The Warship Read online

  That exile had lasted for a hundred years.

  “I am curious to know why I have been summoned . . . now,” said Orlik, strictly controlling his voice generator, because he had started issuing too many nervous clicks and gulps.

  Had his family been a normal prador one, he should be terrified. Being summoned to your father in such families did not often end well.

  But the king’s family was different. He was different! The king was not wasteful of his children and if punishments were required, they were impersonal and quick. Orlik tried to keep this idea at the forefront of his mind . . . trying to forget that what he had been exiled for was still punishable by death. Yet hard reality came straying into his thoughts. The king was vastly intelligent, vastly changed and, though it was something few prador dared state outright, not particularly stable, even for a pra- dor. King’s Guard had been summoned here before and never heard from again. Envoys from normal prador families visited, and returned in plas- mel boxes, if at all. The place was kept constantly supplied with prador females who disappeared. Rumours of grotesque experiments abounded, of the king’s investigations into what the Spatterjay virus was doing to him and his family; endless horror in the bright whiteness of this place.

  The shuttle slid into a docking bay that would have been big aboard a prador destroyer, but here was just subsidiary to a main warfare dock. A single grab, rather like a giant metal human hand, reached out from the side of the dock, took hold of the shuttle and slammed it down.

  “Of course you are curious,” the king replied. “An orb will meet you and guide you to me. Oh, and bring that nasty little drone with you—I would like to inspect it.”

  Orlik glanced round at Sprag, but the drone merely blinked and said nothing. He dismounted the saddle control and headed to the door of his small sanctum. It divided diagonally ahead of him and he went through, finally making his way to the opened ramp of the shuttle, the drone bobbing along behind him.

  The hold was huge and cold, though Orlik admitted the cold might be psychological now he was out of his armour. And anyway, his outer carapace had softened and grown nerves, so he sensed things differently. He felt very, very vulnerable. Tramping across a rough metal floor towards the back of the hold, he spotted the orb sent to meet him. The thing was about the size of a human head—a rough stony ball resting on the floor. As he drew closer it began rolling, rumbling away from him and through a circular entrance, pushing through a rippling membrane there that Orlik recognized as a Polity shimmershield. He followed and pressed against the shield, feeling some resistance, then slid through. Here the orb rolled off to the left along a massive tubular corridor, through the war dock to the ship proper.

  “Why would the king want to see me?” Sprag asked abruptly.

  “Oh, probably wants to take you apart. Always likes his mechanisms.”

  Sprag made a snorting sound, but Orlik could tell the drone was worried. So she should be. Orlik himself was wondering if, as one of the oldest of the king’s children, he might have been summoned for some special, exploratory investigations.

  The interior of the King’s Ship was all painfully, aseptically, white. He passed wide entrances which led into the roar of automated factories, spied Polity cleanbots and occasionally lost-looking ship lice. Two prador armoured in gleaming, metallic blue passed him and he cringed inwardly, until he remembered that they were probably family. Inside their armour, the pair were likely to be as mutated as he was. Of course, if they were not family but normal prador, they would not be leaving this place alive, having seen him exposed. He sidestepped a fading stain on the floor, recalling that the material of floors, walls and ceilings here was self-cleaning. Any nasty bloodstains were quickly absorbed and the area self-bleached. Perhaps it’d been an envoy, or an experiment cut down as it tried to make its escape.

  Finally, the orb rolled into the mouth of a shaft and shot upwards. A dropshaft. Orlik hesitated at the lip, then stepped into it. He fell slightly, but an irised gravity field took hold of him and floated him upwards, fast, then faster still.

  “I am going to see the king,” said Sprag.

  “You are honoured,” Orlik replied.

  “I will never be free now.”

  Orlik withheld any reply. The drone was right. Knowledge of what happened to the king, and to his family, was restricted. It would not surprise him if the normal prador that had died here had seen something they shouldn’t have. It was a comforting thought, that their deaths had so rational a cause However, he had also learned during his recent deal ings with the haiman Orlandine, that Polity AIs knew of the Spatterjay viral mutation of the king and his children. He felt no urge to inform Sprag of this, though.

  The journey took an hour. He finally disembarked into more white corridors and rooms. The orb rolled out onto the floor, abruptly shot sideways, rolled up the wall and dropped into a recess beside a row of further orbs. He had arrived.

  Orlik moved forwards, glancing through a high arched door into a big long room. Here, floating in cylindrical tanks, were what he recognized as his own kind . . . probably. Their mutations were wildly various but generally their diseased-organ coloration was the same as his own. They floated in yellow liquid, attached to skeins of tubes and wires. Pedestal monitors stood beside each cylinder, with pit controls set just below them, but still in a higher position than usually comfortable for prador. Some of these creatures were ripped open, some floating in pieces. It was only when he recognized projectile wounds, and energy weapon burns, on some that he realized what he was seeing. Here were the dead of the King’s Guard, returned for study. He was about to move on when he saw two slug-like stalked eyes swing towards him and heard a twisted claw knocking against the chain-glass. Was that one alive? They probably all were in some sense, what with the viral threads packing their bodies. But whether they were still themselves was debatable.

  “Now, this is a place that could do with a recycling furnace,” said Sprag.

  “It has many,” Orlik replied, and moved on.

  The prador female lay humped up against one wall, her viscera strewn out for twenty feet behind her. She had been a big, tough female but something had gutted her, ripped off her mandibles and broken through the carapace on her back. It wasn’t the spidery polished chrome robot that had done this. Its work was more meticulous as it cut open her back end with a green laser, steadily revealing her sexual organs. Orlik watched for a moment longer as the robot removed various wet baggy masses and placed them in a trolley bucket. The king was purportedly infertile, he remembered, but still this place produced more and more of his children. Not many, just enough to keep numbers topped up so the king could retain his hold on power. Orlik realized he was seeing part of the process involved.

  “Really fucked,” said Sprag.

  The drone was trying to make a horrible joke but put no heart into it. Orlik ignored her and moved on.

  After a steady exploration, he finally came to a gallery room. The area was massive, large enough to see the curve of the giant chain-glass window before him, which followed the exterior of the ship. He moved forwards to gaze out at the scattering of ships, then watched as the behemoth of a reaver slid past, close by. He shivered, his body tensing, and a strange feeling of obeisance flooded through him. He knew this had nothing to do with what he was seeing but to the increasing amount of particular pheromones in the air. He heard movement—the heavy crump of something big approaching.

  “Ah shit,” said Sprag.

  Orlik felt he had to agree as he turned, gulping and clicking and instinctively cringing. He saw the large, complex foot denting the material of the floor first, slid his gaze up the heavy leg and looked upon the king, his father.

  TOBIAS

  Tobias sprawled on his sofa. He had made his calls, checking in on the steady progress of his organization. Now he was relaxing with his vaporizer—his drug of choice a combination of an obscure opioid and mild hallucinogen which he found relaxed him. A mild buzz numbed his sen
ses, when he heard his apartment door open. Only one visitor came in like that.

  “I see my door security leaves a lot to be desired,” he said, without turning.

  “We are indifferent,” it replied.

  He’d never quite understood the constant use of “we.” When he’d queried it with the owner of the voice, it had just laughed, weirdly, sounding like a crowd laughing. It now entered the room and walked round to lower itself into the armchair opposite. He eyed it. The body was that of a large human male, only it wasn’t human. He knew for a fact it had belonged to a Golem Twenty that had worked down in the city spaceport adjoining the runcible facility. The body wore pearl-grey businesswear over sharp-pointed metallic blue shoes. It also had a different head from the original. The Golem one was gone—replaced by what looked like the chromed head of some amphibian. Tobias noticed that the head had shrunk slightly since he last saw it, taking on more human proportions, so that now a wide-brimmed hat could fit. Why this thing didn’t change its features to look completely human he did not know. He was sure it was capable of doing so.

  “How go the preparations?” he asked.

  “Slowly and carefully,” it replied. It called itself Cad—a very human name. He could never see it as anything but an “it” and hated that he had to liaise with something he considered an enemy. One step at a time, however. First he and his associates had to loosen the Polity grip on his home world before . . . cleansing it.

  “How goes recruitment?” asked Cad in return.

  Just then the door chime announced new arrivals outside. Tobias had been expecting them and ignored the question as he picked up his remote—he preferred this kind of technology to a sub-AI computer system in his apartment, no matter how stupid it might be. He gazed at the two figures on the screen. He recognized Gale, but it took him a moment to recall the big man with her. He then realized this must be Ahern—the new recruit who worked in some very secure areas in the runcible facility. He clicked a button to open the door.

  “I have some people here you will be interested in meeting,” he said to Cad.

  The two walked into the apartment and Tobias stood. Gale was a thin woman with pale skin and cropped jet-black hair. She always looked tired and annoyed, and wore shapeless overalls. If she smiled more and dressed up occasionally she’d be attractive, thought Tobias. Ahern was big, obviously boosted, looked highly capable and perhaps a bit dangerous. His head was shaven and the glassy slug of a very modern cerebral augmentation clung behind his ear. With a frown, he reached up and fingered this as he entered.

  “Please take a seat.” Tobias waved to the sofa and armchairs.

  Gale took an armchair near Cad, while Ahern sat on the sofa next to where Tobias had been sitting. Both of them were studying Cad: Gale with a suspicious frown and Ahern with a slightly amused twist to his mouth.

  “We were just discussing recruitment,” Tobias continued, sitting. “How goes that now, Gale?”

  “I have over two thousand fighters ready,” she said proudly. “They have been thoroughly checked out and I can vouch for them all.”

  “Two thousand?” Cad repeated.

  Tobias suddenly felt defensive. It seemed a pitiful number to oppose just Orlandine, let alone the might of both the Polity and the Kingdom. He shrugged, putting the thought aside. Some gave up in the face of such odds, but not him. He was part of a Polity-wide fight for freedom from the Als, and though he and his fellows might suffer defeats, in the end they would win. Anyway, he reflected, it was a game and he always found a way to win.

  “But this is not about all-out war,” he said. “Limited objectives, and then your people do the rest, so you told me. You want Orlandine and the runcibles neutralized, and disruption throughout.” He paused, groping for something else to say. “You were also going to supply effective fighters . . .”

  “Your people are in place?” asked Cad.

  “Mostly.” Tobias nodded enthusiastically. “The new runcibles are easy and quite vulnerable—Mayor Ransom and his people in the south have those covered. I have fifty-three working in the runcible facility here, which is more difficult. Nearly five hundred are up in vacuum construction at the shipyard and nearly twice that working on the new platform.” He gestured to Ahern. “Ahern here is one of our newest recruits and has access to some critical areas. Ahern?”

  The man harrumphed then said, “Yes, I’ve got security clearance. I was under the impression that I had to get something into the facility . . .” He peered at the faces around him. “Anything I take in has to be sufficiently shielded to get past serious scanning.” He held out his hands. “I’ll do all I can, but even though the mind running the runcible is one of Orlandine’s subminds, it’s still AI and not easily fooled.” He paused for a second, leaning forwards, then said, “May I ask what exactly I’ll be taking into the containment sphere?”

  “You may not,” Cad replied.

  Ahern glanced round at Tobias and made a puzzled face, then sat back again.

  Tobias continued, “But of course we need the weapons you promised . . . and the fighters—those others that are coming?”

  Cad ignored the implied questions and reached over to pick up the executive briefcase he had put beside him. He opened it and delved inside to take out an object. Tobias stared at the thing, feeling the skin creeping on his back. It was grey, green and blue and slightly metallic. It looked like a collection of worms fused together. Cad placed it on the table before him. The thing shifted, the worms moving slightly, then it made a popping sound that startled all but Cad, and hinged open like an oyster. Inside, nested in gleaming tech of a kind Tobias had never seen before, was an object he recognized.

  Here was a fancy-looking antique vaporizer—a device that atomized a wide selection of narcotics and other substances, including good old-fashioned nicotine, for inhalation. The thing was gold and chrome with retro buttons, screen and liquid tank just below the spout. Of course he recognized it. He glanced at its twin which he held in his hand and then put it aside on the arm of the sofa.

  “This works just as the object it appears to be,” said Cad. He put the mouthpiece of the vaporizer in his mouth with a metallic click and after a moment puffed out a cloud of chocolate-scented vapour. He then pressed a point halfway down the device’s body and folded it. With a slight ringing sound, the end of the ersatz battery pack opened to expose a shiny interior. Closing his hand around the tank and smaller section of battery pack, Cad now held a gun.

  Tobias studied the thing.

  “Anyone who comes against us will have Polity weapons,” he observed.

  “This particular item is for you,” said Cad.

  “For when I do her,” said Tobias. He felt excited and strong, but then experienced a surge of anxiety. This was really happening. He swallowed dryly and scanned around his luxurious apartment, thinking about all that could happen. But no, he hadn’t done anything actually criminal thus far. This was just pre-match nerves. Everything would work out fine.

  “Yes,” said Cad, the thing’s voice leaden, “for when you do her.”

  Tobias groped for something more to say. “She’s not quite human.”

  “I think you will find this device effective,” said Cad, toying with the weapon. “Orlandine is haiman, so not indestructible. Sufficient damage to her body will kill it, while the other devices will deal with the rest of her mind, where it is distributed down here and up in space.”

  “She has also incorporated Jain tech,” Tobias observed.

  “You understand induction warfare beams?” asked Cad.

  “Yes,” said Tobias.

  “We understand that you do not,” said Cad, seeing straight through him. “Suffice to say that this gun will be effective.”

  “That little thing?” asked Ahern. The big man looked a lot more alert and attentive now.

  “Yes, this little thing.”

  Cad gripped the gun in his right hand, pointed and triggered it. It flashed and made a deep whooshing sound
followed by a thud, like an iron bar going into a watermelon. Tobias flinched and felt stuff spatter over him. The stink of burning meat filled his nostrils, while sofa stuffing rained through the air. Completely dumbfounded, he looked to the side and saw only Ahern’s feet. He stood up and realized the back of the sofa was missing where the man had been sitting. He lay sprawled across the floor, his feet still up on the sofa. His chest was open, ribs splayed, and Tobias could see bloody carpet through the massive hole. The man jerked slightly, then grew still. Smoking meat and bone splattered around another charred hole in the far wall.

  “The fuck!” screamed Gale, standing. She was struggling to pull something from her overall. Cad was upright too now. He kicked her in the guts, blindingly fast, with one pointy shoe. She went down groaning, and folded in on herself.

  “Why?” Tobias managed.

  “The weapon,” said Cad, “fires a concentrated ionic blast. As well as doing what you see here—” he gestured to Ahern—”it acts as an induction and EMR weapon, disrupting AI and computer systems. It also delivers a cloud of reprocessing viral nanites, which we did not use on this occasion. They are what will turn Jain tech on itself.”