Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

‘They want us to stop searching for a way to break their bridge monopoly.’

‘Which I’m comfortable with.’

‘See, I just didn’t want to have the same conversation again.’

‘Well, I’ll just do as I’m told then.’ Despite the angry clattering of his mandibles, Vic was sure he nailed the intonation of human sarcasm.

‘Good,’ Scab said. Vic was a little annoyed that Scab appeared to have missed it.

Scab put a hat and sunglasses on. In the centre of the lounge a holographic picture of an augmented, heavyset feline male appeared. Vic looked over the feline. He wore utilitarian clothes that looked heavy enough to have significant built-in armour and an energy dissipation weave. The weapons he wore on display were similarly functional – no show, just utility.

‘That Jide?’ Vic asked, and then increased the magnification of the image, paying attention to the striping on the feline’s fur. ‘I didn’t realise he was a Rakshasa.’

Scab nodded. The Rakshasa were an aristocratic warrior elite found on some of the more hidebound feline planets. As individual combatants they were very dangerous because of their warrior philosophy. As soldiers they were difficult to lead.

More detailed holographic images were appearing in the air. Rotating images showed. A human half-and-half whose slender androgynous beauty even Vic was able to admire. S/he was their kick-murder specialist, their silent killer.

Two humans, over-muscled man-plusses. They were either genuine twins, genetically altered to become twins or just cut to look the same. Obvious conflict-resolution world veterans, both of them sported significant levels of hard-tech augment. The twins were all scar tissue, metal and hardened composite. Either one of them could give me a run for my money if they know what they are doing , Vic thought.

The fifth and final member of the team was also significantly hard-tech augmented, though with some interesting soft-tech enhancements as well. The lizard was obviously a berserker. Their close-in specialist. Once berserk, he would be little more than an unpredictable scaled weapon.

‘Seeder’s sake, that’s a heavy crew,’ Vic said, wishing he could whistle through his mandibles. The ’sect ’faced to local comms and found that Jide’s crew weren’t much below Vic and Scab in the bounty-killer ratings. They specialised in taking down heavy high-profile targets. ‘Wonder who they’re here for?’ But Vic already had a sinking feeling. Scab turned to look at his partner. Scab’s milky eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his sunglasses. Vic looked at the holography and then back at Scab. He thought he detected the ghost of a smile on the human’s face. ‘They could actually do it!’

‘Then I’ll be dead and you’ll be free,’ Scab said and turned back to stare at the transparent ceiling. All around was the light and metal of busy high orbit. With a thought Scab rolled the Basilisk until their subjective up was looking down at the cloudy planet.

Vic didn’t need to download any information on Pythia; everyone knew the story. It hadn’t been called Pythia originally. It had been one of the first planets to be colonised by lost humanity. Overcrowded, its environment and resources were exhausted after centuries of habitation. Unrestricted nanite use led to overwhelming nano-pollution which first became a health risk and then a global pandemic. The solution was more nanites, a tailored viral nano-swarm designed to eat all the others and then destroy itself. However, the design team of the consumption swarm had been infiltrated by a nanite rights terrorist organisation. Instead of consuming the planet-wide nano-epidemic, it became its operating system and united it as one god-like swarm. The first thing the Pythia virus did was become a wind that blew across the planet, eating layer after layer of the planet’s inhabitants’ flesh. Flaying them down to picked-clean polished bone and then eating the bone as well. Pythia simultaneously became the planet’s only sentient inhabitant and a civilisation in its own right made up of uncountable millions of tiny individuals.

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.