“If you believe the multiverse theories,” said Brond.
“This kind of science is now like religion,” said Greer. “You can choose the theory that best suits you.”
“Only of the theories you don’t understand.”
“You understand them, then?”
“Keep it down,” said Blite. “I’m concentrating.”
“Sure thing, Captain,” said Greer, and they both returned to contemplating their screens.
Apparently, these worlds were both of enough interest to Polity AIs for them to have sent an AI science ship to observe and gather data. The ship’s mission was to map out the ecologies at both the moon and the green-belt world, and to gather and preserve samples of every single life form. This massive task required a ship’s crew of war drones repurposed for the job, and Golem, perpetually visiting both the world and the moon to observe and record the fauna and flora in their particular habitat, record that habitat in detail and gather samples. Checking through some of the data on this, Blite came across a highly technical report from a Golem android who had for a number of years watched a silicon-based plant growing until it shed spurs into a methane storm to seed itself. As he read he kept stamping down on his growing frustration and anger. This all had to mean
something
.
Next, he came upon a mission conducted by two drones and a Golem who, of necessity, wore a strange form of syntheflesh and skin. A human community on the green-belt world, of over fifty thousand, struggled constantly to survive. Being highly adapted and living in a mutualistic relationship with a silicon-based mould enabled them to digest a wider spectrum of the local fauna and flora. The mould also grew tough armour over their skins to protect them from a local combination of social insect and parasite that injected eggs that grew into nests inside their victims.
“Forty minutes,” said Brond, alerting Blite to just how absorbed he had been in his reading, and how successfully he had suppressed his impatience.
“Shut up,” the captain replied.
Checking further, he found that this human society was the result of the pre-Quiet War diaspora, for its members were descendants of colonists who had been brought here by a cryoship. The colonists had almost destroyed their vessel in the process of landing it, and during their first years on the world had cannibalized it. Their history was interesting and grotesque. None of the original colonists remained alive because the adaptations they needed to make to survive were far too radical for an adult, with the technology they had available. Instead, they made the adaptations and introduced the mutualistic mould to their children, most of whom were foetuses in amniotic cryo-tanks when they landed. The adults had to spend their remaining lives in sealed buildings—only venturing outside in armoured space suits. Some of them might have survived until now—the gerontological science of the time would have enabled this—but their children, upon reaching adulthood, rebelled, introducing a nasty social parasite to their parents’ living quarters.
This was all very interesting, but was still irrelevant to the
Black Rose
’s arrival so many light years from their world. Blite now focused his attention on Crispin Six.
Crispin Six had been a planetary system until its sun went supernova six years ago. It fried its planets in the first day, and the blast wave had been steadily expanding ever since. This front had already passed over a binary system close by and given it a toasting, causing one ice giant there to lose a couple of worlds and itself expand into something more gaseous and hot. It had also swept away the cometary cloud surrounding that system and destabilized one of the suns—an average G-type—which it had left poxed with sunspots and hurling out tentacular flares. But no life existed there, and the blast hadn’t fried any ecologies so far. That would change with devastating effect, however, when it finally reached Rebus.
Blite experienced a moment of cold sweat until he rechecked the realspace coordinates of their destination. Thankfully, it lay behind this blast wave. However, he still couldn’t see why these worlds Penny Royal had highlighted were of any relevance to the AI. Certainly it now seemed unlikely that it wanted to destroy them, since their destruction was imminent anyway. He next quickly checked for status updates on this story—his new ship had updated itself from the Polity net when they were at the border. He discovered that of course the Polity AIs were aware of the inevitable destruction of Rebus, and they were acting. The human population of the world wasn’t too large for evacuation by ship. But such an operation would be difficult, and an easier method was available.
“Twenty minutes to our destination,” said Brond.
Blite just glared at him for a moment, then returned to his studies.
A Polity stellar incident centre had dispatched a cargo hauler called the
Azure Whale
. Aboard, it carried three runcible portals. Runcible technicians would position one on that gas giant’s moon and two on the green-belt world. Once they activated these, thoroughly prepared incident teams would come through. On the moon their job was, like megascale gardeners, to dig up every element of a whole ecology. Apparently, the AIs concluded that samples were simply not enough and the silicon-based ecology was too precious to lose to the blast. On the green-belt world, their job was also to gather large elements of the ecology, but the main task was to round up all the humans there and dispatch them through the runcible. To this end, Sparkind forces and grappler robots were to be deployed—obviously, they expected some resistance.
“Captain,” said Leven.
“Yes,” Blite replied distractedly.
“We just deployed U-space disruptor mines.”
“What?” Blite looked up. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Leven, “perhaps you would like to ask Penny Royal.”
Blite felt no inclination to do so, as he was sure he’d be finding out within minutes. He sat back, still pondering on the world of Rebus. Was this rescue attempt normal Polity behaviour? The world wasn’t quite within the Line so wasn’t the AIs’ responsibility. He grimaced. It struck him as more likely that the Polity actions had more to do with the interesting silicon ecology and adaptations of the human society. He then wondered when it was he had become so cynical.
“And we’re arriving,” said Brond.
Blite felt the distortion from the top of his head to his toes. Leven cast the local view up in the screen laminate: just dark starlit space. But Blite already knew that they were not arriving in any planetary system.
“So what—” he began, then felt further twists in the pit of his being.
“The mines,” said Leven.
The view on the screen swung round and, checking the figures along the bottom of it, Blite saw that they were under heavy fusion acceleration. Another jump ensued, brief—feeling as if it was on the edge of turning him inside out. White lightning webbed the area of space now centred on the screen—and out of it nosed something immense. Out into the real came a great slab of a ship that looked unnervingly like a pre-Quiet War gravestone. And Blite recognized it at once from his investigations.
“The
Azure Whale,
” he said.
“What?” Brond turned to look at him.
“Seen it before?” asked Greer.
He just gestured to his aug. “I saw it just a few minutes ago.” He requested a link to them and, when they enabled it, he shot over the data on the Polity rescue attempt. It would take them a while to digest it, by which time, he reckoned, Penny Royal would have finished doing whatever it was going to do here.
“We’re using particle beams now, apparently,” said Leven woodenly, even as those beams cut across from the
Black Rose
to the big ship. They picked over its surface—hitting here, carving a line there, centring on one point and burning right through the big vessel in several places. The
Whale
, which immediately after exiting U-space had fired up a powerful fusion drive array, bucked. Then something exploded out of its side, and its drive went out.
“Evacuate,” hissed a voice—Penny Royal of course. But it didn’t seem to be addressing them.
After a few minutes, a square on the screen etched out a point on the ship and brought it into focus. Two objects shot out of an ejection port. The view next swung across to show castellated shuttle bay doors opening, then a couple of wedge-shaped evacuation shuttles blasted out into vacuum.
“I’m getting queries from the captain of the
Azure Whale,
” said Leven. “He wants to know why they have been attacked and why he, his crew and the ship AI were ordered to abandon ship.”
“Beats me,” said Blite. “Penny Royal, what the hell are you doing?”
The screen view changed again and, on checking, Blite found it was unmagnified this time. They were now right over the hauler and its upper surface spread below them like a massive steel plain.
“Do you want to speak to them?” Leven asked.
“Not yet,” said Blite.
He gazed at the view for some while longer, glanced at Brond and Greer and saw they had a glassy look as they worked through the data he had auged over to them.
“Bay doors are open,” Leven noted.
Blite watched and in a moment saw a large shadow falling down towards that massive ship.
“I take it our passenger just left us?” he asked.
No reply.
“Leven?”
Still no reply as the shadow settled on the hauler.
“Leven?” Blite asked again.
“Yes,” Leven replied, sounding distracted and odd.
“Focus in on that.”
The view from the surface of the hauler shot towards them. The rippling spiky mass on its hull was certainly Penny Royal and, even as he watched, it sank into the surface, leaving a hole filled with glittering darkness. After a few minutes, the view retreated again to show much activity on and about the ship. Robots had swarmed out of some of the holes, making rapid repairs, while debris spewed from various ports.
“So Penny Royal is over there, Leven?” Blite asked again.
“Yes and no,” the Golem mind replied.
“Explain.”
“A U-space connection I cannot explain occurred just after those first mines were deployed. The AI’s mass increased two-fold, then it separated. One portion is aboard that ship while the other one remains here.”
Blite mulled that over as they watched the activity aboard the hauler. After twenty minutes it began to wane, despite just a little of the damage having been repaired. The fusion drive fired up again and began to draw the big ship away. Blite thought about talking to that captain aboard one of those escape shuttles, but couldn’t think what he would say. A short while later, as the hauler grew increasingly distant, he felt the twist of U-space and watched it finally fold out of existence. It seemed that Penny Royal had just stolen a massive hauler with three runcibles aboard.
“You’ve just condemned over fifty thousand people to death in a supernova blast,” he said.
“Not quite,” the AI whispered, and then with an unnecessarily violent wrench took the
Black Rose
under too.
SPEAR
So, the
Lance
was a wreck and Riss and I had been rescued from imminent destruction by Sverl, who had sent us into firing range of Cvorn’s ST dreadnought in the first place. It was all just a little puzzling.
“Perhaps, if you would explain what you want with us?” I suggested.
The chain-glass box holding Riss now stood open and Sverl was peering inside. After a moment, he reached in to take hold of Riss, then with the drone’s inert form hanging from one claw, he headed over to a low work surface on which various clamps had been mounted. He dumped the snake drone there, then moved back, as a multi-manipulator robot immediately descended like a spider on a thread from the ceiling.
“I check all information pertinent to my interests,” said Sverl, “but only when I was updating from Flute, did I learn about the assassin drone Riss—and this object.” Sverl gestured with one claw to Penny Royal’s spine, now in the claws of a second-child. He was placing it in a series of clamps at one end of the work surface.
“I still don’t understand what you intend to do here,” I said.
“The spine, as you are aware, contains copies of the essential formative memories and mental patterns of most of Penny Royal’s victims,” said Sverl.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said. “Riss tells me there is quantum entanglement involved—that the spine is linked to my mind and to another location that might be Penny Royal. I wondered if it was just a relay for information stored elsewhere.”
“No, those memories are here,” said Sverl. “The spine contains more than enough storage for that purpose, and there is no reason for the memories to be relayed. I would suggest that Penny Royal is influencing the order and intensity of the memories you experience. But most importantly, it is using the spine to keep apprised of your location, mental state and what actions you intend to take.”
I should have dumped it in a sun
, I thought . . .
Shouldn’t I?
“I still don’t know, however, what this has got to do with Riss,” I said.
“The spine contains those memories, but it also contains the technology for manipulating them, erasing them, cutting, pasting and, most importantly, transferring them,” Sverl explained. “It is a key that will unlock Riss’s mind, penetrate it as it was penetrated once before by this same technology—perhaps by this same piece of Penny Royal.”
“So the fact that we are all together, now—does this mean what you intend to do was planned by the AI?”
“Planned, foreseen, caused . . .”
The robot had now lifted up the snake drone and fixed it into the series of clamps in line with those holding the spine. I noted that it firmly fixed the drone’s head and had used retractor hooks inside a metal ring to pull open its mouth, right in front of the sharp end of the spine. Also noting that the clamps holding the spine were on slides, it didn’t take much imagination for me to guess where it was going to end up.
“It seems to me that Penny Royal is overcomplicating the solutions to the messes it made,” I suggested.
“Yes,” Sverl agreed, “if we are to be simplistic.”