centrally to the warp. Before sending it through, he gave Gant a meaningful look.
‘I’ll get Mika to memplant me on the Jack Ketch, but I don’t suppose we’ll be celebrating in Elysium,’ he said.
‘If she thinks it advisable,’ Gant replied woodenly. ‘But it might be better to wait until your mycelium is removed.’
Thorn nodded, and himself stepped through.
After a pause Cormac asked the runcible AI, ‘Are you reset?’
‘Destination Viridian now open,’ it replied.
Stepping onto the dais, Cormac asked Gant, ‘What was all that about?’
They approached the shimmering wall of energy, its light playfully batting their shadows about behind them.
‘Feeling his mortality,’ Gant replied.
‘That’s a first.’ Cormac stepped through.
The ash was five hundred metres thick in places, accumulated on this volcanically active planet’s single small tectonic plate, which slid around its surface like an ancient stone ship. There were no artefacts preserved in the ash, nor in the underlying stone, rather the artefact was the cause of both, requiring nothing to preserve it even here. Having resilience greater than any other material on the planet, it had neither melted nor broken, and the stone had accreted around it and the ash built up on top of it over the aeons.
Cento considered how, for many years, researchers had come to study what they considered a natural phenomenon: a large layer of thermocrystal carbon within this small tectonic plate. Only recently had a scientist noted that the dense structure of this substance, which was similar to diamond, also bore a molecular resemblance to memory crystal. The woman, Shayden, then tried an optic interface, and was astounded by the reams of code feeding back. Some of it looked like genetic data, but most of it was scrambled and as yet indecipherable. Polity AIs were now studying the download from the fragment of crystal Shayden had used, in the hope of determining whether it was memory storage of the Jain or perhaps of some other ancient race. Cento was here for the more prosaic purpose of ensuring that Shayden, who now waited back at her ship with her research assistant Hourne, had not falsified her results.
‘We should see the layer further down,’ said Ulriss.
Cento turned away from peering over the edge of the plate, and glanced to where Ulriss indicated. The dip, further down, would indeed bring them closer to the layer of thermocrystal carbon, just as it would bring them closer to the river of magma boiling through the crevasse beside them.
‘Then let’s hurry,’ he said, checking the timepiece set in the wrist of his suit, not because he needed to check the time but because he wanted Ulriss to remain aware of how little of it they had left.
‘We should get some out-gassing before it blows.’ Ulris gestured to the hellish plain beyond the river of molten rock, where a perfectly curved cliff, almost like a hydroelectric dam, occasionally became visible through the pall of smoke. This was just one edge of a massive caldera which, every five hours for the last twenty years, had blown out a few million tonnes of rock –molten and solid –and ash, and a cornucopia of poison gases to contribute to the volatile and lethal atmosphere.
‘We will be gone before then, whether I obtain a sample or not,’ Cento replied.
They trudged on down the slope, eventually reaching the position indicated. Cento unshouldered his bolt gun and looked around. Noting an area clear of ash, he walked over, pressed the device down and triggered it, firing a fixing bolt into stone. Discarding the bolt gun, he then unreeled, by its end-ring, the monofilament line from the abseil motor on his belt. Stooping to click the ring into place on the bolt, he heard Ulriss begin yelling over com.
‘What! No! Stop! No!’
Cento stood and whirled to see the poor man suspended off the ground, held there by his biceps in the grip of a hugely tall humanoid, who was walking him back to the crevasse edge. Cento reached down to detach the ring, but suddenly became aware of another humanoid. This one was standing beside him, clad head to foot in some sort of biotech suit. How he had not detected the approach of this one, Cento could only put down to the use of sophisticated chameleonware. In less than a second he had assessed the situation: the likely source of the tech meant these two must be somehow connected with events on the planets Cheyne III and Masada, and therefore with how things would now proceed. Ignoring the smaller ind
ividual and leaving the ring attached, he accelerated towards the big one, who was now holding Ulriss out over the white-hot river. That the larger humanoid intended to drop the man, Cento had no doubt. The abseil motor screaming as it wound out monofilament, Cento leapt, just as the figure did drop Ulriss. He should have been able to grab him a couple of metres down from the edge . . . Before he even went over a big hand slammed into his chest and stopped him dead. The big humanoid . . . Golem . . . To move that fast . . .
‘Oh God! No! Nooo!’
Cento stabbed his hand towards the big Golem’s chest just as he heard Ulriss’s gasp of shock as he hit the magma. There would still be time –the man’s hotsuit would take a minute to give out. But the second hand clamped around Cento’s wrist. The big Golem pulled and turned, easily spinning Cento over and slamming him down on his back. The monofilament was now caught up under Cento’s armpit and biting through his suit. Cento tried to turn as the other Golem wrenched him to his feet and the filament cut deeper. He felt the arm disconnect –sheared clean away at the shoulder –then a backhanded blow deposited him at the edge.
‘No! Oh fuck nooo!’
Cento rolled over in time to see Ulriss fighting to stay on the surface of the magma, his suit splitting and beginning to belch flame. His final scream truncated as his suit blew away and he burned incandescently. Something black and skeletal skittered like a spider on a hot plate. Briefly, a cloud of black oily smoke occluded the view and when it cleared only the silvery remains of the man’s hotsuit floated on the magma.
‘Not fast enough, Cento.’ It was the one in the biotech suit who spoke.
Cento rolled as he came upright, so the mono-filament was no longer twined around his chest. Perhaps he could pull it across the big Golem’s legs . . . He glanced at the speaker. ‘Who are you, and what do you want here?’
‘Your arm.’ The man pointed to the severed limb.
‘Why should you want my arm?’ said Cento as he moved sideways, dragging the filament across with him.
‘Because it’s his.’
His?
Cento gazed back at the big Golem, noting that his arms were not evenly matched. His own severed arm, lying on the ground still wearing the sleeve of his suit, was a brass-coated metalskin limb –both a replacement and a trophy from a battle fought years ago on a planet called Viridian.
Mr Crane?
How could this be Mr Crane? Cento clearly remembered their fight. Crane nearly destroyed him once, and it had needed both himself and his companion Golem Aiden to finish the monster. They tore him apart, destroyed his crystal matrix mind. Yet now the same Golem was back, and it seemed much stronger and faster than before. That made no sense.
Abruptly Cento leapt to one side intending to pull the monofilament across Crane’s legs, but the big Golem leaped nimbly and accelerated. Cento braced himself, but Crane outweighed him three to one, and easily knocked him back over the edge. Scrabbling for grip with his remaining three limbs, Cento slid down a slope angled thirty degrees to the vertical. Stone just broke away from his grasp, but when the abseil motor started whining, he managed to reach down and initiate its brake. The line jerked him to a halt only a metre above the magma.
‘That was close.’
Cento looked up and saw both of them gazing down at him.
‘I wonder what happens if I do this?’
Cento fell, hit the slope and slid further down, jamming his hand deep into a crevice to halt that slide. Monofilament fell about him like spindrift. With the spectrum of senses he possessed, he did not need to look down to know that he was up to his thighs in magma. His hotsuit gave out as quickly as Ulriss’s, fire and smoke gusting around him as syntheskin and the other combustible components of his legs burnt away. Now glancing down he saw metallic traces mirroring the surface of the molten rock. When the magma flow finally pulled his lower legs away, it was something of a relief, as now it no longer threatened to drag him down. Glancing up again, he saw that this respite would not last. With slow but inexorable care, Mr Crane was climbing down towards him.
Cento did not highly rate his chances now against the huge Golem. He glanced from side to side hoping to see something, anything that might enable him to survive. To his right, just above where the crystal layer slanted down into the magma, was the open end of a lava tube, just under a metre wide. Maybe he could swing himself in there? Even though he was aware that these tubes usually extended no more than a few metres –bubbles of gas in the cooling magma rather than a flow of it having formed them –this seemed his only option. Perhaps ensconced in such a place he could even defend himself.
On his remaining arm he levered up his now reduced body weight. Glancing down he saw that his legs had separated at the knee joint and that only his bare hip bones protruded from the remains of his suit. The magma had melted the components in his knees, but not the ceramal of his bones. Looking up and seeing that Crane was now only a couple of metres above him, he began to swing himself from side to side to get up enough momentum. He released just as a boot slammed down towards his wrist.
He hit the edge of the lava tube, groped inside it, his hip bones scrabbling away below him like a dwarf’s legs; then he was inside and turning himself round –the tube, as expected, being only a metre deep. Shortly, Mr Crane’s head appeared upside-down in the tube mouth, peering in through the visor of his hotsuit. Cento finally admitted to himself that he was dead: there was no escape. The big Golem, with his full complement of limbs and obviously superior strength, would just reach inside and drag him out, probably to send him after Ulriss. Sure enough, the big hand now groped inside like a fat spider, slapped away Cento’s defending hand, and closed over his face. There came a long pause, then the hand released him.
What now?
It wasn’t possible to read the expression on that brass face. Mr Crane suddenly reached down to the bottom of the lava tube, to the layer of crystal that formed its floor. He groped to the edge, where the crystal was jagged, and snapped a piece off, which he brought up and held before his visor for inspection. He then closed his hand around it, holding out only one long forefinger, which he brought back to his visor. He placed it vertical to his mouth: Shush now, be quiet.
Mr Crane hauled himself out of view.
While the metallier licked his lips and weighed yellow jade, Tergal studied the display of weapons in the cracked glass case and speculated on what Anderson’s reaction might be to learning how he had obtained that precious stone. He realized the knight did not trust him, had been keeping a close eye on him. And well he might. Though the attraction of the knight was that he was everything Tergal wanted to be, as soon as that attraction waned,Tergal would rob him and move on. It was what he did –he was scum.
Tergal had not told Anderson the entire truth. The minerallier Fround had been a hard man yet an honourable one, and Tergal’s mother, after birthing the bastard Tergal so young, had been considered spoiled goods, so Fround’s offer for her had been more than generous. He had paid for her in the yellow jade, of which only he knew the location. In the months that followed, Tergal’s mother, though not loving the man, had come to respect him –and, Tergal knew, would come eventually to that other state too. Tergal now understood that his dislike of Fround had been rooted in jealousy –in having to share the mother who had once been all his own –and that his subsequent behaviour had been contemptible.
Fround’s attempts at gaining the boy’s friendship had only increased his dislike. Those attempts had included the free use of Stone, one of Fround’s three sand hogs; a generosity in money and clothing; and finally sharing the knowledge of the location of the precious jade. In his jealousy,Tergal had only construed that the man had been trying to buy him. Now he recognized Fround’s bewilderment at such a reaction: the man had been according Tergal equal status when he might so easily have rejected him. He had only been trying to act like a good father.
Tergal sighed –too late now to put things right. He truly regretted stealing bot
h jade and hog, yet not his departure. In the years that had passed since, thieving or exchanging some of the jade or even working his way across many lands, he had experienced much more than would a parochial minerallier, and now was actually travelling with a Rondure Knight –the kind of man he had once thought only the inflated province of history and myth.
‘Getting more frequent now,’ the metallier said.
Tergal turned to him. ‘What?’
‘The quakes –getting one just about every twenty days.’
Tergal nodded, then looked pointedly at the jade. He wasn’t going to get carelessly chatty with someone who was undoubtedly preparing to sting him.
‘I can give you a thousand pfennigs,’ said the minerallier eventually, as he began racking his weights.
Tergal turned from the case. ‘There’s seventeen standard ounces of jade there, and the usual market price is between eighty and a hundred pfennigs an ounce. At the lowest rate, that’s thirteen hundred and sixty.’
The minerallier shrugged. ‘You would deny me any profit at all?’
‘I would deny no man profit, only limit the extent of it.’ Tergal stabbed a finger down at the glass case. ‘One thousand one hundred, and this, and we have a deal.’
The minerallier came out from behind his counter, and walked over to stand beside Tergal. He peered down at the weapon indicated.
‘That is worth two hundred and fifty alone, and you will require ammunition. I can let you have two spare clips, a hundred rounds, and nine hundred pfennigs.’
‘You’ll wait until jade is a hundred pfennigs an ounce,’ Tergal observed.
The man shook his head. ‘There you are wrong. Observe the grip. I obtain these from Central Manufacturing, then make such fine additions. I would use the jade for the same.’
The lapis lazuli grip had been what had first attracted Tergal’s attention. He might find a better deal elsewhere, but not this particular handgun.
