The blockade of USERs—underspace interference emitters that prevented ships attaining FTL travel—positioned a hundred light years away from this point in every direction, prevented any other ships getting close. It illustrated more than any other precaution how seriously Earth Central considered the threat of Jain technology. But as he left the VR chamber, Thorn spied four figures loping along the corridor away from him, and wondered about Earth Central’s other agendas.
The four figures were humanoid but reptilian: their skins regulated with green or yellow scales and their gait reverse-kneed, like birds. One of the four glanced over its shoulder with a toadish visage, bared many sharp teeth at him then loped on. Dracomen—120 of them aboard this ship, all kitted out in military combat suits and armed with the best in portable weapons the Polity could offer.
‘Is it just a case of putting all the bad eggs in one basket?’ he asked, heading in the same direction as the four.
‘That is certainly a possibility. Perhaps you’d like to elaborate?’ asked Aphran, abruptly folding out of the air beside him.
He eyed her. ‘Well, we have Jack, a ship AI, now partially melded with the recording of someone who was an enemy of the Polity. That’s one bad egg to start with.’
‘I am no longer an enemy of the Polity for I no longer agree with the Separatist cause,’ she replied.
‘Why the conversion?’
‘I have seen and understood too much.’
‘And I am supposed to believe that?’
‘What anyone believes is irrelevant—the facts of my existence, or otherwise, won’t change,’ she said.
‘Those being?’
‘I’m a second generation memcording of a murderess, and the only reason I haven’t been erased is because I’ve been useful, and because my consciousness has become closely entangled with Jack’s. I am incapable of doing anything harmful against the Polity because of that last factor, and the moment those two conditions change I don’t think I’ll survive long.’
‘Okay, I’ll accept that for now. Another bad egg is myself, who has been in contact with Jain technology—just like yourselves. And then there’s the dracomen: the offspring you might say of the sowing of the dragon’s teeth. They’re a product of Dragon and, though they’ve agreed to join the Polity, we don’t fully understand their biology let alone their motivations.’
‘Yes, those are the eggs,’ said Aphran, and abruptly disappeared.
Thorn considered: Aphran had been useful, she also saved Jack when that AI’s ship body—the Jack Ketch— was destroyed. Quite probably she did no longer espouse the Separatist cause. However, Polity justice was harsh and unforgiving. As a Separatist she had taken lives, and nothing she had done since could change that.