The Parasite

  THE PARASITE

  BY

  NEAL ASHER

  First published 1996 by Tanjen LTD.

  This edition published by Neal Asher on

  Amazon Kindle.

  Copyright © Neal Asher.

  The right of Neal Asher to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  Space watched with its glinting spider eyes as the great tri-clawed link miner poised in the emptiness like a grasping robotic hand. Star-shine glimmered like oil on its pitted hull whilst inside its single occupant waited, impatiently.

  ‘I have no reading as yet,’ said Jack as he rubbed a hand over his stubbled cheek. He could have shaved but felt the stubble necessary to reinforce his persona as a rugged old hand.

  Before him, above the touch console, the screen displayed the menace of emptiness and the distant toy-like shape of Saturn. Two minutes passed before he spoke again.

  ‘I have it now, it’s half a million miles out and closing. Should be here in about three hours. I think it’s time to go for initial boost.’

  He shifted the view of the screen to the area of space above Orion’s belt. Three hours. He again checked the comet’s position and relative speed on the laser-bounce detector, swore quietly, then allowed the computer to give him a vector. The predicted figures were wrong. The comet was doing half again its previously estimated fall speed, so with a relished vehemence he told the ship’s log about the mistake. It was unnecessary to do so, since the figures were recorded and simultaneously transmitted to TCC, but it made him feel better to spit out some bile.

  Eighty thousand tons of complex ices and rock hurtled through void, satellite fragments swirling about it, each with the destructive potential of an armour-piercing shell. Jack tapped the enable touch-plate with his forefinger then looked yearningly at Ignition Ten as the clock connected to the heating elements of the main boosters started its slow countdown. The link miner glinted blue stars of manoeuvring jets and slowly turned its tri-claw to the as yet invisible hammer of ice and rock. Jack’s mouth was dry.

  Once, apparently, the ionic boosters of a link miner had failed to shut down during an interception like this. The brief flash was witnessed by astronomers in the northern hemisphere of Earth and when, seven months later, the comet had swung round the sun on an altered parabola, its coma had been a weird ethereal blue before it splashed on Venus’s atmosphere in spectacular galvanic death. It is said that one twisted claw of the link miner now orbits that planet like a reminder of fallibility and hubris – like the floating remains of a crab left by the passing snap of a bass. Jack felt a frisson of fear and shivered as he thought of that relic. Later there would be no time for such superfluous emotions.

  Twenty, nineteen ... eighteen ... The display seemed to change with teasing slowness as if spiralling down into stasis; one, but never zero. Still the comet lay out of sight, but if it had been visible it would have been too late. Not that he could not get out of the way in time, but the flare from the ionic boosters would have wrecked the complex ices he had come here to mine; raising them above the temperature of a hundred and fifty degrees Kelvin to their flare point where they would have become normal ‘dirty’ water ices. He pushed his head back into the padded brace and made sure he was well back in the form-fitting chair.

  Three ... two ... one ... The display flickered and he tapped Ignition Ten – so called because of the highest g-force it could boost to, but one he did not need now. Then he prepared himself for the hour of high-gee needed at his present vector needed to bring him to the intercept point.

  From the three junctures of the link miner’s talons, miniature suns ignited and flares of ionized water spewed into space. In a minute his ship was at five hundred miles an hour, then a thousand, yet the surrounding stars moved not at all. The acceleration clamped Jack back in his seat, his suit tightening against his body automatically. There was no discomfort at first. It was exhilarating. The discomfort would come later, after perhaps twenty minutes at this acceleration.

  On the arm of his chair the ready light came on as basic control transferred to there from the main board. With a finger weighing as much a brick Jack tapped the control that centred up the laser approach display. The comet was still too far away to be seen, but close enough for him to get a more accurate reading from the laser bounce-back. He did a quick mental calculation as the figures came up for him. There was a discrepancy, not outside parameters, but not nice. He calculated, and the computer confirmed, that when the link miner impacted the comet, he would experience an extra six gees of acceleration. The ship could take it but he knew he would black out. Dare he feed more energy into the boost? He dared not. There were millions of Ecu worth of complex ice to be mined and extra energy fed into the boost now might cut that figure by half. He set the automatics on the grab and readied himself as best he could for the impact, which was fifty minutes away now.

  Time, as it is wont to do in moments of tension, dragged its leaden feet. In that time Jack enumerated, in order of probability, the many things that could go wrong, starting with burst blood vessels in his brain and finishing with stress fractures at any one of a million points on the ship. Yet, in the last moments when the comet came, he could not help watch with morbid fascination as it grew on the screen. And in those moments it seemed to come so fast. There was a growing blur of grey and white, stars occluded by a growing storm, followed by an explosion of sound. It seemed to Jack he could not survive this. Then the blood drained from his head like wine from a punctured gourd, and let in the blackness.

  Chapter 1

  On waking Jack’s wanted to vomit, but he bit back on it and the impulse faded. Acceleration had passed now, yet he felt it had not, because of the gentle, almost subliminal, pull of the comet his ship now clung to like a great tick. There were sounds now, transmitted through the leviathan talons of the link miner’s claw, the uneasy creaking and static crackling of the ice. He checked the screens and saw two of the talons firmly imbedded. The third had come down across a slab of rock, shattering the slab in the process. The tip of the arm was buried in the ice beyond. It would do.

  ‘Down and held,’ he said, more for his own benefit than the log’s, then began to free himself from his chair. A glance at another screen showed him that the bore was already eating its way in and that the hold was a quarter full. He had time now to take a look – he always felt a bit superfluous when the automatics took over.

  From the life-support blister Jack towed himself down the corridor leading to the loading shaft. There he donned his carbon sixty cold-suit and then clad like a Samurai opened the door to the cold lock, then the door to the deep cold of the loading shaft, ice crystals falling about him in a nacreous snow.

  The loading shaft was the bell-shaped underside of the ship, positioned down against the comet at the juncture of the claw’s talons below the hold and then living quarters; the mouth of the tick. A hundred feet below him the face of the comet glinted weird colours in the subdued neon. Down the centre of the shaft a twenty-foot diameter pipe revolved slowly as it cut huge plugs of ice from the comet and transferred them to the hold above. Jack tugged on a rung and hauled himself up to the hatch leading into the hold. In a moment he was inside, above the bore and watching as automatics mindlessly sheared the perpetually growing cylinder of ice into coin-like sections which the auto-handlers stacked. There was no sound, just a steady vibration he picked up every time he touched a surface. He moved on into the stacks, like a worshipper moving into the temple of Karnak, surrounded on all sides by pillars of ice shot through with random fluorescence. All looked well until he reache
d the back of the hold.

  Something ... something in the ice.

  It was a flaw, twenty feet long and spiralling up a nearby pillar, disjointed where the shear had cut the blocks. He swore, because the automatics should have picked up on contaminants like this. Noting the number – J12 – he made a mental note to have this stack transferred for fuel, then reached out to touch the flaw.

  Something ... fibrous?

  His glove came away with a substance like candy floss sticking to it. Immediately he felt intense cold in his fingers. Shit! He propelled himself as fast he could to the nearest cold lock. By the time the lock opened to his command he had lost the feeling in three of his fingers and ice burn was creeping into his hand. In the cold lock his suit frosted a millimetre thick with ice, then beaded with water. Fumbling, he removed his helmet and air pack, insulated body armour and boots. The gloves always came off last as a precaution against cold burn from the suit. His right glove had something viscous on it. He dropped it to the floor and it shattered. It should not have. A glance at his hand confirmed his fears. He would lose three of his fingers and part of his hand. His hand ached from cold burn and his fingers were numb, and suddenly he felt very ill. He vomited, then staggered back to his living quarters.

  In fifteen hours both the hold and water tank of the link miner were full. Trying to ignore the horrible ache in his hand and the deadness of his fingers, now clad in a thick glove he had not yet dared to take off, Jack strapped himself in his acceleration chair and keyed the automatics that would release the link miner from the comet. Normally he would have done this with the manual controls, but he felt ill, he had the shakes, his eyes were streaming with their whites all but gone in a red web-work, and every minute or so he sneezed, when his coughing allowed it. He knew what this was: extreme allergic reaction. He had taken antihistamines but they did not seem to be doing any good.

  The automatics blew the three talons of the claw free then threw the link miner from the comet in a cloud of vapour and glittering shards of ice, turned it, and a blast from the ion drive put it on a new course. Main deceleration would be nearer to the satellite factories in near Earth orbit. Jack sat still and stared at the receding comet, his expression hard, then he focused his attention on the communicator. He should really transmit; tell them back at TCC what had happened, but he was reluctant. One whiff of this and there would be quarantine for him and restrictions on this load of ice. Too much money was at stake. Having bought into the expedition with credit from his coming redundancy payment, ten per cent of The Cryon Corporation profits would go to him. Thereafter there would be no more chances since comet mining was being phased out, it being made obsolete by satellite industry. He gazed at his hand. An accident; a loose seal on a glove. So unfortunate that the glove had been dropped in the central shaft and remained on the comet…

  There was no other evidence. The contaminated ice had been converted to water and used in the boost away from the comet. His word should be sufficient. He sneezed then coughed. All he had to do now was get rid of this damned reaction. He deliberately turned from the communicator and peered up at the screens.

  ‘Out and away,’ he said, throwing words into the void. He felt fuzzy headed, but it would pass. He pushed his undamaged hand up his stubbled face and back across his hair, and felt a stickiness there. Studying his hand he saw blood on his palm. He reached up to the side of his head and probed, fingertips coming away bloody. He was bleeding from his ears. Allergic reaction. That was all.

  Five days after he should have gone into hibernation sleep the allergic reaction had diminished somewhat, but the med-scanner diagnosed gangrene in his hand. He knew that if he was to save at least part of it he would have to operate on it himself. Yet, when the time came, with his hand as dead as a sand filled glove, he could not make the first cut with the laser scalpel. This was not uncommon. The situation had occurred before on long flights. After a time he taped his hand up and pulled a polythene glove over it to contain the smell. Then, with a weary reluctance, he made his way to the plastic coffin where he would sleep away the next two years. He would think of something when he woke. He had to.

  Horribly bright light shone through his eyelids showing a tracery of veins like rivers on an incarnadine map. A persistent buzzing filled his ears as of an alarm clock without a snooze button. Jack attempted to swear but found the effort too much. He slept.

  The second waking was always easier though never remembered as such. Jack opened his eyes to the gleaming arc of the lid above him as it revolved aside. He unzipped the restraining bag from the inside then he reached for the tubes that had been plugged into a carotid artery and jugular vein. A light tug and they came away leaving bloodless wounds that had been sealed days previously. He then reached to pull himself from the coffin. This was the bit he really hated: the cold, and the gnawing hunger that could not be immediately satisfied because he felt so sick. The nausea was the understandable reaction of his body to the antifreeze it had contained. The substance might well have been quite normal for a certain weird Russian rodent, but he was human. As his hand came down on the cold edge he sneezed, and remembered.

  Even as he coughed and sneezed his way to the control chair, Jack was surprised at how quickly the nausea receded and just how much he could eat only minutes after thaw-up, yet, he still felt as if his proper place was back in the coffin. It took an extreme act of will thereafter for him to turn on the screens, the computer, and the radio. From them he quickly learnt that he was days yet from home. Then he noticed that the finger he had stabbed at the touch plates was one of the ones he should have amputated. He peeled off the polythene glove, then the tape, which came away with a thick layer of dead skin, and stared at his fingers for a long time, before sneezing then slumping back in his seat.

  The Cryon corporation station was cylinder a mile long and a half of a mile wide, studded with the excrescences of lounges, high-grav gyms, instrument pods and docking tubes, and had shuttles clinging to it like wasps on an apple core. As soon as it came into view over Earth’s sapphire horizon, Jack allowed his radio to spring into raucous life.

  ‘This is TCC calling link miner Zero, do you hear this Jack? ... Come on, answer.’

  Jack shook himself. He felt as dry and heavy as new-cast lead and had a thirst that would not go away. How long had he been sitting here with the radio going?

  ‘Here,’ he said, begrudgingly.

  ‘Thank Christ! You took your time replying. There’s a correct way to do these things ... are you okay?’

  Okay? For a moment he could not make sense of that. His thoughts were sluggish and dull. He groped for an excuse. ‘Usual shit – ice condensed round the aerial.’

  ‘You should have cleared that just after leaving the comet.’

  Jack was suddenly, almost convulsively aware of danger. He would become subject to close scrutiny if he did not give plausible responses, and could end up in trouble very quickly. Suddenly he was thinking with unaccustomed clarity.

  ‘What does it matter? I’m here now. Do you think I’d fool around with this shipment? I’ve got to think of my percentage.’

  In the background a sharp exchange ensued, shortly followed by a reluctant reply. ‘Okay Jack, bring her in. We’ll take her on automatics at five hundred meters.’

  ‘You will not,’ said Jack, sitting upright. ‘I’ll bring her in myself.’

  Why did he say that? He had not docked on manual in years. Did he fear the automatics that much?

  ‘No ... sorry ... yeah,’ he quickly corrected. ‘Take her at five hundred.’

  When the automatics took over, Jack dug his fingers into the arms of his chair, his body as rigid as a plank. He was scared, but just could not think why. There had been no docking accidents in years and there were none this time.

  The doctor scraped at the dead skin to reveal new pink skin underneath, examined that in puzzlement then abruptly dropped his scalpel in the sterilization tray. Jack waited for comment as the doctor re
moved his surgical gloves, but the man continued to peer at the dry, seemingly mummified fingers.

  ‘Okay?’ Jack asked.

  The doctor nodded. ‘Just dead skin.’

  ‘I can go then?’

  The doctor dumped his gloves in a bin and went on, ‘It healed remarkably quickly and I’m surprised there was no necrosis. You were lucky. Most cold suit breaches normally result in the loss of something, up to and including life.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jack, angry at the suspicion in the doctor’s voice, and having to put heavy restraint on an abrupt urge to violence. So, he had healed quickly, what was wrong with that?

  ‘Clean bill of health then?’ Jack commented, wondering why he felt so guilty.

  ‘For now, though I’d like to do a full scan later when you have the time.’ The doctor gazed at him in perplexity. ‘There are still some other symptoms to be accounted for.’

  ‘Yeah, when I have the time.’

  The doctor continued gazing at him, then casually added, ‘Your on-board med-scanner diagnosed gangrene.’

  Had it?

  ‘Time that ship was thoroughly checked out,’ said Jack. ‘Faulty cold suits and faulty med-scanners make for dead pilots and profitless trips, both of which are of great concern to me.’ He stood up and stepped away from the chair, poised, his healing fingers clenching into a fist.

  I’ll have to kill him.

  The doctor nodded and turned away. ‘Come back when you can.’ He seemed stiff-backed as he walked away.

  When I can. I could break his neck now. Why? Why?

  Jack backed to the door flushed with panic. He did not want inspections, but murder? In a moment he was outside the door, breathing heavily, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and rage coiled at the base of his spine. He wanted to take his money and run, get back to Earth, normality, away from this aseptic environment. He did not want to kill. What purpose was served by killing?