The Line of Polity

20

"Now we're getting to it," said the woman as she observed Brother Nebbish with his robe of sackcloth, his expression of pious disapproval, the slight aura around his head, and a book clutched in his right hand.

"At last into the valley came Brother Nebbish, and when he saw how Stenophalis, Pegrum and Egris had failed, he was undaunted."

Nebbish was staring bug-eyed at the mess strewn across the valley floor as he walked into the place. The remains of the other three were huge in comparison to him, and he did not stand astride the valley.

"Warded by his faith and armed with the Word of God, Brother Nebbish demanded of the Hooded One, 'Come forth and face me! "

The woman choked on her laughter when in the picture the good Brother dropped his book, hauled his robes up over his knobbly knees, and took off down the valley like an Olympic sprinter.

"Standing always in the light of God, Brother Nebbish smote the monster with the iron of God's law, and the monster was bowed."

Nebbish had fallen flat on his face at this point, as the shadowy creature rose up to follow him. His face thick with ash, Nebbish looked back at it as he scrambled to his feet, and with his mouth hanging open in what had to be a perpetual scream, he sprinted on,

"Standing always in the light of God, Brother Nebbish smote the monster with the radiance of God's justice, and the monster was blinded."

Nebbish could certainly shift, but he just didn't have quite so many legs as the thing that was coming after him.

"Standing always in the light of God, Brother Nebbish finally smote the monster with the thunder of God's truth, and the monster was cast down."

The woman had never before seen a realistic depiction of a man being peeled like a potato. She was also intrigued to watch the movement of muscle and sinew, as the skinless Brother Nebbish ran screaming on a conveyor belt of chitin, towards the deep shadow containing a glitter of horrid eyes,

"And what moral does this story have?" she wondered.

"Hooders have more fun?" the book suggested.

She dropped the book as if it had tried to bite her.

Stanton eased the aerofan down on a rocky outcrop and the machine made a crunching sound as it crushed the countless molluscs colonizing the surface. As the machine's fans wound down to stillness, he held out his hand to Apis, who handed over the binoculars he had been gazing through.

"Primitive, but effective enough in this light," the boy commented.

Stanton thought at first he was referring to the great mass of creatures ahead, then realized Apis meant the binoculars — being an Outlinker he had probably only come across such technology in a museum. Stanton then found himself amused, realizing the boy had only spoken thus to highlight the fact, to the girl, that he came from the superior Polity.

"You do tend to find that with some technologies," said Stanton, bringing the lenses up to his eyes. "They reach the limit of their development. I wouldn't call these a satisfactory limit though. I could do with autotracking lenses, shake compensators, and image enhancement." He paused to study the view ahead, continuing, "Then again, I doubt those would tell me anything different." He lowered the binoculars. "I haven't the faintest idea what those creatures are, but even in half-light they look like killers to me. We'll have to go round them to try for the ship."

Thorn kept his head well down and tried not to think beyond surviving the next few minutes. The pulse-cannon was only a few metres ahead of him. It was firing away at full power, its shots passing only a metre above his head, yet still the creatures were somehow getting past it — to fly straight into the fusillade coming up from the rebel soldiers who he saw were now retreating towards the armoured doors. To his left his aerofan lay on its side draped in pieces of smoking calloraptor remnants — the same unpleasant fallout that was presently snowing down on himself. The soldier Carl was tangled in the wreckage of the crashed fan. He was wasted, as not even these creatures could have survived what had happened to him. Further back, the war drones were down and out of it, their energy sources drained beyond any possibility of self-recharge. Somehow knowing this, the calloraptors had quickly lost interest in them and were going after more mobile prey.

The old cyborg, Fethan, had been flung much further along the cavern. By running like a madman, he had made it to the rebel line — only losing the skin off his back to one tenacious creature that would not let go until blasted to fragments. Thorn considered fleeing too, but the fractured bone sticking out of his shin told him he would not be running anywhere; just as the piece of fan blade imbedded in his forearm told him he would not be playing the violin for a while. That he had managed to retain his APW he considered a miracle, and he wondered for how many minutes it would extend his life, should he finally make some move.

Just back from the wreckage of the aerofan was a door he had seen one of the creatures tear open, perhaps hoping this would provide another route into the rebel stronghold. When the creature emerged from it shortly after, Thorn guessed some sort of maintenance room lay beyond the door. Perhaps a place for tools, even spares for the pulse-cannons. Maybe if he could just…

Suddenly the nearest pulse-cannon ceased firing, and immediately the creatures were swarming past it overhead. He turned back to see them landing by the armoured door, and tearing at it in mindless anger. Others turned their attention to Lellan's abandoned aerofan, ripping the grounded machine to pieces. But his simple turning motion betrayed him, and three of them dropped from the flock to come hissing towards him like gulls after a discarded fish. With his left hand he swung round his APW, and managed to incinerate two of them before the third was upon him. He smashed away with his weapon and tried to bring the barrel to bear. But the creature had closed its claws into his clothing and the flesh of his stomach, its wings wide open to steady it as its pink star of a mouth stabbed towards his face. Flinching back, he saw silver hands close round each shoulder of the creature's wings. With a new screaming, it tore apart before him, its double chest parting down its central channel. Then a figure stepped through, grabbed Thorn by his collar, and dragged him at speed to the maintenance room. There Thorn pulled himself up on one leg, and stared across at what was still recognizably Gant, as the Golem drop-kicked a pursuing calloraptor back amongst its fellows, then fired a shot that sent the lot of them tumbling backwards.

Through gritted teeth Thorn said, "Seems we've been in caves like this before, old man."

Gant glanced at him. "Tell me you've got a memplant," he said.

" 'Fraid not," Thorn replied.

"Best you survive then." The Golem then hauled closed the steel door, and braced his back against it.

In one bay Skellor found a shuttle that was not so interpenetrated with Jain substructures as to be almost unrecoverable. Those stems and branches that had penetrated its hull, he quickly withdrew, initiating the necessary repairs on their way out. Whilst transporting its egg from Medical through the strange organic spaces of the ship, he accelerated the growth of this one chosen from a new batch of calloraptors. Upon getting it to the bay, he paused only to retard its wing growth and then make swift surgical alterations so that when he stripped the egg case away the raptor tumbled out possessing only long bony arms ending in optic interface plugs. Skellor then wrapped the new creature in a Jain pseudopod, inserted it into the pilot's chair of the shuttle, tore away the manual controls, and connected it directly into the craft's main systems. Now he was ready: he had his way of bringing Cormac to the Occam. Skellor then opened the bay doors and ejected the craft and its raptor pilot into space — another of his experimental creatures wrenched painfully into the world.

Looking through the eyes of his other creatures on the surface, Skellor now felt a grinding boredom at the inevitability of it all. He had destroyed every spacecraft evident on the surface of the planet, and though there might be something hidden in the caverns, it could not get off the ground without detection. So really Cormac, as much as his two companions trapped in that store room, had nowhere to run. The agent might choose to take his own life rather than be captured, but Skellor's anxiety about that was leavened, for he knew he could rebuild and revive anyone who had been dead for up to ten hours. Skellor's greatest fear was that Cormac might select a form of suicide that could utterly destroy his brain — as Captain Tomalon had done — for not even Skellor could recreate something for which he possessed no pattern.

Though the remaining pulse-cannon was still destroying his creatures in great numbers, he knew it could kill no more than an eighth of their number before they finally broke through. Of the remaining raptors maybe half would be killed inside the cavern itself before the human population was slaughtered and Cormac finally taken. Their losses didn't matter very much, because Skellor did not intend to retrieve his raptors. Once Cormac was safely aboard the shuttle that was even now going into descent, Skellor could break this planet like he had broken the moonlet from which he had obtained materials for growth.

Cormac glanced at the empty Shuriken holster on his wrist and swore. It seemed to him that he suffered nothing but loss all the way down the line, and he was damned if he was going to lose any more. Gazing around the huge cavern in which he stood, anger and suppressed grief prevented him from feeling impressed. All he saw was another trap — and that was not where he wanted to be. Lellan was over conferring with her men, setting up heavy weapons for the moment the raptors broke through the door — as they most certainly would, any time now. She had said she would be back soon, but minutes dragged slow and leaden. Did she not realize how unimportant all the little battles down here really were? Abruptly, Cormac came to a decision. After a conversation held with Lellan, before they had come here to the mountains, he had learned that he needed exit cavern seventeen, which lay to the right of something called the Watergate. He gazed along the river's length winding past the pillartowns and the ponds, the crop fields and storage bunkers. It had to be there: one of those tunnel entrances beside where the river entered the huge cavern. There must be the Watergate.

Cormac walked away past a big antique rail-gun now being bolted to the stone floor, past soldiers setting up a barricade — something pretty futile considering their attackers could fly. He headed on down an alley leading between two large warehouses, to an open space where various military vehicles had been abandoned. As he walked along, he found it a relief to be breathing again without a mask over his face. Reaching the empty vehicles, he climbed into something that resembled the bastard offspring of a jeep and a golfer's cart, engaged the simple electric drive, and headed away. Someone shouted after him, but he ignored that. He would have readily shot anyone who attempted to stop him.

Now on the move again, he did have a little time to spare for his surroundings. Just as Blegg had informed him: the Underworld was bigger than the surface colonization, and from what he could see was well organized. Whether it was better in this respect than what he had briefly seen above he could not judge, as all he had seen up there was ruined by war, and the one city he had only glimpsed. Studying the fields and ponds down here he saw that the inhabitants had taken the same agricultural route as the Theocracy, and as so many other planetary populations: the usual cereal and vegetable crops, but also protein harvested from species of fast-growing crustaceans and chilopods that were not the product of natural evolution, but genetically spliced for this very purpose hundreds of years in the past. He wondered how the Theocracy, farming the same unnatural creatures, could square that with their rigid beliefs, but then recalled how religions had a long history of 'squaring things' so their senior echelons could live comfortably whilst the lower ones did the labour and suffering.

The stone track he drove along sat well above the ponds and fields stepping down in tiers towards the central river. He noticed the marks of cutting tools on stone and realized that every field and every pond had been excised out of rock. Looking round at the immensity of the cavern, with its gridded ceiling and pillar-towns, he wondered just how much had been excavated and how much was natural. But, then, over a couple of centuries it would have been possible to shift a lot of stone.

Eventually the track curved directly past the plascrete banks of the river, near where a couple of waterwheels, maybe fifty metres in diameter, were constantly churned round by the current. Cormac wondered if the river itself was the only source of energy here — generating the power to supply heating and lighting, while the plants growing under those lights provided the oxygen. Or if there was somewhere a hidden fusion plant or geothermal energy tap? He reckoned there must be something like those, for this place was not just some agrarian idyll. There had to be industries here for the building of the pillartowns and the manufacture of tools and weapons. This underground world was definitely not low-tech.

Beyond the waterwheels, lock gates reached halfway up the height of the cave mouth from which the river issued. Hinged on either side to the walls of the cavern, these were driven by huge hydraulic rams, and were presently open. Cormac could not discern the purpose of these gates until he drew closer and saw that, just back from the cave mouth, another tunnel led off to one side, opening just above the surface of the water. Closing the lock gates would force the water level to rise and be diverted into this alternative tunnel. Perhaps this was to provide further hydro-electric energy from a hidden generator, or maybe just a flood-prevention measure.

Behind the waterwheels, but before the lock, a level bridge stretched across the river. Cormac observed that tunnels had been bored into the wall on either side of the river's entrance. Lellan had told him earlier that exit seventeen lay to the right of the Watergate, and this was soon confirmed for him when he saw the large 17 etched into the rock above one tunnel right ahead of him. Soon he plunged into it, lights coming on automatically above him. The tunnel drifted left in a slow arc and eventually emerged into the natural cave cut by the river. For a while he motored along on a narrow track beside the thundering white water, then his route cut away from the river bank and began to rise. When he began to find himself gasping for breath, he had to flip his breather mask up, realizing that it wasn't the airlocks that retained the oxygen in the larger cavern. He guessed that it must be continually topped up, which confirmed his suspicion about there being other sources of energy, since greenery would not be able to do the job alone.

A few minutes after donning his mask, he came to an open area where a couple of vehicles were parked in front of a circular armoured door, with a smaller door set into it. Three soldiers stepped out of their vehicles, as he halted his own and got out. One, who was evidently an officer, approached him.

"We are to offer you all assistance," she said, her fingers resting against her coms helmet, while she listened to instructions delivered through the device.

Cormac studied her and then the two big men with her. He was frankly tired of seeing people around him die. "Just confirm for me how to get to Lyric II once I reach the surface."

"We'll take you there," the woman insisted, taking her fingers away from her helmet at last.

"No, just give me the directions," he repeated.

The woman gestured behind her. "There's only one route down the hill, which takes you directly to the river. You follow that downstream to the Cistern, and the ship rests on the largest beach. You won't see it though."

"I know all about the chameleonware," Cormac replied, heading for the smaller door. Then he paused and turned back. "Tell Lellan…" He paused, momentarily unable to go on. If he failed in his attempt, this whole planet would be denuded of human life. If he succeeded, however… he succeeded.

"Tell her the Polity will come."

The woman smiled at this, and he did not add that they might well be coming to inspect an ashpit over a charnel house.

The calloraptors' racket outside ceased once the pulse-cannon started up again. Gant had dragged over a heavy pedestal-mounted grinding machine, and jammed it against the warped and mutilated door of the workshop, before turning back to Thorn.

"We'll need to do something about that." The Golem pointed at Thorn's shattered leg.

"No, really?" said Thorn, groping in the bag of medical supplies he had earlier retrieved from the ATV. Finding what he wanted he slapped three drug patches on his knee, and a further one on his biceps. Gant moved off to scour the workshop and small storage room attached. Shortly he returned with rolls of insulating tape, a plascrete sprayer, and varying lengths of alloy tube that was probably used for water pipe.

"I can see what you're thinking, and I don't think I like it," murmured Thorn. Before the analgesic patch on his biceps had fully done its work, he wrenched out the aerofan fragment imbedded in his arm. That there was no instant gush of blood to denote a severed artery almost surprised him, as that was the way his luck had been going. He then caught the roll of insulating tape Gant tossed him, and wound some of it tightly around the wound. Meanwhile, Gant was studying his leg.

"Here, take this," the Golem said at last, holding out the plascrete sprayer.

"So you're qualified in field surgery?" said Thorn, groping for humour.

"Who took that bullet out of your arse on Thraxum?" Gant muttered.

"I was trying to forget about that." Thorn looked away while Gant taped lengths of the alloy tube to his boot, and bound them close to the protruding fracture.

"I'll pull it straight," said Gant. "When I give the word, I want you to start spraying the plascrete."

Thorn nodded, then yelled out in agony. He watched in morbid horror the splintered bone drawn back into his flesh as Gant pulled the leg straight. When the limb seemed about the correct length, Gant gave the order and Thorn began to spray. He yelled again as the reacting epoxies burned the open wound. As soon as his lower leg was encased in its makeshift cast, Gant hauled him to his feet.

"At least you can walk a little now," said Gant.

"I'll not be winning any races," growled Thorn.

Gant turned to look towards the entrance. "You know, if that pulse-gun stops again, that door won't hold them out much longer," he said.

Thorn shrugged. "Do we need longer to formulate an escape plan?" he asked.

"You know, you get even more sarcastic as you get older," said Gant.

"At least I have that option," said Thorn. Then noticing Gant's odd glance, he added, "To get older, I mean."

Gant stared at him. "It bothers you that much, about me?" he asked.

"I grieved for your death, and now I feel cheated," said Thorn.

"You may not have been cheated, as whether or not I am really Gant is a moot point. I never intended for you not to know, but I had the memplant put in thirty years before I even met you — when I was a kid back on Earth. It just never seemed important enough to mention."

"That you were immortal?" asked Thorn.

"Is it immortality? I don't know. I do know that many other Sparkind have memplants, so why don't you?"

Thorn shrugged. "Just never got round to it."

The firing of the pulse-cannon ceased again, followed by the roar of calloraptors storming up the tunnel outside.

Gant headed towards the door. "Do me a favour," he said. "If we ever get out of this, get yourself memplanted, will you?"

"Can you still get drunk?" Thorn asked as Gant stepped over to the door, and braced himself against the grinding machine.

"I have that option," Gant replied, his expression puzzled.

"Then I will get it done, and we'll celebrate in Elysium."

Gant did not get much chance to reply to that as the first calloraptor hit the door and managed to wriggle its head around the warped metal.

Eldene woke with a start. She had fallen asleep despite the cold, her back propped against the rail and her head resting on the Outlinker's shoulder. He seemed to put out plenty of warmth, though, and when she realized he had his arm around her she felt a surge of some feeling she did not really want to identify. She realized that Stanton — a bulky silhouette against the stars and one tumbling moon of the predawn sky — must have spoken and that was what had woken her.

"About ten minutes," Stanton continued, and from that Eldene surmised they would arrive on solid ground soon. Apis did not remove his protective arm from her. Glancing at him in the half-light, she saw no sign of embarrassment at such new-found intimacy.

"Ten minutes until we land?" Unsteadily she stood, the rail seat flipping back up behind her, and looked out over the lightening mountains. Behind them, Calypse was a brown dome blistering up from the horizon, which was barely distinct from the sky above it. Below was a river valley, deep in shadow, but she could still distinguish the mercurial glitter of water.

"Yeah, ten minutes," Stanton confirmed. "Do either of you know how to fly one of these things?" He tapped a hand against the steering column.

Standing up also, Apis said, "The controls seem simple enough. I don't see any difficulty."

Stanton said, "Well, if, as you said, you brought in a lander without ion engines, I should think you able enough."

"Why do you ask?" Eldene inquired.

"Because, when I head for my ship, you can take this aerofan to the nearest Underworld entrance." He looked at Eldene. "You remember where it is?"

Eldene nodded, feeling an immediate sinking sensation. With one incident so rapidly following another, she'd had no time for thoughts of the future. It had often in fact seemed laughable that she might even have a future. Now she just didn't know… she just didn't know.

Ahead, a wide lake caught between sheer rock faces became visible, but from this angle it took Eldene a moment to recognize it as the one they called the Cistern — the landing spot of Lyric II. The ship, of course, was invisible somewhere on the further shore. In a moment Stanton brought the aerofan down low, its down-blast disturbing insectile shapes from their roosts on half-submerged rocks in the lake, and causing the flute grasses behind the shore to roll like sea waves. Stanton eventually landed them on a narrow beach Eldene recognized. As the fan motors wound down, Stanton opened the rail gate and stepped down onto sand and shells. Eldene noticed the insect things crawling back up onto their rocky perches.

"I'll be back in a moment," he said, "then you can head off." He turned away and started walking up the beach.

"As he walks towards it, he'll disappear," she informed Apis.

"Yes, chameleonware, I know about that," the Outlinker replied.

Eldene felt a flash of anger at his conceit, but still she was glad to be with him. "They used it on Miranda then, did they?" she asked.

"No, no, they didn't," Apis replied.

"How do you know about it then?"

"I was taught… educated…"

"Gosh, you are so clever," said Eldene, and had the satisfaction of seeing him flush with embarrassment.

Something was wrong. As Stanton kept on walking, he remained perfectly visible in the breaking dawn. By now he should have disappeared into the magical field projected from the ship. There was a clattering of falling stone, and Stanton turned to a rockfall on his left, his heavy pulse-gun drawn and aimed in one smooth motion. In a motion that was even smoother, a figure rose from behind a nearby boulder, took a few fast and silent steps, and pressed the snout of a smaller gun into the back of Stanton's head. Eldene had no time to yell a warning, but now grabbed up the rail-gun abandoned on the floor of the aerofan, and stepped out with it aimed at the newcomer.

"Girl, you better put that down before you hurt someone," said a voice behind her.

Eldene swung round to see Fethan, and felt a surge of joy — then dismay when she saw what had happened to him. Confused, she lowered the weapon and looked back at the drama ahead. It was the agent, Ian Cormac, who had captured their rescuer, and now Eldene was not sure where her loyalties lay. She watched silently as Stanton was disarmed and herded back towards the aerofan. Standing beside her, Apis gently took the rail-gun from her.

"Well, John, seems we've been here before," said Cormac. He glanced to Fethan. "I wondered who that was creeping through the grasses."

"Lellan sent me after you," Fethan replied. "She thought you might need some help."

"What I need is a ship," said Cormac, returning his attention to Stanton. "I can see where it landed but, 'ware shields or not, it certainly isn't there now."

Stanton, with his hands clasped on top of his head, remained stubbornly silent. Eldene noted the complete lack of warmth in Cormac's expression, and feared he was about to pull the trigger. Then abruptly the agent stepped back, holstering his own weapon, then moved around Stanton to face him. Weighing the prisoner's heavy gun in his hand for a moment, he abruptly tossed it to him. Stanton's hand snapped down, caught it and aimed it in one movement. Now Eldene thought it was Cormac's turn to die.

"It's like this, John. You shoot me and everyone dies. If I get up there in a ship, meaning your ship, everyone still has a chance to live. Of course, you can get to that ship yourself, and escape, but I don't think you'll do that."

Stanton abruptly concealed the gun. "Jarv will have taken it to a prearranged spot. We can be there in an hour or so."

Cormac gestured towards the menacing shape of the Occam Razor poised in the morning sky like a diseased eye. "Well, let's go before we get seen. Now is not the time for that to happen." He turned to Fethan. "Get these two down into the caverns. Calloraptors or not, that'll still be the safest place for a while." He reached out and squeezed Apis's shoulder. "Mika will probably find you, and I think she's going to be pleased about that — we all thought you and Eldene had died."

Eldene wondered if that was the most human emotion the man could ever show. She herself was glad of Fethan's arm across her shoulders, and Apis close at her side, as they watched Cormac and Stanton take the aerofan up into the air, then back along the course of the river. She shivered. It was cold, very cold that morning.

The workshop door was no longer recognizable as such, and Gant threw the grinding machine into the mass of calloraptors that were jammed together in their eagerness to get through. Using their APWs at the lowest setting, Gant and Thorn fired into the winged mass until the creatures did break through, then strategically brought down the ones that would impede the rest. But they still had to keep moving back, and in the little workshop there wasn't room to retreat.

"I'm not dying here in a fucking cupboard!" Thorn yelled.

"Can you make it to the main cavern door up there?" Gant slammed a raptor to the ground with the butt of his weapon, then burnt its head off when it began to rise again.

"I can make it — so long as that pulse-cannon doesn't start up again!"

"Now then!"

Both of them upped the setting on their APWs, and the air thumped with the detonations. Violet fire tore through a wall of alien bodies, and black smoke exploded in every direction. Firing repeatedly they advanced, breaking into the main tunnel, swarming with the calloraptors. Thorn now realized that the pulse-cannon would not start up again, because the creatures had somehow torn it from the wall and smashed it. Firing into the cavern to try and clear a path, Thorn began his painful advance, Gant staying right beside him. They made twenty paces.

"Oh fuck," Thorn managed as his weapon died on him and its displays went out. Still heaving himself along, he jammed the weapon's barrel into the mouth of his nearest attacker, then drove his fist into the throat of another as it dropped towards him. It felt like thumping a tree.

"Here!"

Gant threw his own APW across to Thorn, and unshouldered his pulse-rifle. Thorn caught it and fired upwards, clearing the air above them. They now moved back-to-back, only Thorn's shooting being really effective. Gant emptied his rifle and had to resort to his Golem strength — tearing the assailants apart as they came in. Soon they ended up with their backs to the wall.

"Double fuck," muttered Thorn, as the second APW also spat its last and faded out.

Then they heard something like an inhalation, as the calloraptors drew back from them and ceased their onslaught.

"You do know that fucker Skellor is watching us through them," said Gant.

After the chaos that had preceded, the sudden silence almost made Thorn's ears ring. Then he noticed a strange whuckering sound as of an unbalanced aerofan. As the calloraptors suddenly stormed forwards as one, Thorn knew he was about to die. But something flashed across in front, and with a triple thud and sprays of pink liquid, the three leading calloraptors fell out of the air in pieces. Further flashes were followed by more creatures disintegrating. Their attack stuttered to a halt and they drew back. Shuriken dropped into view in front of Gant and Thorn, flexing its chainglass blades to slice away pieces of raptor flesh.

The two of them just stared at each other, then along the tunnel to where the raptors had now broken into the main cavern. That was why they were no longer under direct attack, but these few seconds Shuriken had given them might prove the difference between life and death. They watched in silence as the creatures just flew on past them now, simply ignoring them. They watched as partially burnt raptors approached from further back in the tunnel, following their flying brethren — the whole crowd cramming towards the chaos of gunfire by the cavern door. Still without saying anything, they simultaneously moved over to crouch behind the wrecked aerofan lying nearby, though the creatures continued to ignore them. Shuriken hovered over them for a second or two longer, until Thorn held out his hand. The killing device hesitated for a moment, flexing its blades in and out in agitation, then abruptly closed them up and dropped into his palm.

"I'll return it to Cormac when I see him next," he explained.

"Yeah, you do that," muttered Gant.

Jarvellis felt a sudden surge of gladness immediately tempered by fear when she saw who accompanied John Stanton on the aerofan. She watched carefully as the machine came in to land on the patch of wilted rhubarbs beside the river. As the two stepped out from it, neither had their weapons drawn, but that meant little since perhaps John was wearing an explosive collar and the agent's finger was on some remote trigger. No matter how much John had come to terms with the Polity, after the previous crimes he had committed, it would never accept him.

"Lyric, use the laser to target that man with John," she instructed.

On one of the subscreens she watched as a close-up picture of Cormac was overlaid by a grid; the square covering the man's head blanked out as the picture froze for a moment, then the picture started to shift again, as the grid faded to leave a single targeting frame centred on the agent's forehead. Of course, if John was wearing an explosive collar, it was likely Cormac carried a dead man's switch for it, so Jarvellis restrained herself from killing the agent right then. Also John was unlikely to have led his captor here… Dammit! Jarvellis thumbed the control for the external speakers.

"John… is everything all right?" she asked.

The two men paused. John seemed to gaze straight at her, though there was no way he could yet see Lyric II. He grinned and reached up to pull down the uniform shirt collar he wore, to expose his neck. Sometimes she just hated the way he seemed to get inside her head.

"What's happened, John? Why is he here?"

Moving again, Stanton replied, "He wants to save the world, and to do that he needs our ship."

As the two of them entered the 'ware field Jarvellis hesitated to operate the airlock control. What the hell could this ship achieve against a Polity dreadnought, and was she really prepared to risk so much?

"Jarv, the door," said Stanton.

Swearing again, she thumbed the control, then stood up and headed back into the cargo area. Clumping aboard, the two men seemed to fill the small space.

Jarvellis glanced down. "Careful!"

Cormac lifted his foot off the interactive storybook he had just stepped on. He stared at it in some puzzlement, then at the other toys scattered across the floor. A small blond-haired boy charged out from wherever he had been playing, a toy dark-otter clutched in one hand. He hesitated for a moment, then with a delighted yell rushed over to Stanton, who picked him up.

"Ian Cormac, meet Cormac Stanton," said John Stanton, trying to hide his embarrassment. Jarvellis noted this, just as she noted the agent's expression turn from something cold and hard to something merely tired. She guessed that was to do with the ship, and what he wanted of it, and there being an innocent child aboard.

In Thorn's estimation a couple of thousand of the creatures had now swarmed into the main cavern. Judging by the receding roar of gunfire, the rebel fighters were being driven back. Beside him Gant stood up and offered him a hand, and Thorn rose up onto one foot, supporting himself against the Golem's unyielding strength.

"Well, frankly, I'm surprised to be alive," he said. "I gather, from something Cormac said earlier, that you've met these bastards before."

Gant shrugged. "A couple of kinds, yes. The normal predators on Callorum weren't too much of a problem, but then there was something Skellor created — and neither type had wings."

They moved out from behind the aerofan, Thorn glancing at what remained of the soldier Carl before he turned his attention to the other debris on the tunnel floor. Those creatures, it appeared, had to be scorched almost down to the bone, or completely blown into pieces, before they would actually die. The remains of such carnage lay everywhere in drifts upon the stone. Underfoot something white and glassy crunched and fragmented. He noticed one creature burnt down to bone yet still moving, some pinkish substance oozing out between its bones. It fixed him with gleaming dots of eyes set deep in dark pits, and even tried to open its mouth to hiss. This small action used up the last of its strength for then it shuddered, and the pinkish substance began turning the same white as the frangible layer on the floor.

"What the hell?" muttered Thorn.

"Jain tech," explained Gant.

"Nasty," said Thorn. "Now what do we do?"

Gant studied him. "How much oxygen do you have left?"

Thorn glanced at his bottle's readout. "About two hours — so there's only one direction for me to go." He pointed towards where the calloraptors had gone.

Gant abruptly turned and headed back to the aerofan, stooping over the body of Carl. First discarding a pulse-rifle which was bent and broken, he next came up with the man's breather pack and removed its oxygen bottle from the blood-soaked bag. Returning with this item he said, "Another hour from this, though not enough to get you anywhere far. But I don't think that matters now." He looked back the way they had originally come in.

"More of them?" Thorn was looking around for something to use as a weapon.

"No, dracomen," said Gant.

"How can they be here?" Thorn asked, puzzled.

"Oh, they can. I worked with Scar for quite some time, and he can run faster than the top speed on one of those things." Gant gestured to the aerofan.

"So what do they want here?"

"To kill calloraptors, I expect," said Gant. "It's something Scar took great pleasure in."

Thorn considered that. "I think we should move over to the side of the tunnel," he suggested.

In the seat beside Jarvellis, Cormac clipped his harness into place and watched her expert manipulation of Lyric II's controls. The ship responded with a deep thrumming, like a musical instrument being played by an expert hand. He watched her take hold of the joystick as the screen revealed the debris being blown about outside. Lyric II lifted and tilted, its legs and feet quickly retracting before the toes could stub themselves on surrounding rock.

Bringing the ship over wilted vegetation towards the river, Jarvellis glanced up as Stanton returned to the cockpit. "All done?" she asked, and Stanton nodded.

At least in cold-sleep the boy would feel no pain should their ship be destroyed, thought Cormac. But then he doubted that any of them would feel very much — it would be so very quick. The unexpected presence of the child left him feeling hollow inside, though no less resolute. In the end duty had to come first.

"How long?" he asked.

"Lyric?" Jarvellis prompted.

The AI replied, "We should achieve escape velocity in one half of an orbit — that's two hours nominally. One hour after that we will be able to submerge in underspace."

Cormac nodded to himself as the screen now showed them coming up out of the river valley and achieving enough height so that Jarvellis did not have to navigate the ship along the watercourse. Higher still, and the ion engines were now cycling up to a steady roar. Though the screen continued to show the forward view as they accelerated, he guessed that the ship was now beginning to tilt into their vector so that the engines could blast out directly behind. Air turbulence began to give the craft the occasional tentative shake as it accelerated. It maintained that more due to brute force than to aerodynamics — like most ships of the time, Lyric II was built to land and take off by using antigravity.

Cormac recalled a conversation he'd had with Jarvellis: "The 'ware effect doesn't hide AG, it merely blurs it over a number of kilometres," she had told him. "That was good enough for Theocracy detectors, but not to get us by a Polity dreadnought."

"What about the fusion engines on this?" he'd then asked her.

"Taking us straight up, the blast would flare visibly outside the range of the 'ware effect. Skellor would detect us that way too."

"I guessed so," said Cormac. "Can we slingshot around the planet on ion boosters? We'd leave a trail, but that's something we'll have to risk."

In response Jarvellis had opined that the trail would be one of wreckage — Lyric II not being built to withstand such forces. However, they had little choice.

"Approaching Mach one," she announced now. "Let's hope Skellor's got no one listening down there, because the 'ware only covers us for long-distance checking of air disturbance. They'd still hear the sonic boom."

"Let's hope that, indeed," said Cormac — and didn't really like to think beyond. It seemed to him that the processing power and technology Skellor had under his control meant the man was only limited by his own imagination. Probably Skellor was watching through the eyes of his calloraptors, but would it occur to him to listen also? No doubt, from where he hung geostationary, he could see in great detail much of what occurred on the planet, but what was his focus? He had certainly missed the journey Stanton and Cormac had made on that aerofan, probably because his attention was directed entirely towards his creatures' attack on the cavern. Had it occurred to him to set up listening posts? Did he have anything watching on the other side of the planet? Much depended on the detail: it wasn't good enough to have the power of a god without a god's universal vision.

A subscreen gave them a receding view of the Occam Razor, while another screen presented a view across the top of Lyric II whereby Cormac could see that they were now flying perpendicular to the ground so that the ion engines could operate most effectively. The ship had started to vibrate, and from somewhere there came a whistling scream, like a bombshell coming down but never hitting. Every now and again the craft gave a shudder as if something structural was about to break.

"Let's drop the Mach readings: we just passed five thousand kph," said Jarvellis.

The ground was now far enough below them for many small details to be lost, not that there was much diverse detail over this wilderness. The open plains receded underneath them, changing from greenish blue pocked by great splashes of red to a sudden band of grey stone, then cerulean ocean. Jarvellis adjusted a sub-screen to show the continent receding behind them like a thick blanket of mould skimmed back off the oceanic surface. The ship was now howling and shuddering constantly, and by the way she was white-knuckling the joystick Cormac suspected that Jarvellis did not consider this at all a good sign.

"Do you have stress readouts for this craft's superstructure?" asked Cormac.

"Yes, I do," admitted Jarvellis. "But I'm not looking at them."

Soon they were puncturing cloud as they flew on into night. Looking at the screen with a view all across Lyric II, he observed ice building up and flaking away in glittering contrails.

"Are we leaving a vapour trail?" he asked her.

"No, the exhaust is too hot. Our only problem right now is the ionic trail and, as you said, we just have to hope he doesn't spot that."

"Other problems?" Cormac persisted.

"Proximity lasers online," the AI chose that moment to announce.

"That problem," Jarvellis replied. "Your Dragon creature did a fine job of destroying the laser arrays. Shame it left the debris up here as well. I've set our course to avoid the worst of it, otherwise I'll dodge the larger fragments whilst Lyric here vaporizes the smaller ones."

"But surely you'll be able to do all that inside the 'ware field?" Cormac pointed out.

Stanton interjected, "Sure they'll get vaporized inside the 'ware field, but that vapour won't stay inside the field for long. You were worried about a moisture vapour trail lower down. Now you can worry about a metallic vapour trail up here."

Cloud banks lay below them like a mountain range of crystal sulphur and snow, with jade ocean glimpsed far below through deep crevasses. Above this they hurtled further into space that could never get completely dark because of the Braemar moons suspended like lanterns, and behind them, the shining glass sculpture of the distant nebula. Cormac registered U-chargers powering up then on a subscreen and observed vapour explosions as the ship's lasers obliterated obstacles that were too small to be visible but large enough to punch holes through the hull. Operating the steering thrusters, Jarvellis took the ship swaying to one side to pass a lump of wreckage resembling half a piano made of polished aluminium. For a short while the lasers continued operating at full capacity, though not well enough, for they could hear the sharp bullet-cracks of impacts.

"Lyric, damage?" Jarvellis spat, when these impacts finally ceased.

"Four micropunctures, now sealed. One large hole in the hydraulic cylinder for landing foot two. I've shut off the hydraulic fluid supply to it, but cannot repair. We need to space dock for that," the AI explained.

"Be glad of the chance," Jarvellis muttered, glancing at Cormac.

He was observing the display that noted their speed in kilometres per hour. Now pushing twenty-five thousand, he saw that they had achieved escape velocity, and that now the arc of the horizon was dropping below them.

Stanton confirmed this for them by asking, "What now, Agent? What do we do now?"

"Depending on the circumstances, it would take about an hour for the underspace disturbance created by a ship this size to disperse." He turned to Jarvellis. "Get the Occam up on the main screen, will you."

Jarvellis did as requested, and soon the Polity dreadnought filled the main screen, looming utterly clear now in the clarity of vacuum. For a second Cormac allowed himself misgivings: Skellor had so obviously moved far beyond anything Cormac himself could easily judge or understand, let alone manipulate.

"One hour at the present velocity will take us far enough out of the well for you to use U-space engines. You don't need greater velocity?" he asked.

"No. We have modern engines on this Lyric," Jarvellis replied tartly.

"Okay… if you use your fusion engine—"

"Fusion mode," Jarvellis interrupted. "The engines are dual-function: ionic and fusion."

"Whatever," said Cormac, irritated. "If you use fusion mode, how quickly will you be able to go under?"

"Ten minutes, maybe less. Lyric?"

The AI replied, "Seven minutes and thirty seconds… mark."

"Use fusion," said Cormac, "for the last few seconds — and in those last few seconds I want you to send a message for me as well."

"Just say it, and Lyric will record it," Jarvellis told him.

Cormac cleared his throat and addressed the image on the screen. "Skellor, it seems you missed me again, but I guess mistakes are to be expected from an intelligence stretched so far beyond its capacity. Now I want to make you an offer: come and work with the Polity on studying the technology you now control. All previous misdemeanours can be forgotten, since you know that Polity AIs do not countenance vengeance, and in exchange for what you now possess, you could have almost anything you ask for." Cormac glanced round at Stanton, who seemed set to explode. He continued, "I do understand that you will not want to compromise your safety. When I arrive, I'll send a message to that effect into the Polity, and you can thenceforth communicate with ECS yourself and make the right arrangements. Please give this offer serious consideration. Message ends."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Stanton growled.

"Trust me," said Cormac, then smiled at the rustling of material that told him Stanton had just drawn his weapon. He went on, "What did I just say to him?"

"You offered him anything he wants," said Stanton.

"I also said 'When I arrive, I'll send a message to the Polity', so what do you think he'll work out from that?"

Stanton thought for a moment then said, "He'll know you're not going right into Polity space."

"Precisely, so he'll think he still has a chance of silencing me," said Cormac. "And when he moves to pick up our trail, and tries to follow us through U-space, he'll see that this is true."

"You haven't told me our destination yet," said Jarvellis.

Cormac now told her.

So engrossed had Skellor been in the underground battle that he felt a surge of panic as in a microsecond he became aware of fusion spillover from a 'ware field. Immediately he put the relevant laser battery online, whilst experiencing huge loathing and contempt for himself. With all his available sensors he had watched out for Polity technology, and so just not expected anything else. That was his own damned chameleonware on some small ship, and it had nearly got the vessel past him. Targeting the calculated centre of the 'ware effect, he immediately became suspicious: why was he seeing fusion spillover now? It seemed almost as if the pilot of that ship wanted to be seen. Then Cormac's message arrived and Skellor screamed with rage at his own stupidity, and fired his lasers, only to see their blast igniting vapour over a fading U-space signature.

Skellor immediately engaged the Occam's fusion engines to take him out of low orbit. As he did this, he imposed self-control and re-examined the content of the man's message.

'When I arrive I'll send a message to the Polity was a provocative phrase. Skellor felt it was a ploy to get him to follow the ship to some dangerous destination on the Line. Yet there could be no trap laid there, because no one outside of this system knew anything about him. Hammering up towards the rapidly fading signature, Skellor probed and was further bewildered when he discovered what the little ship's destination was.

What did this Agent Cormac think he could achieve by leading Skellor there?

It took Skellor a huge adjustment of perspective to understand what was happening: if he did not pursue, then Cormac would get to the Polity and Skellor's secret would be out. If he did pursue, the chase would take him two solstan months, and in that time the Polity would be sure to have gone to Masada to find out what had happened to its people — and to this very ship — and again the secret would be out. Obliquely, Skellor realized what he was truly being offered. Cormac was sacrificing himself for this remote world. The agent realized Skellor would never follow the trispherical ship anywhere under Polity control, as that would be suicide for him, thus Cormac would not now be heading into Polity space. The circumstances were such that Skellor had a choice: he could stay here and incinerate this world, or he could follow the ship and capture Ian Cormac. Without a second thought Skellor dropped the Occam Razor into underspace.

"Pull back! Pull back into Pillartown One!"

The man with the still-working coms helmet who was loudly relaying Lellan's orders let his gaze stray from the air above him for too long. Two calloraptors hit him simultaneously and dragged him screaming up into the middle of their flock, where his screams were soon curtailed as they ripped him apart. With the taste of bile in his mouth and with his hands shaking, Apis quickly changed the energy canister of his pulse-rifle. It was an automatic action — which he had done six times already. Long before he, Eldene and Fethan had arrived, the battle had become a diffuse and chaotic thing, for the calloraptors, once through the cavern door, had room to take to the air and attack at will from overhead.

"Where is Pillartown One?" he asked Eldene, as she fired several short bursts overhead. She pointed to a building beyond the hovering raptors, then led the way.

Watching his footing on the rocky terrain — for he still feared falling over more than physical attack — he followed Eldene as she continued firing short bursts upwards. He saw she was certainly a better shot than himself when one burst she fired separated a raptor's wing, and the creature came thwacking like a broken sail to the cavern floor. Before it even hit the ground, three dracomen were upon it and tearing it apart. Apis noticed that one of them wore a weapons harness, and he wondered if that might be Scar. Difficult to tell, for they were all so similar. It had taken some time, and much reassurance from Lellan, for the rebel forces to realize they were friendly. However, though they made ferocious allies, they could not fly.

"We have to move faster!" Eldene yelled.

Glancing aside, Apis saw the rebel forces in full retreat. He ran to keep up with Eldene, ducking a claw that passed dangerously close to his head, then ducking the dracoman that leapt straight up in front of him. The thump from above told him that it had seized its prey, and he glanced back to see dracoman and calloraptor hit the ground in a flailing bundle.

"Keep moving!" shouted Fethan, sprinting past. Apis broke into a run again, till soon he was back abreast of Fethan and Eldene.

To either side of them, commingled rebel forces and dracomen were retreating under the onslaught from above. The running seemed to go on interminably, with the pillartown seemingly always distant from them. Then, as if he was coming out of some nightmare, Apis found himself in its shadow, and saw rebels and dracomen ducking through the shattered doors ahead of him. Driven wild by the prospect of their prey escaping, the raptors descended in vicious onslaught.

"Watch out!" Fethan yelled.

Apis ducked, and the creature went straight over him, and knocked Eldene to the ground. Apis leapt forward, and slammed himself into the raptor just as it was trying to drag Eldene upwards. He brought it down and, pinning it underneath himself, he emptied his rifle into the monster's chest. Fire flared underneath him, and claws closed on his leg. He felt himself being jerked up, but with his head towards the ground, and with horror saw the one he had just eviscerated with fire flapping to its feet, with fibrous pink chyme welling up in the burn holes on its midsection, then going for Eldene a second time. Hauling himself up, Apis swung his weapon with all the force he could muster, smashing one of his own assailant's wing joints, and both he and it crashed to the ground. His rifle gone now, he was defenceless as the raptor loomed over him, its triple mouth opening to tear off his face.

"Fuck you!"

His fist smacked hard into its double-keeled chest, and it coughed. He thought of Miranda, and hit it again in exactly the same place. As something gave under his fist, he assumed it was his own bones breaking. Amazingly the raptor continued coughing. He struck it again, now thinking of all those who had died on the General Patten. Then for his mother, he followed that blow with one up and under the monster's ugly head, then another… then another. It suddenly seemed to go soft on him. He felt its neck snap, saw its flesh tearing — that pinkish chyme welling up to make repairs.

"And double fuck you!" he yelled, remembering one of Gant's favoured curses. His next blow tore the creature's head from its body.

Apis did not allow himself time to feel appalled at what he had just done, he turned and immediately went for the one attacking Eldene. By then the dracomen had realized where the rebels were heading and had closed in. During the confused and vicious fight that followed, all the rebels were soon undercover, and dracomen manned the doors, joyfully countering any intruding raptors.

"Skellor programmed 'em to attack and kill, but not much beyond that," observed Fethan. "They're at a disadvantage when they land." He then turned to inspect Apis thoughtfully. "Take it you finally got over your fear of falling."

Apis fought to recover his breath, still not quite believing what he was now capable of doing, even though he had worked it all out. That was the Jain nano-mycelium working inside him — likely the very same stuff that effected such rapid repairs to those raptor creatures. Even though the same tech worked inside, he had beaten the creature simply because its strength was related to its density, so the raptor could not be as strong as himself since it needed to be light enough to fly. After a moment Apis stood upright and noticed Eldene was watching him with something approaching awe. He turned back to Fethan. "If they keep having to land in order to attack, the dracomen will eventually get them all," he suggested.

"Only thing to stop them fighting themselves to death would be a bit of Skellor's reprogramming," said Fethan with satisfaction.

"There's nothing to stop him doing that remotely," Apis stated.

"I doubt he can do it from underspace," replied Fethan with a grin.

"He's gone? Skellor's gone?"

"That's the word, boy. That's the word," Fethan replied.

Apis could only believe it as he watched raptor after raptor land outside and enter the building, only to be torn apart by the waiting dracomen, and as what had been a desperate fight in the open devolved into a slaughter — an extermination.

Lyric II spun out of underspace, exciting a photonic trail, before its fusion engines ignited to decelerate it down into the system. Being identified as one of the numerous large cargo ships that usually arrived at and departed from the sprawling structures coming into view, its AI was soon queried by a local AI, its presence noted and directions given, then it was all but forgotten. Aboard the ship, Cormac sipped hot coffee and tried to shake off the last dregs of cold-sleep that seemed to clog his head with wet tissue-paper. So much would depend on what happened in the next few minutes that, in his present debilitated state, he was finding it difficult to accept it all as real. Eyeing Stanton and Jarvellis, he saw that they were having no such problems accepting reality: she appeared white and ill, while her partner wore an expression of grim determination.

"He may not be prepared to take any more risks with us." Stanton at last voiced what they were all thinking. "If he fires on us as soon as he surfaces, that's it — all over."

"But he won't," said Cormac with a confidence he did not feel. "He'll want to gloat, if only for a few minutes, and while he does that we'll be sending our message on ahead. I would even bet he'll open communications with us in the hope of getting some response out of me."

"And our response to that?" said Jarvellis.

"I will talk to him," said Cormac. "Every second we gain…"

"In that respect," said the captain of Lyric II, "it's time to start counting."

The Occam Razor slid out of underspace a thousand kilometres behind them, so that it seemed a tangled, dead thing, wrapped around something glorious and precious, was folding out of blackness there. Observing the great ship, Cormac was struck this once by how strangely beautiful it was. Perhaps this was because it would be the last time he ever saw it.

Through the myriad senses at his disposal, Skellor observed Lyric II like a fleck of matter against the sprawling backdrop. He studied the cylinder worlds like displaced towers, and the fragile chains of habitats, the huge manufactories and refineries, and the swarms of ships. Here was another place open to subversion, to takeover — throughout it he could feel the presence of Dracocorp augs, in loosely aligned communities each held together by the creeping dominion of one of their members. His arrival at Masada, and what he had found there developing under the Hierarch, had made him understand the subtle route Dragon had used to dominate humans — a route Skellor had very unsubtly ripped wide apart. But that was all something he must return to later, for here he was much too close to the Polity, and already could feel the U-space probing of a runcible AI. No, the one ship ahead of him he would take, and that would be all and enough. He opened the bay from which he had earlier ejected the raptor-piloted lander, and accelerated down onto Lyric II. As he descended, he spread himself out through Jain structure, substructure, architecture in a kind of rapturous stretching as of some creature extending great wings and claws.

This is it, Agent. I have you now.

Horrible laughter then echoed within him — and it wasn't his own.

You are dead, he told the source of that laughter.

You made me, replied the ephemeral voice of Aphran. He tried to find it, encompass it, smear it out of existence, but he was chasing mere shadows through the vastness of himself.

You haven't seen it yet, have you?

I haven't seen what? he asked, hoping this time that when she spoke again he would be able to nail down exactly where she lurked.

The light, Skellor. The light.

Standing in the sharp blue shadows of his favourite cyanid, Dreyden drew hard on his cigarette, its glowing tip reflecting off his chromed aug, then blew out a cloud of smoke over the exposed yellow convolutions inside one of the plant's opened pods. The convolutions all immediately zipped themselves up like a swarm of worms passing over the surface of this alien flower, then after a time unclenched again.

It was only here that Dreyden truly felt he could relax. Or perhaps he was kidding himself that relaxation was even possible for him: he had been described as being 'taut as monofilament' from his childhood — full of crazy hopes and numbing fears which he felt were the driving forces of his success. He knew that sometimes his fears strayed into the irrational, and it was good that he did know this, for Lons and Alvor would never tell him: Lons because Dreyden's sanity or otherwise was not a matter of interest to him; and Alvor because he was always looking for an angle, for a way to manipulate his boss, to scrabble another couple of rungs up the ladder.

Across the ground before him a flattened worm of jelly oozed with slow ripplings that caught the lights from his apartment. To his right he saw that a plasoderm's grey seedcase had hinged itself completely open, and that the object crawling before him was the last of its slime-mould spore carriers to be released. He threw his cigarette butt into the empty seedcase where it hissed out in the damp interior. The accuracy of his shot gave him a second's satisfaction before his whole world collapsed on him.

There was no alarm mode in his aug, as he considered that for anything that urgent he wanted no delay. His connection, which had been a low buzz of activity in a place impossible to point to, suddenly slammed back with such force that he staggered against the lethal edges of the cyanid leaves.

"Battle stats and alarm to all areas lock down and seal gate connection break…"

Alvor was rattling off instructions so closely auged in that he became part machine himself for that brief moment. Lons had already moved beyond the verbal and was dealing in logic blocks and prestored sub-programs. Below Dreyden's hands, virtual consoles flicked into existence, and all around him flat and holojected displays folded out of the air. There he observed huge transfers of information as the bulwarks of his empire were automatically dropped into safe storage. However, his attention was immediately riveted on one small screen. A touch at the non-existent console expanded the screen to reveal the huge Polity dreadnought bearing down upon Elysium.

"Lyric II pursued. Message coming in from John Stanton."

Dreyden had not needed Alvor to tell him this. He was on top of things now.

"Dreyden, you've got to cover me. He is seriously pissed about those drones," said the holojected image of John Stanton.

Dreyden felt his insides clenching in a brass fist as he studied the man — Stanton seemed scared, and that was a first.

"What about the drones?" he asked.

"Signal code broken. Signal code broken."

Dreyden pressed his hands together to stop them shaking, as Stanton flickered out of existence and was instantly replaced.

"Donnegal Dreyden," spoke a hated image. "This is Ian Cormac of Earth Central Security. You have thirty seconds to transmit all your control codes to this Polity dreadnought. If you fail to comply I will be forced to fire upon you."

Something was wrong with all this, but Dreyden could see no way to discover what, nor had he been allowed time.

"You know what my reply has to be," he said, not believing he was speaking these words, nor knowing what else to say. "I did warn you last time you were here."

"Do you really think your pathetic mirrors will manage to cut through the armour on this Polity dreadnought before it destroys them?" And now Cormac's expression turned furious. "Do you really think that ECS can countenance you supplying terrorists with high-tech Polity war drones?"

"But I—"

The link cut off and Dreyden was left staring at darkness.

"He can't be that stupid."

Dreyden was in complete agreement with Alvor's assessment: Agent Cormac of ECS had to know the mirrors were capable of raising in seconds the temperature of anything to that of a sun's surface. The agent must want to die aboard that great ship, and Dreyden did not have the option to persuade him otherwise. Already he was sending the signals that would give him total command of each mirror. Before him a depiction of Elysium sprang into existence, and each mirror gained a shimmering halo as it came under his control. His hands moving across and through the consoles, he spidered the air with bright lines as he plotted trajectories and sent further commands. In that moment he moved into the language of machine code, and felt himself connecting more deeply into his own realm. He knew that, like those images of consoles and screens around him, the feeling itself was illusion, but he felt the glide of massive hydraulics, the acid fire of thruster motors, and the huge shifting of mirrors at his command. Subliminally he noted a grabship caught in momentary focus, turning mercury-bright then transforming into a ball of light expanding and dispersing. Then plotted trajectories intersected on what was even now becoming visible through the glass dome above.

The Occam Razor gleamed then glared in sunlight — a strange gem flashing into existence over Elysium. To one side Dreyden saw the hologram of someone appear and turn puzzled bloodshot eyes towards him. It was recognizably human but horribly tangled, and melded with both the organic and the mechanical.

"Subversion access! Subversion access!"

He didn't need to be told, as he was already fighting to prevent it killing the tracking programs in the mirror-guidance systems. The figure was screaming now as the heat delved down to it inside the dreadnought, white light all around it and holographic smoke filling the imaging area. Equally, the Occam Razor was howling across the sky with fire flaring across its surface and Jain structure ablating away into space. Then it rolled, bringing to bear another surface as yet untouched by sunfire. Dreyden felt a huge surge of energy through solar collectors and, with a thought, folded out a screen to view one section of Elysium itself. He saw an expanding mass of wreckage: burnt and burning habitats, domed forests falling out into blackness, human bodies… and a line of fire tracking across, searing and smashing and killing.

"You bastard!" he shouted, not entirely sure whom he was cursing.

The fire died as the weapons exposed on this new face of the Occam Razor collapsed into the boiling plain of its hull. To one side the image of the man-thing flickered out, and the ship seemed suddenly to alter its shape. For a second everything blacked out as a safety system cut into the visual feedback, then it cleared on the red eye of an explosion, and spreading sheets of molten metal and incandescent gas.