Dark Diamond

by Neal Asher

Genres: Space Exploration; Space Opera; Colonization; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Dark Diamond is the first in a high-octane space opera trilogy from Neal Asher, creator of the Polity universe.

Doomed to die. And die again.

Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen. After surviving a series of catastrophic accidents and assassination attempts, Blite realizes that whenever he dies the dark diamond reverses time to a moment before his death. He must go through the traumatic experience again and again until he escapes.

Every encounter Blite survives generates a time flash which reveals potential futures. This extraordinary phenomenon attracts the attention of Polity agents and the crab-like p-Prador who wish to acquire this power for themselves. Hunted across space and time, Blite must uncover the true nature of the dark diamond before it causes his destruction . . .

Release date: April 15, 2025

Publisher: Pyr

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue

Captain Blite

Fate had conspired to leave him with one working and clear eye, and just enough muscle in his neck with which to raise his head and look at what remained of his body. There wasn’t a lot of it. Not that he believed in fate, of course – well, not in any vague religious, supernatural sense. He rather felt that Fate in his particular case had a name still spoken of with awe – and of course the retrospective, spectator-titillation of those who weren’t there when a particular black AI started fucking with causality, or didn’t have any skin in the game.

Smoking rubble lay all around him: chunks of composite, shards of ceramal, foamstone that had apparently heated up enough to melt, and drifts of ash still glowing red inside. Thick, heavy smoke boiled through the air and each heaving breath he took failed to draw enough oxygen into his lungs. Even so, he could see that his legs and arms were gone, while his torso looked like a pork roast, nicely prepared and shaped into a neat cylinder, but having been shoved into an oven that was far too hot. It surprised him that he could feel no pain, until he did. Then he transitioned into the nightmare of not having enough air to breathe and not enough with which to scream.

Again.

1

Blite – Present

Captain Blite had met some interesting people over the years, and some had, surprisingly, been younger than him. But there was something about this guy. He didn’t look particularly enhanced – he wasn’t obviously boosted and hadn’t grown his body taller, as seemed the fashion nowadays. He looked much like your standard Polity human of Blite’s early years: a melting pot human. He did have that sinewy tough appearance of people Blite had known in the past, which in those days had hinted at someone who could move fast and violently. He had silvery hair cropped short, a face conventionally handsome but with lines that told of strain and thought. All of it could be a look straight out of a catalogue, though, and mean nothing at all.

But still . . .

The guy wore a long, light coat of some fine, slightly metallic fabric over a black T-shirt, black leg-hugging combats and enviroboots. This old-fashioned style was one that came around again and again, as Blite well knew. Watching the man come down the wide aisle on the viewing deck, he became immediately wary. He knew there must be a contract out on him because a year ago, when he’d gone off from his company Penny Transport to tick off a few more things on his bucket list, there had been two attempts on his life. And, frankly, this guy looked like a killer.

The man gazed at Blite directly. In his left hand he held a drink, and his jacket hung loosely enough to conceal a weapon. Surely he wouldn’t try anything here? The AI of this passenger ship was eternally vigilant, while the crew consisted of an interesting bunch of very capable humans, high-series Golem and a couple of war drones. Blite knew there was suppression tech around him, undoubtedly including lethal weapons concealed in the walls, while the disc-shaped bumps in the ceiling were almost certainly pendant security drones. He’d chosen to go on this cruise precisely because of all this – so he could relax for a while and not have to keep looking out for the next threat. Damn it, he was a legitimate businessman now and owner of Penny Transport. He thought he’d left that sort of nonsense behind him.

The guy sat down in the seat just one along from him and put his drink down on a side table. They both sat there gazing through the chain-glass wall opposite, beyond which sat a gas giant, striated with cloud like Jupiter, but in shades of green and gold, a large asteroid the shape of a caraway seed in silhouette, and the Fortense space station just sliding into view. This was a thick slab twenty kilometres long, with spaceships docked along one edge like contacts on an old computer chip.

‘It’s quite a view,’ said the man. Calm voice, but there was something in it.

‘Yup, it is that,’ Blite replied.

‘You’ll be going through the runcible there to travel to Callanasta, then by ship to your company base on the Lustra moon Perihelion,’ he said.

The man turned towards him and studied him evenly. Blite had never believed all that rubbish about seeing something in a person’s eyes. They were just balls of jelly, after all. You didn’t see stuff there, just the focus of their expression. But in this case he was, briefly, prepared to believe there was more there. He saw intensity in this man’s gaze, as well as strength, and something else that seemed utterly beyond the norm. He swallowed dryly, realizing that, for the first time in perhaps a century, he was looking at someone who scared him. This made him angry, of course.

‘Who the fuck are you to know my travel plans?’ he said.

The man smiled; the expression didn’t have any warmth in it. He held out his hand.

‘My name is Ian, formerly ECS.’

Fuck, fuck and fuck! Blite didn’t want to shake that hand. This 

Ian might be lying and nanotoxins could be concealed in a handshake, but he found himself reaching out anyway. A brief clasp, nothing special – just a hand. He now understood his initial reaction to this interloper. He didn’t believe the ‘formerly’, since Polity agents never retired.

‘And why is ECS interested in me?’

The man turned back to the view and Blite felt relieved to have those eyes off him. ‘I told you, I’m retired from ECS. Though I have to admit that certain connections remain and that’s how I learned of their interest.’

‘In what way?’ Blite just hoped the answer would be simple, prosaic and nothing to do with rather complex events he’d been involved in long ago. He’d already been interrogated about those and there was nothing more to say.

‘You were really lucky with that assassin on Earth, weren’t you? Almost as if you were prepared for him. Managed to disable his weapon and then pump shots in through a vulnerable part of his armour.’ Ian turned back again and studied him coldly. ‘How many attempts did it take for you to get it right?’

Blite now felt really worried. Nobody should know how he’d done that and, as far as he understood the process, nobody could know.

‘That’s a strange thing to say,’ he commented.

No doubt about it now. He needed to get back to his company at Perihelion and keep his head down there. He needed, rather than leaving it in the hands of others, to get a grip on the ongoing investigation into who the hell was trying to kill him. He really, really did not want to be a person of interest to ECS, not again. Not after everything that had happened before. He’d thought the AIs would never leave him alone, never stop investigating every aspect of his life. He’d thought the questions would never end.

‘It happened in New York, didn’t it?’ Ian continued, gaze sliding back to the view. ‘And strange power outages occurred at the same time, running equatorially around Earth. Along the Atlantic coast a cold ocean current swept round, and the sea farms had some problems with die-offs. They put them down to the sudden drop in temperature, but that didn’t really account for it. Nor was the cold current accounted for.’

Blite forced a smile. ‘I expect it can be made to fit some conspiracy theory, but I’m failing to see what it has to do with me.’

The man turned back to study him again. ‘There was a rash of sunspots that year too, and they were outside of projections.’

‘I still don’t see—’

Ian snapped up one hand. ‘Just listen. Investigations were made into the individual attempts on your life. They led nowhere because cash payments and instructions had been delivered to the assassins beforehand. With the killers all dead and you still alive, the investigations were shelved. But now AIs have made a connection between the attempts on your life and other curious phenomena and, considering your history, that becomes very interesting.'

‘Yes, I see how that might be the case.’ Blite wanted to get the hell away from here. He didn’t like where this seemed to be going at all.

Ian continued, ‘Earth Central Security is aware now, as is Earth Central, our beloved AI ruler of the Polity. You need either to disappear for a good long time or to find a way to stop these attempts on your life. If you don’t, and they continue, and those other phenomena continue . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t need to go on, do I?’

‘No, you don’t.’

Ian, the erstwhile Polity agent, abruptly stood up. He took up his drink. ‘Let us hope that we don’t meet again.’ He walked away.

Crackling groans were issuing from his mouth by the time the mask went on. As soon as it started feeding him oxygen he had the air to scream, but this faded out as something went into the side of his neck and awareness of his body slid away. He could still see, however, as a scorpion-like autodoc climbed onto his chest, dug in sharp limbs to hold itself in place and extruded a mass of self-guiding pipes and wires from its mouth.

‘How the fuck is he still alive?’ someone wondered.

He couldn’t move his neck now, but the vision in his one eye continued to work. He saw two people in hazmat suits move into view. One of them stooped down beside him, putting a couple of cylinders on his stomach behind the doc, then connecting fluid tubes to the machine.

‘Tough bastard, whoever he is,’ said this one – a woman, by the voice.

‘I think he’s still with us,’ said the other. ‘Put him out.’

He didn’t feel the injection or the alteration to the nerve shunt on his neck. The world just went away and then, seemingly without transition, it had changed when he next came to. He was hanging semi-weightless in clear fluid, in a tangle of pipes and wires. It seemed they must have found one of his arms and reattached it. He moved the skinless limb and noted it only possessed a forefinger and thumb. His mind seemed to be ticking along just fine, but the fact he wasn’t suffering the horrors had to be due to drugs, targeted neural suppression, and some tinkering with his nanosuite.

‘Stop waving that about,’ said a voice apparently in his ear. ‘You’ll pull out some of those feed tubes.’

He was in a regrowth tank and through the fluid, and the glass containing it, he could see someone standing there. Obviously they’d attached hardware to his skull so he could hear. Could he talk? He tried – just subvocalizing and forming the words without actually moving anything, because there was no air in his lungs and he wasn’t breathing.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘Tideville on Callanasta,’ the woman outside replied.

He recognized her voice as that of one of his rescuers, but that wasn’t the main thing which now occupied his mind. He remembered arriving on the Fortense space station and, after his talk with that ex-agent,

he’d had no wish to hang around, so he’d bought a runcible slot to head here as soon as possible. What he couldn’t remember was actually going through the runcible to Callanasta.

‘What happened?’

‘Runcible failure,’ she said incredulously. ‘Can you fucking believe it?’

He could, and now the horrors began. Runcibles didn’t fail any more, and he couldn’t help feeling that this failure had been deliberate, connected to the attempts on his life – this had been an attempt on his life. If that was the case, then this whole thing had just gone nuclear, literally, and investigative AIs would be buzzing around this place quite soon, if they weren’t already. He needed to get out fast, before connections were made.

He raised his mutilated arm in front of him. ‘Yes, I can believe it.’

‘It’s crazy. Hasn’t happened in a hundred years – not as bad as this,’ she said. Then, ‘Anyway, I need information from you. The AI is down and we’re having problems identifying survivors. Costs for your medical treatment are obviously covered, but we need some details on who you are, and if there’s anything we should be aware of regarding regeneration of limbs and other repairs.’

He considered this briefly. The AI might be down, as she said, but others would soon take up the load. Almost certainly his DNA was in the system and they would quickly enough discover his identity. He then reconsidered. No, that was rubbish. Even if an AI was down, others would be functional and connected and he would have been identified by now. She wanted to ask him something else.

‘My name is Blite, but you already know that,’ he replied. ‘What do you really want to know?’

‘Okay,’ she admitted, coming closer to the glass. ‘We’ve scanned you and everything is much as other scans, and we can of course fix you. However, there’s something impenetrable to scanning – a crystal set in the bone of your skull – and we have no idea what the hell it is.’ After a pause she added, as an excuse, ‘We don’t know if it’ll interfere with any of our procedures.’

‘It won’t interfere with anything you do,’ he replied, not entirely sure it was true. ‘It’s just something valuable to me that some people tried to take away from me once. I had it put there so they couldn’t.’

‘Oh, I see . . . but it’s impenetrable . . .’

‘It is indeed.’ He didn’t elaborate and instead said, ‘Now, I need to make a U-com call to someone. I want you to give me a vocal netlink, and I need it quickly, as well as some privacy. If you give me that, perhaps I’ll elaborate on what exactly I have in my skull.’

After a long pause she turned and walked away, saying, ‘You’re in – just speak.’

‘Carlstone 87876523BIT,’ he said. He didn’t mind that he was probably being overheard

 because the code was a one-time thing. The ‘BIT’ amused him – it stood for ‘Blite in trouble’. After a delay of a minute or so, a sound like that of an antique phone connection being made burred in his ears, then a moment later someone spoke.

‘What’s happened now?’ said his second-in-command of Penny Transport.

‘I’m in a regrowth tank on Callanasta, in the town of Tideville,’ Blite said. ‘Burned, and have lost all but one of my limbs. I need you to put a medical transport team together and get me the hell out of here fast.’

‘We heard about the runcible,’ said Carlstone. ‘Hell, you were in that?’

‘I was indeed. Get me back there, quick as you can. Also, I want our security up to max, and I mean max.’

‘Potential for attack?’

‘Just do what I say. I don’t have much privacy here.’

‘We’re on our way.’

The connection broke with a click.

Blite hung in the fluid, waiting until, inevitably, the woman came back.

‘You still want to know what’s in my head?’ he asked.

‘Sorry, but I’ve never seen anything our scanners can’t get through.’

‘It’s a piece of Penny Royal,’ he told her.

As she walked away laughing, he tried to smile, but nothing in his face worked. Then he remembered the one who’d once tried to take this piece from him, forcing him to have it implanted. The thief – the terrified thief.

Blite – Past

The art gallery had been laid out on three levels, and Mr Pace’s sculptures sat on pedestals in cylindrical chain-glass cases. Mr Pace, whom Penny Royal gave immortality, and who was thankful to lose it again. Using the touch consoles at the base of each display, one could black out the background behind the sculpture and revolve the pedestal, also turning on lights of various hues. Another touch could bring up a menu in the chain-glass itself, which allowed magnification down to the microscopic on any portion of each sculpture.

Blite stood gazing in at the sculpture of a prador – one of the implacable alien enemy of the Polity, still out there, beyond a border space called the Graveyard. All the tools provided here for potential buyers’ close inspection of these artworks were irrelevant in the case of this collection. Before his death, Mr Pace had lined up the sale to a planetary AI; on subsequent investigation Blite had discovered that the buyer concerned, here on Abalon, had just been obeying orders. The ultimate owner of it would be Earth Central itself, and the collection would go on display in the Terpsichorean Museum of Art in London.

This sculpture was beautiful, yet ugly too, and menacing. It had been formed of translucent yellow and green glass, even with glass internal organs. Its limbs were distorted and there were whorls in its deformed

shell. He was sure now that, impossibly, it depicted one of Sverl’s children, even though Mr Pace could simply not have encountered those rebel prador when he made it. The AI Penny Royal again – fucking about with time and causality.

The prador here was special to Blite. Like all of Pace’s sculptures, it activated under the warmth of a hand, but unlike others, this one had once activated, then stayed active, even after he took his hand away. It had been just a few months ago, when he’d gone to find it after receiving a message, especially for him, from Penny Royal. The sculpture had something for him, he’d been told, which turned out to be three ruby memcrystals containing the minds of his dead crewmen. And, of course, all of that had been impossible, if one thought in Blite’s terms and not like something with godlike powers. These crystals, along with this collection, he and his old crewmate Greer had been asked to take to Earth, where they would be ‘interviewed’ by AIs about events leading up to Penny Royal inserting itself into a black hole and, apparently, moving beyond time. One other item had been with the crystals too. Unconsciously, Blite now raised his hand and closed it around the black gem he’d had fitted into a pendant hung around his neck.

A piece of Penny Royal. Why the AI had given it to him he had no idea. He’d just known the moment he first touched it that it was his. He didn’t know if it was in any way active – it was a touchstone and a connection to those events that somehow acknowledged his part in them. And, if he was honest, he felt special owning it.

He would have to hide it when they went to Earth. He’d leave it aboard Pace’s ship during those interviews and, if at all possible, he wouldn’t mention it. If they found out, the AIs would take it away from him for examination. No. He realized the ship wouldn’t be safe enough. The AIs, or AI, that would interview him would almost certainly take Pace’s ship apart. It would have to go in a shielded container and then into a secure box with Galaxy Bank here. Since he was a very rich man now, and his account was with them, they’d run around to provide him with whatever he needed. This would have to be his next task.

‘Okay,’ he said, and turned away from the case.

He’d seen everything now. Pace had been a supreme artist. He’d also been one of Penny Royal’s projects when that AI hadn’t been quite so nice. It had effectively given Pace corporeal immortality by dint of a nigh-indestructible body. And if he did destroy it anywhere, he was perpetually backed up, so mechanisms in his home world could rebuild him. By the time Blite had encountered him, the man had wanted to die, and finally he had.

On the lower floor, Greer was looking through the collection. Blite raised a hand to the heavyworlder woman and by gesture indicated that he’d meet her later for a drink, then headed out of the gallery. Things were up in the air for her and for him. They were both very independently

 wealthy, but those interviews with the AIs were still to come, and what then? He’d always been attracted to the idea of retiring on a resort world, drinking cips in some sunny beach bar and generally being indolent. But, even now, with nothing to strive for any more, no scrabbling after money to pay for some upgrade or new component for his ship, or acquiring a cargo for transport and involving himself in some barely legal deals, he could feel boredom growing.

He moved outside. Here the buildings were oddly curved structures that loomed over the crowded street. Apparently they were the product of some architectural artist the ruling AI here had transported in. People paid a premium to live in the upper apartments, and business concerns similarly paid out to rent shop space on the lower floors. Blite didn’t like them much – they reminded him too much of the rib bones of some giant beast, and as if the street were its spine. There were aspects of this world he did like, though. The Abalon AI wasn’t one of those heavy-handed planetary AIs that controlled everything. It allowed business that slid into that grey area Blite preferred. It could be dangerous here, it could be chaotic, but on the whole it wasn’t too boring. His attitude soon changed when a girl ran into him in the crowds and knocked the wind out of him.

Blite staggered back and glared at her. She looked at him in shock. She appeared young, clad in a scrappy environment suit and heavy jacket, thin elfin face with artfully messed yellow and blue hair. As ever, that could have been a look from a catalogue.

‘I’m so really sorry,’ she said.

Blite waved a dismissive hand at her. She nodded in gratitude, smiled and ran on, dodging through the crowds. He watched her go, while making a grumbling sound in the back of his throat. Such a prosaic encounter, after all he’d been through. If only she knew. He continued on towards his rented apartment. It was only when he was climbing the stairs to it that his hand strayed to his breast again, underneath his suit, and he realized the pendant was gone.

Blite – Present

His regrowth in the tank continued apace. The hardware they’d attached to his skull was in fact an induction aug, and he found it had many more functions than enabling him to speak to, and hear, those who came to visit him. He could link into the AI net and search out information he wanted. He could enter virtualities and play games, or live a life of his choosing while his body healed. Instead he chose to contact Carlstone again, to keep harrying him, then drifted into ten-hour periods of unconsciousness while he waited.

After the first ten hours, he could see skin forming on his arm. It was doubtless developing on what remained of his body too, but he couldn’t see that. The woman was there again when he woke.

‘We’ve been overloaded,’ she told him. ‘Our procedure with you was to be stabilization first, then we’d bring you out under the printerbot and autosurgeon, but apparently you’re being transported out of here?’

‘Yes, that is the case.’

‘I never realized you were that Blite.’

‘That Blite?’

‘The extremely wealthy owner of the Perihelion moon and Penny Transport.’ She paused. ‘And you weren’t lying about what you have in your skull.’

‘I always tell the truth, me,’ Blite lied.

‘Anyway,’ she continued. ‘We would have been taking you out of the tank by now for surgery and printing but it seems your people will be arriving soon. If we start work on the next procedures, we won’t be able to interrupt them.’

‘Just leave me here,’ Blite informed her.

‘And what about—?’

Blite didn’t hear the rest because he’d already instructed the induction aug to put him under for another ten hours.

When he next woke a ceiling was passing overhead, punctuated with alternating light squares and the bumps of security drones. Curved glass now lay close to his face. He couldn’t make out much about the figures moving with him, beyond the fact that they wore combat armour and carried weapons. One of them was almost certainly Carlstone, come to get him out of here as instructed.

‘Everything good?’ he asked via his aug.

‘No problems,’ Carlstone replied. ‘Taking into consideration what we discussed after initial contact, we’re taking you out by ship. Two of our trade ships are here and we’re going in one of them.’

‘How long till we’re aboard?’ Blite asked.

‘An hour until we’re aboard the shuttle and launched, then three hours till we’re on the ship.’

‘Flight time?’

‘Eight days.’

‘Why so long?’

‘More secure route.’

‘The ship has been swept?’

‘It has, and its unit is . . . prador.’

That meant the controlling mind of the ship was the flash-frozen ganglion of a prador and not an AI. Good choice, Blite felt, because right now he didn’t trust any AI. He queued up the aug to knock him out for another four hours but then hesitated. He felt a bit mean about his responses to the woman who’d been one of his rescuers and had obviously been curious about him. He should have overcome his inclination to reticence and engaged her in conversation. But about what? She would probably have wanted to know more about those past events surrounding Penny Royal, and he’d grown tired of telling that story – mostly because of telling it to the interviewing forensic AI Carnusine years before,

while it hinted that it would really like to examine him more closely, and did he mind? He hadn’t allowed it – or rather, they’d allowed him not to allow it. Perhaps she wanted to know more about the crystal in his skull, and how and why it had got there. There was no danger in that. He’d never been secretive about it. In fact the crystal – the dark diamond – was the one which kept secrets. Maybe another time he’d hunt her down and be kinder, but right now he had problems to deal with, and someone else to hunt down who might help him get to the bottom of all this.

Blite – Past

Blite was devastated. When he reported the theft of the pendant he described it as holding a black jewel but dared not elaborate on that. He also described the girl who’d stolen it, using an induction aug to access his memories for a more precise depiction of her. Turned out her name was Meander Draft 64XB and she was on record, location presently unknown. He threw some money around and employed the types he was used to employing to hunt her down. But eventually his schedule began to catch up with him.

AIs were getting tetchy about him not turning up on Earth for those interviews; Earth Central itself had sent him a message. He became aware that his delay on this world, just to look for a missing pendant, would bring that pendant to the notice of those AIs. They’d start to wonder why he considered it so important; they’d speculate on it having some connection to the events they wanted to interview him about. In the end, he paid out more money, left instructions for the search to continue, and funds for a large – but not too large – reward.

Done, thought Blite bitterly.

His belongings were packed in two grav-cases and now his time in this Abalon apartment was up. A small shuttle awaited at the space port and Mr Pace’s, or rather the ship Pace had given him, awaited in orbit. The collection of glass sculptures had been packed away safely, transported back up there, and was now in the hold.

Time to go.

He strolled along the street, his two cases drifting after him. He regretted leaving this place and was anxious about what was to come when he arrived on Earth, as well as still pissed off about the theft of his pendant. At the end of the street, he took an aircab to the space port and was soon strolling through the wide entrance to the shopping complex that backed onto the designated landing pad. There wasn’t much security here. Cargos coming in were scanned in a limited manner for dangerous weapons, but since your average fusion node could be converted into a heavy weapon, and a lethal biological could be concealed in a pinhead, it was just a hat-tip towards security. The gates to the landing pad had scanning too, but you were only stopped if you

couldn’t be identified. He walked straight through.

Wide steps led up to the pad. Once he reached the top, he looked around. The shuttles were set out in rows and of various designs. Stacks of cargo crates were everywhere, autohandlers and older driven versions loading the crates onto trains of wheeled pallets, people standing talking or wandering about too. Small cargo ships and shuttles were here. The larger stuff lay beyond, where bigger ships loomed and cranes shifted over stacks of huge cargo containers. He walked along a row of shuttles, finally spying his own far ahead, half concealed behind stacks of plasmel crates. As he drew closer, he turned to his luggage and waved a hand ahead.

‘Go aboard,’ he said tightly, and the two cases overtook him.

He slowed his pace, knowing he was dawdling because he didn’t want this next stage of his life to begin. He felt irritated and low, as if he had a hangover he’d failed to medicate. He needed to move on – get his mind on other things. Looking at all these cargos and all this business, he pondered on how, with the wealth now at his disposal, he could do things so much better than he had before. Did he really want to sit on a beach with that cips? How long would it be before he started thinking about importing his favoured version of that drink? How long before he looked at price lists, import tariffs, tax structures and how to get around them? He grunted to himself and stepped past a large stack of plasmel crates, finally ready to board the shuttle.

‘Please,’ said a shaky voice.

He halted, hand sliding down to where he usually wore a gas-system pulse gun at his hip, then straying away again.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice.

He couldn’t see anyone at first, but stepping forward further, he noticed her sitting in the gap between two stacks of crates, with her back against one of them. She looked up at him. Her face still appeared young but had rings under bloodshot eyes. It was thinner, with the bone structure sharply highlighted by shades of grey. There were deep scratches on her neck, as if she’d raked herself with her fingernails. Her hair was messy, not stylishly so, just messy, and had streaks of something drying in it – probably vomit. Certainly, her torn and battered envirosuit had vomit down the front, and he could smell a horrible mix of body odours. She reminded him of the kind of people found in back alleys on less salubrious worlds, lost in addiction and lying in their own shit and urine.

‘You,’ he said.

‘I thought it would be enough . . . enough for you to follow the trail,’ she said, and then her gaze wandered away from him as she groped into a pocket of her suit. She took out the pendant and, with a shaking dirty hand, nails broken and bloody, held it up for him. ‘Please take it.’

Without a second thought, Blite snatched the pendant from her. He inspected it, immediately suspicious it was a copy, but the moment his finger touched the black crystal he knew it was his own. He slipped the chain over his head, then tucked the thing inside his shirt so it rested against the bare skin of his chest. Something unwound inside him and the world seemed suddenly brighter. He peered back down at the girl, wondering what to do about her. 

She was already rising now, and the transformation was startling. Her face suddenly seemed prettier, like life had returned to it. She stood straight and strong and peered down at her soiled clothing in disgust, before sighing out a breath and her gaze straying to where the pendant lay against his chest. He realized she now looked less of a girl and more of a woman.

‘I don’t know what to do now,’ she said. ‘It just wouldn’t let me keep it . . . it showed me things.’

Blite now had questions. He reached out to grab the shoulder of her suit, prepared to drag her inside the shuttle. Her hand came up with a blade in it – glinting chain-glass – and he knocked it aside, grabbing for her with his other hand. He caught part of her sleeve but the knife sliced down, thankfully cutting the fabric rather than his fingers, and she slid lithely past him to run away. He watched her go, knowing he carried far too much bulk to go in pursuit, and anyway, what was the need? He turned and headed for the shuttle, wondering whether to cancel the search for her, but then decided against it. He could tell this hadn’t been just an opportunistic theft; he wanted to know why she’d stolen a pendant that, on the face of it, looked like tourist tat, and what it had done to her.

Blite – Present

‘Those are mine?’ Blite enquired aboard the ship.

Carlstone had always been the height of efficiency and Blite admired the way he tended to every detail, but he’d outdone himself this time. Blite had awoken on a surgical table in a sealed surgery, a gleaming autosurgeon backing away from him, an organic printer folded down at the foot of the slab, and other equipment all around. He was presently pointing with his partially restored arm at a row of cylinders along one wall.

‘We brought your stock of cellular printing substrate.’ Carlstone, who looked more like the ECS soldier he’d once been than the administrator of Perihelion he now was, stood behind the glass of the clean surgery. ‘It’s all there: bone, muscle and skin – the lot. But I thought it might be an idea to wake you first, bearing in mind what we discussed.’

‘That someone has been trying to kill me,’ Blite said. ‘And that the runcible failure on Callanasta might have been no accident.’

Carlstone nodded. ‘You said you wanted to augment.’

Blite nodded – he could do that now. Yeah, he wanted to boost himself up, make sure he was a lot less vulnerable to injury, which seemed a rational choice. He shuddered, a hint of the horrors rising, but still thankfully suppressed. Of course, Carlstone couldn’t know – in fact no one could or should know – that it was the injuries which most concerned him, not the possibility of dying. Yet it seemed that somehow a particularly spooky ‘retired’ Polity agent called Ian might know. He put that aside for the moment.

One thing at a time.

‘Yes, I want everything we have,’ he said. ‘What do we have?’

Carlstone shrugged. ‘Depends how concerned you are about your appearance.’

‘I want it to be more or less the same.’

Blite had never really gone in for much in the way of body modification. He still looked mostly the same as he had as a youth, when in fantasy virtualities he’d always been given the role of the blacksmith, or in others the heavy, the enforcer – the guy who broke people’s bones for fun. Heavily muscled, just through genetics – though maybe now looking on the point of turning to fat – he liked his body as it was, because it was Blite.

‘Very well,’ said Carlstone. ‘And how quickly?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Then we can toughen up your bones and weave cable muscle into your present musculature, including some in your heart, and we can put in subdermal armour. However, all those will need support by altering your lung capacity, the carrying capacity of your blood, organ processing etc., and that’ll be via reprogramming your nanosuite, so it will take a little while to catch up.’

‘Anything else?’

‘We could give you fire-resistant skin, but it never looks quite right.’

Blite peered at him. It seemed Carlstone was having one of his all too rare moments of humour.

Carlstone continued, ‘I would also suggest nerve enhancement and the incorporation of an aug to run all the integration processes.’

Blite grumbled.

Carlstone added, ‘It can be an induction aug you can remove at any time.’

‘You neglected to mention something else,’ said Blite.

‘I was waiting for you to mention it.’

‘You brought it?’

‘Yes, I did, but I strongly suggest it’s something you avoid.’ Carlstone grimaced. ‘Too many imponderables there. First off, we don’t know how it will interact with your other enhancements. Secondly, it was developed, or it evolved, in the Kingdom, aboard the King’s Ship. Let’s face it: even the AIs don’t know enough about the Spatterjay virus, and what they do know is fucking scary. This one . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It’s fast-acting, I’ll give it that.’

‘We’ll leave it for now,’ said Blite. ‘But I want a batch of it prepared to go in my thigh bone, with an externally activated pump.’

‘You’re the boss,’ said Carlstone tightly.

‘Now get all that other stuff done.’

Blite reclined, thinking about this virus. On the world of Spatterjay, it turned its

hosts into a reusable food resource for the leeches which spread it. Those hosts then became something really really tough, and the virus worked with all species, including the humans of Spatterjay, called hoopers. It had made some of them very strong indeed, the toughest being the Old Captains, whose strength and durability hadn’t really been properly measured, but lay beyond most Polity enhancements. It sounded ideal if you didn’t want to end up dead, but it had its drawbacks.

If you were sufficiently injured, the virus used an eclectic collection of genomes from its previous hosts to increase your survivability. And this could turn you into a monster, so it had to be controlled. The things it did were also based on a malfunction of something else it contained, which few knew about: the genomes of a squad of Jain soldiers. The Jain had been an alien race whose vicious technology had been hanging around and destroying civilizations since the Jain themselves had disappeared long ago. Add to this the version of the virus they’d obtained from the Prador Kingdom, which was a mutated or modified strain that worked much faster than the centuries it usually took to create an Old Captain, and Carlstone’s reservations were warranted. However, as Blite drifted into unconsciousness, he had the strong feeling it might be something he would need, and soon.

2

Matheson

Matheson stepped out of his tent, dumped his pack by his feet and peered down at the marks in the dirt. Some were still visible, though the hailstorm in the night had obliterated the rest. Sleer tracks. They’d come visiting to grind whatever version of eating apparatus they had – that being dependent on what stage of sleer they were – against the open-cell monofabric of his tent. They weren’t much of a threat to him, having little chance of penetrating the material, but they’d interrupted his sleep, and he liked his sleep. He decided he’d have some target practice on the pests today as he continued with his associates towards the ‘farm’. He looked around.

Jurgen, their guide, was out of his tent and shrugging on his pack. The other three tents of the Brice brothers and sister were still closed. Ricardo, the Golem, had yet to return from his nightly perambulations. And Nightshade, the spider drone, was squatting on the roof of their ATV, gazing off towards the horizon. Matheson turned back to his own tent, opened the flap to check he had left nothing inside, then stepped back, tapping the control on the flimsy console by the flap. With a hissing sound, the dome-shaped tent released air from its open-cell foam and steadily collapsed. As it did so, microfibre memory mesh began to fold it, and fold again, until finally it became a small block that could fit into the palm of his hand, flimsy screen on top. He slid it into a pocket in his pack, picked up the pack and walked over to Jurgen, who was already collapsing his own tent.

‘So today we should reach the boundary of the farm,’ said Matheson.

‘Weather permitting,’ Jurgen replied, looking up at the sky.

‘No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.’

‘That’s all right for you to say,’ said Jurgen, eying the high-tech power armour Matheson wore. ‘If the hail comes again, I can always just give you directions to the pass.’ Jurgen shrugged.

‘And I pay you the rest of your fee?’

‘Of course.’

‘No, you get us to the pass and I pay you there, as agreed.’

Matheson turned away. The Brices were up now, all efficiency and readiness as they collapsed their tents and ran weapons checks. Sheen Brice, the sister, didn’t look very different from her brothers. All three were heavily boosted, extremely tough, and the best bounty hunters in the sector. Matheson auged in, running his own weapons check as he slung on his pack. His multigun was strapped onto the back of it at the moment, and he saw no need to unlimber it until they were closer – his gas-system pulse gun and flak pistol would be enough to deal with any sleers or droons that might come after them. Gazing into the distance, he wished he could have used a grav-car to take them beyond the pass, but their target at the farm apparently had detection gear, a couple of particle cannons and a missile launcher. Airspace over the farm was a no-fly zone, as agreed by the authorities of this world they were on, Cull.

‘I still don’t get why they’re so complacent about us being here,’ said Ulnar Brice, stepping up beside him. ‘The machine has citizenship – you’d think the authorities would protect it.’

‘That’s because it can protect itself better than the police of Cull,’ said Ricardo, casting his voice from a distance as he walked towards the encampment. ‘You’ve seen how they are here: low-tech projectile weapons.’

‘But as a matter of policy?’ said Ulnar.

‘It told them it needs no protection.’ Ricardo had broken into a run, his cast voice dopplering oddly. Finally he arrived by them. ‘As I understand it, the thing rather likes all the attempts to collect on the Polity bounty that’s been placed on its head. It is, after all, a killer.’

Matheson grimaced. There’d been numerous attempts to bring the machine in, either

 whole or in bits – the bounty specified that either way would garner payment, though the more intact the thing was, the more money would be forthcoming. And the bounty had recently gone up . . . Whatever. The machine, the fucking machine, would be returned to the Polity in bits because this was personal. Because this was the machine. Matheson remembered the day when his mother had told him his father was dead, having tried to collect on a bounty for a separatist terrorist called Arian Pelter. Growing up, he’d trained himself for the same profession, but by the time he was ready, Arian Pelter was long dead. He’d found out about the machine, though – how it had killed fifteen bounty hunters, including his father. It had torn off his head.

Matheson learned his profession properly and gained deep experience over more than a century. He forgot about the machine until, in his hundred and seventieth year, ennui hit. He survived it, barely, but only because he remembered his past and decided to make the machine an end goal to give him purpose. Coming out of ennui, he discovered that bounty hunters with higher resources than him had tried and failed to get to it, and he realized he wasn’t ready. But now a series of profitable successes had provided the equipment they wore and carried, and wealth enough to employ a war drone and the Brices. What had once been a distant purpose enabling him to survive had become present reality.

Matheson now eyed Ricardo, clamping down on his growing dislike. They’d worked together for many years and he had trusted the Golem more than he did most other such machines,

which wasn’t a high bar. This was because Ricardo was a human mind loaded to a Golem chassis. But over the last year, during two previous hunts, the man-Golem, who’d always been precise about necessary precautions, had begun to make them burdensome. Almost certainly this was because the high-value target prior to those two hunts had nearly done for Ricardo, with a particle cannon demounted from a warship. Matheson speculated on Ricardo in comparison to the machine they were going after now. He knew that with their new equipment he and the Brices could bring Ricardo down, and his chassis was a modern series. However, the machine at the farm had been altered and adapted. It’d been loaded with a murder tape to break its Polity programming, armoured in some fashion, and it was rumoured to have integrated some form of alien technology, though the last seemed highly unlikely.

‘We all ready, then?’ he asked, looking around.

Jurgen gestured across the gritty ground and they set out. They’d used the ATV previously where it had been a flat plain, but ahead stretched a rockscape with buttes of multicoloured outcrops jutting up here and there. This area lay athwart the jagged peaks where the supposed pass ran through, though they’d never been able to obtain satellite imagery or even a map. At the end of this, just behind those peaks, was a small plateau upon which lay the farm. It was inaccessible by any way other than on foot – apparently the machine had blocked off other routes. Matheson had considered climbing gear but didn’t fancy getting caught on a steep face by his supposed prey. Grav-harnesses weren’t an option, since the machine had ways of detecting grav disturbances. The thing had laid out its game and he would play by its rules only so far.

‘Hey, Nightshade! You going to sit there all day?’

The spider drone turned and observed him with glittery red eyes. Matheson felt a brief primal shudder at the sight of this three-metre spider, seemingly fashioned of grey iron, scrambling down off the ATV and coming after them. But Nightshade seemed okay. His contract had been open, and many other bounty hunters had used him and recommended him. That spider body was loaded with good weaponry. Matheson nodded to himself. They had the edge, with a man-Golem, a spider war drone, state-of-the-art power armour and weapons, and the EM disruptor shells for their multiguns, which should bring down any damned rogue machine. And they had an ace in the hole too, which Matheson had strictly ordered the others never to discuss within Jurgen’s hearing.

They trudged throughout the morning between rocks, along rough stream beds and past hills and buttes. A sleer came out of a hole at the base of one of the buttes and started to head towards them. The nightmare thing vaguely resembled a scorpion, was as big as the spider drone and had an excess of manipulators to the fore. Before Matheson could even reach down to his flak pistol, Sheen had nailed it with her laser carbine. In a cloud of smoke and fire the sleer retreated, body segments revolving independently. It never reached its burrow, just falling apart with those segments rolling away like burning tyres.

‘Save your ammo,’ said Will Brice.

He had a point. All of them apart from Jurgen, Ricardo and Nightshade wore power armour; one good solid kick would be enough to deter the creatures.

Jurgen next led them to a stream that wound down from the mountains. They ascended alongside this, below layered sandstone cliffs that grew steadily taller. The path here seemed quite worn and, where it went up over fallen slabs, steps had been carved in the stone. Matheson caught hold of Jurgen’s shoulder and gestured to steps lying ahead.

‘This looks well used,’ he said, suspicions arising about where they might be being led. ‘I thought the machine kept itself isolated.’

‘He does, generally, but he’s running a farm. He grows biotech stuff up there and sells it. Traders from the city or the plains come up here.’

‘And they have no problems?’ Matheson didn’t like how Jurgen referred to the thing as ‘he’.

‘They’re not coming to collect on the bounty.’

‘Ah, so it’s a peaceable machine usually, just defending its agrarian idyll?’

‘He likes his sport,’ Jurgen replied, heading for the steps.

The path wound steadily higher and the declivity the stream had cut steadily narrowed. Ahead, stretching across between the two cliff faces, he saw

 a tree trunk lodged in place. There were ropes hanging from this, most of them flapping loose but one still holding a body up there by the neck.

‘This is as far as I go,’ said Jurgen. ‘The edge of the plateau is a further four hundred metres up.’

On the sandstone slabs below the tree trunk lay remains that had obviously, at one time, been suspended above. There were headless skeletons clad in body armour, and skulls scattered around, lodged in crevices. Sheen climbed up onto a rock to inspect some of them.

‘Polity commando kit,’ she called down. ‘Maybe twenty or more years old.’ She held up a skull with a helmet still in place.

‘Army surplus,’ said Will. ‘You can buy it anywhere.’

‘So, will you transfer my payment?’ said Jurgen.

Now, Matheson felt, it was time to start playing the game his way. He had no doubt that Jurgen had some kind of deal with the machine up above. He led the hunters here, doubtless assessing their capabilities, then sent some kind of report. It was time to remove him from the equation. He reached down and drew his weapon, but Nightshade had moved close and now reared up. A hissing crackle raised dust from Jurgen’s clothing and he shuddered, going down on his knees with a baffled expression. The spider drone caught him and laid him down on his side. It had effectively saved his life by hitting him with a load of stun beads.

‘You’re too kind,’ said Matheson.

‘The police here may turn a blind eye to bounty hunters going after the machine, but maybe not to the murder of one of their citizens. Let’s keep this clean.’

Matheson holstered his pulse gun. Nightshade was right, but Matheson still didn’t like the spider drone’s inclination towards morality. That had been in the reports from others who hired him. Apparently, he only killed those who directly attacked him or were, not to put too fine a point on it, bad people. It bothered Matheson that he might well fall into the latter category.

‘This does not look good,’ said Ricardo from up on the rock where he’d joined Sheen. ‘If these guys were wearing army surplus, it seems they obtained a standardized batch for them all to wear. They were all boosted, auged and had other cybernetic enhancements too.’ He held up the bones of an arm held together with gristle and ligaments, and a joint motor at the elbow. ‘And look at this.’

He dropped the arm and picked up something else, then tossed it down to them

Will stepped in to catch the item and swung round, brandishing it. It was a heavy carbine of some kind.

‘ECS high-power laser carbine with side slug launchers and EMP viral warfare facility,’ he said. ‘We ain’t in Kansas any more, Toto.’

It was an expression Will had used a couple of times before: when he’d learned what their mission would be here, and when he’d seen the ship Matheson had bought following their last big bounty. Matheson reminded himself now, as he had on those previous occasions, to look up the phrase, since he had no idea what the man was talking about. Another object spiralled down from the rock and thumped in sandy dust. Matheson stepped forwards, stooped, and picked it up. A small flat gun – a pulse gun of a familiar design. This was the kind of weapon legendarily carried by Polity agents. He discarded it. You could buy them anywhere.

‘I suggest a reassessment,’ said Ricardo, jumping down from the rock and landing lightly. ‘We need more information.’

Matheson stared at him, his growing dislike abruptly grounding in reality and finding justification. In a Golem chassis, Ricardo had super strength, speed and durability, but inside that chassis he was still a man. In retrospect Matheson realized that the precautionary approach which had made Ricardo so useful arose out of cowardice. He saw in an instant how Ricardo had always tried to put his fears across logically, in terms of the mission, but really he was craven. Oh, he would happily rip off the head of a victim, but any hint of danger to himself and that ‘reassessment’ would come out. Matheson grimaced at his twenty-twenty hindsight, as he saw the logic of this fear which had led the man to install himself in a Golem chassis in the first place.

‘We need no more information,’ said Matheson. ‘There’s a killing machine up there with a huge bounty on its head and we’re going to collect.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Close up visors and initiate the ’ware.’

He watched as the Brices closed their visors and worked their wrist controls. Shimmering lines appeared at the tops of their heads and traversed down their bodies, seemingly erasing them from existence. He turned to Ricardo, who shrugged, then disappeared in the same manner. Ricardo didn’t wear armour but had the same chameleonware installed in his body. This was their big edge – on top of their superb armour and weapons. He looked around for Nightshade – but the spider drone had already disappeared – then closed down his own visor. As soon as it snicked home all the others reappeared to him. Their ’ware was linked so they could see each other, since being invisible to each other would almost certainly result in some friendly-fire incidents.

‘Where’s Nightshade?’ asked Will over com.

‘Scouting ahead,’ the spider drone replied. ‘More casualties up here – you need to come and have a look. Ricardo might not be far off the mark.’

Matheson felt a stab of anger, but suppressed it. None of them knew about his father and how he’d died, and he didn’t want to start showing any behaviour they might consider irrational. No matter what did lie ahead, they were going to the farm. He waved an arm at the others and led the way up.

Here and there along the path lay wreckage. Two grav-platforms rested against the cliff face like huge discarded coins, weaponry still mounted on them. On one a corpse was draped over what looked like a particle cannon. Another pile of wreckage at the foot of a cliff, after a long scar through the sandstone, looked to be the remains of an armoured grav-car. Then ahead he saw Nightshade, standing in front of something crumpled below

steps which led upwards beside a waterfall.

‘I think I knew him,’ said the spider drone. ‘His name was Plunder – veteran of the war like me.’

This wreck of a war drone was the usual nightmare rendition of something nasty and insect-like. It had a short flat body at the back, from which protruded a barbed sting. From its thorax six legs had protruded, some of which it had lost, the rest bent and broken. Its head had been birdlike, from what he could see remaining of it. As he drew closer, he noticed a large hole – big enough to drop a man through – had been burned right through its body.

Nightshade turned and looked at them. ‘So, we’ve had what looked like a unit of Polity commandos here, a Polity agent, grav-mounted weapons and now a war drone. Perhaps this machine we are hunting is even more dangerous than we supposed.’

The Brices were looking at Matheson and waiting for his response. Ricardo was gazing at the ruined drone with an odd lost expression.

‘This is staged,’ Matheson said finally. ‘No way did the machine take all of these out at once. As I understand it from Jurgen, the machine allows people up here to the farm to collect its crops. It probably doesn’t react unless attacked.’ He gestured at the drone and back down the pass. ‘I’d bet these didn’t come here all together but separately, over many years. Then, after they were killed, the machine put them here.’ He pointed to the war drone. ‘That probably made the mistake of flying in. Jurgen tried to imply the machine likes killing bounty hunters, but putting these here indicates otherwise – it’s trying to turn us back.’

‘This is not a good idea,’ said Ricardo.

‘Shut the fuck up, you coward,’ said Matheson.

‘Oh, a coward, am I?’ Ricardo enquired.

‘Yes, and it’s become more obvious ever since you were beamed.’

‘A coward,’ Ricardo repeated. He gazed at Matheson for a long moment, then abruptly swung around and began walking back the way they’d come. Matheson stared at him, not quite believing what he was seeing.

‘Where the hell are you going?’

Ricardo just kept walking.

Matheson felt the rage surge up; he drew his flak pistol and began firing. Ricardo stumbled as shells slammed into his back, but they couldn’t do much damage to his Golem chassis. Abruptly he jerked into fast motion and went dodging and weaving down the pass. Matheson lowered his weapon. Pointless exercise.

He turned to the others. ‘Anyone else want to run?’

‘We’re good,’ said Will. ‘If it all turns to shit, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll end up dead – we’ll just have to get out, fast.’

‘Nightshade?’ Matheson asked.

No expression to read there – just those glittery red eyes. ‘War drones don’t make the mistake of flying straight into heavy weapons.'

‘How many disenfranchised war drones have you known that chose a way out?’ asked Matheson.

‘He has a point,’ said Sheen. ‘Probably decided to go down in flames.’

‘Okay,’ said Nightshade. ‘But I am not suicidal. If this does turn to shit, I’m gone.’

‘So, we continue,’ said Matheson, heading for the steps up the side of the waterfall.

The last stretch before the upper plateau consisted mostly of these steps. Matheson felt himself boiling inside, but his certainty had drained away. Yes, it seemed likely the dead had been positioned there as a deterrent, but, fuck – a war drone brought down? Anyway, Will was right. They had their chameleonware and they had their weapons. If things got too hot up above, they could lay down a lot of fire and flee. At least then he’d have more of an idea what he faced and be able to return better prepared.

After two longish climbs they came to a short length of steps up to clear sky. Matheson unhooked his multigun from his pack, extended the support arm from his suit and fitted it into place, plugging in the power lead and ammo feeds from the pack. Targeting and weapons selection came up in his head-up display. The Brices did the same and they auged together, running a final weapons check. Nightshade opened two hatches in his back end and protruded a pair of miniguns, while other hatches slid open on the war drone’s body too. They were ready for the final climb. Matheson waved a hand and led the way up.

From the last few steps the vista opened out ahead of them. The plateau wasn’t huge – just five kilometres across. The scene was bucolic, with neat fields laid out between fences, around a farmhouse that seemed transplanted from some ancient age on Earth. He took in the scene, looking for the machine, then his gaze fell upon a nearby flat rock, raised like a dais directly in the path. Lying on this, like some exhibit in a sculpture museum, was an object. It consisted of a thick mass of glassy and metallic fibres, some seemingly frayed, ribbons of a variety of materials, grey and black nodes like seeds, and thin ribbed wires of some black substance. It had been tied into a knot nearly a metre across, with the two ends of the mass protruding for over a metre on either side.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Nightshade.

Matheson heard a sound and turned to see that Nightshade had retracted his cannons and was now closing up his other lethal hatches.

‘What do you see?’ said Matheson.

‘That Ricardo made

the right call, and this is where we turn around and go home.’

‘Talk some fucking sense, drone.’

With one forelimb Nightshade indicated the knotted mass. ‘That is a Mobius AI, and it’s not looking too good, is it?’

‘You’re fucking with us,’ said Will.

‘Bye bye,’ said Nightshade and turned around to head back down the steps.

Matheson wanted to fire on the thing, just like he had on Ricardo, but you didn’t open fire on a war drone – their reactions could be instantly lethal. He watched him disappear out of sight.

‘What now?’ asked Sheen. ‘We had some serious edge when we came up here and it’s now looking increasingly blunt.’

‘Look,’ said Will, pointing.

A figure had stood up, out in the fields. It was humanoid and obviously quite tall, ...