Dark Intelligence (55 page)

Blite now took a moment to consider Penny Royal’s earlier words. He at once understood that Spear and the AI itself were the lure to bring Isobel here. But why? Why couldn’t the AI have completed its business with her when they last encountered the
Moray Firth?
And why, in all sanity, had it tampered with her transformation, turning her into this?

“How much guilt does an AI experience?” wondered Brond, now standing close beside him.

He’d gone right to the heart of it. It had become evident that Penny Royal was correcting past wrongs, trying to clear up the messes it made when it had not been quite so
nice
. Blite couldn’t help but feel that Penny Royal had chosen Isobel—one of those transgressions—as a route to absolution. But did that mean he was now witnessing the elaborate suicide of the black AI?

SPEAR

“Fuck and damnation,” I said, hanging upside down from my seat straps.

Annoyingly, Riss was still coiled in the driver’s seat as if gravity had no effect on her, despite the fact that our ATV was now on its roof. I looked back to see the Weaver sprawled bill down against what was the ceiling—its rump up in the air and the very picture of indignity. “Agreed,” it said, then began to squirm round.

“A gravity shock wave,” said Riss, “generated by an intricate form of U-space distortion—a rather more subtle spatial manipulation than a Polity USER.” The drone looked back. “Stay where you are, I can right us.”

Hydraulic motors began humming and the ATV began to tilt sideways. Glancing to the side, I could see one of the nearest cage wheels hinging down on its axle, which itself was telescoping out. In a moment the vehicle was up on its side, then tilting past that, before abruptly toppling back down the right way up.

“Umph,” said the Weaver.

I looked back to see it on its rump again and looking mildly irritated, one claw supporting it against the wall because the ATV was still tilted. Gradually the wheel and axle combination that had flipped us back over retracted and aligned, bringing us level again.

“So what caused that?” I asked, probing tender flesh around my shoulder bone.

“Yes,” said Riss, again turning to look at the Weaver, her third black eye now wide open, “what caused that?”

While the Weaver scratched at its rump and chewed over whether or not to reply, I tried using my aug to go after information. Surely I could get some sort of satellite image of whatever was occurring ahead? Nothing: Masada’s computer networks were all down.

“Isobel Satomi caused that,” the Weaver eventually replied.

“What?” I said, then grew irritated with myself. That admission of dumb ignorance had been issuing from me all too often of late.

“How the hell could she have possibly got here? The security here is massive and the Polity would have come down on her like a collapsing skyscraper the moment the
Moray Firth
surfaced.”

“Isobel Satomi,” said the Weaver, now taking up that handy little device of his and attaching some other horn-shaped item to it, “is now a stage one biomech and war mind instatement. Penny Royal is experiencing difficulties.”

I managed to suppress the “what” before it left my mouth.

“What stage was the Technician?” Riss asked.

“Stage ten,” said the Weaver, “there’s nothing higher.” It held the device up close to its eyes. “You may proceed now.”

Riss turned to look at me and I met her unblinking gaze. “Well, you heard the fella,” I said.

Without comment, Riss faced the screen, the joystick shifted, and with a slight grating sound the ATV surged forwards again. I now noticed what looked like a thunderstorm lighting the horizon ahead—also the sky looked darker and the sun was setting behind us. We’d travelled maybe a further hundred feet when another of those waves heaved up the grasses far ahead and sped towards us. I gripped my seat arms, determined not to end up with my full weight against the straps if we were turned over again.

Click.

All around us the churned ground flattened, as if under some huge invisible arrowhead—and when I glanced back at the Weaver, it had raised its device once more. The approaching gravity wave hit the edge of this area and rode up over it. We also rolled on through the flattened area, weathering the wave, although I swore as the wrench forced my tender collarbone against my safety strap. But the ATV remained stuck to the ground and we continued on. I looked at the Weaver again, who exposed his white holly teeth in a grin.

“There are whole legions of forensic AIs who would fight each other to the death to get hold of that toy of yours,” Riss noted.

“Yes,” said the Weaver, “which is why I am here now.”

Half an hour of travelling, four more waves, and a couple of detonations finally brought us close. The latter lit up the sky like nuclear strikes. But the ATV had obviously sustained damage, because even as it laboured to the top of a hill of newly compacted rhizome, something gave out and filled the vehicle with the smell of hot metal. I looked round as the Weaver abruptly straight-armed the cargo door, which went down with a crash. It quickly clambered out and I unstrapped and followed.

“Your mask,” said Riss, who was dogging my footsteps. I donned it quickly, stopped just to breathe for a moment and clear the shadows from the periphery of my vision, then pursued the Weaver to the summit.

The vista we had hoped for now lay open before us. Far over to the right I could see
The Rose
, sitting under a hardfield dome. Far over to the left I could see the Atheter AI building, half buried on its side. In the sky, directly ahead, Penny Royal and the thing that had been Isobel Satomi were tearing at each other like angry gods. And it looked as if the black AI was losing.

We just watched. Isobel hung in the sky like burning vine, cupped by a disintegrating expanse of black edges and surfaces. Energies were flashing between these Titans as if they’d stopped sniping at each other and had now moved on to their particular form of hand-to-hand combat. This was a vicious scrabble, with armouries depleted and knives out. High above, in the darkening sky, I could see glinting shapes—doubtless every Polity asset in the system was poised up there. The Weaver now began heading down the slope, having inspected this view for a moment. I didn’t really think this was a great idea but I followed. Just then, as if waiting for our arrival, Penny Royal came apart with a sound like some titanic glass bowl shattering and just dropped into thousands of pieces from the sky.

ISOBEL

She’d won, she’d destroyed Penny Royal, and now Thorvald Spear had come. Complete vengeance would be hers … her mission would be accomplished. Isobel released her hold and dropped down through the sky, her fires going out. She hit the ground heavily, partially sank, then scrabbled out.

The enemy?

Her war mind reacted, bringing its remaining resources to bear with enough energy remaining to obliterate Spear. She fought it. She didn’t want his end to be that simple. And the war mind actually stopped, surprising her because she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to hold it back. Using her many legs, she sped towards the three making their way down the distant slope. She raised her hood, shedding glassy shards as she sharpened her feeding sickles, targeting frames and complex tactical schematics blooming all over the three. The snake drone was a danger, but could be dealt with using just a small twist. As for the other creature …

She slammed to an involuntary halt.

“And this is what you want to be?” a familiar voice asked.

No, you’re dead—I destroyed you.

Abruptly she forced herself into motion again, baffled by whatever had obstructed her. She inspected the last of the three. Why was Spear accompanied by a large gabbleduck? And why was it that she now, abruptly, felt so afraid?

The snake drone. She targeted it properly and began to generate the required shaping of U-space distortions to turn the thing inside out. But suddenly she couldn’t remember how to do that, the war mind seemingly fading away from her.

No matter.

The predator was still with her and the drone simply could not stand against her present form. They were now just fifty feet away. She began to raise her hood, prepared to come down on Spear, who was now crouched down, gazing at her. She felt something then, an infrasound pulse hitting her. This was how Spear had paralysed Trent, Gabriel and herself when he had first escaped them. Elements inside her abruptly froze, but now they were irrelevant. She experienced a moment of vicious joy. She just bypassed those small points of paralysis and mapped Spear’s body in intricate detail as she rose higher, determining the slowest and most agonizing way to take him apart.

“So that is all you can do?” she said. However, her translator had been destroyed, along with the two Polity weapons she’d attached to her body. She must therefore be using some more complex system inside her to speak.

Spear stood up, shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Few of my human nerves remain, so your prion cascade was sure to fail.”

“So the Weaver tells me,” said Spear. “It also told me that obedience to their masters is integral to Atheter war machines. Are you feeling that love yet, Isobel?”

Enough of this. She began to move forwards. Click.

She froze. No. No! Somehow Spear’s prion cascade was now working and her whole body just slid from her control. She came down like a falling redwood and hit the ground, splashing mud all around. Targeting frames, schematics, tactical calculations, they all fled. The predator relinquished her and faded too. Spear and the snake drone slid away from her perception and all she could now see was the gabbleduck, the Atheter, beckoning to her with one claw, summoning her.

She felt the love.

The war mind was now back in full control, perfectly melded with the predator, while she continued to recede. She felt the war mind’s total loyalty, its absolute love of the kind that had created it which was utterly fundamental to its being. Then it expelled her into blackness.

SPEAR

The albino hooder, which had been partially controlled by Isobel Satomi’s parasitic mind, now came forwards. It halted just a few feet from the gabbleduck and lowered its hood to the ground. I wasn’t sure I liked that, the way it seemed to be prostrating itself. I found something distasteful about its lack of choice, even in something so lethal—but then humans fool themselves with their belief in free will. And I might well be the worst example of such self-deception. Also, such a reaction was hypocritical, when I considered my relationship with Flute …

“So, are they both dead now?” I asked, a hollow disappointment opening inside me.

“Isobel might have been killed by the war mind but Penny Royal certainly wasn’t.”

I turned to gaze enquiringly at the silver snake.

Riss continued, “The original Technician was much more powerful, yet was also incapable of destroying Penny Royal. Look.” Riss flicked her tail at the scene ahead.

Translucent black octagons, each no thicker than paper, lay scattered across the darkening landscape—but even now they were changing. They were collapsing in on themselves, compressing their own substance into something darker, harder, and definitely more opaque—crystalline objects of all different shapes like the parts of a Chinese puzzle.

I felt suddenly angry. I understood that I was part of the lure to bring Isobel here, which was irritating enough, but my main anger stemmed from my failure to understand why she’d been lured here after all that. Also why she’d been turned into the thing still grovelling before the Weaver.

“Penny Royal seems loath to erase any data, no matter how despicable it might be,” said a recognizable voice. “So I’m guessing Isobel Satomi is also alive, in some form, somewhere.”

“Amistad,” said Riss, turning. “You can move very quietly when you want to.”

I turned to see the erstwhile war drone poised on the churned ground just behind us, flickers passing over his gleaming carapace as he dispelled some final chameleonware effect.

“So,” I said, my anger at last finding direction, “the warden of Masada has at last seen fit to show his ugly face now the danger is over.” It wasn’t fair, I know—I wasn’t feeling very fair.

“A questionable title,” said Riss.

“A defunct title,” said Amistad, “as of just a few minutes ago.”

I fought the urge, but I lost: “What?”

Riss swung back towards me. “This world was under protectorate status and thus a ward of the Polity, requiring a warden with Polity military assets. While the Weaver had no way of defending itself, that’s how it would have remained. And that is the situation the Polity AIs would have preferred. They supplied the Weaver with some technology, but not much in the way of particle cannons, U-jump missiles or CTDs.”

“Ah,” I said, the penny, at last, dropping.

“Not only was I compromised by Penny Royal, which would have put my warden status on hold until I’d been vetted,” said Amistad. “But the AI has also just made me redundant.”

It has to be noted that Amistad did not sound particularly unhappy about this.

I turned to look at the Weaver and the thing that had been Isobel Satomi. I auged into Masada’s computer networks, relieved to find them reinstating, and felt my mind seeming to expand. I encompassed more data and considered legalities. The Atheter’s greatest weapon and defence was the hooder war machine I saw before me. This had been refined over millennia in battles between themselves and predatory Jain technology. So it was understandable that the world had ceased to be a protectorate the moment Penny Royal provided the Weaver with this thing. Even now, polite demands had gone through to the Polity from the Atheter AI, reinforcing this change of status. Sure, the runcible transfer gates could stay, as could the people. But the orbital weapons platforms, the warships and the whole Polity military presence would have to go.

This was an Atheter world now and the Polity had no rights here.

BLITE

With his eyes glued to his monocular, Blite said, “Play that last bit for me again, Leven.”

His ship mind obliged while he watched the Weaver moving off with the albino hooder trundling along at heel like some obedient hound. Spear and the snake drone were now awaiting the arrival of a gravcar to pick them up—the only vehicle now being allowed into the area. Amistad had his own methods of moving himself about quickly. On the horizon, other vehicles that had congregated were now moving off too—troop transports and gunships, two recognizable forensic AIs and a selection of war drones.