The Engineer ReConditioned Part 3

Kellor obliged this comment with a, slight tilt of his head.

"There is a science vessel that poses a threat to the Confederation. We need to take it out."

"Polity?"

"Yes."

"Expensive."

"Ten million units of irradiated platinum."

"Behind the Line?" Kellor asked, preparing to get up and walk away.

"What do you mean?"

"Is it in Polity s.p.a.ce?"

"No."

Kellor sipped some more of his drink and allowed a chunk of the psychedelic ice to melt on his tongue. That was a lot of irradiated platinum for destroying a science vessel outside of Polity s.p.a.ce. There had to be a catch. There always was.

"Where is this vessel?"

"Its last reported position was at the edge of the Quarrison Drift. Entering the Drift. I have that position to within a light year. There must be no survivors; total obliteration."

"For my own sake I have to agree. I don't want the Polity taking an interest in my affairs. What complications might there be?"

"The s.h.i.+p could be planetside by the time we reach it." Conard gave a bleak grin before sipping his gla.s.s of mineral water. Kellor distrusted people who made a point of staying sober. It probably meant they needed a clear head to keep track of their lies.

"I don't have the equipment for a large-scale planetary action. All I have is delta wing landing craft adapted for orbital bombardment."

"We will supply soldiers and landing craft for any ground action. You have the hold s.p.a.ce."

Kellor nodded then tilted his head as the crodorman came staggering into the vending area. The man looked drunk and angry. Kellor shook his head in mock sadness and dropped a hand down to his belt. He felt nothing but contempt for bad losers.

"How soon can you be ready?" asked Conard.

"There are a few loose ends ... "

The crodorman approached their table, pulling something from his bulky garments.

"Trazum speck!"

Kellor knew enough crodorun to recognise the challenge and threat. He stood as the crodorman finally pulled free a cylinder of grey metal. The end of the cylinder shot away to a distance of a metre and hovered suspended, the vague s.h.i.+mmer of field-stiffened monofilament between it and the cylinder. Kellor drew a small flat gun and pointed it. The crodorman paused; that moment again. The gun made a sound like a plastic ruler slapped against a table. The crodorman's arm fell off. The weapon fell with it and sheared in a half a recently vacated chair. On his feet now Kellor aimed again. The crodorman had time only to look down at the blood pumping from his stump. Again that sound. A hole the size of a strawberry appeared in ridged forehead and spattered customers behind the crodorman with pieces of skull and brain. He fell back over the vending machine which whined under his weight and thanked him for his custom. As Kellor holstered his gun he noted Conard clipping a similar weapon back into a wrist holster. He filed the information away for future reference.

"That's one loose end," he said.

"It's female," said Abaron.

"I thought you had females," said Chapra. They were sitting in a small eating area. Chapra was eating prawns and Abaron occasionally gave the plateful a strange look.

"Female ... definitions. I had two s.e.xes and made the fundamental error of a.s.suming that because they were so like Earth crustaceans in every respect they would be the same in meiosis ... it's the trihelical DNA. There are three s.e.xes, all contributing their share of the chromosomes. This is the third." He pointed at the projection. It showed a crustacean little different in outward appearance to its fellows.

"So our friend used the device to conduct a s.e.x-change operation," said Chapra with much amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Yes," said Abaron grudgingly. He looked at the creature curled around its weird machine. "No doubt it is correcting my error with one of the other species."

"Why don't you do the rest?" asked Chapra. "Help it out."

Abaron stared at her for a moment as if trying to decide whether or not she was ridiculing him. He eventually nodded then took up his notescreen and headed out of the room.

"What has it got in there now?" Chapra asked the empty air. The projection flickered and changed, showed the creature harvesting some of the water weed and feeding it into the machine. The projection then flicked back to real time showing the creature uncurling and moving back from its machine. A cloud of small objects gusted from one white mouth.

"What is that?"

"Seeds and spores," said Box. "Initial a.n.a.lysis shows - " Box's voice abruptly cut off.

"Yes ... shows what?"

The silence lasted for racked-out seconds. Chapra felt a chill. It was not often that an AI did not reply, was not there. To her knowledge this could only mean that Box's entire processing power had come on line. And that power was phenomenal.

Box said, "I am sorry to delay. There are seeds and spores for one hundred different varieties of water weed."

"But there was only one," said Chapra, and only after she had said it did she realise what Box had told her. "Jesu, it can do that?"

Box said, "From the plant material it placed in the device the creature has made seeds and spores for one hundred different varieties of water plant. The genetic coding for sixty-four percent of these plant seeds is close enough to the original plant code for it to have altered that genome. The rest fall outside that area of probability as they are bihelical DNA."

"It's an engineer, a f.u.c.king genetic engineer."

"Shall I continue?"

"Yes, sorry."

"Many of the seeds seem to have their origins in a completely different environment from what is likely the creature's native one but have been altered to survive in it. Five of the seeds are from Earth seaweeds."

"You mean Earth-type?" asked Chapra, even though she knew an AI did not make that kind of mistake.

"Earth seaweeds, specifically three types of kelp and two bladder wracks. The kelps are Furzbelows or Saccorhiza Polyschides, Sea Belt or - "

"Yes, yes, you've made your point, but what does it mean?"

"You require my answer to that?"

"I would like it. I know what mine is."

"Very well, this creature is or was a member of star-spanning race with a technology comparable if not superior to our own. At some time it or its kind visited Earth."

"Is or was?"

"We have never before encountered a creature like this yet it has obviously travelled in human s.p.a.ce. If its point of origin does turn out to be the system for which we are heading, then the creature might post date the extinction of its own kind by as much as five million years."

"How long now until we get there?"

"Forty-eight solstan hours."

Chapra nodded to herself and returned her attention to the projection.

"h.e.l.l," she said. "What now?"

The creature had placed the sample pots on the jetty, each of which contained something.

"I'm going down there."

"Judd is on his way."

"Yes, I'm sure he is."

Diana unclipped the restraining bar from her seat as the interface helmet automatically disconnected itself from her head, from her mind. Abruptly she was human again; limited to a small and fragile bipedal form. It was to be a G.o.d to interface with the Cable Hogue. It was also very tiring.

"Everything nominal," said Jabro, as if he expected no answer.

"Nominal," said Diana, still seeing the sh.o.r.e scenes from Callanasta's surface. The tsunami had been ten metres high, but the sh.o.r.e baffles had absorbed most of its energy. There had been only minor flooding in some coastal areas. No deaths. But then not many people lived on that world.

"We should do a weapons test before arrival," said Jabro. Behind his back Orland grinned at Seckurg, the token Golem on the bridge.

"Why should we?" asked Diana, her face straight.

"We don't want anything to go wrong at the other end," said Jabro, just as straight-faced.

"Hogue," said Diana, addressing the ceiling as was the wont of any addressing an AI, the location of which they were unsure. "Give us a vector on something to blast."

"Asteroid field two hours away at present speed. Navigation hazard and mostly the size of Separatist dreadnoughts. Nice that," said Hogue with relish.

"How long with the Laumer engines?"

"One hour. Engines still on diagnostic."

"Take them off that and put them online. This is a priority mission."

Deep in the guts of the Cable Hogue, banks of crystalline cylinders phased red-violet then off the visible spectrum. The force holding the s.h.i.+p under the surface of unders.p.a.ce dragged it deeper and slammed it forward. The energy expended was such that the s.h.i.+p left a visible trail behind it in reals.p.a.ce; self-created antimatter sparkled into oblivion as it connected with stray hydrogen atoms and left black lines like stretch marks across vacuum.

One hour later the Cable Hogue flashed into existence in a field of asteroids with a dispersion of thousands of kilometres. Asteroids glowed and bloomed into expanding spheres of plasma. Jabro segmented an asteroid the size of Earth's moon, then hit each segment with quark bombs. The resultant flash was mistaken as a nova on a distant world, a hundred years on.

"That cost us," said the s.h.i.+p AI, but Jabro was laughing like a maniac and did not hear. Diana smiled to herself, knowing Hogue would not have allowed Jabro access to that particular weapons bank if the cost had been prohibitive. The cost later turned out to be a twenty minute stopover in the troposphere of a gas giant for refuelling, then the Hogue really opened up with its Laumer engines. The result was called The Cable, and it glowed in the skies of many a world for decades.

The heat licked at the edges of the air blast on Chapra's face as she entered the isolation chamber. It almost seemed malevolent. Judd walked out ahead of her, to the edge of the jetty, and studied the containers. The creature was floating about ten metres out and Chapra felt that faint sensation that told her she was being ultrasound scanned. After a moment she followed Judd and peered down into the containers.

"A gift?" she wondered. She squatted down and looked closely. Three of the containers held small quant.i.ties of metallic powder. There were small quant.i.ties of crystalline substances in a couple of others, and in the remaining three were minute copies of the containers themselves. Chapra reached inside and took one out. Like the originals it was transparent. There was a mere fleck of something inside it.

Judd said, "The creature showed increased scanning activity when you spoke and it is showing it again now."

Chapra stood up. "Perhaps it understands that this is how we communicate. I imagine that it communicates using ultrasound and pheromones - not an easy language to translate." She stooped and took up four of the containers. Judd took up the other four.

"I don't think these are a gift," she continued. "I think the creature is letting us know its requirements." She turned to the door then and halted in surprise. Abaron, dressed in a totally-enclosing environment suit, stood just inside the chamber.

"Abaron." She could think of nothing more to say.

"There is a communication for you," he said, his voice grating from the PA of the suit. He quickly turned back to the door, hit the control to open it, went through. Chapra and Judd followed him through the lock. In that little chamber Abaron removed his mask while Chapra flicked back her hood. His face was pouring with sweat.

"Is that suit malfunctioning?" asked Chapra sweetly, then d.a.m.ned herself for insensitivity - at least he was trying. She shook her head. "What do you mean 'a communication'?"

"A priority message from a place called Clavers World," he said.

"Box? I thought you weren't letting anything through."

"I merely rea.s.signed priority. One of my subminds has been vetting all communications. This particular one may be relevant to all our actions. It is from Alexion Smith and it is on real time."

"Him. What the h.e.l.l does he want?" As she said this Chapra glanced at Abaron and saw the awe on his face. "Strike that," she said. "Let's go and find out."

Junger twenty-eights, thought Kellor. He stood in the hold of his s.h.i.+p watching, on a nearby viewscreen, the guns.h.i.+ps jetting across vacuum from the heavy-lifter shuttle. The General must have bribed someone in the Polity to obtain them. They were dated, and must have been scheduled for destruction at some point. Sixteen of them. Kellor licked his lips. He was not sure he liked this. The money was good and must obviously be in proportion to the risk ... but some of the other toys the General had brought aboard bothered him. The tactical atomics weren't so bad. Kellor had used them himself on many occasions. But the CTDs were. Contra terrene devices were the kind of things to get you really noticed by Earth Central, and it was by not being overly noticeable to EC that Kellor was able to continue to operate. He really hoped the General had no intention of using them against a Polity world - that would really p.i.s.s off some major minds, and a p.i.s.sed-off AI was an enemy indeed.

"You have some reservations," said Conard. A few paces behind him stood his two young aides, their expressions utterly devoid of emotion and in Kellor's opinion, intelligence.

"I always have reservations when I don't know all the details," Kellor replied.

The General stood with a swagger stick tucked under one arm and managed not to look ridiculous. His uniform was neat and spotless on a diminutive frame. His face wore a mildly thoughtful expression. But Kellor had begun to understand what went on behind that expression. General David Conard hated the Polity, and most especially its AIs, with fanatical intensity. He would die to bring it down. And he would kill anyone to bring it down. Kellor considered himself a better man. As far as he was concerned people could live how they liked. He only killed for money.

"There is nothing much to add. You must first sever communications using those ... missiles." He said the last word with contempt. It was his disgust at the thought of using smart missiles that had made Kellor finally realise the depth of Conard's hatred of AIs. "And on our subsequent arrival in the system take out the Polity s.h.i.+p you'll find there."

"And that's all?"

"Yes, and as I said before, 'There must be no survivors; complete obliteration'."

"And it's only a Polity science vessel?"

"Yes."

"No colony on the world?"

"No."

"That's all right then."

Kellor turned to watch as the first of the guns.h.i.+ps entered the hold of the Samurai. They had four-man crews, which meant his own crew would be outnumbered by about twenty. He would have to prepare for that eventuality. He turned back to Conard.

"Why?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?"