‘No, it is not,’ the dracoman replied, and moved away.

The Legate was now only a few hundred yards away, and Cormac thought it laughable how the entity held its hands up and open as if to show it carried no weapons. He knew all its weapons would be inside it. Once the entity had approached to ten yards away, Cormac stepped forwards. ‘I think that’s about close enough. So tell me, what do you want? I would guess you haven’t come here to surrender to us.’

‘It is good that you retain your sense of humour,’ said the Legate. ‘Allow me to acquaint you with realities.’ It pointed upwards with one overly long finger and, in that instant, com was restored and Cormac received a time-delayed information package from the NEJ. He held this package in his gridlink, as loath to open it now as the memory package gifted to him by Jerusalem. He suspected bad news, but more than that he suspected their com codes had been cracked by whatever this being before him represented.

‘Nobody is to open that package,” he instantly broadcast from his gridlink.

It almost seemed the Legate heard him as well. ‘We have not yet broken your com codes, since the algorithms that control them were created by AI. Had we broken them, be assured that you would now be under my control, as would all here, AIs or those using gridlinks or augs.’ The Legate turned its nightmare head slightly towards Horace Blegg. ‘Including you.’

Cormac decided he must take the risk. ‘All of you, accept nothing via my gridlink for the next minute.’ Out loud he said, ‘Blegg, Thorn, back away from me.’ He looked up at Arach. ‘I want you to soft link to me. Any sign that I’m subject to a subversion program, you take me down then—’ he stabbed a finger at the Legate, ‘then you take him down.’

‘What the—?’Thorn began.

Horace Blegg slapped a hand on his shoulder and began drawing him away. ‘Information package from the NEJ—we don’t know if it is genuine.’

As a further precaution, Cormac reached in his pocket and thumbed up then held down the dead man’s switch on his grenade. Only then did he open the package.

Haruspex and Coriolanus were visible ahead, glaring bright in the light of the near sun. ‘We have all released beacons broadcasting this package, so hopefully it will get through to you,’ Jack informed him. ‘We are attempting to sling-shot around the sun, to make a run on the USER which is located on a moon orbiting the other living world here. While that USER continues functioning, estimated time to the arrival of Polity forces here, one year. Only if the USER is shut down will that estimate reduce. We will reach the USER in seventeen hours. The expected time of arrival thereafter of the dreadnoughts, less than a day.’

The package contained more information, but that was the gist of it.

‘I have no idea what that message contained,’ said the Legate, ‘but presumably you now understand your situation. You are alone here and even a minimal chance of rescue is a long time off. Pure logic should now dictate your next actions. You cannot escape, and if you fight you will all either be captured or killed. I now offer you a deal.’ One long hand gestured to encompass the Sparkind and the dracomen. ‘In exchange for the lives of all these. You’—one finger stabbing towards Cormac—‘and you’—now towards Blegg—‘will hand yourselves over.’

Cormac thumbed the dead man’s switch on the grenade back into position. He did not for one moment believe this entity would allow the others to live, no matter who handed themselves over. Or perhaps they really would be kept alive, which might be worse.

‘Let’s just shoot the fucker and run for the cave,’ came a communication from Chalder after the minute Cormac designated ran out.

Through his gridlink Cormac broadcast: ‘Start moving towards the cave, but try not to make it too obvious. Arach, the Legate has chameleonware so if it shows any sign of fading out…’

‘I was already doing that,’ the drone replied grumpily.

‘What guarantees can you give that you’ll stick to your word?’ Cormac asked out loud to the Legate. Scanning beyond it, Cormac recorded the scene in his gridlink then ran a comparison program to perpetually analyse that same scene moment by moment. It annoyed him that he had not thought to do so earlier.

‘The only guarantee I can give—’ began the Legate.

It was the trunk of a tree down in the jungle, slightly displaced for half a second.

Chameleonware.

‘Arach!’

‘I see it.’

The Legate disappeared. One of the spider-drone’s Gatling cannons whirred and fired, spewing fire across the intervening ten yards. The Legate reappeared only yards from Cormac, juddered to a halt and survived longer than seemed possible under such a fusillade, then exploded into metallic shreds. Arach’s other cannon whirred and spewed fire. To the right and left of where the Legate had been, huge shapes nickered in and out of being—flat louselike bodies supported ten feet off the ground by bowed insectile legs, their nightmare heads unravelling squidlike grasping tentacles. Both of them collapsed, pieces of them exploding away, clearly visible now as their chameleonware broke down. Cormac squatted for cover and glimpsed Arach springing from his perch just as turquoise fire splashed down onto the rock cube, turning its upper surface molten. The drone ran, with all his weapons now directed up at the sky. Darker shadow fell over them as another spiral ship shut down its chameleonware right above. High intensity laser punching down: five or more dracomen turned instantly to flames. Autoguns now trained on the ship above, but one of them suddenly blasted to silvery fragments. And meanwhile a hellish army swooped up the slope from the jungle.

‘Thorn, mine the entrance as we—’

Thorn turned towards him, grinning perhaps… then he stood in an inferno, coming apart, face melting away from a screaming skull, before toppling disjointed in clouds of greasy smoke. Gone: in an instant.

Thorn…

Further explosions lit the garish scene as the autoguns found targets on the ship above. Even while paralysed mentally Cormac continued to function on an instinctive level. He sent Shuriken streaking down towards a pack of quadruped machines like headless brushed-aluminium Rottweilers, who led the charge from below. The star threw its blades out to maximum extent and howled along just off the ground, as if carrying the anger Cormac should now feel. He took out his grenade and gridlinked to its control mechanism. He ran a simple program, so that the moment he lost consciousness the grenade would detonate. He placed it in the breast pocket of his envirosuit, then, standing fully in view, aimed his proton weapon and, picking his targets in the leading ranks, began to fire. He slewed emotion, became colder. Fuck them, what was the point now in retreating to the cave system?

Shuriken hammered into a thicket of legs, sending many of the dog-things sprawling. Cormac fired continually as silvery flat-worms slid up over the fallen grey bodies like running mercury, each hit of his converted these things to disparate segments—which then extended out tendrils to rejoin and draw together again.

‘Cormac, get to the cave,’ came Blegg’s communication via his link.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Cormac replied.

‘Do you want reasons?’ Blegg asked. ‘Chalder just died trying to protect you, and others will now die to that same end. Get into the cave!’

A scan of his surroundings: numerous oily fires—difficult to discern which burning figures were human and which dracoman. From ten yards down the slope one of the flatworms reared up, its nose flaring open on a glittering interior. A stun blast smacked into Cormac’s chest and sent him staggering back, then down on his knees. Above him, a flattened torpedo shape, snakish legs tangled underneath, unravelling and reaching for him. Consciousness fading.