Polity Agent

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.

* * * *

I have 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.