12

Earth

‘Bartholomew reports that he’s moving the Vision to minimum safe distance away from Saul’s ship,’ said Elkin, as they rounded a corner in the corridor and headed towards Calder’s apartment. ‘And Calder reports that the tug is bringing the Scourge into Earth orbit and that a shuttle has just left it.’

It all seemed too much all at once – just too many balls to keep in the air. She palmed the lock to Calder’s apartment, turning to watch as some of her security team deployed in the corridor, then she stepped inside.

‘So tell me again about what Vaughan reported,’ she snapped.

‘Our undercover operatives here were listed as unsafe personnel, and either moved to the far end of the station or off station altogether,’ said Elkin flatly. ‘This could have simply been an administration error, but it also seems that Vaughan and his team are finding themselves hindered by the Inspectorate personnel aboard.’

‘Hindered in what ways?’ Serene asked as she sat down at Calder’s desk and opened up her palmtop, expanded its screen and adjusted the keyboard projection to a suitable surface.

‘Mostly bureaucratic foot-dragging, restrictions on system access, and by allocating quarters for Vaughan and his men in… inconvenient parts of the station.’

‘I always considered the number of Inspectorate personnel present here too high,’ remarked Serene. ‘And now I’m feeling uncomfortable with that – just as I am uncomfortable with Calder’s attitude.’

Her annoyance at finding so many Inspectorate personnel still in evidence here had turned to alarm, for she experienced some intimation of sinister motives behind their presence. She shook her head and initiated a search of the station’s system through her palmtop and, while it was running, turned on the main desk screen and called up an exterior cam view. The search continued while she watched the main drive of the tug firing as it brought the Scourge in towards Earth, which in this current view lay over to the right of the screen. The shuttle was visible, but slowly moving out of shot.

‘So it never occurred to Calder that a reduction in political oversight here might result in increased productivity?’ she enquired.

Something in her tone immediately had Sack stepping forwards with his reptilian hands clenching and unclenching. Elkin glanced at him and stepped away from Serene, keeping her hands firmly behind her back and her expression bland. Of course, it wasn’t really in Elkin’s remit to look at staffing levels, and it might not be Calder’s fault that so many Inspectorate personnel were still here, since reorganizing the structures he inherited was not entirely down to him. Serene knew that her anger stemmed from her not having immediately investigated this anomaly herself.

Her search now revealed staff rosters and complements, and it was easy enough for her to locate those listed under ‘oversight’. She ran an overlay from the new command structures on Earth, and began finding those who were surplus to requirements. Even as she did this, she noted something else: just how many of these personnel were listed as ‘Inspectorate/disciplinary’.

‘They have adjustment cells here?’ she enquired, then began checking for herself. They did have adjustment cells – currently occupied by fifty-eight personnel. She felt her anger grow upon seeing such waste and inefficiency, and spun her chair round. Elkin was now thoroughly preoccupied with her fones and by whatever her aides were drawing her attention to on their note screens. Serene deliberately forced calm on herself and waited. She had employed Elkin because of the speed with which the woman could collate data, come to conclusions, and make reports and assessments. After a minute or so, Elkin’s preoccupation with information cleared, but this left her looking concerned and slightly puzzled.

‘Ma’am,’ she cleared her throat, ‘it seems a faction of the Inspectorate entrenched itself here even during your rule, and were in place before Calder arrived. His official response, when this matter was raised by the advisers you supplied to him, was that you wanted immediate results and he could not give you them if he was to spend time conducting a purge. However, data indicate that they were retained on his orders, and their section chiefs vetted by him personally.’

‘Your assessment of that?’ Serene asked.

‘I suspect he might have been building a power base, ma’am.’ Elkin paused to glance at something else one of her aides was showing her, then continued, ‘Calder’s subsequent response to a query from his advisers was that they cause fewer problems this way than would removing them from their posts and returning them to Earth.’

‘I would hardly call keeping fifty-eight personnel in adjustment cells a lesser problem,’ Serene noted tightly.

‘Apparently,’ Elkin continued, ‘just to get the one thousand one hundred and forty surplus Inspectorate personnel back to the surface, with their belongings, would take at least five space-plane runs – journeys, he asserted, that could not be afforded.’

‘One thousand one hundred and forty surplus personnel,’ Serene echoed flatly. ‘Who is this chief Inspectorate political officer?’

‘There is none, ma’am,’ Elkin replied. ‘They take their orders directly from Calder.’

So, Calder did not want these personnel returned to Earth, and it seemed there was some agreement there. This probably meant they did not think they would do so well under the new regime. She swung back to her palmtop and began doing some checking, searching the local system for data on the personnel concerned and then, upon realizing that very little data was available there, she linked to her data banks down on Earth, loading the list of the Inspectorate staff based here to specialized security searches. Within a few minutes things started being flagged for her attention. She began studying everything thus flagged, while simultaneously relaying this new data to Elkin and her aides.

All the Inspectorate personnel involved came from the environs of Outback spaceport, and were those Messina had originally sent there to prepare the way for him. It all made perfect sense now, and she began to develop some real worries on checking further. The section chiefs had liaised closely with her own security teams prior to her arrival; also an inquiry to databases on Earth revealed that they had all managed to avoid being fitted with strangulation collars, though how was unclear.

‘How many of my security personnel do we have here?’ she asked as she went on to checking readergun protocols aboard the station. It seemed that she did have primacy, so could reactivate and take over the guns in a moment. However, since there had been a lot of construction and reconstruction here, and readerguns had not been considered essential to her purposes, there were huge areas left without coverage – including the large accommodation area where these Inspectorate personnel were housed.

‘Approximately five hundred,’ Elkin replied, now herself looking slightly sick.

‘So we are outnumbered two to one by Inspectorate personnel who were loyal to Messina, and who now seem to have made some sort of a deal with Calder.’

Elkin nodded dumbly.

‘You and Vaughan missed this,’ Serene observed. ‘You missed precisely the kind of situation you were supposed to be looking for.’

It could be that she was being overly paranoid, but that was better than being dead. It seemed likely that the Inspectorate personnel had chosen this place as a refuge, but it might also be because, under Messina, they had seen the main power base shifting off-world, and had decided that it probably wouldn’t be any different under Serene. Quite probably, there were those among them with ambitions, perhaps trying to build themselves a little empire out here, and in Calder they had found someone of similar mind. However, they had all run afoul of Serene’s decision to keep cutting political oversight, even after the large chunk Alan Saul took out of it, and they had also run afoul of her decision to pay a visit. The question now was how they would react.

‘I can only apologize,’ said Elkin, shooting a nervous glance at Sack.

Serene gave a dismissive wave of her hand. This was too serious a situation for her to start killing off essential personnel right now. Maybe later Elkin could pay the price for her lapse.

Serene selected the list of Inspectorate personnel and ran it through another program that gave her a list of their implant codes, which she then fed into the Scour activation program. She could kill all of them this way but, if she did, it would become obvious that the Scour was far too specific.

‘You’ve been feeding this through to Tactical?’

‘I have, ma’am.’ Elkin gestured to one of her blank-faced aides. ‘First assessment is that even if Calder’s retention of these people was not originally done with hostile intent, it will be now. He will know that he has been found out and, due to the consequences of that, Tactical puts a high probability on him making some sort of attack on you. However, he will not move against you until after the Command and Fist have departed under Alcubierre drive.’

Serene said nothing for a moment as she considered that, and realized she had been stupid. Of course her personnel weren’t outnumbered. She nodded as if this was nothing new to her. ‘Because of the troops aboard the Fist, obviously.’

‘Still supposing the likelihood of some sort of attack on you, Tactical advises against making the obvious move of ordering the Fist to dock again and using its troops to negate that potential threat. If the Fist was to return to the station, it seems highly likely that Calder would then realize something is wrong, and act accordingly. His most likely response is to fire the station’s railguns at the Fist, and either disable or destroy it.’

Elkin looked even sicker now – scared to complete her tactical assessment. Serene held up a hand to silence her, then called up a station schematic and noted that the new dock Calder had suggested Clay Ruger’s shuttle should arrive at was without a readergun network, and was quite some distance from both the escape drop-ship and the space-plane docks. She also checked timings and noted that Ruger would be arriving after the Fist and the Command were scheduled to depart.

. . . the likelihood of some sort of attack on you…

Calder possessed his own private army, her undercover operatives here had been removed, Calder’s Inspectorate staff had been hindering her own security staff when, if Calder had wanted to avoid discovery, it would have been better for him to have ordered them to keep their heads down. Now it seemed that Calder had directed Ruger – and consequently herself – to an inter-station shuttle dock without a readergun network. Calder was moving against her, of that she was now certain.

‘So what’s the best Tactical can give me?’ she finally asked.

Elkin swallowed drily before commencing. ‘You can send your security teams against the Inspectorate complement here, which will give you time to get to the drop shuttle and thus get away from the station. But at the same time you must also order Bartholomew to fire on the station to disable its railguns and control infrastructure, otherwise Calder will be able to hit you on the way down. This gives you an approximate sixty per cent chance of escaping alive, though there is an above eighty per cent chance of both the Fist and the Command being disabled.’

Not good enough. Serene coldly contemplated the data available to her. It seemed likely that Calder had planned some sort of attack upon her in this new space dock, once Ruger arrived. She must turn this situation to her own advantage.

‘Vaughan has the usual complement of hardware, I take it?’ she enquired.

‘Enough for a small war,’ Elkin replied, ‘but the Inspectorate personnel aboard will have access to the same sort of hardware.’

‘I don’t know why I bother with Tactical,’ remarked Serene contemptuously. ‘We take them in the space dock.’ She paused reflectively. ‘My security team is kept ready for all circumstances, including vacuum combat. Besides, they will be equipped with VC suits, while I note that, though armoured, the Inspectorate personnel here still wear ordinary uniforms.’

Elkin nodded doubtfully.

‘I take it some of Vaughan’s people are already present in the new dock, to oversee the arrangements for Clay Ruger’s arrival.’

Elkin blinked, rubbed a finger at a menu control located at her temple, and at length replied, ‘Yes, Vaughan has assembled a team there, but station Inspectorate personnel are making all the arrangements.’

Viewing the big desk screen, Serene noted that the tug was no longer firing its main engine, and Earth loomed large behind it and the attached Scourge. Meanwhile, the shuttle was out of view. Despite her suggestion that the Fist and the Command should use the Scourge for target practice, Calder had urged that it be dismantled instead. Yes, a lot of it would be highly radioactive – and therefore only good for scrap – but most of the engines were still fine, including the main one, and the plutonium and uranium from the nuclear arsenal could also be salvaged. Serene studied it for a while longer, but could see no ulterior motive from Calder for recommending salvage. He had obviously still been playing the part of a loyal citizen, while making his own arrangements elsewhere.

Rather than use her palmtop, she summoned up to this same screen a number of internal cam views of the station itself, and quickly located the shuttle dock Ruger would be heading for. The view inside showed a great hall with airlocks running down one side, and two levels of station monorail lines running down the middle. Swarming about the area were armed Inspectorate personnel, as well as numbers of Serene’s own security staff.

‘How many?’ she asked.

‘Two hundred of ours, six hundred of Calder’s people,’ Elkin offered instantly.

Serene continued staring at the screen. She had hoped for an easy option here. She had hoped that the Inspectorate personnel would be wearing their usual uniforms. It would then have been simplicity itself for Vaughan to plant a charge on one of the space doors, and then allow vacuum decompression to deal with her problem. Foolish hope that, because Calder was not so stupid as to allow his people into anywhere as vulnerable as a space dock without the requisite gear. She could now only distinguish his people from her own by the older design of VC suit they wore.

‘Tell Vaughan to get himself and all his team here at once.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Just do as you’re told.’

All her options were running out. If she took Tactical’s advice, she could lose everything: she could lose Alan Saul, she could lose the Gene Bank data – whether acquired from Saul or Ruger – and she could lose her own life.

‘I take it Vaughan is by now aware of the situation?’ she enquired.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Serene nodded, then selected the screen tab on her palmtop for the Scour activation program. For a moment she hesitated, considering adding Calder’s name to the list, but decided against that, before abruptly switching to another screen and sitting back. No, not yet – considering how fast the Scour acted, there was still time, and she needed to think hard about the consequences of taking this step.

Everyone aboard the station would soon realize that the entire Inspectorate complement had died from the Scour. That information would then spread around Earth orbit, and without doubt it would eventually reach Earth. It would then be obvious that the Scour was a lot more specific than previously supposed, that merely air-transmission or some similar form of contagion were unlikely. She would have to concoct some sort of story to cover this outbreak.

Calder…

The man’s main discipline was nano-technology, so surely it would be possible to contrive some way for him to take the blame. This could all be down to an assassination attempt against her and how he used the Scour to remove the personnel protecting her. Yes, something like that should work. There would be loose ends to tie up, but none that could not be neatly knotted by a strangulation collar, bullet or adjustment cell. Perhaps she could also contrive some sort of alliance between Calder and Alan Saul, as that would neatly—

‘Ma’am?’

‘What?’ Serene whirled on Elkin.

‘All your delegates are assembled ready in video conference, and we are currently recording for ETV their ratification of a pardon for all real or imagined crimes committed by Clay Ruger and Pilot Officer Trove,’ she said. ‘It’s being transmitted here right now, and will soon be ready for insertion into the station ETV broadcast.’

Serene stared at her blankly, not quite understanding for a moment. Then it all clicked into place in her mind. She must never forget the importance of ensuring that Clay Ruger actually began transmission of the Gene Bank data.

‘Vaughan also reports that his team is fully in place around you, while Admiral Bartholomew – confirmed by Calder – has tightened his estimate of departure to just one hour’s time.’

‘I see,’ said Serene, wondering where the intervening time had gone.

Ruger’s shuttle should be docking in about three hours, which should allow her enough leeway to have things sorted out and cleared up for his arrival. It wouldn’t do to have hundreds of Scour victims floating around inside the space dock when the ETV broadcast began – therefore Vaughan and his men would have to deal with that.

Serene tapped on the tab of the Scour-activation program, poised a finger over the return key projected on the table before her, hesitating for just a moment as she remembered the first time she had done this and the pompous words she had spoken then to the man Ruger had replaced. She then brought her finger down.

Argus

Acceleration pushed Hannah back into her seat as the new train headed out towards what someone had dubbed the ‘Meat Locker’. This newly built hall was sandwiched within the lattice walls between Arcoplex Two and the Arboretum. The thing was a kilometre long, two hundred metres wide and extended the depth of the gap between the two lattice walls, which was a hundred metres. Down one side was a station into which the vehicle now slowed, throwing Hannah forward against her straps. Once it had stopped, airlock tubes extended from the near wall to each of the three carriages, the tube accessing the rear cargo carriage being oval in cross-section and ten metres across at its widest point. As all these tubes connected, Hannah could hear movement from the rear as robots began unloading the next batch of components for the Meat Locker.

She unstrapped and propelled herself over to the door leading into the nearest airlock tube, checked the ready light, opened the door and passed through. A moment later, she found herself in the new hall itself and looking around. Directly ahead of her the wall was honeycombed, with partially assembled cryogenic pods protruding here and there, with the golden centipedes of Saul’s conjoining robots busily at work on them. Over to her right the more conventional station robots were busy ferrying out the cargo, dispatching crates and empty pods through the air to be fielded by their more up-to-date brethren. There were humans here, too: some of the chipped controlling the older robots, engineers working on individual pods, and at the far end of the wall, beside a pod extending near what she supposed she might call the floor – such nomenclature in zero gravity always being difficult – stood a small group apart. She propelled herself towards them, correcting her trajectory with the wrist impeller of her suit because, despite the place being pressurized, using spacesuits was a precaution all ship’s personnel took in any new builds.

Approaching the group, she slowed and brought herself clumsily face-down towards the floor, but still managed to engage one gecko boot, to secure herself there while she stood properly. One of the figures was without a spacesuit – stripped down to his undershorts while Dr Raiman attached stick-on sensors to his exposed skin. As Hannah walked closer, Da Vinci waved to her cheerfully. She raised her hand in not so cheerful acknowledgement, nodded to Langstrom and the other two officers present, then turned to the remaining individual.

‘So you’ve finally come out of your pit,’ she remarked, glancing round to locate the spidergun, squatting over by the further wall. ‘Why’s that?’

‘To offer moral support,’ Saul replied.

‘It would have to be just that,’ Hannah observed flatly. ‘We mere humans are now expected to govern and police ourselves, which means you’ve effectively washed your hands of us. What’s that decision all about, then? A separation of church and state?’

‘Within the limits and constraints of them being aboard my ship, I have given the people living here more freedom. I shall see, in time, what they do with it.’

‘That’s big of you,’ Hannah snapped, then wished she hadn’t. ‘Anyway, I would have thought, with everything that’s going on, you’d want to stay at the centre, and in utter control.’

‘Generally my location is irrelevant and, anyway, the ship is in no danger right now.’ He paused for a second, his pink eyes blinking. ‘The Vision cannot harm us, and I can get us on the move the moment the other two ships start heading our way.’

‘I detect some doubt.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m just failing to perceive what Galahad hopes to achieve. Unless those two ships have some way of viewing normal space through an Alcubierre warp, and thus tracking us, sending them against us is a futile gesture.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Hannah, studying him more closely.

With the Mach-effect drive operating to keep the ship stable and the EM shield protecting them from the ionization in the flux tube, all radio communications were shut down. Previously this had meant that, without a direct optic connection, Saul would be disconnected from the ship’s systems, but Hannah could see he had used the same work-around as he had employed against Salem Smith on first sending his robots against him. An optic cable extended from the socket in his temple down into the neck ring of his suit, while, attached to the shoulder of his suit, was a flat matt disc with green pin lights flickering and glinting around its rim. He was laser-linked to receivers on the robots here, on his spidergun, and on any other item of equipment that used some form of remote control – and therefore through all of these into the ship’s systems.

Examining him further, she noted other changes, such as the fact that he wasn’t wearing a standard-issue VC suit. His bulked slightly larger, with numerous black boxes attached to its surface; the helmet hanging from his belt had also been redesigned, possessing optic connections all around the neck ring. It seemed that, while holed up in his inner sanctum, Saul had been busy indeed. Then, with a start, she realized that at the base of his neck, small devices had been surgically attached at his carotids, pipes and wires leading from these down inside the suit.

‘Pressure shunts and nutrient feeds,’ she decided.

‘And much else besides,’ he agreed, before turning to glance at Da Vinci, who, held steady by Raiman, was now stepping into the cryogenic pod.

As Saul turned, she spotted another optic connection at the base of his skull, the cable similarly leading down into his suit, but she could hazard no possible reason for it. She, too, glanced at Da Vinci, feeling abruptly at odds with herself. She had come here because she was concerned about him, because she wanted to make one last attempt to dissuade him from trying out this pod, but now all her concern was focused on Saul.

‘You’ve been operating on yourself,’ she said.

He turned back to her, his expression mild. ‘Well, I wasn’t actually holding the scalpel. I just robotized and programmed a combined micro- and macro-surgery, shut down this body of mine and let the surgery proceed.’

‘You should have let me do it,’ said Hannah, feeling both horrified and affronted. ‘I’ll need to run some tests.’

‘You have enough to do,’ he replied, ‘and my health, mental or otherwise, is no longer your concern.’

‘It’s the concern of us all!’ she countered vehemently.

He tilted his head and in that moment she realized that his skin now had a slightly metallic hue which was not due to the lighting here, as she had first assumed.

‘Your concern is irrelevant,’ he stated, the spidergun beyond him suddenly unfolding and becoming more attentive.

Had some fragment of humanity left inside him grown angry with her? Hannah wondered. Or had some risk-assessment program running in a mind that effectively spanned this entire ship calculated an increase in danger to its core; this human body and brain that sat at the centre of Alan Saul like the reptile back-brain sits at the core of all humans? Hannah gazed at him for a while longer, but he showed no human response to such scrutiny.

‘Hi, Hannah,’ called out Da Vinci, his voice sounding slightly slurred, ‘glad you came.’

She switched her attention back to him. He was now lying down inside the pod, and Raiman was beginning to close the lid. She hurried over. ‘Wait!’ But, as she arrived and peered down at him, Da Vinci’s eyes were already closed and he was breathing deeply and steadily.

‘The process has started,’ explained Raiman.

Hannah wanted to tell him to stop the process at once, but knew that would be childish, and effectively beyond her authority. As the lid then closed, she switched her attention to the monitor screen showing all the rhythms of a human body, all slowing down. She noted the abrupt change in the pattern there, just as Da Vinci had predicted, at the moment the pod began to exchange blood for a complex form of antifreeze. Thereafter his core temperature began to drop rapidly.

‘Time to insert it,’ said Raiman. ‘The control systems in the wall need to engage.’

She stepped back as he punched a button on the side of the pod. It began to slide into its hexagonal space in the wall, grotesquely like a paper coffin going into a community digester. If it turned out that this process would kill Da Vinci, then she had already lost him. She wondered where this Meat Locker rated in Saul’s calculations. Would the people aboard be given a choice about going into these pods, or did that decision fall under his remit regarding his own and his ship’s safety? Would it in fact be compulsory?

‘Couldn’t this have waited until we were away from the solar system and well out of danger?’ she asked. ‘We really needed the opportunity to do much more research into it.’

‘Not my decision,’ Raiman replied.

Hannah flicked him an annoyed glance then turned to Saul – but Saul was gone. He must have walked away while she was checking Da Vinci’s monitor. In that moment she realized that while she might indeed have lost Da Vinci, there was also a good chance he would survive. All the same, she had very definitely lost the human being named Alan Saul.

He was gone forever.

‘It’s called the Vision,’ said the copy of the comlifer located aboard the Command, and who now allowed Saul to address him as Chris, ‘because that’s about the limit of its capabilities.’

‘It possesses weapons,’ Saul noted, just as he reached the door leading into his inner sanctum.

‘It does, but you could fry it if it gets any closer.’

That was probably true, though Saul’s main concern had been about its named purpose, which was why, ever since its arrival near Europa, he had switched over to minimal usage of the Mach-effect drive, and was now holding his ship in position using the rim steering thrusters. Just as with the Saberhagens’ weapon, it was best not to apprise the enemy of technologies with tactical relevance, and the Mach-effect drive was certainly that.

In the virtual world he had created, Chris appeared slimmer than the image Saul had seen of him aboard the Command, and he was now clad in a neat suit. This struck Saul as not the usual dress of a robotics engineer but of an Inspectorate executive, a political officer. Saul was now entertaining some suspicions about his new guest, and so decided to discover Chris’s true thoughts.

‘They’re panicking,’ Chris continued. ‘They’ve seen how fast your reconstruction has gone and are worried that you might take off or be too well prepared before their two warships can come after you. I’d bet they’ve moved the Vision closer so as to push you into doing something else that’ll hamper you, just as moving the Command and the Fist out of the construction station made you recall your space planes.’

The explanation was feasible but, as Saul had just told Hannah, Galahad’s overall approach seemed strangely flawed. She must know that he could engage the Rhine drive at any moment and that though the two warships might be able to pursue him along whatever course he chose, they could not know when he was going to stop and change direction, and would therefore not know when to stop their own drives in order to change direction to go after him. Just one course change was needed, and he would be lost in the universe and utterly beyond Earth’s reach.

So he had to be missing something.

Entering his sanctum, the door locks thumping home behind him, and his spidergun settling down like a dog coming home after a lengthy walk, he headed straight for his gimbals chair and quickly strapped himself in, unplugged the optic leading from his temple into his suit, and instead plugged in the one here. There was no interruption in the flow of data, and he was pleased with his trial of his new laser networking device, his life-support suit and the recent upgrade to his human body’s mental function that required that new suit. Now his backups were truly backups – copying everything now running in his skull, in the additional brain matter growing in an artificial cyst in his groin, as well as the terabytes of processing power distributed throughout his suit.

‘I’m not sure I would characterize what they are doing as panic,’ Saul stated, now opening links into the subpersona called Chris and injecting specially designed search engines which, if he wanted to draw similes with living organisms, were less like bloodhounds and more like wolves.

‘What are you doing?’ Chris asked.

‘Getting to the truth,’ Saul replied.

The moment the search engines hit, the image of Chris began screaming, whereupon the virtual world he occupied tore open and flew apart. But how, Saul wondered, could something that was a mere collection of bytes feel pain? Of course, the same logic could be applied to human beings. Were they not just moist collections of biological information? It occurred to him now to wonder – as had been speculated on before by people of a philosophical turn of mind – how many of those around him were actually conscious.

The first truth the engines delivered was that, yes, Chris had been a robotics engineer, until his talent for sucking up to the right people and undermining rivals got him the position of political officer in the robotics factory.

After Saul’s attack on Earth and Galahad’s assumption of power, Chris had tried scrabbling further up the ladder but only managed to annoy someone senior to him. He’d been on his way to adjustment when he was offered an alternative – and he’d grabbed it. Who wouldn’t? But, as a comlifer, first losing any will to live, and then going through the agonizing conditioning process, he wished he had chosen the visit to a white-tiled cell instead.

The next truth was a defining one. This subpersona had so many holes that it was a wonder it had managed to hold itself together. It contained no tactical data of any value to Saul, and some data that was most definitely a plant, like the assertion that the Fist and the Command would not be ready to leave Earth for at least five days. Still, Saul ran all of this ‘Chris’ through filters, pattern-recognition programs, sifted and sieved him to get every last nugget of potentially useful information, then wiped the storage that had contained him, the subpersona expiring with an electronic sigh.

Certain things now seemed plain. Those moving against Saul wanted him to believe that they were desperate; that if he engaged his ship’s Rhine drive all their plans would come to nothing; that the impossible was being demanded of them by the dictator of Earth. And it was all a lie. They had something, some technology or method, to achieve what Galahad wanted. That they had built and were in the process of dispatching those ships indicated this, for Serene Galahad might be a homicidal autocrat, but she wasn’t insane enough to squander so much on a mere folly. The pattern of holes in the knowledge of this Chris also confirmed this. On the surface the memory erasures looked merely rough, but they covered up some very specific deletions.

Human frustration arose inside Saul, instantly banished, then its source abruptly reprogrammed itself to rid him of that particular route towards time-wasting emotion. He could go no further than affirm that his enemies had something extra, and that they knew how he had intended to react simply by running. As he considered this he noted that those he had summoned some time earlier were now arriving at the door leading into his inner sanctum, so he opened it for them.

They entered quickly, arranging themselves about his gimbals chair like alien priests around some technological god. There was no real need for them all to be present, but by summoning them Saul was making a statement both to them and to himself: in the hierarchy of this ship they stood higher than the humans since they were allowed here, while they also remained totally at his beck and call. But it went beyond that: a need for direct contact both in them and in him, to bring clarity and order.

Swinging his chair round in a slow circle, he studied the ten proctors. Over the time since their initiation, they had every one of them changed. They now wore human clothing or vacuum suits of one kind or another to fit their larger forms. This, Saul knew, was so that they did not look quite so alien and threatening to the humans aboard. Many carried devices of their own manufacture, most of which were staffs like the one Judd first constructed, which was packed with electronics and a power source based on the rectifying batteries, and was both a multipurpose tool and a weapon. But the most radical changes were in the minds that Saul sensed floating like satellites around him. Each was a different shape, each had diverged and specialized, yet they remained conjoined – sharing information like a group of servers. They were like one being with ten facets, but also ten experts, each of which could quite comfortably survive on its own. He also now realized that the one that had named itself Paul was their interface with Saul himself. Paul served as the one designated as both their legate and expert as regards Alan Saul.

‘Humans,’ Saul began, switching straight to the concern that had inspired this meeting.

‘Your ship could be more efficient without them,’ Paul replied, ‘but it could also be more efficient without you. It could be more efficient without us and without individual robots and with all its systems automated.’

Saul smiled as he followed this logical chain. ‘Without the arcoplexes and the Arboretum, efficiency would increase. Without the metal of the hull and much of the superstructure, the engines would prove more efficient. The Traveller engine would operate better without having to haul about the Rhine drive, and the Mach-effect drive would be more efficient without having to incorporate both the Rhine drive and the EM shield. The hull would be better without the holes, and could be made smaller if there was less contained inside. In fact, if there was nothing actually inside this ship, there would be no need for a hull at all…’

Stone soup, Saul thought, allowing them to register that.

Seeing, on a virtual level, the ramped-up communication now occurring between the ten minds, he wondered if they were struggling with rhetoric and irony but, no, Paul had started in with the same, so they should all be able to handle it. This communication was of a much higher order.

Saul continued, ‘My initial purpose was based on my genetically based need for safety and survival.’

‘Which you are now transcending,’ Paul observed.

Saul wasn’t so sure about that, but allowed it.

‘Beyond survival, what is my purpose now?’

‘It is whatever you decide.’

‘And the humans?’

‘What you decide.’

Saul felt a moment of chagrin that was immediately tracked down and analysed. He realized he had some difficulty in just asking a simple question because of complicated reasons involving its human source and a growing arrogance within him. He negated those reasons and asked, ‘What do you think?’

The level of communication between the conjoined minds around him suddenly increased, and again Saul resisted the temptation to listen in.

‘We think,’ Paul finally said, ‘that you have already made your decision. By allowing them all to be backed up, you consider their minds something unique and worth preserving and that, when your own survival is not threatened, you will make every effort to do so.’

‘But there’s more,’ Saul said.

‘Yes,’ Paul agreed, ‘because of the problems they represent to you, aboard your ship, you will dispense with them… eventually.’

Saul allowed clarity to banish indecision. Each genetic combination that resulted in a human body was something he could now easily copy, and it was only the minds that were unique, because of their nurture and not their nature. He knew, then, precisely what he would do, once the exigencies of survival had been attended to.

‘But now we have more immediate concerns to consider.’

The proctors were on the move, both physically and mentally; the meeting now over, and their conjoined communications breaking up. Though he was the one who had summoned them here, Saul could not help but feel that he himself had been judged.

‘You cannot run yet,’ Paul opined.

‘Give me your reasoning,’ Saul instructed, to further clarify his thoughts.

‘They will have developed some means of knocking out the drive warp,’ replied Paul. ‘And it will be located aboard the Vision, as well as the other two ships.’

‘Judd?’ Saul enquired.

‘Either a near-c railgun, or some other sort of high-speed missile or some way of disrupting space-time,’ replied the more practically minded proctor.

‘Disrupting space-time on that level is beyond even me,’ Saul replied, ‘so I doubt they have anything like that. One must also factor in their proximity.’ Was he merely being arrogant? No, not about the space-time disruption. However, after seeing those test shots directed at Earth’s moon, it seemed likely they’d found a way to fire nuclear missiles, at railgun speeds, that would deliver the impact required to knock out his warp. Thereafter they could just keep knocking it out until the other two ships arrived. He needed to deal with the Vision immediately, as he’d suspected.

‘Supposing our warp is knocked out,’ said Saul, ‘they will then try to knock out our vortex generator.’

‘The Mach-effect drive is distributed,’ said Judd. ‘As long as it is supplied with power, the drive can be maintained through constant attention.’

‘It can be used to interfere with their targeting,’ Paul added. ‘We calculate an over eighty per cent chance, on probable attack patterns, that, armoured as it is now, the vortex ring can be kept safe, though supporting infrastructure is certain to be damaged.’

The Mach drive could be used to help Argus dodge bullets, Saul translated, and the armour would stop anything that got too close.

Already Saul had called up the schematic in his mind and was having his robots collect essential materials and components and dispatching them to critical junctures all around the hull of the ship. How unsurprising, he felt, that the critical sectors numbered ten, and that his own communication with the robots might be compromised during any conflict.

‘So you know what to do,’ he stated.

Led by Judd, the proctors headed for the door. Each would control a group of robots, their task being to keep the Mach-effect drive operating. As they left, he considered what must be their point of view. If he deemed the humans aboard an encumbrance he was prepared to be rid of, how then did he view the proctors? In the end, though they had promised to serve him, how highly did they rate their own survival?

‘I will do the right thing,’ he said to Paul, the last proctor to leave.

‘Of course you will, Alan Saul,’ Paul replied, ‘by your own definition of “right”.’

Somewhat uncomfortable with that notion, Saul waited, watching through cams as the proctors rapidly reached their designated locations, where robots gathered around them, clinging to the inner skeleton of the hull. Once they were in position, he considered his own options, deciding in an instant that now it was time for him to change, at least, his own approach.

It was time to take this fight to them.

Even as he made his plans, he sent a warning. Roused from slumber, Le Roque pulled on a ship suit and stumbled from the cabin he had reoccupied in the relocated Tech Central and, not bothering to attach the fones he had seemed reluctant to abandon, began issuing his instructions through his implant – instructions dealing with the human population, which was now his responsibility. Throughout the station, work crews began locking down their latest tasks and heading back to their accommodation, while the robots folded themselves around beam junctures or anywhere else suitable nearby. A further signal transmitted through kilometres of optic went to a couple of explosive charges fixed on the two booster tanks acting as anode and cathode in the flux tube, and bright explosions severed the cables from their anchor points. Since so much cable lay outside, the feed from the tube did not drop immediately, but gradually diminished as the cables wound in. Meanwhile, Saul started up two new fusion reactors and four fission reactors utilizing radioactives mined from the rubble pile, then prepared the Traveller engine to fire.

‘Make sure of your weapons,’ he instructed the Saberhagen twins, even though he felt sure of them himself, and could take control of them in an instant.

‘Are they coming?’ asked Brigitta.

‘No, not yet,’ Saul replied, ‘but they obviously want a war, so that’s what I’m going to give them.’