Polity Agent (64 page)

Five feet.

She fired up the fusion engine and two sun-bright blades of flame stabbed across, low above the icy ground, and struck the approaching worm. It held for a couple of seconds, then parts of it began to ablate. Abruptly it began to coil upwards, then it just flew apart. Orlandine shut down the engine.

Four feet.

‘Come on!’

Four feet.

‘Fuck, fuck!’

The drill shaft, being fed down in hollow sections behind the independently operating drill head, could clearly advance no more. Diagnostics screamed the reason at her: the force of the engine burn had bent one of the drill-shaft sections right below the ship. And the ship’s detectors now picked up seismic disturbances not caused by the drilling—more visitors. Orlandine began racking up pressure in the shaft and the drill bit began turning again as that pressure pushed it down further, but then it stopped again. No joy—and Orlandine knew what she must do. She resupplied power to the mycelium, then quickly detached herself from the interface sphere. No time for delay, no time at all. In the hold she donned a heavy-duty assister frame and spacesuit, then headed for the airlock, meanwhile maintaining EM contact with the ship’s systems.

The lock popped open on a settling snow of iridescent ice flakes. She glanced over towards where the engine flames had scorched the terrain and saw the remains of her attacker: its individual segments melted down into the ice, vivid rainbow light flaring and swirling around them—a low-temperature photoluminescent effect.

Stop admiring the view,
Orlandine reprimanded herself, and scuttled down from the lock, clinging upside-down to the hull underneath the ship.
Just four damned feet.
The bent shaft-section now became visible. Over beside it she dropped to the ground and, using the same tools she had used on the Dyson segment to cut ice blocks, sliced down around it and began levering out chunks of ice. Minutes passed before she removed enough to clear a gap down around the shaft by four feet—minutes she could not now afford. Almost incidentally, still watching through the ship’s sensors, she fired the lasers at rapidly approaching objects.

‘Multi-tasking!’ she shouted triumphantly, as she turned to head back inside, and wondered not for the first time if she was going insane.

Spheres of fire ignited on the horizon as she reached the lock. Just as she was closing the door behind her, a storm of razor ice impacted the hull. Something tugged at her thigh. Glancing down she saw air gusting from her suit, then a sudden explosion of breach sealant closing up the rip. She ordered the drill to start working again as the lock cycled, gave some slack to the mooring cables. The bent shaft of the revolving drill began to slam
Heliotrope
about, but it was working again, boring down.

Two feet. . . through!

Stumbling back inside the ship, Orlandine sent the signal to detach the drill bit. Under pressure the five CTDs shot down into liquid methane. Orlandine ordered emergency detach from her assister frame and it clattered to the floor. She felt slightly sick and dizzy.

Cables . . . detach from shaft. . .

For a moment she could not figure how to do that, then, as she finally reached the interface sphere, remembered how and sent the required signals. As the ship detached from the drill, the pressure within the drill shaft exploded underneath
Heliotrope,
hurling it up and away from the planetoid, and throwing Orlandine to the floor. Not enough to move the ship far, but the constant blast of methane following it out through the open shaft continued the job. More missiles coming in now, and the ship’s lasers, now underpowered, were having problems hitting them all. Orlandine dragged herself to her feet and connected to the interface sphere, immediately gaining a greater perspective.
Heliotrope
steadily rose on a large methane geyser. The CTDs below were slowly moving into position, the bacilliform objects still shooting up towards them. The exhausts of all the missiles speeding towards her surrounded the planetoid like a cage. By now the reactor had nearly built up enough energy to fire up the fusion engine again, but not yet because of the drain from deploying the lasers.

No more time.

Orlandine sent the signal to detonate. The glare from below shone blue-green through the ice in the crust, and then the crust itself heaved up. The methane geyser became gigantic, accelerating
Heliotrope
further, and hurling up boulders and bergs behind it. The final flash followed a few seconds later, then . . . nothing.

Not enough chlorine?

Not so, the planetoid became increasingly luminous, began to stand out more visibly from the darkness of space. The first crack opened up a hundred miles from her landing point, and out of it glared bright white light. More cracks appeared rapidly, and Orlandine observed a chunk of rock and ice the size of Gibraltar lifting away from the planetoid on a swirling explosion of arc-light. Next, in seeming slow motion because of the sheer scale of the blast, the planetoid came apart. Over there a continent-sized piece of the crust departed almost with balletic grace, but which had to be travelling at thousands of miles per hour. Below her, a rising swarm of boulders that could grind up
Heliotrope
like a sardine tin thrown into the works of some huge engine. And there, a gust of flame stabbing out like a solar flare.

Fusion start.

Instantly onlining the engines, Orlandine flung her ship towards safety. Only then did she notice the warnings from her physical diagnosticer. She had lost about a litre of blood, which must now be washing around inside her spacesuit. She would have to attend to that later. To herself she half smiled, half grimaced, as the USER ceased to function—roasted in white fire.

* * * *

Another dreadnought, pounded until it looked like a maggot-chewed apple, self-destructed rather than allow itself to be subsumed by the rod-ships settling on its burnt and pitted hull. The more manoeuvrable Polity ships seemed to be standing up better, perhaps because the alien ships concentrated their fire on the larger ships whose heavier weapons could actually destroy them. Once the enemy had dealt with all the dreadnoughts, they would doubtless mop up the rest.

In a nightmare fugue, Azroc watched the battle and tracked the logistical projections to their conclusion. One small part of those projections predicted the destruction of the
Brutal Blade
within the next half hour—this fact appearing as inevitable as a sunset. The Golem observed the ribbons of fire burning through space as high-energy weapons swept across gas that had escaped from shattered vessels. He saw old-style attack ships fighting a losing battle in the disrupted ring system, playing hide and seek behind tumbling boulders. He observed a tenacious assault on an enemy ship by a dreadnought similar to
Brutal Blade,
how that other ship peeled away snakish structures and fired missile after missile as it closed in. Rod-ships dotted the dreadnought’s hull like clinging leeches. It did not slow, but rammed the enemy ship, detonating all its weapons simultaneously. A brave but futile act, human almost.

Then Azroc’s eye fell upon other minor scenes: a shuttle being subsumed by a rod-ship, and spacesuited figures jetting away from it with painful slowness. Gusts of flame and gas as the shuttle’s laser targeted then incinerated each of these figures. Were they evacuees from this very ship? The Golem calculated the chances of that, and of one of those figures being Karischev. Azroc had by then shut down those parts of his mind concerned with the emulation of human emotion, though, as he did so he considered whether it was emulation, when copied so perfectly, or the thing itself? Perhaps the mere fact that he could disconnect himself from it did make it emulation. Such thoughts he concerned himself with as he waited for his own destruction.

Then the USER shut down.

It took the Golem some moments to realize what had happened, as com traffic rose to a scream and Polity ships began disengaging and running. Only as ships began winking out, dropping into U-space, could he accept that they might now survive. He began to bring parts of his consciousness back online; returning to life. The first shuttle to come in through the gaping hole in the side of
Brutal Blade
skidded along the shining deck and crashed into the wall below the dormitory windows. Another swiftly followed it, then another. Focusing in on the coms operating between Brutus and those aboard the shuttles, he learnt that seven out of the twelve small vessels had survived. Nothing said about Karischev, however.

Once the last shuttle slammed down in the docking bay, the
Brutal Blade
dropped into U-space with a ragged groan echoing throughout its structure. They were away; they had survived. Azroc removed his grip from the stanchion as the gravplates came back on and stabilized. He moved across to the nearest dormitory window and observed a shimmer-shield come on within the hole through which the shuttles had entered. Beyond this he observed repair robots, like frenetic spiders no bigger than a finger end, spinning metallic fibres across to slowly mend the gap. He moved away from the window and along through the dormitory. He observed a man lying on the floor, his spacesuit still intact, but himself horribly broken inside it, his spine snapped at right angles. Azroc stooped down and observed a small autodoc clinging to the suit’s shoulder, nestled in breach foam like a spit bug. Checking the doc’s readout he discovered that it maintained life—the doc shunted in at the man’s neck, keeping his head alive and thus the brain inside it. The rest could be repaired, or replaced later. Azroc stood up and moved on down into the shuttle bay.

Sparkind were disembarking, but Karischev himself was yet to appear. Recognizing the soldier’s shuttle, Azroc quickly headed over to it. The shuttle lay distorted, hot metal ticking and creaking as it cooled. Azroc realized then that it had not even made it away from the ship. Some weapon had carved a channel right through its hull, energy discharges frying its systems and welding it to the deck.

A Golem Sparkind reached the shuttle’s airlock ahead of Azroc, tearing it away from its distorted frame. Smoke gusted out, stinking of fried meat. Azroc ducked inside after the other Golem, and began checking for life-signs amid the incinerated remnants. Two remained alive, maintained by suit autodocs operating in much the same way as the one Azroc had seen in the dormitory. The rest of the bodies were casualties of war. He finally identified Karischev as the burnt thing still strapped in the navigator’s seat. The sick wrench of anger he felt was no emulation.

* * * *

Epilogue

At first it seemed there might still be some life in the wrecked Centurion. Scanning it from a distance, King picked up energy usage from within the hull, localized heat sources, and other indicators that something might still be functioning inside. However, drawing closer, the AI attempted to open communication links but received no response, and now, inspecting the ship at close hand, King realized those earlier signatures must have resulted from its death throes, a leaking reactor, final fires dying down inside the vessel. It was hardly recognizable as a ship at all, now that it lay twisted out of shape in a cloud of its own debris. The likelihood of its mind having survived seemed low.

When the USER went offline in a way that indicated its destruction, King’s first instinct was to flee immediately. However, the AI suppressed that instinct. It had already rescued some humans for reasons it did not like to study too closely, so why not make certain here? Maybe a rescued AI would state King’s case later to the Polity? But it was really that undamaged weapons nacelle that swung King’s decision not to leave immediately. Yes, its contents might be depleted, but King needed such supplies desperately, and anything would be better than his present complete lack of armament.

The
King of Hearts
drew even closer to the ruined ship, pieces of wreckage bouncing and clattering from the hull before tumbling away into vacuum. King fired his two grapnels, closing their hardened claws into ripped hull metal on either side of the undamaged weapons nacelle, then began to draw the wreck towards him. After a moment he guided his remaining telefactor out of the accommodation specially constructed for the rescuees, back into the bay, and launched it into space. Bringing the telefactor down on the wreck’s twisted hull, he set it to cutting its way in, then returned his attention to the weapons nacelle. He scanned the nacelle and discovered it contained only two imploder missiles—not really a great haul, but better than nothing. He would get the telefactor to cut the missiles free after it checked out the mind inside the ship . . .

Then the comlink opened. ‘One false move and you’re toast, boy,’ came a voice.

‘Who is this?’ Something about the speaker seemed familiar to King, but he could not identify what because at present the communication came via radio and was voice only.

‘Inspect yourself, King.’

Through the telefactor, King did as instructed. Debris had clattered against him constantly during his approach to the wreck. Some of it, however, had not bounced away, and appeared too suspiciously even in construction to be mere debris. King paraphrased himself:
Polity super-intelligences taken for mugs
... A neat row of black hemispheres now decorated his hull from stem to stern.
Space mines.

‘Now,’ said the voice, ‘I hope I have your attention, because if you do anything reckless and I send a signal to those mines, there won’t be enough left of you to make a decent-sized ingot.’