‘Yes?’ said the Hive mind.

‘I have your package, and I will deliver it,’ said Keech, the liquid in his mouth and throat distorting his synthesized voice. A set of slowly changing coordinates flicked up on the screen map, and Keech lifted his scooter from the stone. Once in the air, he keyed the autopilot and sat back. He didn’t want to fly manually while he was dripping on the controls.

Through thousands of eyes the Warden observed the people in the base on Coram and on the planet below. When a situation hinted at ramifications that might impinge on its remit, the AI observed it with greater attention, or assigned a submind to watch it develop. When an SM could not be spared from its particular vehicle: be that an iron seahorse, floating cockleshell, or some other more esoteric sea-shape, the Warden loaded a copy or created one for that specific purpose. Sometimes it allowed these new minds to continue. At other times it resubsumed them. After all, they were only a pattern of information — as was all life.

At present, through one of its eyes, the AI was observing with interest the arrival of an amphidapt from the runcible in the core ocean of Europa, in the Sol system. The attachment that came with this woman had her noted down as a separatist terrorist who might be attempting to smuggle leeches to the strange dark sea that was her home. After only moments of observation, the Warden lost interest and assigned SM24 to observe instead, as it did not understand how she believed she might bypass the bio-filters of the runcible. Not a molecule got through that the Warden was not prepared to allow through. Now it let its attention wander to a fight occurring just beyond the Dome gate. Just for the hell of it, it placed a bet for an E with the submind in charge of Dome security, and got odds that made it wonder if it was time to subsume said mind — for it obviously knew something the Warden did not. Shortly after that, the AI received a signal from a direction whence nothing had come in decades — in fact from one of its deep-space eyes. It gave the new matter almost a quarter of its attention.

The ship emerged out of underspace, leaving a coruscating trail as antimatter particles struck the disperse local hydrogen. Two of the Warden’s deep-space eyes flared out in an EM shockwave, so of necessity it had to observe from a distance. Around the ship the stars distorted, as if seen through a lens, as it fell into the system seemingly out of control. Braking on ram scoop motors, it threw out a torus of radiation as it dumped velocity and came down to half the speed of light.

‘Please identify yourself,’ sent the Warden, as it noted the pilot was experiencing difficulties. A jumbled theta-block of pictographic computer language then overloaded all the Warden’s receivers for two microseconds. It took the AI another three seconds to discover that there was little information of value in this communication, other than its form. By now the vessel had the Warden’s full attention.

‘Prador ship. Please identify yourself.’

The ship was tumbling, using ram scoop and ion drive intermittently, as it tried to slow. Leaving a long trail of fire behind it, it arced around the sun. Another block of information overloaded the Warden’s receivers. Four seconds later the AI got the gist.

‘Nature of U-space generator fault?’

The garbled reply lasted for a couple of seconds, then cut off as the ship went into U-space.

The people in the Coram complex were baffled at the sight of all the exterior windows immediately becoming shrouded in something like an undulating wall of sun-glinting water as shimmer shields slammed into place across them. Internal doors closed — just slowly enough for people to get out of the way. Deep inside the moon, energy buffers went online to take any surge from the arm-thick superconducting cables linked to every essential system in the complex. Through the shimmer shields, ugly weapons turrets could be seen rising out of sulphur and ice.

‘Attempting to land,’ was the gist of the next transmission.

The Warden immediately direct-linked to the runcible it controlled, ready to transmit itself away should that action be necessary. It knew that if this was an attack, it would itself be the main target. A few seconds later the ship resurfaced in an explosion of antimatter half a million kilometres from Spatterjay, and on the opposite side of the planet from the moon.

Through its satellite eyes the Warden watched as the craft managed to get down to a speed of ten thousand kilometres per second. It skipped atmosphere then tried some sort of aero braking. There was a momentary U-space signature, then a flat antimatter explosion in the stratosphere. After the initial flash and detector overload, the Warden detected a scattering of debris blown into orbit around the planet. It picked up a brief whistling-bubbling sound on com which it tentatively identified from its library as the sound of a Prador getting fried by a high-intensity microwave burst. It considered the event for a whole six seconds before contacting one of its subminds.

‘SM Twelve, you saw?’

‘I saw it. I didn’t know any visitors were scheduled.’

‘They weren’t. It was some sort of Prador vessel, but I couldn’t get close enough to identify it. Check that orbital debris and report back.’

‘OK, boss,’ said SM12.

From one of its satellite eyes the Warden observed a meagre dot accelerate away from the planet at hypersonic speed, before flicking its attention elsewhere.

‘SM13, I want you moving into your last sector immediately. You are now on full crisis alert.’

With a degree of peevishness the Warden then opened up its next communication channel.

‘Sniper, I do know that a molly carp is not capable of travelling at seven hundred kilometres per hour. If it dies, you understand you’ll be charged with killing a grade-three intelligence?’

‘I understand. The carp’s fine. What’s happening up there?’

The Warden transmitted a condensed information package to the war drone. Sniper might be a pain sometimes, but did have his uses, especially in any situation that might involve explosions and sudden death. The Warden then flicked away from the drone to another focus of attention. Now linking through the local server, it accessed a very particular aug on the planet below. The actions it was pursuing were initiated from a program within itself which it labelled ‘nasty/suspicious’. The blueprint for that program had, in fact, initially come from Sniper.

Sniper scanned around inside the molly carp for breakages. Dropping it five metres into the sea the moment the Warden had contacted him had not been a clever idea. Surprisingly the carp was undamaged, just a bit twitchy. He relinquished all control of it as he scanned the information package.

Prador…

Some very old and unused programs initiated in Sniper, and as a result he came as close to excitement as it was possible for him to get. He immediately began running systems diagnostics and checking his inventory: 121 smart missiles with coiled planar loads, an assortment of mines, plenty of carbide fingers for his rail gun, and of course his APW. He was well armed, but his big problem was his power supply. Hauling a molly carp all that distance on AG had depleted his batteries, so his allotropic uranium generator was struggling to bring them up to charge, and his microtok was struggling to keep the generator running. In drone parlance, he was knackered. He decided the best thing for him to do now was sit tight until everything was up to charge.

He did a quick ultrasound scan beyond the fleshy vessel he was in and saw that a sailing ship had just come into range. No matter to him unless they decided to hunt down this carp and cut it open, so he settled down to wait. He was now in what he supposed might be called the carp’s small intestine, and had quite a way to go to reach the final exit.