Of course, with so many humans being packed so closely together dissatisfaction with the regime was inevitable, despite passage to less crowded worlds being offered to them free by the runcible AI. Many did leave, but just as many were born to replace them. Thellant thought of the humans here as a particular breed devolved through urbanization: they would not move because they were incapable of imagining anything beyond the life they knew. Sad for them, but not for him—he grew rich on their dissatisfaction. The thousands of Separatist cells abounding here gathered wealth by extortion, theft, murder, blackmail… to finance the fight against the AI autocrat of Earth. Thellant skimmed the cream of that wealth, while allowing his followers to sabotage a few machines and murder a few citizens. But he remained well aware of why ECS could not catch him. The reason sat upon the sofa behind him.

‘You were told to simply kill her,’ it hissed.

Nervous and sweating, Thellant turned. The Legate always had this effect on him: quite simply it looked plain evil. It was humanoid, just like the Golem made by Cybercorp, and metalskin like some of the older versions produced by that same company. But there the similarity ended. This android wore nothing but its metal skin, shiny and shading to blue-green. When standing it towered tall and incredibly thin. Its fingers were half again the length of human fingers and terminated in sharp points. Its head slanted back, tapering sharply down to the lipless slot of its mouth. It had no nose and its eyes were lidless and insectile. There seemed no edges to the metal skin at its joints—the material there did actually stretch and flex like skin. All of it consisted of the same metal, even the eyes, from which it seemed something cold and harsh gazed out.

‘You informed me’, protested Thellant, ‘that there would be a high level of ECS interest in her, and that agents would be sent to apprehend her. I am the de facto leader of the rebellion here on Coloron, so I could not ignore such an opportunity.’

‘You are the leader here only because of the programs I have created to keep the AIs from finding out about you. But that is irrelevant,’ the Legate waved one long-fingered hand, ‘especially now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Despite my programs, ECS has been closing in on you for some time. Now that your people on Osterland have been captured, the gap will soon be closed completely.’

Thellant felt his mouth go dry. ‘I don’t understand.’ For reassurance he reached up and touched his fingertips to the warm scaly skin of the Dracocorp aug he wore.

The Legate pointed one long digit. ‘Those augs have provided you with secure com and processing power outside AI networks. You give your orders with an unprecedented degree of anonymity. ECS have failed to track the money trails back to you through the conventional networks, because of my programs and because of numerous physical transfers of wealth, but mainly because few people know who you are.’

‘I am aware of how it all works. Your assistance has been greatly appreciated, but remember that, even with it, it was I who built up this organization.’

The Legate interlaced its long fingers. ‘Of course, and while your organization confined itself to this world, it has been easy enough for me to arrange the deaths of those who knew too much and were undergoing investigation by ECS. Had you sent out a single contractor to kill Jane von Hellsdorf, there would be no problem. I could have then arranged for the same contractor to die, and thereby closed down any connection with you or with this world. But instead you sent some of your top people there—people who have seen you and know who you are. Now they have been captured, and we both know that once in ECS hands their remaining silent is not an option. Even now ECS teams are closing in on you, and the AIs are closely watching the spaceports and runcibles.’

‘I have my own secure routes,’ Thellant said.

‘Yes, many of which have been compromised for some time. ECS has had agents in place for years, gathering evidence, gradually identifying those in the higher echelons of your organization here on Coloron. Now they have located the head, they will proceed to destroy the body.’

‘You are part of that body,’ Thellant observed.

‘Correct, in so far as I have advised and assisted you in your cause. But I will now take my leave of this world and leave you to reap what you have sown.’

Thellant abruptly felt a surge of the anger that had been his driving force since his childhood. ‘But this mess is down to you anyway! This woman was irrelevant to me. You wanted her killed and I still don’t know why, just as I really don’t know why you have always felt this urge to be so helpful!

Suddenly the Legate was standing. Thellant stepped back, his heart thumping, then he forced himself to take that step forwards again. Looming over him the android spoke, low and soft, ‘It has been in our interest to maintain a level of resistance to the autocrat; nothing sufficiently threatening to elicit a major counter-offensive, but to have skeletal networks ready and waiting for the tools to do the job. You have remained in contact with your offworld associates, so presumably you know something of the biophysicist Skellor?’

Thellant paused before replying. The Legate was some kind of intermediary—that being implicit in its name—and when it referred to ‘our interest’ that obviously included some other party. He had never discovered who or what that other party might be.

He said, ‘Skellor was a useful acquisition. I knew only that he was developing weapons we might be able to use. ECS hit his base and that was the last I heard. All I do know is that ECS went on to take down a planetary organization as a result.’

‘Then what you don’t know is that Skellor, using technology provided for him by us via von Hellsdorf, subverted an AI dreadnought called the Occam Razor, and came close to wiping out the population of an entire planet just to keep the secret. He then managed to escape the destruction of the Occam Razor, but in the end did not evade the ECS agents pursuing him. And he did all this alone.’

‘Masada…’ murmured Thellant. One of his associates had tried for a long time to find out exactly what had happened out there, but it was a dangerous subject to ask about, what with hunter-killer programs flooding the networks, and with AI warships and ECS teams swarming around that world, a dangerous place to be.

The Legate stepped past him and moved over to gaze at the screen wall. ‘Skellor was in the nature of a dry run, you might say. He was brilliant, but fundamentally unbalanced. We did, however, learn a great deal from him.’

Thellant shivered. ‘What is this technology you’re talking about?’

In an offhand manner the Legate explained, ‘Active Jain technology. It is of an organic nature and enables its wielder to both informationally and physically take control of computer and AI systems, to physically control all mechano-electrical systems, and even to enslave human beings.’

Thellant had already experienced some taste of that. Setting up his network using Dracocorp augs was difficult at first, and he rebelled against the disconnection. He always found it much easier to ensure his orders were obeyed by unexpected visits to his subordinates and the occasional disciplinary knee-capping. But as the number of those using the augs grew he found he could trust that his orders were obeyed. He felt the power—his growing ascendancy over the network—and how, the longer they wore their augs, his subordinates found it nearly impossible to disobey him.

Glancing around at his huge apartment and at the expensive luxuries it contained, he murmured, ‘We need such technology here and now. I… we could take this world, take it out of Polity control, just make it too costly for them in lives and resources to reclaim it.’ He wanted this thing. Perhaps by fleeing Coloron he could escape the coming ECS actions against him, but that would mean him abandoning everything: all this wealth and the power, and his position.