‘You wanted me to accept your gift without reservation. I have not done that.’
The being replied, ‘But you will. More ships will come. You will have to prepare yourself, defend yourself. With your knowledge, and such a tool as Jain tech, you will be able to take all the Cassius stations.’
Not even a weak explanation for its presence, rather no explanation at all. Orlandine glanced across at her nanoassembler which, in the last few minutes, had manufactured more mycelia, and more stews of nanomachines. That assembler would be all she would need. She physically detached from the mycelium spread throughout the enclosing segment, but remained in contact via radio. Walking over to the assembler, she shut it down, disconnecting optics and power supply, and picked the device up with her assister-frame complemented arms. For a long moment she gazed up at the disassembled remains of the node—almost invisible now.
‘Why should I want that?’ she asked the alien entity.
Again that pause. ‘You could run, of course, but you know ECS would never stop pursuing you. From here you could negate all that risk utterly. They don’t yet have the firepower available here to destroy this Dyson segment. You could defend it from them. You could take this entire system, take control of all the runcibles here. Take over the Polity.’
‘You sound so desperate,’ Orlandine replied. ‘Trying to recover a scheme that went wrong?’
‘You won’t escape from here. And while attempting to escape, you’ll waste time better spent on looking to your defences.’
Orlandine smiled to herself. Quite obviously Jain-tech subversion also possessed a psychological component which she herself seemed to have avoided: an arrogance, megalomania—something of that nature. Or had she escaped it? Whatever, she did not perform as the alien expected. As she turned toward the airlock leading to the Heliotrope, she copied the solution to the alien ship’s chameleonware and, from a transponder 50,000 miles away from her, transmitted it to the station once her home. If ECS forces had come here searching for that alien ship, now they would find it—it was her gift to them.
15
Polity agents: such is the quantity of fiction produced about these characters that it is quite probable most people have no real idea of what they are at all. Often portrayed as super beings who spend most of their time whacking Separatists, defeating dastardly Prador plots, stumbling on ancient alien ruins, or shagging their way through most of the population, it is sometimes difficult to remember that they are real people, with a seriously difficult job to do. Such an agent, unless the circumstances are exceptional, is usually recruited from some elite force like the Sparkind, then trained even further. His remit is basically the same as the one the AIs voluntarily adhere to: the greatest good for the greatest number (though how this is assessed is open to debate). Such an individual is bound by duty, has harsh self-discipline, and must make some hard choices. And what do they do? Well… revisit my second sentence above.
— From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon
The vague red area on the Dyson segment finally resolved to a single dot. Cormac could only assume the earlier blurring a problem with this new method of scanning, which was now finally solved. A further five dreadnoughts arrived along with ten more attack ships—including some of the new Centurions—to complement the search. The ones that had arrived earlier were moving into the targeted segment, but Cormac now contemplated withdrawing them. If this Legate entity used Jain technology, their chances of capturing it dropped to only a little above zero. The Legate, he suspected, knew how to utilize the same technology considerably better than the Separatist Thellant.
‘Other information has become available,’ announced Jack. ‘I am now reconfiguring the segment scanners.’
Abruptly it seemed to Cormac that he was falling towards the Dyson segment, then into it, through layers of composite, past titanic structural members to which fusion reactors clung like barnacles, and into its vast icy halls. Something shimmered before him and, in flashes of pixellated colour, became visible. Soon he gazed upon the Legate’s ship, as it cruised along a hundred yards above a frigid peneplain. Cross-referencing this new data to the position of the Jain node they were still detecting, they confirmed it to be aboard this same ship.
‘What is this?’
‘The solution to that ship’s chameleonware,’ said a voice beside him.
He turned to Blegg, whose ship had docked with the NEJ only a little while ago. ‘And how did we get hold of that?’
‘Interesting question, to which at present I can provide no answer. However, the possibilities of our capturing this Legate have now increased substantially.’
Cormac considered that statement, and what Thorn had said before departing to join one of the Centurion attack ships conducting the search. Being an agent for some greater enemy, would the Legate destroy itself rather than be captured?
‘Jack, analysis of that ship,’ he enquired.
‘A product of a Jain-based organic technology. It seems to be totally formatted for covert operations: sophisticated chameleonware, damped drive and thrusters. The hull is metallo-organic matrix—not heavily armoured but probably capable of rapid self-repair. To find out anything more about it would require active scan, which could be detected.’
‘That’s all I need to know, thanks.’ Cormac eyed Blegg. ‘If we capture this creature, we’ll need to quarantine it, then somehow deactivate the tech it is using, then’—he shrugged—‘interrogate it?’
Blegg just waited inscrutably silent.
Cormac continued, ‘I think the preferable option would be to find out where it came from, because certainly it is not working alone… Jack, I want weaknesses introduced into the blockade.’ In his gridlink he selected the locations, and gave the precise parameters for each weakness. ‘Out from there we lay EM mines. It won’t go for that one if it has any sense. Now, move the NEJ over here.’
‘What are you planning?’ Horace Blegg asked.
Cormac glanced at him, then said, ‘Jack—kill the hologram.’
The internal scene from the Dyson segment disappeared. Now they were standing on the glassy floor of the bridge.
Cormac considered his reply to Blegg for a long moment, then said, ‘We let the Legate go.’
The Legate still did not understand. Skellor had been a success — a trial run providing information about how the Polity would respond to Jain attack for, after all, Erebus needed to know nothing more about Jain technology itself. Admittedly the situation on Coloron had been hurried, since the Legate had intended to provide Thellant with a Jain node some years hence. And yes, Orlandine now seemed a dismal and worrying failure. But why so endanger a covert mission by sending the Legate here? It made no sense.
As it relayed all the recent updates of events on Coloron from its probes and U-space transmitters, all around that planet, and then fully apprised Erebus of the situation here, the Legate expected to receive in return a self-destruction order. The attack ships searching the segment were all now closing in, and soon there would be little chance of escape. Orlandine, before cutting communication, had kindly informed the entity that she had provided ECS with the solution to this ship’s present chameleonware configuration. No time to change that configuration now. Angry, it felt the urge to betray her presence here, if she had not already done so herself. However, though the Legate considered the experiment with her to be a failure, she might still damage the Polity.
‘Attempt to return,’ came the U-space reply from Erebus—a totally unexpected instruction.
Switching from passive scanning to full power scanning, the Legate began analysing its situation. ECS did not possess enough ships to completely enclose this Dyson segment so there were obvious weaknesses in the blockade. The largest weakness the entity ignored completely, since that seemed an obvious trap. It chose another one and plotted a course accordingly. Maximum acceleration from the segment would put it in range of one of the ECS attack ships for just a few seconds—enough time, however, for it to be destroyed. But few other options remained, so it engaged its ship’s fusion drive.