The four were down in the pool rather than up in the surrounding chamber because, having been fertilized, instinct had driven them into the water in search of hosts for their eggs. As he studied them, Cvorn felt no stirring of the mating urge. It had faded away years ago when, at about the same time as he started to lose his legs due to his extreme age, his reproductive organs had dropped off. He noted that one of the females had grabbed a large reaverfish and inserted her ovipositor deep inside. The fish was still moving, still fighting the briefly paralysing toxins produced by the eggs she was injecting. Obviously the Five had thought ahead and so preserved living reaverfish aboard their ship for this purpose, and they must have already scoured the results of any previous mating from these females and got quickly to work themselves. Cvorn decided he would have the females scoured again so they could take some of his own preserved seed, and turned to more immediate concerns.
With a twist of his claw in a pit control, Cvorn consigned this image off to one side in just one of his hexagonal screens, bringing all five of Vlern’s children back into view in the others. He studied them, only managing to recognize the one named Sfolk because of a dark whorl in his shell beside his visual turret. The sensation Cvorn now experienced was a lot stronger and a lot more satisfying than his previous vague memory of mating. Here was power. The Five were confused about why they were here and did not understand why they were allowing his destroyer to dock; why they were allowing him into their realm.
“Here is where we will capture Sverl,” Cvorn told them, their presence strengthening in the aug network, but remaining subjugated to his will.
In a way this was more satisfying than using a control unit on some thralled life form because generally such creatures had no will or mind of their own. It was also more satisfying than the pheromonal control he exerted over his own children, which was just the natural order of things. When exercising power, Cvorn had always found it best to exercise it
against
someone. The only drawback here was their bewilderment; the fact that they did not yet understand that he had power over them. But so the situation would have to remain until he was utterly sure he had them in his grip. Then he could fill them in on what had happened to them, enjoy their dismay and watch them squirm.
“How will we capture him?” asked Sfolk, who had confirmed himself as the spokes-prador of the Five.
“We will use my destroyer as bait,” Cvorn replied.
On another screen, he noted his six remaining war drones and twelve of his own armoured children, including his first-child Vrom, now getting ready to head over to the ST dreadnought. His drones would establish themselves in that ship’s cache beside the now-somnolent ones that had belonged to this ship’s previous father-captain. With any luck, he should be able to bend those other drones to his will. Unfortunately, none of Vlern’s drones remained to seize control of, since the Five had wasted them in family conflicts. However, controlling Vlern’s twenty-two remaining second-children might be problematic, and that was why he was sending over Vrom and the others. Best to be rid of them, really, but only when he was sure. Only when the moment was right.
With a crash, which Cvorn felt right down in his sanctum, the two ships docked. Glancing at another screen, he noted his remaining eight second-children waiting with heavily laden grav-sleds and autocarts in the huge tunnel leading to the main airlock. He wished he could have stripped out his destroyer completely, but time was pressing. Though Sverl’s arrival wasn’t imminent, such a chore would take up time Cvorn needed to spend on more important tasks.
“I still do not understand,” said Sfolk. It had taken him a while to reply as he instinctively struggled against the control Cvorn exerted over him, and while he remained confused about allowing Cvorn aboard.
“Observe the world below,” said Cvorn, “and observe its moons.” He turned away from the screens and, hovering on grav-motors, headed to the door from the sanctum, his two thralled human blanks—two heavily muscled males naked but for weapons harnesses—trudging after him. As the sanctum door opened, he mentally transferred image and other data feeds to his aug and control units. A view of virtual hexagonal screens appeared across the vision centres of palp eyes he had lost many years ago.
“I see the world,” said Sfolk.
The planet resembled an earlier version of the Rock Pool. It was mostly oceanic, and the rocky landmasses barren but for flat plates of photosynthesizing vegetation creeping beyond the wide tidal areas created by the world’s three moons. The oceans themselves swarmed with a monoculture of omnivorous and cannibalistic armoured monstrosities similar to ship lice. Cvorn briefly pondered how this was the case for many younger worlds: one life form coming to dominate the ecology. Over a few million years this form would diversify and new balances would establish—supposing the world survived what was to come.
“And the moons?” Cvorn prompted, as he exited his sanctum and headed towards the transfer tunnel to the other ship. His second-children were walking in front of him, bearing his baggage train. Ahead of these Vrom and the other, armoured second-children had already entered the dreadnought—following their orders precisely.
Two of the moons were nothing special. The largest was a standard meteor-pocked sphere while the other was an irregular object rather like a wrack pustule. The third moon was also spherical and pocked, but it had a large shadowy hole at one end and the mass readings were all wrong. Knowing that closer inspection would reveal more, Cvorn waited for Sfolk to understand.
“One is artificial,” said that prador.
Both the Kingdom and the Polity had made hides during the war. They would heat an asteroid to melting point with an energy weapon, then use either field technology or mechanical means to inject gas and blow it up like a balloon. After it cooled, they would cut a hole in one end. The result was a hollow sphere of rock in which to conceal a ship, a fleet or some massive weapon. The Polity had made this one, hence the pocking on its surface as of millennia of meteor impacts—a detail the prador tended to omit.
“We’ll put this dreadnought inside, which will require some cutting, but can be done,” said Cvorn, now reaching the threshold into the other ship. “This will bring the mass reading up close to requirements. We foam-stone in the hole and then the Polity chameleonware I am bringing aboard can conceal any further discrepancies.”
Now moving into the dreadnought, Cvorn turned to the door back into his own destroyer. He felt a pang of regret, then turned to the second-child waiting beside him. “You are ready?”
“Yes, Father,” the child replied.
“Then you now have control of my destroyer—take it to the designated location and await orders.”
The second-child scuttled aboard. It would soon establish itself in Cvorn’s sanctum and take control of the destroyer. Cvorn could have moved the ship to the nearby world and opened fire with its weapons by remote control, but Sverl might intercept the signal. Better to let the second-child carry out this task, because it would obey absolutely, despite the high chance that Sverl would vaporize both destroyer and second-child. Instead, Cvorn was switching now to the dreadnought, establishing a firm grip on the five first-children through the aug network. He swung back round on his grav-motors to face into the dreadnought, feeling a sudden surge of unaccustomed excitement.
“Sfolk,” he said, “remove yourself from this ship’s captain’s sanctum and take yourself to the first-children’s quarters where your brothers are waiting.”
“Vlern . . . Cvorn . . . I don’t understand why I . . .”
“Do it now,” said Cvorn, and pushed mentally, relishing the power.
Sfolk fought, but just could not win and, by the time Cvorn reached the massive diagonally divided door into the captain’s sanctum, Sfolk was scuttling away down a nearby corridor. Cvorn halted at the door, abruptly fighting the urge to send his children after the young adult to bring it back, to tear it apart, and he didn’t know why. Finally, he entered the sanctum; the urge faded as he again contacted all five of Vlern’s children, his control of them now rigid.
“You are to send all your second-children kin to ship’s food store number three,” he instructed, even at that moment usurping Sfolk’s grip on the controls all around him and absorbing data on the dreadnought into his aug. He moved over to the array of screens here, inserted his artificial claws into pit controls and immediately began calling up images there. This was unnecessary because, like Sverl, he could use mental control here, but he felt the need to assert control
physically
.
He watched Vrom and his own second-children converging on that food store and entering it. Sfolk and crew, he noted, had already used the store as a mortuary; the corpses of the third-, second- and first-children who had been the original ship’s complement were piled high in there. The original father-captain wasn’t there, of course. He lay against the wall some yards behind Cvorn—a father-captain larger and older even than him, all his limbs gone and replaced by prosthetics. Cvorn turned to eye the corpse. Judging by the tool chest here and the pieces cut from the corpse’s carapace, Sfolk had been extracting control units, probably to use to take full control of the drones aboard. Cvorn gazed for a moment at the armoured legs and did not know why he had begun to consider some options for himself. A flash of memory occurred, of being mobile on his own legs, of being young and strong . . . It might be good not to be wholly reliant on his grav-motors to get around. He turned back to the screens.
Obeying the orders of their older brothers, Vlern’s second-children were entering the food store. They milled about in the centre of the room, nervous of the armoured prador gathered along one wall, sending requests to the Five for further orders. The Five did not elaborate—Cvorn did not allow them to. Meanwhile, his destroyer had undocked and was now accelerating away. Within a few hours, it would arrive at the nearby world, descend through the atmosphere to the sea, then drop through that to a deep oceanic trench. There it would be far down enough to defend itself from most long-range weapons Sverl, who would have followed the trail here, might hurl at it, and Sverl, therefore, would have to move in close to launch an effective attack, leaving his back unguarded.
All the second-children arrived in the food store and, from his sanctum, Cvorn issued a signal to close the door. Their breath created a sudden cloud of vapour in that chill place.
Then Vrom and the rest opened fire with Gatling cannons.
The children shrieked and clattered and flew apart in a mess of shattered carapace, disconnected limbs and smoking flesh. The place filled with the fog of their dying. This went on for some minutes, then waned to intermittent firing as Cvorn’s children waded into the mess to finish off any survivors.
Eventually Vrom said, “Task complete.” The first-child tended to speak with the leaden tones of an executioner even when he wasn’t killing someone or something.
“Very good,” said Cvorn, finally managing to overcome the tight visceral surge of excitement he had felt on watching that slaughter. “Establish control in critical areas.” Though he could direct most things from here, Cvorn wanted his children at the weapons and defensive emplacements throughout the ship.
As his children dispersed from the food store, Cvorn opened up the dreadnought’s fusion engines to take it in pursuit of the hollow moon. It would take him perhaps a few days to conceal the ship properly, but that was okay—Sverl, who was undoubtedly pursuing, would be reaching the satellite relay by now so was still some days away.
TRENT
Facilities were basic. Trent had a bed with a case of soldier’s rations underneath, and a toilet that slid out of the wall. He couldn’t wash himself, couldn’t clean his teeth, but luckily had no need to shave since facial hair had been excised from the Sobel line. Obviously he just needed to be delivered alive—his dental health or cleanliness being irrelevant.
The ship’s AI—that submind of this thing called the Brockle—hadn’t spoken to him since they had left Par Avion. After a period of time he couldn’t measure, during which he just ate something, used the toilet and then lay down to sink into a dark malaise, he slept. After that, he began to number his options and knew there weren’t many. He considered suicide but, searching his own clothing, found that he had been relieved of every item that might be of use to that end. All he had was his clothing, his earring, his mind. He couldn’t hang himself even with something to which he could attach a rope made out of his clothing. The ship AI would simply turn off the grav and he’d end up floating about on a rope umbilicus looking like an idiot. Maybe he could bite through his wrists or make some sharp edge out of his earring to open them. Too slow, and surely the AI could react to this in some way. His throat? Yes, maybe, but even as he thought about this he knew it was only an intellectual exercise and that he wasn’t going to do it.
So all that remained was waiting to see what was going to happen to him. He would arrive somewhere, whereupon a forensic AI would begin taking him apart and inspecting those parts in detail. Whether the process would be painful he didn’t know, though he did know that his suffering or otherwise would be a matter of irrelevance to the AI. After that he would be dead, gone, would have ceased to exist. He contemplated that knowledge and suddenly found that it simply didn’t matter. He was a prisoner walking a corridor to the electric chair, the noose, the firing squad, the lethal injection or the disintegrator and it didn’t matter which. He just needed it to be over.
During the ensuing three periods of waking, Trent thought about his past, wished he could change it but accepted he couldn’t. Eventually, he felt a familiar twist in his gut and that drag out of the ineffable. It slapped him hard, brought him back into the moment. Then the ship AI spoke again.
“Deceleration in five minutes,” it said.
Maybe, if he positioned himself just so, he could use the deceleration as a method of suicide. Maybe stand on the edge of the bed and throw himself head-first at the floor as it ramped up. No. Trent walked over to the bed and lay on it, arms down by his sides. This time, though the invisible boot pressing down on him was heavy, he did not lose consciousness. After half an hour, the boot came off, and he sat up, his stomach tight and his clothing soaked with sweat. The ship was manoeuvring, occasional surges dragging him one way or another. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat waiting for the executioner.