“All
round
the city?”
Isobel dipped her hood in acknowledgement. “A spherical field completely enclosing it, even underground. Energy from subsequent attacks was also routed into underspace.” The
Moray Firth
was on the move now; Trent could feel its engines in his bones. Isobel continued, “When the emplacement on the moon began firing on the dreadnought, Penny Royal drew all the underspace energy back into the real, routing it through a lasing and collapsing hardfield. The white laser shot, as far as I can calculate, possessed ninety-eight per cent of the total energy thrown against the hardfield. So we’re talking about a laser blast effectively powered by a gigaton-range CTD.”
“The moon?” Trent asked quietly.
“Mostly vaporized.”
Neither of the moons here were very big, as Trent recollected, and certainly a dreadnought possessed the firepower to take out objects like them. But still, Penny Royal wasn’t a dreadnought. This was why Isobel had never gone after the AI, despite her hatred of what it had done to her. She’d always possessed sufficient survival instincts to avoid confronting something that could smear her like a bug. Now, as the
Moray Firth
rose out of the canyon on this inner planet, broken black mountains and sulphur fumaroles slipping past all round, she appeared intent on following the AI.
“I still think you should drop this, Isobel,” he suggested.
As if in reply, armoured shutters drew across the chain-glass screen, shutting out the view. For a second the screen just showed the inner face of the heat-treated ceramal, then the laminate fired up to display the view on screen. Ahead lay the blackness of space, and stars—this system’s sun now lying behind them. It was only evident through a glare reflecting from a sensor spine projecting to the right.
“You might not even be able to follow,” he said, trying not to sound too hopeful.
Isobel turned her hood towards him, and he wondered how he’d ever get used to the horror that was now her face.
“The Rose
is heading out from the Rock Pool’s gravity well,” she replied, a little distractedly. “It’s an old cargo ship so its drive parameters are unshielded. When it goes into U-space, I can weigh its energy balance and determine its coordinates.”
“It might have been unshielded before …”
“If Penny Royal is shielding, then we’ll find another way.”
She turned back towards the view, obviously deep in sensor data. A moment later, graphics appeared along the bottom of the screen and Trent recognized them instantly. She was accessing the ship’s weapons and they were all powered up and ready to fire.
Trent just sat there, feeling a sense of doom. His mood was probably due to the psychological damage he’d sustained along with his injuries. But if she was accessing those weapons, they might well be a part of those “other ways” she was considering. It seemed her earlier idea about getting answers, or some resolution from the AI, had slipped her mind. The main image on the screen now changed to show Blite’s
The Rose
. It was under fusion drive against a backdrop of stars, the
Moray Firth’s
targeting frames now blossoming all over it.
“Isobel … don’t,” he managed.
She was tighter now; coiled like a spring. Emitting a hiss, she turned towards him, scalpel knives clacking together in her hood. They shed slivers of a material like glass, sharpening themselves.
“It would be better if Penny Royal doesn’t leave at all,” she said. “Spear will come here to the AI’s last known location.”
“You saw what it did down on the Rock Pool,” he argued. “Do you think for one second you’ll be able to—”
Oh Hell
. She was firing the weapons.
He could feel thrumming throughout the ship as the railgun fired, then he saw the impacts flashing on
The Rose
’s hardfield on screen. A surge of acceleration tried to throw him out of his seat and he hurriedly latched the safety harness in place. Isobel skidded across the floor, her hard feet tearing up metal. Something flashed out there, the screen blanked and the
Moray Firth
jerked as if slapped by a giant hand. Trent felt his gut tightening and experienced an almost painful awareness of his recent injuries. Just as he’d thought only moments before, she was going to get them both killed.
“Chameleonware?” said Isobel in disbelief. “They don’t use chameleonware.”
The
Moray Firth
abruptly changed direction and the screen came back on, an image flashed up of
The Rose
, so it couldn’t be using chame-leonware itself. The next moment, the ship’s sensors seemed to be trying to fix on something indefinable. He glimpsed a massive object looming out there, now sliding to one side of the screen. The laminate then went completely white, before another image surged forwards to occupy it. Now another image stared back at them, which clattered prosthetic mandibles and bubbled, noises which were instantly translated into speech he could recognize.
“Isobel,” said the prador Father-Captain Sverl, “we need to talk.”
Great, a prador dreadnought on our ass
.
“Isobel,” Sverl repeated.
“No,” she stated. “Never.”
The weapons were firing again, striking flat hardfields and lighting the massive dreadnought looming beyond.
She was attacking?
“Isobel,” said Sverl once again, managing to impart his huge disappointment through that one translated word.
Another lurch ensued, followed by an emergency dive into U-space that set Trent’s ears ringing and made his bones feel as if they’d turned to fracturing glass. The screen went grey, shot through with swirls and flickering lights that sucked on the eyeballs, before turning white. At last, Isobel had found some remnant of sanity.
“It can’t follow us,” she said, rage evident even through her speech synthesizer. “I can shield my drive parameters.”
The U-jump abruptly terminated, space returning to the screen laminate. The stars were dim and widely scattered here.
“It cannot follow,” Isobel repeated. “It was told to guard the fucking Rock Pool.”
Trent didn’t question that. Obviously her communication with the father-captain had been much more extensive than the portion he’d heard. He waited long minutes, and finally Isobel relaxed, as much as her new form allowed.
“The Rose
went into U-space,” she stated, her cowl turned towards Trent. “And I have its coordinates.”
Great. Wonderful
.
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait at the Rock Pool?” he asked. “That’s surely where Spear will be heading next.”
“No … not there,” she hissed. “Spear’s not coming here. He won’t be leaving Masada because Penny Royal is going to him.” She paused … to consider? “I need to arrange a new rendezvous with Morgan. We’re going to need some serious firepower for the endgame.”
“And where will that be?”
“Masada.”
Trent felt himself relax into weary acceptance. There was something liberating about being certain of the time and location of your own death.
SVERL
Sverl felt very disappointed and just a little bit hurt. Didn’t Isobel Satomi understand how close he and she were? Didn’t she understand their fellow feeling?
He squatted in his sanctum and contemplated her reaction to him. Their verbal communication had been brief and pointless, but communication on other levels had held whole encyclopaedias of meaning. He had sent her his life story and his questions in one informational missile, and it punched through all her defences to then unravel. He knew she could handle the data with her haiman augmentations, and he thought she would understand. The bounce-back had been interesting, since his programs had rooted out much detail on her life and sent it back to him. Then all was overwhelmed by a surge of emotion: an insane rage undershot with human terror.
Now, mentally riffling through portions of Isobel’s life story, Sverl understood part of her reaction. Her early years, in human terms, had been traumatic. She had been powerless when she saw her family slaughtered, then powerless in drug-dependent sexual slavery and only climbed to power as a mafia whore. By penetrating her defences so easily, Sverl had made her powerless again, hence her human reaction of fear. However, her rage was something else, human on its surface but driven by what she was becoming. Next reaching the more recent parts of her life, Sverl divined her intentions. She intended to hunt
both
Spear and Penny Royal—her hooder element overriding the rational human in her.
Sverl clattered his mandibles in frustration. He wanted to pursue her to see if she had some insight, or some answers he needed. He could, in an instant, because she had failed to adequately shield her drive. He also wanted to go after the source of all his … confusion: Penny Royal. However, he could do neither. Penny Royal had saved his life, but in repayment he knew he must protect Carapace City. He had no doubt that Cvorn and the Five had left watchers in that system and if he left they would return here to finish it off. He was stuck here for now.
Even as he considered his dilemma, it got a little less complex when it became evident where Isobel was headed. He couldn’t go there. No matter what his need for resolution with Penny Royal and regardless of his intense curiosity about Isobel. The Polity AIs on Masada would not respond well to a prador dreadnought approaching their territory, especially near a world occupied by a resurrected Atheter. There were probably assets in place around that world capable of defending it against an entire war fleet. He would be vapour before he even had a chance to explain.
A visit there would also be suicide for Isobel but now, knowing more about her and what she had become, Sverl doubted that would stop her. He emitted a pradorish sigh, accepting that his curiosity about her was unlikely to be satisfied. He then sent a repeating U-space communication—a general instruction that his Golem would receive the next time Isobel’s ship entered the real. It was a survivor, that one, so it would know what to do.
It was also unlikely that Penny Royal would stay on Masada. The AI was on the move, set on some unfathomable course that Sverl doubted would limit it to one world. It must eventually go where Sverl could intercept it without running into Polity firepower. What to do?
His tentative communication to a Rock Pool target was met with an immediate response. “Well that could have gone better, and it could have gone a lot worse,” said the Polity drone down there.
“I will need to leave,” said Sverl, “but if I go, then Cvorn might come back.”
“True enough,” said the drone. “When members of your erstwhile kind are on the losing side they love the opportunity to resort to spite. I’d bet the farm that Cvorn is checking feeds from watch satellites and sensors scattered all over this system even now.”
“This world needs to be protected,” said Sverl. “Can’t the Polity do something?”
“As you well know, Polity or prador intervention in the Graveyard is frowned upon,” said the drone. “If Polity forces were to turn up here, then your king would have to respond, by which time the turd trajectory would be fanwards.”
It took Sverl a moment to sort out
that
strange colloquialism, his thoughts straying to the strange human obsession with certain bodily functions.
“But prador forces are here already,” he said in annoyance.
“Renegade prador,” said the drone, “who are private individuals with no allegiance to the Kingdom. Just like the private individual humans down here, with their lack of allegiance to the Polity.”
Sverl contemplated giving up on them as he had, effectively, before. He couldn’t. Penny Royal had protected Carapace City and if Sverl left it, to go after some vague resolution from the black AI, its response might not be so good. Sverl glanced at one of his screens, now showing a cloud of debris spreading equilaterally around the planet. It was visible from below as periodic meteor flashes—all that remained of that moon.
“But don’t you fret,” said the drone. “I’m sure your strange need to get close to something even I might get nightmares about will be satisfied.”
How did the drone know about that?
“What do you mean?”
“Consider the situation,” said the drone. “Penny Royal came here to resolve the problematic situation caused by transforming you. I now suspect it’s in the process of resolving another problematic situation, one caused by the changes it made to Isobel Satomi.”
“You are being obscure.”
“I don’t have all the data—my updates from the Polity and elsewhere are limited as I might be captured out here. However, I do know that Thorvald Spear is himself a Penny Royal creation. He hired Isobel Satomi to take him to the AI’s destroyer, betrayed her and wrecked her drive—actions certain to put her hard on his tail. Penny Royal then went and repaired her drive. Later, after the events here, it went into an unshielded jump to Masada, where Spear is located.”
“You’re still being obscure.”
“I can’t really be clearer. Penny Royal will know, down to the nth degree, the extent of Isobel’s changes and how she will react. It’s leading her to the kind of resolution you yourself seek.”
“And still seek,” said Sverl, still not sure he understood what the drone was suggesting. “You said my need will surely be satisfied?”
“It will, but meanwhile you must stay here to deal with Cvorn, who will undoubtedly hatch some plot to extract vengeance from you—by annihilating the people down here.”
“And I must also deal with the Five,” Sverl added.
“No, not the Five—you do them an injustice,” said the drone. “You also haven’t been checking your data.”
Sverl was dumbfounded for a moment, then did some verifying. In just a moment he discovered what the drone was implying. The two prador destroyers had emergency U-jumped out of this system in different directions. Cvorn’s jump had taken him in towards the Polity, while the Five’s had taken them towards the Kingdom.
“You have further data?” Sverl asked.
“I have. The emergency U-jumps took both ships six light years away. The Five jumped again—heading straight into the Kingdom and almost certainly looking for females.”