Neal Asher - Infinity engine

Copyright 2017 by Neal Asher

First Night Shade Books edition published 2017

Published in the United Kingdom by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of

Macmillan Publishers Limited.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Asher, Neal L., 1961- author.

Title: Infinity engine / Neal Asher.

Description: New York: Night Shade Books, [2017] | Series: Transformation; book 3

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039322 | ISBN 9781597808897 (hardback)

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION /

Science Fiction / Military. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. |

GSAFD: Science fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6101.S54 I54 2017 | DDC 823/.92dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039322

ISBN: 978-1-59780-889-7

Cover artwork by Adam Burn

Cover design by Claudia Noble

Printed in the United States of America

Many thanks to those who have helped bring this novel to your E-reader, smart phone, computer screen and to that old-fashioned mass of wood pulp called a book, including Adam Burn for his eye-catching cover image, Bella Pagan for her copious structural and character notes and Bruno Vincent for further editing.

Composer Steve Buick has created an album of original music inspired by Infinity Engine . This background music has been designed to enhance the reading experience, to be enjoyed while reading the book itself. Using long, deeply dark soundscape layersto complement the storys atmospherehe aims to add another dimension of reading without distracting from the action. The music can accompany any section of the book and is available from Amazon, iTunes and other digital music stores worldwide. Find out more at www.evokescape.com.

Atheter One of the millions of long-dead races, recently revived. It was discovered that the gabbleducks of the planet Masada were the devolved descendants of the Atheter. This race chose to sacrifice its civilization and intelligence to escape the millennia of wars resulting from its discovery of Jain technology.

augmented To be augmented is to have taken advantage of one or more of the many available cybernetic devices, mechanical additions and, distinctly, cerebral augmentations. In the last case we have, of course, the ubiquitous aug and such backformations as auged, auging in, and the execrable all auged up. But it does not stop there: the word aug has now become confused with auger and augurwhich is understandable considering the way an aug connects and the information that then becomes available. So now you can auger information from the AI net, and a prediction made by an aug prognostic subprogram can be called an augury.

From Quince Guide, compiled by humans.

first- and second-children Prador offspring chemically maintained in adolescence.

Golem Androids produced by a company Cybercorpa ceramal chassis usually enclosed in a syntheflesh and syntheskin outer layer. These humanoid robots are very tough, fast and, since they possess AI, very smart.

Haiman An amalgam of human and AI.

hooder A creature like a giant centipede of the planet Masada. It was discovered that they were the devolved descendants of biomech war machines created by the Atheter throughout their millennia of civil wars.

Jain technology A technology spanning all scientific disciplines. Created by one of the dead racesthe Jainits sum purpose is to spread through civilizations and annihilate them.

nascuff A device that can externally adjust a persons nanosuite to their sexual inclination. It is mainly worn to advertise sexual availability or otherwise. When the libido of the one wearing it is shut down the cuff is red. When they are sexually active it is blue.

Polity A human/AI dominion extending across many star systems, occupying a spherical space spanning the thickness of the galaxy and centred on Earth. It is ruled over by the AIs who took control of human affairs in what has been called, because of its very low casualty rate, the Quiet War. The top AI is called Earth Central and resides in a building on the shore of Lake Geneva, while planetary AIs, lower down in the hierarchy, rule over other worlds. The Polity is a highly technical civilization but its weakness was its reliance on travel by runcibleinstantaneous matter transmission gates. This weakness was exploited by the prador.

prador A highly xenophobic race of giant crablike aliens ruled by a king and his family. Hostility is implicit in their biology and, upon encountering the Polity, they immediately attacked it. Their advantage in this war was that they did not use runcibles (such devices needed the intelligence of AIs to control them and the prador are also hostile to any form of artificial intelligence) and as a result had developed their spaceship technology, and the metallurgy involved, beyond that of the Polity. They attacked with near-indestructible ships, but in the end the humans and AIs adapted and in their war factories out-manufactured the prador and began to win. They did not complete the victory, however, because the old king was usurped and the new king made an uneasy peace with the Polity.

shell people a group of cultist humans whose admiration of the prador was such that they tried to alter themselves surgically to become prador.

PENNY ROYAL (THE BLACK AI)

An artificial intelligence constructed in Factory Station Room 101, during the Polity war against the prador. Its crystal mind was faulty, burdened with emotions it could not encompass when it was hurled into the heat of battle. Running the destroyer that it named Puling Child , it fought and survived, then annihilated eight thousand troops on its own side before going AWOL. It changed into something dark thena swarm robot whose integrated form was like a giant sea urchin. Blacklisted by the Polity for ensuing atrocities, it based itself in the Graveyarda borderland created between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom after the war. There it continued its evil games, offering transformations for the right price, but ones that were never entirely beneficial for the recipients. It was nearly destroyed in a deal that went wrong. Later restored to function by the scorpion war drone Amistad, it apparently became a good AI.... Now the black AI is moving into its endgame, its plans still obscure and its actions paradigm-changing. And still no one knows if its intent is evil.

THORVALD SPEAR

Resurrected from a recording of his own mind, a hundred years after the war, he is the only survivor of the eight thousand troops slaughtered by Penny Royal on the planet Panarchia. He resolved to have his revenge on the AI and to that end sought out its old destroyer, whose location he had learned of during the war. Taking command of it, he set out in search of the rogue AI. During this search he discovered that his very desire for vengeance had been created by Penny Royal, for it had tampered with his memories. Nevertheless his quest is reinforced by an artefact he found aboard the destroyerone of Penny Royals spines. It has downloaded memories of its victims into his mind. He did believe himself the instrument the AI created for its own destruction, but now is not sure what to believe at all, other than that he must see this through to its end.