War Factory: Transformations Book Two
Praise for
Dark Intelligence
“Beautifully paced . . . does just as well as at slam-bang action scenes as at painting frightening pictures . . . This is space opera at a high peak of craftsmanship.” —
Publishers Weekly
, starred review
“What Asher delivers here is state-of-the-art SF on so many levels . . . a compelling, smart read.” —Paul Di Filippo,
Locus
“Blends large portions of horror and mystery into an SF tale of revenge and redemption . . . a complex and satisfying work.”
—
Library Journal
, starred review
“An exciting, intricate, and unabashedly futuristic story rife with twists and turns . . . Asher returns to his popular far-future series, Polity Universe, with another fast-paced space opera filled with his trademark technological marvels and elaborate world building.” —
Booklist
“A revenge story with plenty of meat on its bones . . . the multifaceted, complex storytelling rewards a dedicated reader with serious tension and mindblowing sci-fi thrills.” —
Manhattan Book Review
“Hardboiled, fast-paced space opera epic . . . Asher’s books are similar to the world of Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe, but the Polity is arguably a much darker and more vicious environment—and all the better for it.”
—
The Register
“Perpetually on the knife’s edge, and this constant tension works wonders for creating a page-turning atmosphere. It’s a damningly gripping and infecting book.” —
Upcoming4.me
“A superb novel and Asher has an amazing talent for world-building, for writing larger-than-life characters, for weaving gripping plots and for imagining exotic alien races and wonderful technologies. Huge ships! Big weapons! Space battles! Ground battles! Treason! Revenge! This is New Space Opera at its best.” —
Sense of Wonder
“One of his best works so far . . . Asher is a modern master of sci-fi.”
—
Starburst
magazine
“[The Polity books] are SF novels that mix early cyberpunk’s insouciance with the widescreen baroque spectacle of space opera and the pacing of an airport action-thriller. But even by Neal Asher’s standards, there’s something particularly grisly about
Dark Intelligence
.” —
SFX
BY NEAL ASHER
Cowl
AGENT CORMAC
Shadow of the Scorpion
Gridlinked
The Line of Polity
Brass Man
Polity Agent
Line War
SPATTERJAY
The Skinner
The Voyage of the Sable Keech
Orbus
NOVELS OF THE POLITY
Prador Moon
Hilldiggers
The Technician
TRANSFORMATION
Dark Intelligence
War Factory
THE OWNER
The Departure
Zero Point
Jupiter War
SHORT-STORY COLLECTIONS
Runcible Tales
The Engineer
The Gabble
NOVELLAS
The Parasite
Mindgames: Fool’s Mate
WAR
FACTORY
TRANSFORMATION
BOOK TWO
NEAL ASHER
Night Shade Books
an imprint of Start Publishing
JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 2016 by Neal Asher
Published in the United Kingdom by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Night Shade Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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[email protected]
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®
is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
®
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Visit our website at
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Asher, Neal L., 1961- author.
Title: War factory / Neal Asher.
Description: New York : Night Shade Books, [2016] | Series: Transformation; book 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050041 | ISBN 9781597808347 (hardback) Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6101.S54 W37 2016 | DDC 823/.92--dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050041
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-834-7
eISBN: 978-1-59780-598-8
Cover artwork by Adam Burn
Cover design by Claudia Noble
Printed in the United States of America
Composer Steve Buick has created an album of original music inspired by
War Factory.
This background music has been designed to enhance the reading experience, to be enjoyed while reading the book itself. Using long, deeply dark soundscape layers—to complement the story’s atmosphere—he aims to add another dimension of reading without distracting from the action. The music can accompany any section of the book and is available from Amazon, iTunes and other digital music stores worldwide. Find out more at
www.evokescape.com
.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to those who have helped bring this novel to your E-reader, smart phone, computer screen and to that old-fashioned mass of wood pulp called a book, including Adam Burn for his eye-catching cover image, Bella Pagan for her copious structural and character notes and Bruno Vincent for further editing.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
PENNY ROYAL (THE BLACK AI)
An artificial intelligence constructed in Factory Station Room 101, during the Polity war against the prador. Its crystal mind was faulty, burdened with emotions it could not encompass when it was hurled into the heat of battle. Running the destroyer that it named
Puling Child
, it fought and survived, then annihilated eight thousand troops on its own side before going AWOL. It changed into something dark then—a swarm robot whose integrated form was like a giant sea urchin. Blacklisted by the Polity for ensuing atrocities, it based itself in the Graveyard—a borderland created between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom after the war. There it continued its evil games, offering transformations for the right price, but ones that were never good for the recipients. It was nearly destroyed in a deal that went wrong. Later restored to function by the scorpion war drone Amistad, it apparently became a good AI . . . But now the black AI is on the move again, its plans obscure and its actions often devastating. It is regarded by the Polity as a paradigm-changing threat.
THORVALD SPEAR
Resurrected from a recording of his own mind, a hundred years after the war, he is the only survivor of the eight thousand troops slaughtered by Penny Royal on the planet Panarchia. He resolved to have his revenge on the AI and to that end sought out its old destroyer, whose location he had learned during the war. Taking command of it, he set out in search of the rogue AI. During this search he discovered that his very desire for vengeance had been created by Penny Royal, for it had tampered with his memories. Nevertheless his quest is reinforced by an artefact he found aboard the destroyer—one of Penny Royal’s spines. It is downloading memories of its victims into his mind. He now believes he is the instrument the AI created for its own destruction.
RISS
An assassin drone and terror weapon. Made in Room 101 in the shape of a prador parasite which has a passing resemblance to a cobra, her purpose was to inject prador with parasite eggs, spreading infection and terror amidst them. The end of the war meant she lost her purpose for being and, while searching for a new purpose, lost even more when she encountered Penny Royal. Thorvald Spear found her somnolent and bereft near the AI’s home base in the Graveyard. She now accompanies him in his quest for vengeance.
SVERL
A prador who disagreed with the new king’s decision to make peace with the Polity. He went renegade and hid out with other prador of similar mind in the Graveyard. He could not understand how it was possible that the prador had started to lose against weak humans and their detestable AIs. He sought understanding of this conundrum from Penny Royal, but got more than he bargained for. Penny Royal initiated his transformation into a grotesque amalgam of prador, human and AI, so he could better understand each. Now he seeks some resolution to his situation and feels only the black AI can provide it.
CVORN
Another prador who joined Sverl in exile. Upon discovering Sverl’s transformation, he allied with other prador to attack him. During a planetary battle he put the shell people of that world—humans who are worshipfully trying to turn themselves into prador—in danger. The attempt failed and Cvorn fled, but he still remains a danger to Sverl and the shell people Sverl has chosen to protect.
CAPTAIN BLITE
A trader whose business edges into illegality. During a deal that turned sour he encountered Penny Royal, who killed his crew. His second encounter with the AI was when it used him and his ship as an escape from the world of Masada. With his ship under the control of the black AI, Blite has witnessed its obscure business in the Graveyard and elsewhere and come to realize that it may be correcting past wrongs. After recognizing this, he and his crew were abandoned again on Masada, but the advanced technology left aboard their ship (not to mention their first-hand knowledge of Penny Royal) means they are now of great interest to the Polity AIs. Blite also feels in his gut that his business with Penny Royal is not yet done . . .
GLOSSARY
Atheter
— One of the millions of long-dead races, recently revived. It was discovered that the gabbleducks of the planet Masada were the devolved descendants of the Atheter. This race chose to sacrifice its civilization and intelligence to escape the millennia of wars resulting from its discovery of Jain technology.
augmented
— To be “augmented” is to have taken advantage of one or more of the many available cybernetic devices, mechanical additions and, distinctly, cerebral augmentations. In the last case we have, of course, the ubiquitous “aug” and such back-formations as “auged,” “auging-in,” and the execrable “all auged up.” But it does not stop there: the word “aug” has now become confused with auger and augur—which is understandable considering the way an aug connects and the information that then becomes available. So now you can “auger” information from the AI net, and a prediction made by an aug prognostic subprogram can be called an augury.
—From
Quince Guide
, compiled by humans
first- and second-children
— Chemically maintained in adolescence at the end of growth spurts, and consequently shed their carapaces on their way to adulthood.
Golem
— Androids produced by a company Cybercorp—a ceramal chassis usually enclosed in a syntheflesh and syntheskin outer layer. These humanoid robots are very tough, fast and, since they possess AI, very smart.
haiman
— An amalgam of human and AI.
hooder
— A creature like a giant centipede of the planet Masada. It was discovered that they were the devolved descendants of biomech war machines created by the Atheter throughout their millennia of civil wars.
Jain technology
— A technology spanning all scientific disciplines. Created by one of the dead races—the Jain—its sum purpose is to spread through civilizations and annihilate them.
nanosuite
— A suite of nano-machines most human beings have inside them. These self-propagating machines act as a secondary immune system, repairing and adjusting the body. Each suite can be adjusted to suit the individual and his or her circumstances.
nascuff
— A device that can externally adjust a person’s nanosuite to suit their sexual inclination. It is mainly worn to advertise sexual availability or otherwise. When the libido of the one wearing it is shut down the cuff is red. When they are sexually active it is blue.
Polity
— A human/AI dominion extending across many star systems, occupying a spherical space spanning the thickness of the galaxy and centred on Earth. It is ruled over by the AIs who took control of human affairs in what has been called, because of its very low casualty rate, the Quiet War. The top AI is called Earth Central and resides in a building on the shore of Lake Geneva, while planetary AIs, lower down in the hierarchy, rule over other worlds. The Polity is a highly technical civilization but its weakness was its reliance on travel by “runcible”—instantaneous matter transmission gates. This weakness was exploited by the prador.