Direct-downloading the information packages via his gridlink to his mind, Cherub instantly learned that Erebus was the rogue AI that had once controlled the dreadnought the Trafalgar, which had deserted the Polity after humanity’s war against the alien Prador. This malign AI, which controlled a pernicious alien nano-technology and a fleet of ships numbering in the tens of thousands, had now returned to attack.

Planetary destruction.

Abruptly Cherub’s assister frame — motorized braces for his arms and legs terminating in extra metal fingers, and two additional limbs extending at waist-level — reached out and gripped the rock, pulling him close to it. For a moment he thought this was a reaction, on some level of himself, to ‘planetary destruction’, but then realized that his survival-orientated sub-persona, which he always put online when he did something dangerous, had recognized another danger. A second later the blast wave from the strike on the city tried to drag him from the rock face. His ribbed carapace already protected his back from his neck to the base of his spine. His sensory cowl, which when closed was a tongue of metal extending from it up behind his head, he now spread open like the petals of a flower for further protection. However, he felt hot cinders burning through his clothing into the skin of his arms and legs. Within his carapace he onlined a program to lock his muscles and cut out pain messages, and then further studied the information packets the AI had sent.

‘Jain nano-technology. Informational subversion. Can sequester all Polity technology, and even humans themselves…’

Instantly shutting down access to his carapace from all outside sources cut some incoming program. Internally he tracked down what he had already received, running high-level diagnostics, isolation techniques and hunter-killer programs. He just got it in time: some ugly and hugely complex informational worm that would have rendered him utterly obedient to whatever sent it… this Erebus. He wondered how many others had managed to react so quickly. What about his brother, Carlton? What about his mother? Turning his head slightly he gazed at the burning city. Carlton, who was out at the hothouses, might have stopped the worm. Their mother, however…

She was in the city doing some business while Cherub climbed the Boulder. This business would have taken her very near the centre, so he assessed her chances of survival as little above zero. Grief tightened a fist inside him and there was no logic involved in his suddenly wanting to climb down to ground level and head back there. But his mother had always wanted him to operate on logic — to use his loose combination of human mind and artificial intelligence to best effect. He had once read, ‘Grief is a selfish indulgence,’ and decided just then not to let it kill him, for even now there were things descending from the sky directly towards the city.

Cherub used programming measures within his carapace and neurochemical measures, via the hardware in his skull, to dull the pain while not dulling his intelligence.

Run away. Hide.

He was too visible here, so first he turned on the surface chameleon effect of his carapace and chameleoncloth clothing. Maybe his penchant for wearing such gear and going wild like this to study the local fauna would end up saving his life. Reconfiguring internal hardware and writing programs in his mind, he created a near facsimile to Earth Central Security — ECS — chameleonware. His carapace did not possess sufficient projecting and scanning facilities to make it 100-per-cent effective, but it would have to do. Then, as the wind dropped to a mere hot gale, he onlined full assist in his climbing program and hurried the rest of the way up the rock face like a spider scuttling up a wall.

Reaching the curving summit of the Boulder, Cherub scanned around him. The boulder-birds he had come here to see were absent — doubtless scared off by the explosion — but they were no longer his concern anyway. Using his sensory cowl, the full potential of his augmented eyes and all the enhancement programs to hand, he focused on the objects descending towards the city. He counted ten bacilliform shapes, each precisely like a rod prokaryote bacterium, but about sixty feet long and with an exterior of a completely featureless blue grey.

Bombs?

That seemed unlikely since the ship above seemed quite capable of messing this place up without resorting to such conventional methods. Anyway, bombs that size would have to be planet busters, so why drop ten of them all in the same spot? He would therefore assume they were not bombs, since to do so would be to admit that he now had a very short time left to live. He just watched carefully, recording everything he was seeing and sensing.

Settling about the central incinerated area, the rod-things just seemed to melt into the rubble. Focusing closer on one, he saw it spreading itself, like something made of jelly, over foamstone rubble and tangled girders. It then began to emit tentacular growths that speared down into surrounding crevices. Near to one of these rod-things, he observed a woman stumbling along, something hanging from her arms, which she held out before her. He realized that she was blind, and that what hung from her arms was shredded skin.

His mother had certainly been well within the blast zone, so had probably died instantly — surely that had to be better.

Cherub forced himself to abandon that train of thought before it led to him having to again alter his brain chemistry.

The woman must have heard something for she stopped and turned abruptly. Out of a nearby drain a tentacle rose like a rattlesnake readying itself to strike, then it lashed out and penetrated her chest, numerous tendrils spearing out of her back as if the horrific thing had splintered inside her. She collapsed to her knees, dragging it down with her. After a few minutes the thing retracted, seemed to hesitate poised over her for a moment, then dropped to the ground and squirmed on past her, emerging endlessly from the drain. Its victim swayed back and forth on her knees, then suddenly lurched to her feet. She looked around for a moment, as if oblivious to the fact that her face was a charred ruin and she seemed to possess no eyes. After scanning a pile of rubble she stepped over to it and picked up a steel reinforcing bar about two feet long. Cherub tracked her subsequent purposeful search through the ruination and watched her smash in the skull of another burn victim before moving on. Cherub realized that the bacilliforms were products of Jain-tech, and that they were infecting the survivors with that same technology. Finally he dragged his horrified attention away from the woman in time to observe a new object descending from the sky.

This thing was quite obviously a ship of some kind. Thirty feet long, it was curved like the head of a spoon. Its exterior was silver-green fading to black at the edges, and it bore patterns like umber veins running through its surface. Silently it landed inside the city, in which it was now possible to see those weird tentacular growths every few hundred feet, and also humans, hijacked like the blind woman, stumbling through the ruins bearing makeshift weapons. It was a vision from hell, as they slaughtered other survivors with sickening regularity. And when the newly arrived ship opened up and a figure stepped out, it seemed as if the arch-demon himself had arrived to oversee it all.

From a distance the bizarre humanoid seemed wholly of metal — just like a Cybercorp metalskin Golem. But closer inspection revealed that its shiny blue-green exterior was without visible joints, and stretched and contracted over its frame like a living skin. The android towered tall and was incredibly thin, and its outstretched fingers resembled a spider’s legs. The head slanted abruptly back at the forehead, and tapered sharply down to the lipless slot of its mouth. It had no nose and the eyes were lidless and insectile.