Neal Asher - Shadow of the Scorpion

Below, mountains of grey stone speared above valleys filled with plants like pine trees, though with foliage both dark green and steely blue, and some areas Cormac recognised as being infested with skarch. Gradually, it seemed the grey stone was being sucked down into the trees, which were soon changing to autumn colours of deciduous growth. The mountains became hills, interspersed with the occasional lake along the shores of which the local «gulls» skated their bodies across the mud in search of their favourite delicacy: a thing that looked like a cross between a slug and a cockroach. Next, Cormac began to notice occasional barren areas, some of them fenced off, all of them looking as if they had been ploughed. Spotting a plume of vapour from some machine working one such area he brought his car down low to take a look. It was a huge cylinder running on numerous sets of treads, conveyors of scoops lifting soil up into its mouth, blackened and smoking soil excreting from its anus. The thing was a massive soil sterilizer, there to kill potential Prador bugs or nanomachines. Cormac flew on.

Soon the barren areas melded and were only occasionally scattered with copses of trees. He saw great lines of sterilizing machines stretching to the horizon, other devices like mobile oil rigs trundling across the wasteland at a snail's pace, occasional ruined cities or towns, buildings melted and crumbling. Then, in the distance he saw the sea, and swinging out that way he was soon flying above a long rocky coastline against which waves broke to cast up plumes of water through crevices, and above which spume floated like confetti in the low gravity. His console screen pinged, scaled up the map and he saw Vogol's Stone lay only ten miles away. He was reaching the tip of the peninsular now, with sea both to his right and left. A series of sharp peaks rose ahead, marching down into the sea. His map gave him direction arrows, then pinged at him again once he arrived above his destination.

The stone had to be the single canted monolith jutting from a plateau cut into the side of one of the peaks, for there, right beside it, rested a familiar steely shape: a scorpion memory.

The weapons exhibition occupied the centre of the city where permanent buildings had yet to be raised. A three-dimensional mazelike structure, nearly two miles wide, had been assembled from portable, but massive tubes of plasmel strengthened with girders of light bubble metal. Escheresque stairways interlaced all this, also drop-shafts and enclosed walkways. The entrance Cormac approached was a wide arch without human attendants but, the whole exhibition being computer-monitored, the doors would automatically close once an optimum number of visitors had entered, then reopen when the number dropped again. The long tubular foyer lying beyond was crowded but not unpleasantly so. Here, numerous exhibits stood in chainglass cases, on pedestals or hung from the plain white walls. Entering, he immediately received a query to his aug, allowed it, and studied the provided menu of options. There were numerous historical tours he could take, both general and specific: he could get an overview of weapons history or he could track the specific historical development of particular weapons. He could focus on a chosen era, for example just taking the tour of medieval weaponry, and enjoying ersatz battles between armoured knights. He could select particular battles and inspect every recorded detail, observe how the weapons of the time were deployed, to what effect, hear expert analysis, study tactics and logistics. It seemed there was something here for every variety of war and disaster junky.

Just inside the entrance Cormac cast an eye over a huge pedestal-mounted rail-gun, obviously of Prador manufacture, then turned and halted to gaze for a long while at a large oil painting. It depicted the battle between the Polity dreadnought My Mary Rose and a large Prador dreadnought, with distances shortened to fit both vessels within the frame. This was the first one-on-one encounter between such vessels in which the Polity ship was actually victorious, and as a child Cormac used to run a video recording of this as a screen saver on his p-top. Further along he regarded a display case containing a single Prador claw. Keying to the constant signal from the case, he uploaded information, discovering the claw was recovered in the vicinity of the battle depicted in the painting. Doubtless the rail-gun on the other side of the foyer had been recovered from the same location.

Entering a juncture of six of the tubular units beyond the foyer, he now needed to make a decision. Here the exhibitors had obviously chosen World War I as their kicking off point. Digitally remastered films from the time could be run on various screens or loaded to aug. The centre display was of the first ever tanks to be used in war: slow-moving iron monsters likely to kill their own occupants merely with the fumes from their engines. In one area, obviously surrounded by a sound-suppression field, visitors were availing themselves of the opportunity to fire replicas of the weapons used at the time: Enfield rifles, heavy revolvers, Maxim machineguns, and the targets available ranged from static silhouette boards to moving manikins that actually bled and screamed. Numerous VR booths offered similar experiences and more besides. It all depended on how much you were prepared to pay, for this whole exhibition was privately owned. Heading down from here would take Cormac directly into wars prior to the first to be numbered. Ahead lay the development of the tank, but only the kind that ran on treads, to his right the propeller-driven airplane, and to his left the machinegun, but only so far as that weapon used solid projectiles. Would such things interest Carl Thrace? Certainly, but nowhere near as much as what lay above, far above. Cormac headed for the nearest stair.

Stepping from the gravcar Cormac expected to feel some disappointment upon once again seeing this drone up close, or rather, up close when he himself was not on the point of death. The distant sight of the drone still roused in him all sorts of complicated feelings, along with the excitement he had felt as a child. It also seemed unchanged: still a big iron scorpion with peridot eyes and weapons ports below its mouth. But Cormac had changed, had experienced an array of situations and emotions, was bigger in every way, so perhaps the drone would look small, not quite so substantial as childhood memory told him.

Drawing closer to where Amistad squatted in the shadow of Vogol's Stone, Cormac realised that childhood or otherwise, edited or not, his memories where not lying to him. If anything, from an adult perspective, the scorpion drone was even more fearsome, for he now knew that there were numerous reasons to fear it. He knew that its armour was tough ceramal it would take a particle cannon to penetrate, that it contained enough weapons to tear a city apart, and that if any individual pissed it off sufficiently, it would probably use its claws to tear that one apart, slowly, for since this machine was a product of the later years of the war, when the aim was to produce fighting grunts just as fast as possible, it was not necessarily stable or moral. Its weapons were supplied with power by laminar storage and fusion reactor, both of which the drone could detonate at will, and during the war its kind often did if they were somewhere the explosion could do huge damage to the enemy, or if they were in danger of being captured. To say that the entity before him was dangerous was an understatement, for Amistad was a purpose-built killing machine with «bastard» being an essential part of its job description.

The drone rose up onto its numerous legs, the fat hooked sting in its tail looping above threateningly, and a single weapons port opening briefly. It raised one long lethal claw and gestured to the stone above.