War Factory: Transformations Book Two (30 page)

A saw went in—the smell of powdered carapace filling the air. He felt various tugs and wished he could close out the squelching sounds that followed. Something thudded to the floor and one of the blanks picked this up and carried it away while the other continued to prepare the socket. Unable to resist, Cvorn now did a status check. He saw through the eyes of the blank behind as it installed nano-nerve interfaces in the large dripping hole in his back end. He saw through the eyes of the other blank as it carried away a chunk of shell with a fleshy mass behind, trailing veins and thread nerves. The face of this shell had indentations where the two injector prongs and coitus clamp had once resided. Cvorn’s worn-out and useless sexual organs were destined for disposal.

The work continued for some while, the second blank returning with cold preserved cartridges of Cvorn’s seed. These it emptied into an artificial testicle and it installed this where his old shrivelled item had been. Meanwhile the young male he’d summoned arrived outside the sanctum door and just settled there—terrified to be at such a location but unable to flee.

“Vrom, come in now,” Cvorn instructed.

The socket was ready and the blanks moving back to stand against the wall. Vrom entered, atomic shear generators fitted to the bases of his claws, the glimmer of their output visible along the internal edges of those claws. Cvorn knew that with these devices Vrom could remove the limbs from any prador in just a few minutes. When the young adult was in here, and thus immobilized, the procedure could continue. Of course, Vrom would have to use the surgical telefactor for the more meticulous work involved, as he removed the young male’s fresh and vigorous sexual organs.

SPEAR

I’d watched the
Lance
take heavy damage while we were floating in vacuum, and wondered if Flute might have survived. Before he rescued us, Sverl had told us that Flute had informed him we were out in vacuum. Had Sverl received that information before that particle-beam strike, or after?

As Sverl’s armoured prador surrounded us, Riss unwound herself from me.

“I have to go covert,” she said, her snakelike form shimmering.

“Is there any need?” I enquired as Riss’s chameleonware engaged and she disappeared completely. “Though I don’t like how it happened, we’re where we need to be.”

“You are not going covert aboard my ship, parasite,” said another voice over my suit radio. I was surprised—Sverl had penetrated our com very quickly.

Six hardfields flickered into existence to form a rough cube a couple of yards across. Where they intersected along the edges and at the corners they glowed and emitted sparks. I’d seen similar capture boxes used, but only to confine large prey like prador. They couldn’t escape between the inevitable gaps between the hardfield discs. I’d never seen hardfields actually intersecting and touching like this, because such proximity tended to create feedback loops that blew out their projectors. During the war, curving hardfields had been considered impossible. But I had learned of the spherical hardfield Penny Royal used to protect Carapace City. So the technology had unlocked potential yet.

Riss reappeared, hovering and writhing inside the translucent box. Ignoring me, the armoured prador in the hold gathered around her for a moment before abruptly scuttling off to one side. They returned, dragging something they’d retrieved from a floor-to-ceiling rack. It was a box big enough to contain a prador: its sides were sheets of chain-glass and its edges made of heavy ceramal. Once out of the rack, it rose up on either a grav-motor or some form of maglev. They pushed it out over beside the hardfield trap, then opened one side of the thing. Now, hissing and throwing out sparks—noticing which, I checked my visor display and realized the hold was filling rapidly with air—the trap collapsed until just a yard across, with Riss coiled tightly inside. It then shifted over and in through the open side of the glassy box. One of the prador closed up the side, and the hardfield trap flickered, then shattered. Chunks hurtled out in every direction, evaporating harmlessly into nothingness as they went.

“Bring them both to me,” Sverl instructed over ship comms.

The cube rose up and began heading for the rear of the hold where a large door was rattling open—making such a racket probably because the section of wall it revolved up into was near where the particle beam had punched through, buckling it. It jammed for a second but the armoured prador leading the way gave it a solid whack with one claw to set it in motion again. I felt oddly reassured by the sight of a prador treating temperamental technology in so familiar a manner.

“
I guess it’s payback time,
” said Riss via my aug.

“
Payback?
”

“
Sverl was one of my early victims, but managed to survive the experience.
”

A prador behind gave me a violent shove that sent me sprawling. I stood up and looked back at what, by its size, might have been a second-child—hard to tell with that armour. What was definitely a first-child, just behind it, brought an armoured claw down hard on the first creature’s back, the clang so loud I was sure something must have broken. The second-child merely went down on its belly, then scrambled up and out of range. The first-child clattered something at it, then turned to me and waved a claw towards the door.

“Keep moving, human,” it said.

I was sure I had just seen a second-child berated for its treatment of me, which struck me as decidedly odd for prador. But this was Sverl’s ship and I knew that the father-captain had changed in strange ways. Had I just seen an example of his altered morality passed on down through his children? I followed Riss’s prison out of the hold.

“
Yes, you mentioned that before,
” I said to Riss.

“
Oh, yeah.
”

“
Will he recognize you?
”

“
He recognizes what I am, which is probably more than enough.
”

I was about to say something about prador morality and the changes this Sverl was supposed to be undergoing, but found I didn’t have the energy to pursue it. Prador were vicious bastards but, as I had noted before, that description could fit plenty of humans and AIs too. And any of the three could be justified in being a bit miffed after having had done to them what Riss had done to Sverl.

Now I surveyed the distinctly aseptic corridor, the Polity cleanbots scuttling here and there and all this in an illumination unexpectedly lacking in the sepulchral quality I knew, from memories not my own, usually to be found inside such ships. Memory surged for a moment, but I ignored it and it waned.

“
Flute, did you survive?
” I asked via my aug, but the response was only a fizzing.

Finally, we were led into a sanctum that bore a closer resemblance to a botanist’s laboratory than the control centre of a murderous father-captain. Riss’s box settled in a clear space at the centre, while the two first-children entered and stood guard inside the door, which closed behind them. Sverl rose up on prosthetic limbs from the usual array of screens. I noted the tail, which looked like an amphibian attached to his rear, then gazed upon the massive skull his body had become.

“Two human visitors in such a short time,” he said mildly. “Gost must never know of this—it would definitely rouse suspicion even in him.” He moved over to Riss’s box and peered inside with large, human-looking eyes. “And you.”

“Hello Sverl,” said Riss, now scraping her ovipositor down the glass separating them, her voice issuing from some speaker set in the ceramal frame holding that sheet. “My, didn’t Penny Royal fuck you up?”

“That is debatable,” Sverl replied. “And by now you must be aware that the chain-glass between us is not responding to the usual decoding molecule and EM frequency you’ll be deploying. It is a laminate of chain-glass and transparent sapphire so you would first need to cut through the inner layer of sapphire to get to the first sheet, disintegrate that, then cut through the next layer of sapphire. You would have to do this twenty-four times. Now look up.”

The drone lowered her ovipositor to rest it tip-down on the floor of the box so she appeared balanced on it, then did so. I looked up as well and amidst all the equipment, all the folded-away robots, power cables and optics, I saw a large cone sitting directly over Riss, base down, with mesh across the base.

“What you are seeing,” said Sverl, “is an EM pulse cannon of my own design. It has enough power to fry every circuit inside you, though I am currently setting it merely to take out everything but your crystal. So, no more attempts to get through that glass, and would you kindly desist in trying to penetrate my computer systems? I very much doubt you have the mental watts for that, but if you
do
make the slightest inroad, you’re toast.”

I thought this particular father-captain had a very odd turn of phrase. He sounded like a war drone laying out the situation. Perhaps this was the result when you combined something as martial as a prador with AI crystal and human DNA. Sverl now turned towards me and walked over. I really wanted to run away, but had nowhere to go.

“So you are Thorvald Spear,” he said.

“I certainly am,” I replied. “Pleased to meet you, Father-Captain Sverl. Tell me, who was this other human you had here? Is he still around?” I had been searching the vicinity for the odd discarded bone but it was as clean in here as the corridors outside, if a little more cluttered. “I would like to meet this person if he or she is still around. I’m sure we’ve got—”

“Understandably you are nervous,” Sverl interrupted, “which is why you are babbling. I am not going to kill you and I am not going to eat you. In fact, right now my robots and some of my children are repairing your ship for your eventual departure. Meanwhile we have a shared interest, which is Penny Royal. We both want
something
from that AI and you may, if you wish, accompany me in my pursuit of it.”

“You know where Penny Royal is?” I asked.

“I do not,” said Sverl, turning now and pointing a claw at Riss, “but that horrible worm in there does.”

“I do fucking not!” Riss exclaimed hotly.

“You do,” said Sverl. “I have learned from Isobel Satomi that Penny Royal is returning to its beginning.”

Riss froze. She had no reply to that. Into the ensuing silence, and feeling as if I’d just been gut-punched, I interjected: “Isobel Satomi?”

Sverl waved a dismissive claw. “The visitor I had was Trent Sobel, who is now with the shell people. He carries the mind of Isobel Satomi in a jewellery item. I accessed her mind and learned that Penny Royal had left a clue there as to its next destination.”

“Shell people?” I asked, still distrusting Sverl and wondering if they were in some onboard larder.

With a clattering of metal limbs against the deck, Sverl turned towards me once more. “They are aboard in their own section of the ship, currently extending their doomed experiment in becoming prador, by now trying to form themselves into a family unit. Now, as Penny Royal instructed, Trent Sobel has his chance to redeem himself.”

I felt a little bit better about that, but not much. “In their own section” did not sound like larder, but the fact that Trent was here meant there was one human aboard who might have a reason to try to kill me. It was almost too much to incorporate and I just stood there with my mouth open as I tried to put it all together.

Sverl turned back to Riss and stepped closer so he was almost touching the glass.

“I know the last known location of Factory Station Room 101,” said Riss, subdued, “but I cannot pass on that information. It is under AI lock.”

Room 101?

Just then, the door grumbled open and I turned to see the two first-children parting to allow in a second-child sans armour. It looked distorted, this creature, its carapace sagged as if it had been partially melted, and its legs bowed under its weight. Did it look nervous? How could I possibly read its expression? Nevertheless, there was something about it of someone carrying an unexploded bomb as it entered the sanctum, bearing the spine of Penny Royal from my ship.

“Of course it is under AI lock,” said Sverl. “How else was the secret kept? Isn’t it fortunate therefore that the means of unlocking that information has been provided? Or, perhaps, aren’t we seeing all the pieces of an ever-developing puzzle, created by a black AI, slotting inevitably into place?”

“You keep that fucking thing away from me,” said Riss, who until this moment had shown no particular fear of the spine.

Suddenly her ovipositor was screeing at the glass, fragments falling inside. Next, her assault on the chain-glass turned an inner layer opaque, before it peeled away, falling to dust. I felt a thump of an EM wave passing through my body. It sent me staggering and my aug went offline. When I had recovered my balance and looked at Riss, she had dropped to the bottom of her prison and now lay still.

“I did warn you,” said Sverl.

10

BLITE

The coordinates of their destination lay forty light years out from the Rebus system, and even further from Crispin Six, so Blite could not see why Penny Royal had directed his attention towards these places, unless it was to find a safe distance from which to watch their destruction. Nevertheless, he decided to search their data, starting with the first of them. The Rebus system lay just ten light years beyond the Polity border. The sun was a blue giant orbited by two gas giants, with a scattering of other smaller worlds closer in. One large moon orbited the closer gas giant and had been listed by Polity surveyors as occupied by an interesting and thoroughly alien silicon-based ecology. Closer still to the sun was a green-belt world where conditions were Earth-like. The surveyors had listed this as possessing a carbon and silicon-based ecology. Blite was still at a loss as to why Penny Royal had sent him here. Then he noted the link to a historical file attached to the initial survey, and opened it.

“One hour until we’re there,” said Brond, now back on the bridge.

“And then we end up skating down the probability slope . . . or something,” Greer added. She was off watch now and it was her time to head for her cabin, but she was lingering to see what would happen when they finally surfaced from U-space, carrying all that negative energy from their time jump.