Read Online War Factory: Transformations Book Two by Neal Aher - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Neal Aher
Tags: War Factory
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little bit brighter than most of the rest of his kind, even understood the irony of that. He also understood that in reality the prador had not been defeated by the humans, but by that glistening thinking rock.
Cvorn tried an aug, designed for the prador ganglion, on one of his second-children. The results had been astounding and Cvorn even began to feel threatened by this child, until he tore off all its limbs, opened up its carapace and ate the contents. The nanoscopic connections in the child’s ganglion had delivered an odd piquancy of flavour. Next, not being too averse to surgical connections to his own brain—he did, after all, have three prador thrall units on his carapace to control his two human blanks and sometimes to control his war drones directly—Cvorn tried an aug on himself. Again, the results were astounding, so he tried a second aug, and then some heavily buffered AI crystal, and fast became addicted to enhancement.
However, Cvorn soon reached the barrier to infinite enhancement: the burn-out of the organic brain. He shivered when he remembered how close he had come to that point. When an organic brain and AI crystal fall into a synergy, intelligence ramps exponentially until the organic brain fails like a first-child attached to the full output of a fusion reactor—something Cvorn had once tried, just for entertainment. He had disconnected and discarded the crystal, and wondered just how Penny Royal had enabled Sverl to survive it.
Still, even enhanced as he had become, Cvorn’s aims and ambitions, unlike Sverl’s, had not changed. He wanted power and the increase of his family beyond those few replacement children he produced artificially in his destroyer’s single incubator. He wanted vengeance against the new king of the prador for his betrayal of his race by seeking a truce with the Polity. In addition, he wanted the prador to win the war against the humans and the AIs, which, in his opinion, had never ended. He hated humans—that had never changed.
Next, understanding that he was unlikely to achieve all these goals alone, he needed allies, and so he turned to the five children of that other refugee from the Kingdom, Vlern—the five young adults Sverl had managed to control and inadvertently weld into an alliance of similar interests, which was how any prador community operated. He contacted one of them, who at length he identified as Sfolk—he often found it difficult to tell them apart. Sfolk was unusually intelligent and their spokes-prador. Cvorn began the slow and very difficult process of building trust with him. First, he revealed Sverl’s true nature to the Five, then he showed the data from his study of the second-child he had auged and offered to put them in contact with his supplier, in the Polity, of prador augs, in exchange for certain agreements. He played them easily at first because they were naive; he played them with more care later as the augs he had given them increased their intelligence. He knew precisely what they wanted—prador females—and offered them a route to that end.
First, they needed an escape route: the Five were completely under Sverl’s control and they needed to work round that. While escaping, they should destroy the humans on the Rock Pool. Sfolk had immediately questioned this. Sverl had acquired, like a disease, some affection for the humans of Carapace City. Why aggravate him when, once they escaped, they would probably cease to be of any interest to him? Cvorn was insistent. This was the quid pro quo: he would, via his contacts back in the Kingdom, help them find the females and in return they must help him destroy Carapace City. He told them that his long years of restraint, culminating in his discovery of what Sverl had become, had enhanced his hatred of humans, and he wanted plain old prador vengeance against Sverl. He did not tell Sfolk that for his plans he needed to draw Sverl out and that by killing the humans he aimed to ensure this.
Cvorn tried an aug, designed for the prador ganglion, on one of his second-children. The results had been astounding and Cvorn even began to feel threatened by this child, until he tore off all its limbs, opened up its carapace and ate the contents. The nanoscopic connections in the child’s ganglion had delivered an odd piquancy of flavour. Next, not being too averse to surgical connections to his own brain—he did, after all, have three prador thrall units on his carapace to control his two human blanks and sometimes to control his war drones directly—Cvorn tried an aug on himself. Again, the results were astounding, so he tried a second aug, and then some heavily buffered AI crystal, and fast became addicted to enhancement.
However, Cvorn soon reached the barrier to infinite enhancement: the burn-out of the organic brain. He shivered when he remembered how close he had come to that point. When an organic brain and AI crystal fall into a synergy, intelligence ramps exponentially until the organic brain fails like a first-child attached to the full output of a fusion reactor—something Cvorn had once tried, just for entertainment. He had disconnected and discarded the crystal, and wondered just how Penny Royal had enabled Sverl to survive it.
Still, even enhanced as he had become, Cvorn’s aims and ambitions, unlike Sverl’s, had not changed. He wanted power and the increase of his family beyond those few replacement children he produced artificially in his destroyer’s single incubator. He wanted vengeance against the new king of the prador for his betrayal of his race by seeking a truce with the Polity. In addition, he wanted the prador to win the war against the humans and the AIs, which, in his opinion, had never ended. He hated humans—that had never changed.
Next, understanding that he was unlikely to achieve all these goals alone, he needed allies, and so he turned to the five children of that other refugee from the Kingdom, Vlern—the five young adults Sverl had managed to control and inadvertently weld into an alliance of similar interests, which was how any prador community operated. He contacted one of them, who at length he identified as Sfolk—he often found it difficult to tell them apart. Sfolk was unusually intelligent and their spokes-prador. Cvorn began the slow and very difficult process of building trust with him. First, he revealed Sverl’s true nature to the Five, then he showed the data from his study of the second-child he had auged and offered to put them in contact with his supplier, in the Polity, of prador augs, in exchange for certain agreements. He played them easily at first because they were naive; he played them with more care later as the augs he had given them increased their intelligence. He knew precisely what they wanted—prador females—and offered them a route to that end.
First, they needed an escape route: the Five were completely under Sverl’s control and they needed to work round that. While escaping, they should destroy the humans on the Rock Pool. Sfolk had immediately questioned this. Sverl had acquired, like a disease, some affection for the humans of Carapace City. Why aggravate him when, once they escaped, they would probably cease to be of any interest to him? Cvorn was insistent. This was the quid pro quo: he would, via his contacts back in the Kingdom, help them find the females and in return they must help him destroy Carapace City. He told them that his long years of restraint, culminating in his discovery of what Sverl had become, had enhanced his hatred of humans, and he wanted plain old prador vengeance against Sverl. He did not tell Sfolk that for his plans he needed to draw Sverl out and that by killing the humans he aimed to ensure this.
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