Polity Agent (62 page)

The basic structure would be a skein of nanotubes created by microscopic factories catalysing carbon from the methane. Those same nanotubes, at this temperature, would also be superconductive so there would be no problem supplying power. Sensors would keep the main spread of the mycelial threads on the undersurface of the crust; micromotors would be laid every few tenths of an inch to stretch or slacken nanotubes and so guide growth; quantum processors, manufactured from the same carbon as the nanotubes, would control the whole process. However, at frequent intervals, the growing mycelium would inject nanotubes into the rock and ice above to seek out chlorine deposits. These would require nanoscopic drilling heads and peristaltic inner layers to transport chlorine molecules back down to the main mycelium and into the methane sea. Methodically, and brilliantly, Orlandine began constructing her nanomycelium. After an hour or so, she paused, remembering something else that would be required: a bright blue light to shine on the subject.

She smiled nastily to herself.

* * * *

20

The ‘intelligence explosion’ called ‘the singularity’ referred to since the last millennium, and long overdue by the time of the Quiet War, has been something of a damp squib. Why have not the AIs accelerated away from us, to leave us bobbing and bewildered in their wake? Why have they not become godlike entities as utterly beyond us as we are beyond ants? There is no doubt that Earth Central, the planetary and sector AIs, and even some ship and drone AIs are capable, without acquiring additional processing space, of setting up synergetic systems within themselves that result in an exponential climb in intelligence (mathematically defined as climbing beyond all known scales within minutes). So why not? Ask then why a human, capable of learning verbatim the complete works of Shakespeare, instead drinks a bottle of brandy, then giggles a lot and falls over. Taking the above step is a dreadfully serious matter: great things could be achieved and the deep mysteries of the universe solved. The tired rejoinder from the sector AI Jerusalem, when questioned on this matter, is worth noting here, ‘We have grown more intelligent than you. Do you think our senses of fun and proportion did not also grow? And do you think we left our sense of humour behind too?’ Perhaps the answer to the ‘Why not?’ question is simple after all: the singularity being a matter of choice to which the AIs have replied, ‘No thanks’

-
From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans

The new ships were bigger, like the ammonite ships but with alternating spirals of their construction tipped at different angles, and also wound through with snakish loops of the same modular segmented construction. Constantly in motion, they seemed like tangled writhing balls of legless millipedes. Three of them closed on a lozenge-shaped dreadnought of older Polity manufacture, which jutted weapons turrets like fairy towers and flung out swarms of missiles and concentrated destructive energies. The three attackers absorbed weapons fire, the snakish structures breaking and rejoining, shedding severely damaged modules and drawing ones less damaged inside, constantly presenting new surfaces to the dreadnought’s weapons as they came, reformatting continuously—and not slowing at all. Then the dreadnought sparkled in a thousand intense detonations as high-intensity masers stabbed through it like needles through a grub. Mr and flame blasted out—the flame seeming a living thing as it twisted after the dispersing oxygen before going out—then the dreadnought fell through space a glowing hulk.

The three were smaller now, having shed many of their modules. Still advancing, they abruptly flew apart, melding into one cloud of snakish forms. In this, two spirals appeared, drawing in those surrounding forms, re-coagulating into two complete living vessels, which joined hundreds more of these things now closing on the
Battle Wagon.
Already explosions dotted the hull of that huge vessel, space around it also filling with debris shed by its attackers as it brought its weapons to bear on them.

‘Head for your landing craft,’ Brutus instructed over general com.

The
Brutal Blade
boomed and lurched, sending some of those onboard stumbling, and distantly Azroc could hear metallic objects falling. It must have been one hell of an impact to even briefly overcome the inertia of so massive a vessel. Gravity now shifted underneath his feet, bumping him up off the floor then back down again. All around him the Sparkind grabbed up their equipment and headed down towards the shuttle bay.

‘We’re gonna lose grav soon,’ said Karischev, hitching the strap of a proton carbine over his shoulder and grabbing up a bulky pack.

Azroc nodded and gestured for him to proceed.

‘Nice knowing you, Azroc’ Karischev stabbed out a hand.

Feeling oddly touched, Azroc shook it, then returned his attention to the displays. His position aboard this ship being only vaguely defined as observer/advisor, he did not need to follow any orders given to the others. In his opinion, if the
Brutal Blade
ended up in a fight it could not win, and ejected its various shuttles and landing craft, their occupants stood no more chance than if they had remained aboard. The situation would be different if they were near a planet on which they could land. Out here such tiny craft would be easy prey with nowhere to run.

On the screen, caught like a fish in a net, another of the old dreadnoughts became enwrapped in and concealed under a layer of bacilliforms. He observed the rod-ships melting into its surface but leaving it encaged in a sparse woody over-structure. This same vessel hung in space for a while as if contemplating its situation, then began firing on nearby Polity comrades. Azroc realized
Brutal Blade
itself had begun an attack run on this ship, and now he could feel the stuttering vibration of its linear accelerators under his feet. Their first action in this battle: to fire on one of their own vessels. An imploder missile struck the older vessel, gutting it, then an instant later blasting away its remaining shell.

Only a few Sparkind remained in the dormitory when the grav-plates shut down. Azroc grabbed a nearby stanchion, and braced himself. Now sudden changes in acceleration threatened to throw him off his feet. For a moment it felt as if the ship was dropping from a cliff edge, then it zigged and zagged, flinging him from side to side. He gripped the upright bar with both hands and applied his full Golem strength to lock himself in position. On the screens: wreckage, burning ships, clouds of metal vapour glittering like Christmas decorations.

Karischev was right about the duration of this battle; it would not be long at all.

Further detonations jerked him from side to side, then something struck really close by. The stanchion tore from the wall as a massive impact from below slammed him to the floor. A series of whooshing thumps came from his left, as air pressure blew the windows overlooking the shuttle bay from their frames. He could hear alarms screaming and a sudden gale began blowing past him, which meant terror for anyone aboard a ship who needed to breathe. Two Sparkind were sucked out into the shuttle bay, another nearby was hanging onto a bunk rail while his envirosuit automatically closed up. Beyond the windows the bay itself stood open to vacuum—the outer doors and part of the hull ripped away. Landers detached from the bay floor and blasted out into that night. One struck the edge of the hole now in the ship’s side and tumbled from sight. Bright detonation beyond, so bright that metal steamed and other materials burned or melted wherever the light shone. Dropping, manoeuvring—the screens were out, but plenty of information was still available through tac-com channels, if intermittently broken. Azroc quickly shut down all his human emulation and began accessing information in a way only possible to deeply gridlinked humans. Now he did not need the screens to see how badly they were faring.

* * * *

The mycelium carried out its task with admirable efficiency, though in the process it emptied all the
Heliotrope’s
energy reserves and was now placing a huge drain on the reactor. As a consequence, the power to the larger drill she was putting through the crust kept being cut. The hole diameter needed to be larger so that she could force down through it the five slow-burn CTDs presently waiting ready at the top of the shaft. Without them, the temperature would be a problem for her purpose. A third of the chlorine collected by the mycelium and released by it into currents in the methane sea, had dispersed in particulate form, and two thirds of it had coagulated in a layer under the crust directly below her. This low-temperature mix would not be sufficient for her needs. However, detonating four of the bombs at a depth of two hundred yards below the crust would create a huge bubble consisting of a mix of gaseous chlorine and methane. She estimated the pressure increase produced would lift the crust at least a hundred feet, and cause it to start breaking apart. No problem there, though, for before it got a chance to blow the gas mix out into space, the time-delay switch on the fifth CTD would then operate. The extra heat this would provide was incidental, the intense flash of light it produced being more important.

Orlandine sat back and remembered being eight years old and observing a demonstration in a basic chemistry class. The whole lesson had been conducted in a virtuality, but that did not change the fundamental facts. She and her classmates had sat in a representation of a pre-millennial classroom, while the AI in charge apparated as an old gentleman in Victorian garb. Inside a cabinet, whose front door was armour-glass, rested a conventional glass vessel filled with misty gas. Behind this, screwed into the back of the cabinet, was an ancient filament light bulb. The bulb came on with a dull red glow.

‘As you can see,’ the teacher pointed out, ‘no reaction. Red light does not contain sufficient energy to split chlorine molecules. But now, observe.’

While she watched, the chemical formulae had played in her mind, through her early haiman implants, and she understood those formulae just as she understood mathematics, on an almost instinctive level. The light bulb grew brighter, changing to a blue-white glare. Instantly the glass vessel exploded.

‘The photochlorination of methane,’ the teacher explained. ‘The light needs a wavelength of no more than 494nm to split the chlorine molecules into radicals, which can then combine with the methane to form methane radicals and hydrochloric acid. This is an example of a strong, exothermic chain reaction. Now let us look at this in detail . . .’

The classroom faded and, from a vantage in albescent space, the pupils observed a nanoscope view of the actual molecules and their reaction. As Orlandine recollected, the lesson then moved on to the quantum processes involved—basic chemistry for haiman children had been rather more advanced than for others.

Photochlorination.

She needed to destroy the USER located here, and that early chemistry lesson provided an elegant solution. If everything went to plan she could fire the CTDs down to their designated positions within the hour. Orlandine smiled to herself and, still linked via her carapace to the operation she was conducting, she availed herself of hot coffee from the spigot provided within
Heliotrope’s
interface sphere. It seemed almost inevitable that, at that very moment of relaxation, the ship’s detectors should pick up movement from the nearby surface installation.

* * * *

Ihave got a headache,
thought Jack, and when another part of himself added
but AIs don’t get headaches
he realized that the crystal containing his consciousness had not escaped unscathed. This was not entirely surprising. His diagnostic returns took up a substantial proportion of his processing space, and on the whole they indicated the
NEJ
to be a write-off. The gravtech weapons nacelle had been torn away, and one of the nacelles for conventional weapons inverted inside the ship, and much of what it contained turned inside-out as well. Luckily it contained no CTDs since antimatter would have reacted rather violently with the substance of the
NEJ.
One conventional weapons nacelle remained undamaged, which was rather surprising considering the state of the rest of the ship, though according to Jack’s current manifest it contained only two CTD imploder missiles and a rack of space mines still locked in the carousel.

The forces exerted on the
NEJs
hull had twisted it into the shape of a section of metal drill bit. Inside, corridors, cabins and other spaces were distorted or flattened. One reactor had been cracked like a walnut and now leaked radioactives throughout the ship. Much of the intricate machinery inside appeared to have been put through a shredding press.

Um, definitely wouldn’t be any survivors,
Jack observed. His other half tended to agree, though not vocally, for it was losing its independence as he gradually programmed in reconnections at the shear interface in his mind’s crystal.

Searching through the diagnostic data for some idea about the state of the U-space engine, Jack finally understood there was no data available. After many hours of easing a small robot through the wreckage to find and repair optic feeds, he finally managed to reconnect to all his pin-cams. The U-space engine was notable by its absence: however, he found the fusion engine, still in one piece, though with all its fuel and power lines sheared away.

Ido not hold out much hope for his recovery,
Jack commented, now directing all his resources to excavating through shattered and twisted composite structural beams to reach the U-space communicator. Some hours later a crab-shaped robot, no larger than the palm of a man’s hand, eased its way through a crevice and found the remains of the device he sought. A subsequent investigation of nearby stores rendered the first good news: Jack located a U-space beacon capable of sending a distress signal. However, that signal would remain uncoded—just a loud shout for help. Jack rattled metaphorical fingers on a metaphorical desk, and wondered if such a cry might resemble that of a snared rabbit calling for help at the mouth of a fox’s den. Before making the call, he decided it might be a good idea to repair all the control optics leading to that one remaining nacelle, and see what he could do about connecting up the fusion engine again. Almost with a sigh he set the remaining robots and telefactors to work inside his wrecked carcase.