by Neal Asher
* * * *
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.’
Thorn shrugged and folded his arms. Briefly Cormac wondered how the other man felt about Cormac assuming command, since until Coloron this arena had been Thorn’s. He dismissed the question: Thorn was a professional, and had been one for a very long time. In situations like this, petty jealousies could not be allowed.
Cormac closed his eyes, and using his gridlink, turned and twisted a three-dimensional representation of the Dyson segment. With scan data relayed to him from the dreadnoughts closing in, he obtained a clearer idea of where the node was generally located, though the signal still would not resolve clearly. He checked the positions of the attack ships, which were nearly in place, observed more stars now flashing all around like a firework display, as more ships arrived. Rather than ask, Cormac checked their number via gridlink. Still not enough: they would need a minimum of a hundred ships for this. ‘When we have the edges covered, we go in here.’ He sent an image of the segment with one edge highlighted. ‘We’ll need to stretch the coverage of each ship with telefactors and drones—we still haven’t enough vessels. I want them to use EM shells, in a standard search pattern, because I do not want this Legate to know we can detect Jain nodes.’
‘And when we reach the target itself?’ Thorn asked.
‘Disable, capture, then questions… if possible.’
‘We don’t even know what this Legate entity is. Is it an alien, an AI, both, or neither? It might not allow itself to be captured.’
‘What other options do we have?’ said Cormac coldly.
* * * *
No more.
She was a library stacked floor to ceiling with books, a computer going into information overload… or, perhaps a more human analogy, she was now educated beyond her abilities. She needed Jain tools to handle such masses of information. She therefore needed to take another irrevocable step.
Orlandine gazed at the small vessel the nanoassembler had provided—an innocuous fingerlength chainglass test-tube with a simple plasmel stopper fitted in one end. It contained something that looked like golden syrup into which a wad of metallic hair had been dropped. However, the hair moved constantly as if fluid in the tube was being held at a constant rolling boil. She stared at it for a long moment, then again checked her screens.
Finally having penetrated the alien ship’s chameleonware, she now tracked it carefully as it drew closer. The arrival of Polity forces also had not escaped her notice, nor the fact that they used secure com and systems hardened against Jain informational assault. But who were they after, herself, or her visitor?
Damn it!
She closed her eyes and tried to bring a sudden surge of anger and frustration under control. She still lacked vital information—a lack that might be the death of her. After a moment she grew calm. She decided to risk contacting the alien to see what she could learn, for it was an unknown, whereas Polity AIs were a definite known danger to her. However, first she needed to expand her capacity, set up defences, arm herself informationally. Opening her eyes she once again gazed at the test-tube.
Orlandine levered out its plasmel stopper, raised the tube to her lips and poured its contents into her mouth. The substance tasted coppery, its texture like fish bones and syrup on her tongue. The mouthful seethed, then began to grow hot. In a moment it seemed her mouth filled with boiling jam. Through her gridlink she took offline those of her nerves broadcasting pain and damage, and mentally descended into the artificial memory storage and logic structures of her extended mind. Only on this level did she perceive the mycelium growing up through the roof of her mouth and start making synaptic connections, billions of them. Next it began to make connect
ions with her gridlink and, like an asthmatic taking adrenaline to breathe easier, she felt the bandwidth of information flow opening out. Heat grew in the back of her neck as the mycelium extended itself down her spine, tracking her nervous system. Via her gridlink she instructed it where to go, and felt movement all down her backbone. It penetrated her carapace and began to make connections there. Then her entire world expanded.
Suddenly, Jain programs she could only partially encompass previously, now opened to her godlike perception. She became like a reader, who previously perceived only one page at a time, now understanding and seeing every word of the book. Glittering halls of intellect opened to her. Her processing capacity doubled and redoubled. This is synergy.
She turned, linking at every level to the equipment surrounding her. Immediately she could accelerate her investigation into what remained of the Jain node; absorbing programs from it and the blueprint of its structure just as fast as her machines could deconstruct it physically. From the computer controlling the mycelium extending through the surrounding segment, she absorbed her subpersona and realized she would never need to rely on such constructs again. She walked over to the computer itself, laid her hand on it, felt her palm grow warm as she directed it to make direct mycelial connection to herself. She absorbed it, became one with it, and tracked on through to the mycelial connection to a scanner far away, redirecting its broadcast in a tight beam solely to the nearby alien ship.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
The response was immediate: viral programs trying to track this new signal to its location. She killed them immediately.
‘I asked you what you wanted.’
The viral attack ceased and then, after a microsecond pause, something replied, ‘That I have yet to decide.’
Orlandine had already assumed this alien to be an agent provocateur, providing her with a Jain node as an act of sabotage against the Polity. She might have gone on to destroy the Polity, whereupon the Jain tech would have certainly destroyed her too. But why was this alien here now? Had it come here to make sure she was performing as expected, to harry her and to push her into fully connecting to the Jain technology? This seemed a rather clumsy move, more likely to rouse her suspicions, make her more wary, and incidentally expose the watching agent to discovery.
‘You wanted me to accept your gift without reservation. I have not done that.’
The being replied, ‘But you will. More ships will come. You will have to prepare yourself, defend yourself. With your knowledge, and such a tool as Jain tech, you will be able to take all the Cassius stations.’
Not even a weak explanation for its presence, rather no explanation at all. Orlandine glanced across at her nanoassembler which, in the last few minutes, had manufactured more mycelia, and more stews of nanomachines. That assembler would be all she would need. She physically detached from the mycelium spread throughout the enclosing segment, but remained in contact via radio. Walking over to the assembler, she shut it down, disconnecting optics and power supply, and picked the device up with her assister-frame complemented arms. For a long moment she gazed up at the disassembled remains of the node—almost invisible now.
‘Why should I want that?’ she asked the alien entity.
Again that pause. ‘You could run, of course, but you know ECS would never stop pursuing you. From here you could negate all that risk utterly. They don’t yet have the firepower available here to destroy this Dyson segment. You could defend it from them. You could take this entire system, take control of all the runcibles here. Take over the Polity.’
‘You sound so desperate,’ Orlandine replied. ‘Trying to recover a scheme that went wrong?’
‘You won’t escape from here. And while attempting to escape, you’ll waste time better spent on looking to your defences.’
Orlandine smiled to herself. Quite obviously Jain-tech subversion also possessed a psychological component which she herself seemed to have avoided: an arrogance, megalomania—something of that nature. Or had she escaped it? Whatever, she did not perform as the alien expected. As she turned toward the airlock leading to the Heliotrope, she copied the solution to the alien ship’s chameleonware and, from a transponder 50,000 miles away from her, transmitted it to the station once her home. If ECS forces had come here searching for that alien ship, now they would find it—it was her gift to them.
15
Polity agents: such is the quantity of fiction produced about these characters that it is quite probable most people have no real idea of what they are at all. Often portrayed as super beings who spend most of their time whacking Separatists, defeating dastardly Prador plots, stumbling on ancient alien ruins, or shagging their way through most of the population, it is sometimes difficult to remember that they are real people, with a seriously difficult job to do. Such an agent, unless the circumstances are exceptional, is usually recruited from some elite force like the Sparkind, then trained even further. His remit is basically the same as the one the AIs voluntarily adhere to: the greatest good for the greatest number (though how this is assessed is open to debate). Such an individual is bound by duty, has harsh self-discipline, and must make some hard choices. And what do they do? Well… revisit my second sentence above.
— From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon
The vague red area on the Dyson segment finally resolved to a single dot. Cormac could only assume the earlier blurring a problem with this new method of scanning, which was now finally solved. A further five dreadnoughts arrived along with ten more attack ships—including some of the new Centurions—to complement the search. The ones that had arrived earlier were moving into the targeted segment, but Cormac now contemplated withdrawing them. If this Legate entity used Jain technology, their chances of capturing it dropped to only a little above zero. The Legate, he suspected, knew how to utilize the same technology considerably better than the Separatist Thellant.
‘Other information has become available,’ announced Jack. ‘I am now reconfiguring the segment scanners.’
Abruptly it seemed to Cormac that he was falling towards the Dyson segment, then into it, through layers of composite, past titanic structural members to which fusion reactors clung like barnacles, and into its vast icy halls. Something shimmered before him and, in flashes of pixellated colour, became visible. Soon he gazed upon the Legate’s ship, as it cruised along a hundred yards above a frigid peneplain. Cross-referencing this new data to the position of the Jain node they were still detecting, they confirmed it to be aboard this same ship.
‘What is this?’
‘The solution to that ship’s chameleonware,’ said a voice beside him.
He turned to Blegg, whose ship had docked with the NEJ only a little while ago. ‘And how did we get hold of that?’
‘Interesting question, to which at present I can provide no answer. However, the possibilities of our capturing this Legate have now increased substantially.’
Cormac considered that statement, and what Thorn had said before departing to join one of the Centurion attack ships conducting the search. Being an agent for some greater enemy, would the Legate destroy itself rather than be captured?
‘Jack, analysis of that ship,’ he enquired.
‘A product of a Jain-based organic technology. It seems to be totally formatted for covert operations: sophisticated chameleonware, damped drive and thrusters. The hull is metallo-organic matrix—not heavily armoured but probably capable of rapid self-repair. To find out anything more about it would require active scan, which could be detected.’
‘That’s all I need to know, thanks.’ Cormac eyed Blegg. ‘If we capture this creature, we’ll need to quarantine it, then somehow deactivate the tech it is using, then’—he shrugged—‘interrogate it?’
Blegg just waited inscrutably silent.
Cormac continued, ‘I think the preferable option would be to find out where it came from, because certainly it is not working alone… Jack, I want weaknesses introduced into the blockade
.’ In his gridlink he selected the locations, and gave the precise parameters for each weakness. ‘Out from there we lay EM mines. It won’t go for that one if it has any sense. Now, move the NEJ over here.’
‘What are you planning?’ Horace Blegg asked.
Cormac glanced at him, then said, ‘Jack—kill the hologram.’
The internal scene from the Dyson segment disappeared. Now they were standing on the glassy floor of the bridge.
Cormac considered his reply to Blegg for a long moment, then said, ‘We let the Legate go.’
* * * *
The Legate still did not understand. Skellor had been a success — a trial run providing information about how the Polity would respond to Jain attack for, after all, Erebus needed to know nothing more about Jain technology itself. Admittedly the situation on Coloron had been hurried, since the Legate had intended to provide Thellant with a Jain node some years hence. And yes, Orlandine now seemed a dismal and worrying failure. But why so endanger a covert mission by sending the Legate here? It made no sense.
As it relayed all the recent updates of events on Coloron from its probes and U-space transmitters, all around that planet, and then fully apprised Erebus of the situation here, the Legate expected to receive in return a self-destruction order. The attack ships searching the segment were all now closing in, and soon there would be little chance of escape. Orlandine, before cutting communication, had kindly informed the entity that she had provided ECS with the solution to this ship’s present chameleonware configuration. No time to change that configuration now. Angry, it felt the urge to betray her presence here, if she had not already done so herself. However, though the Legate considered the experiment with her to be a failure, she might still damage the Polity.
