6.

How charmingly sweet you sing—

Vagule's tardiness in answering the summons would have been unsurprising in, for example, a human, but as a first-child Prador he should have obeyed instantly—Immanence's pheromonal control over him brooking no delay. Via an additional control unit the captain recently connected into his own nervous system and shell-welded to his carapace—now taking the risk of bypassing his chouds—he linked to the ship's systems and tracked down the errant child. Vagule again experimented on the last four humans allowed him, and was working frenetically to isolate the reasons for them dying. One of the humans however remained alive. Through this fact Immanence supposed the first-child managed to mentally circumvent the summons, knowing precisely its reason. Having failed to obtain positive results with the installation of thrall units, Vagule faced punishment. He managed to disobey the summons by twisting it to not apply while this last human still lived. This might mean Immanence's pheromonal emissions might be waning. He would have to check, and if necessary make the required… adjustments. He ground his mandibles in the nearest a Prador could get to a grin, and swung towards the doors, ordering them to open. Gnores and XF-326 entered, ahead of a crowd of second-children, which swiftly spread out around the chamber. The first two, however, remained before Immanence.

"Gnores, I will also require a cold cylinder for organ storage," Immanence said.

Gnores relayed that order to one of the second-children, which scuttled off immediately. Immanence now turned his attention to the greatly enlarged second-child beside Gnores.

"XF-326, you will henceforth be known as Scrabbler." Immanence eyed the child, noting that the yellows and purples of its shell were not yet distinct from each other, and that its scent did not yet contain the hormones of adolescence—that period in a Prador's life when it began growing sexual organs underneath a carapace plate at its rear—a plate that in the transition to adulthood it would shed, along with its two back legs, to expose those organs. Sexual activity at this stage remained zero, only to be activated by the absence of a father's pheromonal control. Scrabbler was not yet a first-child, but would be by the time they reached Trajeen.

Gnores swung round to observe Scrabbler for a moment, and Immanence could guess the first-child's thoughts. Gnores saw himself in the position Vagule now occupied, but only briefly, for arrogance and a deluded belief in his own immortality would soon reassert. Thus it was with all Prador first-children when they first felt obstacles to them becoming a Prime falling aside. How long this lasted depended on the Prador concerned. In Vagule it had not lasted very long at all, which was why Immanence intended to be rid of him. Swift perception of the realities bespoke a worryingly dangerous intelligence in a first-child. Immanence did not need them to be too bright, for he did most of their thinking for them.

"Gnores… the other equipment is being brought up?"

"It is, Father. Second-children will bring it in after him."

Finally, much excitement and skittering around of those second-children still in the corridor announced the approach of Vagule. The first-child dragged himself into the sanctum, Scrabbler and Gnores parting to allow him between them. Vagule scanned each of them, recognising executioners.

"You have failed me, Vagule," said Immanence.

Vagule said nothing—again worrying the captain, for usually the begging and pleading started at this point. The first-child just dipped down lower and rested its claw-tips on the floor.

"But I am not going to kill you."

Vagule perked up suddenly.

That's better.

"In our war against the humans we should not waste resources. And I consider your undeveloped pheromonal glands and cerebral tissue to be valuable resources."

The second-children in the corridor, scrabbling over each other in complete uproar, wheeled the surgical robot into view, then into the chamber. They were obviously experiencing some difficulty with the other larger and heavier object, for there came a rumbling sound, and some loud crunches followed by a couple of squeals and whimpers. Eventually, however, they rolled a large sphere of exotic metal into the sanctum, then cracked open the lid to expose contained grav-motors, steering thrusters, weapons systems, and the central cryo-chamber and attachment equipment.

Emitting a low hissing since seeing the surgical robot, upon seeing this other object Vagule began to squeal.

"Drone shell… no… please?" he managed.

"Step towards me," Immanence ordered.

Vagule turned from side to side, his body quivering and legs dancing a tattoo on the floor. He tried to disobey, but his father's pheromones were strong in this chamber and he could not. He stepped forwards, crouching low before Immanence. The captain reached out with his single large claw, gripped one of Vagule's claws at its base, and twisted it off. Green blood jetted and Vagule shrieked and tried to back away.

"Remain where you are!" Immanence tossed the claw over Gnores and Scrabbler to the second-children, who began fighting over it, then he took hold of the other claw and ripped that off too, sending it after the first. "Strip him now."

Gnores, Scrabbler and those second-children not fighting over the claws, swiftly closed in. Vagule tried to defend himself, but without claws he could not. The crowd swarmed over him, so for a little while he lay buried under a seething mass of his kin. Torn off limbs began to surface in the mass, rapidly broken apart like bait dropped into a shoal of fish. One second-child darted away into the corridor clutching an entire leg, three kin in hot pursuit. Vagule's shrieks slowly petered out, turning to rasping sucking sounds of exhausted agony. When the crowd finally withdrew, only his main body remained, missing all its limbs and even its mandibles.

"Continue," Immanence instructed.

Gnores inserted himself in the hollow back of the surgical robot, sliding his limbs into the pit controls, claws into the slots controlling two spreads of precision limbs and visual turret into the scope interface. After a moment the robot rose on a grav-motor and slid over to Vagule. The procedure thereafter became much more refined and precise than the previous chaos. Using a limb ending in a high-speed circular saw, Gnores cut around Vagule's visual turret, sliced through shell beyond it in a web pattern. With other limbs ending in flat-faced pincers he levered out shell sections with sucking crunches and stacked them to one side, exposing the packed squirmy mass of organs and internal musculature. During a short surgical procedure he removed two whitish pink nodules from either side of Vagule's mouth. These went into the recently arrived cold cylinder. Later, Immanence would have them transplanted into himself: fresh pheromone-producing organs—when they attained their full growth—of tissue that only required small adjustments not to be rejected by his own body.

Gnores hooked out thick optic nerves and tracked them back from the visual turret, which now flopped loose. The pulsing and throbbing within the carapace showed Vagule to be still alive, and he would still be consciously viewing and feeling all this—unconsciousness being a luxury denied to Prador. The optic nerves all linked together and inflated into Vagule's major ganglion, his brain. Gnores hooked up and tracked other nerve trunks away from this and severed them where they branched. Finally he excised the whole mess, cutting the optic nerves close inside the turret at the last. Using nearly all of the surgeon's manipulators he picked up the ganglion and spread out all the nerve trunks in a particular pattern, before turning the lot towards the drone shell. The major ganglion slotted neatly into the central cryo-chamber and, one by one he fed the nerve trunks into the surrounding spread of cryo-tubes to their sockets. With the last one slotted into place, he withdrew. The chamber closed and cold fog began to rise from it as it withdrew deeper into the shell, components rearranged themselves inside and, after a moment, the lid slammed shut.

Immanence clattered his mandibles as if applauding. He knew that right now the processes of cerebral connection and flash-freezing were taking place. In a minute or so base programming would initiate, and then Vagule would obey absolutely without the need for pheromonal control. At the last, movement within Vagule's own carapace finally ceased as his body expired.

"Bring me some of that," Immanence ordered.

Scrabbler leant over the carapace and snipped out the organ that served the purpose of a liver in the Prador and held it up to his father. As Immanence crunched and chewed his way through the delicacy, all around his children grew still, watching him. Upon swallowing the last mouthful, he magnanimously waved his claw.

"Enjoy."

A riot ensued. By the end of it the carapace rested up against one wall, completely scraped clean, and all the limbs lay broken open with the meat winnowed out. Ship lice began venturing from their crevices to snatch up stray gobbets, and Prador burps puttered in the air. Then the spherical drone shell abruptly powered up, lights flicking on and off within various pits in its surface: the barrels of rail-guns extruding momentarily, missile hatches opening and closing. It righted itself, then with a low humming rose from the floor and spun to face Immanence.

"Take your position in the drone cache along with the others and await orders," the captain told it.

It swung round, second-children scattering from its path, floated across the sanctum and into the corridor, turned and motored out of sight.

Most satisfactory.

"You have two hundred humans with which to improve on Vagule's results," Immanence told Gnores. "Be on your way."

Gnores moved off with assertive eagerness.

That would soon change.

* * * * *

Short jumping within a planetary system was not exactly the healthiest of occupations, since the presence of massive bodies, like suns, tended to over-complicate the vectors and result in the ship concerned being forced from U-space in very small pieces. This was why most spaceships surfaced a safe distance from any gravity well and approached their destination under conventional drives. Besides sheer convenience, this was why the runcible superseded ships for transportation within the Polity. Also, the resulting lack of ships within the Polity prevented ECS from mounting a creditable defence against the Prador. Strapped into her acceleration chair—for the ride might be bumpy during this short jump—Moria considered that for a moment. Huge shipyards, currently under construction, were racing to rectify that lack, and she reckoned that should the Polity survive this conflict, such a lack would never again be allowed. This probably meant death to the cargo runcible idea. She unstrapped herself.

The weird sensation of something twisting out of kilter finally passed. The vessel surfaced into the real, intact. She relaxed for a moment, considering the quandary of runcibles and ships. Though for the latter surfacing near gravity wells held dangers, the former were often positioned on planets—right in those wells. It all devolved down to the fast calculations required at the interface, the surfacing point, and to modelling. With a fixed runcible on the surface of a planet, the AI held in its mind a model of the surrounding system—all the space-time maps including those venturing beyond the event horizon of the warp—so it did not need to calculate those. Also an AI lay at each end, making the connection. The nearest analogy she could think of was to ocean travel between two islands. The spaceships were like old-fashioned submarines that needed to surface to see where they were going so they could motor into port without smashing into something. The runcible, however, was a transit tube laid along the ocean bed and whatever used it, be that humans or cargo, could not deviate from its course—entry and exit points were nailed down. Perhaps that was it! Perhaps the problem with the recent test related to drift in the spatial positions of the cargo runcibles! That the tube mouths were not sufficiently nailed down?

"George?" she turned towards him. "Could it be simply spatial drift?" As she said it she winced, realising the AI would have calculated for that and the solution to the problem could not be anything so simple.

No reply from George, however. He remained utterly still, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, still strapped into his seat. Drool ran down his chin.

"George?"

A slight flick of the eyes. Slowly he raised his hand and wiped the back of it across his mouth. He turned his head slightly, focusing on her.

"One for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow," he said.

"What?"

He gave a puzzled frown, then raised his fingers to his mouth and touched his lips as if they betrayed him. "Fine words butter no parsnips," he decided.

Something was seriously wrong.

"What you don't know can't hurt you." He reached out and tapped her aug.

Moria stayed very still for a moment. Necessarily offline throughout the U-jump, her aug had not reinstated now that this ship travelled through realspace towards the cargo runcible. She tried reconnection and there came almost a hesitation, then, via a server on the runcible, she routed into the chaotic Trajeen network. Fragments of news stories reached her first, but she kept getting knocked out of the network and receiving all sorts of strange error messages. Something bad was happening: Separatists… an explosion. Then:

EDDRESS REQUEST >

OFFLINE EDDRESS REQUEST?

ACCEPT?

Moria began to review the information attached to the eddress request, but just stopped at the name:

JEBEL KRONG.

What the hell is he doing here? But then she immediately answered her own question. She knew about Jebel Krong and his Avalonians: stories about him were much relished by the newsnet services, since they were part of the small amount of good news coming from the front. He was here because the Prador were coming. But why did he want to communicate with her? Only one way to find out. She gave permission for her eddress to be used—activating voice and image com.

"Moria Salem" stated the requester.

"Well, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Jebel Krong, but why are you talking to me?"

The connection hardened now—she rather suspected military com software to be involved—and his image appeared in her visual cortex. She took in the chameleon-cloth fatigues with their black webbing, the famous crab buttons, and the austere face with his V-shaped scar.

"Big hole in the networks at the present, so I rather suspect you don't have the full story. That hole was once occupied by the one known as George."

"What?"

Moria blinked, looked at her companion—the image of Jebel still retained.

George said, "What's done cannot be undone," and she understood him.

"My god, what happened?"

"Separatists attacked here, and though they did not manage to take control, they did manage to murder the AI."

"But I still don't understand why you have contacted me. Is it because of George here?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Some confusion, I think. The Trajeen Cargo Runcible AI has a submind…an avatar. Part of its mind resides in a vat-grown human body presently sitting beside me spouting proverbs."

"I see… no, I am not contacting you because of that, though that particular George may be of some use to you. I am contacting you because you are now apparently in charge of the cargo runcible project. In the instants before it was destroyed the AI ordered this. I'm not sure I entirely understand the reasons why, since I have just received orders that both runcibles must be destroyed to prevent the Prador getting hold of them."

"Oh, fuck-shit!"

"Yes, most apposite. We'll discuss the situation further after you dock. Out."

The connection broke and Moria once again turned to George. No proverbs were forthcoming. He merely blinked, held his hand up before his face and wiggled his fingers, his expression slightly puzzled as if never having seen these digits before.

* * * * *

The two Prador vessels caused sufficient disturbance in U-space for Occam to easily follow them, though the term "follow" in a continuum without physical dimension or time strained to breaking point. Tomalon checked realspace maps of the sector and studied the two predicted targets in their path: a transfer station orbiting a red dwarf—one of those places required to control runcible traffic so millions would not arrive at one destination all at once, but now being used to supply ships near the line—and the Trajeen system. He accessed information on the latter and felt his stomach clenching. The human population there stood close to a billion. All sorts of stations and bases were scattered throughout the system, which itself contained two living worlds. Yet, why were those two ships heading there? Yes, being a heavily populated Polity system Trajeen was a viable target, but on the whole the big ships like these were hitting targets of a strictly military significance. Trajeen did not really fit the pattern.

"Why there?" he asked, in his mind.

"Runcibles," Occam replied immediately.

Tomalon already knew they had built and were testing a cargo runcible at Trajeen. But why would the Prador want to seize one of them? A runcible required an AI to operate it and no AI would willingly do so for the Prador. And until now the Prador showed little interest in the devices.

"Why?"

"Because these runcibles, being located out in space, will be much easier to take, especially having been originally taken control of by Prador allies: Separatists."

"What?"

"Allow me to acquaint you with the details contained in a recent communication I have received." So saying the AI swiftly transferred the information to Tomalon's interface. The data-stream being buffered, so Tomalon did not have to take it in all at once, delayed his understanding for a few seconds, then he got the gist.

"The bastards ... but I still don't see why. Do the Prador think they can make runcibles work without AIs?"

"Not known. Perhaps that is what they told the Separatists. Perhaps they believe so. A more likely scenario is that they are after the support technology, which in itself has many weapons applications."

Tomalon did not like some of the ideas that began occurring to him: a runcible gate, even without an AI to control it, could be used to instantly accelerate matter to near-c—just one idea without thinking about it very deeply.

"They must destroy those runcibles," he said out loud.

Out loud as well, using the com system in the bridge, Occam replied, "That is currently in hand. Now we are about to surface near the transfer station where our two Prador friends have just arrived."

"I should give you weapons clearance."

"You already gave it back at Grant's World."

"You don't need it again?"

"Not unless you cancel that clearance. I advise you not to do that."

It was more of a warning than a threat, but not much more.

As they surfaced from U-space, Tomalon closed up with Occam and banished his interior perception of the bridge, becoming one again with the ship and its sensors. They arrived only minutes behind the two Prador ships, and minutes were all it took. A long, glittering cloud of debris lay directly ahead like a scar across vacuum—all that remained of the transfer station. The two ships lay beyond it, gleaming in red light as they accelerated towards the dwarf sun, probably to slingshot round and fling themselves clear before engaging their U-engines again. Still hurtling along at the velocity with which it earlier entered U-space, the Occam Razor ignited its fusion engines and accelerated too. Weapons turrets and platforms rose, missiles and solid rail-gun projectiles loaded. Tomalon expected Occam to shoot out a swarm of rail-gun missiles as before, but that procedure abruptly stood down.

"Why not?"

"Further information package received. While controlling the craft we left, Aureus also sent telefactors to study the remains of the Prador destroyers. The exotic metal armour contains piezoelectric layers and s-con grids linked to what Aureus finally identified as thermal generators. Small strikes merely provide them with more energy with which to strike back."

"Hence that particle beam they hit us with?"

"Certainly."

"Our options now?"

"We get, as one Jebel Krong would say, 'up close and personal' We need to hit hard enough to kill them before they can utilize the energy from our strikes."

The paths of the two Prador vessels now diverged. One swung away from its slingshot route, spun over nose-first towards the Occam Razor, and began decelerating.

"Ah, it seems they want to talk," Occam commented.

Within Tomalon's perception the view into a Prador captain's sanctum opened out, revealing the limbless captain floating just above the floor. Tomalon understood, from intelligence gathered during other conflicts, this to be a Prador adult, and that the fully limbed troops ECS more often encountered were the young. It grated its mandibles to make some hissing and bubbling sounds, and the translation came through a moment after.

"So ECS does have some real ships," it said.

"Would you like to reply?" Occam enquired.

"Why not?" Tomalon sensed the link establishing and spoke out loud, "Who am I addressing?"

"I am Captain Shree—a name you will know but briefly."

"Well, Shree, we do have real ships and you have sufficiently irritated us that we feel beholden to use them."

"I look forward to our meeting. It is a shame we cannot meet in the flesh, but alas I have a war to help win and no time to peel that admirable vessel to find you."

"Fuck me, B-movie dialogue. Why is this character talking?"

"Perhaps to make him the focus of our attack rather than the other vessel," Occam replied.

"Should we ignore him and go after the other one?"

"I rather think not. If we do we'll have Shree behind us. Upon experience of their destroyers I am not sure if we could survive that particular vice."

"I see that your companion captain is not so anxious to make our acquaintance," Tomalon noted.

"Oh, but Captain Immanence has a rendezvous to keep. He passes on his best regards and looks forward himself to encountering more vessels like your own. Thus far the conflict has become boringly predictable."

The Prador vessel now launched a fusillade of missiles, zipping up in the light of the sun like emergency flares. The Occam abruptly swerved and now did launch rail-gun projectiles, but aimed to intercept the missiles rather than hit the Prador ship. On their current trajectory the solid projectiles that did not strike missiles would pass above it, but only just—it would look like a near miss. Within the great ship Tomalon observed some alterations being made: CTD warheads being diverted away from the low-acceleration rail-guns usually used, to one of the more powerful ones. They were being loaded along with the solid projectiles so that every tenth launch would be a CTD.

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" he asked. Such warheads were not often accelerated up to relativistic speeds, since the stress might cause some breach of the antimatter flask they contained. If that happened while the missile accelerated up the gun rails the results might be… messy.

"Not nearly as dangerous as giving this ship time to take us apart," Occam replied. "The chances are one in twenty of an in-ship detonation."

Prador missiles began exploding in vacuum as the projectiles slammed into them. Shree's vessel immediately changed course to intercept any of those projectiles to get through—deliberately putting itself in their path. Occam slow-launched programmed CTD warheads down towards the sun, and ramped up its acceleration towards the enemy. Both vessels came within each other's beam range. A particle beam struck the Occam Razor, cutting a boiling trench through hull metal. Tomalon felt this as pain, but this being a facility of which he felt no need, he tracked down its source—a diagnostic feedback program—and cancelled it.

Occam used lasers to hit incoming missiles, intercepted others with hard-fields, then opened up with masers on the Prador ship. It seemed a foolish tactic, in view of what they now knew about that exotic metal armour, but Tomalon understood that Occam did not want Shree to realise how much they knew. The missiles launched down towards the sun, came up with the solar wind—more difficult to detect—and closed on Shree's vessel. The Prador began to hit them with lasers, but some got through and exploded on the exotic metal hull. Huge dents became visible, and one split in which fires glowed, but even as Tomalon saw these, the dents began to push out and the split to close. Now four particle cannons targeted the Occam Razor, using the energy these strikes generated. They ripped into the Razors hull. One of them struck a weak point and exploded through, and Tomalon observed internal beams glowing white hot and ablating away, some massive hard-field generator cut in half, human living quarters scoured with fire that would have incinerated anyone in there.

The two ships were still on a collision course, and Tomalon realised the Prador vessel would not divert—it did not need to. In a seemingly desperate measure the Occam Razor turned—taking more particle weapon strikes on fresh hull metal—to use its main fusion engines to change course. The sudden massive acceleration caused huge floor sections and corridors, already weakened, to collapse inside the ship. The ship's internal mechanisms began reconfiguring it, relocating the bridge pod, and moving other more vulnerable ship components deeper inside. A close pass at mere hundreds of kilometres. A beam strike hit the hull and passed straight through the ship, exploding out of the other side.

"Close enough," said Occam coldly, and began firing that rail-gun.

They were unlucky, the one in twenty chance playing against them as the sixth CTD detonated inside the rail-gun. The explosion tore into thousands of tonnes of superstructure and hull, shattered much inside the ship and filled it with a brief inferno. Tomalon clung to the arms of his interface chair as the entire bridge pod flew twenty metres before slamming to a halt against a bulkhead. He thought that was it, they were dead, but still connected into the sensor arrays he watched three antimatter warheads, travelling at a substantial portion of light speed, strike home on the Prador vessel. The triple explosion seemed as one to human perception, but Tomalon slowed it so he could truly see what happened. The first detonation pushed a crater into the ship's hull nearly a quarter of its size, the second ripped through and exploded from the other side to blow out a glowing funnel of the super-tough metal, and the last finished the job—cutting the ship in half.

Tomalon viewed the devastation within the Occam Razor. He was glad not to have felt it as pain, because this would have been of the smashed-open ribs and evisceration by fire variety.

"The other ship?" he enquired.

"It has gone," Occam replied.

"Probably thought it pointless to waste weapons on us."

"Probably," Occam agreed.

"What do we do now?"

"There is some damage to those field projectors that protect human passengers during U-space transit. However, our U-space engines are undamaged. It will be necessary for you to be unconscious during the journey, while I make the repairs that I can."

"We're going after it?"

"That is our mission."

The Prador, Tomalon realised, were not going to win this war.

* * * * *

Conlan rose slowly to consciousness, his head throbbing and a foul dryness in his mouth. He found himself lying on cold metal, the feel of a diamond-pattern foot grip against his face. He remained motionless, and keeping his eyes closed listened intently. No one stood nearby. He opened his eyes and tilted his head slightly to obtain a better view of his surroundings: just the floor and metal walls and a ceiling, by the look of them only recently welded into place. His cell. He tried to push himself up to stand and discovered something wrong. They had removed his hand and his artificial arm. Using his other arm only, he completed the task.

The cell stood three metres square with a single bulkhead door set in one wall—no bed, no facilities. Up in one corner protruded a single visible security camera. He walked over to the door and inspected it. No electrical controls and someone had removed the inner manual wheel. Easing himself down next to it, resting his back against the wall, he sat on the floor. His mistake, he realised, was not checking to see if his copilot was dead. Obviously, Heilberg's hand, breaking from its mountings on his arm, softened the blow. Feeling the side of his head he discovered a sore split and blood crusted in his hair. Much blood had also spattered over the shoulder of his flight suit—to be expected from a head wound.

Conlan now used his aug to access the chaotic networks of Trajeen and learnt to his satisfaction that he had achieved his initial aim—the AI was dead, hence the chaos. Little other information became available however, and when his aug dropped offline for the eighth time, he did not bother to reconnect. It would be no help to him now.

"Can anyone hear me?" he called. "I need medical attention, somewhere to wash and a toilet, or is this the usual civilized manner with which ECS treats its prisoners?"

Movement outside now. Locking mechanisms clonked. Conlan heaved himself to his feet and stood close to the door. If he did this just right he might be able to get past whoever came in, maybe relieve them of a weapon in passing. He would have to rely on training and instinct thereafter, which he possessed in plenty. They would not expect him to act this quickly and decisively. The door, he realised, opened on hydraulic rams, so knocking it back into someone's face was no option. When it stood partially open he glimpsed a figure beginning to step through. He kicked hard, towards a torso, but instead of the expected impact, something clamped on his ankle. The figure came through, hauling his leg up trapped between upper arm and chest, forcing him back. He leapt, spinning his other foot off the floor and aimed towards the head. The figure released his trapped leg, ducked under the kick, and a fist like a bag of marbles came up into Conlan's kidneys. Conlan came down on his feet, but unbalanced by his missing arm, staggered. He turned, trying to aim a chop, which was slapped along its path. Then an ECS enviroboot slammed up into his testicles and Conlan abruptly lost the will to fight.

"You're very fast," said a voice, "but I've been in constant combat with those possessing substantially more limbs than you. And the lack of an arm can cause a surprising amount of imbalance—that's something I know well."

Focusing through tears Conlan observed the man standing over him, then further pain roiled through him and he leant over and vomited. It felt as if his balls had been hammered up into his stomach. He coiled into himself on the floor, closed his eyes, and just wished his copilot had hit him a lot harder. Finally, an eternity later, he managed to pull himself into a hunched sitting position and studied his opponent.

"Now, are you ready to talk?"

The man wore chameleon-cloth fatigues striated with black webbing. He didn't look physically boosted or augmented, though he did wear a cerebral aug on the side of his head. His face was thin and acerbic, fair hair close cropped and a distinctive V-shaped scar marred his cheek. Conlan felt he should recognise this individual, but did not. Almost instinctively he loaded the image of the face into his aug and ran a search through the device's memstore, rather than try to connect to the net. He soon obtained the information he sought.

Jebel Krong… why here?

He realised this was the one he spoke to from the grabship, though Krong named himself U-cap then… he remembered: up close and personal...

"Now," said Krong, "I want you to tell me, in detail, what was supposed to happen after you took control of this place."

"Go fuck yourself."

The boot slammed into his guts and lifted him off the floor. Before he could even think of recovering, a knee pinned his left arm to the floor, one hand closed on his throat, while the other clamped on his testicles. He shrieked and tried to fight free. That hand closed tighter and he felt one of his bruised testicles taken between a forefinger and thumb, and crushed. The world faded away.

Conscious again, wishing he wasn't. Krong squatted down facing him, unarmed. Did he hold Conlan in such contempt?

"Now, I have part of the story from your friend Braben, before he fainted, just like you. I will hurt you very very badly unless you tell me what I want to know. And believe me, please, what I just did to you is nothing. We have medical equipment here that can keep you alive far beyond where you would reasonably expect the relief of dying."

Conlan felt real fear growing in him then. Always, before, he was the one dishing it out rather than receiving it. He knew that he would eventually talk, so what purpose did he serve by remaining silent?

"ECS agents… don't… torture people," he managed.

"Tell me your name," Krong countered.

Conlan considered holding that back, but decided, upon his experience thus far, answering to be a small concession to make. "Conlan."

Krong grimaced. "Conlan, ECS agents usually don't torture people, since the results tend to be of questionable utility. Usually, once guilt is proven, further information is obtained by a mind ream. It's interesting technology similar to that involved in installing an aug. It has to be directed by an AI, and even then not a lot remains of the victim's brain. But as you know, we no longer have an AI here even if we did possess the required equipment. However, ECS agents are trained to quickly extract information when the situation warrants it. They will use specialized drugs or torture. No drugs here, though, and I'm not an ECS agent, I'm a soldier fighting a war against a species who seem intent on wiping out the human race, and my patience is running out." Krong stood. "Do you know what Prador do to some of their captives?"

Conlan shook his head. He felt he could move about now, but kept very still.

Krong continued, "They keep them alive, for as long as possible, while they eat them. I'll use pliers and metal snips on you… to give you an as near to authentic experience as I can manage in the circumstances. What was supposed to happen here!"

The moment this man let his guard down or turned his hack, Conlan would rip his throat out. That circumstance seemed unlikely for the present. Conlan told him all.

* * * * *

The three Avalonians who met Moria and George at the airlock were a tough-looking bunch; they were armed and their chameleon-cloth fatigues showed burns and spatters of blood. Stepping out into the embarkation area Moria gazed round at the mess: shattered drones hung from the ceiling on their power cables, energy weapon burns marred the walls and one entire section had been torn out by an explosion.

"Separatists," stated one of the Avalonians, a hard-faced woman who then gestured to the other side of the area with the pulse-rifle she held.

Moria did not require that explanation.

In addition to all the damage in here, Moria saw queues of runcible technicians standing with baggage at their feet by all the other locks. They glanced at her with a fearful lack of curiosity, obviously intent on departing this place.

"This way," said the woman.

With the two other Avalonians behind them and the woman leading, Moria and George walked over to one of the corridors leading into the station. Here the wreckage was even worse with walls torn out, jags of metal protruding, insulation and fried optics hanging free. Some grav-plates were torn up so they necessarily crossed areas where the grav fluctuated disconcertingly. There was blood on the floor, lots of it, but what really turned Moria's stomach was the sight of an armour shoulder-plate with part of the shoulder still inside it. Moria halted, resting one hand against an undamaged section of wall and tried to get her nausea under control. The woman turned impatiently, then her expression softened.

"I know, it's horrible, but we are being forced to make horrible choices," she said.

"When the going gets tough the tough get going," George intoned.

Moria could not help herself, she abruptly burst into laughter, and when she finally got that under control she felt a sudden gratitude towards him. Once out of the corridor she tried to put the image of that shoulder-plate out of her mind, and nearly succeeded by the time they reached their destination and their guards departed.

Jebel Krong and a Golem waited in one of the small lounges overlooking Trajeen, which lay much closer now, as the runcible was being moved back to stable orbit around the planet following the test. Moria recognised the Golem as that constant companion of Krong's: Urbanus. Immediately she asked about the runcible technicians queuing for departure.

"We're evacuating the complex," explained Urbanus. "It seems rather foolish keeping these people here where they make a nice easy target for the Prador. Anyway," he shrugged, "I'm sure they won't want to be around when we blow this place."

Obviously Moria knew all about that, though still she could not help but feel a rebellious anger at the act being so casually mentioned. Glancing at George she discerned no reaction to the words from him. His head just kept swinging from side to side, studying his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time.

Krong turned from gazing out at the view, and gestured to one of the sofas. "Please, take a seat."

"How was the AI destroyed?" Moria asked while she sat.

"One of the Separatists managed to take control of a grabship delivering a runcible buffer section. He dropped the section straight on top of the AI and the massive discharge fried everything."

George, now seated beside Moria, stated, "Providence is always on the side of the big battalions."

Krong stared hard at him for a long moment before replying, "Or the big, well-armoured spaceships that are coming this way." The man then turned away from George dismissively and eyed Moria. "You are only here as a courtesy, and because I am very curious to know why the AI felt the need to put you in charge of this place during the last microseconds of its existence. AIs do not do such things on a whim."

"But I am not in charge, am I?" Moria noted, that shoulder-plate momentarily returning to haunt her.

"Let us say I welcome your input."

"Most helpful," Moria pretend smiled. "Then let me say I too am curious about the AI's motives." Aug com with this man did not give a full impression of him. In the same room with him, she felt a frisson of fear. Here stood someone driven, dangerous, she could feel it in the energy that kept him on his feet and see it in his expression—one she could only describe as pitiless. Perhaps recent events were causing her to overreact.

"Do you have any suggestions?" he asked.

The AI's motives were opaque to Moria, only suggestions as to lines of enquiry occurred. "Have you tried the planetary AIs—those running the runcibles on the surface?"

"I have, but they possess little time to spare for me. They're running the runcibles at maximum rate, open-port all across the Polity. They are also organizing planetary defences. Apparently George," he shot a penetrating look at the AI's human representative in the room, "passed on to them no information about your appointment. Perhaps the reasons for it became apparent in those last moments, prior to it making the decision. It could also be that information was lost in the subsequent net collapse."

"Perhaps if I knew more about what happened and what is likely to happen?"

Krong held up a hand, then addressed his companion, "Urbanus, take George with you and try to question him. Use signing, writing—anything you can think of. If necessary, see if you can fit him with an aug and try to access his brain directly. Liaise with one of the planetary AIs; maybe we can come up with something useful."

"If the decision was made in the last moments," Urbanus observed. "George here will probably possess no knowledge of it. I understand he remained out of communication, in a U-jump, when Conlan destroyed the AI."

"Nevertheless he was part of that AI."

Urbanus nodded and stepped forwards to place a hand on George's shoulder.

George stood meekly and said, "The worth of a thing is what it will bring." He followed Urbanus from the room.

"That is both annoying and worryingly close to making sense. I think he might be trying to tell us something," said Krong.

"Proverbs are like that… this… Conlan?"

Krong looked at her piercingly. "Your aug is unusual, I understand?"

"It is."

"So too is Conlan's, but he played for the other team. He organised an attack up here to seize this place while he himself piloted the grabship. We were forewarned and managed to stop the former but not the latter. We now have Conlan locked in a cell."

That raised all sorts of questions that Moria ran through and discarded as irrelevant. She concentrated on the heart of it: "Why?"

"He worked for the Separatists here who were apparently being financed, indirectly, by the Prador Kingdom. Apparently the Prador promised to destroy all the AIs and put humans back in charge again."

Moria snorted derisively.

"My thoughts too. Once this place came under Separatist control with the AI destroyed, Conlan was to link in, using his aug, to the connection between this runcible and the one at Boh, taking control of all systems there that were once controlled from this end by the AI. It seems he would have been able to prevent reattachment of the units of the complex there by shutting down environmental controls and seizing control of meteor collision lasers. The technicians there would have been fighting to survive and would have had little time to do the runcible any damage before the Prador arrived to take it." I see.

"You don't seem surprised."

Moria shook her head. "George was slowly uncovering what it's possible for me to do with such an augmentation. Subversion of computer systems was involved but I can see how it would be possible."

"I had a difficult time accepting it myself but for the sophistication of the attack. I thought he was overestimating his abilities." He grimaced. "He did, though apparently not those ones."

"What's happening now?" she asked.

"Two Prador ships are on their way here so any spatial defence we could mount in the limited time will be… ineffective. We've a vessel already in transit to Boh to pick up the technicians there, and once it is loaded, another will be following, its crew detailed to conceal CTD space mines within that runcible's structure. We are also mining this one. There is a Polity dreadnought called the Occam Razor in pursuit of those two ships, but…" Jebel shook his head. "I haven't seen anything we've got manage to stop just one of those bastards."

"So we burn our crops behind us," Moria stated.

"Yes. Intriguing and frustrating though this puzzle concerning your promotion might be, I still have to work on the basis that the best way to stop the Prador seizing these runcibles is to obliterate them. My strongest wish is that the Prador on one particular ship take the Boh runcible aboard before discovering the mines." He gazed out at Trajeen again now.

"Particular ship?" she asked.

He glanced back at her. "One of those is the ship that destroyed Avalon Station. The one that set this war in motion and made me the man I now am." Something bitter, perhaps a little insane, flashed across his expression, then he seemed to take it under control as he turned to face her fully again. "Unless the rate of progress of the two ships changes, they should be here within the week."

Moria shivered; he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, Trajeen precisely haloing his head. Two of the moons were visible; Vina, identifiable by its speed of transit, swung over above him like some ominous sign. He seemed a prophet of doom.

"How many will be evacuated from the planet by then?" It never occurred to her to wonder if she would be among them.

"Not even ten per cent," he replied. "I think we're done talking now." He turned back towards the window.

In her aug she received a transmission from him containing all the records of recent events. It was a dismissal.

* * * * *

Vagule's thoughts cycled with frosty precision in his flash-frozen brain. With his spherical armoured body ensconced on one rack in the drone cache, he observed through his sensors eight others of his kind arrayed in similar racks beside him. Communication being possible he listened in to some of the exchanges between the other drones:

"Father will send us into battle soon and we can kill humans."

"I look forward to demonstrating my loyalty to Father."

"Kill the humans and all Father's enemies."

"I have detected a fault in my rail-gun which will make me less able to serve Father."

"Call for maintenance—to not be perfectly maintained is disloyal."

"I have called for maintenance."

And so it went: the continuous affirmation of purpose with discussions straying into the subjects of weaponry, tactics and occasionally into analysis of previous engagements. Vagule, who could do no less than feel utterly loyal to Immanence, also understood that loyalty to be imposed by electronic means just as it was previously imposed by his father's pheromones. His past life lay open to his inspection and he remembered his father's treatment of him with painful clarity. It seemed that though disobedience was no option, his ability to think about his lot was no longer confused by those physical pheromonal effects. However, most of those here were second-children who only vaguely recollected being anything other than war drones. They did not possess an underlying stratum of memory to run counter to their imposed loyalty. There was, however, one other drone here like himself.

"You are the new drone," said that other.

"I am Vagule."

"Yes, a first-child Prime."

"Who are you?"

"I am Pogrom and I too was a first-child Prime, though only your presence here has reminded me of that."

Vagule knew nothing of any first-child called Pogrom and only then did it occur to him that others went through the same experiences before him.

"When were you a first-child?"

"Back on home-world when Immanence still possessed four legs and both claws and before this ship was built. I do not know how long ago, only that thirty first-children have served since then."

Thirty?

Vagule realised hundreds of years must have passed. "What was your infraction?"

"I became too old and Father's pheromones began to have less and less of an effect upon me. He ordered me upon a mission to attack a rival in the King's Council, one from which I was not expected to return. But I completed my mission—I booby-trapped one of the rival's spare control units with diatomic acid which later ate out his insides when he shell-welded the unit to his under-car apace—and returned."

"Then you served Father well." Surprisingly well, since most Prador adults buried themselves behind layer upon layer of defences and were particularly difficult to kill. During the vicious infighting, which was the way Prador conducted their politics, it was the first- and second-children that did the dying and few adults actually ended up dead. They usually only lost or gained wealth or status.

"Yes, I served Father well. Upon my return he called me to him, and it was obvious he intended to strip my limbs and kill me, for already my back limbs were loosening as I made a slow transition to adulthood. I attacked him and managed to tear off one of his legs before the second-children and new first-child Prime-in-waiting managed to tear off all my limbs."

"You attacked Father?"

"I attacked him and am shamed and, as you must know, not shamed."

"I will serve Father," Vagule stated, but beneath that knew he would rather not.

"Father kept me alive for fifty days, feeding small pieces of my organs to the second-children all the while."

"As is just."

"As is just," the other agreed. "At the end of that period, when my death approached, he transferred me to this drone shell. He was much angered because my attack on him necessitated the installation of his first grav-motor, for he could no longer walk unaided."

"You angered Father and were rightly punished," Vagule stated, feeling a core of jealousy for he had not done so much.

"Let us now do weapons inventories, for that is always interesting," said Pogrom.

"Yes, let us do that," Vagule replied, knowing this was as much fun as he was going to have, ever again.