Polity Agent

Blegg rubbed his palms together. They felt gritty, just as they had felt when he climbed to the top of the monolith on Cull to find uncomfortable revelation. Similar revelation had occurred to him before. Captured and dragged into a Separatist base on a moonlet that was only a number on the star charts, he faced torture and interrogation. A ridiculous situation since he had not been on a mission then, merely checking out some fossils that should not have been there. The fast picket that dropped him off was not to return for some weeks, so no cover and no AI on hand to record his memories. They used psychoactive drugs on him, physical torture that left him minus three fingers—removed one joint at a time — minus the skin across his stomach, his testicles crushed and burnt. They could not believe their luck in having captured him. Their leader did not believe it, so the interrogation continued. At some point he became a mewling thing with only a passing resemblance to a human being. Awareness then returned to him with a thump and all the confusion suddenly receded. Clarity of mind became absolute, but what initiated it? They had discovered something very strange about his body, were working to keep him alive to take elsewhere for deeper study and a more meticulous investigation. They talked of the technology for probing minds and other things of a similar nature. Blegg remembered previous deaths, remembered what he was, and knew this could not be allowed. But what could he do? He no longer possessed workable limbs. He decided it was time for him to die. However, then came AI linkage to his mind as the attack ship Yellow Cloud entered the system looking for him. It uploaded his memories as far as and including the moment when the missiles hammered into the base and converted it into a glowing crater in the face of the moonlet. Blegg’s new body thereafter possessed no conscious recollection of this inconvenient episode. It did possess something else, though, should something like this occur again and no attack ship be on hand. It contained the seeds of destruction of itself and much else beside. It became a weapon, as well as a vessel for his consciousness. Of course to use that weapon Blegg had to remember he could die, that he had died many times.

Again Blegg felt that potential awaiting his conscious command. It had been used occasionally since that time on the moonlet, but he had no memories of the circumstances involved, since it was impossible for him to have them. Only after-the-event recordings were open to him: the gutted Prador destroyer he was held captive aboard, sludge smeared across a rocky plateau on a world seceded from the Polity—all that remained of a rebel army—and other less dramatic occasions when he lost contact with the AIs and was in danger of being forced to reveal too much.

This time, however, he realized there would be no new Blegg. Now the truth in all its raw and painful detail stood open to him, just as his facsimile human body now lay open to his internal inspection and under his absolute control. There could be no more Blegg because a certain point had been irrecoverably passed. Time, he felt, for this to be made known.

He gazed across the dank cave in which they now found themselves. Cormac still lay unconscious, and Blegg knew that on some deep level the agent probably fought against waking. Thorn had gone the way of Gant—both of those human Sparkind soldiers dead now, both of the men who had joined Cormac at Samarkand.

Blegg watched his fellow agent, waited, and remembered his many deaths.

* * * *

Consciousness returned abruptly and painfully and the first clear image in his mind was of Thorn’s face melting apart before him. For a moment he could not equate the image with anything he knew, then the full impact of memory hit him.

My decision.

Cormac opened his eyes, ramping up his light sensitivity in the gloom. He lay against a pack which in turn was propped against a rock. He realized his visor was open, but was breathing okay so did not hurry to close it. The planet’s air mix could sustain human life, with only its temperature being too high on the surface. Cool down here.

He sat upright. ‘What’s the situation?’

Too abrupt a move, for he became suddenly dizzy and nauseous. A huge spider tracked across his vision over to the left — Arach—then Blegg loomed before him.

‘We lost many,’ said the old Oriental. ‘There are only seven dracomen with us down here, though five others made it into the jungle. Three human Sparkind surviving, one of them probably not for much longer. Six Golem Sparkind too, some of them badly burnt but still functional. One remaining autogun and Arach.’

‘The enemy?’ Cormac asked.