Once they were inside the ramp swiftly withdrew. The bay door slammed shut, then abrupt acceleration threw them to the deck. Cormac could not breathe, and noticed the acceleration even kept Arach, the dracomen and the remaining Golem pinned immobile. A telefactor rolled out on treads and began by relieving Cormac of Shuriken, then went on to collect up the rest of their weapons. He could still feel his gridlink connection to the bomb down below, and sent the signal to detonate it—perhaps futile, but it gave him some satisfaction to know that any of those biomechs remaining in the volcanic chimney would now be turned to ash. Minutes later, the telefactor withdrew, but acceleration still held them pinned to the floor.

They were helpless, but at least alive.

As he hurtled up through atmosphere, King pondered his reasons for rescuing these Polity personnel and understood that in truth he found more in common with them than with the multipart entity spread through space above. He wanted back into the Polity. He longed for forgiveness. But, with cold and exacting logic, knew it would not be forthcoming. His complicity in the deaths of so many humans on the world Cull would be enough for a sentence of erasure to be proposed, though the outcome there was not certain since he did not actually take a direct part in any killing. However, his destruction of the Jack Ketch, and the AI it contained, made erasure a certainty, should he be captured.

Breaching from atmosphere, King immediately noted that there were not so many of Erebus’s minions as he supposed, and a lot of debris. He registered numerous signatures of ships dropping into U-space, and realized that, with the USER now down, they were fleeing. However, many weapons targeted the King of Hearts and in reply he began emptying the stash he had manufactured while hiding in that volcanic chimney.

The chimney was a fortuitous find, since his first plan had involved slamming himself into radioactive earth for concealment. He detected it only microseconds before the multiple blast from the missiles sent to destroy him threw up from the mountains material that could be mistakenly identified as parts of himself. Decelerating hard, he smashed in through the rocky mouth of the chimney and crashed down inside. When he hit the bottom, tons of stone and dust rained on top of him. He powered down all systems, excepting chameleonware nowhere near as effective as possessed by the new Polity ships nearby. But it was enough, for none of Erebus’s minions detected him.

Over the ensuing months King made his repairs: sending out telefactors to collect refinable ores from the surrounding cave systems, sucking up briny water from below and separating from it both deuterium and pure water to fuel his fusion reactor and engines. When the USER that had trapped him first went offline, he was in no condition to go anywhere. As a precaution, over ensuing months, he manufactured drones no larger than a human head, from non-metallic materials, and launched them—some to take position on the surface of the planet, some out in space, and all using passive scanning. When the USER came back on again, he lay in a perfect position to observe what ensued—the battle fought by those new Polity Centurion-class attack ships. The second time the USER went offline—this time it quite evidently had not been powered down but destroyed—he readied himself to run, Erebus being otherwise occupied. He waited for the moment the biomechs finished off those Polity personnel who had landed here, and themselves left. But next, all hell broke loose right on top of him.

Bastard, that.

But why did he act when he did? The chances of him being discovered had grown exponentially as Erebus dickered about above him in the volcanic chimney. A quick strike and then an even quicker escape were what was required. So why had he stopped to take on these passengers on the way up? There seemed no easy answer to that.

Gaps everywhere. Though swarming in their hundreds even now, Erebus’s forces had still taken a severe pasting from those Centurions, and seemed somewhat in disarray. King felt a strange sort of pride in that.

My sort.

He dropped into U-space just as his weapons carousel clicked on empty.

The Battle Wagon went first, then in waves the other ships followed, winking from black existence. Azroc watched armoured shutters draw across the chainglass screen, as they would be drawn across many other screens throughout the Brutal Blade. Next the ship’s U-space engines came online with a grumble that reverberated through its massive hull, and warning lights came on inside to indicate that it had entered that continuum. Knowing ten hours of journey time would now ensue, unless the USER came back on, Azroc stepped back from the screen and, making an internal adjustment, shut himself down. As he descended into the Golem equivalent of unconsciousness, he understood that many of the humans aboard would not find it so easy to disconnect themselves from the world.

Later, Azroc roused, immediately conscious and thoroughly aware of his surroundings. A brief contact with the ship’s AI, Brutus, confirmed the passing of nine hours.

‘We are one hour from surfacing into realspace,’ the AI informed him.

‘Reconnaissance first?’

‘We have sent four scout ships, though I suspect any trap will not be visible to them.’

Azroc turned away and headed over to where Karischev and his men were ensconced.

The Sparkind units occupied cylindrical dormitories overlooking bays for landing craft. The humans and Golem mostly lay on their bunks, though the Golem needed no rest and such activities were engendered by their emulation programs. Only a few still checked over their equipment, since most checks had been carried out ad nauseam before now. Many gathered around screens and tactical displays positioned at either end of the dormitories. Azroc found Karischev standing before one of these.

‘A quick scan of the system first,’ declared the man, ‘then we go through.’

‘Four scout ships, apparently,’ Azroc agreed.

‘Of course we’ll probably be sitting on our butts during any ship-to-ship battle. But I’m told there are two living planets here the AIs don’t want to burn, so we’ll probably be sent to them to clear up anything the big guns can’t hit without destroying ecologies.’

‘And to find those personnel who were set down on one of those planets.’

‘Yeah—if there’s anything left of them to be found. The information we received makes that look increasingly unlikely’ — Karischev paused—‘though, admittedly, dracomen and Sparkind, along with Horace Blegg and Ian Cormac, are more likely to survive the shitstorm there than most.’

‘Admittedly,’ Azroc conceded.

‘Y’know,’ Karischev added, ‘I never used to believe those two characters existed. I thought they were fictional, like King Arthur or Rasputin.’

Azroc considered the irony of this statement before replying, ‘Well, apparently they are real.’

The ensuing half-hour dragged past slowly, then one of the tactical displays changed to show the situation within the system they intended to enter. Hundreds of enemy ships were revealed scattered across vacuum, but many less now than shown previously.

‘Data from the scouts,’ Azroc commented, while they watched some of the alien ships blink out of existence. ‘The enemy are fleeing.’

‘Sensible of them,’ Karischev replied.

Precisely on time, the entire fleet surfaced from U-space and began to deploy. Immediately the main displays changed to reveal a contracted view of the planetary system, with all its worlds gathered much closer than would be possible in reality, the various ships swarming about them like fish around reefs. All the fleet ships were represented by blue dots, and the enemy ships indicated in red. Azroc identified the Battle Wagon—close by in interplanetary terms—its cylindrical shape still discernible. While they watched, a viewing square picked out a group of enemy ships with fleet ships closing in on them and expanded the view. Then another square picked out one of the main enemy ships and displayed it on a side-screen. The large ammonite spiral spun, darkly iridescent, light flashing from the junctures between its segments and from the inner loops of its spirals. He only glimpsed the occasional object speeding away from it, but a glance at one of the tactical displays revealed the same ship launching a barrage at approaching Polity ships. Then it bucked as if slapped on the edge by a giant’s hand. The screen blanked for a second, then the vessel flew apart: lengths of spiral and separate segments hurtling away.