The Line of Polity

12

As she read she could see it would soon be time for the boy to go to bed, for his expression was becoming increasingly glazed. Checking ahead she saw that there wasn't all that much more to read and realized that the boy would soon be taking a greater interest

"On the third day he came into the realm of the gabbleduck, and found that many years had passed since the faithless had come to test themselves, and it had also been many years since the creature had fed, and to Brother Serendipity it seemed but a mound of skin and bone." The woman bit her lip, then pulled her chair round beside her son's, so he could see the picture in the book. The gabbleduck appeared as a pyramidal monstrosity looking down on the little man. Behind the man the heroyne towered hugely, and coiled on the ground behind it rested the siluroyne, picking at its hatchet teeth with one claw. All three creatures had in their expressions something like suppressed amusement. The boy indeed started to pay more attention now.

" 'Please feed me for I have not eaten in many a year and am fading away, spake the gabbleduck. 'Why should I feed you when, strengthened by my food, you might riddle me to my doom? asked the good Brother. 'You have my promise that it will be otherwise, the gabbleduck replied. 'Swear in the name of God and in the name of his prophet Zelda Smythe, the Brother demanded. And so swore the gabbleduck, and in recompense ate the last third of the meat cake gifted by the old woman. That night none dared approach Brother Serendipity and his three protectors as they came at last in sight of the boundary stone of Agatha Compound."

As the cold-coffin opened, Cormac saw a pterodactyl head poised over him, as if contemplating the opening of a can of food. For a second he felt utterly vulnerable, but his previous assessment of their current situation inside the landing craft — inside Dragon — had not changed. If Dragon wanted to kill them, then there was nothing they could do about it. Ignoring the head, he pushed himself up from the coffin and to one side. Turning in midair, he also ignored the always painful return of feeling as he reached over to the adjacent locker and removed his clothing. Only when he was dressed, and with Shuriken strapped to his arm and his thin-gun in his pocket, did he turn to observe Dragon.

"You interfered with the timings on the coffins," he said.

A mass of tentacles once again filled the airlock, but some of them, he now saw, snaked through the air to penetrate much of the craft's instrumentation.

"Your timings were wrong. We are already off Calypse and you would otherwise have slept for one solstan week more," Dragon replied.

Cormac rubbed his arms and, after pulling himself down to the floor with one of the many wall handles, he stamped his feet on the deck. Glancing around the inside of the craft, he thought for a moment that Apis had also thawed up, then realized that what he was seeing was the boy's exoskeletal suit strapped upright to a handle right by his coffin. He next saw Gant sitting utterly still in the co-pilot's chair: he too had shut himself down for the duration of the journey, but it seemed strange that he had not roused by now, for surely any unexpected sounds or movements would have woken him instantly. Cormac noticed that one of the draconic tentacles had snaked up the side of the chair and penetrated the Golem's side.

"Why have you woken me alone, then?" Cormac asked.

"The only way to win is to become."

Ah, it was going to be one of those conversations — a kind of verbal chess in which he did not know the value of the pieces played. Cormac decided not to dignify such an opaque comment with a reply.

"You referred to 'the enemy' being aboard the Occam Razor, and I presumed that to mean the Jain. Were the Makers — your makers — once at war with them?" he asked.

"It is not they any more."

"You mean the Jain are a dead race?"

"I mean it is not a race."

"Is the rumour true that you enjoy speaking a lot and saying nothing?" Cormac asked, getting irritated.

The head turned towards the cockpit, where a mass of something with the consistency of raw liver darkened the front screen. However, one of the lower screens came on, to display a view outside Dragon. It revealed the swirled opal face of the gas giant Calypse, with two moons poised nearby. From the nearest of these moons, some sort of structure feathered out into space, small ships moving about it like beetles over a pile of twigs.

"That's Flint — and that structure some sort of shipyard, I would guess. Why did you come into realspace out here? Surely closer in would have been better? You could have hit the laser arrays and been out before they had a chance to respond."

"I am not planning to leave."

Great.

"That still doesn't tell me why you're this far out."

"Let them tremble at my presence. Let them see!"

Its final bellow had Cormac clapping his hands over his ears. He saw tentacles retracting; Gant jerking, then abruptly whipping his head round. Behind him, the cold-coffins began to open.

"What the hell?" asked Gant.

"I begin," said Dragon, quietly now, and suddenly the very air in the craft seemed taut with energy. Behind him, Cormac heard Mika groan, then Apis asking a question — but he could not distinguish the words because they became so distorted. Huge pressure built, so it felt to him as if his head must implode. Then there came an immense sound, as of two seconds broadcast from inside a hurricane, and in this vast exhalation the tension and pressure drained away. The screen became a distorting lens showing the view down a long tunnel towards the shipyard. As it settled back to a normal view, the yard disappeared inside a pillar of fire, ships tumbling out into space, some burning and some breaking apart, a crater now glowing in the face of the moon.

Then they were moving, Calypse and its moons dropping behind.

"Vengeance is mine, saith Dragon," the head intoned.

The shaking of her room had been enough to bring Eldene to the surface of slumber, but not enough to hold her there. It was the constantly increasing cacophony in Pillartown One that finally dragged her back to the surface and held her there. She had been lying awake, but just too comfortable to move for quite some time, when the door opened and the lights came on.

"Come on, slugabed, you've slept long enough I think," said Fethan.

Feeling a sudden flushing of guilt at her unaccustomed laziness, Eldene quickly sat up in bed and observed the old man unshouldering first a rifle then a heavy backpack and depositing them on the floor. Now finding she was completely naked, she realized Fethan must have undressed her after she had collapsed into this bed last night. Embarrassment added to her discomfort.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked, clasping the clean pale blue sheets about herself, and noticing how filthy were her hands in comparison.

"About half as long again as you're used to."

Wiping a hand over her face Eldene studied her surroundings with somewhat more attention than previously. That this — the largest and most airy room she had ever slept in — should be found underground was a constant surprise.

Fethan pointed to an arched entrance over to one side. "There's a shower in there with hot water and other luxuries you could easily get accustomed to. You've got an hour before we set out again, so you'd best get moving, girl."

Eldene glanced in the direction he indicated, but felt little inclination to get out of bed naked — even if the old man had undressed her last night.

"Where are my clothes?" she asked at last.

"Threw 'em away," he replied. "There's some new kit in this pack for you."

"What's the hurry? And where are we going?"

Fethan stepped over and sat on the edge of her bed. "A ship's just come in with new supplies, and I thought you'd like to see it. It's not far to go, but Lellan's limiting the number of trips out to visit it in case the activity is spotted, so this'll be our only opportunity." He then abruptly stood up, perhaps finally realizing why Eldene seemed uncomfortable. "Did you get all that Carl was telling you when we arrived here?" he asked.

"Some of it," Eldene replied, for she had been almost dead on her feet whilst Carl lectured her.

"So do you remember where tunnel seventeen is?"

"Where the river comes in?"

"That's it," said Fethan. "If you're interested, be there in one hour." He grinned slyly and headed for the door. As soon as he was gone, Eldene kicked the covers back and went to use the shower. She had to stay with Fethan, for without him she just did not know what to do — this was perhaps the most difficult aspect of going from a life of virtual slavery to one that offered choices. In the shower, she was delighted to discover the hot water, scented soap, and large warm towels, though she could not spare the time to luxuriate. She washed quickly and methodically, dried herself thoroughly, then hurried over to the backpack he had delivered. Before opening it, she picked up the rifle — the same sort as those carried by Lellan and the others — and inspected the thing. She doubted this was Fethan's own, and left here by mistake — she was coming to realize that Fethan did not often do anything without purpose — so he must have specially left it for her. She dropped the weapon on the bed, and tried not to wonder what the provision of this object might mean about her life from now on.

Inside the pack she found underwear and fatigues that she quickly donned, noting how no allowance had been made in the dimensions of the shirt for a scole, and felt fiercely glad of that fact. Also in the pack were a quilted jacket, oxygen pack and mask, cooking equipment, a sleeping bag, and various other items of survival — some of which she did not recognize. Fethan had said the ship was not far away, so taking up the breather gear and jacket only, she left the rest of the pack's contents and set out. She also left the rifle where it was.

The pillartown was a source of greater wonder to Eldene than the familiar ponds and fields on the floor of the cavern. Vaguely she had memories of several-storied buildings, from her orphanage childhood in the capital, but those were memories of dismal grey boxes stacked one upon the other, and joined by toll-tunnels where you must pay to breathe the air. She knew that there were parks and larger spaces, but they were the province of high Theocracy — the proctors, soldiers and priests — not gutter trash like herself. Here the buildings were so utterly different: every floor had wide viewing galleries and balconies open to the cavern air, plants grew in every available niche and were obviously carefully nurtured, the floors everywhere felt soft — and always there was light.

Eldene headed for one of the high-speed lifts Fethan had earlier demonstrated to her, and was soon walking out through the pillartown's lobby. Here was where food and domestic goods were distributed, and she could see stalls stretching endlessly in every direction. All around her there were people — uncowed people who were not waiting for the discovery of some minor infraction of Theocracy rules and the consequent punishment. Outside the building, Eldene covered the short distance down to the river, and then followed a path along the bank to the entrance to tunnel seventeen. She broke into a run once she saw that Fethan, Carl and Lellan were already waiting there, so arrived amongst them panting.

"Let's go," said Lellan, as soon as Eldene arrived, and led the way through an armoured door, then along similar tunnels to those they had arrived through. As they ascended, and breath became short, Eldene shuddered as for a second she felt she was returning to her old life. Realization that this was not so came as a flush of joy.

Tunnel seventeen opened out onto a narrow path cutting across a scree slope, then down a trail etched between platforms of stone that almost seemed to have been placed on purpose — though for what purpose was unknowable — into a valley that might have been the continuation of the one where she had fled the hooder yesterday. However, this path made her feel very much safer as it was cut into stone rising twenty metres above the rustling flute grasses.

Soon the valley turned a corner, and the river glimpsed through greenery terminated in a lake — whether flowing into or out of it was not clear, the river being glassily still.

Lellan, who had been speaking quietly into her mike, glanced back towards Fethan as they approached the lake. "Well — she's down on that further shore." She wore an amused expression as she pointed vaguely.

"Chameleonware," said Fethan. "Risky."

Lellan's amusement evaporated. "Sometimes you are just no fun at all." She continued leading the way.

Eventually their path descended in long steps to the point where the lake connected to the river. They had to walk a short way through flute grass that was chest-high and now throwing out dark red side-shoots, creating a tangle that required some effort to push through, then came to a shoreline of flaky shale scattered with pieces of white bone, like driftwood. There was a tide-line of empty jewel-like mollusc shells, and the shore hissed underfoot when they stepped on it.

"What is that noise?" Eldene whispered to Fethan, subsequently wondering why she was keeping her voice low.

"Small water lice. They feed on animalcules washed down the river to here." This also answered her question about which direction the river flowed.

As they reached the boulder-strewn further shore of the lake, Eldene turned her attention, only momentarily, to a nasty-looking creature squatting on a half-submerged rock. As she turned back to look where she was going she let out a yelp of surprise and abruptly stepped back into Fethan. Suddenly, where there had been only empty shore, there now stood two men and a woman, standing before what seemed to her a huge trispherical spaceship. She felt nothing but confusion, and would have run if Fethan had not held on to her.

"The ship was hidden," he said close to her ear. "It projects a field that, amongst other things, bends light around it and makes it invisible. We just walked inside that field."

Eldene calmed herself and studied the three individuals who stood waiting. They did not wear face-masks, so either they were like Fethan, or some other fabulous Polity technology was at work here. Lellan walked up to one of the men — a thickset ginger-haired individual who appeared to be quite capable of tearing someone's head off — and with her arms akimbo, glared at him.

"We'd almost given up on you. What the hell have you been playing at, John?"

The man rubbed his face, causing the field that contained air over his nose and mouth to shimmer.

"Dorth was on Cheyne III, so I paid my last visit to friend Brom, who was hosting him," explained Stanton.

"Did you get him?" asked Lellan, her tone suddenly avid.

"No, he's back here. But Brom's out of the picture now."

Lellan bowed her head in disappointment.

Meanwhile, Fethan had sidled up to the other man. "ECS?" asked the old man, and Thorn nodded in reply. Fethan went on, "Thought so — it's the company you keep."

Eldene could not help but feel an outsider in all this. She resolved to not remain so for very long.

It was howling in his head, trying to penetrate the now frantic shouting of the Septarchy Friars — a looming hot ophidian presence. He did not need Aberil to announce, "Behemoth is here."

Through the wide chainglass window extending across the front bridge of the lead Ragnorak tug, they could only see Calypse and a distant feeble glow on the moonlet called Flint where, only minutes ago, there had been a shipyard and a population of thousands. In front of the pilot and navigator — in the tank displaying the relative positions of just about every object in the Masadan system — a new object, outlined in red, was moving away from the devastated shipyard. Seated in the couch especially provided for him, on a recently installed grav-plate floor, Loman leaned forwards to peer more closely at this tank.

"What is it doing?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"It's coming insystem on a realspace drive of some kind," Aberil replied, gazing at the instrumentation before the seated navigator, where he floated at the man's shoulder — outside the influence of those few plates provided for Loman. "The fleet is embarking from Hope, and preparing to U-jump on your order to attack."

"How long before they can jump?" Loman asked.

Aberil closed his eyes for a moment and, when he opened them, said, "Thirty-eight minutes."

"Tell them to only prepare."

Aberil glanced at him. "We cannot allow Behemoth to get close to our cylinder worlds. It must be destroyed." Loman stared at him until he added, "Hierarch."

Loman continued to stare, feeling panic rise up inside himself. It had always been accepted that Behemoth would run, after Miranda had been destroyed. Had it not come out here to hide from the Polity in the first place?

"The General Patten was the biggest and most advanced ship we had, yet Behemoth tore it apart without using the weapon it's just used to destroy the Flint complex. What do you think the fleet could do against it?" he asked.

"They could slow it, Hierarch," suggested Aberil.

Loman stood up, walked to the edge of his grav-plates, and stared up at the chainglass screen. He placed his fingers against his aug and tried to find something amid the racket blocking or obliterating the channels. It did not take him long.

"Amoloran! Amoloran!" something bellowed over the ether.

"Listen to me," Loman sent back. "I am the Reverend Epthirieth Loman Dorth, Hierarch of Masada. Amoloran is dead. What do you want here, Behemoth?"

Suddenly the static faded and Loman felt himself to be standing in a vast chamber. The screen he gazed up at now seemed to have translucent scales all across its surface; a sharp astringent smell filled his nostrils, and he felt uncomfortably warm.

"You closed me out with prayer, and I could have destroyed you then. You destroy an Outlink station, and for this the Polity blames me. Now you have hurt me, and for this you will pay," Dragon told him.

"You were not hurt by any order of mine," Loman replied. "You attacked a ship sent on a mission by Amoloran. Those in that ship turned on its engines and burnt you, and for that you killed them all. There is no payment to be made."

"Oh you will pay," Dragon replied.

"Hierarchy it's turned towards us," said Aberil.

With some difficulty Loman severed the link, blinking away the strange after-effects from his vision, and turned to his brother. "What?"

"It just changed course. It's heading towards us."

Loman felt his mouth turn dry and a brass hand clench in his guts. "Send the fleet," he said, and unsteadily returned to his couch.

"Would it be possible to hit Behemoth with Ragnorak?" he silently asked Aberil.

"No, Hierarch. Ragnorak is designed for static targets, and Behemoth would just move out of the way."

Aloud, Aberil continued, "It's accelerating."

In silence, Loman watched the display unfolding in the tank, then a display on one of the control screens fed through from the targeting gear on Ragnorak. There all he saw was a small, slightly distorted sphere growing slowly larger against a background of blackness.

"How long will it take to reach us?" he asked.

"At this rate, just over the hour," Aberil replied.

"So the fleet will get to it first?"

"Yes."

But then what? Loman considered how brief would be his reign as Hierarch. There had been briefer ones, but never with such possibilities of great achievement. He closed his eyes and thought that perhaps this was their reward for dealing with one who had obviously been an emissary of Satan, not God — this was their punishment for not recognizing the difference. Members of the crew at the instrumentation around him were now mumbling prayers. In his mind, he slowly began to recite all the Satagents — but now with his eyes open, and all expression erased from his face. He was on the fifth one, just like Amoloran, when Aberil broke the gloom on the bridge.

"The fleet has gone into underspace."

Loman groped for some sort of reply. They might succeed in stopping the creature, but it seemed very unlikely — something that could tear apart a warship like the General Patten and could destroy something as huge as the Flint complex in a matter of seconds would take some stopping.

He was about to speak again when something slammed into him through his aug — tearing open a link in a way he'd always thought impossible.

"How so obviously you are not Polity AIs, and how slowly your ships enter underspace. With your pathetic fleet all around you, Reverend Epthirieth Loman Dorth, look to your world!"

"What… what do you mean?"

The only reply was fading gargantuan laughter.

"Behemoth has dropped into underspace. It has gone," said Aberil.

Loman sat back and very carefully closed down the channels that linked him to the U-space transmitter on this ship, and thus through to the cylinder worlds. He did not want to listen to the millions dying.

It was a brief U-space jump, yet it seemed interminable.

"Not too bright, are they?" opined Gant, staring at the console out of which had been relayed Dragon's exchange with the Hierarch.

Cormac shrugged and was about to make some comment, but Apis intervened, "Dragon seemed about to attack that device. What happened?"

Cormac explained, "It looks like their ships need to get up speed first to drop into underspace… they can't do a standing jump. But Dragon can."

Apis looked thoughtful for a moment as he closed the clasps down the front of his exoskeleton. "Perhaps they are not used to making war on something that fights back."

"Perhaps," said Cormac, now gazing up at the pterodactyl head that was still hovering above them. "You lied about your ability to drop into underspace, so am I now to believe your story about these people using the mycelium you provided to destroy Miranda?"

"It is true," Dragon replied briefly.

"Okay, I'll accept that for now, but do you suppose for one minute that the Polity would ever forgive you the slaughter of the population on Masada or in those cylinder worlds?"

"I am dying."

"I see, so you intend to go out in bloody style."

"I will live."

"Any remote possibility of a straight answer?"

"I will destroy only their laser arrays."

Cormac glanced around at his companions. It was with a total lack of surprise that he saw Mika holding some sort of instrument up to one of the draconic tentacles. Scar was poised in the air — a reptilian statue. Gant had his foot hooked under the back of one of the seats and once again clutched his APW to his chest.

Cormac returned his attention to Dragon. "What about us? What do you intend for us?"

The head suddenly dropped down so that it was poised right before Cormac. "If I kill and destroy, your Polity will kill and destroy me. You will let me live, Ian Cormac. For how I will now help you, you will let me live."

"I might when I figure out what the hell you mean when you say you are 'dying' and 'will live'. I'd have thought a creature of your capabilities would have learnt how to communicate clearly by now."

The head swung so that it was directed towards Scar. In response the dracoman hissed and seemed ready to attack. Dragon merely said, "He will know — when it is time." With that it abruptly withdrew towards the airlock, tentacles detaching and slithering away after it; the great plug of tangled flesh drew back into a living cavern beyond, and the airlock began to close. The screen they had been observing now showed only something dark and organic, which shifted slowly.

Cormac paused for a moment, then said, "Get strapped in. I think the shit's about to hit."

Seconds later they felt Dragon surface from underspace and, ahead of the lander, curtains of skin began to part. Cormac hunted across the controls until he managed to adjust the setting of one of the lower screens to infrared, to obtain the view he required. Now they could all see a tunnel opening ahead, and going into huge peristalsis. The craft slid forwards twenty metres, and slammed to a halt with a dull boom — then again, as another stretch of tunnel opened. Five times this happened, until through the main screen they saw a vague circle of luminescence. With competent precision, Apis reached down and reset the screen Cormac had previously adjusted — back to its normal view overlooking one side. Then they were out, and falling towards the gleaming arc of a world, starlit space fading to blue on that arc, and hanging nearby a huge machine-gun-magazine satellite, gleaming in bright sunlight. In the rear-view screen Dragon loomed huge against the stars, a distorted sphere across which now passed ripples of light, as over a pool of water containing fluorescing bacteria into which a stone has been cast.

"Shit! Get us out of here!" Cormac shouted.

Apis, who had strapped himself in at the controls before anyone else could object — though Cormac wouldn't, as the boy probably knew them better than anyone else on board — ran at high speed through a start-up sequence and grabbed the joystick. Thrusters roared and the craft tilted to one side, the view of the planet swinging round by a hundred and eighty degrees. There came a thunderous crash, and light flooded the cockpit as from a lightning strike. Now the satellite was behind them, and blowing apart, huge fragments hurtling outwards ahead of a wave of fire.

"Hold us here," ordered Cormac. "I want to see this."

Manipulating thrusters, Apis swung the craft around so the main screen showed a view of Dragon rolling across the darkness above them, heading towards the horizon of Masada — following a line of gleaming shapes suspended above atmosphere like a bracelet of charms for the planet. The creature remained in sight as they descended into atmosphere, and they watched it pause by another satellite and spit an actinic bar down onto it — another satellite gone in a fiercely bright explosion against the blue-black of space.

"Take us further in," said Cormac, then he looked round when the boy seemed disinclined to respond. Apis looked pale and slightly sick.

"The Golem, on the Occam Razor… they hit the ion engines," he stammered, as the landing craft began its brick-like descent. "We've only got manoeuvring thrusters."

Cormac closed his eyes and massaged his temples with his forefingers — he was getting a headache.

"Of course," he said. "This craft hasn't got AG, so we're going to need a flat area at least two or three kilometres long. How much can you slow us with the thrusters?"

Now asked technical questions, Apis lost his sick expression and shrugged himself into a businesslike frame of mind. He checked his instrumentation. "Enough to prevent us burning up, though I calculate… we will be going in at between five hundred and a thousand kilometres per hour."

Cormac glanced round at the other three. "This could prove interesting," he observed.

"You have a strange idea of what constitutes interesting," Mika replied.

"Normally something that involves an explosion, unfortunately," added Gant.

Scar merely bared his teeth.

Cormac went on, "If any of us survive this, it's going to be you, Gant. Your primary mission has to be to get news of what happened on the Occam to the Polity. ECS has to know about Skellor — he could be more dangerous than anything we've ever faced before."

"You are a cold bastard," said Gant.

"Whatever gets the job done," Mika commented sarcastically.

Cormac ignored them both.

The craft was soon shaking, and what had earlier been merely a low droning outside was now growing into a constant roar. Cormac gazed ahead as they punched through stratospheric cloud, above purplish ocean with a scattering of islands like black scabs. Apis manipulated the thruster controls, lifting the lander's nose for the further horizon. Soon they noticed the ocean below was scattered with icebergs.

"Will we make it to the main continent?" Cormac asked almost conversationally.

Apis gave a tight nod in reply.

Separate bergs started knitting below them into an ice sheet, which then started to break apart again. The line of a landmass rose over the horizon, with thick cloud tangled above it. When it became evident that this terrain ahead was mountainous, Apis used the thrusters to take them higher. The roaring was now deafening, the craft shaking alarmingly. Across the main screen rolled motes of something molten, and along its edges a hot glow encroached. Valleys and tors rolled underneath the craft, and it punched through cloud masses — losing vision for long seconds. Spearing down through a final cloud bank, they came out over flat plains, with a glimpse of chequered ponds and a wider spread of agriculture surrounding them. To their right a city loomed out of haze, then rapidly receded.

"Dragon!" Cormac yelled, pointing up to the sky where blooms of light ignited behind cloud, as from a distant thunderstorm.

Signs of civilization receded and they were now plummeting onto an uncultivated plain. The roar doubled as Apis initiated the thrusters to slow the craft, and kept them full on. As he fought to keep its nose up, the craft continued to descend, blurs of beige, dark red and green flashing by beneath them. There came a loud vicious hissing and, glancing at the rear-view screen, Cormac saw a cloud boiling up behind a track hammered through the vegetation below. Apis hit boosters and the cloud was shot through with sheets of flame. Suddenly they were all pressed hard against their straps, and their craft was bouncing and breaking. In the rear-view screen, a thruster nacelle, still jetting flame, curved into the cloud and disappeared. The craft itself began to slew, but Apis managed to correct for this. When Cormac glanced at him, the boy looked terrified but determined. This state of affairs seemed to just go on and on, then, as the din lessened, the craft abruptly, tilted, then flipped. There followed a chaos of rending crashes and bone-jarring jolts, as they rolled over and over, with pieces of the lander breaking away, and cold acidic air rushing in through the gaps torn in the hull, along with a haze of papery fragments. Then they were sliding along, tilted to one side, with wet black mud spraying up through gaping holes.

Cormac found himself fighting for breath as the oxygenated air inside the craft poured away. A roaring in his ears soon drowned out the chaos of the crash. With his vision tunnelling, he saw that Apis had managed to close over the hood of his exoskeleton and the suit, detecting the lack of oxygen, had automatically raised the visor. Behind, Mika was fighting for breath, while Gant was undoing his safety straps. Then Cormac lost it — he blacked out completely.

Thorn could not help but be impressed by the set-up they had here. Studying his companions in the elevator, as it rapidly accelerated up into the building, he wondered what their story might be. The girl looked a little bewildered by events around her, but utterly determined to stick with the old Golem, Fethan. Lellan Stanton… now here was an intriguing woman. She had little of her brother's brutish appearance, but obviously a shitload of his innate intelligence. She and Jarvellis were of a kind — clever, forceful, and not to be crossed. Yes, Thorn rather liked her already.

"What was it?" John Stanton asked.

Lellan replied, "Some sort of explosion." She listened to her helmet's earphone. "I'm not getting much sense out of them up there — there's a lot of yelling."

Thorn reflected on their frantic journey across the floor of the cavern in the jury-rigged AGC. Something big was happening, and there might ensue some kind of reaction from those down here — this place was wound up tight and seemed ready to explode. He'd seen it in the faces of the soldiers and technicians, and he'd seen the armament they'd built up. Through the glass side of the elevator Thorn saw that they had now reached the ceiling of the cavern, but that they were not slowing. Up and through — dark stone speeding past lit eerily by the elevator's internal light.

"Could be something to do with that rock you dragged in with us?" he suggested.

Jarvellis shook her head. "That fragmented and burned up without their notice, but maybe we were detected. That might explain all the activity," she said, her expression worried.

"No, that," said Lellan, tapping the side of her helmet. "That was Polas I was listening to. As far as I can gather, there's been an explosion on or near EL-41, and the possibility of explosions at 40 and 39. They're putting up the big dish and refractor now." She paused, listening again, then: "Seems that was 38."

Finally the elevator drew to a halt and its doors slid open onto a chamber crammed with equipment. One side of this chamber was walled by a window of tinted chainglass giving a view of mountains and sky, so it seemed evident they were located inside some high peak.

As soon as Lellan stepped out of the elevator, a thin weasel of a man began to gesture to her frantically. He sat in a half-circle console with a number of screens jury-rigged before him. Other people throughout this chamber were operating other machines, babbling into microphones, or frantically tapping instructions into consoles of antiquated design. Removing her helmet, Lellan trotted over to the beckoning man. Thorn took his time following along behind, as he once again studied the set-up around him — they had obviously had to do the best they could with whatever they could lay their hands on, but this was as good an operations room as any. It surprised him to see that it even had an old military projection tank — a holojector showing the entire Masadan system. However, he doubted that it displayed real-time — that would have bespoken a sophistication they definitely did not possess here.

"It's gone," the man called Polas was saying. "It's fucking well just gone."

"Show me," said Lellan.

Polas gestured at the screens. One of these showed a radio picture of the black dots of stars on a white background, cut off to one side by the black arc of Calypse. Another showed an empty grid, while another showed just empty blue. On a ring of lower screens, mathematical symbols and graph representations clicked on and off, flickering and changing as if some primitive AI were trying to justify the impossible.

"What about the recording?" Lellan asked.

Polas grimaced. "The machine dumped it as being out of parameters — thought it had made a mistake." He shouted across to one of his fellows, "Dale, you managed to retrieve it yet?"

The woman Dale shook her head as she continued clattering away at her keypad — chasing down something on her screen.

"The rest?" asked Lellan. "Have they gone as well?"

"So the equipment tells us. There's also that." Polas pointed to the chainglass window. Outside in daylight sky, a smoky disc was dissipating — one edge of it silhouetted against Calypse.

"Okay, it's time to send up the probe," said Lellan.

"Might be software, glitched by whatever that was," Polas pointed out.

"Just do it."

"A probe?" Thorn turned to Jarvellis, who was standing beside him.

"We brought it for them on our last trip. They only have the one," she replied.

"Won't its launch be detected?"

"Dispensable probe, and a separate and dispensable site."

Polas swung a side console across his lap — one with touch-controls rather than the buttons and ball controls of most of the consoles here — and with his fingertips expertly traced out a sequence. The radio screen's view changed to the same one they were seeing through the chainglass window. This view then vibrated as somewhere a rocket probe blasted from its hidden silo and headed into the sky.

"I've got it!" Dale yelled, while they all watched this scene, and she came running over with a software disc. Polas snatched it from her, swung the touch-console back out of the way, and inserted the disc into a slot in one of the more primitive consoles. He quickly rattled over the buttons while gazing at the gridded screen, then triumphantly hit the last button with his forefinger, and sat back.

"About a minute beforehand," he explained.

The screen image changed to show the curved satellite laser array Thorn had earlier seen from Lyric II, except that this view was from below, and he could clearly see the reflective throats of laser tubes open before him. They watched this unchanging scene for slow drawn-out seconds, then abruptly Polas leant forwards and stabbed his finger at one of the smaller screens, showing a tangle of signal waves.

"That's what made it dump the recording. No way can we set this system to accept a U-space signature — it screws everything," he said.

"U-space?" Lellan repeated. "They don't jump this close… what is that?"

On the screen, something gigantic loomed behind the laser array. As they watched, it rolled closer — a vast and incomprehensible shape. From it, off to one side of the screen, a black fleck fell away, then the screen whited out for a second. When it came back on, the laser array was a spreading cloud of debris laced with fire, and the vast shape rolled on.

"What the fucking hell was that?" asked Lellan.

Polas wiped his hand down his face to cover his mouth. Almost as if he didn't want what he was going to say next to be heard, he muttered, "There was something about it. Something out at the cylinder worlds… Behemoth… just a name."

"There's no mystery," interrupted Thorn.

They all turned to look at him.

"That was Dragon," he told them. "And my guess is that things are just about to start getting very complicated — and very deadly."

The agony and the terror left him, sucked away through the growing Jain architecture inside the Occam Razor. Those of his command crew who still had enough of their humanity left to feel their own pain were sobbing, which meant there were only two of them, being Aphran and the man who controlled the U-space engines. Skellor silenced them with a thought and began to analyse what had happened. When he had discovered that, he glared at the corpse of Captain Tomalon and wished he'd not been so hasty in having the man killed. The trouble Tomalon had caused was worth as much punishment as that damned Cormac would receive when Skellor finally got hold of him.

It was the burn again. Through the crew member who now controlled all the Occam Razor's energy shielding and shield generators, he located the huge misalignment. Overall there were eighty-four separate generators that shielded the ship from the hard radiation of space, or attack, and most importantly from the mind-scrambling effects of U-space — which even now were not clearly understood, at least by any human mind. The flat screens — a harder version of the shimmer-shield, and likewise a product of runcible technology — all had to mesh perfectly within a second of the U-space motors dropping the ship into under-space. They also oscillated on and off thereafter — the brief period they were off enabling the U-space motors to keep the ship hurtling through that ineffable dimension. But that had not happened: they'd dropped into U-space unshielded; then, within only a few minutes, had been forced out of it again when the shields started operating out of alignment to the motors. Every one of those generators had been connected in a complex net, and every one of them had been run by something that fell somewhere in between a submind and a plain control program.

"You piece of shit," spat Skellor, shutting down the grav-plate below the Captain's corpse. Then, grunting with an effort that had tears of blood forming in the corners of his eyes, he extruded a Jain outgrowth from the wall behind the corpse, which grabbed it around the neck and hauled it upright and back against the wall. Probing inside the man, he found nothing alive. It was not the shots that had killed him — the man's mind was burnt out like everything else on this ship. There would be no satisfaction there.

Skellor closed his eyes, the rage in him growing beyond the proportions of the human part of his mind, cycling into something difficult to contain. Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the man — the thing — he had created, to control the ship's shielding. This man started shaking inside the Jain architecture that enclosed him, then he started screaming as its material closed about him. His bones broke with erratic thuds, and suddenly his screams were choked off. Abruptly all of him that was still visible shrivelled and turned grey. He diminished, drained away as nutrient for… Skellor.

With his rage finally under control, Skellor slid into a cold analytical mode. There had been no real satisfaction there because what he had killed possessed less sentience than an animal, and the screams had been little more than an autonomic reaction, utterly disconnected and operating in its own limited circuit. Now Skellor must grow a replacement for this erstwhile member of his command crew. He turned his attention to Aphran and saw that she was watching him with terrified eyes — there was still enough of her left to realize her danger. Skellor turned his attention away from her before further temptation to kill overwhelmed him, and gazed out through the ship's sensors. Taking navigational information from those parts of himself and from the command crew wherein it was contained — already he was finding it increasingly difficult to identify those parts as somewhere outside his own mind — he saw that there was a solar system near enough for the ship to reach in a U-space jump of only minutes' duration. There he would find what he needed: energy from a sun, asteroidal matter — all those things he needed to fully control the Occam Razor, and to grow.

Cormac returned to consciousness, gasping: lightheaded with the euphoria produced by oxygen flooding a brain starved for long enough to drag him into unconsciousness. He reached up and more firmly clamped the mask over his nose and mouth, then opened his eyes.

His vision was blurred and dark around the edges, and it was a moment before he realized Gant was stooping over him. In another moment, he remembered where he was. He looked at the main screen, saw fire and black smoke, and heard a roaring crackle from outside the craft.

"You all right?" Gant asked.

Cormac removed the mask from his face for a moment. "Bruised, but not broken I think, though somewhat annoyed with myself." He put the mask back on.

"Annoyed?"

Cormac found it easier to speak into the mask, rather than run out of breath while speaking with it pulled away from his face. "I should have remembered about the air mix down here, just as I should have had Apis run a diagnostic on those ion engines."

"As to the air mix, not everyone's perfect," said Gant. "And as to the engines, do you think that knowing they wouldn't work would have helped in some way?"

"Maybe Dragon…"

Gant grimaced.

Cormac shrugged, wished he hadn't, then looked to one side. Apis was not in his seat. He tried looking back, but his neck hurt too much. "They okay?" he asked.

"In the back," Gant explained. "Let me help you."

Gant undid his seat straps and, using his supporting arm, Cormac got unsteadily to his feet, then took the oxygen pack Gant was holding and carefully slung its strap over one shoulder.

The back of the craft was in utter chaos — part of the floor was torn open, and seats had come away from their mountings; mud blackened many surfaces, having been sprayed up through this hole; and the air itself was hazy with smoke. Scar was not present; Mika stood, with her face masked, strapping on an oxygen pack; Apis had meanwhile opened a number of lockers, and was hauling out bits of equipment. There seemed to be plenty of it, certainly, but Cormac couldn't see any way they might transport it. He noted that the young Outlinker had an oxygen bottle, similar to Cormac's, clipped on the back of his exoskeleton, its nozzle obviously compatible with the exo's universal adaptor.

"Where's Scar?" he asked.

Gant pointed to the ceiling of the craft. "Up there, having a look."

"That's good, though I suspect he's not going to see a lot. Now, as far as I see it, we've got to get to help before our oxygen supply runs out."

"Help being?" Gant wondered. "I don't think the Theocracy are going to greet us with milk and cookies."

"What help we get from them might not be willingly given, but we'll have it all the same. No, we have to get ourselves to this Underworld and, from what I understand of it, the way to get there is through those mountains we overflew on the way in."

At this Apis spoke up: "Those mountains are now two hundred kilometres away."

"I didn't say it was going to be easy," said Cormac.

"There are also other aspects of this place which may make things difficult," added Mika.

"Delight me with the news," said Cormac.

"Obviously, knowing where we were coming to, I accessed the Occam's files concerning the ecology of this place."

"Let me guess: the full set of flesh-eating monsters?"

"In most cases that is correct," she agreed. "Though in one case the creature concerned is probably capable of eating metal as well." She glanced at Gant. "No offence intended."

"None taken, I'm sure," Gant replied.

Cormac turned to inspect the stuff Apis had pulled out of the lockers. "Okay, let's see what we can take and get moving. Even though the Theocracy currently has enough problems with Dragon, they still might send someone out here to investigate."

Cormac soon had confirmation that they had no shortage of supplies — it was just a question of how much they could carry, and what items to select. When Scar returned inside, and bluntly informed them that the fire — having used up all the air that had spilt like a pool around the lander — was dying, Cormac realized that they would not need oxygen for the dracoman — the lack of it outside obviously not having bothered Scar in the slightest. Slightly puzzled, Cormac asked him, "Why did you need oxygen on Callorum?"

"Didn't," Scar replied. "Just didn't want to change for the cyanide."

Cormac glanced at Mika, and saw her staring with fascination at the dracoman, then looking round for the equipment she had brought.

There were enough large army backpacks for one each. They filled one with oxygen bottles, and Scar hefted this huge weight with ease. In three other packs they distributed food, medical supplies, power packs, heat sheets, and anything else they could think of that might be of use for what lay ahead. In the final pack — taken up by Gant, after he had replaced his clothing with some found in a locker and donned a thick flak jacket that concealed his loss of syntheflesh — they put all of the equipment Mika had transferred from the Occam. Cormac was not sure what use it would be, but he was certain the Life-Coven woman would possess some items in there that were at the forefront of Polity technology, and should therefore not be discarded. Only as they were leaving the vessel did it occur to Cormac that it had been more than just a landing craft; most certainly it had been designed for the insertion of ground troops. This was an item of information he filed for future reference.

Outside, the fire had run its brief course, and now only steam was rising from the heated ground. If this had been on Earth, the flames would have become an inferno amid the dry dead stems of the surrounding vegetation. But fire needs oxygen, and here that was a sparse commodity. Walking over to Apis, he had the boy show him the air indicator on the wrist of his exo-skeleton. There was oxygen in the atmosphere, but only enough to slow the process of suffocation for a human being. Cormac removed his mask and sniffed at the air, which was redolent with a smell like baked potatoes. Gazing round, he realized this came from the seared tubers of the plants. Reaching the point where the flute grass stood tall again, he turned and led the way back down the swathe the landing craft had cut through it. That way lay habitation, and that way lay the mountains. He wondered if they would get to see either.

Tersely, Thorn told them all what Dragon was — though he knew Stanton and Jarvellis had heard the story before, and Fethan looked unsurprised. What Lellan and Polas had just seen invalidated any disbelief they might have felt. There was almost an embarrassed silence after he had finished speaking, until Lellan said, "What does it matter what this thing is, and what… some part of itself did in the past? It's destroying the laser arrays, and to my mind that makes it the best ally we have ever had."

"Yes," said Thorn. "But will it stop at the arrays?"

Lellan glanced down at Polas. "That probe in position yet?"

Polas checked his instrumentation. "Few more minutes yet."

Thorn said, "You know, there's obviously a bigger picture here." Lellan gazed at him speculatively, and he went on, "Back on Cheyne III, I had a brief but intriguing conversation with the Cereb AI. It told me I might be required for another mission, as an Outlink station had been destroyed and one of the Dragon spheres might be involved in that. I wonder if that station was Miranda — it being the nearest one to here." Thorn paused, seeing how pale Lellan had suddenly become.

"Did you say Miranda might have been destroyed?" she asked.

"Might have been, yes," said Thorn, trying to interpret the looks being exchanged.

Lellan grudgingly explained, "We have a U-space transmitter now." She glanced at Stanton and Jarvellis before going on, "But it's a long haul to broadcast into the Polity from here, and Miranda was to be our relay and signal booster. We'll have to scan the carrier signal about, until we find a capital ship close enough to do the same job." She paused and rubbed tiredly at her face. "Go on, tell me more about your bigger picture."

Thorn waited for further explanation, then said, "Before I go on… tell me, what exactly are you sending by U-space?"

"A cry for help: including five thousand hours of sealed recording of what goes on here."

Thorn thought about that until Lellan prompted, "Bigger picture?"

Thorn continued, "All I thought was that there are other things to factor in. Your Theocracy uses Dracocorp augs, doesn't it?"

"What?" said Lellan.

Stanton interjected, "I've seen them before, when I was with Pelter — and for some reason they freaked him out — but they're available all across the Polity now. If there was a problem with them, surely they'd be made illegal."

"Dracocorp is an Out-Polity corporation that was set up by Dragon's agents. All augs that come into the Polity, whenever ECS can track them down, are checked for subversion access. As far as I know, nothing has been proven, because their technology is so damned complex."

"So what are you getting at?" Lellan asked.

"I'm just pointing out these things: an Outlink station possibly destroyed by Dragon, a lot of Dracocorp augs around here, and now Dragon up there destroying laser arrays. You may be benefiting now, but I'd guess that what is being done is not specifically for your benefit. Of course" — he fixed his attention on Stanton — "if the station destroyed was Miranda, then it's likely someone else might be turning up here."

"Who?" asked the man.

"Ian Cormac — he usually gets called on when there's any shit involving Dragon."

"Yes," said Stanton, his face expressionless.

"That's good, isn't it?" asked Lellan, looking from one to the other of them in confusion.

"For Masada, quite probably, but not necessarily so for me," said Stanton.

Before Lellan could ask anything more, Polas interjected, "I'm getting a picture now." The man was operating a small toggle control, and each of the screens showed views over the curve of Masada, then space, and the face of Calypse. "There," he said, pointing at one of the screens.

Dragon loomed clear on the horizon, and Polas pushed his control forwards to take the probe closer. As it slowly drew in, the picture kept juddering, and when asked about this Polas replied, "Automatic avoidance — it's dodging debris." On two occasions thereafter they saw drifting clumps of titanic wreckage, fires glowing inside them, gases spewing away.

Closer to Dragon, and a flash of light blanked the screen. It then came back on to show a spreading ball of fire and debris — and one less laser array.

"I don't care," said Lellan. "We've lived under those for too long."

"God in Heaven," said Polas. He was operating other controls, calling up views all around as the probe accelerated towards Dragon. Radar images came up, spectral displays — he seemed to be trying every instrument the probe possessed.

He turned to Lellan. "EL-24 and 26 next," he said.

"How much of a hole has it made for us?" she asked.

Polas removed his hands from the controls — perhaps because they were shaking so much.

"Talk to me, Polas," said Lellan.

He turned to her, with a stunned expression, then stared back at the screen when it blanked yet again. "That was EL-26. One more to go, and that's it."

Lellan still hadn't quite grasped what he was telling her. Her expression showed irritation, confusion, then slowly dawning realization.

Polas nodded.

"It's destroyed…" He blinked at the screen as it flickered off then back on again. "It's destroyed all forty-six arrays. There's nothing but wreckage up there now."