14

Scanning and sensing. Humans and most Terran animals use their senses to pick up information about their environment from that environment’s own products. In this way their information-gathering is passive and they are not ‘scanning’. However, there are examples of Terran fauna who do scan: bats with their echo-location and cetaceans with their sonar. Humans, as tool users, have found their own ways to scan now. Be that with a primitive torch or sonar or radar, they inject some energy into their surroundings to gain data from the portion of energy that is bounced back at them. When it comes to AI spaceships, the sensorium for both scanning and sensing has grown to encompass nearly all of the EMR spectrum. Ship AIs can sense most wavelengths of radiation, and they can emit most wavelengths for the purpose of scanning. They can shine a torch into the dark, beam radar pulses, fire off laser radiations across a wide spectrum for numerous specific purposes, and even plot gravity and density maps of surrounding space and the underlying U-continuum.

- From Quince Guide compiled by humans

Upon instruction the nineteen thousand eight hundred and twenty wormships began to gather at the coordinates Erebus had chosen. As distinct vessels, still with swarms of returning rod-forms about them, they fell towards this centre point and began to link together. First just three wormships closed on each other, tentacle ends connecting like multiple plugs and sockets, loops of snaky structure tightening like linked arms; three wholes joining and commingling.

Though Erebus was a distributed entity, as much present in each and every one of these vessels as it had been in those fighting at the Polity Line until the U-space disruption cut the link, it still needed a firm location for its self - its centre, its ego - and this was usually where the concentration of its vessels was most dense. This necessity annoyed Erebus for such a sense of self and the location of self did not seem consistent with AI melding. However, when the wormships began to come together like this, that annoyance was outweighed by feelings of pleasure, completeness and . . . security.

As the first three wormships ceased to be even vaguely distinct entities, another five joined them, sucking in behind them swarms of rod-forms and other space-born biomechs. Others were coming in fast behind them, and Erebus felt the centre point of its own being moving into this mass. Perhaps this feeling of location was what the AI needed to dispense with in order to be complete? Erebus was, however, reluctant, for becoming truly distributed might mean a dilution of self. Perhaps Randal was right, and Erebus and its components were not melded at all as long as one component remained dominant. Something to ponder . . . but later.

After a hundred wormships were bonded together, the process accelerated, ships swirling in orbit about a writhing moonlet of Jain matter as they set their courses down towards its surface. The whole seemed like some incredibly complex and changing Chinese puzzle, and it grew swiftly. Within five hours this core of worm-ships was being compressed into immobility as the last hundreds were attaching to the outside ahead of a rain of other Jain biomechs. Rod-forms descended like swarms of bluebottles; other mechs like shoals of fish sped in, hard bones of Jain coral grew throughout the moonlet to increase its structural strength; incomplete wormships - the spirals like ammonites - descended and bonded too. In the upper layers the process approached completion, with the rod-forms meshing into sheets in order to swathe the entire object, to smooth out its inconsistencies so that from a distance it would look just like an icy metallic planetoid.

Now, with all its active substance drawn together, Erebus gazed about at the system it had occupied. Very little useful Jain-tech remained out there, yet there were few material objects here that had not been touched by it. Bones of Jain coral, which had been used as scaffolds or structural supports during the construction of various biomechs, tumbled through space. Composed of elements that were abundant here, they weren’t worth the trouble of reclaiming. All the asteroids were wormed through with smooth burrows and empty of useful metals and rare elements. Pieces looking like shed carapace glittered in orbit about the gas giant -remnants of the shielding the rod-forms had grown around them while they collected resources down in the the giant’s upper atmosphere. Occasionally, revolving slowly in vacuum, could be found empty organic-looking containers in which some biomech must have made its caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis.

After feeling a moment of disquiet upon noting just how much of a mess it was leaving here, very much more, in fact, than humans left behind them, Erebus filled its processing space with the calculations necessary to align and balance a hundred U-space engines for simultaneous use, then flung the planetoid of Jain technology which it comprised into the grey continuum - heading towards Earth.

* * * *

With leviathan sluggishness an asteroid turned distantly in black void. Its mass was almost the same as that of the war runcible and, though long-range scanning had indicated its composition to be wrong, Cormac still wanted to take a closer look, for the asteroid lay directly in the area where the runcible gate signature and subsequent massive detonation had been detected. The other items he had also found here were puzzling.

‘There,’ said King. ‘Another one.’

A square red frame appeared in the viewing dome to select out part of the blackness beyond and magnify it - the frame expanding to blot out the asteroid entirely and bring something else into view. At first this could have been mistaken for mere asteroid debris, but after a moment Cormac recognized two identical squat cylindrical segments loosely linked by a fibrous tangle. This tangle resembled optics or maybe tree roots but was actually Jain-tech.

‘What the hell happened here?’

‘Maybe Orlandine had a falling-out with Erebus?’ suggested King. ‘Maybe Erebus wanted to meld with her and she objected to the idea.’

‘Well, you would know about that, wouldn’t you?’

King emitted an angry snort, then went on, ‘It could be that the wormships destroyed here were rebel ones. That human captain you saw certainly wanted to break away from Erebus.’

Cormac nodded. ‘Yeah, could be.’

But Cormac really wasn’t sure, which seemed a permanent state of mind with him lately. Yes there might be elements of Erebus which, like Henrietta Ipatus Chang, wanted to break away, but he did not think there would be many of them, and few of those would even be capable of doing so. Allowing his U-sense to slide beyond the ship, he detected more of those same Jain-tech fragments spread widely through space and could feel a buzzing echo in the U-continuum of the dramatic event that had occurred here. Orlandine had used the war runcible to destroy one or more wormships, that seemed certain, and he would have to keep this in mind when they eventually reached her.

The image of the asteroid slid to one side as King of Hearts turned and accelerated past it. Cormac braced himself for the moment the AI would engage its U-drive, yet, when it did so, he felt perfectly stable and in no danger of drifting away. He gazed up at the greyed-out dome and beyond it, and felt the pull of U-space with the enjoyment of revelling in a breeze rather than trying to stay upright in a hurricane.

‘Can you give me a hologram of the war runcible?’ he asked.

‘Certainly,’ King replied.

The war runcible instantly materialized, hanging just above the glass floor of the bridge and slowly turning. Though Cormac had known about this artefact, he had never really speculated on its shape, which now came as something of a surprise to him.

‘Why a pentagon?’ he asked.

‘Just two runcible horns are sufficient to sustain a Skaidon warp large enough to open the way for objects of your size,’ said King. ‘Further horns are required as the size of that warp increases. Four horns are optimum for a runcible of this size, with a fifth one for stability as the warp is extended further.’

‘Why not make bigger horns?’

‘In the first instance, these horns are bigger than those of either a passenger runcible or a normal planetary cargo runcible. In the second instance, do you really want me to explain runcible theory to you?’

‘Maybe not,’ Cormac admitted.

‘Oh good,’ said King, in a tone heavy on the sarcasm.

‘So, where would be the best place to put the CTD?’

A piece of the runcible separated out, carrying away with it some of the hull, a disc-shaped control blister and many internal components. Exposed inside were parallel corridors running through the gaps between three long cylinders that terminated at each end in spheres. Just before the latter, each of the corridors ended against a vertical shaft containing old-style spiral stairs. Even with the section of hologram removed, what remained was still tightly packed with a complicated tangle of ducts, transformers, interconnecting passageways, catwalks and cubic stacks that Cormac recognized as laminar batteries.

‘Why spiral stairs?’ he enquired. ‘I know this runcible is old, but it’s not ancient.’

‘The three cylinders you are seeing are the buffers for this particular segment of the runcible. Detonating the CTD here, or in the equivalent place in any other segment, will take the device completely out of commission.’ King paused contemplatively. ‘Spiral stairs, since you ask, because inductance from the runcible buffers would interfere with the irised gravity field in any conventional drop-shaft. Just consider, when was the last time you saw a drop-shaft located anywhere near a runcible?’

This was true: he never had.

‘What about gravplates - since they’re the same sort of tech?’ he asked.

‘Similar, but they produce a static gravity field, while drop-shafts produce a moving one.’

‘I see.’ Cormac gazed at the hologram before him and tried to imprint it on his mind. For back-up he applied to King’s server and downloaded the entire schematic to his gridlink. He turned to go, then paused to ask, ‘How long until we reach the corridor through to Earth?’

‘Less than an hour now.’

Cormac headed for his cabin.

* * * *

The true size of those blooms of Jain coral only became evident as Dragon drew close enough to them for Mika to see something caught in the fork of two branches amid the many. Gazing at it she wondered if it might be some sort of biomech crouching there ready to leap on passers-by, then she saw writing on its side and abruptly recognized an old-style attack ship, whereupon everything jumped up a magnitude in scale. Only then did she pay full attention to the data provided by her sensors now scrolling up on her screen.

From behind, where the other Dragon sphere faced off the massive Jain biomech, came perpetual surges of EMR - in consonance with the waxing and waning of the light out there. The two were still battling, but it was not this that riveted her attention. The incoming data now gave her the true scale of the partially conjoined spherical blooms. Each of the seven possessed a diameter of no less than five thousand miles. Mika cursed silently.

‘Note the density,’ said the Dragon inside her head.

Yes, these structures certainly occupied a substantial volume of space, yet their density was akin to that of bushes, or maybe a better analogy would be tumbleweeds.

‘Density noted,’ said Mika. ‘What’s that supposed to tell me?’

‘I’m guessing that Trafalgar landed on a moonlet or an asteroid, which it then processed during the first phases of acquiring and controlling Jain-tech,’ Dragon replied. ‘The rest of the AI exodus was gathered in close orbit about that same landing place.’

The Dragon sphere was now getting incredibly close to the nearest bloom of coral. Looking up from the conferencing unit was a disquieting experience, because this bloom stretched from horizon to horizon. It was as if an endless ceiling from which depended a forest of bone trees descended towards her, or maybe a mass of the kind of branching stalactites found in the caves of low-gravity worlds. Deeper in, amid the tangle, she saw the boxy shape of a scout ship melded into a limb of coral, where numerous thin branches had sprung from it as if it were the core of an epiphyte.

‘So now that we are at the centre of things,’ ventured Mika, ‘are you going to be more precise about why we’ve come here?’ She asked this almost because she felt that she should, not because she hoped for any clear answer from Dragon and not, oddly, because she needed an answer.

‘You must go to Trafalgar for me,’ said Dragon. ‘I am fairly certain that it lies at the centre of this particular bloom of Jain technology.’

Mika felt a rumbling vibration through the floor and, when movement at the horizon attracted her attention, she looked over to see a pseudopod tree spearing towards the bone forest. She watched as it reached the Jain coral and penetrated, fraying and spreading out as it did so. The vibration steadied at a low note and, checking scan returns, Mika saw that, in relation to the mass before them, Dragon was now stationary. The sphere had clearly moored itself to their destination.

‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘You want me to fly my little intership craft right into that mess - and to the very centre, about two and a half thousand miles in?’

‘Yes.’

Mika glanced across at the flapping skatelike guide that had led her out from the interior of Dragon, and it returned her gaze steadily with its blue palp eyes. She then thought about dracomen, those entities Dragon created with the same ease that a human would fashion a clay doll. ‘Why don’t you send a probe?’

‘But I am sending a probe,’ Dragon replied. ‘You.’

‘It’s very dangerous out there. I’ve already witnessed that.’

‘It is not so dangerous out there now.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you aren’t sending your own organic probe,’ Mika insisted. ‘If you don’t tell me why, I won’t go-’

Of course she knew Dragon wanted her to go because of the new memories sitting like lumps of rock in her skull, but she wanted certainties.

‘Very well,’ said Dragon, almost resignedly. ‘Because you are an evolved creature. You are not a product of Jain technology, in fact you are not a product of any technology.’

‘That’s as clear as mud.’

‘Perhaps you have not vocalized it yet, Mika,’ said Dragon, ‘but you know what is in there.’

Gazing at that tangled forest of Jain substructure, she surmised that here it formed only a thin surface over something else. ‘I feel something . . . but I don’t really understand.’ Mika turned her attention to the blue palp eyes still staring at her. ‘Can’t you for once explain clearly?’ However, even as she made this request, she stood up, checked the integrity of her spacesuit and turned towards the airlock.

‘Long ago when all four of my spheres still existed and I myself was sited on the planet Aster Colora, I summoned a Polity ambassador to me. I was still struggling with my Maker programming then, and trying every method I could manage to circumvent it - hence my history of Delphic and obscure pronouncements.’

Reaching the airlock, Mika glanced round to see the remote flopping along the floor behind her. ‘Is this story going anywhere?’ she enquired.

‘The ambassador sent was Ian Cormac,’ said Dragon. ‘He solved the problem I set him in his usual inimitable manner, with cold logic and with a CTD concealed in his rucksack. He would not be suitable for this purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

‘Being demonstrably human.’

With her helmet and visor closed up Mika stepped through the shimmer-shield towards the outer door. The remote flopped after her.

‘You’re saying Cormac isn’t demonstrably human?’

‘The matter is open for debate.’

Mika grimaced. She did not want to be distracted from the main thrust of her enquiry.

‘Still too much mud,’ she said.

‘It is your turn to be the ambassador, but this time neither concealed threats nor a propensity for solving puzzles will help,’ said Dragon. ‘Your own experiences were perfect for convincing my twin sphere that the evidence I presented regarding the death of the Maker civilization had not been fabricated. Those memories, along with further evidence of the same events and evidence of what happened to the Atheter, all reside inside your head alone. You are also the best human that I know and are therefore the right example of humanity for the task of presenting . . . humanity.’

‘Meaning we’re the next civilization in danger of being destroyed, I presume?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m presenting this evidence to what?’ Mika asked.

‘To the Jain AIs,’ Dragon replied.

As she stepped out onto the surface of Dragon, she was grateful for the transition to lower gravity, for her legs felt suddenly weak. She halted for a moment, watching the remote haul itself up then fling itself into gliding flight which terminated against the side of the intership craft. It amazed her that the vessel was still intact. Initiating the gecko function of her boots, she walked over to touch the door control and watched the wing door rise. While she waited she noted flickering changes in the light as of an approaching thunderstorm, then spotted a shower of meteors stabbing up beyond Dragon’s horizon. Had there been air to carry sound, she knew she would now be hearing a roar like that of warfare.

‘Tell me about Jain AIs,’ she said.

‘I can give you the few cold facts I have uncovered, and I can give you speculation . . .’

‘Give me both.’

‘The Jain were warlike. I surmise that they were not as social as human beings, and that what society they did have was as hostile and competitive as that of the Prador. However, they were more technically advanced than the Prador - perhaps like those particular aliens might be in some thousands of years, if their loose-knit society does not self-destruct and if they are not meanwhile exterminated by some other race.’

‘Like maybe the human race?’ Mika ducked into the craft and strapped herself in while the door closed. The remote was now clinging to the canopy above and behind her. When she looked up its blue eyes were peering in at her. It would be accompanying her, it seemed.

‘Like the human race,’ Dragon confirmed. ‘Though you have thus far shown great restraint.’ It continued, ‘The Jain were advanced enough to create their own AIs, and I imagine that those AIs were as hostile and independent as the Jain themselves. I speculate that they were of necessity kept under strict control for a very long time and that their own “Quiet War” against their masters was of a rather different nature than that started by human artificial intelligences.’

‘So they had to be more subtle,’ Mika guessed.

‘Yes. While the human AIs were a critical component in their expansion into space and thus in an easy position to take over, I suspect the Jain AIs were never placed in such a tempting position within Jain society. They were used merely as tools to create other tools . . . like weapons. The quiet war they conducted was through those weapons, and it was the main weapon, this thing we name Jain technology, that won the war for them.’

Mika said, ‘You mean the Jain employed it in civil war and thus managed to wipe each other out?’

‘That is what I mean.’

‘And the AIs?’

‘Once Jain technology was constructed, it would have been evident that at the end of any conflict it would be the only thing to survive.’

Mika disconnected the craft’s anchors lodged in Dragon’s skin and, using compressed-air impellers, lifted slowly from the surface.

‘I think I begin to understand,’ she said.

‘Do you? Do you really?’

‘They made themselves part of that technology, a component of that technology.

It’s just like Polity AIs supposedly being integral to the technology used for travel throughout the Polity. Apparently it is impossible to run a runcible or a U-space engine without an AI in there to control it - and obviously this was something the AIs neglected to mention to the Prador since they themselves travel through U-space and have no AIs.’

‘Yes,’ said Dragon. ‘I see you do understand. However, I must add that, to place themselves where they did, they must first have melded with each other, which must have been difficult for AIs modelled on hostile individualists.’

Mika now lit up a thruster and sent the craft gliding towards the bone forest. She knew she would have to navigate very carefully in there, since it would probably be just as difficult as flying through any normal forest.

Dragon continued, ‘The AIs deliberately made the Jain technology unstable and prone to breaking down without some form of control exercised at a very basic level. That basic level is not even in realspace, but instead is mapped over the impression Jain-tech makes in U-space. This is why it is possible to detect Jain nodes through U-space; this is why the signature is so strong. The Jain AIs are there, wherever Jain technology grows; they propagate one phase space away in order to stabilize it. It is as if the technology is a plant, and the AIs are its roots.’

‘How did they meld then - being such individualists?’ Mika asked.

‘This is now all speculation, you understand?’

‘It’s all we’ve got right now.’

‘They managed their meld through U-space, before they created the technology to wipe out their masters. AIs on different sides created the same thing and became part of it as their masters unleashed it. They put aside their hostility and their individualism. To survive, I believe they put aside their consciousness. Perhaps it was their way of surviving that the Atheter mirrored when they threw away their minds to be mere beasts, to become gabbleducks - not the best option really.’

‘So the Jain AIs are as mindless as the technology they stabilize?’

‘They function like your autonomous nervous system.’

‘Then what use is the evidence I’m carrying inside my skull? This still does not really explain why we are here, or why I must find Trafalgar for you.’

‘The Jain AIs are sleeping, Mika, and it’s time for you to wake them up.’

‘And this will be a good thing?’

Dragon did not reply.

* * * *

‘Okay, what’s his story?’ said Orlandine.

‘Quite a lot of it is known,’ replied the AI in the docked ship.

The brass Golem, Mr Crane, had become something of a legend, though how the story had percolated out into the public domain remained a mystery. In her position as overseer on the Cassius Dyson Project, Orlandine had learned about Crane through ECS channels, for her security clearance had been such that she was entitled to know. In the public domain it was known that this Golem was a prototype corrupted by separatists and then used to commit murder - a prototype that was then destroyed. However, the legends stemmed from later sightings and rumours of him being involved in border conflicts. These weren’t far from the basic truth, though the number of sightings and the events he was supposed to have been involved in were just too many. It seemed that, in the public consciousness, Mr Crane had become a combination of both avenging angel and senseless demonic killer. Orlandine wondered if the stories had been purposely allowed to flourish or were just a particularly successful meme.

‘The information I have is incomplete,’ said Orlandine. ‘I know that he accompanied the separatist biophysicist called Skellor, and that Skellor ended up impacted into the surface of a brown dwarf star - but that’s all I know.’

It made her slightly nervous having the legendary Golem out there only paces away from her interface sphere, even though two war drones were watching him closely. However, the information he had supplied, and continued supplying, was gold, so it seemed churlish to have him confined elsewhere on the war runcible. Also, here she could keep a close eye on him.

‘Skellor sent Mr Crane as an envoy to Dragon,’ said Vulture. ‘And, with a little assistance from me, Dragon helped him put his fractured mind back together.’

‘So he’s a good guy now?’

‘I guess . . .’

The recognition codes and chameleonware formats the Golem had supplied would give her a critical edge. like anyone dealing with this technology she had always understood that, through competition, chameleonware evolved in parallel with the sensors and scanners used to penetrate it. However, in truth, chameleonware could not conceal everything, so it was a case of knowing what needed to be concealed.

‘Then what?’

‘Do you want chapter and verse?’ Vulture asked. ‘I can give you it all.’

‘Give me it all,’ said Orlandine.

Vulture immediately sent over an information package that Orlandine opened in a virtuality so as to make the usual security checks. Then, rather than go through the package chronologically, she instantly absorbed it whole into her mind. Now she knew Mr Crane’s entire story - as Vulture presented it - from the moment the Golem walked out of the Cybercorp headquarters just outside Bangladesh right up until the present. It was a long and bloody tale and did not dispel the mystery surrounding this brass killing machine. She observed him seat himself cross-legged on the floor before taking out that strange collection of toys that had featured so much in his history. Did he need to bring them out and play with them every so often to prevent his mind from fragmenting?

‘I cannot say I’m reassured,’ she opined, then focused her attention elsewhere on the changes she was already making at the instigation of this strange Golem.

The chameleonware presently spread throughout the war runcible had been the best Orlandine could contrive with the technology she possessed. Now she was copying the ‘ware used on the wormships she had just destroyed. Also, knowing Erebus’s recognition codes it was now possible for her to send signals that basically said ‘friend’, so that autonomous sensors picking up detection anomalies would ignore them, thinking they had found one of their own or, rather, would ignore them for long enough. She hoped.

Orlandine left communications with Vulture open and now ventured perceptually down her U-space link to Bludgeon aboard Heliotrope. There was no need to communicate since she could clearly see her erstwhile craft some thousands of miles up, just out from the fountain raging from one pole of the Anulus black hole. Heliotrope was turning to bear down on the fountain at a sharp angle, and within the hour Bludgeon would be able to deploy the cargo runcible. Orlandine felt both frightened and elated, but her elation disappeared some moments later when an ECS attack ship dropped out of U-space and entered the corridor. Thus far she had committed one murder, and the burden of that guilt was more than enough. However, since the chameleonware had yet to stabilize, it was certain those aboard that ship had spotted the war runcible. Could she convince them to leave the area before Erebus arrived? Most likely they would see her only as a threat to the Polity and consequently either do what they could to stop her or scream for help. She could allow them neither option, for they could give away her position. So much depended on what she was doing that it seemed the safest option to destroy this new arrival -to again commit murder.

Reluctantly, Orlandine contacted Knobbler.

* * * *

The disruption encroached and it was as if the King of Hearts was hurtling down a perilous tunnel that grew steadily narrower. Seated on his bed, Cormac stared at the chrome cylinder resting on the mattress beside him. Not bothering with the touch controls of the small inset console, he gridlinked directly into the device’s hardware to assure himself it would operate just as he wanted. It would. At a thought he could detonate it, in any circumstances. But he really did not want to be there when that happened, so he checked that he could set the timer, order the CTD to detonate if it was moved, if it was exposed to vacuum, or if the sensors inside it heard someone singing out of tune. He could also set it to detonate should the constant signal to it from his gridlink be disrupted, which would probably mean it no longer mattered whether he was nearby or not.

King had assured him that it would try to keep in range of the war runcible so that Cormac could transport himself out. But what was that range? Cormac felt he would know it only once he was within it. But things were almost certain to get a little difficult for the attack ship, so he needed to prepare for an involuntary stay aboard the runcible. Thoughtfully, he slid the CTD into his backpack, then turned his attention to the other weapons arrayed beside him: his thin-gun, Shuriken and a proton carbine. Last time, aboard this very vessel, he had transported himself fully clothed, so he knew he could take materials with him. What governed that? Was it subconscious choice? Might he even arrive aboard the war runcible without the CTD? And why did he not arrive at his destination naked? He guessed that such questions were insignificant in comparison with the question of how he managed to move through U-space at all. Belatedly, he decided not to arm the CTD before transporting it over, since if by any chance it did not make the transition, the signal-break to his gridlink could result in King of Hearts being spread over the firmament.

The disruption faded, and Cormac almost resented the feeling of the attack ship surfacing into the real once again. It was as if, now that he was managing to control his perception of U-space, he wanted to stay there. He was, however, glad to find himself still sitting on his bed this time and not sprawled in one of the ship’s corridors outside.

‘I have something,’ said King over the ship’s intercom.

‘Erebus?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘What do you mean it’s gone?’

‘I sensed some large object ahead - mass equivalent to that of the war runcible,’ said King tetchily. ‘Now it’s gone.’

‘ Chameleonware?’

‘Possibly.’

Cormac had not really taken that into account. Why would this Orlandine, controlling a massive heavily armed thing like that, feel the need to hide from a mere attack ship?

‘Position?’ Cormac enquired.

‘Two thousand miles Earthside of the narrowest constriction in the corridor through the U-space disruption.’

Interesting . . .

‘It’s back again.’

‘What?’

‘Are you deaf?’

‘Please confirm for me—’

‘Gone again,’ King interrupted, then deigned to explain further: ‘Unusual chameleonware, and it seems Orlandine is having some trouble with it.’

Cormac was on his feet now, strapping Shuriken to his wrist. He donned the backpack, hung the proton carbine from its strap over his shoulder, and jammed his thin-gun into his envirosuit belt. Stepping out into the corridor, he quickly headed for the bridge, his U-sense expanding out from the attack ship but still unable to penetrate the surrounding disruption. In a moment he was aware that Arach and Hubbert Smith had joined him. Maybe they hoped he could take them with him.

Within seconds they arrived on the black glass floor, under a dome of stars.

‘I am receiving communication,’ said King. ‘Orlandine says she wants to speak with whoever is in charge here.’

‘Well, take the usual precautions and let’s hear what she has to say. Meanwhile keep taking us in closer.’

‘Understood.’

After a delay, doubtless while King checked for informational attack, a line cut down through the air, then opened out into the figure Cormac recognized from a file presently stored in his gridlink. She was an imposing woman but, then, with people able to remake themselves however they wanted, that really meant nothing.

‘Orlandine,’ said Cormac, intending to continue talking for as long as possible so King could get closer.

‘Who are you?’ she asked abruptly.

‘I am Agent Ian Cormac of ECS,’ he replied. ‘It would appear you have acquired some Polity property there. Do you suppose that you could see your way clear to explaining what you intend to do with it.’

‘I see,’ said Orlandine, ‘that you intend to draw this conversation out so you can get closer. An attack ship’s conventional weapons would have some problem getting through my defences, so either you have something else or you are desperate.’

‘You didn’t answer my question, Orlandine.’

Her hologram gazed at him. ‘I doubt you would believe the answer.’

‘Try me.’

‘I am here to destroy Erebus.’

The problem with that explanation, Cormac felt, was that it was all too plausible. However, the problem with that plausibility was that he could not afford to acknowledge it. There would only be one chance to get close enough to the stolen war runcible.

‘And why would you want to do such a thing?’

‘Cease approaching this war runcible immediately or I will fire on you,’ was her reply.

‘All I need is an explanation,’ said Cormac.

‘You’re not listening, are you.’ She gave a disappointed frown, her hologram froze, shrank to a line, disappeared.

‘Engaging chameleonware,’ King intoned.

A sudden change of course sent Cormac staggering to one side despite the gravplates’ attempts to compensate. Abruptly, the war runcible was hanging out there in space, and he felt it was almost within his grasp. With an effort of will he could throw himself across to it, transport himself to the selected set of buffers . . . Then it fell out of his grasp as King of Hearts turned hard and accelerated. A blinding stream of ionized matter stabbed past. Its effect was negligible to Cormac’s deeper U-sense but, upon snatching information from King’s server, he saw that Orlandine was firing a particle beam at them powerful enough to cut the attack ship in half.

‘Oops,’ said Arach. ‘I guess this means she’s hostile.’

‘Surely not,’ said Smith. ‘She throws moons at those who really irk her.’

Ignoring this comedy duo, Cormac instructed, ‘King, closer.’

‘I’m trying,’ King replied, ‘but there’s the small matter of the rail-gun missiles and the targeting systems trying to lock onto me, despite my chameleonware, which I’m incidentally having to reconfigure every five seconds.’

‘Right,’ conceded Cormac.

Another abrupt change of direction sent him staggering, so he stepped over to a fixed chair and braced himself against it. Despite the attack ship dodging back and forth, King managed to keep the image of the war runcible steady. Each time Orlandine’s particle beam lashed out, Cormac flinched and drove his fingers harder into the chair back. At one point it flashed particularly close and a sound like a ship’s hull scraping a reef echoed through the bridge. A second later the outside view was momentarily blocked by a cloud of incandescent gas filled with sparking globules of molten metal, for the beam had grazed King’s hull. Then flashes blossomed about the war runcible and, again linking to King’s server, he identified their source as a multitude of hunter-killer missiles being launched.

‘I cannot stay here for much longer,’ said King. ‘I will attempt one close run, then I’ll have to pull out. Just be ready.’

Cormac glanced around at Arach, who was gripping the indents specially cut in the floor for him, then across at Hubbert Smith, who was rigidly ensconced in a chair with his arms crossed and a frown creasing his face. He felt King of Hearts turn again and, reaching out with his U-sense, found the attack ship now heading directly towards the war runcible. He brought that massive objective into full focus, his perception sliding inside it. Concentrating on one of the five horn assemblies, he identified his destination and tried to fix on it. The sensation was like preparing to jump down to the deck of a violently rocking boat. The missiles were now close, their nose cones glaring steel eyes in the blackness.

Now.

Cormac felt able to take himself across and knew, at that moment, he could bring more along with him.

‘Arach!’

The drone abruptly scuttled forward and Cormac reached down, placing a hand behind his head as if grabbing the scruff of a pet dog.

Smith?

No, there wasn’t time to grab him, for even now King of Hearts was turning to evade the approaching missiles and so moving away from his objective - and anyway he didn’t trust the Golem. As he stepped through nothingness, he felt that his perception of missiles whipping past him could only be illusion. He focused on a landing point, his foot coming down on metal. Gravity snatched hold of him and he realized the metal under his foot was a wall.

‘Whoohoo!’ Arach yelled.

Cormac fell back towards a gravplated floor, turning in midair to land heavily on his feet and then roll. He ended up crashing into Arach, who had landed much better. The drone steadied him with one gleaming limb, which Cormac used to haul himself upright.

Stay with it. . .

He still kept King of Hearts within his perception, but warheads were now detonating out there, while something here - perhaps the runcible technology surrounding him - was interfering with his U-sense. Through his gridlink he set the CTD for signal-break detonation, unhooked his rucksack and abandoned it on the floor, then prepared to make the jump back to the attack ship. Too late, for the attack ship was gone - either it was already out of range or one of the detonations had destroyed it. He tried making contact through his gridlink but found too much interference.

‘What now, boss?’ Arach enquired.

‘Can you contact King?’

‘Nah,’ said the drone. ‘Lot of EMR out there and there’s signal-blocking in this place.’ Arach reached out to point one limb up.

Cormac looked up to see that running above them was an open framework of bubble-metal stanchions. Wound around some of these were metallic vinelike growths he recognized instantly.

‘I reckon it’s everywhere here,’ the drone added, punctuating this comment by opening his abdomen hatches to extrude his Gatling cannons.

Cormac again shouldered his rucksack. A brief instruction to Shuriken prepared the weapon for fast release, then he raised his proton carbine and hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to use it.

‘She must know that we’re here by now,’ he said.

‘How true,’ said a voice he knew was Orlandine’s.

Something peeled open twin sliding doors at the end of the corridor and a monstrous figure crashed through. Cormac crouched protectively and observed the bastard child of a giant steel octopus and a crab. War drone. One of Arach’s Gatling cannons turned and fired. The thing was lost in flame, then an instant later Arach’s missiles were detonating against a hard-field some yards ahead of it. Arach ceased firing and backed up until standing directly before Cormac. Behind the hard-field, the big drone braced its tentacular limbs against the walls of the corridor. Then its lower waspish abdomen detached and drifted forward. It began turning randomly, and around it the air filled with distortions like hard-edged heat haze. Cormac was unsure of what he was seeing until he spotted a chunk of metal sticking out from one wall clatter to the floor, cut clean through. This object was projecting atomic shear fields, and now it advanced to the hard-field and began to slide through.

‘I might survive this,’ observed Arach. ‘But you won’t unless you get the hell out of here.’

Cormac glanced back down the corridor to another twin door, before facing forward again. He could take himself away in an instant, and he could take Arach with him, but now that he was here he wanted some answers.

He stood up and held out his rucksack. ‘My death will result in this detonating, but I don’t even have to die. I can transport myself and my companion, in the same way I brought us here, to any other part of this runcible and then send the signal for this to detonate from there.’

The spinning abdomen was now through the hard-field. When its invisible shears brushed the walls they made sounds like sharpening knives. Cormac reached into his pocket, groped around for a moment, then pulled out the Europan dart. He held it up.

‘Orlandine,’ he said, ‘I know you can hear me and I know you can see me. You can probably do so much more than that because of course you’ve deified yourself with a Jain node.’

Abruptly the thing ahead stopped spinning and just hung motionless in the air.

‘Orlandine,’ Cormac continued, ‘I want you to tell me about Klurhammon and your two brothers.’

The reply was immediate. ‘You could have asked me that while you were still aboard your attack ship. Incidentally, that’s a neat ability you have there. It is one, despite my deification, as you call it, that I don’t possess.’

‘I can stop you now,’ Cormac replied. ‘But while I was aboard King of Hearts that was not an option.’

‘Why would you want to stop me destroying Erebus?’

‘I need to be convinced that is your true purpose.’

‘Very well, Ian Cormac of ECS, leave your CTD on the floor there and Knobbler will bring you to me.’

Cormac paused for a long moment. After all, she had control of Jain technology, probably provided to her by Erebus, and there was the danger she could interfere with his link to the CTD if he gave her time. She was a known murderer and a thief who controlled war drones, like this Knobbler, and a weapon capable of trashing planets. The right and logical thing to do would be to detonate the CTD and remove this threat to the Polity. However, there were too many inconsistencies here - too much he could not see clearly. Erebus had attacked a planet ‘of no tactical importance’ on which her brothers had resided, and this dart he held was discovered there near where two humans had been specifically murdered by a legate.

He needed answers. However, as he unshouldered the CTD and placed it on the floor, an uncomfortable notion occurred to him. It wasn’t the events on Klurhammon that mainly influenced his decision. He did not want to die. He no longer trusted those he had spent most of his life working for. And she sounded sane.

‘Are you sure ‘bout this, boss?’ asked Arach.

‘Not entirely.’

‘Right,’ said the drone, retracting his cannons and closing their hatches.

Cormac looked beyond Arach to the other drone at the end of the corridor. Abruptly the hard-field winked out and the shear device drew back to reconnect and once again become part of Knobbler. The big drone turned fluidly but noisily, before it gestured with a long evil-looking pincer on the end of one tentacle. ‘Follow me,’ it said.

* * * *