Dark Intelligence by Neal Asher Read Free Book Online Page B

Later, I read a report of a similar incident on another world and it was filed under the heading Rogue or Black AIs , with a subheading of Penny Royal . That report further revealed that it was Penny Royal who had incinerated my friends and comrades on Panarchia. The AI had not disappeared into the void, and had not suicided as so many such rogue AIs did. I could still find it, and I could kill it. The need for payback back then was a driving force—a feeling I only resisted because, well, I had a war to fight. And now I didn’t want to resist it at all. Not just because Penny Royal wiped out Berners’ division, but because of what had happened to me afterwards. I blamed Penny Royal directly for my fate at the claws of the prador, for that spider thrall and for all I’d lost.
    THE WAR: UNDER THE THRALL
    The humans with blue rings on their skin were tough. Maybe that hue denoted a nanonic sub-system that repaired their bodies, for time and again I saw them damaged and recover. They’d be cut by a sharp carapace edge or chewed on by one of the ship lice, but they bled hardly at all and healed up ridiculously fast. I received similar injuries, and the glue my prador second-child handler sprayed on my wounds only stopped the bleeding. This was why I was dying. The pain, which the device in the back of my neck didn’t block, drove me into a fugue and weakened me in ways the thing could not control. When we arrived on yet another world, I knew for certain I hadn’t got much longer. Once away from the prador ship’s stink, another smell became distinct, and I recognized gangrene.
    Pain is difficult to remember for, if we truly remembered it as a direct experience, we would go mad. Intellectually I know that my suffering at that time was terrible, that because of the spider thrall’s rigid control I was only able to scream somewhere deep inside. But the mind has its defences and, through the prism of memory, I only remember a dull indifference.
    First- and second-children went ahead to secure the area before the prador father-captain left the landing craft, accompanied by human thrall slaves like me. Beyond the ramp lay dank, thick jungle that had been cut down by laser and hammered flat by the passage of many feet to make a path to the encampment. I didn’t then know why we were here, only later learning that this was one of the subplots of the war. Two prador fathers were meeting on neutral ground to hammer out an alliance against another prador faction. Even while conducting all-out war against another race, these creatures were still scrabbling for power and killing each other.
    I walked behind the father-captain with three other thralled humans. We were all armed, including the second-children pacing along on either side of us. As were those lying ahead, plus the father-captain’s first-children. I understand now that allowing so many first-children to live was unusual—one of the exigencies of war. After all, they were closest to maturity of all the offspring, so the most likely to challenge their adult kin. It took about an hour to reach the clearing and, perfectly on time, the other father-captain arrived from the other side. By then I was shaking and failing to make all the movements my thrall required. I was very weak and it was a relief to know I couldn’t manage the return journey, so would end up as food for my masters. I was contemplating my brief future just as the mine went off.
    Across the clearing the other father-captain rose on a massive blast, its under-carapace tearing free and its children tumbling away around it. The ground bucked and debris rained down all around me. I saw another adult prador come down and bounce into nearby jungle, a great mass of its guts ripped loose. I staggered, but my thrall righted me in time to see a missile streak from the jungle. It hit my father-captain in his face, punching through to detonate inside. He exploded into large fragments, each one a chunk of heavy