13
Throughout those initial and immediately hostile encounters with the Prador, Humans only witnessed first- and second-children. Not until some three years into the war was an adult male actually encountered, and the first females were seen only some years after the war was over. However, just from the Prador genome, forensic AIs were quickly able to surmise much about their life cycle, all of it later confirmed. The males are aggressive, intelligent, and use pheromones to force perpetual servitude from their children until they themselves achieve adulthood . . . if they are allowed. They keep harems of the less intelligent females, also pheromonally controlled, which they mate with regularly. The females develop their eggs in oviducts, then inject them via ovipositor into the soft bodies of bivalve molluscs like giant mussels. The eggs hatch and, feeding on the host molluscs, the young Prador grow into the first stage of their lives – a stage very few of them progress beyond.
– From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans
The dreadnought is changing even as Sniper watches. Creatures still scuttle around outside, working on the hull, but now numerous specialized robots are joining them. The work is being carried out at a pace he has only ever seen once before, and that during the war, inside one of the big AI-guided warship constructor stations. Some sort of chemical disintegrator has spread out in a wave, causing the piled-up ice debris around the vessel to smoke away into a fog bank that is only now dispersing. The entire structure of the ship has tightened so that it no longer looks like a rotten pomegranate sagging to the ground, and the numerous gaps in its hull are being knitted together. Also, every now and again, momentary geometric distortions appear in the surrounding haze, as if the creatures are testing force-fields just as esoteric as those projected by the vessel that is down on the ice behind him. Sniper understands, with utter certainty, that something nasty has been unleashed here, but what the fuck it is he has no idea.
Slowly, incrementally, Sniper’s fusion reactor recharges the laminar power storage inside him. However the reactor is running out of hydrogen and certain other essential elements, so he uses one tentacle to bore down through the ice beside him, sampling as he goes. Upper layers consist mainly of CO2 ice with occasional layers softened by liquid nitrogen, which outgasses the moment he reaches them. He needs water ice, which he finally hits ten feet down. Now boring through this, he begins drawing water-ice dust inside himself, heating it until it becomes liquid, then electrolysing it out, the hydrogen going to the reactor and the oxygen into a pressure vessel inside him.
It is a slow and meticulous process that could result in disaster if he does not monitor it constantly. His energy levels are so low that the amount of energy input to keep the fusion process running eats up nearly 90 per cent of the consequent output. Of the remaining 10 per cent he employs much to keep himself powered up, to heat the water, electrolyse it and run the oxygen compressor, and also to power the tentacle still boring down into the water ice. In total the available energy going into laminar storage is climbing from a piddling 1 per cent of reactor output – just about enough to power a food processor.
‘C’mon,’ Sniper mutters to himself, then in annoyance notes how much power is used up by just speaking out loud.
Bugger.
It will take him at least an hour to build up useful reserves, and now he needs to think about how to use them. Even fully powered up and fully armed, he still stands little chance against whatever it is the Guard has turned into, so what other options are available? Deciding to use up a little of the slowly accumulated power, he eases forward from his shell, turning his head to gaze towards the spot where the shuttle was destroyed.
Wreckage is strewn across the surface over there, though covering only a small percentage of the whole because most of it has melted its way down into the ice. A splash of red blood marks where Drooble died, and scattered around it lie gobbets of flesh and what looks like three-quarters of a skull emptied of its contents. There is no sign of Orbus, though Sniper realizes that rail-gun hits on his armour could have heated it enough for it to melt his remains downwards out of sight. No red blood where he was standing either, but then Old Captains don’t really have much of the stuff running round in their veins. However, it is odd that there seems to be no sign at all of Vrell’s remains. He would not have melted into the ice and, having been struck by a rail-gun, the Prador should have left a lot more than that little spatter of green gore on the surface. No sign of any chunks of black carapace, nor stray legs or chunks of Prador flesh either.
Trying to replay his memories of those events makes Sniper painfully aware of how much memory he has lost, but one thing is becoming plain: whilst there had been force-field activity before him, when some sort of spherical field crushed one of his attackers, there must also have been similar activity behind him. So perhaps Orbus and Vrell are still alive? It seems most likely to Sniper that, somehow, whatever is occupying that larger vessel has snatched them up. He needs to find out for sure, and to find out he needs to get aboard that vessel undetected, which is problematic since he doesn’t even possess the energy to pull himself out of this hole.
Half an hour passes and his laminar storage has risen to 8 per cent. Having detected traces of the three naturally occurring isotopes of hydrogen – deuterium, protium and tritium – he takes the risk of refining these out, since not so much energy is required to fuse them. After that he choses his moment, then reconfigures his reactor injectors to utilize them. It pays off with a short-lived energy boost that knocks his laminar storage up to 14 per cent. He draws off some of this to power another of his tentacles, merely to clear the powdered ice from his shell. This ploy allows a larger proportion of the meagre light available here to reach the photovoltaic cells scattered about his surface. It takes another half-hour for their input to match the energy he has expended in cleaning himself, but by then his laminar storage surpasses 30 per cent.
Sniper now possesses sufficient power to get moving, though not enough to employ antigravity or any of his energy weapons. However, he remains precisely where he is. Despite one of the ex-Guard being destroyed by some type of field projected from the ship behind, there is no guarantee that such a field will not be deployed against Sniper, and there is also no reason to suppose it will again be used against those alien creatures if they decide to come after him again. Over the ensuing hour he bleeds a minimal amount of power to run diagnostics and to instigate those repairs he can afford to make. By the end of this time his fusion reactor is operating at optimum, and he can afford to store hydrogen isotopes as well as oxygen, and also bore down into the ice with more tentacles. Soon afterwards he is fully back up to power and it is time to move.
Sniper carefully eases himself up, extracting tentacles from the ice, then turns over until his head is pointing down into the hollow he previously occupied, whilst keeping one sensor-loaded tentacle aimed towards the dreadnought. He needs to get to that other ship fast, but in a way that has at least a partial chance of going unnoticed. From inside himself he extrudes the iron cylinder of a thermic lance now connected to his internal oxygen supply, begins blowing oxygen through it, and ignites that with a stab of laser. The tool, which in past times he used to bore through the armour of Prador war drones whilst in close combat with them, now burns as bright as a sun. Driving the tips of his tentacles again into the ice to brace himself, he thrusts the lance down, thus turning the ice below him into an explosion of CO2 gas. As he bores down, he detects a response back at the dreadnought, and the ice above him explodes into fragments under rail-gun fire, even as he himself drops into the hole he has been making.
Good, thinks Sniper, as rail-gun missiles glance off his shell and punch into the ice all around him. This attack from the dreadnought will prevent whoever controls the ship ahead from seeing what he is doing. Twenty feet down he enters the water-ice layer, and starts turning it liquid whilst still vaporizing the CO2 ice. The pressure from the gas forces the liquid back behind him along the hole he is making, where it refreezes, though with outgas holes worming through it. With any luck the outgassing at the surface will be attributed to hot rail-gun missiles like the one that just bounced off him.
Moving ahead at a slow crawl Sniper makes some calculations based on the steady ablation of the thermic lance, and realizes that its iron will run out before he reaches his destination. He begins employing his lasers, since they are the only energy weapon left to him, and occasionally heaves chunks of ice out of the way with his tentacles. Above, the rumbling attack from the dreadnought ceases and he wonders if the creatures are on their way out again. He keeps tunnelling hard for another ten minutes before some huge detonation above flashes light down through the ice and shakes his subterranean world, sending cracks shooting down all about him. An electromagnetic pulse temporarily disables systems inside him now inadequately protected by his damaged shell, and he realizes that either a CTD or some nuclear device has been deployed. It strikes him as very likely that it was not actually directed at him – more likely that the dreadnought’s occupants were now turning on the other mystery visitor here.
The yards count down, and the thermic lance grows shorter and shorter, finally burning the last of the iron in its ceramic clamp and sputtering out just as Sniper begins to make his way back up to the surface again. Here, however, the ice is thoroughly cracked, possibly as a result of that recent blast, but more likely from the huge monolithic weight currently resting upon it. Sniper pauses to use the cutting function of his one remaining spatulate-tipped tentacle and also brute force to cut and tear out chunks of ice immediately above, before steadily working his way upwards again.
He passes some kind of anchor strut bedded deep down into the ice beside him, then finally breaks through into an open space. He studies a scorched wall of thermal glass all around him, then peers up into a ceramic tube lined with the business end of a force-field containment system, which even now is forcing dust particles away from the walls. Quickly he drags himself sideways, and working frenetically with both tentacles and laser, begins to cut under the thermal glass, having just realized he is sitting right inside the blast ring of a big fusion engine. However, the wall begins to lift – everything above him begins to lift – and gravitic eddies begin flinging about chunks of ice. The ship is lifting on antigravity, but at any moment those fusion engines could kick in. Sniper gropes his way outside the thermal ring, finding indentations and ceramic bracing struts, and pulls himself up, sticking, like a snail going into hibernation, in the gaps available between blast chambers of the fusion-engine array.
Then his world abruptly turns very bright and very hot, as fusion torches ignite all around him.
Rail-gun fire hammers into a hardfield with unexpected force, the missiles turning to plasma and the feedback reaching all the way to the source generator. Through internal ship eyes, the Golgoloth observes the generator involved immediately glowing red, overloading thermal converters until they blacken and shrivel. The energy now reverts to kinetic shock, slamming the generator out of its mountings, punching it back through a heavily armoured and insulated wall, and then through a hundred feet of structure beyond. Safeties cut in, sealing the area and evacuating it of air so as to put out the fires.
Locating the active rail-gun, the Golgoloth fires a probing shot with a standard particle cannon. The beam bounces off an angled hardfield projected up from the dreadnought, and plays over the icy plain, churning up a thick cloud of vapour. The Golgoloth next fires a white laser, aimed off-centre to account for hardfield diffraction. It strikes home perfectly on centre on the rail-gun, blows a crater in the top of the dreadnought, then causes further damage somewhere else inside, so that fire spews from several adjacent ports. This tells the ancient hermaphrodite just how substantially things have been altered inside the ship, since standard Prador rail-guns are buffered for feedback. He suspects this is not a mistake the creatures down inside there will make again.
As its vessel rises above the plain and accelerates into the sky, the Golgoloth contemplates, with increasing disquiet, the data relayed by its own ship’s sensors. The creatures within the dreadnought have adapted its technology, actually altered its structure, use field technology as good as the Golgoloth’s own, and against the drone they killed out there have deployed complex weapons combining both the destructive potential of particle cannons and the invasive properties of viral computer warfare. Nothing like this was going on prior to the ship landing; this means they have achieved all this within a matter of hours – which does not bode well for the future.
‘So tell me about these?’ the Golgoloth says, returning its attention to Vrell and Orbus whilst simultaneously initiating a bank of screens and turning them to face towards the two prisoners. All the screens display an image of one of the new creatures currently residing inside the dreadnought.
‘How the fuck should we know?’ asks Orbus. ‘You sent ’em.’
Interesting.
The Human does not seem to know where the creatures come from. However, the dreadnought is big enough to hide anything inside, so Vrell must have somehow kept knowledge of these entities from Orbus. It strikes the Golgoloth as likely that Vrell has conducted experiments using the Spatterjay virus, probably on survivors of the original crew, to produce some variety of super-soldier, which has then turned against him. Is this what Oberon feared? Interesting to speculate, but other problems begin arising.
Green lasers now strike the hermaphrodite’s ship, refracting through its fields just as the Golgoloth has refracted a laser through theirs. The power of the beams is not sufficient to damage armour, but straight away the Golgoloth begins to receive warnings of invasive viruses. This needs to be stopped, now. Operating the ship’s internal robotics, the hermaphrodite’s logistical, ballistic and martial ganglia assemble components into a chemical warhead based on magnesium and selected thermal catalysts, and spit it down towards the surface. It swerves as it hammers down on the dreadnought and the Golgoloth protects it as best it can with field-tech. It strikes the icy plain and detonates, spewing its burning load across an area of ice a mile across. The reaction is immediate: thick clouds of vapour boil up, and they will shroud the dreadnought totally within minutes. It is a murk even those green lasers should not be able to penetrate.
‘You are notably quiet on this matter, Vrell,’ the Golgoloth observes whilst, with a whole set of programming ganglia, it oversees the destruction of computer viruses generated by those same green lasers. Worrying, because without that growing vapour cloud, the Golgoloth might have lost that battle.
‘You did not send them,’ Vrell states, his body unnaturally still.
Even more interesting.
The Golgoloth has spent centuries dealing with conniving Prador, and immediately recognizes that Vrell is showing confusion, doubt and a degree of fear unrelated to its presence here.
‘I did not send them,’ it affirms.
Oh, what now!
‘Oh, right,’ says Orbus. ‘The buggers just materialized out of thin air?’
The cloud is drawing across the dreadnought, but out of it punches a missile, a very odd-looking missile, shaped like a Prador’s palp-eye. The Golgoloth quickly fires a particle beam at it, but to no effect. The thing is riding up under a domed hardfield umbrella, power being fed into it from underneath by a microwave beam. White laser now, at full intensity, but the power goes nowhere. Golgoloth abruptly shuts the beam weapons off, having realized what is happening. The missile itself is firing the microwave beam. It is feeding power back down to the dreadnought. This means insolent crustaceans down there are using the Golgoloth’s weapons as an energy source. The hermaphrodite launches a single missile which shoots down, under massive acceleration, to detonate against the umbrella. An eye of nuclear fire opens below, which is just a bit more energy than the missile can handle.
As the fire burns and fades, the Golgoloth’s vessel clears atmosphere and heads back towards the fathership. The hermaphrodite begins sending instructions to the vast resources stored within that main ship, making further preparations. It knows this isn’t over, not at all.
‘They are the Guard,’ says Vrell abruptly.
Orbus turns to him. ‘The Guard are all dead and, you know, those didn’t look like armoured Prador to me.’
The Golgoloth considers this for a long moment. Unless Vrell is lying, and managing to do so very convincingly, which might be possible what with him going the same route as Oberon, something very odd is occurring here.
‘How did you kill the Guard?’ it asks.
‘I used a nerve-tissue-eating nanite keyed to the King’s genome,’ Vrell replies. ‘Though as individual Prador they all died, as organisms they did not.’
‘So,’ says the Golgoloth, ‘the virus has resurrected something.’
‘Those ain’t leeches,’ says Orbus.
‘You don’t know.’ Vrell swings his head towards him. ‘I discovered that, at its heart, the Spatterjay virus holds genetic tissue that is alien to us here, and to any life-form on Spatterjay.’ Vrell gazes back towards the Golgoloth. ‘It seems I am not the only one to have discovered this.’
‘Genetic tissue ain’t intelligent,’ Orbus argues. ‘It doesn’t spontaneously generate a brain full of the knowledge to take over a dreadnought and turn itself into some insect cyborg.’ He gestures towards the screens.
Quite.
Neither Vrell nor Orbus possesses a clear grasp of what is happening, nor does the Golgoloth either. It seems only one being knows the answer here. As the hermaphrodite turns its great splinter of a vessel to reinsert into the father ship, it decides the time has come for another conversation with Oberon.
Sadurian pauses in the wide white corridor, tilts her head to listen for a moment, then takes a few paces back and walks over to an alcove set in the wall. Having some knowledge of ancient Earth history, she describes these frequently provided spaces as ‘overtaking lanes’. Their purpose is to offer refuge for junior Prador when their larger brethren come by. Indeed, without them, smaller Prador can end up with shells cracked and limbs missing if they happen to get in the way of their larger kin. Aboard the vessels of normal Prador these refuges are made for third-children to avoid second-children, or for both to avoid the usually belligerent first-children. However, things are rather different here aboard the King’s ship.
Enabling Oberon to produce children was the first of many problems Sadurian overcame during her time here in the Kingdom. Making it possible for those children to grow up was the next and most lengthy task. On Spatterjay, relying on a diet of offworld food and viral inhibitors, the virus-infected children of Humans manage to reach adulthood without too many problems, though there can still be some when they hit adolescence.
However, Prador children, pheromonally controlled by their fathers and heading for permanently inhibited adolescence, grow in violent spurts punctuated by regular shedding of their shells. This process causes the virus’s survival mechanism to switch on at every such occasion. Controlling this requires a cocktail of viral inhibitors, and sometimes even surgical intervention. A small percentage of the children do not survive the process, others need to have their growth halted early. The moment one of the King’s children reaches either first-childhood or some earlier point when the growth spurts need to be halted, it goes into armour. Therefore the usual juvenile hierarchy is somewhat different here. These alcoves are provided for third- and second-children still growing, and therefore unarmoured. Corridor space is given as a priority to all stages of children, just so long as they wear armour. And these are what Sadurian is now avoiding.
The floor vibrates with the approach of an unusual number of Prador to be encountered in this portion of the ship. Sadurian peeks out and along the corridor, to observe a host of over twenty of the Guard thundering towards her. Some of them are small and wear chrome armour like Delf and Yaggs, most wear brassy armour matching that usually worn by the first-children of normal Prador, and a few wear the armour of normal young adults. However, it is debatable as to what stage of development all of these, being Oberon’s children, have reached. Some of the large ones could be either first-children or old virally-developed second-children. The mid-size ones could be at any stage, either under- or overdeveloped. And even the small armoured ones might easily be stunted second-children.
They move at such a pace and in such a chaotic manner that some are clambering over others to proceed. The din they make is incredible, aggravated by the fact that many of them carry weapons and other equipment, and as this riot passes Sadurian’s alcove, showering her with flecks of metal and ceramic, they leave an oily haze of lubricants in the air. She steps out to watch them go, then continues at a saunter towards a destination she is none too anxious to arrive at. But arrive she does.
Diagonally divided, as in most Prador entrances, the twin doors are high and arched but specially fashioned to accommodate something that looks nothing like the general run of Prador kind. Sadurian hesitates before them, laying one hand on the top of her palmtop, where it hooks onto her belt, as if resting it on the butt of a gun. Right then she is thoroughly aware of her vulnerability. Oberon may have set her on a course to discover the data now residing in her palmtop, but that doesn’t mean the King is going to like it. After a moment she walks over to the pit control positioned over her head beside the door, reaches inside and toggles the inner control, feeling something stab into the back of her hand as the pit samples her genetic tissue. She then stands back.
The doors do not open at once, which is usual as the pit control requires approval from Oberon before they do. First comes a grinding clonk inside the walls on either side, then the doors themselves draw ponderously back, allowing a gap no wider than a few feet to give her admittance. She steps into a huge high-ceilinged atrium, pausing for a moment to glance around at the heavy weapons mounted in balcony-like excrescences ranged about the walls.
‘Where are you?’ she asks.
After a pause the King replies, his tone sounding distracted. ‘I am in my control centre.’
Sadurian heads for the wide corridor directly ahead, grateful at least that she isn’t to be greeted in the audience chamber, where too many of the terminal audiences are conducted. Along this same corridor she notes some large and dangerous-looking ship-lice feeding on the remains of the King’s last meal – thankfully nothing sentient this time – and she steps warily round them. Periodically these lice need to be exterminated as, becoming infected with the Spatterjay virus, a few undergo transformations that make them even less savoury creatures. Finally she reaches the control centre.
The King is resting his great weight on a series of bars set just a few feet above the floor, his legs drawn up spiderlike above his main body. As Sadurian enters, Oberon keeps his attention focused on the array of hexagonal screens that honeycomb the wall ahead of him, his underarms at rest in a series of pit controls situated directly beneath the bars he rests upon. Sadurian focuses briefly on this monstrous entity before her, then swings her attention to a second monster now displayed on the screens.
The Golgoloth.
Though she knows about this creature, has seen images constructed from hearsay and heard descriptions, and has always been amused by the mythology, Sadurian has never actually seen the thing itself. Its grotesqueness has not been overly elaborated on by the taletellers, yet Sadurian merely gazes at it with analytical curiosity. She has seen worse monstrosities chewing their way out of the King’s birth molluscs, while the one right beside her certainly takes some beating.
‘You have a Human with you, I see, how coincidental,’ says Golgoloth. ‘Why exactly do you have a Human with you?’
‘I needed someone to solve my reproductive problem,’ Oberon replies. ‘Prador possess neither the elasticity of mind required nor the ability to distance themselves from such research work.’
‘But in solving your problem, the Human becomes a problem itself?’
‘Not really,’ replies the King, ‘since the Polity AIs have been aware of my condition for some years.’
This is news to Sadurian and seems to confirm some of her own speculations about why the King might be lurking here, by the Graveyard. She folds her arms and waits. That the Polity AIs know about the King makes it more likely he will allow her to return to the Polity, yet being privy to conversations like this one might not be healthy.
‘So in destroying Vrell your ostensible purpose of preventing Polity AIs or others finding out what he is, and thereby revealing what you are, is actually a lie.’ The Golgoloth is right on the button of course, but why, Sadurian wonders, is the King even speaking to this creature?
‘I think that you know that already, Golgoloth. I take it you have located Vrell, and that this coincidence you mention somehow concerns that fact?’
‘Astute as ever, O King. Observe.’
A small collection of screens blank down in one corner of the main array, then flicker on again to show a big bulky Human with his back resting against a glassy wall.
‘A Hooper,’ says Sadurian, peering at the man curiously. She herself has taken great interest in the work of one Erlin Taser Three Indomial on the planet Spatterjay – the woman who revealed much about the virus’s lifecycle. One day she intends to go there herself, simply to closely study Hooper Humans like this.
The King swivels his monstrous head round to gaze at her, and she wishes she’d kept her mouth shut. Though they converse with the clatter and bubble of Prador speech, the conversation between these two creatures seems easy and relaxed, and that puts her off her guard. Best to keep silent and remember her true position in Prador society. She lives simply at the King’s will, when otherwise she would be considered little more than food. Very highly paid food, but lunch nonetheless. The King returns his attention to the screens.
‘As my Human has noted: that is a Hooper. I also recognize this human as being involved in killing one of my agents in the Graveyard. He is an Old Captain by the name of Orbus. Perhaps you can elaborate on why he now appears to be a prisoner aboard your ship?’
‘Because he was with my other captive, Vrell.’
‘You have him?’
‘I have him.’
The lower screen image changes to show a black mutated Prador. Sadurian studies Vrell intently, noting the differences between him and Oberon. The King is obviously a lot further along than Vrell, and has been deliberately forcing mutations on his own body for some years, yet Vrell’s appearance does not match that of the King when the latter was the same age. Sadurian knows that for sure after being allowed to study the King’s personal physiological files.
‘Then why is he still alive?’ asks the King.
‘Whilst I was still considering your offer, certain complications arose,’ says the Golgoloth.
‘Explain,’ the King clatters, and Sadurian takes one careful pace away from him. When the King uses single-word interrogatives like that, it usually means he is getting pissed off, which in turn usually results in blood spattered on the walls.
‘I drove Vrell’s ship down onto a planetoid so as to facilitate my extracting him from it, since I knew that, wanting him dead, you would want proper evidence of his demise. However, I did not even need to extract him for, along with this Orbus and a Polity drone that was subsequently destroyed, he fled his ship – pursued by some distinctly strange creatures.’
‘Creatures?’
The King’s mandibles snap open on the final clonk of the Prador word and he rises up slightly, his big ribbed body now tense as that of a scorpion about to strike. The lower screen image changes yet again, this time to display some sort of cyborg insect.
‘Identify,’ Oberon instructs.
‘Vrell’s ship has been taken over by these creatures,’ the Golgoloth explains. ‘And it is apparent that they were once members of the Guard, but somehow transformed by the Spatterjay virus into what you see. Presumably the virus is working with some ancient alien genetic tissue it holds, but that would not explain how these things are able to wield advanced technologies. Perhaps you, Oberon, should now "identify".’
Oberon settles back with a sigh that seems to have some elements of pain in it. ‘It has happened,’ he intones.
‘What, precisely?’
Oberon raises his head. ‘You clearly did not look deep enough into the viral store, if all you found was alien genetic material.’
Sadurian cannot help herself. ‘Quantum mem-storage – the mind of a soldier, or perhaps the minds of many soldiers.’
‘As the Human says,’ declares the King.
The Golgoloth shudders as if those words possess a physical force, then speaks very slowly as it, no doubt, ransacks its ‘ganglion’ storage. ‘And that being so . . . considering the likely age of the virus in its present form, these soldiers were created by one of the three extinct races: the Jain, the Csorians or the Atheter.’
‘Discount the last two,’ Sadurian interjects. ‘You’re not up-to-date on recent research.’
‘Why?’ asks the ancient hermaphrodite.
‘Because the genetic sample I’ve been studying does not come anywhere close to matching that of those we now know to be the descendants of the Atheter – the gabbleducks of Masada. Nor does it match pieces of genetic material recovered by fossil genome techniques from what Polity AIs are sure is the body of a Csorian.’
‘The Jain, then,’ the Golgoloth continues. ‘The ones who liked to rearrange solar systems and even destroyed a few suns. Something very dangerous has been unleashed.’
‘Yes, it has,’ replies the King, ‘and now I must destroy it.’
Sadurian feels the world shift and the walls seem to distort all around her. Prador shielding is not as good as that on Polity ships, but in either case she knows instantly when any ship she is aboard has shifted into U-space. The Golgoloth fades from the main screens, but the picture of the Jain still hangs in place.
‘I wonder what they looked like before they started changing themselves . . . before they advanced enough . . .’ Sadurian wonders aloud.
Oberon just swings that great head of his towards her again.
Sadurian thinks it politic not to add: . . . before they could change their physical form at will . . . just like you, King of the Prador.
Gurnard regrets the death of Iannus Drooble, but it is not for AIs to limit the free will of Humans, even if they make stupid choices and get themselves killed. AIs only limit that free will when it might result in others dying.
‘We cannot rescue Orbus,’ says Thirteen, perching with his tail wrapped round one arm of the Captain’s chair, ‘or Vrell either.’
Gurnard could not agree more. With Sniper down, and quite possibly destroyed, there is no one now to send to the rescue, and going up against so large and obviously powerful a vessel would be suicidal. Such an effort would most likely only increase the chances of the two captives dying. All Gurnard can do therefore is watch, and again send out a request for advice.
The larger chunk from the big ship out there is heading back to the main ship with Orbus and Vrell now aboard. However the other splinter sent out to prevent the Gurnard getting any closer remains on station. Still no idea where that big ship comes from, and less idea what those creatures down on the planet are. Initially the AI assumed the big ship used some kind of U-jump – like it did with its missiles – to put alien assault troops aboard the dreadnought, but subsequent events have shot that theory down.
‘Any word from Sniper?’ Thirteen asks.
‘Nothing,’ Gurnard replies, contemplatively, whilst trying to analyse some particularly odd readings it is picking up on local com. ‘Nor have I received any response from the Polity fleet stationed at the border.’
‘That seems a bit strange.’
‘Perhaps they are still analysing the data.’
The local com is laser-based, and Gurnard is only intercepting a small portion of it, but even that is enough to realize it is dangerously loaded with informational life. Gurnard now recognizes it for what it is: this is splash, overspill from a computer warfare laser. Triangulation along the length of its own ship’s body gives Gurnard the source of the splash and thus the laser’s true target: that splinter deriving from the big ship out there. Analysis of how the laser is being deflected reveals that the beam is playing along the length of the splinter from somewhere down on the planetoid. If the attacks made upon the larger shuttle portion of that ship were not enough, this confirms the hostility of those life-forms below. Gurnard wonders if the crew of that big ship knows what is going on.
But then, before the AI can speculate further, it receives an urgent exterior request to open a U-com channel. All the codes are correct and it seems, from data accompanying the request, that it is opening from a distant location, via the runcible network and the Polity fleet. Gurnard accepts the request and allows Thirteen to listen in.
‘The data you dispatched is interesting,’ says the entity at the far end of the channel, and Gurnard feels for a moment as if it has tried to open conversation with a couple of individuals on the side of a mountain, and the mountain itself has replied. The ship AI knows instantly that this is no normal AI speaking; this is Earth Central itself.
‘Interesting in the sense of an old Chinese curse?’ Gurnard suggests.
‘Quite possibly,’ concurs Earth Central. ‘Due to the sensitive nature of relations between the Polity and the Prador Third Kingdom, we have been disinclined to initiate any large-scale intervention in this matter and, despite your data, this disinclination remains unchanged.’
‘We’ve got a massive unidentified vessel, possibly of Prador manufacture, here within the Graveyard,’ Gurnard observes. ‘And we’ve got alien assault troops that seemingly have appeared out of nowhere.’
‘Let me clarify matters for you: that large alien vessel is the property of a creature called the Golgoloth, a being that fled the usurpation of the Second Kingdom.’
Gurnard receives a data package and absorbs its contents instantly, now knowing precisely what this Golgoloth is, and also learning that Earth Central and the sector AIs have known about the creature for centuries.
Earth Central continues, ‘It seems likely that, despite the Golgoloth having previously been hunted down by King Oberon, it is now acting as his agent in this matter.’
‘And those aliens down there?’
Another data package arrives, from which Gurnard learns in great detail about the Jain soldiers the Spatterjay virus holds at its core. The ship AI also studies with interest the results of data extraction from the Jain quantum storage: about how these soldiers can alter and adapt their bodies at will, how they are hostile to any but those in their own squad, how certain elements of the knowledge held in storage have yet to be properly interpreted even by autistic-savant forensic AIs. However, these scientific details are not all of the data Earth Central is providing. Gurnard also learns about the long and troubled deliberations, between Earth Central and the Sector AIs, about what exactly should be done. On numerous occasions the whole planet of Spatterjay has come close to annihilation at their hands, so what held the AIs back? The answer was a reluctance to destroy such a unique source of data about the Jain, rather than any question of morality regarding planetary destruction and genocide.
‘You will not intervene here,’ says Gurnard. ‘Yet what is now happening here is precisely what you feared.’
‘As of this time, intervention is not required.’
‘But if no action is taken against them, they get a chance to grow stronger.’
‘But action is being taken. King Oberon, in his capital ship, along with twenty of the most advanced Prador dreadnoughts, is already on his way.’
Gurnard isn’t entirely sure this means the situation has got any better.
‘So what should I do?’
‘Though you were formerly employed by Earth Central Security, that employment is now considered at an end, and you are once again a free agent,’ Earth Central replies. ‘My advice, therefore, is that you get out of there just as fast as you can. Our border defence stations will let you through, if you do this right now. However I cannot guarantee that they will let anything pass through later on.’
The channel closes.
‘Ever get the feeling you’re just a pawn on a chessboard?’ Thirteen asks.
‘Often,’ Gurnard replies.
‘So what’s the real agenda here?’
‘My guess if that if King Oberon deals with this problem the Polity gets a bit of a negotiating advantage, what with him being the one to have broken their treaties. However, if things get out of control, Oberon might end up dead and quite a few of his major ships could be smashed up, then the Polity moves in to finish off the Jain – after which it has another kind of advantage.’
‘For attack?’ suggests Thirteen. ‘Attacking the Kingdom?’
‘No,’ Gurnard replies. ‘I’ve information about this Golgoloth now, and about how that creature is basically what held together the Second Kingdom, and further data on how Oberon alone is what holds together the Third Kingdom. Remove both of them from the equation, and Vrell too, since he might become as capable as either of the other two, and the Prador will start attacking each other again, and the Kingdom will fall apart.’
‘Then, I suppose,’ says Thirteen, ‘after letting them tear each other apart, ECS goes in to clear up the mess.’
‘Neat, don’t you think?’
‘Not very moral.’
‘Whoever accused us AIs of morality?’ Gurnard wonders.
‘So we run now?’
‘Of course not.’
Gurnard returns its attention to the splinter of ship still visible out there. The attempts at computer warfare have ceased, and it is now turning away to head back towards the father ship. Perhaps it has managed to fend off those attacks, but if otherwise Gurnard suspects it will be seeing the results of that failure quite soon.