The Line of Polity

18

"In his armour of brass. Brother Pegrum came upon the valley and saw how Stenophalis had failed, but was undaunted."

The woman reckoned that, after seeing what had happened to Stenophalis, she herself would be daunted to the point of having to change her underwear. But of course Pegrum had not seen it happening, only the final result — which somewhat resembled a can of minced beef after being hit with a sledgehammer.

She continued with: "Coming astride the valley, with the sun gleaming on the polished brass of his armour, he demanded of the monster that skulked below, 'Come forth and face me! "

Brother Pegrum looked fine and strong. The woman shook her head, and read on — she suspected there might be some degree of repetition in these stories of the variously armoured brothers.

"The Hooded One came forth, and he smote it with hard light until its scutes glowed like the sun, and below it the river boiled away."

The red beams from the Brother's heavy QC laser spat into the shadowed cowl, but only seemed to make the eyes glow brighter. Deep in that cowl the woman saw things glittering and moving, and wondered how true to life this picture might be,

"But light availed him nought, and out of a great fog of steam rose the monster to drag him down into the Valley of Shadows and Whispers."

Brother Pegrum definitely did not want to go: he was kicking and he was screaming and he was clawing at the mountainsides. The picture reminded the woman of an ancient picture she had seen, long ago, of one of the damned being dragged down into Hell.

"And his armour parted like butter under the knife of the Hooded One."

The woman paused again. "Gross," she murmured.

The flash from the screen left shadows fleeing across his vision and, even though he was some distance from the explosion itself, Stanton's ears were still ringing. From the holocam he'd dropped on top of Dorth's command tent, he was now unsurprisingly getting no response, but he had seen enough.

All communications shut down, only seconds before all those guards he had seen around the landers dropped to the ground, so he was getting nothing from Lellan, Polas or even Jarvellis on what had been going on, but then he didn't need to. Through the holocam he'd watched that bastard Dorth walking out into the grasses with five others, and then those five tearing away their Dracocorp augs only seconds before the hit. It didn't really take much figuring to work out what had happened: some sort of subversion weapon operating through aug software, communications knocked out, high-powered laser hits obviously from outside of the atmosphere… so the one Cormac had warned them about had arrived and started throwing his weight around. But Stanton was not going to allow that to distract him. Barring the near-miss on Brom's barge on Cheyne III, this was the nearest he had got to Aberil Dorth in decades, and he was not now going to take his eye off the ball. The only problem was that he needed to cross about five kilometres of wilderness to get on Dorth's trail.

At present the aerofan was useless — its laminar batteries so drained they had not even an erg to spare to run the LCD displays on its console — so Stanton stepped over the side rail and dropped to the ground. He tried not to allow himself to think too deeply about the kind of creatures he had been seeing in quantity during his circuitous journey here, nor to wonder what the hell was stirring them up, but there seemed something odd about the atmosphere of the wilderness — something that felt, incongruously, both alien and familiar, and threatening too. He shook his head and swore. He'd been around too long and in too many shitty situations to get the jitters like this.

Checking the direction-indicator setting of his wristcom, he was annoyed to see it had been completely scrambled by the same viral attack that had knocked out communications. No matter, the line of incinerated landers stretched from horizon to horizon and, so long as he did not go too wildly off course, he would run into that line soon enough, and once there all he needed to do was find one undamaged laminar battery. Stomping straight into flute grasses, he drew his heavy pulse-gun and a laser torch.

"I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley," he intoned, and tried to believe it when his words seemed to stir something huge in the darkness right behind the spot where he had brought down the aerofan. He went into a squat, and peered back in that direction but, with afterimages still plaguing his vision, all he could see was flute grass and the aerofan. Then there was the rearing of a huge shadow, and something nudged the aerofan aside as it slid past… and just kept on sliding.

I'm dead.

He knew exactly what it was: the other monstrous predators here walked only on two or four feet, not on a hundred paddle legs. And other predators he could handle mostly, but not this one. Stanton reversed his pulse-gun up underneath his chin, as the hissing roar moved up beside him and a head like a gigantic limpet shell reared up into the darkness — the shadowed hollow of it filled with the whickering of small sharp movement. Stanton prepared himself: if it came down over him he would pull the trigger — there was simply no other option. Unbelievably the thing slid on past, its segmented body forming a wall of armour beside him that he could have reached out and touched. Then it was gone.

With care Stanton withdrew the weapon from under his chin, releasing it into his other hand. He then straightened out the crackling tension from his fingers. The heat from the laser strike, he reasoned, must have confused it — as it was in the direction of that it was now going. To his knowledge, no one had ever got so close to a hooder and survived. This, he supposed, was another example of what Jarvellis called 'Stanton luck'. He hoped it would hold out, since he must now follow the hooder in towards the fires.

Inside the bridge pod, Skellor checked, with his human eyes, that all that remained of his command crew was ash and smoke. In the end, he realized, only those things that were utterly of his own creation could be trusted. His eyes now opaquing, he turned his attention outward once again.

The Theocracy army would reach the landers soon enough, but meanwhile there were other matters requiring his attention. Through huge magnification he gazed down on the northern ranges of the single continent.

Hitting the rebel communications centre had been a mistake, for there they had possessed only a secondary emitter, not the actual U-space transmitter, and now his chances of tracing it had become so much less. It was somewhere there in the mountains, but had since ceased transmission, though there was still a ghost of signature for him to work with. Because of this he was able to extend the fractal calculations that fined down its location in realspace as a function of its location in underspace. But even for him this was not easy, as such maths was normally the province of runcible AIs — specifically constructed for the purpose. What he really needed was some eyes on the ground — or at least close to it. The Theocracy army was out of the question, for if he turned them back towards the mountains, the rebels, still scuttling for their caves, would probably turn to counterattack and thus hinder any search. The Theocracy soldiers were rough tools now anyway — the cerebral burn he had used leaving them as little more than automatons — and most importantly, though he could control them, they were, like Aphran, not his own creation and therefore not to be trusted. Skellor had something else in mind.

All of the shuttles inside the Occam, from the smallest twelve-seaters to the huge delta-wing heavy lifters, were already bound up and pierced by the growth of Jain substructure, and in some cases with the larger architecture. Luckily he did not require an actual landing on the planet — just insertion into its atmosphere — and those grabships he had returned to their holds after the growth would be adequate to that task. Through the internal vision of the Jain structure which, like an infinity of fibre optics, could provide him with views anywhere it existed in the ship, he watched the continued growth of the calloraptor-hybrid eggs in their polyhedral framework, before deciding what changes should be made. The alterations to muscle and bone structures took an infinitesimal fraction of a second for him to calculate, but for longer than that he was annoyed that practical considerations had him dispensing with a large proportion of the weight and hence the strength of those structures. Briefly he considered the installation of some form of AG, but found the idea aesthetically displeasing. As soon as he finally reached a decision on what he must do, he did it: Jain filaments darkening the albumen of the eggs as they tore and rebuilt and polished to perfection.

Beyond the Medical section, by using the old mechanisms of the ship, Skellor shifted a corridor so there was a direct connection between that area and the bay containing the grabships. As the eggs turned metallic white on completion of the processes operating inside them, they were drawn in towards the main trunk of Jain architecture passing through that section, and microscopic cilia in their billions conveyed them into the newly constructed corridor, further down which Skellor now grew another spur of architecture to convey them to the bay. Here he glued them into a three-dimensional honeycomb that expanded the grabs of three ships so that in the end it seemed they held boulders of metallic conglomerate. When the doors of the bay finally opened, and the ships blasted out into space, Skellor felt great satisfaction with his creation, and even more so as he began to program sharp little minds. In all, this particular act had taken him five and a half solstan hours — about twice the time it would take him to denude the planet's surface of human life by using the conventional weapons of this ship. But that was not something he wanted to do just yet — not while he was having such fun.

Through her light-intensifying binoculars, Lellan surveyed the lower slopes and still saw no more sign of the Theocracy army. There seemed no rhyme or reason to anything the enemy had been doing all night. Earlier they had kept attacking erratically: squads charging from cover in what seemed a co-ordinated attack, then that charge losing impetus once out in the open, where her own troops could use the Theocracy troops for target practice. It had been mad, horrible, and seemed to make no sense at all, yet it had produced an effect simply by attrition, because the Theocracy forces outnumbered hers by three to one. Now, though, the foe were just turning around and walking away. Lowering her binoculars, she turned her attention to the technician, who had Lellan's coms helmet lying in pieces on a nearby mollusc-crusted rock.

"Any luck?" Lellan asked. "Because I could really do with talking to my field commanders sometime soon."

The woman glanced up. "You can use it for direct radio communication right now, if you want. All the computer functions are scrambled and the only way to clear that would be a wipe followed by a direct software download from—"

"From the operations room," finished Lellan. "From Polas."

The woman ducked down and, with quick expertise, reassembled the components of the helmet, then passed it up to Lellan before turning to pack away her tools.

"Okay, who can hear me?" asked Lellan into the comlink as soon as she donned the helmet, then winced at the barrage of sound as everyone tried to reply together. "Okay, okay! I'll list each of you in your numerical order and you can reply in turn, then you can shut it unless I speak to you individually." Twelve out of fifteen field commanders answered as she said their names. Lellan nodded to herself, then went on. "I have here with me a Theocracy soldier just taken prisoner — as no doubt have some of you. I want you to listen to this, then to what I have to say after."

Turning to the prisoner on either side of whom stood Carl and Uris, she asked, "Your name?"

"Squad Leader Sastol," said the man. He looked bewildered, as if not even sure about the truth of that statement.

"Shall we pretend, Sastol, that I've had you beaten and tortured, and am now threatening to take away your air supply?" she continued. The man Sastol jerked his head up from contemplation of his feet and stared at her in confusion. Lellan went on, "What's happening down there? Your entire army was attacking us previously without any co-ordination. We've captured hundreds like you who have ripped off their augs, but those still with augs would seemingly rather die than be captured. And now your entire army has turned around."

"Something destroyed Faith," Sastol replied, perhaps deciding he preferred this method of pretend torture.

"Something destroyed my faith a long time ago," said Lellan. "Are you trying to tell me you've lost yours?"

Sastol stared at her directly. "Something destroyed Faith — the cylinder world."

Lellan absorbed that, then asked, "And the army?"

"He who destroyed Faith also tried to capture my mind through the Gift. I tore my aug away. Others did not."

Carl said, "So whose side is this Skellor on?"

"His very own, I think." Lellan paused, then said, "Did you all get that? By the numbers, give me the confirmation — or otherwise — such as you can." Seven of her commanders confirmed that they were getting the same story from their own prisoners. Two others assumed the whole thing a ruse, and did not believe that one of the cylinder worlds had been destroyed.

"As your commander I'm very interested to have your opinions. Now I will tell you how I see things." Lellan paused, obviously uncomfortable with what she must now say. "We came up from below and we attacked not because we thought we could hold the surface, but simply because we thought we could increase the ballot and create enough noise to attract the attention of the Polity — so that our cry for help would be heard and could be responded to. We had to do this because staying underground, and staying silent, would have resulted in the Theocracy destroying us down there. Are you all in agreement with that?"

The chorus of 'ayes' was all she needed to continue with, "Now, we have above us an AI dreadnought, which I am told has been subverted by someone who worked for the Separatists. The Separatists on Cheyne III were supplied with arms by the Theocracy, yet, that same individual has come here and destroyed a cylinder world, and is now demanding that we… What is it, Pholan?"

The commander who had interrupted her gave a terse explanation, and when he had finished she went on, "Oh, not only a cylinder world, it seems — all of the Theocracy landers as well. As I was saying, this individual is now demanding that we hand over Ian Cormac. As I see it, Polas was right. The army must get under cover. You have to take your fighters back down into caves."

Lellan waited for the dying down of a storm of protest. Even in war, to be on the surface offered a kind of freedom none of them had experienced for a long time. When that protest turned to argument between various commanders, she lost her patience.

"Enough!" Argument died to muttering, then silence, and she continued, "Wake up and smell what you're shovelling. You know we cannot win a war on the surface. We have never been able to win a war on the surface. In the end we must have Polity intervention here to escape further oppression. And that we will get it is a foregone conclusion."

There came a brief flurry of further argument before they realized what she had just said. Into the silence that came after, she threw, "A subverted AI Polity dreadnought has destroyed a cylinder world, and has been striking at the surface. Anyone would be mad to think Earth Central Security will not come here now. What credibility they were preserving by non-intervention here is completely gone. Separatists across humanspace will claim that dreadnought was not really subverted. ECS will come here to investigate and to offer aid — and the whole furore the Polity has been striving to avoid is now inevitable. Now they have nothing to lose by coming here, but they do have a world to gain — one that has been iconic to Separatists for a long time."

Argument continued, but Lellan was determined. "You have my orders. Obey them or not." Then she shut off her comlink.

"We retreat and hide, then?" asked Beckle, inspecting the rail-gun he had taken from Sastol.

Lellan shrugged. "If we stay up here, this Skellor could fry us from orbit any time he likes. That he has not done so yet tells me that he's in such a strong position that we're almost irrelevant to him. Either that or he likes playing games."

"You didn't answer his question," said Carl, who had sat Sastol on the ground with his hands on his head.

"No, I didn't," said Lellan.

"What are you going to do?" Carl asked.

Lellan grinned. "Well, I've been the rebel leader for long enough, and now I don't think there's much more I can do for the rebellion. I intend to head out there" — she pointed into the night — "to get hold of this Ian Cormac, and the others, and find out what the hell is happening."

"We'll be coming with you," said Beckle, closely inspecting the sight of the rail-gun.

"I didn't doubt it for a moment," she replied.

"We will also be coming," said two voices simultaneously.

The prisoner, Sastol, stared with bewilderment at the two cylinders, which he had assumed merely contained supplies. They emitted a deep humming and ignited all over with glinting lights and displays, as they rose off the ground and turned themselves upright.

The Outlinker boy, Apis, was utterly exhausted and sank to his knees on the muddy ground, but Eldene did not allow him to stay there. She grabbed his arm and began hauling him to his feet.

"We have to keep going. If they catch us, they'll kill us. And they won't do it quickly!"

He stared at her, probably too tired to know what he thought of that possibility. At first she had not understood what was the matter with him, until he'd gasped earlier, "How do you people live with this? How do you manage to spend all your lives in gravity?" Without his exoskeleton he was directly feeling the full effects of a force he had never before experienced.

As she finally wrestled him to his feet, he managed to formulate a response. "Do you think any of them are still alive back there, then?"

"I hope not," Eldene replied, fingering the pistol she had snatched from Speelan as they escaped. She moved in close and hooked an arm around his waist to help him along. Together they staggered on through a dark wilderness of flute grasses and churned mud; hot breezes blowing in behind them, where a hot-metal glow illuminated clouds of smoke and steam so that they appeared like a range of orange mountains — a range from behind which the upper edge of Calypse was rising as a harbinger of morning.

"Where should we head now?" Apis asked.

Eldene scanned around them and did not know what to reply. Their situation seemed hopeless: they had limited oxygen, were miles from anyone who could be considered friendly, and even heading back to their erstwhile captors was now out of the question. Where could they go? Back towards the crater, in the hope of running into their comrades, or towards the fighting in the hope of coming across some of the rebels? These were the questions she was beginning to ponder, when she heard the sound of voices from behind them.

"Keep moving," she hissed at Apis as he showed signs of sagging to the ground again. He too now heard the voices and then an order suddenly barked, followed by silence.

"Theocracy?" he whispered.

Eldene felt the skin on the back of her neck creeping — she had recognized the source of that order. She nodded to Apis as they struggled on.

It seemed the voice must have carried for some distance, for thereafter they heard nothing more until the lightening sky became distinct from the horizon of towering grasses around them. When they next heard something — the sound of someone falling over and cursing until ordered to silence again — it became evident that someone was indeed behind them, and now, in the better light, rapidly drawing closer.

"They're trailing us," whispered Eldene, at first suspecting herself of paranoia, then coming to believe her fears absolutely. How else could it be that this party, led by the one called Aberil, was still so close to them, hours after the godlike obliteration of the landers? "We have to move faster." She looked up into the Outlinker's face, and knew that it wasn't the quality of the light that now gave his yellow skin a greyish tinge, though she did wonder what was producing the appearance of worms writhing underneath that skin. He returned her gaze, his expression apologetic, before something seemed to take hold of him from the inside and shake him violently. He jerked upright and away from her — his eyes gone wide in shock and his skin turning almost orange as it suffused with blood. Then his legs folded and he went down. Eldene tried to heave him upright, but he was no longer the construct of sugar sticks and paper he had described himself as once being — but now heavy with muscle and bone.

"You go on," he gasped, his breathing raw. "I'll tell them you got killed back there." He nodded towards the now fading fire-glow.

Eldene did not like to point out that if someone was experienced enough to track them this far throughout the night, that person would surely be experienced enough to recognize that there were two of them.

"I'm staying with you," she muttered, giving herself the appearance of expertise as she pulled out and checked the magazine of the pistol before slapping it back into place. Glancing around, she saw that moving further along or backwards on this spit of rhubarb-cloaked land would afford them no better cover than at present. She gestured to the tangled flute grass beside them. "We'll go in there."

"You should go on," Apis insisted.

Eldene shoved the pistol back in the belt of her camouflage trousers, and reached down to help him to cover. Seeing her determined expression, he made no further attempt to send her away. It was obvious to Eldene, though, that he did not really want to be left alone. But then, she was staying with him for the very same reason.

The first of the Theocracy soldiers emerged into view, shortly followed by the officer, Speelan. Watching the guard inspect the path she and Apis had flattened through the purple vegetation, Eldene suppressed any hope that this group might head on past them. Their trail was too obvious, what with succulent stems and leaves crushed and oozing sap like blue paint. She also realized that, for survival's sake, she must act first. She raised the pistol and aimed it, but Apis caught her wrist.

"Wait… wait a moment," he said firmly.

She stared at him and saw that he no longer looked so weak and ill. Now there was something gaunt and fierce about him.

He went on, "It knows about threats to its survival, and I bet that was something that Mika did not program in. Before, it just had me operating at the lowest energy level, while it continued rebuilding me. But now it knows."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she hissed.

"When you shoot at them, they'll run for cover. When they go for cover, we must run on and wait for them again."

"You are up to running?"

"With the mycelium… I can."

Now Aberil himself and the Proctor Molat had come into view. Eldene studied Apis for a moment longer, then turned away and raised her pistol again. It was morally wrong to kill, according to tenets of the Satagents and Zelda Smythe, yet when had that ever stopped members of the Theocracy from doing so? With cold calculation Eldene chose the leading soldier, for he was obviously the tracker, and emptied one full disc of five rounds into his torso.

With a horrible grunting sound the man staggered back, the front of his jacket sprouting its insulating fibres, a haze of red exploding out behind him and hinge-ing down his mask as it simultaneously exploded from his mouth. His expression turned bewildered as he tried to retain balance on legs no longer under his control. Finally he collapsed beneath the rhubarb leaves.

Eldene just stared, too stunned, for a moment, to take aim at the others diving for cover. Just pressing her finger down on the electric trigger had achieved this. Shaken, she aimed at the spot where she had seen Aberil drop and scrabble towards a thicket of flute grass, and fired off another disc. To the right, someone stood and brought a weapon to bear. She fired a further disc of five rounds in that direction.

"Come on! Come on!"

She did not know how long Apis had been pulling at her arm. Slugs were now slapping with vicious force into the vegetation all around. Eldene allowed him to lead her for a moment, then freed herself when she realized she was hindering his progress. Something flicked the epaulette on her shoulder, and something else nipped her earlobe. Ahead of her she saw the back of Apis's overalls slapped, and he went over, rolled, came to his feet snarling for a moment before humanity reasserted itself and he pushed on. There was blood on his clothing for he had certainly been hit, but it must have been a ricochet — a slug with its force spent in the flute grass — and soon, sometime soon, he would replace the oxygen mask that had been torn from his face.

They came out into another open spit between the grasses, this one with black plantains spearing up through the purple rhubarb leaves, their own foliage insipid white and sprouting wormish secondary roots in the shade below. Looking around, Eldene was bewildered by surrounding light and by clouds of colour. The flute grasses here were peppered and hazed with red, yellow, white and gold, and just looking at them made her eyes hurt. Abruptly she realized that it was only the sunrise illuminating an area where the grasses were budding at last — something she had only ever before seen at a distance. Catching her breath, she glanced again at Apis.

"Your mask," she said.

Apis stared at her for a moment. Then, realizing what she was saying, he removed a new mask from a pocket in his oxygen-bottle container, tore the remains of the old one from its clip hinges in the collar extension below his chin, and clipped the new one into place.

"How?" Eldene asked.

Apis looked confused for a moment, then explained, "I'm an Outlinker — we can live in vacuum for a time, so this is no problem." He waved a hand at their surroundings, but she could see he did not believe that explanation himself. She reached towards his back and he allowed her to part the rip in his overall. She saw there only what looked like an arrow-shaped scar.

"It's the mycelium," he said.

So he had been hit. As Eldene stepped past him to lead the way to the next tangled stand of flute grass, dotted with white buds, she tried to focus on the realities of people trying to kill them, not the unreality of someone who should have died.

They were struggling up a slope thick with slimy vegetation, when the grasses ahead of them shuddered under a fusillade, spraying a snowstorm of buds. Eldene turned back and fired past Apis. She saw someone staggering aside, yelling, and two other figures diving for cover. Then… then only an electrical clicking from the pistol she was holding. What had Fethan instructed? "Double-press and hold down empties the entire magazine." She nevertheless pointed the weapon at Aberil as he slowly stood up, bloodied power pack tucked under one arm, its cable looped in front of him, and the rail-gun he had taken from the dead soldier pointed negligently at their legs. The electrical clicking continued for a moment, then ceased as some mechanism in the pistol cancelled it.

Aberil tilted his head and grinned at her. "Empty, I think, little rebel." Then he moved in close, jabbed the barrel of his weapon into Apis's stomach, keeling him over, then swept it across to knock the pistol from Eldene's hand. Clutching at bruised fingers, she held her ground and glared at him. With obvious contempt he turned his back on her. Looking past him she could see Speelan sprawled on the ground, cursing, until Proctor Molat emerged from cover and went over to help the wounded man put a dressing on his leg and also slap on an analgesic patch. Aberil turned back to face her.

"This Outlinker, I think, has knowledge which may be of use to me. You have killed one of my men and injured another." He shrugged. "I would like to have time to punish you properly, but time is not something I have…" Aberil paused as the sudden roar of an aerofan drowned his words. He glanced up as the machine appeared overhead and began to settle down towards them. "Then again," Aberil shouted, "it seems I will have time to deal with you properly."

Eldene stared at the commander then up at the descending machine. If she ran now, the other proctor would get her with the aerofan's side-mounted rail-gun, but that was perhaps better than suffering the ministrations of this lunatic. And run she was just about to do, as the aerofan dropped to hover just over their heads. Then the proctor inside it flung himself over the rail, and descended on Aberil like a flesh-and-bone hammer. Aberil dropped his rail-gun and power pack and, before Eldene could think to reach for it herself, Apis had snatched up the weapon and pointed it at Molat and Speelan, who simply had no time to reach for their own weapons. The two of them froze where they were, and could only passively observe what followed.

"Good Deacon Aberil Dorth," said John Stanton, hauling the man to his feet then driving his own forehead straight into the bridge of Aberil's nose. Eldene winced at the horrible crunching sound, then at the horrible butchering impact of each blow that followed. The Deacon tried to fight back, but he might just as well have been striking a mobile boulder, and in return he received blows from hands seemingly made of granite. Eventually, Aberil was down on his knees, groping for another mask as he spat teeth and blood. Eldene expected Stanton to finish the man, to kill him, such had been the palpable hate issuing from him. Instead he eventually pushed the Deacon onto his side with his boot, then turned to her and Apis.

"No more time for self-indulgence," he said, nodding towards the aerofan that had drifted down only a few metres away from them. "Climb in and we'll get out of here."

"What about these two?" Apis asked.

Stanton glanced at Molat and Speelan, then swung his attention back to Aberil as the man finally got his mask into place and managed to rise to his knees. "We just leave all of them here," he said. "They'll not be going far." He stabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "I have friends coming soon who'll see to that."

Choking on blood, Aberil said, "Got… no stomach for it…Stanton?"

Stanton grinned at him. "Just leaving that for someone who can do a better job."

Eldene did not understand what he meant until she, he, and Apis were high in the aerofan and heading away. When Stanton pointed out the things in the vegetation below, she knew precisely the ending of Aberil Dorth's fairy tale.

Her neck and shoulders aching with tension, Jarvellis studied with suspicion the flat expanse of rock wedged amid foothills. This was the first likely-looking landing spot she had spotted while traversing fifty kilometres of river, then five kilometres of its tributary. For a while she'd felt panic growing in her as she manoeuvred the ship between precipitous slopes or sheer walls of stone. For a time she even felt she had taken a wrong turning somewhere, somehow.

"This is the one?" she asked.

"It is," confirmed the AI. "A homing beacon has just been activated by our presence."

After a moment Jarvellis eased the control column over and boosted the ion engines to lift the ship over mounded muddy banks and rhubarbs standing three metres tall. On side screens she glimpsed vegetation steaming and slumping under the craft's ionic blast and, strangely, tricones oozing to the surface as if urged by some suicidal imperative. Coming in over the flat stone surface, she made no complaint when the AI opened out the ship's legs and feet, unbidden. She brought it down gently, but no amount of gentleness could prevent its weight crushing thousands of little hemispherical molluscs to a slurry.

"This is somewhat visible," said Lyric, flashing up on one screen a view of the trail of broiled vegetation leading from the river.

"Like I give a shit," she said, stretching her neck to ease it.

"I think that perhaps you should," said the AI. "I did not want to distract you while you were engaged in such risky flying, but now you have to know." The screen showing the vegetation now flicked over to another view that Jarvellis recognized as computer-enhanced.

"What is this?" she asked.

"The view of the sky above us, magnified, from two hours ago. You are seeing three grabships from the dreadnought."

"Shit, what kind of scan did you use?"

"Passive scan — the Skellor will not be able to trace us."

"Good… good. Why grabships?"

"Observe the masses of objects they are dropping," said the AI.

Jarvellis squinted at the screen. Even computer-enhanced, the picture was not very clear. She could now make out the shapes of three grabships, but would never have recognized them as such without the AI telling her. She only saw the 'masses' to which the AI referred when they moved from line of sight to the ships, for they were blurred into that original image, and then only saw them for a few seconds as they glowed before breaking apart. She felt something tightening in her abdomen when she thought of John Stanton being out there somewhere, and not knowing about this. As far as she judged, to say this Skellor's intent would be hostile was an understatement, so anything that did not slam down on them from orbit — like the laser blast that had taken out Polas — was probably even worse.

"Bioweapon?" she managed, her mouth dry.

"Possibly — but a strange one. Each of the objects in the initial masses was an ovoid approximately two metres long. This in itself is not unusual, because bioweapons dropped from orbit are usually inserted in larger packages for heat-shielded re-entry and then dispersal. However, these are not dispersing. After losing some sort of shielding after re-entry, the objects have remained in a loose cluster."

"Where is it now?"

"Directly above the mountains — and above us."

"Can you get a picture?" Jarvellis asked, puzzled.

"Oh yes. Now that they are settling lower, I do not need to use so much enhancement either," the AI replied with annoying smugness.

"Well, show it to me then."

The AI showed her, and Jarvellis could only gape at this newest insanity.

Calypse was attached to the horizon by only the smallest arc of its disc, as if reluctant to release its hold for its journey across the sky. Its swirls and bands of colour gleamed bright only for as long as it took until the sun, rising to one side of it, could throw it into silhouette. Perhaps reflection from the surface of Masada, or some luminous quality of the giant itself, cast it meanwhile in a light that gave it true depth. More than at any other time he had seen it, Cormac felt aware that this orb was truly a vast gas giant rather than some two-dimensional disc imprinted over a large proportion of sky.

"Where is it now?" Cormac asked them tiredly.

Gant did not display any tiredness, and Cormac wondered if Fethan had enough that was human remaining in him to feel any weariness. It seemed not, however, for since the cyborg had returned to requisition Gant's aid in the task of leading away the hooder, the both of them had been charging back and forth at high speed all night. This was evident from their clothing — torn from their running through the abrasive grass stalks and smeared with streaks of yellow and red juice from the crop of coloured buds the grasses had suddenly produced.

"It's moved on ahead," said Fethan. "But if that relieves you, best you know that it's not alone."

"More hooders?" asked Thorn.

"More of everything," said Fethan. "Seems the whole fauna of the planet is on the move. Must be the fighting attracting 'em, as I can't think what else it might be."

Cormac rubbed his eyes then turned to Gant. "How far do you estimate we are from those Theocracy landers?" He tried to keep bitterness out of his voice.

"Not far now," the Golem replied, looking ahead. "I can see the heat haze from here."

Cormac glanced at Fethan and noticed a hardening of the cyborg's expression. That same hardness had appeared in him when Mika reported that the signal from the exoskeleton had ceased. That event had occurred at the same time as the laser hit, so it seemed unlikely that Apis or the girl Eldene were still alive.

"We never really thought about it, but why did Skellor hit them?" Thorn asked.

"We're not totally sure he did," said Cormac pedantically. The massive communication over com — before it had gone dead — gave that impression, or rather what Thorn and Gant had described of it did. "But if he did, then the reason is obvious: he's knocking out all forms of space transportation prior to burning this planet down to ash."

"There you go: always the optimist," said Gant, but his effort at humour was wasted.

"You're that certain this is Skellor's aim?" asked Fethan.

"Call that scenario one," said Cormac. He glanced at Gant, and added, "The least optimistic one." He went on, "I know for certain this man will go to any lengths not to let the Polity become aware of his existence. Whatever way he sets about it, he'll want us dead." He looked now at Mika, who had been very much silent since informing them about the loss of signal. "What's your estimation?"

Mika winced at this assumption of her specialized knowledge. "He will not want to lose what he has acquired. The Polity would only take it away from him," she said, discomfited by her own reasoning and how it might apply to her.

"An assumption we have to work with," said Cormac. "Now, changing the subject, perhaps one of you can tell me what the fuck that is over there."

Gant spun, and aimed his APW. Thorn did likewise with his.

"Where?" they asked simultaneously.

"There!" Cormac gestured with the barrel of his thin-gun.

The half-seen bulky shape, crouching in trampled and pummelled flute grass that resembled a flash-frozen stormy sea, seemed to shrug with resignation at being spotted. Then it rose up on its hind legs.

"Scabble-dobble-log?" it wondered, unfolding its sets of forearms like some nightmare melding of the goddess Kali and a tarantula.

"Keep moving," said Fethan. "We're safe while it's talking. It's when you can't hear 'em you gotta worry."

"Who told you that?" Gant asked.

"Well… everyone knows that," Fethan replied, looking unsure.

Cormac observed the curving row of slightly luminous green eyes set into the white dome of the creature's head, as it watched them move on past it. When it was upright like this, those eyes were perhaps three metres above the ground. The claws terminating its multiple forearms were the size and shape of bunches of bananas, only bananas made of obsidian and sharpened to points glinting in the morning light. He had no doubt that Gant and Thorn could take this creature down with the weaponry they had, so maybe there wasn't a great deal to worry about. Then he suddenly felt very stupid, for there was something else he had forgotten about.

"Gant, Thorn, power down those APWs right now," he said. As they looked at him queryingly, he pulled Shuriken and held it ready to throw. "Something I neglected to remember is that Skellor would easily pick up the UV and radiation flash, so we might just as well be sending him an invitation to come and get us."

Reluctantly the two of them lowered their weapons and flicked certain controls on them.

"Dooble-ooble-caro-flock," the gabbleduck told them, obviously approving.

"Keep moving," said Cormac.

Soon the gabbleduck lost interest, and ducked back out of sight. As they headed on, Gant placed the two APWs in his pack, and armed himself and Thorn with two pulse-rifles instead. Almost as if something had been waiting for this, they heard huge movement in the flute grasses behind and over to one side.

"Run," ordered Fethan. "I'll try to lead it away."

"The gabbleduck?" asked Cormac as they broke into a trot.

Fethan appeared puzzled as he listened to the rushing sound. "No… definitely not. Hooder, I think. Something really big, anyway." He beckoned to Gant, and then he and the Golem split off to one side.

"Fuck," Thorn gasped out. "Gant's got the APWs."

"Gant'll be back… if they can't lead it away."

"Yeah… great," Thorn managed.

Saving his breath for running, Cormac did not continue this conversation. Unlike the cyborg and Gant he did not have an option. Keeping his hand tight around Shuriken, he watched his footing and just kept going. Glancing up, he saw something boiling into the air and surmised this was from the landers, and that he was getting close. When something heavy crashed past him, he turned to throw Shuriken but desisted when that something said, "Scabber-abber-abber," accusingly and accelerated away, its gait lying somewhere between that of a cheetah and a caterpillar.

"What the hell!" shouted Thorn, when something else went growling and hissing across in front of them, its hide not quite changing fast enough to match its surroundings, so for a time there were strange misplaced animal imprints in the air. Behind them, the rushing sound in the grasses was growing louder and louder — but now much less specific, for it seemed to stretch out on either side of them as well. Suddenly Fethan and Gant were with them again, as they came out onto open ground where the vegetation had been seared and flattened, and wrecked landers formed a wall of ruptured metal carcasses and scattered engine cowlings like giant cored olives. Coming to the nearest of these wrecks, Cormac stumbled to a halt, the others stopping with him.

"APW!" he shouted at Gant, but the Golem did not seem to hear.

"Bloody hell," said Gant.

Cormac glanced at Fethan, who for the first time looked utterly perplexed. Now, turning his attention back the way they had come, Cormac realized there was something very odd about this sound: a kind of slapping vibration like… like feet? Stepping up onto an engine cowling, he saw huge movement cutting towards them through the grasses, and shapes moving fast in the purple spaces between vegetation clumps. One of these shapes now leapt from a tangle of both new and old stalks and, trailing papery fragments and coloured buds, it thumped down into a crouch before them. This first one snarled, drawing lips back from its curving white teeth, as its fellows stormed out behind it. Dracomen — thousands of them.