Polity 1 - Prador Moon (18 page)

Gnores moved off with assertive eagerness.

That would soon change.

* * * * *

Short jumping within a planetary system was not exactly the healthiest of occupations, since the presence of massive bodies, like suns, tended to over-complicate the vectors and result in the ship concerned being forced from U-space in very small pieces. This was why most spaceships surfaced a safe distance from any gravity well and approached their destination under conventional drives. Besides sheer convenience, this was why the runcible superseded ships for transportation within the Polity. Also, the resulting lack of ships within the Polity prevented ECS from mounting a creditable defence against the Prador. Strapped into her acceleration chair—for the ride might be bumpy during this short jump—Moria considered that for a moment. Huge shipyards, currently under construction, were racing to rectify that lack, and she reckoned that should the Polity survive this conflict, such a lack would never again be allowed. This probably meant death to the cargo runcible idea. She unstrapped herself.

The weird sensation of something twisting out of kilter finally passed. The vessel surfaced into the real, intact. She relaxed for a moment, considering the quandary of runcibles and ships. Though for the latter surfacing near gravity wells held dangers, the former were often positioned on planets—right in those wells. It all devolved down to the fast calculations required at the interface, the surfacing point, and to modelling. With a fixed runcible on the surface of a planet, the AI held in its mind a model of the surrounding system—all the space-time maps including those venturing beyond the event horizon of the warp—so it did not need to calculate those. Also an AI lay at each end, making the connection. The nearest analogy she could think of was to ocean travel between two islands. The spaceships were like old-fashioned submarines that needed to surface to see where they were going so they could motor into port without smashing into something. The runcible, however, was a transit tube laid along the ocean bed and whatever used it, be that humans or cargo, could not deviate from its course—entry and exit points were nailed down. Perhaps that was it! Perhaps the problem with the recent test related to drift in the spatial positions of the cargo runcibles! That the tube mouths were not sufficiently nailed down?

“George?” she turned towards him. “Could it be simply spatial drift?” As she said it she winced, realising the AI would have calculated for that and the solution to the problem could not be anything so simple.

No reply from George, however. He remained utterly still, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, still strapped into his seat. Drool ran down his chin.

“George?”

A slight flick of the eyes. Slowly he raised his hand and wiped the back of it across his mouth. He turned his head slightly, focusing on her.

“One for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow,” he said.

“What?”

He gave a puzzled frown, then raised his fingers to his mouth and touched his lips as if they betrayed him. “Fine words butter no parsnips,” he decided.

Something was seriously wrong.

“What you don't know can't hurt you.” He reached out and tapped her aug.

Moria stayed very still for a moment. Necessarily offline throughout the U-jump, her aug had not reinstated now that this ship travelled through realspace towards the cargo runcible. She tried reconnection and there came almost a hesitation, then, via a server on the runcible, she routed into the chaotic Trajeen network. Fragments of news stories reached her first, but she kept getting knocked out of the network and receiving all sorts of strange error messages. Something bad was happening: Separatists… an explosion. Then:

EDDRESS REQUEST >

OFFLINE EDDRESS REQUEST?

ACCEPT?

Moria began to review the information attached to the eddress request, but just stopped at the name:

JEBEL KRONG.

What the hell is he doing here? But then she immediately answered her own question. She knew about Jebel Krong and his Avalonians: stories about him were much relished by the newsnet services, since they were part of the small amount of good news coming from the front. He was here because the Prador were coming. But why did he want to communicate with her? Only one way to find out. She gave permission for her eddress to be used—activating voice and image com.

“Moria Salem” stated the requester.

“Well, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Jebel Krong, but why are you talking to me?”

The connection hardened now—she rather suspected military com software to be involved—and his image appeared in her visual cortex. She took in the chameleon-cloth fatigues with their black webbing, the famous crab buttons, and the austere face with his V-shaped scar.

“Big hole in the networks at the present, so I rather suspect you don't have the full story. That hole was once occupied by the one known as George.”

“What?”

Moria blinked, looked at her companion—the image of Jebel still retained.

George said, “What's done cannot be undone,” and she understood him.

“My god, what happened?”

“Separatists attacked here, and though they did not manage to take control, they did manage to murder the AI.”

“But I still don't understand why you have contacted me. Is it because of George here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Some confusion, I think. The Trajeen Cargo Runcible AI has a submind…an avatar. Part of its mind resides in a vat-grown human body presently sitting beside me spouting proverbs.”

“I see… no, I am not contacting you because of that, though that particular George may be of some use to you. I am contacting you because you are now apparently in charge of the cargo runcible project. In the instants before it was destroyed the AI ordered this. I'm not sure I entirely understand the reasons why, since I have just received orders that both runcibles must be destroyed to prevent the Prador getting hold of them.”

“Oh, fuck-shit!”

“Yes, most apposite. We'll discuss the situation further after you dock. Out.”

The connection broke and Moria once again turned to George. No proverbs were forthcoming. He merely blinked, held his hand up before his face and wiggled his fingers, his expression slightly puzzled as if never having seen these digits before.

* * * * *

The two Prador vessels caused sufficient disturbance in U-space for Occam to easily follow them, though the term “follow” in a continuum without physical dimension or time strained to breaking point. Tomalon checked realspace maps of the sector and studied the two predicted targets in their path: a transfer station orbiting a red dwarf—one of those places required to control runcible traffic so millions would not arrive at one destination all at once, but now being used to supply ships near the line—and the Trajeen system. He accessed information on the latter and felt his stomach clenching. The human population there stood close to a billion. All sorts of stations and bases were scattered throughout the system, which itself contained two living worlds. Yet, why were those two ships heading there? Yes, being a heavily populated Polity system Trajeen was a viable target, but on the whole the big ships like these were hitting targets of a strictly military significance. Trajeen did not really fit the pattern.

“Why there?” he asked, in his mind.

“Runcibles,” Occam replied immediately.

Tomalon already knew they had built and were testing a cargo runcible at Trajeen. But why would the Prador want to seize one of them? A runcible required an AI to operate it and no AI would willingly do so for the Prador. And until now the Prador showed little interest in the devices.

“Why?”

“Because these runcibles, being located out in space, will be much easier to take, especially having been originally taken control of by Prador allies: Separatists.”

“What?”

“Allow me to acquaint you with the details contained in a recent communication I have received.” So saying the AI swiftly transferred the information to Tomalon's interface. The data-stream being buffered, so Tomalon did not have to take it in all at once, delayed his understanding for a few seconds, then he got the gist.

“The bastards ... but I still don't see why. Do the Prador think they can make runcibles work without AIs?”

“Not known. Perhaps that is what they told the Separatists. Perhaps they believe so. A more likely scenario is that they are after the support technology, which in itself has many weapons applications.”

Tomalon did not like some of the ideas that began occurring to him: a runcible gate, even without an AI to control it, could be used to instantly accelerate matter to near-c—just one idea without thinking about it very

deeply.

“They must destroy those runcibles,” he said out loud.

Out loud as well, using the com system in the bridge, Occam replied, “That is currently in hand. Now we are about to surface near the transfer station where our two Prador friends have just arrived.”

“I should give you weapons clearance.”

“You already gave it back at Grant's World.”

“You don't need it again?”

“Not unless you cancel that clearance. I advise you not to do that.”

It was more of a warning than a threat, but not much more.

As they surfaced from U-space, Tomalon closed up with Occam and banished his interior perception of the bridge, becoming one again with the ship and its sensors. They arrived only minutes behind the two Prador ships, and minutes were all it took. A long, glittering cloud of debris lay directly ahead like a scar across vacuum—all that remained of the transfer station. The two ships lay beyond it, gleaming in red light as they accelerated towards the dwarf sun, probably to slingshot round and fling themselves clear before engaging their U-engines again. Still hurtling along at the velocity with which it earlier entered U-space, the Occam Razor ignited its fusion engines and accelerated too. Weapons turrets and platforms rose, missiles and solid rail-gun projectiles loaded. Tomalon expected Occam to shoot out a swarm of rail-gun missiles as before, but that procedure abruptly stood down.

“Why not?”

“Further information package received. While controlling the craft we left, Aureus also sent telefactors to study the remains of the Prador destroyers. The exotic metal armour contains piezoelectric layers and s-con grids linked to what Aureus finally identified as thermal generators. Small strikes merely provide them with more energy with which to strike back.”

“Hence that particle beam they hit us with?”

“Certainly.”

“Our options now?”

“We get, as one Jebel Krong would say, 'up close and personal' We need to hit hard enough to kill them before they can utilize the energy from our strikes.”

The paths of the two Prador vessels now diverged. One swung away from its slingshot route, spun over nose-first towards the Occam Razor, and began decelerating.

“Ah, it seems they want to talk,” Occam commented.

Within Tomalon's perception the view into a Prador captain's sanctum opened out, revealing the limbless captain floating just above the floor. Tomalon understood, from intelligence gathered during other conflicts, this to be a Prador adult, and that the fully limbed troops ECS more often encountered were the young. It grated its mandibles to make some hissing and bubbling sounds, and the translation came through a moment after.

“So ECS does have some real ships,” it said.

“Would you like to reply?” Occam enquired.

“Why not?” Tomalon sensed the link establishing and spoke out loud, “Who am I addressing?”

“I am Captain Shree—a name you will know but briefly.”

“Well, Shree, we do have real ships and you have sufficiently irritated us that we feel beholden to use them.”

“I look forward to our meeting. It is a shame we cannot meet in the flesh, but alas I have a war to help win and no time to peel that admirable vessel to find you.”

“Fuck me, B-movie dialogue. Why is this character talking?”

“Perhaps to make him the focus of our attack rather than the other vessel,” Occam replied.

“Should we ignore him and go after the other one?”

“I rather think not. If we do we'll have Shree behind us. Upon experience of their destroyers I am not sure if we could survive that particular vice.”

“I see that your companion captain is not so anxious to make our acquaintance,” Tomalon noted.

“Oh, but Captain Immanence has a rendezvous to keep. He passes on his best regards and looks forward himself to encountering more vessels like your own. Thus far the conflict has become boringly predictable.”

The Prador vessel now launched a fusillade of missiles, zipping up in the light of the sun like emergency flares. The Occam abruptly swerved and now did launch rail-gun projectiles, but aimed to intercept the missiles rather than hit the Prador ship. On their current trajectory the solid projectiles that did not strike missiles would pass above it, but only just—it would look like a near miss. Within the great ship Tomalon observed some alterations being made: CTD warheads being diverted away from the low-acceleration rail-guns usually used, to one of the more powerful ones. They were being loaded along with the solid projectiles so that every tenth launch would be a CTD.

“Isn't that a little dangerous?” he asked. Such warheads were not often accelerated up to relativistic speeds, since the stress might cause some breach of the antimatter flask they contained. If that happened while the missile accelerated up the gun rails the results might be… messy.

“Not nearly as dangerous as giving this ship time to take us apart,” Occam replied. “The chances are one in twenty of an in-ship detonation.”

Prador missiles began exploding in vacuum as the projectiles slammed into them. Shree's vessel immediately changed course to intercept any of those projectiles to get through—deliberately putting itself in their path. Occam slow-launched programmed CTD warheads down towards the sun, and ramped up its acceleration towards the enemy. Both vessels came within each other's beam range. A particle beam struck the Occam Razor, cutting a boiling trench through hull metal. Tomalon felt this as pain, but this being a facility of which he felt no need, he tracked down its source—a diagnostic feedback program—and cancelled it.