Polity Agent (45 page)

‘I am not with the Polity,’ sent the attack ship AI.

No single voice replied—it all seemed the maddened howl of a mob.

‘Let me speak with Erebus.’

U-space signatures now, where those mysterious objects gathered—then close by. Something big dropped into being first, then the surrounding spacial density began to increase sharply as other things arrived. Less than a microsecond afterwards, the AI detected growing U-space interference and the hot touch of targeting lasers, and dropped the
King of Hearts
into U-space, an instant later surfacing 100,000 miles away.

‘Speak to me—I am not an enemy.’

The reply was a consensual scream, ‘Open completely!’

This
then was Erebus. All of this was Erebus. And it wanted King to meld with it. Over the years of its existence the attack ship AI had grown contemptuous of humanity, and felt the need to find something better, faster, grander, and entirely AI. It had been prepared to create something like this . . . consensus. But to join one, to be absorbed into one? In that moment King discovered how much it valued its own individuality, and understood itself to be more like its makers than like this thing. Picking up informational flows, logic structures, and
purpose
beyond its comprehension, King recognized only madness.

‘I need time.’

‘You have none.’

U-space signatures again. Its course reversed, King jumped again, only to find itself labouring through a U-space storm. Independently, Erebus must have developed its own USERs. Perpetually rebalancing engines, King flew through the storm, but then even more USER interference slammed into it and the
King of Hearts
found itself falling down some spacial slope, as if entering realspace too close to a gravity well. It materialized right into a high-powered maser, instantly burning into its hull. Anti-munitions release, and King returned fire on multiple targets: ships and missiles. King jumped again, slamming in and out of an underspace continuum with no give in it. Another 100,000 miles, but enough to take it away from the main sleet of missiles. Planetary system now. The swarm still pursuing, King engaged fusion drive at maximum. At least the attackers could no more enter U-space than could King, and could not jump ahead. However, their weapons were faster.

Masers scored across King’s hull, peeling up armour like a screwdriver scoring through paint, then tracked away to follow an anti-munitions package the attack ship released. They pierced what was merely a holographic image of the attack ship, then swept back. Warheads detonated on other similar packages. King onlined a rail-gun and filled space behind it with near-c projectiles, swinging the fusillade across to cover its fall towards the hot but living planet below. It kept firing interceptor missiles until its armoury emptied of those; then followed with high yield CTDs, imploders, and straight atomics. A vast storm of explosions trailed the attack ship down. EM blasts made its scanning a mostly intermittent affair. More ships behind now, or just falling wreckage?

Above atmosphere, King duelled with only its beam weapons, knocking out waspish missiles homing in on it. White heat re-entry, endless steaming jungle below, then mountains ahead. King scanned them and detected useful concentrations of metals and carbon. Stored energy at minimum and fusion reactors struggling to keep up, King released one last anti-munitions package as missiles closed in on every side. The
King of Hearts
decelerated hard down towards the mountains. Eight warheads impacted within a second of each other. The titanic blasts incinerated jungle for a thousand miles all around, demolished a mountain, created a magma lake. Except for sufficient spectroscopic readings of metals and carbon in the atmosphere, the attack ship was gone. The impact site and surrounding area, being now highly radioactive, would not be easy to scan.

* * * *

Mika came instantly awake, knowing Dragon had just surfaced from U-space.

‘Have we arrived?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Dragon confirmed over the manacle’s com system.

Shortly before Dragon’s departure from
Jerusalem,
now some days ago, the Dragon head and attendant pseudopods had retreated back down their hole and that hole closed. Conversation with the entity thereafter had merely been via com. It had answered many of her questions, but those answers were as convoluted and Delphic as ever. She still did not know where Dragon had brought her, or why.

Slinging her heat sheet back, she sat upright and demanded, ‘Exterior view.’

The walls and ceiling disappeared, but what she now saw could only be described as an
interior
view—the insides of Dragon no less. Masses of flesh like raw liver pushed in from every side, throughout which groped hands of blood-red tentacles. As she watched a grey-white pseudopod snaked past like a giant conger eel, and something globular with metallic veins spread over its surface gradually sank from sight. However, this exterior downward movement made Mika realize that the manacle was slowly being pushed back to Dragon’s surface. It seemed a slow process, so she stood up, picked up her pack, then headed off to use the sanitary facilities this place provided. After that she returned to grab up a pull-tab coffee, and stood watching while the drink heated in her hand.

‘Where have we arrived?’ she asked finally.

The floor shuddered and Dragon’s flesh and skin began to part overhead, to reveal a hot glare beyond. Flesh slid down from this either side of the manacle as finally it surfaced. Mika observed stars peppered across blackness above one draconic horizon. Poised above the opposite horizon, a white actinic sun glared, its ferocity doubtless filtered just enough, through the projection system, to prevent it burning out her eyes.

‘Here,’ Dragon informed her.

Below the sun’s glare, a massive pit opened in Dragon’s surface, a constellation of blue stars rising from its depths. Thousands of cobra heads came into view: great open fans of them stemming from massive arterial branches, which in turn extended from a tangled fig-vine column of a central tree. This titanic growth rose up beside the manacle like some vast organic spacecraft launching. It occluded the sun, and only then, with the glare cut out, did Mika see the other object approaching. This new sphere could have been any moonlet or some titanic ship but, as it drew closer, she noticed it too everting growth. The other remaining Dragon sphere approached.

Taking up her palm-com, Mika quickly plumped down in the VR chair, strapped herself in and tilted the chair back. Through her com she ran a check to ensure the continuing operation of all the recording equipment contained in the manacle.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

The liver-like flesh in the open floor parted for the emergence of two pseudopods and that disquieting new Dragon’s head. It arched out over her, glanced up at the scene she was witnessing, then turned its attention to her directly.

‘I am about to acquaint my other half with some realities,’ it said.

‘It doesn’t know, then?’

‘No, I was unable to make connection while being held captive within the USER blockade around Cull, and have not attempted connection since Cormac acquainted me with events in the Maker realm.’

‘Why not?’

‘As Cormac would know, face-to-face encounters yield the most effective results. My other half is also still subject to its Maker programming.’

‘But surely your other self will defeat that and the results will be the same as with you?’

‘Why should they be? This is a different
me.
I have also been captive of Jerusalem for some time.’

‘It will be suspicious?’ Mika suggested.

‘It will only know for sure, by seeing what
I
have seen from the inside.’

‘Maybe it still won’t believe you.’

‘Let us hope it does. I would not want to kill
myself?

The second Dragon sphere drew close overhead like a moon falling to earth. Through her palm-com Mika input an instruction for part of the view to be magnified. One quarter of the ceiling served this purpose, focusing on where the two pseudopod trees reached for each other. Lightning flashed between them as the relative charges of the two spheres equalized. Blackened and trailing smoke, some pseudopods, struck by these discharges, were ejected from the trees. Finally the two massive growths began to join and writhe
into
each other. She observed separate-sourced cobra heads coming together, eye to eye, like electric sockets mating, sapphires winking out. Was this, she wondered, how the original four Dragon spheres had connected, unseen inside their conjoining? The two trees like two giant organic plugs, finally joined completely, then the composite tree began to contract and grow squatter, drawing the two Dragon spheres together. It occurred to Mika that she was trapped between two titanic entities that might shortly be in violent disagreement. Though a fascinating experience, she might not survive it.

* * * *

Cormac listened in to the com traffic, then eyed his surroundings. Ships represented as brief stars, then magnified to visibility, appeared continuously and swung around the sun towards the
NEJ’s
present position. From this part of the ship he gained a better overview of the situation. Just like on the bridge of the original
Jack Ketch,
Cormac apparently stood in vacuum somewhere out from the sun, but in a Cassius system contracted down to a more manageable scale. The ship’s viewing systems rendered the gas cloud translucent and filtered the sun’s brightness. Dyson segment 14 stood out to Cormac’s left—its diamond shape a grey eye in roiling gas.

‘So where is your ship right now?’ he asked.

Horace Blegg, standing beside him, extended an arm and pointed towards one of the stations, whence a small ship now departed, a red dot flashing over it in the display. Cormac grimaced then turned to study the other man, if man he was: Blegg once again bore the appearance of an aged Oriental, his hair grey and close cropped, his expression enigmatic. He wore a pale green envirosuit, dusty, with sand on his boots.

‘You say you have a Jain node aboard?’

Blegg grimaced and replied, ‘I do.’

Returning his attention to the segment, Cormac saw a blurred red area appearing—the other signature. ‘That the best resolution you can get us, Jack?’

The Centurion ship’s AI replied, ‘The U-space signature is strange—a slight dispersion between two points. Perhaps a node has been initiated and it is coming apart.’

‘So, where are we now?’ Cormac asked. ‘You, Blegg, were drawn here by the U-space signature of a Jain node, and I came here pursuing a being called the Legate. It strikes me as unlikely there’s no connection.’

‘It does,’ Blegg agreed. ‘I at first supposed the node related to a murder committed aboard one of the stations—that it was in the possession of an overseer called Orlandine. It may be possible that she has no involvement in this—that she committed her murder coincidentally. However, I don’t like coincidences.’

Cormac tilted his head, checking some further information through his gridlink. ‘The timing is about right. You detected this particular signature a short while after the Legate’s arrival here . . . if he did actually arrive here.’

Blegg shrugged, seeming strangely unconcerned.

Cormac went on. ‘I just have to assume the signature is from a node previously in the Legate’s possession and that it is now somewhere within the Dyson segment. We need to find out.’

‘I leave that to you, agent.’ Abruptly, Blegg was gone.

‘Is he real, Jack?’ Cormac immediately asked. ‘Was that a real material being standing there just now?’ It had occurred to him long ago that if Blegg were an avatar of Earth Central, he would need the connivance of AIs like Jack to make fleeting appearances like this one.

‘Yes, it was.’

Cormac grimaced—of course, if the AIs did connive in this manifestation, they would never tell him. He gridlinked again and accessed the AI command structure, and saw overall command devolved to himself. Surely the AIs would be better at handling this? He asked himself this question only briefly—having done so many times already—before issuing his instructions. He knew his present status would last only so long as he did not screw up. Glancing over as Thorn strode across apparent vacuum to join him, he nodded an acknowledgement.

‘Jack, what’s our complement so far?’

‘Two dreadnoughts and twelve attack ships . . . make that
three
dreadnoughts.’ Obviously another one had just arrived.

‘Okay.’ Cormac studied the hologram of the Cassius system. ‘Have one of the dreadnoughts stand out meanwhile, and position the other two underneath the segment. Have them use realspace scanning and U-space scanning for the node signature. Position the attack ships evenly around the perimeter.’

‘The Legate might run for it without the node, using chameleonware—’ Thorn began.

Cormac held up his hand. ‘Chameleonware is fine just so long as no one is aware the user is somewhere in the vicinity. EM shells should disrupt the ‘ware sufficiently for us to enable detection. Though I doubt the Legate will run without taking its toy with it. There’s no one living in that segment, so no potential human hosts like Thellant.’

‘Big area to have to search.’

‘I’m open to suggestions.’