"All of them! All of them!" The voice was Tomalon's and it was also Occam's.

"Do you mean everyone who went into cold-sleep?" It was a question Cormac did not want to ask, but had to.

"Yes," the reply, echoed from intercoms all down the corridor. Almost unconsciously, Cormac reached back with his finger and initiated his shuriken holster. Underneath his sudden frigidity of thought, he felt a ball of anger growing.

"Listen to me carefully, Tomalon. I can understand your and Occam's grief, and feelings of guilt, but you are merely feeding each other's dysfunction. I need you to stabilize ship control and go to maximum internal security alert."

"Initiate Golem?" returned the voice of Tomalon, echoed a fraction of a second later by the voice of Occam.

"No. With this level of subversion we cannot guarantee that they won't be under someone else's control. They are just as much in storage as the people in cold-sleep. Get your drones searching the ship, especially in and around the Security Area. I'll be there soon."

"I… will," the Captain managed.

Now Cormac altered settings on his wristcom and opened a channel that had been isolated for this single purpose.

"Dragon?"

For a long moment there was no reply, then a grudging, "Yes."

"Are you attacking us?" he asked.

There came a roaring, as from a vast crowd-filled auditorium in response to some momentous event. "I am legion," Dragon replied, as this sound slowly died.

"If you do not give direct answers to direct questions, I will send the code to detonate the CTD that presently sits between you and this ship. Perhaps you would survive the blast, but I think it unlikely you would survive being shoved out of the underspace field and being smeared across a few light years."

"I am not attacking. I cannot attack," Dragon immediately replied.

Cormac considered that: how easily it could be a lie. With his finger poised over his wristcom he still considered sending the code that would detonate the CTD, as even if Dragon was not the source of the present danger it would be best to detonate to curtail future dangers. The creature's next words stopped him, however.

"I can see it," said Dragon.

"What can you see?"

"I can see the enemy. It is on your ship and it will take your ship. It is what it does and it is what it is."

"This enemy, what is it?"

"Ancient," said Dragon. "The eater. The body that continues to kill and consume after its mind is burnt. You must return to realspace. I must leave this ship."

"You know your words are opaque to me," said Cormac. "Get pellucid or you'll be leaving this ship in pieces."

"You usually call it 'the Jain', and assume you talk of a dead race of individuals," Dragon replied.

It was all Cormac needed to now understand what was happening.

Skellor.

How so very confident they had been in their superiority, and how so very sure they had been that he had made his escape. Skellor had not escaped; he had begun, from that very moment when they had nearly captured him, to attack. Cormac switched channels back, as he headed for the nearest drop-shaft, so he could address the others.

"We are really in it now: looks like the source of our problems is Skellor, interfaced — as we know — and now possessing active Jain technology," he said. At the shaft itself, he reached in to test that the field was operating, before punching his destination and stepping beyond the threshold. The gravity field dragged in down through the ship, in a curve, so that — without reference to the floor he had stepped from — there was neither up nor down.

"Where's Scar?" he asked of his wristcom as he had to upend himself to walk out of the drop-shaft near the Security Area.

Through Aiden's ears he heard Mika reply, "Scar is still in Medical. He was helping me with one or two things there."

Cormac wondered just what experiments she had been doing on Scar this time, then he spun — with Shuriken ready to throw — as Cento came trotting from the side corridor.

"Firing — down there," said the Golem, pointing down a corridor ahead of him and to Cormac's right. Cormac immediately matched the Golem's pace and, as he ran, he pulled his thin-gun from his jacket pocket. He could not yet hear any shooting, but then he did not have a Golem's superb hearing. Their pace increased when they both heard Gant shout, "Give it up!"

Rounding a corner, they had to leap the corpses of two Separatist prisoners. Beyond these, they came to where someone had blown out the walls, and where insulation and wiring were hanging from gaping holes in the ceiling or blasted up from gaps in the floor. Ahead of them was a figure that turned and showed itself to be Gant, and most certainly Golem: between his neck and his groin, his clothing had been blasted away, as had his syntheflesh covering. The column of his spine and the solid node of his chest, with its rib indentations, were exposed; also shielded optic cables that looked more like water pipes than anything else, and the smooth gleaming movement of his pelvis. Ahead of him, two figures were fleeing, and he was about to give chase; but then he turned, obviously now in direct-line communication with Cento.

"What have you got here?" Cormac asked as he and Cento closed.

"Four prisoners. They already got Cardaff and Shenan — though Christ knows how they got her. Their only weapons are a couple of pulse-rifles and a riot gun. I want to take at least one of them alive, but every time I get close they knock me over with that damned gun." With a degree of puzzlement he looked down at the damage those blasts had done to him.

"Okay," said Cormac. "They won't be able to keep both of you off." He glanced at Cento. "The two of you go in fast and grab at least one of them." Both Gant and Cento moved off at his instructions — accelerating away faster than any man could move. Cormac trotted along behind, scanning about himself as he went, utterly aware that there could be another twenty or so Separatists waiting somewhere in ambush. However, there came no yells and no sudden fusillade. The riot gun blasted once, and there was a brief stuttering of pulse-gun fire, before he came upon the scene of Cento holding a man and woman above the floor by the backs of their necks, disarmed and kicking, and of Gant swearing vehemently and climbing to his feet. Soon Gant had rejoined Cento and taken charge of the woman. As Cormac approached, both Golem were holding their prisoners by the biceps, in front of themselves.

"Where are the rest of you?" Cormac immediately demanded, surprised to note that the two were still fighting against the adamantine grip of the Golem — surely they knew they had no chance to escape, so why did they continue to fight?

"About," said the man, through gritted teeth.

Cormac studied the two of them for a moment. "Where's Skellor?" he asked, but the pair just glared at him with a kind of grim desperation, and still they struggled to escape.

"You know, you can either live or die," Cormac warned them, coldly studying their response.

"We're dead already," the man replied, then went rigid, his eyes rolling up inside his head. Cormac saw that he had bitten right through his bottom lip, and observed the blood running out of his ear as his head slumped to one side. Reaching out he tilted the man's head to more closely observe the Dracocorp aug: the thing appeared deflated — like the desiccated corpse of some strange mollusc. He turned to the woman and saw that she was staring at him with a slightly contemptuous twist to her mouth.

"You survived then," she said. "But that's something I can soon enough change."

"What do you mean?" asked Cormac.

The woman continued, "I told you, on Callorum, that you were over the Line, but being arrogant ECS you just had to push too far. Well, you've pushed me to this, and you'll pay for it."