War Factory: Transformations Book Two (21 page)

“Anything?” I asked.

“I’m still scanning,” said Flute grumpily, still out of sorts after our near-encounter with Sverl’s dreadnought.

“But no sign of Sverl—I thought he would be here ahead of us.”

“Don’t forget that chameleonware,” said Riss.

I felt stupid because I had forgotten the chameleonware, and had half expected Sverl to have materialized here and gone straight in to attack whatever he found. But Sverl wasn’t really prador any more, so would certainly approach this situation with more caution. He was probably somewhere close by, out here with us, I thought.

I continued to stare at the images presented but started fidgeting and felt impatient.

“The problem out here,” I said, “is that you’re passive-scanning stuff that’s an hour out of date. We really ought to move in closer.”

“A-a-dvise against . . . that,” said Flute, as if speaking the words actually caused him pain. “My kind can be . . . tricky.”

I glanced at Riss, who simultaneously swung her head round to gaze at me, then blinked open her black eye. This wasn’t for me. I guessed she was now inspecting Flute’s activities very closely.

I too paid closer attention, feeling there was something wrong about Flute. Data I had previously only been casually looking at I now reviewed and inspected more carefully. In a short while, I found something. Studying neutron flows, Flute had found an object deep in that world’s ocean but had then seemingly decided not to examine that data closely, and instead widen his search. He was now focusing intently on a particular land mass as if sure it concealed something lethal. I was about to mention this, but Riss communicated with me directly through my aug.

“
Flute just sent a U-space transmission,
” she said. “
From what I could catch, it looked like a situational update.
”

“
What do you reckon?
” I asked.

“
It’s the father-captain. He gave the second-child mind crystal augmentation. I suspect Flute’s loyalties are not all they should be.
”

“
But then you would say that.
”

“
I am just speculating on the data,
” said Riss sniffily. “
Who else could Flute be updating?
”

“
Penny Royal?
”

“
Possible, if the AI got to him, but unlikely. Penny Royal already has its spy aboard.
”

Riss was of course referring to the spine and its other connections elsewhere. Again, here was proof that I could trust nothing that Penny Royal had or might have touched. I dithered, wondering what the hell to do, then decided on direct confrontation.

“Flute,” I said, “it seems you have found Cvorn’s destroyer and have neglected to inform me.”

“The scans are not clear,” said Flute.

“That neutrino lensing effect looks very much to me to be the kind you would get from a functional but inactive U-space drive.”

“There could be . . . something . . . else,” Flute managed.

“Flute, who did you send that situational update to?”

After a very long pause, my ship mind replied, “I . . . cannot.”

“Were you, or are you, in communication with Father-Captain Sverl?”

Again, the long pause then, “I cannot.”

“You have scanned that world and found nothing but that object down at the bottom of the ocean,” I said. “You are just completing your scans of the moons and they are just rocks.”

“I suspect . . .”

A prador destroyer down at the bottom of that ocean was no danger to us. It would take time to drive itself to the surface and the only weapons it possessed that could be effective against us from down there were missiles, which would also take time to surface. We could be gone from here long before they became a problem. However, I couldn’t ignore Flute’s painfully expressed fear. And there was something else I couldn’t ignore. I turned to Riss.

“Presupposing Cvorn is aiming to capture Sverl and present him as evidence of Polity perfidy to his Kingdom allies,” I said, “I have to wonder how he’d manage it.”

“This has been something of concern,” said Riss.

I continued, “Sverl is aboard a dreadnought. Cvorn just has a destroyer . . .”

“I can only suppose that Cvorn is acting as bait for Sverl, and that the moment he knows the father-captain is here he’ll send a signal to bring in his allies. The present position of his destroyer is a good one if he intends to delay Sverl. It would take many days for Sverl to either safely destroy it down there or root it out, which might be enough time for those allies to get here.”

“Safely?”

“He can do the job a lot quicker if he enters the ocean, but a multitude of traps might be concealed down there: dormant torpedoes and mines are easier to conceal in brine.”

So, Cvorn was in fact here, but Cvorn was not what this was all about. My priority was to keep tabs on Sverl, who I hoped might lead me to Penny Royal. In fact, it occurred to me that the best option to my ends would be to talk to that father-captain. I pondered this for a moment, then something else occurred to me.

“Flute, why did you use a U-space transmission to update Sverl?”

Flute made a sound like a duck trying to quack through a glued-together beak.

“One would suppose,” I said, “that if Sverl was here concealed under chameleonware, then some other form of communication would be easier.”

“Sverl isn’t here,” said Riss.

“That would be my guess,” I agreed. “I think we should withdraw and check other sources for data.”

Via my aug, I also sent to Riss, “
I also think we should disconnect Flute and take a long, hard look at his protocols.
”

“
Agreed,
” Riss replied. “
Never trusted the little fucker.
”

“
If necessary, can you adapt yourself to running a U-space drive?
”

“
If necessary, yes.
”

“Flute,” I said out loud, while checking data in my aug, “take us to Golon. I understand it is the nearest inhabited world.”

“I . . .” Flute managed, then began emitting a sound like an angry wasp trapped in a tin can.

“
Another U-space communication,
” said Riss.

It took much longer than was entirely necessary for Flute to fire up our U-space drive. I strapped myself in, just in case, as I remembered someone dying in circumstances quite similar to this. But it was the unwelcome visitor aboard that dead victim’s ship that had killed him, while the object he had been cautiously heading away from had been Penny Royal’s planetoid.

Flute took us under, the screen fabric turning grey, then flaring back to life with a world looming large before us. That had just been too quick, and I knew the world I was seeing was not Golon, but the oceanic world hiding Cvorn’s destroyer.

“You fucker,” said Riss out loud, whipping round and heading for the door so fast she was a blur. Before she reached it, the bulkhead door slammed shut and locks clonked ominously into place.

“You are obeying your father-captain’s orders, aren’t you, Flute?” I said.

“Zzzzt,” Flute replied.

“Sverl is using us as a probe to gather information, isn’t he?”

“Zzzt.”

Meanwhile there came a crack from over by the door. I glanced over to see that Riss had driven her ovipositor into the wall beside it, had levered the cover off the palm control and was now working inside it with those small limbs usually folded below her hood. It occurred to me that right now Riss probably regretted keeping such an ineffectual body form.

Now more closely linked into my ship’s systems than ever, I felt the hardfields flicking into existence out there and shifting in random patterns. Flute went immediately from passive scanning to active, firing a laser at the sea over that neutrino lensing effect to read vibrations from the surface, probing deep with an X-ray laser for reflections from hardfields or super-dense matter, rattling through other spectrums of EMR to capture whatever lay below. In seconds, in a frame down in one corner of the screen fabric, an image was building, identifiable as a prador destroyer.

“If he wasn’t aware of our presence a moment ago,” I said, “he is now.”

Flute’s response to that was to fire a sensor probe down towards that ocean. I didn’t need any more confirmation: we were Sverl’s sacrificial goat. This Cvorn, who hated the Polity, might be unable to bear such close inspection without making some response, especially as it would be evident to him that the one doing the inspecting was aboard a Polity destroyer. We were either here to lure Cvorn out so Sverl could attack, or merely here to uncover Cvorn’s plans.

Then we were into U-space again—just a brief flicker, in and out. The world was suddenly closer, and next something slammed into us, the screen fabric whiting out, grav fluctuating and something exploding inside the ship. I guessed we had just lost a hardfield projector.

“He’s killed us,” said Riss.

The screen fabric came back on just as our fusion drive fired up, the massive acceleration hardly compensated for by internal grav. I replayed exterior cam views in my mind, saw one of the planet’s moons revolve towards us what looked like a city of weapons inset in a cavity on its surface, and a particle beam lancing out.

ISOBEL SATOMI

Isobel Satomi sat up in her bed and stretched. She felt good, really good, and as she tossed back the heat sheet and swung her legs over the side of the mattress, her mind was utterly clear. This was unexpected, but only in this moment because just prior to it she must have been static data stored in crystal lattices. She remembered that Penny Royal had recorded her to Trent’s sapphire earring, that she had chosen to leave the body of the hooder she had been residing in. But where was that earring now? Who had resurrected her in this familiar virtuality?

She stood up and walked over to gaze at herself in her screen, which was now on its mirror setting. She was beautiful, as she had once been, and she wondered if she would again have to endure the rapid transformation to ugliness prior to her acceptance of her change into a hooder. She ran her fingers through her black hair, down her neck, and down to cup her breasts. This was what she wanted: just to live in this body again. She slid her hands over her flat stomach, ran her fingers down through her pubic hair and probed one finger into her vagina. The feeling was so intense she quickly snatched her hand away, reminded of the times far in the past when she had touched herself like this while standing before some client. She really didn’t want to perform for some voyeur now. Turning away, she walked over to her wardrobe, opened it and took out underwear and pulled it on, then donned tight black trousers, a pink cotton blouse and sandals, then took some time brushing her hair and applying just a little eyeliner, before selecting a couple of skin-stick ear studs—purple diamonds to match her eyes. But what now?

Maybe Trent had decided to bring her back to life? Or maybe the sapphire earring had passed from his ownership long ago. Perhaps some private individual had powered her up and she was now functioning in a time beyond the Polity?

“Okay, I’m ready,” she said out loud.

With an ominous click, her cabin door unlocked. She turned towards it, walked over and stepped out into a corridor that had definitely not been part of the
Moray Firth
. Here was a big oval tunnel the shape of those found inside prador vessels, only this one had no artificial rock on the walls, no luminous growths and no lice. She turned to the right and began walking, relishing the feeling of walking upright again, like a human, and not scuttling along on numerous limbs with her belly to the floor. Finally, she came to the large diagonally divided door into a captain’s sanctum. The halves of this rolled aside and disappeared into the walls, but within she could see nothing but darkness. She hesitated.

Did the prador fire up human memplants and venture into virtualities? Had her crystal fallen into the claws of those horrors and, if so, what could they possibly want with her? There was only one way to find out. Obviously, whoever controlled this unreal world was giving her some latitude. But that person wanted something from her too, whether that was to torment her or make her run through endless insane scenarios. She had no power to stop it. She walked slowly into the darkness. Under her feet, she felt the floor become uneven, then her sandals crunched on gravel. Ahead of her, a line etched itself into existence and she smelled the sea. The area above the line abruptly grew lighter, picking out deep blue-grey clouds against a pale sky, the glare of a rising sun keeping everything below in dark silhouette.

“Well, this is unexpected,” said a voice.

The bloated red orb of a sun rose rapidly then slowed above the horizon, while below it heaved a violet sea. Directly ahead lay a beach of rough white sand, upon which waves slopped gently. She heard the cry of something that definitely wasn’t a gull. Checking to her left, she saw an arid landscape scattered with occasional rose-shaped pale green succulents growing at the bases of granite rocks, which stretched into haze and distant spiky peaks. To her right this same landscape rose up to a low hill upon which tall ferns clustered like an encroaching army. In front of her, seated on a rock by the shore, was a man. She walked towards him.

“What is unexpected?” she asked.

The man raised his gaze from inspecting his open hands and looked at her. He was blond, his hair short-cropped, and his eyes were blue. He was pretty enough in his way but didn’t bulk very much in his silly patterned shorts and sleeveless top, and was nowhere near the masculine ideal Isobel preferred.

“How it feels to be really human,” he replied, his voice soft and non-threatening. He reached down and picked up a rock, held it tight in his hand then released it.

Isobel thought about his statement and asked, “Are you an AI slumming it in this virtuality as a human?”

“Partially,” he said, grimacing.

“Haiman?”

“Of a sort.”

“What do you want from me?”

Now he looked sad. “I have studied your entire life, Isobel. I know why you became what you became, and the drivers behind your every action. I was fascinated at first but in the process found a growing abhorrence because, in studying the detail and all the interconnections, one comes to understand that the very concept of choice is a false one.”