Those Disassembly Sheds which did get built were massive cuboid structures, two hundred metres a side, and very basic. An immense skeletal framework was thrown up, bridging the end of the branch canal, then cloaked in flat composite panels. A vertical petal door above the canal allowed the ironberg egress. Inside, powerful fission blades on the end of gantry arms performed a preprogrammed dissection, slicing the ironberg into thousand-tonne segments like some gigantic metal fruit.

A second network of smaller canals connected the Disassembly Sheds with the actual foundry buildings, allowing the bulky, awkwardly shaped segments of spongesteel to be floated directly to the smelter intakes. The desolate land between the Disassembly Sheds, foundry buildings, and canals was crisscrossed by a maze of roads, some no more than dirt tracks, while others were broad decaying roadways built to carry heavy plant during the heady early days of construction. None of them had modern guidance tracking cables; foundry crews didn’t care, they knew the layout and drove manually. It meant that any visitors venturing deep into the yard invariably took wrong turnings. Not that they could ever get lost, the gargantuan Disassembly Sheds were visible for tens of kilometres, rising up out of the featureless alluvial plain like the blocks some local god had forgotten to sculpt mountains out of during Nyvan’s creation. They made perfect navigational reference aides. Under normal conditions.

The road was over eighty years old; coastal winters had washed soil away from under it and frozen the surface, flexing it up and down until it snapped. There wasn’t a single flat stretch anywhere, a fact disguised by fancifully windsculpted drifts of snow. Alkad’s car lumbered along at barely more than walking pace as the suspension rocked the body from side to side.

They’d driven into the yard at a dangerously high speed along the roadway. A fifth car had been wiped out behind them, then the blasts of energy from space seemed to stop. Alkad datavised the car’s control processor to turn off at the first junction. According to the map she had loaded into her neural nanonics memory cell, the Disassembly Sheds were strung out across the yard’s northern quadrant.

But as she was rapidly discovering: the map is not the territory.

“I can’t see a bloody thing,” Voi said. “I don’t even know if we’re on a road anymore.”

Eriba peered forwards, his nose almost touching the windshield. “The Sheds have to be out there somewhere. They’re huge.”

“The guidance processor says we’re heading north,” Alkad said. “Keep looking.” She glanced out of the back window to see the car following her bouncing about heavily, its headlight beams slashing about through the snow. “Can you sense Baranovich?” she asked Gelai.

“Faintly, yes.” Her hand waved ahead and slightly to the left. “He’s out there; and he’s got a lot of friends with him.”

“How many?”

“About twenty, maybe more. It’s difficult at this distance, and they’re moving about.”

Voi sucked her breath in fiercely. “Too many.”

“Is Lodi with them?”

“Possibly.”

A massive chunk of machinery lay along the side of the road, some metallic fossil from the age of greater ambitions. Once they’d passed it, a strong red-gold radiance flooded over the car. A faint roar made the windows tremble.

“One of the smelters,” Ngong said.

“Which means the Disassembly Sheds are on this side.” Voi pointed confidently.

The road became smoother, and the car picked up speed. Its tyres began to squelch through slush that had melted in the radiance of the smelter. They could see the silhouette of the furnace building now, a long black rectangle with hangarlike doors fully open to show eight streams of radiant molten metal pouring out of the hulking smelter into narrow channels which wound away deeper into the building. Thick jets of steam were shooting out of vents in the roof. Snowflakes reverted to sour rain as they fell through them.

Alkad yelled in fright, and datavised an emergency stop order to the car’s control processor. They juddered to a halt two metres short of the canal. A segment of ironberg was sliding along sedately just in front of them, a tarnished silver banana shape with its skin pocked by millions of tiny black craters.

The sky above turned a brilliant silver, stamping a black and white image of the canal and the ironberg segment on the back of Alkad’s retina. “Holy Mother Mary,” she breathed.

The awesome light faded.

“My processor block’s crashed,” Eriba said. He was twisting his head around, trying to find the source of the light. “What was that?”

“They’re shooting at the cars again,” Voi said.

Alkad datavised the car’s control processor, not surprised when she couldn’t get a response. It confirmed the cause: emp. “I wish it was only that,” she told them, marvelling sadly at their innocence. Even now they didn’t grasp the enormity of what was involved, the length to which others would go. She reached under the dashboard and twisted the release for the manual steering column. Thankfully, it swung up in front of a startled Eriba. “Drive,” she instructed. “There’ll be a bridge or something in a minute. But just drive.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Sarha grumbled. “Here we go again.”

Lady Mac ’s combat sensor clusters were relaying an all-too-clear image of space above Nyvan into her neural nanonics. Ten seconds ago all had been clear and calm. The various SD platforms were still conducting their pointless electronic war unabated. Ships were moving towards the three abandoned asteroids, two squadrons of frigates from different nations were closing on Jesup; while Tonala’s low-orbit squadron was moving to intercept the Organization ships. This orbital chess game between the nations could have gone on for hours yet, allowing Joshua and the others plenty of time to get back up to the ship, and for all of them to jump the hell away from this deranged planet.

Then the Organization frigates had started shooting. The voidhawks accelerated out of parking orbit. And space was full of combat wasps.

“Velocity confirmed,” Beaulieu barked. “Forty gees, plus. Antimatter propulsion.”

“Christ,” Liol said. “Now what do we do?”

“Nothing,” Sarha snapped. So far, the conflict was ahead of them and at a slightly higher altitude. “Standby for emp.” She datavised a procedural stand-by order into the flight computer. “Damn, I wish Joshua were here, he could fly us out of this in his sleep.”

Liol gave her a hurt look.

Four swarms of combat wasps were in flight, etching dazzling strands of light across the darkened continents and oceans. They began to jettison their submunitions, and everything became far too complicated for the human mind to follow. Symbols erupted across the display Sarha’s neural nanonics provided as she asked the tactical analysis program for simplified interpretations.

Nyvan’s nightside had ceased to become dark, enlivened by hundreds of incandescent exhausts blurring together as they engaged each other. It was the fusion bombs which went off first, then an antimatter charge detonated.

Space ahead of Lady Mac went into blazeout. No sensor was capable of penetrating that stupendous energy release.

Tactically, it wasn’t the best action. The blast destroyed every combat wasp submunitions friend or foe within a hundred kilometres, while its emp disabled an even larger number.

“Damage report?” Sarha asked.

“Some sensor damage,” Beaulieu said. “Backups coming on-line. No fuselage energy penetration.”

“Liol!”

“Uh? Oh. Yeah. Flight systems intact, generators on-line. Attitude stable.”

“The SD platforms are launching,” Beaulieu warned. “They’re really letting loose. Saturation assault!”