Infinity Engine

  “The origin,” I began, then had to clear my throat, “of the spine.” Even as I said it, I groped into that artefact for some part of the original crew of the Lance, but could find nothing. Had they been concealed from me so I could only experience this, now? Why weren’t they available now? I could feel the rest of the story lurking at the edges of perception, ready to reassert itself the moment I allowed it.

  I began walking again, down that path to our final destination: Penny Royal.

  The Brockle

  As the High Castle dropped back into the real, light minutes out from Panarchia, the Brockle studied numerous damage reports and remembered, briefly, how it had been to be human, and what a cold sweat felt like. It had lost twenty of its units in that encounter, the fusion engines were sputtering and many fusion reactors were now shapeless lumps of radioactive metal. When it peered through a functional cam in another engine section, it found just a hollow where the U-space drive had been. Most of the damage had been caused by the initial jump, misaligned because of an interaction between the U-drive and those hardfields. However, the jump had been necessary, for the Brockle had calculated its survival time had it remained engaged as a matter of seconds.

  While struggling manically to get more weapons and sensors back online, and more of the new hardfield generators functional, the Brockle realized the High Castle was a lost cause if the other ship pursued, and so it abandoned its efforts. Instead it concentrated on getting the last of its units installed with U-jump drives. Minutes passed and when the alien ship failed to arrive, the Brockle diverted some of its attention to the fusion and grav-engines, rapidly rerouting power supplies, burning out safety limiters and setting the engines running despite the damage that was causing. The High Castle lurched towards the distant planet, its whole structure twisting briefly but damage reports holding steady.

  An Atheter starship . . .

  There could be no doubt. There had been much speculation about Atheter technology amidst the Polity AIs and much extrapolation from archaeological finds, but no real agreement on what their vessels might look like beyond one firm fact: the Atheter wove stuff. This had been confirmed by the example of that species resurrected on Masada and how it had first built its home and then housing for the Technician. The Atheter’s whole rise to civilization had been based on weaving and they had never abandoned it, instead taking it into the realms of nano-technology and meta-materials. The attacking ship had looked like a woven Christmas decoration and its structure was much the same as that of the sphere.

  The Brockle was definitely right about what it was, but that wasn’t much help now, because if that ship now followed, the High Castle and the Brockle would soon be a spreading cloud of vapour.

  An Atheter starship controlled by a prador . . .

  The Brockle could see no other reason for that initial communication being in the prador language, and this was a confirmation of all it thought about Penny Royal. Other data arose in its mind about Mr Pace. He had been at the extremadapt colony, searching for this very ship. That was why Penny Royal had gone there, to retrieve it. The Brockle felt very uncomfortable as it thought further about those events. The Junkyard where the extremadapt colony had been located drew in damaged U-spaceships. It seemed Penny Royal had arrived there in the remains of the Black Rose after the Brockle had come close to destroying that ship. That could indicate an alarming ability on the black AI’s part to predict future events . . .

  No.

  That it had then installed a prador at the helm was a perfect demonstration of the black AI’s madness, which made such ability unlikely. Penny Royal had demonstrated some ability to arrange events, just as the Brockle now understood itself capable of doing, but there was no way it could know it would narrowly avoid destruction and that the tides of U-space would cast it up at the Junkyard. It must have been preparing to go there in the first place and just accurately jumped there. The Brockle dismissed such thoughts of superior ability from its mind, for it could not allow fear of its prey to stop it now.

  The High Castle was drawing closer and closer to the planet, but still it wasn’t close enough. The Brockle calculated that it itself could make two U-jumps with the drives installed in its units before its energy ran too low. These would only be short, mere dips in underspace before being spat out again, but they would not take it close enough that it could actually get to the surface of Panarchia. However, the moment the starship arrived, it would jump, because the alternative would be immediate destruction. The Brockle understood that the prador controlling that vessel had miscalculated, because if it had used just the weapons the Brockle had seen to their maximum effect, the High Castle would have been gone within the first five seconds. It was doubtful that the prador would make the same mistake again.

  As the minutes stretched into an hour and the High Castle continued towards the world, the Brockle drew together its U-space-capable units. Charging and linking its internal jump engines to maximum effect, it waited, steadily accruing more of those units . . . and waited. Perhaps the prador was still playing games. Its method of concealment had been far superior to anything the Brockle had even heard about, so perhaps it was simply waiting out there, ready to make the kill at the last moment. Further calculations, and the Brockle felt a horrible sinking sensation in its being—again reminding it of what it had been to be human.

  It could not escape.

  The ship that had attacked it was technologically far in advance of the Polity. The Brockle knew that even a Polity ship would be able to track its short U-jumps with ease. Even if it did manage to get down to the planet, that ship could just fry it on the surface! No . . . the Brockle realized it had been thinking like a human; as a discrete individual. Penny Royal was on the planet intent on gaining redemption from Thorvald Spear, therefore the black AI would not want that planet destroyed. If the Brockle could get there it could disperse its units, which could then engage individual chameleonware. If the starship then arrived it would need to create utter mayhem on the surface in its attempts to destroy the Brockle, maybe even destroy the planet itself, which would surely interfere with Penny Royal’s plans. The Brockle just needed to get to the planet . . .

  Serendipity intervened. Ship’s maintenance suddenly put a bank of long-range sensors online and now the Brockle could see so much more. It could see right to the planet. It could see the Lance down on the surface and, after a moment, it could see the humans working their way up through the mountains to Penny Royal. Swift calculations ensued. Now it realized that if the starship was coming it should have been here by now. Confirmation of the fact that it wasn’t coming just yet came in a spurt of data from its units back by the sphere, and as some of them abruptly went offline. It watched as a gravity wave crushed and disintegrated two of the outlying attack ships, like flies hit far too hard with a swat. Then it watched the sudden reappearance of the Atheter starship, descending on the rest of the fleet like a giant snowflake fashioned of iron, newly pulled from the forge.

  Further calculation. The Brockle estimated that the starship would be busy out there for at least twenty minutes, maybe longer if its priority was the protection of the sphere. This wasn’t sufficient to get it to the planet. However, the previous scan of the system had revealed an alternative lying between it and the planet—a place where it could recharge. As it began preparations, it missed the flash of light by whole seconds before secondary data scanners alerted it.

  Laumer engine . . .

  “Hi again,” said Amistad.

  Another bright flash followed and a missile hurtled towards the High Castle from the rear, accelerating at a rate no material object should be able to withstand. In the first microsecond the Brockle hit this object with one working particle beam, but to no effect. In the next few microseconds the AI began ejecting its ship’s generators to throw up its new hardfield, but it just wasn’t quick enough. The object struck the High Castle harder and fast
er than a railgun missile, but did not explode. As it travelled up the length of the ship, the object itself wasn’t disintegrating as it should. All of this would be enough to wreak total destruction, without inputting what would happen when a Laumer engine collapsed in on itself. The energy output was immense and, making the calculation before half the ship was gone, the Brockle jumped.

  Sfolk

  “. . . and this time without the silly games.”

  As Sfolk watched the two attack ships disintegrate and the Polity fleet dispersed, he felt new tactical options blossom in his mind. A second directed gravity pulse turned another attack ship to black flinders falling across the snow white of the accretion disc, while the remaining three threw out hardfields to intercept blood-red particle beams and spewed orange arcs of the molten remains of their hardfield projectors.

  Now properly heeding the tactical prompts, Sfolk found them integrating into his mind, becoming as much part of him as the ship itself. Gaining this new perspective, he understood the choice of weapons. A directed gravity pulse at the remaining three would have spilled towards the sphere which now, on his display, was marked as an asset to be protected at all costs.

  Bump in the road . . .

  The starship lurched and stuttered, the underlying U-twist jerking briefly out of phase as it sucked up the energy of U-jump missiles. Tactics changed abruptly as the starship’s extension to Sfolk’s own mind input the ability of this enemy to learn. Sfolk threw the starship into a thousand-gravity curve, the air turning to amber around him and his thoughts briefly sluggish, then out, skipping into U-space for just a second, lined up for a perfect railgun strike on one of the dreadnoughts.

  Target sector denied.

  Bewildered, Sfolk shot past the dreadnought, hardfield thrumming and bruising under particle beam strikes, then briefly turning black as it slammed into a swarm of railgun missiles.

  Some virus in the system?

  The tactical display open in his mind was telling him that while the attack ships could be destroyed at will, the dreadnoughts were assets that needed to be disabled and captured. Some of the major weapons available to Sfolk could not be used, while the other weapons could only hit certain target sectors with full force. Other areas within the ship could only be damaged to a degree, while still others were not to be touched at all. Sfolk tried to run a system diagnostic, but the system told him this was unnecessary or, rather, being part of and in control of the system, he felt at the heart of his being that it was unnecessary. Yes, the Polity ships were using informational warfare against him. They were attempting to convey viruses and worms by electromagnetic induction, laser, and even in their particle beams by setting up back resonance through his hardfield to its projector, but Sfolk shrugged it off when he finally understood how primitive it was. These were the worms and viruses from a prehistoric sea, while what he had available was the product of evolution millions of years after them . . .

  Into another curve, two attack ships falling in at his tail, another, it seemed tactically likely to appear just . . . there. Sfolk fired a tumbler railgun slug, altered the angle of his curve, then watched in satisfaction as the other attack ship did materialize, then shattered into fragments and a cloud of hot gas which was, nevertheless, dark as smoke against the backdrop of the accretion disc.

  Changing tactics. Gravity pulse to predicted jump point. Nothing there. The starship shuddered and lurched, amber field clamping down on Sfolk. Two more U-jump missiles gone into the twist. Hardfield bruising again under particle beams Sfolk diverted back towards the sphere. The Polity ships had analysed him and realized that he couldn’t use certain weapons in the vicinity of the sphere. They had also realized that he was either making mistakes or reluctant to use his full firepower against the dreadnoughts.

  “So why is that, Penny Royal?” he clattered.

  There was no reply from the AI, but swift analysis of the target sectors, combined with data previously loaded by Penny Royal and Sfolk’s own knowledge of how such ships were made, soon presented him with the answer. While both the attack ships and the dreadnoughts contained AIs completely engulfed and absorbed by subminds of the Brockle, the latter also contained human crews. These crews had been sent into aqueous-glass stasis, and their stasis tanks were in those “not to be touched” sectors. Sfolk issued a select few prador expletives at Penny Royal, for it seemed the AI had left this in the system, and then struggled to redesignate the dreadnoughts.

  After passing close over the top of the sphere, Sfolk probed down with a white laser, hitting the dreadnought passing below. As hardfields went up he fired near-c railgun beads of exotic matter. The hardfields shuddered under the impact, the dreadnought spewing whole glowing projectors from an ejection port. The openings between field failure and replacement were small, but just wide enough. The blood-red particle beam stabbed down, perfectly timed on a cluster of bead strikes, lanced through for a microsecond, exactly on target on an ejection port. The dreadnought fell away, fire boiling from its own railgun ports as the hardfield generator exploded in its ejection tube at just the right point.

  “Three allowable target sectors, okay?” said Sfolk, as if Penny Royal might be lurking nearby.

  The attack ships were back and rather than go after the second dreadnought Sfolk seeded U-space mines and U-jumped, down past the damaged dreadnought and into the accretion disc. A second later he shot back up out of it like a breaching whale and fired two of his own U-jump missiles. The attack ships reacted by jumping themselves—obviously containing no runcibles to divert those projectiles. On his display he saw the U-space mines detonating, then one of the attack ships rematerialized a hundred thousand miles away looking like a crow hit with a sledgehammer. Its signature all wrong, it jumped again, reappearing just a hundred miles further on as a mass of glowing debris. The other attack ship would not be surfacing, not here, but perhaps a few years hence where Sfolk had collected this starship.

  He had time only for brief satisfaction before the air thickened all around him and the starship shuddered through a series of jump missile attacks while four powerful particle beams converged on his hardfield. The remaining dreadnought had worked out how to push his ship to its limit—to push the twist beyond three hundred and sixty degrees. It had not, however, completely understood the abilities of the ship. Sfolk shut down the hardfield. The particle beams struck the woven meta-material of his ship, energy draining away and particulate shed as a dust cloud. Sfolk loaded one of a selection of viruses and fired his white laser as a carrier, straight into the throat of one particle cannon. He next shed part of the underlying twist in a smaller mirror twin and dispatched that.

  The twist struck an instant later, the dreadnought bucked, and its fusion torch simply went out. The entropic effect spread from the point of impact—the point where the twist instead of releasing energy sucked it up—just ahead of the engines. Lights went out in ports, active sensors stopped filling intervening space with EMR and the particle cannons stuttered and died. The effect was brief as the twist wound down into non-existence and went out itself. As the dreadnought began to power back up, Sfolk swung back in towards it, targeting all those allowable sectors.

  Acquired, his system reported, opening a series of control channels. The virus had done its work, and quickly. The Brockle’s submind was fragmenting and now Sfolk controlled that ship. Sfolk immediately diverted, going after the damaged dreadnought currently limping down into the accretion disc. Since it had been so satisfactory before, he loaded the same virus and fed it down towards the other dreadnought using com lasers. Just a few minutes later the damaged dreadnought was limping back up out of the disc, his to command.

  That’s it?

  Sfolk felt disappointment deep in his prador heart, but he felt it almost negligently, because, though he still bore the form of that kind, his substance was much changed. He was now bound to this ship, a component of this ship. He was this ship. And
, in the end, that suited him just fine.

  Sverl

  On very many levels Sverl watched the destruction of the Polity’s, or rather the Brockle’s, fleet out there. It had taken just thirty-five minutes for the Atheter starship to annihilate six modern Polity attack ships and seize control of two of their modern dreadnoughts.

  “Yes!” said Bsectil, punching upwards with a claw.

  “You’re pleased?” Sverl enquired.

  “We’re all pleased,” said Bsorol, gesturing with his claw at the gathered second-children, who were rattling their own claws against the hull of the hauler—a pointless action in vacuum since it made no sound.

  “But that wasn’t really a Polity fleet out there,” Sverl pointed out. “And it wasn’t defeated by us . . . the prador.”

  Bsorol clattered dismissively. “It was state-of-the-art Polity weaponry controlled by a Polity AI, and that ship is controlled by a prador.”

  As he had begun routing feeds to events occurring outside the sphere to his children, Sverl had first been surprised at the detail, but then realized that the sphere’s system was linked to that of the ship out there. Sphere and ship were Atheter, linking and meshing, and nothing was being blocked. In the first few minutes of the battle he loaded history which, the ship’s memory having been erased in the far past, began at the moment Sfolk and Penny Royal had boarded it. This he had transmitted in its entirety to his children: Bsorol and Bsectil sucking up the data via their augs and delivering a commentary to the second-children. So of course they had been cheering on Sfolk.

  Sverl heaved himself up onto his legs and turned.

  “Collect all our belongings,” he instructed, and in so saying, he realized his sojourn here was over. Yes, they were getting dangerously close to the black hole and the sensible thing to do was to leave, but it wasn’t that. He had come here for some kind of resolution, to see things here through to their conclusion and in some respects it seemed he had gained neither. But it felt right to go now. He knew Penny Royal’s ultimate aim, and knew he could not be part of it. The AI had brought him along just as far as it was possible to do so.