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  BRASS MAN

  Neal Asher was born in Billericay, Essex, and still lives nearby. He started writing SF and fantasy at the age of sixteen, and has since had many stories published. His full-length novels include Gridlinked, The Skinner, The Line of Polity, Cowl, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Polity Agent, Hilldiggers, Prador Moon and LineWar.

  Also by Neal Asher

  The Parasite

  Runcible Tales

  The Engineer

  Mindgames: Fool’s Mate

  Gridlinked

  The Skinner

  The Line of Polity

  Cowl

  The Voyage of the Sable Keech

  Polity Agent

  Hilldiggers

  Prador Moon

  Line War

  BRASS MAN

  Neal Asher

  Copyright © Neal Asher 2005

  First Night Shade Books edition © 2018.

  First published by Macmillan,

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan,

  a division of Macmillan Publishers International Limited.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing LLC, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Published by Night Shade Books,

  an imprint of Start Publishing LLC

  Jersey City, New Jersey

  Please visit us on the web at

  www.nightshade.start-publishing.com

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-649-7

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  For my parents, Bill and Hazel Asher.

  You started all this, obviously.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to those readers who told me, on reading Gridlinked, ‘I really liked Mr Crane!’ and from whom this book got its inception – first and foremost of those being Caroline, who still hasn’t told me to get a proper job. My thanks also to Keith Starkey for his excellent observations and John Jarrold for his, and as ever to Peter Lavery for that pencil, my growing palate for good red wine, and the trenchant fluffy-bunny editorial mark. No books get to the shelves without the hard work of many others: Steve Rawlings, Rebecca Saunders, Dusty Miller, Emma Giacon, Liz Cowen, Gillian Redfearn and many others. And that mine are arriving on shelves in other countries and in other languages is thanks to: Michelle Taylor, Jon Mitchell, Chantal Noel and Vivienne Nelson. I could now thank those who are selling my books elsewhere – Stefan Bauer, Moshe Feder, David Hartwell, to name but a few – but this is beginning to read like an Oscar speech so I’ll shut up now.

  Prologue

  As this new face of the asteroid turned into view, Salvor swore when he realized the titanium and platinum readings he was picking up were not from some large deposit in the object itself, but from the wreckage strewn on its surface. However, upping the magnification of the image on his main screen dispelled his disappointment. There was something intact down there, something that looked like the head of a giant thistle made out of golden metal. Perhaps he wasn’t wasting his time here after all.

  ‘Vulture, match to rotation,’ he said. ‘Get me geostat on that thing.’

  Boosters thrummed inside the small craft, and the image of the metallic object revolved and centred on the screen. The thrumming then continued as the little ship maintained position.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Immediately skeletal line images of various objects began to overlay the one already on the screen, flickering on one after another, faster and faster until they became a blur.

  ‘Not a complete ship,’ replied Vulture. The little survey ship’s AI voice was female and silkily sexy. Salvor had based it on a recording of his second wife’s voice, just as he’d based the AI’s personality template on her as well. This was all before that wife had developed the demeanour of a harpy, and a voice to match.

  ‘No shit? And there was me thinking the rest of that wreckage and the metal vapour all around here had nothing at all to do with it.’

  ‘No need to be sarcastic. I was going to add that it is a piece of a ship, and that it is quite obvious which ship, if just a little thought is applied: a piece of the Occam Razor.’

  ‘Now who’s being sarcastic?’

  Salvor called up a subscreen in the bottom of the ship’s main one, and on that he studied scan results. ‘Case-hardened ceramal. Are schematics of the Razor available?’

  ‘No. Polity AIs are a little bit funny about distributing that sort of information about their battleships. I can’t understand why.’

  The Polity, that ever-growing sphere of human-inhabited worlds, was, on the whole, governed by the Earth Central AI, through the sector AIs, then planetary governors or runcible AIs. Humans came in quite low in the hierarchy, and not much military information was shared with them. Salvor supposed this was because humans were not to be trusted. He ignored Vulture’s snipe, and said, ‘I’m surprised any of it survived, and I’m surprised those Polity investigators haven’t found this already – they seem keen to retrieve every fragment. Let’s go down and take a look.’

  ‘That might not be advisable. The cover story is that the ship’s AI went rogue, and that’s why it attacked Elysium. But there are other stories about some nasty organic tech being involved. Why not report this to the Polity and collect the reward?’

  ‘Nice idea, but the thinking man has to wonder why such rewards are offered. Nothing’s for free, you know. You can guarantee their profit margin is even greater. Take us down.’

  As the Vulture descended, the screen kept the image of the metallic object centred. Approaching the surface of the asteroid, to one side of the object, the Vulture – a ship that resembled a black maggot ten metres long – spat out anchor spears trailing lines. Brief flashes lighting the screen told Salvor that the bolt charges had blown the anchor spears into the rock and, as the little craft pulled itself down, he stood and propelled himself back from the cockpit.

  ‘I wond
er why it’s remained on the surface – there’s not enough gravity to counter the centrifugal force here,’ he said, as he took his helmet from its locker, clicked it onto the neck ring of the suit he wore, and activated his suit’s system.

  ‘If it hit while hot, then it’s likely it fused to the rock below’ – Vulture was speaking inside Salvor’s helmet – ‘or some part of it might be snagged into the ground. But there’s also the possibility that it was fixed to this asteroid somehow.’

  That gave Salvor pause. ‘You mean there might be someone alive inside it?’

  ‘That, or some remaining AI or computerized system.’

  ‘Well, it’s been a year since the Occam Razor was fried, so any surviving humans would be dead or in cold sleep by now.’

  Salvor pushed himself through the cramped cabin to the airlock, the inner door of which Vulture was already opening. He crammed himself into this even more cramped space, while the inner door closed and the lock cycled. Eventually the outer door opened and he stuck his feet out into the clarity of vacuum. As he stepped down, the suit opened a display in the bottom right-hand corner of his visor to tell him it had turned on the gecko function of his boot soles, and to ask if he would like to change this. The suit, being semi-AI, had already scanned his surroundings and was anticipating his needs. He ignored the screen and after a moment it flicked off. As soon as his feet touched the scoured stone of the asteroid his boot soles bonded, and he began walking across to the titanic piece of wreckage as if across a floor smeared with tar.

  ‘It’s noticeable that the stalk section has been detached rather than broken away,’ Vulture told him over com.

  Salvor scanned down the hundred-metre ‘stalk’. He saw that it was square in section and about ten metres across, and all down its length were interface points for fibre optics, gas ducts and fluid pipes. Mating plugs were still engaged in some of these – their pipes, ducts and optics sheared away and trailing into vacuum. Also, along its surfaces, were many other linkages and devices: long racks of gear teeth, hydraulic rams, grav-plates, generators and heavy-load step motors. It was evident that this object was something the Occam Razor could move about inside itself. The far end of the stalk was sealed and attached to some huge hydraulic engine, its mating sockets open to vacuum.

  ‘Many Polity battleships possess the utility to rearrange their internal structure for optimum efficiency. Evidently this is part of that movable structure,’ Vulture told him.

  ‘Really?’ Salvor replied drily.

  The main part of the object was spherical and about fifty metres in diameter, the profusion of sensor arrays at its far end giving it the appearance of a flowering thistle head. Upon reaching it, Salvor inspected underneath and saw that it had indeed fused to the asteroid, and that this melting process had produced runnels of black rock possessing a disconcertingly organic appearance. But he’d seen weird shit like that often enough before while surveying asteroids. It didn’t mean anything.

  Eventually, standing where the sensor arrays speared overhead in a metallic forest, he spotted something that looked like an escape hatch. It was partially open, and water ice frosted the shadowy ground below. This immediately told Salvor that it was unlikely anyone was alive inside, because had that ice been the result of only water vapour in an airlock, it would have been gone long before now. This asteroid had been in close orbit of the sun only a few months before, and the temperatures here would have been enough to melt lead. Obviously, atmosphere had been leaking from inside this thing ever since it impacted here, and was still doing so. He ducked under and caught hold of the edge of the hatch. Briefly, it resisted him, then the servos of his suit kicked in and it swung open – its silent shriek transmitted as a vibration through his glove. He moved into an airlock, his suit obligingly turning on his helmet lights, and saw, as he had suspected, that the inner door was open. Hauling himself through this he scanned around inside.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Nasty organic tech.’ Vulture was now – he saw by the display in the bottom corner of his visor – interfaced with his suit and seeing all he was seeing.

  ‘Looks dead to me.’

  ‘Even so, decontamination procedures will be advisable when you return.’

  ‘I know what this is,’ said Salvor, observing the control chairs tangled in woody tentacular growth, the massed circuitry underneath the tilted glass floor and the other systems set in the surrounding walls, also pierced by that growth. ‘It’s the bridge pod.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. I also advise you to get out of there now – you don’t know what you are dealing with.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Do you know how much Dreyden would pay for this – or one of the Separatist groups? There’ll be a fortune in high-tech systems here, let alone whatever all this other weird shit is.’

  Salvor now noticed the desiccated corpse lying against the back wall, pinned there by growths that had sprouted from the wall. His attention slid back to the captain’s chair and he saw that it was empty. So probably some sort of biotech attack: the ship taken over and made to attack Elysium, while the captain himself lay dead back there.

  ‘Nothing I can do about all this right now,’ he said. ‘I’ll take recordings and put them out on the net – see who makes the biggest offer for its location.’

  He turned to go, then hesitated when something shifted beside him. A wave of shadow revolved around something, and revealed it. A man stood there: a naked man with hideous burns on the side of his face and down one side of his body, burns deep enough to expose the bone around one empty eye socket, the blackened teeth in his jaws, and burnt ribs in his chest. That same strange growth occupying the bridge pod also occupied this man’s body, only in him it was moving like maggots in a corpse. It also cupped the unburnt side of his face and writhed chitinously under his skin. On the opposite side of his head a crystal matrix aug glimmered greenish light, and from it crystal rods speared down into seared flesh around his collarbone.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ was all Salvor managed before the man’s left hand snapped out and caught him by the throat, and the right hand pressed against his suit’s visor.

  ‘Salvor! Salv—’ Vulture’s cries cut off.

  The suit’s systems went crazy telling him of suit breaches, subversion programs, changes in air mix . . . Salvor fought against the grip crushing his larynx, but it was like fighting a docking clamp. The suit’s systems died: all the miniature displays it had flung up along the bottom of his visor going out at once. Then his visor was melting and dark woody tendrils were squirming towards his eyes.

  He didn’t scream, could not find the breath.

  – retroact 1 –

  Just outside Bangladesh, bright tropical sunshine bathed the lawns surrounding Cybercorp HQ, and the volume of chatter from the crowd was increasing in direct proportion to the amount of chilled champagne consumed. Many members of the press, bored with waiting for the appearance of the new Golem Twenty-five, were finding diversion by feeding canapés to the resident chipmunks. Someone had brought an elephant kitted out in its red and gold regalia. It stood to one side swinging its trunk at the swarming holocams, its Golem mahout looking embarrassed. No one knew why the creature was there; few of them gave a damn.

  Sitting on the plinth of a statue of Ganesh, Solenz Garrick of Earthnet used a tissue to wipe raven shit from his businesswear and, with something approaching hatred, eyed the black birds roosting in the nearby date palm. Glancing towards the conglomeration of geodesic domes nestled around the base of the kilometre-tall Corp tower, he shook his head and said something filthy. The launches of the earlier Golem series had certainly been media events, but now, at number Twenty-five, they were becoming passé, and it told Solenz something of his boss’s regard for him that he had been sent to attend this event. He now turned and looked up at his own holocam.

  ‘The numbering of Golem is, on the whole, a superfluous distinction now,’ he announced. Then he stood up, eyed the smear on his shoulder, before turning sidew
ays to the cam.

  ‘The differences between each series are now only small improvements, usually negated when Golem of the earlier series are upgraded by their owners – or, if free, by themselves. Underneath all the hype it can be seen that the prototype Twenty-five only possesses slightly more efficient servomotors and a rather longer-lasting power supply than its predecessor.’

  ‘I think that crow said all that needs to be said about your narrative, Solenz.’ As he swayed up to stand beside Solenz, Barone of India News grinned unpleasantly. The man then drained his glass and tossed it on the ground, where a chipmunk came to inspect it, sniffed haughtily, then went on after more canapés.

  ‘It was a raven, actually,’ said Solenz, uncomfortably aware that he was still live on Earthnet, if only on one of the lower channels.

  ‘Ah, here they come,’ said Barone.

  Out of the arched entranceway to the nearest dome issued Corp execs dressed up like a shower of peacocks. In the centre of this group, towering over them all, walked the new Golem.

  ‘They always build the prototype big for effect – to make up for the lack of any real technical advances,’ said Solenz sniffily.

  ‘Oh, get with the program, man,’ said Barone. ‘It’s all about primary ownership, and how big my cojones are ’cause I can afford a Golem from the newest series.’

  Even though he was still live, Solenz turned to Barone and said, ‘Why don’t you just fuck off over there somewhere.’

  ‘Oooh, touchy.’ But Barone moved away.

  Like dogs running in to sniff something unmentionable, the press then moved in. Solenz shouldered and elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. The Corp representative – dressed in businesswear superior to his own, Solenz noted – held up his hands and waited for silence, flicking his fingers at the holocams moving in for a closer view of big lanky Golem standing behind him. Solenz prepared himself to be bored, and tried to think of incisive questions to ask once the speechifying was over.