Orbus Read online

  Orbus peers up at it. ‘Should I?’ he growls. ‘Should I really go back to the Gurnard and see if I can get myself dropped into another shitstorm like this?’

  ‘I’m sure that wasn’t the intention,’ says Thirteen, not even bothering to eliminate the doubt from his voice.

  ‘Whatever,’ Orbus spits, striding on up the stair. He wants answers, he tells himself, and if necessary he will tear the Gurnard apart to find them. Yet, on some level, his own reasoning feels false. I want to know how to stop, something whispers. I want to know how to control it, and I want to know why I started to cry back there…

  Outside Smith Storage, klaxons are blaring and a little way along from the door a crowd is now gathering about some kind of wall access. Orbus only realizes what they are up to when he notices those on the periphery pulling on survival suits–simple impervious and reinforced paperwear with a transparent visor and a limited oxygen supply, and the possible difference between life and death in a situation like this. He heads straight for the lift.

  ‘Hey, Cap’n,’ says Drooble, ‘I think you can put me down now.’

  Orbus hoists the man off his shoulder and stands him on his own two feet.

  ‘See, I’m—’ Drooble’s legs give way and he just slumps to the floor. ‘That’s odd,’ he adds.

  Orbus nods to himself. The hideous impact of a rail-gun missile, as well as cutting a chunk out of Drooble’s side, has severed his spine. It will take the man a while longer yet before he is up and about, and he will need to be well fed with non-Spatterjay food items just to stop him becoming markedly stranger than he is already. Orbus again picks him up one-handed and slings him over his shoulder, then enters the lift. Thirteen zips in beside the pair, then heads up to the roof of the compartment, perhaps trying to keep out of the Old Captain’s reach. Orbus hits the touch-pad for the bottom floor, inadvertently driving it through the lift’s wall, and they descend rapidly…

  But obviously they have not been moving fast enough. ‘Step out of the lift and kneel down on the floor!’ a voice instructs, as the door opens.

  Orbus recognizes the ophidapt official, now standing behind four men clad in visored helmets and combat armour, and all armed with pulse rifles–every barrel pointing at Orbus. Doubtless the moment the atmosphere breach occurred, station security personnel started watching the images on their screens from the cams located within the area.

  Stepping out of the lift, his legs quivering with the urge to hurl himself forward and just scatter these fools, Orbus enquires viciously, ‘Did you know you’ve got a Prador aboard?’ Though he wonders if the Prador is still aboard, because it seems likely the war drone that attacked it dragged it to where their fight would be less likely to cause inadvertent casualties.

  The ophidapt just stares at him for a moment, then again orders him to, ‘Kneel on the floor!’

  ‘I need to speak to any one of the Layden-Smiths,’ says Orbus, fighting to introduce some calm into his voice. ‘But let me guess, they’ve been out of direct communication with you for a while?’

  ‘Station property has been severely damaged,’ says the ophidapt, seemingly unable to process what Orbus has said. ‘You are in the area, and obviously have been involved in some way, so I must take you into custody.’

  ‘I’ve no time for this,’ Orbus growls, groping down for his bull-whip, but it is still up above somewhere.

  ‘When I fire,’ says Thirteen, ‘run for it.’

  Red com-laser light flashes on four visors, and across the eyes of the ophidapt. Orbus ducks to one side and takes to his heels, pulse-gun fire hammering into the lift behind him. He deliberately circumvents the reception committee, so as to put them out of his own reach.

  ‘Ow!’ says Drooble, and glancing down the Captain sees his crewman’s foot is smoking, so obviously one of the shots was on target even after the drone blinded the marksmen.

  Still hurtling along, Orbus soon reaches the long tunnel leading to the docking area. Behind him he hears shouting, but no one starts firing because only a thin skin of metal separates this area from vacuum. Reaching the other end, he takes a couple of turnings to reach the door into the carrier-shell atrium. He kicks it in and strides through, then enters the zero-gravity shell itself. The security drone, obviously alerted, shoots out of its alcove, but Orbus is already sailing across towards it, with one hand reaching out. The drone must be semi-AI and intelligent enough to know its chances of survival, for it snaps back inside its alcove, the hatch slamming shut. Thirty seconds after that, Orbus boards the shuttle and is soon strapping Drooble into a chair.

  ‘Of course’–Thirteen settles down to wind his tail around one of the console levers–‘there’s the problem with all this station’s armament.’

  Orbus seats himself, then reaches forwards to click a brass switch positioned before a very archaic-looking horn-shaped mouthpiece. ‘You there, Gurnard?’

  ‘I am always here,’ the distant ship AI replies.

  ‘Right,’ says the Captain, ‘you dropped me into this mess and now I want you to get me out of it.’

  ‘You should be safe enough,’ the AI replies. ‘Sniper informs me that the Prador had seized control of the station weapons but, presently being otherwise occupied, will not be able to deploy them. However, I am now moving in to assist in the unlikely event of any problems.’

  The moment the universal dock disengages, Orbus wrenches up the helm and, on steering jets, accelerates the shuttle out of the carrier shell, just far enough not to cause too much damage to the station when he engages the fusion drive. Torch firing up, the shuttle then hurtles out of the station structure, only a few surfaces singed by the fusion flame. Next he flings the shuttle into a hard turn. Numerous red lights ignite on the console and Orbus does not need long to interpret the archaic-looking displays of information on those little screens before him. The missile from one of the big rail-guns just misses them, which means someone has managed to get the weapon up and working, but is firing on manual.

  ‘I see,’ says Orbus, knowing he might not be so lucky next time.

  The Golgoloth shifts in uneasy slumber, all the tubes and wires mating with its ancient Prador body rattling and squirming wetly in the armoured lair surrounding it. The two internal ganglion grafts it uses for internal monitoring, which never sleep, note that the new muscle grafts to its five-chambered heart have bonded nicely, and sends a signal via cybernetic implant along one of the fibre-optic cables sprouting from scarred and heavily shell-patched carapace. This signal simultaneously shuts down the mechanical pump that is circulating the creature’s green blood and sends electric impulses to probes buried inside heart muscle. The much patched and repaired heart takes up the slack at once, smoothly taking over the task the mechanical pump has performed for the last decade.

  Slowly, since the creature is in no hurry to be anywhere, automated systems within its lair begin bringing the Golgoloth’s other external ganglia online, bringing it to consciousness. By incremental degrees it begins to observe its surroundings through both its turret and palp eyes, then makes a visual inspection of all the equipment that keeps it alive and has kept it alive for an appalling time. The only notable damage is to a pipe leading to a blood scrubber, which it must have crushed with its latest single claw graft while in uneasy slumber. But because of the tenfold redundancy in the equipment surrounding it, this isn’t a problem. Next the Golgoloth focuses its attention on the numerous readouts from the array of hexagonal screens standing before it like a chunk of honeycomb, and begins to check upon the running of its abode beyond this armoured lair.

  The creature’s children all grow nicely and some of them will soon be ready for harvesting. They are a direct product of the Golgoloth for, being a hermaphrodite, it possesses both Prador sexes and, with a little technical assistance, can mate with itself.

  Specifically it studies the largest of its seven hermaphroditic first-children, secured in a slowly expanding growth framework, nutrient feeds and monitoring optics
mated into sockets surgically implanted in its body. The child’s remaining claw is now big enough for removal and grafting. Like the Golgoloth itself when it was younger, this first-child’s entire body has grown asymmetrically; one entire side growing twice as fast as the other and therefore one claw reaching the point when it could be harvested before the other one. The Golgoloth now sports the largest of those two claws as a replacement for a previous graft that came under attack from its ridiculously rugged immune system, just like its legs, which are presently under attack and turning an odd custard yellow and will soon need replacing. This first-child cannot provide those limbs, since its own legs were removed to provide the Golgoloth with internal muscle about the socket of its new claw, but the other children are coming along nicely.

  The Golgoloth now pushes itself up onto its yellow legs, whilst engaging the antigravity unit on its underside to take the bulk of its weight. As it moves towards the door of its lair, subsidiary feeds automatically separate from its body to snake back to their sources through the foot depth of water upon the floor, whilst its two main life-support units detach from their floor sockets and switch over to internal power. As it advances to the doors, these two units–fat upright floating cylinders with numerous protrusions and inset pit-consoles–drift along behind, keeping their numerous optics and pipes slack enough not to pull free, but not so slack they might become entangled about the creature’s legs.

  The doors open and the Golgoloth moves out into the wide corridor, eyeing the mutated ship-lice crawling along the walls to keep pace with it, ever ready for the occasional graft that might drop off. They are a necessary pest here, because they keep the place clear of the build-up of organic detritus. At the end of the corridor the hermaphrodite Prador begins to descend one of the numerous ramps in its abode, and now, with its heart having undergone sufficient testing, begins bringing online more of its external ganglia. In a moment it attains full temporal consciousness, which puts it at the intelligence level of a wakeful and bright but normal Prador. And the Golgoloth begins to remember and consider its immense lifespan.

  In the early planet-bound days of the Prador, their aggression kept them in an Iron Age lasting many thousands of years. During that time, technical knowledge was gathered and jealously guarded by various individuals and factions. However, since alliances tended to change very quickly, with betrayal and murder of one’s allies an utterly accepted political tool, this technical knowledge gradually spread. Towards the end of this age of iron, one particular Prador rose to power and achieved planetary dominance first by dint of being extremely aggressive and cunning, and second through the creation of a liquid explosive that led to the invention of the gun. This was a legendary time of rigid control over the factions and rapid technological advance, and by the time the First King became the victim of one of his own jealously guarded weapons, Prador were building flying machines and computers, and had even advanced their biotechnology to the point where they could keep their children in perpetual childhood and install thralls in many of their homeworld creatures. Prador even managed to get into space, and the first bases were established on the two homeworld moons at the end of the First King’s reign.

  After the death of the First King, a thousand years of warfare ensued. Knowledge was never lost, only jealously guarded, and after a large alliance of factions managed to run a scientific project for long enough to split the first atom, the entire race faced extinction with the onset of the nuclear age. Startlingly, however, some sanity prevailed, and the Prador managed to agree amongst themselves rules of engagement that would not result in their world ending up as a radioactive wasteland. And it was during this time that the Golgoloth hatched from an egg implanted in one of the seashore birth molluscs.

  Reaching a wide armoured portal leading into the nurseries, the Golgoloth sends a coded signal and slowly the portal divides diagonally, its two heavy halves rolling back into the walls. Entering the long chamber, it studies the large first-child lying directly ahead. The child’s turret eyes are locked perpetually on an array of screens before it. But its palp eyes turn towards the creature that is both its father and mother, and it struggles ineffectually in the framework keeping it permanently imprisoned. Then it jerks suddenly. Obviously it did not give the required response to something appearing on one of its screens, and therefore received its punishment shock. The Golgoloth learnt long ago that just as exercising its children’s muscles results in the best limb grafts, keeping their minds active results in the best ganglia either for internal grafting or for connecting into its distributed mind.

  It meanwhile moves on. Later it will activate its surgical robots and take that claw perpetually flexing under electrical stimulus.

  The Golgoloth supposes itself a product of mutation because, despite controls of nuclear weapons being introduced before it hatched, they were used previously and still used later on occasion. Usually, one such as itself is not even allowed to survive into third-childhood, for adult male Prador are ruthless in their selection of those children they allow to live. But the Golgoloth’s father was an oddity himself, with very low fertility–perhaps the mutation actually began with him–and because of a strange interest in the grotesque he allowed the Golgoloth to live and kept it as a curiosity. Only later did he realize that this odd asymmetric and crippled child possessed a formidable intelligence. He realized it too late, only shortly before the self-renewing diatomic acid the Golgoloth invented had eaten right through his shell.

  After murdering its father, the Golgoloth moved to take over their home’s security system and use it to exterminate all its first-and second-children kin. Thereafter it used chemical and thrall control over the remaining third-children, and itself stayed hidden and undiscovered for many years. During this time it studied and experimented and, by delivering a few severe lessons, discouraged its neighbours from trying to seize its land or other property. It also studied history, particularly its favourite period: the time of the First King. The Golgoloth felt that the Prador way was ridiculously wasteful, for with them strictly controlled under some powerful autocrat, all the stupid internecine conflicts could be terminated. The Golgoloth considered itself for that position, but knew a king must be visible and that, upon seeing the Golgoloth, all the other Prador would turn upon it. Studying its neighbours, however, it saw few candidates suitable for the position, and so set about experimenting upon itself.

  The first self-fertilized eggs it produced, and itself injected into a birth mollusc, simply died, and after some months of study the Golgoloth came to the conclusion that though sperm and egg were sound, the fertilized eggs were not receiving the required nutrients in its body. Next it tried removing such fertilized eggs from its own body and inserting them into one of Father’s wives, but they would not let the Golgoloth anywhere near them, so it became necessary to completely delimb one of them for the process. The eggs grown inside this female, and then manually injected into a birth mollusc, did actually hatch out, but they produced many grotesques even more distorted than the Golgoloth itself. They also produced three Prador who, though having some internal mutations, appeared to be sound, so the Golgoloth allowed those to live.

  Now reaching the next first-child, the Golgoloth peers closely at legs permanently stretching and flexing within the framework. Really, even the ones on the child’s fast-growing side aren’t yet ready for removal and grafting, and the Golgoloth knows that, unless it raids its emergency supply, it will be losing some of its own sickly legs before replacements are ready here. No matter, the hermaphrodite long ago created blocks and filters for its nerves; the process is no more painful than shedding old carapace, and it can increase antigravity support for its body. Next time it will ensure more children are available for spare parts, for it has come a long way in this process from its first attempts.

  One of those children it allowed to survive from its first brood died before reaching third-childhood–a fault in its digestive system–and a second died from a minor in
jury because its blood possessed no clotting agent. The third survived to grow and learn quickly under the Golgoloth’s guidance. He was intelligent, this Prador, and quite normally aggressive and competitive. The Golgoloth trained him to direct this aggression much more constructively than his fellows, and through gradual stages relinquished responsibility, turning from master to teacher and adviser. The Prador grew to adulthood with the Golgoloth ever there in the background; like a weirdly distorted shadow. Then, with only a light guiding claw, this adult began to make astute moves, ruthless takeovers, very specific assassinations. He mated frequently and produced a rapidly growing batch of children, though their number did not match that of those that were meantime necessarily and secretly destroyed. The Golgoloth trained these children, then went on to use the same techniques on the children of those Prador who became allies.

  Two decades of conflict and expansion followed, then a final large conflict that for a brief time went nuclear. At the end of this the homeworld was ruled by a new King, and they called his reign the Second Kingdom, in deference to the legendary First Kingdom. The Golgoloth was both mother and father of this King–kingmaker in every sense.

  5

  They metabolize oxygen in a similar manner to Human beings, though the blood they use to transport it is based on copper rather than iron. However, never has a creature been more suited to space without having undergone some sort of modification. Certainly anoxia will kill them, but not as quickly as it will kill a Human. They can withstand the extreme cold of space, since it finally drives them into a natural cryosleep rather than killing them. Pressure changes are not a problem to them either and, supplied with oxygen, they can survive in vacuum. It has been noted incidentally that, because of this, the atmosphere integrity of Prador ships would never pass Human inspection. They possess numerous limbs for moving about in zero gravity, numerous ‘underhands’ with which to manipulate their complex environment, and numerous eyes with which to observe it. The shame is that they bring to that same environment the minds of psychotic lobsters.