Neal Asher - The Gabble

“Hey thanks-it’s nice to know you care.”

Sleepily, from the lower bunk, Gene said, “You’re rather sensitive for someone who was once described as a walking abattoir.”

“Ah,” I said, “so you’re frightened of me. That’s why you gave me the coding of that U-space signal?”

She pushed back her blanket and sat up. She’d stripped down to a thin singlet and I found the sight rather distracting, as I suspect was the intention. Reaching up, she fingered the metal collar around her neck. “Of course I’m frightened-you’ve got control of this collar.”

“Which will inject you with a short duration paralytic, not blow your head off as I earlier suggested,” I replied.

She nodded. “You also suggested that if I didn’t tell you what you wanted to know you would demonstrate on me the kind of things Jael did to you.”

“I’ve never tortured anyone,” I said, before remembering that she’d read my ECS record.

“Well … not anyone that didn’t deserve it.”

“You would have used drugs, and the other techniques Jael used on you.”

“True,” I nodded, “but I didn’t need to.” I gazed at her. “I think you’ve been involved in this operation for a while and rather resent not being in at the kill. I was your opportunity to change that. I understand-in the past I ended up in similar situations myself.”

“Yes, you liked to be in at the kill,” she said, and stooped down to pick up her clothing from where she had abandoned it on the floor. She’d sacked out after me, which had been okay as soon as I put the collar on her, since Ulriss had been watching her constantly.

I grunted and went off to find a triple espresso.

After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushroom steak, beans, a liter of grapenut juice, and more coffee, I reached the stage of being able to walk through doors without bouncing off the doorjamb. Gene ate a megaprawn steak, drank a similar quantity of the juice, and copious quantities of white tea. I thought I might try her breakfast the next time I used stores or the synthesizer. Supposing there would be a next time-only a few minutes remained before we surfaced from U-space. Gene followed me into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot’s chair, which was about as redundant as the pilot’s chair I sat in, with the AI Ulriss running the ship.

We surfaced. The screen briefly showed stars, then banding began to travel across it. I glanced at the additional controls for chameleonware and saw that they had been activated.

“Ulriss-”

“Jael’s ship is down on the surface of a free-roaming planetoid next to an old vessel that seems to have been stripped and from which bonded-regolith tunnels have spread.”

“So Penny Royal is there and might see us,” I supplied.

“True,” Ulriss replied, “but that was not my first concern.” The view on the screen swung across, magnified, and switched to light amplification, bringing to the fore the planetoid itself and the Prador cruiser in orbit around it.

“Oh shit,” I opined.

We watched the cruiser as, using that stuttering burn of the fusion engine, Ulriss took us closer to the planetoid. Luckily there had been no reaction from the Prador ship to our arrival, and as we drew closer I saw a shuttle detach and head down.

“I wonder if this is part of Jael’s plan,” I said. “I would have thought she’d get the memstore loaded, then meet the Prador in some less vulnerable situation.”

“Agreed,” said Gene through gritted teeth. She glanced across at me. “What do you intend to do?”

“I intend to land.” I adjusted the screen controls to give me a view of Jael’s ship, the one next to it, and the surrounding spread of pipe-like tunnels. “She’s probably in there somewhere with the memstore and the gabbleduck. Shouldn’t be a problem getting inside.”

We watched the shuttle continue its descent and the subsequent flare of its thrusters as it decelerated over the network of tunnels.

“It could get … somewhat fraught down there. Do you have weapons?” Gene asked.

“I have weapons.”

The Prador shuttle was now landing next to Jael’s vessel.

“Let me come in with you,” said Gene.

I didn’t answer for a while. I just watched. Five Prador clad in armored spacesuits and obviously armed to the mandibles departed the shuttle. They went over to one of the tunnels and gathered there. I focused in closer in time to see them move back to get clear of an explosion. It seemed apparent that they weren’t there at either Jael’s or Penny Royal’s invitation.

“Of course you can come,” I said, eventually.

Jael frowned at the distant sound of the explosion and the roar of atmosphere being sucked out-the latter sound was abruptly truncated as some emergency door closed. There seemed only one explanation: the Prador had placed a tracker on the

Kobashi

when she had gone to meet them.

“Can you deal with them?” she asked.

“I can deal with them,” Penny Royal replied through its submind golem.

The AI itself continued working. Before Jael, the gabbleduck was stretched upright, steel bands around its body and a framework clamping its head immovable. It kept reaching up with one of its foreclaws to probe and tug at the framework, but, heavily tranquilized, it soon lost interest, lowered its limb, and began muttering to itself.

From this point, equipment-control systems, an atmosphere plant and heaters, stacked processing racks, transformers and other items obviously taken from the ship above-spread in every direction and seemed chaotically connected by optics and heavy-duty superconducting cables. Some of these snaked into one of the surrounding tunnels where she guessed the ship’s fusion reactor lay. Lighting squares inset in the ceiling illuminated the whole scene. She wondered if Penny Royal had put this all together after her arrival. It seemed possible, for the AI, working amidst all this like an iron squid, moved at a speed almost difficult to follow. Finally the AI moved closer to the gabbleduck, fitting into one side of the clamping framework a silver beetle of a ship’s autodoc, which trailed optics to the surrounding equipment.

“The memstore,” said Penny Royal, a ribbed tentacle with a spatulate end snapping out to hover just before Jael’s chest.

“What about the Prador?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we deal with them first?”

Two of the numerous eyes protruding on stalks from the AI’s body flicked toward the golem, which abruptly stepped forward, grabbed a hold in that main body, then merged. In that moment Jael saw that it was one of many clinging there.

“They have entered my tunnels and approach,” the AI replied.

It occurred to her then that Penny Royal’s previous answer of “I can deal with them” was open to numerous interpretations.

“Are you going to stop them coming here?” she asked.

“No.”

“They will try to take the memstore and the gabbleduck.”

“That is not proven.”

“They’ll attack you.”

“That is not proven.”

Jael’s frustration grew. “Very well.” She unslung her combined pulse-rifle and launcher.

“You are not unintelligent, but you seem to have forgotten about the instructions I left for the Kobashi on departing. Those Prador will try to take what is mine without paying for it, and I will try to stop them. If I die, the Kobashi detonates and we all die.”

“Your ship will not detonate.”

“What?”

“I broke your codes two point five seconds after you departed your ship. Your ship AI is of Prador construction, its basis the frozen brain tissue of a Prador first-child. The Prador have never understood that no code is unbreakable and your ship AI is no different. It would appear that you are no different.”