Skellor—the brilliant biophysicist who was promising to change their fortunes—brought ECS down on them like an avalanche. Subverting an ECS dreadnought by using Jain technology, he then made Aphran and some of her fellows his crew in the most horrific way possible: subsumed in Jain tech, becoming mere adjuncts to him, suffering and yet not dying. Then he killed her, burned her in a never-ending fire, the only escape being for her mind to flee inside the Jain structure. Next came Jack, who uploaded her from there to a partitioned segment of his own crystal. She combined with him, embracing him for the sake of her own survival, and there found clarity with which she began to see everything thereafter. For open to her were the massive historical files that Jack contained, giving sharp contrast to the peace and plenty enjoyed across the majority of the human Polity. She saw how the AIs allowed the human race the freedom to enjoy luxurious eternity, or even to destroy themselves personally, but not the freedom to destroy each other. She came to recognize her past life as the stubborn intransigence of a spoilt child. But most importantly she saw Jack. And that alone was enough.
‘I wondered why you were not prepared to die for the cause, but you did not answer me,’ she enquired over com.
Freyda shook her head, then sat down with her legs crossed, her back resting against the wall.
‘Only when I see you, will I believe it’s really you,’ she replied.
Aphran chose an image matching her appearance when held captive aboard the Occam Razor, and projected it into the room.
Freyda frowned and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Projection. I suppose whatever is talking to me now was constructed out of information reamed from Aphran’s mind before they killed her.’
‘Skellor killed me. You remember Skellor, don’t you? He actually burned me to death.’
Again the dismissive hand gesture.
Aphran allowed her form to change into that now more commonly seen by those aboard the NEJ. This elicited more of a reaction, Freyda’s eyes growing wide. She stared for a long moment before shaking her head.
‘I am a memcording—that’s all of me remaining,’ Aphran told her. ‘Is this what you would like to be? You have information that may be vital and you are surrounded by people who are very much lacking in patience. They’ll use an aug to interface with your mind, make a copy of all it contains, then that recording will be taken apart by this ship’s AI. You personally will then be of no use. This cell can easily be opened to vacuum.’
‘You’re no Aphran I know. You would have died rather than serve them.’
‘But I did die.’
Freyda grimaced and stared down at the floor.
Aphran went on, ‘This is an Aphran with her eyes opened wide. Your cause is hopeless, pointless and destructive. But then I think you came to realize that even before you recruited me. Once you genuinely believed all that humans-to-rule-humanity crap, but in the end you just enjoyed your own sense of importance… and killing people of course.’
‘If I do talk, what do I get in return?’
‘Whatever we can give you, but within reason.’
Freyda snorted contemptuously then said, ‘I would rather like to stay alive.’’
‘Is that within reason?’ Aphran shrugged. ‘Hard or soft—your choice. From here you’ll be transported back to Earth, which will require about fifteen runcible transfers. There you’ll face a judicial AI and be sentenced for your crimes. This does, however, mean you’ll live a little longer.’
The fifteen transfers were the key, for Freyda would still believe there might be a way out of this for her. Aphran only felt sad when registering the furtiveness in the woman’s expression.
‘I want to be allowed certain freedoms during that time,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be put into coldsleep.’
‘Granted.’
Again that look of furtiveness. ‘I’ll need time to think about this… in a better location than this. I am not an animal to be caged.’
Aphran allowed herself to begin to fade. ‘You have no time.’
‘Okay,’ said Freyda quickly. ‘Okay… what do you want to know?’
‘How many of you were there, down there?’
‘I’m not entirely sure—’
‘How many?’
‘Seventeen… fourteen now.’
‘Their location?’
Freyda eventually volunteered a grid reference deep in the forests.
‘There is something there,’ Jack informed Aphran. ‘It’s shielded, but not sufficiently so.’
‘Now,’ said Aphran, ‘what brought you here?’ She gritted her non-existent teeth through the ensuing political diatribe, and kept asking the same questions until Freyda provided the true answer.
‘High level ECS agents to kill—that’s always attractive.’
‘How did you know they would be here?’
While she waited for the answer, Aphran listened in on coms traffic both within the ship and way below, as the shuttle down on the surface, containing Thorn, Scar and fifty dracomen, launched on a heading to the coordinates just revealed.
‘I was told.’ Freyda abruptly stood and eyed Aphran up and down. ‘Is that how you appear now, the princess, the lady in white… one of the good guys?’
‘It is how I like to appear.’
‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten Coloron, then. Thellant N’komo still runs things there, and it’s him you need to talk to. Where he got his information from I don’t know, but it was him that sent us here.’
Aphran allowed her image to fade totally, then, as an afterthought, sent the signal that paralysed Freyda. The Separatist woman dropped like a pole. Aphran observed as the door now opened and the telefactor entered, carrying the aug they would use to record Freyda’s mind and check the veracity of her story.
‘Do we ship her back to Earth?’
‘No,’ Jack replied.
‘Kill her?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Sentence was passed on Freyda long ago, should she ever be caught. Death or erasure to be carried out as soon as feasible after her capture. After I have taken a recording of her mind, checked her story, and gleaned from it all knowledge that might be useful to ECS, I will wipe the recording and then wipe her mind. We will put her body into coldsleep, as there are still plenty of minds in the Soulbank who would be grateful for the physical vessel.’
And that being how the Polity dealt with its criminals, Aphran felt die then any hope she harboured for a future.
The scene now surrounding Thorn vaguely reminded him of his time as a soldier. Inside the shuttle the ten dracomen squatted in pairs in their saddle seats, their weapons braced across their chests. But these were soldiers of a different stripe. When they first landed on the planet, Thorn asked Scar why they discarded their impact suits. The dracoman leader had replied that they did not wish to be encumbered. Thorn then suggested they clad themselves in chameleon-cloth fatigues. Scar demonstrated how their own skin was much better at the job. So now, but for harnesses on which to carry high-tech weapons and other equipment, they were naked: green scaled all over except for their fronts which were yellow from throat to groin. With their forked tongues tasting the air, sharp white teeth occasionally exposed, they seemed like extras in a barbaric scene out of some VR fantasy.
In the cockpit Thorn faced forwards as Scar brought the shuttle down low so that now, through the ceiling-to-floor front screen, they could see the forest hurtling along underneath them.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘Sixteen minutes.’
Thorn nodded. It had been difficult, but he managed to force himself to delegate this mission to Scar—just giving the dracoman the simple instruction:
‘Try to kill as few of them as possible—we’re here for information, not extermination.’
‘How many prisoners do you want?’
‘I leave that up to you, Scar.’
Scar banked the shuttle slightly, and took it lower, forest now speeding under its left-hand side. Opening his pack Thorn removed a plastic box and popped it open. As Scar straightened the craft again, Thorn took out one of the small camcom discs and passed it over to the dracoman, who inspected it for a moment before slapping it on the side of his head. Closing the box, Thorn tossed it to the next dracoman behind him. He did not need to say anything more as dracomen were very far from stupid. The first took out a disc, pressed it to its temple, then passed the box on. Now Thorn operated the lever to bring his seat closer to the mission control console. He lifted the VR headgear from its recess and placed it over his head—the visor covering his face and phones enclosing his ears. Immediately frames began accumulating across his range of vision as each dracoman pressed a camcom into place. Using the ball control in his chair arm he selected frame one in the sequence. It expanded to fill his vision and the sounds within the shuttle changed slightly. He now seemed to be looking through Scar’s eyes, and hearing what the dracoman heard. Clicking back, he saw all the frames now present, and a diagnostic readout showed the system to be working at optimum. Thorn removed the headgear and placed it back in its recess.