"This is what we will find out. But if you do run out of space and speed," George pointed towards the gas giant, "there are five server satellites in orbit to which you can apply for more." He glanced at her, and as he did so the codes she could use for this arrived in her aug. "Any more capacity you might require has been prepaid and so held open for you."

She turned and faced him. "So tell me, what's being tested here, the cargo runcible or my aug?"

"Both," George replied, still staring out into vacuum. He then frowned and continued, "The current war situation being what it is, it seems likely this project will shortly be relocated. Also, augs such as yours might be useful to the war effort—perhaps more so than a working cargo runcible."

"But you'd need Sylac for that."

"Sylac was apprehended on Cheyne III and is currently in transit to Titan, where he will be working for ECS."

Moria absorbed that, then replayed what George had just said. "Hang on… relocated. We'll not be able to move these runcibles."

"The research will be relocated." Now George turned to face her. "These runcibles will be destroyed before the Prador arrive here."

For a moment Moria was stunned. Yes, the war was impinging and taking all the excitement out of the project, but only now did the reality truly strike her. "They are coming here?"

"Unless we gain some unexpected advantage, the battle line will cross the Trajeen system in two months time. Since we came out here," he nodded towards Boh, "evacuation and defence programs have been instituted. But it seems likely Trajeen will either be occupied by the Prador or rendered inert. ECS will not be able to halt the Prador advance until the shipyards are all fully functional."

Rendered inert.

And there, she realised, the difference between George and a normal human being. She should never forget that he was essentially an AI submind in a human shell, and along with all the other Polity AIs directed an interstellar war like some kind of chess game in which worlds were pawns.

"Will we win, do you think?" she asked.

"Define 'win, " said George, staring at her steely eyed, then he seemed to relent. "The Polity will certainly survive, but in what form or after sustaining how much damage is debatable. At least our course is clear."

"Clear?"

"We are defending ourselves from an alien aggressor with seemingly no regard for the lives of our citizens. This is our first encounter with them and we have given them no reason for their aggression. We are fighting to survive not to defend or impose some political ideology, nor to maintain or gain some economic advantage… as has been the human custom. Those who fight will suffer few moral qualms."

"Oh, that's okay then."

"It is time for you to begin modelling the test," he told her, expression bland.

After that?

She felt like just telling him to bugger off, but then took a grip upon herself. Cold in his summation of the situation George might be. Cold in their plans might be the Polity AIs. But the luxury of emotional breast-beating would not win this kind of merciless, industrialized conflict. What would win it would be the efficient construction and deployment of weapons, the measured choices in the development of technologies, intricate battle-planning to the advantage of the Polity as a whole, calculation, working the numbers. Very few AIs bothered to play roulette, those that did always won.

"Did you hear me?" George asked.

"Yes, I heard."

Moria began with the basic real-time virtual model of the two gates, distances truncated to fit within the compass of her perception. She then created underlying gravity, system vector/energy and U-space coordinates maps. But these were only the parchment on which she painted the rest. Recalling from memspace the models she had already created of the two runcibles' energy systems, she began running predicted function, perpetually updated by actual function—the delay measured in microseconds. Soon she observed warp initiation. Between the five gateposts of each runcible the cusps formed: each like the meniscus of a soap bubble. Slowly then, the five horn-shaped posts began to slide apart, opening like iris doors, stretching each cusp across vacuum. The cargo ship's fusion drive ignited like a white star and the vessel now began to accelerate towards the Trajeen gate.

"0.0004532 disparity between G2 and 3 here," she noted.

"Already noted," George replied. "You now have access. Make the necessary correction."

Moria felt a moment of pure terror as channels opened from the Boh runcible to her aug, and she found herself taking a mental step back as appalling data flows overwhelmed her. She applied to the Boh servers and processing space opened. She began running the calculations to superpose her model on reality and find the required corrections. She created and collapsed formulae in her mind, in her aug, quickly working her way through the problem. Then came the ecstasy of squirting the solution over to the runcible. A few brief squirts from the runcible's attitude jets closed the disparity and shortly her superposed model matched.

The five horns now completely separated, spreading the meniscus across a kilometre of space. Between them, the edges of that strange severance of realspace blurred out and away, spilling Hawking radiation into vacuum. However, Moria soon recognised an untoward energy drain in the system, and put online two more reactors at the Boh runcible. George did not instruct her to do this, but he made no objection. She saw that the larger part of him, at Trajeen, did the same.

"I now give you total control of the Boh outer gate."

Shit! Fuck!

Now the vessel reached the Trajeen gate and went through, gone in an instant. A microsecond of calculation as the buffer feedback figures came through. Precisely the correct amount of energy applied at the meniscus. Calculations collapsing beyond it. A blurring, negative state, U-space calculus, a glimpse of understanding: everything there andeverything here, matter just rucked up space-time and time itself a mere parenthesis…

The cargo vessel flashing through the gate, backwards, twisted out of shape and trailing fire. A thousand kilometres beyond the gate it abruptly decelerated, yet none of its engines could be working to do that. Then it just came apart as if somehow all its components transformed into wet clay. Metal and chunks of asteroidal rock slowly spread out, breaking down further until micro-debris formed a sphere which began to be distorted by Boh's gravity. Moria felt as if someone flash-froze her brain then cracked it with a hammer. She groaned and went down on her knees.

"What went wrong?" George: calm, analytical.

"I don't know!" she yelled.

"That is a shame. You still have a long way to go."

She knew, instantly, that he was not talking about just her.

During the weeks of travel through U-space, Immanence reviewed his family's present status in the Kingdom and made plans for further expansion upon his return by deciding on which alliances he should make or break, which other Prador to bring down if not assassinate—though the assassination of Prador adults was never easy—and by working on scenarios based on all the new things he had learned since the war's beginning. But such plans remained skeletal at best, and protean, for who knew what advantages or disadvantages he might own over the next few years, or how many of his allies or enemies might be destroyed, or how their positions might change? It was the ability to adjust his plans to changing circumstances that had raised him to his present position, and he relished the prospect of further rapid change. However, after a time such planning in a vacuum palled, and he turned his attention to history recordings—private and public—then to weapons design, the formulation of new poisons, possible application of enslaved humans… but steadily lost interest in each subject as he worked through it.