Newton's Wake

the scrota ae the guys that used the old country as a fucking gun-rest.’ He shrugged. ‘The old guard are used tae handling what you might call the military side ae things, dealing wi the other powers, whereas this is mair like combat archaeology. Dealing wi a power we dinnae ken much about.’

‘Our sort of thing,’ said Duncan. ‘Your sort of thing.’

‘Amelia Orr’s sort of thing, too,’ Lucinda pointed out.

‘Nah,’ said Duncan. ‘She’s aye rode shotgun on expeditions. Good comms op, but she disnae have the nous that comes fae getting down and dirty in the tech.’

‘So, gentlemen,’ said Lucinda mimicking the boss, ‘what alternative would you suggest?’

‘That was what we were going to ask you,’ said Duncan.

‘They DK ships sound promising,’ said Kevin.

‘All right,’ said Lucinda. ‘Here’s how I’d play it. I’d fortify the other side of the gate we went through, and every direct secondary connection from it. I’d try to negotiate with the Knights—hell, offer them a free hand, and hands off on our part, on every new discovery of a posthuman tech deposit for, say, the next year or so. Opening bid, take it up to ten years if we have to, but keep that card close tae the chest. In exchange, they give us back control of the gates on Eurydice. At the same time, make a real generous offer to the Eurydiceans of good rates and a clean slate, forget about the old vengeance stuff. We’ve far more to gain from trading with them than from trying to screw reparations out of them. They have lots of cool kit and flash art. And they’re just yearning to talk to and trade with somebody else, they’ve been in cultural solitary confinement for two hundred years.’

‘Cannae see the Knights buying it, or the Eurydiceans trusting us,’ said Duncan.

‘That’s just the diplomatic offensive. The other side of it is, getting ships in-system without engaging the Knights. Now, I have no doubt that DK and AO will be interested. There’s a whole system that’s not very well developed, a nice stable sun, and an underpopulated terraformed planet. Deals to be done there, I’d say. Encourage them tae swarm in. Get some of our people in on DK and AO ships.’

‘Aha,’ said Kevin. ‘Good one.’

‘Then what?’ said Duncan.

‘Build up contacts with the Eurydicean armed forces. Remember how I said many of them are a dissident faction, the Returners? I bet most of them will be smarting under the Knights before too long. There’s your ground force ready made.’

‘It’s space forces we need, and that’s the problem,’ Duncan objected.

‘One way to do it would be a straight swap—ship for ship. Our people in-system could clandestinely take over DK or AO ships already in place one by one, in exchange for our ships somewhere else. When we have enough, we’ll have a local superiority of force, all ready to put some weight behind our very reasonable offer.’

‘Nice plan,’ said Duncan. ‘Too many failure nodes, though. Depends too much on secrecy and surprise for my liking. One KE spy in any ae the camps and we’ve blown it.’

‘That’s why we need a backup,’ Lucinda said. ‘It could be a dozen or so of our ships—I reckon that’s what the old guard are going to go for, and would fit in fine with that plan. Trouble is, it’s high attrition, brute force, and might not succeed after all. Or—it could be just one ae they new DK ships—it could fittle straight in, right under the belly ae the KE ship on site, and any ship in space, and blow them all intae the next cycle ae the universe in real time.’

‘Im-fucking-possible,’ said Kevin. ‘Nae fucker can fittle wi that precision.’

Lucinda fished out the slate and passed it to him. ‘Read the spec,’ she said. ‘It’s no boasting. I’ve seen one ae they ships, and I tell ye, it goes like a bat out of heaven.’

The two men became lost in the spec for a few minutes. Kevin got up, saying nothing, and got in another round. They checked through it again.

‘No way can we afford tae go off after the kind ae stuff they’re asking,’ Duncan said at last. ‘It’d be a huge diversion fae dealing wi the Eurydice crisis.’

‘It would be if we were to divert people who would otherwise be working on it,’ Lucinda said coolly. ‘But I’m not.’

‘You’ll no get any other family members alang wi ye,’ said Kevin. ‘Your name’s pure poison at the minute, I’m sorry tae say.’

‘That’s my problem,’ said Lucinda. ‘I’ll put together a team of civilians if I have to. At their own risk and mine, and their profit and mine if we succeed. And the family’s, if we get enough loot to buy a ship in time. Meanwhile, chaps, do feel free to take the ideas we’ve discussed back to the boss. Claim the credit for them if you like. They’re good ideas, and they complement what he was going to do anyway.’ She grinned at them. ‘Settled?’

It was.

‘So—what do we do now?’ Lucinda asked. ‘The night is young.’

Kevin laughed. ‘Aye, but you’re going to flake out in a couple of hours.’

She nodded gloomily at this assessment.

‘What we do,’ Duncan said, ‘is you tell us some more about Eurydice and its beautiful people, and then you get tired and emotional, and then we take you home.’

‘Now that,’ said Lucinda, ‘is a plan.’

CHAPTER 10 Enlightenment’s Dawn

Relief rang through all the circuits of the Hungry Dragon like blood returning to a limb. Parts of its machinery and mind were still blocked to its awareness, but the painful warping of its will towards controlling the manufacturing processes on the asteroid had ceased.

‘What’s going on?’ Lamont called out as he thrashed into the webbing.

‘You may have noticed a change in the subsonic vibration of the hull,’ said the ship. It selected a screen. ‘As you see, the manufacturing process appears to be complete.’

The surface of the asteroid was covered with glistening pods, row upon Fibonacci-sequenced row of them like grains of corn on a cob.

‘What are these?’ Lamont asked.

‘They have formed up in the last six minutes,’ the ship replied. ‘They consist of multi-laminated plastic shells and shock-absorbent packing around clusters of one hundred war machines each. The most likely hypothesis is that they are disposable atmospheric entry vehicles.’

‘Shit,’ said Lamont. ‘I wonder how they intend to get to Eurydice. I mean, I didn’t see any sign of them building a—’

He stopped. His face and mouth worked in time with his mind. The ship waited. It was like monitoring a very slow piece of machinery.

‘Shit,’ he said again.

Another long pause. The ship contemplated certain mathematical relationships that gave it a sense of satisfaction.

‘Look,’ Lamont said, the figure of speech triggering a completely irrelevant surge in the ship’s visual system, ‘can these things be reasoned with?’

‘They are designed not to be,’ said the ship. ‘The manufacturing process is self-organising and decentralised. The individual machines it produces are autonomous. Each has just sufficient intelligence for its task, which is highly specialised and not open to negotiation or subversion.’

‘They must have a bloody On and Off switch,’ grumbled Lamont. ‘Otherwise how would they know when to stop fighting?’

He gazed at the interface with an expression of slowly dawning suspicion.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s in you, isn’t it? The central command system for the war machines.’

‘I have no way to confirm that,’ said the machine. ‘But I cannot deny the possibility.’

Lamont scratched his stubble, grinning. ‘In that case, the problem becomes one of breaking down the partitions.’