5.
Which they ate with a runcible spoon-
He managed to ignore it at first, the people patting him on the back or grasping his hand and saying, "It's great to meet you," or "Thank you for what you're doing," or simply staring. But now as he sat sipping a glass of the local brew—something called greenwine—at one of the bars in the arcade leading to the main runcible complex, he began to become a little irritated. "Christ! You think they'd be used to seeing soldiers by now."
Urbanus, who sipped a glass of cranberry vodka just to be sociable and because a fuel cell in his body could utilize it to power him, emulated an amused smile and gazed up at the glass ceiling of the arcade. "Are you going to tell him, Lindy, or shall I?"
"I think we should let him find out for himself, don't you?" Lindy replied. She glanced back into the bar itself where numerous customers had gathered since their arrival, and kept peering out at them. Then she bit her lip and nodded to a screen display affixed amidst ivy on the outer wall of the bar.
"What are you two—" Jebel turned towards the screen. "That's Grant's World… fucking Prador."
The scene depicted a camouflaged second-child fleeing through jungle. Something familiar about that, but then Jebel had seen many fleeing Prador. He let his gaze stray away and saw that a group of people now gathered on the main concourse were looking towards the bar. When they saw he had spotted them, some of them grinned, nodded and moved off. Others stayed to point out the bar to others. Jebel was beginning to get the creepy feeling it was him they were pointing to, and it made him feel nervy.
"Excuse me, sir."
Jebel spun round spilling some greenwine down his shirt front. His hand dropped to the thin-gun holstered on his belt. Then he lowered his gaze to a small boy standing before him—a kid in ersatz fatigues, a toy pistol on his belt and a pet lizard clinging to his shoulder.
"Hey," said Jebel, "I'm no recruiting officer."
The boy did not seem to know how to reply to this, so instead looked towards a woman standing a few paces back, clutching a holocamera. She held the device up questioningly. Jebel supposed the kid, who was obviously into militaria, wanted a recording of himself with some soldiers. He shrugged and waved a hand obligingly. Boy moved up beside him as the woman, probably his mother, raised the recorder.
"Can you stand by me?" the boy asked.
Feeling rather foolish, Jebel stood with his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Alan," the boy replied.
"So you want to be a soldier?"
"I want to be like you," the boy replied, staring up at him wide-eyed.
Like adults throughout history Jebel then just stood there unable to think of anything else to say. Certainly the boy would not want to be like Jebel, but how to explain that to him? Finally the woman came over.
"Thank you for that." She held up her holocamera exposing a fingerprint and gene reader plate. "Could you verify it, please? I know it's an imposition, but there are sure to be fakes."
"Well… yeah, sure." Jebel pressed his thumb against the plate until the device beeped.
"We'll leave you in peace now—I expect you get a lot of this." Hand on her boy's shoulder, she moved away. The boy kept looking back at Jebel, still wide-eyed.
Jebel sat, not quite sure what to think.
"Of course," said Urbanus, "the lizard on his shoulder is a gecko—they've become quite a fashionable pet."
Gecko.
"Worryingly dense, our great leader," Lindy added.
With interminable slowness, realisation surfaced in Jebel's consciousness. He understood then that, on some level, he already knew. He turned and looked at the bar's screen and observed airborne shots of a glowing crater surrounded by burning jungle.
"Recorded by the AIs, war drones," said Jebel, then turning to Urbanus, "and you?"
The Golem nodded. "Those were my instructions. The Polity needs good news of victories right now, and there's damned few of them. It also needs heroes."
"I'm not sure I—" Shadows abruptly fell across their table. Jebel looked up to see four floating holocams jockeying for position above him.
"Looks like the Trajeen newsnets just found out," said Lindy.
"I won't stay here for this," said Jebel.
"No need," Urbanus replied, "I've just been informed that our services are required elsewhere, if you are willing."
"Where?" Jebel asked.
Urbanus pointed up through the roof of the arcade, at an object only just visible in the sky.
* * * * *
Standing upon the bridge of one of the utility ships available to the runcible project, Moria gazed through a chainglass screen at the nearby Boh runcible hanging in silhouette before the gas giant: a small thorny object skating above banded colour and omnipotent indifference. She rubbed at the back of her neck. The tension, just bearable during the transit here, seemed to have stretched all her muscles and turned her spine into a rod. Her stomach also felt full of swirling oil and she'd not eaten for ten hours. But the excitement was gone. Moria acknowledged to herself that the war removed the gloss of discovery and adventure from it all. Everyone was distracted by the constant bad news, and only recently were people becoming frightened. Staff were also being seconded away by ECS to work in the big shipyards, and many of those remaining worried about kin either involved in the conflict or living on worlds closer to the front line. How could anyone feel excited about the runcible project now that the Prador were killing millions, taking world after world, and smashing Polity dreadnoughts like a steamroller tracking over walnuts. Moria shook her head and tried to return to the moment.
When they first approached, she was able to discern the smaller objects spreading away from the runcible itself, some of them towed by grabships, some moving under their own power, and some being shifted by stripped-down drive motors bolted into place. To evacuate the runcible about half of the infrastructure—all the scaffolds and extraneous rubbish and all the occupied accommodation units—was moved to a lower orbit, and since then boosted around the other side of Boh, that being probably the safest place to move them, in the permitted time, should there be any mishaps.
U-space com established between Trajeen and Boh, Moria could call up a real-time view of events back at the other runcible. There a different procedure was used. Rather than detach paraphernalia from around the runcible, the staff were evacuated to Trajeen. The runcible itself, driven far out from the planet by five big fusion motors, represented less of a danger than the Boh one since at that end any mishaps would not be so cataclysmic. Now in deep dark, with Trajeen a distant blue marble, that runcible waited. And a hundred kilometres away from it, the big cargo carrier stood ready: one kilometre long and half a kilometre wide, that final distance extended by old-style balanced U-space engine nacelles and a third very old U-navigation nacelle—they did not want to use a new vessel for this. The ship's holds were filled with asteroidal rock to bring its mass up for the test. Neither humans nor AIs occupied it—George, or rather the larger part of him back at the Trajeen runcible, would guide it remotely through the gate.
"As well as data gathering and collation at this end," said George, standing beside her, "I want you to model the entire test."
"Well, thanks for that," Moria checked the time to the test in her aug, "but a little more notice would have been nice."
"As we have thus far discovered: it is only when you are under pressure that the more esoteric programs and functions of your aug are revealed."
"How much more processing space do you think it has, and how fast do you think it can operate?" she asked.
"This is what we will find out. But if you do run out of space and speed," George pointed towards the gas giant, "there are five server satellites in orbit to which you can apply for more." He glanced at her, and as he did so the codes she could use for this arrived in her aug. "Any more capacity you might require has been prepaid and so held open for you."
She turned and faced him. "So tell me, what's being tested here, the cargo runcible or my aug?"
"Both," George replied, still staring out into vacuum. He then frowned and continued, "The current war situation being what it is, it seems likely this project will shortly be relocated. Also, augs such as yours might be useful to the war effort—perhaps more so than a working cargo runcible."
"But you'd need Sylac for that."
"Sylac was apprehended on Cheyne III and is currently in transit to Titan, where he will be working for ECS."
Moria absorbed that, then replayed what George had just said. "Hang on… relocated. We'll not be able to move these runcibles."
"The research will be relocated." Now George turned to face her. "These runcibles will be destroyed before the Prador arrive here."
For a moment Moria was stunned. Yes, the war was impinging and taking all the excitement out of the project, but only now did the reality truly strike her. "They are coming here?"
"Unless we gain some unexpected advantage, the battle line will cross the Trajeen system in two months time. Since we came out here," he nodded towards Boh, "evacuation and defence programs have been instituted. But it seems likely Trajeen will either be occupied by the Prador or rendered inert. ECS will not be able to halt the Prador advance until the shipyards are all fully functional."
Rendered inert.
And there, she realised, the difference between George and a normal human being. She should never forget that he was essentially an AI submind in a human shell, and along with all the other Polity AIs directed an interstellar war like some kind of chess game in which worlds were pawns.
"Will we win, do you think?" she asked.
"Define 'win,' " said George, staring at her steely eyed, then he seemed to relent. "The Polity will certainly survive, but in what form or after sustaining how much damage is debatable. At least our course is clear."
"Clear?"
"We are defending ourselves from an alien aggressor with seemingly no regard for the lives of our citizens. This is our first encounter with them and we have given them no reason for their aggression. We are fighting to survive not to defend or impose some political ideology, nor to maintain or gain some economic advantage… as has been the human custom. Those who fight will suffer few moral qualms."
"Oh, that's okay then."
"It is time for you to begin modelling the test," he told her, expression bland.
After that?
She felt like just telling him to bugger off, but then took a grip upon herself. Cold in his summation of the situation George might be. Cold in their plans might be the Polity AIs. But the luxury of emotional breast-beating would not win this kind of merciless, industrialized conflict. What would win it would be the efficient construction and deployment of weapons, the measured choices in the development of technologies, intricate battle-planning to the advantage of the Polity as a whole, calculation, working the numbers. Very few AIs bothered to play roulette, those that did always won.
"Did you hear me?" George asked.
"Yes, I heard."
Moria began with the basic real-time virtual model of the two gates, distances truncated to fit within the compass of her perception. She then created underlying gravity, system vector/energy and U-space coordinates maps. But these were only the parchment on which she painted the rest. Recalling from memspace the models she had already created of the two runcibles' energy systems, she began running predicted function, perpetually updated by actual function—the delay measured in microseconds. Soon she observed warp initiation. Between the five gateposts of each runcible the cusps formed: each like the meniscus of a soap bubble. Slowly then, the five horn-shaped posts began to slide apart, opening like iris doors, stretching each cusp across vacuum. The cargo ship's fusion drive ignited like a white star and the vessel now began to accelerate towards the Trajeen gate.
"0.0004532 disparity between G2 and 3 here," she noted.
"Already noted," George replied. "You now have access. Make the necessary correction."
Moria felt a moment of pure terror as channels opened from the Boh runcible to her aug, and she found herself taking a mental step back as appalling data flows overwhelmed her. She applied to the Boh servers and processing space opened. She began running the calculations to superpose her model on reality and find the required corrections. She created and collapsed formulae in her mind, in her aug, quickly working her way through the problem. Then came the ecstasy of squirting the solution over to the runcible. A few brief squirts from the runcible's attitude jets closed the disparity and shortly her superposed model matched.
The five horns now completely separated, spreading the meniscus across a kilometre of space. Between them, the edges of that strange severance of realspace blurred out and away, spilling Hawking radiation into vacuum. However, Moria soon recognised an untoward energy drain in the system, and put online two more reactors at the Boh runcible. George did not instruct her to do this, but he made no objection. She saw that the larger part of him, at Trajeen, did the same.
"I now give you total control of the Boh outer gate."
Shit! Fuck!
Now the vessel reached the Trajeen gate and went through, gone in an instant. A microsecond of calculation as the buffer feedback figures came through. Precisely the correct amount of energy applied at the meniscus. Calculations collapsing beyond it. A blurring, negative state, U-space calculus, a glimpse of understanding: everything there and everything here, matter just rucked up space-time and time itself a mere parenthesis…
The cargo vessel flashing through the gate, backwards, twisted out of shape and trailing fire. A thousand kilometres beyond the gate it abruptly decelerated, yet none of its engines could be working to do that. Then it just came apart as if somehow all its components transformed into wet clay. Metal and chunks of asteroidal rock slowly spread out, breaking down further until micro-debris formed a sphere which began to be distorted by Boh's gravity. Moria felt as if someone flash-froze her brain then cracked it with a hammer. She groaned and went down on her knees.
"What went wrong?" George: calm, analytical.
"I don't know!" she yelled.
"That is a shame. You still have a long way to go."
She knew, instantly, that he was not talking about just her.
* * * * *
During the weeks of travel through U-space, Immanence reviewed his family's present status in the Kingdom and made plans for further expansion upon his return by deciding on which alliances he should make or break, which other Prador to bring down if not assassinate—though the assassination of Prador adults was never easy—and by working on scenarios based on all the new things he had learned since the war's beginning. But such plans remained skeletal at best, and protean, for who knew what advantages or disadvantages he might own over the next few years, or how many of his allies or enemies might be destroyed, or how their positions might change? It was the ability to adjust his plans to changing circumstances that had raised him to his present position, and he relished the prospect of further rapid change. However, after a time such planning in a vacuum palled, and he turned his attention to history recordings—private and public—then to weapons design, the formulation of new poisons, possible application of enslaved humans… but steadily lost interest in each subject as he worked through it.
The entertainments available to him in his sanctum finally all but exhausted, Immanence decided to take a tour of his ship before its arrival at the next target. He summoned both Vagule and Gnores, and the second-child XF-326 along with a random selection of that one's contemporaries. The two first-children arrived before the others outside the closed doors to the sanctum and Immanence watched them through the corridor cam system. Gnores moved to the fore and carefully watched the doors. Vagule shoved him aside, and when Gnores raised his claws, Vagule quickly smacked him hard across the visual turret. Gnores hesitated—not being that much smaller than Vagule—but the other having been appointed Prime by Immanence forced his decision. He squealed obligingly and backed off.
Now the second-children arrived, led by XF-326 who, Immanence noted, with his new privileges providing him better nutrition that Immanence also ordered dosed with certain hormones, was growing fast. The second-children, clambering over each other behind where XF-326 halted a safe distance from the two first-children, were all about the same size. His size lay between that of them and Vagule and Gnores. Immanence understood why XF-326 held back. His recent growth spurts would have weakened his carapace and a blow administered by either of the two first-children might result in serious injury. Immanence rose up on his grav-motors and swung towards the doors, ordering them open as he slid towards them.
Much scrambling, pushing and shoving ensued as his children realised he actually intended to leave the sanctum. The second-children were fine staying in the corridor all about him, there being room for them. As Immanence turned into the wide oblate-section corridor, perfect for his large carapace, he noted that XF-326 assumed the safe position directly underneath the rear of his carapace—safe so long as the captain did not decide to shut off his grav-motors, which he was known to do. Vagule and Gnores necessarily scrambled ahead, scuttling sideways so they could keep their father in clear view, clattering their back ends against the rough walls, loosening weed and sending ship lice scuttling.
"I want to see how you are progressing with these humans," Immanence told them.
"We have four recently implanted, and we are seeing how they progress before doing any more," Vagule informed him.
"I am aware of the current status of your research, Vagule. I want to see the entire process. Bring up another four and show me."
"We were thinking of trying spider thralls next," piped up Gnores.
Immanence observed Vagule's mandibles grinding and knew that Gnores would pay for that impertinence later.
"Why spider thralls?" Immanence asked.
Gnores replied, "With a less traumatic installation we were hoping… were expecting… that is—"
Vagule interrupted, "Even with all the support systems, full coring kills them within a few days. We are gradually learning about their autonomous nervous system, but we need to learn more to know what can be safely retained or discarded. Using spider thralls we are hoping they will live longer and thus provide us with more time to gather data."
Very good, thought Immanence. Vagule already understood that though the truth might result in some unpleasant punishment, lies, though delaying it, would result in punishment more severe.
"How many have died so far?"
"As a result of installation, fifty-three. A further eight have died in the holding area from injuries suffered during capture. We have also discovered that feeding them can be a problem. At present they are refusing to eat their own kind, though that might change should they become sufficiently hungry."
"And?"
"I would rather try them on other foods, since waiting until they are starving would result in them being weakened and ill and less able to sustain thrall implantation."
"Very well. Try them on our stores of meat and check their requirements for supplements. These humans are omnivores, remember, so may require certain minerals from vegetative matter."
At the end of the corridor they reached a shaft down which Vagule and Gnores scurried. Immanence slid into it, the second-children scuttling all around him and descending using footholds in the rough wall of the shaft. Immanence dropped slowly in the lower gee, his grav-motors countering the plates at the shaft bottom to halt him a few metres from the floor. The procession continued until they reached a sealed chamber much like the captain's sanctum. Vagule opened the doors for him and ducked inside. Immanence followed, scenting alien blood and flesh and the other smells concomitant with human life, and death. In the chamber he turned, surveying the humans upon whom Vagule experimented.
Twelve of them were clamped along one wall. To his left lay a stack of about twenty corpses—failures. Of the twelve, he could see by the readouts on the hexagonal screens above, five were dead. He eyed a rack of spider thralls, then another rack containing the larger thrall hardware required after a full coring. Perhaps something even smaller should be made? Immanence filed the thought for later attention as he now surveyed surgical equipment dipped in bins of sterilizing grease and two surgical robots standing off to one side. These dark metal shells conformed to the foreparts, visual turret and underside of a first-child. Many recessed pit controls inside took their claws and manipulatory hands, whilst to the fore spread many jointed, precision limbs, each ending in surgical tools.
"Remove the corpses and bring in four replacements," Immanence instructed. He then gestured his claw towards XF-326. "You, bring one of them over and feed me."
Under orders from Vagule, Gnores took some of the second-children off to collect four living humans, while Immanence kept a greedy eye on XF-326. The second-child closed its claw into the ribcage of one corpse, swiftly dragged it over and methodically began to dismember it, passing up pieces to Immanence's mandibles. As he crunched up a severed hand and forearm, the captain contemplated what enabled him to eat such fare. The rugged Prador digestive system could extract nutriment from a stone—this being a known method of survival in some situations. While eating he realised that decay improved the taste, probably because bacteria in the ship were partially breaking down the alien flesh. Even so, the captain pondered the quirks of evolutionary biology that resulted in something that tasted so good.
Gnores returned with the four humans who were, until they entered this chamber, docile and mainly inactive. However, two of them began yelling and babbling human speech. Immanence guessed they found the scene somewhat distracting. Sending a command to one of his sanctum chouds he ran the speech through a translator then directly back to him, but it revealed nothing of relevance, just many questions concerning their fate, occasional threats, and vague references to some human deity. He studied the humans while Gnores and the second-children began stripping off their filthy clothing. They were difficult to tell apart but now Immanence knew enough about their anatomy to identify one male, two females and a younger version that was probably the human equivalent to a second-child, though he could not guess at what its sex might be. Strange creatures. What was the purpose of that thick mat of hair on their heads, some form of protection perhaps? Why were two of them emptying their bowels—surely in a dangerous situation it would be better not to leave a scent that could be tracked? What purpose was served by piercing the body here and there with pieces of rare metals decorated with cut gems? Why those vulnerable external genitalia on the men and those ridiculously inflated mammary glands on the women? Immanence realised he had much yet to learn, should he be interested enough.
Vagule inserted himself into the back hollow of a surgical robot while Gnores and the others clamped the humans to the wall. The babble soon ceased when human-specific drugs were injected and feed-lines attached to their veins.
The spider thralls—each leggy device no larger than a human thumb—were installed via splits in the thick muscle on either side of the back of their necks. One of the humans—the child—for no immediately apparent reason died during this procedure.
"How many do we have left?" Immanence asked, his manner slightly bored now as he turned back towards the doors, though through his chouds he spied on the data streams from the thralls.
"Six hundred and twenty," Vagule replied, backing out of the surgical robot.
"I will be expecting some measure of success by the time that figure drops to five hundred and sixty," Immanence told him. "And I will be most displeased by failure."
"As you order," Vagule replied, sagging slightly.
Gnores, however, immediately perked up at this, as did XF-326. They all knew precisely what Immanence meant by it: that some time soon the opportunity for promotion might arise, after one terminal demotion.
* * * * *
While the grabship flew on automatic towards the Trajeen cargo runcible, Conlan scratched between his aug and his ear to lift the edge of his mask, pressed a control no larger than a pinhead and felt the mask sag on his face. After a moment all its edges lifted and he peeled it away and dropped it beside his seat. Then he studied the grabship's controls.
Though a pilot carried out the main task of launching the vessel and much of the final manoeuvring to position its load, certain safety protocols were also functioning, and he was constantly monitored. Should he become ill, or die, the runcible AI could take control to guide the ship out of danger and back to base. Also, if the vessel deviated from its mission plan, the AI would be alerted, and could again take control. For example, if the pilot took it into his head to ram the ship into one of the runcible gateposts, the AI would swiftly put a stop to that.
Subverting such systems was no easy task with the usual hardware, which was why Conlan, though leader of this mission, had chosen himself for this part of it. He clipped open the cover on his aug and plugged into it his multipurpose optic cable, then found the relevant port in the console and plugged the other end into that. Passive scanning of the vessel's systems quickly revealed the various security systems. All communications were being monitored by sophisticated voice language-recognition programs which passed com up through various layers of filtering, then informed the AI should they hear some sequence to cause concern. A blueprint of the mission plan was also stored, so comparisons could be made and any large deviations equally passed on. There were many other security measures. Conlan noted one flashing a warning to his console—apparently he and the copilot needed to link in the monitoring hardware of their spacesuits. Conlan scanned all these then went in search of the truly important level of security: the one that informed the AI if any of the other systems were being interfered with. He found it stretching weblike across all the other systems. But there was nothing he could do about it at the programming level. His aug might be a sophisticated tool, but he did not yet possess sufficient skill to create the destructive viruses he might need. However, it was possible for him to scan and analyse the ship's hardware.
After a quarter of an hour, Conlan unstrapped himself and moved into the rear of the ship, and stepping over the copilot, he made his selection from the racked tools there. He then pulled up a floor plate and cut through certain optic cables, before returning to his seat, opening the control console, plugging his aug back in, then continuing his selective destruction of the ship's safety and security protocols, beginning with that one concerning suit monitoring for himself and the copilot. When finished he gained complete control of the vessel, and would retain it unless the AI managed to take him out. He offlined autopilot, took hold of his grabship's joystick and pushed it forwards to its limit. Now he changed com to a nonstandard frequency, encoding the signal through his aug.
"Conlan here. What's your status, Braben?"
"Our shuttle is about to dock. We encountered a few problems. One of them is now sitting in the toilet with a broken neck, the rest were minor and put down to glitches associated with the runcible test and the subsequent return of about five hundred technicians."
"You are running twenty minutes late. Why is that?" So asking, Conlan eased off on the joystick. Braben and the rest of the Separatists should have penetrated the runcible's infrastructure by now, causing distracting mayhem.
"Two shuttles got priority ahead of us—probably due to the same glitches and confusion that made things easier for us."
"Okay." Conlan felt a sudden sweat break out over his body. Had their plans been uncovered? He could not see how. "Continue to plan. I'll delay my strike by twenty minutes, but no longer. When you have things under control, you'll have to knock out docking security so I can come in. Best of luck. Out."
Now the runcible lay clearly visible ahead of him. He magnified the view in the forward screen, initiated a grid and selected the unit housing the runcible AI. He knew that unit mounted laser meteor defences and was heavily armoured. Those lasers were also powerful enough to knock out most conventional missiles, and could easily cripple a ship like this one. Certainly the AI would fire on the missile he intended to use. It made no difference.
* * * * *
Five of them came through the airlock, heavily armoured and opening up with projectile weapons. Security drones dropped from the ceiling and lasers snap-cracked through the air. Two drones exploded, scattering debris about the embarkation lounge. One of the men went down screaming with smoke pouring from his armour's joints, concentrated laser-fire having penetrated his suit. Cams kept going out, and Jebel's perspective kept on changing. Then the last cam was gone, and the images, transferred by Jebel's aug to his visual cortex, blinked out. However, he could still hear the shooting and occasional explosion.
The AIs made no objection to Jebel and his Avalonians roughly tracking the progress of the Prador dreadnought that had destroyed Avalon Station and was directly responsible for the death of Cirrella. His unit became one of the best at putting up a ferocious defence against Prador first-strike ground forces. Unfortunately, after grinding that initial assault to a standstill it was usually the first unit to be moved on to the next world or next station, which sometimes put them ahead of the ship—as at Grant's World—but more often behind it when its initial bombardment ended and the ground forces moved in. The AIs understood his vendetta against the Prador aboard that ship to be a powerful motivation indeed. And this time they had placed him on the right world at the right time, where some opportunity, no matter how small, might present itself.
He considered the growing military encampment on the planet below. Forces here were small—about a thousand four-man Sparkind units, numerous war drones, and about fifty thousand ground troops—since most of the runcibles were being employed for evacuation, and Trajeen already accepted as a lost cause, especially now that they knew another ship of the same kind had joined his ship. However, that did not mean there should be no resistance at all. The forces here were to give the Prador a bloody nose before retreating, to delay things long enough for a big Polity dreadnought to engage, and to give the new ships steadily being turned out by the shipyards time to deploy around the next world.
But now this: being called up here to deal with this. At first it seemed like a welcome escape from the media attention on the planet below, but Jebel, coldly angry at the best of times and further enraged by events at Grant's World, felt his anger reach new heights upon learning what the first part of his job here entailed.
"Urbanus, is the shuttle away?" he asked over his comlink.
"It is."
"Are they safe?"
"The pilot is okay, but she just found her navigator in the toilet. Dead. Broken neck," the Golem replied.
"They will fucking pay for that."
"I have just received reports from the surface," the runcible AI, for some reason known as George, interrupted, "the technicians whose identity they assumed, were not in fact killed. Someone simply altered their departure times so they just did not turn up at the spaceport."
Jebel mulled that one over. "That's worrying. Again we're seeing some sophisticated planning and computer subversion here."
The attack was well-planned; the Separatists managed to smuggle equipment aboard the shuttle, and their subsequent entry into the complex surrounding this cargo runcible demonstrated that they had obtained information on the positioning of the security drones and cams. It would have succeeded too, but for one of the Separatists on the planet below deciding, at the last moment, that fighting on the side of aliens that blithely destroyed worlds and ate people, might not be such a great idea after all.
The smell of burning wafted through the air, and smoke became visible just below the corridor ceiling. Jebel pushed himself away from the wall and closed his visor. Behind him, twelve other Avalonians, crouched against the wall, did the same. It occurred to him, in that moment, that although having been involved in some hideous conflicts, he had killed only one human being—a man, one firing a pulse rifle into a crowd after having been driven insane by a duff aug, and that was twenty years ago. But he did not think that would be much of a problem in this case. The idea of capturing some of these bastards to interrogate them about their organization was soon abandoned—an exercise about as pointless as obtaining information about underground movements in Dresden just before the bombers arrived. He took a small remote control from his pocket and peered around the corner.
Three armoured Separatists entered ahead of the main group assigned to this corridor. Two other such groups would now be entering the two other main corridors leading from embarkation, and encountering a similar reception. Jebel held up three fingers to those behind him, then crooked a finger. The three nearly reached the corner where Jebel awaited, before the main group of eight entered the corridor behind. Jebel sent the signal and ducked back.
The explosions, multiple, one upon another, lasted for a few seconds. Jebel drew his thin-gun—disdaining anything heavier for this chore. Human wreckage filled the corridor, some of it beginning to scream, the rest mangled and still, and Jebel was reminded of another place and time. The fragmentation mines had torn out the walls. Directly ahead of him, the first of the armoured Separatists tried to push himself upright while turning to gaze at the devastation. In passing, Jebel slapped him on the back. The man turned, raising his seeker-gun, but the ignition delay of the small gecko mine on his armour ran out. The mine thumped, the man belching blood and other substances inside his visor before dropping like a puppet unstrung. The other Avalonians now advanced. Another of the Separatists struggled up onto his knees. An Avalonian put a mine on him before he fully rose, and blew the back out of his helmet. One of the other Avalonians placed a mine on the third, maybe unnecessarily. They moved on towards embarkation. Something bloody whined and scrabbled at the floor as Jebel stepped over it. He identified a head and put one pulse from his thin-gun through it. The whining stopped.
"Have we got them all?" Jebel asked over com.
"Seems like," Urbanus replied. "By the way, Lindy has taken their commander prisoner."
"Why did she do that?"
"I thought I'd better wait for your input, Jebel," Lindy interrupted over com. She sounded a little shaky to him, but then she had probably never killed a human before. "We caught him out… oh, there you are."
Embarkation lay in ruins, unsurprisingly. Jebel's Avalonians were now checking the area. One of the Separatists was down on his knees with his hands interlaced on top of his head, the Avalonian behind him grinding the snout of a laser carbine into the back of his neck. Lindy stood to one side looking a little sick. Urbanus stood before the prisoner. Jebel walked over.
"How did he survive?" he asked.
Urbanus glanced round. "Commanding from the rear. He wasn't in the corridor when we blew the mines. Touch of concussion from the tail end of the blast."
Blood running between his teeth, the man glared up at him. "Do you think you've won?"
Jebel glanced about himself. "Seems pretty decisive to me."
"You'll know… soon enough."
Jebel flung up his hands. "There now, you've gone and done it. Now I'll have to find out what you know, and fast. Y'know, there is a war on."
"You can't—"
Jebel shot him through the kneecap. "Now, perhaps you'd like to explain yourself?"
* * * * *
The larger part of the Trajeen System Cargo Runcible AI observed the scene in the embarkation area, just as it observed many other scenes throughout the runcible installations here and around Boh. Its connection at present with its other part—a submind called George occupying a human skull—presently stood offline while the ship ferrying George and Moria made a short U-space jump back towards Trajeen. It considered intervening in Jebel Krong's interrogation—the man seemed unstable and might kill his prisoner—but his methods thus far were the most effective in the circumstances. And certainly, something else was up.
Their plan to take control of the runcibles so as to hand them over to the Prador when they arrived, could have succeeded only so far, because the AI controlled everything within the complex. Perhaps they had thought to take hostages; no, they must know that the AI would only allow a hostage situation to continue until the Prador ship drew close enough. Then, imbalances in the runcible—a resonance with buffers offline—resulting in no runcible at either end for the Prador to seize. This then must have been only part of their attack. The informational sophistication they had used made that evident.
Grabship?
The AI focused its sensors on the grabship hurtling down under full acceleration. Trying to link to that vessel it found no connection at all. This then, must be the other part of the plan. Did the pilot of that ship intend to ram it into the accommodation unit containing the AI itself? Such suicide missions were not uncommon amid such fanatics.
The AI brought its meteor lasers online and up to power, targeting the approaching vessel, but the ship dropped its load and began to curve away. The AI targeted the load now heading directly towards it. Only seconds away. The AI instantly identified the object, and understood, and admired, the brilliance of the plan: the charge the buffer section contained could not be destroyed or diverted, not with meteor lasers. A brief calculation rendered the result that the AI's chances of survival were minimally better if it did fire upon the buffer. Minimally. In the microseconds remaining, the AI's thoughts went off at a tangent instigated by the nature of this attack, and it realised a probable solution to the problem posed by the approaching Prador dreadnoughts. Too late. It fired the lasers and kept on firing. Most of the energy reflected away from the metallo-ceramic layers armouring the huge store of power inside. Ion trail—so some penetration. Information package to human submind, and into complex computer systems. Intense fusion fire—
The runcible buffer section struck home.
Conlan observed the explosion and smiled. The AI had fired on the buffer section, but even if it had not, the result would have been the same. Its chances of fully rupturing the section with meteor lasers were minimal in the time allowable, but certainly the section would rupture on impact. A plasma fire radiated out into space. The initial EM pulse from all that energy discharging scrambled the AI, and the subsequent fire now fried it. It was dead.
A perfectly executed hit.
* * * * *
Conlan began decelerating the grabship, turning it back towards the runcible.
"Braben, report."
Silence.
"Braben?"
"Braben is otherwise occupied. Who the fuck is this?"
That was not Braben or any voice he recognised—someone else was using Braben's comlink. Conlan felt the knowledge drive into his gut like a blunt drill. Obviously the assault on the complex had failed. If he went there he would be captured, and ECS were not noted for their mercy. He would have to try landing on the planet.
"Oh, brilliant," the other abruptly said. "You know, you turd, in lieu of meeting you myself, I just wish I could see you meet your allies."
Conlan's instinct was to break contact, but his curiosity stirred. "I am not sure I entirely catch your drift."
"Well, obviously you're the fuckwit aboard that grabship who just murdered an AI."
Automatically Conlan replied, "You cannot murder machines."
Now that they knew he was aboard this ship, landing on the planet was also out of the question, for they would track him down to the surface and ECS troops would be waiting for him the moment he stepped out. Only one other option remained: try heading out-system on an intercept course with the approaching Prador ships. But supposing there were enough supplies aboard for him to survive the journey, what would be the reaction of those Separatist allies? He might have killed the AI, but he certainly had not secured the runcible. Always central to Separatist plans lay the idea of them holding this huge bargaining chip. Conlan had seen the newsnet broadcasts. He suspected the Prador might be less inclined to mercy than ECS. A sudden tiredness suffused him as he observed all avenues closing to him.
"To whom am I speaking?" Conlan enquired.
"Oh, let's get on a friendly first-name basis. My name's U-cap, what's yours?"
"I'm Conlan and you know, U-cap, we will be meeting very shortly." Conlan thrust the joystick fully forwards and aimed the grabship towards those runcible buffers already in place. If he hit hard and fast enough the chain reaction should be spectacular. Better to go out that way than in some ECS cell or in pieces in some alien gut.
"I don't think so, shit-head."
Conlan did not recognise that voice either, and only belatedly realised it came from behind him. He turned just in time to see his copilot, Anna Vasco, her face masked with blood, and then the heavy handle of a multidriver slammed down onto the side of his head and knocked him into a dark place.
* * * * *
The Occam Razor surfaced from U-space and hurtled towards the planetary system. Massive capacitors and laminar batteries stacked up power from fusion reactors, enormous weapons carousels began powering up, replacement parts stood ready in robotic hands for lasers and masers, and the entire internal structure of the ship began to reconfigure for battle.
"I require weapons authorization from my human captain," Occam stated through their link.
The evident irony of this request made Captain Tomalon wonder just how necessary his permission might be. The closer he grew to the AI the more he realised how utterly entangled they were becoming. He granted authorization without even reviewing the sensor data upon which it was based. Inside the great ship he observed those carousels now turning to present missiles to the breech sections of rail-guns, and weapons platforms and turrets rising on titanic rams towards the hull. An exterior view showed him turrets extruding from the ship like the spikes from a mace, rail-gun ports and the business ends of beam weapons opening and one platform for informational warfare finally surfacing. This ship carried appalling destructive capability: besides the beam weapons and rail-guns it also carried missiles containing contra-terrene devices—CTDs—antimatter weapons with a ridiculously high yield. But would it be enough? The Prador ships had already demonstrated that they could take most of what ECS could throw at them and repay it tenfold. He now reviewed the sensor data.
"Where the hell is this?" he asked out loud.
Occam made no reply. Tomalon checked back through the navigational log, found it to be in order, then made comparisons between recorded data on their destination system and this one. They were the same.
"Oh Christ, that's Grant's World."
Through the Occam Razor's sensors he studied the devastated planet. At present it held a kind of temperature stasis: the heat from the weapons employed down there, and the subsequent volcanic activity, were countering the effects of the dust in the atmosphere blotting out the sun. This could not last of course. Within a decade, Grant's World would drop into a centuries-long winter, during which some species might survive to rebuild a living world, as had always been the case on Earth after each catastrophic mass extinction. But this was no misfortune of nature or orbital mechanics. An intelligent species had done this to wipe out members of another intelligent species, in just one battle in an ever-expanding war.
"There are people alive down there" Occam informed him.
"You're kidding."
The temporary stability of the temperature did not mean things were okay on the surface. Hurricane-force winds were swiftly spreading radioactives everywhere, tornadoes drilled across landscapes churning up topsoil and hurling it high. The chances of escaping a tsunami if you were anywhere within a hundred kilometres of a shore, were nil. And if that was not quite enough, the massive quakes released billions of tons of CO2 from ocean depths whilst the spew from the volcanoes acidified the sky. The atmosphere was no longer breathable for a human being, not even for one breath, unless you wanted to etch out the inside of your lungs.
"I am detecting emergency beacons, but also some com between military units. However, that will have to wait. Let me direct your attention to the objects in nearby space."
Tomalon dragged his attention away from the holocaust. The objects Occam indicated were three big cylinder-shaped vessels, two dark ships bearing a familiar shape but nowhere near the size of the dreadnoughts they sought, and various smaller ships.
Prador.
"Do you need any further weapons permissions?" he asked in their silent communication.
"No. Shall we dance?"
He and Occam drew closer in informational no-space so that Tomalon could not quite say where he ended and the Occam Razor's AI began. Was it he who cut the decelerating burn so they came upon those enemy ships, travelling at over a million kph? Did he fire the rail-guns, launching a swarm of solid projectiles out ahead of them? He was both observer and main participant. For a while he was the Occam Razor.
The rail-gun projectiles slammed into the enemy ships first, puncturing hulls and containment, breaching reactors and occasionally detonating weapons. Two shuttles simply exploded. One of the cylindrical vessels—a troop carrier, Tomalon realised—belched atmosphere through numerous breaches. Next missiles, launched at lower speed then igniting their own drives out from the Razor, punched home. They struck perfectly central on two of the carriers, which broke in half trailing atmosphere and fire, while other spillages gave the impression of seed pods snapped open. A close view of those seeds showed thousands of Prador second-children pouring into space with their legs clamped up close to their under-carapaces. Tomalon wondered if they were dead or if they could actually survive in vacuum for a while. He would not have been surprised.
"What the fuck?"
Pain racked Tomalon. Someone was pointing a blowtorch flame at his skin. Exterior view of the Occam Razor: turquoise flashes as a phenomenally powerful particle beam sliced a trench through the hull, fire exploding into the spaces inside. Occam immediately redirected missiles aimed for the last troop carrier, zoning them in on the Prador destroyers which remained seemingly untouched by the rail-gun projectiles. The beam struck again. This time from the second destroyer. A weapons turret exploded, rolling fire around the hull. Then the missiles reached their targets.
A full-on hit with a CTD sent one of the destroyers tumbling through space, a huge chunk torn out of it and fires burning inside, but Tomalon was troubled to see that the vessel had survived at all, and now seemed to be trying to right itself. He, or Occam, hit the exposed interior with laser blasts, gutting it until it became still. Those other vessels surviving the initial assault also began to fire on the Occam Razor. Beam strikes made Tomalon feel warm and caused itches he could not scratch, but there were no more of those ridiculously powerful particle beam strikes. Why? He did not know.
Missiles swarmed out, but the Occam Razor outran them. In a hard decelerating burn it swung around Grant's World, its superstructure groaning, and error reports flashing up to the captain's vision from the distant reaches of the ship where repair robots were rushing to breaches like ants to holes in their nest. Coming back towards the remaining Prador ships he detected U-space signatures as some of the Prador ran. However, the remaining destroyer began to accelerate towards them.
Both ships launched solid rail-gun projectiles and explosive missiles. Occam fired two CTDs to detonate in and punch a hole through an approaching swarm of the solid projectiles and followed them with a line of five CTDs running one behind the other. Three closely spaced detonations followed. Briefly, turquoise fire licked over the Occam's hull, then the remaining two weapons hammered home. The Prador ship hurtled out of the ensuing blasts, misshapen, with splits in its hull. Small seeker missiles then, buzzing around the out-of-control ship like horse flies zoning in for an opportunity to bite. They found the splits and detonated inside. The subsequent explosions must have killed everything within, but unnervingly, they did not break the hull, but pushed it almost back into its original shape.
"Tough fuckers, aren't they?" Tomalon observed, wincing.
Two further missiles departed the launch tubes, one heading towards the hulk now falling past them, one heading out to find the remains of the other destroyer: beacons—so they could be retrieved for study. ECS had obtained few remains of such ships.
Now they came upon the remaining Prador ships. Launch after launch spread obliteration. The remaining intact troop carrier ceased to be intact. Smaller ships detonated like fire crackers. Lasers, running on subprograms, sought out anything crab-shaped, and seared holes through it. When the Occam Razor finally turned and headed back towards Grant's World, very little remained behind it but glowing wreckage and fire.
"Now the survivors," said Tomalon, only slightly troubled by his part in a conflict with quarter neither offered nor requested. As more and more reports filtered out to him, he realised that this conflict was fast becoming total war, and atrocity merely another weapon—employed by both sides.
"That is not our mission."
Chewing on his lower lip, Tomalon disconnected slightly, raised his nictitating membranes and once again saw the interior of the bridge. His mission to pursue, delay, and if possible stop the two Prador dreadnoughts, took precedence. But he did not like the idea of leaving survivors down there.
"Open com to them," he instructed out loud, closing down the membranes on his eyes again. When Occam complied, Tomalon said, "This is Captain Tomalon of the ECS dreadnought the Occam Razor. Please send status reports detailing available supplies and the condition of your wounded, and append prior reports and present known casualty figures." Within his close connection with Occam, Tomalon counted fifteen distinct communications and viewed the facts the AI winnowed out. There were a hundred and forty-three survivors. Twelve would die if they did not receive aid within an hour and another fifty-six were stretcher cases that could last maybe another day. All either had sufficient air supplies or were managing with envirosuit filters and purification plants. One group of the fifteen needed assistance because they were located in a highly radioactive area. If they were not out of that area within three hours their dosage levels would kill them despite later rescue.
"It is not just those on the planet," Occam observed.
Communications began arriving from ships scattered throughout the system: people trapped behind bulkheads, engines burnt out, atmosphere venting, leaking reactors… but not many wounded needing medical attention, vacuum being an unforgiving environment.
Through Occam, Tomalon surveyed the holds of the Occam Razor. He observed a vast hall with shuttles lining one side like upright soldiers, gleaming and oiled. He observed racking systems containing landing craft and conveyers to take them to their bays.
"Just me and you aboard, so we have no need for all this. They contain medical equipment and supplies."
"Other ECS ships are on their way, certainly, but the plan would fail in one respect: we would need to remain here to guide these craft to their destinations throughout the system and down on the planet. In nearly every case the craft would face problems their programming might not be able to overcome: wrecked vessels, auto-defences still online, storms and EM interference."
"We can't just leave those poor bastards!"
"We will—our solution approaches."
Long range sensors picked out the ECS destroyer moving out from an asteroid field. Its fusion drive was burning dirty, but it was making progress.
"Who is this?" Occam asked over U-com.
"Aureus," replied the AI within the destroyer.
"Your crew?"
"All dead."
Through exterior cams Tomalon observed hold doors irising open in the Razors hull to release a stream of shuttles and landers. Inside, the shuttles were moving down their hall like bullets in a magazine, and the landers were being conveyed—all the massive machinery inside the Occam Razor in smooth titanic motion.
"I have given Aureus the control codes for all these vessels," Occam explained. "Once they are all launched we must leave."
Tomalon concurred—the human component throwing the final switch allowing the AI to do what it would. When finally the Occam Razor turned away from Grant's World, its captain viewed the final estimated casualty figures. One and a half million humans and AIs had died here. His hands clenched into fists, Tomalon began reviewing the big ship's weapons manifests.