18
Even as the first primitive computers were being bolted together, so were their diseases and parasites. Computer worms and viruses, so named because of their similarity to the real thing, were designed to penetrate computers in order to tell you about the latest tooth-rotting drink, to spy or simply to trash everything out of sheer malice. These things both evolved and were deliberately improved, in some cases even by those selling the cure for them, and in later centuries they became ever more complex. We still use the same names for them, though a better description would be ‘computer life’, for they include destructive programs that might be better described as sharks, scorpions, poisonous spiders and snakes, and – ranging into mythology – why not demons, imps and evil gnomes? It is rumoured that programs even exist that can penetrate living minds merely through the senses. As with all life, however, some parasites became symbionts and mutualists, or utterly independent entities. Some programs developed to fight the parasites even became malignant themselves. It was all a very fast evolutionary process that still continues and, though we may bemoan the latest picture worm wrecking our personal files, we should also remember that another product of this same process is artificial intelligence – for good or evil I leave you to judge.
– From HOW IT IS by Gordon
The powerful disruption of a USER shudders underspace, and in an instant Sniper realizes its source is that weird ship out there. The Jain, now manifesting in the debris cloud, have just ensured that no one will be taking off outsystem for some time. Win or lose, this is to be the battleground. They have also ensured that neither the King nor the Golgoloth will be firing off any U-space missiles. Now checking back towards the retreating King’s ship and its escort of dreadnoughts, Sniper observes that dropping from it are numerous dodecahedral objects, and one other item: for the Golgoloth’s ship is now loose out there, jetting steering thrusters to get its spin under control, and occasionally snapping out a fusion flame as it begins to manoeuvre.
‘Whoot,’ Sniper exclaims. ‘The shit just hit the fan.’
‘This is not a matter for any amusement,’ replies Gurnard.
‘Urn, I guess you were quite close to that last one?’
‘Close enough to bend my spine – and that weapon used some form of U-tech I know nothing about.’ Gurnard pauses. ‘This does not bode well for any of us, Sniper.’
‘No shit.’
Sniper surveys the Guard surrounding him. None of them is pointing a weapon at him, and some are now heading towards those dodecahedral objects, which he consequently assumes are not mines. Now might be a good time to make his escape. However, far in the distance, the ship of bones, judging by the blackness spreading around it, is recharging for another blast; while heading directly towards him and the surrounding Guard, with nothing in between but chunks of cooling magma and dispersed gas, comes a swarm of about two hundred Jain soldiers. Obviously the Jain intend to use their big weapon to take out the King’s dreadnoughts, but have dispatched a portion of their number to mop up everything else. Looks like it is going to be a stand-up, knock-down, brawly mess out here, and Sniper would not have missed it for anything.
‘Hey, who’s in charge here?’ Sniper asks, broadcasting on the same frequencies the Guard are using.
Unintelligible code bounces back at him, then abruptly transforms into Prador language, which Sniper has no trouble either understanding or speaking.
‘I am Frordor,’ comes the reply.
Sniper triangulates the signal by using the tips of two of his raised tentacles, and thus locates the armoured Prador in question. The only way this Frordor is distinct from all the rest is that he seems to be hauling around a big missile-launcher that isn’t integral to his armour.
‘I fought these same fuckers down on that planetoid,’ Sniper explains, ‘and there’s some stuff you need to know about their techniques.’
‘Do you know battle language Aleph?’
‘I do.’
‘Tell me, then.’
Sniper searches his own memory and finds, thankfully, that the old battle language of the Prador is not something the Jain have stolen from him. He likes the lingo, because it is utterly pragmatic. Using it, he now broadcasts his earlier experiences down there on the planetoid, detailing the viral attacks and the other methods the Jain soldiers employ.
Frordor begins to issue orders: ‘Move back to weapons caches, triclaw formation and rotate hardfield defence.’
‘If they get under your armour they’ll go straight for your suicide bombs,’ Sniper warns.
After a brief pause, Frordor says, ‘Disable approved by King. Tacticals manual detonation only.’
The armoured Prador begin falling back into a three-pronged formation, with the dodecahedral objects ranged behind them. These are now being opened up by others of the Guard and their contents distributed. Sniper spots big lasers, portable hardfield generators, some more of those large missile-launchers and numerous belts and packages of missiles and mines.
‘Um, any chance I can get me some of that stuff?’ he enquires.
‘Help yourself,’ Frordor replies.
Sniper draws in his tentacles from the gesture of surrender, assuming he is now no longer a prisoner. It strikes him as unusual for Prador, even the Guard, to adapt to a new situation so quickly, but then these, being with the King, must constitute the elite. He fires up his fusion engine and speeds over, scanning more deeply the armaments currently being distributed. The missiles are of about the right size, so he begins adapting his rail-gun to take them. As he approaches, the Guard unloading this particular dodecahedron, and flinging packages on courses to other Guards, suddenly sends three of the rolled-up missile belts in his direction. Sniper decelerates, fielding them with his tentacles, and then abruptly unravelling one of them. Closer scan reveals that the missiles contain balls of high-pressure metalized hydrogen wrapped about a layer of very dense explosive with a plutonium core. To the rear of each lies a chemical drive, and steering-jet holes ring the equator. Even as he tries to fiddle with the computer hardware inside them, Frordor sends him the access code. Sniper opens a hatch just above his rail-gun and begins feeding the missiles inside himself, as if eating sweets, reprogramming them as he slots them internally into his missile carousel.
Now Sniper jets over to another weapons cache, from which spherical crates of mines are being distributed. Again some packages get diverted his way. The mines are simple enough: they possess no propulsion but can be programmed to detonate in varying circumstances. He feeds a good number of these inside himself for later use, the remainder he sticks to his shell for easy access. Then he pauses to survey the overall situation.
The Guard seem as ready as they can be, Frordor having successfully deployed the claw formation, with its rotational use of hardfields to prevent too many of his comrades taking too much of the load at once. The Golgoloth’s ship has stabilized, and distanced itself behind and to one side of this formation, and now some of the Guard abandon it to join those already here. Perhaps the Golgoloth is hoping it will not need to get directly involved.
Sniper now considers his own position. He could easily take up a place within this formation and fight with the rest of the grunts, but that isn’t how he likes to operate. He prefers to bring in something from outfield, something others have not thought of. In fact he likes to win, not just slug it out. He therefore sends a probing signal to the Golgoloth’s ship, to try and open up some communication.
After a moment the creature replies. ‘Yes, I did note that you’ve survived, Polity drone,’ it says. ‘And it appears you managed to gain access to my ship without me noticing. How did you do that?’
‘I got in through one of your rail-gun ports then I used your maintenance robot ID code – you might like to take a look at that, because if I can do it, then so can the Jain.’
After a pause, ‘I now see where you came in. I have therefore randomized the code, and now all maintenance robots possess a personal code, to be altered on a randomized schedule.’
Fast.
‘Are you in this fight or not?’ Sniper asks, deliberately including Frordor in the communication.
‘Since the Jain have seen fit to strand us all here, it seems that I am in,’ the Golgoloth replies. ‘I do not think these creatures recognize neutrality.’
‘So what have you got?’
‘You expect me to detail the firepower I possess to a temporary ally and potential enemy?’
Sniper shrugs as he again focuses on the approaching Jain. Five of them are clustered about an object shaped like a doughnut, which has various receptor and transmission dishes dotted over its surface. The rest don’t carry anything more than those Sniper originally faced and, despite them being very very dangerous, there is only so much energy that creatures of this scale can individually deploy. He considers what he would do if he were one of them, intent on destroying a defence just like this.
‘You’re gonna be the main target,’ Sniper informs the Golgoloth. ‘They won’t fully engage the Guard here, but they’ll go for you. They like to hijack and subvert, and your ship is perfect for that purpose. If they get to it, they’ll enter and force the Guard to fire on you.’
‘I agree,’ Frordor interjects.
Steering thrusters suddenly fire up on the Golgoloth’s big melon-shaped vessel, and it begins to draw nearer to the formation, whilst Frordor issues orders in battle code, moving that formation over towards the approaching ship. Even now missiles are zipping towards them from the converging Jain, and little time now remains to get the defence properly organized.
Sniper now watches the approaching doughnut-shaped object, noting how it is being kept to the centre and rear of the Jain formation.
‘What is that damned thing?’ he broadcasts.
Immediately the Golgoloth sends to him a recording of the problems it earlier encountered while leaving the planetoid: how the Jain contrived to use the same energy the hermaphrodite deployed against them. It seems likely that this object serves a similar function, or is a relay from the vessel back there within the cloud, or both, so it needs to be taken out, quickly.
Clearly visible because of the surrounding dust and gas, green lasers spear up from the Jain. They blur and fray as they strike hardfields, but still enough gets through to form a viral attack.
‘Colour-shift all sensors,’ Frordor instructs.
Now why didn’t I think of that? Sniper grumps to himself. He does the same as all the Prador do, excluding the green of those lasers from the spectrum he can receive. Almost immediately these lasers shift to blue.
‘Keep shifting,’ Frordor instructs.
‘Watch for feedback through hardfields,’ Sniper sends.
‘Rotating.’
The Prador positioned to the fore of the formation break off and circle round to the rear. Now particle beams spear up, splashing on hardfields. The lasers start rapidly shifting their spectrum, and the Jain begin manoeuvring in a swirling pattern. Now they are so much closer, Sniper begins firing his own laser, loading it with the code Vrell passed to him when they were on the planetoid – the one designed to detonate the tacticals within the Guard these assailants once were. No response; they’ve obviously disabled that option, even as Frordor just did. He accelerates, curving out between Frordor’s formation into the gap between it and the Golgoloth’s ship. Distantly he observes another object approaching from off to one side, fusion engines at full blast: the Gurnard.
‘Come to join the fun?’ Sniper enquires.
Gurnard’s reply is less than polite.
Now the Guard launch missiles, and in moments the space between the two opposing forces begins blossoming with explosions. The projectiles impact on hardfield walls, flaring scales of energy into existence. Particle cannons probe from either side as the Jain come in closer, then, from a point on the exterior of the ship of bones deep in the cloud, a beam spears out, only visible because it heats the dispersed gas and dust along its course. Microwave beam, Sniper realizes, as it strikes precisely at the centre of the doughnut, and from there divides into a hundred narrower beams, licking out to be intercepted by a select few of the Jain. From these issue particle beams of incredible intensity, all focused on Frordor’s formation. The first three Prador forming the tip of each claw simply rupture as first their hardfield generators blow and then the beams hit them. Explosions of claws, legs and chunks of armour carapace spread, and others of the Guard cannot rotate into position fast enough to replace the casualties.
‘Break for individual combat,’ Frordor instructs needlessly.
From the moment he regained consciousness and found himself a captive of King Oberon, Vrell decided he would not beg, he would not grovel, and he would grab any opportunity that comes his way to fight for survival. However, on finally coming before the King, he has realized that he does not face a creature who will want those satisfactions from him. He has found himself before an entity even more frightening and even more potent than the Golgoloth, and which functions on a level far above himself. Upon having his restraints removed, he perhaps should have made some futile gesture, hopefully thus speeding his own end. But he did not, because he knew when he was utterly outclassed.
Probing the controls made available to him, Vrell discovers he has been allowed a great deal of leeway. He can call up onboard information within the mask, which provides him with a three-dimensional virtuality. Some of this data is classified even to members of the Guard. He can also open private com channels and run the kinds of complex calculations and programs he is accustomed to. He can access sensors aboard this same ship, and the dreadnoughts, and even those carried by individual Prador out there, so through the mask he can see every detail of the desperate fight taking place out in space. However, the ship’s weapons, defences and command channels lie outside his remit. Instead he opens another channel to send a probing signal, and then waits.
‘Gotcha,’ Thirteen replies, his voice relayed through small speakers in Vrell’s mask and the words also displayed as Prador glyphs should he need them. ‘Orbus is in the circuit too.’
Vrell turns his head to glance over at the prisoners, the mask moving with him and responding to his wish by providing an outside view, then turns his attention back to the King, his attendant Human and the two chrome-armoured third-children. The two small Prador are currently attaching optics, power feeds and various fluid pipes to the numerous devices woven throughout the King’s body, thus connecting him to the mechanisms of the pillar. As yet Vrell has been unable to access any information about what is occurring there.
‘Any idea what’s going on?’ he asks.
‘I am scanning,’ Thirteen replies, ‘but the technology is awfully complex.’
‘Whatever it is,’ says Orbus, ‘the thought of it is scaring that Sadurian character even more than those nasty buggers out there are.’
‘How do you know this?’ Vrell asks.
‘Trust me,’ the Old Captain replies. ‘She started shitting herself the moment the King told her he "must become" – whatever that means.’
Vrell studies the King further, trying to put aside his initial reaction of awe and terror. The King is obviously a creature already well advanced in mutation by the Spatterjay virus. But now he has decided he ‘must become‘ after being faced with the evidently superior firepower of the Jain. He has obviously decided on an option he was reluctant to choose before and, if Orbus is correct about the reaction of the Human woman, whom Vrell has ascertained to be a first-class Polity mind specializing in reproduction and genetics, it seems likely this choice is a dangerous one. Vrell already has some idea of what that might be even as he seeks confirmation from the masses of data made available to him, but numerous searches render him nothing more than an arrow pointing directly towards the King’s private files. Vrell takes a long hard look at the codes needed to give him access, and proceeds to formulate programs that might enable him to crack them.
‘I can’t see how he can become anything worse than he is,’ Orbus adds.
Vrell cannot find the spare processing power within his own mind to respond, as he inserts every available limb into pit-controls and frantically works his programs. He calls up data from ship’s systems, programs or fragments of the same that are stored there. He combines them, alters them, tests them, puts them through high-speed computerized evolutionary processes. Trying to cover every bet, for he feels sure he will have only one chance at this, his mind goes into overdrive. Then, almost on a level that is not quite consciousness, he launches his programs against the King’s files and finds himself in an informational battle that seems to mirror the chaos unfolding in vacuum outside.
He punches through firewalls, and then has to either disinfect or sacrifice the programs he uses for that purpose when they become loaded with killer viruses from the walls themselves. He has to weave together his own programs to fight killer programs deployed against him, has to even reformat his own thinking and sensory input so as to prevent some of the things sent by those same killers from loading into his own mind – but the King’s earlier attack on him aboard Vrost’s ship has prepared him for this. At many points he finds himself making no headway at all, being diverted into blind tunnels or lured towards data precipices, and every time he finds he has to exert more effort in pushing the functionality of his mind to its limits, and beyond its limits, yet finding something there even so. Reaching a certain depth in he knows there is no turning back, as this determined penetration becomes a fight for survival. His breathing accelerates to its limit and hunger grows inside him as his mind constantly sucks up and burns nutrients. His brain becomes hot and his heart pumps at its maximum, to feed it food and oxygen and to draw away heat. Some of his limbs and some internal organs shut down, superfluous to this process. Then, when it seems he is about to be crushed under those powerful defences, he is through, all of them collapsing simultaneously around him. He feels he has been deliberately tested to the utter limit, which in itself seems far too neat to be coincidental.
‘So you are in,’ says something, and Vrell cringes, exhausted, immediately expecting to come under either an informational attack or a physical one. For the thing here is something the Prador so much dread: an artificial intelligence.
‘What are you?’ Vrell asks, unable to think of a more coherent question.
‘I am Sphinx.’
‘Are you Polity?’
‘I am,’ replies Sphinx. ‘I am the property of Sadurian, though of course I also belong to myself. She fed me into the ship’s system about two hours ago, when she realized just how badly fucked-up things might get here.’
‘How do you intend to react to me?’ Vrell asks.
‘I do not intend to react to you as you fear,’ the AI replies. ‘My own presence here is as unrequested as your own.’
As his breathing and heart rate slow, Vrell mulls that over. This AI could be either an enemy or an ally. Certainly it can find information more quickly than he can . . .
‘What is the King doing?’
‘He is in the process of opening up quantum Jain memstorage inside himself, so as to provide himself with the knowledge to defeat them,’ Sphinx replies, simultaneously opening and presenting files in a quickly growing virtual space. These show Vrell the details of the operation, which Vrell briefly inspects.
‘It is, as you might imagine,’ says the AI, ‘a risky venture which will probably result in the mind of some Jain soldier taking complete control of him. He believes, however, that he can control things for long enough to obtain the necessary knowledge.’
Vrell peers across at the King. All the pipes, optics and cables are finally attached, and the pillar now quietly humming to itself. The effect upon Oberon is noticeable already. Clear fluid drips from gaps between sections of his carapace, and he is swinging his head from side to side as if in agony. Perhaps he is.
Vrell inspects the information contained in the files, but is still not up to speed. ‘How is he doing this?’
‘He is using nanites to kill off the last of the Spatterjay genome stored inside every one of his cells, thus leaving only Jain DNA, the virus itself and those quantum stores. The disruption to his cellular machinery is very great, and many of the cybernetic mechanisms spread throughout his body are there just to keep him alive.’
‘So in the end it will be just his mind pitted against whatever comes out of quantum storage,’ Vrell notes.
He is starting to feel better now, almost euphoric. With the kind of access previously denied him, he initiates searches into the files. It surprises him to find that the only weapons in the near area are the wall-mounted defensive weapons in the atrium and a cache of the weapons taken from himself, Orbus and the Golgoloth’s children. There is nothing he can gain control of from here to turn against the King. However he does find out how to open the small cache, and how to turn off the force-fence around his comrades, but this does not seem enough, for these same files also provide him with a great deal of data about the King’s physical structure and the power of his mind. There is even stuff here Vrell simply cannot comprehend, and he doubts, if it comes to a fight, that he and the others can win. It would be like a crowd of Human children armed with bows and arrows attacking a fully-armed Prador. The result would likely be messy.
‘And if you attack the King now,’ says Sphinx, ‘you’ll probably destroy the only hope for survival any of us has right now.’
That is certainly a valid point, but another valid point is that if the King does manage to repel the Jain using their own knowledge, it will not be long before he becomes one of them too. This newly made Jain soldier controlling the King’s body will then be right in the middle of its enemy, and with access to many conveniently placed weapons and primary controls. In such a position it could, given time, reactivate the Guard’s tacticals and destroy them all at once, seize control of the dreadnoughts and force them to fire on each other, or send the codes to reactivate their self-destructs. Vrell needs to be ready.
Then he spots it: the one small chance they have.
‘Our weapons,’ Vrell tells Orbus, ‘are in a store set into the wall over to your right, and I can deactivate the fence surrounding you. As soon as I shut down the fence and open the store, here is what we must do.’
The Prador formation shatters, its separate armoured troops now making less easy targets for the persistent particle beams. Along with the relay device they draw their energy from, the Jain shooters now hold back, whilst the rest come on. But still those beams are methodically incinerating members of the Guard. As if this was not bad enough, that plaited beam lances out again from the Jain ship’s main dish, passing through the periphery of this skirmish.
Sniper tracks its course and watches it flash against a hardfield off to one side. There, two of the King’s dreadnoughts are attempting to cover each other. As the first hardfield goes out, the dreadnought it issued from drops back shedding fire from numerous ports, and another hardfield intercepts the beam. The damaged dreadnought stabilizes for a moment, even whilst the detonations of hardfield generators star the hull of its replacement. It manages to emit an intermittent field, but this isn’t enough. Something big then blows inside the replacement ship, hurling out a chunk of hull armour from a glowing wound, and its field winks out. At once the beam stabs through. It hits the vessel like a slow-turning metal drill, and just tears into it, spewing debris into space, before punching its way out the other side. However, this time it does not shut down but rips out the side of its target then bores into its fellow. The beam’s first target is now just an unrecognizable mass of wreckage, while it cores its second and leaves it tumbling inert through vacuum. Meanwhile, the darkness surrounding the Jain ship begins to grow again as it draws in energy for yet another strike.
As the advancing Jain and the Guard defenders swirl into each other, Sniper finds himself passing within just a few miles of a formation of five Jain. He first focuses his rail-gun entirely upon one of them, and fires a fusillade of inert missiles. Then he launches ten of the Prador missiles, each in a different direction, all following the slightly adapted program he has just devised. Copying the Jain, he rapidly begins changing the spectrum of his laser, continuously loading it with a varied selection of viruses and worms. He is damned if he intends to lose out against these fuckers this time.
As he has calculated, they change their formation slightly, one of them accepting the impact of the rail-gun missiles whilst two others cover it, the remaining two focusing their attention on the missiles as they loop round. He ramps up his drive to full power, turns on his supercavitating conefield, and spears down towards their hardfields. The impact is massive, juddering Sniper almost to a halt, but it breaks up their formation and knocks out their hardfields. His own conefield gives out, blowing numerous internal fuses and slagging two of its five emission coils. Drive still firing at full power, he comes down on one of them and propels it away from the rest.
A claw closes on one of his tentacles as the creature tries to turn him round to face its particle cannon. Setting his spatulate cutter running, he spears it inside the mirrored barrel of the cannon and slices down inside, sheering power lines and components. The creature begins to extrude something tubular which ignites at its tip – a thermic lance – while the others now swing round to follow. Sniper fires his steering thrusters, spinning himself and the creature with precisely enough timing for his opponent to receive the brunt of a particle-cannon blast from one of its fellows, which cuts a smoking crater in its back.
Finally, tearing through its internal components, Sniper hits something vital and the creature’s movements become sluggish. Using another tentacle Sniper selects mines from his armoury, withdraws his main tentacle and begins to insert the things inside his prey. The other four Jain are now otherwise engaged, as the ten missiles finally head back towards them and begin to prowl around them like piranhas. Sniper decelerates, allowing the four to fall in his direction, then propels their fellow towards them. His opponent crashes amidst them, some twenty yards ahead of Sniper, and meanwhile begins to move much faster and to correct its tumble. It has self-repaired astonishingly fast – just in time for the numerous mines inside it to detonate. Chunks of the Jain slam into its fellows, sending them into instant disarray.
Programmed to respond to this detonation, the prowling missiles now speed in. Sniper folds in his tentacles and puts his hardfield out to its maximum power and extent, set to roll back towards him at the precise time of the expected detonations, thus obviating some of the blast. Space turns incandescent, and Sniper finds himself hurtling away, his hardfield still functional though its generator is torn from its mountings and pressing against the back interior of his shell.
Flame clears to reveal that two more Jain are now toast, but the remaining two begin accelerating towards him. On either side, he sees Prador already copying his technique and engaging claw to claw. How will they insert mines, though? Numerous blasts rapidly lighting the firmament indicate to him that they are not, but instead are engaging then detonating their own internal fusion tacticals. He admires their dedication, but decides it is not a technique he himself wants to employ. It might be a winning formula, too, if not for that energy feed emanating from the Jain ship to that relay and thence to individual Jain soldiers. These particular troops continue to fire a sequence of immensely powerful particle-beams that pick off the Guard with devastating precision. How can the Guard win against that? And as he launches further missiles and accelerates towards his own two opponents, he wonders how just he is going to win as well.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, erupts a dazzling white blast. One of the two Jain simply blackens and ablates away, and the second is sent tumbling helplessly. A bubble appears around it, closes then winks out, and a trail of shattered and molten debris mark its onward course.
‘Very good, drone,’ the Golgoloth sends. ‘Now let’s see what you can do about that relay.’
Checking out towards the relay, Sniper sees complicated duelling going on all around it, with the hardfields projected from the Golgoloth’s vessel and from the Jain themselves taking on strange twisted shapes he has never witnessed before. Next scanning down towards the ancient hermaphrodite’s ship, Sniper sees that about half the Jain force is currently heading towards it, under a hardfield umbrella, power being fed to them by that relay. White lasers probe up, and every now and again one of the Jain simply detonates like a fuse blowing in some circuit. The Golgoloth has also launched missiles, which circle round questingly. However, judging by their present casualty rate, at least twenty of the Jain will reach the Golgoloth’s ship before this is all over, and just one or two of them might be enough.
‘What cover can you give me?’ he enquires, setting himself on a course that will take him round that hardfield action.
‘Enough to keep them from close engagement,’ the Golgoloth replies, then adds, ‘Trust me.’
Sniper likes the creature’s sense of humour.
He now concentrates on repairing some of the damage inside himself, dispatching minibots to weld his hardfield generator securely in the position it now occupies. Reinstalling fuses, he sets his three remaining conefield coils running again. This will give him three-fifths of a cone, which might mean the difference between life and death. He checks power, finds he is a quarter down, then loads more mines and missiles inside himself. The Jain spread about the relay obviously know he is coming, for many of them turn in his direction. A particle beam lances towards him, but splashes on an angled hardfield and deflects, losing coherence, and blasts past Sniper like the output from a flamethrower. Other Jain try to manoeuvre for a clear shot, but shifting themselves outside of their main formation puts them in the way of the Golgoloth’s bubble fields. They, too, instantly become clouds of spreading debris. Others retreat to defend the relay itself, and he considers the odds.
‘Unless you can take out the ten of them around that relay,’ he tells the Golgoloth. ‘I haven’t got a fucking chance of knocking it out.’
‘It only has to be out for less than a second,’ the Golgoloth replies. ‘Can’t you think of something clever and martial?‘
Sniper now knows what needs doing. He launches his whole stock of missiles towards the relay, tweaking the programming of each as he fires them. That should keep ’em busy. Now for the mines, which he begins internally loading to his rail-gun and firing, their programs sets equally as varied. Because they do not precisely fit the rail-gun barrel, their accuracy isn’t that great, but he wants nothing explosive left inside him for what is about to come.
‘Get yourself ready,’ he sends, whilst firing up his fusion engines to take him on a course behind the relay.
‘I see,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘Our brief acquaintance has been an interesting one.’
About the relay itself, missiles detonate one after the other. Sniper is satisfied to see the tail end of a Jain tumbling away and a claw, glowing white hot, go spearing past him. One of the Golgoloth’s fields then manages to punch through, and a brief sheer-plane slices two more of the Jain creatures in half horizontally. Then Sniper is bearing down on a seemingly solid bar of microwave energy. He fires up both his hardfield and conefield and falls into the bar. The remaining conefield coils last only a tenth of a second, while the hardfield generator persists for a further two-tenths of a second, the excess heat draining into his s-con grid but, once that becomes overloaded by microwave radiation, the grid simply turns molten inside him. Sniper’s internal temperature ratchets up dangerously, even as he uses emergency measures to protect his most vital component: the crystal of his mind. Three of his minor tentacles simply fall apart, and one of his major ones explodes as the metal of a motor turns to gas. An age seems to pass in only tenths of a second, as he finally tumbles out of the beam’s path. But has he cut off the microwave flow to the relay for long enough?
He has.
Through blurred visual input, Sniper watches numerous bubbles flash in and out of existence in surrounding space, strewing debris after them. A white laser blinks into hazy existence, deploys in a rapid circle that incorporates the doughnut of the relay, until the thing becomes a ring of burning gas. Sniper tries to fire up his fusion engine, but it merely belches a dirty red flame before sputtering out. He tries his particle cannon on a nearby Jain, but nothing happens. His mind seems to be filled with nothing but error codes, but at least he still has a mind. The nearby Jain swings towards him, other more distant Jain swing towards him too, but then that same white laser licks out to touch them, one after another, turning them instantly into puffs of glowing gas. Distantly, Sniper can see the remaining Guard now close to the Golgoloth’s ship, and can see how the attacking Jain are swiftly being dispatched.
‘Nice one,’ he sends, then notes the error code informing him that a glowing slagged item inside him is all that remains of his ability to communicate.
‘Bollocks,’ he notes, as he falls away from the action.
It isn’t over, not by any means. That swarm of objects now rising from the Jain ship is probably the rest of the buggers, and a brief brightness flooding surrounding space sees yet another dreadnought turned to scrap metal. Around that distant Jain vessel, the darkness is intensifying again, as it recharges to take out the remaining dreadnoughts, or the Golgoloth’s ship, or even the King’s ship. However, it is over for Sniper, and he thinks it doubly over for him when a hardfield bubble materializes around him and drags him to an abrupt halt. He waits for it to close down to a point, but instead it throws him in a different direction. Enough of his sensors remain for him to observe a set of crenellated hold doors opening, before he crashes down onto a ceramal deck, bounces and thunders into a rear wall.
Seems he is home, then, and he waits for Gurnard to find some means of talking to him.
The Golgoloth feels as raw and beaten up as it often used to feel after one of its siblings had attacked it – before it first learnt how to avoid them, then turn them against each other, then find other means to defeat them before it slaughtered them all. But at least this is a feeling to which it has been long accustomed. The reality, it suspects, is that little of its own original physical body remains for, over the long years, it has replaced all of its underhands, legs, both claws, numerous internal organs and something like 80 per cent of its major ganglion. Its mind remains its own, however, always its own. This, it seems, is precisely the King’s condition, having lost or changed most of his physical body over the years. But now it seems the King is losing his mind.
‘It can be done,’ intones Oberon.
The Golgoloth checks its displays and once again begins integrating its exterior ganglia distributed throughout the ship. Certainly it has five U-jump missiles now ready for firing, but USER disruption within this system has turned underspace into a chaotic and ever-changing geometry.
‘If I fire them, they’ll be bounced out, probably turned inside-out too,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘There’s no stability out there. Anyway, you’ve got your own kamikazes.’
‘Not accurate . . . enough,’ the King struggles to say.
The old hermaphrodite peers at the image of the King and gets a horrible inkling of what the mechanisms interlaced throughout his body, and the pillar they connect to, are for, and also what the Human female and the two chrome-armoured third-children are currently doing. At that moment, on other sensors, the Golgoloth watches another of the King’s dreadnoughts die, and knows that its own ship would not last long if thus targeted. Perhaps it is time now to make a run for it, just using conventional fusion drive. The King and his remaining forces should keep the Jain occupied for a little while and, due to the U-space disruption, the Jain would only be able to pursue the Golgoloth by using conventional drive too. Perhaps the Golgoloth could stay ahead of them, using the techniques it long ago employed to first avoid Oberon’s hunters; perhaps it could even lead the Jain into the Polity itself and let them become a problem for Earth Central and all its subordinate AIs.
‘Stability is integral in space weave. Obedience is integral to success,’ remarks Oberon.
Right, he is definitely losing it – for that isn’t how the King talks at all. Meanwhile, other displays show that the nearest dreadnought is launching three bulky missiles the Golgoloth recognizes as the current Prador version of its own U-space missiles: large flying bombs piloted by first-child minds, suicide weapons.
Oberon continues, ‘If you run, my five remaining dreadnoughts and my own ship have you in their sights. If you survive that, which I doubt, the kamikazes will follow you and, once you reach stable U-space, they will kill you.’
Ah, the King is back. The Golgoloth estimates its chances. The firepower remaining to the King does make fleeing an unlikely option. It doesn’t matter how many hardfields the Golgoloth can deploy if it becomes the target of a few hundred rail-guns and as many energy weapons.
‘Space weave?’ the hermaphrodite enquires.
‘Weapon a product of revolving singularity positioned across interface of U-space gate – effect focused through spiral gravity field,’ says the King. ‘You will all be erased, as is necessary for our survival.’
Oberon is swinging his head from side to side, his voice now produced by machinery rather than his own twitching and clashing mandibles. The Golgoloth also notes that the King’s words confirm he has accessed Jain quantum storage, because he has just described technology that certainly does not exist within the Kingdom, and might not yet even exist in the Polity.
‘You mean that weapon which just destroyed two of your dreadnoughts,’ says the Golgoloth, pretending to be thick.
‘That weapon . . . yes,’ manages the King.
‘What about positioning?’ asks the Golgoloth, very much not liking what seems to be implied here.
‘Yes . . . you must put yourself right in front of that beam, my old friend.’
My old friend.
Suddenly, those words seem to be enough, and the Golgoloth feels a great sadness surge through him. Oberon is also saying goodbye, it realizes. But the question remains about how to deal with what will certainly replace the King – a Jain soldier.
‘It is indeed sad to lose a long-time friend,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘True replacements are difficult to find.’
‘You know all . . . about replacements,’ says Oberon. ‘The first replacement . . . for me . . . will be dealt with. Arrangements have been made.’
The Golgoloth just has to trust that this is true, as it fires up its engines, turns its vessel so its least damaged side faces the ship of bones, and then accelerates towards it.