Polity Agent (47 page)

‘Attempt to return,’ came the U-space reply from Erebus—a totally unexpected instruction.

Switching from passive scanning to full power scanning, the Legate began analysing its situation. ECS did not possess enough ships to completely enclose this Dyson segment so there were obvious weaknesses in the blockade. The largest weakness the entity ignored completely, since that seemed an obvious trap. It chose another one and plotted a course accordingly. Maximum acceleration from the segment would put it in range of one of the ECS attack ships for just a few seconds—enough time, however, for it to be destroyed. But few other options remained, so it engaged its ship’s fusion drive.

The spoon-shaped ship turned by a slanted joist, two bright flames ignited to its rear. Accelerating, it left a cloud of icy fog behind it.

‘Would not self-destruction be better?’ the Legate enquired.

‘Is there no possibility of escape?’

‘Escape
is
possible.’

‘Then you must return to me for reintegration. Resources are not to be wasted. I refuse you permission to destroy yourself under any circumstances. Try your utmost to shake pursuit, but ensure you return here.’

Clear as mud.

The Legate’s ship exceeded 20,000 miles an hour and continued accelerating. The entity itself estimated that seven seconds would take it far enough from the Dyson segment for it to be able to engage U-space drive. If it survived those seven seconds it would be clear. There might be pursuit but, once in U-space it could reconfigure its chameleonware, then after a few more such jumps no ECS ship would have a chance of following. Ahead, a line of glowing orange revealed the segment’s edge. EM shells began to detonate all around, interfering with the ship’s systems. Something blew right behind the Legate, filling the few gaps in the interior with metallic smoke; diagnostics went haywire and some of the ship’s computing ability crashed. However, the engines continued working uninterrupted, and the ship possessed sufficient redundancy to cover this. The orange line thickened; brighter towards the bottom and bluish above, with the occasional flecks of stars—or ships—becoming visible. Then, within a moment, the little ship hurtled out into the open.

Telefactors and drones filled nearby space. A modern Centurion-class attack ship lay close, and missiles streaked in from all sides. The Legate scanned those missiles: decoys mixed with rail-gun accelerated solid projectiles hurtled up from below; CTD and planar warheads came in from above and to the left; and EM shells and more rail-gun projectiles came from the right. The current attack appeared designed to drive it down and to the right, into dense gas, where it would necessarily take longer to drop into U-space. In an instant the Legate had created a defence to take it on through. The ship could survive rail-gun strikes so long as they hit nothing vital. The decoys and EM shells could be ignored. Nothing else must get close.

It altered its course sharply to the right. EM shells ignited all around it, and rail-gun projectiles slammed into the ship. Systems scrambled, fire exploded around the Legate, then vacuum sucked it away through punctures in the hull. Diagnostics briefly online: five projectiles punched right through the ship—inert rail-gun projectiles that missed the ship’s drives, else the craft and Legate would be a spreading cloud of vapour by now. Hull mesh and mycelial repair already working. The Legate glanced down to see part of its own thigh had been torn away, while jags of hot metal penetrated its chest. Ignoring these injuries, it put its ship into a five hundred gravity turn, downwards, then abruptly back up again. It targeted nearby missiles with lasers, but only two of the six weapons worked. A detonating CTD cleared a hole, and the Legate aimed for it. More impacts: sheet lightning of energy discharges throughout the ship, molten metal spattering the screen from the inside. Then, utterly on the edge of disaster, the Legate dropped its vessel into U-space.

* * * *

‘A risky strategy,’ Blegg said.

Cormac shrugged as he gazed at the bridge display. ‘We would have gained very little by trying to capture that ship. The Legate would probably have destroyed itself rather than allow that. Now at least we might learn something.’

At that moment the bridge display blinked out, then came on again to show the grey roiling of U-space—or rather a human-tolerable simulacrum. Feeling that familiar shift into the ineffable, Cormac nodded to himself in satisfaction. He turned to where Jack had thoughtfully provided two reclining chairs and a coffee table, now sitting incongruously at the centre of the black glass floor. He noted that one of those dracomen saddle seats had also appeared. Evidently Scar would be joining them. Cormac walked over and plumped himself down in a recliner.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You still tracking it, Jack?’

‘I am,’ replied the ship’s AI.

‘We have three other state-of-the-art Centurions like the
NEJ,’
he explained to Blegg as the Oriental joined him. ‘They all possess the new chameleonware.’

‘Yes.’ Grudgingly said.

Cormac stared at Blegg for a long moment. There now seemed something different about him, something wrong. He did not ask about this, because he knew his chances of receiving a straight answer were minimal. Instead he said, ‘Jack, all the older ships are to deny themselves the ability to track the signature of a Jain node. They’ll probably lose sight of the Legate’s ship after the first two or three jumps. You, and the other three Centurions, start using your ‘ware right now. You’ll relay our coordinates to the other ships, whenever possible, but they are to stand off meanwhile unless we call them in.’

‘You are supposing it will run for home,’ suggested Blegg.

‘I am, yes, but if it doesn’t and looks set to approach any Polity worlds or bases, we’ll then attempt capture. I think it will run for home, and I can only—’

‘Something has occurred,’ Jack interrupted.

The bridge display changed, and once again they gazed upon the Dyson segment hanging in the clouds from the demolished gas giant. Cormac realized he now viewed a recording from one of the dreadnoughts, for he could see the shape of the
NEJ
much closer to the segment itself. He watched the Legate’s escape, the storm of explosions, and the subsequent winking out of the Legate’s ship, then the
NEJ
and other ships as they dropped into U-space. The dreadnought held station, and its view closed in on the opposite side of the Dyson segment, where something flashed away at high speed and then also winked out. The view froze, reversed, then a frame enclosed a fusion drive flame and the object it propelled. Selecting that image out, it magnified it for them. Programs rapidly cleaned up the image.

‘The
Heliotrope?
said Jack.

‘So she
was
hiding there,’ said Blegg.

Cormac grimaced. ‘Overseer Orlandine.’ He added, ‘I suppose the question we should have been asking was why did the Legate come here?’

‘And the answer?’ asked Blegg.

Cormac shook his head, then asked Jack, ‘Did the
Heliotrope
escape completely?’

‘It did,’ the AI replied. ‘Only two dreadnoughts remained by the segment, but the
Heliotrope
did not fall within range of their weapons, even if they had chosen to use them.’

A few facts came together in Cormac’s mind, and he turned to Blegg. ‘She sent us the solution to the Legate’s chameleonware so we would concentrate on that ship, thus giving her the opportunity to escape.’

‘Outstanding reasoning,’ said Blegg.

‘Outstanding sarcasm,’ Cormac replied. ‘But we should have known.’

‘The information came via the AI net,’ Blegg replied. ‘An HK program tracked it only as far as one of the Cassius stations, from where it was broadcast to us. No real way of knowing if she sent it. Do you want to go back?’

Orlandine was a haiman, who had been promoted to become overseer of a project this size, a murderer, and one quite likely to have had contact with this Legate. Yet she had betrayed the Legate to them, and there had been only one node signature detected—the one aboard the Legate’s ship—hadn’t there? Cormac felt a momentary disquiet, remembering how long it had taken to clean up that signature. Maybe as long as it took a second node to follow through its program with a host and therefore cease to be detectable as a node? This woman could be someone even more dangerous than Skellor. But an AI had once told Cormac that psychos wielding weapons, however dangerous, should not be your prime target: you should always go after the arms trade that supplied them.

‘Continue the pursuit,’ he directed.

* * * *

Settled in a storage area and perpetually updated by Jack, Arach wondered if he had made a big mistake. Space battles, he felt, were okay if there was some chance that enemy ships might need to be boarded, but there had been no need of that. Long pursuits through space were also okay, so long as there might then ensue a planetfall and some subsequent ground-based conflict. But was that likely? For a long time Arach had been shutting himself down for periods that extended over decades. Signing on to
Celedon,
the station drawing the line of Polity, he had hoped to find some action there. No such luck. This hooking up with a Polity agent known to often get involved in violent conflicts was the drone’s last desperate gamble at relieving boredom. If this did not work, then maybe permanent shutdown? Or perhaps Arach should abandon the Polity altogether and see if he could find some action beyond the line? He would wait and see. In darkness he drew power to charge up his energy reserves, counted and recounted his esoteric collection of missiles, and ran perpetual diagnostic checks on his weapons systems. He would see.

* * * *

In U-space the ship repaired itself and within two weeks, ship time, regained optimum function. Some debris still lay around inside it -pieces of rail-gun missiles and burnt-out components—but, given time, the ship’s mycelium would take these apart and incorporate them. The Legate watched nearby disturbances in the continuum, caused by the pursuing warships, and now began to work on plans for evading them. They knew the solution to this vessel’s chameleonware, thanks to Orlandine, so time to do something about that. The Legate ran programs to completely change how that ‘ware operated, created back-up programs for further changes, then, finally ready, it surfaced its ship back into the real.

Seven ships materialized a mere 100,000 miles away in interstellar space: two dreadnoughts and five old-style attack ships. The Legate instantly onlined the new program and accelerated for some distance under conventional drive, before dropping back into underspace, the ‘ware distorting its U-signature too, and concealing the ship in underspace. The Legate travelled for five days in that continuum, and still detected some disturbance in the vicinity, which meant the ships could still detect it, or had chosen a close course by chance. Again into the real.

This time the two dreadnoughts were gone and only three of the attack ships remained. The Legate jumped again, then again before changing the ‘ware program for a second time. Some kind of feedback through the program created ghost distortions during the transition from one continuum to another, but this time no pursuers remained. As a precaution the Legate changed the program yet again, and made three more random jumps, before setting a course of jumps for home. Still some ghosting in the system, but considering how close it had come to destruction, the Legate could live with that.

* * * *

During initial contact, the pseudopods within the manacle withdrew from sight, but the humanoid dragon head remained, its neck sinking out of view, bringing the head to rest in the layer of flesh, like a man sinking in living quicksand and tilting his head back for one final breath. Its expression grew slack and unresponsive, as if something had pulled a plug below. During the ensuing hours the entity’s surrounding liverlike flesh hardened and scales rose out of it, like flakes of skin about to break away but then petrifying to gemlike solidity—crystallizing and growing translucent. Further hours passed.

At last something was happening. Observing the magnified section of the linkage between the two dragon spheres, Mika noticed pseudopods detaching from each other and withdrawing. The bright sunlight that previously shone down on the manacle building for twenty minutes of every hour, as the two spheres revolved around each other in the sun’s orbit, was briefly occluded by a titanic pseudopod tree breaking away from the main connection, its fans opening out then folding in vacuum as it retreated into the other sphere. Mika felt the floor shift and observed the draconic landscape rolling all about in fleshy waves. Then the connection between the two spheres really began to come apart. Shucked off scales rained through space at the parting and even the occasional dead pseudopod. The whole connection unravelled like the severing of some vast fibre-optic skein, through which a sapphire light passed.

‘Discussion over, I see; so you convinced your brother sphere?’ She nervously glanced down at the head, expecting it to re-engage with her at this point, or at least for Dragon to give her some response over the comsystem. None was forthcoming, and it worried her that Dragon could not spare the processing power for a simple communication. Then that changed, as the head jerked out of its torpor and opened its eyes, like a corpse reanimated and prophesying doom.

‘Run to your ship,’ it said, ‘you cannot survive here.’

* * * *