by Neal Asher
Such was the way Thorn relieved his boredom. On board a month passed before the alien vessel headed out-Polity, and now they had been pursuing it for two months altogether. If he had known it would go on for so long he would have climbed into a coldsleep coffin for the duration. He considered doing so now but, for all they knew the Legate’s eventual destination might be only minutes away. But at least Thorn was enjoying more amenable company aboard this high-tech Centurion, the Haruspex, than did Cormac aboard the NEJ. For travelling with Horace Blegg and the dracomen would not be a bundle of laughs.
There were four Sparkind units in all aboard the Haruspex, each of them consisting of four individuals—two Golem and two human, so always there would at least be a card game Thorn could join, or a training session in VR or for real like this.
Finally, having worked up a good sweat and noting from the scoreboard projected overhead that the Haruspex AI placed them at about even, Thorn called a halt. As they drew apart, on the raised platform circling the chamber above them, a couple of Sparkind clapped with slow sarcasm before heading down to take their turn. Thorn eyed them: a woman called Sheerna and a Golem called Aspex. He knew Sheerna was keen to perfect some techniques against an opponent who simply did not make mistakes.
‘Same time tomorrow?’ Chalter enquired.
‘Supposing nothing more interesting comes up, yes,’ Thorn replied.
They collected their towels and, both mopping sweat from their faces, moved out into a corridor leading to the crew quarters.
‘I’m told that if this latest destination doesn’t turn out to be the target, Belisarius is going to use a gravtech weapon to knock the Legate’s ship out of U-space,’ Chalter commented.
‘Who told you that?’
‘One of the guys aboard the Coriolanus, called Bhutan. He tells me even the AIs are getting rather bored and tetchy.’
That did not entirely surprise Thorn. A month in human terms probably felt to an AI, whose mind operated at orders of magnitude faster, like a hundred years. However, merely being bored and tetchy could not justify such a change in the mission plan. He glanced questioningly at Chalter, for the man should know that.
‘I think it’s due mostly to the direction and distance travelled,’ Chalter added. ‘They are starting to wonder if this Legate has realized it is still being pursued, and is now leading us away from its base. It might do that if it had no regard for time, or for its own life.’
‘What about that battle back there?’ Thorn asked.
Chalter nodded. ‘Another reason for not continuing too much further. The AIs are keen to check out that planetary system.’
‘And I would guess’, Thorn said, ‘that ships like this would be much better off guarding the Polity from its enemies. It would be advantageous for an enemy to expend just one small vessel in order to lead away four diamond-state ships like ours?’
‘That’s the thinking,’ Chalter replied.
In his room Thorn was luxuriating in a shower when he felt the Haruspex depart U-space. He dried himself quickly and pulled on some Sparkind fatigues.
‘Haruspex, that seemed a short jump, so what’s happening?’ he asked.
In a lazily superior tone the AI replied, ‘Perhaps a question better directed towards the Legate. I have no idea why he surfaced here.’
‘Could we be getting closer to his destination?’
‘Not yet ascertained.’
As he stepped outside his quarters, Thorn again felt that strange twisting, and knew they had submerged yet again. The ensuing jump was also of short duration, for Thorn had taken only a few paces along the corridor before the ship surfaced again. Distantly, he heard machinery winding up to speed, and clanking sounds against the hull.
‘We are under attack,’ Haruspex noted.
Thorn ran for the ship’s bridge, Chalter and the other three unit leaders joining him soon after. The Haruspex bridge was similar to that of the NEJ: a wide expanse of floor seemingly resting out in vacuum. Thorn discerned a distant vessel, and small objects swarming through space, close all around. To his far right he could see the Coriolanus, its laser strobing the cloud surrounding it. As the ranking officer aboard Haruspex, Thorn occupied one of the acceleration chairs available and leant back. Chalter and the others stood back, remaining out of the way, as it would not do to have too many people involved in this. Images of other chairs began to blink into existence: the human commander of the Sparkind aboard Coriolanus, and Cormac aboard the NEJ. There were no humans present from the Belisarius, though a hologram of the ship’s avatar—a large chesspiece knight—did flicker into existence. Jack the hangman also appeared, along with Coriolanus the Roman legionary leaning on his spear, and Haruspex itself appearing as a floating crystal ball. All projection.
‘It seems the Legate has just led us into some kind of set defence,’ Cormac observed.
No shit, thought Thorn as he observed a pumpkin-seed object go hurtling past propelled by a bright fusion flame, then tracked by laser and turned to vapour.
‘Why are we visible?’ he asked.
Cormac held up a hand and turned towards the legionary image. ‘You’ve received five hits, what’s your current situation?’
‘They are not explosive, rather Jain subversion tech which, given time, would have completely subsumed this ship. I have destroyed them: three from outside by laser, the other two from the inside with a particle cannon.’
‘You see,’ added the human from the Coriolanus—Bhutan, a thin individual with pallid hairless skin and eyes like razor shards, who sported twinned military augs, one on each side of his head — ’we flew straight into them, so chameleonware was no defence.’ He glanced at Thorn. ‘There are so many of the damned things, we have to use proximity lasers, and the resulting weapons drain negates the ‘ware effect.’
Thorn had not known that fact. ‘The alien vessel?’ he asked.
Cormac replied, ‘Completely ignored, and flying right through them.’
‘Has it seen us?’ Thorn asked.
Cormac glanced at him, then back towards whatever display he observed aboard the NEJ. ‘I think that highly likely,’ he shrugged, ‘so we’ll have to grab it and see what we can learn. I think that what we’ll learn, if anything at all, is that we are very close to its final destination.’
‘Could this be it?’ wondered Haruspex.
In space, through the transparent walls of the Haruspex’s bridge, the AI used a frame to pick out a small area and magnify it, revealing a distant object like some jungle ruin, still swamped in lianas, transported out into vacuum. Like wasps issuing from their nests, the seed objects were swarming out of large barnacle-shaped excrescences on its surface.
Bhutan remarked, ‘Looks like something completely subsumed.’
‘It looks like something that will cease to exist in about thirty seconds,’ Cormac added.
That brought about a silence as they all watched. Perfectly on time, it seemed a pinhole punched through the strange object as if it were drawn on a sheet of black paper held up to the sun. Abruptly it distorted and shrank inwards towards the hole. The view then polarized over some titanic flash, and next they observed an expanding sphere of glowing gas. Within minutes the Centurions penetrated this, sang to the tune of the Shockwave as it peeled their smaller attackers away from them.
‘Alien vessel is jumping,’ Belisarius—a horse head talking.
The scene greyed out for a few seconds, and around Thorn the holograms grew thin as a nightmare crowd. Then the Haruspex shuddered back into the real, with star patterns altered about it.
‘It’s still running in a straight line directly for that high-albedo object,’ Jack observed. ‘I would guess, upon observing us, it paused to receive instructions.’
Thorn sighed and began to unstrap himself.
‘But should we pursue any further,’ asked a new voice, ‘as we now know where to look? Should we not now call in the dreadnoughts? That our quarry is continuing along its original course migh
t indicate that whatever awaits at its destination is not too worried about us.’
Thorn eyed the ancient Japanese man. He had a point: why risk four Centurions against an unknown foe?
‘But do we know where to look?’ Cormac asked. ‘This could merely be diversionary, and I’m not happy about bringing the larger force all the way out here until some target is confirmed.’ He gazed at Blegg. ‘Unless I am instructed otherwise, we continue.’
Blegg shrugged resignedly and disappeared.
* * * *
Utterly connected and at one with the Heliotrope, as it rose from U-space into the real, Orlandine felt an amusement almost sublime. Her dreams provided her with clues, and her partial interfacing with Jain technology provided the means. Now she could detect a node signature in U-space. In those first moments of abrupt mental growth she assigned programs to the task and, on abandoning the Dyson segment, decided to track down other Jain nodes. And look where that search brought her: full circle.
She identified the four Centurion-class attack ships, way in front of her, only when the trap revealed them, though she had been aware of something in that location, for a node signature registered from there. She then surmised that the other node signature far ahead of them issued from the alien vessel. It further occurred to her that the Polity ships might be using the same tracking methods as herself, which was probably why they did not lose the ship despite its chameleonware being as sophisticated as their own.
But what now?
She had decided to track down node signatures in the hope of observing uncontrolled Jain growth, to learn more and perhaps locate their original source. But pursuing these two could soon become a lethal occupation. Her most sensible move would be to abandon the idea, and flee to somewhere remote where material and energy resources would be easily available to her. A planet was out of the question, for she was still not prepared to take the risk of putting herself in so vulnerable a position at the bottom of a gravity well. Perhaps an asteroid or comet close to a sun… but, even while considering those options, she kept the Heliotrope on the trail of the Polity ships, who in turn might well be following the alien vessel to its home.
* * * *
There were no disagreements from the AIs about continuing this quest, but that was not unexpected as warship AIs tended not to back down. Cormac felt Blegg’s point only valid so far. Whatever lay ahead might be something small they could easily neutralize. It might be very mobile, in which case halting now would defeat the whole reason for allowing the Legate to escape since, while they awaited the larger force, the Legate and whoever or whatever had sent it might escape. And if the Legate’s master turned out to be something too large for them to handle, then they could run, and only thereafter would it be time to pull in the dreadnoughts and destroyers.
Cormac returned from the bridge to his cabin, and lying on his bunk, worked through in his gridlink all the recordings of recent events. Jack informed him that the large object the NEJ had destroyed with a CTD imploder was once an old Polity ship called the Calydonian Boar. Apparently it had joined up with some other AIs that headed out this way after the Prador War. This suggested those AIs either ran into something utilizing Jain technology or alternatively tech arising from it. Or had used it themselves. The positioning of such a defence implied something to defend, which somewhat undermined his theory about a mobile opponent. He sighed and banished speculation—however it ran, they would achieve their aim here: not to engage and defeat some enemy, but to clearly identify one. It seemed they would know shortly to whom the Maker had handed over its Jain nodes.
He turned his thoughts to other matters. The memory package still awaited his attention, and yet again he began to consider the implications of that. He had once managed to translate himself through U-space, and though he could not see how that might be possible, it seemed nevertheless a damned useful ability to possess. He really needed to re-integrate those memories, to see if he could re-acquire that ability. However, he remained reluctant to venture into that hell, those memories integral to what Skellor made him suffer. Other thoughts impinged: that he could translate himself through U-space might imply that Blegg, who claimed to be able to do the same, might be telling the truth after all, so was not merely some avatar of Earth Central. Perhaps they were both that mythical thing so beloved of holofiction producers: ‘the post-human’. Cormac grunted in annoyance, dismissing the idea. The reality, he felt sure, was that the AIs were the genuine post-humans.
He decided the package would have to wait until after the resolution of forthcoming events out here. Absorbing it now might psychologically damage him—impair his efficiency—and, until Blegg told him otherwise, he remained in charge and could not afford to risk that. He slid his feet off the bed and perched on the edge. He desperately needed something to do, and like the humans aboard the other ships, he headed for the ship’s training area.
16
Thin-gun: there is still much debate about whether this weapon, much loved by holofiction producers, was first introduced fictionally or actually. I’ll get back to that shortly, but first let me describe this weapon: well, for a start, it’s thin. ECS took the components of a typical gas-system or aludust pulse-gun, reduced them to their smallest size, and flattened them. The basic ethos behind this weapon is that it is easily concealed—being flat, it does not bulk in clothing. As such it is the main choice for those regularly working undercover, be they Polity agents or criminals. Further developments by ECS resulted in microtok-charged energy canisters—combined with either a gas or powdered aluminium load — being constructed small enough to insert into the handle of this weapon in the form of a clip. Some thin-guns contain a sub-AI micromind that can prevent the gun being fired by anyone other than its rightful owner, or can cause it to detonate its own power supply if pointed at its owner, and can even make a moral decision about whether or not it wants to fire at all. But, returning to the fiction/fact debate concerning these weapons, the first fictional thin-gun appeared in a VR interactive game, before the Polity became a distinct entity and before the runcible-based expansion. Despite the rather savage methods the authorities employed at that time, corporate police were never able to trace its producer. The interactive, though withdrawn from sale through licensed outlets because of its seditious content, sold very well on the black market and rose to attain cult status. Subsequent investigations revealed its producer to be very probably one of the rogue AIs involved in the Quiet War. The same AI may well be still extant—though it’s not telling.
- From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon
The solar system, still in the process of forming out of an accretion disc, contained thirty-two planetary masses, eight about the same size as Neptune or Uranus, and two further Jovian masses, the rest falling into the size range between Neptune and Earth. Other masses—asteroids, moons, comets—numbered in trillions. Gas and dust shrouded all, meteor strikes and massive storms lit the interior intermittently, as did the slowly growing sporadic luminosity of the nascent sun, as fusion fires fought with black spots for dominance of the solar sphere.
The Legate’s vessel surfaced half an AU out and proceeded inwards on fusion drive. The moment the four Centurions surfaced, a U-space signature immediately blossomed beside them, and something big dropped into being. They came under immediate and intense scanning from this hugely dense object—a two-mile-wide ribbed ammonite spiral glinting metallic green. The shape seemed to imply something grown rather than manufactured, one that could keep on growing. Organic technology. It launched a cloud of projectiles that Jack recognized as the same type launched earlier from the subsumed Calydonian Boar. These now swarmed towards the four Polity Centurions like twilight mosquitoes anxious to feast. Confident the other ships would be doing the same, Jack engaged his chameleonware and immediately changed course.
More U-space signatures now, on the edge of the accretion disc, then close by. Bacilliform ships began appearing, more spiral forms, lens shapes, indistinct wormish conglo
merations breaking and reforming, and sheetlike masses that only closer scan revealed to be constructed of conjoined bacilliforms. Some of these objects were no larger than a human fist, others extended miles across.
‘Doesn’t seem too healthy around here,’ Jack commented. It took him just a microsecond to transmit that message, and he did not see precisely what happened next. The Belisarius must have been struck by some of those seed objects—enough at least to disrupt its chameleonware. Whereupon that Centurion ship fled — masers refracting around its hull, then beginning to impinge—leaving an orange trail of metal vapour through space. A wall of bacilliforms, a thousand miles tall, U-jumped directly ahead of the fleeing ship. Jack shut down his ‘ware, bringing all his weapons online. He saw the Haruspex and Coriolanus do the same. The big spiral ship bore down on the Belisarius, while the wall of rodlike ships folded in around it like some huge tissue employed for catching a wasp. Blights of missiles rained down on all sides. Jack’s CTD imploder hit the big spiral ship first, collapsing its middle section and momentarily leaving a glowing doughnut of matter, before the subsequent explosion obliterated the rest. Anti-munitions scattered illusions around the Belisarius, but not enough. Missile after missile impacted on it, cutting away a nacelle, distorting its shape and peeling away a trail of its armour. It tried to U-jump, but its engine was damaged or some other weapon hit it. It shimmered, everted like a snake skin, disappeared in white fire.
