Line War (16 page)

Surrounding this hologram, on every inner face of the chamber, were gravplated surfaces. On the one Azroc now strode out upon were concentric rings of consoles occupied by humans, Golem and haimen. Two other inner faces, or floors, were similarly occupied, while others were empty or occupied by only one or two figures. Throughout this chamber, holographic ship avatars appeared and disappeared, as conferences were conducted on the physical as well as the virtual level. Massive quantities of information were being shunted back and forth, and then acted upon: ship movements, defensive capabilities of vulnerable worlds, weapons-manufacturing statistics - the whole complex logistical web of this current Line war.

Earth Central and all the high-level AIs within the Polity had been preparing for something like this, but at present it was still considered a ‘local matter’. For Erebus had attacked a fleet
outside
the Polity and until now had shown no sign of doing anything else. No one quite knew what Erebus intended, for its actions thus far had seemed rather illogical. Remembering friends who had died, Azroc did not look upon the matter so coolly. Indeed, Azroc the Golem had discovered emotion within himself, welling up from somewhere below emulation, when he had found his friend roasted in a shuttle that had not even managed to escape the bay of the dreadnought
Brutal Blade
during Erebus’s assault.

‘So something has happened at last?’ he enquired of the air.

‘Certainly,’ Jerusalem replied.

‘And why am I here?’ Azroc asked.

‘You are here for your input.’

‘Really.’

Azroc knew himself to be substantially more intelligent and much faster of thought than any base-level human. He also knew that most humans viewed Jerusalem as something almost supernal and beyond understanding. It was all about orders of magnitude really: humans to Jerusalem were as fleas to an elephant, whereas Azroc placed his own elevation at about that of a cockroach. And now Jerusalem wanted his input? Azroc would have laughed if he hadn’t totally misplaced his sense of humour aboard the
Brutal Blade.

The Golem again scanned about visually, then accessed fragments of what was happening on a virtual level. He noted that Jerusalem had assigned about one per cent of its processing power to him alone, and was further bewildered by that, for one per cent of such a giant AI was a huge amount. Why, then, did Jerusalem think Azroc’s input was important? He was, after all, just one Golem of many, with an AI mind outclassed by thousands of others already aboard this vessel. Azroc tried applying for access to information and processing power on deeper levels, but found himself blocked. After a moment of chagrin he finally worked out what was going on here: he was merely a sounding board for Jerusalem, perhaps one of many scattered about this chamber. He decided not to resent that as he disconnected from virtuality.

‘What is the situation thus far?’ he asked aloud, like any unaugmented human.

‘We prepare for conflict but don’t know where or what form it will take,’ Jerusalem replied.

‘Any idea of where Erebus is now?’

‘We have tracked down certain parts of the entity . . .’

‘Those being?’

‘Perhaps you should head for the big screen to your left?’

Azroc looked over at the adjacent floor of the Hedron, angling up from this one. Positioned upon it was a blank ten-foot-square screen, next to a platform composed of metal gratings upon which had been bolted a single empty chair and beside which stood a Golem hand interface - a narrow pillar topped by a sphere inset with the imprint of a skeletal hand. He strode over, stepping across the join between floors, and mounted the platform to head for the seat. Once ensconced there he felt a moment’s annoyance: here he was, just another component slotted into place in whatever machine Jerusalem was creating.

‘One of Erebus’s wormships attacked the planet Cull, where it destroyed all the human-sleer hybrids,’ Jerusalem informed him, as the screen began showing these same events.

Azroc frowned, then sent internal instructions to his syntheskin covering. The skin of his right hand internally detached itself, wrinkled for a moment, then puffed up, a split opening around the wrist. From this split he stripped off the syntheskin layer, like a fleshy glove, to reveal the gleaming skeletal hand underneath, which he then placed in the imprint in the sphere. After a moment, a connection established through the pseudo-nerves in his hand: it was a simple two-way connection, not a multitasking link. Through this he could either receive or request information from the AI, but no more than that. Jerusalem was deliberately isolating him from the webworks of data exchange all around, making him a devil’s advocate, someone with a divorced point of view -oversight without involvement. This was a technique often used by AIs when dealing with complicated situations. Jerusalem clearly wanted another point of view, maybe someone who could see the wood rather than the trees.

An information packet suddenly arrived, and it felt like his hand was burning until he applied translation programs to the stream of data coming up through his finger nerves. It simply detailed the events at Cull, but without any interpretation of them.

‘An attack either to mislead or to remove a danger,’ he announced. ‘But how could the hybrids be a danger to Erebus?’

‘There is evidence that they would show the same resistance to being hijacked by Jain-tech as dracomen do.’

‘I see. And were the dracomen similarly attacked?’

Another information packet came through detailing the worm-ship attack on Masada.

‘I would say that Erebus feels it has resources to squander,’ said Azroc.

The pause before Jerusalem’s reply was infinitesimal, but it nevertheless gave the Golem some satisfaction.

‘Why do you say that?’ Jerusalem’s question, of course, was a politeness, for in that minuscule pause the AI would have already worked out Azroc’s reasoning. However, the Golem then experienced a brief moment of confusion, for surely Jerusalem should have worked this out a microsecond after the first attack by Erebus. Was the AI now playing the kind of games with him it usually reserved for humans? What was its purpose in pretending to only understand this matter now? Azroc did not know and felt even more like a mere cockroach.

‘After its attack upon the hybrids,’ he said, ‘Erebus should have known we would work out exactly where it would strike next. It should also have known the precise disposition of Polity ships in the area, and realized what the level of our response would be. Obviously you yourself will be able to make a more accurate calculation than I can, but I would reckon the chances of success of the second attack, with just one ship, were little better than 50 per cent, with a somewhere above 90 per cent chance of the wormship being destroyed whether it was successful or not. Erebus was clearly prepared to sacrifice one of its ships with those odds, therefore has ships to squander. But then I saw that during the attack on the Polity fleet.’

Yet another information packet arrived. Azroc studied it and was puzzled.

‘Perhaps this was intended to draw your eye away from its other two attacks? Or perhaps the other two attacks were to draw your eye away from this one? Certainly there could be no special resistance to Jain-tech on a world like that.’

Jerusalem now informed him, ‘I have received a transmission from the agent investigating this incident. It would seem that a legate landed on that world . . .’

The screen now showed an image file of the said legate, first at the city of Hammon then later at the ranch house where it murdered the two humans.

‘Who were they?’ Azroc asked.

‘We do not yet know. Evidence of their identities was deliberately erased.’

‘I see. And the wormship, it escaped?’

‘There was nothing there to prevent its attack or to stop it leaving.’

Very puzzling, all of this, but then the actions of this Erebus had been puzzling from the very start. He tried to make some sense out of all this. That many more-powerful minds than his own, with greater access to processing power and numerous data sources, were working on the same problem did not impinge. They would all be thinking in a very similar way, while he, being outside their box, would have to think there.

‘The wormship at Masada was destroyed. The one at Cull was severely damaged but it escaped - so did you track it down?’ he asked.

‘It was dealt with,’ the AI replied curtly. ‘I was considering sending a mission there to see if any useful information could be obtained.’

‘I doubt it.’ Azroc tried to stay outside that box. ‘Anything else there?’

‘Nothing relevant.’

‘So what else do you have?’

Now the screen divided into four, first showing four distinct suns - bar codes along the bottom of each screen division giving their spectra - then next flicking to various positions in those relevant solar systems. The first showed the face of a gas giant, a swarm of fifty wormships drifting across it in silhouette. The second showed a similar number of ships scattered throughout an asteroid field. In the third they were orbiting a gas giant, and in the fourth they formed a ring around a small hot planetoid in close orbit about a sun.

‘These four squadrons of wormships have been discovered, so far, and resources are already being moved into place to counter them. They appear to form part of a general pattern of attack.’

‘If you could elaborate?’

‘The fourth of these to be discovered was only found by making predictions from the first three. The first three were all located near inner Line worlds with human populations above one billion, and all within a hemispherical section of the border a thousand light years across.’

‘Again this makes little sense . . . unless you go back to supposing that Erebus is careless of resources, and therefore considers its forces so overwhelming that conventional logistics and battle plans are irrelevant.’

‘Ah,’ said Jerusalem. ‘Even as we speak another group of fifty wormships has been discovered within the border area.’

The screen divisions disappeared to be replaced by an image of wormships hurtling through void, only stars visible behind them. The point of view tracked them for a while, then the picture whited out, and the clip returned to the start.

‘A watch station, now no longer able to watch,’ observed Jerusalem, adding, ‘And more.’

The screen again divided, this time into six views including those Azroc had seen first. The extra two views were of the one he had just observed and another showing wormships tumbling above a regolith horizon. Then came further divisions. Azroc watched as the original views were consigned to the left-hand upper comer of the big screen, as more and more came in. Within half an hour there were eighteen confirmed sightings, and Polity vessels were searching for more - for it seemed a certainty there would be more.

‘They’re not attacking?’ he finally queried.

‘I really wish I could answer yes to that,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘However, bombardment of at least two worlds has already commenced.’

* * * *

Vulture perched on the console of the
Harpy.
Both Vulture and this ship’s AI had been named after winged beasts (though of course only Vulture itself had truly become one), but such a similarity in names was nearly the only common ground they shared. Despite his present form as a bird, Vulture could still communicate on AI levels, and of course had tried striking up a conversation with Harpy.

Easier to strike up a conversation with an abacus.

Vulture had once been the AI of a little ship like this one, owned by similarly dubious characters but, by contrast with the thing controlling this vessel, Vulture had been a Polity AI with a powerful and complex mind and some vague adherence to Polity principles.

‘So how are you doing?’

‘Question object confusion.’

‘Erm . . . been anywhere interesting lately?’

‘Back formation supposed: Have you. Interest irrelevant.’

Vulture began to get some inkling of what he was dealing with here. ‘What are you?’

‘Prador Control System Apex 45 Gorland.’

Ah, so - whether this ship’s control system was a genuine AI was a debatable point. Such systems were what the Prador enemy had used to control the U-space engines in all their ships. Basically, they took one of their own first-children and cut out its brain and a large chunk of its nerve tissue, which they wired into the ship itself. Substantial reprogramming of this offspring’s living brain ensued, followed by a freezing process. The resulting mind could think within limited parameters, it could store up memories and experiences within the narrow remit allowed, but the Prador would never allow it to grow outside that remit. Despite this limitation, Vulture decided to keep trying to communicate with Apex 45 Gorland to bring it out of its shell, so to speak, since the other occupant of this particular craft was even less communicative.

Vulture had already tried to discover how Mr Crane had managed to trace that downed wormship. He suspected the Golem somehow had access to the Polity AI nets - past evidence seemed to suggest so.

The ECS personnel on Cull had been much surprised when Crane and Vulture entered the runcible facility being constructed there. Ignoring the swiftly dying protests of the technicians - the runcible AI having ordered them, for their own health, to back off - Crane had input some coordinates into the runcible and then stepped up to the cusp. Vulture hurriedly landed on the Golem’s shoulder as he stepped through. Their subsequent arrival on another Line world, and then transport on a rickety shuttle to a smaller world in the same system, had been . . . interesting. But how had Crane known about the arms deal going down? Vulture could only suppose that the Golem not only had access to the nets, but to secure levels of them too, either that or Polity AIs were colluding in the Golem’s crusade.