The Warship by Neal Asher

Author:Neal Asher [Asher, Neal]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781509862498
Goodreads: 42090415
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2019-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Blade

That’s enough, thought Blade and immediately translated it into actions. The robots, which had completed essential alterations and proceeded to the merely cosmetic, either terminated or ran their various tasks to a stop point. The mass of them, swarming around Obsidian Blade like ants on the corpse of a black locust, began to retreat. Construction spiders drew back on their umbilicals, folding in their limbs. Flat beetle-welders scuttled away. Smaller masses like metallic lichen peeled up and detached, sucked away by roaming magnetic hoovers. Docking clamps opened, while munitions conveyors and tubes unplugged themselves. And Blade floated free.

Once given free rein, Blade had proceeded rapidly with the alterations and repairs. Caliban, the dreadnought AI, had retooled the autofactories to produce newly designed components while routing standard parts from ship’s stores. Blade’s bent and disfigured constituents disappeared into furnaces, along with redundant parts Caliban did not trust enough to save. It had all, however, gone faster than the dreadnought’s AI wanted. Like an injured cop anxious to be back at work and go after the perpetrators, Obsidian Blade had hurried things along. It shrugged itself, and newly minted splinters of things, which weren’t exactly U-jump missiles, flexed out of its hull like ruffled scales, out of all of its hull. Blade nudged at the hold doors while they opened. Then, when the gap stood wide enough, it punched briefly with its fusion drive. The drive flames ignited from the rear of every one of the splinters. Blade lit up like a Christmas tree and leapt out into vacuum, itching for a fight.

‘That was unnecessary and dangerous,’ said the destroyer AI primly.

‘Suck it, Caliban,’ Blade replied.

‘So rude,’ came the reply, but Blade could sense the amusement there.

Out in vacuum, Blade could see no more than it had been able to through the sensors of the dreadnought, or through links to other sensors in the Polity fleet at Jaskor. Still, it felt better to be looking with its own ‘eyes’. Telemetry updates were little different too, though Morgaine sent instructions about where Blade needed to be in the present formation. Caliban had informed her of all that had occurred in the dreadnought’s reconstruction bay, and the alterations Blade had made to itself. She seemed a little bit terse and disapproving. Though reluctant, Blade began moving where directed, since that put it closer to the planet. While in motion, it studied the prador ships here. Integral to Blade’s programming was their status as the enemy. Most of the tactical stuff it had concerned encounters with such vessels and, in its time, it had been involved in a few dust-ups. But no, it now felt a visceral pull towards the planet. The enemy was there and that was where Blade wanted to be.

The Clade.

Putting together further data from perpetual scanning of Jaskor, Blade itched even more for the fight. It had learned, while within the dreadnought, that the Clade had killed Orlandine and trashed the city below. Its next target seemed likely to be the Ghost Drive Facility.

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