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  After a short pause, while Blite stood there panting and wondering where his momentary calm had gone, Brondohohan spoke quietly from the darkness to one side.

  “Which was, as I recollect,” he said, “precisely what you did.”

  “Of course some of the stories are true,” added Greer from over the other side of the trail.

  Getting ready to start shouting, Blite squinted at the heavy-worlder woman. But he could see her pointing at the box sitting on their grav-sled and realized she had a point. At least one of the stories about alien technology was true, because that thing in there seemed to be the real deal. If it hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have been here trying to retrieve it. If it wasn’t, their buyers in the Separatist movement wouldn’t have been so interested.

  “Come on, let’s keep up the pace,” he said, realizing they’d slowed to a dawdle, then checked his com-plate for positioning. Chont and Haber were to the rear, with Brondohohan and Greer on each side. Then Ikbal and he were by the sled, Martina controlling it. They were good, and soon they would reach the edge of the space port. He shouldn’t have allowed the fears of his crew to distract him, but he also shouldn’t get complacent now that they only had a little distance to go before reaching his ship. Sure, they wouldn’t have to go through port security, which was a relief. This world’s enterprising brand of homegrown terrorists, the Tidy Squad, had bored a smuggler’s tunnel through the port’s foam-stone raft. But there was still a chance of them being spotted. They still might have to fight their way back to the ship, or even abandon their acquisition and run.

  Trudging on through the Masadan evening, Blite wondered which of the stories about this place he really believed. Though he considered the one about the ancient alien machine and the hooder dubious, there were none he could definitively discount. He understood himself enough to know that his angry response to that Tidy Squad idiot glooming on about Penny Royal had two sources. He didn’t want his crew spooked and, tough as they were, that was just the kind of thing to get under their skins. He also didn’t want to believe it himself, because Penny Royal was already under his skin. Blite shivered.

  He still clearly remembered that operation twenty-eight solstan years ago. He supplied some thralls and control units smuggled out of Spatterjay to some collector on the edge of the Graveyard. The buyer had apparently been a rich Polity citizen, keen to add to his collection of wartime memorabilia. Only, when Blite and his crew delivered the items, it turned out that the buyer was a front for some nascent coring operation in the Graveyard itself. Shortly after the buy, the heads of this were meeting someone who would repair and activate what they really wanted: working prador thrall technology.

  The buy was going bad, quickly, because the shits involved had decided that their large amounts of weaponry gave them a bargaining advantage. It was all about to turn into a nasty firefight when the other side’s repairman turned up, and then it turned into a complete nightmare. The meet had been in a valley on a heavy gravity world, where plants grew iron-hard and close to the ground, and where most humans wore motorized suits. Blite had looked up as he prepared to open fire and order the thrall tech they had come with to be blown up. On the ridge above, a metal flower had bloomed. A giant black thistle-head atop a stalk of braided silver snakes. He stared at it in shock as, like a slow black explosion, it came apart. Its individual spikes turned as they sped away to point down into the valley, all settling to hang still in the air—a wall of daggers woven through with silver lace.

  “Penny Royal!” one of the opposition called, gazing at Blite with a superior smile.

  Blite immediately wondered about the possibility of surviving what was about to happen here; if he left this valley alive, he would be glad to do so. He knew about Penny Royal. However, it seemed the opposition did not for, like so many fools, they had obviously struck some sort of bargain with the devil.

  The second shout of that name came filled with panic, as the wall of knives suddenly swept down. Pulse-fire and the snap and crackle of laser carbines filled the valley. The light in the sky went out, then a discharge like pink lightning left one motorized suit belching fire and smoke. Something picked up Blite and deposited him on his back, his bones crunching. A massive explosion followed and dust rolled through. Blite lay there for maybe an hour as the firing stuttered to a halt, as the screaming died away and the dust settled. Finally heaving himself to his feet, he went to take a look around.

  The eight heavily armed thugs who had accompanied the buyers were out of their suits, gasping in the poisonous air. They were naked, crawling along the ground, the tops of their skulls missing, each with a prador thrall in place in the emptied cavity inside. Two of the buyers had survived as well. Their bodies were melded at the waist and they scuttled on all eight of their limbs like a prador, hexagonal control units sprouting from their skins like technological pustules. They no longer looked sane, drooling, with eyes rolling. Blite walked away, realizing that Penny Royal had done what they wanted. The rogue AI had made the thralls and control units work. The problem with Penny Royal, as any sensible Graveyard trader knew, was that it often did a lot more of what the recipient didn’t want. Back at his shuttle, he found two of his six-man crew waiting for him. There were no life-signs from the other four suits and, after much indecision, he went back to look for them. All he found were four empty suits, coated inside with a black tar-like substance.

  “You okay, boss?”

  Blite snapped out of his reverie and glanced at Martina, who was watching him with concern.

  “Fine,” he said, realizing that the space port raft lay directly ahead. He had lost himself in memory for rather longer than he had supposed. He shivered again and checked their surroundings, suddenly feeling that coming here had been his worst idea in twenty-eight years. He called up a map on his com-plate, then pointed off to the right, towards the smugglers’ tunnel. After he’d returned his plate to his pocket, he drew his flak gun.

  “Pick up the pace,” he instructed, “and stay alert.”

  Not that there was anything they could possibly do if that nightmare came for them.

  They began pushing through standing flute grasses, leaving the previous trail, which had probably been made by some of the local fauna. His obvious anxiety spread and his crew closed in, checking wrist-mounted motion sensors and heat signature scanners. Blite found himself breathing heavily—getting spooked—and when they pushed out into an open area beside the foam-stone raft, he gazed warily at the dark mouth of the tunnel, partially concealed by a hatch of woven flute grass. He really didn’t want to go in there, but no other choices were viable. Up above, the tough ceramic razor-mesh fence was loaded with sensors, punctuated by autogun towers and scattered with smaller security drones. Just climbing up onto the raft would result in capture, let alone approaching the fence.

  “Come on.” He headed over to the tunnel, the skin on his back crawling and his stomach tight. He reached the hatch before the others and dragged it aside, ramped up the light amplification in his visor, then looked through the sights of his gun into the tunnel. Nothing there and no sign anything had been there, either. He could only see the footprints they’d made when they used this tunnel four days ago. He led the way in, abruptly glad to be in this enclosed space. If anything came for him, it could only come from ahead or behind. Glancing back he saw that all his crew were in, the grav-sled wobbling as it adjusted to the curved foam-stone floor. A few hundred feet further in, he even considered blowing the tunnel behind them, but decided he was being irrational. Anyway, that wouldn’t stop the likes of Penny Royal, supposing the AI was even here.

  Finally they reached steps leading to the surface of the foam-stone landing field. The grav-sled hesitated, then levitated in fits and starts as if reluctant to make the climb. They then stepped out into the shadowy framework supporting fuel silos, before making their way across a hundred feet of landing field to The Rose. Gazing at his squat vessel, which some had compared to an iron mosque, Blite
felt his tension beginning to ease. He used his plate to signal the cargo hold ramp to lower and they all entered that way. As the ramp closed up, Blite let out a slow breath. It had been silly to get so spooked.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, pulling off his mask the moment the hold’s atmosphere light switched to green. “Leven,” he continued. “Are we clear to lift?”

  Their ship’s mind replied through the intercom. “I requested clearance as soon as I saw you coming in. We’ve got a window in five minutes—AG only, no chemical thrusters.”

  “Take us up as soon as you can,” Blite replied, following the others through the airlock to the main ship.

  When The Rose began to ascend, Blite was secured in one of the chairs on the bridge, gazing across the space port through the chain-glass screen. He supposed the stricture on their launch method might be due to the wildlife. The Tidy Squad had advised that it wasn’t a good idea to use lights out in the flute grasses, so perhaps the glare of chemical thrusters might attract unwanted attention to the space port. Soon they were high enough to see beyond the port to the flute grass wildlands, then to chequerboards of sqerm ponds and the fortified town they’d recently visited. Within half an hour, the edge of the main continent had resolved, the rim of the world closing in. Blite spotted a satellite like a set of church organ pipes, and guessed it was some sort of Polity weapon.

  “We’re clear for secondary drive,” said Leven.

  “Take us out.”

  A few minutes later the fusion drive kicked in and they were leaving Masada behind them. Blite felt a further relaxing of tension. He decided then and there that he had no intention of returning to this place while rumours of black AIs abounded.

  “Captain, I’m getting some weird readings from the hold,” said Martina from a neighbouring bridge seat.

  “That’s to be expected—it’s alien technology,” he replied.

  “I know, but these are different readings.”

  Blite unstrapped himself. “Okay, let’s take a look.”

  He and Martina made their way down to the hold, Martina picking up some diagnostic tools on the way. He wasn’t too worried about the chunk of technology he’d brought aboard. It wasn’t Jain built—just a piece of some other alien tech with some strange variable mass readings. These indicated it might be something that messed with the Higgs field in ways they hadn’t seen before. However, the readings from it were weak and it was very doubtful it had enough oomph to reach much further than a few feet around it. The most likely reason for the change in readings was some induction effect from the ship’s systems, feeding it just an erg more power.

  Ducking in after Martina, he peered at the cube-shaped box. He began to wonder if it might be better, and safer, to sell it to a collector rather than the Separatists. They would probably just end up destroying it in an attempt to extract some lethal advantage, whereas a collector would be a lot more careful and methodical.

  Studying one of her sensors, Martina began, “This is really odd. I’m getting hardfield and—” A loud noise interrupted her.

  It sounded like a sword being drawn from a metal sheath, only hugely amplified, and the air all around them pulsed. The plastic box on the sled suddenly parted, dividing through the middle. The two halves shot away to thump against the walls, then dropped to the floor. Blite stared at the exposed contents. The compressed laminar lump of silvery metal and black glass had changed shape. In a way that was difficult to define, it was moving. Then it really moved. One layer of glass sprang upright and fanned like the head of a tubeworm, one made of knives and shadow. Below it, the rest of the mass began to unfold in seemingly impossible ways—long spines extending and silver snakes unravelling—the whole thing expanding, growing, multiplying.

  Blite felt sick with terror, and with a sense of inevitability, as the thing rose above him. He found himself down on his knees, all his energy draining away. He saw Martina had dropped her devices, saw them falling to the floor in slow motion. She was then back up against the wall, mouth open, horrified. And he watched as, in all its glorious, terrifying magnificence, the black AI Penny Royal continued to unfold itself to occupy their hold.

  “Hello, Blite,” it whispered.

  8

  AMISTAD

  Over a decade ago, Amistad, the scorpion drone, had been technically upgraded to the status of planetary AI, but more recently politically downgraded to his current position of planetary warden, so now had time and processing power to spare. Poised upon the viewing platform of his tower, he gazed inwardly at a perfectly recorded memory of the time before he took up this chalice. Penny Royal had been on the point of dissolution when Amistad found its remains, isolated in its roaming planetoid, and began examining them. This had been the ultimate find for the drone in his long exploration of madness and brilliance, for Penny Royal was the apex of both. It was an AI psychopath, or perhaps a schizophrenic, or perhaps something else for which a term had yet to be invented. Its technical abilities lay some way beyond those of Polity AI designs—even the slightly mad forensic AIs or the ones who had retreated into esoteric mathematical realms. Study of those remains soon revealed that Penny Royal had fractured sometime in the far past, its various parts containing different states of consciousness. In that respect it was much like Mr Crane, another being Amistad and Polity AIs were anxious to study, but this “brass man” had disappeared long ago. It had vanished with the Polity agent who had been either its nemesis or victim—the details were unclear.

  Further study revealed that Penny Royal had compartmentalized its evil, locating it in a state of consciousness Amistad had labelled Eight. Admittedly, the lines of division were difficult to distinguish. Called to serve here, on Masada, Amistad had decided to separate out that eighth state and raise the rest back to functionality. Amistad was mainly driven by curiosity because, although he’d been able to map Penny Royal’s madness, he couldn’t fathom its brilliance. Other Polity AIs had allowed this, for they were curious too. What had made this creature and how could it do the things it did—could it return to the fold and still retain its uniqueness?

  Amistad was slowly coming to the conclusion that the whole exercise had been a huge mistake. He had resurrected and now unleashed something terrible indeed.

  The eighth state was the key. Amistad had managed to isolate it physically from the rest of Penny Royal, secreting it in a container on the bottom of the ocean. However, he had never fully understood it. Without it, Penny Royal had remained functional, brilliant, and had served well enough. But, on discovering that the eighth state still existed, the AI had retrieved it and then apparently destroyed it. There was the rub. Amistad was beginning to doubt the veracity of those events and so studied its memory:

  “You lied,” Penny Royal whispered, swinging towards Amistad an array of spines unnervingly like icicle eyes.

  “Is that so unusual?” Amistad replied, edging round, up to the caldera rim just ten metres away, still contemplating how to take Penny Royal down because he was sure the AI must have by now reincorporated its eighth state of consciousness—its madness. Taking a quick peek over the edge, the drone decided the magma down there was plenty hot, but it would probably take everything in his armoury to keep Penny Royal in it for long enough …

  “Am angry … concerned.”

  The Amistad of the present realized he should have paid more attention, right from the moment he rebuilt Penny Royal. The black AI had been playing him, grooming him for something like the diorama on the edge of that caldera.

  “Why did you keep it?” Penny Royal asked.

  “Scientific interest,” Amistad replied.

  The spines abruptly surged closer, extending on necks of plaited tentacle. Did Penny Royal want a physical fight here and some Holmes and Moriarty ending in the fire below? Amistad targeted the rock below, where the AI had rooted itself, selected a chemical missile and loaded it.

  “Interest is finished,” said Penny Royal.

  The black AI shi
fted, spines rippling, slid to one side to reveal what it had been squatting over. There lay the armoured sphere that contained Eight, unopened.

  And there, right there, an assumption he had been led into. Penny Royal had played the part of the slightly unstable but generally good little artificial intelligence. Even its speech patterns had been part of it. The AI had showed itself quite capable of taking apart and putting back together a human being, even at the atomic level, and yet it couldn’t manage more than a limited vocabulary? Amistad could now see how the performance had been designed around Amistad’s own mind. Penny Royal had played on his arrogance, on his belief that he could cure such a creature. It had presented a believable persona of an autistic intelligence trying to come to terms with its new self.

  Amistad examined this memory of the confrontation much more closely, running through the different EM spectrums, focusing on the sphere itself rather than on his greatest concern at the time—an AI that might try to kill him. And there it was: an even pattern of heat spots on the sphere’s armour that showed up in infrared. The ceramal surface in that area showed a different crystalline pattern from the rest. Some sort of physical connection had been made. Amistad reckoned on a nano-fibre penetration to facilitate upload. He played the rest of the memory through.

  Like some child’s model of a hand, four spines folded out on corded tentacle, swung to one side, paused for a moment, then swung back, slapping into the sphere. It tumbled over the edge, bounced on the slope below, then splashed into boiling magma. It wouldn’t be destroyed, not yet; it would take ages for the heat to do any damage. Amistad shifted right to the edge, almost went over, rocks dislodged and tumbling down, but then scrabbled back. What did he really want that thing for? Was he keeping it because of his attraction to madness—a prime sample for some collection? A missile spat down, hit with a sharp detonation like some massive fuse blowing. The side of the sphere peeled open on arc fire and it turned over, began to sink.