War Factory: Transformations Book Two (3 page)

Garrotte seethed.

“Aren’t you ready yet?” asked the distant
Vulcan
’s artificial intelligence.

Garrotte surveyed its wrecked body.

“It will be a little while yet,” it replied tightly.

Vulcan had previously noted that if you give an idiot a gun, you just make him a dangerous idiot. Annoyingly, had their positions been reversed, Garrotte would have made the same sarcastic observation of the other ship. And Garrotte did feel like an idiot now, as it should have foreseen that last move by Isobel Satomi as she headed down towards the planet. The extent of her abilities had quickly become clear. Jumping her ship, the
Moray Firth
, directly into the
Garrotte
’s surfacing point from U-space had been one of the most obvious signs—and Garrotte had missed it. Again, the attack ship AI surveyed its body. The matter of the
Firth
had intersected with the antimatter in some of the
Garrotte
’s splinter missiles. The resulting explosion had taken a huge bite right out of its middle. The pieces either side of this bite were connected by a mere yard-wide tangle of hull armour. And only in the last minute, with its systems re-establishing, could it see this. Now, with internal scanners coming back online, it could focus on a small inner chamber—and it did the AI equivalent of breathing a sigh of relief.

The space suit was safe.

Spaceship AIs liked their hobbies, but modern attack crafts like the
Garrotte
had little room in which to indulge them. However, it did have internal areas for molecular manufacture and had, despite this breaking numerous rules, turned over one of these to personal pursuits. The space suit sitting in that chamber was a molecular replica of one from the Viking Museum on Mars. The suit had belonged to a pilot—a man who had survived the destruction of a needle ship used to test one of the first U-space drives. It was the Garrotte’s mascot, for the AI liked the story, and the lessons it taught about the art of the possible. And, thinking on that, Garrotte gave a mental shudder, next gazing from the pin cams in the cage around its own crystal towards disrupted matter lying just a few feet away—that’s how close its own destruction had been.

Yet, even after so much damage, it should have been functional, and Garrotte still hadn’t sorted out why it had ended up practically paralysed. It reviewed the diagnostics from when it had failed to splinter off missiles to take out both the remains of the
Firth
and the ship Isobel Satomi had actually been aboard—the
Caligula
. It reviewed a later diagnostic record of when it had been unable to do anything about one of Satomi’s thugs detected still alive aboard the wreck of the
Firth
. And it re-experienced its frustration on watching Captain Blite rescue that individual and take him away in
The Rose
. Still nothing, still no reason for that paralysis.

Whatever the fault, it was gone now and the
Garrotte
was pulling its two halves back together, and knitting them into a smaller whole. As they butted against each other and nanotech worked round the join like a bone welder, further diagnostic returns began to give Garrotte a chance of a guess at what the fault had been. U-space shock seemed the best term to describe it. The quantum effects of two ships trying to materialize in the same place had resulted in the whole ship degaussing. Strange electrical eddies had ensued and electrons had begun tunnelling at random. Garrotte had sent signals to parts of its body, but they had simply failed to arrive. U-space shock was the AI’s best guess, although some doubts still lingered.

“So how goes it?” Garrotte asked the
Vulcan
’s AI.

“We haven’t completely surrounded the Masadan system yet, and we did not manage to stop
The Rose
departing,” it replied.

“What?”

“Captain’s Blite’s ship is of no concern. It was not directly involved in the action here, like the
Firth
or the
Caligula
, and Penny Royal was not aboard.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Garrotte. “But Penny Royal
was
aboard that ship and that needs investigating. Also Blite picked up one of Satomi’s heavies.”

“That particular exclamation is hackneyed,” Vulcan observed.

“You’re evading the issue,” said Garrotte. “The
Rose
headed straight towards you under conventional drive, so you should have been able to stop it easily.”

“Deep scan of the vessel revealed that Penny Royal was not aboard, so the
Santana
was sent to intercept it, while I kept myself free to act should the AI appear. After talking to Blite and further deep scanning his ship, the
Santana
ordered him to shut down his U-space drive, which was then winding up for a U-jump,” Vulcan explained. “Blite told Santana to go fuck itself so Santana fired shots to disable his ship. However, those shots were ineffective because it seems Blite has acquired some sophisticated hardfield technology—probably from Penny Royal.”

Clever
, Garrotte thought. Blite had known that the Polity would be moving in to try to capture Penny Royal, but with resources stretched thin. He must also have known about the ability of newer Polity ships to use U-jump missiles to knock ships out of U-space. He would therefore also have known that subsequent disruption of his drive would have given said Polity ship time to intercept and capture him. This was why he’d left his U-jump so late. Had he jumped earlier, a modern vessel like
Micheletto’s Garrotte
or the
Vulcan
would have used such missiles against him. Instead, he’d cruised out on conventional drive, so Polity forces could scan him and, because Penny Royal was not aboard, they would consider him a secondary target and send a lesser ship, like the
Santana
, to intercept him. Even without U-jump missiles, that ship should have been able to stop him, but then he had played his joker: new hardfield tech. He had played it perfectly, and Garrotte wondered if the hardfield tech was the only alteration Penny Royal had made aboard that ship.

“Why wasn’t he pursued?” Garrotte asked, wondering if
The Rose
could now shield the parameters of its U-jumps.

“Our target is Penny Royal,” said Vulcan. “We’re stretched thin out here and need every Polity ship available, which is why you are needed, ASAP.”

Garrotte considered running further diagnostics on itself, but obviously the situation was an urgent one. It made its calculations, fired up its U-space engine and submerged in U-space. Just a short jump—out to the edge of the Masadan system and the periphery of the Atheter’s jurisdiction. However, even as it submerged, leaving the real behind it, the AI of the
Micheletto’s Garrotte
knew that something was very very wrong. What should have been a jump of just a few seconds’ duration just continued, while the input coordinates simply disappeared.

THORVALD SPEAR

I am legion
, I thought, wondering why that phrase had popped into my head. I knew I could aug-out its prior meanings in a moment but decided not to. Let it stand. No need to know, because the meaning alone was apt.

The multitude of dead, an unwelcome gift from Penny Royal, had retreated from my mind just for now. But they were by no means quiet. Already on that Masadan spring morning I had experienced a surge of déjà vu, prompted by those memories, but thankfully it had come to nothing. That previous one, just a week ago, had been bad. I’d felt myself reliving a memory of dying from a hideous virus aboard a space station, thousands of others dying around me. In this recollection, I knew that something had come aboard . . . Penny Royal, again. What initiated the memory, I wasn’t sure . . . maybe the presence of another forensic AI here on Masada had triggered it.

“Not much longer now. Amistad is coming out of it,” said Riss. “I’m still surprised he went for it.”

I glanced at the snake drone. Riss was up on her tail, cobra hood spread and glassy translucent body revealing the glinting and shifting of its internal mechanisms. The third black eye on the top of her head was open as she studied the scene across on the other side of the platform, which I now turned to view as well. Amistad was again taking on the shape of a great iron scorpion. A week ago, a forensic AI had broken the erstwhile warden of this world into his component segments, and even opened those segments up for inspection. It had subjected Amistad’s mind to similar deep scrutiny. The being that had done this had resembled a swarm of blued steel starfish and had been too much like Penny Royal for my comfort. Then it had left, declaring Amistad free of any “infection” from the black AI. Now constructor robots—floating spheres with tool arrays dangling like jellyfish tentacles—were, under his own instruction, reassembling the drone.

“Not much longer,” I agreed, not really in the moment.

Ever since discovering that Penny Royal had interfered with his mind, Amistad had been under mental and physical quarantine. Now he was coming back to himself and could once again be part of the Polity he had served. I hadn’t remained here just to see this, but in the hope of another encounter with Penny Royal. I had hoped that the black AI still had business here, but I was now beginning to think I had wasted my time.

I moved away from Riss and walked over to the rail at the edge of the platform. Below the observation platform, flute grasses were scattered with nodular little flowers in a multitude of colours as they bloomed. We’d stayed here ten days now, and still no sign of Penny Royal. I was sure the black AI had escaped the Polity blockade, and that out beyond the Masadan system, all the ships and recently deployed USERs—those underspace interference emitters used to knock ships out of faster-than-light travel—were irrelevant now.

I transferred my gaze to a long tubular flute-grass building, which now lay some miles distant after the Weaver had ordered the Polity to move our platform away. The Weaver, the one and only sentient member of the Atheter race, had recently entered that building. Moreover, it had done so with a hooder, the war machine that had once been a human called Isobel Satomi. No one knew what they were doing, because no one could spy out what was going on in there. In fact, beyond freeing itself from Polity oversight, no one had any idea what the Weaver’s intentions now were. None of this affected my purpose, however.

It was time to leave.

But where should I head? Even though I was sure Penny Royal was no longer on this world, I simply had no idea where it had gone. And I needed to find the AI, because I felt certain that I was destined to destroy it. I could feel the anger of the dead, and it was mine too.

“So where are we heading?”

I turned to peer at Riss, uncomfortable with the assassin drone’s ability to see stuff like that inside me.

“Where did Penny Royal go?”

“Amistad is fully functional now,” said Riss, “and coming up with some interesting titbits. It seems that
Micheletto’s Garrotte
, after repairing itself, was summoned out to the blockade. It never arrived and no one has any idea where it went.”

I shrugged. Even if we discovered the black AI had escaped on that ship, we were no closer to knowing where it had gone. I felt a ball of frustration inside me at that.

“If we want to hunt down Penny Royal, we have to go back to first principles,” I said, gripping the rail, fingers white. “It seems it was here to clear up a mess it had made, in the form of Isobel Satomi, so what will it do next?”

“Penny Royal left no shortage of messes,” Riss commented. “Most of them in the Graveyard.”

“The Graveyard is a big place.”

“You’ve reviewed that data on the Rock Pool, on Carapace City?”

“I have.”

“What do you think?”

“It seems Penny Royal was there protecting the city when the prador started fighting each other. It then drew Satomi after it when it left that world.” I paused. “What am I supposed to think?”

“Probably no more than that Penny Royal indulged in some passing altruistic act while in the process of luring Satomi here,” said Riss. “However, if you were to factor in this little gem . . .”

Riss sent a data packet directly to my aug. I opened it at once, seeing no reason to distrust the assassin drone. It was an audiovisual file and started with a report from some slightly evil-looking man. He was clad in a shiny suit with what looked like laser burns on the sleeve. I was unsurprised to learn, in the introduction to this file, that he was a Polity agent. He was talking to someone who could not be seen.

“Data is limited in the city,” he said. “There have been no actual physical encounters with the prador father-captain. However, it’s interesting how every time he communicates with the shell people or with the other prador down here the images used are unchanged. I’ve analysed them and know that the father-captain everyone sees is indistinguishable from the one in wartime recordings
before
he was hit by an assassin drone parasite infection.”

“If you could clarify that,” said a cold voice.

“There’s no doubt that Sverl is computer-manipulating old images.” The man paused, inspected the burns on his sleeve for a moment, then continued, “He doesn’t want anyone to see what he looks like now and perhaps that’s understandable. We routinely use ocean sifters, which analyse pieces of prador genome. They recently picked up something quite strange: a chunk of the prador genome and human DNA combined in such an unfeasible way that there has to be picotech processes behind it.”

“You have dispatched this?” asked the cold one.

“I have.” The man frowned. “And have you dispatched some backup for me?”

“The drone Arrowsmith will be joining you directly, along with a Sparkind squad inclusive of two Golem twenty-eights.”

“Good.” The man nodded. “And about fucking time. I’m presuming, then, that you got confirmation on my previous report?”

“I did—there is no doubt that Father-Captain Sverl visited Penny Royal’s planetoid.”

There was a brief hiatus in the recording, then I was viewing footage taken decades later. The man in the shiny suit didn’t look any older, just more evil.

“The drone Arrowsmith is staying, but I’m pulling the rest of my team out. It’s a bust. It’s only a matter of time before Cvorn gets a kamikaze through and fries us all. Sverl just won’t be able to intercept everything Cvorn throws at him and afterwards he’ll probably go after Cvorn—enough of the prador remains in him to want vengeance.”