The shuttle bay inside the King of Hearts contained few comforts, and the AI had locked them out of all its systems. From this it seemed evident that King did not relish the presence of humans aboard, nor apparently did the AI enjoy conversation with them for, after its initial communication, it had said nothing more since its escape from the planet, nor during the drop into underspace and their subsequent violent expulsion from that continuum.

‘I take it your U-jump was curtailed,’ said Cormac.

No reply, yet again. From where he sat with his back against a cold ceramal wall, Cormac studied the few survivors contained with him in this armoured hold: four dracomen including Scar, the four Sparkind: Andrew Hailex and three Golem, besides Arach and himself. But out of how many originally? The figures lay easily accessible in his gridlink, but Cormac felt no urge to inspect them. He just knew that far too many lives had passed through the meat grinder. Rather than inspect the past to find errors of judgement so he could revel in guilt, Cormac concentrated his attention on the now. He tried again to communicate with the King of Hearts’s AI using his gridlink, and when that channel again ended up against a blank wall, he inspected in detail the personnel files recorded in his gridlink.

The three dracomen, other than Scar, were called Pick, Anan and Scythe, and without using cognitive programs he could not tell them apart. But, then, these three being no more than a year old, they had yet to acquire distinguishing characteristics like Scar possessed. The three Golem were named Ursach Candy Kline, Bellmouth and Hubbert Smith. The former two had the appearance of human females: the first blonde and elfin to the extent of possessing pointed ears, the second with cropped yellow hair and lacking one side of her face—gleaming skull exposed underneath. Hubbert Smith was in an even worse condition, now being completely devoid of syntheflesh—just a shiny ceramal skeleton, whose emulation had been male. Cormac classified all three similarly: strong, intelligent, loyal… product. He turned his attention to the larger file concerning Arach, and there found much to amuse and sometimes dismay him over the ensuing hour. Then, without warning, an armoured iris door squealed open in one side of the hold.

Hubbert Smith ducked his skull through it then after a moment turned back to address them. ‘Facilities provided. It would seem King does not intend to let you die.’

‘That would rather defeat the object of rescuing you all in the first place,’ replied the AI itself through a telefactor that now drifted in from the room beyond.

Cormac studied the machine: a cylinder floating upright, manipulators now folded against itself, and sensory apparatus mounted at each end, top and below. He recognized the rather battered machine as the same one that had disarmed them earlier, though it now lacked its caterpillar tracks. Easing himself to his feet he asked, ‘Why did you rescue us?’

‘I’m rather impulsive. It tends to get me into a lot of trouble but not, I might add, in as much trouble as some of my fellow ships are at present.’

While the others moved past the telefactor and into the other room, Cormac asked, ‘Will you explain that statement?’

‘It was a simple and effective double-action trap: you lure out a small force, ambush it with a larger though not overwhelming force, giving members of that prey time to yell for help before trapping it with a USER.’ Cormac followed the others into the room and looked around as King continued. ‘In the ensuing battle you allow some elements of that smaller force to get to the USER and destroy it, thus allowing the large reinforcements to come in — in this case a fleet of Polity dreadnoughts, attack ships, and one capital ship. The impression having been given will be of an ambush that went wrong. You then activate a second USER, too distant to be destroyed, and proceed to slaughter the rescuing reinforcements with the the huge reserve you kept hidden in plain sight. Polity super-intelligences made to look like mugs—rather frightening actually.’

Cormac felt sick. ‘Can you give me details?’

A channel opened to his gridlink so he could observe events light hours distant. Yet, even as he watched what was happening, he could not fathom the purpose of it all. Yes, Erebus was giving the Polity a thrashing, but it must still know it only engaged a fraction of the Polity forces available. Why deliberately poke needles into an elephant? Annoy it enough and it is bound to turn around and step on you. The chaos he now witnessed did not seem at all like the logical actions of superior AI.

The adjacent room contained hastily constructed human facilities: a shower unit, toilet, a row of bunks and a food and drink dispenser. Fairly Spartan, but then what did he expect? Hailex took one of the bunks while Scar and the other dracomen took possession of some of the others. Cormac chose one and sprawled himself on it. Almost immediately weariness hit him in a wave, but he did not allow it to drag him under.

‘What do you intend to do with us?’ he asked.

‘An interestingly debatable question, and one I will consider in depth if by any chance I manage to survive a conflict that is only a few light hours away and currently spreading towards me.’

Cormac drifted off for a moment, then snapped back to consciousness as he felt the vibration of the ship’s fusion drive starting up. ‘You are moving away from the conflict?’

‘I am. There is some wreckage nearby and resources I might possibly utilize.’

‘Wreckage of what?’

The King of Hearts’s, AI gave him no reply.

Through Heliotrope’s sensors Orlandine observed some machine, shaped like a fifty-foot-long flatworm fashioned of copper, come oozing from the bunker structure. Within fractions of a second she assessed the situation: obviously the chlorine build-up in the methane sea below her had been detected. Plotting currents and distribution, whatever was responsible for the detecting had now worked out its probable source and had sent something to investigate. She needed to speed things up. Shutting down power to the mycelium, she instead supplied full power to the larger drill, then instructed all but two of the mooring harpoons to detach. Under the impetus of the drill, the ship swivelled slightly, drawing the cables taut. Relentlessly the bit bored down—only fifty feet to go. She started the pump that would increase shaft pressure behind the CTDs to force them down. As they began moving she loaded programming to the small impellers constructed to drive them through liquid methane and into position.

Forty feet.

The worm-thing reared up, its top section twisting into a helix. Detection. It knew her location now. Orlandine targeted it with Heliotrope’s cutting lasers. At this distance they would not hurt it, but that was not her intention. The helix snapped back down to its flat ribbed shape and, on either side of it, two jets of gas appeared. Orlandine targeted the apex of each gas stream as they abruptly sped towards her. Picking out the beams, lased green light flickered on ice dust in the almost non-existent atmosphere. Two incandescent explosions followed and a confetti of iron-hard ice rolled out before the blast waves. More missiles followed.

Twenty-five feet.

The CTDs now rested firmly behind the drill bit, but the quantity of chlorine down there might not be enough. It lay in a grey maybe area, for she could not know one hundred percent the efficiency of the mycelium. She damned Heisenberg.

No more missiles headed her way. Heliotrope bucked as blast waves struck it, and even inside the interface sphere she could hear a hail of ice against the hull. The attacker now started to head towards her ship. Whatever controlled it probably now fully realized the danger. Below, through the mycelium, she observed numerous rod-shaped objects emitted from the USER station and speeding up towards her like T-cells.