16

 

CVORN

Cvorn stared at his screens in disbelief, at the swirling dust and gas, at the particle beams punching through and the swarms of missiles closing on a target that was no longer there. He had expected Sverl to U-jump before receiving too much damage to be able to do so. He had expected then to follow Sverl to another location and some desperate harpooned-fish defence, and there peel his ship like the shell of a mollusc to get to the soft centre. Now he wanted to rage, shriek and tear something apart.

The data. The damned data.

Cvorn ran it again in his aug, and again. Here was the hole he hadn’t seen. Here was the option he had been unable to cover. The Polity had done stuff like this during the war when the prador had centred on a major target amidst minor ones, like a dreadnought amidst attack ships. They had intersected all their U-fields, then twisted and changed them so that the attack ships threw out fields large enough to be considered a dreadnought. During U-jump transition, mass readings became indistinguishable, and then all ships headed off to different locations.

Cvorn ground his mandibles together, backed off from saddle and screens and turned full circle, stamping his feet against the floor in frustration.

Damned data.

Sverl’s shielding was so damaged he had had no chance of preventing Cvorn obtaining his ship’s U-signature and thus his next destination. He had known that, and so confused the issue. Cvorn did not know which field related to which ship. The five vessels had also headed off to destinations all at wild variance. He now had a one-in-five chance of choosing the right one, unless he got smart and figured something out.

Cvorn still wanted to tear things up, but instead he shut down his weapons and issued recalls to those missiles he could call back. Meanwhile, he headed across to the other side of his sanctum and pulled open a medstore. He took out a sausage of smart cement, snipped a piece off and slapped it over where his left palp eye had been. As the cement softened and deformed to ooze in and fill the hole, leaking analgesics and pathogen killers, the pain there died and Cvorn began to get over the urge to throw a tantrum.

“You,” he said, opening communications with the second-child aboard his old destroyer, “recall what missiles you can and return.”

“Sure thing, Father,” said the second-child. Cvorn studied its image down in one facet of his screen array and wondered if it was time to have the child replaced. It had perhaps spent too long away from its family, and certainly too long away from the airborne pheromones that enforced obedience. Then, while he gazed at the second-child, he realized the odds had changed. He could send the destroyer the child occupied after one of the five vessels, and have it report by U-com the moment it found out which it had pursued.

This glimmer of hope, on top of the pain in his visual turret fading, raised Cvorn’s mood and he began to think more positively. Returning his attention to the U-signatures, he began to try gleaning what he could from their minor differences. He related them to astrogation and soon learned that every destination was a planetary system. He now began examining these closely.

The first he checked, because it had at once seemed familiar, turned out to be the world where Cvorn had originally set his ambush to catch Sverl. Now, supposing this signature related to Sverl’s dreadnought, why would he go there? It seemed an odd choice—did that make a more likely one? That might be the case, so Cvorn marked that world as a definite possibility.

The second signature related to a binary star system at the far edge of the Graveyard. Examining data available on this, Cvorn could see no way in which it could give Sverl any kind of tactical advantage. But then perhaps that was the point.

One more signature was to a hypergiant sun. This lay outside the Graveyard and, with its complex collections of surrounding astronomical objects, offered possibilities for Sverl. Cvorn began analysing the system and at once saw that it did offer more such advantages than the other two, and so listed the destinations in order of advantage to Sverl. However, even as he did this, he felt a leaden depression, knowing that the system with the most advantage might mean Sverl was heading there or that it was the most likely decoy. Then there were the two remaining destinations, which were highly problematic.

One lay inside the Polity and one lay inside the Kingdom. The first Cvorn felt he did not need to study at all because Sverl would most likely not get there. He’d be picked up by a Polity watch station—then be knocked out into the real either by its USER or by a U-space mine or missile deployed by one of the new Polity attack ships. Perhaps that was his intention. Perhaps he intended to scream for help from the Polity, hoping to turn Polity defences against Cvorn, and see Cvorn destroyed. Then at least he might survive as a captive of the AIs.

The Kingdom did not have quite such efficient U-space defences, but it did have detector gear. Sverl would probably get through there and head just beyond the secondary and much tighter U-space minefields surrounding the home world. When he arrived he would almost certainly be surrounded by the home world King’s Guard squadron just moments later. Cvorn was sure the king would be aware of the threat to his rule that Sverl represented. He would therefore annihilate his ship without further ado. This destination struck Cvorn as the least likely. But then again, did that in turn make all the others more likely decoys? What would Sverl gain by heading there? He would die. But if Cvorn followed, he was certain to die too.

Frustrated and feeling that he was getting nowhere, Cvorn struck the Polity and Kingdom destinations from his list and focused on the others. Now he examined the U-fields more closely and compared their parameters to a recording he had made from Sverl’s ship during its last U-jump. None of them matched completely. This could be because of the mass Sverl’s dreadnought had shed by sending out that old attack ship and kamikazes, also because of the damage Cvorn had inflicted. The closest match was the one heading to the ambush world, while the one most at variance was the one heading to the binary system. He studied the parameters over many hours, glancing at the alert that told him all the self-drive missiles were back in their weapons cache. Then he noticed the alert informing him that his destroyer was ready to dock, to which he briefly responded by telling the second-child aboard to stand off and wait. Nothing revealed itself—nothing to change the odds. Then, despite striking them from his list, he ran a U-fields comparison for those vessels heading for the Polity and the Kingdom. It was with a feeling of inevitability that he studied the results and found they were the closest match to Sverl’s original field.

In the end, it came down to a very simple reality. The hypergiant was the one that gave Sverl the greatest tactical advantage, and was the most likely decoy. Sverl was very smart, so in a way Cvorn felt that the other prador might exclude the hypergiant. Sverl might head to a location that was neither the most likely decoy nor the most tactically advantageous. After all his checking, all his calculations, all his thought on the matter, Cvorn realized he could rely on only one thing, and that was instinct. He liked the ambush world; just its sheer oddity as a choice made him feel that this was where Sverl would head.

“Child,” he said to the second-child aboard his destroyer, “you will at once head to this destination.” Cvorn sent the coordinates of the hypergiant. “Upon your arrival open constant U-com and keep me updated with what you find there. I will pick up on it when I surface from U-space.”

“Will do, Dad,” said the second-child.

This reminded Cvorn that he definitely needed to straighten that child out, but he wouldn’t do it yet.

He next sent the coordinates of the ambush world to his ST dreadnought’s ship mind, and ordered immediate pursuit. The dreadnought accelerated on fusion, since even it did not possess the tech for a standing jump into U-space. Twenty minutes later Cvorn watched his destroyer disappear, and ten minutes after that he felt a wave of distortion pass through his body as his own ship submerged into that baffling continuum.

TRENT

“So what’s this all about?” asked the catadapt woman, Sepia.

“I’ve no idea,” Trent replied, observing the prador moving towards them. He turned to Rider Cole. “You?”

The mind-tech was squatting over the shellwoman whose body was complete, but who had lost an outer prador carapace. She now wore a skin of silver grey. He had attached a reader induction ring around her head and was studying data on a touch screen. He looked up.

“No idea either,” he replied, his expression slightly lost.

Trent had not liked the idea of letting Cole make even a cursory examination of the shell people, because the man might be tempted to start tinkering. But what choice did Trent have? He needed to do something to stop these people committing slow suicide. Cole was assessing them for any organic damage, caused either in the past or by the recent hormonal control. He had said that he couldn’t do much anyway while they remained in such a state of somnolence. Trent didn’t believe him.

Cole abruptly shook his head and stabbed a finger towards the approaching prador, scattered about a grav-sled bearing a large bulky object into Quadrant Four.

“But that thing looks old and it looks like human manufacture.”

Trent eyed the thing. It was a huge squat cube decorated with thick pipes, power sockets and exterior tanks. It had sets of cooling fins both on its surface and as separate components sitting on coils of superconductor. One face was clear of such items and inset in this was a ring, punctuated all round with circular hatches. With all the exterior gear and attachment points, it looked like some large component extracted from a ship, or maybe an autofactory. He recognized something about it, but couldn’t nail it down.

As it drew closer, Bsorol moved over, leading a small party of second-children. Trent knew that the first-child was all right, but he didn’t like the idea of second-children milling about so many somnolent and vulnerable human beings. He headed over, Sepia falling into step beside him. But Cole remained intent on his studies of the shellwoman’s brain structure and slow neural firings.

The sled arrived beside the line of shell people laid out on the floor, and immediately one of the second-children went over and picked up one of them. Meanwhile, other children were opening power ports in the floor, reeling out cables and plugging them in, and the object on the sled started to emit puffs of vapour.

Trent broke into a run, heading for the second-child now cradling a shellman sans legs and with a deep sealed cavity where his intestines had been. “Wait! What the hell are you doing?”

Bsorol clattered something and the second-child dropped its load heavily on the floor and rapidly backed up. Trent stooped down by the man, turned him over onto his back and checked the small circular monitor attached to his chest while Bsorol clattered some more then cracked a claw against the second-child’s back. Trent flinched even at this common violence of prador society. The second-child bubbled grudgingly and went off to help its fellows with the power lines. The monitor showed a mild concussion that the man’s nano-package was already repairing. And, even as Trent watched, the man stabilized and settled back into hypersleep. Trent stood and headed over to Bsorol.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Father’s orders,” Bsorol replied, waving a claw towards the thing on the sled.

“I think I know what that is,” said Sepia.

“What orders?” Trent asked.

“He wants them to survive and we have to prepare,” said the first-child.

“For what?”

“You need to talk to Thorvald Spear—he will give you detail.”

“It’s a zero freezer,” said Sepia.

Bsorol turned slightly to face her. “It has the capacity to deal with all of them, whereupon they will have to go into insulated containers with independent refrigeration.”

“What?” said Trent. He now recognized the thing—not the whole of it because he had never seen one entire, but the hatches. Polity Medical had used these things in some hospital ships during the war, when casualties had been coming in too fast for capacity. Trent, who had been born after the war, had visited some of the highly popular war virtualities. In one he had seen a freezer like this being used.

“You’re going to freeze them?” he asked.

There were dangers, especially in freezing people as damaged as these. Trent wanted to object, to stop this, but was also attracted to the idea of putting the problem that these shell people represented on hold.

“Spear has more information, you say?”

“He will explain,” Bsorol confirmed, now turning to the second-children. Having plugged the zero freezer into the ship’s power, they were now gathering before him. “This child will take you to him.” Bsorol gestured to the second-child he had earlier berated.

Trent eyed the creature. He hoped that it was too frightened of Bsorol to do anything nasty, but did not think for a moment that anything beyond fear, or a large gun, might stop it. He groped down towards his hip where once he had holstered his pulse-gun and wondered if the empathic feelings Penny Royal had burdened him with applied to prador. He didn’t need to think for long. He had winced when Bsorol hit that second-child earlier. He had felt its pain.

“Are you coming?” he asked, turning to Sepia.

“You’re going to see Spear?” she asked.

She appeared nonchalant about it but Trent guessed her feelings were otherwise. In him, when they were in the cage, she had seen someone she had categorized as an operator, accustomed to violence, and just the kind of ally she had needed. Perhaps she had, briefly, considered him as someone she would have liked to know better. But he hadn’t behaved as expected, and when she saw how he was with Reece, she’d become distant. However, the moment she and Spear got close to each other, it seemed the air between them fizzed. Trent understood that his earlier self would have been jealous, even though he had no claim on Sepia. That wasn’t the case now.

“Yes. Spear,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” she replied. Next, glancing at the second-child, she dropped a hand to the pulse-gun she wore. She’d also found a laser carbine that she carried slung on her back. Perhaps her disappointment in Trent as protective muscle had made her more careful about her own safety.

“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing to the second-child.

The creature snipped its claws then clattered something. Bsorol whipped round to face it, whacked it on the back again and clattered a reply. It cringed, bubbled, then turned away to head towards the exit from Quadrant Four. As he followed, Trent imagined the content of that conversation. The second-child had probably sought some confirmation that these were humans it couldn’t eat and Bsorol had clarified the matter.

“Like a lot of people in Carapace City, I always watched the news feeds about new arrivals,” said Sepia as they stepped out into one of the ship’s corridors. “If available, those feeds presented potted biographies. You were Isobel Satomi’s most trusted lieutenant, a dangerous man, a killer. What happened?”

Trent felt himself go cold. It was almost as if she was keying into his earlier thoughts.

“Penny Royal,” he replied briefly.

“What?”

“There’s a possibility that it wasn’t the black AI, though,” he said contemplatively. “I was handed over to the Polity and then into the tender care of a forensic AI.” Trent blinked—memories of a bloody maelstrom sunk deep in his mind surfacing for a moment. “It could have been the Brockle, the forensic AI, that changed me. But I’m sure it happened before then. I’m sure it was Penny Royal that tampered with my mind.”

“Uh . . . forensic AI . . . you’re an outlaw who was sentenced to death by the Polity long ago. How the hell did you get away?”

He glanced at her. “It just released me. It’s complicated, but I’m sure part of the reason it did so is because of what Penny Royal did to me. I’m no longer the threat I was.”

“That’s not enough—death sentences are supposed to be immutable.”

“There was some pressure as well.” He shrugged. “Politics.”

She nodded acceptance of that. She was a citizen of the Graveyard and so, unlike most Polity citizens, did not trust in the unalterable justice of the AIs. Those who had lived outside the Polity for any length of time began to see the rust under the paintwork and soon understood that things were never as neat and definitive as often portrayed in that realm.

“So what did Penny Royal do?”

“It gave me empathy, or a conscience, or both, though I would say that one is a product of the other,” Trent replied. “I feel the pain I cause.”

They walked on in silence behind the second-child, then Sepia asked, “Do you regret the change?”

Trent was about to reply that yes, he certainly did, but then reconsidered. Sure, possessing such empathy limited his ability to act. It was painful, traumatic, but only because he functioned in a world where pain and trauma were common. However, he now felt larger, more connected and open to ways of thinking that hadn’t been within his compass before. When he reflected on how he used to be, he saw a limited man, a cipher. The traumas of his early life and the violence of it thereafter had severed and cauterized his emotions and thought processes. He also saw a man who could never have felt the way he now felt about Reece, but whether that was a good thing, he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know,” was all he would concede.

Was that really what Penny Royal had done? He labelled the change he had undergone as the addition of empathy and conscience, but maybe the black AI had given him nothing at all. Maybe Penny Royal had merely decalcified his brain, scraped the crap off all those functions that had shut down and set them running again. Perhaps conscience and empathy had been petrified and, because they were working again after so long, they felt very raw.

The second-child finally arrived at a wide diagonally divided door, inserted a claw into a pit control beside it for a moment, then stepped back. The door opened into a massive airlock with an identical door at the other end. The prador gestured them inside.

Sepia led the way in, saying, “I notice only the first-children have translators.”

Trent followed her in, a short while later the door rumbling closed behind him. “Maybe it’s better we don’t understand what the second-children say about us.”

“Maybe it’s better they don’t understand what we say about them,” said Sepia. “Seems to me they’re a little lacking in self-control.” She raised her voice with the last few words as the doors opening ahead of them released a cacophony.

Spear’s destroyer sat in the huge hold beyond. Welding spatters were spraying the floor, from robots clustered over it like wasps over a rotting banana. A jointed arm towards its rear end was extending what looked like a complete fusion drive. Second-children were scurrying here and there. Some wore exoskeletal worksuits bristling with tools, others were loaded down with materials. It took a second for Trent to realize what was odd about the picture, then he noted various objects just hanging in the air or scribing straight courses between workers. He understood that grav was off in that area.

While studying the vessel, Trent remembered his first sight of it from the Moray Firth. He and Gabriel had speculated on whether Isobel would give either of them the captaincy of it, after she inevitably ordered them to murder Spear. That was before Spear used a prion weapon to paralyse them and head away with this ship. That was also before Isobel, while transforming into a hooder, had eaten Gabriel.

The second-child who had guided them here clattered something and scuttled off. Trent watched it go, then turned back to the scene before them.

“What can you tell me about him?” Sepia asked.

Trent didn’t need to ask who the “him” might be. “Ex-bio-espionage agent during the war. Resurrected only recently after mouldering in a memplant for a hundred years, but still fucking dangerous. He played Isobel easily and took that ship right out from under her.” Trent nodded towards the Polity destroyer. “He could have killed her and me, but didn’t.” He glanced at Sepia. “And you’ve already seen how smart he is.”

“I’ve seen,” she said.

“So what do you think of him?”

“He looks at me as if he wants to eat me,” she said.

“Surely you’re used to that?”

“Yes, but I get the impression that there might be screaming and blood involved when it’s one of them doing the looking.” She stabbed a thumb behind in the direction the second-child had taken.

“I guess he might seem a little intense,” said Trent.

“Fucking terrifying might be a better description.”

“Enough to drive you away?”

“Definitely not,” she replied. “Shall we go in?”

As they stepped into the hold, a voice called, “This way!”

The snake drone Riss rose out of a floating pile of debris, hovering in mid-air like some weird exclamation mark, then nosed out and writhed towards the destroyer. Her movements were just like a snake, only one that had found invisible ground level, a yard above the floor.

“What’s this about, Riss?” Trent asked, now trying to dismiss the previous conversation from his mind. He was uncomfortable with it and with the fact that he had wanted to continue, to ask Sepia about Reece. It was the kind of exchange he would never have had before—all that relationship stuff. The full extent of his relationships up until the events on Masada had usually involved a secured payment beforehand.

“It’s about our best chance of survival,” the drone replied.

Trent moved to the edge of the hold and from there propelled himself to the mass of cables. He landed heavily, as it had been a while since he had moved about in zero gravity. Sepia sailed past him after the drone, neatly catching the edge of the airlock it had entered, flipping over and coming down on her feet. Trent followed, landed a bit better this time and propelled himself inside after her—then crashed down on his shoulder.

“Grav’s on in here,” she observed.

“No shit,” he replied, struggling to his feet.

They found Spear on a bridge lined with screen fabric displaying various scenes from the work ongoing all around.

“They’re zero freezing the shell people,” said Trent.

Spear gazed at him for a moment, then at Sepia, but the charge between them seemed to have waned a little. He then pointed up at one of the screen frames, which showed the open hold of the destroyer. “We’ll put them in insulated caskets—one hundred per cent heat sealed—and pack them in there. They won’t take up all the room, but that’s because not one of them is actually a whole human being. It’s good that they aren’t, otherwise we wouldn’t have room for Sverl’s second-children.”

“What?” was all Trent could manage.

“We’re tearing out the human quarters now to make room for Sverl, Bsorol and Bsectil—plus Sverl’s war drones. And we should be able to fit other encased child-minds into the weapons cache.”

Riss issued a contemptuous snort at this.

“We’re leaving?” asked Sepia.

Spear glanced at the drone first, obviously annoyed at its attitude, then looked at Sepia. “Perhaps the best way I can put it is that there is a one-in-five chance that we will have to if we want to stay alive.”

“Back up a bit there, will you, and explain?” said Trent tiredly.

“Did you understand what happened last time we surfaced into the real?” Spear asked.

“No,” Trent replied.

He did know that Cvorn had attacked them. He had found himself hanging onto a wall pit control while the ship shuddered around him and grav fluctuated. And he did see part of the upper wall of Quadrant Four bulge and break open like a ripe boil, to spew white-hot gases high above. This was apparently from a shield projector melt-down. But he knew that wasn’t what Spear was getting at.

“Let me explain,” said Spear.

Trent listened and pondered why, once again, frying pans and fires seemed to be part of his destiny.

SVERL

Sverl perambulated about inside his sanctum, inspecting terrariums, aquariums, his little glasshouse and some freestanding plants. He studied some of the other projects he had used to occupy his time ever since the war. He eyed a process for cold-growing AI crystal, much as it grew inside him, and another to isolate his original genetic tissue from the mishmash he now contained. The idea had been that one day he might even be able to grow himself a new prador body. He checked on an attempt to isolate the human genetic tissue within him and identify it by running searches through the massive collections of genomic files in the Polity. As he moved on to peer at the strewn-out parts of a disassembled piece of U-space drive, he realized he wasn’t contemplating what to work on next, but saying goodbye.

For many reasons Riss’s idea was a good one. Cvorn would finally trace them to Factory Station Room 101 and might arrive before they had completed their business there—whatever that might be. But whatever happened, his dreadnought would not be able to survive another encounter with Cvorn. It was already severely damaged, low on munitions and low on stored energy. He needed a method of escape but he also needed a way of actually getting aboard the Factory Station. Riss’s idea that they use Spear’s destroyer to access it, because the automated defences should not react to it, solved both these problems. What would happen thereafter, he had no idea. But Penny Royal was due here, so they could finally confront the black AI. That was all he needed to know.

Not bothering to return to his prador controls—he performed most tasks mentally now—he studied how things were progressing with Spear’s destroyer. His robots and children had almost repaired it and the only thing it lacked was a mind that could drop it into U-space. They wouldn’t need that for the short trip from this dreadnought to Room 101. And, anyway, it was a position Sverl himself could occupy if Flute did not return from his decoy mission. The shell people, all zero frozen and secured in their containers, were now on their way down to the ship. Bsorol and Bsectil were already there, installing Sverl’s war drones and other mind cases in the weapons cache. The remaining second-children were on their way too. All that remained was for Sverl to head over, but still he was hesitant. Now was the time for a course he had been avoiding. He had admitted to himself that his ship, complete and unguarded, was vulnerable. Cvorn would annihilate it as it was, so now it was time for drastic measures to try to save at least some of what he had here.

Like all prador dreadnoughts, Sverl’s ship, when constructed, was an indivisible chunk of technology. Wrapped around its father-captain like layers of armour, it either survived or died with him. However, Sverl had noted the utility of the idea used in some wartime Polity ships of breaking them into a series of components and firing them off on different courses. This option might render a ship unusable, but Polity forces could retrieve surviving components to reassemble them into a whole ship, or to serve as parts of another one. Sverl had taken the idea and applied it to his own dreadnought. The first problem he had faced was that the major complete component was the exotic metal hull wrapped around the rest. It had been necessary to cut it, which made it weaker—a weakness that was part of his problems now with Cvorn. He had then made lines of division, liberally scattered with planar explosives, shear fields, hardfields and rocket motors to provide motive power. He had distributed power sources and other items between them and thus, in the end, Sverl had indeed divided his ship into its eight quadrants. They all contained living quarters, holds, supplies, weapons and other essential items. Two respectively contained the fusion engines and the U-space drive, while the latter also contained Sverl’s sanctum.

Sverl set into motion the automated preparations for division, diverting energy to distributed power storage and lining up command sequences in the system. It took just a moment for the ship to be ready, since it needed little physical preparation—its main task being to close and seal bulkhead doors. Shortly after it surfaced from U-space, the planar explosives and shear fields would be ready to sever physical connections. The hardfields would be ready to throw the quadrants apart, the rockets would send them on courses about the numerous astronomical objects in Room 101’s system.

That’s it, then . . .

Sverl turned and headed to his sanctum door. As the two halves rolled back into the wall he paused, realizing that, though he had often opened and closed these doors to allow others to enter and leave, it had been many years since he himself had stepped beyond them. He stood there, staring into the corridor beyond, analysing his reaction in intricate detail. Then he understood that such an analysis wasn’t required: he was just a tad agoraphobic and frightened.

“I need to get out more,” he said, using human words, and headed out into the corridor.

Within a few minutes, he reached a wide dropshaft—the kind of transport not usually found aboard a prador vessel—programming his route ahead. Irised gravity fields dragged him through his ship, finally depositing him through a ceiling hatch in a grav-plated corridor. He landed with a heavy thump and behind he heard shrieks and panicked bubbling, and turned to eye a couple of second-children he had just avoided crushing. They backed away from him in confusion then, as his pheromonal output reached them in all its intensity, they paused.

“Father?” one of them clattered.

“Of course,” he clattered back.

All his children had known about the changes he had been undergoing, but few of them had actually seen him. Certainly, few of his second-children had come face-to-face with him in decades.

“Shall we proceed?” he asked, waving a claw ahead.

Hugging close to the wall, they scuttled past him, heading on towards the hold containing Spear’s destroyer. He sighed to himself and followed, stepping through after them into organized chaos.

The shell people were now arriving—within hundreds of coffin-sized caskets loaded on a series of grav-sleds now the grav was back on in here. If each of these caskets had only been capable of holding one shell person, then there would not have been near enough of them, nor enough space in the destroyer for them. However, some of these contained as many as three or four people, frozen together and interlocked like a meat supply. All of them were filled with special anti-freezes and cell preservers, so that even at a temperature just ten degrees above absolute zero they would become pliable. They could then be separated and placed individually into whatever medium or device would be required for their revivification.

Sverl eyed this scene and peered closely at the small gathering of humans towards the nose of the ship. They in turn were watching Bsorol and Bsectil guiding war drones through a hatch into the weapons cache. He then observed the two second-children with him head over to load caskets. Only once those were aboard could the second-children obey their orders and climb in afterwards. They would pack themselves as tightly as the human amputees, along with, of course, their wide selection of weapons and tools. He moved out, and at once all activity slowed and all eyes, whether set in skulls, visual turrets or up on stalks, turned towards him. He felt suddenly nervous and found himself running a program to control his limbs rather than just using his prador ganglion. Next, slightly irritated, he sent an order directly to Bsorol’s aug and the first-child clattered loudly, putting his prador words through the hold PA. As work recommenced, Sverl walked over to his first-children and the humans.

Here stood Spear, Trent, the catadapt Sepia and the mind-tech Rider Cole. These were all the conscious humans now aboard, for Taiken’s wife had chosen to take herself and her two children through the zero freezer. Sverl had noted Trent Sobel’s bafflement at this and supposed that his new empathy had its limitations. The catadapt and the mind-tech, who had never seen Sverl before, were gaping at him.

“Fucking hell,” said Sepia.

Sverl ignored her, instead coming to stand before Spear.

“My place is ready?” he said, speaking human words. The question wasn’t strictly necessary, because he was continually viewing the changing interior of the ship in one portion of his AI mind.

“It’s an extended annex behind the bridge,” said Spear. “You obviously won’t need to see the screen fabric.”

“These others?” Sverl gestured with one claw to the other humans.

“A bit cramped—but I’ve had extra acceleration chairs fitted in the bridge.”

“We’re all going to be nice and cosy,” said another voice.

Sverl eyed the snake drone Riss, realizing he had been trying to ignore the thing. He then studied it on a deeper level and noted its attempts to free itself from the collar. No doubt, once outside Sverl’s dreadnought, Riss would eventually break out of the thing. Whether Sverl would then have to destroy the drone depended on what it did when free. If it came anywhere near him with that ovipositor, it would discover that Sverl’s prosthetics and internal bracing skeleton hid a multitude of sins.

“I will install myself now,” said Sverl, moving round the group to Bsectil and Bsorol, sending a coded transmission directly to their augs, “Join me when you’re done here—and bring your full kit.” For most prador, this would have meant armour and weapons, but for these two it meant more than that. Each of them had his own specialized tool kits as well as weapons. Each of them was somewhat more effective than the average armoured prador.

“The EMR pulse-gun?” suggested Bsorol.

“Of course,” Sverl replied. If the snake drone got uppity, it would quickly learn the error of its ways.

Rounding the nose of the ship, Sverl observed where a large section of hull had been folded out and fitted with a ramp leading into the interior. He clambered up this and entered the aforementioned annex, which backed onto the screen fabric-lined bridge, an arch open between. The area was without grav-plates, otherwise Bsorol and Bsectil would not have been able to fit inside too. Occupying the area still pulled down by the grav of the hold, Sverl found the specially made indentations in the floor into which he inserted his feet and secured himself. He opened himself up to his ship’s systems again and, despite his nervousness about relocating, found it made no difference to his control of his environment. That might change, however, should Cvorn arrive and force them to head for Room 101, while Sverl’s dreadnought deliberately tore itself apart behind them.

“Now we are coming to the crux,” said Spear, communicating via his aug.

“Yes,” Sverl replied.

“While we have avoided being destroyed by Cvorn, the vagueness of our quests has been cast much in shadow.”

“Yes.”

“We are either going to Room 101 in pursuit of Penny Royal—or at that AI’s behest. We’re pawns being moved into placed.”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?”

“No,” said Sverl, and he really meant it.

“I’m not uncomfortable with what we’re doing,” replied Spear, “though I am somewhat disturbed by a notion I cannot shake—that I am pursuing a set destiny. Sometimes it seems that everything I do resembles the actions of one with a religious faith.”

“But what are the alternatives?”

“Too numerous to list.”

“But they are all commonplace, prosaic.”

“And there you nail the heart of it.”

“We have just hours now,” said Sverl. “There is no turning aside and Cvorn is a driver of this. I wonder if that was his sum purposed.”

“And when his purpose is over?”

“Discarded, like a blunt screwdriver,” said Sverl. “I would bet that the series of events leading to his destruction are already in motion.”

“Let’s hope so.”