The coils, which were not for launching but for moving the well-hopper outside for whenever Crowther or Owl thought of some further improvement to make to it, powered up and flung the well-hopper out. With a slight tug of regret, Crowther watched it go, streaking out into space, looking exactly like an old-fashioned bullet, except one with a scorpion clinging on for the ride. Far enough away from the station to cause no problems, the Laumer engine engaged and the bullet disappeared, leaving a trail of photons rucked up from the quantum foam.
“Now let’s get that fucking runcible back on,” said Crowther. “We need to talk to Earth Central and I, for one, am considering taking a short vacation. Very possibly on Earth.”
“Perhaps advisable,” said Owl who, Crowther noted, was for the first time in many years opening an access hatch in the hull and coming inside.
Sfolk
As he waited where instructed by Penny Royal, Sfolk watched a world—one larger than his own prador home world—distort like a rubber ball hitting a wall. The thing was already all but molten, its watery oceans boiled away and continental land masses floating on a sea of magma. As it orbited its sun, the planet continued to take a pounding from the tidal forces of the black hole that both it and the sun were being drawn into.
Sfolk made idle calculations to pass the time. The planet would manage two more orbits of its sun before those tidal forces finally tore it apart, that was unless massive EMR blasts from explosions closer to the black hole boiled it out of existence—to accurately predict its fate would require the mapping of those inner objects. The sun it orbited would last longer, though it was bleeding incandescent gas into vacuum as if it had been punctured, which was why Sfolk’s surroundings were now little better than they had been when he settled this ship on the surface of a hypergiant sun.
“It is time,” Penny Royal told him.
Sfolk experienced a surge of joy as he flung the Atheter starship up out of the accretion disc of Layden’s Sink. Engaging chameleonware far in advance of anything the Polity used, he opened up the drive that, as far as he could judge, actually clawed at the fabric of space. New data on Polity ships, now available to him from a download Penny Royal had provided, detailed a Polity drive like this: a Laumer drive. None of the ships lying ahead possessed such a drive, but the end result would be just the same anyway, for they were prey.
The six attack ships, two dreadnoughts and one other design of ship he could find no label for, but which he knew was named the High Castle, blossomed with targeting frames, tactical options—a thousand different ways they could be destroyed. Sfolk cancelled all the data concerning the recognizable ships and concentrated on the remaining vessel, which was steadily drawing away from the others. He now digested and understood a fraction of the tactical options, first bubbling with joy, but then growing slightly irritated.
Too easy.
He didn’t know if he would ever get another chance to go into battle against the Polity like this and he wanted it to last to savour it. The options, as he understood them, described an engagement lasting a mere ten seconds. He cancelled everything and took manual control, ignoring all the warnings the system flicked up, hit fusion and took his ship up away from the disc, then down towards the High Castle. He opened up com, probing for a response, and sent a greeting, just before shutting down chameleonware.
“Hello,” he clattered in the prador language, because he knew the AI aboard would understand it. “And goodbye.”
The initial beam shot—of a kind of particle beam that utilized exotic matter—stabbed as red as blood into existence and carved across the hull of the High Castle for a fraction of a second before the Brockle threw a hardfield up against it.
The shot could have carved through to the Polity ship’s fusion engines and disabled them. However, Sfolk had deliberately limited its power and scored it across the other ship’s hull rather than concentrate it in one place. Shortly after that, the stubbornly insistent tactical displays indicated that Sfolk should now use a gravity-wave weapon to smash up the ship in the same way as a prador put through a rolling mill. Then, perhaps, one of the missiles which, by its stats, seemed similar to a gravity imploder? Numerous railgun missiles were available too. How they had become available he wasn’t entirely sure. It seemed the ship, as well as charging up its power supply, had drawn in matter from the fusion reaction in the surface of the hypergiant sun and converted that into physical weapons. Sfolk’s tactical displays were again all but screaming at him the hundreds of different ways, and combinations of ways, he could destroy the ship ahead. He overrode them again.
The High Castle ignited fusion drive, fired up grav-engines, complemented both of these with steering thrusters and peeled upwards away from the accretion disc at a thousand gravities. Sfolk’s ship went into immediate pursuit mode, the air around him thickening like amber. Thoughts suddenly sluggish, he fired a single railgun missile—one of those tumblers—intent on taking out at least some of his opponent’s motive power. The ship ahead slewed, throwing out a hardfield. Such was the power of the railgun strike Sfolk expected to see a projector blow, but the Brockle was learning fast. The hardfield slanted at the last second for deflection, diverting the missile away from the engines.
Annoying.
It occurred to Sfolk then that though he possessed a military advantage at the moment, he might well be at a mental disadvantage. Certainly something unusual was occurring aboard that ship because a lot of energy was being expended inside and Sfolk’s own tactical displays were changing.
The Brockle was up to something.
Though he hardly understood it, Sfolk used one of the weapons his displays were recommending, and fired up a directed gravity wave. A moment later his tactical display froze, the ship diverted, the structure all around twanging like a taut wire, seemed to go over a lump in some invisible road and left a massive detonation behind. The gravity wave hadn’t fired. Sfolk struggled to understand what his displays were trying to tell him and, after a moment, realized the other ship had fired a U-jump missile that had come close to detonating inside. Responding almost instinctively, Sfolk initiated a massive firing from railguns, and probed with the particle beams. That should do it.
The other ship flung up a hardfield—a circular disc half a mile across—and a fraction of a second later some cylindrical object exited a railgun port. The particle beams struck the field, weird iridescence fleeing from the impact points. A moment later, the cylinder now sitting behind the hardfield detonated and the field collapsed. The beams punched into the surface of the ship, hesitated for a moment on s-con gridded armour, then began drilling through that. Yet it seemed the Brockle was still active. A moment later another hardfield went up as another cylinder exited. Sfolk’s tactical displays went crazy. This hardfield began to bow upwards as if blistering under heat, but now the particle beam was having no effect. The other ship then abruptly changed direction and cut its acceleration. The railgun missiles, which had been closing fast, simply missed.
Internal protection came off and Sfolk found himself panting, his body aching, but his mind beginning to work better again.
Fast, he realized.
Over the duration of this brief battle the Brockle had managed to create a reasonable facsimile of Penny Royal’s hardfield generators.
“Should have heeded your tactical displays, Sfolk,” Penny Royal whispered. “Now, you’re too late.”
Why was he too late?
Sfolk tried the gravity-wave weapon again. The thing propagated across intervening space, a space-time ripple only visible on a gravity map of the system. As this map came up, Sfolk realized he had been missing something: the other ship was now heading directly towards the black hole. Before the wave reached it, the other ship ejected another five cylinders, each immediately extending the curve of its hardfield, bending it round, and finally connecting it into an enclosing sphere. Such a field, however, should be no de
fence against a gravity weapon. The gravity wave struck and Sfolk gazed numbly as the hardfield, with the ship static inside it, seemed to fade in and out of existence, riding the wave.
In the next moment vacuum all around shaded to umber and then deep orange, and Sfolk’s displays reported numerous impacts. They were entering the accretion disc now and already this was having an effect on the tactical displays. So, there were other weapons to use. Sfolk selected the prime weapon—some manipulation of U-space related to the way the Atheter vessel stored energy: a way of generating a twist in that continuum. But next he found he could not lock targeting because now they were in the tidal disruption of the black hole and the space lying between the two ships was sleeting with radiation.
A U-signature generated—a slash in one slope of the gravity map of this system. The ship ahead blinked out of existence, generating a secondary realspace arc of new photons from the quantum foam. Briefly it was gone, then Sfolk’s equipment picked it up again, skipping out of U-space a hundred million miles away, beyond the black hole and again above the plane of the disc, its hull distorted by an ill-tuned jump, and bleeding fire. A moment later it dropped into U-space again and was gone.
Angry at himself for what he recognized as stupid arrogance, Sfolk plotted the signature of the High Castle. The ship had been capable of concealing such a signature before but had been sufficiently damaged by that first jump that it could no longer hide its destination. It was heading towards one of the planetary systems being drawn into Layden’s Sink.
“Leave it,” said Penny Royal. “You’ve learned your lesson.”
“Lesson?” Sfolk clattered.
“Yes, your lesson,” said Penny Royal. “Now go and destroy those other ships, and this time without silly games.”
19
Spear
We were just a few miles away now, as high as we needed to climb at the head of a path leading down and then around a jagged peak to the scattering of craters, one of which Penny Royal occupied. Even though we were deeper into Panarchia’s night, it had grown lighter. There was a glow along one horizon, marking out the position of Layden’s Sink, which would not come into sight on this summer’s night. More octupals were out now and the pattering of their darts against our suits was like occasional flurries of hail. Yet, sometimes I felt them as debris impacts against my hull as I fought in the night skies above.
Polity forces had taken losses above thirty per cent, while the prador fleet here had lost just a few ships. I felt momentary confusion as a ship mind when I said aloud, “You were right, Sepia,” then it faded as I returned to myself.
“In what respect?” she asked.
“The Polity knew it could not win the battle here. It apparently accepted the challenge of rescuing those trapped troops but only so it could inflict damage against the prador. We lost over a third of our ships while the prador lost just a few dreadnoughts. However, our ships could be replaced in a matter of days by the likes of Room 101 while it took the prador many weeks to replace a dreadnought.”
As Penny Royal I saw the whole dreadful pattern with utter clarity, but I could not shut down my reception of the dying screams of my fellow ships and of their crews. I was keening as I fought and as the orders came through for steady withdrawal.
“But not you,” said the AI of the Vorpal Dagger.
It had all happened AI-fast. The attack run had been a conveyor belt of destruction, Polity destroyers and attack ships shattering and burning around me. Screaming. At the last the thing we were shepherding in got its chance: a chunk of matter pressed on the surface of a Neptunian world, packed with triple-cased CTDs and a single-burn fusion engine attached behind. When we were close enough, it fired up its engine to give it an acceleration measured in thousands of gravities. It was then the Polity’s answer to prador exotic armour: essentially an armour-piercing missile. But the cost of delivering it . . .
I was crying as I peeled away from the storm of wreckage that was all that remained of my fellow ships while, inside, my Dark Child grew stronger with its rejection of it all. The human crew were locked in their acceleration chairs, clinging to survival, their suits solid around them but still not able to keep them conscious. The missile struck the prador dreadnought that was our target and actually managed to penetrate its adamantine hull, its massive CTD load detonating inside. The whole ship expanded like a balloon, then spewed fire from many ports as it deflated back to its original shape. By then I was deploying faulty chameleonware and decelerating hard to come in behind a planetoid, glowing and volcanic now from stray weapons strikes.
Not you . . .
The main body of the Polity fleet was light minutes out from me now, with prador ships lying in between.
“These are your orders,” said Vorpal Dagger, the com sizzling with static.
No choice now—orders cannot be disobeyed. They are also horrifying and just minutes remain before they must be carried out. This battle must be taken to its conclusion. Rapidly assessing my resources I note that some changes have been made. The nano- and microbots aboard were strictly limited in their areas of maintenance but have now been subtly reprogrammed. The limitation to their procreation has been removed and they have been given access to materials with which to build more of their kind. The larger robots are being changed too, by those same microbots and nanobots which are building their larger brethren more extensive tool arrays. Extra buckarbon memstore replacements available for those robots have been penetrated, are being used by my Dark Child to hide its more rebellious thoughts.
“What do you do?” I ask, but not in human words.
“We made us not removable from ship body,” the darkness replies, and I cannot dispute this effort towards our own survival.
But the human crew?
“I have the answer,” says my Dark Child.
We must proceed in towards the planet Panarchia. I must avoid all prador vessels to get myself to a particular location. To get to that required location without making contact with any prador ships will require accelerations and course changes no human crew can withstand. The knowledge screams inside me—emotions improperly adjusted and just too intense. By now, one of the human men has woken and unstrapped himself and is making aug queries about our situation. I must act.
I begin accelerating and, after a hesitation, tell my child, “Begin with the woman,” because it is just too hard to do it myself. Eagerly it initiates nano- and microbots in the bridge, their activity so intense that metal glows and surfaces issue smoke. The machines, which with worrying foresight are mainly accumulated around the acceleration chairs, begin reforming matter. On the woman’s chair, they issue nanoscopic tendrils that enter her suit and flick up from that to insert themselves through her mouth into her still-drugged and unconscious body. They connect from the inside to her aug and thence into her mind, rapidly and destructively downloading all that she is and, throughout this process, the tendrils thicken into worms and then snakes of meta-material. I am saving them . . . though defining what is “I” has become difficult. But I am also killing them and though my orders would have inevitably led to their deaths I cannot escape the guilt and the pain . . . the grief.
The second man wakes. Turns his head and sees what is happening. He reacts quickly, making aug links to his conscious fellows.
“It’s gone rogue!” he cries, hurling himself from his chair, a snake of nano-fibres I had not seen growing, snapping after him but missing.
The other man in the corridor hesitates, then turns to head back.
“What the hell is going on?” asks the Golem Daleen.
The Golem may be a problem. My true self knows this and my Dark Child understands it more. The consonance of our thoughts draws us closer and as it reacts I react too, and briefly we are one. Acceleration is now very high and internal grav can no longer compensate. The first man comes out of a roll, staggers to a wall locker and tears
it open, pulls out a pulse-rifle. I fire side steering thrusters at full power and knock off grav, and he slams into the further wall of the bridge, momentarily stunned. In the corridor the second man hits one particular point on the wall there, high up, where the machines are swarming, almost as if my child predicted this . . . as if I predicted this. The matter of the wall extrudes and encloses him, penetrates him and he screams for there is no time for niceties now. Even as this happens I, and my child, make additions to the orders from Vorpal Blade and dispatch them to the Golem Daleen. And she staggers under the load of its horror, breaks and falls when the attack viruses enter her mind.
Slight separation again and I am briefly, completely myself as I now begin the hard manoeuvring required to avoid a scattering of prador ships ahead. I consign full responsibility for the remaining man to my child as that man manages to stagger from the bridge and into the corridor. He keeps away from the walls while running a fast transit program through his aug, using steering thrusters on his suit; it even compensating for the manoeuvring forces. He is coming to kill me, but the mission is all. Only in the short access tube leading to the ship’s cortex does he come too close to a wall. The tentacles snare him, seize his rifle and drive it through his body to eliminate the threat. Fibres penetrate his brain and record . . .
I was on my knees.
“Thorvald, come on now . . .”
My face was wet with tears and when I looked up into Sepia’s face I saw that she had been crying too. With my throat tight, I stood up, catching her near-imperceptible nod, for she understood.