The Legate’s vessel surfaced half an AU out and proceeded inwards on fusion drive. The moment the four Centurions surfaced, a U-space signature immediately blossomed beside them, and something big dropped into being. They came under immediate and intense scanning from this hugely dense object—a two-mile-wide ribbed ammonite spiral glinting metallic green. The shape seemed to imply something grown rather than manufactured, one that could keep on growing. Organic technology. It launched a cloud of projectiles that Jack recognized as the same type launched earlier from the subsumed Calydonian Boar. These now swarmed towards the four Polity Centurions like twilight mosquitoes anxious to feast. Confident the other ships would be doing the same, Jack engaged his chameleonware and immediately changed course.

More U-space signatures now, on the edge of the accretion disc, then close by. Bacilliform ships began appearing, more spiral forms, lens shapes, indistinct wormish conglomerations breaking and reforming, and sheetlike masses that only closer scan revealed to be constructed of conjoined bacilliforms. Some of these objects were no larger than a human fist, others extended miles across.

‘Doesn’t seem too healthy around here,’ Jack commented. It took him just a microsecond to transmit that message, and he did not see precisely what happened next. The Belisarius must have been struck by some of those seed objects—enough at least to disrupt its chameleonware. Whereupon that Centurion ship fled — masers refracting around its hull, then beginning to impinge—leaving an orange trail of metal vapour through space. A wall of bacilliforms, a thousand miles tall, U-jumped directly ahead of the fleeing ship. Jack shut down his ‘ware, bringing all his weapons online. He saw the Haruspex and Coriolanus do the same. The big spiral ship bore down on the Belisarius, while the wall of rodlike ships folded in around it like some huge tissue employed for catching a wasp. Blights of missiles rained down on all sides. Jack’s CTD imploder hit the big spiral ship first, collapsing its middle section and momentarily leaving a glowing doughnut of matter, before the subsequent explosion obliterated the rest. Anti-munitions scattered illusions around the Belisarius, but not enough. Missile after missile impacted on it, cutting away a nacelle, distorting its shape and peeling away a trail of its armour. It tried to U-jump, but its engine was damaged or some other weapon hit it. It shimmered, everted like a snake skin, disappeared in white fire.

Jack’s own anti-munitions created an image of the NEJ beside him as he re-engaged chameleonware. But that was no distraction for the cloud of rail-gun projectiles hammering up at the ship from underneath. His carousels whirling at blinding speed, he fired a large-yield imploder down towards that cloud, hoping to hoover up most of them, then aimed lower-yield straight CTDs towards a wall of bacilliform ships massing ahead and threw himself into a 100 gravity turn. That was the limit, since the internal gravplates would not compensate for a harder turn, and though the dracomen might survive it, Cormac would not. Blegg, of course, was another matter entirely…

The physical attack was not all of it. A constant bombardment of informational attack kept trying to breach their coms systems. Jack allowed some of this through, routing it into secure storage. A message constantly repeated: I am Erebus, merge with me, be one.

Ah, so that’s what it’s all about, Jack thought. ‘Out of here,’ he sent.

The three remaining ships dropped into U-space and jumped back along their inward course. Many of the alien ships followed. Breathing space, at least. Having located the enemy, the time had now come to call in the big guns. Jack sent a U-space package to the fleet of Polity dreadnoughts, informing them they should come and play. In a matter of days the Centurions would reach them then the pursuing ships would be in serious—

Suddenly, a solid wall of U-space interference expanded in their course, taking that option away as it slapped them out into realspace. Jack located himself, finding they now lay within the planetary system they had traversed earlier. Fusion drives igniting, they ran for cover as their pursuers began to materialize. A wall of those bacilliform ships began to form ahead of them, while masers, lasers and missiles probed space in search of the remaining three chameleonware-concealed Centurions.

‘Well, we strolled straight into that one,’ observed the Centurion’s AI.

‘What the hell was that, Jack?’ Cormac asked, also frantically applying at other levels for information.

‘We assumed we would be able to run,’ Jack replied. ‘We assumed wrong because the bad guys here possess USERs.’

‘Oh shit.’

Viewing internally, Jack noted Cormac heading for the bridge. He looked rather sick.

‘Group together,’ Jack sent. ‘We cut a hole through it at five hundred miles.’

All three ships concentrated maser fire on targets directly ahead. No point using missiles in this situation as they would be travelling as fast as any munitions they fired. The planetary system would make a perfect killing field for the three ‘ware concealed ships. They would be able to use guerrilla tactics—hitting and hiding—for some time. But the living crews aboard the three ships were a problem. By the sheer violence of their manoeuvring the aggressors demonstrated that they did not have the same liability aboard them. Jack noticed that some of the pursuers were also apparently fading out of existence, which meant the Centurions had no advantage in possessing chameleonware.

‘Jack, your hands need to be untied,’ said Cormac from the acceleration chair in which he had strapped himself. ‘Coriolanus has eight Sparkind aboard, and Haruspex has sixteen plus Thorn. Here we have myself and Blegg and nearly a hundred dracomen. I suggest a fast shuttle drop over one of the inhabited worlds, then you can manoeuvre properly.’

It seemed the only sensible move. Their living occupants at least stood a better chance down on the surface of a planet than aboard Centurions that could not manoeuvre properly or aboard smaller vessels dropped in vacuum.

Cormac continued, ‘I’ve already transmitted orders to the others to load up with weapons and supplies… I’m presuming reinforcements will be on the way?’

‘They should be.’

‘How long?’

‘Days only, supposing the USER is shut down. We are presently trying to locate it. Its range is not large—about a light year radius.’ He did not add that should the USER not be shut down, the dreadnoughts would take more than a year to arrive, for Cormac knew that.

‘And your chances of shutting it down?’

‘Good, against the present forces, but we have yet to locate it.’

‘Then you drop us. Run for the nearest of those living planets. Which one is it?’

‘The hot one.’

‘Within range of the standard envirosuit?’

‘Yes.’

‘Transmit everything you have on that world to my gridlink.’ Cormac began unstrapping himself. ‘Time to get ready.’

Jack could not help but notice the tired fatalism in Cormac’s voice. The AI pondered the situation for a microsecond, then opened a secure com channel.

‘You don’t need to leave,’ he said to the recipient.

‘But nevertheless I shall.’

‘The issue is not just one of danger to your physical body — captured, you would be a very useful source of information to any enemy.’

‘I outrank you,’ Blegg replied, ‘and I’m bloody well going.’ He cut the channel.

As an afterthought, Jack sent another internal message: ‘Arach, I think you just found what you were hoping for.’

Blegg’s ship dropped from the NEJ and accelerated away under high G, following the two shuttles containing most of the dracomen, which had departed a few minutes earlier. Cormac glanced back at the spider-drone squatting directly behind him, then at the thirty dracomen packed beyond it, then returned his attention to the screen. Further ahead, the two other shuttles that had departed even earlier, containing Thorn and the Sparkind, were entering atmosphere, their nose cones now cupped in orange brilliance.