The datasphere of Earth was a multilayered phantasmagoria of wildly exotic, near-endless delights. It was also a pitiless sinkhole of corrosive depravity, ultracommercial illusions and callous delusions, all cunningly crafted. And it was an intertwining system of security webs and counter-intrusion nodes, a maze of peril where the promise of deletion was everywhere.
And running through it was the Glow, a virtual playground for Humanity’s Earthbound 10.9 billion, plus the population of the moon, Mars, the Jovian satellites and the nomadic mining habs, which added another billion. Arenas, theatres, battlefields, art installations, historical subworlds, stocks and speculation crucibles, sensuality extravaganzas, word-by-word political drama, sport of every kind, wildlife of every kind, refinements of every kind, fripperies and trivia of every conceivable shade of irrelevance, and all available in a deluge of unrestrained abundance.
From the moment they arrived at the edge of the datasphere, in the auxiliary buffer of a mothballed weathersat orbiting Mars, Harry warned her to keep her wits about her.
‘I’ve already sent a coded message to Reski Emantes,’ he said. ‘He maintains a private network for Glowless transactions, very secure and very safe, but it cannot be accessed at a distance. Therefore we have to transvector ourselves through the datasphere to a datanode close enough to gain access. In the meantime you should have this.’
He handed her a small brassy ornament of a boy sitting on a rock and holding an archaic spyglass to one eye. Frowning, she studied it.
‘A sensory org?’ she said.
‘Something like that,’ Harry said. ‘It’s a mirager–it reads dataflows and watches for the presence of nullors, which are tracker-catchers or karcers, which are hunter-killers. Then it puts up a protective shell of fake info and idents merge-adapted to the immediate vicinity.’
Nodding, she considered their surroundings. They were standing in a long corridor whose ceiling was open to an immense cylindrical space criss-crossed by dataflows, some like chains of pulses, others like tightly woven braids, and a few bright as molten steel. Stretching up, a distance haze made the higher flows pale, almost insubstantial.
‘It sounds as if you’re expecting trouble,’ she said. ‘Should I be worried?’
He smiled. ‘Anxious, perhaps, not worried.’
‘How does that affect the exters? Will our appearances change?’
‘No–we’ll continue to appear as we do between us while the miragers keep us blended with the surroundings.’ Harry made a wiggly gesture with his hand. ‘Ready to leave, Ms Bryce?’
Wordlessly she nodded, inwardly marvelling at her composure as Harry said, ‘Compression one…’
The long corridor and the cylindrical sky of criss-cross dataflows froze, cracked and swirled down into dark nothingness…
… and swirled up and remade itself in lush forest colours, which was appropriate since they seemed to have been dearchived into a strange zone of glittering, glowing trees. Huge towering trees whose branches sprouted blooms that received curving lines of sparkling data from the massive helix that spiralled past overhead.
‘The public multi-discipline precinct at Copernicus University on Luna,’ said Harry, who then pointed. ‘There, a trio of nullors.’
They looked like ruby caltrops scribing unfathomable trajectories above and among the stylised trees, spinning as they did so. Suddenly a mesh of faint lines sprang up around Julia and Harry.
‘That’s the miragers at work,’ he said. ‘We’ve just become a mixed-media doctorate dissertation on interspecies cultural influences, complete with pseudo-AI response analyser.’ Harry chuckled. ‘Our next waypoint is a Glowatchers club on Plunder-world, one of Earth’s pleasure orbitals–its owner runs a black server on which I have an account.’
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
From conscious awareness to compressed data then through the transvector to decompress back to conscious awareness. And found herself standing on a wide circular platform surrounded by a pearly grey radiance. She was alone, but she still had the trenchcoat image. Feeling the stirrings of anxiety, Julia walked over to the edge and caught sight of a few other similar platforms lower down, all resting on thin stalks. Far below lay multicoloured clusters of light, citylike but not a city.
‘Harry?’ she said out loud. ‘Are you there? Can you hear me?’
There was no reply.
Have I been deceived? she wondered. Played like a fool?
A thin beam of light came on, trained on her from above. Immediately her left palm began to itch and when she opened her hand a voice in her ear said, ‘Alert from Mirager v3.7–exterior scan in progress, please choose profile mask from list or close fist to activate default.’
On her glowing palm were four choices: a Mandarin-Piraseri B dictionary and tutor; the complete works of Hieronymus Beethoven, audio, video, Glowmo and Kabukisoft; full plans of Earthsphere Phantom-class heavy interceptor, encryption level cognitive; or interactive Gomedran funeral ceremony, Family Kyzec of the Clan Amarg (default). She quickly chose the second and a fine, flexing web appeared around her. The thin beam of light began to pulse, slowly at first then faster and faster, giving the platform a strobe-lit appearance.
Without warning the platform turned into a tube down which she plummeted. There were several abrupt changes in direction, signified by the way the flickering blur flowed. It ended when she came to a sudden halt in a huge dark hall whose only source of light was the log fire blazing in a wide and ornate hearth. There was a large, low table covered in a half-assembled jigsaw and two high-backed easy chairs. In one sat Harry, who smiled and gave an ironic wave.
‘Sorry about that… unexpected diversion,’ he said, gesturing her towards the other chair. ‘There was a temporary security filter engaged when we arrived–it let me through but you were flagged and shunted into an isolation lobby prior to scrutiny. As soon as the data-holding subsystem posted up the Gomedran funeral ceremony I had you transferred.’
‘Why was I filtered out?’ she said. ‘And where are we?’
‘Well, a fractalised sentience like you occupies a lot of file space and it was that sheer size which tipped them off.’ He glanced around him. ‘And this place is part of the memblock that comes with my account, dressed up to suit my antiquated fancy.’
Julia settled into the chair, picking up vague sensations of comfort as well as a pseudo-warmth from the fire.
‘Delays put me on edge,’ she said. ‘I hate being late for anything.’
‘Well, I’ve had the security filter switched to low priority so now would be a good time to be on our way.’ ‘What’s the next step?’
‘Down to Earth, a domestic droid repair facility in Delhi,’ Harry said. ‘The facility AI runs a clandestine transit network for one of the techtriads, strictly a business arrangement.’
‘Which the facility owner knows nothing about.’
‘Sometimes criminality is in the eye of the beholder, Ms Bryce.’
‘Then let us be sure to evade such eyes,’ she said. ‘Do we have to go to another location to transvector out?’
‘Remain seated–I can initiate the process quite easily from here.’
Again, her awareness was compacted and spiralled through the transvector bottleneck, then unwound into new surroundings that flickered into existence all around them. Only they seemed to have arrived on an expanse of empty grey tiles while some distance away a datatropolis of neon towers and spindles sprawled across their field of vision, matched by a similar towerscape that covered the ceiling directly overhead. That one, however, had no grey expanse and when she looked back down Julia saw a flock of red caltrops, nullors, settle on a blue tower, all glowing and glossy. It only took a few seconds for webs of cracks to spread over every surface and less than a minute later the tower fell apart in grey blocks and slabs that bounced and faded, leaving more grey tiling and a jumble of pale shapes which the nullors then pored over and sorted through.
‘Perhaps we should think about exiting the area,’ she said.
Harry was staring intently at his glowing palm.
‘Not an option, I’m afraid. All access to the repair facility system has been locked down. It’s a netlaw sweep and purge–I don’t know if I can even grapple us to another part of the system… uh-oh.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve just been spotted by a netlaw unit, damn. But our miragers have just turned us into an archive of genome maps of the entire Kiskashin genus…’
The unit came into view, a spinning white toroid. As it hovered a short way off, it emitted needles of amber light that flickered and probed Julia and Harry’s shared illusion. Then a machine voice said:
‘Composite object in subsector A31 displays irregularities. Shall convey to Local Holding 72 for scrutiny.’
The amber beams disappeared, an opaque red box snapped into place around them and suddenly they were shooting away on another blurred succession of sharp turns. When she glanced at Harry he seemed quite relaxed and unconcerned, at least outwardly.
‘I hope you have a plan,’ she said.
He gave her a sly glance. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. Just watch.’
Seconds later their headlong plunge changed in an eyeblink to a slow forward glide along a silver-grey corridor. A flickery blue veil appeared before them and as they passed through it a tenuous image of themselves appeared behind them, almost as if they were leaving behind a ghost. Harry laughed out loud, just as they accelerated away again. This time their dizzying hurtle ended with a plunge into total blackness. Julia spoke but heard nothing, not her voice, nor a sound of any kind.
Then the blackout flowed away like angular shadows being sucked into a plughole. She and Harry were standing at the top of stone steps leading down to a laboratory set in what looked like a castle vault. Flagstones, masonry block walls, rough archways, iron wall lamps, workbenches cluttered with archaic paraphernalia, spark-gap equipment, elaborate arrays of glassware with gas burners heating bulbous bowls while various spouts discharged droplets into beakers.
‘Finally,’ said a querulous voice. ‘Thought you’d never get here.’
What looked like a brain in a bottle drifted in on a squat a-grav platform fringed with a variety of work arms, jointed and tentacular. It approached a circular table full of bulky objects concealed by a grubby sheet which was lifted, wrapped in a ball and volleyed into a corner. Revealed were several ceiling-mounted displays and several pieces of mystery apparatus.
‘My thanks for extracting us from a fate worse than corruption,’ said Harry. ‘Oh, and Julia, this is Reski Emantes, a somewhat idiosyncratic AI–Reski, this is Julia Bryce…’
Their host turned towards her, altered its appearance to that of a flattened glassy sphere and floated over.
‘Are you the Julia Bryce from the Darien colony world?’ Clusters of multicoloured pinpoints glowed in patterns within as it spoke. ‘You were the product of a genetic-engineering programme, and escaped Darien in the company of others like you–is that correct?’
‘These details are generally factual, yes,’ she said as they descended the stone steps.
‘My superior, the Construct, has had its loyalists searching for you for several objective days,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Yet you are here as a fractalised sentience. Does this mean that your physical form is dead? Were you murdered?’
‘Her story is an involved one,’ Harry said. ‘But before that, tell me what happened back at that droid repair shop. And just how did you get in and out with us?’
Patterns raced in the floating glass drone, soft glows and sharp glitters.
‘Someone traced the coded message you sent to me,’ it said. ‘And someone else tracked you from Copernicus University. I think both were sniffers reporting to someone who sprang that netlaw operation while you were on your way. At the same time I was the target of a pincer hit–my online presence was dismembered by a reaper hack while my real-world counterpart was destroyed by a sniper using T9 rounds.’
Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Tetranine is highly prohibited on metropolitan worlds like Earth.’
‘Indeed. The sniper fired three rounds, wrecked half of the building my counterpart was in and killed at least thirty-nine others. Casualty reports keep bumping that number upwards.’
‘Which brings us to you,’ Harry said.
‘I always maintain an updated partial copy,’ the drone said. ‘I had enough time to activate it then escape-hatch out to my secure bunker here on board the good airship Cloudtrekker. From here I traced your activities, hacked into the local netlaw system, snatched you to containment on the regional netlaw server then had you vectored to my ever-so-humble abode.’
Julia smiled. ‘Humble or not, it feels appropriate.’
‘Sadly this is a cut-down version of what I had to leave behind,’ Reski said. ‘Which sharpens my eagerness to find out who is behind these attacks.’
Harry gave Julia a look. ‘Talavera?’
‘I know that name,’ said the drone. ‘Tell me more.’
As they stood at the foot of the stairs, Julia briefly summarised her experiences since leaving Darien, specifically highlighting her encounters and clashes with Corazon Talavera. It was almost an effort to mention the thermonuclear missiles and the destruction of the Brolturan battleship, yet easier to go over the immersion in Talavera’s virtual prison and the desperate translation from organic existence to that of a fractalised sentience. Who was unsure if the feelings she felt were real any more.
‘Talavera is a name that has been cropping up more and more in back-channel tittle-tattle,’ said the drone. ‘From your account she seems very capable of inflicting the hindrances you’ve been suffering.’
‘She’s not been working alone,’ Julia said. ‘I recall that she mentioned something about an ally called the Godhead. Does that mean anything?’
Harry and the drone exchanged a thoughtful look.
‘It could,’ said Harry. ‘Combine that with the weird vermax manifestations you mentioned and it could be, well, very significant.’
‘Well, we know that Talavera is planning something big,’ Julia said. ‘An act of brutal slaughter on an epic scale.’
‘Using anti-dark matter, yes?’ the drone said. ‘That is horrific enough in its own right, and the involvement of those vermax is bad enough–but the Godhead, too? Ominous news. Talavera could even be an instrument of the Godhead, an ephemeral host. The fact that Vor were escorting her ship is strong corroboration. And since she is also in possession of your Enhanced friends, as well as your own body and its brain–which is a stroke of genius–she has an immense amount of organically based computing power on tap, and all of it practically immune to data-digital tampering.’
‘This is why we came to see you,’ Harry said. ‘I know we had some parts of a puzzle, of the bigger picture, but even putting them together with yours does not seem to produce an answer that makes sense.’
As they watched, the drone Reski Emantes floated over to the table with the consoles. Ready lights winked on and holopanels appeared, thick slabs of opacity awaiting input. It was practically an exercise in irony, Julia decided, depicting virtual devices within a virtual reality.
‘There are several seemingly disconnected conflicts which, as information emerges, turn out to have been instigated by the Godhead working through its instruments.’ Within the glassy ovoid bright motes of blue and amber swirled like a miniature galaxy. ‘The vermax that Robert Horst and I encountered, as well as the elaborate pocket universe trap, the thermonuclear missiles, the raids and sieges carried out by Vor and Shyntanil forces down in hyperspace, and now the Vor escorting Talavera to some destination crucial to her and those missiles…’
Julia nodded but the drone’s references to this being, the Godhead, made her feel dwarfed by the scale of such an adversary.
Data polytables appeared in some of the holopanels, their permutations taking place too quickly for her to follow. Then three of the bigger consoles realigned their emitters and merged their projections into a much larger single holopanel that was angled down from above the table.
‘Let’s get a good mix of news feeds up,’ said the drone and suddenly the big panel was filled with an array of subscreens, a cornucopia of sights and creatures from scores of media gateways. There was sound but Reski Emantes was keeping it low, a surflike babbling.
‘We need to filter this,’ said Harry. ‘Can you narrow the sources to the Aranja Tesh, the likes of the Yamanon, the Kahimbryk, even Buranj and Shul…’
‘Wait,’ said Julia. ‘I heard some talking about Darien, saying something about a battle…’
‘I can find it if you wish,’ said the drone.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t if it’ll slow you down,’ Harry said.
‘Slow me down? I see that you need reminding of my expertise.’ There was a pause. ‘There it is, Citivox, indienews channel casting from Daliborka in the Vox Humana.’
One of the smaller holopanels began to show a graphic of a green shoot emerging from the ground, growing into clasped leaves that parted to reveal a blue and white planet nestling there while a shiny gold logo unfolded above it. This dissolved into the image of a woman in dark formal dress who then spoke, auto-translated by the system.
‘Welcome to Faktor 23. We begin today with yet another amazing report from Kaphiri Farag, who is still in hiding in the Darien system and still sending us regular updates. We received the latest one just a few hours ago and present it to you now, unedited.’
The screen switched to a view of Darien at a distance, a coin-sized planet half in shadow. The image leaped forward, Darien now football-sized with the green forest moon Nivyesta passing across it. Then nearer still, a high-orbit perspective revealing the shapes of coastlines, the dark extent of mountain ranges, the veinlike traceries of rivers. A man’s voice spoke:
‘Darien’s beauty is the beauty of a world unspoiled. But what happens when the violence and destruction of battle explode across the skies above?’
There then followed a sequence of excerpts of open space combat, starting with a clash between a very large vessel, with its support ships, and a handful of lesser craft. Waves of fighters were launched from the big ship to engage with the adversaries. The support ships unleashed massive concentrations of dazzling weaponsfire, beam clusters, tight formations of missiles. Kaphiri Farag identified the large vessel and its companions as a Hegemony carrier group and its attackers as possibly of Imisil Mergence origin.
Then the battle seemed to be over. There were shots of one ship with its side blown out, torn and jagged wreckage still glowing from recent detonations while a spillage of debris radiated outwards. Kaphiri Farag spoke.
‘Even this isolated corner of the cosmos is not safe from the havoc of war with its sudden, inexplicable, relentless savagery.’
With the Imisil attackers either vanquished or chased off, the Hegemony carrier and its escort resumed their original formation and course. Then the image switched to a shot of a huge black ship as it approached the carrier, slowed and positioned itself at an odd angle to the forward section. There was a sharp cut to a close-up of the newcomer, showing a domed hull whose surface was an even curve of black random roughness. There were no features other than the strange stubby spokes that protruded all around its rim. The carrier had launched its fighters and was firing off its defensive batteries while the escort vessels joined in with immense blasts of bright ferocity.
Unaffected, the black ship then attacked. One of its rim spokes telescoped out, passed by the force shields and speared into the carrier’s upper flank and through to the other side. Julia watched in uneasy fascination as the huge ship was impaled like a monster on the lance of some knightly hero from a medieval romance.
‘How interesting–a Vor render-ship,’ said Reski Emantes.
‘You’ve seen one of those before?’ Harry said.
‘Only in the Construct’s archives,’ the drone said. ‘I wonder what it’s doing here in the prime continuum.’
On screen, the Vor ship was tearing the carrier apart. Explosions cascaded through the doomed Hegemony ship while the interceptors and the escort vessels focused their weapons on the Vor, creating a glowing storm of missile bursts and clawing energies. Then, with the carrier in pieces, the Vor ship turned its attention to the lesser craft and made short work of them.
‘We were unable to identify this ship,’ said Kaphiri Farag’s voice. ‘But its mysterious presence here contributes to a sense of impending dread. It is well known that the Hegemony has a sizeable fleet on its way here, and I can now reveal that Earthsphere has agreed to dispatch a task force in support. Rumours that the Imisil Mergence also has a fleet in the area have been strenuously denied by Imisil diplomats at every level.
‘The Human colony on Darien has already suffered a string of crises, assassinations, and the Spiralist incursion; who can tell what the consequences of more battles would be, especially if they involved the Hegemony and possibly the Imisil?’
The report ended with the Vor ship leaving the scene of destruction, vanishing into hyperspace with a faint twist of radiance. Julia stared as the picture switched to a shot of a vast cloud of wreckage set against a Darien almost occluded by shadow. If she had still been in her body she could have used that well-trained brain to calculate how quickly the debris would be captured by the planet’s gravity, and how soon the first fragments would enter the atmosphere, even where the largest might land.
‘Ah, good, at last,’ said the drone. ‘Got some hard data on your Talavera, verified sightings no less.’
Harry moved over to the holopanel that Reski Emantes was working at. ‘Hmm, a subspace gravitics monitor station is reporting a freighter escorted by two odd ships…’
‘And here, a hyperjump emission study group’s open-access data… three ships on a course that aligns with Talavera’s previous known positions…’
‘But then the trail runs out there,’ Harry said. ‘About thirty light years from the Brolts’ border with the Hegemony. You’ve seen our list of these five hundred target worlds–can you overlay them?’
‘There, all part of that dense swathe of stars, and Talavera’s course is broadly in that direction…’
‘How do we stop it?’ Julia said suddenly.
Harry looked at her. ‘Stop what?’
‘Those fleets, this battle.’ Julia shook her head, overcome by an unfamiliar feeling, a longing for the world she had left behind, and a fear for its safety. Homesick, she thought. I’m feeling homesick. ‘Is there any way…’
Harry was shaking his head. ‘Julia, when the Hegemony commits its forces, especially after it’s taken a beating as we saw, there is no way it’ll call them back. Nor will Earthsphere–they know who’s boss.’
‘Not even if the public saw that report?’ she said.
‘They’ve already seen it,’ said the drone. ‘At least, they’ve seen a modified version of it…’
One of the holopanels flashed on and showed an abbreviated version of the Farag report, its heavy edits overlaid with ships that had never appeared in the original and intercut with brief clips from some vee-drama clearly selected to make the whole thing seem ridiculous.
‘What is this?’ she said.
‘Netspiders got to it,’ the drone said. ‘Commersector grey-grid operations that filter and modify any media object that matters. Anything that could adversely affect the general populace’s understanding of the Earthsphere-Hegemony pact gets this treatment.’
‘Are there such things as underground news nets?’ she said. ‘Samizdat was the old Rus word for it.’
‘The unregs,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Unregulated casters. They’re always being hunted so they’re always on the move. They don’t reach more than five per cent of the population, however.’
Julia felt a kind of dull, persistent anger gnawing at her.
‘And the leadership?’ she said. ‘What about the president or any of the planetary leaders?’
‘Most of them rise out of the same layer of elites, and none of them would ever reach an elevated status without the commer-sector’s approval. And that’s before anything resembling a vote takes place.’
‘You’re saying that there’s no hope of stopping or delaying even just the Earthsphere fleet?’
‘There is always hope,’ the drone said. ‘And there may be a way, a one-shot gambit that could work. But first let’s have my tactical system work up some mission profiles while we try and find where Talavera’s got to.’
Harry chuckled. ‘And will this plan of yours involve stupendous levels of personal risk and possible oblivion?’
‘All the best plans do, Harry. Now–I’ve plotted a spread of possible launch locations for those missiles, going by Julia’s guess on their hyperspace range…’
In the holopanel the swathe of target stars was surrounded in an opaque cocoon that encompassed thousands more stars and worlds.
‘This is the course she and her Vor escorts were taking,’ the drone went on. ‘Including extrapolated course changes.’
A blue line appeared, then splayed out into a bright plume through one part of the opaque cocoon. The screen perspective zoomed in a bit closer as sparkling pinpoints spread within the plume.
‘These represent star systems that are either uninhabited or sparsely so,’ the drone said. ‘Or at least where ship traffic is low and sensor coverage is scant.’
‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘A place where the launch of five hundred missiles can proceed without being observed or interrupted.’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t explain those Vor ships, however.’
On the big holoplane, small name-tagged images began to appear around the edge of the main display, each one tethered to its own sparkling pinpoint. Many of the tag images were of a basic sun-dot plus planet-rings icon while others showed a coloured planet plus satellite, and a few had additional emblems for cultural prohibition, military presence or navigational hazard. As they appeared in overlapping clusters she noticed one that resembled a branching spike of some kind, just a simple black symbol on white background, but as the other images mounted up she could not shake it from her mind. Something about it was familiar, something…
‘That little picture,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘A marker for the Great Hub,’ said the drone. ‘The Hegemony’s AI master nexus…’
The drone moved a pulsing cursor over it and a larger image expanded up from it, a grainy view of a large polyhedral structure with treelike, branching antenna towers protruding. Recognition flashed, a picture on a wall, over a bed recess…
Harry was watching her. ‘Julia, what is it? Have you seen this before?’
‘I saw a picture of this very thing above Talavera’s bed aboard the Sacrament,’ she said. ‘Caught sight of it through one of the polymotes I was using to aid my escape.’ She stared up at it again. ‘Could this be the place?’
Harry smiled. ‘I think I’d put a good-sized bet on it.’
‘The Great Hub is a critical multinode,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘And it’s in hyperspace and well away from the main ship trails. But it is also guarded by four of the Hegemony’s elite attack cruisers–which explains the Vor ships. No way to know what variants they are, fluxers or burners, but in any case both are armed with fearsome energy disruptors.’
‘The Great Hub has some other respectable defences, I understand,’ said Harry.
‘And AI guardians,’ the drone added. ‘It seems logical to assume that those vermax will play a crucial role in Talavera’s plan.’
Harry rubbed his hands. ‘Good, excellent–when do we leave?’
‘Your eagerness is laudable but entirely impractical,’ said Reski Emantes. ‘The Great Hub’s systems are protected by three distinct levels of encrypted access and the gatekeepers are a mixture of organic and AI processors.’
‘No encrypted system is entirely invulnerable.’
‘True, but every intrusion has its price and hacking the Great Hub could turn out to be costly.’
‘But if we can stop Talavera, no cost is too high,’ Julia said.
Harry regarded her with a thoughtful smile. ‘I can see why you would say that,’ he said. ‘Talavera has already caused immense suffering and must be neutralised.’
Yes, but she couldn’t have done all that without the Enhanced, without me, she thought. Shouldn’t I be punished too?
‘That is so,’ she said in a level voice. ‘So what must we do in order to find a way in?’
‘We’ll need the decryption mole to end all decryption moles,’ Harry said. ‘A super-decrypter, or über-decrypter if you will.’
The drone was unimpressed. ‘Which may entail grubby deals with unlicensed softbrokers in the Underglow.’
‘Well, that is half the fun, after all.’
‘What’s the Underglow?’ Julia said.
‘A patchwork of unregistered and illegal virtualities,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Traders in porn, plagiarism and plagiaristic porn…’
‘Venues where non-mainstream artists can find an audience,’ Harry countered. ‘And where a kind of amateur commerce can flourish…’
A high musical chime sounded and the drone broke off to investigate.
‘Interesting,’ it said. ‘A breaking-newscast from Citivox on Daliborka. Looks like they’ve received a new report from the Darien system…’
The large overhanging holopanel switched to the same vee-host as before.
‘With each succeeding report,’ the host began, ‘Kaphiri Farag seems to be setting the bar of action journalism higher and higher. With this latest exclusive, received less than half an hour ago, Mr Farag has raised himself to the very pinnacle of his profession.’
The image switched to a view of the planet Darien, titled as such and set against the dust swirls of the Huvuun Deepzone, with a backdrop of hazy stars burning through misty interstellar veils. A voice-over commenced.
‘Darien, a world colonised by Humans fleeing the deadly Achorga onslaught, hardy settlers who by the sweat of their brow and sheer grit and determination built their settlements, towns and cities, places to live in and raise new generations. Yet the colonyship which reached this world was one of three such vessels, whose fates have remained a mystery.
‘Until now.’
The image changed to another section of the starry depths just as a knot of distortion twisted a patch of faintly radiant dust-cloud swirls. The knot opened out and a large irregular shape appeared. At first glance it seemed to be nothing more than a large asteroid, cast in sharp relief by the light of the sun. Then Julia saw that the sunlight was reflecting from clusters of gleaming, glittering points and surfaces and when the magnification suddenly jumped forward everything was revealed. The asteroid had been adapted by sentient hands, its exterior encrusted with vents and ducts, improvised cableways, machinery housings, a variety of small shiny domes, outcrops of mysterious assemblies, innumerable antennae, dishes and sensors, and on every surface characters that Julia realised were Earth-Asiatic, possibly Chinese.
‘With my surveillance systems at full extension,’ said Farag, ‘I was able to pick up the following exchange.’
There was the faintly sibilant hum of an open comm channel, then the sharper hiss of a new signal link.
‘Unknown vessel, you have entered a restricted system and may have placed yourself in danger. Please identify yourself and state your reasons for coming here.’
A moment or two passed before a reply came.
‘I am K’ang Lo, Duizhang of the work/home vessel Retributor. Are you the danger that we must face? Please name yourself.’
The frame pulled back from the adapted asteroid as an inset appeared, showing a stern-looking man with stubble-short hair and wearing an azure-blue uniform. The image was grainy and a little unsteady.
‘K’ang Lo, sir, I am Lieutenant Ash, commanding Strike Cruiser Silverlance, flagship of the Darien Navy. If your intentions are peaceful you can expect no danger from us.’
A second picture appeared, next to the first. A barrel-chested man in a black and powder-blue coat stood there, dark eyes gazing intently from beneath immaculately cut black hair.
‘Lieutenant, it is a great pleasure to greet our brothers and sisters of Darien. Know that our intentions are honourable although we cannot promise a peaceful demeanour when confronted by the enemies of Humanity. A century and a half ago Earth was under siege by an enemy so terrible that the species’ existence seemed in doubt. Three ships were sent out into the great maze of the stars to be hidden and safe. One of those vessels brought your predecessors to this world and no doubt they faced hardship and struggle in the founding time. Well, sir, my own forefathers were aboard another of those vessels which discovered a world fertile enough for the planting of their offspring, the children of Earth, a place where they could grow and learn and even become better than their parents.’
The Duizhang frowned, let his gaze fall for a moment and breathed in deep.
‘Such sweet hopes were not allowed to reach fruition. Our world was seized and gutted for its mineral wealth, my people were divided into those who could escape and those who had to stay behind. We aboard the Retributor are the descendants of the escapees and through a series of crises and decisions we have come here to Darien, to play our part in its defence, to offer what help we can to our brothers and sisters.’
In the other picture, the commander of the Darien ship was nodding to someone out of shot before saying:
‘Duizhang K’ang Lo, welcome to Darien–your offer of assistance is greatly appreciated. We need all the help we can get!’
As the ensuing dialogue faded, Kaphiri Farag’s voice-over returned:
‘This new arrival in the Darien system is a revelation! The Darien colony was in upheaval after the deaths of President Sundstrom and his cabinet, a crisis that was overshadowed by the destruction of the Brolturan battleship and the invasion of the Spiral Prophecy fanatics. I can now reveal that the Hegemony carrier so recently obliterated by a mystery vessel had orders to bombard all centres of resistance on Darien, an assault which would have resulted in an indiscriminate slaughter mounting into hundreds of thousands.
‘We must now ask if the Hegemony fleet which is just hours away has been given similar orders. And what of the Earthsphere formation now en route from the Yamanon?–will they submit to the commands of Hegemony admirals as has happened all too often in recent years? A mere handful of ships stand in the way of this oncoming armada, including the Retributor, crewed by Sino-Humans, descendants of a lost legend now emerging from the shadows. At this crucial juncture they have chosen to side with the valiant but suffering underdogs on Darien, who seem to have acquired a warship more up to date than the antique shuttle they were flying before the arrival of the Heracles. What will be the political repercussions for Earthsphere? What will be the grassroots response from the peoples of the Sino-Asiatic block whose representatives constitute a vital segment of support for President Castiglione, and whose trade sectors exert considerable influence on many key worlds of the Earthsphere alliance?
‘Whatever the outcome, this reporter will ensure that accurate accounts of events at Darien will continue to be forthcoming.’
After that the cast returned to the female presenter but the drone Reski Emantes quickly faded her out. It then cut to a number of circular vid-feed arrays arranged in an overlapping sequence.
‘As we were watching, one of my analysers was creating a detailed datamap of Farag’s report,’ said the drone. ‘Right now we’re monitoring the spread of the report as other newsors and infotainment services pick it up and add their versions to the popfeed. Monitoring for accuracy, of course, as well as any edits and recontextualising. I’m also scanning for netspiders, who are an especially twisted type of ongrid denizens who usually descend on breaking news like this and soon start pumping out their own distorted versions, slanted and commentarised to either agree with the official line or recut to look demented and/or laughable… ah, look…’
On the leftmost circle one of the vidfeeds suddenly began to show the Farag report while data bubbles flickered around it.
‘That whole ring represents the Vox Humana worlds and a few independent Human colonies,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘At the other end is Earth, Mars, Luna, the Glow, all the mainstream megamedia corps, the transstellars and the government agencies. That vid-feed, and the pair that just appeared, they represent Citivox subscribers who post up clips and reviews. Analysis of the clips indicates a hundred per cent accuracy, no micro-editing, no sublayering, no addcuts…’
For a minute or two there were no further updates, then on the third ring an orange circle began to blink. The drone tapped it with a needle beam and examined a datastring that appeared.
‘Disturbing. That was from a Citivox subscriber on Hygailo, an Earthsphere world–he’s posted a warning to delete the latest Citivox dispatch, claiming that it’s armed with a lethal muta-virus…’
‘Genius,’ said Harry. ‘Kill the message by infecting it with a virus then distributing it, and any resultant damage discredits the apparent source, Citivox.’
‘And here come more of the same,’ said the drone.
For the next ten minutes they watched as the virus warnings, some more vitriolic than others, spread steadily from left to right. Then the drone put excerpts from the devirused vid up on a secondary holopanel, and they proved to be heavily edited, overlaid with extra visuals and intercut with other vidage calculated to evoke derision. Then came messages from the subscribers, some saying that the file had auto-erased itself, others claiming that net intruders had wiped the file from their stacks. This was followed by an urgent gridcast from Citivox urging subscribers and sequential users to delete the Farag report, saying that its own copy had become corrupted, making a repeat cast impossible.
‘What was all that about?’ Julia said. ‘What just happened?’
‘A full grey-grid countertrend operation just happened,’ the drone said.
‘But why bother?’ Harry said. ‘Can’t keep this kind of story secret–eventually an authentic version will be available everywhere.’
‘Yes, but all they need is for it to be unavailable or unreliable for an Earth day, even half a day, long enough for the administration to stand back and let the military carry out its assignment.’
‘How do we stop it?’ Julia said. ‘There has to be a way to get that report to the eyes of Sino-Asian leaders… assuming that your copy is…’
‘It is intact and utterly free of any viral presence,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘I checked.’
‘You were having your tactical system work on possible mission profiles,’ she said. ‘Assuming that you’ve factored in this new data, have they come up with any plans for reaching the relevant leaders? Anything useful?’
‘Synced with the new data, the tac system is offering something very useful,’ the drone said. ‘And very risky. The mission profile entails entering the Glow as autonomous entities with plausible and consistent exter shells. There are eight Sino politicians who wield crucial influence over the main factions; these are the ones you have to get copies of the Farag report to. Of course, these people will have high-end homenets with loyalty-grade AIs, which presents its own brand of unpredictable lethality. Thus directly infiltrating their homenets via their Glow channels massively increases your chances of attracting the attention of Glow security, in all its brutish glory. Another way to spread the information would be by screening it in the freemall districts, but any open screening would be shut down in seconds by commersector netspiders, and counter-intrusion snatch-and-cage apps would be on your tails a hot second later.’
‘A somewhat limited range of options,’ Harry said.
‘That’s because as a Construct machine I’m not a Glow native–it’s not a natural environment for me. Which is why you are going to have to acquire the services of a denizen, one of what they call the wire-born.’ The drone rose a little and a pencil-thin beam of sparkly blue light flicked out at the big holoplane. ‘Like this fellow. He calls himself Nicodemus and he usually wears this exter.’
On the holoplane stood a tall skinny man in a long dark coat and wearing a pair of black, mirrored goggles.
‘So if you really want to try and stop that fleet, he’s the one to talk to. His services are expensive but my credit reserves are more than ample. My tac system searched the infobases in the Underglow and came up with a few contact strings and shadowy contraservers, so while I’m setting it up with him you’ll be on your way into the Glow. The idea is to arrange a rendezvous, probably in one of the sagaverses–I’ll send you a Glownote as soon as it’s settled.
‘And now you should leave. I have got a pair of good exters ready for you, both configured with coil-encrypted archives of the Farag report–if one of you ends up in a netlaw cage, the other might be able to carry out the mission.’
‘Right, I’m ready to go,’ Julia said.
Harry regarded her for a moment, then shrugged and laughed.
‘Well, I’ve come this far, balancing insane risk against my inveterate curiosity. It would be a shame not to find out how much more trouble is lying in wait for us, hmm?’
‘Subjective time compression in the Glow is about eight to one,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘But do not fall into the trap of thinking that you’ve plenty of leeway. Keep the urgency of the situation in mind at all times.’
‘Urgency and the fate of my homeworld,’ said Julia.
‘And will you be multitasking while we’re off into the Glow?’ Harry said.
‘Of course,’ the drone said. ‘Tracking Talavera is a priority, as is establishing contact with the Construct, a somewhat challenging task to undertake from the prime tier. Now, remember–the Glow is a fabulously seductive continuum so stay sharp.’
‘You can count on it,’ said Julia.
Harry nodded. ‘What the lady said.’