‘It could have been better,’ argued Cormac, horrific scenes from inside those disintegrating re-entry units vivid in his mind.
After her return to the conferencing unit, Mika watched the Dragon spheres consume two more asteroids, and the effects of that massive dinner were more than evident. Despite the gravplates within the floor of the unit, Mika could still feel massive shiftings below her and often had to shut off exterior view since the heaving and rippling of the surface outside tended give her a touch of motion sickness, which was strange, since she’d had the standard alterations made to her inner ear to prevent that effect. As far as she could gather, this violent movement was all part of the growth process, for both spheres now measured over five miles in diameter.
A number of the probes originally pushed down inside this particular sphere had been destroyed in the commotion, but she was still obtaining enough information from the remainder to learn that Dragon was making radical alterations to itself, for the sphere’s interior had changed beyond all recognition. The skin immediately underlying the scales was now over twenty feet thick, possessing a complexity of layers that almost went beyond analysis. Almost? Something had been niggling at Mika’s mind as she studied what information she could obtain about some of those multiple layers — the superconducting meshes, the kind of alloys being built up molecular stratum after stratum, and then came definite identification of a metal that had not been included on the human elementary table until humans had first walked on worlds beyond the solar system. That final identification clicked a switch in her mind.
Prador armour.
Some layers of this new epidermis bore close similarities to the armour those enemy aliens had once used on their ships, and which had explained why they so nearly flattened the Polity despite it being run by oh-so-superior AIs. As for the other less familiar layers? She didn’t know. More armouring, doubtless, more methods of defence, some perhaps intended against informational and EM warfare, and sensory apparatus, or whatever. Much of it lay far beyond her ken, and beyond the analytical abilities of the tools she presently controlled. But, certainly, much else was beginning to fall into place.
Those tubes porting around Dragon’s equator, those toroidal structures deep inside its body, those massive power sources flashing into being on her scans, like igniting stars; the networks of heavy superconducting conduits and the darkening of bones as their density increased; the conglomerations of pseudopods that seemed to be able to move about so easily inside, almost like antibodies… or fire crews. Dragon’s weapons had been dangerous enough when it was still in its original form of an organic probe, its spheres measuring merely a mile or so across. Mika realized that she was now seeing Dragon deliberately and massively weaponizing itself. Clearly all that additional growth was for defensive and offensive purposes. But why?
This whole process kept her fascinated, rapt, for hours, but eventually weariness began to overcome her. She therefore set the scanners to continue sweeping the areas of greatest interest, and made doubly sure that all the data being collected was properly backed up, then she finally retired to one of the fold-down bunks and fell instantly asleep.
A moment later she was gazing at the twin Dragon spheres, joined now by pseudopod trees, as they spun down towards a dead sun. She instantly recognized this as a dream, so such imagery was okay; it was the other stuff that really bothered her. She could smell something, like burning, or cooking, or perfume, or putrefaction, and somehow that smell was more layered with meaning than any chunk of recording crystal. And over there, in the darkness at the utter limit of her perception, something tangled, hot and utterly alien encroached on reality. She was gazing at a great mass of steel worms, triangular in section, segmented coils and conglomerations and layers of them deep as space itself. Then came another smell of cloves, very strong, and something dripped on her face. In an instant she woke.
That human-in-appearance but utterly unhuman head hovered over her, attached to a neck extending all the way back to the central floor hatch. Beyond it, cobra pseudopods crowded the conferencing unit, shifting about and darting here and there as if inspecting the interior like a crowd of curious tourists. As she sat up and wiped a spattering of milky saliva from her face, Dragon’s human face drew back from her.
‘So you’ve finally remembered me,’ said Mika.
‘I never forgot you for an instant,’ Dragon replied.
Mika snorted contemptuously but felt foolishly pleased by the answer. She swung her legs off the bunk, stood and stretched. ‘So what have you been doing and where are we going?’
‘To answer your first question: we have been making ourself stronger.’
Now the head gazed to one side and, following the direction of its gaze, Mika saw one pseudopod engaged with the consoles and screens she had been using earlier. She walked over, took a seat, and immediately one screen banished its datastream to show a picture: a great disc-shaped cloud, white as snow against the black of space.
‘An accretion disc,’ observed Mika.
‘Our destination,’ said Dragon.
She turned to gaze back up at the head. ‘This is where Cormac went. This is where Erebus came from. You can’t be thinking of going up against Erebus?’
‘No.’
‘Then why the preparations?’
The head came closer and dropped down until level with her shoulder, gazing intently at the screen too. ‘Erebus has now begun a large-scale attack against the Polity, which it is presumably directing from somewhere actually within the Polity, but it is here that it transformed itself, became what it now is. Here, in this disc, we will find the roots of Erebus — but here we will also find something else.’
Mika shook herself, aware Dragon had not answered her question about preparations but unable to ignore what it had just said. ‘Attack? What about this attack?’
‘Erebus’s forces have moved against numerous Line worlds, where they are currently conducting bombardments and ground assaults when not being prevented by ECS fleets.’
‘You got this from Jerusalem?’ Mika felt she should be back there, not here running obscure errands for this alien, yet she felt guilty because right here was where she wanted to be.
‘No, I have my own trustworthy source in the Polity.’
‘Source?’
‘My networks of Dracocorp augs have in many cases been infiltrated, so I do not entirely trust the information they supply. But there is one in the Polity who carries a piece of me around inside him, and he will never be… infiltrated.’
‘Who is…?’ Mika trailed off, not enjoying asking so many questions.
‘A Golem android called Mr Crane.’
Mika flinched. ‘You don’t trust Polity AIs, you don’t trust Jerusalem, yet you trust that… thing?’ Mika grimaced, reconsidering. ‘You might be right at that.’ She found herself focusing on the screen image again. ‘What is this “something else” we’ll find here?’
‘More roots.’
The answer was almost a relief. Dragon had been giving her far too many direct answers — had not waxed Delphic and obscure for some time, which was both out of character and disconcerting.
‘And to deal with these roots you require weapons capable of trashing planets?’ she asked.
‘No, for the foliage and another purpose besides.’ Mika looked round directly at the swaying head, which blinked at her then nodded towards the screen. ‘Even after Erebus’s departure that accretion disc remains a perfect nursery. Inside, there is material and energy in abundance. That place will be virulent with Jain technology.’