Polity Agent

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 scanned the nacelle and discovered it contained only two imploder missiles—not really a great haul, but better than nothing. He would get the telefactor to cut the missiles free after it checked out the mind inside the ship…

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.

‘You will take us here,’ it instructed.

King brought the U-space engine online and expanded its field to encompass the wreck, before dropping them both into the U-continuum. He noted, through the channel open to his telefactor, that it had by now cut its way into the other ship’s hull. In a short burst of code he gave it other instructions, then felt some relief when he realized the other ship did not seem to detect the signal. He understood then that the mind in the wreck had played its only real strong cards. Its sensors must be severely damaged; what sensitivity they still possessed had been badly degraded by the radiation leakage from the cracked reactor. It would probably not even see the telefactor until the machine was upon it.

Slow hours passed, and finally the telefactor, after cutting its way through much wreckage, entered the chamber containing the other mind, thereupon sending its ‘ready’ signal to King. Now fully engaged through the telefactor, King was in a position to destroy the other AI mind. But… what would be gained?

‘Aren’t you going to do something, then?’ asked the mind in the wreck.

‘This changes nothing,’ said King.

‘Precisely… I’ve been watching your telefactor’s stealthy approach for some time and wondering what you intended.’

King felt slightly embarrassed, like a child caught by its parent in some obviously stupid act. He settled the telefactor down on its base and just let it stay there. Now, in underspace, he noticed much disturbance—many ships.

‘The fleet?’

‘Yes, what remains of it.’