Polity Agent

Prador-Human War: this intense conflict lasted for forty years. Warships were destroyed in such numbers that some worlds acquired ring systems formed from the resultant debris. Ten million humans (this estimate is considered low and it might really be as high as fifty million) were infected by a virus on an out-Polity planet called Spatterjay, which enabled them to withstand severe physical injury, then were cored (most of the higher cerebrum removed) and thralled (the cerebrum being replaced by Prador enslaving technology) and sold to the Prador by a human called Jay Hoop. In one incident an entire moon was flung through an enlarged runcible gate to destroy one of the heavily armoured alien dreadnoughts, and in another a sun was stimulated to produce a solar flare to fry a similar vessel. Armies of humans, Golem and baroque and slightly mad drones numbering in ten of millions fought for possession of worlds against similar numbers of Prador first- and second-children and Prador drones (not controlled by AI but by the preserved brains of the aforesaid children). Many worlds were bombed with antimatter explosives, or fission weapons, scoured by particle cannons, hammered by near-c rail-gun projectiles. Some were burnt down to the bedrock and utterly denuded of life. Billions died on both sides. It could be claimed that the Polity won, for the Prador withdrew, but the aliens were not truly defeated. Fifty years later those same ring systems and denuded worlds became tourist attractions, as did Spatterjay itself, but now, nearly a hundred years later, interest has waned amongst the Polity’s growing population. Some even believe the data on this conflict, easily accessed just about anywhere, is fiction, or just a hoax perpetrated by the AIs.

- From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans

It sat in interstellar space like a giant harmonica; forty miles long, twenty wide and ten deep, the square holes running down either side of it were the entrances to enormous construction bays. Massive weapons turrets protruded from it out into space: housing racks of missiles as large as attack ships; thinking bombs whose prime purpose had been to fight their way to exotic-metal hulls and detonate; particle-beam cannons gaping like cavern throats; rail-guns that could fill nearby space with swarms of ceramal projectiles travelling at near-c; lasers, grasers, masers… Nearby space had once been also patrolled by chameleonware sneak mines, but they were decommissioned after becoming too much of a shipping hazard—their minds unstable and bored with waiting for an enemy that would never come.

‘I knew about this sort of thing,’ said Cormac, ‘but still…’

‘You were born about when it ended, weren’t you?’ Mika asked. She stood unusually close, he thought. He could smell her scent, realized she used Eyegleam and Shade, and her lips were now dyed a redder hue than her own. He read the implicit message, but did not know if he should respond.