‘And when we reach the target itself?’ Thorn asked.

‘Disable, capture, then questions… if possible.’

‘We don’t even know what this Legate entity is. Is it an alien, an AI, both, or neither? It might not allow itself to be captured.’

‘What other options do we have?’ said Cormac coldly.

No more.

She was a library stacked floor to ceiling with books, a computer going into information overload… or, perhaps a more human analogy, she was now educated beyond her abilities. She needed Jain tools to handle such masses of information. She therefore needed to take another irrevocable step.

Orlandine gazed at the small vessel the nanoassembler had provided—an innocuous fingerlength chainglass test-tube with a simple plasmel stopper fitted in one end. It contained something that looked like golden syrup into which a wad of metallic hair had been dropped. However, the hair moved constantly as if fluid in the tube was being held at a constant rolling boil. She stared at it for a long moment, then again checked her screens.

Finally having penetrated the alien ship’s chameleonware, she now tracked it carefully as it drew closer. The arrival of Polity forces also had not escaped her notice, nor the fact that they used secure com and systems hardened against Jain informational assault. But who were they after, herself, or her visitor?

Damn it!

She closed her eyes and tried to bring a sudden surge of anger and frustration under control. She still lacked vital information—a lack that might be the death of her. After a moment she grew calm. She decided to risk contacting the alien to see what she could learn, for it was an unknown, whereas Polity AIs were a definite known danger to her. However, first she needed to expand her capacity, set up defences, arm herself informationally. Opening her eyes she once again gazed at the test-tube.

Orlandine levered out its plasmel stopper, raised the tube to her lips and poured its contents into her mouth. The substance tasted coppery, its texture like fish bones and syrup on her tongue. The mouthful seethed, then began to grow hot. In a moment it seemed her mouth filled with boiling jam. Through her gridlink she took offline those of her nerves broadcasting pain and damage, and mentally descended into the artificial memory storage and logic structures of her extended mind. Only on this level did she perceive the mycelium growing up through the roof of her mouth and start making synaptic connections, billions of them. Next it began to make connections with her gridlink and, like an asthmatic taking adrenaline to breathe easier, she felt the bandwidth of information flow opening out. Heat grew in the back of her neck as the mycelium extended itself down her spine, tracking her nervous system. Via her gridlink she instructed it where to go, and felt movement all down her backbone. It penetrated her carapace and began to make connections there. Then her entire world expanded.

Suddenly, Jain programs she could only partially encompass previously, now opened to her godlike perception. She became like a reader, who previously perceived only one page at a time, now understanding and seeing every word of the book. Glittering halls of intellect opened to her. Her processing capacity doubled and redoubled. This is synergy.

She turned, linking at every level to the equipment surrounding her. Immediately she could accelerate her investigation into what remained of the Jain node; absorbing programs from it and the blueprint of its structure just as fast as her machines could deconstruct it physically. From the computer controlling the mycelium extending through the surrounding segment, she absorbed her subpersona and realized she would never need to rely on such constructs again. She walked over to the computer itself, laid her hand on it, felt her palm grow warm as she directed it to make direct mycelial connection to herself. She absorbed it, became one with it, and tracked on through to the mycelial connection to a scanner far away, redirecting its broadcast in a tight beam solely to the nearby alien ship.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

The response was immediate: viral programs trying to track this new signal to its location. She killed them immediately.

‘I asked you what you wanted.’

The viral attack ceased and then, after a microsecond pause, something replied, ‘That I have yet to decide.’

Orlandine had already assumed this alien to be an agent provocateur, providing her with a Jain node as an act of sabotage against the Polity. She might have gone on to destroy the Polity, whereupon the Jain tech would have certainly destroyed her too. But why was this alien here now? Had it come here to make sure she was performing as expected, to harry her and to push her into fully connecting to the Jain technology? This seemed a rather clumsy move, more likely to rouse her suspicions, make her more wary, and incidentally expose the watching agent to discovery.

‘You wanted me to accept your gift without reservation. I have not done that.’

The being replied, ‘But you will. More ships will come. You will have to prepare yourself, defend yourself. With your knowledge, and such a tool as Jain tech, you will be able to take all the Cassius stations.’

Not even a weak explanation for its presence, rather no explanation at all. Orlandine glanced across at her nanoassembler which, in the last few minutes, had manufactured more mycelia, and more stews of nanomachines. That assembler would be all she would need. She physically detached from the mycelium spread throughout the enclosing segment, but remained in contact via radio. Walking over to the assembler, she shut it down, disconnecting optics and power supply, and picked the device up with her assister-frame complemented arms. For a long moment she gazed up at the disassembled remains of the node—almost invisible now.

‘Why should I want that?’ she asked the alien entity.

Again that pause. ‘You could run, of course, but you know ECS would never stop pursuing you. From here you could negate all that risk utterly. They don’t yet have the firepower available here to destroy this Dyson segment. You could defend it from them. You could take this entire system, take control of all the runcibles here. Take over the Polity.’

‘You sound so desperate,’ Orlandine replied. ‘Trying to recover a scheme that went wrong?’

‘You won’t escape from here. And while attempting to escape, you’ll waste time better spent on looking to your defences.’

Orlandine smiled to herself. Quite obviously Jain-tech subversion also possessed a psychological component which she herself seemed to have avoided: an arrogance, megalomania—something of that nature. Or had she escaped it? Whatever, she did not perform as the alien expected. As she turned toward the airlock leading to the Heliotrope, she copied the solution to the alien ship’s chameleonware and, from a transponder 50,000 miles away from her, transmitted it to the station once her home. If ECS forces had come here searching for that alien ship, now they would find it—it was her gift to them.