Brass Man

7

Ambient temperature was rising rapidly and, with his grub-like heaving along the ground, Cento realized he would not reach the survey ship before his motors started seizing up again or one of the huge rocks that kept raining down crushed him finally into the ground. But even with all the carnage around him—lava sleeting through the acidic air, pyroclastic flows pouring down from the distant caldera, and the continual earthquakes—he did have a line of sight to the vessel, and could still use his radio. His brief query elicited no reply. The chance that there was someone alive there, but unable to use a radio, he considered remote. Then linking to the ship’s computer—Shayden had never bothered to replace it with an AI—he descended into code as he gave it instructions. As a pall of smoke cleared, he saw that those instructions were being followed.

Vessels such as this one were used for orbital survey as well as landing, so contained robot probes. These devices were made for sampling atmosphere, limited surface scanning for mapping and the occasional retrieval of airborne or spaceborne objects. Cento observed a rear port opening and the probe sliding out to hover beside the ship. It was elliptical with a sensory head mounted on its front end, and the six grasping arms folded underneath it complemented its beetlish appearance. Smoke veiled all again, but the link remained and Cento could feel the probe coming towards him. Soon it penetrated the smoke, a sleet of lava pattering its upper surface. It drew closer, bucked when a large lump of semi-molten rock hit it and bounced off, but kept on coming. Such devices were rugged, but hardly made for this environment. Cento was relieved when it finally drew to a halt above him.

The Golem reached up and gripped one of the probe’s arms. It folded down two more arms and with three-fingered claws gripped one of his hipbones and his neck, then with a thrum of AG lifted him from the boiling ground. Quickly it turned and flew back towards the ship, depositing Cento at the last by the open airlock, before turning to head back to its launch cache.

Cento observed the two incinerated corpses lying nearby, then began dragging himself inside the ship. There he pulled himself upright and tried to close the lock, but something had destroyed its mechanism. He dragged himself to the cockpit and hauled himself up into the pilot’s chair where, after strapping in, he tried to use the ship’s more powerful transmitters. Nothing—no contact with the carrier shell, so no way to link through to the U-space transmitter it had on board. Unsurprised at this lack of response from the shell, Cento initiated the lander’s autolaunch. The computer refused, of course, because of the open airlock. Cento paused, then put it offline and took hold of the joystick. It would be a rough ride, but then he was used to those.

The virtual image he constructed was of a sphere of glowing points, all linked by spidery lines to a central nexus glowing brightest of all. That was the network, the entity of Dracocorp augs, suspended in grey void. Reality bore little resemblance, for the station orbiting the red dwarf was like a thick coin five kilometres across, spiked and glittering with sensory arrays and with a half-kilometre-high docking tower protruding from its centre. Few ships were docked there, and fewer still occupied the surrounding space. Skellor wondered if ECS was even aware that this station, placed for the long-term study of this carnelian star, was no longer entirely theirs. The query he received from the runcible AI contained there certainly gave the impression that this place was still Polity property. Working through the Vulture’s systems he responded, giving a false identity for his ship and for himself, both of which would be impossible to check in less than a solstan month — should the runcible AI feel any need.

‘Ruby Eye welcomes you, trader Scolan,’ the AI began over com.

‘Glad to be here. It’s been a long journey.’

‘And the purpose of your visit?’

‘Probably alcohol poisoning. I’ve been too long in this tin can.’

As this exchange drew to a close, Skellor could feel the runcible AI probing the Vulture for information, but the ship’s responses were his own, for his subversion program had certainly found and killed every last shred of personal identity the ship’s AI had retained. When the link finally broke, he flew the Vulture towards the tower and his designated docking station, slowing and turning it at the final moment into that framework. Buffers extended and absorbed the last of the ship’s momentum, then four universal docking clamps swung in towards the ship from above and below, and gripped it with large gecko adhesion pads. An embarkation tunnel then telescoped out from the tower, groped about a bit on the hull of the Vulture till it eventually found the airlock and connected.

Skellor stood up from the pilot’s chair and turned to regard Mr Crane. ‘Now, time to go to work.’

Crane swept up his toys and pocketed them. Skellor could not resist another probe inside the Golem, for he was learning—from a mind filled with disconnected but bloody memory—that Mr Crane was very good indeed at the profession to which he had been perverted.

It was night and, in the shallows that lay beyond the channel excavated into the seabed alongside the jetty, pearl crabs gleamed like underwater stars. Striding out along the gritty strand, his pulse-rifle propped across his shoulder, Evans thought Alston was overreacting. The Pelters just did not have the firepower to come in here mob-handed. Maybe they had more men than the two hundred guarding this island. But they would not be as well trained as Chaldor’s mercenaries or Evans’s own men.

‘Clear here,’ he said into his comunit.

It seemed pointless to eyeball the beach when no craft could come within twenty kilometres of the island without being picked up on radar. Yes, they might come in underwater, but that way would be unable to bring in anything to deal with the autogun emplacements set into the mountainside below Alston’s fortified home. By air was of course out of the question, as that would bring Polity monitors in here quick as blade beetles.

‘There’s a small cat about fifteen kloms out,’ Chaldor replied. ‘Tell your men to stay alert.’

‘What’s it doing?’

‘Nothing as yet.’

‘Probably just an otter hunter.’ Evans glanced along the beach to where two of his men were invisible in the low scrub of creosote bushes just back from the jetty. He had groups of five men spaced at intervals of a hundred metres all around the island. All of them were bored with waiting and itching for a fight, but he suspected there would be no fight here, and that the final showdown would be in Gordonstone. He turned from the sea, intending to head over and speak to his men, but just then, out of the corner of his eye, spotted something in the water.

‘What in hell’s name?’ He swivelled and peered directly at the object. At first, it appeared to be merely the top of a post revealed by one of the quick ebb tides generated by the fast transit of the moon, Cereb. But it kept rising as it headed inshore till a rim became identifiable. It took a moment for Evans to admit to himself that what he was seeing was a large, wide-brimmed hat. He lowered his pulse-rifle into position by his hip, and set it whining as it topped up the charge in its capacitor.

‘What is it, Evans?’ Chaldor asked him over com.

‘A hat, ah… with a head underneath it.’

Evans felt his skin crawl as the huge man rose higher and higher out of the waves. He wore no breathing gear, and his skin looked rubbery—false. Had Semper actually been telling the truth? Evans pulled his flare goggles down over his eyes and, as soon as the man was out to his waist, he fired. The goggles prevented the strobing flash from blinding him, thus allowing him to see the flames and the glowing impact of each shot in turn. But the big man just came on.

‘Shit, Semper was telling the truth—we’ve got one big-fuck Golem coming ashore!’

Evans fired again, holding the firing button down. Suddenly the Golem was up onto a ledge and taking huge strides through shallows scattered with pearl crabs, leaving milky footprints behind as he crushed the myriad creatures. Evans turned to run back towards his men. Perhaps more firepower might… A heavy thumping tread behind him—he couldn’t believe it; this was wrong, too quick…

Evans’s men heard the scream—and turned just in time to see the Golem discarding something ripped and bloody. They came out of cover, confidently aiming their pulse-rifles.

Guilt, Mika found, was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion for which her Life-coven training had ill prepared her—and now she felt doubly guilty. She reached out to touch a finger to the hard-field that overlay the chainglass window, and found it slippery to the touch. Beyond the window, the asteroid was held central in the vast containment sphere by gravplates generating antigravity mounted all around the sphere interior, countering the minimal gravity of the asteroid itself. In the intervening space the vacuum swarmed with machines and suited figures, skinless Golem and complex telefactors operated by the Jerusalem AI. Already Jerusalem had separated the bridge pod of the Occam Razor from the surface, and sometime hence it would eject the asteroid into space in order to destroy it with an imploder missile.

‘He will not be pleased,’ she said.

The voice that replied was mild and conversational, but then you didn’t need to shout when you were a demigod. ‘Ian Cormac’s requirement for an expert in matters concerning the Jain and Dragon is not of prime concern. His singular mission is to catch and/or destroy a criminal. Our concern is to contain and understand a technology that could obliterate the Polity. Your abilities, as you surmised, will be more usefully employed here.’

Mika turned and surveyed the quarantine pod she had been allotted, with its intrusive scanning gear and the huge cowled surgical robot poised over a slab with drain channels around its edges, and felt a sudden lethargy overcome her. The nerve blockers and analgesics were not so effective now, and soon it would be time. Whether or not she would survive was open to question. The reports received from the medical team on Masada told her Apis had not yet revived, and that they were still removing further mycelial growths from him but, on the plus side, he had not yet died.

‘I’ve uploaded the recording of the operation.’ she stated.

‘I have,’ Jerusalem replied, ‘studied it in detail, Asselis Mika, and will be able to make some improvements. Presently I am designing T-cell nanobots for the finer work.’

Mika gritted her teeth and asked, ‘Will I be clear then?’

‘This method has a good chance of success. Disconnected filaments of the mycelium will not be able to transmit defensive information to each other, and so the nanobots should be able to destroy them. They will work in the same manner as the counteragent still being used to rid Samarkand of the ceramal-eating mycelium there.’

‘Disconnected filaments?’

‘The mycelium is killing you, so immediate surgery is necessary. However, I am capable of more invasive surgery than you performed on the outlinker, so I should be able to remove more of it.’

Mika shuddered. She wasn’t usually squeamish about such things, but she did not intend to ask the AI just how invasive it intended to get. The result, she suspected, would look rather like an explosion in an abattoir.

‘Might it not have been better to have Thorn here as well?’

‘The procedure I am about to undertake can also be carried out aboard the Jack Ketch. Thorn can then be kept in cold sleep until such a time as the nanobots can be conveyed to that vessel.’ Jerusalem paused. ‘There is, Mika Asselis, no further reason for delay.’

Mika knew she was procrastinating, and was doing so because she was scared. She discarded her robe, walked over to the surgical slab and sat naked on the edge of it. It was very cold. As she lay back and the surgical robot raised a nerve blocker to her neck, she thought that perhaps, like Thorn had intended, she should have had a memplant installed so that the step over death and into artificial life would be available to her too, but it was too late for that now.

On the Jack Ketch itself, with two analgesic patches on his chest and a nerve blocker now numbing his leg where earlier it had felt as if the mycelium had taken a hacksaw to his hipbone, Thorn limped out into the corridor adjoining Medical, and thought how weird. This seemed more like the inside of some old Renaissance chateau than a high-tech warship, what with the carpets, the plaster mouldings on the ceiling, the ornate dangling light fittings. But more disconcerting was that none of this stuff had been here a couple of hours ago, when he had entered Medical to be checked over.

The dropshaft was reassuringly high-tech, however, though it shifted while he was in transit. Gripping the handles fitted at his departure point, he stepped out at an angle onto the floor of the bridge. Momentarily, the changed angle of gravity fields disorientated him, and the fact that seemingly nothing stood between him and starlit vacuum was disconcerting. He lowered his gaze to study the bridge’s strange decor, then its other occupants—just as Jack said, ‘He will speak to you momentarily.’

Cormac was pacing the rug, obviously angry; Gant lolled nonchalantly, with his shoulder against one of the cast-iron street lamps; while Jack’s mechanical avatar sat in one of the club chairs, an ankle resting on one knee, the fingertips of each hand pressing against each other to form a cage below his chin, his eyes invisible. Thorn went over to join his friend.

‘This should be interesting,’ Gant muttered.

Thorn made no comment, his gaze straying to the antique execution devices for which Jack seemed to have developed a penchant. ‘That’s a new one.’ He pointed out a big brass statue of a bull.

Gant glanced over. ‘The brazen bull—particularly nasty. It’s hollow, and the victim was placed inside to be roasted. They put reeds in its nostrils to alter the sound of the screams, so that it seemed the bull was bellowing.’

‘You know,’ said Thorn, ‘I’m glad I don’t live in any system run by humans.’

‘Fucking A,’ said Gant.

Just then a shape appeared, apparently turning above them in vacuum: a ring, composed of a jade-green serpent swallowing its tail: ouroboros. This acted as a frame for something that appeared first as a distant silver dot, then grew to fill the frame and finally came through to block it from view: an androgynous face, bald and metallic, with shadowed hollows rather than eyes. This was a projection, not something actually outside the ship. Thorn and Gant fell silent to observe.

Cormac looked up. ‘Jerusalem?’

‘The same,’ the face replied.

Without any more ado, Cormac said, ‘I went to Masada specifically to collect Mika, since I require her expertise.’

The face tilted as if its unseen body had shrugged. ‘Certain other factors have come into play, Ian Cormac, not least my own requirement of her taking precedence.’

Cormac grimaced. ‘I was given carte blanche by Earth Central, which presumably you have been allowed to override, and presumably for the best of reasons, so I’m not going to argue the point. I would just like an explanation.’

‘Simply put,’ the AI replied, ‘we have decided that understanding Jain technology is more important than apprehending one criminal who happens to employ it. Skellor is certainly dangerous—any Separatist with a gun is dangerous. Do you go after said Separatist or do you go after the arms trade? The answer is simply that you go after both, but that the latter must necessarily take precedence.’

‘A very elastic analogy,’ said Cormac tightly.

‘There are the other factors I mentioned.’

‘Do go on.’

Jerusalem continued, ‘Asselis Mika will shortly undergo major surgery, without which she will die. Once I have carried this out, I will place her either on life-support or in cold-sleep suspension, whilst one of my subminds removes stray, regrowing, and possibly mutating Jain filaments. Were she aboard the Jack Ketch, the same scenario would apply: she would have been useless to you.’

Hearing this, Thorn wondered if his insistence on not going with Mika but boarding the Jack Ketch had been such a bright idea.

‘But then she’s useless to you as well,’ said Cormac.

‘For a period of five to ten days, by which time I will have designed and nanofactured robotic T-cells capable of hunting down and destroying all remaining Jain structures inside her. Obviously, Jack could employ such nanobots. But your search for Skellor—debouching from Viridian—is most likely to be either on the Line or out-Polity altogether?’

Looking uncomfortable, Cormac nodded.

Relentlessly Jerusalem continued, ‘Then the likelihood of my being able to convey some medium containing those nanobots to you is remote, as that would have to be done through the runcible network.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

‘It is also well to remember one other point: Asselis Mika herself believes she will be more usefully employed aboard me.’

Cormac remained silent, his look of annoyance fading to blankness as he folded his arms.

‘Thank you for your explanation,’ he said coldly.

The head nodded once, then slowly receded, and winked out. Briefly the ouroboros reappeared, like a call sign, then it too faded.

After a pause, Cormac turned to Thorn. ‘You heard the prognosis for Mika, so the same probably applies to you a few days down the line.’

Thorn straightened up, trying not to wince at a stabbing pain at the base of his spine. ‘I heard it.’

‘You can take a shuttle across to the Jerusalem.’

Thorn snorted. ‘What would I do aboard a ship like that? I’d rather be in cold sleep here.’

Cormac nodded, then turned to the ship’s avatar. ‘Jack, take us under.’

Immediately the stars and the blackness folded into a deep grey, and Thorn still experienced a frisson at that strange tugging feeling that told him they were on their way.

‘And while we’re here, Jack,’ Cormac continued, ‘let’s see what our dead Separatist has to say.’

Despite his pain, Thorn had been fascinated to learn that this ship possessed its own ghost. He stared as a line of distortion cut through the air outside the drawing room. With a clicking, whickering sound, the automaton Jack shut down, its head bowing and the glint dying behind its glasses. It must have been too much trouble for the AI to maintain simultaneously both the automaton and the projection of Aphran that now appeared.

This was not the woman of whom Thorn had seen images. That woman had been contemptuous, angry, frustrated at no longer being able to fight… in other words, human. This Aphran was something else entirely.

She was naked but, naked or otherwise, Thorn doubted her bones had originally been visible through translucent flesh. She was colourless, her hair long and pale, whereas Thorn distinctly remembered it being brown; her skin was white as milk, whereas before it had carried a slightly Asiatic hue; and her eyes were a demonic, pupil-less black. Thorn could only wonder if this was the result of some strange kind of vanity, for surely, appearing this way, she could be whatever she wanted. Also, the woman was drifting, like a corpse in deep water, her hair and arms pulled back and forth as if by wayward currents. There was a sound too, like delicate wind chimes or a tittering giggle, and a distant moaning.

‘Hello, Aphran.’ Cormac walked over to the edge of the carpet.

She turned and focused on the agent, though Thorn knew that this was all illusion—the woman would be seeing him through the camera eyes Jack allowed her. Thorn glanced at Gant, then stepped away from the lamp post to stand at Cormac’s shoulder. Curiosity was growing inside him, as thick and heavy as the Jain nodes that were already there.

‘Hello, agent,’ Aphran replied.

Cormac seemed at a loss. He parted his hands as if to encompass that same loss, then brought them together and got straight down to business.

‘You told me Skellor is hunting dragons,’ he said. ‘But I think I can safely assume that we’re not talking about the winged and fire-breathing kind?’

‘Dragons and brass men,’ Aphran replied, and tilted her head back as if laughing, or as if in pain. Thorn saw then that the woman did possess some colour—the inside of her mouth was bright red.

‘Well, I know about the brass man. He collected what was left of Mr Crane on Viridian only a short time ago, and that’s where we are now heading, in the hope of picking up his trail. Do you know where he’s going next?’

‘Dragons.’

Cormac appeared to be chewing on something bitter. ‘But where will he find them?’

‘Give me substance,’ said Aphran.

Cormac slowly nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll do that when I think you’re no longer holding anything back. My other option is to let Jack take your mind apart piecemeal, in order to find what I want. Though after taking that course I’m not sure I’d bother asking him to put it back together again.’

‘Cruel,’ hissed Aphran.

‘You are merely a dispensable recording, but more pertinently you are a criminal under sentence of death.’

Thorn absorbed that. Not so long ago the guilt of a cerebral recording was a murky legal debating point. Now all recordings of murderers, made after the murder was committed, came under the same sentence.

‘I have paid.’ In saying this, Aphran changed—aged a hundred, a thousand years in a few seconds, became something twisted, with flames issuing all around her.

Ignoring this display, Cormac asked, ‘Why did Skellor want a smashed metalskin Golem?’

‘Pleases him… angry when I mocked him… burnt me.’

Aphran’s illusory form was growing young again — the flames dying away in the air around her.

‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t doubt he has the ability to rebuild Mr Crane. But because it pleases him?’

‘It pleases him. Please him. Love him.’

‘Do you know where he is heading from Viridian?’

Thorn now observed Aphran grow old again, then in a moment young.

‘Completion… the symmetry… aesthetically pleasing.’

‘Answer the question: where is he going? Where is the Dragon sphere he is hunting?’

‘I love you I love you I love you…’ Aphran was oscillating between extreme age and pubescence, and a halo of flame remained surrounding her.

Cormac turned to Thorn and Gant. ‘Is there anything either of you would like to ask? Maybe you might get some sense out of her.’

Gant spoke up: ‘What did he do to you?’

Aphran was now floating a metre from the floor. Her gaze swung down towards him.

‘Skellor,’ she hissed. Something then snapped inside her and she tilted her head back, opening her red mouth wide. A cycling wail issued from her, and she began to slide back away from them. Abruptly this movement accelerated, and she hurtled along above the deck and disappeared through the invisible wall.

‘Maybe some other question would have been better,’ suggested Thorn.

‘She said she’d paid,’ said Gant, looking directly at Cormac.

Coldly analytical, Cormac said, ‘Yes, I see. What would it be possible to do to a person if you could control the function of that person’s body at a nanoscopic level? Nerves, skin, bone and flesh could be rebuilt even as they were being destroyed.’

Thorn added, ‘She said he burnt her. I wonder for how long.’ He winced, pain not being something he could distance himself from right then.

Cormac turned and stared at the wall—at grey void. ‘Jack, should we erase her?’

‘That is your decision, but I would advise against it,’ the disembodied voice of the AI replied. ‘She has suffered but, with time and effort, can be restored. She may possess much knowledge about Skellor, and much insight.’

‘Without Mika,’ said the agent, ‘that might be something we’ll need desperately.’

‘Well, if you fully understand the danger, then I cannot dissuade you,’ said Anderson, knowing that the sister of a killer coming after him had only increased Tergal’s fascination. It was harmless enough: the danger Unger Salbec represented held no threat for the boy.

Golgoth was to the right of them now and ahead numerous trails tangled into the Sand Towers. This was not the usual route taken away from the city—which lay on the other side—but Anderson hoped thus to avoid encountering Salbec’s sister. He had intended to depart from the lower city directly underneath the platform, but Laforge had advised him against that because apparently the area of the Towers lying below the Overcity was swarming with nasty creatures—some of them possibly human. Here, but for the occasional sulerbane plants standing, with their woody frills and brackets, like petrified dwarfs in ragged clothing, the ground was barren. The coloured sand eroded from the layers had been trampled by the passage of many feet into a mixture of nondescript grey.

Raising his monocular, Anderson turned aside and studied the Overcity of Golgoth. Its two-kilometre-wide platform, as well as resting on the buttes themselves, was supported by steel pillars and arching trusses. In the shade thus engendered, there was movement amid scattered bulbous dwellings made of bonded sand. The Overcity, with its rectilinear towers, domes and spires, resembled an Earth city that Anderson had once seen in an ancient picture. He panned his monocular around to face the buttes directly ahead. He could distinguish falls certainly caused by the recent quakes and, above them, could just make out the occasional sinister shape of a sleer skittering across the high faces of sandstone, or in and out of the caves bored into it. The creatures were small, but it would be best to keep safely to the centre of the paths.

‘Have you ever had to kill a third-stage sleer?’ he suddenly asked.

‘They don’t have a third stage,’ Tergal replied.

‘Ah, they are rare where you come from, but not so rare where we are going.’ Anderson pointed. ‘Those are all first-stage—little more than nymphs. They’re cave hunters mostly, and for that purpose possess a feeding head with grinding mandibles with extensible antlers, ten legs attached in pairs on independently rotating body segments, and though quite capable of killing a man, they never grow larger than a metre in length. Also, like their adult kin they possess the ability to split themselves in two, but there’s no necessity for that as they are not breeders.’

‘I know what they are,’ said Tergal, giving Anderson a puzzled glance.

Anderson continued regardless. ‘After about two years, they encyst in the sand and transform to the second stage. The front segment folds up and melds into the feeding head, the two legs attached turning into carapace saws for dealing with larger prey outside the sand caves—prey they can now see because they simultaneously gain a nice triad of compound eyes. They also grow an ovipositor drill which they can use to inject paralytic. And at this stage they grow to about two metres in length.’

Tergal grunted, then shifted about in his saddle. He asked, ‘What’s an ovipositor?’

‘It is the egg-laying tube protruding from the rear of an adult sleer.’

Tergal turned to him. ‘There, you see: “adult sleer”, so why do you talk of a third stage?’

‘Because there is one.’ Anderson considered all he had learned during this journeying, and all he knew about sleers and their life cycles. One day he would write a book about it all, to add to the collection kept in the Rondure library—but not yet, not while there was still so much to see. He continued enthusiastically, ‘The second-stage creature, as you are aware, splits itself for mating: each half moving on four legs. The rear section can then go off to mate with the rear sections of other sleers, while the feeding or hunting end continues about its business—the two sections still communicating by low-frequency bio-radio. Once rejoined after mating, the whole creature lays eggs in a cave or burrow in which it will dump paralysed prey. Nymphs—first-stage sleers—then hatch out and feed on this preserved food. After many years, and for reasons I’ve not yet fathomed, a second-stager again encysts, and transforms into the third stage. These lay eggs in a similar manner, but out of them hatch second-stage sleers.’

‘What are they like then, these third-stage creatures?’

‘Bigger, inevitably. The first one I killed was three metres long. Its carapace was dark grey, rather than bearing the usual sand-coloured camouflage, and another pair of legs had ridden up beside its head to form pincer arms that act just like that punch axe you carry. And of course it now ran on six legs. It did that.’ Anderson pointed to the rim of his sand hog’s carapace where two large puncture holes had been filled up with a web of the epoxy strips normally used to shoe a sand hog’s feet. Tergal observed this damage silently, then his gaze slid up to the long case fixed further up the carapace.

‘How did you kill it?’

‘Not with that—I got that later.’ Anderson waved a hand at the case. ‘I hadn’t properly learned my trade then, so used my fusile. Luckily the creature was more interested in my mount than in me, and it clung on even as I kept reloading to shoot bullet after bullet down its gullet. Meanwhile Bonehead slid his feeding head underneath it, and chewed on its guts. While that was happening its breeding section broke away and ran off on two legs—I never knew what became of that.’

Anderson had noted one of Bonehead’s two eye-palps—which had extruded from its sensory head earlier as they first came in sight of the sleers—turning towards him during this conversation. It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.

He continued, ‘Had it directly attacked me, there was little I could have done—it would have winkled me out of this armour easy as eating a sand oyster.’

Staring into the shade that lay between the Sand Towers, Tergal asked nervously, ‘So we could encounter such creatures here?’

‘It’s a distinct possibility. And we might even encounter a droon or an apek, or even a fourth-stage sleer.’

‘You only find apeks near lakes,’ argued Tergal. ‘And droons are either extinct or a myth. As to fourth-stage sleers, I’ve not even heard such a myth. Don’t tell me: your hog here lost its claw to one?’

‘No, an apek took that over by Lake Cooder in Bravence. And I’ve myself seen drawings of fourth-stage sleers—and droons—but I’ve never heard of any who have encountered them.’

‘Which probably confirms they don’t exist.’

‘Either that, or not many have survived to tell the tale.’

The reception committee consisted of technicians working in the docking tower who, upon seeing Mr Crane step out behind Skellor, suddenly decided to get busy about other tasks. He saw that all three men wore Dracocorp augs, and supposed the source of that bright point in the aug network had sent them to assess this new visitor. Now ignoring them, he strode on towards the security arch spanning the gangway leading to the centre of the tower. The arch was to alert the station AI to anyone entering with lethal biologicals or weapons capable of damaging the structure of the station itself. Skellor did not want to know what it might make of him or Crane and, stopping before it, he pressed his hand against the device’s white anodized surface. From his palm, Jain nanofilament eased between the molecular interstices of the metal, and spread, invading optics and tracking them back to the controlling submind.

Too late, that same mind became aware of the invasion. Skellor isolated it and linked, erased its immediate memory and substituted one comprising a single inoffensive human stepping through the security arch. With his other hand he waved Air Crane ahead of him. He then raided the submind for information about the station and its residents, delaying its restarting for a few seconds before pulling his hand away, the filaments stretching and snapping back as if he had just pressed his palm into treacle. He stepped through himself and, glancing back, noticed that two of the technicians had been watching him. They would have no idea what he had done, but they would certainly know he had done something, for there had been no alarm raised on the detection of a large armoured Golem.

Beyond the arch, the long high corridor, lit by spider-web lights inset in the ceiling, terminated at the mouth of a dropshaft. Stepping past and to one side of Crane, who was now peering down into the well, Skellor inspected the control panel. He chose ‘Main Concourse’, then stepped in. Descending, he glanced up to see Crane step into the shaft, clamping his hand down on his head as if he expected his hat to be blown off, but there was no air-blast as the irised gravity field rigidly took hold of him.

Exiting the shaft, Skellor surveyed a large open area floored with mica-effect tiles, its high ceiling supported by bulbous pillars reminiscent of the Bradbury Hotel on Earth, the lighting web extending across the ceiling giving it the illusion of depth. Spread across this expanse were seating areas, trees of all varieties growing in small walled gardens, bars and open-plan restaurants, and all around the edges, between the many exit tunnels, were lighted shop fronts. Right in the centre, in a circular lawn kerbed with polished agates, grew a huge baobab under whose low branches people rested or picnicked.

Skellor immediately noted that many people were eyeing him and Mr Crane. He was not worried over this—the nexus of the Dracocorp network would not get the time to react appropriately. He closed his eyes and, using those devices grown inside his body, mapped signal strengths throughout the station. He again created the virtual sphere, then input the blueprint of the station he had taken from the submind, deforming the sphere to fit it. The central glowing point was ahead, higher up and to his left. He made for the relevant tunnel, Crane dogging his footsteps like Dr Shade.

The tunnel, sectioned like a pipe and lit as elsewhere, had coloured lines traced along the edge of the mica floor to provide directions for those without augs. Checking the blueprint, Skellor saw he would have to take the next dropshaft leading to the floor above. Around the mouth of this shaft loitered people wearing Dracocorp augs.

Now for the reaction. Skellor first alerted Mr Crane, then inside himself recalled a stored viral program he had used aboard the Occam Razor. No longer being part of a large Jain structure as well as a Polity dreadnought, he did not have the transmission power he had used in the Masadan system. Back on the Razor a touch to any one of the Dracocorp augs worn by Separatist prisoners had been all he required to take control of them all—but theirs had been a nascent network, with no individual yet gaining ascendance. In the Masadan system it had been necessary for him to take control through the Hierarch, who was also the one in control of the aug network, which he had done through the sheer power and bandwidth of the transmitters available on the Occam Razor. Here, he must touch the ascendant Dracocorp aug and, to get to the individual wearing it, he suspected he would leave a trail of blood.

As he reached the dropshaft, seven people turned towards him. He scanned them at a low level, and saw that all of them were armed. He noted how they had prepared for Mr Crane: two of them carried APW handguns, and another a mini-grenade launcher. But they had carried out no scan themselves, and were reacting only to what they were seeing: a human and a simple, though large, metalskin Golem.

One of them stepped forwards; a catadapt man with a mane and feline eyes. He grinned, exposing fangs.

‘Welcome to Ruby Eye,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain how you came aboard without Security becoming aware of him.’ He gestured at Mr Crane.

Skellor halted. This man was carrying an APW; Skellor also noted that in a pouch attached to his belt he carried a Dracocorp aug. No doubt they assumed that the lack of a reaction to him by the security of this station meant he was a Polity agent. He linked through to the big Golem, to give instructions, and then saw that they were not required. Crane had already picked up from him the result of the scan and was ready to act.

‘By what authority do you ask that question?’ he asked, taking a pace closer.

‘The authority of Nalen, who, despite what the Polity might think, runs this station.’ The man drew his APW handgun from inside his puffed coat, and held it down to his side. ‘And Nalen would like to meet you — but with suitable precautions in place.’

Precautions… The man meant Skellor wearing the Dracocorp aug, and to do that he would expose himself to Nalen’s inspection. Perhaps he could insert the virus through that link, but then again Nalen might be able to fend him off. It would have to be the bloody path. Mr Crane moved even before ordered.

The man had no time to raise his weapon. Crane went past him with a snapping sound, which might have issued from the Golem’s clothing—so fast did he move— but more likely from the man’s neck. He remained standing for a second—his expression bewildered as his head sagged, his shattered neck unable to support it. Crane hit the next APW wielder and hefted him screaming from the floor, a big brass hand turning in a bloody morass below his ribcage. Skellor advanced, in no particular hurry, and observed the one equipped with the launcher turning and bringing the weapon to bear from underneath his long coat. He fired—just as Crane turned the victim he was holding into the path of the shot. The screaming man exploded into something ragged and bloody. Crane threw the remnants at the one with the launcher. This second man was yelling as he tried to disentangle himself. Crane was by him, taking away his launcher, turning it round and driving it straight through his body. Even as he dropped the man, he turned and backhanded an assailant behind—a woman—who in an instant was a headless woman cartwheeling sideways through the air. A second woman drew her weapon and aimed at Skellor.

‘Tell it to stop!’

Skellor smiled, shook his head, disappeared.

‘Fuck! Fuck!’ the woman screamed, firing repeatedly at the spot where he had been standing. Then her gun was snatched away, disappearing, whereupon a single shot issued from one side, making a hole through her cheek and blowing out the back of her head. The two remaining people, a man and a woman—both dressed in the coveralls of runcible technicians—backed away, firing at Mr Crane and frantically screaming for help over their augs. Crane accelerated towards them, not because they were causing any damage to him, but more likely because of the holes they were putting in his coat. Reaching them, he grabbed both by their heads, then slammed them together. His hands met, palm to palm, in a wet explosion.

Standing to one side of Crane, Skellor reappeared. ‘You are impressive, Mr Crane,’ he said.

Crane scraped away the larger spatters of brain and pieces of bone from the front of his burnt coat. As he stood there, his exposed brassy skin darkened as it exuded Jain fibres—and in a few seconds the burns and tears on his coat had disappeared. Even the blood faded as if sucked away. Crane looked down, shook a piece of skull from the toe of his boot, offered no reaction to the words. Skellor immediately probed inside the Golem and, with what he found, considered destroying Crane there and then. Some of the Jain structure inside the Golem was no longer under Skellor’s control, hence the way Crane had used it. But Skellor stayed his hand, putting in place a program to alert him should any more of that structure be subverted by the Golem. Mr Crane, after all, was so very good at his job.

Skellor turned and walked towards the dropshaft and, not bothering to utilize panel or grav fields, which might well be under Nalen’s control, reached inside and grasped the maintenance ladder. Before following, Crane abruptly stooped and picked up the piece of skull he’d shaken from his boot, then gazed at it. They had all died, so he could not, in his twisted logic, gain a substantial icon. He tossed the skull fragment aside, and followed Skellor into the dropshaft.