As, some hours later, she finally approached the planetoid, Orlandine noted signs of occupation. Large areas had been ground flat in a landscape of contorted ice seemingly formed by the water freezing while large bubbles had spread through it, and subsequently subliming away so that only curves and sharp edges remained. A few blasts from the air jets brought her ship down in one of the clear zones, and she wondered if the craft would have survived a landing in one of those other unlevelled areas. At this temperature water-ice could possess the consistency of steel and much of that contorted ice looked dangerously sharp. Heliotrope’s hull might be constructed of layered composite with an outer skin of ceramal, but it still could be damaged.

As the ship skidded on a gritty layer of flattened ice, blowing up an iridescent cloud, she fired the mooring harpoons and observed their explosive heads drive home. Possibly there were seismic detectors on this planetoid, but hopefully what they detected would be dismissed as just natural settling of the crust.

Now the difficult part…

Controlling Heliotrope’s external hardware directly, the ship being designed as a working vessel rather than simply for transport, Orlandine extruded a drill from its belly and immediately started boring down through ice and rock. While this was in process, she assessed her various supplies and considered her options. Heliotrope contained only five slow-burn CTDs, of the kind used at the Cassius project for melting and causing ice build-ups on large structures to sublime. These might melt a hole through the planetoid’s outer crust, but would have little effect on the USER unless she could position them right next to it, which seemed highly unlikely. However, carefully studying the sensor returns from the drill head, she began to see… possibilities.

Orlandine found the crust of this planetoid rather interesting, and wondered what spectacular events had resulted in such a high concentration of sodium chloride—in the form of frozen brine — and the abundance of other chlorine compounds. Perhaps the planetoid had formed from the debris of a gas giant, for similar concentrations also could be found at the Cassius project. The presence of these chemicals indicated the possible presence of something else here, and eighty yards down she found it: a layer of pure chlorine frozen solid at these temperatures. Whatever process had formed this planetoid must have involved extremely rapid freezing for so reactive a compound not to combine with others. Perfect.

The drill bit finally broke through a hundred yards down and, until Orlandine injected sealant around the shaft, the Heliotrope sat momentarily on a geyser of methane turning partially to snow, but quickly subliming in near vacuum. Withdrawing the drill shaft’s central core, she then pushed a probe down into the methane sea and, using a passive seismic detector, scanned the planetoid’s interior. Very soon she built a virtual image in her mind.

The USER device lay at the sea’s precise centre, the massive singularity it contained holding it in place. From this spherical core protruded numerous structures like aerial-clad city blocks. Just under the planetoid’s crust she detected other devices, perhaps sensors or weapons. One of these lay only half a mile away from her, so instantly she trained Heliotrope’s sensors in its direction on the surface, and discerned how the exterior of this device resembled a cylindrical bunker sheathed in ice. But there seemed no activity from there as yet.

Now maintaining close contact with the ship and all its sensors, ready to launch at a moment’s notice, she eased herself from her seat and moved back into the ship’s hold. Jain technology, inevitably, held the solution. Linking to her nanoassembler, she input the parameters for the nanomachines she required. It soon became apparent that nanomachines would not work in such low temperatures, so a mycelium would be required: one that would spread around the interior of the planetoid’s crust below her, one that could inject itself through ice and rock to seek out the deposits of pure chlorine. Unfortunately she needed to remain here while the mycelium performed its task, because it would need to be powered by the ship’s fusion reactor.

The basic structure would be a skein of nanotubes created by microscopic factories catalysing carbon from the methane. Those same nanotubes, at this temperature, would also be superconductive so there would be no problem supplying power. Sensors would keep the main spread of the mycelial threads on the undersurface of the crust; micromotors would be laid every few tenths of an inch to stretch or slacken nanotubes and so guide growth; quantum processors, manufactured from the same carbon as the nanotubes, would control the whole process. However, at frequent intervals, the growing mycelium would inject nanotubes into the rock and ice above to seek out chlorine deposits. These would require nanoscopic drilling heads and peristaltic inner layers to transport chlorine molecules back down to the main mycelium and into the methane sea. Methodically, and brilliantly, Orlandine began constructing her nanomycelium. After an hour or so, she paused, remembering something else that would be required: a bright blue light to shine on the subject.

She smiled nastily to herself.

The new ships were bigger, like the ammonite ships but with alternating spirals of their construction tipped at different angles, and also wound through with snakish loops of the same modular segmented construction. Constantly in motion, they seemed like tangled writhing balls of legless millipedes. Three of them closed on a lozenge-shaped dreadnought of older Polity manufacture, which jutted weapons turrets like fairy towers and flung out swarms of missiles and concentrated destructive energies. The three attackers absorbed weapons fire, the snakish structures breaking and rejoining, shedding severely damaged modules and drawing ones less damaged inside, constantly presenting new surfaces to the dreadnought’s weapons as they came, reformatting continuously—and not slowing at all. Then the dreadnought sparkled in a thousand intense detonations as high-intensity masers stabbed through it like needles through a grub. Mr and flame blasted out—the flame seeming a living thing as it twisted after the dispersing oxygen before going out—then the dreadnought fell through space a glowing hulk.