Cybergeddon (novelisation)

Cybergeddon was the third instalment in the Novelisations in Time & Space series. It was written by Lupan Evezan, adapted from Paul Ebbs' script for the 2000 Cyberon audio adventure of the same name.

Unlike the original version, this story contained the licensed usage of several preestablished DWU concepts, including Aurichall (introduced in the P.R.O.B.E. story The Blue Scream of Death) and the warship Corodin (introduced in Flight of the Cyberons).

Publisher's summary
Corrigan is a throwback; a misfit; a starship captain with the heart of a seafaring mariner. His skills as an engineer and navigator are unparalleled. He's just not terribly good at being human. Perhaps that's why he plies his trade between the rim-worlds and the Vega Station with only a Clockwork Robot for company. But when his estranged daughter goes missing on the wreck of a starliner, Corrigan is faced with a stark choice - leave her to die, or attempt a rescue that would surely destroy his relationship with her for ever.

The Cyberons however, care little for Corrigan's choices - with two million new subjects to convert and an unlimited supply of power, they are poised to attack the Vega Station. It will be the first staging post in a decisive war against humanity.

Prologue
In the midst of the Cyberon War, Commander Myna Nevaryn of the warship Cydonia watches from the bridge of her ship as her forces take on a fleet of Cyberon ships in battle. They are trying to liberate the planet Menos, currently surrounded by a Cyberon fleet, and take out the flag-ship of the Cyberleader, and are preparing the ambush them, with the Cydonia cloaking a number of other ships including the the Corodin, the Lea, the Lop Washer and the Gulliver.

The signal to launch the surprise attack is given, and Myna deactivates the cloaking shield. However, the plan goes wrong almost immediately, with the Gulliver being taken down even though the strategy assumed that it was at low risk. In her final moments before the Cydonia is disintegrated in the fire of the Cyberon ships' plasma guns, Nevaryin is terrified on behalf of the entire Alliance, realising that the Cyberon hive intelligence has learned to think creatively, and is now able to match human plans tit-for-tat.

Indeed, within the Cybernet, a new intelligent system has just been installed, branching outwards from two artificial intelligences "orbiting" each other and trading points of views for optimal results. One is more attuned to logic and the other more attuned to creativity. They briefly experience a burst of cosmic awareness before snapping back to the perspective of their own network and getting to work.

Chapter One
Somewhere, somewhen, a man prepares to do something terrible to stave off his grief relating to someone called Emily, wondering if she would forgive him for what he is about to do.

Elsewhere, the Red Star passenger liner SS Titania is cruising through hyperspace. An Emily is making light conversation with the of the bar near the ship's indoor pool, Duncan. They are getting along well, a feeling which only improves after she watches Duncan get chewed out by the ship's stuffy purser for being out of uniform on the job.

The ship lurches as it leaves hyperspace, soon to dock at one of its stops, Vega Station, which Emily states is the last place she'd want to stop, as she has some "old ghosts" there. Their conversation is broken up for good when a series of tremors, followed by a loud explosion, shake the entire ship violently. Soon, a mechanical voice declares through all speakers onboard the Titania that the ship is now under "Cyber-control", causing mass panic.

Chapter Two
On Vega Station itself, the Red Star Line's Vega Station information centre is updating people who were expecting relatives flying on the Titania on the situation. At the moment, however, the desk is taken up by a wild-eyed old man called Captain Corrigan who loudly insists that his daughter Emily was onboard the Titania, even though she does not appear on any of the paperwork to which the office has access. Corrigan finally gives up on getting what he wants from the office and walks off to sulk with his companion, the clockwork android Christian, who quickly needs rewinding. Against Christian's advice, Corrigan explains that he intends to fly to the "wrecked" Titania himself to look for Emily, even though the warp accident to which the authorities have chalked up the ship's wreckage would likely have destroyed all organic life aboard. Accordingly, the Captain orders Christian to finish the repairs on their own, smaller ship, the Jerusalem, as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Duncan regains consciousness in cramped metal surroundings and briefly wonders if he is a prisoner before remembering how, after the invaders rounded up the humans and transported them to metallic cells, Emily tore her way into a ventilation shaft and dragged him up with her. They keep quiet as they hear the robotic inv walking by outside, not for the first time — producing rather frightening sounds.

Elsewhere, a Cyberon reports to the leader that "the purge of unsuitable life-forms has been completed", leaving 75% of the original slate of captured "Tellurians" alive. The Cyberon leader orders the launch of "Phase One" of their plan.

Christian brings up the fact that the prices of Kabasta Systems' Mark Nine avatars have dropped, asking Corrigan if he'd consider upgrading him into this more advanced form of android body. However, Corrigan dismisses this topic to focus on the search as they step into the ruined Titania. They search the leisure deck and then the bridge, finding great damage but — eerily — no humans at all, living or otherwise.

Meanwhile, Emily and Christian have ventured out of the ventilation shaft. They find numerous dead or dying prisoners who've been wounded and discarded by the invaders, and halt when they recognise the purser. They stay with him in his final moments, and he finds the strength to share that he recognised his killers as Cyberons.

Captain Corrigan and Christian are back on board the Jerusalem, with their instruments detecting that the Vega Station space navy appears to be converging towards the Titania, when a victorious Corrigan announces that he has successfully tracked Emily, who is now in the Corvel-Runista system, and orders Christian to set a course for the same. An argument ensues when Corrigan refuses to explain to Christian how he can possibly be remotely tracking Emily's location. The argument takes a turn with Corrigan giving voice to a number of his most antiquated prejudices against machine intelligences, offending Christian. It is interrupted when they reach her current exact location — Asteroid GX-923 — and prepare to make a landing there.

Chapter Three
Emily and Duncan uneasily make their way through the ship, with the bodies of two of the dead strapped to their backs to act as shield. They come face to face with a platoon of three Cyberons who begin to shoot at them, but manage to outrun them and take refuge in an out-of-the-way computer room. They let go of their grisly shields before heading further into the labyrinth of corridors, confident they've lost their pursuers. Duncan notices that Emily has sustained a burn on her right forearm, though she assures him that she can hardly feel it.

Meanwhile, Captain Corrigan and Christian step out onto the surface of Asteroid GX-923. They find a cave, whose depths lead down into a clearly constructed tunnel. Their entry is detected by the Cyberons, with a pair being ordered to track down and capture the intruders. As they wander further in, they notice the ballast they leadened their space-suits with in order to deal with the asteroid's low gravity are feeling heavier and heavier, making them realise that the underground complex they've entered has its own neutron-star material-based gravity generator. Before long, and despite having readied their weapons, the Cyberon guards get the drop on them and render them unconscious.

Chapter Four
After making their ways through the winding passageways, Duncan and Emily find themselves in an enormous room whose silvery walls are lined with "row after row" of rectangular boxes — millions of them.

Looking closer, they find that they are frozen caskets, each containing a frozen humanoid bodies — though not all of them are human, with the first being a creature with a mess of tentacles on its face. Another body is similar human-like but not human — "noseless, with eyes that were too large and skin that was too pink". The third body is definitely human.

Even though it does not look like any cryo-preservation methods in common use, they are forced to conclude that the Cyberons must be keeping them alive somehow, for future conversation. Not wanting to dwell on the thought that the victims may have been conscious in that icy stasis for who knows how long, they move on, making their way through the length of the enormous chamber.

Chapter Five
As he and Christian are led through the corridors of the base by the Cyberwarriors, Corrigan asks their captors to identify themselves. After they reveal themselves as Cyberon, the baffled Corrigan asks to know how they survived the Cyberon War, which was supposed to have ended nine hundred years prior. The Cyberon explains that, with the War not going their way, the reason the remaining Cyberon forces all disappeared one day was that they'd all retreated to this very asteroid, waiting for "mission parameters" to become favourable again.

Corrigan and Christian are separated, with Christian taken to another room while Corrigan waits outside with his captor. He is told that the Cyberons are attempting to extract his positronic brain from his crude clockwork body; it is of interest to them due to appearing to be an extension of Cyberon technology (something which is news to Corrigan). However, he convinces them to halt the operation by revealing that, to prevent Christian leaving him before his contract was elapsed, he wired the android's clockwork body to damage the brain if an attempt was made to disconnect the brain from the body without Corrigan's say-so. The Cyberons therefore order Corrigan to perform the operation himself.

Chapter Six
Still trudging through the chamber of frozen caskets, Duncan and Emily suddenly find that the caskets are beginning to pick themselves up of their own accord, zooming in line down the length of the chamber towards an unknown target; soon they are forced to duck out of the way lest the speeding, automated process bludgeon them to death.

Meanwhile, the operation on Christian has just begun, and Corrigan is unsettled when he finds that the Cyberleader himself is observing it. While he's beginning his work, he talks with Christian, both of them agreeing that they need to get word to Vega Station. Soon, he finds that the Cyberon tools are unsuitable for unscrewing Christian's innards, and asks to go back to the Jerusalem so he can get his own. The Cyberleader agrees to this, sending a Cyberon with him to keep an eye on him.

Duncan and Emily, having taken refuge, and gotten some rest, in a small alcove, come to the same conclusion as Corrigan on the necessary course of action, and resolve to go back the way they came, at the risk of facing the Cyberons again, in an effort to get to some working comms equipment.

Chapter Seven
While Corrigan is being led back to the Jerusalem, Duncan and Emily reach the doorway through which they entered the chamber. They notice that the caskets, now dense as a school of fish, are all flying towards a different opening. They realise this is the "mouth" of the central Conversion Engine, and this place is in fact the Cyberons' "factory floor".

A little later, in the operation room, Christian overhears a Cyberon underling reporting to the Cyberleader that there was an explosion on the surface of Asteroid GX-923, and the Jerusalem has taken off. They realise they've been tricked — and Christian further explains that while he was "operating" on him, Corrigan actually transferred the detonator for a further stash of explosives to Christian, enabling him to cow the Cyberons into uncuffing him and letting him leave the room unharmed. However, immediately after he has gone, the Cyberleader orders him hunted down and the Jerusalem destroyed.

Chapter Eight
Having reached the edge of the Cyberon facility, out of the way of any immediate patrols, Christian activates his communicator and gets in touch with Corrigan, who explains that he was not actually onboard the Jerusalem when it launched, and that this is a fortunate thing, as, as he predicted, the Cyberons have now destroyed it. However, what he was counting on was the ship's automated black-box protocol which will, by now, have sent an automated distress signal with precise coordinates to Vega Station — although the Cyberons detect the transmission and immediately go to battle stations in preparation for conflict with Vega.

On Vega itself, the Caradan Lieutenant Jyaxx Nevaryn, the top-ranking individual in the largely ceremonial Vega navy except for the Admiral (an artificial intelligence), is having light office banter with her human assistant Lonnie about excessive paperwork when they receive a communication from the Admiral warning them about the distress signal they've just received from the Jerusalem and what it means. Meanwhile, Corrigan is continuing to make his ways through the corridors of the Cyberon base. He comes face to face with a Cyberwarrior, but, for an as-yet-undisclosed reason, it leaves him alone.

Chapter Nine
Still standing near to the entrance of the Conversion Engine room, Duncan and Emily are debating how to proceed when they hear footsteps coming by. Duncan insists on hiding, ineffectually, but Emily recognised that the footsteps weren't human. They turn out to belong to Christian, who instantly recognises Emily as his Captain's daughter, Emily Corrigan, from all the photographs he's shown him.

She is outraged when Christian mentions that Captain Corrigan has somehow been tracking her, and demands that Christian scan her to try and figure out where in her body the tracking device is embedded, but before they can do so, they are startled by what appears at first to be a Cyberon — but is actually Corrigan himself, wearing a hollowed-out Cyberon as a disguise. A family argument erupts, which Duncan tries to break up to get everyone to hurry back to "the ship" — only to be told that there is no escape, as the ship Corrigan and Christian arrived on has been destroyed, and also that war between the Cyberons and Vega is imminent.

Chapter Ten
Cyber-production is in full swing, as illustrated by the experiences of Lana, one of the millions of people who were kept in conscious, frozen stasis for all these centuries and are now being funnelled into the Conversion Engine and transformed into new Cyberwarriors.

Meanwhile, in one of the empty Cyberon laboratories, Corrigan is busy welding a Cyber-Power Unit into Christian to replace his clockwork winding system, as he'd left the winding key aboard the Jerusalem. Feeling unusually energised, almost inebriated, Christian is just testing his newfound strength when they feel the ground vibrating beneath their feet and realise that the entire asteroid is actually a ship, now flying towards Vega Station. However, before thye take any other action, Emily demands to be told how Corrigan has been tracking her. Christian, having worked it out, proposes to tell her himself, which Corrigan is desperate enough to stop him from doing that he briefly threatens Christian at gunpoint — but ultimately, he relents and Christian blurts out the truth. Emily is not a human being: she is herself a positronic mind in a Mark Nine avatar.

Chapter Eleven
Cyberon warships have been gathering in sight of Vega Station, but most of the population, such as the patrons of a restaurant with a view of outer space around the station, have either not recognised them as cyber-ships, or assumed them to be reproductions for an antiques show. However, mass panic ensues when the Cyberleader, with the help of a Cybertechnician, broadcasts an ultimatum to Vega across all communications channels, announcing that the Cyberons have prevented any other communication between Vega and the rest of the cosmos, and will leave them one hour to decide between destruction or submission to the Cyberons. In central command, an increasingly terrified Jyaxx Nevaryn, to whom leadership falls with the Admiral being stuck, tries to order the space navy back to Vega to fight off the invaders head-on — only to be told that this option is blocked to them because the bulk of the navy forces have yet to return from their expedition to the wreck of the Titania.

Back on the Cyberon asteroid, Christian and Corrigan explain to "Emily" that she was the product of an underground, illegal process called fleshing: implanting a full human memory into a positronic brain in a lifelike android, with subroutines designed to prevent the target from realising they aren't made of flesh and blood, from making them sneeze or get flu-like symptoms, to an artificially-induced aversion to medical examination or sexual relationships, to simply failing to notice when things about their bodies don't add up, such as injuries not hurting as much as they should. Emily's mind was adapted from a damaged mindscan of the original Emily Corrigan, Corrigan's daughter, who died in a fire years back with her mother — although Corrigan erased the mother in question, and the fire itself, from the memory bank so the "reborn" Emily wouldn't ever find out the truth. An outraged Emily also realises that this was why Corrigan bought Christian after she ran away — he was planning to flesh him into a second copy of Emily, before thinking better of it and simply keeping him on as part of the ship's crew.

Before the traumatic conversation can be carried any further, the four are forced to flee as an actual group of Cyberons are heard coming their way.

Chapter Twelve
A space battle begins as Vega Station sends out its three reserve emergency warships out to fight the Cyberon vessels. Although heavily armed, Jyaxx cannot help but think that they look quite small next to the Cyberon fleet.

Meanwhile, Emily is struggling to cope with what she has learned, even as it brings into relief the strange feeling of malaise she has been dealing with for years. Though unsure of where she stands on whether the person she is right now is the same person as the human Emily Corrigan, the same person as the previous sentient consciousness of this positronic brain whose memories Corrigan wiped to make room for his daughter's, or a new entity entirely, she does wish she could download herself out of the Emily-shaped Mark Nine avatar, if only for a little while.

There is little time for such luxuries, however, as the group scramble to hide from the Cyberon patrol. As they run, they catch a glimpse of the three Vega ships on a screen, and get the small relief to know that the distress signal did get through. It is short-lived, however, as the Cyberons' plasma cannons make short work of the thee ships. Seeing this, Jyaxx inwardly concludes that Vega is doomed, but decides not to surrender, and to keep acting like she has a plan, hoping to prevent the population and her team's last moments being wasted on despair and panic. She orders the station's own short-range laser readied as they brace for the Cyberons' direct approach.

Emily, Duncan, Corrigan and Christian realise that a sabotage effort from within the Cyberon base, which they are uniquely poised to perform, is Vega's only hope of salvation. Christian announces that he has an idea: with both his and Emily's positronic brain designs having been based on salvaged Cyberon technology (cryptically adding "some of us more closely than others"), fulfilling Emily's wish to be transferred out of the Mark Nine avatar may in fact be the path to victory.

Chapter Thirteen
The Cyberleader contacts Vega Station again, demanding an answer to his earlier ultimatum.

Meanwhile, Christian explains to Corrigan and Duncan that he and Emily will need at least twenty minutes to enter the Cybernet and comprehensively explore it. If at all possible, the two humans' task is to create disturbances and mayhem in the physical world to buy them that much time.

With the deadline almost upon Vega, the Cyberleader is telling its underlings in the Cyberon command chamber to arm the lasers, when Corrigan and Duncan provide the required distraction by running chaotically into the command chamber, shouting gibberish and flailing their arms wildly. They then split up, with Corrigan fleeing out of the command centre, chased by the Cyberons — buying Duncan a few precious moments to shoot indiscriminately at whatever bits of the central control panel look important and complicated. He is soon shot, and Corrigan is captured, but they've done their work.

Chapter Fourteen
Emily and Christian finish the procedure and upload their consciousnesses to the Cybernet, where Emily is exultant at no longer being contained by Emily Corrigan's form, enjoying the abilities that come with being an entity of pure data floating in a projection of a computer network, and freeing herself of the last remains of the fleshing's constraints on her consciousness. However, Christian quickly gets her to calm down and focus on the task at hand, warning her that there must be anti-virus protocols who could detect her if she gets too rowdy. Analysing the source code, they notice a lot of data streams converging in a particular "direction" and follow it, as it seems to be where the central control node is.

The "system breach" and "virus warfare" is detected on the outside by one of the Cyberon Cybertechnicians. The injured Captain Corrigan overhears its report ot the Cyberleader, and, before he loses consciousness, he mocks the Cyberleader, telling it that the Cyberons have already lost.

Within the Cybernet, Emily and Christian find the point of entry of the "central control" section of the net, with Christian talking Emily through the process of letting go of her mental self-image as a humanoid so that she can squeeze through the projection of this point as a small physical portal. While, outside, the injured Duncan is converted into a Cyberon under the watchful eyes of the Cyberleader, Emily and Christian find themselves attacked by a datavore, an anti-virus program which swims through the virtual-reality projection of the data-streams and software like a shark through water.

Meanwhile, it's Corrigan's turn to undergo conversion. Remaining defiant, he tries to fight the process, and, despite the pain, even finds the strength to debate the Cyberleader about the ultimate pointlessness of the Cyberons' endless conquest.

In the Cybernet, Emily try to outrun the datavore through multiple environments, but it keeps following them and anticipating their swerves, appearing to be much more intelligent than an anti-virus would normally need to be. Eventually, Christian gets a flash of inspiration and speeds Emily's progress through the system along while unfastening himself from her, ceasing to flee from the datavore. Emily looks in horror from a distance as the datavore seems to devour Christian whole — though Christian curiously didn't appear worried.

Chapter Fifteen
With the final deadline having arrived, the Cyberleader orders the destruction of Vega Station to commence. Meanwhile, the replacement of Corrigan's internal organs with mechanical parts is finished, and he is injected with Cyberon fluid.

Meanwhile, the datavore nearly catches up to the still shocked Emily when it suddenly halts in its movements and begins contorting and thrashing in distress — before finally exploding to reveal a mostly-intact Christian emerging from its virtual innards. He explains that before begin eaten, he "squeezed fifty percent of [his] data into an extrusion and programmed an anti-datavore datavore into it", an "old army trick" which resulted in the datavore being erased from the inside out. However, the fifty percent of data he had to sacrifice mean he can no longer remember the first ten years of his life, although he seems to take this lightly.

While Corrigan's conversion seems to be finalising, Christian and Emily finally reach the central node, the sight of which Emily finds sickening with the way it instantly deletes all "unwanted" information as a routine part of its filtering system. As they get to work, the effects of their efforts begin to be felt topside, with the conversion progress on Corrigan beginning to reverse and all Cyberon systems beginning to seize up and spit garbled nonsense. Even the Cyberleader itself, unable to quarantine itself from the hacked net in time, finds itself reciting the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty before spontaneously catching fire as a critical short-circuit is remotely sparked within his system. The straps keeping Corrigna restrained fail along with everything else, and Corrigan is released, laughing victoriously at the roomful of dead Cyberons. Across the entire base, Cyberons old and new are burned to a crisp inside their metal casings as their circuits malfunction and overheat. The final end of the Cyberon species has come.

Within the Cybernet, however, Christian and Emily have barely celebrated their victory when they see a swarm of datavores, released by the Cyberleader as its final act before he blew up, converging on the control node. Furthermore, as they begin to reshape themselves to meld into the software of the environment, Christian realises the datavores are so unexpectedly "over-designed" because they're capable of functioning as backup systems — and as their priority, they're bringing the weapons systems back online to complete the Cyberleader's earlier order to disintegrate Vega.

Through his newly-implanted neural link to the Cybernet, Christian manages to get in contact with Corrigan, who confirms that the Cyberons are destroyed, but breaks the news to him about Vega still being about to be destroyed. Although Corrigan is dying — due to the incompatibility of a converted Cyberon body and an unconverted brain if nothing else — Emily and Christian come to the conclusion that they need him to use the manual override on the control console. Corrigan does his best, but his mind is going, devolving into an incoherent stream of consciousness as he reflects on his life and sins. With Christian's expertise still needed inside the Cybernet to keep the datavores at bay, it falls to Emily, despite her obvious reluctance about such a plan, to temporarily download herself into the cyber-converted Corrigan's body to steer him towards the control.

Chapter Sixteen
Emily downloads herself into Corrigan's body, and struggles, through the pain she now feels with him, to keep her fragmented mind and his free from the influence of the Cyberon drug still in his system, and focused on the almost impossible task of walking the ruined body across to the control panel and pressing the right controls.

Elsewhere on the base, the cyber-converted Duncan is hanging on, not without difficulty, to his own will and resisting the system failures that are almost overloading his suit. Though he knows he's too damaged to live long, he intends to find Emily and make sure she's okay before he lets himself go.

Emily, Corrigan and Christian are unable to find an override switch on the Cyberon control panel, but figure out an effective brute-force alternative: just in the nick of time, and as the last of Corrigan's living mind fades into darkness, they manage to direct the ship to tip starkly upwards, causing the deadly laser beam to shoot harmlessly above the Vega Station without harming it.

However, with the unmanned, asteroid-sized Cyberon ship now threatening to be drawn in by the Station's gravity and collide with it, Jyaxx, still overjoyed at the inexplicable miracle that prevented Vega's destruction, orders it destroyed via the short-range laser — and Christian, deducing that the navy authorities on Vega would have done so, tells Emily they need to get out quickly. After they return to their robot bodies, their attempt to commandeer an escape shuttle is initially blocked by an automated defence program. To their shock, however, a new voice to replace the automated computerised message: Duncan, alive and free of Cyberon influence, who explains that he managed to project his mind out of his failing cyber-converted body and into the Cybernet. From the inside, he is able to override the security protocols and switch on the shuttle before he gently fades away alongside the Cybernet itself.

Epilogue
Some time after making their escape, Emily and Christian meet up in a verdant envirochamber where a memorial to Corrigan — who was posthumously made a Honourary Admiral for his noble sacrifice against the Cyberons — has been erected, having attended the funeral service. In addition to being granted full citizenship of Vega Station, she learns that Christian also received a brand-new Mark Nine avatar from the Vega navy in exchange for his heroics. So has Emily — but today, she is wearing her old, Emily Corrigan-shaped sleeve. She explains that she is yet unsure of what she will do with this body in the long run, but felt she owed it to Corrigan to at least wear it for this particular occasion, as the closest thing to his real daughter attending, which is what he would have wanted above all else. Christian gives her Corrigan's journal, the reading of which he hopes might give her some closure. She reluctantly accepts the gift, agreeing to read it within a couple of days. The two then exit the envirochamber, with Christian intent on continuing to show her the ropes of being a positronic mind, beginning with a trip around Vega Station's data-space.

Elsewhere, what remains of the crude intelligence of the Cybernet is mulling over its fate, now that its virtual environment has entirely collapsed and its "false master" has dissipated. It notes that it could only effect the resurrection of the Cyberons if it were reunited with the two artificial intelligences that were originally at its very heart, its twin creators — which will now never happen, as they, being none other than the original selves of the positronic minds now calling themselves Christian and Emily, have now both forgotten their original purpose, and are living their own lives. Even though this leaves it forever useless, the Cybernet is surprised to find itself happy at the thought that its creators are finally free and living their own lives.

The contents of the last entry Corrigan ever wrote in his journal are revealed, showing that, eaten away with remorse, he intended to tell Emily the truth in the end.

Characters

 * Emily
 * Christian
 * Myna Nevaryn
 * Corrigan
 * Duncan
 * Purser
 * Board manager
 * Cyberleader
 * Jyaxx Nevaryn
 * Lonnie
 * "Eccentric-looking woman"

Worldbuilding

 * The war between the Earth Alliance and the Cyberons has been going on for "decades".
 * Duncan mentions how his mother advised him to go into the computer business.
 * Christian signed onto the Jerusalem under the provision that when able, Corrigan would transfer his positronic brain into a new Mark Nine avatar, following the loss of his previous body. In the meantime he has been stored in an antiquated clockwork body.
 * Corrigan states that "there is not one lever, one cog, one movement" in Christian's current body which would have "looked out of place to Stephenson, Brunel, or Henderson".
 * In the "centuries" since the Cyberon War, the Cyberons have become "bogeymen" in children's tales, similar to the Big Bad Wolf.
 * When Corrigan is distracted at the wheel of the Jerusalem, he nearly crashes it into a Perceptizone broadcasting satellite.
 * The Sentiency Act of 2976 granted equal status with humans to "all Level 15 positronic minds".
 * Christian recalls that Asteroid GX-923 was surveyed in the year 3245, is made up of "mainly iron and silicates", and has a mass of about thirty billion tonnes.
 * Holomovies are a common form of entertainment in Duncan and Emily's era.
 * Corrigan placed three charges of distronic explosives in the cranium of Christian's clockwork body.
 * Corrigan recalls how his father used to tell him old horror stories about the Cyberons over "a game of cards".
 * Vega Station has "beautiful" envirochambers mimicking natural outdoors environments.
 * Caradans are said to resemble a cross between a horseshoe crab and an armadillo.
 * Vega Station is described as "the largest residential and commercial station this side of Stellion's Whorl".
 * Cyberon ranks include Cyberwarriors, Cybertechnicians and Cyberleaders.
 * Emily's fleshing was performed by the Bhor'Vhali of Gand City, who Christian says are "brilliant programmers" with "no social conscience to speak of".
 * "A few years back", Emily suspected her dysmorphia and spiritual malaise about her existence (actually an effect of the fleshing process) might have meant she was trans. She used a holosimulator to test out the feeling of living as other genders, but they did not nothing to alleviate the malaise, and she dismissed the theory, annoyed that "her feelings couldn’t have the decency to be the result of something normal".
 * Lonnie has a wife and a six-armed pet whose name Jyaxx can never remember. She returns to her off-station homeworld on vacation.
 * Corrigan was born in 3847.

Continuity

 * Myna Nevaryin is aware that the "true" Cyberon is "the parasitic hellspawn of that awful volcanic planet Aurichall". (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)
 * The Corodin is one of the ships participating in the attack on the Cyberon flagship. (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons)
 * When they first awakened, Christian and Emily "could see time, and they could see the delicate fibres of which it was composed. They could see history, an intricate, orderly, spiraling web anchored to the foundations of the universe". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
 * The Cyberwarrior recalls to Corrigan that during the original Cyber-War, some Cyberon vessels were lost to "space-time irregularities". Indeed, one Cyberon vessel was flung back in time to the late 20th century through the Merrapine Scar, (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons) and P.R.O.B.E. found an unrelated Cyberon pod buried under 21st century London, having seemingly also been thrown back through time. (HOMEVID: The Only Cure)
 * Distronic explosives are mentioned. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
 * There were rumours that the Cyberon War's end had something to do with "some sort of nanotechnology they had developed turned against them, and destroyed them overnight". (PROSE: Cyber-Hunt, The Blue Scream of Death)
 * Christian believes that, in addition to gold, (PROSE: A Bright White Crack) acetone might be a useful weapon against the Cyberons. It previously proved effective against the Cybermen in the form of the Polly Cocktail. (TV: The Moonbase)
 * A reference is made to "Stellion's Whorl". (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)