"Very well," she went on, "he may even have more… in fact he must have, to have been able to subvert a Polity dreadnought." Jarvellis could feel herself clenching up inside. There it was again: indecision stemming from the fear of making the wrong choice — too much to lose.

"Dammit!" She slammed her hands down on the console. "We just assume a level of technology equivalent to that of the dreadnought. Now… this means the chameleonware field should cover us for anything, barring a real close scrutiny, but it will not cover us if we use AG."

"Agreed," said the AI.

Jarvellis stared at the screen, showing her the lake and riverine valley beyond: the looming faces of stone and tangled vegetation, which had changed from the dull beige seen upon their arrival here to dark green and red, lurid purple and light-sucking black. "So we need to use ion drive and gas thrusters to get out of this trap."

"You will then leave an ionic trail," cautioned the AI.

Jarvellis nodded. "But a diffuse one, as I'll only be using the ion engine for lift, and especially diffuse because the blast will be directed down into the river, which will soak most of it up. Would it be better to stay here?"

"On the basis of a Polity technology level, no," replied the AI.

" And if 'the Skellor' has a higher tech?"

"No again."

"Then we move," said Jarvellis.

"What about when you want to move away from the river?" the AI asked, probably annoyed about her little victory.

"There's a hundred kilometres of it before it finally winds out onto the plain. I think we'll worry about that pass when we come to it."

The AI had nothing more to add, so Jarvellis reached out, her fingers skittering across the controls with practised ease. She noted that the AI had, on its own initiative, filled the water tanks with water it had purified from the nearby source, so there was now no shortage of fuel for the tokamac running around the centre of the ship, nor for the ion function of the engines themselves, which now started up with a low thrumming. Outside she saw steam and debris blasting from underneath Lyric II, shells and stones splashing into the adjacent pond, and the insectile creatures diving from their rocks, perhaps confused by this sudden shower that appeared to them out of thin air. Taking a firm grip on the joystick Jarvellis gently raised and tilted it, observing on the subscreens the ship's feet retracting and folding away. Without AG, the ship handled like it was wading through glue, but she was more than capable of flying it. She considered telling its other human occupant to strap in for safety, then rejected the idea. She was confident she would not crash this ship; and the only disaster that could befall it would be discovery by Skellor, in which case Lyric II and all its occupants would survive only fractionally longer than the mountaintop containing Lellan's operations room.

Aberil realized it was going to burn his mind like fuse wire in a lightning strike; just as it had burnt the thousands in Faith, just as it had burnt his brother Loman, and just as it was burning the minds of the Theocracy army upon the planet and making each individual soldier into a dronelike extension of itself. Then something caused the 'burn' to pull back from all those within the tented area.

"Outlinker… too crude…"

After these three words something, which until then had seemed as monstrously impersonal in its slaughter as a pyroclastic flow, became personal and focused. Aberil found a force of will operating more directly, on him, and he could not resist. It jerked him to his feet and pulled his hooked fingers away from their tearing at his aug. Eyes open now, he both saw and felt Speelan, Molat and the others gathering in closer as if this was necessary to bring them into the focus of the now possessing mind.

"The Outlinker boy… where is the Outlinker boy?"

All of them turned to survey their surroundings, bewilderment and rage roaring up in a darkness somewhere behind perception, like the oncoming wall of a tsunami. Aberil felt the others overwhelmed by the force — folding in on themselves — but for him the cold hard ideals that had so long ago crystallized his mind served as a bulwark, and he did not allow himself to go.

"I will find him for you,"

Suddenly he became the full focus of that attention, and he sensed amusement spreading through the wave like red cracks.

"What a horribly neat mind you have, Aberil Dorth. It's like a Chinese puzzle: all interlocked blocks and distorted shapes."

Aberil was not sure what was meant there. All he was sure of was his recognition of power — terrible and godlike. He could feel it studying him, and knew that his life depended utterly on what he said next.

"There is service or death — I can see that. Give me the tools and I will serve."

Threat receded and Aberil now felt some degree of normality return. Around him stood his men: four guards, Speelan and Molat — tired and pale, but not burnt out. He could feel the strength of his linkage through to them, and the ascendance of his aug over theirs.

"These tools are yours."

The presence now mostly folded itself away, leaving only the lightest touch upon him. There were no further threats, because there was no need of them. Aberil knew the consequence of failure, but he also knew that even success would probably bring the same consequence.

"Jerrick here is a trained tracker," said Speelan, clapping his hand on the shoulder of one of the guards.

Aberil nodded and surveyed the other soldiers in the tent. Those that were not obviously dead seemed utterly brain-burned — their augs turned grey against their skulls.

"Then we'll use Jerrick," said Aberil, clapping his hands together. "Let's move!"

Aberil led the way across the large tent, pointing out supplies that should be collected, and pulling breather gear for himself from a rack by the airlock. Out in the falling night he paused and sent to Speelan:

"Where's the ATV?"

Puzzled, Speelan replied out loud, "Over to the right there, but surely we'll need to work on the ground."

Aberil turned to the rest of them. "You," he selected one of the guards, "get in that ATV and take it straight back into the flute grasses."

"For how far?" asked the man.

"You keep driving until ordered to do otherwise," snapped Aberil, reinforcing the order through the new power he derived from his aug. The man turned woodenly and headed for the ATV, climbed inside, and soon they heard the turbine winding up to speed.

"The rest of you come with me."

When they were what Aberil considered was a sufficient distance from the command tent and the landers, he sent the heavily reinforced order for them to tear off their augs, before he reached up and tore off his own.

Snarling, Skellor let run a subprogram he had paused only minutes earlier. One of the towers on the surface of the Occam began punching lased light down at the surface of the planet, obliterating lander after lander, then Aberil's command tent, and the ATV the First Commander was clearly escaping in. Under high magnification, from orbit, a glowing line briefly cut through the wilderness as plastics and metals burnt in the intense heat, with what little oxygen there was available, before snuffing out. Then Skellor shut the program down and swore at his own stupidity.

Dragon had come down in that area, as was evident from the crater, and the Outlinker boy was also in the area — which meant it likely that Cormac was there too. Skellor felt the rage cycling inside himself. In itself the destruction and death he had just delivered did not matter, because in the end he must utterly expunge the system here of human life and burn every scrap of recording technology to dust, so that no evidence of his existence could ever leave this place. But in this case he had deprived himself of what eyes he had possessed in that area — those Theocracy soldiers in and around the landers who had not torn away their augs — and in that blast could have killed Cormac as well. Seething, he blanked the attack program he'd already downloaded to the whole subverted Theocracy army, then turned them around and set them marching back towards the landers.