Mika came instantly awake, knowing Dragon had just surfaced from U-space.
‘Have we arrived?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Dragon confirmed over the manacle’s com system.
Shortly before Dragon’s departure from Jerusalem, now some days ago, the Dragon head and attendant pseudopods had retreated back down their hole and that hole closed. Conversation with the entity thereafter had merely been via com. It had answered many of her questions, but those answers were as convoluted and Delphic as ever. She still did not know where Dragon had brought her, or why.
Slinging her heat sheet back, she sat upright and demanded, ‘Exterior view.’
The walls and ceiling disappeared, but what she now saw could only be described as an interior view—the insides of Dragon no less. Masses of flesh like raw liver pushed in from every side, throughout which groped hands of blood-red tentacles. As she watched a grey-white pseudopod snaked past like a giant conger eel, and something globular with metallic veins spread over its surface gradually sank from sight. However, this exterior downward movement made Mika realize that the manacle was slowly being pushed back to Dragon’s surface. It seemed a slow process, so she stood up, picked up her pack, then headed off to use the sanitary facilities this place provided. After that she returned to grab up a pull-tab coffee, and stood watching while the drink heated in her hand.
‘Where have we arrived?’ she asked finally.
The floor shuddered and Dragon’s flesh and skin began to part overhead, to reveal a hot glare beyond. Flesh slid down from this either side of the manacle as finally it surfaced. Mika observed stars peppered across blackness above one draconic horizon. Poised above the opposite horizon, a white actinic sun glared, its ferocity doubtless filtered just enough, through the projection system, to prevent it burning out her eyes.
‘Here,’ Dragon informed her.
Below the sun’s glare, a massive pit opened in Dragon’s surface, a constellation of blue stars rising from its depths. Thousands of cobra heads came into view: great open fans of them stemming from massive arterial branches, which in turn extended from a tangled fig-vine column of a central tree. This titanic growth rose up beside the manacle like some vast organic spacecraft launching. It occluded the sun, and only then, with the glare cut out, did Mika see the other object approaching. This new sphere could have been any moonlet or some titanic ship but, as it drew closer, she noticed it too everting growth. The other remaining Dragon sphere approached.
Taking up her palm-com, Mika quickly plumped down in the VR chair, strapped herself in and tilted the chair back. Through her com she ran a check to ensure the continuing operation of all the recording equipment contained in the manacle.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
The liver-like flesh in the open floor parted for the emergence of two pseudopods and that disquieting new Dragon’s head. It arched out over her, glanced up at the scene she was witnessing, then turned its attention to her directly.
‘I am about to acquaint my other half with some realities,’ it said.
‘It doesn’t know, then?’
‘No, I was unable to make connection while being held captive within the USER blockade around Cull, and have not attempted connection since Cormac acquainted me with events in the Maker realm.’
‘Why not?’
‘As Cormac would know, face-to-face encounters yield the most effective results. My other half is also still subject to its Maker programming.’
‘But surely your other self will defeat that and the results will be the same as with you?’
‘Why should they be? This is a different me. I have also been captive of Jerusalem for some time.’
‘It will be suspicious?’ Mika suggested.
‘It will only know for sure, by seeing what I have seen from the inside.’
‘Maybe it still won’t believe you.’
‘Let us hope it does. I would not want to kill myself?
The second Dragon sphere drew close overhead like a moon falling to earth. Through her palm-com Mika input an instruction for part of the view to be magnified. One quarter of the ceiling served this purpose, focusing on where the two pseudopod trees reached for each other. Lightning flashed between them as the relative charges of the two spheres equalized. Blackened and trailing smoke, some pseudopods, struck by these discharges, were ejected from the trees. Finally the two massive growths began to join and writhe into each other. She observed separate-sourced cobra heads coming together, eye to eye, like electric sockets mating, sapphires winking out. Was this, she wondered, how the original four Dragon spheres had connected, unseen inside their conjoining? The two trees like two giant organic plugs, finally joined completely, then the composite tree began to contract and grow squatter, drawing the two Dragon spheres together. It occurred to Mika that she was trapped between two titanic entities that might shortly be in violent disagreement. Though a fascinating experience, she might not survive it.
Cormac listened in to the com traffic, then eyed his surroundings. Ships represented as brief stars, then magnified to visibility, appeared continuously and swung around the sun towards the NEJ’s present position. From this part of the ship he gained a better overview of the situation. Just like on the bridge of the original Jack Ketch, Cormac apparently stood in vacuum somewhere out from the sun, but in a Cassius system contracted down to a more manageable scale. The ship’s viewing systems rendered the gas cloud translucent and filtered the sun’s brightness. Dyson segment 14 stood out to Cormac’s left—its diamond shape a grey eye in roiling gas.
‘So where is your ship right now?’ he asked.
Horace Blegg, standing beside him, extended an arm and pointed towards one of the stations, whence a small ship now departed, a red dot flashing over it in the display. Cormac grimaced then turned to study the other man, if man he was: Blegg once again bore the appearance of an aged Oriental, his hair grey and close cropped, his expression enigmatic. He wore a pale green envirosuit, dusty, with sand on his boots.
‘You say you have a Jain node aboard?’
Blegg grimaced and replied, ‘I do.’
Returning his attention to the segment, Cormac saw a blurred red area appearing—the other signature. ‘That the best resolution you can get us, Jack?’
The Centurion ship’s AI replied, ‘The U-space signature is strange—a slight dispersion between two points. Perhaps a node has been initiated and it is coming apart.’
‘So, where are we now?’ Cormac asked. ‘You, Blegg, were drawn here by the U-space signature of a Jain node, and I came here pursuing a being called the Legate. It strikes me as unlikely there’s no connection.’
‘It does,’ Blegg agreed. ‘I at first supposed the node related to a murder committed aboard one of the stations—that it was in the possession of an overseer called Orlandine. It may be possible that she has no involvement in this—that she committed her murder coincidentally. However, I don’t like coincidences.’
Cormac tilted his head, checking some further information through his gridlink. ‘The timing is about right. You detected this particular signature a short while after the Legate’s arrival here… if he did actually arrive here.’
Blegg shrugged, seeming strangely unconcerned.
Cormac went on. ‘I just have to assume the signature is from a node previously in the Legate’s possession and that it is now somewhere within the Dyson segment. We need to find out.’