Neal Asher: Prador Moon

The huge interior of the ship consisted of movable sections. Weapons platforms and sensor arrays could be presented at the hull and later recalled inside to be repaired by interior autofactories. Living quarters could be shifted to safer areas within, or even ejected should the ship suffer an attack likely to destroy it. The bridge pod could be moved about inside to forever keep its location opaque to enemy scanning, and could similarly be ejected. Tomalon wondered if its present location, so far from his entry point, was a deliberate ploy on Occam's part so the AI could watch him for a little while before they finally sealed their interface, partial and impermanent though it might be.

Finally Tomalon reached the drop-shaft that would take him up to where the bridge pod presently extended, like the head of a giant, golden thistle from the ship's hull. He stepped into the irised gravity field, and as it drew him up he felt no reservations, no second thoughts. It seemed as if he had been preparing for this all his life. Departing the head of the drop-shaft he traversed a corridor he recognised as the one running through the stem to the pod itself. Clinging to the ceiling, a couple of crab maintenance drones observed him and he raised a hand in salute, before finally entering the pod.

Through the chainglass roof the nearby shipyard lay just visible, though the intense activity around it was not. Tomalon turned his attention to the rest of the pod.

Translucent consoles seemingly packed with fairy lights walled this place. Fixed to columns sunk into the black glass floor, in which the spill of optics flickered like synapses, an arc of command chairs faced the chainglass windows in the nose. The prime command chair, which looked more like a throne, lay at the centre of these. Why the other chairs remained here, Tomalon could not guess—the ship and its captain had required no command crew for more than fifty years. In reality the ship only needed a human captain to provide executive permission to its AI, and in fact not even that. Tomalon found himself in the strange position of having to relay Occam's orders to itself—a way of circumventing the old hard-wiring the ship contained.

"Occam," he asked out loud, and was unsurprised to receive no reply. The AI had always honed down its communications to the barest minimum during previous exchanges. Tomalon wondered if it missed Varence who, no longer supported by this ship's systems and that prosthetic being the intelligence of the AI itself, had quietly slid into death. He nodded to himself, stepped over to the command chair, and after a moment kicked off his slippers then shrugged off his coverall and tossed it on a nearby chair. Naked he seated himself, his forearms resting lightly on the chair arms and feet correctly positioned on the footrest. Immediately, with eerie silence, the interface connections swung out from underneath and behind the throne, and trailing skeins of optic cable closed in on him like an electric hand. The first connections were of the vambraces on both his arms—U-engine, fusion and thruster controls, then others began to mate all over his body. In those first moments he felt as if he were draining away as his consciousness expanded to encompass the ship, and the vast input from its sensors. He began to panic.

"Note the shipyard," Occam told him, "see how it grows."

The words brought immediate calm. He focused, and felt his nictitating membranes close down over his eyes and knew that to anyone observing they now looked blind white. But now he saw so much more. The shipyard was growing visibly amidst the swarm of constructor robots and telefactors: scaffolds webbing out into space and hull metal rapidly filling in behind.

"How big is it going to be?"

"Big enough. But what does its present designation tell you?"

Tomalon tried to remember, then found himself pulling the information as if from the aug he no longer wore, taking it from the very mind of Occam. "It does not yet have a name. Its designation is merely Shipyard 001… ah, I see. We may be building hundreds of these?"

"So it would seem. This will be no small war."

Now Tomalon could look within the ship…himself. He enjoyed access to every internal cam and could gaze through the eyes of every drone or robot. Diagnostic systems came online, and he checked the readiness of the U-space engines, the fusion engines, the multitude of steering thrusters. Information flowed through him and not one detail bypassed him. He felt like a god.

"So, history student, what is the lesson we AIs have learned?"

Confusion, but only for a moment, for his close link to the mind of Occam enabled him to understand the AI's drift. "I can quote direct from a lecture I once heard: 'After the eighteenth century neither bravery nor moral superiority won wars, but factories and production. That concerned the World War II and America's intervention, though it is equally as applicable now."

"Quite," Occam replied. "Do you feel ready to take this product into the fray?"

"I do," Tomalon replied, but he felt a moment of disquiet. His mind seemed to be operating with crystal clarity now and he saw many other historical parallels.

"But you feel some disquiet, I sense?"

"The story of the Hood and the Bismarck occurs to me."

"Ah, I see: The Hood was the largest and most powerful ship available to Britain at the start of World War II, but Hitler's Bismarck quickly destroyed it. Perhaps now would be a good time for you to check the weapons manifests and acquaint yourself with the armament we carry."

Tomalon's perception opened into and upon enormous weapons carousels, rail-guns, beam weapons, a cornucopia of death and destruction. He saw that included in this cornucopia were the new CTDs—contra-terrene devices—and realised that, being a god, here were his thunderbolts.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince—

The Trajeen cargo runcible briefly came into view through the shuttle windows: five horn-shaped objects with tips overlapping bases in a curvilinear pentagon. Each of these objects was three hundred metres long with accommodation and R&D units clinging around its outer curve like the cells of a beehive. Tube walkways linked these conglomerations, and many solar panels glimmered like obsidian leaves. An orthogonal nest of plaited nanotube scaffolding poles enclosed the whole. Moria glimpsed the robots, one-man constructor pods and telefactors in the process of dismantling that scaffold. The glare of welders and cutting gear lit stars throughout the complex and plumes of water vapour swirled out like just-forming question marks over vacuum.

The shuttle swung in, taking the runcible out of view for a few minutes. Shadows then fell across the vessel and Moria saw some of those hexagonal units up close as the craft came in to dock. It shuddered into place, docking clamps engaged with a hollow clattering, followed by the whoosh of air filling a docking tunnel. After a moment, the disembarkation light came on and all the passengers began unstrapping themselves and pushing off from their seats to grab the safety rails leading to the airlock. Inside the shuttle it was nil gee, as in the tunnel leading to the complex.

"Best of luck," said Carolan as they reached the complex itself, then she slapped Moria on the shoulder and moved swiftly away. Moria guessed the woman's haste was instigated by the sight of the ECS officer heading this way across the embarkation area. She had only told Carolan that the AI contacted her concerning her Sylac aug and wanted to speak to her further, not daring to relate the circumstances of that contact. She pushed herself from the docking tube and settled down to the floor as the grav-plates within began to take hold.

"Moria Salem?" asked the man, smiling at her nicely.