The Line of Polity

6

"And thus it was that with God's guidance Brother Goodman came at last to the land of the gabbleduck. Hereabouts were trails worn through the grass and the scatterings of the bones of those who had failed the test," the woman told her boy, raising an eyebrow at the picture displayed in the book showing a veritable charnel house.

"The babbleguck, the babbleguck," said the boy impatiently — she had given up trying to get him to pronounce the name correctly and assumed this story would become part of his own personal mythology when he grew up. Scrolling the text down moved the scene along to soon reveal the creature itself: it squatted in the grasses like some monstrously insectile hybrid of Buddha and Kali, with a definite splash of Argus in the ocular region.

"Gabbleduck," said the boy, and the woman looked at him with suspicion before continuing.

"In his right hand Brother Goodman carried the word of God and in his left hand he carried the wisdom of Zelda Smythe. He brought no weapons to the abode of the monster other than these and his Faith. 'Ask me a riddle! he cried, holding up both books."

At this point, the gabbleduck, with its multiple arms folded on its triple-keeled chest, turned its array of green eyes upon the pious brother.

" 'Scubble leather bobble fuck, said the duck, and in reply Brother Goodman smote the creature with the word, 'Ung? "

The woman started giggling as the picture book now showed the enormous creature stooping down and opening its large bill to expose an interior lined with something like white holly leaves.

"Then guess… what… happened?" she managed.

Giggling as well, though not sure why, the boy did not manage a reply. The book showed them both anyway.

The Occam Razor was a dark and disturbing ship, made more so because despite its large crew and resident population, it always seemed empty — any crew member possibly being, at any one time, as much as a couple of kilometres away, and that was a disturbing thought. His cabin was large, comfortable, had all the facilities of a plush hotel, and was like a room in an empty house. Standing at the wide screen that served as a window, Cormac sipped a whisky with cubes of normal ice in it, unlike the one he had been poured by Dreyden — whisky with cips ice was a lethal combination — and watched Elysium, and the huge sun it orbited, dwindle into invisibility. He felt the need now to be about his business, but there were months yet of ship time to get through before the Occam Razor reached its destination. Unable to contain his impatience any longer he swallowed the last of his drink, placed the glass back in the wall dispenser and headed for the door.

The ship was not quiet, yet it had an air of quietude. The sounds Cormac could hear in the corridor were distant and echoey, and as of someone working on things far off: the crackle of a welder, the clang of something dropped, the stutter of a laser drill. He checked the time and, seeing that only an hour had passed since their departure from Elysium, he decided not to bother Mika yet — she would hardly have had time to settle in her cabin, let alone establish herself in the ship's forensic laboratory in Medical. He decided he needed to think, and he always thought best while he was walking. There was plenty of room to walk here, so he chose a direction and set off.

In a few minutes it was evident he had left the accommodation area. The walkway soon lost its carpeting — bare gravity plates exposed — then its partition walls, exposing the inner structure of the ship. All around him was an ordered forest of wires and optic cables, ducts and foamed metal beams, and plasma tubes, often intersecting at some bulky wasps' nest of a machine. For a couple of minutes he had a view of something far below him that looked like the Sydney Opera House, but it was soon obscured as some huge deck slid slowly over it. He had been walking for ten minutes when a drone flew waveringly towards him. This particular machine had the smooth shape of an arrowhead with no visible manipulators, and he wondered just what purpose it could possibly serve.

"What's the quickest way to the hull?" he asked quickly, when it became evident the drone was not going to stop. The drone jerked to a halt in midair, turned two ruby eyes towards him, then turned again so it was pointing down the way he was heading.

"First left, about half a klom," it said.

"Thank—"

The drone had already flown off.

Cormac soon came to an intersection of four walkways, and took the one on his immediate left in the hope that he was still going in the right direction. If he was, he would reach his destination in five or ten minutes. After only a couple of minutes it came into sight. The hull of the ship was a steel cliff with neither top nor bottom in sight, just a couple of square kilometres of curving hull-metal. The walkway ended in a circular platform before a shimmer-shield curtaining a rectangular hole piercing the hull. Cormac received an impression of scale it was not often possible to find on a world. This ship was awesome, but it surprised him to have not yet encountered any crewmembers. Strangely, it came as no surprise to him to see a familiar figure awaiting him on the platform, silhouetted against the glitter of stars.

"Now why the hell are you here?" he asked as he drew closer.

Blegg was utterly silent until Cormac came to stand beside him, then he gestured to the immensity beyond the shimmer-shield. "Games," he said, while gazing out into the flecked darkness. "Human beings playing at silly games and arguing like children over their toys." He turned to look at Cormac, and Cormac flinched at what he saw in those eyes: a power there, something ineffable.

Blegg went on, "The human race occupies a small fraction of the galaxy, a small sphere at its rim, a hundred star systems at most, but enough that it is beginning to be noticed."

"Yes, I'm sure it is," Cormac replied, fumbling in his pocket and finding a New Carth shilling — the currency used in Elysium. He held it out and, remembering the briefing from Blegg he had previously received in VR, tipped his hand and exerted his will to stop the shilling in midair. It bounced off the platform then curved spinning into the space beyond — now obviously outside the influence of the grav-plates he was standing on.

"We are not in VR," Blegg told him.

"Then let me repeat: 'Why the hell are you here? Did you board at Elysium?"

"The human race is beginning to be noticed, Ian Cormac."

"By the likes of the Makers, yes, and we saved the one surviving member of a mission from their race and are now transporting it back. What of that? Its arrival back in its home system is years hence in our terms, and presumably it is now a friend."

"Not just the Makers, Ian, but they illustrate a point — the rogue biological machine of theirs, Dragon, has caused the human race many problems."

Cormac snorted. "You talk of the human race as if you are not a member."

Blegg grinned. "Ye doubt me, Ian?"

"You are capable of things no other human is capable of, at least, to my knowledge."

Blegg allowed that a derisive grunt. "There're others like me, and there'll be more."

Cormac let that ride and instead asked, "Who other than the Makers are beginning to notice us?"

Blegg turned back to the shimmer-shield. It was a moment before he replied. Cormac stamped his feet against the deck plates. He had only just started to notice how cold it was on the platform. A chill blast came up from below, and there were gleaming nodules of ice on the rails.

"They're out there," said Blegg. "They were building starships before humans stood upright. There're star-spanning civilizations that're millions of years old."

"Oh, tell me more, please," said Cormac, his breath visible before his face.

Blegg grinned at him. "Better," he said.

"So what if they are watching us?"

"We have to be ready. Simple examination by such as them could destroy us. Levels of technology — like Dragon. Even now, our astronomers still think that all pulsars and black holes are natural phenomena. They also express amazement at how lucky the human race has been: a moon to prevent Earth's atmosphere becoming as thick as that of Venus, no large asteroid strikes while our kind developed, the aptly timed Ice Age late in our evolution. It also surprises them how abundant are living worlds beyond Earth."

"I presume there is a point to all this?"

"We squabble. We must be unified, strong and as one. Soon we'll be playing grown-up games. As we are we might not survive."

"Masada?"

"Masada. All of them."

Cormac stared at him and waited. He was sure Blegg was bullshitting him again for his own obscure purposes or amusement. Give the big picture, fine, but what do I do being only a pixel in that picture? Blegg turned back to watch as a shutter slowly slid down outside the shimmer-shield.

"Entering underspace," said Blegg, and as Cormac felt the strangeness, the dislocation, he saw that for a moment Blegg had gone translucent, flickering like a hologram. He reached out and touched the other man's shoulder, but he was there. His skin felt hot, fevered. As if he had not noticed the touch, Blegg continued to speak.

"Masada is not a heavily populated world but, under the Theocracy there, life is very cheap. The majority of the surface population would rebel, but they do not because they live at a perpetually enforced technological disadvantage. A grid of laser projectors hangs geostationary over their heads and, as I said before, the Theocracy are building a kinetic launcher to suppress what rebellion there is in the planet's Underworld. That religious order controls them all, and most of its members live safely out of the way in satellite cylinder-worlds. The sheep live a hard life on the surface of the planet."

"Sounds idyllic. What do you want me to do?"

"Thirty hours after the Occam Razor takes the position of the Outlink station, it will draw the line of Polity across the Masadan system. It would be useful if the populace rebelled against oppression, then they could be helped. It would be useful if there was a valid reason for the Occam Razor to enter the Masadan system."

Cormac noted the sarcasm. "Why not just move in and take over anyway?" he asked, deciding not to make things easy for Blegg.

"Politics."

"Yeah? Explain."

"Masada is held up as something of an icon for Separatists across human space. It would be nice if our intervention was on the behalf of the populace — useful if the Theocracy was made to look villainous."

"I still don't get it," said Cormac, deliberately stubborn.

"All-out war costs. You should know that. It has always been your job to prevent it."

"How very cynical. I can take the Sparkind down… to assist?"

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"Two of the landing craft on this ship are carrying cargoes of high-tech weaponry."

Cormac considered that for a moment.

"What about the lasers? If they are operating we'll never get landing craft down."

"I am sure you can make a malfunction look plausible."

"Fine. So I have my instructions." Cormac turned away, then quickly turned back. "Before you disappear, tell me, are you human?"

"I was when the Enola Gay overflew my home city of Hiroshima. I saw my family incinerated about me and I remained untouched. When I walked out of the city I doubted my humanity."

"You don't talk much like a Japanese."

"I lived in Japan for ten years. I've lived in other places for a lot longer than that."

"I'm supposed to believe this?"

"Look at me. Look at my eyes."

Cormac did as instructed; saw that they were black, with a pinpoint of red, advancing. It suddenly seemed to him he was standing on the platform, without the body of the ship to protect him from the hard radiation of the stars and the incomprehensible distortions of underspace. The red came out and filled the gap. Cormac found himself in a furnace and he recognized the character of that fire. He also understood what Blegg meant when he said there would be 'others'.

Curled foetally, cold and shivering, on the deck plates, alone, Cormac believed in Blegg.

Lying on the surgical table Thorn could not help but cringe as Stanton swung across the autodoc. Though attached to a long jointed arm extending from the pedestal at the head of the table, the doc itself was indistinguishable from the one Lutz had used on him back on the barge.

"They say travel broadens the mind," said Stanton, calling up a program with the touch-console mounted on the pedestal, and initiating the doc. "Whoever says that wants to try spending a few months inside a ship of this size… We get into the cold-coffins as soon as possible, and thaw up as near to our destination as possible."

The autodoc hummed as it came towards Thorn's face, opening out its surgical tools and array of legs like a descending spider. He felt something stab into his face, but before he could react to that his face became like dead meat over his living skull. He attempted to speak, but his mouth just did not work, and all he managed was to issue a few grunting sounds. Seeing bloody implements moving about right over his face, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the tugging sensations and audible crunching as the doc straightened the cartilage in his nose. Next, he felt a tugging lower down and surmised that the doc was pulling his lips apart so it could get to his broken teeth.

"It's measuring up now," said Stanton.

Thorn opened his eyes and glanced aside to see the man watching the procedure with obvious fascination.

Stanton went on, "You should have hung on to your broken teeth. It could have welded them straight back in. As it is, it has to measure everything and match colour and consistency for the synthebone and enamel. You're lucky, in a way: the doc on the first Lyric wasn't anywhere near as sophisticated — you'd have got your teeth back, but they'd probably have been the wrong colour."

Thorn wanted to make some sarcastic comment about being too preoccupied at the time to pick up his teeth. By Stanton's grin, he realized that the mercenary probably guessed exactly what he was thinking.

The droning of a cell-welder now ensued as the doc repaired the damage to the soft tissues of his face. While this was done he ruminated on how 'cell-welder' was a misnomer, as an autodoc did not actually repair broken, dying, or dead cells — it removed them and reconnected the tissues that had been parted by breaks, splits or cuts. For more substantial damage, the doc used synthetic or regrown tissues to fill in the gaps — in the case of the synthetics, this tissue was subsequently replaced by the natural healing processes of the body. However, he did not think that any such additions, other than his teeth, would be required for him since everything else was still there — if a little squashed.

"Your face looks like it's exploded," said Stanton. "It always fascinates me how they open you up to make even minor internal repairs."

Thorn reckoned Stanton should have been a surgeon — he seemed to enjoy describing to the patient the processes involved.

Now, as well as that of the cell-welder, came the higher-pitched droning of a bone-welder as the doc fixed into place the teeth it had rapidly manufactured inside itself. There came further tuggings as it checked the security of its welds. With the work of the cell-welder still continuing, Thorn was beginning to wonder just how much damage had been done to his face, when suddenly feeling returned to it and the doc withdrew. He sat up and immediately brought his hand up to his face: he now possessed a new set of front teeth and his nose was back to its customary shape, and all he felt was an ache deep in his gums and his sinuses. He took the mirror Stanton proffered him and inspected the repairs — same old face, but with absolutely no sign that it had been broken.

"You say that you now have the greatest respect for Ian Cormac, and that after Viridian your perspective changed completely. But I still don't see why you saved my life. You risked a hell of a lot there," said Thorn, handing back the mirror.

"Haven't you realized?" asked the mercenary as he returned the mirror to its rack. "I'm one of the good guys now."

Thorn, who was an expert when it came to 'evil grins', felt that Stanton's took some beating.

It was a huge ship, which was convenient as this meant that there were many places to hide — and right then Skellor wanted to hide. This hold-space was old and obviously had been long unused. The ceramal walls were dull, and on the floor were scattered the wing cases of blade beetles that some time in the past must have briefly infested this area. Many of the wing cases, he noticed, had tiny neat holes punched right through them — a sure sign that small ship drones had used their lasers to clear the infestation.

Skellor dropped down with his back to the cold wall and closed his eyes, connecting himself deep into the Jain substructure and assessing the information presented by the devices it was creating within him. Unconsciously he touched a hand to the woody material that had grown from his collarbone and up the side of his neck to cup his chin and cheek, on the opposite side of his head from his aug. This part of the substructure had grown before he had managed to take control of it, and he had yet to find a way to reverse the process. No matter — he'd find a way.

The detector, which was integral to the entire structure inside him, no longer registered Hawking radiation, and from it he no longer experienced the terrible feeling of threat. As far as he was aware, the Polity had no interstellar ships capable of carrying working runcibles, since the devices conflicted with the function of the underspace engines, yet Hawking radiation was a byproduct of a black hole — and it was damned unlikely one of those was aboard — or of runcible function, so what had occurred?

Almost on an instinctive level Skellor knew that something had recently paid the Occam Razor a visit, and that same something had rung alarm bells in the Jain structure and in himself. That something, he understood, had represented a great danger to him. But fortunately, it had departed the ship shortly after the ship itself had entered underspace, and now it was time for him to make his plans.

He knew that if the AIs that ran the Polity found out about him and what he had achieved, they would not rest until they had tracked him down. How much more severe would their strictures be upon his work now that he had become his work? They would throw him into the deepest hole they could find, and fill it in after him. Now, rather than being a researcher who had found the Separatists convenient allies and generous paymasters, he was essentially a Separatist himself. The Polity was now his enemy — it could be no other way.

So first he needed to know where this ship was heading, how many people there were aboard and who they were — and everything else that he was up against. As yet, he did not have the confidence to attempt gleaning that information directly from the ship AI. Yes, in a very short time he had acquired huge capabilities, but he did not yet think himself ready to go up against an AI of that level. However, there were other ways of getting the information he needed that would not require him venturing too deeply into the ship's systems: human beings were easily accessible packets of information in themselves. Of course, it would be convenient if, whilst finding out those things he needed to know, he also acquired some allies.

Skellor attempted a smile, but his face felt stiff. Going deeper into his Jain structure he began to build further useful… tools.

The corpse was laid out on a table inside the isolation booth while forensic robots, which were complex near-kin of autodocs, swarmed over it like chrome dung beetles as they investigated and catalogued its structure. Cormac observed this process with a feeling of chill that he had brought up with him from the platform on which he had met Blegg. What he had seen down there… what had he seen?

"They were rather touchy, down there," said Mika, as she studied screens and, through the touch-consoles below, tapped in further instructions to the robots.

Down there?

After a moment he realized she was referring to Elysium and the difficulties the three Golem had experienced extracting her from that place. He smiled then, remembering her inability to ask direct questions. "They thought they were about to suffer a Polity takeover."

"An understandable reaction," Mika replied, as he turned. She made a pushing gesture with her hand, exposing the tattoo on her palm that signified her graduation from the Life-Coven on the planet Circe — a secretive place that produced some of the best analytical minds for biosciences in the entire sector. Cormac studied her. She had changed only a little since the last time he had seen her: her orange hair was now shoulder-length rather than the crop it had been, her eyes were still demonic red and her skin pale, but she had acquired some bulk on her diminutive frame that had not been there before.

"Have you had a chance to look at the artefacts?" he asked her.

"Briefly," she nodded to the nearby case in which they were contained, "but such items require deep and intensive study."

"Then they are Jain?"

"Oh yes, but in all honesty this thing is much more interesting." She indicated the creature Shuriken had killed in the Separatist base on Callorum, as some of the forensic robots now burrowed inside it. "You realize that this was once a human being?"

"I saw the similarities, but I assumed it was just some bio-construct of Skellor's and left it at that. He's had a tendency to come up with some nasty devices: poisonous snakes directed by microminds, birds with planar explosive packed into their bones, and more recently an organic gun that fires darts which are apparently just grossly enlarged bee stings but can inject the poison or drug of your choice."

"It's surprising he was allowed to remain free," Mika opined.

"We never had anything definite on him until he started taking Separatist pay cheques, so we left him alone in the hope he'd lead us to others, which he did." Cormac grimaced. "Though now I suspect that maybe we left him to get on with his work for a little too long." He gestured to the corpse in the isolation booth. "You said this was once a man."

"Or woman," Mika replied. "I'll have it sexed in a little while, though I can't see what there is to be gained from that. Essentially what Skellor created here is a melding of calloraptor and human being, but that's not the most interesting part: this creature has a nanotech structure inside it that worked very quickly to repair its body."

"Yes, quite," said Cormac with irony.

Mika acknowledged his tone and went on, "Only by damaging its body so severely did you manage to take it beyond its ability for self-repair."

"We don't possess anything like that."

"No, I would say its source is Jain, as our own nanotechnologies are just nowhere near as advanced." She gestured to the artefacts. "Though I have to wonder if they are that source."

"Meaning?"

"From what little I've learnt from them I know that they are Jain, but they're severely corrupted, and I wonder if any more could be discovered from them than we'd learn from a pot shard about the full extent of the Roman civilization."

"Then Skellor has something else."

"One would think so," replied Mika, gazing past his shoulder to the laboratory's door. He glanced back and saw that Scar had entered and now stood waiting with the usual reptilian patience. Mika continued, "Of course you can ask him yourself once he's found."

Cormac snorted at that, "If we find him."

"He won't be able to hide down there on Callorum forever, and the remote sensors Occam dropped will pick up any ship that leaves or arrives," said Mika.

"You're forgetting his chameleonware. I guarantee he has a ship stashed somewhere on the surface, which he'll be able to leave on without being detected," opined Cormac. He turned to Scar, "What do you want here, dracoman?"

"It is not a case of what he wants," said Mika, standing and moving past Cormac. "Come in, Scar. Let's start where we left off."

Cormac had also not forgotten Mika's fascination with dracomen… and Dragon. That, besides her expertise, was the reason he had brought her along.

The Occam Razor came out of underspace five hours earlier than expected, some time after most of the crew had gone into cold-sleep, but before Cormac himself felt the inclination. In a pensive mood since his encounter with Blegg and his discussion with Mika, he immediately demanded to know the nature of the problem. Occam took a moment to reply as it was not a very co-operative AI.

"Distress call," was all it said to him.

Cormac tossed aside the note screen he had been studying, got off his bed and quickly pulled on his ship-suit and exited the cabin. Perhaps Tomalon might have more to say. Reaching the nearest drop-shaft, he keyed in the deck level from which the bridge pod had previously extended, then he stepped in. On the requisite deck, he quickly found one of the ubiquitous drones, and asked it for directions. Luckily, Occam had not shifted the bridge pod, and soon Cormac was there.

"What have you got?"

Tomalon turned towards him blinking to clear his eyes of the views projected through his link with the ship's sensors. Cormac wondered what it was like — flying the ship, being the ship.

"A landing craft. Looks to be of Masadan manufacture. Life signs evident just for one person, though there may be others in cold-sleep." He nodded to one of the windows and up flickered a view of a battered-looking craft with one of the Occam's grabships heading towards it. This unknown craft was a much smaller version of those ships used to tow asteroids to Elysium.

"The distress signal, what format?" Cormac asked.

"Standard Polity."

"Strange."

The grabship closed on the landing craft like some huge metallic tick, its triple claw unfolding spiderish against the actinic glare of the stars. Slowing to match the speed of the craft and adjusting to match its rotation, the grabship closed its claw and gripped before speeding back to the Occam. When it filled the screen, another view was cast up, from one side, of the grabship decelerating into the maw of a hold: a wasp with captured grub, flying into a hole in the wall of a house. As the hold irised shut behind it, Cormac glanced at Tomalon, who lifted a hand almost concealed in linking technology and gestured to the drone that had just entered.

"I'll take you there," he said.

So that was how much he identified with the ship.

"Have Cento and Aiden meet us there, armed," said Cormac, turning to go.

Tomalon nodded and his eyes went opaque again. The drone turned in midair and led Cormac out. Tomalon was leading him, or the AI, or likely an amalgam of the two.

Was I like that? It had been years since Cormac had been gridlinked, and then he had been variously linked with a series of different AIs. Still, it had dehumanized him, hadn't it?

With the gas giant in its position — at this time of year — of leading the sun by only one quarter-day, Eldene knew, when Calypse disappeared behind the far horizon, that darkness was only a few hours away. When workers headed down the rows of grape trees, carrying the backpack sprays they had been working with all day, Fethan changed course to take the two of them away from any encounter. The sky changed from lavender to deep purple then starlit black, and one of the giant's moons hurtled across above wisps of cloud as if late for an appointment with its Jovian father. Shortly they reached another of the tool sheds they had earlier seen, and Fethan broke into it.

"Don't move from here unless you really have to," Fethan instructed her, handing over Volus's stinger. "I'm going to find some supplies." Fethan winked and slipped out of the door.

Eldene was too tired to protest and, pulling the tarpaulin from a dilapidated electric tractor, found the darkest corner, wrapped herself in the material and bedded down. But all her discomforts conspired to keep her awake: the strange lightness she felt without her scole, the sensitivity of her nipples from where, unsupported by the creature, they had been rubbing against her shirt, the itching pain in her chest where its feeding tubules had penetrated, and the discomfort of having to use a breather unit. Instead of sleeping, she lay back and replayed the long question-and-answer session of that day.

Unlike the tutors at the orphanage, Fethan answered her every question succinctly and never lost patience. Eldene now visualized such wonders as runcibles, Polity battleships, wondrous Earth and the heavily populated Sol system, strange environments adapted for human use, and humans adapted to live in strange environments. She contemplated the idea of godlike AI minds wiser and more intelligent than anything she could have possibly imagined before, of medical technologies that seemed capable of extending people's lives indefinitely… the strange creatures and stranger technologies and constructs… No, sleep just did not seem possible with all these golden visions playing across her retina. Then the next thing she knew she couldn't breathe, and was scrabbling in the darkness of midnight to find the spare oxygen bottle.

"All right, girl," said Fethan from beside her, with swift precision changing the bottle for her.

"Thank you," she said, as soon as her breathing was back to normal.

"You go back to sleep."

She was about to say something else to him, but with seemingly no transition, Fethan was shaking her by the shoulder and light was beaming in through cracks in the grapewood walls of the tool shed.

Eldene lay there for a moment longer, as she felt so warm and comfortable in the tarpaulin, but then habit beaten into her at the orphanage, and further reinforced by the proctors in the work sheds, had her struggling from the tarpaulin and to her feet.

"Were you gone long… in the night?" she asked, hinging her mask down in irritation.

"Few hours," Fethan replied, squatting down to open a large pack resting against the wheel of the electric tractor. From this he held up another oxygen bottle and showed it to Eldene before placing it on the floor.

After taking another quick breath from the mask Eldene asked, "Did you get any sleep?", then could have kicked herself for her stupidity, and was grateful when Fethan offered no patronizing reply.

What came out of the pack next, Eldene smelt before Fethan revealed it to her, and, with her mouth watering, she approached almost involuntarily.

"Sausage," she said reverently as Fethan handed her the huge tube of meat, then shortly removed a loaf followed by a four-pack of wine bottles.

"Remember, this has gotta last you four days," said Fethan.

Eldene heard him, but was too busy relishing her first mouthful of meat in something like four months. She followed this with bread, then with a swallow of wine — something she had tasted a couple of times back at the orphanage. Eating was a rather vexing process with the mask, and Eldene could see why the thing was disposable — no doubt it very quickly became quite filthy.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, finally pausing to take the water bottle Fethan handed her.

"There's a lot of Voluses in the world, though this morning there's one less," Fethan replied.

Eldene stared at him in the dim light of the tool shed as she tried to adjust to the casual killing of yet another proctor for oxygen, food and drink. It came as no surprise to her that such adjustment did not require much effort. She took another bite of sausage, another swallow of wine.

Once Eldene had eaten, and recorked the bottle of wine, having only drunk a quarter of it — she well understood how drinking too much would affect her, having never acquired any tolerance of alcohol, and having experienced the effects of Fethan's lethal brew back at the work sheds — they set out into the new day. Calypse was high in the sky, so they were an hour or more beyond the customary starting time for workers, but none were in sight nor came in sight before the pair reached the fringe of the orchards.

"Why did you brew alcohol if you never needed it?" Eldene asked, as heading through flute grass they skirted a wide area of square ponds where workers were scattered like pawns.

"I brewed it because I could, and it gave some of the team there some comfort," Fethan replied.

"They'd have more comfort not still being there."

"Yes, but how many breather masks do you think I could obtain for them?"

Chastened, Eldene now saved her breath for walking. The new growths of grass, like spikes of green metal tipped with blood, were now a hand's length high and it was walking through these that became difficult. The tall growths of last year were becoming increasingly brittle, however, and disintegrated almost at a touch.

By mid-morning, with both the sun and Calypse well up in the sky, they rested upon a huge tricone shell that was buoyed up by the flute grass rhizomes. This monster shell was three metres long and wide enough at its widest end for Eldene to sit on it without her feet touching the ground. Here she sat drinking water and eating a piece of bread while Fethan walked slowly around the shell itself studying the ancient graffiti carved into its nacreous surface.

"I never knew they got to be this big," said Eldene, around a mouthful of bread.

"Neither did I, but then I wouldn't, as the only ecological survey recorded on the AI net is about three hundred years old and was not produced by the most reliable of sources." Fethan paused with arms akimbo and transferred his gaze up to the sky. Then suddenly, moving very fast, he caught Eldene by the arm, half carrying and half shoving her off the end of the shell. "Get inside! Right now!"

Eldene caught a glimpse of things glinting in the sky as she hurriedly obeyed, Fethan diving into the cone next to her. Once safely inside, she tilted her head to the drone of turbines and immediately recognized the source: a military transport was passing right over them. She risked peeking her head out for a look. The transport was just a huge flat rectangular box with windows down each side, one thruster mounted on a rear tail fin, two air rudders depending below the front two corners, and underneath, the two huge turbines that kept it in the air. The blast from these engines raised a wake of fragments from the dead flute grass below, and the noise was deafening. Accompanying this massive vehicle was a veritable swarm of aerofans. She glanced aside to see Fethan watching the sky as well.

"Still no AG on their transports; Lellan's ahead of them on that," he said.

"What's all this about?" Eldene whispered, though she then wondered why she bothered to keep her voice down — the proctors could not have heard her over the racket generated by the transport's engines.

"Might be because two proctors have been killed in as many days, but I doubt that," said Fethan. "The Theocracy don't care so much for their proctors that they'd mobilize a transport. So I'd say Lellan's been stinging their arses — probably with a supply or worker raid. She likes to keep the bastards on their toes."

"Worker raid?" Eldene queried as the flight faded into the distance and she and Fethan finally crawled from cover.

"She'll normally select a work camp, go in with a transport just like that one, and liberate the lot of them. The only ones in the camp who object are usually the proctors, and their objections last only so long as it takes 'em to hit the ground. Lellan's not what you'd call reasonable when it comes to proctors."

"What about the lasers?" Eldene gestured to the sky.

"There are occasional windows of opportunity — when things can be done on the surface unseen. Before now Lellan has also stolen Theocracy transports and their radio identification codes. It's not something she gets away with very often, but when she does she makes the most of it."

They moved on through the flute grass.

Cento, Aiden and Gant met him as he stepped from the drop-shaft nearest the hold containing the craft. This hold was positioned over a kilometre from the bridge pod. Cormac noted that the two original Golem were in uniform and carried their JMC military-issue pulse-guns. Their expressions were unreadable. By contrast, Gant, whom Cormac was still loath to describe as a Golem, was not in uniform — it looked as if he had hurriedly dressed in whatever was to hand — however, he did carry the same weapon as the other two. Cormac made no comment on his presence. If he was out to prove something here, then let him do so.

"Scan shows only one person in there. There may be others in cold-sleep or undetected by scan. Stay alert. I want at least one alive if possible."

"Aren't we a little over-armed for this?" asked Gant.

"Recommend the softer approach when you've got something to lose," Cormac reminded him.

Gant muttered something filthy and fingered his gun. The drone led them through a sliding door into a cavernous hold, where the landing craft rested at the centre of a plain of ceramal deck plates. The grabship had returned to its rack position in a row of ten against the wall — they looked like giant metal insects clinging to a cliff. As he stepped through the door Cormac studied the captured craft.

It was of an old utile design much used before the introduction of cheap antigravity motors. Its body was a flattened cylinder terminating in a chainglass cockpit, behind which, like shoulders, were two ball-mounted thruster motors capable of firing in any direction. At the rear of the craft, behind another pair of thrusters, were two huge ion engines extruding outwards from the craft, these in appearance being simply two large spheres with the rears sliced off them. It had no landing feet let down and so lay flat on the deck.

The drone accelerated away from them to do one circuit of the craft, then hovered above its airlock which lay between the thrusters on one side. When they finally joined it, Cormac directed Cento and Aiden to the lock itself, not daring yet to touch this craft himself for standing before it was like standing before the open door of a freezer. Cento took hold of the manual wheel and turned it easily. There was a slight rush of air as pressures equalized, and when this door was open far enough, Aiden moved into the lock to release the inner door. Cento quickly followed him in with his pulse-gun ready. Cormac followed on with Gant.

Inside the craft, a skinny youth with bright yellow skin lay flat on his back, with Cento bent over him. Cormac took in the situation in a second and shouted to the drone.

"Drop the gravity — to five per cent, now!"

There was a moment's delay, enough for Aiden to step back into the main body of the craft from the cockpit, which he had been checking out. Cormac's stomach lurched as the gravity changed. He glanced round and saw Gant rising slowly into the air, his embarrassment evident, then returned his attention to Cento.

"Outlinker, unconscious, fractured ankle," the Golem announced after a brief pause.

"There's another in one of the cold-coffins: a woman. But the manifest numbers twenty-five on this craft," said Aiden.

"They're not here?" Cormac asked needlessly. He did not see Aiden shake his head. An Outlinker on a Masadan landing craft, now what did that mean?

"How long, do you think, before I can speak to him?" he asked Cento, who was probing the youth's ankle.

"I'll get him up to Medical, and thereafter it will be Mika's decision."

Cormac nodded and stepped back into the airlock. The drone rapidly backed out of his way into the hold.

"Tomalon, I'd like you to hold position until this is sorted. We could then get a better idea of what we're flying into."

The drone said, "You do not command this ship."

"I know," Cormac replied.

"I can give you twenty hours."

Apis Coolant was conscious in three.

Skellor tracked her as she strode along the walkway, then started to move in after she sent about their business the three drones accompanying her. He wondered for a moment just what sort of ship this was that required human maintenance personnel, then understood that the craft had to be old — perhaps something left over from one of the many conflicts during the early expansion of the Polity. That meant that its AI would not be such a godlike entity as the newer Polity AIs and therefore much of the ship was outside its control — hence the human maintenance personnel. It also meant that this ship probably had an interfaced captain, and perhaps even a command crew. Not knowing his own capabilities just yet, Skellor could not judge whether this would make his task more or less difficult.

Walking soft on the ceramal deck plates, he came up behind her. She wore an aug that had the appearance of faceted sapphire behind which she tucked a strand of her long blonde hair as she glanced up from her note screen and gazed about herself. She could not see Skellor with his chameleonware operating, even though he stood only a few paces behind her. Her aug first, he thought, to prevent her broadcasting a cry for help. He reached out, his hand only inches from her face, and paused to relish the thrill of being this close and yet unseen, of having this much power, then he closed his fingers around her aug and tore it from her head.

She shrieked and ducked down in reflex, blood welling from the spot where he had torn the aug's anchors from the bone behind her ear. Skellor tossed the aug from the walkway and watched it continue along in a straight line into the bowels of the ship, now that it was beyond the pull of the grav-plates. The woman pulled herself upright and looked about in terrified bewilderment. Skellor now took offline the Jain boosting of his body, for he had swiftly learnt that with it operating he had no judgement of his own strength. Then, just as he had been taught by one of the Separatist fight trainers, he side-fisted her temple. Catching her as she slumped, he re-initiated boosting and slung her over his shoulder as easily as if she were a sack of polystyrene. Extending the range of his 'ware field to include her he quickly moved off. Had other people been viewing this attack they would have seen her simply rise into the air and disappear.

One of the drones she had sent away approached down the walkway as he marched along it. Pressing himself against the rail, to allow it past, he smiled to himself — utterly invisible, even to machines with a greater spectrum of senses than a human being.

Soon he reached the abandoned hold, where he lowered the woman to the floor before sealing the door behind him. Now he had to learn how to take exactly what he wanted. Squatting beside her, he pressed his fingers into the raw wound behind her ear and sent filaments from the Jain substructure through her skin and into her skull. Using the same methods the substructure had employed to connect to his crystal matrix AI and to himself, he connected to her and, adopting the same decoding programs he had earlier used on the structure, he read her mind. First he built a model of her brain in one small memory space in his aug, then, decoding the workings of her mind, he began to transfer across everything that was her. Soon he found that he no longer needed the model and erased it. It was a destructive reading, he found: memories, experiences, skills, understanding… all those facets of this human mind he absorbed, but by doing so destroyed their intricate source — it was like memorizing a book and burning each page once it was memorized. When he had finished, he withdrew his fingers and observed that she was still living: still functioning on those autonomous impulses that he had not touched. Grimacing, he touched her again, found the relevant area of her brain, and stopped her heart.

Sitting back, Skellor began the process of editing everything that he had taken. He dumped huge amounts of memory he considered irrelevant, and acquired-skills he himself had already far exceeded. In the end, what remained to him was her knowledge of this ship; of the ship's layout and the location of those areas the Occam AI could not see; of the function of automatic systems; of the drones, their connections back to the AI, programming languages — a wealth of knowledge that would enable him to travel throughout the ship undetected even without his chameleonware. From her he also learnt why the ship had so quickly departed Callorum, and viewed through her eyes the destruction of Miranda as displayed on the viewing screen in her cabin. He discovered too that there was no command crew, but that there was an interfaced captain. He learnt of the army of Golem in storage, of the five-hundred-strong staff of technicians, crew, maintenance, and ECS — mostly now gone into cold-coffins. Finally he learnt where the Separatist prisoners from Callorum were being held, and realized what his next task would be.

Cormac stepped into Medical and quickly caught hold of the doorjamb before he shot up into the air. The youth lay propped up in a cot, his foot in an auto-doc boot, drug patches on his arms. He was eating ravenously from a well-stacked plate. Bright-eyed he glanced up at Cormac. Then, remembering something, his expression became bewildered.

"You're Cormac," he said.

Cormac nodded and moved carefully across the carpeted floor to take a seat by the cot. Abrupt changes in gravity took some getting used to, but any higher than it was at that moment would have been uncomfortable for the youth.

"You're Earth Central Security," Apis added.

"That I am," said Cormac.

"I killed them."

Cormac looked at him carefully. Twenty-three Masadans?

"Perhaps you'd better start at the beginning. You are from station Miranda I take it?"

"Yes."

"Tell me what happened to you."

Apis did that. When the boy finished, it was Cormac who felt bewildered. So, Dragon definitely was involved — but how? That question would have to wait for the moment.

"It's doubtful you'll be tried for murder. What you did, you did in self-defence, no matter the number killed." Cormac put his hand gently on Apis's shoulder. "If anything, I congratulate you. These Masadan soldiers sound like fanatics and, from what I've heard, seem likely to have been responsible for many deaths." He took his hand away. The youth looked relieved, but that might be because Cormac had not crushed his shoulder. "As for your mother, Mika is having her moved to a cold-coffin up here, where she can more easily make a diagnosis. Mika is good, and I have no doubt your mother will soon be conscious and well. Tell me, do you have any idea why Dragon attacked the ship?" Apis shook his head. "How far did this attack take place from where the station was destroyed?"

"I don't know — we went into U-space. It'll be in the landing craft guidance computer."

Cormac nodded. Occam would have downloaded that information by now.

"Have you any idea why the Masadans took you and your fellows off the station?"

"Not to rescue us… though that's what they said. But they made some of us work in the engine room of their ship. Mother said we were to be slaves."

Null-gee construction, thought Cormac: Outlinkers would make excellent station builders.

"That's all for now. I'll leave you to finish your meal."

In the bioscience section adjoining Medical, Cormac found Mika seated with her feet up on a workbench while she studied a portable screen.

"How's the mother?" he asked.

"She'll take a while. She had a fractured skull and a cerebral haemorrhage. I'm leaving her in cold-sleep for the present while I check my files here on Outlinker physiology." She nodded down at the screen she was holding.

Cormac moved further into the room and gazed into the isolation booth containing the thing he had killed on Callorum. Suddenly it just didn't seem as important now.

"Tomalon… Ship!" he said.

"What is it?" the ship AI asked abruptly.

"Do you have the co-ordinates of the Dragon attack on the Masadan craft?"

"Of course."

There then came a strange whining muttering sound followed by a sharp snapping. Like a vessel filling from the bottom with flesh, Tomalon appeared in the middle of the room.

"Yes, we have the co-ordinates," he said, taking over from Occam.

"I didn't know you had holojectors on this ship," said Cormac.

"Only in some sections. The Occam Razor was being refitted, prior to being called out to Callorum."

Cormac considered that: this ship was an old one and, though powerful, was in many ways far more primitive than other Polity ships.

"Can you take us to the co-ordinates of that attack?" he asked.

A moment's displacement had the room wavering and Tomalon's image flickering on and off, then it stabilized — they had dropped into U-space.

"In transit," said Tomalon, confirming this.

Cormac turned to Mika, who wore a puzzled expression. "Did you ask the boy about what happened to him?" he asked, trying not to put too much irony into his voice.

With a flash of irritation she replied, "I didn't need to ask. He needed to tell someone."

"Then you realize things are starting to get complicated."

"They always do when you are involved," she replied, returning her attention to her screen.

Cormac studied Mika until there came a further feeling of displacement as the Occam Razor rose back out of underspace. Returning his attention to the Captain's hologram, he observed it sliding sideways to pause by a console and screen probably used to run research programmes. The screen came on and lights played around the touch-pads of the console, as it no doubt linked into the ship's ubiquitous communications channels.

"We are there now," said Tomalon, his mouth moving but his voice issuing from the console.

Cormac walked over and stared at the screen. It showed him a spreading cloud of twisted lumps of metal tumbling through the void; the hazy glitter of metallic particles and a fog of gases. One large tangle of wreckage contained a dull red glow, and vapour was spilling from this out into space.

"Identify," he said flatly.

"Everything you would expect," said Tomalon. "The remains of a ship torn apart: hull plates, insulation, gas, and corpses."

Now a square isolated the glowing tangle of wreckage and the view closed in on that. Clinging to a twisted structural member projecting from the tangle were two bloated human shapes — one with bright red skin and one with skin of a golden yellow.

"Dead?"

"They are all dead," Tomalon replied. "These two probably died before the others out there, because that glow you see comes from a broken atomic pile."

"Anything else within scanning range?" Cormac asked, glancing behind when Mika came to stand at his shoulder.

"Four hundred kilometres out there is what remains of a landing craft — the twin of the one our friend Apis occupied. Nothing alive there either. I've been close-scanning all debris in the area for survivors, but there are none." Tomalon paused and a strange muttering issued from the console as if he was exchanging a comment or two with someone nearby him — obviously some spillover from his link with Occam. He went on, "Extending the range of scans now."

"A waste of life," said Mika.

"Death always is," Cormac replied.

"Life-form detected," Tomalon said suddenly, his voice containing that rough edge that was something of Occam.

"Where?" Cormac asked.

"Two light days along our projected path."

"Identify."

"Spherical creature one kilometre in diameter. Ninety-eight per cent projection: Dragon."

"Now the shit hits."

Mika had no comment on that. Tomalon merely flickered out of existence.