Consider, the simplest way to suborn a Tausennigan Thunderhead Superfortress is to throw the loyalty switch and BE an Ob'enn. Kevyn knew this. With the military medical gear aboard the PDCL, Petey could have grown an Ob'enn from scratch. With the demonstrated A.I.-in-skull abilities of the "Magic Cryokit," that Ob'enn could be given a more-than-organic brain.

From this thought, Kevyn worked his way backwards, and realized that it all hung together MUCH better -- especially since he'd SEEN the guts of the fabber Petey was claiming to have used to grow PD brains, and he couldn't see any way those A.I.s could be grown in that gear without being loyal to the Ob'enn -- the blocks were all still there.

The implication here is a little daunting: There are multiple organic PDs out there, grown using military medical gear and some tweaks for inserting hypernet nodes. Obviously the Fastballs not only ripped-and-scattered neutronium... they also inserted a boarder, probably punching him through several decks in the (extremely relative) comfort of a minitank, and landing him right there in loyalty-switch country.

It's a neat trick. If it works, you have a Superfortress completely loyal to you, but infested with Ob'enn you need to somehow dispose of. Depending on your morals, this can be done slowly and extremely mercifully, or very, very, VERY quickly.

If it fails, well, you've STILL got the Superfortress outgunned. Destroy it completely, or maybe use some surgical precision to lobotomize it. Whatever suits you. And since "you" in this case are an Artificial Superintelligence on probable par with the Partnership Collective, there's no telling what kind of a suit you're going to want.