Such was the way Thorn relieved his boredom. On board a month passed before the alien vessel headed out-Polity, and now they had been pursuing it for two months altogether. If he had known it would go on for so long he would have climbed into a coldsleep coffin for the duration. He considered doing so now but, for all they knew the Legate’s eventual destination might be only minutes away. But at least Thorn was enjoying more amenable company aboard this high-tech Centurion, the Haruspex, than did Cormac aboard the NEJ. For travelling with Horace Blegg and the dracomen would not be a bundle of laughs.

There were four Sparkind units in all aboard the Haruspex, each of them consisting of four individuals—two Golem and two human, so always there would at least be a card game Thorn could join, or a training session in VR or for real like this.

Finally, having worked up a good sweat and noting from the scoreboard projected overhead that the Haruspex AI placed them at about even, Thorn called a halt. As they drew apart, on the raised platform circling the chamber above them, a couple of Sparkind clapped with slow sarcasm before heading down to take their turn. Thorn eyed them: a woman called Sheerna and a Golem called Aspex. He knew Sheerna was keen to perfect some techniques against an opponent who simply did not make mistakes.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ Chalter enquired.

‘Supposing nothing more interesting comes up, yes,’ Thorn replied.

They collected their towels and, both mopping sweat from their faces, moved out into a corridor leading to the crew quarters.

‘I’m told that if this latest destination doesn’t turn out to be the target, Belisarius is going to use a gravtech weapon to knock the Legate’s ship out of U-space,’ Chalter commented.

‘Who told you that?’

‘One of the guys aboard the Coriolanus, called Bhutan. He tells me even the AIs are getting rather bored and tetchy.’

That did not entirely surprise Thorn. A month in human terms probably felt to an AI, whose mind operated at orders of magnitude faster, like a hundred years. However, merely being bored and tetchy could not justify such a change in the mission plan. He glanced questioningly at Chalter, for the man should know that.

‘I think it’s due mostly to the direction and distance travelled,’ Chalter added. ‘They are starting to wonder if this Legate has realized it is still being pursued, and is now leading us away from its base. It might do that if it had no regard for time, or for its own life.’

‘What about that battle back there?’ Thorn asked.

Chalter nodded. ‘Another reason for not continuing too much further. The AIs are keen to check out that planetary system.’

‘And I would guess’, Thorn said, ‘that ships like this would be much better off guarding the Polity from its enemies. It would be advantageous for an enemy to expend just one small vessel in order to lead away four diamond-state ships like ours?’

‘That’s the thinking,’ Chalter replied.

In his room Thorn was luxuriating in a shower when he felt the Haruspex depart U-space. He dried himself quickly and pulled on some Sparkind fatigues.

‘Haruspex, that seemed a short jump, so what’s happening?’ he asked.

In a lazily superior tone the AI replied, ‘Perhaps a question better directed towards the Legate. I have no idea why he surfaced here.’

‘Could we be getting closer to his destination?’

‘Not yet ascertained.’

As he stepped outside his quarters, Thorn again felt that strange twisting, and knew they had submerged yet again. The ensuing jump was also of short duration, for Thorn had taken only a few paces along the corridor before the ship surfaced again. Distantly, he heard machinery winding up to speed, and clanking sounds against the hull.

‘We are under attack,’ Haruspex noted.

Thorn ran for the ship’s bridge, Chalter and the other three unit leaders joining him soon after. The Haruspex bridge was similar to that of the NEJ: a wide expanse of floor seemingly resting out in vacuum. Thorn discerned a distant vessel, and small objects swarming through space, close all around. To his far right he could see the Coriolanus, its laser strobing the cloud surrounding it. As the ranking officer aboard Haruspex, Thorn occupied one of the acceleration chairs available and leant back. Chalter and the others stood back, remaining out of the way, as it would not do to have too many people involved in this. Images of other chairs began to blink into existence: the human commander of the Sparkind aboard Coriolanus, and Cormac aboard the NEJ. There were no humans present from the Belisarius, though a hologram of the ship’s avatar—a large chesspiece knight—did flicker into existence. Jack the hangman also appeared, along with Coriolanus the Roman legionary leaning on his spear, and Haruspex itself appearing as a floating crystal ball. All projection.

‘It seems the Legate has just led us into some kind of set defence,’ Cormac observed.

No shit, thought Thorn as he observed a pumpkin-seed object go hurtling past propelled by a bright fusion flame, then tracked by laser and turned to vapour.

‘Why are we visible?’ he asked.

Cormac held up a hand and turned towards the legionary image. ‘You’ve received five hits, what’s your current situation?’

‘They are not explosive, rather Jain subversion tech which, given time, would have completely subsumed this ship. I have destroyed them: three from outside by laser, the other two from the inside with a particle cannon.’

‘You see,’ added the human from the Coriolanus—Bhutan, a thin individual with pallid hairless skin and eyes like razor shards, who sported twinned military augs, one on each side of his head — ’we flew straight into them, so chameleonware was no defence.’ He glanced at Thorn. ‘There are so many of the damned things, we have to use proximity lasers, and the resulting weapons drain negates the ‘ware effect.’

Thorn had not known that fact. ‘The alien vessel?’ he asked.

Cormac replied, ‘Completely ignored, and flying right through them.’

‘Has it seen us?’ Thorn asked.

Cormac glanced at him, then back towards whatever display he observed aboard the NEJ. ‘I think that highly likely,’ he shrugged, ‘so we’ll have to grab it and see what we can learn. I think that what we’ll learn, if anything at all, is that we are very close to its final destination.’

‘Could this be it?’ wondered Haruspex.

In space, through the transparent walls of the Haruspex’s bridge, the AI used a frame to pick out a small area and magnify it, revealing a distant object like some jungle ruin, still swamped in lianas, transported out into vacuum. Like wasps issuing from their nests, the seed objects were swarming out of large barnacle-shaped excrescences on its surface.

Bhutan remarked, ‘Looks like something completely subsumed.’

‘It looks like something that will cease to exist in about thirty seconds,’ Cormac added.

That brought about a silence as they all watched. Perfectly on time, it seemed a pinhole punched through the strange object as if it were drawn on a sheet of black paper held up to the sun. Abruptly it distorted and shrank inwards towards the hole. The view then polarized over some titanic flash, and next they observed an expanding sphere of glowing gas. Within minutes the Centurions penetrated this, sang to the tune of the Shockwave as it peeled their smaller attackers away from them.

‘Alien vessel is jumping,’ Belisarius—a horse head talking.

The scene greyed out for a few seconds, and around Thorn the holograms grew thin as a nightmare crowd. Then the Haruspex shuddered back into the real, with star patterns altered about it.

‘It’s still running in a straight line directly for that high-albedo object,’ Jack observed. ‘I would guess, upon observing us, it paused to receive instructions.’