“Flee anywhere that doesn’t have the Killers,” Tabitha said, slowly. The former President — the first Community President — frowned as she finished her glass and placed it down on the ground. It vanished a moment later. “Do you really want to abandon the Milky Way Galaxy after so long?”
“I think that if the Killers start destroying every rocky planet in the galaxy, the shockwaves will wipe out most of the Community anyway,” Brent said. “There’s little choice, as you both know; either we win, or we lose. We storm Heaven and unseat the gods, or we are condemned to death or permanent exile.”
“Perhaps not,” Patti said, surprised at the hope in her voice. “We could set up again in the Clouds, build up our tech base, create new black holes… and eventually beat their technology. Perhaps our people will return to the Milky Way Galaxy with blood in their eyes and revenge in their souls.”
“Perhaps,” Brent agreed. “By then, we may know how to toast the entire galaxy without needing to get our hands dirty. We may even know how to wipe the Killers out…”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, really,” he added. “Either we win, or we lose.”
Patti nodded. “And is the Shiva Team ready and waiting?”
Brent looked at the chronometer on his wrist. “They’re ready,” he said, shortly. “The MassMind worked out the programming algorithms for them and so… if we break down the Killer station, they can break in and end the war, one way or the other.”
“Good,” Patti said. She wandered over to the food producer and ordered a drink for herself. “And good luck to you and your men.”
“Thanks,” Brent said, firmly. He smiled at her suddenly. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Patti said, carefully. “I may not answer, of course. How may I be of service?”
Brent looked her in the eye, “Who told you about the supernova bombs?”
Patti hesitated, threw a look at Tabitha, and then decided to answer honestly. “The MassMind,” she said, finally. “It decided that I should know about them so that the bombs could be deployed against the Killers.”
“Interesting,” Brent said. His face showed no sign of the shock she was sure he was feeling. The MassMind was not supposed to get involved in politics, although Patti was sure — just like human politicians — that it would be able to rationalise away any doubts or scruples it might have had. “I always assumed that it was some bastard from the Technical Faction, upset that his wonderful invention wasn’t being used.”
Patti smiled, remembering an old video entertainment featuring a mad scientist. “You’re sure? You don’t want to put it through rigorous safety tests, demand that I tone down its strength and eventually deploy it in a year or two; long after the original reason for its creation has passed? Wow… Well. If you insist captain then it seems I have no choice but to unleash this glorious… err… necessary weapon of mass destruction.”
“Quite,” Brent agreed. His face darkened. “Tabitha, why did the MassMind share that particular titbit with anyone?”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said. “I used to be its representative to the War Council, but it hasn’t been telling me so much as it became more involved directly with the war itself, without working through me. I don’t know what it was thinking.”
“But it has worked out for the best,” Patti pointed out, oddly disappointed by their reactions. They could at least have been angry, even if anger wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere. “The Killers have been hurt badly for the first time in centuries. We’re on the verge of understanding their science. We have gravity control now ourselves… and it’s only a matter of time before we crack the remainder of their technology. Didn’t it all work out for the best?”
“We’ll see,” Brent said, finally. He stood up and threw a snappy salute. “I’ll be back soon, promise.”
His image flickered and vanished. “I’d best be going too,” Tabitha said, without bothering with any niceties. “We’ll pick up the question later.”
“Sure,” Patti said. She had the odd feeling that the MassMind had manipulated her, without bothering to explain why. The ‘how’ was obvious. It was a collective of billions of human minds and understanding her mind would have been easy. “If there is a later.”
It seemed impossible, but the mite was intelligent!
The newborn studied the alien creature with genuine fascination. It had taken it only a few moments to construct a series of intelligence tests and it had been astonished by how quickly the mite had solved them. The tests didn’t require rote learning or inherited memory and skills, but genuine thinking… and the mite had solved them all. The newborn Killer had rapidly run out of intelligence tests — or, rather, tests that the mite could understand — and was devoting its considerable intellect to solving a more important question. Was it actually possible to communicate with the mite?
It studied the mite with every sensor it could construct and deploy and concluded that the low-power radio transmissions were intended to serve as a form of communication. It hadn’t realised at first, but it had been blinded by its own preconceptions. A Killer would have used such transmissions to communicate with its internal cells, not an external person, yet the mite should have no need of such organs. It was an ungainly solid creature and its body didn’t seem to require radio to keep itself together. The newborn had wondered if the mite used the massive internal augmentation to keep itself intact in a gravity field, but that didn’t seem to make any sense. A creature born on a rocky world would be used to a gravity field as a matter of course. It constructed a radio transmitter and attempted to open communications.
The task was surprisingly easy. Unknown to the Killer, the Spacers had spent years — assuming that they would be the ones to encounter the Ghosts or any other Hidden Race — preparing for contact with aliens and Rupert had brought the complete package with him when the Killer had kidnapped him. The newborn studied the transmissions it received, calculated their meaning, and tested it. The process was long and slow, but it was simple enough to understand what the mite was trying to tell the newborn.
It was happily engrossed in sharing concepts and trying to build a common language when the alert echoed through the communications network.
The mites were attacking one of the core worlds!
Chapter Forty-Four
Lightning shuddered as it dropped out of Anderson Drive.
“We have arrived, sir,” David announced, unnecessarily. “One Big Dumb Object dead ahead.”
“Show me,” Andrew snapped. They had bare seconds before the Killers reacted to their presence. “Put it on the main display.”
The sight shocked him silent. The sphere was immense, huge beyond imagination; so large it seemed to effortlessly dwarf everything else in the system. His imagination suggested towers and cities on the surface, but the towers would be the size of Earth and the cities would be larger than Jupiter. The tiny icons representing Killer starships seemed microscopic compared to the sphere; the merest shape on the surface of the sphere dwarfed them. It seemed to hold the entire fleet spellbound, daring them to try their worst.
Try me, it seemed to shout to the heavens. You insignificant bugs. Do you think that you can destroy my immensity? Do you think that your puny weapons can inflict even a tiny amount of harm on me?
“Scan the sphere for power emissions that might suggest the location of any defence weapons,” Andrew said. His voice felt hushed in his own ears. The sphere seemed to overwhelm any plans they might have developed, as if the plans no longer mattered, compared to the sheer glory of the sphere. The Killers might have built it, yet even a human could admire the sheer… scope of their achievement, the sheer immensity of what they’d produced. They’d wrapped a shell around a sun, a shell far further from the parent star than Earth had been from Sol, and made it look like nothing. Any defensive weapons on the surface would be so tiny as to be almost unnoticeable. “I want you to coordinate with the other starships in the fleet; try and build up a picture of the exterior of the sphere.”