This second object was thirty feet long, curved like the head of a spoon, in colour silver-green fading to black at the edges, and bore patterns like umber veins in its surface. It clawed at the very fabric of space to decelerate in a way Polity physicists and AIs were only just beginning to understand, and implement. As it slowed, its chameleonware initiated and made it invisible throughout most of the radiated spectrum. Its insides were packed like the guts of some nematode—though with organs seemingly silver-plated when not of the same grey-green metal as the hull. Sunk inside this, and connected to it, the Legate scanned all signals, comprehended the underlying U-scape, viewed information just as it viewed the growing scene before it, angrily.

Firstly, she had obviously not yet made any physical contact with the Jain node. That was annoying but acceptable, and factored into the calculation. But thereafter she had not reacted as predicted by all the psyche tests and cerebral assessments. She was extremely intelligent for a buffered amalgam of human and AI, but still a loner, a power seeker, and asocial. Feeling trapped and constrained by the Polity she should have grasped at all the Jain node implied, for she had known nothing of its parasitic/destructive tendency. She had delayed and delayed until forewarned. But even that should not be unconscionable.

Orlandine’s arrogance should have been such that she would believe herself able to control the technology despite its revealed purpose, use it, grow and become godlike—discarding what she did not want of it in the process. That had been Erebus’s initial assessment, for the AI itself only later had discovered the layering of Jain tech’s depth of purpose. It was made to fool intelligent, borderline supernal, technical but—most importantly—arrogant beings. She should have taken the bait. By doing so here, she would by now have taken over this entire Cassius project, spread vastly around the sun incorporating all nearby sentients, all the stations and ships and the giant puzzle pieces of the incomplete Dyson sphere. From here, while she still maintained control, she would have used the numerous runcibles to spread out into Polity, subsuming worlds, stations, incorporating AIs. Weaving the Polity into the whole it should be, and reducing human beings to what they essentially were: flesh puppets. At the peak of spread she would then have discovered just how effective a weapon was the Jain node—being made for individuals like her, and civilizations like this. Perhaps some of the Polity might still have survived.

Not enough.

But even all this was not what angered the Legate most; only its inability to understand did that. It could not comprehend why it had been sent here. Aboard, it carried one more Jain node destined for a Separatist leader actually located within Earth’s solar system. Coming here to find out exactly what had happened endangered that mission and statistically raised, by an unacceptable amount, the chances of the Legate being discovered. What was Erebus thinking? Disconnected from that entity for so long, the Legate could not now know. But neither could it disobey.

The Legate located the construction station initially overseen by Orlandine. Shutting off all drives and dropping its ship’s systems to minimal function, it drifted in, cautious. Now it began delving into the AI network and, as expected, found hunter-killer programs leashed like attack dogs around any information concerning Orlandine. The Legate knew it could destroy them, but doing so would reveal too much. Other methods would have to be employed. Drifting in closer it observed the damage to the station, enclosed under a shimmer-shield, ran programs to assess its cause, but could learn little from that: a fusion explosion—the degree of devastation commensurate with the output of an interface sphere power cell. Its hypocentre was not precisely at the location of Orlandine’s sphere, but much of hers had also been destroyed. What had happened here? Polity AIs must suspect this to be no accident, hence the hunter programs. The Legate constructed and discarded scenarios. Perhaps Orlandine began her takeover and some other haiman learnt of it in time to destroy her—that other haiman sacrificing himself and others in the process? No, the informational takeover would be too fast. Really, there was only one way to find out.

Using minimal power, the Legate nudged its vessel towards the near edge of the shimmer-shield, for fewer sensors would be active there after having been damaged by the explosion. Its ship turned concave side down to hull metal that had been rippled into waves by the blast. The vessel injected nanofilaments to bind itself in place—still invisible to most forms of detection. Then came a shifting of the vessel’s inner components. It heaved like some animal vomiting, split along one side, and the Legate slid out turning its feet down to the metal, stood up, bonding with the similar nanofilaments, and walked. Momentarily the Legate became visible while detaching from the ‘ware effect of its vessel, but then its own ‘ware came on and it faded from existence again. Stepping to the edge of the shimmer-shield it peered inside.

Two ant-shaped drones clung to twisted metalwork and emitted pools of light in which two human women clad in monofilament oversuits worked. The women were scanning and sampling physical evidence. One of them wore an aug; the Legate lightly touched then pulled away from this nexus of the AI network, learning the other woman to be gridlinked. It considered going in there, disabling the drones, and snatching from the humans whatever it could. Too intrusive, too obvious. Anyway, the Legate needed more than just the physical evidence; it needed anything informational which, by the fact that these two worked in here now, would have already been removed to be scanned and assessed by forensic AI.

The Legate turned and strode away across the hull, eventually stopping by a service lock constructed for inspection drones. Scraping sharp fingers across hull it scanned through—ultrasound by touch—and soon located the control mechanisms. A low leakage of atmosphere behind this hatch enabled it to trace out the shape of a service robot lurking inside, like a trapdoor spider. It pressed its palm flat over the control mechanism, injected filaments, each tipped with a micron diameter thermic lance, burnt through the hull, connected, and then feeding power from inside itself operated the mechanism. The hatch thumped up, a slight puff of air escaping, and slid aside. The maintenance drone immediately came online, its lensed sensory head tilting upwards. The Legate reached down, grabbed for it, pulled it out and smashed it down on the hull, once, twice, stabbed a hand through its outer casing and gutted it, located its small crystal mind, crushed that to glittering fragments, then sent the drone on its way into vacuum.

Once inside, the Legate wormed through maintenance ducts and finally came up against inner hull. It placed a finger against this softer material, injected a single microfilament equipped with a cutting head, bored through, then discarded the head in order to online the filament’s optics. Now an inner maintenance shaft. Forefinger and mid finger together, extending bladelike to twice their original length, were blurred along the inner edge by the activity of thousands of microscopic teeth. The Legate pushed its fingers through the wall and cut round in a circle, fast, a cloud of powdery detritus spraying all around. The excised section of wall blew towards it under air pressure. The Legate slid through pulling the removed section back into place. Breach sealant automatically ejected from the wall itself to seal the cut line. An alarm would sound somewhere but, because the sealant had dealt with the problem only a maintenance drone would be sent. The assumption would be of a micrometeorite puncture. By the time they discovered any different, the Legate would be gone from here.