Polity Agent (41 page)

The pack and its contents were a recent requirement, for the
Jerusalem
would shortly drop into U-space to make the return jump to Cull. The AI decided that a trip to Coloron would be wasted, for any Jain technology there would soon cease to exist. Nevertheless, Mika wondered about the timing of the jump coinciding with her allotted session with Dragon. Perhaps the AI intended giving her a break from her current concerns about augmentation? Though of course it would be arrogant to assume it thought her so important.

Once ensconced in the single seat, Mika said, ‘Okay, Jerusalem, you can take me over—I’ve no overpowering urge to pilot this thing myself.’

From her suitcom the AI replied, ‘Scenic route?’

‘If you have sufficient time.’

The wing door to the craft sealed itself shut with a crump, and lights began flashing amber in the bay as pumps evacuated the air. Mika strapped herself in, felt the grav go off, then looked up through the cockpit screen as the lights turned to amber and the ceiling irised open on stars. Swivelling to point downwards, the fore thrusters fired to propel the craft out into space. It turned nose-down over the
Jerusalem’s
outer ring, which now looked like some vast raised highway running to the horizon of a metal planet. The giant research vessel was a sphere three miles in diameter, with the thick band around its equator containing all its shuttles, grab-ships, drones, telefactors . . . the tools the AI used to manipulate its environment, which Mika felt the AI defined as
everything.

The small craft now turned away and headed towards a reddish green sun on the
Jerusalem’s
horizon. Acceleration from the ion drive kicked her in the back, and the small organic moonlet fell towards her. Around her she noted things glinting in the blackness: ships and robotic probes being recalled to the equatorial ring of the giant research vessel. She abruptly felt very vulnerable, then, looking ahead towards Dragon, a surge of excitement.

The AI brought the craft down in steadily lower obits around the huge being that named itself Dragon. On the first orbit, Dragon simply appeared like a small and fairly nondescript moonlet. Only closer, when its living substance became visible, could anyone know different. Here an area of jewelled scales, looking like scarlet and jade stone until it moved, a ripple travelling across it as if the entity took a breath of vacuum. A seeming copse rose over the sharply curved horizon, waving in some impossible breeze. Those weren’t trees, though, but cobra heads raised high, with gleaming sapphire foliage, and the undergrowth consisted of writhing red tentacles groping in shadow.

The first tight orbit revealed the manacle as a bright metallic line, like the epoxyed-on attachment for some pendant chain. Closer to, she saw it rested at the bottom of a shallow trench, as if it had etched itself into the surface. On its third pass her craft decelerated above this and slowly spiralled down. She felt the tug from gravplates below, each time her craft passed over them, then grav became constant as it landed on the ceramal strip beside the trapeziform building.

‘Close your visor,’ Jerusalem advised.

The moment Mika did this, the craft purged its internal air supply. Then the wing door opened and her seat automatically swung towards it. She stepped out, noting how the ceramal was dulled by microscopic scratches from many hundreds of similar vessels landing here and the boots that had clumped from them. She too clumped across to the nearby airlock, to enter through the outer metal door and an inner shimmer-shield. The square pool of scaled flesh, which she had viewed so many times remotely, remained unchanged, but upon retracting her visor she experienced the smell of it for the first time: something spicy and slightly rank, with a hint of confined beasts. She moved to the area off to one side, containing VR and laboratory equipment, dumped her pack down beside a VR chair and plumped herself in it.

Concisely she instructed, ‘Exterior view.’

The walls faded from existence to reveal the edges of the trench all around, but she stood high enough to gaze out on the draconic landscape. She abruptly sat upright when she saw her vessel lifting a little way from the manacle, turning, and coming down again to where clamps issued from below to close on its skids.

‘Jerusalem, you secured the craft,’ she stated.

‘Certainly—but it will of course be available to you when you are ready for it.’

Now, before her, the pool of scaly flesh stretched and parted. Humid warmth issued forth and an odour as of burned grease drowned out all other smells. Mika supposed this resulted from whatever Dragon had destroyed inside itself. She reached down, opened her pack and took out her palm-com. Trying not to show any of the disquiet she felt, she called up her list of questions. A heavy slithing sound issued from the widening gap before her. The smell increased. After a moment she looked up and realized that this time things were occurring that had never happened during visits here by others. The split now traversed the entire length of the rectangular area and opened wider than before, its edges turning like scaled rollers. Soon they drew out of sight, and Mika stood up, moved to the edge and peered over. Below her, a gaping red cavern curved down into hot darkness. Abruptly a spiralling wheel hurtled up towards her. She jumped back as red tentacles, sharp as claws, shot over the edges into the surrounding structure and clamped down on the floor. She looked up, noticing something else was happening too. The manacle was lower now in relation to the outside surface, for it was sinking inside Dragon.

‘Jerusalem?’

No reply.

‘Jerusalem!’

Nothing.

Cobra pseudopodia speared into view—the honour guard for the head that followed. This too had changed. Four times the usual size, hairless and scaled, eyes completely black, the human head licked narrow lips with a sharp tongue, red as blood.

‘The
Jerusalem
has entered U-space,’ Dragon told her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Preparing to do the same.’

‘To Cull?’

Dragon grinned, exposing sharp teeth.

‘Eventually,’ it replied.

* * * *

The crowds of refugees were thinning now as they filtered through Polity battle lines, but the attacks, by scanning drones, increased. Seated on the sloping armour at the front of an AG tank, the woman placed a monocular up against her eyes and watched as one of the scanning drones fell out of formation, its twinned lasers flickering like arc welders. Tracking down, she saw figures burning away like ants on a hot plate and wondered if all of these had been infected by Jain technology. Around this carnage people fled in panic until, when it seemed nothing remained for it to burn, the drone returned to its position in the formation. A couple of air ambulances then descended. Bodies lay on the ground around the conflagration, some writhing, some crawling. She lowered the monocular.

‘You check out,’ said the ECS tank commander, tossing her ident bracelet back to her.

She caught it and slipped it back on her wrist. He had also gene-scanned her to make a comparison with the identity information the bracelet contained. She smiled, glad that it checked out satisfactorily, and quite happy with her new name and her profession as a freelance reporter selling sensocords of events like this to the net news services. All she needed to do was place herself where newsworthy events occurred, while her new aug recorded everything she saw, heard, smelt, tasted, felt . . . She returned her attention to the arcology as the ground shuddered beneath her.

Monitors and Sparkind now came out, fighting a defensive retreat, firing on figures lurching out after them through smoke and flame. As far as was visible, in both directions, more of Coloron’s forces retreated—that last inner line of defence.

‘You can stay there if you like,’ said the commander, ‘but I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He climbed inside the AG tank which, shortly afterwards, began to lift.

As the tank drifted forward, the woman quickly stepped up into the open doorway. ‘What’s happening now?’

‘We hold them back until the civilians are far enough behind the lines,’ the commander replied, as he manipulated the tank’s controls, ‘then it’s bye-bye arcology.’

The woman felt awe at the thought, and some sadness. Her ident did not say anything about her once having lived here.

‘You staying or going? I need to close that door.’

She stepped back and down to the ground, the door hissing shut as the tank moved on. Glancing beyond the tank, then behind her, she saw the whole ECS battle line beginning to advance slowly through the crowds. She pitied those about to lose their homes, and those about to die, having experienced both traumas herself. But then she wasn’t what she seemed: closing her eyes, she remembered her recent resurrection.

She had felt cold, and a thousand needles prickled her skin. Something had crumped ahead of her and a line of light cut down to one side, through the darkness.

I’m in a cold coffin,
she realized, but beyond that realization lay only confusion.

A taste in her mouth like copper.

Ihave a mouth?

Skin feeling abraded.

Ihave skin?

A cold aseptic room lay before her, cold coffins inset all around its walls like Egyptian sarcophagi, bright metal, white surfaces.

I have eyes?

She stepped out, she looked around. Human vision seemed a narrow thing after having been used to enhanced viewing in more places than one and across more of the spectrum than the human eye could see. Her hearing remained unchanged, however. Gradually the floor warmed her feet. She needed to urinate, touched her mons tentatively and shuddered with pleasure at the sensation. Her stomach rumbled. She looked down at her hand and did not recognize it.

‘Do you hear me?’

I’m not dead.
So much meaning in that statement.

‘I hear you,’ she said, and felt a sudden panic at the unrecognizable tone of her own voice.

‘I have placed a mirror to your right.’

She turned to see the naked form of the Separatist Freyda standing there, and now understood what Jack had done. For a moment she resented this, for she wanted to live in her own body. However, her own body had been incinerated long ago.

‘Did you do this alone, or does ECS approve?’ she asked.

‘ECS does not know. I felt that I owed you something, and I know that you have changed in ways ECS could never ken. Nobody will be looking for a Separatist called Freyda, because she no longer exists—her DNA has been reclassified in the databases, and any criminal record deleted.’

‘What now?’ Aphran asked.

‘The choice is yours. You can have yourself altered cosmetically, or choose to stay as you now are. One of the dracomen will transport you down to Coloron. Thereafter, all choices are your own.’

‘A second chance?’ she asked.

‘Yes—exactly that.’

‘Thank you.’ Aphran collected some disposeralls from a dispenser in the wall. As she donned them, she just did not know what the future held for her. At some point that fact would be welcome, for now she actually had a future. Jack had created the false identity, this false life. Aphran liked the AI’s choice, but then Jack knew her like no other.

She opened her eyes to see tanks and autoguns advancing and firing on the arcology over the heads of Coloron’s forces. She saw missiles streaking down from above and, as when counting the seconds between the peal of thunder and the lightning flash, tracked explosions across the arcology.

* * * *

Another lander returned to the
NEJ
just ahead of them. Cormac watched it enter a docking bay, then pulled his attention back to studying the entire ship. Definitely one of the newest designs: attack ship configuration with a state-of-the-art chameleonware hull which, as well as being able to bend low intensity EM radiation around it, could also, to some degree, deflect high-powered lasers and masers. The outer skin was a form of polymerized diamond, over layered composite laced with superconductors. The ship’s skeleton, composed of the usual laminated tungsten ceramal, shock-absorbing foamed alloys and woven diamond monofilament, in this case was cellular and more substantial than usual. Cormac also knew that its extra weapons’ nacelle contained gravtech armament in addition to the usual lethal complement housed in the other two nacelles.

A Centurion,
he remembered—that’s what they called these now.

The lander flew over the ship, then down to the second bay on its other side. It eased in through a shimmer-shield and settled in the narrow armoured area. Cormac stepped out first, followed by Thorn and then the dracomen. He noted armoured bay doors closing down and huge hydraulic grab arms easing out of the wall to take hold of the lander.

Jack?
he tried once more through his gridlink. Again there came no reply. He applied at other informational levels through the ship’s systems, but found himself blocked by AI defences of the kind now being employed against Jain tech subversion everywhere throughout the Polity. But, then, in any war, communication always suffered first.

‘Not being very talkative, is he?’ he commented.

Thorn glanced at him quizzically.