Dark Intelligence (36 page)

“What about that forensic AI and my ownership of this vessel?”

“Your salvage claim has been approved and no further investigation is required.”

“Take us in, Flute,” I instructed, then sat back to ponder the oddity of this situation. Were I a Polity AI, I would want to strip this ship down to its individual components and study each of them at the sub-molecular level. I would also be very wary of allowing Penny Royal’s former craft near a world where the AI had apparently been given amnesty. Especially while it was controlled by someone who wanted to hunt that AI down, which they must have surely worked out by now. Something did not add up here. A lot of things didn’t add up.

“I want to talk to Amistad,” I said, even as the fusion drive kicked in to take us on the last leg of our journey to Masada itself.

“Amistad will speak to you, face-to-face, down on the planet,” said Riss. “Further communications with him have been blocked.”

Now, to give us some scenery, Flute had called up a truncated view in-system onto the screen wall. I could see the sun, but with its glare toned down. The gas giant Calypse was off to one side—like an onyx marble amidst the complexity of the Braemar moon system. And Masada lay ahead, enlarged in a subframe, aubergine in hue with its moons highlighted in their courses around it. Notable too were the other items around that world. Here were a veritable swarm of satellites and various space stations, including a massive one still under construction.

Before coming here, Flute had updated astrogation data files so had known we couldn’t surface from U-space closer than two parsecs from Masada. I had no doubt that around that world lay the means of preventing anyone venturing too close: USERs, underspace interference emitters, dipping their singularities in and out of U-space to cause local disruption fields. And doubtless there were big weapons too, in case a hostile ship managed to penetrate too close. Perhaps this last explained Amistad’s lack of paranoia about us now approaching the world, but it certainly didn’t explain that “no further investigation required.”

Too many things didn’t add up, including the attitude behind that phrase. Then there was the mysterious connection I had with Penny Royal’s discarded spine, plus my apparently erroneous memories. I was beginning to entertain the suspicion that I was a piece being moved around a chessboard, but with no idea who was playing me.

14

SVERL

In response to the new arrival the Polity drone had pointed out, Sverl immediately issued a recall to all his children, some of whom were out hunting reaverfish. Then he issued recalls to various pieces of equipment scattered about the world—including drones, survey robots and some of the closer perambulating mining robots and refineries under the sea. Others that were more distant might have to be abandoned. If he wanted to retrieve any satellites, he could pick them up when he was in orbit, if that was where he was going …

It was time for him to act, surely?

But how? Penny Royal was finally here, the supposed target of his vengeance. Could he simply wait for
The Rose
to draw closer, surface his dreadnought and deploy its weapons to destroy the ship? Penny Royal might be dangerous, but it was aboard a simple salvage ship and surely couldn’t survive the blast of a crust-breaking prador kamikaze.

However, such destruction would be too impersonal. And if Sverl was completely honest with himself, plain vengeance wasn’t all he wanted, if he wanted it at all. He wanted a confrontation, resolution, explanation and answers to questions he could feel but just didn’t know how to ask … maybe he was even hoping for absolution?

So again: what should he do? Sverl could think of no possible reason why Penny Royal might come here, beyond himself. Perhaps the Polity’s acceptance of the black AI was justified, perhaps it had changed and was now coming to right wrongs and give explanations. Or quite possibly it was coming to correct past mistakes and its methods hadn’t changed at all. Perhaps it had come to erase those mistakes …

Sverl champed his mandibles, utterly conflicted. What if Penny Royal was coming to cure him, to set his transformation in reverse? Did he, like Isobel Satomi, want a cure for his ills? Did
she
any longer want such a cure? She appeared quite comfortable in her new form, while Sverl himself was ambivalent about his own transformation. He froze for long minutes, his thought processes locked until the need for a response drove him to action. He turned back to his screens and inserted both his claws into pit controls. He could at least get some of his other local problems out of the way.

“Sfolk,” he said to the young adult prador peering from one screen. “I am now relinquishing control of your ship’s system. You must decide amongst yourselves what you do next.”

Sfolk made a sound that had its human equivalent in, “Uh?”

“I will not stop you returning to the Kingdom,” Sverl continued, “but must warn you not to expect justice or fair treatment there. In the Kingdom only might is right.” He paused before sending the signal that would remove his lock from their vessel’s engine and weapons. Was it such a good idea to give them control of their weapons now? Perhaps he should delay … No, he decided not. The Five would probably be squabbling for the next ten years about who controlled what, and most likely would return to their fratricidal pursuits.

“That is all,” Sverl added, and closed down the connection.

He now turned his attention to two more screens, from which two wholly adult prador gazed at him. “Cvorn and Skute, I give you fair warning that I am relinquishing my rule of our enclave.”

Only as he said the words did he realize they were true. Penny Royal was here and Sverl felt certain some resolution of his vague aims was in the offing, although whether that would be confrontation with or destruction of the AI he didn’t know. Thereafter … he knew he couldn’t stay here.

“Why?” asked Cvorn, while Skute just bubbled—Sverl felt sure the latter had been sliding into senility for some time.

“The time has come for me to take care of some matters that have remained unresolved for … some while,” Sverl replied.

“You wish to kill the rogue AI, Penny Royal,” Cvorn stated.

No, yes, maybe
, thought Sverl. How could he possibly explain the complexities of the situation to one of his former kind? Cvorn was intelligent for a prador, but would still become first confused, then angry. This would translate into suspicion verging on paranoia towards Sverl’s activities. He sometimes wondered how he’d managed not to end up in an all-out battle with his neighbours during their time here. Then, abruptly, it hit him. He’d never revealed to any prador his encounter with Penny Royal, yet somehow Cvorn had learned of it. What else might the old prador have learned? What might he know about Sverl’s transformation?

“Yes, I am going to kill the rogue AI,” he said carefully.

“So you know its present location?” asked Cvorn.

“Yes,” Sverl replied, his own suspicions increasing, “I know its location.”

“And you’re leaving?”

“Yes, I’m leaving,” said Sverl, deciding it better to pretend he’d be searching for the AI, rather than revealing Penny Royal was aboard the descending ship. If he did, Cvorn might open fire on
The Rose
. He continued, “I have also relinquished control of the Five’s ship and have left them to decide their own command structure. They want to return to the Kingdom … for females.”

“Yes, apparently so,” said Cvorn.

Now suspicion transformed into paranoia and Sverl began to pay a lot more attention to his data feeds. Most of his children and drones had returned, the two from the space port were just entering the sea and would be back in just minutes. Only three of the distant reaverfish hunters would take some time to arrive. Two of the big mining robots were trundling inside, with a big refinery—one that weaned useful pure metals out of seawater—coming in close behind. But there was a lot of other movement out there too—as children, drones and robots similarly returned to the three destroyers. These belonged to Cvorn, Skute and the Five respectively.

“Is there something you want to say to me, Cvorn?” he asked.

“Just that you’ve made a serious mistake, Sverl,” said Cvorn, “I put that down to what you’re turning into.”

In this situation, a human military commander would never have replied in such a fashion. Sverl was also now thoroughly aware of his mistake. Any other prador would have had to ask, thus giving Cvorn a chance to brag and threaten. But Sverl just cut communications and considered the situation as it now stood. Cvorn and Skute had long since refused to return to the Kingdom because, like Sverl, they felt that ending the war was a big mistake. Their rabid hate of humanity had not waned and it had taken all Sverl’s powers of persuasion to stop them ripping apart the first shell people to arrive here. And, in later years, he’d barely prevented them from eradicating Carapace City. He’d told them it was better to learn from the humans, so they could gauge how best to exterminate them in vast numbers, rather than just wipe out a few—the kind of argument prador liked.

But apparently Cvorn, possibly Skute and quite likely the Five, had been well aware of Sverl’s encounter with Penny Royal and the changes he had undergone. Typical of prador, they no longer considered him one of them. It was likely they were now preparing to act against him and he must be ready for that.

Why they had not moved against him before now could be down to an established principle of prador military tactics—that two destroyers had a destructive power equal to one dreadnought. In preventing the Five from controlling their ship, he’d maintained a balance of power here. And by relinquishing that control, he’d shifted that balance. Sverl immediately tried to link through to the Five’s destroyer, and was completely unsurprised to find his access to its systems now blocked.

While previously he’d considered laying a trap of some kind for the AI here in the ocean, for surely it was here for him, the situation had now changed. If he stayed down here, his ship stood a good chance of being destroyed. But he faced yet another mental conflict. The humans in Carapace City and elsewhere were now in danger. In fact, “in danger” wasn’t really strong enough. Even if Cvorn and the others didn’t act against him, they would certainly exterminate the humans here as soon as his protection was removed. Sverl was very much against that and wondered if his long fascination with them could now be styled affection.

What could he do?

One of the human traits he’d acquired, and could really do without, was a tendency to be indecisive and procrastinate. However, he was part AI, so could also think with utter logic and come to the most rational conclusions. He coldly considered options as he watched
The Rose
descend towards the space port. He couldn’t fully protect the shell people and himself. The three prador destroyers possessed CTDs, atomic and even chemical weapons. Just one of these could annihilate Carapace City, and he simply didn’t have the hardfields and anti-munitions to stop one getting through. Especially if he was using them to protect himself.

Sverl began to prepare. He first sent an alert to all his children to bring them to battle readiness and applied a higher level of security protocol. He didn’t want the others sneaking some weapon either close to or aboard his ship. Next, he began ramping up power accumulation from his fusion reactors and running diagnostics on his weapons systems. It then occurred to him that now might be a good time to get a little sneaky too. His ship rested on the seabed, but was adjacent to a drilling and mining installation he’d been using to obtain hydrocarbons. That installation had now shut down—its equipment being withdrawn—but a convenient mineshaft still lay available. He selected one of the midrange CTDs from his weapons cache, set up automated systems to transfer it to his drone cache, then ordered two drones to transfer it down the mineshaft.

This one device would be enough to cause plenty of damage to Skute’s ship and minimal damage to the other two. He could’ve chosen something more destructive, but the resultant tsunami would have swept away Carapace City, while this lesser device should result in a wave only a few metres high. Next, he selected other devices from his armoury, some of them of Polity manufacture, and set them loading to his railgun carousels. He paused then, with everything in motion around him and the volume of noise in his ship increasing. He had done all he could here for now.

Time to make a call.

The call he made was through Carapace City’s communication network. He used only a static image of how he’d once looked—as he’d appeared when he last used this channel, four decades ago. He also ensured it remained completely and deliberately unsecured, though he kept tracing software running.

“Yes,” snapped a shellman, his gaze off to one side, probably watching his strange recent customer departing.

“Taiken,” said Sverl, waiting for the man to look at the screen. Taiken, of Taiken Fuels, the most powerful trader here and de facto ruler of the shell people, swung his attention back to the screen. His eyes widened in shock and his mandibles dropped to expose his human mouth.

“Father-Captain Sverl!” he exclaimed, then made a gobbling noise only vaguely reminiscent of that made by an obsequious first-child. The cam on his system tracked him as he made some half-human attempt to grovel.

“You must order the population of Carapace City evacuated inland, immediately,” said Sverl. “You are all in extreme danger.”

Taiken just crouched there for a moment with his human mouth trying to frame words and failing. Eventually he pulled himself back upright and managed, “Why?”

“You are a shellman so understand that you are all here on sufferance. Only my intervention with my fellows has prevented them from eradicating you. I am now no longer in command here and soon my fellows will begin cleaning house. Their first action is likely to involve them firing a CTD at your city.”

“They wouldn’t,” Taiken said, showing that thoroughly irritating human tendency for self-deception.

“They would,” Sverl affirmed. “And then they would take great pleasure in hunting down any survivors. The best chance your people have of surviving is to head inland and disperse in the mountains—the mountains because there may be actions out here in the sea that will result in tsunamis. My fellows have not appreciated my protection of you and your people, so my departure from this ocean may not be a quiet one.”