The sun was shrouded in the cloud generated by the titanic destruction of the Cassius gas giant, though that fug occasionally revealed drifting structures, glittering scaffolds of pseudomatter, immense space stations and swarms of vessels—all evidence of the massive million-year construction project taking place here. The ship surfaced from U-space one astronomical unit out, and travelling at three quarters the speed of light, it used ramscoop to decelerate: opening out orange wings radiating from the abundant hydrogen being dragged in around it, soon followed by the sun-bright ignition of a fusion drive. This vessel bore none of the sleek lines of other Polity ships, seeming more like some ancient vehicle’s engine block, greatly enlarged and transported out into space. It was in fact mostly engine: a leviathan tugboat for hauling moon-sized masses. The arrival of such a ship here at the Cassius project being a common occurrence, it was merely noted by the humans, haimans and AIs directly concerned with it, and slotted into the vast calculation of construction as a nail might be slotted into a similar calculation for a house. Just a few noted, and dismissed, the slight discrepancy between ship and U-space field. Fewer still observed the other object that came through with it and rapidly veered away from its course: it was too small, too inconsequential seeming in a project of this scale.

This second object was thirty feet long, curved like the head of a spoon, in colour silver-green fading to black at the edges, and bore patterns like umber veins in its surface. It clawed at the very fabric of space to decelerate in a way Polity physicists and AIs were only just beginning to understand, and implement. As it slowed, its chameleonware initiated and made it invisible throughout most of the radiated spectrum. Its insides were packed like the guts of some nematode—though with organs seemingly silver-plated when not of the same grey-green metal as the hull. Sunk inside this, and connected to it, the Legate scanned all signals, comprehended the underlying U-scape, viewed information just as it viewed the growing scene before it, angrily.

Firstly, she had obviously not yet made any physical contact with the Jain node. That was annoying but acceptable, and factored into the calculation. But thereafter she had not reacted as predicted by all the psyche tests and cerebral assessments. She was extremely intelligent for a buffered amalgam of human and AI, but still a loner, a power seeker, and asocial. Feeling trapped and constrained by the Polity she should have grasped at all the Jain node implied, for she had known nothing of its parasitic/destructive tendency. She had delayed and delayed until forewarned. But even that should not be unconscionable.