by Neal Asher
Monitors and Sparkind now came out, fighting a defensive retreat, firing on figures lurching out after them through smoke and flame. As far as was visible, in both directions, more of Coloron’s forces retreated—that last inner line of defence.
‘You can stay there if you like,’ said the commander, ‘but I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He climbed inside the AG tank which, shortly afterwards, began to lift.
As the tank drifted forward, the woman quickly stepped up into the open doorway. ‘What’s happening now?’
‘We hold them back until the civilians are far enough behind the lines,’ the commander replied, as he manipulated the tank’s controls, ‘then it’s bye-bye arcology.’
The woman felt awe at the thought, and some sadness. Her ident did not say anything about her once having lived here.
‘You staying or going? I need to close that door.’
She stepped back and down to the ground, the door hissing shut as the tank moved on. Glancing beyond the tank, then behind her, she saw the whole ECS battle line beginning to advance slowly through the crowds. She pitied those about to lose their homes, and those about to die, having experienced both traumas herself. But then she wasn’t what she seemed: closing her eyes, she remembered her recent resurrection.
She had felt cold, and a thousand needles prickled her skin. Something had crumped ahead of her and a line of light cut down to one side, through the darkness.
I’m in a cold coffin, she realized, but beyond that realization lay only confusion.
A taste in her mouth like copper.
I have a mouth?
Skin feeling abraded.
I have skin?
A cold aseptic room lay before her, cold coffins inset all around its walls like Egyptian sarcophagi, bright metal, white surfaces.
I have eyes?
She stepped out, she looked around. Human vision seemed a narrow thing after having been used to enhanced viewing in more places than one and across more of the spectrum than the human eye could see. Her hearing remained unchanged, however. Gradually the floor warmed her feet. She needed to urinate, touched her mons tentatively and shuddered with pleasure at the sensation. Her stomach rumbled. She looked down at her hand and did not recognize it.
‘Do you hear me?’
I’m not dead. So much meaning in that statement.
‘I hear you,’ she said, and felt a sudden panic at the unrecognizable tone of her own voice.
‘I have placed a mirror to your right.’
She turned to see the naked form of the Separatist Freyda standing there, and now understood what Jack had done. For a moment she resented this, for she wanted to live in her own body. However, her own body had been incinerated long ago.
‘Did you do this alone, or does ECS approve?’ she asked.
‘ECS does not know. I felt that I owed you something, and I know that you have changed in ways ECS could never ken. Nobody will be looking for a Separatist called Freyda, because she no longer exists—her DNA has been reclassified in the databases, and any criminal record deleted.’
‘What now?’ Aphran asked.
‘The choice is yours. You can have yourself altered cosmetically, or choose to stay as you now are. One of the dracomen will transport you down to Coloron. Thereafter, all choices are your own.’
‘A second chance?’ she asked.
‘Yes—exactly that.’
‘Thank you.’ Aphran collected some disposeralls from a dispenser in the wall. As she donned them, she just did not know what the future held for her. At some point that fact would be welcome, for now she actually had a future. Jack had created the false identity, this false life. Aphran liked the AI’s choice, but then Jack knew her like no other.
She opened her eyes to see tanks and autoguns advancing and firing on the arcology over the heads of Coloron’s forces. She saw missiles streaking down from above and, as when counting the seconds between the peal of thunder and the lightning flash, tracked explosions across the arcology.
* * * *
Another lander returned to the NEJ just ahead of them. Cormac watched it enter a docking bay, then pulled his attention back to studying the entire ship. Definitely one of the newest designs: attack ship configuration with a state-of-the-art chameleonware hull which, as well as being able to bend low intensity EM radiation around it, could also, to some degree, deflect high-powered lasers and masers. The outer skin was a form of polymerized diamond, over layered composite laced with superconductors. The ship’s skeleton, composed of the usual laminated tungsten ceramal, shock-absorbing foamed alloys and woven diamond monofilament, in this case was cellular and more substantial than usual. Cormac also knew that its extra weapons’ nacelle contained gravtech armament in addition to the usual lethal complement housed in the other two nacelles.
A Centurion, he remembered—that’s what they called these now.
The lander flew over the ship, then down to the second bay on its other side. It eased in through a shimmer-shield and settled in the narrow armoured area. Cormac stepped out first, followed by Thorn and then the dracomen. He noted armoured bay doors closing down and huge hydraulic grab arms easing out of the wall to take hold of the lander.
Jack? he tried once more through his gridlink. Again there came no reply. He applied at other informational levels through the ship’s systems, but found himself blocked by AI defences of the kind now being employed against Jain tech subversion everywhere throughout the Polity. But, then, in any war, communication always suffered first.
‘Not being very talkative, is he?’ he commented.
Thorn glanced at him quizzically.
‘Jack,’ Cormac explained.
‘He’s been rather busy lately, analysing evidence, interrogating suspects and taking apart their memcordings. He also recently rid himself of Aphran.’
Cormac halted. ‘Rid himself?’
From the intercom Jack’s voice suddenly issued, ‘I feel I should rename myself as I am now in singular control of this ship. However, there is some truth in the current name Not Entirely Jack.’
‘Has sentence been executed upon her?’ Cormac asked.
‘Aphran no longer exists,’ replied the ship AI.
That, Cormac realized, did not really answer his question, but he let that go as he turned and walked to the circular door leading from the bay, which promptly irised open before him. He stepped through and found himself in a corridor resembling a pipe. The flat surface of the gravplate floor laid in that pipe was covered with blue carpet moss, bearing a repeating pattern of white nooses—a pattern copied from the original Jack Ketch, though its carpets had been plain fabric. The rest of the corridor remained strictly utile: padded walls and ceiling, diffuse lighting, and soft hand grips in case the gravplates should fail. Cormac wondered if Jack made his usual baroque and sometimes gruesome additions elsewhere, for the original ship had contained various human execution devices of antique design that the AI liked replicating down to the smallest historical detail. Cormac waited until Thorn stepped through beside him.
‘Which way—I’ve been unable to access any information on the layout,’ he said.
Thorn stepped aside to allow Arach also into the corridor. The drone scuttled over to one side and reared up as the dracomen filed out next to head along the corridor. Cormac noted how the dracomen eyed the drone curiously before moving on.
‘Well, you certainly do get some types,’ commented Arach, coming back down on its sharp feet.
Cormac assumed there had been some inaudible communication between drone and reptilians, but simply classified Arach’s observation as interesting before turning back to Thorn, who gestured down the corridor, saying, ‘These corridors run in a grid throughout the ship, all gravplated on one side, so you can walk anywhere using them. There’s no movable drop-shafts.’
Cormac nodded to himself. Drop-shafts were a hangover from older ship geometries in which the builders felt some need of up and down. Jack had used a movable one to get
his passengers to different locations inside the old Jack Ketch. This construction, he surmised, was for enhanced structural strength. ‘Are we heading now for the bridge—if that’s what you still call it?’
‘No, Jack can project anywhere in this ship and there’s something I thought you might like to see.’ Thorn led him through a bulkhead door, then into a long corridor curving down the length of the hull. Three bulkhead doors later they entered another corridor carpeted with flute grass matting and filled with hot terrarium air. Until now, all the corridors they traversed were boringly prosaic. Perhaps baroque interiors were something Jack had grown out of.
‘More dracomen,’ observed Cormac.
‘Nearly a hundred of them aboard.’ Thorn paused reflectively. ‘You know there’s thousands of them now on the planet below?’
Cormac nodded: he did know. He followed Thorn past a series of rooms occupied by the reptilian creatures. Finally the two men came to the cylindrical training chamber, with gravplated floors at either end and a zero-G section in the middle, which spanned the ship. Here Cormac observed dracomen at play, or training themselves to kill—there probably being little difference. He headed over to a stair and climbed to a platform positioned just below the zero-G section, his feet light on the metalwork where the gravity effect from the plates at one end of the cylinder partially cancelled out the effect from those at the other. Thorn moved up beside him.
‘Okay, Jack, what do you have for me?’
A line cut down through the air below disporting dracomen, and out of it folded a humanoid figure.
‘This is the Legate,’ announced Jack.
Cormac studied the image for a moment. ‘That tells us very little. Any AI or any human could take on that exterior form if they wished. Do you have any idea what’s inside it?’
‘Thellant attempted a scan of this particular entity, but that revealed only an empty shell. I surmise from this fact that his scanning equipment encountered sophisticated chameleonware. Other facts do confirm that the Legate can make itself invisible.’
The figure in question revolved slowly in the air like some musical doll, the tune played being the sound of fleshy impacts as dracomen continued their contests, above and below, totally ignoring the image. Cormac applied directly to Jack for information, and received a potted history of the association between Thellant and the Legate.
‘So, an enemy of the Polity—nothing new there—but the technologies it employed have heretofore not really been the province of Separatists.’ Cormac paused, applying analytical programs to the history provided, then said, ‘Give it all to me, Jack.’
A hundred times larger than the potted history, this next block of information stretched his gridlink storage space, cutting down space for those programs he needed to analyse it. He reached up to press his fingers against his temple as if expecting a headache. His sleeve dropped back and he glimpsed Thorn’s look of surprise, then amusement, at seeing Shuriken holstered there once more. He ran a search program to find what he could delete to make more space. The memory download from Jerusalem sat temptingly in the list appearing. He returned it to storage, deleted old programs and dated information, then returned his attention to Jack’s new information. Patterns began to emerge.
‘An outside force stirring up our rebels,’ he concluded. ‘Do we have any way of going after this character?’
‘Thellant’s memories did not supply that info. However, cross-referencing his memories with information provided by Coloron has provided us with something.’
‘Don’t draw it out, Jack.’
‘U-space anomalies: within a day prior to every arrival of the Legate here, there would be a mass/U-signature discrepancy for some large arriving ship. Such discrepancies have always been ignored, since they are often due to the registered mass of a large cargo vessel being off by a fraction of a percentile. In the case of the Legate’s arrivals, the mass discrepancy has always been about the same: twelve tons.’
‘So it’s clearly a small vessel piggy-backing in on other ships’ U-fields?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Is a search being conducted?’
‘This information has been broadcast to all AIs across the Polity. All records are being checked, as are all new arrivals to worlds everywhere. If any ship comes in with such discrepancies, we will henceforth be immediately informed.’
‘So now?’
The hologram of the Legate disappeared, and one wall of the chamber seemed to dissolve too in order to give a view outside. The planet Coloron fell away, starlit space revolving into view. Then came that drag at the very substance of reality, and the view greyed out, as they dropped into U-space.
‘Even as I spoke the words,’ announced Jack.
‘What?’ asked Cormac.
‘Twelve-ton discrepancy detected, within the parameters of the Legate’s last departure from here. Other forces are already on their way.’
‘Other forces?’Thorn muttered.
Cormac asked, ‘Where was this discrepancy detected?’
‘The Cassius project.’
It figured: the AIs would be mighty pissed off about anyone messing with that.
14
Simple hardfield principles: this kind of field is projected from its generator much like a torch beam from a torch, the circular field meniscus generating at a distance preset in the generator like said beam striking a wall. Rather than getting into the complex maths and spacial-warp mechanics involved, it is best to think of it as simply a disc extended from its generator on the end of a long and extremely tough girder—both being made of a superconductor. Kinetic shock against the disc results in kinetic shock being transferred to the generator itself, where many methods are used to either absorb or convert it. Simple hydraulic rams are often used, also thermal or electrical conversion rams. Heat applied to the disc results in heat being applied to the generator. Again various methods are used to deal with this: superconductors to bleed it away, and other cooling systems. There are, however, deliberately designed-in limitations to how much of either a generator can absorb. Sufficient onslaught of each will usually result in a generator, with designed-in obsolescence, melting, though sometimes, if the limits are sufficiently exceeded, it will explode. A generator not so designed can, at some unplanned limit, implode, briefly creating a singularity at its core and a consequent fusion burn from highly compressed matter when the singularity goes out. The explosion in this case exceeds, by orders of magnitude, the explosion in the former case. Hence the deliberate obsolescence.
— From ‘Weapons Directory’
The hardfield generators rested in transporters heavily constructed of carbide steel laminated with bearing materials and shock-absorbing foamed resins. Designed to bend and twist under huge loads, then return to their original shape, they were low and incredibly heavy, and in this situation not worth the energy expenditure of AG, so they ran on two sets of caterpillar tracks. Two thousand of them guarded the landward perimeter, their anchor spikes driven down through ten yards of earth until they encountered bedrock. The generators themselves were spherical, covered in flexible cooling pipes and bristling with radiator fins. The fields they projected, as well as being impervious to matter, were polarized against radiations outside the human visual spectrum. Those fields also slanted at forty-five degrees, to deflect the Shockwave rather than stop it completely. The tank commander told her it still seemed likely that any generators surviving the blast would be driven, along with their transporters, deep into the ground.
‘Why not wait until everyone is completely clear?’ she asked, once again perching on his tank.
The man himself stood nearby, smoking a cigarette. He told her it was a habit acquired after spending too much time in his youth taking part in VR interactives based on celluloid films that were centuries old. He found it relaxed him.
‘Coloron keeps destroying Jain tech on the surface, but it continues burrowing into the ground. It may be doing so slowly at present, but t
hat’s only because the arcology was necessarily built on solid granite. Once it reaches the softer strata, it’ll speed up. So if we don’t take it out before then, we may lose the planet.’
The arcology was now a silvery line on the horizon from which fires sprouted. Poised like stormclouds over it, atmosphere ships, having hurled down their lightnings, now departed to make way for what was to come. The tank commander tossed her a set of goggles.
‘I thought the hardfields will block the flash?’ she said.
‘They will, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be there all the time.’
Aphran grunted her thanks and pocketed the goggles.
Ground armour, autoguns, tanks like the commander’s, and AG platforms retreated to the shield line, many of them burdened with troops. Behind these, firing continued as more dehumanized residents tried to come out in the wake of Coloron’s forces, only to be taken down by the scanning drones. Then the drones abruptly retreated, like flies shooed away from a corpse. A turquoise bar sliced down from the sky, turning the intervening ground to magma, working rhythmically back and forth before the arcology. Distantly, the cloud-locked sky, generated by massive evaporation of sea water, reflected similar fires around the other perimeters. Columns of smoke cut the sky in between like black tornados. Occasional sheets of flame groped upwards, and explosions constantly shook the ground. It seemed as if the troops had fled the Pit. Five dreadnoughts now occupied space above MA, to add their firepower to Coloron’s own. One of those ships, even now, was probably selecting sources of appalling destruction from its weapons carousel.
