Spear
The other three had all prepared themselves, following the descent of the ship’s interior into vacuum. Cole and Sepia had managed to fold up the hoods and flexible visors of the survival suits they had worn under their clothing, while Trent was wearing a suit similar to my own that had reacted to the pressure drop. Working through my ship’s system, I closed up the weapons cache hatch and the hold space doors. And as I did this I noticed perpetual interference on the virtual level. Attempts to penetrate my ship’s computing were constant, but weak and incoherent. When I tried to analyse these I found external programs fighting one other, and in fact weakening each other. Further analysis revealed that they were old news – the kind of viral attack used during the war. Even at full strength, they wouldn’t have been good enough to get past the system’s standard informational warfare defences – let alone crack the codes that gave me control of both system and ship.
The blown hatch was more problematic, what with the potentially dangerous level of light penetrating. Luckily, we weren’t in the full glare of the hypergiant, or we would have been getting a lot more than just singed. I would have liked the hatch back, but it was now tumbling away towards one of those tentacle-headed constructor monstrosities. And, even as I watched, one tentacle fielded it, while pods at the ends of other tentacles spilled numerous scorpion-format robots all over it. However, I did still have a hardfield generator available, which would darken to the right degree. I focused it in the gap, but not quickly enough.
Just moments before the field came on, a closer tentacle thrust its pod end inside. I swiftly altered the programming of the projector, so that the field only conformed to the frame of the hatch. With a flash of discharging energy, it sheered straight through the tentacle, but even this was too late. While the severed limb thrashed, the pod at its end divided horizontally and its back end hinged open. Packed inside was something that looked like a complex technological chrysalis – all folded limbs and tubes, polished metal and gleaming lights. The severed tentacle bucked again, spilling this thing, and as it rolled out it began unfolding above the deck. There it thumped down and engaged two long-toed gecko feet.
At first it just seemed a metallic lump, fashioned somewhat organically. Then, as my visor adjusted to the light drop, it rose up. It hunched, twinned sets of arms opening out, these terminating in complex tool hands – with the glimmer of shear fields along curved fingers. It trudged through into the bridge, noticeably collapsing down a little as it came over the grav-plates, then straightening up again. Its head, a squid-like contraption with three glowing blue eyes, had been swinging from side to side until that moment. Then it focused on me, ribbed metal tentacles furling and unfurling. The presence of this machine confirmed that something was decidedly wrong here, supposing I actually needed any confirmation. On top of the weird growths out there and the barely understandable communications I had been receiving, this thing did not look familiar at all. I could remember the kind of robots usually found aboard wartime factory stations and this thing wasn’t one of them. Sure, during the war there had been an inclination to create robots with a more organic look – like Riss – but aboard stations they had always been more utilitarian.
I glanced across at the other three, who were quickly unstrapping themselves. The only one armed was Sepia. And, while I wondered how effective her pulse-gun and laser carbine could be, I wished she did not have them. They might make her more of a target. I backed away, moving over to one wall to reach out carefully and touch a control to release a series of clamps. Penny Royal’s spine fell into my hand, memories surging in my hindbrain like a stormy sea and an utter sense of connection establishing itself. An icon flashed in my visor to tell me atmospheric pressure was up again, and the visor and segmented helmet closed back down into my suit’s neck ring. In the air, I now smelled hot metal and something caustic, like the mist off an acid bath. Next, Trent, Sepia and Cole were on their feet, Sepia bringing her laser carbine up to her shoulder. Part of me wanted to tell her to lower it, yet another, larger part, was assessing how useful she would be.
‘I am seizing control of this ship,’ said a voice. ‘Drop your weapons and provide access codes.’
I glanced up at the frame still open in the screen fabric – now displaying a standard com icon of a silver human head. The speaker was using the channel the prador had used, but was clearly much closer. However, the communication wasn’t coming from the unwelcome new robot we’d acquired.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Construction bay AI designation E676.’
I found myself probing back along the signal, not sure how I was doing this, and glimpsed a mind and then a wider view. E676 was physically transferring itself to a spiderbot carrier. I now knew exactly what was happening – why robots were swarming and fighting each other out there, why the constant attempts to take over my ship’s system. The AIs here had heard what the King’s Guard had said to me. They wanted off this station before he carried out his threat. The robots wanted my ship. The one talking had been just that little bit faster than the rest.
‘Give me your access codes,’ it demanded again.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ I replied succinctly.
The robot reacted.
It leapt, one of its tentacles stabbing out and whipping across. It hit Sepia, picking her up and smashing her into the wall. It then caught Cole and sent him spinning as it came down on the bridge’s horseshoe console. It was horribly fast, and in response my time sense changed. My thinking ramped up in a synergetic curve between my aug and my mind. Rage arose in me too, because it had hit Sepia and she might be dead. I saw Trent diving, going into a neat roll that put him underneath the sweep of another tentacle as he snatched up the carbine. On another level, the memory horde, residing in the object I clutched, responded with a tsunami of data. It drained into my mind and my aug, and an instant later became firm knowledge. Some of the people there had been robot designers, programmers and maintenance technicians. From their knowledge, I quickly understood that this thing was an amalgam of two small construction robots, while its upper squid-like head was in fact a type of war drone.
‘Hey!’ I shouted, moving now with what I felt to be glacial slowness, and the thing began to swing its head back towards me. By now Trent was up in a squat, aiming and firing, burning out its eyes and frying tentacles. Reaching out to my ship’s system, I knocked off the grav at the same time as throwing myself forward, legs ahead. A tentacle skimmed over me, while a second one smacked the carbine from Trent’s grip – before catching him under the chin and sending him flying backwards. The controlling mind wouldn’t be in the parts originating from a construction robot – at least that was my calculation. I closed my legs around the thing below its head. Simultaneously, I swung the spine round and drove it hard into the lobe-like structure behind the front of its tentacular head. The shock juddered up my arms but the spine punched through armour, impaling the thing. I released and, bringing grav back up, landed in a squat, then stood and turned. The robot keeled sideways and crashed to the floor.
‘Riss,’ I said aloud, simultaneously sending the message by aug as I headed over to Sepia. ‘Leave Sverl alone and get back here.’
‘Sorry, no can do,’ Riss replied, her words almost lost in static.
‘Sverl is an ally,’ I reiterated. For a moment, I got a flash of something through Riss’s eyes. The drone had its ovipositor stuck deep into what looked like a standard design of construction robot. It was down on the floor with its limbs moving randomly. On another level, I could sense the drone circumventing a block and penetrating that robot’s simple mind.
‘You would kill yourself . . . not taking . . . logical step,’ said Riss. ‘Sverl has to die . . . are to survive. It’s simple.’
‘Or you have simply rediscovered your purpose in existing?’ I suggested.
‘Fuck you,’ said Riss, those words coming through quite clearly, and she cut the connection.
I tried to reach out to her, and found something in the spine responding. In a moment I realized it was the copy of Riss in there. Sinking into that and fast-analysing it with a multitude of programs running in parallel, I searched for strengths and vulnerabilities. Annoyingly, I found that I had provided the very weapon she intended to use next. But in a close parallel search, I found the relevant vulnerability. It was a code a Polity AI had once used, which made her dump the parasite eggs she had contained. I could use it to make her dump the enzyme acid she carried. But to do so I had to get close enough to send a powerful enough radio signal.
‘Sverl,’ I said, opening another channel.
‘Yes, I know about the snake drone,’ said Sverl.
‘I will come to you,’ I said.
‘Your presence is irrelevant,’ he replied, and cut me off too.
I squatted down by Sepia, and aug-linked to the biostats from her suit. When the stats told me she was alive, and not badly injured, I felt some of the tightness leave my chest. I gazed at her face, at the blood leaking from her nostrils, and stepped back. I needed to ensure we were all safe.
I next focused my attention out through cams on the Lance’s hull. Robots were still fighting each other out there – some were clinging to the hull too and trying to drive in diamond saws and drills. Some of those tentacle umbilici were also approaching. Still running extra programming, I assessed the situation, briefly considered tactics, then set things running. Anti-personnel lasers extruded and began firing, ripping into anything vulnerable to them. Steering thrusters fired up, plasma flames frying anything in reach. I fired the particle cannon, destroying one of the larger umbilici, but was unable to reach the rest. I then triggered the emergency explosive undocking procedure. The Lance jerked and rolled, then rose, the shattered remains of docking clamps falling away. I fired again, particle cannons and railguns spreading a steady wave of destruction from where we’d been secured, scrapped and burning robots tumbling out into the bay. I hit the nearest big grabs threatening us and turned them to glowing scrap, then I brought the ship back down again, engaging remora feet.
‘Attempt to take my ship again,’ I said, ‘and I will cut through to this location –’ I sent the coordinates of E676 back to the AI – ‘and will burn everything I find there.’
After a long pause E676 replied, ‘Understood.’
I glanced over towards the fallen robot. It was utterly still but for something shorting out where its tentacle face touched the floor. I walked over and took hold of the back end of the spine, but it was jammed in solid. It needed to be thinner to slide free. It needed to change its shape just as Penny Royal did with all its parts. Geometric patterns fled through my consciousness and the thing made a sound like blades passing over rock, loosened in its hole, and I pulled it out. The thing was narrower now and indented with deep grooves, small crystalline structures folding down its length.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Sepia. She slowly pulled herself upright, wiping at the blood below her nose. Such an archaic curse, I thought, and considered asking her where it had come from. Some sensitivity to my surroundings returned then and I realized she was staring at me with something close to terror. I glanced down at the robot again, then at the screen fabric. The rose sunlight from the hypergiant illuminated it well, giving us an excellent view of the glowing wreckage out there. I then looked across at Trent. The man was watching me carefully, his expression unreadable until memory presented me with many similar examples. People displayed this kind of dumb acceptance when things were just completely out their control. It was often writ on the faces of those who were confronted by Penny Royal.
Now I analysed what I had done. I had been a soldier, but I was no highly trained killer like Trent. I wasn’t physically boosted or augmented, yet I had just, in the matter of a minute, brought down a robot that was part war drone. Next, as if that had been nothing, I conducted two brief conversations before taking on and defeating a station AI. I understood then that the bleed-over from those other dead minds was affecting me on every level. Not only was I acquiring knowledge I hadn’t had before, but skills too. And all were working synergetically within me.
‘I’m going out after Sverl,’ I said. ‘I have to stop Riss.’ I glanced at Sepia again, whose stats told me she had cracked a couple of ribs. The prostrate Cole was unconscious but in no danger. I then focused my attention on Trent.
He reached over and picked up the laser carbine, frowned as he inspected it, then glanced speculatively into the rear annex.
‘Of course you are,’ he said.
Sverl
Sverl felt truly frightened for the first time in many decades. Things seemed to be slipping out of his control, because they had slipped out of his understanding.
What happened to Grey?
He’d felt his links to the Penny Royal Golem, John Grey, dissolve and dissipate. This happened just as the King’s Guard delivered its secret message to Spear. These factors, then Riss’s communication, had all increased Sverl’s sense of danger. He suddenly no longer trusted Spear – the man had obviously been undergoing some drastic changes anyway. And he was sure that Spear’s reply to Riss had been just for Sverl’s benefit. He must know Sverl had penetrated their communications. That the man was now controlling Grey was also a distinct possibility. Thereafter, all Sverl knew was that he had to get out of Spear’s ship . . .
In terms of choices, why should he die, so Spear and the others could survive? Should he sacrifice himself to prevent the destruction of Room 101? Was this what Penny Royal wanted of him? No, the AI was playing some other game here. Its interest in him had to be more than that, surely?
Just then, the station shuddered – another missile from the King’s Guard getting through. These strikes acted as a constant reminder of the reality of the situation. Was it a reality he was trying to deny, Sverl wondered.
He now clung to a series of pipes, crusted with odd metallic moulds and running the length of a warship assembly tube. Perhaps it was even the tube in which Spear’s ship had been built. As he did so, Sverl tried to see his way through his steadily waning panic. The certainty that Penny Royal intended more for him than his destruction here arose from the portions of his mind where that earlier panic was deeply rooted. In the human part of his mind, it came from what he might describe as the religious impulse. There was a need to attribute responsibility to a higher being, whilst feeling self-important enough to believe a higher being was interested. Certainty also arose in his prador self – from a similar arrogance and a greater belief in his own immortality. And, annoyingly, it had moved from both of these into his AI self. Sverl considered the idea of shutting down the two organic sources, to look at the situation more realistically, but just couldn’t do it. The mere thought of doing so now caused panic to return – the organic portions of his mind hanging on for grim death.
Penny Royal would not allow anything to destroy Room 101; Penny Royal would not let Sverl die.
‘Where now, Father?’ asked Bsorol, eyeing some centipede robot crawling along the pipes towards them, seemingly grazing on those metallic moulds.
Where now? Where was Penny Royal?
‘We need to establish a base,’ Sverl replied, trying to appear utterly firm. ‘From there I’ll be able to search through this station’s systems and eventually locate Penny Royal. When I have located the AI we go to it, and I at last get some answers.’
Answers? To what?
One of Sverl’s war drones slowly cruised down the length of the pipes to pause over the centipede robot. The thing stretched as if trying to reach it and the drone zapped it with a maser. At once it turned around and scuttled away. The drone swivelled round to return, then something hit it hard on the side, exploding and sending it gyrating away from the pipes.
‘Just one response!’ Bsorol snapped over the command channel. ‘We don’t have an endless supply.’
A second war drone fired a missile and the thing sped off, igniting its drive a short distance away. It shot down towards where the end of the assembly tube was filled with one of those massive worm cast growths. There, it hit and exploded – a brief flash was visible and a spreading cloud of debris. Sverl meanwhile keyed into data exchanges. The distant attacker had, again, been a highly mutated maintenance or construction robot. It seemed that was all the fragmented society of AIs here had available inside the station. There were no Polity war drones, thankfully – well, except for one . . .
‘They’ll try some sort of sneak attack next,’ said Sverl.
‘Yes, Father,’ Bsorol agreed, obviously still waiting to hear where they should go.
Sverl tried to pull back from his fear – for surely it issued from his amalgamated organic brain – and tried to think with the clarity of AI crystal. To know why Penny Royal would come here, he needed to resolve this place’s mystery. Nobody had a clear idea of what had happened here. The place had been under prador attack and it had escaped. But why had the Factory Station Room 101 AI taken the station out into the wilds like this, and here begun killing all its fellow AIs? What was the madness that infected it? And where was it now? There were intelligences scattered throughout the station – but there was no sign of the Room 101 AI. Had the others destroyed it?
‘We go that way,’ said Sverl, gesturing with one claw along the length of the assembly tube.
He had already snatched a station schematic from the mind of a maintenance robot, and now knew the physical location of the station AI at least. Sure, with its subminds and data nodes spread throughout the station it had been a partially distributed intelligence. But still, the bulk of its thought processes had run inside a large chunk of AI crystal. And this sat inside an armoured vault lying twenty miles ahead.
Bsorol settled beside him, reaching out and closing a claw around one of his limbs and used his suit impeller to set them in motion. As they travelled Sverl began to reach out, mentally, trying to reacquire his connection with Grey. At least he might find out if Spear had control of the Golem. This time a connection established at once.
‘Hello Sverl,’ came the reply.
‘What happened, Grey?’ he asked. ‘Does Spear control you?’
‘He does not yet know that he can.’
‘Are you still free?’
‘No, I never was.’
‘Who controls you?’
‘The same as always.’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think?’ Grey replied, and cut the connection.
Sverl felt his panic returning. He had been aiming for an encounter with Penny Royal all along and finally it might happen. However, he entertained the possibility that – after the debacle at the Rock Pool – he should have run just as far and as fast as he could away from all known space. He reached out through Room 101, checking other sensors and clouds of disrupted data for a sign of anything dark and spiny. Instead, he detected something snakish. There seemed a horrible inevitability to Riss’s presence here . . .
‘We need to go faster,’ Sverl snapped, abruptly knocking Bsorol’s claw away and turning on some of the hardware embedded in his ceramal skeleton. The grav-motor worked against surrounding matter in the same way as Riss’s motive power and shoved Sverl forwards. His accompanying children hurried to catch up and remain in a protective formation about him. As he travelled, he continually scanned and weaned data from his surroundings, and found himself necessarily altering the schematic in his mind.
The station had undergone many changes over the last century. Semi-sentient technology had turned large areas into those strange worm casts, and tangles of tentacles were sprouting everywhere – their pod-like fruit ready to disgorge strange insectile seeds. Wild nano- and microtech growths crusted many surfaces, and extra tunnels snaked haphazardly through the structure, lined with fused detritus as if made by some giant burrowing beetle. It was as if the AIs here had devolved into the very fauna and flora from which some of their programming and physical characteristics derived.
Soon reaching the end of the assembly tube, they came to a wide portal leading into an area tangled with strangely overgrown machinery. Sverl identified handler robots resembling steel bastardizations of the human’s god Kali. Maglev routing tubes were wrapped around with those other worm tubes. Dangling on thick threads of optic and power cables Sverl noted the glittery-eyed heads of hardfield conveyors, giant hydraulic arms and spider constructors. Large masses of coagulated wreckage and unused ship components were mounded up in some spaces or were drifting to the slow tidal pull of the hypergiant. Even deep within the station, the glare of that immense sun managed to penetrate; rather than needing to illuminate his surroundings, Sverl found it necessary to filter out the light.
Through a narrow channel, Sverl could see the edge of an octagonal runcible cargo portal, which he estimated to be a quarter of a mile across. This was where they had brought in pre-manufactured components. The area had been used for some assembly work, but components were mostly routed to mini-factories spread through the station. If anything was active in here, it would probably be perilous. But the place was dead. He propelled himself in.
Drifting down the channel to the runcible portal, Sverl checked the schematic again. Had the portal been working, its meniscus would have obstructed the way, and this would not have been an ideal route. However, this runcible, like all such within this station, was dead too.
‘We didn’t do this,’ said Bsorol, waving a claw at the surrounding devastation and snaking burrows.
No, the prador attack had not caused the damage here. It had been caused by AIs fighting inside the station, and the subsequent rebuilding by distorted minds and technology gone insane. Sverl began to note further strange anomalies: construction robots wound together in death grips, other robots half melted and stuck to the superstructure. One of the umbilici manipulators had a mummified human corpse in a space suit impaled on one limb. As they drew closer, the sights grew increasingly strange – further evidence of technology run riot. Robots lay tangled in vine-like growths sprouting from the walls. Strange crystalline growths issued from one of the big handler robots like some parasitic fungus. And another human corpse, with just the helmeted skull and one arm visible, lay embedded in solid metal. Spikes of glassy metal protruded from otherwise empty eye sockets.
They passed through the inactive runcible into the next receiving area. Here, Sverl detected a submind surviving in the runcible control mechanism. It was singing the same atonal song to itself over and over again. And it gave no response at all to Sverl’s probe.
‘Them bones them bones them dry bones,’ it sang.
Sverl shivered and was glad to be moving away from it.
At the end of this area, a growth resembling metallic lichen blocked the route leading towards the Room 101 AI. Sverl could see movement on it and, scanning closer, observed microbots slowly and meticulously building this thing. They were working like ants but with metal rather than organic matter – slicing it from a nearby collection of bubble-metal beams and working it into interlocking puzzle pieces before bringing them over and inserting them into place. There was order here, but no reason. As far as Sverl could tell, the structure they were building served no purpose at all. He estimated it would take them about two billion years to chew up the entire station.
‘Burn a way through,’ he instructed his children.
Bsorol and Bsectil moved forwards and opened fire, their beams converging on the mass and spiralling outwards. Metal vapour exploded out, white-hot, then rapidly cooling as it reached them. It left threadlike metallic crystalline growths on their armour. It took them some minutes and they even had to use their impellers to hold position – the thrust from the particle beams pushing them back. Finally, they cut through and made a wide enough hole. With a brief mental command, Sverl ordered one of his war drones through first. Bsorol followed with a couple of second-children in tow.
‘Clear,’ he said.
Sverl went after them, feeling uncomfortable about having wrecked what was perhaps a century of work by those microbots. Was that human guilt at kicking over a termite mound? It certainly wasn’t something a prador would feel.
On his internal map – that schematic – the tunnel was straight. But once inside it, he saw it turned sharply to the right and curved upwards. Scanning ahead, he saw the tunnel distorted into an almost perfect spiral. This was just like the work of those microbots: order and organization to seemingly no purpose. Feeling slightly baffled and rather claustrophobic in the constricted space, he followed his first-children along the winding course. Soon he began to see that more was involved than the pointless distortion of the station structure. Embedded in the walls were Golem, occasional maintenance robots and, in one case, another human corpse. Maybe this was the result of some sort of trap, so he checked his surroundings for anything still active, but all he found were near-somnolent patches of nanotech. However, those things set in the walls appeared with meticulous regularity, with any limbs arranged just so. Was this art?
Beyond the end of the tunnel, things returned to what you might expect around an assembly plant. It was as if some intelligence had managed to create an enclave of sanity. However, Sverl could detect nothing active in the vicinity. Beyond this zone, things became even more Byzantine than before. The station structure had been severely distorted, so that what lay ahead resembled a jungle of tree limbs up to a yard wide. They were all formed of compressed and twisted metals, plastics and composites. Deep inside this – seemingly the seed from which it all grew – rested a pill-shaped container a quarter of a mile across. Despite the strange protruding connections, Sverl still recognized it – the armoured abode of the Room 101 AI. With a feeling almost of dread, he advanced towards it.
Cvorn
The infection that had lost Cvorn one of his newly installed palp eyes was gone. But now his other palp eye was completely blind and beginning to sag. Diagnostics had revealed that the steady transformation of the young adult’s genome in those eyes by antejects had failed because of his own immune response to those same compounds. No matter – the palp eyes weren’t critical. Fortunately, a localized mutation of his own genome caused this, and did not extend to his nether regions. His body was steadily incorporating his new sexual organs. However, as he nibbled at pieces of jellied mudfish and washed them down with chasers of the foul-tasting stomach remedy, he wondered if his insides would ever return to normal.
Cvorn turned his attention back to the steadily expanding ship’s schematic on his screens. Sfolk had still managed to evade the ship’s security drones, so Cvorn had decided that the only remedy was a complete review of the altered schematic. To this end, his children were out with scanners. They were working their way through the ship, transmitting data directly back to him. This laborious manual method was the only reliable way of getting what he needed, as the ship’s system was completely in thrall to this false schematic. But the new schematic would not be ready before he reached the coordinates where his old destroyer had been annihilated.
Cvorn again checked the data on that incident and again found it frustratingly inconclusive. The second-child had kept the transmission open and plenty of data was available, but it still wasn’t clear what had fired on the destroyer. The destroyer’s sensors had detected Sverl’s ship, but at some considerable distance from its own arrival point. They had then perceived objects swinging round the red dwarf, but these were cloaked in a haze of EMR, and before identification was possible an energy surge occurred and the transmission ended.
Did Sverl have allies? Cvorn could think of no being, either prador or Polity, who might assume such a role. But regardless, he had taken precautions . . .
Cvorn stared at his screens, noting a small warning scrolling in one of them. The second-children must have discovered yet another part of the ship that hadn’t been there on the schematic. They’d already picked up a tunnel leading from this very sanctum to a grating two corridors away to which Sfolk must have cut the fixings. This was now blocked and the grating welded down. But it was vexing to find this so near . . . Cvorn abruptly did a double take. No, this new warning signalled something else entirely. This actually told him that some cams had gone offline towards the nose of the ship – cams in a corridor adjacent to an armoury.
‘Security Drones Four and Seven head to these coordinates,’ he instructed, in his excitement briefly losing control of his ability to aug them the instruction or coordinates. He waited, champing his mandibles, then inadvertently regurgitated a chunk of jellied mudfish. His ailments seemed determined to remind him of their presence. He swallowed, tried to remain calm, then sent the coordinates – simultaneously bringing up sensor feeds from the drones on two of his screens.
SD4 was the first to arrive on the scene, rounding a curve in the corridor next to where one of the cams was offline. The drone’s image feed briefly showed what lay ahead. Then the perspective shot up to the ceiling, before disappearing in a bright flash. A second later Cvorn heard the distant explosion and felt the rumble through the ship.
‘All drones converge on the coordinates of Drones Four and Seven!’ he instructed. ‘Beware mines!’ Next, he ran a replay of what the drone had seen. He saw a prador in the armour of a large first-child, slicing through the door into the armoury with a green-output quantum cascade laser.
Not so smart, he thought before panicking again, and belatedly checking on the contents of that armoury. It contained hand-held particle cannons, Gatling guns, missile launchers and a wide selection of explosives. With such weaponry, an armoured prador could wreak a great deal of havoc. But still, breaking in there seemed a foolish move. No matter how much havoc Sfolk caused, he would never get away from there – the security drones were just seconds away.
Now came the feed from SD7 as it slowed before the cam black spot. It framed an object stuck to the wall just above the floor and just below the ostensibly malfunctioning cam. Before Cvorn could issue instructions, the area in sight filled with metal flinders from Gatling fire and the mine detonated, taking out one wall of the corridor and part of the floor. Though he was aware that these drones contained second-child ganglions and could therefore think for themselves, he still said, ‘Get in fast and kill him.’
‘Understood, Father,’ replied the drone, rounding a smoke-filled corner and entering the stretch of tunnel Sfolk had previously occupied. At the far end, Cvorn glimpsed the remains of the other drone lying in burning wreckage. Sfolk must have used a planar explosive mine to cut the thing in half.
SD7 reached the doorway into the armoury – which was still smoking around its edges, with the door lying on the floor inside. The drone entered fast, swerved left then up and to the right. Cvorn caught one glimpse of a line scoring across a wall, spilling molten metal. More feeds opened up on Cvorn’s screens as the other drones started to arrive, then another of them blinked out. It was all too chaotic to absorb and would require decoding in his aug, which he wasn’t capable of right then. Abruptly he backed off his saddle, turned and headed for the sanctum door, retaining enough control to signal it to open ahead of him. There he paused for a second, considering bringing his blanks with him, but knew he wouldn’t have much control over them either.
‘Vlox!’ he called, routing that and his imperative clattering to the PA system. ‘You and armed children to me now!’
Four second-children clad in armour came at a run, skidding round the curve at the end of this tunnel, brandishing Gatling guns and particle cannons. They had been on station while the others were mapping the ship, just in case they uncovered Sfolk’s hideaway. Vlox came running after, unarmoured but now bearing a single-barrelled weapon. This was specifically designed to punch through prador armour and explode inside it. Cvorn liked that his new first-child was keeping on top of events and was thinking ahead. Vlox might even survive in his post for as long as Vrom.
‘Come!’ he said peremptorily, and set off.
Two of the second-children shot forward, tipping sideways and running along the curve of the tunnel wall to get past Cvorn’s bulk and settle in ahead. They soon reached a branch in the tunnel and headed right, following its curve down – already aware of where Cvorn wanted to go. Meanwhile, Cvorn managed to control himself enough to get imagery back from the drones’ cams. The armoury was now full of smoke, the green laser stabbing through it and signalling its source. The drones were targeting this with careful particle cannon shots. Cvorn felt briefly angry. Why weren’t they opening up with everything they had? Then he remembered just how dangerous it would be to do so at that location. This was quickly confirmed, as a further blast knocked out two cam views – but another showed Sfolk tumbling in a cloud of fire.
Very quickly, they drew closer to the sounds of conflict. Judging by the cam feeds, Cvorn reckoned Sfolk had realized he was finished, so now fought without regard for his own safety. One of the drones that the blast had knocked down had just recovered when the young adult leapt onto it. Another explosion ensued and Cvorn lost not only the cam feed from that drone but all other feeds too. Sfolk had destroyed the drone; Cvorn reckoned he had used the methods of a particularly feared human fighter during the war and had stuck a mine on the thing. Cvorn slowed down. Perhaps his impulse to rush down here to be in at the kill hadn’t been a great idea. Vlox took this opportunity to get past him and join the two second-children just as they reached the edge of the cam black spot. Together, they rounded the curve into the conflict zone.
It was getting seriously chaotic in there. Sfolk had managed to activate a particle cannon and he wasn’t reluctant to hit the munitions surrounding him. He was using them, in fact – deliberately hitting explosives whenever a drone drew near. Cvorn could feel the shock waves travelling down the tunnel and a moment later saw part of the wall panel blow out, hinging down like a ramp. Sfolk couldn’t last much longer now. His armour was beginning to glow and he’d lost three of his eight legs and part of one claw. Cvorn halted and decided to wait, but did not have to pause for long.
Another blast caused a cloud of flame to belch out of the hole in the wall. Then out shot Sfolk, hitting the far wall and crashing down again. His legs were now all missing on one side – the claw gone on that side too. However, in his other claw, he still held a particle cannon. He tried to right himself to face back towards his attackers but, at that moment, he must have spotted Cvorn and began to orient himself towards him. The second-children opened fire, the streams of slugs from four Gatling cannons driving the young adult back.
The onslaught sprayed metal flingers all around, denting Sfolk’s weakened armour. Vlox squatted and took careful aim, firing off five shots in quick succession, even the damped recoil of his weapon sending him skidding back each time. Three shots punched straight through the front of Sfolk’s armour. One went into his visual turret and one ricocheted off his claw and punched through the ceiling. Half a second later, fire spewed from those holes, the entire upper section of Sfolk’s armour lifted and hinged back on the explosions. Then he dropped like an eviscerated clam.
‘Good shooting,’ said Cvorn, pretending very little concern.
He headed over to the smoking remains. The grenades had spattered much of Sfolk’s insides on the walls, but had curiously left the upper and lower sections of his shell intact in the relevant armoured sections. Cvorn studied these, experiencing a momentary regret over the speed of Sfolk’s death. He reached out with one claw and flipped the upper section of carapace so it landed back in place, now sans Sfolk’s visual turret. He eyed the dark whorl in that shell he’d used to identify Sfolk and considered having Vlox collect all the shell and glue it back together as a trophy, then dismissed the idea. He had more important concerns, and if he was going to keep trophies, his first would be Sverl – stuffed and mounted.
‘Clear up this mess,’ he instructed Vlox, and turned away.
Riss
In the depths of Factory Station Room 101, the construction robot closed two clamp hands around Riss’s body. It tightened them like the hydraulic vices they were, applying a pressure that would have simply chopped through the prador parasite Riss aped. She didn’t struggle as the robot then extended a tool head and from that extruded a collimated diamond-chip saw and set it revolving. Had that saw been operating at sea-level air pressure on Earth, it would have produced sonic shocks, since its velocity would have far exceeded the speed of sound in that medium.
The saw blade touched Riss’s collar and with a puff of dust began to penetrate. The collar immediately began to issue a series of EM pulses. Riss’s thoughts decohered. She lost control of her electromuscle first, then all her other systems, in an accelerating cascade. Blindness across all sense bands ensued and, as Riss descended into darkness, she knew that the same EM pulses would disable the robot’s electrics too.
After an immeasurable length of time, for even Riss’s internal clock had gone down, the darkness receded and her thought processes began to cohere again. This reminded her of similar spells of darkness in her past: when Penny Royal had hollowed her out and her long somnolence next to Penny Royal’s planetoid. It conjured up moments of shutdown waiting, ever waiting, for a war that stubbornly refused to return. Sensors re-engaging, Riss quickly turned down light input, then felt movement – a continuous, almost seismic, shuddering. She recognized this from the previous attack on this station. These were the vibrations caused by particle beams getting through to the hull and carving it up. She had to get moving; she had to get this done.
Riss tried to wriggle free but couldn’t, then eyed the two halves of her collar, floating just a few feet away. At least that had worked. Any interference with the collar would have resulted in an EM burst that would have knocked Riss out, along with any other robot nearby. Once she had full control of the construction robot, it had therefore been necessary to reprogram its hydraulic system. She’d had to simplify the collar’s removal method so the robot could still get the job done, despite the EM pulses. But now Riss had another problem: her reprogramming had neglected to include the robot opening its clamp hands.
Riss strained against them and cursed. This was ridiculous. She ceased struggling, pulled back mentally and tried to analyse the problem properly. The solution arrived a moment later and she felt stupid, perhaps as stupid as any organic entity. Scanning the robot, she assessed what the EM pulses had done to it. The thing was somnolent, scrambled, but had suffered no physical damage. Now free of the collar, Riss forged a radio link with the robot and began to reprogram it – pasting together many of the blocks of code that remained. After a moment, it shook itself, released Riss, went back down on all fours and began scanning for microfractures in the floor to repair. But not for long.
The plasma blast wave, like a wall of glowing glass travelling through the vacuum in the corridor, picked up both Riss and the drone and sent them tumbling. Another weapon had hit inside the final construction bay. This was not good at all, since the protective hardfields defending that part of the station had been the best overall at one time.
Regaining her balance and adhering to the floor with her remora setting, Riss squirmed past the robot. It was now floating above the floor, moving its limbs aimlessly. Glancing back, she saw the robot spit out sticky string and drag itself back down, whereupon it began inspecting for fractures again. Riss was oddly glad – she was grateful to the thing, after all. All her systems were fully functional now and she even still had that flask inside her, containing something nasty she could inject with her ovipositor. Probing her surroundings and weaning usable data from the chaos, she began to build up a map of the surrounding area of station and soon related it to an old schematic of the station stored in her memory. Suddenly she halted. She had been here before.
Some distance ahead lay the assembly tube for a design of destroyers commissioned long after Penny Royal had departed this place. It was down this that Sverl and his children had gone – they could hardly keep their location secret in a station packed with damaged robots and AIs spilling data from their ruptured minds. Instead of heading along the most obvious route there, Riss writhed up a wall and entered a small tunnel. For a drone with her body shape, this was a quicker route. In a sense, this also took her back into her past, which might provide her with a further weapon – one she had not used in a very long time.
Riss followed two further tunnels on her schematic and the last of these brought her out into a corridor she had been in before. She writhed partway down the wall, noting that the shifts in the station had partially crushed the corridor. But the human remains of three people were still here.
Ah . . . if wishes were . . . fishes.
The woman, now a partially mummified corpse resting back against the wall, had said that – just before blowing her brains out with a pulse-gun. The two on the floor had taken curare 12 beforehand. All three had known they had no chance of escaping the station. They knew that the steady temperature rise, caused when Room 101 switched the heat-sink runcible to ‘import’, would kill them. Riss studied the woman. She had obviously decayed for a while. But during that process, some breach had opened this corridor to vacuum and her remains had dried out, mummifying them. Riss could see the glint of metal inside the woman’s busted-open skull and the intagliation of carbon electronics on the inner faces of some pieces on the floor. Here was Riss’s first experience of wartime deaths. Seeing this again somehow formed a link between her present self and the naive young drone that had found these people. She felt loss and confusion, and an expansion of some inner darkness as she moved on.
Another tunnel took her through to a chamber from which many such tunnels debarked and thence to the small tubular autofactory that had made her. It was wrapped up now, at the centre of one of those huge worm casts. She entered the factory – quietly, since she could detect skittering movement in the newer structure all around. Robots had stripped out most of the factory. However, during the heat of battle and the ensuing insanity of Room 101, they had not taken everything. A long snakish body was stuck against one curved wall by a spill of some transparent epoxy. It was all jointed spine, plaited electromuscle and flexible components. Its head consisted only of a cylindrical turret topped with an eye, faded to grey. This had to be one of the drones behind Riss on the assembly line. Had certain things occurred aboard this station only a matter of minutes earlier, this would have been Riss’s fate too.
The prador . . .
It was the correct response to feel rage towards them. They had attacked the Polity, they had been responsible for the incineration of inhabited worlds and the deaths of billions. They had equally been responsible for this object before her and those pitiful remains in that corridor. Hate was the right response, yet . . . Riss found something inside her that just didn’t fit. Without the prador, this station would never have existed. Without them, she, Riss, assassin drone, would not have existed either.
Certainty tottered, but Riss closed the black eye she had been using to study this nearest of her kin and turned away. She existed to kill prador – and with the end of the war the purpose of her existence, supposedly, had ended. She had waited and in some sense was still waiting for that war to begin again. She had faced lean times, but Sverl would mark the end of them. The war might be over, but she could still find reasons to kill these obnoxious creatures.
Riss moved on and into a supply area. This place seemed stripped out too and Riss felt her hopes of finding what she sought beginning to fade. Then she spotted the inset door and read the dusty writing on it. She headed over and gripped the manual handle made for human hands with her small manipulators. Bracing her body against the wall, she pulled the handle down and heaved the door open. Inside were numerous shelves and all were empty but one, and here rested three small flasks. Riss scanned them deeply, finding the contents of all three were alive, in their way, but in stasis – a biological trait of their kind. Riss writhed into the room, opening her body, and loaded all three cylinders inside her, before writhing out again.
Now she was complete. She once more contained prador parasite eggs and could inject them into her prey. Despite feeling packed and gravid, she felt no satisfaction or any anticipation of future release. Perhaps it would return to her. Perhaps Spear was right about Penny Royal taking away hope, which was something that could surely always return.
By tunnels small and large, past metal growths like fungus, Riss headed off in pursuit of Sverl.
The Brockle
With one of its units plugged into the U-space transmitter, the Brockle reached out into near space to set up a constant watch for the single-ship. Fortunately, the ships used to transport prisoners here were stripped down and unsophisticated. They did not possess the more modern U-space transmitters that were capable of sending and receiving while in U-space. This meant that the ship would receive no instructions from Earth Central until it actually surfaced in near space. The Brockle had no doubt that then Earth Central, or some other AI, would try to strong-arm the Brockle’s submind aboard – forcing it to take the single-ship back under and away from there. This it could not allow, because the single-ship was a requirement for the subterfuge it was about to enact. The moment that ship surfaced, the Brockle would immediately reabsorb the submind of itself it contained and take complete control.
Leaving the unit attached to the U-space transmitter in place, the Brockle coagulated back into human form, floating amidst the shredded remains of Antonio Sveeder’s corpse. This watcher had delivered Earth Central’s message and the Brockle still had the opportunity to heed it. It had not yet done anything criminal for, in destroying the watcher, it had not actually killed a sentient entity. It considered all the legalities and illegalities of remaining here or heading off. But, in the end, it all came down to something quite simple. It was bored with those usually sent for interrogation here: the humans were all the same in their self-justification and their parochial mindsets, and the more interesting machine intelligences sent were increasingly rare. In fact, the Brockle had not interrogated one in decades. No, it had made its decision.
Abruptly propelling itself into motion, it headed to the back of the hibernation chamber, through the airlock and back down the length of the Tyburn. It was headed towards what had been its abode for over eighty years. As it travelled, it considered what other preparations it would need to make. It had no physical belongings other than itself. All it really needed was data. Although, even as it thought this, it found itself outside the room in which Ikbal and Martina lay comatose.
The Brockle had by no means gleaned everything of use from their minds, and even their bodies might contain some stray useful data – perhaps recorded to the memory of a medical nanobot or some nanofactory attached to the wall of an artery. It could take them with it and continue its interrogation, but felt reluctant to so burden itself. Or it could leave them and forgo that data, which it was also loath to do. However, an alternative existed.
It entered and gazed down at the two humans prostrate on the floor. Extracting data while keeping them intact and alive would take meticulous work and time it did not possess, for the single-ship was perhaps only days away. With a thought, it knocked out grav in the room, then began to separate. In a moment the silver worms of its body were shoaling around the two forms, which it now lifted from the floor until they were floating a couple of yards above it. It simply tore away and discarded their clothing, which it had previously carefully returned to their bodies. It had already examined every thread down to the nanoscopic level. Inserting its own nano-fibres and data drills along the entire length of their bodies, it began examining them, soon deploying meniscus blades. These cut skin and flesh away for secondary examination and full atomic recording before it discarded them. It found nanobots from the medical packages all modern humans ran and recorded their memories and physical data. Then, entering the skulls of Ikbal and Martina, it raised them out of coma, because mental examination was always better when the candidate was conscious. At this point it noticed them screaming, but that soon stopped when certain items were removed.
Where did the definition of death lie when everything could be recorded? At what point is murder committed when the victim is being converted into data? Soon shoaling amidst a spreading gory cloud, the Brockle pondered these philosophical points as it destructively recorded everything these two people were. It would take them with it, as part of itself, sure that what it was doing was not murder. However, it wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Earth Central or other Polity AIs would see it that way.