9
Prador-Human War: this intense conflict lasted for forty years. Warships were destroyed in such numbers that some worlds acquired ring systems formed from the resultant debris. Ten million humans (this estimate is considered low and it might really be as high as fifty million) were infected by a virus on an out-Polity planet called Spatterjay, which enabled them to withstand severe physical injury, then were cored (most of the higher cerebrum removed) and thralled (the cerebrum being replaced by Prador enslaving technology) and sold to the Prador by a human called Jay Hoop. In one incident an entire moon was flung through an enlarged runcible gate to destroy one of the heavily armoured alien dreadnoughts, and in another a sun was stimulated to produce a solar flare to fry a similar vessel. Armies of humans, Golem and baroque and slightly mad drones numbering in ten of millions fought for possession of worlds against similar numbers of Prador first- and second-children and Prador drones (not controlled by AI but by the preserved brains of the aforesaid children). Many worlds were bombed with antimatter explosives, or fission weapons, scoured by particle cannons, hammered by near-c rail-gun projectiles. Some were burnt down to the bedrock and utterly denuded of life. Billions died on both sides. It could be claimed that the Polity won, for the Prador withdrew, but the aliens were not truly defeated. Fifty years later those same ring systems and denuded worlds became tourist attractions, as did Spatterjay itself, but now, nearly a hundred years later, interest has waned amongst the Polity’s growing population. Some even believe the data on this conflict, easily accessed just about anywhere, is fiction, or just a hoax perpetrated by the AIs.
- From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans
It sat in interstellar space like a giant harmonica; forty miles long, twenty wide and ten deep, the square holes running down either side of it were the entrances to enormous construction bays. Massive weapons turrets protruded from it out into space: housing racks of missiles as large as attack ships; thinking bombs whose prime purpose had been to fight their way to exotic-metal hulls and detonate; particle-beam cannons gaping like cavern throats; rail-guns that could fill nearby space with swarms of ceramal projectiles travelling at near-c; lasers, grasers, masers… Nearby space had once been also patrolled by chameleonware sneak mines, but they were decommissioned after becoming too much of a shipping hazard—their minds unstable and bored with waiting for an enemy that would never come.
‘I knew about this sort of thing,’ said Cormac, ‘but still…’
‘You were born about when it ended, weren’t you?’ Mika asked. She stood unusually close, he thought. He could smell her scent, realized she used Eyegleam and Shade, and her lips were now dyed a redder hue than her own. He read the implicit message, but did not know if he should respond.
He shook his head, feeling slightly uncomfortable, ‘No, I was eleven years old when it ended. I grew up while secrets were still being kept, and I had been working for ECS for twenty years by the time the AIs felt it safe for some of them to be revealed. By the nature of my work I already knew more than most, but was surprised even then.’
Mika grimaced. ‘So you are what… just over a hundred years old?’
‘Solstan time,’ Cormac agreed, ‘but personal time about ten or so years less than that. I’ve spent a lot of time in coldsleep between missions.’
Mika nodded, shrugged her acceptance, then pressed a hand against the panoramic screen as if she wished to touch the vast construct. ‘There’s seven more of these stations still mothballed. You know, most Polity citizens cannot quite grasp the scale of that conflict—just what a mobilized interstellar civilization can do.’ She turned, shrugged. ‘It’s been like that ever since war was industrialized.’ She gestured behind her at the screen. ‘This place was built in only three years and churning out dreadnoughts, attack ships and war drones just about as fast as the construction materials could be transmitted in. It could not keep up with demand during the initial Prador advance, since on average one medium-sized ship got destroyed every eight seconds during that conflict.’
‘But still we won, in the end,’ said Cormac.
‘Won?’
‘Well, we survived, which had not been the Prador’s intention.’
‘The new king of the Prador made the right decision to withdraw. Had they continued they would have lost completely, but as it was they retained some autonomy.’
Cormac smiled to himself. Mika knew this subject and was extremely interested in it. All these facts, available to him with a thought, were now common knowledge: casualty figures, number of worlds burned down to the bedrock or obliterated, the stories of moonlets fired through enlarged cargo runcibles to take out Prador heavy dreadnoughts, the abominable coring trade out on the Polity rim—how Prador enslaved humans in their millions. But it was now history, and as such seen by many as not quite real, not really anything to do with them.
‘Why did Earth Central choose this place as an Isolation station?’ she asked.
To business, he thought.
‘No other place large enough and isolated enough. Two more of these places are also being used. So far there’s over eight million people aboard this one.’
‘Not nearly enough—we should have gone straight to Coloron.’
Cormac shook his head. ‘The runcibles are closed to incomers for the duration, and it would take four months by ship even at Jerusalem’s top speed. By the time we got there it would all be over one way or another.’
‘So what is the plan now?’
‘You, D’nissan and all the others stay aboard the Jerusalem and continue doing what you do best: you study Jain technology and learn what you can from Dragon. Jerusalem predicts that after the initial rush to the runcibles on Coloron the pressure will drop off. In the inevitable lulls, ECS Rescue and military personnel will be transmitted through. I intend to go through then to link up with Thorn.’ He glanced at her. ‘Jerusalem is holding off until the situation on Coloron has been clarified. If required, this ship will make the jump to there. If not it will head back to either Cull or Masada.’
She mulled that over for a while, then nodded. Cormac could see her torn between undertaking field work on Coloron and continued research here on the Jerusalem with its huge resources. Probably what inclined her not to ask to come along with him was the mile-wide being which hung in space nearby, only a few tens of miles from the Jerusalem. Dragon now accompanied them. Its manacle, no longer containing CTDs, was no longer a manacle at all. This had been a test. Had Dragon fled, then some doubt would have been cast on its testimony. It did not, and continued to assist the researchers aboard this ship.
‘How long until you go across?’ She nodded at the screen.
‘When I’m ready. I need something from Jerusalem first.’
She nodded again, then gave him a long assessing stare.
‘By the way, how is your research progressing?’ Cormac asked.
Mika moved away from the screen and sat on his sofa, curling her legs up beside her. ‘We are learning a lot, and very quickly. We will, within days, have developed a system to prevent physical Jain-tech takeover of the human body, though it won’t prevent the subject being killed. Next we’ll be working on a doctor mycelium similar to the one I used before’—Mika looked uncomfortable—’only one that won’t try to grow Jain nodes and thus kill its host. Dragon has offered to give us these items complete and in working order. Jerusalem refused—it does not want us using anything we don’t fully understand. So now Dragon is feeding us the schematics piecemeal.’
Cormac did not feel very good about that somehow. Was it really the case that to survive in the universe humanity must cease to be human? Already transformation had occurred—augmentation, boosting, adaptation, the haimans—and this now seemed yet another step in that direction. If all this present furore led to some all-out conflict against something that was just a thing, just a hostile technology that required hosts, could it be, that if they came out the other side of it, they would be indistinguishable from the Makers? Transformed into something less admirable despite their victory? He winced—of course that supposed humanity was something to admire.