The Dragon's medsuite was much smaller than the too-familiar room on the Refuge, and it didn't have the full set of medical monitors and machinery, but it was equipped well-enough to handle most emergencies. It was also highly automated, since she or Ondo tended to fly the Dragon alone. The good news was that the suite's systems reported full functionality as she carried him to the couch and laid him down. He still hadn't responded at anything above a basic biological level.
She stood over him for a moment. He looked oddly small and frail as he lay unmoving, as if he'd shrunk in size. He at least looked peaceful, his chest rising and falling slowly, his shock of grey hair lying back from his face.
She replayed her impressions of the Godel avatar's attack. Something about it didn't make sense to her. Was it an improvisation when the infecting AI found it couldn't communicate with Concordance? Or had it been part of the plan all along? The beams of light that had flashed into Ondo's eyes were intense – the nav projectors were capable of rendering stars and supernovae – but there was more to them. She slowed them down. There were patterns there: messages, she guessed. Instructions. A rapid-fire tattoo of commands blasted directly into his brain flecks. Had Concordance worked out a way to glitch the devices, hack them so they malfunctioned? Burn them out so they damaged the surrounding tissues? She didn't know. His augmentations still weren't responding. She instructed the Dragon's systems to inform her as soon as they worked anything out, then let them get on with their work.
She was thirty minutes away from her final rematerialisation at the rendezvous point when Surtr contacted her from its own ship. “I have seen no sign of pursuit on my route here. What is the status of Ondo?”
She replied via her flecks as if Surtr were simply standing nearby. “Never mind that for the moment; how the hell are you talking to me when we're both in metaspace?”
“Isn't that normally possible?”
“It isn't ever possible, because it isn't possible. We're both in the void; there is no physical reality around us through which we can communicate.”
“My apologies, Selene Ada. I was not aware of that limitation.”
“How are you doing it?”
“I am simply … doing it. I can only assume that the Tok had technical abilities you do not.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Ondo was going to be absolutely fascinated – if he ever woke up to find out. But Surtr's communications also sent a jolt of alarm through her. In metaspace, uniquely, she felt safe.
“How did you even find me? Do you have the means to track me through the void?”
“I identified your location only because we are converging on the same translation point. Your prior trajectories through the Singh Field are unknown to me.”
That was something. She gave it a status report on Ondo. But, as she finished, she became aware of a glow flaring in her peripheral vision. She turned rapidly, images of the blooms of nuke strikes in the atmospheres of Maes Far and Coronade flashing through her mind. Was she somehow under attack?
But it wasn't that. The cartography deck's bulkhead – the very one that had been breached by the Concordance intrusion bug – was glowing with wavelengths that she recognized. The same light that haloed Surtr when it passed through the walls of its own ship.
“What the hell?” The Aetheral was entering the Dragon. She braced herself against explosive decompression; there was no way her ship's bulkheads could pull off the same trick as Surtr's had.
But, somehow, they did. In a moment, the Aetheral was there with her, standing a few metres away. The hull behind it remained as solid as it had been.
She couldn't keep the anger from her voice. “How are you here? That is physically impossible; you can't EVA in metaspace. And next time, damn well tell me what you're about to do.”
Surtr's voice was as infuriatingly calm and measured as ever. “My apologies. Entering this way was easier than crawling through multiple sets of doors. Your ship has some of the capacities of my own, abilities I was able to enhance during my repair.”
“Your ship is nearby?”
“That is obviously not a particularly meaningful concept in metaspace, but the time taken to pass between was small, yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I have come to attempt to fix him.”
“Ondo needs to be left where he is. The ship will take care of him. I think your entropy-spirals are helping, but his tissues need to be given time to recover. We need to let the swelling in his brain go down and then see what state he's in.”
“I did not mean Ondo.”
“What? Then, who?”
“I mean the core Mind inside the Radiant Dragon. It is still there, cowering in the darkness. I catch whispers of it. I would like to try and return it to life. And I would like to converse with it. I think … I think it may in some sense be another like me.”
“It looked nothing like you when I saw it, believe me.”
Surtr triple-blinked. “Not superficially, perhaps, but in essence. Perhaps, in purpose. I think we may both be part of a greater design.”
Great. Now Surtr sounded like Ondo. “I approve of your disregard for shallow conceptions of identity, but that doesn't make reaching the Mind any easier. Both Ondo and I tried repeatedly when we returned to the Refuge after my encounter, and we could not get through to it. The virtual walls it has erected around itself are as strong as the physical barriers. If we force our way in, we risk causing significant damage.”
“May I try?”
“Could I stop you?”
That seemed to confuse
