The answer wasn’t long in coming, once it had reprogrammed a horde of nanomachines to search the mite’s body… and a strange body it was, too. The mite had interfaced itself with mite technology, somehow remaining alive despite the changes in its environment and it even had nanotechnology of its own. The two swarms collided and the newborn pulled its probes out, fast. The last thing it wanted was to accidentally kill the mite. Its data built up quickly. The mites were a single mind, within a single body; when the body died, so did the mite. A Killer who was torn in half would either reintegrate or separate into two separate entities, but the mites seemed to be very ill designed. It took it hundreds of simulations to realise that the mite’s body was designed for a planetary surface, not space itself, or deep within a gas giant. It would almost certainly have been killed if it tried to visit a Killer colony without protection.
And if that is the case, the newborn wondered, why are we fighting?
It reached out through the network of biological processors that interacted with the starship’s mentality and ordered a massive reconfiguration of the section nearest the mite. It only took a short period of time, even as the Killers reckoned time, to create a new section, one suitable for a mite. Synthesising the required atmosphere and presumed nutritional requirements was harder, but the Killers had scanned mite-bearing worlds before destroying them and it had the records to assist it in creating a living space. It was those records that pushed it into a realisation that no Killer had ever made. The mites were not identical. The one it held within its hull was not one of the First Enemy. It changed everything.
Rupert had been watching as the two swarms of nanomachines clashed inside his body, expecting death at any moment. When the Killer swarm retreated, he didn’t allow himself to get complacent, but when the wall fell away, he was definitely surprised. The Killer had somehow reconfigured the entire section and created what looked like a small living space, or a zoo. His sensors pinged, revealing that the atmosphere was almost Earth-like, although the oxygen level was just a little too low. It was breathable, but a normal human would have felt light-headed until they grew accustomed to the atmosphere; a Spacer would have no such trouble. It was almost as if the Killer had decided to try to make him feel welcome.
He stepped forward, suddenly aware of the pains in his joints as he moved, and saw a single jet of water in the corner. It took him a moment to analyse it and decide that it was pure water, completely pure water. Normally, he wouldn’t have drunk anything from an alien, but he suspected that he should show willing. The Killer probably didn’t intend to poison him. There was hardly any taste at all, he realised, as he sipped the water gratefully. He had been far thirstier than he had realised.
“Thank you,” he said, addressing the silver ceiling. The Killer was probably watching him, even though it probably wouldn’t understand the message. He took another sip and saw the small food table. Half of it looked utterly inedible, but after he scanned it, he had to admit that most of the foodstuffs should be edible, if unpleasant. His Spacer metabolism could certainly handle them. “Now what?”
The newborn studied the mite carefully as it moved into its new quarters. It went against the Killer understanding of the universe to suppose that the mites might have something reassembling intelligence, yet there was no doubt that they built starships and weapons, some of them in advance of what the Killers themselves had created. Killer biology did suggest that it might be instinctive behaviour rather than actual intelligence, but it rather doubted that that was the case. This particular set of mites showed rather more adaptive capabilities than it would have expected from rote learners. It devised a series of intelligence tests and started to produce the first one. If it could prove that the mites were actually intelligent…
The possibilities, it decided, were endless.
And perhaps the war could be ended before both races were destroyed.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Defence Force — oddly, for such a high-tech organisation — had always preferred to have meetings conducted on a face-to-face basis, believing that it was easier for all parties to gage what was really being said. In a universe where the right software could allow a fake image — either of the wrong person or merely hiding their emotions — face-to-face meetings made sense, even if they could be inconvenient. Andrew had served in the Defence Force long enough to understand, although he privately believed that there were times when meetings in the MassMind were the only way to proceed. A mass briefing, involving nearly all of the remaining Defence Force units, was one such time.
To his eyes, they were standing in a massive hall, with enough seating to hold over a hundred thousand Captains. The illusion only began to fade when he looked around, seeing how the room appeared to be greater on the inside than on the outside, somehow compressing far too many people into a confined space. The audience would be seeing things from the same point of view, even though they knew that they were hardly alone; it felt oddly cumbersome for the MassMind. It wasn’t a personal fantasy, created for one person or a handful of people, but a shared reality for thousands of minds. It felt a little absurd.
“Welcome, all of you,” Brent said, from his place at the centre of the room. Andrew could hear him perfectly; he could even see him perfectly, something that would have been difficult if the room existed outside a perceptual reality. A mental command allowed him to zoom in on the Admiral’s face, noting the telltale signs of a man using an image modifier to keep his emotions hidden. It struck him as odd, somehow; the Admiral wasn’t known for hiding anything from his subordinates. “We have taken the risk of calling you all together to discuss the coming offensive — an offensive that might prove decisive.”
Andrew sensed the murmur racing around the massive room. He’d been pulled off defence duty himself and knew that almost all of his fellow Captains felt the same way. Defences all across the Community had been cut back to the bare minimum — if that — so that the fleet could be massed in the right locations, leaving countless settlements undefended. Logically, the Killers couldn’t wipe out more than a handful of them in the time they had left, but logic was cold comfort when the dead might include family and friends. The Defence Force wasn’t a real Faction, even though it sometimes acted as one; every man and woman in the room would have friends, family and acquaintances outside the fleet. Abandoning the Community didn’t sit well with them.
“This is Prime #4,” Brent continued. If he was aware of the growing discontent, he showed no sign of it. “We didn’t succeed in locating it, despite its odd nature, until we recovered data from the Killers by an… unusual delivery method. It is one of twelve stations the Killers have constructed up near the Galactic Core, bare hundreds of light years from the Core Hole, and serves two separate purposes. The first one is to generate gravity fields that can reach out and touch anywhere in the galaxy. The second one is to serve as a hub for the Killer Communications Network.”
Andrew felt the tension rising in the room. They all knew what the Killers could do with gravity fields and the concept of them being about to affect anywhere in the entire galaxy was a chilling one. Andrew had seen the classified briefings that had been brought back from the Killer Network and knew that the Killers could, when they were ready, render the galaxy uninhabitable for any other form of life. The entire human race was at stake…