This caused panic in the Consortium systems. Pythia had made it quickly into orbit, its unparalleled processing power allowing it to hack even the most secure military systems if they were ’faced. If they weren’t ’faced then they could still be hacked, assuming a self-replicating mote of dust could get close enough to them.
The Consortium navy blockaded the bridge points. The navy sent entire battle groups after ships containing Pythia, and hired veritable fleets of bounty ships to do the same. Pythia was tracked down and destroyed, all except for the original planet. There was a battle between Pythian-held orbital weapon systems, the Consortium navy and at least one member of the Consortium Elite at the time. Pythia was eventually eradicated from orbit.
Nobody was quite sure what to do about the planet. Destroying it was a risky proposition because nobody could guarantee that wouldn’t just spread the nanites across system space. Blockading was another possibility, but people would always try and find a way back for whatever crazy reason they thought they had. Tailored seek-and-destroy nano-swarm bombing was the only real option, but that had not worked well the first time.
Then Pythia surprised the Consortium by offering to negotiate. Pythia felt it was no different to the uplifted races. Its expansion was viral in nature, it needed to consume matter to procreate, and like all living things it wished to do so. Its attempt at expansion was just an attempt to secure such material.
Eventually a deal was brokered whereby Pythia was given free access to Known Space’s comms networks. Its signal, in the form of intelligent search programs, was carried from beacon to beacon throughout Red Space. Pythia agreed not to attempt to control systems and allowed that to be written into sophisticated comms filters that any communication from the surface had to go through. All the search programs did was try to find every last bit of information. Ever. Then bring it back to Pythia. Pythia would then sift through the information, data mining on an enormous scale, piecing together tiny disparate bits of information to make astonishingly accurate predictions. It did this without ever violating secure systems, though some of the more sophisticated AI search routines were not beyond bribing people for information.
Meanwhile, Pythia ate. It ate every building and machine on the planet, everything made by uplifted hand. It made more and more of itself. Its processing power increased. Then it started eating the surface of the planet, stripping it away.
The information supplicants paid in matter. Either the debt relief they paid went into buying more matter or they just sacrificed the biggest item they could for what they wanted to know. Each sacrifice made Pythia more capable.
The clouds in Pythia’s atmosphere were thick swarms of nanites. Breaching the atmosphere was a death sentence. The swarms would consume anything before it got close to what was left of the surface. There was some concern as to what would happen when the swarm consumed enough of the planet to destroy the magnetosphere.
Vic was looking subjectively up at the whorls of cloud in the atmosphere beneath him. Much of it looked violent. Ionisation made lightning play across the data storms that composed the think tanks for the more difficult questions that had been asked.
‘Look,’ Scab said, and part of the Basilisk’s transparent hull magnified. Vic watched as explosive bolts on orbital tethers released the carcass of a stripped parasite ship from a sacrificial orbital ship cradle. The massive ship with its insectile legs was designed to latch on to an asteroid and process the matter into carbon, which then filled the ship’s inflatable cargo bladders.
Automated tug engines flared in the night, pushing the craft towards the planet at a perilously steep entry angle. Once manoeuvred into the correct trajectory, the engines separated and started their return to the orbital cradle. Scab slowed the Basilisk to watch the ponderous ballet of the parasite ship’s last voyage. Ever a keen witness of destruction, Vic thought. As it hit the atmosphere the flare lit up one whole side of the planet’s sky. There’s an element of show to this, Vic decided. Looking around, he realised that some of the more luxurious habitats had gently tipped themselves, manoeuvring engines glowing as they did so, to allow better views for their wealthy patrons.
The ship died in fire, becoming a rain of flaming debris. The clouds swarmed across that debris, consuming it. From Vic’s perspective the clouds seemed to be lit with their own internal fire across to the planetary horizon.
‘That was our sacrifice,’ Scab told him. Vic was no longer surprised by how ludicrous their sponsorship was.
‘How long?’ Vic asked.
To an extent, time was meaningless. Everyone had their own standards depending on their home planet, and most people tailored their physiology to the planet’s day/night cycle, assuming it had one, regardless of their species’ original home. In space, people either used Consortium or Monarchist standard time.
Consortium standard time was based on a twenty-six-hour standard cycle that was apparently human basic from before the Loss. Most felines felt it was unreasonable to be expected to stay awake for two thirds of such a long period of time.
Vic had felt the familiar sense of entrapment when he heard the solid metal-on-metal sound of the Basilisk being grabbed by the high-security habitat’s docking arm. Then they had walked through anonymous corridors that could have belonged to any cleanish midrange hotel anywhere in Known Space. His own room was small but blessedly designed for ’sects. More to the point, he could pretend he had privacy from Scab – who knew, maybe he actually did. Though that thought made him itch in the back of his skull.
They had been extensively checked for weapons. Most of their day-to-day stuff was fine. Illegal S-tech was completely out, so Scab left his energy javelin and the Scorpion on the ship. Both of them had had to divest themselves of some of their nastier virals and modify their nano-screens to be less abrasive. Their P-sats were fine, but they had to downgrade some of their systems a little. Scab had had to drain some of his more advanced liquid software out of his skull as well.
All this had been just over six standard cycles ago. The room that had initially been a welcome change from the Basilisk was now another small prison. Vic had exhausted most of the room’s entertainment suite’s options. After all, ’sect-on-human porn immersion was a niche market.
Vic was lying on the transforming piece of furniture that was the only place to sit, lie or sleep in the room, staring at the ceiling through his multi-faceted eyes. He had experienced reading a text file in a colonial immersion and had tracked down and tried reading one for entertainment. It had been exhausting. He couldn’t get his head round having to create the images with his own mind. Now he was just wondering if it was possible to die from boredom and self-abuse.