Polity Agent

‘Jerusalem!’

Nothing.

Cobra pseudopodia speared into view—the honour guard for the head that followed. This too had changed. Four times the usual size, hairless and scaled, eyes completely black, the human head licked narrow lips with a sharp tongue, red as blood.

‘The Jerusalem has entered U-space,’ Dragon told her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Preparing to do the same.’

‘To Cull?’

Dragon grinned, exposing sharp teeth.

‘Eventually,’ it replied.

* * * *

The crowds of refugees were thinning now as they filtered through Polity battle lines, but the attacks, by scanning drones, increased. Seated on the sloping armour at the front of an AG tank, the woman placed a monocular up against her eyes and watched as one of the scanning drones fell out of formation, its twinned lasers flickering like arc welders. Tracking down, she saw figures burning away like ants on a hot plate and wondered if all of these had been infected by Jain technology. Around this carnage people fled in panic until, when it seemed nothing remained for it to burn, the drone returned to its position in the formation. A couple of air ambulances then descended. Bodies lay on the ground around the conflagration, some writhing, some crawling. She lowered the monocular.

‘You check out,’ said the ECS tank commander, tossing her ident bracelet back to her.

She caught it and slipped it back on her wrist. He had also gene-scanned her to make a comparison with the identity information the bracelet contained. She smiled, glad that it checked out satisfactorily, and quite happy with her new name and her profession as a freelance reporter selling sensocords of events like this to the net news services. All she needed to do was place herself where newsworthy events occurred, while her new aug recorded everything she saw, heard, smelt, tasted, felt… She returned her attention to the arcology as the ground shuddered beneath her.

Monitors and Sparkind now came out, fighting a defensive retreat, firing on figures lurching out after them through smoke and flame. As far as was visible, in both directions, more of Coloron’s forces retreated—that last inner line of defence.

‘You can stay there if you like,’ said the commander, ‘but I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He climbed inside the AG tank which, shortly afterwards, began to lift.

As the tank drifted forward, the woman quickly stepped up into the open doorway. ‘What’s happening now?’

‘We hold them back until the civilians are far enough behind the lines,’ the commander replied, as he manipulated the tank’s controls, ‘then it’s bye-bye arcology.’

The woman felt awe at the thought, and some sadness. Her ident did not say anything about her once having lived here.

‘You staying or going? I need to close that door.’

She stepped back and down to the ground, the door hissing shut as the tank moved on. Glancing beyond the tank, then behind her, she saw the whole ECS battle line beginning to advance slowly through the crowds. She pitied those about to lose their homes, and those about to die, having experienced both traumas herself. But then she wasn’t what she seemed: closing her eyes, she remembered her recent resurrection.

She had felt cold, and a thousand needles prickled her skin. Something had crumped ahead of her and a line of light cut down to one side, through the darkness.

I’m in a cold coffin, she realized, but beyond that realization lay only confusion.

A taste in her mouth like copper.

I have a mouth?

Skin feeling abraded.

I have skin?

A cold aseptic room lay before her, cold coffins inset all around its walls like Egyptian sarcophagi, bright metal, white surfaces.

I have eyes?

She stepped out, she looked around. Human vision seemed a narrow thing after having been used to enhanced viewing in more places than one and across more of the spectrum than the human eye could see. Her hearing remained unchanged, however. Gradually the floor warmed her feet. She needed to urinate, touched her mons tentatively and shuddered with pleasure at the sensation. Her stomach rumbled. She looked down at her hand and did not recognize it.

‘Do you hear me?’

I’m not dead. So much meaning in that statement.

‘I hear you,’ she said, and felt a sudden panic at the unrecognizable tone of her own voice.

‘I have placed a mirror to your right.’

She turned to see the naked form of the Separatist Freyda standing there, and now understood what Jack had done. For a moment she resented this, for she wanted to live in her own body. However, her own body had been incinerated long ago.

‘Did you do this alone, or does ECS approve?’ she asked.

‘ECS does not know. I felt that I owed you something, and I know that you have changed in ways ECS could never ken. Nobody will be looking for a Separatist called Freyda, because she no longer exists—her DNA has been reclassified in the databases, and any criminal record deleted.’

‘What now?’ Aphran asked.