About them the pool lay deep and wide, but soon the two dracomen ahead led them into a narrow intestinal pipe corkscrewing through the rock. Twice they surfaced in travertine sumps, and on a third occasion a glare of light passing through the water ignited the sump with rainbow colours.

‘The autogun just ran out,’ one of the human Sparkind commented.

They waited, then suddenly the water itself surged upwards, forcing them towards the ceiling.

Now, thought Cormac, only Arach’s little present stands between them and us. He reckoned those Jain-constructed biomechs could move faster down here than he and his fellows, though they might have to burrow again if there had been intervening rock falls.

‘What explosives do we have remaining?’ he asked.

‘Grenades, eight planar mines and one more CTD,’ replied one of the Golem.

‘Let’s hope we won’t need the CTD,’ he said. ‘Position the mines where you deem appropriate—proximity detonation.’ He added unnecessarily, ‘Let’s keep moving,’ as the water level descended.

Within an hour they left the pipe and ascended a gently upward-sloping fissure. The temperature slowly began to rise, which indicated this cave system opened up somewhere to the surface. Then abruptly the upward slope ended against a wall of stone. Reaching this and directing his envirosuit light upwards, Cormac discerned another fissure climbing up into darkness.

‘How many mines left?’

‘Four.’

‘Okay, you Golem take the lead. Position two of the mines up in the fissure and when you reach a suitable point, run lines down.’

As the Golem headed rapidly up through the fissure Cormac turned to the others. ‘All of you, take a rest.’ He himself felt utterly drained, partly a result of the stimulants he had used while fighting through the jungle above. He did not want to use any more of them until it became absolutely necessary.

Lines snaked down to them twenty minutes later, just as a dull boom echoed through the cave system. The biomechanism must now have entered the underwater cave system. They hooked up their winders and ascended to where the Golem had secured themselves. The fissure here turned to follow an angle of thirty degrees from the horizontal still ascending.

With disheartening regularity over the next few hours the mines they had planted detonated behind them. Twice they needed to stop and take seismic readings to find some available course ahead. Once it became necessary to use one of their remaining mines, then some of the grenades, to blast a way through into another tunnel. While in there another dull boom resounded from behind. Checking some instrument one of the Golem told them, ‘That was the last mine we planted.’ Cormac felt he really did not need that—he could count. Then, manoeuvring through one sharply curving tunnel, he noticed a steady climb in temperature. Further along he found it necessary to close up his envirosuit. Next, reddish light began to impinge.

‘We have a problem,’ came a yell from up front.

Cormac quickly moved up past the others.

‘The seismic scanner missed this,’ explained one of the dracomen, almost guiltily.

The tunnel opened out onto a tilted slab that ran partly along one side of what appeared to be the empty chimney of a volcano. High above, the sky was visible like a bloodshot eye. Cormac moved to the rim of the slab and peered over.

Something down there?

He caught just a hint of a metallic gleam, but immediately it faded, then the rest of the dracomen and the Sparkind surged out of the fissure, unstrapping their weapons and turning to face back the way they had come. Arach reared up, standing only on his four back legs, the four front ones spread in threat, shimmering along their inner edges as chainglass blades extruded. From the fissure came a sound as of a swarm of iron snakes ascending towards them.

‘Yeah, we have a problem,’ Cormac agreed wearily.

Out towards the cold living world there were fewer of the alien ships, and those that were there would not be able to build up sufficient speed to catch up with the Centurions. They could, however, intercept, since the Centurion’s target was an obvious one. Also, some of the alien ships had followed the same sling-shot solar orbit as the Centurions, and were not far behind, though with their number depleted by Haruspex’s use of a gravtech weapon as they first sped down towards the sun.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ asked Coriolanus. The Centurion’s AI loaded its question with just the right level of irony. Jack reckoned it must have been practising. Scanning ahead, he now estimated the moon to be not much larger than Mars’s moon Phobos.

‘You and Haruspex go in ahead of me,’ he said. ‘Haruspex takes the left flank, you take the right flank. We’ll strafe the surface with masers, follow up with CTDs. On our second pass we’ll use rail-gun missiles to penetrate deep, followed by telefactors to check for—’

‘Ho ho,’ interrupted Haruspex.

‘Okay, plan B,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s blast the fuck out of that moon.’

‘Oops, contacts rounding the planet,’ warned Coriolanus.

Bacilliforms swarmed into view, and behind them, like their herders, came two ammonite spiral ships. After observing these, Jack now noticed some of the lens-shaped vessels on an intercept course far over to one side. It would be nice to be able to use chameleonware at this point, but all three Centurions had sustained too much damage for that to be effective. Jack instead fired off a near-c fusillade from his rail-gun to intercept them. The other two ships likewise let loose with their rail-guns, whereupon Haruspex complemented this with five seeker missiles, which slowly dragged away from the three Centurions.

‘What about maser attack?’ enquired Haruspex.

‘Use anti-munitions,’ Jack instructed.

‘None left,’ the other replied.

‘Mmm, me neither. Coriolanus?’

In reply, a number of objects sped from the third vessel. A hundred miles ahead they activated, and three hologram Centurions sprung into being. The three original ships then utilized their chameleonware, for what little concealment that provided.

‘They’re forming up, now,’ observed Coriolanus.

The rod-ships were conjoining into a wall extending before the moon, the two big spiral vessels sliding around this to come head-on at the Centurions.

‘Drop back from me’, Jack instructed, ‘a hundred miles. I’m going to DIGRAW these bastards. You two follow me in and then hit the moon with the heavy stuff.’

‘Now that,’ said Coriolanus, ‘sounds suspiciously like a plan to me.’

‘Well, ain’t you the comedian?’

Nevertheless, the two other ships did drop back. DIGRAW might stand for ‘Directed Gravity Weapon’ but its effect was about as directional as a leaky flame-thrower. Jack now lay safely within the central area of DIGRAW propagation, so effectively wore an asbestos suit, but the other two ships could easily get burnt if too close.

The swarm of rail-gun missiles now reached the lens-ships. Two of the ships exploded, while the others tried to veer away. Another took numerous hits and just ended up tumbling through vacuum.

One hour later, Haruspex’s missiles found the remaining two lens-ships, but by then they had long ceased to be a problem to the Centurions.

Charging the DIGRAW took Jack all that time and still continued, which meant power remained low to his rail-guns, which launched most of his material weapons. Firing missiles without an initial rail-gun boost would be pointless, since the enemy’s defensive weapons would have plenty of time to react to them. The moon was now the province of the other two Centurions. Jack’s task lay directly ahead.

A million miles out, Jack detected rail-gun missiles heading towards him, and did the only thing possible in the circumstances: he shut down power to the DIGRAW capacitor and projected a hardfield out ahead of his nose. NEJ shuddered as near-c projectiles impacted on the hardfield, turning instantly to pure energy. Three strikes and that hardfield generator burnt out. Jack instantly onlined another generator and took three more hits. The second generator filled the inside of NEJ with smoke. A fourth hit tore it from its housing and hurled it down the length of NEJ inside, spraying molten metal everywhere. Jack surmised that any human passengers aboard would definitely not have survived that.