Neal Asher: Shadow of the Scorpion

"He was a Prador first-child, you know."

That sonorous voice sent a shiver down Cormac's spine. He gazed up at the stone and considered accessing information about it, but such ready knowledge was a conversation-killer. "So what was this Vogol's story?"

"He was the leader of a Prador battalion: near on a thousand second-children, war drones, armour, portable p-cannons. We smashed them, but he and a few of his kin survived and climbed to the top of the stone with hard-field generators and two p-cannons. He held us off for two whole hours. He's still up there now." Amistad flicked its antennae to one side. "Follow me."

The drone led the way out from the shadow of the stone around towards its canted back, where a stairway had been cut into the rock. This last was a recent addition, Cormac noted, because it actually cut through the burn marks and heat-glazing caused by the battle here. The drone's sharp feet scraped the rock sending flakes of stone tumbling down behind. Within a few minutes they reached a slightly tilted plateau, and there stood Vogol. The first-child was much larger than those of its kind Cormac had encountered aboard the Prador ship on Hagren, its shell lay nearly ten feet across and its colouration was a bright combination of yellow and purple. It stood perfectly still, a big rail-gun affixed to one claw, an ammunition belt and cables trailing to a power supply and heavy ammo box affixed to its underside. As he drew closer Cormac saw that a thick glaze covered the creature, and rods supported it, penetrating into the rock below. Vogol had been stuffed and mounted.

"I got to him first," Amistad informed him. "Just after your father managed to down their systems with a computer virus and put a shot through one of their power supplies. Vogol never gave up; even spitting stomach acid at me after I tore off all his limbs." The drone was chinking a claw against the stone below it as it gazed at the Prador. "Happy times."

"Tell me about my father," said Cormac.

After a long pause the drone reared up and spread both claws expansively. "I met him here on this world. He was a combat veteran and specialist in attack viruses, whose usefulness in creating such viruses was coming to an end because of his frustration with being kept out of the fighting. Just like you he was then transferred in as a replacement in a Sparkind unit." Amistad dropped down onto all legs and turned to face Cormac, not that there was anything in that face Cormac could read. "I first met him in the Cavander mountains where his unit, amongst others, and amongst independent drones like myself, was hunting Prador saboteurs. Being allowed to fight once again, he was taking more risks than he should and using Jebel U-cap Krong's methods: wearing chameleoncloth fatigues and sneaking up on Prador with gecko mines to take them out. The AI on the ground did not like this, but knew it had to give him some leeway."

It was good to hear this and Cormac was glad he had come, but he knew there was much more to be told. "This was during the Hessick Campaign?"

"No, a solstan month before."

"When did you meet him next?"

"You understand what the Hessick Campaign was?"

"The Prador occupied this peninsular, where they had numerous cities under siege. I'm not entirely clear why they wanted to fight a ground war here—why they didn't just bombard from orbit." Cormac shrugged. "It was a big and complicated war."

"Our understanding of the situation then," said the drone, "was that we were certain to lose this world, because if we won the ground war the Prador dreadnoughts would then move in to obliterate everything. But we were fighting a delaying action in order to keep the runcibles online, and ships coming in, wherever possible, to evacuate as many of the people here as we could." The drone brought one claw to clonk its tip against the stone, as if making a point. "Only as we began the campaign to drive the Prador from the peninsular so we could evacuate the besieged cities, did we find out the true aim of the Prador."

"Presumably to establish a foothold, but also to retain this world as a living environment," said Cormac.

"So we thought, but we could see no tactical advantage to them." The drone shook itself. "You of course know that this was the time when the traitor Jay Hoop was operating out of the world now named after him: Spatterjay. He was processing tens of thousands of human prisoners, ferried there by the Prador. He was infecting them with the Spatterjay virus in order to make them tough enough to withstand the installation of Prador thrall technology. It is estimated that before his operation was shut down, he processed over ten million human beings, but the likely figure is much, much higher."

Cormac nodded, a nasty taste in his mouth. He had already seen a product of that "processing," the hooper on Shaparon, the "human blank" as they were sometimes called: an abnormally tough human with most of his brain ripped out and replaced with thrall technology.

"That's why the Prador were here," Amistad continued. "Yes, they were fighting ECS forces, but they didn't want to bombard this place and kill everyone because they wanted the people. Their snatch squads were operating all across the planet. Cities we had thought destroyed during the fighting had in fact been emptied then subsequently demolished." The drone raised that claw and brought it down hard, splintering stone. "They were not here to gain some tactical advantage in the war, but for slaves."

The stair wound up past displays of combat knives, uniforms, handguns. Suspended in the central space was a replica Stuka, then an American tank, then a selection of World War II machineguns. Opposite each of these were drop-shaft entrances to take those whose interest was more specific to the areas dealing with these items. The WWII room contained more weaponry than the one below, more logistical stuff too, though it was still possible to have fun blowing away a mannikin with a Sten gun. Divergent halls traced the development of jets during the war and for a number of years thereafter. One entire hall was devoted to atomic weapons used on Earth before Solar System colonization, and another traced the development of submarines, though with a brief diversion at the beginning into the submarine used in the American Civil War and WWI submarines. Cormac kept on climbing, heading for the Solar System corporate wars and beyond. Or course, up there, right at the top, the Prador/Human war occupied almost one third of this exhibition.

After World War II ensued smaller but no less intense conflicts: the Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, the numerous squabbles over fast-depleting oil supplies and the subsequent squabbles over other resources, then, until the human race established itself in the Solar System, everything was labelled a "police action" rather than a war. It was during this time that the leaden behemoths of government were bankrupting themselves and imploding and the corporations were growing in power. Effectively the governments were bought out by the corporations, asset-stripped and consigned to history, then, because they were as human run as the previous governments and just as liable to greed and stupidity, the corporations began to fight between themselves for power and resources.

The whole of history was not covered here, for that would defeat the purpose of this exhibition. There was nothing here about the diaspora of cryo- and generation-ships during the time of corporate power, nor much about the political complications—they only displayed where relevant to some conflict or the development of some new weapon. Cormac paused by an early attack ship, apparently salvaged from the surface of Io, which was used during an assault on Virgin Jupiter by the Jethro Manx Canard Corporation—one of the survivors of those wars and a weapons development and design corporation still in existence now, though controlled by the AIs. Gazing about he saw that there were few visitors in this part of the exhibition. Perhaps those coming here who, like himself, had probably bought the bargain price week-long pass, were leaving these upper levels until later. He decided to take a side route from this point, for he remembered Carl expressing an interest in JMCC, in the weapons it developed, and in one particular designer.