‘Is there anything else you are keeping from me?’ he asked.

Immediately another memcording arrived.

‘What is this?’ asked Cormac, not daring to open it.

‘To control you, Skellor linked into your mind, but as a consequence you were partially linked into his. This is something you picked up from there—his memory of how he actually obtained his Jain node.’

Cormac viewed it, experienced it: as if he himself stood upon the platform on Osterland and received from Jane von Hellsdorf a Jain node for the bargain price of ten shillings.

‘I should have known about this. This needs following up.’

‘Thorn, some dracomen, and a strange amalgam of the Jack Ketch AI with a dead woman called Aphran, are already investigating. You are not yet stable enough for that kind of mission.’

Cormac reluctantly accepted that.

‘Jack and Aphran…’

Even as he spoke he sought information via the Jerusalem’s servers: the original Jack Ketch had been destroyed fighting rebellious AI warships, including the King of Hearts, but Jack’s mind was retrieved by Dragon, whom Jerusalem finally caught up with in orbit of the brown dwarf where Skellor and Cento died. Then Dragon’s meek surrender and return to the Cull system, some kind of bartering enacted at fast AI speeds, with the result that Dragon gave up the ship mind, then the huge band manufactured by Jerusalem and placed around Dragon’s equator—a guarantee that Dragon would not try to use the gravitic weapons it contained in some escape attempt.

Cormac returned his attention to the screen. Focus!

Dragon must now answer some hard questions for there were clear links between it, the Makers, and Jain tech arising here in the Polity. Cormac needed to decide what those questions should be, and how far he was prepared to go to obtain answers.

Thorn rested with his back against an oak tree and waited. He observed Scar, pacing back and forth next to the dome. The dracomen had come back in during the night, obviously bored with waiting. Thorn’s own training made him very patient, and his experience enabled him to value brief moments of peace during any operation. It gave him time to appreciate things like trees, the starlit sky fading into misty morning, trees, the cool air on his face, more fucking trees.

Those down on the planet had gathered many holocordings and after deep analysis of them, usually of the background, Aphran discovered that three people had visited Jane von Hellsdorf. One of these Aphran picked up in an aug recording, and another in publicity shots taken of the village. The first one Aelvor’s monitors identified as a dissatisfied customer come to complain, and the second as another stallholder come to sell von Hellsdorf his old stock. Both were apprehended and now being questioned by monitors. But in the end what Aphran did not find proved to be of most interest. One of the residents in Oakwood had made holocordings of a barbecue, and in the background a krodorman—a heavy G ‘dapt to one particularly swampy world—showed up knocking on von Hellsdorf’s door. Analysis of the thousands of samples found at the scene revealed no trace of krodorman DNA. This person had left no physical trace of herself—for the figure was female—and they needed to know why.

‘We have her,’ Aphran announced finally, as the sun began to disperse the mist. ‘The Parliament Hotel on Cockleshell Street.’

Thorn stood and began heading for his aircar. ‘Is she still there?’

‘She has been a resident in the hotel for two months, has not yet checked out, but is not presently in her room—the hotel security system has not registered the door to her room being opened in the last two days—ever since we arrived here, in fact. It would seem that, immediately upon our arrival, she paid a visit to Jane von Hellsdorf, forced that aug upon her, then disappeared.’

Scar reached the passenger door of the aircar just as Thorn climbed inside. The dracoman growled low as he shoved the seat back and clambered into the cramped space, putting his feet up on the dashboard. Thorn stared at him for a moment, shrugged resignedly, then took the aircar into the sky. He glanced back and down to see two monitor aircars and two of Jack’s telefactors following him.

‘Jack,’ he said, opening his comlink to the ship AI, ‘have you yet figured out what caused Ms von Hellsdorf to explode?’

The AI replied, ‘A combination of four enzymes released from her liver the moment she experienced an adrenal surge—which became inevitable once someone started delving into her mind. The enzymes instantly began converting her body fat to nitroglycerine.’

‘Why do that? Killing her beforehand would have kept her secrets safe.’

‘Obviously taking out any investigators nearby would hamper their enquiries. It is the kind of thing done by those who consider ECS personnel as viable targets.’

‘Separatists,’ Thorn replied, stating the obvious.

Jack went on, ‘It is a well-tested methodology to use booby traps to target specialists among what is considered the enemy. In the Second World War the Nazis dropped bombs specifically designed to kill those sent to defuse them… And now my search has revealed that Separatist cells around Krodor have used this method many times.’

‘All very neat,’ said Thorn. ‘Tell me, Aphran, what do you think?’

‘You mean with my deep experience of Separatist methods?’ she replied bitterly.

‘Yes, precisely that.’

‘It makes sense. The prime target for any Separatist is an AI, as they are the direct subordinates of the Earth Central autocrat — sorry Jack—and after that we… they will go to great lengths to kill ECS agents. The likes of yourself are considered prime targets because not only do you serve the autocrat, you are considered traitors to the human race.’

Clear of the mist the aircar glinted in orange-hued sunshine. Soon the main town lay below and Thorn began to ease the car down towards the streets. He checked his palm-com—now lying open and stuck to the dashboard beside Scar’s right foot—identified Cockleshell Street and headed for it.

‘Let’s suppose, then,’ said Thorn, ‘that a Separatist organization learnt, by whatever means, that ECS would soon be taking an interest in Jane von Hellsdorf.’

‘Then I would expect no less than an entire combat group turning up down there,’ Aphran replied.

Thorn grimaced to himself, having already worked out the coming scenario. He decided that landing in Cockleshell Street itself would not be such a good idea, and chose a thoroughfare adjacent to it, but still in view of the hotel.

‘Jack, the entire hotel and surrounding buildings need to be cleared.’

‘I have already informed Osterland and Aelvor.’

Of course Jack was ahead of him—that’s how AIs were.

The message obviously got through because the front doors opened and people began emerging. The two other aircars landed in the street behind Thorn’s vehicle, but the two telefactors held station up in the sky. Four monitors came past the car and headed towards the growing crowd before the hotel. There followed some gesticulation and shouting, but the evacuated people began moving on down the street.

‘Jack, Fethan gave me a little gift before I departed Cull: one of Jerusalem’s HK programs.’

‘Yes, I know,’ the AI replied.

Thorn tilted his head and asked, ‘Aphran, if you yourself planted an explosive device here, in this situation, how would you detonate it?’

‘Net feed. I’d connect it to some com system. The signal would be untraceable. Or I would have assumed so.’

‘But you would need a spotter of some kind, otherwise how would you know when to detonate?’

‘I would either connect the device to something only an ECS agent might try to access—secure storage or something locked like a safe—or I would use a cam system, probably activated by movement, and routed through the same net feed.’