by Neal Asher
Still, even enhanced as he had become, Cvorn’s aims and ambitions, unlike Sverl’s, had not changed. He wanted power and the increase of his family beyond those few replacement children he produced artificially in his destroyer’s single incubator. He wanted vengeance against the new king of the prador for his betrayal of his race by seeking a truce with the Polity. In addition, he wanted the prador to win the war against the humans and the AIs, which, in his opinion, had never ended. He hated humans—that had never changed.
Next, understanding that he was unlikely to achieve all these goals alone, he needed allies, and so he turned to the five children of that other refugee from the Kingdom, Vlern—the five young adults Sverl had managed to control and inadvertently weld into an alliance of similar interests, which was how any prador community operated. He contacted one of them, who at length he identified as Sfolk—he often found it difficult to tell them apart. Sfolk was unusually intelligent and their spokes-prador. Cvorn began the slow and very difficult process of building trust with him. First, he revealed Sverl’s true nature to the Five, then he showed the data from his study of the second-child he had auged and offered to put them in contact with his supplier, in the Polity, of prador augs, in exchange for certain agreements. He played them easily at first because they were naive; he played them with more care later as the augs he had given them increased their intelligence. He knew precisely what they wanted—prador females—and offered them a route to that end.
First, they needed an escape route: the Five were completely under Sverl’s control and they needed to work round that. While escaping, they should destroy the humans on the Rock Pool. Sfolk had immediately questioned this. Sverl had acquired, like a disease, some affection for the humans of Carapace City. Why aggravate him when, once they escaped, they would probably cease to be of any interest to him? Cvorn was insistent. This was the quid pro quo: he would, via his contacts back in the Kingdom, help them find the females and in return they must help him destroy Carapace City. He told them that his long years of restraint, culminating in his discovery of what Sverl had become, had enhanced his hatred of humans, and he wanted plain old prador vengeance against Sverl. He did not tell Sfolk that for his plans he needed to draw Sverl out and that by killing the humans he aimed to ensure this. He did not tell them that Sverl was the key to restarting the war against the Polity.
However, the first attempt to capture Sverl had been a failure, so his plans had changed. His contacts in the Kingdom had lined up another target for Vlern’s brood, because the location of the females would be of secondary importance to the Five’s method of escape. Of course, having snatched the females, the Five intended to head far away from the Kingdom, and the Graveyard, beyond the reach of other prador and out there begin breeding. Their plans were irrelevant because Cvorn had thwarted them from the beginning. He had neglected to tell them of the odder qualities of the biotech augs that his supplier, Dracocorp, had provided.
3
SVERL
The fusion drive seared the rocky ground beyond the city, instantly scouring away the meagre vegetation in a cloud of ash and smoke, rocks cracking and smoking in sun fire and turning molten. Closely linked into his ship’s systems, Sverl hinged out its stabilizing feet and read the error reports but found nothing critical.
Exterior cams showed the feet—great flat skates of exotic alloy folding down on hinged legs driven by massive gas-fed rams, shielded on their inner sides by hardfields—coming down on molten rock and sinking. This was a problem the designers had foolishly failed to compensate for throughout the war, Sverl remembered. He’d known of many instances of ships trapped on the ground after rock hardened about their feet, and Polity forces annihilating them.
He shut down the fusion drive and listened to his ship creaking and groaning around him as it settled. He noted the vessel was tilting slightly and, for a moment, assumed that the ground must be softer over on one side. Upon checking, however, he saw that the landing feet there had sunk no deeper than had the others. Further checking revealed, half a mile to one side, a squat cliff apparently rising out of the ground. It wasn’t rising; the rock on this side of it was sinking. Under the immense weight of the dreadnought a chunk of volcanic rock, under the feet on one side and sitting on softer sedimentary rock, had broken off from that surrounding it and was now sinking. Sverl further probed the ground with his sensors, but even as he did so the rate of sinkage slowed. It would be fine—if they could ever take off again.
“Bsorol,” he said, the image of that first-child immediately coming up on one of his screens. Many years of chemically maintained adolescence had twisted Bsorol, his legs bowed and his carapace whorled like old wood. “I want a team suited up and outside when feasible. I want thermal-sealed fracture charges pushed into the hardening rock about the landing feet within the next hour.”
“Yes, Father,” Bsorol replied. Then, after a hesitation, “There are many humans out there.”
Sverl glanced at another screen. Various gravans and gravcars, ATVs and cargo platforms led the crowds moving out from the city. One of these cars had moved too close during the dreadnought’s descent and now lay on its side, its passengers climbing out. Sverl recognized the shellman Taiken, along with what were presumably members of his family: a female and two boys. The other vehicles had sensibly maintained their distance so were okay, while the people on foot had dropped to the ground, a hot smoky wind howling above them. Of course, like many other children aboard, Bsorol had taken an interest in the goings-on in Carapace City. He had also been in proximity with the humans while serving his time guarding the small land-based space port—mostly so Sverl could have a presence there if he needed to act quickly against some threat. However, despite his long years of service to Sverl, Bsorol, like his siblings, was still almost certainly viciously xenophobic. This might be a problem.
“Yes, there are humans out there,” Sverl replied, “and soon they will be coming aboard this ship to occupy Quadrant Four and the lower holds there.”
“Why?” Bsorol asked.
“Because I am saving them all from the imminent destruction of their city.”
“But why?” Bsorol asked again.
Sverl mulled over various replies but knew none of them would make sense to Bsorol. He then realized how things needed to change. Perhaps the time had come to do something he had shied away from for many years. Perhaps he should allow Bsorol and his other children access to augmentation to widen their horizons. They needed to think beyond the mere instinctive urge to exterminate competitors, whether in other prador families or in alien races. But that was for the future. Right now only one option was available.
“Because I want to and I am father-captain of this ship,” he replied. “And if you continue to question me in this manner you will shortly find yourself in a flash freeze case inside one of my kamikazes. Obey your orders, Bsorol.”
“Yes, Father,” Bsorol replied, seemingly relieved at this simplicity.
The ship had settled now and Sverl moved to insert his claws into pit controls. He then hesitated for a moment. By the speed of his reaction to Cvorn’s kamikaze, he had proved that his preference for using manual controls was foolish. He now mentally initiated the lowering of a ship’s ramp. This was the size of an ancient human aircraft carrier and had not been used before—it was intended for ground assault forces that Sverl had never carried. Meanwhile, he began closing bulkhead doors around the route to Quadrant Four and instructing his children in those tunnels and in the quadrant itself to depart. In their home territory his children could not be fully trusted with humans. He could order them to cause no harm, but defining that might be problematic. Since most of these humans were shell people, there could be confusion. The tap a prador would deliver to another of its kind to attract attention would leave even a shellman a quivering mess on the floor.
The shell people outside were on the move again, rounding the ship to the lowering ramp, while more and more of them were coming out
of the city. Luckily, the ramp would extend far enough from the ship for them not to have to cross rock melted by the ship’s engines and now still glowing with red heat as it solidified. Focusing in on those leading, Sverl saw that Taiken and his family were now at the forefront on a grav-raft—on its side the words “Taiken Fuels”—while just ahead of this hovered the surfboard shape of the Polity drone.
“I don’t remember extending an invitation to you, drone,” he said over the ever-open channel.
Sure, Sverl had been enough distorted by the changes he was undergoing to want to rescue the shell people of Carapace City, but a Polity drone, an actual member of his erstwhile enemy? Now considering this notion further, he initiated some powerful scanning of the approaching horde using instrumentation he had acquired from the Polity, amalgamated with prador technology, and since enhanced using his own growing knowledge and abilities. Just a second later, scanning flagged up a Golem too.
“I’ll be no trouble,” the drone asserted.
“Bullshit,” said Sverl, slipping easily into human parlance as he opened armoured blisters in his ship’s hull and extruded Gatling cannons to target the drone and the two Golem now detected in the crowd. “You are not boarding my ship.”
Further scan results began to come in, revealing something odd about one of the gravcars. It looked battered and old but, reading its emissions, Sverl realized its grav-motors were at ninety-nine per cent efficiency. A further hard probe scoured away the chameleonware concealing the fact that it could be vacuum sealed, contained twinned mini-fusion jets and onboard armament, along with a wide selection of lethal hand weapons, including proton rifles, within reach of the three people inside.
“I’ve been instructed to offer what protection I can to these people,” the drone replied, but it was now dropping back.
The two men and the woman inside the car weren’t shell people. They could have been just anyone from off-world. Judging by their physiques, augmentations and weaponry, they could be enforcers for some criminal gang. Sverl thought otherwise.
“You are not boarding my ship, drone,” he said, “nor are the Sparkind unit and that lead Polity agent—those Golem twenty-eights running insufficient chameleonware and the three in that interesting gravcar.”
“There are Golem twenty-eights here?” said the drone innocently.
“You have thirty seconds,” said Sverl, immediately setting the countdown running. “Admittedly the firepower I will have to use will kill many shell people, but I would rather that than have your kind aboard.”
The reaction was instant. The gravcar abruptly swung round in the air and came down in a hard landing ahead of the approaching crowd. Already the two Golem were moving, frighteningly fast, but only towards the car and not to the ramp. They quickly piled into the car and it took off, lighting afterburners when it reached a hundred feet and streaking up into the sky, doubtless heading off to hitch a ride with one of the rescue ships up there. The drone rose to fifty feet and hung in the sky for a moment.
“Well, it was a long shot but worth a try,” said the drone. “So long, Sverl . . . it’s been interesting.”
“So long, drone,” Sverl replied, feeling quite odd as the drone swung round and shot up after the gravcar. He realized the sensation was regret and a kind of loneliness—both feelings that prador experienced infrequently.
Taiken’s raft soon reached the foot of the ramp and began to ascend. Other vehicles followed it up and then the steadily tramping crowd—all weighed down with personal belongings. Scanning towards the city, Sverl watched the stragglers hurrying out. Next, checking through cams inside the city, he was surprised to find it, as far as he could judge, empty of life. Perhaps the drone had been wrong about him not getting them all. Perhaps it had so couched its warnings of the city’s impending destruction that all had heeded them. Then again, these were mainly shell people, whose worshipful attitude to the prador had brought them here.
Over the next hour, the shell people trooped aboard the dreadnought. Sverl issued instructions in human speech over the ship’s PA system and, as Taiken’s raft approached the massive oval diagonally divided door into Quadrant Four, he contacted Taiken via a comunit the man carried on his reaverfish skin harness.
“Taiken, you are about to enter one of the eight quadrants of this dreadnought. My children have vacated it and you have access to the hold spaces in its lower levels. I have closed the bulkhead doors to other quadrants and am sealing them. Do not try to open those doors. I will instruct my children to do you no harm but instinctive reactions cannot be discounted. Also, pressure changes in the rest of the ship, which my kind can tolerate, could well kill humans—even ones changed as you are. Any questions?”
“I am familiar with the design of the interior of prador ships,” said Taiken in an irritatingly superior manner that Sverl knew was aimed at the shell people near him. “I know how to obtain water from the dip holes and we have the equipment to access the power supply and convert it for any of our Polity-manufactured equipment. However, we may have insufficient food, though that depends on how long we will be aboard this ship.”
“There are forty-eight tons of reaverfish carcasses in the hold you have access to,” Sverl replied. “They were frozen shortly after capture so, with the required additives, are suitable for human consumption.”
Usually, prador allowed such carcasses to decay for a while to render them more to the prador taste for stored meat. Sverl had found his tastes changing, for now he liked his stored meat undecayed and had lost his appetite for fresh meat steadily stripped from screaming and terrified enemies.
“Good, I thank you, Father-Captain,” said Taiken respectfully. “Where are we going?”
“I have yet to decide,” Sverl replied, shutting down the communication and sending the signal to open the big door into Quadrant Four.
Sverl had no idea what he was going to do with these refugees. One option would be to dump them on another inhabited Graveyard world. But wouldn’t doing so just make another world a target for Cvorn? Of course it would. The only way they could truly be safe would be if he were to head for the border lying between the Graveyard and the Polity and hand them over to the AIs. Sverl had a problem with that. Beside the quite possibly lethal consequences of taking a prador dreadnought right to the Polity border, he knew that the Polity AIs were very interested in the works of Penny Royal, and they had to know he was one of them. He felt that if they did not inadvertently destroy him and his ship, they would try to grab him.
So what to do?
Sverl watched the main crowd from Carapace City enter his ship, then the seemingly endless stream of stragglers. He watched the first arrivals divide up various areas and select living spaces. They set up toilets connected into the ship’s waste systems, powered up human lighting, then toned it down to the correct ambiance for shell people, and began settling in. Outside he watched Bsorol, another first-child called Bsectil and five second-children who, in their suits, were indistinguishable from their older siblings, working their way around the landing feet and shoving the charges down into rock which had the consistency of thickening porridge. Next, through a watch post established on an islet jutting up far out in the ocean, he observed the approaching blast front from Cvorn’s kamikaze.
A deep purple band extended across the horizon and steadily thickened, an anvil of grey cloud generating above it and then itself extending all the way across the horizon too. Multiple lightning flashes lit this scene as of a million arc welders working all at once. The purple band and the cloud melded into one and took on the appearance of a massive roller. This grew larger as it drew closer to the islet, finally occupying all space from the surface of the sea up to high in the atmosphere—a great curved wall the colour of human bruises. Ahead of it Sverl noted that the ocean had mounded and that when it finally arrived at Carapace City there would be a tsunami. However, making some rapid AI calculations, he worked out that the growing pressure inside the closing blast front woul
d squeeze the ocean back out, and the resulting wave would actually be small. Also ahead of this front, gunshots of lightning perpetually stabbed down into the sea, as if intent on clearing the way for it. One of these fried Sverl’s watch post and abruptly cut off his view.
Half an hour remained now as Bsorol and his crew returned through a maintenance hatch. One last party of humans was making its way up the ramp—two shell people guiding a small grav-raft on which they had mounted an amniotic tank, its occupant a shellman who had recently undergone drastic surgery. Doubtless the reason for their delay was in finding a way to shift his life-support gear. As they reached the head of the ramp, Sverl began to close it, then paused when he spotted two more shell people heading out from the city. Of course, though he had extensive surveillance of the city, he could not see into every nook and cranny, and there could be other refugees too.
It had been Sverl’s intention to lift off and get into orbit before the blast front arrived, which meant he needed to close the ramp now and leave those two out there—and any coming behind them—to die. However, his ship was more than resilient enough to ride out the storm, especially anchored as it was. He decided to leave the ramp down and close it just before the blast front arrived, to offer the strongest chance of survival.
The two made it inside and no one else followed in the time remaining. Sverl began to close the ramp, satisfied that he had done his best. Then, even as it thumped home and the horizon all around bruised and bled lightning, a woman ran out of the city clad in an environment suit bulked out over prador grafts. She was like a taunt. She was the flaw and the unavoidable death. The blast front lay only minutes away, while the pressure ahead of it was ramping up horribly. Quite likely her environment suit would fail before the front arrived to annihilate everything here not made of prador exotic metal.
