Polity Agent

Then Azroc’s eye fell upon other minor scenes: a shuttle being subsumed by a rod-ship, and spacesuited figures jetting away from it with painful slowness. Gusts of flame and gas as the shuttle’s laser targeted then incinerated each of these figures. Were they evacuees from this very ship? The Golem calculated the chances of that, and of one of those figures being Karischev. Azroc had by then shut down those parts of his mind concerned with the emulation of human emotion, though, as he did so he considered whether it was emulation, when copied so perfectly, or the thing itself? Perhaps the mere fact that he could disco

Then the USER shut down.

It took the Golem some moments to realize what had happened, as com traffic rose to a scream and Polity ships began disengaging and ru

Once the last shuttle slammed down in the docking bay, the Brutal Blade dropped into U-space with a ragged groan echoing throughout its structure. They were away; they had survived. Azroc removed his grip from the stanchion as the gravplates came back on and stabilized. He moved across to the nearest dormitory window and observed a shimmer-shield come on within the hole through which the shuttles had entered. Beyond this he observed repair robots, like frenetic spiders no bigger than a finger end, spi

Sparkind were disembarking, but Karischev himself was yet to appear. Recognizing the soldier’s shuttle, Azroc quickly headed over to it. The shuttle lay distorted, hot metal ticking and creaking as it cooled. Azroc realized then that it had not even made it away from the ship. Some weapon had carved a cha

A Golem Sparkind reached the shuttle’s airlock ahead of Azroc, tearing it away from its distorted frame. Smoke gusted out, stinking of fried meat. Azroc ducked inside after the other Golem, and began checking for life-signs amid the incinerated remnants. Two remained alive, maintained by suit autodocs operating in much the same way as the one Azroc had seen in the dormitory. The rest of the bodies were casualties of war. He finally identified Karischev as the burnt thing still strapped in the navigator’s seat. The sick wrench of anger he felt was no emulation.

Epilogue

At first it seemed there might still be some life in the wrecked Centurion. Sca

When the USER went offline in a way that indicated its destruction, King’s first instinct was to flee immediately. However, the AI suppressed that instinct. It had already rescued some humans for reasons it did not like to study too closely, so why not make certain here? Maybe a rescued AI would state King’s case later to the Polity? But it was really that undamaged weapons nacelle that swung King’s decision not to leave immediately. Yes, its contents might be depleted, but King needed such supplies desperately, and anything would be better than his present complete lack of armament.

The King of Hearts drew even closer to the ruined ship, pieces of wreckage bouncing and clattering from the hull before tumbling away into vacuum. King fired his two grapnels, closing their hardened claws into ripped hull metal on either side of the undamaged weapons nacelle, then began to draw the wreck towards him. After a moment he guided his remaining telefactor out of the accommodation specially constructed for the rescuees, back into the bay, and launched it into space. Bringing the telefactor down on the wreck’s twisted hull, he set it to cutting its way in, then returned his attention to the weapons nacelle. He sca

Then the comlink opened. ‘One false move and you’re toast, boy,’ came a voice.

‘Who is this?’ Something about the speaker seemed familiar to King, but he could not identify what because at present the communication came via radio and was voice only.

‘Inspect yourself, King.’

Through the telefactor, King did as instructed. Debris had clattered against him constantly during his approach to the wreck. Some of it, however, had not bounced away, and appeared too suspiciously even in construction to be mere debris. King paraphrased himself: Polity super-intelligences taken for mugs … A neat row of black hemispheres now decorated his hull from stem to stern. Space mines.

‘Now,’ said the voice, ‘I hope I have your attention, because if you do anything reckless and I send a signal to those mines, there won’t be enough left of you to make a decent-sized ingot.’

‘I have humans aboard.’

‘I very much doubt that, unless you’ve found a way to use them for fuel. I know your opinion of anything that is not AI.’

In response King sent images of those he had rescued. There came a delay before the response, as the recipient of those same images no doubt opened the information stream in secure space so as to check for both viruses and veracity.

‘You know ECS policy concerning hostages,’ said the other ship.

‘I know it, but these are not hostages. I rescued them.’

‘The King of Hearts changes his heart?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You know what the ECS response to you might be?’

‘I do… I have not yet decided how to resolve this.’

‘You will open yourself to me for inspection. Completely.’

‘You could be an agent of Erebus—and I would rather the mines be detonated than submit myself to that.’

‘You too could be such an agent… Very well, then, allow me access to your U-space communicator, or would you rather I detonated those mines right now?’

King opened an exterior link to his U-com, permanently monitored and ready to be closed down in an instant. He did not know the contents of the information package the other ship sent, nor what it received in return. But after a moment, the other vessel sent coordinates.