Polity Agent (48 page)

Surfacing after yet another U-space jump, Jack surveyed the planetary system ahead, cataloguing individual planets and scanning for large artificial constructions either on them or in surrounding space. Two light months ahead, the AI picked up some signs of battle: weapons’ flashes with the familiar signature of CTDs and plain atomics, a UV flash followed incrementally by infrared, pinpricks of coherent microwave radiation probably the result of masers firing. The immediacy of U-space signatures was not evident now, since this conflict of course took place two months ago. Scanning did not sufficiently reveal the combatants, though there seemed many low albedo objects in the system at the time. The AI assumed the Legate had surfaced into the real here just to view this scene. Grabbing the opportunity, Jack sent off a U-space information package detailing their present coordinates and events thus far. A return package updated him on the position of a steadily growing fleet of ECS dreadnoughts, a light century behind them.

‘Are we strolling into an interstellar war?’ wondered Blegg.

Listening in to the conversation, Jack wondered if they might be bringing one along with them.

‘There’s always that possibility,’ Cormac replied as he stepped out into the training area, ‘but why go pissing off the Polity if you’re already involved in such a serious conflict?’

‘Historically speaking, such actions from aggressors have not been unusual.’

‘And you would know, wouldn’t you,’ Cormac muttered sarcastically.

Through internal cameras, Jack observed Blegg and Cormac squaring off to each other once again, and relayed this image to the other ships. The contests fought between the Sparkind throughout this journey were interesting, but this one would be even more so. Jack supposed the two contestants were hardly aware of the betting going on between AIs behind the scenes, just as they seemed unaware that while they fought, they sometimes moved at AI speeds. Of course, since recent revelations to him, Blegg’s mood swayed between indifference and anger, so the results of the contests became less easy to predict. Then, just as the two agents exchanged their first blows, all four ships dropped into U-space.

Many hours later, ship time, the four resurfaced within the system. The Legate’s ship surfaced too, only briefly, then continued on. Jack once again scanned, but found little more than gaseous clouds and small masses of debris from the distantly viewed conflict here. But there was no time to grab any for analysis.

‘It’s not stopping here,’ observed the AI of the
Haruspex.

‘There is nothing to stop for, since obviously this is no base,’ the
Coriolanus AI
interjected.

‘Map and track,’ instructed Jack, dropping into underspace yet again.

In the underlying continuum they compared figures, and traced the course of the Legate’s ship on its way out of the system.

‘The high albedo object—it is heading there,’ said Haruspex.

‘Nova or accretion disc?’ wondered the
Belisarius AI.

‘Not a nova,’ said Jack, studying previous images. ‘Either an accretion disc or a sun being eaten by a black hole—though, if the latter, I would have expected more X-ray radiation.’

During their next jump through U-space Jack analysed data gathered from the system they had departed. Two living worlds there—one wintry and the other hot and humid. The battle seemed to have centred around the hot world and, checking recorded images, Jack saw evidence of some sort of impact on its surface -something worth checking further should the opportunity arise.

The rest of the planetary system consisted of, further out, a huge gas giant twice the size of Jupiter, a scattering of icy planetoids and asteroids, and one giant frigid world with its own ring system, and a rather odd and low reflective and highly metallic planetoid between the orbits of those two giants. This thing, being small, did not possess sufficient gravity to keep its surface flat, lacked atmosphere and therefore weather to erode down its features, yet it occupied an area swarming with spaceborne detritus so should be pocked with craters. The image Jack viewed showed something smooth as marble. It must be a recent addition to this solar system—a not uncommon occurrence considering the vast number of dark worlds roaming the space between suns.

* * * *

Thorn bowed to his opponent—a man stripped to the waist, exposing a physique that seemed as if forged from iron, the effect redoubled by his skin bearing a metallic tint—then snatched his head back from the path of a foot arcing towards it. Back-fisting the foot along its course, he kicked out for the back of his opponent’s other knee, then withdrew the strike as the attacking foot snapped back towards him. Chalter grinned at him, blinking pinkish albino eyes that were another result of whatever adaptation gave his skin that metallic hue. The man was disconcertingly good, but then Thorn expected no less: all of the soldiers aboard the
Haruspex
were Sparkind. Chalter now tried bringing his foot down on Thorn’s forward-bent knee, while simultaneously aiming a chop to the side of his head. Thorn withdrew swiftly, not wanting another session with the autodoc, as after his last encounter with Chalter. He spun into a roundhouse kick, just skimming Chalter’s face, followed that with a chop that put the man off-balance, then hammered a blur of punches into his torso. Of course, punching Chalter’s torso seemed about as effective as thumping wood. The blows threw the man back, knocked a little breath out of him, but he grinned and instantly came in to attack again.

Such was the way Thorn relieved his boredom. On board a month passed before the alien vessel headed out-Polity, and now they had been pursuing it for two months altogether. If he had known it would go on for so long he would have climbed into a coldsleep coffin for the duration. He considered doing so now but, for all they knew the Legate’s eventual destination might be only minutes away. But at least Thorn was enjoying more amenable company aboard this high-tech Centurion, the
Haruspex,
than did Cormac aboard the
NEJ.
For travelling with Horace Blegg and the dracomen would not be a bundle of laughs.

There were four Sparkind units in all aboard the
Haruspex,
each of them consisting of four individuals—two Golem and two human, so always there would at least be a card game Thorn could join, or a training session in VR or for real like this.

Finally, having worked up a good sweat and noting from the scoreboard projected overhead that the
Haruspex AI
placed them at about even, Thorn called a halt. As they drew apart, on the raised platform circling the chamber above them, a couple of Sparkind clapped with slow sarcasm before heading down to take their turn. Thorn eyed them: a woman called Sheerna and a Golem called Aspex. He knew Sheerna was keen to perfect some techniques against an opponent who simply did not make mistakes.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ Chalter enquired.

‘Supposing nothing more interesting comes up, yes,’ Thorn replied.

They collected their towels and, both mopping sweat from their faces, moved out into a corridor leading to the crew quarters.

‘I’m told that if this latest destination doesn’t turn out to be the target,
Belisarius
is going to use a gravtech weapon to knock the Legate’s ship out of U-space,’ Chalter commented.

‘Who told you that?’

‘One of the guys aboard the
Coriolanus,
called Bhutan. He tells me even the AIs are getting rather bored and tetchy.’

That did not entirely surprise Thorn. A month in human terms probably felt to an AI, whose mind operated at orders of magnitude faster, like a hundred years. However, merely being bored and tetchy could not justify such a change in the mission plan. He glanced questioningly at Chalter, for the man should know that.

‘I think it’s due mostly to the direction and distance travelled,’ Chalter added. ‘They are starting to wonder if this Legate has realized it is still being pursued, and is now leading us away from its base. It might do that if it had no regard for time, or for its own life.’

‘What about that battle back there?’ Thorn asked.

Chalter nodded. ‘Another reason for not continuing too much further. The AIs are keen to check out that planetary system.’

‘And I would guess’, Thorn said, ‘that ships like this would be much better off guarding the Polity from its enemies. It would be advantageous for an enemy to expend just one small vessel in order to lead away four diamond-state ships like ours?’

‘That’s the thinking,’ Chalter replied.

In his room Thorn was luxuriating in a shower when he felt the
Haruspex
depart U-space. He dried himself quickly and pulled on some Sparkind fatigues.

‘Haruspex, that seemed a short jump, so what’s happening?’ he asked.

In a lazily superior tone the AI replied, ‘Perhaps a question better directed
towards
the Legate. I have no idea why he surfaced here.’

‘Could we be getting closer to his destination?’

‘Not yet ascertained.’

As he stepped outside his quarters, Thorn again felt that strange twisting, and knew they had submerged yet again. The ensuing jump was also of short duration, for Thorn had taken only a few paces along the corridor before the ship surfaced again. Distantly, he heard machinery winding up to speed, and clanking sounds against the hull.

‘We are under attack,’ Haruspex noted.

Thorn ran for the ship’s bridge, Chalter and the other three unit leaders joining him soon after. The
Haruspex
bridge was similar to that of the
NEJ:
a wide expanse of floor seemingly resting out in vacuum. Thorn discerned a distant vessel, and small objects swarming through space, close all around. To his far right he could see the
Coriolanus,
its laser strobing the cloud surrounding it. As the ranking officer aboard
Haruspex,
Thorn occupied one of the acceleration chairs available and leant back. Chalter and the others stood back, remaining out of the way, as it would not do to have too many people involved in this. Images of other chairs began to blink into existence: the human commander of the Sparkind aboard
Coriolanus,
and Cormac aboard the
NEJ.
There were no humans present from the
Belisarius,
though a hologram of the ship’s avatar—a large chesspiece knight—did flicker into existence. Jack the hangman also appeared, along with Coriolanus the Roman legionary leaning on his spear, and Haruspex itself appearing as a floating crystal ball. All projection.

‘It seems the Legate has just led us into some kind of set defence,’ Cormac observed.

No shit,
thought Thorn as he observed a pumpkin-seed object go hurtling past propelled by a bright fusion flame, then tracked by laser and turned to vapour.

‘Why are we visible?’ he asked.

Cormac held up a hand and turned towards the legionary image. ‘You’ve received five hits, what’s your current situation?’

‘They are not explosive, rather Jain subversion tech which, given time, would have completely subsumed this ship. I have destroyed them: three from outside by laser, the other two from the inside with a particle cannon.’

‘You see,’ added the human from the
Coriolanus—
Bhutan, a thin individual with pallid hairless skin and eyes like razor shards, who sported twinned military augs, one on each side of his head -’we flew straight into them, so chameleonware was no defence.’ He glanced at Thorn. ‘There are so many of the damned things, we have to use proximity lasers, and the resulting weapons drain negates the ‘ware effect.’

Thorn had not known that fact. ‘The alien vessel?’ he asked.

Cormac replied, ‘Completely ignored, and flying right through them.’

‘Has it seen us?’ Thorn asked.

Cormac glanced at him, then back towards whatever display he observed aboard the
NEJ.
‘I think that highly likely,’ he shrugged, ‘so we’ll have to grab it and see what we can learn. I think that what we’ll learn, if anything at all, is that we are very close to its final destination.’

‘Could this be it?’ wondered Haruspex.

In space, through the transparent walls of the
Haruspex’s
bridge, the AI used a frame to pick out a small area and magnify it, revealing a distant object like some jungle ruin, still swamped in lianas, transported out into vacuum. Like wasps issuing from their nests, the seed objects were swarming out of large barnacle-shaped excrescences on its surface.

Bhutan remarked, ‘Looks like something completely subsumed.’

‘It looks like something that will cease to exist in about thirty seconds,’ Cormac added.

That brought about a silence as they all watched. Perfectly on time, it seemed a pinhole punched through the strange object as if it were drawn on a sheet of black paper held up to the sun. Abruptly it distorted and shrank inwards towards the hole. The view then polarized over some titanic flash, and next they observed an expanding sphere of glowing gas. Within minutes the Centurions penetrated this, sang to the tune of the Shockwave as it peeled their smaller attackers away from them.

‘Alien vessel is jumping,’ Belisarius—a horse head talking.

The scene greyed out for a few seconds, and around Thorn the holograms grew thin as a nightmare crowd. Then the
Haruspex
shuddered back into the real, with star patterns altered about it.