Thellant looked at him enquiringly.
The man explained. ‘Coloron’s orbital weapons are limited — not enough to contain us. A dreadnought should be able to fry anyone who tries to break quarantine.’
Thellant moved on. More such ships would arrive. He needed to escape now. Scanning about himself again, he saw the AG platform drawing even closer, but he could no longer see the dracomen behind him. He adjusted his course accordingly, picking out a small quadraspherical ship—ECS Rescue by its markings. He could see that the vessel was firmly closed up—probably to prevent panicked citizens sneaking aboard—and that ECS staff worked from a row of inflated domes nearby. Within an hour he reached the first of those domes, glancing inside at rows of beds. All of them were occupied, some of their occupants being tended to by autodocs. Rescue staff had set out their stall outside as well, where they were treating the walking wounded. A flash lit the sky—the third one since he chose this ship. Apparently the dreadnought had already knocked out a gravcar and gravtransport, both trying to escape to SA. Finally he came up beside one of the Rescue ship’s four spheres, next to an airlock.
Thellant pressed his hand against the mechanism, injected Jain filaments to subvert the locking mechanism. The door crumped open.
‘Hey, what you—?’
Backhanded, the woman flew three yards through the air and hit the ground, her skull shattered. Inside, then closing and sealing the outer hatch. Through the inner hatch, to find this cargo-sphere empty. He moved on into the next where from outside he had seen the flight deck. He needed to move fast. His hand slammed down on the console, filaments injecting, sequestering systems, taking over the ship, searching out its AI. He found it, closed it off before it could scream for help, then took it apart. Dropping into the pilot’s chair he initiated AG and watched through the cockpit screen as the ship began to rise.
‘Lassa, why are you launching?’
A query issued from some AI above—probably the dreadnought. Thellant learned from information subsumed from the AI, Lassa, that this ship had been due to launch in one hour. He answered through Lassa.
‘Unnecessary delay. All cargo and staff unloaded, and all cold coffins filled.’
Only in that moment did he discover that one sphere of the ship contained twenty coldsleep containers, fifteen of them now occupied by people severely injured.
‘Very well, you are clear to make orbit.’
As easy as that? Thellant grimaced to himself. The Polity was far too dependent on its damned AIs and in this case that was a mistake. He settled back in the seat, his hand still on the console and with himself still linked into the ship’s systems. As it continued to rise he entertained a sudden suspicion and ran diagnostics on the U-space engine, but it was fine—no problems at all. He put it online, ready to drop the ship into underspace the moment that became possible. An hour of flying later the sun picked out gleaming ships in a blue-black firmament, before it broke over the planet’s curve. He shut off AG and started the fusion drive to finally pull him clear of the well. Then a stuttering flash, and something hammered the Rescue ship, violently tilting his horizon. Then again that flash, which Thellant now identified as a high-powered laser. Through his link into the ship’s systems, he felt the U-space engine not only go offline but completely disconnect, as if it had disappeared. The second hit had taken out the fusion drive plate. As the ship tilted up into starlit darkness, another vessel passed overhead, glittering like oyster shell.
A voice issued from the console. ‘Gotcha.’
11
The development of the laser as a weapon began way back at the start of this millennium and it has been with us ever since. However, for ship-to-ship conflict, improvements in reflective and s-con heat dispersal armours have all but rendered ineffective as weapons lasers in the range of infrared to ultraviolet. Move outside those spectra, however, and you have masers, which can be used to sufficiently penetrate missiles—which will not have the heat-dispersal capacity of a large ship—to destroy them, and at closer range actually can destroy ships. The same rule applies to xasers and grasers, but in all cases the range and destructive potential of these weapons is limited, especially in fields of conflict often lightyears across. And, in reality, we learnt from the Prador how negligible is their effect, in the arena in which they are usually employed, when compared with the numerous other varieties of particle cannon. As you are all aware, the ubiquitous pulse-gun is just a form of particle weapon, the particulate matter ranging from powdered aluminium to a gas—
(audience interruption)
Pardon
(audience response)
I will state again that there is no such thing as an APW! What you are referring to is a proton weapon—highly destructive and tending to spread isotope poisoning wherever used. The APW, the antiphoton weapon, the dark-light gun, is a fucking fictional creation!
(moderator query)
Yes, thank you. I’m fine.
— From her lecture ‘Modern Warfare’ by EBS Heinlein
The sphere composed of two-foot-long metal ants rested in the centre of the Feynman Lounge, individual ants occasionally detaching to be off about their assigned tasks. This new conceit of Polity AIs, in choosing to locate themselves in increasingly bizarre body shapes, elicited the Legate’s contempt, but not sufficiently for it to consider outright confrontation. In retrospect it was a good thing it had not tried taking information from the two women investigating the explosion site. The two ant drones accompanying them—which the Legate had initially discounted—were dangerous, being part of this forensic AI.
Via fibres inserted through a nearby wall, the Legate observed five humans, two haimans and three Golem, all wearing ECS uniforms that identified them as members of the forensic team. The others in the lounge, three advanced haimans sporting carapaces and sensory cowls, were part of the Cassius project. They sat silently, two together on a couch and one in an armchair. The rigorous interrogation they underwent was conducted via optic linkages plugged into their carapaces, the cables snaking back to the AI itself. But within minutes this session ended, whereupon the haimans detached the cables and departed.
The Legate withdrew its spying fibres from the wall and turned round. The room it occupied belonged to a man whose mental capacity was only complemented by a cerebral aug, so it had been easy to enter while he slept and put him into a deeper sleep. After scanning through the information contained in this particular individual’s aug, and by linking into the public com systems of the station, the Legate learnt what was generally known about the incident that occurred here. The explosion had resulted in the death of a haiman called Shoala, and subsequently the rumour mills ground away. Many on the station knew Orlandine’s and Shoala’s relationship to be more than just a working one. Orlandine, though a superb overseer and sublime scientist, was generally considered too focused, too haiman, too unhuman. Much of the current speculation concerned the possibility of her having suffered some paranoid identity dysfunction, that being the expected, though uncommon, madness affecting her kind. The Legate did not believe that theory for a moment. It had studied her for a long time and knew that in this case madness did not come into it. Yes she could kill, but for perfectly logical and, in Polity terms, immoral reasons.
Still concealed by chameleonware, the Legate moved out into the corridors of the station and made its way down to the concourse leading to the Feynman Lounge. Within a few minutes it recognized one of the forensic team: human and possibly gridlinked. The man, a thickset individual with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, strolled along with one of the ant drones scuttling beside him. They chatted like old friends.