‘I think we’ve been here before,’ remarked Janger.

The ship AI’s remote was a Golem chassis clad in syntheskin up to the neck, above which a gleaming skull was exposed but with the rear of its cranium missing, and from there optics sprouted, trailing across the floor to plug into a nearby console. The Golem placed the queen back down on the board and tentatively moved a finger across to tap it on a castle.

‘Approximately thirty-two years, seven months, two days, fourteen hours, twenty-two minutes ago, as I recollect.’

‘I thought you just said “approximately”.’

‘Yes, I didn’t count the seconds.’

‘Smart arse.’

The Golem withdrew its fingers from the chess piece and scratched its metal chin. ‘If you want me to play to my fullest capacity, I’ll do so. However, the last time I did that, you discharged the chess set through the airlock and got the yahtzee out again.’

Janger sighed. It had always been a source of annoyance to him that Clarence needed to handicap itself so as not to thrash him at every game. Also, though he vaguely recollected a game quite similar to this, he wasn’t sure who had won on that occasion. Of course Clarence, if it allowed itself, would remember every detail. He glanced across at the storage cabinets lining the living area and wondered if now might be a good time to get the yahtzee out, or even the playing cards, but then Clarence, working through this Golem, possessed the perfect poker face. Just at that moment the big hauler seemed to lurch underneath him, and he experienced that definite feeling of transition that told him the ship had just come out of U-space, and in this case none too gently.

‘That damned U-engine shouldn’t need servicing for another twenty years,’ he grumbled.

‘Nothing wrong with the engine,’ Clarence replied.

The ship shuddered massively, enough to skitter some of the chess pieces across the board and topple a king onto the floor.

‘Give me visual,’ said Janger, stooping to recover the chess piece. He felt a sudden crawling sensation up his spine. As he understood it, there was something occurring near the Line, but that was far from here. Surely he was well out of it?

‘Pirates?’ he suggested, only half joking.

‘I am somewhat bewildered,’ Clarence confessed.

A virtual screen cut down from the ceiling, right through the living accommodation, so it now seemed as if half the entire ship had been sheered off at that point and he was now gazing straight out into vacuum.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

There was something sitting out there, something massive: a pentagonal frame structure. The space the pentagon enclosed was one the Clarence Bishop could easily pass through, for the structure was some six miles across.

‘It’s a war runcible,’ Clarence observed.

‘It’s a fucking what?’

‘They started building such devices towards the end of the war for transporting things not equipped with their own U-space drive — fleets of ships, war drones and weapons. That would have saved on the manufacture of such drives. There was even talk of using the runcibles as accelerator weapons too.’

‘Uh?’

‘Perhaps you recollect hearing about the Trajeen incident.’

‘Chucking moons about?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Okay, so what is it doing here now, and how come it knocked us out of U-space?’

‘Anyone in possession of such a device would have no problem causing sufficient underspace interference to knock a ship into the real. Why it is here and why it has targeted us, I can only speculate.’

‘Speculate then.’

‘Pirates,’ the ship AI replied.

‘We’ve got lasers,’ said Janger.

‘They’ve got particle cannons, rail-guns, multispectrum EM weapons. Frankly, they could turn this ship into a wisp of vapour in less than a second.’

‘So resistance is futile.’

‘In my estimation, yes.’

The view now swung round and Janger observed some sort of spaceship docked alongside his own vessel. It looked fairly modern: a sleek craft with a pincer grab extending from its nose. Even as he watched, vapour puffed out from below it as one of the Clarence Bishop’s massive cargo doors began opening.

‘I take it you’re recording all this, and transmitting it?’ Janger enquired.

‘I’m recording it, but the U-space disturbances are preventing me from sending out a distress call.’

‘Right… give me an internal view of that hold.’

A rectangular frame drew itself into existence in the virtual screen, blanked for a moment, then as the camera adjusted light amplification, an image slowly resolved of a huge darkened hold. The space was packed with crates and large oddly shaped objects covered in crash-foam, all of them suspended in a quadrate scaffold. Janger detected movement and the camera swung to track it, then the view flickered and changed as another camera picked up that same movement from a different point of view.

‘Um,’ said Janger, not quite sure exactly what to make of what he was seeing.

‘Mantis religiosa,’ said Clarence.

‘Uh?’

‘The praying mantis — though this one appears to be fashioned of metal and is about eight feet long. I would suggest that what we are seeing here is an independent drone and, considering where it came from, that means a war drone that once fought the Prador.’

‘What’s it doing, anyway?’ Janger wondered.

‘Stealing our cargo?’ Clarence suggested.

The mantis drone appeared to be all sharp edges, which Janger could now see were perfect for cutting through the webbing security straps. Within a moment it had released a crate from the supporting scaffold and sent it drifting along towards the hold door. The camera followed the crate’s progress to where a horrifying-looking beetle of some kind diverted its course slightly, to another point where it was then fielded by what looked like a ten-foot-long aluminium scorpion. Panning back, Janger now saw a whole line of crates had already been set on this course.

But what could he do? He was outgunned by the war runcible and outgunned by those things stealing his cargo. He wondered briefly what his insurance position on this loss would be.

‘What are they stealing?’ he asked.

‘The components of a cargo runcible.’

‘What the hell do they need a cargo runcible for, when they’ve got that massive thing out there?’

‘A runcible is both the entrance and exit of a tunnel, but employing it to end up in exactly the same place might not be very useful. Beyond that I have no idea,’ replied Clarence. ‘By the way, the airlock into this living accommodation is now being used.’

‘And you didn’t stop that?’

‘I am impotent now. Something has seized control of me. That we can even look into the hold is either because we have been allowed to, or because the cameras were overlooked as being of little importance.’

Janger pushed his chair back, got up and rushed forward, straight through the virtual screen. On the other side of it he skidded to a halt by a row of lockers and yanked one open. From inside he pulled out a pulse-rifle, then an energy canister which he inserted into the gun’s stock. The rifle whined up to charge, yet showed a zero on its digital display. Janger swore and pulled out a second container, which clipped in place underneath the barrel. The display immediately shot up to 150.

But what now?

If it was a drone now coming through the airlock, he realized that a pulse-rifle would be about as effective as throwing gravel at an elephant — just enough, perhaps, to piss it off.

‘Shut off the screen,’ he said, backing towards the table. He then glanced at Clarence. ‘Can you help?’

‘I am at present paralysed from the neck down,’ the ship’s avatar replied.

‘Great.’

Janger returned his attention to the corridor leading to the airlock just as he heard the inner door closing. A shadow loomed up of a figure swiftly moving down the same corridor. Janger drew a bead on the doorway and waited for whatever nightmare was to appear.