Not much hope here, either.

Cormac scanned around. ‘Did Scar survive?’

The Golem pointed over to the mouth of a nearby tunnel. Meanwhile, one of the human Sparkind, who had disassembled and now reassembled a pulse-gun, asked, ‘When we’ve nothing left to shoot them with, what then?’

Cormac instantly accessed information available in his link: Andrew Hailex, 64 years old, joined ECS as a monitor age 25, rose through the ranks then transferred ten years later to GCG — Ground Combat Group. Left after four years to marry and raise three children. Rejoined ECS at age 55 and trained as a Sparkind. Involved in several dangerous actions. Regularly sends messages to his family…

Hailex, of course, looked no older than Cormac appeared — maybe in his twenties—but then few people chose to look old. His scalp was hairless, probably naturally so for he did not possess eyebrows either. He bulked out his envirosuit so seemed likely to be boosted. He grinned—he’d lost a tooth—and his eyes displayed a pinkish tint. He rather reminded Cormac of Gant.

‘I’ll think of something, but if it turns out we have nowhere left to run, what remains for you to do I leave to personal choice,’ Cormac replied. ‘Our attackers are using something related to Jain technology and I rather suspect they won’t be interning us in a nice comfortable prison camp. I’m afraid I’ve no suggestions for you.’ Cormac grimaced, realizing how he had just paraphrased Blegg.

The other man’s grin faded, then he reached out and nudged an open case with his toe. Inside rested two polished aluminium objects the size of coffee flasks: two CTDs, low yield, but enough to raise the temperature in here to that of a sun’s surface.

‘Yes,’ said Cormac, ‘that’s one option.’

Moving off he entered the side cave to which the Golem had directed him. This stretched back only ten yards, and there Scar and two other dracomen sat by a pool down into which the cave roof slanted.

‘Scar, I want some of your people to scout out that fissure.’ Cormac stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

Scar stared at him for a long moment, then blinked. ‘I have sent two there already.’

A beat.

‘Are you in communication with them?’

‘Always.’

‘What have they found?’

‘The fissure runs down sheer for fifty yards, then its angle changes to forty-five degrees for another four hundred yards before beginning to level out. My associates have just now reached that point. Seismic scanning ahead indicates a crawl of nearly two miles, then several pools from which tunnels extend under water.’

Cormac noted how the dracoman held his hand submerged in the pool he presently crouched beside, fingers spread out, and wondered if this somehow enabled contact with the two dracomen below.

‘These tunnels?’

‘I know no more yet, however the route to it is too narrow for the autogun, or for Arach.’

Cormac considered their options. If they remained here they’d certainly end up in a fight they could not win.

‘Recall them,’ he said. ‘We’ll be going down there anyway.’ He turned and headed back out into the main cavern.

‘Arach, over here.’

The spider shape reared away from the wall and scuttled over to him. Cormac studied the drone for a moment, then explained the situation.

‘No problem,’ Arach replied and, before Cormac could say any more, scuttled away again. Cormac now called over everyone else in the cavern and gave his instructions, finishing with: ‘Those that need it, get some rest now—we move in two hours.’

‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ said Samland Karischev, as he gazed out through the massive chainglass screen.

‘Brutus is feeling as frustrated and annoyed as we all are,’ replied Azroc.

Freed from his duties by the Coloron AI, Azroc had immediately transferred to the Brutal Blade, the utile dreadnought run by the AI Brutus, and sometimes jokingly referred to—because of its resemblance to some titanic beast’s liver plated with metal—as the Organ Transplant. Fresh from that devastated world, where an entire arcology capable of housing a billion souls had necessarily been destroyed, the opportunity for some payback filled him with joy even though he was Golem. And when Battle Wagon joined the fleet, now grown to twenty dreadnoughts, numerous attack ships and other warcraft, that joy only increased.

Serious payback: now one of the big boys accompanied them.

Karischev pointed through the screen at the distant vessel. ‘It doesn’t look like much. Why all the excitement?’

Azroc sighed. The Battle Wagon did not look particularly threatening, being a cylindrical object apparently devoid of sensor arrays or evident weapons. ‘It doesn’t look like much because you are now seeing it against a backdrop of vacuum and so do not really have any idea of its scale.’

Karischev, a squat bulky man with a friendly boulder-like face and watery brown eyes, struck Azroc as a bit of an enigma. The man carried no augmentations, either cerebral or physical, and obviously did not bother to change his appearance to anything more aesthetic, as it seemed most humans were inclined to do. He also commanded a strike force of Sparkind ground troops, assigned to Brutal Blade.

‘Big, then?’ Karischev suggested.

‘Eight miles in diameter and twenty miles long. It’s old, built during the Prador War, carries weapons designed to penetrate Prador exotic armour, plus numerous recent upgrades. Much is made of the fact that ships like Brutal Blade can destroy worlds. The truth is that a ship like ours could easily depopulate a world, but not actually destroy it. The Battle Wagon, however, could do the job without, as the saying goes, breaking into a sweat.’

‘No shit?’ Karischev’s eyes grew wide.

‘Definitely.’

Karischev turned back to gaze through the screen. ‘Of course, you can be carrying the biggest gun in the world, but that don’t matter a fuck if you ain’t got a target.’

Azroc could only nod in agreement. The information packages sent by the NEJ showed, in the system a light year ahead, enemy forces that the ships now glinting in space all around him could obliterate with ease. But since the USER had deployed and ejected the fleet from U-space, it proceeded on conventional drives. At this rate it would take them more than a year to reach their target, which created all sorts of problems, not least being that the fight would long be over and the enemy would have had a year to prepare for them—unless before that they shut down the USER and fled.

Another problem arose concerning the living occupants of those few ships in the Polity fleet that carried them. They would have to go into coldsleep if the USER remained functional. The quandary faced by the Battle Wagon AI, now in command of this fleet, was that if the USER did go offline, the entire fleet could jump to the target system at once, and troops might need to be dropped very quickly, but it took some time for humans to recover from the effects of coldsleep.

‘I’m gonna check on my men,’ said Karischev, turning away.

Watching him go, Azroc wondered if bringing along these ground troops was such a good idea anyway. Yes, they might be needed, but thus far the conflict had remained mainly ship to ship—one of those fast AI battles waged on the line of Polity of which rumours abounded but of which he had never found confirmation. It struck him that such vulnerable troops would serve no purpose other than to add to the casualty figures.