Neal Asher - Line War

The ship decohered before those hot spots appeared, then its individual strands began to break up into their separate segments. It was as if the ship had been made of safety glass that had shattered. Active scan revealed the same as before, however: every segment was devoid of sentience.

‘You’re losing control,’ said Randal.

Upon his words, three wormships detonated, and Erebus immediately began running diagnostic searches to find out what had happened. They came back with the same result: some outside force had caused their detonation — some sort of informational warfare.

‘Not that your control was ever that good anyway.’

Erebus began further refining the action of his tools. Randal had to be utterly removed now, for he must surely have sent whatever it was that destroyed those three wormships. Erebus quickly ran search programs to locate the areas where Randal’s code was most… dense. It would isolate those areas, then employ the tools within them.

‘You’re eyesight isn’t too clever either.’

What was the man wittering on about? Erebus found three areas that crossed the physical boundaries between eight ships. As per plan, it isolated them, then set the tools to work.

‘Your screw-up is all but inevitable now.’

But Erebus could see no problem. While those three informational areas might end up erased, the wormships concerned would only lose a proportion of themselves and could then regenerate.

‘Staring at your navel, Erebus?’ said Randal. ‘While you’ve been focusing most of your attention inwards, I’ve been blinding your outward eyes.’

Erebus now realized that those code concentrations were all linked into the sensors in wormships positioned to the rear of the fleet. Even as the entity discovered this, three more of its ships disappeared in a massive imploder blast, and another two began to unravel as some sort of EM warfare missile passed between them, broadcasting hunter-killer programs. Erebus fought to reclaim sensor control, and regained it just in time to see a particle beam punch through another ship and that ship detonate. Erebus tracked this beam back to its source, and immediately recognized the giant Cable Hogue, with the Jerusalem trailing in its wake. Then more missiles began to arrive ahead of the two Polity ships.

‘Bingo,’ said Randal.

‘I see two large ships,’ admitted Erebus, ‘and they will do much damage. But not enough — I have nine hundred wormships.’

‘Yeah,’ said Randal. ‘I just needed that distraction.’

Even as Randal spoke, Erebus felt linkages breaking, systems dropping offline. In a second it realized how the tools it had created specifically to kill Randal were now no longer isolated. They were transmitting rapidly from ship to ship, and already some wormships were coming unravelled.

‘You have killed yourself,’ said Erebus.

‘I have killed ourself,’ Randal replied.

‘I can survive this.’

‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’

‘You are not me,’ said Erebus, and then began accelerating the ships it still controlled directly towards Jerusalem and Cable Hogue.

Mika had never before moved so fast in zero gravity, having previously always been so careful, knowing how easy it was to misjudge momentum. True, the Polity spacesuit she wore was unlikely to be breached, but just as certainly it would not prevent her bones shattering if she piled straight into a wall at some speed. But at that moment a few broken bones were the least of her worries.

Things just like this had chased Chaline and those others who had found the remains of the Maker civilization in the Magellanic Cloud; things like this had chased Cormac. Its body was a metallic torpedo of biotech, and legs starred out from its front end, just behind a nightmare head that seemed all protruding sensors and the chitinous complexity of an insect’s eating cutlery rendered in silver-black metal. However, there was something different about this biomech. Those that had been seen before had been utterly functional killing machines made specifically for hunting down targets in environments like this. This thing looked diseased, for nodules protruded all over its body, while some of its limbs were too short and others seemed the products of mutation. One limb was three times thicker than the others, and while the pursuer used this as its main method of propulsion, it could probably have moved faster without it. The mech’s deformities made it slower, which was all to the good, yet they also made it more frightening.

‘Turn left at the end here,’ Dragon instructed. The blue-eyed remote slammed up against the wall at the end of the corridor. Oddly, though the remote had earlier seemed a soft flapping thing, it struck with a ringing crash, then threw up a trail of sparks as it shot away to the left.

Mika somersaulted in mid-air, her boots crashing down on the same wall and partly absorbing her momentum. She felt her knee pop but ignored the stabbing pain as she shoved herself after the remote, grabbing at protrusions of Jain-tech on the walls to propel herself along faster. Glancing back she saw the biomech crash into the wall too, then just hang there as if stunned, its legs waving aimlessly about. Then abruptly it turned, mandibles like steel sheers clattering angrily, something long and jointed snapping out between them every time they opened.

‘There is a suiting area at the end, then an airlock,’ Dragon informed her.

Mika felt a sudden horror. Dragon did not want to go back to the Polity and face Earth Central. The entity’s agreement about contacting Cormac was rubbish — just to humour her. She had obviously become a liability Dragon now wanted rid of. Why else lead her to this dead end of a suiting area and airlock? She would never be able to get the lock open before this biomech was upon her.

‘You’ve killed me,’ she said.

‘If I had wished to do that there are easier ways.’

As she approached the suiting area, Mika spun herself round in mid-air again and drove her feet against the wall to slow herself. Her boots skidded along shattering Jain-tech, chunks of it bouncing away in every direction. Then she caught the edge of the door, swinging round it into the cylindrical room beyond. Some type of spinning disc rose out of her way, and she shouldered into the wall beyond and caught hold of a nearby ladder rung to prevent herself bouncing away. Looking up at the spinning thing, she could now just about make out the two stalked eyes sticking up from it.

‘The airlock, Mika,’ Dragon reminded her.

She propelled herself over to the door to operate its manual controls, determined not to look back. But as she finally got the locking mechanism open and began shoving hard against stubborn hinges, she could not stop herself.

The biomech had almost reached the suiting area, but then something streaked down the length of its body making a sound like a hammer drill. Its big leg and two smaller limbs fell away and, unbalanced, the biomech turned and crashed into the door jamb. Spinning in the air behind, the remote then came down hard behind the thing’s head. Sparks flew, as from a cutting disc going into metal, but then the remote began to slow and the biomech to reorient itself upon her.

‘Mika, there are more coming.’

The airlock door was nearly open, but the biomech was already pulling itself into the suiting room. She saw the remote abruptly stop spinning, and two blue eyes gazed towards her. Then the thing just shrank, shrivelled, as if being sucked into the cut it had made in its enemy. Then came the detonation: fire blasting from between the biomech’s mandibles and blowing open its torpedo body. It slammed against the wall, its remaining legs folding up and tightening like a fist. The blast flung Mika against the door, shoving it all the way open so that she fell into the space beyond. She did not allow herself a moment to catch her breath. Already she could see other… things approaching down the corridor. She heaved against the door, which swung freer now, and drove it closed behind her.