Neal Asher: Shadow of the Scorpion

A side passage took him into a hall detailing the weapons developed by JMCC. The corporation was responsible for much that was still extant now: the pulse-guns, proton weapons and particle weapons—it was left to others to find ways to defend against these destructive devices. The JMCC hall rose in steps heading, he realised, for the Prador War levels above, where the corporation expanded massively to develop the aforementioned weapons into something much more effective than initially. Before reaching that area, which he could identify far ahead by the brassy glint of Prador exotic metal armour, he turned into a side hall, quite small and narrow, whose subject was just one man: Algin Tenkian. As he stepped in Cormac downloaded a brief history of the man:

Tenkian was born two hundred years ago on Mars during something called the Jovian Separatist crisis, and as yet there was no record of his death. Originally he was trained in the areas of metallurgy and the then quite young science of force-field dynamics and, at age nineteen, on his graduation from VIT (Viking Institute of Technology), the Jovian Separatists recruited him and soon moved him to their weapons division. After four years, when the Separatists had resorted to terrorism, he became disillusioned with their methods and surrendered to Earth Security on Phobos, where he served two years of a ten-year sentence—on his release being forced to join ECS where he worked for six years. Aged thirty-two he joined JMCC, where he worked for five years after which he was recorded as leaving the JMCC complex. Three years later he turned up on Jocasta as a designer and crafter of esoteric individual weapons. Beyond that there was no further chronology.

Cormac could delve further into what was known, but felt no real interest, not now. He stepped up to the first display case and peered inside at a huge bulky handgun with a heavy power cable trailing from its butt to a backpack power supply. This, apparently, was the very first ionic-pulse handgun developed by ECS, and Tenkian had been on the design team. In the next case were rows of small mobile weapons: guns mounted on wheels, treads, mounted inside single wheels, and finally on legs—a row of development terminating in the mosquito autogun. Cormac applied for the download from this display but got nothing. The lights flickered briefly, and he was sure he saw one of the autoguns move. Turning, he glanced behind at the mouth of a drop-shaft over which was a sign saying "Individual Esoteric Weapons." Down there doubtless were a few examples of those weapons but mostly copies of them, for many were difficult to obtain, being held in private collections. Then, abruptly, a man, for some reason using the side ladder, climbed into view and stepped from the shaft. Cormac felt the sudden shock of recognition, despite the grey hair, the stoop, the crooked nose.

"You know that ECS is using you, don't you," said the man. He straightened up and pressed a finger against his temple, adjusting his face so it became the one Cormac knew well.

"Using me, Carl?" Cormac enquired.

Of course Cormac could read no expression in the drone's iron face and peridot eyes, but there was no doubt it was angry about what the Prador had been doing here. Why? Why anger at this particular aspect of a race of vicious homicidal aliens when the battle with this Vogol had been "happy times"?

"Surely the slaves were a resource and thus a tactical advantage?" he suggested.

Amistad remained utterly still for a short moment then dipped his front end low to the stone and gave a slow writhe. Poised lower down like this the drone looked even more like the arthropod it had been modelled on, and even more menacing.

"The slaves were never a tactical advantage, nor the human prisoners taken for other purposes." Those big claws clicked together for a moment then the drone rose up again. "They were spoils of war. The Prador wanted human slaves because slavery is part of their psychology—all the first-, second- and third-children of the Prador are enslaved by the pheromones produced by their fathers, most of the adults are enslaved in their vicious hierarchy by those above them. Only a few thousands of adult Prador are in any way we would know of as independent, and only then because they possess enough power and resources for other Prador to consider it too high a risk to either enslave or attack them. It is a precarious existence for them, and in the Prador Kingdom murder and betrayal are just politics."

"Nice," said Cormac, gazing at Vogol. Cormac knew all about this anyway. He knew that the second-children he had encountered aboard that ship had still been if not pheromonally then psychologically enslaved by their dead father, still fighting humans as originally instructed, incapable of stopping had they even known the war was over. This Vogol was the same. He ranked higher than most, but still would have been utterly under the control of an adult, and following orders unto death. "And the human prisoners taken for other purposes?"

"Prador eat their own kind. They often eat their own children. They consider the meat a delicacy not because it tastes so good but because it is an ultimate exercise in power." Amistad shrugged. "Once it was an act of evolutionary selection: the weak and the stupid children being turned into dinner. Now it works the opposite way around: the adults killing and eating those who might become too clever, too strong, a threat."

"But humans?"

"Another rare delicacy and ultimate exercise of power. To Prador, human meat is an acquired taste and certain substances must be eaten with it to prevent poisoning, and a perpetual diet of such meat will result in these Prador dying."

Cormac remembered the news stories he had seen as a child; about the livestock farms on Prador-occupied worlds—the livestock being humans who had never known any other life but that farm. How were such people now? Had their minds been edited of the horror?

"We seem to be straying from the key subjects," he said, "which are my father and the Hessick Campaign."

"Come with me," said the drone, now directing its antennae up towards the top of Vogol's Stone and leading the way. They walked up to the very edge, a thousand-foot drop below and much of the Olston Peninsular and Hessick County spread out before them. Amistad pointed a claw towards the purple misty line of the Cavander mountains. "Pushing from there we did manage to drive them from the peninsular, straight into the sea. But that was precisely what they wanted us to do. They wanted us out of the mountains where they could deploy against us more effectively."

"And the AIs didn't realise this?"

Amistad turned slightly to peer at him. "Of course they did, but the thinking was that if we could push them back for just a little while we could rescue the bulk of the population of Hessick County as far as the peninsular."

"So how did that go?"

"Your father and I were not involved in the main push. Along with numerous other Sparkind units and war drones our jobs were sabotage and assassination. We went in ahead of the main Polity forces, under chameleonware, to hunt down the three adult commanders on the ground, and any other first-children commanders we could find along the way."

"I know about that," said Cormac. "It was the assassination of two of the commanders that drove the remaining one to flee."

Amistad snipped a claw at the air. "Later, that was later…. We didn't manage to get close to any of them at first, though we did manage to take out some of the main first-children, like friend Vogol here. The subsequent main assault went very well, we thought. We pushed their forces back into the sea and were set to bring in atmosphere ships to evacuate some cities. It was only then that we began to find many of the cities were empty, and it was then that the Prador detonated the CTDs they'd spread strategically about the peninsular. While our forces were still in disarray, some thousands of concealed Prador war drones rose out of the sea and attacked. We started losing very heavily and had to retreat." The drone paused and gazed steadily at Cormac. "It was these events, and what we did during that retreat, that finally led to your father's death."