War Factory: Transformations Book Two by Neal Aher

Author:Neal Aher [Aher, Neal]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: War Factory
ISBN: 9781597808347
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2016-05-03T07:00:00+00:00

THE BROCKLE

The single-ship that had just arrived was one of three used to convey prisoners to and from the Tyburn to face the Brockle. The woman inside was a murderess, but there must be more to it or she would not have ended up here. Her hatred of the Polity had led to her joining a separatist organization and she might be involved in other crimes too. The Polity wanted her reamed of information and then sentence executed on her.

The Brockle’s latest case had decided that her three sons had no future in the Polity, due to her detestation of the Polity and its AIs. They, despite being legal adults, apparently had no say in the matter. She had tried to force them to accompany her to one of the outlink stations to take a freighter ride outside the Polity. But they had refused, also rebelling further by getting themselves fitted with Polity augs. She had pretended to accept their choice and invited them to her home for a meal, whereupon she had fed them with a self-propagating neurotoxin. This poison, as well as killing them in seconds flat, turned their brains to jelly. So despite the alert broadcast by the augs they wore, they ended up unrecoverably dead.

So prosaic.

The Brockle felt a wave of ennui at the prospect of interrogating her. Maybe if ECS had sent some Golem murderer or the likes of the strange Mr Pace its feelings would have been different. But ennui was followed by angry frustration. Earth Central had informed the Brockle that it could obtain no more of value from Ikbal and Martina after their time with Penny Royal on Captain Blite’s ship. It was ordered to release them, returning them via this very single-ship . . . The Brockle’s contribution to solving the “Penny Royal problem” was now at an end.

The Brockle thought otherwise. All the intimate details it had gleaned from Blite’s crewmembers proved that Penny Royal, as well as being a paradigm-changing force, was dangerously unstable. The Brockle had requested the other two crewmembers—the couple Chont and Haber Geras—but apparently ECS had intercepted and questioned them on Earth, and released them. This was just plain wrong. It could learn so much more by a joint interrogation of all four. It could make so many comparisons of their experiences. By jointly putting them under pressure and setting them against each other in some VR scenario it could elicit new facts. Didn’t Earth Central understand the necessity for this? Didn’t that AI understand how dangerous Penny Royal was?

In its seat before the window, which gave a view along the thin central body of the Tyburn to the section that still contained the remains of some of the colonists, the Brockle ground its ersatz teeth and felt the need for some rebellion of its own. Through the cams in the interrogation room, it gazed upon Ikbal and Martina. Presently they were lying on the floor, the silver worms of nano-fibres visible around their heads, which had also penetrated within.

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