Scratch monkey

Oshi Adjani works for the Boss doing odd jobs, fomenting a revolution here, confronting a mass murderer there. Her field of operations is the Milky Way galaxy, and the Boss is a Superbright, one of the man-created super-intelligent artificial intelligences who regard this galaxy as their property. She has been rigorously trained, her body filled with nanotechnology that augments her senses and enables her to communicate with the ubiquitous Dreamtime encoders. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Now the Super brights are confronted with the enigmatic Ultrabrights, artificial intelligences as far beyond the Superbrights as the Superbrights are beyond ordinary humans. The Superbrights are engaged in the inevitable struggle with them for control of the galaxy and the DReamtime.

Oshi has been drafted into this vast conflict. She has been sent to a human colony that the Boss has projected to be in the path of the Ultrabright blackout. But the colony is in chaos, their Superbright has gone mad, and not even the Boss cares if Oshi lives or dies, because she is only a scratch monkey.
Scratch Monkey is the 2011 Boskone book by Guest of Honor Charles Stross, with cover art by Official Artist Gregory Manchess.