Neal Asher - Line War

The two million inhabitants of the planet Klurhammon claimed that their homeworld did not have a population sufficiently large to warrant a runcible, that device for instantly transporting people across the vast reaches of space. Those few who felt the need to travel elsewhere could easily book passage on one of the many ships that visited to collect the harvests of biomolecular construction units that were the main business of their world. However, in reality, the locals did not want to make it any easier for others in the interstellar Polity to visit them. They were introverted, relished their small society, enjoyed the open spaces around their high-tech farms and within their sprawling open-plan single city of Hammon, and they regarded the rest of the Polity with either indifference or suspicion.

It was not their decision to make.

A runcible was installed in Hammon twenty years ago, along with its controlling artificial intelligence, which became effectively the planetary governor. There were objections to this move, but when a massive influx of visitors failed to appear, and the profitability of certain select biologicals — once transported out by spaceship but now sent by runcible — rapidly increased, these objections died. Those few visitors who did arrive were treated with respect, but little warmth, and soon even their numbers waned. The people of Klurhammon thus continued with their introvert and somewhat Byzantine lifestyle, but were soon to have their antipathy towards visitors justified.

The controlling artificial intelligence and the crew of the Lubeck — a mile-long cargo hauler shaped like a slipper, with a structure resembling a submarine’s conning tower protruding from where the ankle should be — saw the visitor first. Its strange underspace signature presaged the arrival of something utterly alien — something that none but the ship’s AI could recognize. Crew gazed in awe at a screen displaying a sphere three miles across seemingly formed of a tangled mass of giant legless millipedes constantly in motion, loops writhing in and out. It slid past the Lubeck impelled by some engine that clawed at the very fabric of space.

Some managed to exclaim in surprise before massive acceleration, which could not be compensated for by the ship’s internal gravplates, slammed them into walls, floors or ceilings. The Lubeck’s AI knew this would certainly kill some of them, but it also knew that to stay within the vicinity of this thing could mean death to them all.

It was correct.

The missile needled across intervening space from the alien vessel, its passage the briefest flicker to the human eye, but long enough for the AI, whose speed of thought was orders of magnitude above the Lubeck’s crew, to recite every prayer in every human religious canon. It punched through the Lubeck’s hull and detonated before crewmembers impacting hard with the internal structure of the ship could actually die from their injuries. Sun-hot fire bloomed inside the stricken craft, travelling out in a sphere neither slowed nor diverted by any intervening material. In a glare of light and in the silence of space, the cargo hauler simply disappeared. The weird snake-tangled vessel did not alter course or slow and quickly fell into orbit around Klurhammon even as the fire it left behind cooled and dispersed. The Lubeck now consisted of a spreading cloud of gaseous matter containing the occasional sprinkling of metal globules cooling and hardening into what resembled perfectly formed ball bearings.

The runcible AI, named Klurhammon after the world it governed, had seconds longer to contemplate the arrival of this alien vessel. This allowed it time to transmit data and conduct a brief conversation before some form of U-space interference curtailed that option.

‘One of Erebus’s ships has just arrived, destroyed a cargo hauler and is now approaching,’ it told Earth Central — the ruling artificial intelligence on Earth. ‘It is not even bothering to conceal itself with chameleonware.’

‘Get yourself out. Get out now,’ that intelligence replied.

‘It was my understanding that my world was “of no tactical importance”,’ Klurhammon observed. ‘I’ll stay and do what I can for them.’

The option was still there for the Klurhammon AI — physically a large lozenge of crystal using quantum-interface processing — to rail-gun itself from the planet and out into space. It chose not to do so, instead activating its rather pathetic array of orbital weapons and firing them. Missiles sped towards the alien vessel, microwave beams punched invisibly across orbital space. The AI observed some beams striking home, but the burned and blackened modular units of the alien vessel’s wormish structure just revolved inside it, to be replaced by shiny new insectile segments. Perhaps one of the missiles would be more destructive? Almost upon that thought a firestorm spread across tens of thousands of miles, all the missiles detonating before reaching their target.

‘Bad decision,’ Klurhammon opined.

In the ensuing second and a half remaining to the planetary AI, no reply was forthcoming from Earth Central. The high-intensity particle beam fired by the alien ship was eight feet in diameter: straight and blue in vacuum, but blurred and turquoise in atmosphere. It struck the centre of Hammon directly over the runcible, and in a few seconds the ensuing firestorm devoured runcible, AI and the surrounding two-mile-wide complex, then washed into the city to scour over buildings flattened by the initial blast wave. Fifty thousand people died, some so quickly naught remained of them but smudges on some still-standing walls, others in the slow agony reserved for those with most of their skin charred away.

Like many on the world of Klurhammon, Cherub Egengy was a haiman — a human partially combined with AI. Seeing his city struck so hard, on his vantage point on the north face of the Boulder he just clung to the ochre stone amid the heathers, unable to process the sight. Belatedly, through external comunits scattered around the world, he received the message — with explanatory information packets — the AI had sent just before expiring: ‘We are under attack from a ship controlled by the entity named Erebus. Planetary assault or planetary destruction certain to ensue. Run away. Hide.’