Gridlinked Read online

  ‘Opinion or order?’

  ‘Take them. Your decisions should be fully informed.’

  Cormac nodded—an order, then. ‘I’ll take them, but I’m damned if I’ll arm them. I’ll also need more than that. Are there any more Sparkind available?’

  ‘No, but there’s a small force of ES regulars there.’

  ‘They’ll have to do, then. I’ll also need energy weapons and a couple of contra-terrene tacticals. Yield forty should do.’ He looked at Thorn. ‘Get Cento—if he’s in one piece—and Aiden down here ASAP. They bring the dracomen down with them. Tell them I want them watched at all times. Also, I want an ES uniform with rank, same for yourselves. Get going.’

  Thorn crushed his empty cup and tossed it on the floor. He had an expression of grim satisfaction on his face as he headed for the door. Cormac pulled his mask across, until the frigid air had circulated a bit and mixed with the warmer air in the shuttle.

  ‘Still a lot of holes,’ he said.

  ‘They’re for you to fill.’

  ‘OK, an energy creature moving about through our runcibles would have been noticed.’

  Blegg smiled again, then leant back. He spoke at the ceiling. ‘Come on, moron. I know y’listening.’

  There was no reply; perhaps the listener did not like his insulting manner. Cormac decided to try.

  ‘Samarkand AI, ask the Viridian runcible AI to search for an information lock of the type discovered by your predecessor.’

  Samarkand II replied to him immediately. ‘An information lock was discovered one hour ago. Viridian now acknowledges the arrival of a matter / energy transmission. It arrived in containment sphere B9 and then left the runcible facility by an unknown method. Viridian also informs me that this lock is secondary.’

  ‘Secondary?’ asked Cormac. He looked at Blegg, who nodded slowly.

  ‘It means the lock was opened, then replaced. Someone knew where the Maker went before we found it out. Y’understand?’

  ‘Dragon,’ said Cormac.

  Blegg shrugged. ‘Planetary scan, what y’got there?’ he asked.

  There was a pause before Samarkand II replied. ‘There was an airborne energy trace, originally dismissed as stratospheric lightning. Re-integration of the data suggests it grounded at the Chiranian ruin in the Magadar forest.’

  ‘There’s y‘Maker,’ said Blegg, and stood.

  Cormac gave a short nod and looked at him as Blegg finished his coffee and placed the cup carefully on the bench. Without more ado he headed for the shuttle door. Without pulling his mask across, he hit the touch-plate. Cormac quickly got his mask into place as the door cracked open. He watched Blegg.

  ‘Anything else you might have neglected to tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘Y’have facts. Y’have a mind. I’ll get things set for you.’ Blegg paused. ‘I’ll get that silicon moron on Viridian to give you the details.’

  Great.

  Blegg stepped out into the cold and trudged off in the direction of the containment sphere. As the door closed, Cormac pulled off his mask and lay back against the bulkhead. He kept turning over what he knew. Pelter was on Viridian, and was likely there with Dragon’s help. Dragon would lie about the reasons behind this, if it gave any answer at all. Cormac dared not ask. He was still very aware that here, now, Dragon held all the cards. It could destroy the runcible, and it could destroy Hubris. Cormac realized he had to keep his mouth shut and work everything out for himself. He needed more answers and he needed a clear course of action. Despite Blegg’s assertion, he did not have all the facts and his course was not yet clear. He summarized some of the more pertinent facts available to him.

  Fact: the runcible buffers were sabotaged in a way easily within the capabilities of Dragon and of this Maker, if what Dragon said were true. Fact: this Maker had escaped from its containment vessel, if such it was, and escaped Samarkand by runcible. That they had not discovered this until recently bespoke the Maker’s ability to interfere with AI programming, an ability Dragon probably had as well. Fact: the creature in the tunnel had not been made to withstand the cold, yet the dracomen had. Fact: Dragon probably knew about the Maker’s departure long before it arrived here and threw its apparent tantrum. These particular facts made a lie of Dragon’s story. But what was the truth? Conclusion: if Dragon was responsible for what had happened here, how would he find out for sure, and what the hell would he do about it?

  Cormac closed his eyes and he began running through things again. He knew, in the end, that the explanation would be simple, and any solution perhaps less so. Right at this moment he just couldn’t seem to get anything in order. He needed rest. The bench was padded and would have to suffice. He stretched out on it and was wondering if he would be able to get any sleep, when sleep crept up and got him instead.

  * * *

  The cracking of the shuttle door had Cormac sitting upright and pulling his mask across. Thorn entered with a large bag slung over one shoulder. He dropped it before Cormac as the door closed.

  ‘That was quick,’ Cormac said.

  Thorn pulled off his mask and gave him a quizzical look. ‘It was quick,’ he said, ‘for shuttling up to Hubris and back.’

  Cormac dropped his mask and looked around for some sort of time readout. He realized then that he should have acquired some sort of timepiece. While gridlinked he had always known the time, so it had never occurred to him that he might not know it.

  ‘Ten hours,’ said Thorn, as if reading his mind.

  Cormac shook his head, trying to dispel that last fuzziness. He stood up, pointed at the bag and looked questioningly at the Sparkind.

  ‘Your uniform,’ said Thorn.

  ‘Right,’ said Cormac, taking up the bag, ‘I’ll change in the sphere. Let’s go.’

  They masked up and cracked the door for a second time. Outside, vapour was rising off the CO2 slush as the machine and human activity raised the temperature. They hastened for a lock into one of the covered walkways, then on to the containment sphere. Upon reaching the sphere, Cormac found the temperature almost uncomfortable: it was above zero Celsius. Around the sphere, prefabs had been erected in some sort of analogue of embarkation lounges—and they were crowded. Technicians were setting up information consoles, laying insulated flooring, installing powerful little air heaters. Cables snaked all over the place and there was a racket of compressors, power tools, talking and shouting. When they finally got through to the sphere itself, they found it crowded as well. Thorn pointed out where Aiden, Cento and the dracomen stood. As he and Thorn headed over, Cormac saw that strangers viewed the dracomen without surprise. They probably thought they were just more adapted humans. There were plenty in the crowd already: catadapts with multicoloured fur, ophidapts with fangs, forked tongues and skin little different from that of the dracomen, tripode adaptations to heavy-gravity worlds, and others more exotic and less easy to compare. There were some who looked askance at the dracomen. They were perhaps more observant or were members of the original mission.

  ‘Wonder how long before we see copies,’ said Cormac, when they reached the two Golem and the two dracomen.

  ‘It would be a difficult adaptation,’ said Aiden.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It would require extensive rewiring of the nervous system.’

  ‘You mean putting the legs on backwards and making them work.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

  Cormac allowed himself a strained grin, then inspected Cento. The Golem had a fine network of lines on his face and on his hands. Obviously a new syntheskin covering could not be found quickly enough. He still wore his old one and the joins showed.

  ‘Are you . . . all right?’ he asked.

  ‘All right?’ Cento repeated.

  ‘I mean,’ said Cormac, ‘are you fully functional?’

  ‘I have eighty per cent efficiency. Replacement is better than repair. The welding of my chassis I cannot trust under the full loading of my joint motors.’

/>   Eighty per cent. That meant the Golem could probably rip only one man in half at a time.

  Cormac surveyed the crowds, then shrugged and began to pull off his coldsuit. Thorn did likewise. No one paid attention. Under his coldsuit, Thorn—like Cento and Aiden—had the uniform of a major in the ES regulars. Once he had his coldsuit removed, Cormac kept going until he was naked. He stooped and opened the bag Thorn had deposited. Inside he found underwear, chainglass body armour and a uniform. When he strapped on the armour, that drew more looks than his nakedness had.

  Over the body armour Cormac donned the green and grey fatigues of a colonel in the ES regulars. It would ease the giving of orders. Once dressed, he again strapped shuriken to his wrist. He would be the only one of them armed. Hardwired proscription prevented the transmission of certain weapons through the runcibles, and it was easier to collect new weapons on the other side, rather than disconnect that wiring. Cormac could only manage to get shuriken through because he had managed to get it classified as an antique, but even then he needed special dispensations, and the weapon had to be deactivated. Had he tried to get it through illegally, it would have been reduced to dust by the proscription filter the runcible had inbuilt when he stepped out the other side. The body-armour helmet he dropped into the bag, along with a laptop that held all the information relevant to this mission. This was all he was taking. With a quick inspection of the inside of the sphere, he hoisted the bag to his shoulder.

  ‘All set?’ he asked, with a wary glance at the dracomen.

  ‘Ready,’ said Thorn, grimly.

  Cormac stepped up onto the black glass dais and led the way to the twin horns of the runcible. In a moment they had reached the containment sphere and soon had it to themselves. They gathered before the twin horns.

  ‘Samarkand II, is our destination set?’ asked Cormac.

  ‘Ready when you are,’ replied the AI.

  Cormac mounted the steps to the pedestal. ‘Send the dracomen next,’ he instructed Thorn, and stepped through the cusp.

  STOP.

  START.

  One pace—and he stepped out of one of a bank of runcibles on the planet Viridian in the Mendax planetary system, in the Chirat cluster, 173 light-years from Samarkand.

  The containment sphere was empty. But for the lack of crowds here, he might well have been stepping out in the Samarkand sphere again. Quince and light-cargo runcibles had been standardized for half a century; the big difference here was that this sphere was one of many, as had once been the case on Samarkand and as, hopefully, would be the case again when Chaline finished her work. As he stepped off the pedestal the dracomen came out behind him, then Thorn, Aiden and Cento.

  ‘Viridian?’ Cormac asked, as of the air.

  The voice of this new runcible AI had a maturity Samarkand lacked. Irritatingly it still had that patronizing tone, though.

  ‘Sergeant Polonius Arn is waiting for you with a carrier. The weapons and supplies you detailed will be onboard. He will take you to a rendezvous with the ES regulars. They are waiting at a place called Motford, and from there we can head straight for your destination. It’s one Viridian day’s journey away, just a few hours more than solstan.’

  ‘What about here, when that thing runs?’ asked Thorn.

  The AI replied before Cormac could say anything. ‘In one day’s time there will be an evacuation of this port, the surrounding area, and Westown, because of a fluxing antimatter-containment field. From that moment all runcibles here will only open to Samarkand. The Samarkand AI informs me that, from there, newly arrived personnel are being sent back to Minostra. The remaining technicians will return to Hubris, ostensibly to carry out a refit. The reason given is that another crisis has developed at the outlink station of Danet.’

  ‘There,’ said Cormac, ‘sufficient, don’t you think?’

  Thorn nodded his agreement. They left the containment sphere.

  The embarkation lounge was not crowded, but it seemed to be kilometres long. The four of them gathered round the dracomen and walked quickly to the far doors. Cormac thought that the strange glances they were getting were due to their uniforms rather than the bird-walking dracomen. He noted, with a quick sideways flick of his eyes, two dodgy-looking individuals loitering by a drinks dispenser, and surreptitiously reached down and keyed the start-up sequence into shuriken. Before he had taken two more paces, shuriken’s holster was humming against his wrist.

  ‘You see them?’ he asked Thorn.

  ‘I saw them,’ Thorn replied.

  ‘Stay alert. We might be walking into it right now.’

  ‘I’m always alert,’ Thorn said, a touch of annoyance in his voice.

  The doors opened out onto an AGC park surrounded by country with the bleak quality of moorland. Pools like tarnished copper coins were banked round with thick growths of something like sage, speared through with the black blades of sedges. Where there was neither of these, the ground was pebbled with something thick and green and which, without closer inspection, Cormac thought, could be either geological or biological. His momentary curiosity on this matter was assuaged when he saw one of these growths break open to fling a cloud of helicopter seeds into the air. As he walked on, he espied something like a flying rabbit with a split trunk come to suck the seeds up before they reached the ground. It got most of them. Cormac pulled his finger away from the quick release on his shuriken holster.

  ‘Did they follow?’ he asked of Thorn.

  ‘Out of the lounge, yes—but not now,’ Thorn replied.

  ‘We’ve been eyeballed then. Probably something set up for later.’

  In the distance could be seen a line of bluish forest, and beyond this the sky was cut by a chaos of laminated slabs that could have been alien ruins. Beyond the runcible facility, the AGC park and a scatter of finned cooling towers that could have been mistaken for something living, there were no other buildings in sight. Viridian had been colonized for a long time. Only on the most recently colonized planets had it become acceptable to establish runcibles within cities—or cities around runcibles. The sky was pale-green, the sun showing through bluish clouds: a green glare of a copper arc light. The planet was well named. Cormac realized, as he stepped out, that this was what the submind had told them. Was there a red moon? he wondered. And what exactly were the ‘glass dragons’? Was that a reference to the dracomen, or to the Maker?

  The armoured personnel carrier stood out from the other vehicles, like a vulture amongst canaries. The private AGCs were of all colours, and small; some of them were open and more like flying sedan chairs, some of them were reproductions of the petrol-driven cars of old Earth, but few of them were ugly. The carrier was battleship grey. In appearance and size it was a railway carriage minus wheels, and with all hard and uncompromising angles. At the back of it there were tail-mounted turbines, and along its length a number of stabilizing fins. There were turrets for automatic projectile guns and beam weapons. It was a formidable machine. As they approached, Cormac glanced from it to the red Cortina replica parked next to it.

  ‘Hardly covert,’ he said.

  Arn was a sergeant in the ES regulars, but just as obviously a native of Viridian. He was a short stocky man with cap-cut, light blue hair, a bushy moustache of the same colour—and it seemed to be natural coloration—and dark pupil-less eyes deep-set in a craggy face. He studied them for a moment, then saluted smartly and opened the door to the carrier.

  ‘Sergeant, you have weapons for us?’ said Thorn.

  ‘So too.’ He saluted again.

  ‘No need for all that,’ said Cormac. ‘Just show us the weapons and take us to Motford. I’ll give a briefing there.’

  Arn pointed out some crates strapped in the back of the carrier, then went to take his position at the controls. Cento joined him—looking hopeful, Cormac thought. Shortly the carrier was airborne and, when they were clear of the AGC park, the ion boosters roared. The carrier accelerated smoothly; it would have been quite possible to walk about ins
ide while it was travelling.

  ‘How much do you intend to tell them?’ Aiden asked.

  Cormac looked up in surprise from the crate he was opening. He had expected Thorn to be the one to ask that, as the Golem Thirties were decidedly taciturn.

  ‘I see no reason to hold back on anything this side of the runcible. Only we ourselves will use the energy weapons, though. They’re just extra muscle for when friend Pelter puts in an appearance.’

  Aiden looked pointedly at the two innocuous boxes at the end of the case. Cormac lifted one out and pressed his thumb against the lock. It was keyed only to him. The box opened to reveal a gleaming cylinder, twenty centimetres long by five wide, with the letters CTD in a garish red pictogram, purpled by the light. On the end of each cylinder was a black cap with a miniconsole on it—remote or timer, the result was always the same. Cormac smiled.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll leave off telling them about these,’ he said, and closed the box. It had ‘JMCC: Enropower. 1 Kilowatt Hour’ etched into the lid. The cylinders, though, were not powerpacks: they delivered a great deal more energy than one kilowatt, and in substantially less time than an hour. CTD stood for contra-terrene device. Thorn by then had opened another case, and was holding a weapon that had the appearance of a stubby carbine made of glass and old wood. Under the glass, salamanders writhed, waiting to be released.

  * * *

  When Cormac had finished his briefing, ten regulars dispersed to their sky-bikes, which were parked haphazardly on soggy lichen-covered ground. They were to fly escort, and all other vehicles were to be warned off. Arn lifted the carrier into the sky with a smooth acceleration. Cormac took one of the four seats at the control console, along with the sergeant and Aiden.

  ‘These ruins, Sergeant, describe them to me,’ he said.

  ‘So too. They’re what’s left of an old ES ground installation, sir. There’s just a few fragments of a shield dome surrounding a couple of underground missile silos. Surrounding that is a radial scattering of old storage buildings, nothing very large. There are supposed to be bunkers under the ground around the silos, but no one goes in there. Still hot.’