‘We have Thellant,’ announced Jack of the NEJ.

‘My joy knows no bounds,’ replied Coloron.

‘This has not slowed the advance of the Jain substructure,’ Jack observed.

‘If anything it seems worse.’

‘There may yet be a way to slow it down.’

Coloron immediately worked out what that way might be. ‘Your spy in the camp?’

‘Yes, Jerusalem’s hunter-killer program has maintained contact. It is presently propagating itself through the Jain informational architecture. Apparently it cannot change the rate of growth but it is, as you say, a spy in the camp, so can relay the disposition of enemy forces and resources.’

‘Link me.’

The ensuing communication with the HK program was nonverbal, and Coloron’s analysis dissected it on many levels. The AI immediately began constructing a virtual map of the substructure overlaid on a map of the arcology. Further analysis revealed stashes of materials behind the line of advance, currently being made ready for easy conversion; energy being bled from fusion reactors and stored in laminar structures, both capacitors and batteries; sneaky mycelial extensions heretofore undetected; and subsumed humans armed and massing for advance. Coloron now checked the disposition of its own defences, and issued orders.

‘Azroc, that’s close enough, pull your forces out.’

The Golem was presently accompanying those of his forces busy incinerating the Jain tech spreading along the walls and through the floor of a long hydroponics chamber. Smoke layered the air from burning vegetation, and fluids pouring from broken tanks onto hot metal boiled up in dirty clouds. Within sight, figures still human in shape but no longer entirely human tried to work their way through. Squatting beside a small proton cannon standing on four insectile legs, Azroc glanced back towards the drone through which Coloron spoke.

‘You’re going to blow it?’ he asked.

Coloron replied, ‘Thellant has been captured, and now new tactical intelligence has become available. The substructure is massing for a push very near your current position and it could reach Runcible 5 within half an hour.’

‘Where do you want us now, then?’

Coloron transmitted directly into the Golem’s mind a simple map of the present situation. The infestation had started thirty miles in from the shore, and fifty miles in from the northern edge of the arcology. Runcible 5 lay the nearest to it, with 4 and 3 spaced evenly along the shore to the south and the same distance in from the sea. The AI did not want to send any more inhabitants to those runcibles as there were crowds enough there already, and Jain tentacles moved faster along the shore wall than elsewhere. Forty miles in from that row of three runcibles, again evenly spaced, lay 6, 7, 8 and 9. Another fifty miles further in lay 1 and 2. Runcible 10 was located well out of the way, in the recent north-eastern extension. On the map the Jain tech had completely taken over the north-west corner, and now lay only three miles from 5 and twice that distance from 6. Azroc’s forces were currently arrayed in a line cutting off that entire section—those last two runcibles at their backs.

‘Pull back to seven now. I will destroy five and six the moment the substructure reaches them. You have a minimum of thirty-four minutes.’

‘Okay.’ Azroc began signalling to his section commanders.

‘And, Azroc’

‘Yes?’

‘I am about to begin some sterilization.’

‘Understood.’

Coloron knew of some, either Separatist related or suffering from severe troglodytism, who were not obeying the evacuation order. Many of them remained inside the infested area, within reach of Jain tentacles, and many had already been taken over. Little could be done for any of those. From cameras on the particle weapon geostationary above, the AI studied the circular chunk of arcology it had initially excised in the hope of containing the Jain tech. The cavity near the centre of this, made by the Coloron’s first satellite strike, looked like a bullethole filled with steel maggots. The trench cut to separate out the piece of arcology in which this hole lay also squirmed with movement as Jain tech increasingly bridged the gap.

The AI checked all the systems of the toroidal satellite, finding it was up to power, with plenty of fuel available for the fusion reactor of which most of the satellite consisted. Even at that moment, a tanker craft was approaching from a recently arrived cargo carrier. One of its three tanks contained hugely compressed deuterium in the metallic state—further fuel for the reactor—the other two were filled with cupronickel dust to provide the particulate matter for the cannon itself.

I am procrastinating.

That system check had been an unnecessary delay.

‘Firing particle cannon,’ Coloron announced.

The turquoise beam stabbed down through atmosphere and struck the already fire-blackened chunk of arcology just off centre. The beam cut through its various levels like a thermic lance through a beehive. Fire and smoke fountained half a mile into the sky. The cannon satellite, adjusted by the gravplate ring on the fusion-reactor torus, incrementally tilted and began to revolve. Down below, the beam began to cut spirally outwards from its initial strike point. Viewing the scene in infrared, Coloron estimated the extent of the firestorm now exploding through the levels below. Within minutes the beam reduced the originally excised piece of arcology to glowing slag at the bottom of a huge pit. Shutting off the cannon the AI then contemplated what it had done. It had just obliterated about ten cubic miles of arcology and killed thousands of inhabitants, and that seemed likely to be only the beginning. Now checking the map relayed by the HK program, Coloron saw energy flowing away from that same area, and Jain tech material resources being transferred. The substructure, Coloron realized, could be herded.

‘I suggest you cut a line down to bedrock,’ sent Brutus the AI controlling the dreadnought above, which, unusually, bore a different name: the Brutal Blade.

‘That is my intention,’ Coloron replied. ‘With what happens next, such a division will certainly be required.’ The AI viewed the dreadnought through various sateyes arrayed above the particle cannon. It was a utile vessel looking nothing like a blade. Two miles across at its widest point, it bore some resemblance to a gigantic lump of metallized liver, with many organic tubes opening to space—heavy armour gave it its shape and those tubes were its weapons systems. ‘CTD imploder, lowest yield, take out this fusion reactor,’ Coloron ordered, sending the location of the mentioned reactor.

One of the tubes, a linear accelerator, spat out a black sphere that hurtled down into atmosphere, glowed red, then white, and began to ablate. Ten miles up it shed two burning hemispheres. The missile it contained slammed down through a wheat field, igniting a small fire around the surface puncture. A microsecond later, the field bulged up into a hill; it started smoking, then abruptly combusted. Flame jetted from arcology vents within a mile of this, then smoke from those lying beyond them. Crowds of people still moving away along the north-west shore gazed back at debris blasted from the numerous exits in the arcology’s edge. Coloron measured the spread of heat, observed the substructure’s reaction to this latest strike, then sent a map selecting the positions of other reactors, and locations of those enemy materials and energy stores.

‘Interesting,’ commented Brutus.

‘After I have cut the division,’ the Coloron instructed, ‘you must take out all those targets at once.’ The AI knew that, on some level of awareness, the Jain substructure would realize the disposition of its forces had been discovered. It would probably find the HK, but by then the damage would be done.