“Give me your access codes,” it demanded again.
“Go fuck yourself,” I replied succinctly.
The robot reacted.
It leapt, one of its tentacles stabbing out and whipping across. It hit Sepia, picking her up and smashing her into the wall. It then caught Cole and sent him spinning as it came down on the bridge’s horseshoe console. It was horribly fast, and in response my time sense changed. My thinking ramped up in a synergetic curve between my aug and my mind. Rage arose in me too, because it had hit Sepia and she might be dead. I saw Trent diving, going into a neat roll that put him underneath the sweep of another tentacle as he snatched up the carbine. On another level, the memory horde, residing in the object I clutched, responded with a tsunami of data. It drained into my mind and my aug, and an instant later became firm knowledge. Some of the people there had been robot designers, programmers and maintenance technicians. From their knowledge, I quickly understood that this thing was an amalgam of two small construction robots, while its upper squidlike head was in fact a type of war drone.
“Hey!” I shouted, moving now with what I felt to be glacial slowness, and the thing began to swing its head back towards me. By now Trent was up in a squat, aiming and firing, burning out its eyes and frying tentacles. Reaching out to my ship’s system, I knocked off the grav at the same time as throwing myself forward, legs ahead. A tentacle skimmed over me, while a second one smacked the carbine from Trent’s grip—before catching him under the chin and sending him flying backwards. The controlling mind wouldn’t be in the parts originating from a construction robot—at least that was my calculation. I closed my legs around the thing below its head. Simultaneously, I swung the spine round and drove it hard into the lobelike structure behind the front of its tentacular head. The shock juddered up my arms but the spine punched through armour, impaling the thing. I released and, bringing grav back up, landed in a squat, then stood and turned. The robot keeled sideways and crashed to the floor.
“Riss,” I said aloud, simultaneously sending the message by aug as I headed over to Sepia. “Leave Sverl alone and get back here.”
“
Sorry, no can do,
” Riss replied, her words almost lost in static.
“
Sverl is an ally,
” I reiterated. For a moment, I got a flash of something through Riss’s eyes. The drone had its ovipositor stuck deep into what looked like a standard design of construction robot. It was down on the floor with its limbs moving randomly. On another level, I could sense the drone circumventing a block and penetrating that robot’s simple mind.
“
You would kill yourself . . . not taking . . . logical step,
” said Riss. “
Sverl has to die . . . are to survive. It’s simple.
”
“
Or you have simply rediscovered your purpose in existing?
” I suggested.
“
Fuck you,
” said Riss, those words coming through quite clearly, and she cut the connection.
I tried to reach out to her, and found something in the spine responding. In a moment I realized it was the
copy
of Riss in there. Sinking into that and fast-analysing it with a multitude of programs running in parallel, I searched for strengths and vulnerabilities. Annoyingly, I found that I had provided the very weapon she intended to use next. But in a close parallel search, I found the relevant vulnerability. It was a code a Polity AI had once used, which made her dump the parasite eggs she had contained. I could use it to make her dump the enzyme acid she carried. But to do so I had to get close enough to send a powerful enough radio signal.
“
Sverl,
” I said, opening another channel.
“
Yes, I know about the snake drone,
” said Sverl.
“
I will come to you,
” I said.
“
Your presence is irrelevant,
” he replied, and cut me off too.
I squatted down by Sepia, and aug-linked to the biostats from her suit. When the stats told me she was alive, and not badly injured, I felt some of the tightness leave my chest. I gazed at her face, at the blood leaking from her nostrils, and stepped back. I needed to ensure we were all safe.
I next focused my attention out through cams on the
Lance
’s hull. Robots were still fighting each other out there—some were clinging to the hull too and trying to drive in diamond saws and drills. Some of those tentacle umbilici were also approaching. Still running extra programming, I assessed the situation, briefly considered tactics, then set things running. Anti-personnel lasers extruded and began firing, ripping into anything vulnerable to them. Steering thrusters fired up, plasma flames frying anything in reach. I fired the particle cannon, destroying one of the larger umbilici, but was unable to reach the rest. I then triggered the emergency explosive undocking procedure. The
Lance
jerked and rolled, then rose, the shattered remains of docking clamps falling away. I fired again, particle cannons and railguns spreading a steady wave of destruction from where we’d been secured, scrapped and burning robots tumbling out into the bay. I hit the nearest big grabs threatening us and turned them to glowing scrap, then I brought the ship back down again, engaging remora feet.
“Attempt to take my ship again,” I said, “and I will cut through to this location—” I sent the coordinates of E676 back to the AI “—and will burn everything I find there.”
After a long pause E676 replied, “Understood.”
I glanced over towards the fallen robot. It was utterly still but for something shorting out where its tentacle face touched the floor. I walked over and took hold of the back end of the spine, but it was jammed in solid. It needed to be thinner to slide free. It needed to change its shape just as Penny Royal did with all its parts. Geometric patterns fled through my consciousness and the thing made a sound like blades passing over rock, loosened in its hole, and I pulled it out. The thing was narrower now and indented with deep grooves, small crystalline structures folding down its length.
“Jesus Christ!” said Sepia. She slowly pulled herself upright, wiping at the blood below her nose. Such an archaic curse, I thought, and considered asking her where it had come from. Some sensitivity to my surroundings returned then and I realized she was staring at me with something close to terror. I glanced down at the robot again, then at the screen fabric. The rose sunlight from the hypergiant illuminated it well, giving us an excellent view of the glowing wreckage out there. I then looked across at Trent. The man was watching me carefully, his expression unreadable until memory presented me with many similar examples. People displayed this kind of dumb acceptance when things were just completely out their control. It was often writ on the faces of those who were confronted by Penny Royal.
Now I analysed what I had done. I had been a soldier, but I was no highly trained killer like Trent. I wasn’t physically boosted or augmented, yet I had just, in the matter of a minute, brought down a robot that was part war drone. Next, as if that had been nothing, I conducted two brief conversations before taking on and defeating a station AI. I understood then that the bleed-over from those other dead minds was affecting me on every level. Not only was I acquiring knowledge I hadn’t had before, but skills too. And all were working synergetically within me.
“I’m going out after Sverl,” I said. “I have to stop Riss.” I glanced at Sepia again, whose stats told me she had cracked a couple of ribs. The prostrate Cole was unconscious but in no danger. I then focused my attention on Trent.
He reached over and picked up the laser carbine, frowned as he inspected it, then glanced speculatively into the rear annex.
“Of course you are,” he said.
SVERL
Sverl felt truly frightened for the first time in many decades. Things seemed to be slipping out of his control, because they had slipped out of his understanding.
What happened to Grey?
He’d felt his links to the Penny Royal Golem, John Grey, dissolve and dissipate. This happened just as the King’s Guard delivered its secret message to Spear. These factors, then Riss’s communication, had all increased Sverl’s sense of danger. He suddenly no longer trusted Spear—the man had obviously been undergoing some drastic changes anyway. And he was sure that Spear’s reply to Riss had been just for Sverl’s benefit. He must know Sverl had penetrated their communications. That the man was now controlling Grey was also a distinct possibility. Thereafter, all Sverl knew was that he had to get out of Spear’s ship . . .
In terms of choices, why should he die, so Spear and the others could survive? Should he sacrifice himself to prevent the destruction of Room 101? Was this what Penny Royal wanted of him? No, the AI was playing some other game here. Its interest in him had to be more than that, surely?
Just then, the station shuddered—another missile from the King’s Guard getting through. These strikes acted as a constant reminder of the reality of the situation. Was it a reality he was trying to deny? Sverl wondered.
He now clung to a series of pipes, crusted with odd metallic moulds and running the length of a warship assembly tube. Perhaps it was even the tube in which Spear’s ship had been built. As he did so, Sverl tried to see his way through his steadily waning panic. The certainty that Penny Royal intended more for him than his destruction here arose from the portions of his mind where that earlier panic was deeply rooted. In the human part of his mind, it came from what he might describe as the religious impulse. There was a need to attribute responsibility to a higher being, whilst feeling self-important enough to believe a higher being was interested. Certainty also arose in his prador self—from a similar arrogance and a greater belief in his own immortality. And, annoyingly, it had moved from both of these into his AI self. Sverl considered the idea of shutting down the two organic sources, to look at the situation more realistically, but just couldn’t do it. The mere thought of doing so now caused panic to return—the organic portions of his mind hanging on for grim death.
Penny Royal would not allow anything to destroy Room 101; Penny Royal would not let Sverl die.
“Where now, Father?” asked Bsorol, eyeing some centipede robot crawling along the pipes towards them, seemingly grazing on those metallic moulds.
Where now? Where was Penny Royal?
“We need to establish a base,” Sverl replied, trying to appear utterly firm. “From there I’ll be able to search through this station’s systems and eventually locate Penny Royal. When I have located the AI we go to it, and I at last get some answers.”
Answers? To what?
One of Sverl’s war drones slowly cruised down the length of the pipes to pause over the centipede robot. The thing stretched as if trying to reach it and the drone zapped it with a maser. At once it turned around and scuttled away. The drone swivelled round to return, then something hit it hard on the side, exploding and sending it gyrating away from the pipes.
“Just one response!” Bsorol snapped over the command channel. “We don’t have an endless supply.”
A second war drone fired a missile and the thing sped off, igniting its drive a short distance away. It shot down towards where the end of the assembly tube was filled with one of those massive worm cast growths. There, it hit and exploded—a brief flash was visible and a spreading cloud of debris. Sverl meanwhile keyed into data exchanges. The distant attacker had, again, been a highly mutated maintenance or construction robot. It seemed that was all the fragmented society of AIs here had available inside the station. There were no Polity war drones, thankfully—well, except for one . . .
“They’ll try some sort of sneak attack next,” said Sverl.
“Yes, Father,” Bsorol agreed, obviously still waiting to hear where they should go.
Sverl tried to pull back from his fear—for surely it issued from his amalgamated organic brain—and tried to think with the clarity of AI crystal. To know why Penny Royal would come here, he needed to resolve this place’s mystery. Nobody had a clear idea of what had happened here. The place had been under prador attack and it had escaped. But why had the Factory Station Room 101 AI taken the station out into the wilds like this, and here begun killing all its fellow AIs? What was the madness that infected it? And where was it now? There were intelligences scattered throughout the station—but there was no sign of the Room 101 AI. Had the others destroyed it?
“We go that way,” said Sverl, gesturing with one claw along the length of the assembly tube.
He had already snatched a station schematic from the mind of a maintenance robot, and now knew the physical location of the station AI at least. Sure, with its subminds and data nodes spread throughout the station it had been a partially distributed intelligence. But still, the bulk of its thought processes had run inside a large chunk of AI crystal. And this sat inside an armoured vault lying twenty miles ahead.
Bsorol settled beside him, reaching out and closing a claw around one of his limbs, and used his suit impeller to set them in motion. As they travelled Sverl began to reach out, mentally, trying to reacquire his connection with Grey. At least he might find out if Spear had control of the Golem. This time a connection established at once.
“
Hello Sverl,
” came the reply.
“
What happened, Grey?
” he asked. “
Does Spear control you?
”
“
He does not yet know that he can.
”
“
Are you still free?
”
“
No, I never was.
”
“
Who controls you?
”
“
The same as always.
”
“
Who?
”
“
Who do you think?
” Grey replied, and cut the connection.
Sverl felt his panic returning. He had been aiming for an encounter with Penny Royal all along and finally it might happen. However, he entertained the possibility that—after the debacle at the Rock Pool—he should have run just as far and as fast as he could away from all known space. He reached out through Room 101, checking other sensors and clouds of disrupted data for a sign of anything dark and spiny. Instead, he detected something
snakish
. There seemed a horrible inevitability to Riss’s presence here . . .