War Factory: Transformations Book Two Read online

  Praise for Dark Intelligence

  “Beautifully paced . . . does just as well as at slam-bang action scenes as at painting frightening pictures . . . This is space opera at a high peak of craftsmanship.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “What Asher delivers here is state-of-the-art SF on so many levels . . . a compelling, smart read.” —Paul Di Filippo, Locus

  “Blends large portions of horror and mystery into an SF tale of revenge and redemption . . . a complex and satisfying work.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “An exciting, intricate, and unabashedly futuristic story rife with twists and turns . . . Asher returns to his popular far-future series, Polity Universe, with another fast-paced space opera filled with his trademark technological marvels and elaborate world building.” —Booklist

  “A revenge story with plenty of meat on its bones . . . the multifaceted, complex storytelling rewards a dedicated reader with serious tension and mindblowing sci-fi thrills.” —Manhattan Book Review

  “Hardboiled, fast-paced space opera epic . . . Asher’s books are similar to the world of Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe, but the Polity is arguably a much darker and more vicious environment—and all the better for it.”

  —The Register

  “Perpetually on the knife’s edge, and this constant tension works wonders for creating a page-turning atmosphere. It’s a damningly gripping and infecting book.” —Upcoming4.me

  “A superb novel and Asher has an amazing talent for world-building, for writing larger-than-life characters, for weaving gripping plots and for imagining exotic alien races and wonderful technologies. Huge ships! Big weapons! Space battles! Ground battles! Treason! Revenge! This is New Space Opera at its best.” —Sense of Wonder

  “One of his best works so far . . . Asher is a modern master of sci-fi.”

  —Starburst magazine

  “[The Polity books] are SF novels that mix early cyberpunk’s insouciance with the widescreen baroque spectacle of space opera and the pacing of an airport action-thriller. But even by Neal Asher’s standards, there’s something particularly grisly about Dark Intelligence.” —SFX

  BY NEAL ASHER

  Cowl

  AGENT CORMAC

  Shadow of the Scorpion

  Gridlinked

  The Line of Polity

  Brass Man

  Polity Agent

  Line War

  SPATTERJAY

  The Skinner

  The Voyage of the Sable Keech

  Orbus

  NOVELS OF THE POLITY

  Prador Moon

  Hilldiggers

  The Technician

  TRANSFORMATION

  Dark Intelligence

  War Factory

  THE OWNER

  The Departure

  Zero Point

  Jupiter War

  SHORT-STORY COLLECTIONS

  Runcible Tales

  The Engineer

  The Gabble

  NOVELLAS

  The Parasite

  Mindgames: Fool’s Mate

  WAR

  FACTORY

  TRANSFORMATION BOOK TWO

  NEAL ASHER

  Night Shade Books

  an imprint of Start Publishing

  JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY

  Copyright © 2016 by Neal Asher

  Published in the United Kingdom by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers 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 Night Shade Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Night Shade books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Night Shade Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Night Shade Books® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. ®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.nightshadebooks.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Asher, Neal L., 1961- author.

  Title: War factory / Neal Asher.

  Description: New York : Night Shade Books, [2016] | Series: Transformation; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015050041 | ISBN 9781597808347 (hardback) Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6101.S54 W37 2016 | DDC 823/.92--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050041

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-834-7

  eISBN: 978-1-59780-598-8

  Cover artwork by Adam Burn

  Cover design by Claudia Noble

  Printed in the United States of America

  Composer Steve Buick has created an album of original music inspired by War Factory. This background music has been designed to enhance the reading experience, to be enjoyed while reading the book itself. Using long, deeply dark soundscape layers—to complement the story’s atmosphere—he aims to add another dimension of reading without distracting from the action. The music can accompany any section of the book and is available from Amazon, iTunes and other digital music stores worldwide. Find out more at www.evokescape.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to those who have helped bring this novel to your E-reader, smart phone, computer screen and to that old-fashioned mass of wood pulp called a book, including Adam Burn for his eye-catching cover image, Bella Pagan for her copious structural and character notes and Bruno Vincent for further editing.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  PENNY ROYAL (THE BLACK AI)

  An artificial intelligence constructed in Factory Station Room 101, during the Polity war against the prador. Its crystal mind was faulty, burdened with emotions it could not encompass when it was hurled into the heat of battle. Running the destroyer that it named Puling Child, it fought and survived, then annihilated eight thousand troops on its own side before going AWOL. It changed into something dark then—a swarm robot whose integrated form was like a giant sea urchin. Blacklisted by the Polity for ensuing atrocities, it based itself in the Graveyard—a borderland created between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom after the war. There it continued its evil games, offering transformations for the right price, but ones that were never good for the recipients. It was nearly destroyed in a deal that went wrong. Later restored to function by the scorpion war drone Amistad, it apparently became a good AI . . . But now the black AI is on the move again, its plans obscure and its actions often devastating. It is regarded by the Polity as a paradigm-changing threat.

  THORVALD SPEAR

  Resurrected from a recording of his own mind, a hundred years after the war, he is the only survivor of the eight thousand troops slaughtered by Penny Royal on the planet Panarchia. He resolved to have his revenge on the AI and to that end sought out its old destroyer, whose location he had learned during the war. Taking command of it, he set out in search of the rogue AI. During this search he discovered that his very desire for vengeance had been created by Penny Royal, for it had tampered with his memories. Nevertheless his quest is reinforced by an artefact he found aboard the destroyer—one of Penny Royal’s spines. It is downloading memories of its victims into his mind. He now believes he is the instrument the AI created for its own destruction
.

  RISS

  An assassin drone and terror weapon. Made in Room 101 in the shape of a prador parasite which has a passing resemblance to a cobra, her purpose was to inject prador with parasite eggs, spreading infection and terror amidst them. The end of the war meant she lost her purpose for being and, while searching for a new purpose, lost even more when she encountered Penny Royal. Thorvald Spear found her somnolent and bereft near the AI’s home base in the Graveyard. She now accompanies him in his quest for vengeance.

  SVERL

  A prador who disagreed with the new king’s decision to make peace with the Polity. He went renegade and hid out with other prador of similar mind in the Graveyard. He could not understand how it was possible that the prador had started to lose against weak humans and their detestable AIs. He sought understanding of this conundrum from Penny Royal, but got more than he bargained for. Penny Royal initiated his transformation into a grotesque amalgam of prador, human and AI, so he could better understand each. Now he seeks some resolution to his situation and feels only the black AI can provide it.

  CVORN

  Another prador who joined Sverl in exile. Upon discovering Sverl’s transformation, he allied with other prador to attack him. During a planetary battle he put the shell people of that world—humans who are worshipfully trying to turn themselves into prador—in danger. The attempt failed and Cvorn fled, but he still remains a danger to Sverl and the shell people Sverl has chosen to protect.

  CAPTAIN BLITE

  A trader whose business edges into illegality. During a deal that turned sour he encountered Penny Royal, who killed his crew. His second encounter with the AI was when it used him and his ship as an escape from the world of Masada. With his ship under the control of the black AI, Blite has witnessed its obscure business in the Graveyard and elsewhere and come to realize that it may be correcting past wrongs. After recognizing this, he and his crew were abandoned again on Masada, but the advanced technology left aboard their ship (not to mention their first-hand knowledge of Penny Royal) means they are now of great interest to the Polity AIs. Blite also feels in his gut that his business with Penny Royal is not yet done . . .

  GLOSSARY

  Atheter — One of the millions of long-dead races, recently revived. It was discovered that the gabbleducks of the planet Masada were the devolved descendants of the Atheter. This race chose to sacrifice its civilization and intelligence to escape the millennia of wars resulting from its discovery of Jain technology.

  augmented — To be “augmented” is to have taken advantage of one or more of the many available cybernetic devices, mechanical additions and, distinctly, cerebral augmentations. In the last case we have, of course, the ubiquitous “aug” and such back-formations as “auged,” “auging-in,” and the execrable “all auged up.” But it does not stop there: the word “aug” has now become confused with auger and augur—which is understandable considering the way an aug connects and the information that then becomes available. So now you can “auger” information from the AI net, and a prediction made by an aug prognostic subprogram can be called an augury.

  —From Quince Guide, compiled by humans

  first- and second-children — Chemically maintained in adolescence at the end of growth spurts, and consequently shed their carapaces on their way to adulthood.

  Golem — Androids produced by a company Cybercorp—a ceramal chassis usually enclosed in a syntheflesh and syntheskin outer layer. These humanoid robots are very tough, fast and, since they possess AI, very smart.

  haiman — An amalgam of human and AI.

  hooder — A creature like a giant centipede of the planet Masada. It was discovered that they were the devolved descendants of biomech war machines created by the Atheter throughout their millennia of civil wars.

  Jain technology — A technology spanning all scientific disciplines. Created by one of the dead races—the Jain—its sum purpose is to spread through civilizations and annihilate them.

  nanosuite — A suite of nano-machines most human beings have inside them. These self-propagating machines act as a secondary immune system, repairing and adjusting the body. Each suite can be adjusted to suit the individual and his or her circumstances.

  nascuff — A device that can externally adjust a person’s nanosuite to suit their sexual inclination. It is mainly worn to advertise sexual availability or otherwise. When the libido of the one wearing it is shut down the cuff is red. When they are sexually active it is blue.

  Polity — A human/AI dominion extending across many star systems, occupying a spherical space spanning the thickness of the galaxy and centred on Earth. It is ruled over by the AIs who took control of human affairs in what has been called, because of its very low casualty rate, the Quiet War. The top AI is called Earth Central and resides in a building on the shore of Lake Geneva, while planetary AIs, lower down in the hierarchy, rule over other worlds. The Polity is a highly technical civilization but its weakness was its reliance on travel by “runcible”—instantaneous matter transmission gates. This weakness was exploited by the prador.

  prador — A highly xenophobic race of giant crablike aliens ruled by a king and his family. Hostility is implicit in their biology and, upon encountering the Polity, they immediately attacked it. Their advantage in this war was that they did not use runcibles (such devices needed the intelligence of AIs to control them and the prador are also hostile to any form of artificial intelligence) and as a result had developed their spaceship technology, and the metallurgy involved, beyond that of the Polity. They attacked with near-indestructible ships, but in the end the humans and AIs adapted and in their war factories out-manufactured the prador and began to win. They did not complete the victory, however, because the old king was usurped and the new king made an uneasy peace with the Polity.

  shell people — a group of cultist humans whose admiration of the prador is such that they are trying to alter themselves surgically to become prador.

  Sparkind — The Sparkind are an elite ECS military force, though with a name deriving from the Spartans (citizens of an ancient Greek city who were noted for their military prowess, austerity and discipline), they cannot trace their ancestry back so far. Sparkind are the direct descendants of the Special Forces that came into being during the Earth-bound wars towards the end of the second millennium: the Special Boat Service, the Special Air Service, Navy SEALS and the like.

  —From Quince Guide, compiled by humans

  the Technician — The last of the original hooder war machines. Having existed on Masada for two million years in a state of mental somnolence, it recently woke up but was apparently killed by a machine made by the Atheter to wipe out their own civilization.

  USER — Underspace Interference Emitter. This device disrupts U-space by oscillating a singularity through a runcible gate. It is used to push ships out of U-space into the real, or realspace.

  U-space — Underspace is the continuum spaceships enter (or U-jump into), rather like submarines submerging, to travel faster than light. It is also the continuum that can be crossed by using runcible gates, making travel between worlds linked by such gates all but instantaneous.

  Caroline Asher

  10/7/59 – 24/1/14

  You told me to never stop writing just some days before you died.

  I’m sorry my love but I did stop.

  I tried to forget everything, but now I am remembering.

  1

  PENNY ROYAL: A DARK HISTORY

  A destroyer slides out into a chaos of ships while the artificial intelligence inside absorbs data. It quickly understands its nature, grasps an overview of human and AI history and learns about the first encounters with the alien prador and the ensuing war. But at the forefront of its mind are tactical data, situational reports, casualty reports, an analysis of the latest battle and its own purpose within that. As a large portion of the swarm of Polity ships sets off, the AI fires up its fusion engine for the first time, heading for its designated spot
as outrider to a huge interfaced dreadnought. Ahead lies the massive hexagon of a runcible space gate. Drones and some ships pass through its shimmering interface, but other ships swing aside to take another route; the destroyer AI meanwhile routes power into ultra-capacitor and laminar storage as it awaits its final components.

  A shuttle approaches the AI’s ship fast, its flight edging into the unpredictable since the pilot is no machine. The blocky vessel, little different in appearance to a brick with engines, slows.

  “Are you going to open those doors or what?” a voice demands.

  The destroyer AI opens its space doors and, with a reckless expenditure of fuel, the human pilot sends the shuttle inside, steering thrusters marring the perfectly polished walls. The AI closes up docking clamps and locks the vessel down, shuts the doors and charges the hold with air, then watches internally as four humans, clad in armoured acceleration suits and loaded with gear, clamber out of the shuttle. It finds their presence a little puzzling, though even from its moment of inception it knew they were coming. Surely, they are only a disadvantage to it—to the purpose it serves? Continuing to observe them, it feels a strange emptiness opening inside. They are here and they are not logically required, therefore how much else is logical? Briefly, it sees everything as purposeless patterned matter without any reason for existence, including itself. Then, with a shudder, its programming reasserts itself.

  “Don’t you just love that new-destroyer smell?” asks one of the men.

  “Preferred the old bird,” replies the other man, “but there wasn’t much left to repair.”

  “I am Daleen,” says one of the others, addressing the AI directly. This radio communication identifies this “female” as a Golem, if the AI hadn’t already known.

  Two human males, one human female and a Golem android fashioned in the female form, then. The reason for their presence aboard is still unclear, but will surely become evident in good time . . .