Polity Agent

Coloron observed them only for a few seconds more, then returned its attention to the epicentre of these events. Azroc’s forces were still moving back as instructed, but now they were coming under fire. People, some wearing Dracocorp augs, were emerging from the blanked area. Many of these were armed and they seemed organized—following military attack patterns. The monitors kept knocking them down with stun blasts, yet they rose again within seconds, taking up their weapons and coming on. No defence could be sustained like this.

On direct encrypted com to Azroc, Coloron ordered, ‘Shoot to kill.’

Azroc immediately relayed the command, and monitors adjusted the settings on their weapons. Full-strength pulse-fire slammed into the attackers, burning holes through torsos and heads. The attack staggered to a halt, then, horribly, Coloron observed a female casualty standing up, retrieving her short rail-gun, while a nub of pink flesh oozed out to fill the hole in her chest.

Azroc instructed, ‘Sparkind, we need proton fire.’

Proton fire ensued: violet fire and smoke, burning bodies, walls, floors and ceilings collapsing, ventilation shafts and ducts ripped open. Updated on events, the dracomen out in the arcology began to head towards Azroc’s forces.

Turnaround. Now all the dracomen had arrived the runcibles reversed to transmit evacuees to Isostations. The dracomen nearby began forcing them through. Meanwhile the Azroc’s forces finally reached a point Coloron considered far enough from the previously enclosed area of the arcology.

‘Firing particle ca

The turquoise beam spat down from the toroidal satellite, struck a maize field and turned it into a firestorm, bored down into earth, then through composite layers, and deep into the arcology, precisely down the axis of the affected cylindrical section. In sight of Azroc’s forces, fire blasted from corridors, across urban parks, through shopping arcades, and sports or VR centres. It blew people along with it like burning leaves. The Coloron AI calculated that with just that one blast it killed over forty thousand inhabitants. The tentacular Jain structure began spreading out of the wreckage, fingering out of ventilation shafts and oozing sluglike along split electrical and optic ducts, and this confirmed to the AI that many of them were as good as dead already. The AI watched that growth slow down gradually to a stop, and dared to hope. Then abruptly the Jain substructure waved its spiky fingers to dismiss hope, and surged on.

Coloron broadcast through the remaining server network, and via public screens and address systems: ‘Urgent evacuation order: a hostile alien organic technology is attempting to take over MA.’

On the screens the AI displayed scenes of what was happening. It took it a full two seconds to calculate how best its order should be carried out. Some sections could be evacuated via the runcibles, others would have to make use of the exits around the arcology perimeter. An external zone would have to be set up to quarantine MA from the rest of the planet, to prevent any physical manifestation of this invading technology from escaping, but allowing enough room to get inhabitants out of the arcology itself. Corolon assigned a submind to the vast logistical problem of moving a billion souls to safety, and knew, with mathematical certainty, that those forty thousand dead were only the start.

Ten yards above the floor, one set of her assister-frame limbs gripping a rung set into the crashfoam-covered wall behind her, Orlandine studied her latest creation. Precisely in the centre of the chamber, the yard-wide gimbals device was supported within a light scaffold of bubble-metal poles attached to the floor and ceiling. Its outer two rings served to present any facet of an i

There were safer ways to do this, layer upon layer of security protocols, shell upon shell of vacuum and armour, and even layers of automated weapons. She could in fact have automated everything here and studied the node from a few thousand miles away. However, it seemed to her that now its only method of affecting the outside world was informationally via the optic cables leading from the sensory heads, which it could do even if she was a long way away and even if every gun in the Polity was pointed at this thing. But this present set-up was similar to the one she had used back at the Cassius Project, when she accepted that, in studying something like this, certain dangers were inherently unavoidable, and before she got scared, destroyed all her equipment there, and returned the node to its case in her quarters. Orlandine rubbed her two human hands together. Time to go to work.

Rather than go immediately into some virtuality to assess sca

Too slow.

Orlandine shrugged to herself. This exercise was only to see how the Jain node might react to investigation. As yet it remained inert. She continued sca

First she removed the console from the equation and began controlling the equipment by radio emission from her carapace, then impatient with this she plugged direct optic links into it. Subsequently, the screen definition and speed began to a

In her virtual world mere thought became action, and that world contained no representation of herself, merely her godlike omniscience. She began creating subpersonae, choosing and assigning areas of study to them, and collating their data output herself. The submolecular sca