Polity 1 - Prador Moon (22 page)

“Have you discovered anything?” She nervously rubbed her hands together and could not conceal her disappointment when the Golem shook his head. Now she turned towards Jebel. “I think I understand it all now, but it's a matter of positioning and… this Conlan.”

“Woman, you had better start making sense sometime soon or you will be joining him in his cell.”

“I'm presuming Conlan possessed some means of communicating with the Prador ship when it arrives?”

“He was to use his aug to make com connection on the back of the U-space link to Boh—the runcible control signal. He's generously given me the code he intended to use, and when the Prador ship does arrive he will be informing them that he has complete control of the two runcibles. I'm hoping this will make them less diligent in searching for any nasty surprises on the Boh runcible.”

“Good, that's exactly what I want.”

“I won't warn you again.” Jebel tried to keep it under control, but felt himself close to losing his temper. Moria seemed oblivious to this—off somewhere in her own mind.

“Positioning. You told me an ECS dreadnought is pursuing the Prador ship?”

Jebel stared down at the floor, took a deep breath and tried to find some calm within himself. “It is,” he said tightly, “though it is severely damaged and I doubt it will be up to much.”

“And how soon after the Prador ship will it arrive?”

“Almost on top of it, I'm told.”

“It is damaged… but it should possess sufficient armament to destroy the Boh runcible?”

“Yes, but we'll be mining that, so there will be no need.”

“And I should be able to communicate with that ship from here?”

“Yes…if I give you the required frequency and codes, which I have no intention of doing until you start making sense. I've no intention—”

Jebel gaped at the apparition that now appeared in the doorway: George, with a smear of blood behind his newly installed aug, which stood open, the optic connection dangling.

Moria turned. “You know, don't you? You realised,” she said.

George replied emphatically, “When one door shuts, another door opens.” Then added, “Faith will move mountains.”

Moria whirled back to Jebel. “That confirms it for me, do you agree?”

“Agree with what!” Jebel bellowed.

“Oh yes,” Moria said, and told him

* * * * *

After availing himself of the meagre facilities, which were substantially better than those in his prior accommodation, Conlan paced the small cabin, then paused when he felt that weird shifting telling him the ship was just surfacing from U-space. A short in-system jump, then. In his estimation that meant their destination could only be one place: the Boh runcible. He considered what that might mean, but could come up with no sensible answer, so he sat down and waited. Within a few minutes the door to his cabin opened and Jebel Krong entered.

“Ah, you are considerably more sweet-smelling than when last we met,” said Krong.

“Besides that,” said Conlan, “and the fact that I am aboard this ship and still breathing, I rather suspect you want something from me.”

The expression on Jebel's face told Conlan that only what the man wanted prevented him from beating Conlan to a pulp. And as Conlan was well aware, Jebel Krong could easily do just that.

“As you've probably guessed, we've just arrived at the Boh runcible. Urbanus and Lindy will shortly be suiting up to conceal CTD mines throughout the structure. You and I will be going down there, where you will key in with your aug to the U-space connection. When the Prador vessel arrives you will tell its captain precisely what I instruct you to tell him.”

“And why should I do this?”

“Would you like me to start becoming uncivilized again?” Jebel enquired.

“What have I got to say?”

“You'll first tell the Prador captain that you and your people now occupy the Trajeen runcible and, through it, control the Boh runcible. With the proviso that some technicians aboard the Trajeen runcible have managed to evade you, though you'll state that they should not be a problem.”

“Then?”

“When the time comes I'll inform you.”

“Well, I won't say what you want, not without certain guarantees.”

“I can offer you one guarantee.” Krong pulled two objects from the pocket of the light spacesuit he now wore and tossed them down on the nearby cabin bed: a pair of pliers and a pair of metal snips.

Conlan stared at the two tools, his mouth arid. “Yes… you can hurt me, but that won't help you get what you want. If I'm in pain I won't have much aug control, but even if I do, I might forget some key phrases necessary for me to use with that Prador captain, to assure him that I am not being coerced.”

“What is it you want, then?” Krong asked, teeth gritted.

Conlan decided it was time for him to find out how strong his bargaining position might be. Obviously Krong wanted him to convince the Prador that he controlled the runcibles so they would take one of them aboard without sufficiently checking it. Maybe he was integral to this desperate plan. Now he would find out. “I want a new identity, and all records of my old identity wiped. I want two million New Carth shillings paid to me in etched sapphires, and an unrecorded runcible transmission to any destination of my choosing.”

“Oh, is that all?” Jebel asked. “How about a Marineris Trench apartment, a new wardrobe and couple of courtesans to feed you peeled grapes?”

“If I thought all my demands would be met I'd ask for your testicles on a metal hook,” Conlan spat.

“Really,” Krong leant over him, very close, as if wishing Conlan would attack. “Here's the deal, Conlan: you get to live. You get adjustment and a custodial sentence reviewed every ten years.”

“No way is any AI going to fuck with my mind. No deal.”

“Then there's only one other option.” Krong stepped away from him, stooped and picked up the two tools from the bed.

Conlan wondered if he had pushed just a little too hard. Maybe adjustment wouldn't be so bad…

Krong continued, waving the metal snips at him. “This ship carries cold-sleep escape pods. You do what I say and one of them is yours. We fire it into deep space and maybe, sometime in the far future, someone will find that pod and open it. You could be lucky. The Polity could be gone by then. Or if it still exists you and your crimes might have been forgotten.”

Conlan eyed those snips. That wasn't so bad. If Krong had acceded to his initial demands Conlan would have known the man intended to renege. This sounded real. “You have a deal,” he said.

* * * * *

The U-space transmitter did not look particularly impressive, just a grey box sitting on the floor with numerous optics and s-con power cables feeding into it. But the technology that box contained was akin to a miniature replica of the one driving the huge runcible outside the chainglass windows on this side of the complex. The transmission of information being a considerably less complex procedure than transmitting huge cargo vessels, the transmitter required no AI—a simple synaptic computer served the same purpose.

Moria chose this particular room in which to base herself, since there was less of a chance of a breakdown of the single link between this console and transmitter in here. Any other console in the complex would have been routed through other networked com nodes, and she really didn't need some idiot software glitch getting in the way. She had more than enough to do.

“Sit there.” Moria pointed to one of the three chairs behind the console desk, and George meekly walked over and ensconced himself. “And no more proverbs for the moment. I know what to do now and I don't want you confusing the issue.”

George seemed about to say something, but instead clamped his mouth closed like a naughty child and removed his optic cable from his top pocket. While she watched he plugged one end into his aug, then the other end into the console, then sat with his hands in his lap. He appeared childish only for a moment longer, then straightened, something metallic gleaming in his eyes.

Moria placed her flask of coffee and cup down on the pseudo-wood surface and took the chair next to him. In her aug she again checked the time. Jebel had reached the Boh runcible some hours ago, and should soon be docking to what remained of the complex there. The Prador ship would arrive in approximately five hours, according to reports from the ground-based AIs—their data obtained from monitoring stations launched throughout the Polity some days into the war. She had received no communication from the Occam Razor, but then U-com became difficult from within U-space—a problem the AIs hoped to iron out sometime soon.

Moria plugged herself in and began running diagnostic checks on the huge and intricate systems she controlled. She ran up every fusion reactor in the complex to its maximum, routing power into storage in the runcible buffers at this end. Solar collector satellites stood ready to maser energy to the receivers on the runcible, should she require it—a highly likely possibility. Beginning to model the two runcible gates and all the energy systems involved, she slotted in the information revealed by the diagnostic returns. Then, because she knew she was procrastinating, she took a long, hard look at her data map. Certainly the planetary AIs would release processing space to her, but it was not that area of processing that most concerned her. She closely studied the nexus of the data map, where the AI should be, and where before lay nothing but errors and broken connections. Something now occupied the space, directly linked to the console before which she sat. It looked skeletal, with at present un-instated connection to that processing space on the planet below. It looked nothing like an AI, nothing like anything she had ever seen before. It was George.

“Are you ready?” she asked—through her aug.

“Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the Devil.”

There, another proverb. What other reply to expect? Whatever the hell that meant she supposed it to be the best answer she would receive.

Moria set to work calculating orbital velocities and trajectories. At present the runcible face lay at a tangent to Trajeen, so she needed to turn it to ninety degrees from the surface. Sending the cargo ship through required a two-kilometre extension of the gate; now she needed an excess of two hundred kilometres. She worked out that this would take, with each gatepost travelling at its maximum of twelve hundred kph, averaged over the distance, more than five minutes.

Too long.

A particular fact niggling at her for some time now came to the forefront of her mind. Her plan stood a much better chance of working if she could initiate the warp only after the gateposts reached full extension. This meant her accuracy in positioning the posts needed to be well inside the tolerances set for the normal method of opening the gate. Over the next long hour she calculated what the new tolerances should be, and applied them to the system. Immediately thousands of errors appeared—possibly more than she could deal with.

“Two wrongs don't make a right” George told her, then added a proverb he used before, “When one door shuts, another door opens.”

Moria sat for long minutes trying to understand that, then abruptly felt very stupid. She did not need to initiate warp at full extension at both gates, only the Boh one. This cut the errors by half and, she felt, brought the required calculations within parameters she could handle. She spent a further hour modelling gate operation under these circumstances, then saved the model. Now, to position this gate.

Where it ultimately ended up around Trajeen depended on when the Prador ship arrived and when it could be manoeuvred into position. However, she could run a rough projection based on an arrival time five hours hence. This she did, and then she began to move.

The positional drives fired up again and, slowly, through the nearby windows, she observed Trajeen rise, its blue curve filling the lower half of the view. The moment the runcible lay upright to the surface, and stabilized, she fired the drives in a different direction to send it in orbit around the planet, so it would arrive in position in five hours. Further adjustments would then be required, utterly dependent on the situation out at Boh. Now, with one of her models being updated in real-time via the U-space link and the test viewing sensors out at Boh, she observed Jebel Krong's ship docking, and waited.

* * * * *

Consciousness returned by slow degrees, and during moments in the in-between state, Tomalon possessed no conception of being human. He
was
the
Occam Razor.
Through its sensors he observed the Trajeen system as a whole, not contracted to human perception, and realised what mere specks were himself, and the Prador ship millions of kilometres ahead. Then the lines of division impinged, for he did not control his own body, and he became aware of Occam.

“U-space currents have affected the duration of our journey. We have arrived two hours earlier than expected,” Occam told him.

“Is
this a problem?”

“It is, but one that can hopefully be resolved. I am presently in communication with Moria Salem, who controls the cargo runcibles. She has transmitted a plan of which you need to be aware.”

The information arrived at Tomalon's interface with the ship AI, and he slowly and carefully worked his way through it. He felt a shiver when he began to realise what this woman intended to do, and what would be required of the Occam Razor.

“This is a serious proposition?” he asked.

“It is.”

“So we must continuously feed her information concerning our position and the position of the Pradorship, while we make an attack run on the Boh runcible?”

As he asked this, Tomalon began checking through the ship's systems and infrastructure to see what Occam had done while he was unconscious. Various ship's robots were busily working, strengthening or replacing structural members, taking wrecked machinery and burnt and twisted metal to interior autofactories to be cut up, smelted, and turned into replacement components for the ship. A veritable swarm of constructors presently worked its way around the hull, removing damaged plates and welding new ones into place. Others were replacing looms of fried optics and wiring. A whole weapons turret had been rebuilt. Yet he realised the ship would probably not survive a head-on encounter with the Prador vessel.