The Line of Polity

14

"And thus it was in the fiftieth year of colonization that the siluroyne came to dwell underneath the Bridge of Psalms and sorely troubled the low people of the compounds, and in the fiftieth day of the fiftieth year there came to that bridge the two pond workers, Sober and his wife Judge."

The picture the book displayed was of a mountainously fat couple made even more grotesque by the huge green and red scoles that seemed almost moulded into their bare chests. They wore only breeches and open shirts and were both so bristly and ugly that it was difficult to distinguish male from female.

"Greedy peasants," commented the woman.

The boy looked up at her and waited.

"You'll never see a fat pond worker," she explained to him.

The boy continued staring at her until she continued with the story.

"As the two workers crossed the bridge, the siluroyne climbed out before them and said, 'Give me my toll of flesh blood and bone. Terrified, the two could not say a word as the monster bore down upon them. Then Judge, more quickwitted than her husband, said, 'Let us live, and we shall bring you more flesh blood and bone than you can shake a stick at! Craftily the monster said, 'One of you will bring it to me whilst I hold the other here. Judge went and brought first the Brother whose sin was gluttony…"

In the picture the siluroyne held Sober in one of its multiple hands, whilst with the other it ate, one after the other, the sinning Brothers that Judge led to the bridge. Glancing at her son, the woman was glad he did not seem to notice when she missed reading out some of the sins committed by the Brothers — he was so busy watching those Brothers being crunched down and the gut of the siluroyne expanding.

Dawn crept in unnoticed, covered by the flashing of pulse-cannons and detonation after incandescent detonation. Slowly, the ancient walls and bastions surrounding the city became distinct from a purplish sky — gradually revealed in all their repro-medieval glory. In the past these huge limestone and plascrete defences had served the purpose of keeping the somewhat hostile wildlife out of the small inhabited area within. The growth in the population and the spread of crop fields into the wilderness had driven said wildlife back, and for a hundred years the walls had served only to prevent the city itself from spilling out across the land like some kind of poisonous technological froth. Now they once again served a truly medieval purpose, as this morning the enemy was at the gates.

Carl noted the position of the rail-gun in the north tower, as it opened up on one of the remaining tanks, which sped down the causeway between two squerm ponds. The racket of iron slugs impacting armour was horrendous and pieces fell away from the tank as it turned and motored down into one of the ponds, taking itself to cover. Carl hoped, for the sake of the occupants of that tank, that no slugs had penetrated. If the tank had been holed, and those holes were big enough, the occupants wouldn't even have time to either drown or suffocate before the squerms got them.

The transformer hum, followed by a strobe light, signified that the pulse-cannon had cooled down enough for Beckle to fire it once again.

"Got the bastard," he said.

"Are you sure about that this time?" Carl asked, observing the water slopping against the lower edge of their own tank's display screen, and the squerms in that same water scraping their way across the vehicle's surface, perhaps sensing that there was something soft to chew on inside the big tin can in their pond.

"Sure enough," Beckle replied. "It was the same one as before, I reckon they just wheeled it across from the other side."

Carl looked up at this latest burning cavity cut into the limestone, and opined that they would be wheeling nothing nowhere now.

"Let's get out of this hole then," he said, and thrust the steering column forwards and up. The tank's motor droned in response, while squerms and water slewed away from the screen. Immediately there came the rattling clanging of small-arms fire impacting on their armour, and Beckle replied by cutting chunks out of the city wall with his pulse-cannon. On the displays, and by glancing to either side, Carl saw that all the tanks were now advancing.

"Let's take down that gate," ordered Carl, speaking into his comlink. Missiles flashed from right and left, and the ancient grapewood gates disappeared in a cloud of fiery splinters, then the gate towers were soon collapsing into dusty piles of rubble. Carl drove his tank up onto one of these piles and, as the dust cleared, looked down into the city. Before them lay the sealed complexes and towers, the underground tunnels and roofed parks and greenhouses that made up the place — a place that people simply called 'the city' and sometimes forgot had once been called 'Valour', but then it was easy to forget a name like that in a place where one false step could mean death and where people could get into debt for merely breathing.

"I wish we could just go straight in," said Beckle.

"We'd kill thousands," warned Targon, again acting as their collective conscience. "It cannot be done like that." Carl observed the Theocracy soldiers dodging between the buildings, then swung the viewpoint to behind them. Over the chequerboard of ponds the infantry were now coming in on their grav-sleds, fans kicking up spray behind, and leaving agitated movement in the squerm ponds. He listened to his comlink, then glanced across at Uris who was receiving the same instructions via text and logistic diagram, before reversing his tank down off the pile of rubble.

"I could have hit a few," said Beckle. "I'm not that inaccurate."

"Too much collateral damage," said Carl. "Anyway, Lellan's coming out with a couple of carriers, and we're gonna join the attack on the spaceport now."

Spinning the tank full circle on its treads, he applied full power to send it away and around the city — away from aberrant missile-launchers, be they hand-held or tripod-mounted. He did not mention to his crew that they were one of only three remaining tanks now joining the attack on the spaceport. He didn't think that would be helpful or encouraging.

Listening in to Lellan's battle channels, Stanton raised the Proctor's set of binoculars and observed the first explosions as a heavy pulse-cannon opened up on the spaceport cranes. The response was immediate: armoured vehicles roaring across the huge foamed plascrete slabs to meet the attack; Theocracy carriers rising into the air, surrounded by swarms of aerofans; fire and missiles and explosions and, most importantly, all over there. Lowering the binoculars Stanton glanced down at the man from whom he had taken them. The man was young, inexperienced, had been arrogant in his new position of power, and Stanton had taken less pleasure in snapping his neck than he had in doing the same to the Separatist, Lutz. All the same, Aberil Dorth had been just like this young man all those years back, and look at what he had since become.

Stanton reached down and hauled the man up to the rail of the aerofan, then tipped him over so he fell with a splat onto the damp ground between wide spreads of native rhubarb leaves — his naked skin flecked over with spatters of black mud. Had the man been smaller or thinner, Stanton would have needed to find another proctor of sufficient girth, as the uniform had been his main requirement, though he was happy to have acquired an aerofan to get him into the spaceport more quickly. The man should have been less careless in pursuit of what he must have considered a worker gone astray. Things might have turned out differently — strange, the workings of serendipity.

There were no queries as Stanton took the aerofan in over the fences and rail-gun towers on this side of the port, nor when he brought it down by a large bedstead shuttle that was undergoing maintenance — though not one of the maintenance crew was now in sight. Picking up his rucksack Stanton stepped out of the aerofan and moved out across the acres of plascrete, viewing his surroundings with something approaching nostalgia.

Most Polity worlds had outgrown ports like this, what with the spread of the runcible network and the advent of efficient AG technology. This port, built two centuries ago to support the landing of ships without AG, was still in use as such — a vast platform of foamed plascrete slabs that floated on the muddy plain to support the huge ships when they came down, along with the tangled infrastructure of rolling support towers and cranes, refuelling tankers and cars, a whole world of what on many worlds was called 'heavy tech'. Like so much on this world, this port was an anachronism. The traders coming to buy the squerm essence produced by the refineries in the city did not actually need the infrastructure, but were confined to the port to prevent smuggling and other infractions of Theocracy law. That confinement had not prevented Stanton himself from stowing away as a child, and thus escaping this world. He noted that, like the rats that they were, all the traders were gone now.

"It's pretty nice to have a port like this," he said into his comlink. "But to be utterly dependent on it when there are alternatives is downright stupid."

"Convenient for us, though," Jarvellis replied to him from Lyric II.

Stanton grunted noncommittally as he removed an innocuous cylinder the size of a coffee flask from his pack, plugged a miniconsole into the end of it, and punched in the required code. Satisfied with the response, he detached the console, and dropped the cylindrical object down into the narrow channel between the two huge slabs of plascrete. He then looked across to where something detonated, and a huge loading crane twisted with an agonized scream and went down like a falling tree, incidentally cutting a building in half in the process. Beyond this he now saw two carriers rise into view: one hovering protectively above the attacking tanks, and one ahead of them, bombarding troop positions concealed in the warehousing at the edge of the port. It was a bombardment that did not last long, for a missile stabbed up and punched through the second carrier and, trailing fire, it ploughed sideways through buildings as it came down, throwing up a wave of burning wreckage before itself. Stanton thought the Theocracy troops must feel proud of themselves — managing to hold off such a force from such a vulnerable position. He felt almost proud to wear their uniform himself as he dropped another cylinder into the gap between slabs below a huge container that he suspected, by the smell, was full of something wonderfully flammable.

"One more, over nearer the centre, then I think it's time I went away," he said.

He trotted across slab after slab to reach the centre of the landing field — he felt that a casual stroll was not really suited to the occasion — and there he initiated another innocuous-looking cylinder and dropped it between slabs. Looking down he saw it plop into black mud five metres below, then slowly sink, its red LEDs swamped at the last.

"That's it, all done now," he said.

"Tell me when you're on your way out, and I'll inform Lellan. She's swearing already about plausibility," Jarvellis replied.

"Tell her now: I can look after myself, and I don't like the idea of her sacrificing more of her armour," said Stanton.

"I'll only tell her that when you're on your way out," said Jarvellis stubbornly.

Stanton swore, and broke into a run for his abandoned aerofan. Half an hour later, Lellan's forces were driven back by the resolution and fighting spirit of the Theocracy forces. Tragically, Lellan had been unable to take the most essential installation on the planet — and Theocracy commanders even believed that to be her aim.

At first Eldene found huge satisfaction in dozering the ATV through tangled stands of flute grass now turning dark green; accelerating across areas of rhubarb, plantain, and multicoloured blister moss; carefully edging around areas where the fighting was most obvious, then bringing it back on course for the south. But she discovered that operating the simple controls was not exactly demanding and, after the initial novelty had worn off, her actions soon became almost automatic, and in a state of weary fugue she found her mind drifting back to the apartment in Pillartown One, and the conversation there between herself and Fethan:

"How much of that Dragon business did you understand?" Fethan asked, cutting straight to the core of her confusion.

"Some ship attacking one of the arrays. Then there was something about a creature…" She trailed off. What she remembered didn't make any sense.

"Dragon is a creature the size of a small moon," Fethan explained. "It came here and it destroyed every single laser array in orbit, before falling to earth in the south."

Eldene nodded, waiting for the punch line that would turn a patently ridiculous statement into some moral epigram, or the explanation that would make clear what Fethan was actually saying. He'd not elaborated.

After a moment Eldene said, "You're saying some mythical creature flew here through space and destroyed the laser arrays — that we are all now free and will live happily ever after?"

"No, I'm saying that an alien creature, but well known in the Polity, and which named itself after a mythical one, came here and destroyed the laser arrays, and that now your people have a chance to fight for their freedom — a fight they still might lose." He held up a finger. "You hear that?"

Eldene listened to the noise coming from the rest of the building. She nodded.

"That's everyone getting ready to move to the surface: civilians, military, the lot. The laser arrays might be gone, but a Theocracy device that could penetrate even down to here is still on its way. At present they control the surface, and we must take that from them, and we must hold it and not allow them to retake it. Staying here, we are dead; if we lose on the surface we are dead; and if we do not collect the rest of the votes required for the ballot and persuade ECS to come here, we are dead. Now, girl, do you understand that I am not telling you sweet fairy tales, but a… grimmer kind?"

Eldene said, "What can I do?"

Fethan reached down beside the bed and picked up the pulse-rifle she had abandoned there. He tossed it to her and, catching it, she jerked awake, finding herself again at the controls of the ATV. His reply was a fading whisper in her mind:

"There ain't that many choices going, girl."

Choice?

Here on the surface, choices were limited to two — fight or die — and they were not mutually exclusive. A long day of avoiding ground actions only sometimes to come across the hideous results of such had shown her the consequences of these simple choices; and just seeing such had worn her ragged and almost to the edge of tears. Fethan took over, as the weight of Calypse and the sun dragged night over the land, whilst Eldene found a padded mat and a heat sheet and fell quickly asleep on the vibrating floor. When she awoke, with seemingly no transition, it was to bright daylight in the front screen, and she wondered why she had felt so weak before, and resolved never to feel weak again.

On the other side of the cabin Thorn was also sitting up, having just woken as well.

Fethan looked round at them both. "Ah, at last, the snoring ends," he said.

"Why've you stopped?" Thorn asked, scratching at his beard.

Only when he said this did Eldene realize that there was no vibration from the engine.

Fethan gestured to the door of the ATV. "Be best if I show you, I think," he said.

Thorn opened the door only after he saw that Eldene had copied him in flipping up her mask. The door made a slight whump as it opened, but the pressure differential was such that little breathable air would be lost from the cabin. Eldene followed him out into surroundings little different from those she and Fethan had encountered when first going out into the wilderness. To her left lay flute grass, plantains and native rhubarbs, cut through with a curving path made by the ATV — that path already blurring out of existence as the new grass slowly regained its upright position. The ATV rested in an area strewn with blister moss, the occasional algae-green tricone shell, and flashes of that bright green plant Fethan had identified for her as real grass imported from Earth. To her right there stood an embankment topped with a high mesh fence. When Fethan clambered out of the ATV and led the way up the bank, Thorn and Eldene followed with caution, since the sounds of explosions and gunfire from beyond the fence were almost constant.

Along the base of the embankment, below the fence through which they were gazing, was a muddy track, then a band of grape tree orchards. Beyond these lay squerm and sprawn ponds. On the causeways and embankments between, a running fire-fight was taking place: groups of Theocracy soldiers lay down covering fire for a gradual retreat towards a distant mesh-fenced compound; Underground forces advanced behind grav-sleds on which had been mounted shielded rail-guns. Bodies and wrecked sleds were scattered all across this area. A Theocracy armoured car was burning — the fire fed by its own internal air supply — and some of the ponds were red, and foamed with voracious feeding.

"The rail-guns on the sleds are a recent addition," observed Thorn.

"I was just speaking to their commander," said Fethan. "Because of the resistance here, and the lack of cover, they dismounted what they could salvage from the wrecked towers of the previous compound they took. This fight has been going on since yesterday: every time they drive the Theocracy soldiers back to the compound, they get hit by the towers still working here."

"Then we should go round," said Thorn.

"That'll add three hours to our journey and, from what I understand, the problem's going to be solved anyway in the next hour." Fethan glanced to the sky above the far right of the compound. "In fact, probably in the next ten minutes."

The military carrier with its retinue of aerofans was clearly a welcome sight for the Theocracy soldiers guarding the compound, for they waved as it came racketing in over the ponds. Two minutes later they were burying their faces in the black soil as missiles lanced down from the carrier and turned the two ironwork towers behind the compound fence into glowing wreckage. These men could not hide from Lellan's fighters, who guided the aerofans in above them and opened up with the side-mounted rail-guns. The rebels pounded those trying to hide into slurry, and those who abandoned their weapons and ran out with their hands in the air just made easier targets. Within half an hour the forces of the Underground had taken this more difficult compound.

"Let's get moving," said Thorn, as he observed the carrier and its retinue depart.

Eldene tried to feel some pity for the Theocracy soldiers — as would have been morally right — but all she felt, when they drove down a causeway past smashed and near-obliterated bodies, was annoyance at such waste of equipment. As they passed the compound buildings — Fethan giving a salute to the commander of the rebels — she observed with a deep empathy a group of bewildered and bowed pond workers, their arms clutched protectively around their scoles. Almost with embarrassment she realized she was patting her hand against the itchy area below her breasts where the wound left by her own scole was still healing, then clutched that hand in her other one to still it. To then see that some of the rebels wore the padded overalls of pond workers underneath their flak jackets — bulging with their own scoles — immediately raised her mood. These people — obviously recent recruits — she saw, further on, distributing packs of ajectant and weapons amongst their recently liberated fellows.

Beyond the compound lay more of the carnage of battle, which they drove through for the best part of an hour before seeing another high embankment and mesh fence ahead of them.

"We should reach the first co-ordinates by late afternoon," said Fethan. He glanced at Eldene. "Do you want to take over now?"

Eldene hesitated — she wasn't confident about driving the ATV up the bank and using it to knock down the fence, as Fethan had done upon entering this agricultural area. Before she could formulate a reply, there came a sudden staccato clattering down the side of the ATV, and pieces of something were rattling and pinging around inside the cabin, and yellow breach-foam was oozing from holes in the vehicle's walls as it sealed them.

"Shit! Shit!" Thorn yelled as the ATV lurched, throwing both him and Eldene to the floor. As she grabbed for one of the wall handles to try and pull herself upright, she got a canted view through the front screen as Fethan drove the vehicle down into one of the ponds. Thorn was quickly up into the weapons control seat, the visor across, his left arm stiff at his side and blood trickling down from his torn biceps.

"Where the fuck did that come from?" he asked, whilst manipulating the controls of the weapons turrets, and turning his head from side to side — the visor throwing up views for him in whichever direction he looked. "Got it!" One of the turrets whined round above, and emitted a low thrumming as it emptied part of a magazine. "Fethan, take us up and out. They've just gone down into a pond."

"Sorry, trooper — got a burst tyre," said Fethan.

"Who attacked us?" Eldene asked.

Thorn unstuck the visor from his face and glanced at her, then to Fethan, who looked curious to know the answer as well.

"Small armoured car, bloody fast as well," he replied.

"Running?" suggested Fethan, studying the display that showed the tyre re-inflating.

"I'd guess so," replied Thorn, pressing the visor back into place. "Yep, definitely running — they're up and moving now."

Fethan wound up the power in the motor, and slowly eased the ATV out of the pond. With a horripilation, Eldene observed the hooked bouquets that were the mouths of squerms flashing up before the screen and brass segmented bodies whipping through the air and dropping away. The ATV still had a lean-down on the back left corner as that tyre, after auto-repair, slowly inflated. They came up out of the pond and turned, bringing into view a black armoured car running on front steering treads and rear balloon tyres. It had nearly reached the embankment when both turrets on the ATV stuttered and hissed. After a few seconds one of the turrets stopped firing, and from it came mechanical clonks and buzzings as it inserted another magazine. On the bodywork of the car flashes ignited and fragments of metal, from its armour and from ricochets, splashed into the surrounding ponds or flung up small explosions of earth. Then it was up the embankment, flattening the fence before it, then down and gone.

"Fuck," said Thorn succinctly, pulling the visor from his face. "That tyre ready to run yet?"

Fethan shook his head. "Two minutes at least."

"Your arm," said Eldene.

Thorn glanced at the wound, then reached down, pulled an evil-looking knife from his boot, and with practised ease split the material of his sleeve and peeled it back from his leaking flesh.

"Can I help?" Eldene ventured.

"Well, there should be a suitable wound dressing in here somewhere." He gestured with his knife to storage lockers at the back, on either side of the packaged autodoc. "Try in there."

Eldene opened one of the lockers and looked with bewilderment at the packages and equipment it contained. She tried to find bandages, cotton wool, antiseptic, but saw nothing she could identify as such.

"The blue one, there," said Thorn, who had moved up behind her.

She picked up a round flat packet and then tried to open it.

"No," Thorn told her, "just press the darker side against the wound."

She did as instructed, then snatched her hand away when the package seemed to move underneath it. In amazement, she watched the thing deform and spread on his biceps until joining in a ring around his arm.

"It reacts to the blood," said Thorn, raising his fist and opening and closing it.

Eldene stared — he seemed now to be in no way impaired by just the kind of wound that would have had a pond worker's arm in a sling for many days. She looked to Fethan, who was watching her calculatingly.

"Could have done with one of them when you lost your scole. It's Polity tech — available to all for less than the cost of a cup of coffee," the old cyborg explained.

Eldene then truly felt a deep anger at the Theocracy, even though she had no idea what a cup of coffee might be, or how much it might cost. That it came cheap she had no doubt — just like human life down here on the surface, and strangely it was not awareness of this second fact that made her angry, for she had been aware of that all her life. No, it was the growing awareness that such cheapening of human life was not necessary; that this was an economy the Theocracy rulers, for their own ends, must struggle to maintain.

The edge of the crater was a hill of debris: mounded flute grass and its rhizomes, black mud veined with green nematodes, and stranded tricones — some of which had been killed by the impact shock and were giving off a stink it was possible to detect even through a breathing mask. Following Gant and Scar, Cormac climbed the hillock to gaze down into the devastation the fall of Dragon had wrought.

The crater had a teardrop shape, and they stood upon one of its long, banked sides. At the rounded front of this indentation in the landscape, the debris was mounded even higher. Proceeding to the horizon, from the tail of it, was a wide lane of destruction that looked somehow unreal, so neatly had the plain been parted, and so regularly had the growths of flute grass been flattened on either side where the trail cut through stands of that vegetation. Cormac was studying this trail, when Scar hissed and pointed with one clawed finger.

"Yes, it's Dragon," said Cormac, looking again at what remained of the titanic creature.

"Comprehensively wasted, I would suggest," said Gant.

As Apis and Mika joined them on the hillock of debris, Cormac studied the slope down into the heart of the crater. Only a few tens of metres below where they stood, the slope consisted entirely of black mud — at least half a kilometre of it descending to a star-shaped explosion of white chalk that even now was being obliterated as the mud slid back down. What remained of Dragon was slowly being interred, and would perhaps, in a few months, be hidden from sight.

"What are our chances of getting down there without getting buried in mud?" he asked generally.

"Do we need to get down there?" Gant asked.

"We need to get down there," said Mika quickly. Cormac glanced at her avid expression as she studied black bones and broken flesh, the glitter of a million scales, and masses of pseudopods spilt like intestines, beyond real intestines spilt like nacre and brass castings in a broken framework of sickle blades and tangled bare spinal columns.

"Said without any bias at all, of course," he said. Mika glared at him as he turned back to Gant and Scar. "Nevertheless, we do need to get down there. I want to know for sure that this Dragon is dead," he continued.

Gant nodded, then gestured to their left where the mounded debris rose highest at the head of the crater. "Limestone further up the slope there — probably torn up by the impact. I think I can see a way down."

Cormac glanced at the greyish-white smear down the slope he indicated, then gestured for Gant to lead the way. As a group, they trudged round the lip of debris. Here, Cormac found, was the highest elevation they had reached since crashing the lander. And here, gazing round, he saw just how utterly they were isolated in the middle of a bland and boggy wilderness.

The stands of flute grass mostly stood high enough to conceal those areas between. There lay long valleys inhabited by blister mosses, low spreads of purple-leaved native rhubarb, and other growths with no Earthly comparison or name. Travelling them was easier than pushing through the grass stands but, since they had no maps of this wilderness, it was necessary to stick doggedly to a straight-line march so as not to be drawn off course by attempting easier routes. Those areas were also preferable to Cormac, for in them he occasionally got to see some of the native fauna: creatures both reptilian and bovine hurtling away in an odd gliding lope, ubiquitous tricones puncturing the surface and submerging again instantly, groups of creatures that appeared very like terrapins until their spiderish heads protruded and they contemplatively grated together their mandibles. Some of those same shelled creatures roamed the slope close by, and it was reassuring to see them bumbling along feeding on the broken vegetation rather than something more animate. In the distance Cormac could see creatures that he at first took to be wading birds, until he gave himself a reality check.

"I've got no sense of scale here," he admitted to Gant. "What do you see out there?"

"Creatures standing… about four metres above the flute grass. No way of telling their actual height, as there could be a few metres of leg and foot going way down through the grass and mud. They're moving away from us, anyway. It's those other ones that aren't visible which I find more worrying."

"I beg your pardon," said Cormac.

Gant shrugged. "I've led us round some big wormlike things that lie underground — don't know if they're predators or not — and Scar here stung the arse of something that started homing in on us all just before this happened." He gestured towards the crater.

"I'll thank you to keep me informed in future," said Cormac, almost unconsciously bringing his fingers up to the touch control of his shuriken holster as he scanned their surroundings.

"Those are heroynes," said Mika.

Cormac turned to her. "What?"

She pointed at the distant creatures. "Heroynes."

"Dangerous?" Cormac asked.

"As dangerous to a human as a terrestrial heron is to a frog," said Mika. "They might mistake us for food."

"Shouldn't be too much of a problem, then," said Cormac. Mika just stared at him, as he went on with, "Last I heard, terrestrial frogs didn't go around armed."

At this, Apis let out a laugh that sounded almost like a gasp of pain. Perhaps it was the surreal imagery; perhaps he was just losing it. He laughed again, tears in his eyes, then shook his head and made a weak gesture towards Scar, who was now crouching, with his attention still directed down into the crater, as it had been from the first. Cormac nodded, allowing that Scar bore a resemblance to a large and heavily armed frog, then turned his attention to Gant as the Golem gestured beyond the distant heroynes.

"That's not all," he said. "From the direction they and those other things in the grasses are heading, I'm seeing munitions flashes; and from what I've been able to pick up on uncoded frequencies, there's some sort of war going on."

"The Underground," said Cormac. "They'll be taking the surface now. From what I know they would have grabbed the opportunity presented."

They soon reached the area earlier indicated by Gant, where the impact had peeled up a huge slab of limestone from the bedrock and dropped it like a ramp up the slope of mud. Also peeled up with this rock was a mass of chalk and tricone shell conglomerate that lay in boulders half-sunk all around. Chalky water had drained from these and from the slab, and had run down the slope to gather in milky pools. There was movement here as well, as tricones gobbled their way under the surface dragging crushed vegetation down to be munched at their leisure. Gant led the way down into the crater, quickly followed by Mika with instruments, recently taken from the pack Scar carried, clutched in both hands. The dracoman came down last — reluctant and hissing quietly as he stepped delicately down the stone. Broken shell in the chalky slurry across the face of the stone made footing firm and it was only minutes after stepping onto it that they could all step off it to trudge through a chalky morass towards the remains of Dragon.

"Ambient temperature's low. From previous experience, too low. And there are no electrochemical signatures… nothing out of the ordinary," observed Mika.

"You're saying it's definitely dead?" said Cormac, who had stopped to change his oxygen bottle. "No ambivalence in the readings, like there is in Dragon's conversation?"

"I think… yes, I am sure," said Mika.

"Okay, we'll give you an hour here — so find out what you can," he said.

Mika looked round at him. "Only an hour, why?" she asked.

"Now that question sounded almost natural," Cormac replied. "It's a shame that the answer is quite obvious." He held up his empty oxygen bottle, and then tossed it aside. Mika went quickly to work.

Eldene allowed the ATV to roll to a halt as it broke through into the clearing. Thorn, who was inspecting the turret gun magazines from a drop-down ladder, swore then released his hold to land on the floor in a crouch. Fethan had reached the weapons-control chair before him and held the targeting visor ready to press against his own face.

Eldene looked round. "Something's happened to them," she said.

Thorn came smoothly upright and was beside her in a second, one hand leaning on the console as he gazed through the screen.

"Ease us forward," he said. Then with a glance back at Fethan, "Stay on it."

The last of the flute grass parted before the vehicle, to reveal a mossy clearing around a low outcrop of limestone nested amongst black plantains and the nodular volvae of rhubarbs. What lay near this outcrop was identifiable as the armoured car that had fled them, but only just so. It had teen torn apart: the back end, along with one axle still bearing shredded balloon tyres, lay to the right, a section containing a torn-open engine and one tread lay in front of them, and the remaining tread, cabin and guns seemed to have been put through a mincer, then pounded into the ground.

"They must have been carrying planar explosives or something," said Thorn. He glanced at Eldene. "Stop us here. I want to have a look at this."

He and Fethan were out through the door, even as Eldene was shutting down the motor and applying the brake. Before following them, she studied the scene a moment longer — such a savage wreck, but no burn marks… She left the ATV with her pulse-rifle held across her stomach, and with its safety off.

"Has to be a planar load," Thorn was saying. "I can't think of anything else that would make such a mess."

Eldene noted how Fethan scanned the surrounding grasses, his gaze coming to rest at last on an only just visible channel pressed through it. The old cyborg then tilted his head and listened intently.

"Where are they?" Eldene asked.

Thorn glanced round at her. "What?"

"Where are the soldiers?"

With a puzzled expression Thorn stepped closer to the wreckage to study it. He prodded at a shredded tyre with the barrel of the pulse-gun he had drawn, Eldene standing now behind him, nervously surveying their surroundings.

"Not there," said Fethan. "Over here." The cyborg crooked a finger at them.

Eldene and Thorn walked over to him and gazed down at what he indicated on the ground. The moss here was red, as such mosses often were, but this red was wet and glistening and recognizable as human blood — which she'd seen enough examples of quite recently. Also, scattered here and there, were small diamonds of human skin and fragments of bone. Fethan squatted down, picked up one of these fragments, and held it up to show how one edge had strange concave serrations, as if someone had drilled a line of holes before breaking the bone along them.

"Back to the ATV. I'll drive," he instructed. Then, pointing off to the right, "We go that way."

"What is it, Fethan?" Eldene asked, feeling something crawling up her spine.

"It's almost pointless to run if it comes after us," he replied. "In the mountains I had cover, and that was a small one."

"Quit with the mysterious bullshit," said Thorn.

"Hooder," said Fethan, pointing to their left. "It's about half a klom over there, as far as I can estimate, digesting its meal." Indicating the wreckage, he finished with, "And, judging by what's happened here, that meal was just an entrée."

Standing behind the Captain's chair, Aberil studied with cold satisfaction the screens and readouts in front of the man. Lellan had failed to take the spaceport, and would now be caught between hammer and anvil. The Lee and Portentous carried two armoured divisions each, and they would provide the hammer. The forces contained in the three remaining ships — Ducking Stools Gabriel, and Witchfire, the last of which he was presently aboard — were the anvil against which the rebellion would be crushed. It annoyed him now that he had chosen to board one of the ships carrying the fleet of landers, but he had not expected Lellan's failure to take the spaceport, and had not wanted to be stranded in orbit, merely conveying his orders to the attack leaders. Gazing around at his staff officers and orderlies, who were clinging to the rope nets ranged behind the seated command crew of the ship, and who would soon accompany him to the surface, he nodded with satisfaction then sent:

"God defend the right, only when the right cannot sufficient defence make. Captains of the Lee and Portentous, take your ships down and begin the attack."

Back through his aug he got a wash of approval. General Coban on the Lee sent back:

"We'll take the fast-track launchers out first — that'll give them something to chew on while we bring out our tanks. Then they'll know we've arrived. God defend the faithful."

Aberil winced at Coban's abrupt and cursory, "God defend…" — the man, like so many other officers in the army, did not have a sufficient fear of his superiors to convey the required sincerity of tone. It was something that, after this present situation was dealt with, he would have to look into. Presently, General Coban was too experienced and useful to alienate.

Now turning fully to his chosen staff Aberil addressed them aloud. "We must allow these fighters their head in the coming battle, but in the future they must be brought back into the fold. Too long, I think, they have forged their own path within the confines of Charity."

There was much nodding and grim-faced agreement — he had chosen these people himself, and knew them to be of like mind. He enjoyed their company, and with them knew exactly where he was: on top.

"Now it is time for us to disembark. Our landing will be in the wilderness one hundred kilometres south of Valour, and from there we shall sweep in, our line impenetrable."

"First Commander Dorth, what of those rebels who flee to the caverns?" asked Speelan — a thin and intense individual about whom Aberil sometimes had his doubts also.

"In the end there is always Ragnorak, but Lellan will know about that and therefore not allow her forces to retreat. She'll realize there will be no quarter given, and none expected."

"Should we pursue them down below, if they do flee?" Speelan asked.

"No, we merely seal the entrances and carve RIP on the rocks above."

After the dutiful laughter, Aberil towed himself along the ropes to the exit tube leading from the bridge, his officers and orderlies following close behind. Soon, by the convoluted ways of this mu-class ship, they came to the chaos of the lander bays, where men in white and pale blue uniforms covered in samples of scripture found some relief from cramped landing craft where they were racked as closely in the bays as bullets in a magazine. Many of these men, Aberil noticed, were praying, whilst others found more comfort in checking their weapons and body armour. It irked him that none of them became sufficiently silent and attentive at his approach, and that those who bowed or saluted seemed to do so with nonchalant lack of respect.

The command lander was twice the size of all the others, containing as it did communications equipment, heavy Polity pulse-cannons, as well as the luxury of grav-plates and some civilized space. Aberil was glad to be back aboard and, as he took his seat beside the pilot's — with its screens and logistics displays — he once again felt totally in control. Anyone from outside the Theocracy would immediately have noticed the lack of communications equipment, but then such people would come from a society where wearing an aug was still a matter of choice.

"General Coban, status?"

The General snapped back over the ether, "Two hours and we'll be down. Lellan's forces seem in disarray: some are heading back to Valour, and some are just rolling back out into the wilderness."

Aberil checked his screens and saw that this was true. He turned to his command crew, who were seating themselves at their various consoles.

"What is your assessment?" he asked a fat mole of a man called Torthic, who was the logistics officer of the group.

"Seems like a falling out amongst thieves," the man replied as he checked the data he was receiving. "Either that or the head has been cut off. We know a carrier was destroyed in the initial attack."

Aberil linked into the public address channel of his aug: "All troops return to landers. We begin descent in one half of an hour." Then he sat back and contemplated the coming obliteration of the Underground. He really hoped Lellan was not dead, as he had been so looking forward to meeting her, in the flesh. But if she were dead, there would be plenty of other prisoners to provide instruction and entertainment back on the cylinder worlds.

The sun set upon the land, bringing the grey hour that served to highlight the flashing of weapons used in sporadic conflicts towards every horizon. After changing his location for the fifth time that day — more out of boredom than any need to elude pursuit — Stanton began to bring his stolen aerofan down into thick flute grass, saw something large thundering towards him with what he felt were not the best intentions, and quickly jerked the column up and away to get out of range. A great flat beak clapped shut with a sound like a mat being beaten on concrete. He caught a glimpse of an array of glowing green eyes below a domed head, the muscled column of a body with more limbs than seemed plausible, and a whiff of quite horrible halitosis. Pulling away, he heard something that sounded like someone swearing in a quite obscure language.

"A bloody gabbleduck!" he exclaimed.

"Say again," said Jarvellis over com.

"Gabbleduck just tried to get me. You don't normally see them around here — the noise from the spaceport scares off their prey, so they don't bother coming in."

"Lellan said something about that earlier: seems the fighting is attracting things in from the wilderness and down from the mountains. There's even been a report of a hooder going into one of the compounds and systematically emptying squerm ponds."

"Perhaps humans dying make similar sounds to those of their normal prey."

"Perhaps — or perhaps they've just decided that enough is enough with these damned squabbling humans."

"Be nice to think that," said Stanton. "But we'll probably find it's some frequency of radio emission or the smell of some explosive or incendiary that attracts them in."

"Aren't you the optimist."

"Yeah," said Stanton, bringing the aerofan down into the middle of an area of low vegetation — wide plates of blister moss and grey thistles, rhubarb volvae just opening to expose leaves like tightly screwed-up black paper — which was well away from any stands of concealing flute grass, so he had a clear view of his surroundings. "It's called experience," he added.

As the motor of the aerofan wound down into silence, a deep thrumming vibration became evident. For a moment, Stanton surveyed the fragmented cloud strewn across the darkening sky, before stooping to open his pack. From this he now removed a square flat package that opened like a small briefcase to reveal a flat screen and miniconsole — a touch-console clustered around a single ball control — as well as a small winged egg. The screen he removed and secured against a rail of the aerofan by means of its rear stickpad. The egg he tossed up into the air and watched flutter away like a sparrow. Soon the flying holocam had given him a perfect view of the spaceport and all the activity there.

"You got this, Jarv?"

"Yeah, busy little soldiers, aren't they? Lellan says it's two of their ships coming down — they should be in view within a few minutes. A swarm of craft are coming down from the remaining three, and should be landing about the same time, probably in the south."

"Shame we can't have a surprise ready for them as well," Stanton opined.

"You wouldn't want that actually, knowing now who's coming down with the landers. Be far too quick for him."

"Him?" said Stanton flatly.

"The same."

"Then I guess I'll be joining Lellan when her forces converge."

"And in the meantime what do I do?" she asked.

"As we agreed: you stay safe. Losing a father would be more than enough for the kid."

The Lee and Portentous dropped through cloud like giant cannon-balls through layers of torn tissue-paper. Partial AG made their descent less bricklike, and took some of the strain from the huge landing thrusters that even now were glowing red-hot in their cowlings. But, even so, the noise was tremendous, a hot wind blasting across the swamps below them, and the ground quaking. Stanton watched them pass overhead, one after the other: conglomerations of black and rust, now less like cannon-balls as their full construction was revealed. Gun turrets, viewing bays, locks, and engine cowlings could now be clearly seen; also visible were areas where their original spherical hulls had been cut away and ugly square or flat-edged extensions grafted on.

Whilst watching these two huge ships slow and turn above the spaceport on huge blasts of thruster fire, Stanton removed from the top pocket of his acquired uniform the miniconsole he had been using earlier. All its five displays were nominal, which meant that there was nothing blocking the U-space signal coming from the five cylinders, and nothing to block the signal pulse he could send at any moment. He watched the ships slowly descending, until they were out of sight behind the taller stands of flute grass, then he transferred his attention to the screen affixed to the rail of the aerofan. With this bird's-eye view he observed the ships come in to land — their weight actually sinking the entire spaceport a couple of metres into the swampy ground — then the subsequent activity as ramps and gantries were moved into place by great caterpillar towing machines, and cranes were rolled in to connect higher gantries.

"Lellan wants to know what the delay is all about," said Jarvellis.

He replied, "The more open doors, connected ramps and gantries, and equipment in the process of being unloaded, the less the likelihood of an emergency takeoff succeeding."

"Cold bastard sometimes, aren't you?"

"And you would do it differently, my love?"

"Har-har-har."

Treaded missile-launchers and armoured cars were at last motoring from both ships when Stanton nodded to himself, laid his thumb across all five buttons, and pressed down. The screen he was watching whited out for a second then came back on to show metal frameworks looking like tinsel under a blowtorch; great slabs of plascrete riding up on arc-fire explosions; one ship tipped over and sliding down canted plascrete, the white-hot hollow of its interior exposed; the second ship trying to lift, but dragged sideways by the attached gantries and ramps, to crash down and bounce amid the growing atomic inferno. Like leaves before a wind, armoured cars, unidentifiable wreckage, whole slabs of plascrete hurtled out on the ensuing blast wave. The sound preceding it did not hit him at once, it just grew like the revving of some huge engine, became titanic, then, in sympathy, the ground began to move like a slow sea. Stanton recalled his holocam, quickly secured it and its screen back in their case, then he crouched, gripping the rails of the aerofan. He observed the cloud of smoke and fire growing alarmingly into view, before all the flute grass was flattened by the sudden wind, to reveal a carnage of fire and a wall of smoke and steam boiling outwards, interpenetrated, led and followed by debris. Crouching even lower, Stanton watched a slab the size of a playing field tumble overhead. To his right what remained of an armoured car bounced once, and spread white-hot fragments hissing through the vegetation. As the smoke and steam hit, he bowed his head and closed his eyes, wondering if perhaps just one CTD might have been adequate — and if it might have been wiser to observe the results from more of a distance.

The glow became a blazing eye on the horizon, ringed round with shades of lurid purple and orange, some tens of seconds before they heard the long drawn-out grumbling of the explosion and saw clouds drawn suddenly into lines and seemingly snuffed from existence.

Standing with his boot resting on one of the gun turrets, Thorn asked, "You knew this was going to happen, so what was it, then?"

Sitting on the other gun turret, Eldene observed the old cyborg as he too watched the distant glow, whilst combing his fingers through his raggedy ginger beard. When he finally did turn to answer Thorn's question, it was with a distracted air.

"Well, unless I miss my bet, that was the spaceport and any military landing there being attempted from the cylinder worlds. Can't confirm that yet, though, as com's all down," he said.

"EM pulse," said Thorn, gazing back at the orange glow. "So that was a nuclear explosion?"

"More than one, I think — small tactical CTDs." Fethan looked down at Eldene and grinned. "More wonderful things devised by the Polity."

"Anything that destroys the Theocracy is all right by me," murmured Eldene.

Fethan frowned at her but, before saying anything about that, tilted his head and said, "Ah, seems the Theocracy just lost two of their largest ships, along with any facility to land more of that size." He turned and pointed. "But not the ability to land, however."

A roaring had now grown distinct from the sound of the explosion, and it became evident this had little to do with the blast itself. Like shoals of grey sharks, the landing craft of the Theocracy filled the sky and slid overhead — hundreds of them. The three of them felt an urge to duck out of sight, but where was 'out of sight' with such a swarm of craft filling the sky?

"We're only small beer," said Fethan, "but best to get moving anyway. They might send someone out here once they've landed." He leapt down from the roof of the ATV and entered it. Eldene quickly followed him down then inside, but Thorn took a while longer.

"CTDs are not something the Polity hands out like lollipops, you know," he commented, upon finally re-entering the vehicle.

With half an ear to the ensuing exchange, Eldene set the motor to spinning up its flywheel, before engaging the hydrostatic drive and getting them under way.

"Seems John Stanton had no trouble getting hold of them," replied Fethan. "But why am I telling you this? You should know, as you came here aboard his ship."

"Sealed cargo and a hostile ship's AI — so I didn't get to find out very much. All I was sure about was the drug manufactories and pulse-rifles."

"Ah, so you didn't get a look at the two Polity war drones and the U-space transmitter?" said Fethan.

Thorn's reply to this involved a physically impossible sexual activity in conjunction with the edible but prickly fruit of a bromeliad.

"There is a girl present, you know," Fethan warned, and this time received an even briefer retort.

Eldene tried to suppress it — it seeming so inappropriate in present circumstances, and she had only understood half of what Thorn had suggested — but the giggle escaped her nonetheless.

"Ignore him," said Fethan. "These Earthmen are just foul and uncouth creatures."

That, coming from Fethan, had the tears running from her eyes, and she found that her suppressed laughter only escaped with more force.

"Watch where you're driving," Fethan added.

The little electric heater was an amazing device that folded into a case no larger than the palm of a hand. The grid opened out into a twenty-centimetre square that was suspended just off the ground by two U-shaped telescopic legs; the microtok was a flattened ovoid between these, simply supplied with water from a small filter pipe pushed into the damp ground. It was, Molat suspected, a device intended for cooking upon, but it put out a wonderful blast of warmth, and he could not summon the inclination to damn this piece of Polity technology. Like all proctors, he would have punished its possessor before adding the item to his own collection, but since that earlier possessor was presently rotting down into the thick loam of the planet, there was nothing much to do about him. Holding his hands out towards the square of red-hot metal, Molat looked across them at Toris.

"We'll head out for the landers. I for one will not surrender myself to the Underground in this uniform," he said, rather than relayed through his aug. It was more comforting to speak out loud in this darkness, and there was so much horror coming in over aug channels of late that he was beginning to develop an aversion to using them. Perhaps Toris felt the same, for he too replied aloud:

"They'll be going all out to attack our wonderful First Commander Aberil Dorth. We might be somewhere behind them or caught between the two of them."

Molat didn't like the tone he seemed to be getting from Toris ever since the destruction of the spaceport. Most proctors neither liked nor trusted Aberil Dorth — the man was psychotic at best — but that was not an antipathy you allowed yourself to voice aloud, or to even think if you could help it, since mistakes were easy to make over aug channels.

"Nevertheless," he said. "That is the only direction we can head to find safety."

Toris looked up, and seemed about to say something he might regret. However, a rushing rustling in the flute grass stilled further vocal conversation.

Toris: "What in God's name was that?"

Molat: "It sounded big, and I felt the ground move."

Toris: "You know there are heroynes and siluroynes out here?"

Molat: "Thanks for the reminder That's made me feel much better."

Molat turned off the little heater and stood up, blinking to clear the gridded after-images from his vision. Another hissing in the flute grass behind Toris had Molat pointing his rail-gun in that direction. Toris turned, with his own laser pistol gripped two-handed. Something odd about the grasses over there…? Then Molat realized what he was seeing: two deep dark eye-pits in which glittered eyes like faceted grey sapphires. Its huge head — which was the most yet to become visible — had the appearance of a bovine skull patterned with flute-grass stripes, and trailed two flat-tipped feelers from its lower jaw. The teeth, when they were exposed, had no camouflage, however, and gleamed like blue hatchets in the moonlight.

"Siluroyne! Siluroyne! Oh fucking hell, I'm dead! A Siluroyne!"

Molat supposed that Toris didn't even realize he was broadcasting, as the man fired his hand laser into that huge face. The monster bellowed and reared, its multiple forepaws opening out in silhouette against the sky like a huge clawed tree. Molat realized that Toris's shooting had only pissed off something that had been intending to eat them anyway. It seemed to him there was only one way for him to escape. He reached out and, as hard as he could, shoved Toris towards the monster — before turning and running.

"Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!"

Glancing back he saw the thing stooping down, its many forepaws closing in like a cage.

"Oh God no! Please no!"

It was upright again now, and in two of its sets of claws it held Toris like a hot dog. Molat shut down his connection as the monster began crunching down the other man's leg like a stick of celery, almost as if it wanted him to continue screaming, and knew that if it bit the human's other end the screaming would stop. Molat ran hard and fast, not caring in what direction, just so long as it was away.

The first grabship brought in a chunk of asteroidal rock that was too huge to get in through the doors of the heavy-lifter bay. But such was the original architecture of the Occam Razor, Skellor found he could reposition whole floors and compartments, huge generators, ducts, and the numinous devices of the ship, and then actually part its armoured hull to allow such a mass of material inside. In the new bay thus created, Skellor kept the great stone positioned centrally by a balancing of grav-plates, and reached out to it there with an explosion of the ligneous pseudopods that were Jain, and himself.

High-speed analysis which was more like touch and taste soon rendered to him the chemical structure of his prize. He found large quantities of iron, silicates, and sulphur; lesser quantities of carbon, much of it turned into useful fullerenes by the heat of the explosions that had destroyed the moonlet; rare earths and radioactives there was in fact very little on the periodic table that was not represented here. Having tasted, he then fed — his pseudopods thickening and hardening, and the asteroid, now laced with webworks of filament, visibly shrinking like a fly being sucked dry by a spider.

Soon there was no need for the grav-plates to hold the rock in position, as his pseudopods had become almost indistinguishable in girth from great oaks. Other asteroids, drawn into other bays, he treated in the same manner, but now almost unconsciously — like a man simply breathing or feeding. With more conscious application he created a superconducting network from the fullerenes to link together the eighty-four flat-screen generators and the U-space engines. The independent controls of these he found burnt beyond the recovery of any Polity technology; however, that recovery was not beyond him. With silicon and rare earths he rebuilt the little controlling subminds, understanding, as he did so, why the system was not centralized; how, with a ship this size, even the high-speed adjustments he could make through the net were not fast enough.

With other materials Skellor strengthened his grip on the structure of the rest of the ship but, having discovered the utility of being able to alter its internal and external structure at will, he did not completely ossify it in the ligneous growth of the Jain architecture — so he kept the movable floors and walls, and the bridge pod that could be expelled from the ship with a thought. Even so, upon taking an external view through the sensors of one of the grabships, he saw that the Occam Razor was now very much changed in appearance: its great lozenge of golden metal was now marred by the grey and silver of Jain architecture, patterned like lichen.

It was from these outer structures that Skellor felt the harsh radiation of the nearby sun like a balm, as he sucked it in and converted it to his purposes. In truth, materials were not his greatest requirement here — but the energy to absorb materials, and to extend throughout the ship was. Almost unconscious, again, had been his earlier calculation that he would have drained all the Occam's energy resources by doing what he now did, so would have had none left to drop the ship into U-space. As his work continued, his requirements for energy grew. The radioactive material from the asteroids was quickly refined and burnt away, and soon he was flinging out huge curving spines up to a kilometre long, between which he exuded nacreous sheets that were something like the meniscus of a bubble, which then turned deep black to absorb more of the sun's energy — to grow, to keep on growing…

It took one of the grabships, blasted off course by some huge chemical explosion occurring in the load it was bringing in, and then crashing into a growing array of these sun sails, to raise Skellor's awareness out of this incessant growth. Abruptly he realized that nothing more was now required; that he was ready to drop himself into U-space. Consciously bringing to a halt the expansion of himself throughout the ship, while retracting the sun sails, he found difficult. There was inner resistance from that part of himself that was Jain. It was that same separation of self that an addict experiences, and Skellor realized he must never allow himself to go too far along that way again. It would be so very easy just to lose himself in growth for growth's sake, and forget all other purpose. In moments his will had reasserted itself, and he remembered his work, which was more important than anything, anything at all.