‘Orlandine is haiman, and was the overseer of this station—she would not therefore have needed Jain tech to gain access here.’

‘One thing,’ said the man with them. Blegg looked over at him, then caught the palm-com tossed in his direction. He studied the screen as the man continued, ‘Just twenty minutes before the explosion she ordered extra supplies to be loaded onto the Heliotrope. That in itself did not seem the action of someone deranged and desperate, but could be discounted until now. Check the list there — item eight.’

‘Shielding,’ said Blegg.

‘More data,’ announced the AI.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘No, I mean more data is arriving.’

‘From?’

‘A Centurion ship called the Not Entirely Jack.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Blegg, ‘the serendipity of a holistic universe.’

With no reply forthcoming from the AI, the man observed, ‘Forensic AIs are not noted for their sense of humour.’

‘I wasn’t joking,’ said Blegg.

… He turned to another card, saw them laid out all around him like gravestones.

He could have transported down here from the attack ship but, being only able to transport himself and a limited number of items through U-space, he required this shuttle. Many items here, some of them quite large, needed to be lifted out for ECS to study. Bringing his shuttle in along the five-mile trail of destruction, he eyed the hulk lying where it terminated. Security forces had set out a cordon of drones around the hulk but there were no sightseers out here anyway, and none back in Tuscor City who might wish to become such. Most of them were more interested in getting themselves safely through one of the few runcible facilities, or else aboard one of the evacuation craft.

The Prador scout craft seemed almost intact, despite recent encounters with an ECS dreadnought, a planetary defence station, and finally with the ground. It had exotic-metal armour, the Prador’s big advantage over the Polity—that and the fact they possessed many more ships. It all seemed on the turn, however, now the big Polity shipyards were up and running, but an easy win was still out of the question. Earth Central calculated that another five worlds would be lost to the Polity before ECS pushed the Prador forces into retreat. Billions more would die, the war dragging on for at least another twenty years, and then the Polity would still be picking up the pieces for centuries afterwards. Maybe Blegg could find something here to make the Earth Central AI feel a bit more optimistic.

Blegg brought his shuttle in over the cordon, and down, observing autoguns tracking him. Landing, he saw an armoured gravcar and transport speeding over his way, and when he finally stepped from his vessel, troops piled out of the gravcar. It seemed almost as if the attack ship AI had not informed them of his arrival. He learned differently when the ECS commander approached him.

‘Problem?’ Blegg enquired of the woman who stood before him. Her troops headed over to the transport, where they quickly began unloading items strapped to AG pallets.

She nodded slowly. ‘As you came in we got the news: a Prador dreadnought just entered the system.’

Blegg immediately communicated mind-to-mind with the AI of the attack ship far above. ‘Why didn’t you inform me?’

‘Because you were about to find out anyway, and I have more important concerns than keeping you informed.’ replied Yellow Cloud.

‘How long do I have?’

‘A minimum of three hours’

Blegg turned and glanced down the length of his shuttle, sending a command to the onboard computer to open the hold. The ramp door whoomphed out from its seals and slowly began to hinge down on rams. He turned back to the commander, ‘What have you got so far?’

She turned and led the way to where her troops were now towing the floating pallets over the rough ground. Gesturing to one, on which a bulky object lay shrouded in plastic, she said, ‘We got the pilot—almost intact.’

Blegg eyed the object, then the men who were moving it. ‘How many people do you have here?’

‘Fifty-eight.’

‘What about the rest?’ Blegg gestured to the other pallets.

‘The remains of a particle beam weapon, a thermal generator, a missile launcher and what looks like a Prador biological weapon.’

‘What’s your route out of here?’ Blegg asked.

She pointed back towards the city. ‘Same as everyone else.’

‘Very well. Dump the Prador—we’ve more than enough of their corpses on ice. Dump the launcher and the thermal generator—we already know how they work. You have three xenotechs here with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want them with me, along with all their equipment. Load everything else here and order the rest of your people aboard.’

The commander looked suddenly very relieved.

‘Yellow Cloud?’ Blegg sent. ‘I’m sending most of these troops to you, along with one or two possibly useful items. Please take control of the shuttle and launch it the moment they are aboard. Once you have them and those items aboard, send the shuttle back.’

‘That will not leave you much time.’

‘But time enough to remove as much corn-storage as we can find.’

The commander stayed, along with the three xenotechs, one of them towing a floating tool chest while the other two carried tool packs on their backs. Just as the shuttle lifted, Blegg led the way into the dank interior of the scout ship. A single entry tunnel, wide and cavelike enough to permit access for a body considerably larger than any human, led to an oblate sanctum where the Prador first-child had operated the ship’s alien consoles. Ship lice the size of a man’s shoe crawled over ragged stony walls that were coated with pale green blooms of weed. The pit-console projected from the floor like a huge coral, and an array of hexagonal screens formed most of the forward wall.

Standing between console and screens, Blegg pointed to the floor. ‘See this?’ He then traced an outline with the toe of his boot. ‘The memstorage should be right under here. It won’t be booby-trapped, since the Prador are reliant on their encryption—they still haven’t figured out just how easily AIs can break it.’

As one of the techs began slicing through the floor metal with a diamond saw, the commander asked, ‘How do you know this?’

‘I’ve been breaking open these things since the very beginning.’

‘Who are you anyway? No one told me your name.’

‘Horace Blegg.’

Everyone glanced round.

‘You know, there are quite a few people who think you’re a myth.’

‘Keep working,’ Blegg ordered the techs. ‘We don’t have much time.’

They finally levered up a section of the floor to expose a stack of black octohedrons looking like some kind of alien caviar, nesting amid optics and power cables.

‘Just cut all round. You won’t damage anything.’ Blegg turned to the man with the floating tool chest. ‘Dump your tools. We’ll use that’—he pointed to the chest—‘to transport them.’

Soon the octohedrons were gathered up and loaded, and with relief they left the dark, damp interior of the Prador scout ship and headed out to where Blegg’s shuttle had landed earlier. The sun, a green-blue orb, nested in tangerine clouds on the horizon, as stars began to wink into being in the azure firmament.

‘I take it the shuttle is on its way?’ Blegg sent.

There came no reply.

‘Yellow Cloud?’

Checking his watch he saw that an hour yet remained of the three hours stipulated. Blegg concentrated, slinging his consciousness out in search of the attack ship, and picked up fractured communications… missiles on your ten… rail-gun… Where did it… but they said… Also fractured images of broken hulls belching oxygen fires into vacuum, with no gravity to give the flames shape… growing spherical explosions, glittering trails of wreckage, a man screaming as he fell towards the world, spacesuit intact but beginning to heat up.