by Neal Asher
‘They’ll maybe have something ready for us when we get there. There’s an archaeological dig at the old ruins, and it shouldn’t take them long to move equipment.’
They walked away from the runcible facility, and a wave of memory dragged Cormac into a sudden still point as he looked around. The country beyond the AGC park bore a resemblance to earthborn moorland, with pools the colour of tarnished copper, separated by thick sage-like growth. Distantly the blue line of forest seemed a standing wave, frozen in approach, and behind it rose mountains of laminar stone bearing more resemblance to something constructed than to any natural formation.
Here was where many of Arn’s fellows had died. Here was where Arian Pelter’s quest for vengeance had ended. And here was where Aiden and Cento had destroyed the brass killing machine, Mr Crane—though Cormac now wanted to be sure that they had done a sufficiently thorough job.
Arn led the way to an area of the vehicle park not crowded with gravcars, to where the stratocar rested, distinct from the others. It was an AGC, but more streamlined, bearing stubby wings, two fusion engines mounted at the back and underslung boosters. The doors hinged up like wings by themselves as the three approached, and shortly the men were inside, strapping themselves in—Gant and Cormac taking the two seats behind the pilot’s. Seeing the two of them were ready, Arn lifted the control column and, with a thrum of AG but no feeling of acceleration, the craft shot up vertically from the ground. When he pushed the column forwards and the engines ignited behind, the acceleration slammed them back into their seats. The craft still rising rapidly, Cormac noted Arn operating a sledding control so that the AG functioned at an angle to the gravity of the planet, thus increasing their acceleration even more. In the stratosphere, Arn then engaged the boosters.
‘Useful toy,’ Cormac commented, when he could recover his breath.
‘ECS upgrading,’ Arn replied. ‘There’s a lot of it going on now.’
‘This is the first I’ve seen,’ commented Gant.
Cormac glanced at him. ‘Seems we both need to catch up on events a bit.’ Silently he then queried the runcible Al:
Viridian, this vehicle is definitely not standard issue…
It is becoming standard issue.
Why?
It is considered a suitable response.
To what?
To possible enemies.
Cormac didn’t pursue that. He had no doubt that was ‘suitable response’ to the threat of Jain technology getting into the wrong hands… again. Through his gridlink, he reached beyond Viridian and felt the huge flows of ECS information—a sure sign of much activity, industrial and military, all across the Polity.
After two hours of stratospheric flight, Arn decelerated and brought the stratocar down in a spiralling glide. Cormac recognized the curving chain of the Thuriot mountains and, when they were closer, the surrounding landscape of moorland scattered with copses and forests of blue oaks and chequer trees. He did not recognize the precise area where a low cruiser with a treaded excavator mounted on its back had been parked, until he actually climbed out of the car. Then he spotted the shattered trees and knew that this was where it had happened. He gazed for a moment beyond those trees, remembering that here was where he had killed Arian Pelter, then returned his attention to his immediate surroundings.
There were four people waiting by the cruiser, and shortly two of them approached: male and female, both ophidapts, with scaled skin, reptilian eyes and skull crests. No doubt they also possessed folded-back snake fangs, not usually employed for injecting fatal poisons but just the poisons their sexual partners preferred. Cormac recognized the type, and if that fact was not enough to put him on edge, their physical similarity to dracomen was.
“Where do you want us to dig, soldier man?’ the female asked Arn.
He turned to Cormac, who stepped forwards.
‘Scanning first—then maybe some digging. You have ground scanners?’
‘Excavator has them.’ She indicated the machine. Studying it, Cormac realized it was a robot, very probably with AI. Soil would be its essential environment: it could probably feel it through its digging buckets, its sifters, its blowers and its washer. Almost as if this brief mention of it was all that was required, a ramp swung outwards from the cruiser, hinged down to the ground, and the excavator rolled off. Out of the corner of his eye, Cormac caught Gant dropping a hand to his holstered pulse-gun. He grinned to himself.
‘Over here,’ he said, leading the way to where he remembered the camp having been located.
The woman hissed something and the excavator trundled over.
‘Somewhere here—’ But before he had finished, the excavator accelerated forwards and began digging. Cormac was about to demand what was going on when the excavator backed up to reveal an arm, then meticulously but swiftly continued unearthing the rest of the corpse it had detected the moment it turned on its ground scanners. It uncovered a second corpse shortly after, while Arn and Gant still inspected the first.
‘Buried alive,’ said Arn.
Briefly studying the second corpse, Gant added, ‘Bled to death.’
Cormac noted the burnt-out Dracocorp augs both corpses wore, and thought about where he had seen that before. He later found the crushed remains of Arian Pelter’s skull—unearthed from the foxhole in which the clean-up crew had buried him.
He was unsurprised to discover later that of a brass man—or its parts—there was no sign.
* * * *
Upon seeing the watchers, Anderson ordered no more quavit and instead filled a larger glass with water from the jug provided on the table. Often, of late, he was becoming recognized in large population centres, and always for the wrong reasons. Perhaps, in this case, those watching him were just curious about a Rondure Knight—Anderson had already received many a strange look while in this city. But over the last twenty years he had brought to book a gang of five outlaws responsible for terrorizing a district for many years, as well as three murderers and twice as many thieves. And it always seemed that such vermin came from extended families with much the same proclivity. He placed a hand on the gun now holstered at his hip, and glanced down at the other packages resting by his feet. No, he would not attempt to use these weapons here for, having had no practice with them, he would likely end up killing some bystander. Usually his muzzle-loader was sufficient for such situations—its one loud crashing shot being enough of a distraction for him to close in and use it as a club.
These four—one woman and three men—were dressed just like gully traders, but it struck Anderson as more likely they had stolen this clothing from their last victims. Perhaps he was being paranoid—but he thought not. Gully traders were genuine humans, so did not need the sand goggles these individuals all wore either suspended around their necks or lodged up on their hat brims. Nor did gully traders carry thuriol hooks, which were used by rarely encountered hog trainers… or by villains to disable sand hogs during a highway robbery.
Anderson swore to himself, abruptly realizing that his eyesight was not so good nowadays. He now knew the woman: Unger Salbec. She was the sister of Querst Salbec, whom Anderson had, many years ago, dragged back to the same town where the man had raped a woman, then killed her. Receiving the customary punishment for such a crime, Querst Salbec had been thrown into a sleer burrow, where probably he had remained alive for several days, paralysed by sleer sting, while awaiting the hatching of the eggs attached to the rocky walls and then the voracious attention of the sleer nymphs.
As the four now began to rise from their table, Anderson felt the leaden inevitability of his past catching up with him. Unger Salbec nodded to him, smiling without much humour. Damn, she was still as attractive as ever.
‘Anderson Endrik?’ said a voice.
Anderson cursed himself for being a fool, as three others surrounded him from behind. So much had he been concentrating on the four in front of him in the adjacent bar, he had forgotten to watch his back. The speaker pulled out a c
hair and sat down, placing on the table a carbine similar to the one contained in the bag at Anderson’s feet. The other two remained standing, their large assault rifles held across their stomachs, their gazes fixed on the other four who, after a muttered exchange, now carefully retook their seats.
Anderson noted that the three surrounding him all wore the same style of clothing: hip-length jackets with some sort of armour woven into the material, cloth trousers with similar armouring over the thighs and knees, heavy steel-toecap boots, and peaked helmets. This was the kind of attire worn in a foundry, but Anderson knew the purpose to which it had been adapted. He allowed himself to relax a little.
‘Yes—I’m Anderson Endrik.’
‘I hope you know that freelance work is frowned on in Golgoth. If you have come here to collect a bounty on someone, you can forget it. Everyone within city limits comes under my jurisdiction, and no one touches any lawbreakers but my men and me. Of course,’ he glanced over at the four, ‘if you are aware of any who might have committed capital crimes elsewhere, they will assuredly be ejected from the city—and what happens outside city limits is none of my concern.’
‘You are… police?’
‘That is one description.’
‘Your name?’
‘Kilnsman Gyrol. Tell me, Anderson Endrik, are you considering committing violence in my city?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Anderson spotted Tergal coming out of the shop, and he did not miss the weapon the boy now wore at his hip. He just hoped that Tergal would keep his cool.
‘I’m not considering committing violence,’ Anderson said slowly, getting his thoughts in order. He then carefully added, ‘Unless it’s to defend myself.’ It had occurred to him that here was one way he could escape a certain piece of his past.
‘I don’t much like the look of them,’ said Gyrol, gesturing with his thumb. ‘What are they?’
‘At a guess I’d say they are thieves. Going further I would say that the woman is probably a relative of one called Querst Salbec—a rapist and murderer.’ It was a lie and the truth, and could get him into all sorts of trouble but, what the hell, he would be long gone.
‘I don’t like that sort in my city.’ Gyrol stood, taking up his weapon. ‘Perhaps I should go over and have a cautionary word with them.’
‘Perhaps you should,’ said Anderson. ‘Tell me, Kilnsman Gyrol, how long have you been shadowing me here?’
‘Ever since Laforge ran you in from his roadhouse. I’ve long known that those are the places to watch.’
Anderson nodded. ‘I’m getting old, then. I never saw any sign of your people.’
‘Comes to us all, even Rondure Knights.’ Gyrol smiled. ‘Where do you go from here?’
‘The Sand Towers, then out on the Plains.’
Gyrol nodded towards Tergal, who had paused, indecisively, ten metres from the table. ‘Then teach the youth to watch your back. Unless they do something stupid, I’ll not be able to detain these four for long.’
Anderson grimaced, but decided not to comment on how Tergal might not be the best choice for guarding his back.
Gyrol moved to go, then paused. ‘Strange rumours filtering down from the Plains—are you involved in that?’
‘What kind of rumours?’
‘Strange creatures… Nomads changing their routes to avoid certain areas. Like I said: rumours.’
‘Dragons?’
‘That was your word—not mine.’
‘Yes, I’m going to take a look.’
‘Take care, knight.’
‘I will.’
Anderson stood up as Tergal now approached. It was definitely time to leave town.
7
Augmented: In popular usage ‘augmented’ has now become distinct from ‘boosted’. To be ‘boosted’ is to be physically augmented either by chemical or nano-structural/surgical means. To be ‘augmented’ is to have taken advantage of one or more of the many available cybernetic devices, mechanical additions and, distinctly, cerebral augmentations. In the last case we have, of course, the ubiquitous ‘aug’ and such back-formations as ‘auged’, ‘auging-in’, and the execrable ‘all auged up’. But it does not stop there: the word ‘aug’ has now become confused with auger and augur—which is understandable considering the way an aug connects and the information that then becomes available. So now you can ‘auger’ information from the AI net, and a prediction made by an aug prognostic subprogram can be called an ‘augury’.
— From Quince Guide compiled by humans
Ambient temperature was rising rapidly and, with his grub-like heaving along the ground, Cento realized he would not reach the survey ship before his motors started seizing up again or one of the huge rocks that kept raining down crushed him finally into the ground. But even with all the carnage around him—lava sleeting through the acidic air, pyroclastic flows pouring down from the distant caldera, and the continual earthquakes—he did have a line of sight to the vessel, and could still use his radio. His brief query elicited no reply. The chance that there was someone alive there, but unable to use a radio, he considered remote. Then linking to the ship’s computer—Shayden had never bothered to replace it with an AI—he descended into code as he gave it instructions. As a pall of smoke cleared, he saw that those instructions were being followed.
Vessels such as this one were used for orbital survey as well as landing, so contained robot probes. These devices were made for sampling atmosphere, limited surface scanning for mapping and the occasional retrieval of airborne or spaceborne objects. Cento observed a rear port opening and the probe sliding out to hover beside the ship. It was elliptical with a sensory head mounted on its front end, and the six grasping arms folded underneath it complemented its beetlish appearance. Smoke veiled all again, but the link remained and Cento could feel the probe coming towards him. Soon it penetrated the smoke, a sleet of lava pattering its upper surface. It drew closer, bucked when a large lump of semi-molten rock hit it and bounced off, but kept on coming. Such devices were rugged, but hardly made for this environment. Cento was relieved when it finally drew to a halt above him.
The Golem reached up and gripped one of the probe’s arms. It folded down two more arms and with three-fingered claws gripped one of his hipbones and his neck, then with a thrum of AG lifted him from the boiling ground. Quickly it turned and flew back towards the ship, depositing Cento at the last by the open airlock, before turning to head back to its launch cache.
Cento observed the two incinerated corpses lying nearby, then began dragging himself inside the ship. There he pulled himself upright and tried to close the lock, but something had destroyed its mechanism. He dragged himself to the cockpit and hauled himself up into the pilot’s chair where, after strapping in, he tried to use the ship’s more powerful transmitters. Nothing—no contact with the carrier shell, so no way to link through to the U-space transmitter it had on board. Unsurprised at this lack of response from the shell, Cento initiated the lander’s autolaunch. The computer refused, of course, because of the open airlock. Cento paused, then put it offline and took hold of the joystick. It would be a rough ride, but then he was used to those.
* * * *
The virtual image he constructed was of a sphere of glowing points, all linked by spidery lines to a central nexus glowing brightest of all. That was the network, the entity of Dracocorp augs, suspended in grey void. Reality bore little resemblance, for the station orbiting the red dwarf was like a thick coin five kilometres across, spiked and glittering with sensory arrays and with a half-kilometre-high docking tower protruding from its centre. Few ships were docked there, and fewer still occupied the surrounding space. Skellor wondered if ECS was even aware that this station, placed for the long-term study of this carnelian star, was no longer entirely theirs. The query he received from the runcible AI contained there certainly gave the impression that this place was still Polity property. Working through the Vulture’s systems he responded, giving a false identity for his ship an
d for himself, both of which would be impossible to check in less than a solstan month — should the runcible AI feel any need.
‘Ruby Eye welcomes you, trader Scolan,’ the AI began over com.
‘Glad to be here. It’s been a long journey.’
‘And the purpose of your visit?’
‘Probably alcohol poisoning. I’ve been too long in this tin can.’
As this exchange drew to a close, Skellor could feel the runcible AI probing the Vulture for information, but the ship’s responses were his own, for his subversion program had certainly found and killed every last shred of personal identity the ship’s AI had retained. When the link finally broke, he flew the Vulture towards the tower and his designated docking station, slowing and turning it at the final moment into that framework. Buffers extended and absorbed the last of the ship’s momentum, then four universal docking clamps swung in towards the ship from above and below, and gripped it with large gecko adhesion pads. An embarkation tunnel then telescoped out from the tower, groped about a bit on the hull of the Vulture till it eventually found the airlock and connected.
Skellor stood up from the pilot’s chair and turned to regard Mr Crane. ‘Now, time to go to work.’
Crane swept up his toys and pocketed them. Skellor could not resist another probe inside the Golem, for he was learning—from a mind filled with disconnected but bloody memory—that Mr Crane was very good indeed at the profession to which he had been perverted.
— retroact 8 -
It was night and, in the shallows that lay beyond the channel excavated into the seabed alongside the jetty, pearl crabs gleamed like underwater stars. Striding out along the gritty strand, his pulse-rifle propped across his shoulder, Evans thought Alston was overreacting. The Pelters just did not have the firepower to come in here mob-handed. Maybe they had more men than the two hundred guarding this island. But they would not be as well trained as Chaldor’s mercenaries or Evans’s own men.
