Then full memory returned: And I can move through underspace.

He shuddered, suddenly also remembering his mentor Horace Blegg’s last days while he and Cormac were being pursued by Erebus’s biomechs. Blegg had believed himself able to step through U-space, for that was how, apparently, he had escaped the Hiroshima nuclear bomb at the beginning of his incredibly long life. Blegg could also mentally access the AI nets and talk mind-to-mind with AIs. Only at the end had Blegg learned the truth: he was a construct of Earth Central, his memories of stepping through U-space had been falsified to give the impression of continuity — such a U-space jump usually occurring when that construct faced destruction, when its mind was uploaded, edited, then placed in another construct.

Am I just the new Blegg?

This thought had occurred to Cormac before, but really it was pointless speculation of the same kind as that of some people who wondered if their lives were just virtual realities. He must continue living in the belief that his memories were true, else he would despair. And succumbing to the idea that the next time he faced death he would be uploaded and put into a new body would certainly have fatal consequences if he was wrong. He would continue to live to the best of his abilities — that was the only choice.

‘Smith,’ he said quietly, knowing full well that he did not need to shout in order to attract the attention of a machine capable of hearing the impact of snowflakes.

Hubbert Smith opened the door and entered. He had a standard-range envirosuit draped over his arm, and in one hand held a pair of enviroboots and a sealed pack of disposable underclothes.

‘All better now?’ the Golem enquired.

Cormac still felt battered, perhaps more so mentally than physically, but he had felt worse. The repairs performed by the medic and the autodocs would still take a little while to settle. Though most physical injuries could be repaired, breaks in bones and tears in tissue being welded, there was a point beyond which it was better to let the body itself, and whatever suite of personal nanites that body possessed, take over, with the result that no one leapt up in prime condition from a surgical table.

‘Getting there,’ Cormac replied. ‘Scar and Arach?’

Smith shook his head. ‘They’re both back aboard the King of Hearts. Arach is a little dented but otherwise fine. Scar… Scar is in cold storage.’

Cormac just stared at the Golem for a long moment. What was there to say? All humans and Golem working for ECS knew the risks they ran, and could choose not to undertake them. Cormac liked to think that Scar, even though a construct of Dragon’s, had possessed the same choices, though in that respect he could only rely on the assessments scientists like Mika made. But, that aside, he had obviously lost another friend and comrade, and it hurt. He could not help feeling paranoid about how such comrades were continually being stripped away from him, and about how he himself continued to survive — and change. After a moment he turned his thoughts away from such introspection, instead lifting up his hand and studying it, which just like the rest of his body was utterly and aseptically clean. He peered closely at his fingernails, just in case.

Smith said, ‘Don’t worry — we got the sample. It’s been properly analysed, and now search engines are checking ECS records. If she was a Polity citizen, we’ll soon learn her identity.’

Cormac lowered his hand. ‘Remes said something odd just before that shock wave hit us. Apparently we weren’t supposed to be here at all.’

‘Wild goose chase seem to be the right words to apply.’ Smith placed the garments down on the surgical table.

Cormac slid off the table and stood upright, then opened the pack of underclothes and quickly began pulling them on.

‘So who sent us after the goose?’

‘One of Erebus’s agents operating in Jerusalem’s camp, apparently,’ Smith replied, ‘but I don’t know any further details. When we get back to the ship, you’ll be able to talk to the one investigating this.’

Obviously there was still Jain-tech in the area, and therefore com security was still an issue, otherwise Cormac would have been able to connect to the King of Hearts directly from here by using his gridlink — the one that wasn’t supposed to be functioning. He quickly pulled on the envirosuit and boots, then went to gather his meagre belongings. Strapping on Shuriken and pocketing both the gun and the dart, he briefly wondered what such a scarcity of personal possessions said about him.

As they exited the medbay, Cormac noticed his surgeon in a side room with another patient before the door was quickly closed. All that was left of the individual on the surgical table had been a partially cooked torso and a head. Maybe one of those with a ‘little doctor’ inside keeping him alive? Besides the medical staff there were numerous walking wounded here. He spotted a woman with her right arm missing at the elbow, brain-like tissue sealing the stump, indicating that she also contained a little doctor, and before long he realized that thus far he had not seen a single human being on this world without some kind of augmentation — either visible or embedded like those little doctors or a gridlink. Those gridlinked were evident simply by the way they carried themselves, though Cormac could confirm the presence of the hardware by a quick peek inside their skulls.

‘How many others died during our operation?’ he asked.

‘Only fifteen.’

Cormac knew that, in the context of the casualties of the numerous battles taking place across this section of the Line, it was a comparatively small number, but he felt personally responsible for those fifteen. And because their deaths actually hurt him, it also occurred to him that his usefulness as an ECS agent might well be coming to an end. Conscience was all very well, but guilt was merely a hindrance in an occupation where ‘ruthless’ was part of the job description.

They entered an elevator shaft whose very presence demonstrated just how antiquated this atmosphere ship must be and perhaps why it had been recently knocked out of the sky. They glided down three floors without anyone joining them, eventually stepped out into a wide hold whose side wall had been torn out by the crash, and headed outside through the jagged gap. Gazing around at the churned-up ground, Cormac located the King of Hearts and headed towards it, soon mounting its ramp. Within minutes Cormac was standing on the black glass floor of the bridge, with Arach and Hubbert Smith hovering a pace behind him. The gap in this line-up that Scar should have filled seemed to exacerbate a sore spot inside Cormac’s skull.

‘I take it there’s someone who wants to speak to me?’ he enquired.

‘That is so,’ replied King.

‘Well, now would be a good time,’ Cormac said flatly, assuming King was playing silly games again.

‘Not everyone can be at your beck and call,’ King replied. ‘Just wait one moment.’

Suitably chastened, Cormac waited, but it was not for long. A line suddenly sliced down to the black glass floor and out of it folded the hologram of a human figure.

Cormac recognized this apparition at once. ‘Azroc,’ he said.

The Golem nodded in acknowledgement.

‘You’re a long way from Coloron,’ Cormac observed.

‘I was on that fleet that went to your rescue, the one that Erebus all but wiped out. You could say that the experience has widened my horizons.’

‘All our horizons have now been widened, though maybe our futures have been consequently shortened,’ Cormac replied. ‘We weren’t supposed to be here?’

‘You were given false orders by an agent of Erebus. The same agent’s remains show without a doubt that it was a product of Jain technology—’

‘And yet it managed to infiltrate the heart of your operation there? I thought we had the means of detecting that technology now.’