I should not have missed that, thought Amistad. Then perfect recall revealed that he hadn’t missed it—in his own original recall of this particular visit, these details just hadn’t been there. He immediately began checking his own systems for interference, meanwhile broadcasting warnings to local AIs and back to Earth Central. Penny Royal had been interfering, and the AI had been interfering with Amistad.
On looking deeper, he saw that his earlier memory of his and Penny Royal’s encounter on the lip of the caldera hadn’t contained its more recent detail either. He really hadn’t known that Penny Royal had uploaded its eighth state from the container. Just as with this more recent memory, detail had been added later. But, unfortunately, there was no time stamp on it and no way of telling when this had happened. Nor was there any way of telling how it had been added. Or indeed why.
“You have been compromised,” noted the Garrotte, its communication channel tight, security heavy and bandwidth limited, “by Penny Royal.”
Other local AIs noted this too, and began to limit their connection with Amistad. Even one of his subminds—one with a lot more of his original war-drone self in it than others—declared independence and abruptly severed all connection.
“I have,” Amistad replied. “But even so, I think I know what’s coming.”
“Really?” wondered the Garrotte, now distrusting Amistad entirely.
“Really,” Amistad continued. “Penny Royal sampled the Technician—it took genetic data and probably—”
“I have four ships coming through now,” said the Garrotte. “Sorry, work to do.”
The attack ship cut the communication channel, firmly. And Amistad had a sneaking suspicion that the data had been added to trigger this very result—so he would be compromised right now.
ISOBEL
The Caligula smelled like an abattoir, one that had also been set on fire. The crew were all dead and the surviving seven troops had barricaded themselves in the armoury, where they had set up some heavy weapons. She’d just managed to stop herself going in after them as her frenzy started to diminish. It wasn’t risk to herself that halted her, but the fact that the Caligula could be crippled if they started letting loose with particle cannons. She waited then, with the patience of a cat, and watched as the seven cut through a wall and rushed to get aboard a shuttle. She watched them depart, took some necessary action, then turned away from the armoury.
Even with the initial frenzy gone, the hunger remained. For now it originated utterly in the cold analytical part of her, and she continued to feed. It was no meticulous feeding, this, no instinctive hooder need to separate out poisonous black fats. She knew, on that analytical level, that such simple poisons would not affect her present form. All the way back from the armoury she ripped into the corpses, her extensible feeding members sucking at fluid. Her scalpel manipulators, some now as large as garden sickles, sliced up the rest and conveyed a constant stream to her large feeding mouth. Everything went in this time: clothing, augmentations, the laminated bones of those who had been boosted. She only realized how unselective she was being when she became aware she’d sliced up an assault rifle and eaten that.
After the fifth corpse, her body felt agonizingly tight and her temperature was now so high that the stuff she was eating had begun to smoke as she took it up. The small human part of her wanted to scream. Relief only came with a shuddering crack all down her length, as the old carapace broke open along dorsal lines. Each segment parted over new hot growths of cyanosis-blue flesh. Even as she moved on, new carapace began to extend from under the old, like the growth of fingernails under time-lapse. Her cowl, her mouth, and her manipulators were growing at the same pace too and as these got larger the pace of her feeding increased. Isobel peeled the corpse of a woman as if eating a cob of sweetcorn, chewing down flesh, bones and gristle. She fed on the spine like a stalk of asparagus then sucked in the shoulders, arms and head in one bite. Negligently, she noted her new carapace scoring the corridor walls. And, while searching for one who had crawled into his cabin to die, she had to tear out the door, its frame and part of the wall.
I am Isobel, she told herself, but was only sure of what that meant in the last human part of her mind, which now had little grip on the rest. The analytical part was now utterly dominant, the predator an adjunct to that, while the human looked on. Even so, the dominant war machine parts still vaguely retained Isobel Satomi’s purpose for, powerful as it was, it was a servant or slave and still required instruction. It was going to Masada to kill both Thorvald Spear and Penny Royal. Previously, this had been nothing more than an arrogant fantasy. However, even while it was a part of and trapped inside this mentality, the human Isobel realized that success was now a real possibility. The tri-part being, this new Isobel, was quite capable of taking on the black AI. However, the war machine’s vagueness of purpose stemmed from something else. Its analytical part had reacted to the Jain technology dormant in the Spatterjay virus, which it had been exposed to in the thralled corpses. And this exposure to its ancient foe had triggered a dawning awareness of its true purpose. Hooder war machines had been created to fight a particular enemy: Atheter who controlled or were controlled by Jain tech, along with the technology itself. The Jain may have disappeared as a race many millennia ago, but their tech still survived here and there, as lethal as a dormant genocidal bio-weapon. A hooder such as Isobel wasn’t designed to hunt down creatures it didn’t even recognize—and the awakening part of her being was starting to sense that. Its present mission didn’t come from its true masters and soon there would be a reckoning.
When Isobel reached the bridge of the Caligula, she realized that she couldn’t enter it without wrecking it completely—and that entering it was a pointless exercise anyway. Behind the bridge she tore out walls, destroyed cabins and ripped up floors, but with a precision that left essential optics and power cables in place. She eventually coiled her now huge form in a nest of torn metal and other debris. She had fed hugely and grown hugely, but further internal growth needed to take place. She became somnolent as she concentrated the autonomous mechanisms that belonged to her analytical side on her new form’s internal structures. The predator retreated, now perceiving no immediate threats and being dominated by the other. Isobel the human fought against the urge to sleep, somehow aware that this would be her last and only chance to regain some control.
First she focused on the predator. It was in fact the main mental component of the hooder she had originally been turning into. It had started to dominate her, which had resulted in her making decisions she’d never have made as a human.
I’m going to Masada?
It was madness.
As she worked on seeing more clearly she found herself borrowing from the analyst, almost, but not quite, unconsciously. The predator was the rabid animal, now drugged and dopey, and she was leashing it and fitting the muzzle. Even so, she understood that these bonds could never be enough and moved to the next stage, which was to incorporate it back into herself and try to dominate it. It began to meld easily with her, and she understood why when she viewed the links between them. It had previously incorporated part of her into itself: the murderer, the villain, the killer without conscience …
I am going to Masada.
Yes, that decision had been a kind of madness—but now, with her new abilities, with the war mind …
She turned towards that analytical being; that war mind. She felt stronger with the predator leashed and now part of her. First she slid into its identification routines and tried to subvert them, but they were hardwired and heavily defended. The war mind knew what its masters were and she wasn’t one of them. Why, then, that vagueness? Why had it not immediately rejected and suppressed her? Why was it still fixed in some vague way on the same purpose as she?
Orders.
It came down simply to that. This thing was bigger than her: a complex, multifaceted being. It controlled internal weaponry and energies on levels only accessible to pla
netary AIs in the Polity. But that was not how it had started out. It was a new being and had grown within her from Penny Royal’s genetic manipulations. It had started out as something small—with Isobel being part of it throughout, even though dominated by the predator. Had it been combined with Isobel alone, it would have recognized her as alien, but it knew the predator as part of itself so she’d escaped notice. She had, in fact, been consigned to that small part of itself reserved to receive orders from its masters. It did not see her as a being, just instructions.
Isobel moved quickly to affirm that, concealing those parts of her human self that had blunted its purpose. She clarified her intentions—or orders—then enforced them through her link to it via the predator. She would be in control …
I am Isobel.
She was instantly and utterly absorbed. She was at once predator, war machine and Isobel Satomi. Her orders were firm, her purpose was absolute, and now she was impatient to act.
TRENT
The screaming and sounds of weapons fire had finished long ago. And, really, if any of that started up again he didn’t need to listen to it to know what had been going on aboard the Caligula. Trent turned the volume down, and again studied the single video clip he had obtained before the Caligula’s cam system went down. Isobel had come out of the hold fast and simply ripped Morgan and those others apart before moving on. Then there was just screaming—sound only available via a laser bounce detector Trent had focused on that ship’s hull.
There had been a couple of atmosphere breaches over there too and a couple of escape attempts. The two in space suits had been hit by something that smeared them across space like bugs against a glass window. The shuttle, leaving some while after the last screams died away, managed to get nearly as far as the Glory before a missile blew it to pieces. Trent supposed that last action was Isobel recovering her senses, and deciding she didn’t want those aboard the Glory knowing what had actually happened aboard the Caligula. They would doubtless get her story instead, something about a mutiny being put down. They would hear nothing about her overpowering need to rip people apart and eat them. He tried communications again, and this time Isobel responded, her image coming clear on the screen.
“So you just couldn’t control yourself,” he said. He had to suppress his urge to flinch back from the image of her spread right across the screen before him, her manipulators and other nasty protrusions framed by her hood.
“There was danger,” she intoned.
“That why your Golem killed the captain of the Glory?”
After a long pause, as if this was some incident she’d not recollected, she replied, “He was slow.”
“What the hell happened there, Isobel?”
“We cannot trade in virus-infected humans anymore.”
Right, Trent thought. He’d seen the cargo being ejected from the Glory, but had assumed Isobel was abandoning evidence of their crimes before they headed to Masada. It would make sense if she’d intended to retrieve it after her supposed success on that world. However, when she steadily destroyed them with the Caligula’s weapons, he saw that as confirmation of her lost grip on reality. That cargo was a massive investment in time and money—the kind of investment the former Isobel would never have dispensed with so casually.
“So why is that?” he asked.
“The enemy is there, in the virus. It’s dormant, but it’s possible it could be inadvertently activated. The Jain are there in the virus.”
Trent sat back. She’d finally stepped off a mental cliff, because he had no idea what she was babbling about.
“Now we go to Masada, to complete the mission,” she added.
He felt the U-space engine engaging and guessed the same was happening aboard the other ships. Trent knew that it wouldn’t be long now before answers to his questions would cease to matter to him at all.
SPEAR
It soon grew hot within the ATV, doubtless due to friction from the flute grasses that constantly brushed against its bodywork. I sat perfectly still for a while, half expecting us to crash into something, but I finally suppressed this instinctive fear with the knowledge we were unlikely to crash while the vehicle was controlled by Riss. I forced myself to relax, reclined my seat a little, and decided to do some investigating.
I opened up my aug to Masada’s computer networks, first trying to track down the submind that had been set to watch us. I could make no connection with it—I next tried Amistad himself and was again disappointed.
“You won’t get much there,” said Riss, obviously keeping a watch on me in more than just the physical world. “Amistad just discovered he was penetrated by Penny Royal. All the other AIs in the Masadan system just dropped him like the proverbial hot potato.”
“What?” I asked, wondering whether a proverbial hot potato was somehow hotter than the common kind.
“He’s quarantined, isolated, his warden status on hold. He won’t be making any big decisions here until a forensic AI has taken him apart and scrutinized those parts—if he allows that.”
“In what way is he compromised?”
“No real details, but it seems his memories were interfered with.”
“A common complaint around here,” I observed.
Bouncing off Riss’s announcement that Amistad was under quarantine, I checked the status of our destination. Annoyingly the quarantine there still applied, despite the initial order having come from a now “compromised” AI. Even while I was performing my checks, I was surprised to be contacted by a human rather than another AI.
“You’re heading towards an interdicted zone, buddy, and we can’t allow that.”
The identification package attached to this communication told me that Leif Grant, the human ambassador of this world, was speaking to me. I’d always wondered about human ambassadors. They’d been used in all sorts of odd and quite critical situations, like first contact with the prador and in communications with the trans-stellar entity Dragon. They were often used on worlds that were just beyond the Line and about to be subsumed by the Polity. With the latter, I understood the reasoning—how humans on out-Polity worlds might be somewhat suspicious of AIs. But in the former two cases things hadn’t gone so well. Were human ambassadors used because of some odd AI attempt to be inclusive; to not leave out their inferior organic kin? Perhaps they were deployed as just another tool, through which the AIs could gather more data.
“Who can’t allow that?” I asked. “As I understand it Amistad has been isolated, so shouldn’t you be questioning his previous decisions?”
“Amistad is good,” said Grant, “and the present situation is only due to understandable caution in the AI world.”
“Still, we’re not stopping and we intend to enter that area,” I said. “Amistad was being just a little too cautious, and he hasn’t got all the facts.”
“Like what?”
I really wished he hadn’t asked that.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Isn’t it always? But the quarantine still stands,” Grant paused for a moment, as if checking something. “Apparently your war drone associate assaulted a couple of police officers.”
“Rubbish,” Riss interjected. “I merely defended myself. It wasn’t my fault they fired stunners straight at hardfields and got caught in the back blast.”
“Mmm, debatable. Here’s how it will run. I’ve got a couple of assets moving to intercept you. The moment you enter the zone’s half-mile border, your vehicle will be disabled. If you proceed on foot … or by other means, to enter the zone, you yourselves will be disabled and carted back here.”
“Whatever,” said Riss, doubtless sure of her own abilities.
“Yeah, whatever,” said Grant, and signed off.
Ahead, the flute grasses were getting shorter so I could occasionally see more than a few feet ahead. Riss accelerated, then shortly after that swerved to avoid something. I caught a passing glimpse of a big animal with a lot of teeth, its hide shifting like chamel
eoncloth to match its background. I’d just seen a siluroyne, which made me think twice about the prospect of walking across this terrain, but I had to put my confidence in Riss. As if to reaffirm just how dangerous it was, we moved into an area where the grasses were actually lower than the front screen of the ATV. And in the distance, where the grasses once again grew tall, I saw a huge birdlike creature striding along, stopping, then darting down a long spike of a beak. During the conflict here many casualties had been due to creatures such as the camouflaged one back there—and now this, this heroyne.
“Fuck,” said Riss. “We’ve got company.”
I thought the drone was referring to the distant creature, which now rose up again with something wriggling in its beak.
“Not there,” Riss added, then tipped her head up.
I looked up through the cab’s skylight, but couldn’t see anything until I turned to peer back through the roof windows in the cargo section. Two objects were hanging in the sky behind us, matching our course. These two upright cylinders looked a little battered, though the weaponry sprouting from top and bottom ends looked perfectly functional.
“Should be no problem for you,” I suggested.
“Unfortunately they are,” Riss replied. “Modern security drones—sub-AI but loaded with some serious shit.”
“They seem quite … plain.”
“Just a fashion,” Riss shot back.
Drones were first formed in fear-inducing shapes during the war. They’d been manufactured quickly and were a little unreliable. After the war, both the need and inclination to make independent drones like Riss had waned. Most were subsequently controlled by AIs or were installed with AI subminds, which was essentially the same thing. Even though Riss looked high-tech, modern and lethal, she was over a hundred years old.
“So we’re stuck.”
“One way to find out—we’re coming up on that half-mile border in about ten minutes.”