"Do you have my cargo ready?" said Jarvellis.

"Of course. The main package can be loaded right now." Alvor looked pointedly at the briefcase Stanton carried. "And the two extra items you ordered are with Dreyden, who would like to extend his hospitality."

Stanton considered suggesting Jarvellis should stay with the ship, when he saw her expression, but knew she would refuse.

"Then we accept," said Stanton.

Alvor grinned again, and rested his forefinger against his aug in a somewhat effeminate gesture. "And so your main cargo is on its way. Will we require locking codes?" he said.

"Lyric will handle it," said Jarvellis.

The two men turned to keep pace, as the four advanced across the bay.

"Oh yes, you have an AI on this ship," said Alvor. "Do you trust it?"

"More than I'd ever trust you," replied Jarvellis.

"That's nice," said Alvor as they moved on out of the bay.

"I am dying."

Cormac was alone in his cabin when Dragon told him that. He was lying on his bed transmitting through the submind. No doubt Tomalon would be listening in, but there was not much Cormac could do about that, nor wanted to.

"Is there no way we can help you?"

Silence.

"There is a very good xenobiologist on this ship and the bioscience facilities are the best." Cormac thought his offer faintly ridiculous. Got any wound dressing that's a quarter of a kilometre wide? And how about ten thousand gallons of unibiotic?

"Why would you want to help me?"

"Why not?"

"You avoided the contract killers."

Ah.

"It was you then, not your fellow I killed at Samarkand — or the other two?"

"They are far from here."

"Did you organize things through the Masadans?"

Silence.

"How long until you die?"

"I will have vengeance first."

"What are you waiting for, then?"

"Take me there."

Cormac chewed that one over. "You've lost the ability for trans-stellar flight."

"Yes."

"Why should I help you kill people?"

Silence.

"What would you do if we transported you to Masada?"

"Destroy until destroyed."

"And how much damage could you do?"

"Enough."

"I couldn't be a party to such indiscriminate destruction."

"Vengeance!"

"You're repeating yourself, but your impulse could serve my purposes."

Silence.

"We could transport you there. In return, I would want you to only attack orbital facilities. This we can enforce. You are aware of the capabilities of this dreadnought?"

"I am aware."

"Specifically, then: geostationary over the populated area of Masada are laser arrays. Destroy them — only them. Is it agreed?"

"Agreed."

Cormac cut communication.

"You trust this creature?" asked Tomalon.

Cormac kept his annoyance from his voice. "No. But if it attacks anything other than the laser arrays, we can destroy it and be lauded as saviours."

"And after it has destroyed the arrays?"

"Likewise. The crew of that Masadan ship, I have very little concern about, but I'll not soon forget those Outlinkers that died out there."

Skellor gazed from one to the other of the two individuals he had killed: one Golem and one human. As he subsumed the experience of their lives — their knowledge and understanding, and anything else that might be of relevance to him — he could not help but make comparisons. The heart of the Golem's mind, once he had discarded layers of emulation programs, was all logic and clarity and thoroughly documented storage of life-experience and knowledge. The heart of this Cardaff's mind, however, was something that snarled and had to be immediately erased — life-experience and acquired knowledge sitting in layers over this primal animal. As — in the quartz-matrix AI that was an extension to his own mind — he sorted all that he had acquired, he began to feel disappointment. Increasingly he found himself discarding irrelevancies until very little was left. All that remained were a few experiences, all that these two knew about the Occam Razor, and memories of places to which he had never been. So much dross stored by both Golem and human mind alike.

Moving to the nearest console, Skellor pressed one grey hand down on it and let the filaments flow down into its workings. Soon he found what he was searching for and the console came back online. He gazed at the screen showing the thirty Separatist prisoners. They were conferencing through their augs: probably trying now to decide what best to do for the cause. Skellor berated himself for the surge of contempt he felt — they had been useful to him, and would be useful again. With a thought he initiated the program that downloaded the information virus he had been working on into the Jain substructure that interpenetrated his body and was also an extension of himself. The Dracocorp augs had been a very useful tool for the Separatists and now for himself they would become a useful tool. Having an organic basis made them so much more accessible.

Moving out of the control area Skellor marched down the corridor just as the lights came back on. Soon reaching the armoured door into SA1, he punched in the code he had stripped from Cardaff's mind, before pressing his hand against the palm-lock. Now the DNA he had stripped from the man's body enabled him to cause enough of a delay in which to shoot in filaments and subvert the lock's security program. The lock thunked and the door slid open.

"Skellor," gasped Aphran, groping for where she usually kept her QC laser. She didn't trust him — none of them did after he had moved back from the development of chameleonware for them to his own work.

"Glad to see me?" Skellor smiled.

Aphran was a number of paces away from him, but a boy called Danny stood close enough. Skellor recalled all their names since his change. Nothing he had viewed or known previously was now inaccessible to him. Being direct-linked into the quartz-matrix AI had given him perfect recall as well as huge processing capabilities. Being extended by the Jain substructure enabled him to use those capabilities to devastating effect in the real world. He reached out and caught hold of Danny's shoulder. The boy froze — at first in fear, then because Skellor reached inside him and blocked the relevant nerves.

"Now," Skellor said. "You'll be glad to know that you are going to help me to take over this ship." Taking his hand from Danny's shoulder, he transferred it to the Dracocorp aug behind the boy's ear, and cupped the device in his hand. It felt cold to him, but then very little didn't now.

"Take over an ECS dreadnought?" Aphran sneered.

Skellor nodded as the filaments flowed into the aug and sought out the right connections. Once he found them and connected, he loaded the virus. The boy grunted as if he had been punched. Aphran, her face pale with fear, slapped her hand against her own aug, but the virus was transmitting now and she could do nothing. Skellor folded his arms and watched as she lost her balance and went over. All around the others started to fall over as well. The convulsions hit shortly after, and many of them now were showing the whites of their eyes. Three of them started screaming, which confirmed for him his calculation of a seven to thirteen per cent loss. Stepping further into the Security Area he watched those three die, then waited for the others to recover.

"What have you done?" Aphran asked him as she recovered enough to pull herself to her knees. One of her eyes was bloodshot, the other entirely red. Blood was also seeping from her right ear.

"Just ensuring that you do as you're told," he said. "Now, stand up."

The remaining twenty-seven stood as one, then stared at each other in confusion. Aphran was noticeably grimacing.