Alastair Reynolds - Spirey And The ...

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Spirey and the Queen
a novelette by Alastair Reynolds
Space war is godawful slow. Mouser's long-range sensors had sniffed the
bogey two days ago, but it had taken all that time just to creep within
kill-range. I figured it had to be another dud. With ordnance, fuel and
morale all low, we were ready to slink back to Tiger's Eye anyway; let one
of the other thickships pick up the sweep in this sector.
So - still groggy after frogsleep - I wasn't exactly wetting myself with
excitement; not even when Mouser started spiking the thick with
combat-readiness psychogens. Even when we went to Attack-Con-One, all I
did was pause the neurodisney I was tripping (Hellcats of Solar War Three,
since you asked), slough my hammock and swim languidly up to the bridge.
"Junk", I said, looking over Yarrow's shoulder at the readout. "War debris
or another of those piss-poor chondrites. Betcha."
"Sorry kid. Everything checks out."
"Hostiles?"
"Nope. Positive on the exhaust; dead ringer for the stolen ship." She
traced a webbed hand across the swathe of decorations which already curled
around her neck. "Want your stripes now or when we get back?"
"You actually think this'll net us a pair of tigers?"
"Damn right it will."
I nodded, and thought: she isn't necessarily wrong. No defector, no stolen
military secrets reaching the Royalists. Ought to be worth a medal, maybe
even a promotion.
So why did I feel something wasn't right?
"Alright," I said, hoping to drown qualms in routine. "How soon?"
"Missiles are already away, but she's five light-minutes from us, so the
quacks won't reach her for six hours. Longer if she makes a run for
cover."
"Run for cover? That's a joke."
"Yeah, hilarious." Yarrow swelled one of the holographic displays until it
hovered between us.
It was a map of the Swirl, tinted to show zones controlled by us or the
Royalists. An enormous slowly rotating disk of primordial material,
eight-hundred AU edge to edge; wide enough that light took more than four
days to traverse it.
Most of the action was near the middle, in the light-hour of space around
the central star Fomalhaut. Immediately around the sun was a material-free
void which we called the Inner Clearing Zone, but beyond that began the
Swirl proper; metal-rich lanes of dust condensing slowly into rocky
planets. Both sides wanted absolute control of those planet-forming
Feeding Zones - prime real estate for the day when one side beat the other
and could recommence mining operations - so that was where our vast armies
of wasps mainly slugged things out. We humans - Royalist and Standardist
both - kept much further out, where the Swirl thinned to metal-depleted
icy rubble. Even hunting the defector hadn't taken us within ten light
hours of the Feeding Zones, and we'd gotten used to having a lot of empty
space to ourselves. Apart from the defector, there shouldn't have been
anything else out here to offer cover.
But there was. Big too, not much more than a half light-minute from the
rat.
"Practically pissing distance," Yarrow observed.
"Too close for coincidence. What is it?"
"Splinter. Icy planetesimal, you want to get technical."
"Not this early in the day."
But I remembered how one of our tutors back at the academy put it:
Splinters are icy slag, spat out of the Swirl. In a few hundred thousand
years there'll be a baby solar system around Fomalhaut, but there'll also
be shitloads of junk surrounding it, leftovers on million-year orbits.
"Worthless to us," Yarrow said, scratching at the ribbon of black hair
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which ran all the way from her brow to fluke. "But evidently not to
ratty."
"What if the Royalists left supplies on the splinter? She could be aiming
to refuel before the final hop to their side of the Swirl." Yarrow gave me
her best withering look. "Yeah, okay," I said. "Not my smartest ever
suggestion." Yarrow nodded sagely. "Ours is not to question, Spirey. Ours
is to fire and forget."
Six hours after the quackheads had hared away from Mouser, Yarrow floated
in the bridge, fluked tail coiled beneath. She resembled an inverted
question mark, and if I'd been superstitious I'd have said that wasn't
necessarily the best of omens.
"You kill me," she said.
An older pilot called Quillin had been the first to go siren - first to
swap legs for tail. Yarrow followed a year later. Admittedly it made
sense, an adaptation to the fluid-filled environment of a high-gee
thickship. And I accepted the cardiovascular modifications that enabled us
to breathe thick, as well as the biomodified skin which let us tolerate
cold and vacuum far longer than any unmodified human. Not to mention the
billions of molecule-sized demons which coursed through our bodies, or the
combat-specific psychomodifications. But swapping your legs for a tail
touched off too many queazy resonances in me. Had to admire her nerve,
though.
"What?" I said.
"That neurodisney shit. Isn't a real space war good enough for you?"
"Yeah, except I don't think this is it. When was the last time one of us
actually looked a Royalist in the eye?"
She shrugged. "Something like four hundred years."
"Point made. At least in Solar War Three you get some blood. See, it's all
set on planetary surfaces - Titan; Europa; all those moons they've got
back in Sol system. Trench warfare; hand to hand stuff. You know what
adrenalin is, Yarrow?"
"Managed without it until now. And there's another thing: Don't know much
about Greater Earth history, but there was never a Solar War Three."
"It's conjectural," I said. "And in any case it almost happened; they
almost went to the brink."
"Almost?"
"It's set in a different timeline."
She grinned, shaking her head. "I'm telling you, you kill me."
"She made a move yet?" I asked.
"What?"
"The defector."
"Oh, we're back in reality now?" Yarrow laughed. "Sorry, this is going to
be slightly less exciting than Solar War Three."
"Inconsiderate," I said. "Think the bitch would give us a run for our
money." And as I spoke the weapons readout began to pulse faster and
faster, like the cardiogram of a fluttering heart. "How long now?"
"One minute, give or take a few seconds."
"Want a little bet?"
Yarrow grinned, sallow in the red alert lighting. "As if I'd say no,
Spirey."
So we hammered out a wager; Yarrow betting fifty tiger-tokens the rat
would attempt some last-minute evasion. "Won't do her a blind bit of
good," she said. "But that won't stop her. It's human nature."
Me, I suspected our target was either dead or asleep.
"Bit of an empty ritual, isn't it."
"What?"
"I mean, the attack happened the best part of five minutes ago, realtime.
The rat's already dead, and nothing we can do can influence that outcome."
Yarrow bit on a nicotine stick. "Don't get all philosophical on me,
Spirey."
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"Wouldn't dream of it. How long?"
"Five seconds. Four..."
She was somewhere between three and four when it happened. I remember
thinking that there was something disdainful about the rat's actions: that
she'd deliberately waited until the last possible moment, and that she'd
dispensed with our threat with the least effort possible.
That was how it felt, anyway.
Nine of the quackheads detonated prematurely, way beyond kill-range. For a
moment the tenth remained, zeroing in on the defector - but instead it
failed to detonate, until it was just beyond range. For long moments there
was silence, while we absorbed what had happened. Yarrow broke it,
eventually.
"Guess I just made myself some money," she said.
Colonel Wendigo's hologram delegate appeared, momentarily frozen before
shivering to life. With her too-clear, too-young eyes she fixed first
Yarrow and then me.
"Intelligence was mistaken," she said. "Seems the defector doctored
records to conceal the theft of those countermeasures. But you harmed her
anyway?"
"Just," said Yarrow. "Her quackdrive's spewing out exotics like Spirey
after a bad binge. No hull damage, but..."
"Assessment?"
"Making a run for the splinter."
Wendigo nodded. "And then?"
"She'll set down and make repairs." Yarrow paused, added: "Radar says
there's metal on the surface. Must've been a wasp battle there, before the
splinter got lobbed out of the Swirl."
The delegate nodded in my direction. "Concur, Spirey?"
"Yes sir," I said, trying to suppress the nervousness I always felt around
Wendigo, even though almost all my dealings with her had been via
simulations like this. Yarrow was happy to edit the conversation
afterwards, inserting the correct honorifics before transmitting the
result back to Tiger's Eye - but I could never free myself of the
suspicion that Wendigo would somehow unravel the unedited version, with
all its implicit insubordination.
Not that any of us didn't inwardly accord Wendigo all the respect she was
due. She'd nearly died in the Royalist strike against Tiger's Eye fifteen
years ago - the one in which my mother was killed. Actual attacks against
our two mutually opposed comet bases were rare, not happening much more
than every other generation - more gestures of spite than anything else.
But this had been an especially bloody one, killing an eighth of our
number and opening city-sized portions of our base to vacuum. Wendigo was
caught in the thick of the kinetic attack.
Now she was chimeric, lashed together by cybernetics. Not much of this
showed externally - except that the healed parts of her were too flawless,
more porcelain than flesh. Wendigo had not allowed the surgeons to regrow
her arms. Story was she lost them trying to pull one of the injured
through an open airlock, back into the pressurised zone. She'd almost made
it, fighting against the gale of escaping air. Then some no-brainer hit
the emergency door control, and when the lock shut it took Wendigo's arms
off at the shoulder, along with the head of the person she was saving. She
wore prosthetics now; gauntleted in chrome.
"She'll get there a day ahead of us," I said. "Even if we pull twenty
gees."
"And probably gone to ground by the time you get there."
"Should we try a live capture?"
Yarrow backed me up with a nod. "It's not exactly been possible before."
The delegate bided her time before answering. "Admire your dedication,"
she said, after a suitably convincing pause. "But you'd only be postponing
a death sentence. Kinder to kill her now, don't you think?"
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Mouser entered kill-range nineteen hours later, a wide pseudo-orbit three
thousand klicks out. The splinter - seventeen by twelve klicks across -
was far too small to be seen as anything other than a twinkling speck,
like a grain of sugar at arm's length. But everything we wanted to know
was clear: topology, gravimetrics, and the site of the downed ship. That
wasn't hard. Quite apart from the fact that it hadn't buried itself
completely, it was hot as hell.
"Doesn't look like the kind of touchdown you walk away from," Yarrow said.
"Think they ejected?"
"No way." Yarrow sketched a finger through a holographic enlargement of
the ship, roughly cone-shaped, vaguely streamlined just like our own
thickship, to punch through the Swirl's thickest gas belts. "Clock those
dorsal hatches. Evac pods still in place."
She was right. The pods could have flung them clear before the crash, but
evidently they hadn't had time to bail out. The ensuing impact - even
cushioned by the ship's manifold of thick - probably hadn't been
survivable.
But there was no point taking chances.
Quackheads would have finished the job, but we'd used up our stock. Mouser
carried a particle beam battery, but we'd have to move uncomfortably close
to the splinter before using it. What remained were the molemines, and
they should have been perfectly adequate. We dropped fifteen of them,
embedded in a cloud of two hundred identical decoys. Three of the fifteen
were designated to dust the wreck, while the remaining twelve would bury
deeper into the splinter and attempt to shatter it completely.
That at least was the idea.
It all happened very quickly, not in the dreamy slow-motion of a
neurodisney. One instant the molemines were descending toward the
splinter, and then the next instant they weren't there. Spacing the two
instants had been an almost subliminally brief flash.
"Starting to get sick of this," Yarrow said.
Mouser digested what had happened. Nothing had emanated from the wreck.
Instead, there'd been a single pulse of energy seemingly from the entire
volume of space around the splinter. Particle weapons, Mouser diagnosed.
Probably single-use drones, each tinier than a pebble but numbering
hundreds or even thousands. The defector must have sewn them on her
approach.
But she hadn't touched us.
"It was a warning," I said. "Telling us to back off."
"I don't think so."
"What?"
"I think the warning's on its way."
I stared at her blankly for a moment, before registering what she had
already seen.
That arcing from the splinter was something too fast to stop, something
against which our minimally-armoured thickship had no defense, not even
the option of flight.
Yarrow started to mouth some exotic profanity she'd reserved for precisely
this moment. There was an eardrum punishing bang and Mouser shuddered -
but we weren't suddenly chewing vacuum.
And that was very bad news indeed.
Antiship missiles come in two main flavours: quackheads and sporeheads.
You know which immediately after the weapon has hit. If you're still
thinking - if you still exist - chances are it's a sporehead. And at that
point your problems are just beginning.
Invasive demon attack, Mouser shrieked. Breather manifold compromised...
which meant something uninvited was in the thick. That was the point of a
sporehead: to deliver hostile demons into an enemy ship.
"Mm," Yarrow said. "I think it might be time to suit up."
Except our suits were a good minute's swim away back into the bowels of
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Mouser, through twisty ducts which might skirt the infection site. Having
no choice, we swam anyway, Yarrow insisting I take the lead even though
she was a quicker swimmer. And somewhere - it's impossible to know exactly
where - demons reached us, seeping invisibly into our bodies via the
thick. I couldn't pinpoint the moment; it wasn't as if there was a jagged
transition between lucidity and demon-manipulated irrationality. Yarrow
and me were terrified enough as it was. All I know is it began with a mild
agoraphilia; an urge to escape Mouser's flooded confines. Gradually it
phased into claustrophobia, and then became fully-fledged panic, making
Mouser seem as malevolent as a haunted house.
Yarrow ignored her suit, clawing the hull until her fingers spooled blood.
Fight it," I said. "It's just demons triggering our fear centers, trying
to drive us out!"
Of course, knowing so didn't help.
Somehow I stayed still long enough for my suit to slither on. Once sealed,
I purged the tainted thick with the suit's own supply - but I knew it
wasn't going to help much. The phobia already showed that hostile demons
had reached my brain, and now it was even draping itself in a flimsy
logic. Beyond the ship we'd be able to think rationally. It would only
take a few minutes for the thick's own demons to neutralise the invader -
and then we'd be able to reboard. Complete delusion, of course.
But that was the point.
When something like coherent thought returned I was outside.
Nothing but me and the splinter.
The urge to escape was only a background anxiety, a flock of
stomach-butterflies urging me against returning. Was that
demon-manipulated fear or pure common sense? I couldn't tell - but what I
knew was that the splinter seemed to be beckoning me forward, and I didn't
feel like resisting. Sensible, surely: we'd exhausted all conventional
channels of attack against the defector, and now all that remained was to
confront her on the territory she'd staked as her own.
But where was Yarrow?
Suit's alarm chimed. Maybe demons were still subjugating my emotions,
because I didn't react with my normal speed. I just blinked, licked my
lips and stifled a yawn.
"Yeah, what?"
Suit informed me; something massing slightly less than me, two klicks
closer to the splinter, on a slightly different orbit. I knew it was
Yarrow; also that something was wrong. She was drifting. In my blackout
I'd undoubtedly programmed suit to take me down, but Yarrow appeared not
to have done anything except bail out.
I jetted closer. And then saw why she hadn't programmed her suit. Would
have been tricky. She wasn't wearing one.
I hit ice an hour later.
Cradling Yarrow - she wasn't much of a burden, in the splinter's weak
gravity - I took stock. I wasn't ready to mourn her, not just yet. If I
could quickly get her to the medical suite aboard the defector's ship
there was a good chance of revival. But where the hell was the wreck?
Squandering its last reserves of fuel, suit had deposited us in a clearing
among the graveyard of ruined wasps. Half submerged in ice, they looked
like scorched scrap-iron sculptures; phantoms from an entomologist's worst
nightmare. So there'd been a battle here, back when the splinter was just
another drifting lump of ice. Even if the thing was seamed with silicates
or organics, it would not have had any commercial potential to either
side. But it might still have had strategic value, and that was why the
wasps had gone to war on its surface. Trouble was - as we'd known before
the attack - the corpses covered the entire surface, so there was no
guessing where we'd come down. The wrecked ship might be just over the
nearest hillock - or another ten kilometers in any direction.
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