DAY 2

 

 

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal

June 23rd

Thank Heaven that’s over! And we can see daylight again.

Such crises are alarming, and worryingly common. This is without doubt the most dangerous planet I have ever studied.¹

For obituaries of the fifteen deceased, click here. What idiot left the roof open? There is a theory that it was a computer malfunction, but of course that’s preposterous; Juno never malfunctions. Maybe we have a saboteur in our midst? Far more likely.

No matter; I’ve been in this kind of situation before.² And I’m acutely aware there is nothing I can contribute when it comes to military/civil war/rebellion against the Galactic Corporation stuff; but fortunately there are other, equally important, things to think about, where my expertise does count for something. Namely, scientific discovery!

I have spent the first three hours of the day since 5 a.m. reviewing the results of the abortive xeno autopsy. We have established that this specimen is either a) a species or subspecies of the Godzilla genus which differs radically from the Godzilla helmsi that we dissected twelve weeks ago or b) belongs to a rival genus that mimics the form of the Godzilla but has a plant origin not an animal origin, or c) is an animal in a symbiotic relationship with a plant which provides the animal with skin in return for nutrients, or d),³ whatever d) might be.

My initial theory which I expounded to the group in the bar afterwards, namely that the cells of the dead creature could wilfully recombine in new forms, giving it the ability to reincarnate as any kind of creature it chose to be, proved to be fanciful, and I was much mocked for it.⁴ Hmmm.⁵ Although it’s certainly the case that every cell in the creature’s body remains alive and viable even after the death of the larger organism. This raises the possibility that all large animals on New Amazon are gestalt organisms built up of swarms of individual cells acting in concert, like an ant colony on legs. However, more of this anon.⁵⁶

I have now decided, in the absence of any intelligent contributions from my esteemed colleagues on this matter, to abandon our existing taxonomy and to create three new Kingdoms. These are: Animaliaplantae, Plantaeanimalia, and Kingdomshifters, which I don’t know the Latin for. This avoids the annoying ambiguities entailed in describing creatures which have both animal and plant characteristics. I shall write more on this in due course.

For the moment, I would catalogue yesterday’s creature thus:

 

Mimic-Monster

Kingdom: Animaliaplantae (aka “Animalish”, a neologism of my
                        own, which I rather like)

Phylum:        Chordata

Subphylum:        Vertebrata

Class:                      Reptiliacorticis⁷

Order:                          Duocorus⁸

Genus:                             Mimicus

Species:                                Mimicus godzilla

 

I am assembling the charred pieces of the dead creature and hope to have some firm conclusions within a . . . oh bloody hell, what is it now?

Sorcha had been put in charge of the dawn raids. A dozen Technicians were dragged from their beds, naked or in body-hugging pyjamas, and hurled into the white-noise room. Forensic tests of all the equipment were made, and Sorcha had a team of Soldiers inspecting all the dome-camera footage for evidence of espionage.

The results were negative. No one had sabotaged the dome; none of the Techies confessed; two of them lost their minds and had to be relegated to low-level Slave status — dumb servants, with all the legal rights of robots, namely none. Sorcha felt guilty about this. Good Techies were at a premium, though she always marvelled at how badly these genius types coped with a bit of basic torture.

Sorcha’s report attributed the dome failure to General System Error, a technical euphemism for Act of God.

“Juno, can you shed any light on this?” Sorcha asked.

One of the Techies had told her that a computer virus sent from Earth and affecting Juno herself might have been the cause of the mishap. Sorcha had no idea if that was credible.

“No, I cannot.”

“Did you cause the dome breach?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Juno. “Last night — well, I have to admit. It’s a blank. I can’t remember anything.”

Puzzled, Sorcha reported to Commander Martin. “It may be a computer virus,” she said. “Perhaps from Earth. If so, Juno is compromised.”

“That’s impossible,” he told her, scathingly.

“How’s it going?” Professor Helms said gently.

“Hmm?”

“What?”

“The dissection.”

“What?”

“The —”

“Ah!”

“Oh! You mean — oh no! No.”

Helms smiled.

“We haven’t —”

“We didn’t —”

“It’s OK,” said Helms, amused. “What you’re doing is OK. On the squeamish side, but I’m fine with it.”

Dr William Beebe and his wife Dr Mary Beebe were meant to be analysing the morphology of the Butterfly-birds (Avespapilio parasitum) taken from the Mimic-Godzilla’s intestines. But Mary couldn’t bear the idea of dissecting these beautiful creatures — even if they were stitched up again afterwards. So the two of them had managed to construct a wind tunnel tomography scanner, using ultrasound bursts to build up a picture of the organs and muscles of one of the birds as it flew into a whirlwind of air.

“Beautiful,” murmured Helms, entranced.

“Yes, but,” mused William, “why? Why do they fly at all?”

“Indeed,” said Mary.

“Since they don’t need to,” William added, unnecessarily.

Mary sighed; and William repented of his unnecessary words.

Helms realised: these two didn’t fully realise he was there, so lost were they in their rapport.

“Perhaps,” Mary continued, “they live in the organism until it dies then they have to fly long distances to reach the next organism?”

“The jungle is busy enough,” Helms argued. “They could walk a few yards and hop on another Godzilla without any trouble.”

“True,” said Mary, blinking as she absorbed the fact that Helms was talking to her, and actually talking sense. “And of course,” she added, forlorn at the abrupt death of her hypothesis, “the wings are a liability for creatures living inside a host body. They must have to keep them furled up.” Mary illustrated by hunching her arms and body to illustrate how the minuscule Butterfly bird must spent its day within the stomach and colon of vast predators like the Godzilla.

“And yet,” William reasoned, “they must long to live thus.” He raised his arms and flapped around the lab, to illustrate the freedom and exhilaration of being a Butterfly bird that is able to fly through the sky.

Helms stifled a grin. He loved being with William and Mary; and he was enjoying getting away from the burdens of command.

“Do such creatures ‘long’?” said Mary reprovingly.

“Does the leopard love to run?”

“Well, yes.”

“Watch.”

William took a jar containing a dozen Claw-Scarabs (Ungula scarabus, flying insects a little like beetles but with claws on every section of their segmented bodies). He clipped the jar to the wind tunnel and slipped the lid off. The Claw-Scarabs flew inside and hovered in mid-air near the Butterfly-Bird.

Within moments the Butterfly bird had tilted its body and lunged. One Claw-Scarab vanished into its beak. The others flew wildly up and down, but the Butterfly bird was remorseless and swift. It could turn its head 360 degrees in mid-air so its wings could still capture the lift from the wind jets as it swivelled its head and ate. And it could also plunge and swoop and soar with astonishing speed. Within twenty seconds all the Claw-Scarabs had been devoured and the Butterfly bird resumed its solitary lonely flight in the wind tunnel.

“Why would a creature capable of such effortless predation,” argued William, “choose to live up a dinosaur’s arse?”

“Perhaps —” Helms began.

“What a stupid bloody question! You’re much too philosophical,” Mary reproved her husband.

“And you have no soul,” William chided.

“That’s because there’s no such thing as ‘soul’,” Mary mocked, mercilessly.

“True!”

William made a silly face, to acknowledge he’d lost the argumentative point.

Mary laughed, a lovely bell-peal laugh that echoed around the lab, until the sound of the emergency siren dimmed her good humour.

“I’m so sorry,” said Helms, who was enjoying himself enormously. “I fear we need to suit up.”

“Yet another attack by alien monsters?” said William.

“Or perhaps an act of sabotage. Or, conceivably, a rebellion. Never a dull moment, is there?” Helms said, still smiling, and he tapped the code to open up the secure wardrobe where the body armours were kept.

Sorcha liked an enemy she could see, and confront, and kill. The idea that a virus from Earth might have affected the Mother Ship computer infuriated her. Because she knew that a bunch of Earth rebels who were gazillions of miles away and who had the temerity to fight via impenetrable computer codes could never be killed by her Soldiers, or hanged, or defeated by military means.

However, Commander Martin remained adamant that the rebels must be on Xabar. His protocols told him that no one, and nothing, could hack into Juno, or the Earth remote computer, or corrupt the QB link.

So the interrogations continued. Another Techie lost his mind. No information was gleaned. The mood among the Xabar populace was becoming bleak. Professor Helms sent her repeated memos throughout the day protesting at her iniquitous treatment of “his” people.

And finally the day was over — Sorcha was off-duty, and Major Johnson was in operational command.

So Sorcha decided to take some R & R, and went to the Battle Simulator Room, to fight some simulated battles. Sorcha always found this therapeutic — she was killed twice and it sent a shudder of pleasure running through her.

And now, Sorcha was being confronted by an artillery attack by a race of armoured aliens with laser-beam eyes and about to take evasive action in her One-Jet when —

The missiles disappeared. The aliens disappeared. Her One-Jet disappeared. Sorcha found herself sitting in a leather chair with a virtual helmet on. She took the helmet off, and found her fellow Soldiers were similarly baffled.

“Juno,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

No answer.

“Juno,” she said, “please report.”

Nothing. Just silence. “Major Molloy to Major Johnson, what’s happening?” Nothing. “Major Molloy to Commander Martin, please acknowledge,” she subvoced. Total silence. She tried subvocing the Soldier next to her.

“What the fuck?” she said.

“The MI network is down, “the Soldier said, in his real voice.

“How can that —”

At that moment the alarms went, and a voice — she recognised Ben Kirkham’s flat, droning tones — was heard over the never-before-used intercom system:

“Alpha Alert. We have a total systems failure. We have no communications, no link with Earth, and the MI frequencies have been blocked. And the worst news of all,” Ben continued, grimly, “is that we’ve lost touch with Juno. The Mother Ship is no longer returning our calls.”

Xabar was a city run by dumb robots. The airconditioning was controlled by electronic sensors, the hydroponics by simple feedback circuits. And the Doppelganger Robots — all of which could be controlled by human minds when required — were most commonly used as low-grade machines with the simplest of cybernetic circuits.

But the brains and soul of Xabar was Juno; a quantum computer of almost infinite power which monitored every aspect of the city’s life. If a holographic sparrow flickered, Juno would know about it. She gave instructions to the dumb Doppelgangers, she kept the air fresh and fragrant, she ensured the animals in the city zoo were safe and content, and she was the conduit for all communications with Earth and the other Settled Planets and for all MI communciations between Soldiers and Scientists and Techies. If you wanted to make a holographic videocall to your brother on a planet fifty light-years away, Juno would set it up. If you wanted to download data from the up-to-date Galapedia, Juno would source it and collate it and check all the references.

Everyone spoke to Juno, every hour of every day: “Juno, can you check this?” “Juno, can you do this?” “Juno, I have a problem.” “Juno, please advise.”

It was unprecedented for a Mother Ship computer to break communications.And for the citizens of Xabar, the loss of Juno was emotionally and psychologically devastating.

“Juno, are you there?”

“Juno, can you advise me on my data?”

“Juno, what should I watch on television tonight?”

“Juno, can you make me a playlist of blues and nufunk that will make me pleasantly melancholy?”

“Juno?”

“Juno, are you there?”

“Juno?”

“Juno!”

“Juno!!!!!!”

Sorcha wondered if an armed rebellion was imminent. The thought filled her with cold joy. Any rebellion was bound to fail — her Soldiers would easily massacre any insurgent Scientists.

But that scenario was, she knew, unlikely. Mass rebellion was a no-brain strategy — the history books were littered with stories of massacres in which Soldiers and DRs had crushed and slaughtered would-be rebels. These days the rebels were smarter; they knew that isolated acts of sabotage were more effective, and harder to stamp out. And indeed, some argued, though Sorcha vemenently disagreed, that minor acts of sabotage should be tolerated as a way of letting resentful citizens blow off steam. It was, according to this soft-headed neo-liberal view, the price you paid for tyranny.

“Reboot complete, all systems fully functional,” said a voice in her head.

“Juno?” said Sorcha.

“Django, can you hear me?” Helms said.

A long pause followed. Then Django’s voice spoke in the Professor’s inner ear:

“Acknowledged, Professsor. Good news. We’ve now got contact with Juno again The MI network is working. All systems have been restored.”

Helms realised that he could actually hear his own heart pounding. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ve just been speaking to Commander Martin. But my worry is — what the hell has been — I mean, have you figured out what the problem was?” he added, in an attempt at a calm and casual tone.

“No.”

“Did you run a diagnostic?”

“Juno won’t let me.”

“So is it possible,” said Helms, holding in his terror, “that it was Juno who opened the dome? And Juno who sabotaged the post-mortem? Is she acting against us?”

“Hardly likely,” Django said, with an attempt at reassurance.

“Harumph,” Helms snarled, and he cut the MI link.

“Helms?” Sorcha barked into her MI.

“Not now, Major.”

“We need to talk.”

“I’m dealing with —”

“The Commander is furious. He doesn’t understand how Juno could have —”

“I couldn’t give a damn what the Commander thinks.”

“Professor!”

“Sorcha, you need to do something for me.”

Sorcha hesitated. “What?”

“Do you have your body armour on?”

“Not any more, no. Once the emergency was —”

“Then get it back on. And tell all your Soldiers to get armoured up. The full complement, I don’t want anyone on rest break. And tell them to be prepared.”

“Be prepared for what?”

“You’ll see.”

Sorcha sat in her control chair, deeply worried. The Professor was famous for his dithery, amiable calm; but the man she had just spoken to was in a state of blind panic. He must, she realised, have come to the same conclusion that she had just come to.

They were at war with Earth.

“Major Molloy to all units,” she subvoced, to access her secure channel, then: “All Soldiers, I’m restoring a state of Alpha Alert, get back in your armour.”

Helms ran down the corridor and found his way blocked by a swarm of DRscalpels. He moved towards them; they swarmed a bit more. He was suddenly convinced they would kill him if he attempted to pass.

He turned around, and walked slowly back to his cabin. Behind him, the DRscalpels made an eerie hissing noise. It felt as if they were mocking him.

“What the hell are you playing at, Major?” said Commander Martin over Sorcha’s MI.

“I’m following Professor Helms’s request, sir.”

“Why? What has he told you?”

“Nothing,” Sorcha admitted.

Mia Nightingale enjoyed being in the locker room when the Soldiers stripped out of their body armour. She savoured the sight of their naked bodies, their powerful muscles, the stench of sweat and the raw physicality of these trained killers.

And of course the locker-room scenes were highly popular on the soft porn and warrior-porn sites, and Mia usually got a kickback from pirate sales of the downloads.

But that wasn’t why she enjoyed these moments. It wasn’t sexual; rather, she found a great purity in these scenes. They were moving tableaux of warriors at their most vulnerable.

And she marvelled at the power and the beauty of these Soldiers’ bodies. They were trained for combat, bred for combat, genetically engineered for combat. All of them — the men, the women, and the two hermaphrodites, Tonii and Maria — all of them had bodies like gods and goddesses, marked with scars and fissures, and ornamented with tattoos of remarkable variety and beauty.

She moved around the Soldiers as they took their body armour off, capturing each instant with her hand-held cam. She was so taken for granted now that the Soldiers barely registered her presence.

“Go on, take a close look,” Sergeant Anderson suggested, as she moved for a close-up of the naked warrior queen tattoo on his taut, chiselled abs.

“Yeah,” said Mia, unsettled at the tattoo, as she realised that the naked warrior queen had been beheaded. It made her feel queasy.

“All Soldiers, I’m restoring a state of Alpha Alert, get back in your armour,” said Sorcha’s voice crisply over the MI.

Helms walked to his cabin on wobbly legs. He saw a silver Humanoid DR and felt a lurch of panic, but forced himself to stay calm.

The DR was staring at him with its blank metal eyes. “What are your duties?” Helms barked at it, but the DR didn’t answer.

“Helms to Ben Kirkham,” Helms subvoced, “can you run a systems check on —”

“Time to die, Professor,” the DR said, with a leering smile. Helms swiftly drew his plasma pistol and the DR raised its own plasma gun and held it to Helms’s temple, and Helms felt his stomach turn over.

Then the DR lowered its gun. “Is something wrong, Professor?” it asked, in its robot flat tones.

“No. I’m fine. Just . . .” Helms looked at the gun in his hand. “Just checking my gun is charged.”

“Professor, it’s Ben here, can I help?”

“No I’m —” Helms said incoherently, as the DR held out its hand to him.

“Let me,” it said, and the DR took the gun off him, thrust the gun butt into a hole in its chest, and charged it. Then the DR handed the gun back.

“I’ve added some explosive shells,” the robot-mode DR said helpfully.

Helms sat at his desk. He took a deep breath.

Then he conjured up his virtual screen.

He typed his encrypted password in mid-air and an image of New Amazon appeared before him.

“Helms, this is Commander Martin.”

“Not now.” Helms clicked his MI off.

The door of his cabin flew off. The DRscalpels flew in. They aimed their laser beams at him and —

— exploded in mid-air. Helms had primed his plasma security beams; they blew the dumb robot tools out of the air.

He continued typing passcodes, a long series of encrypted codes that led him to the final screen which blazed violently at him, and then he typed the launch codes for the missiles and authenticated them with a retinal scan.

A signal was transmitted over Helms’s private and secret radio channel, via his MI, and a dozen missiles were primed, and then fired out of a buried silo deep in the jungle.

The flotilla of missiles flew through the air, cutting through the flocks of New Amazonian birds that cluttered the air, and continued on a course that led towards the domed city.

Helms watched it all on his virtual screen. Each missile carried a camera and dozens of missile-view images danced in the air in front of him.

And, after a few minutes, the missiles were soaring high in the air above Xabar. The sky was dark with chaff and anti-missile missiles thrown up by the dome’s automatic security systems, and the sky was white with explosions, but then the remaining missiles, soared down fast and struck the still-intact inner dome of Xabar and shattered it in a million pieces.

The explosion was deafening.

Sorcha was almost thrown out of her control chair by the explosion that rocked the dome. The EVACUATE alarm began to ring.

“What’s happening?” she said into her MI, but once again there was no response.

Then there was a whirring noise and, in her head, she heard Helms’ voice, oddly distorted. “Alpha Alert, Alpha Alert, we’re being attacked by Juno. Repeat, Juno has gone rogue. Evacuate. Treat all Doppelgangers as potential enemy targets. Get your armour on, seize your weapon, head for the AmRover bay. And do it now. Run!”

“What the hell is going on now?” screamed Commander Martin.

“Repeat, Juno is rogue, Juno is rogue.”

Chaos descended upon Xabar. Alarms whined and flashed.

In the Rack Room, the DRs began to stir. Eyes opened. Arms twitched. Silver bodies stood, and moved away from the confining racks.

Plasma cannons were, unnecessarily, locked and loaded.

The DRs began to walk.

Terry Miller was a xenobiologist of forty years’ experience. He was surprised to hear a faint padding sound, the unmistakable noise of DRs walking. He glanced up and saw twenty DRs enter the corridor ahead of him.

“What’s going —” he began to say, and then the plasma cannons fired.

Michael Corden was peering at the image of a New Amazonian plant cell through a microscope when he heard a clattering noise in the hall. He was too preoccupied to look up. He had already disconnected his MI, and had doggedly ignored all the various commotions that had been attempting to ruin his day, such as the EVACUATE alarm. These emergency drills were becoming a —

A plasma blast blew his legs off. Michael felt dizzy, and wondered what had just happened, and then —

Dr Alan McCoy and four other Scientists had been working in the Plant Rooms, and all of them had body armour on when the doors were smashed open. Alan, who was justifiably impressed at his own speed and quasi-military discipline in responding to the alarms, smiled when two Humanoid DRs strode in.

“What does Helms mean when he says that Juno has —” Alan began, and then he realised the DRs were about to shoot him, and his three colleagues.

“Ah, f —” he managed to say before he died.

All around Xabar, Scientists were confronted by murderous DRs in all their varied forms — Humanoids, Drones, Cleaners, Scalpels, Cranes and Jibs.

The Dormitory Wings were invaded by DRdrones.

The Recreation Areas were filled with Humanoid DRs on the march.

The shopping malls were hosed with plasma beams fired by robot Guns; DRbombs exploded in the swimming pools; grenades were hurled by serving robots into school buildings.

There were fifty Humanoid DR bodies in the Rack Room, though most of the time they were hardly used. But today, all the silver-skinned Doppelganger Robots were out, padding near-silently, staring with their silver eyes, looming tall. And they were joined in their stately deadly tread by all the other dangerous DRs from the storage basements — the semi-brained Rockets, Guns, and Missiles, which flew beside and behind and in front of the Humanoids like the weapons of some invisible ghost army.

And all these robot brains were inhabited by the multi-tasking quantum-computer brain of Juno, which had now had its orders: kill everyone in Xabar.

And so the Doppelangers did as they were instructed, efficiently and methodically.

They killed, and they killed, and they killed . . .

Plasma blasts ripped through flesh, grenades were hurled, DRscalpels dissected and flayed all who came in attacking distance.

Security doors locked shut, trapping Scientists and Soldiers in killing zones. Guns flew into the Earth Aviary Restaurant, firing bursts of plasma energy, shredding tables and cups and saucers and people. Within minutes, the room was full of blood and charred corpses as the virtual birds flew blindly around.

And meanwhile, the hardglass dome of Xabar had been shattered utterly by the missile strike. A wind swept through Xabar and many were caught up and hurled high into the air, crashing up into the Canopy, before plunging downwards to their deaths. The flash of plasma fire lit up the black night. The screams of dying men and women almost drowned the howling of the insects in the jungle beyond.

It was a massacre, and a disaster, and it came as a total shock to almost everyone. One moment the Scientists were cataloguing their results and preparing their experiments; the next they were caught up in a ghastly bloodbath.

Sorcha jogged down the corridor and found her way blocked by corpses.

“Major Molloy to Commander Martin, where do I go?”

“Just evacuate, Major.”

“Where’s the battle, Commander?”

“Evacuate, I’ll take it from here.”

Sorcha took a deep breath. She was desperate for battle. She could taste her own death, it was like eating her tongue.

But orders were orders. She jogged to the nearest evacuation chute and plunged inside.

After the emergency alarm had proved to be a malfunction, Private Tonii Newton had returned to the hot tub in the spa. He basked in the hot waters, allowed jets of steam to relax his muscles, and savoured being in his own body.

Moments later, he got Sorcha’s strange order to get battle-ready, so with a curse he left the spa waters and put on his battle armour. Then he sat by the pool, body-armoured up, and waited for further instructions. This, he reflected, was going to be one of those days.

Then the explosion hit.

Torrents of water went hurling upwards and descended in a wet blow. He was swept off his feet, but got up again in moments.

“Private N 47 reporting, sitrep please, Control.”

There was no response from Juno Control. Then Tonii heard Helms’s voice over his MI:

“We’re being attacked by Juno. Repeat, Juno has gone rogue. Evacuate. Treat all Doppelgangers as potential enemy targets. Get your armour on, seize your weapon, head for the AmRover bay. And do it now. Run!”

Tonii heard the faintest of noises and threw a flash grenade long and high and it hit the Humanoid DR that was entering the spa. The explosion blew the creature backwards and Tonii was running. He reached the corridors and saw two unarmoured Soldiers in a firefight with a Humanoid DR and two DRscalpels. Suddenly they started screaming and their bodies opened up like fruit being peeled from the inside. Tonii sprayed the DR with plasma fire, then switched to a hail of smart bullets, which burrowed into then exploded inside the mid-air DRscalpels.

Then Tonii ran down the corridor. He saw two Scientists, in their blue body armour, emerge from a lab, clutching plasma rifles to their bodies as if they were Christmas presents. To his surprise they were chatting to each other cheerfully, showing no hint of anxiety.

“We should, I suspect, be swift,” the male Scientist, who Tonii recognised as William Beebe, unhurriedly suggested.

“I don’t consider I was dawdling!” his wife — Mary? — rebuked him.

Tonii beckoned impatiently and William and Mary Beebe followed him.

He walked fast, eyes and ears attuned, firing bursts of plasma into the ceiling whenever he heard the distant vibration of a DR on the floors above. They reached the evacuation chute, and William clambered in and vanished from sight. A few moments later Mary followed and tumbled downwards. Tonii glanced around. Two red-and-black-armoured Soldiers appeared round the corner of the corridor, one with an arm missing. Tonii beckoned them to join him, but the Soldiers vanished in a mist of blood as a DR plasma blast incinerated them. Tonii hurled himself into the evacuation chute.

He fell face downward, down the narrow pipe, his rifle screeching against the tough metal. Then he landed with a thump in the AmRover bay to be confronted by the barrels of a dozen rifles.

“Private N 47, password Andromeda,” he shouted via his helmet mike and was hustled away from the chute by Soldiers.

The AmRover bay was crowded and bloodied. The gates were open and a packed AmRover was driving out.

“The DRs have the second and third floors,” said a Soldier, and then a flock of DRscalpels flew out of the chute and the bay was lit with the flares of controlled plasma energy that ate the metal monsters with heat beyond heat.

“Anyone know what’s going on?” said Tonii.

“Juno’s gone rogue.”

“Not possible.” But of course it was possible.

Tonii thought about all the likely explanations for Juno going rogue. It couldn’t be rebels, he decided — no mere rebel could subvert the Earth Computer, or sabotage Juno. So that meant it had to be Earth humans playing games, again. Murdering and pillaging, as they had done so many times before. Massacring an entire community of people, just for the hell of it.

Once again.

Tonii waited, in line, as the AmRovers were loaded up. He thought about a galactic civilisation where murder was considered to be a sport, and his soul was rent with pain.

Professor Helms ran fast and clumsily down the corridor in his blue body armour, escorted by three Soldiers running at full tilt.

He was astonished at the horrors all around him. The DRs had run amok. There were bodies everywhere. He hadn’t expected this.

“Professor, we need you out of there now,” said a voice in his head. It was Commander Martin, over the MI-radio link.

“This is madness,” Helms told him, desperately. “I can’t believe what’s happening . . . this should be . . .”

“Get him out of there please,” said the Commander’s voice, and the Soldiers picked Helms up and threw him down a chute.

When he landed, strong hands grabbed him and picked him up.

“Are you wounded?” said a familiar voice. He looked up, and saw it was Sorcha.

Helms felt a sudden, unexpected lurch of delight at seeing her alive.

The first ten minutes of the attack were carnage, in which the DRs killed and maimed with callous efficiency.

The eleventh minute was when the Soldiers fought back.

Commander Martin was in his office, surrounded by virtual screens, which gave him a second-by-second visual account of the fighting. His door was bomb-proof, the computer program he was running superseded the Juno programs, and he was in full body armour.

He saw twelve Soldiers engaged in a bitter hand-to-hand fight with the main body of the Humanoid DR forces, in the corridor that led to the Green Area evacuation chutes. He issued a silent prayer, and blew up the corridor. Twenty DRs were incinerated, plus twelve of his own people. He breathed a swift subvocal prayer: They gave their lives, in Glory. Then he carried on the fight.

Cameras buried in the walls and ceilings gave him a total sweep of every part of Xabar. He saw a flock of DRscalpels heading down a corridor, and fired the laser beams hidden in the cameras and twenty or more were blown out of the air.

He could see DRtanks and Humanoids lying in wait outside the AmRover Bays. He marked the area on the screen with a red circle, and pulled down a missile strike. Concealed missile silos hurled nil-brain rockets — not connected to the Juno mainframe — as deadly rain upon the would-be ambushers.

And he still had a hundred and fifty or so Soldiers inside Xabar, fighting with all their skill and courage.

Commander Martin was a new breed of Soldier — an academic and a thinker. But he was also a veteran of a dozen xeno-wars. He had fought silicon aliens and spacefaring aliens and Van Neumann machines built by aliens rendered extinct a billion years or more ago. And he’d spent years war-gaming a scenario in which the CSO used the Doppelganger Robots to kill his own people. It was, after all, given that merciless bureaucrat’s track record, a pretty likely scenario.

So Commander Martin felt more than ready for this conflict. The Doppelganger Robots were tough, powerful, heavily armed and fast — since they were being controlled by the super-swift computer mind of Juno. But Martin’s Soldiers were men, and they were women (and indeed, two of them were both), and war was in their blood.

Martin’s hands moved swiftly on the virtual joysticks, he clicked bombs to explode, he barked instructions and sitreps to his troops via their secure short-range radio link, and he killed robot fucker after robot fucker after robot fucker, with glee.

The Soldiers split up according to pre-ordained and memorised orders into two packs, the Bodyguards and the Kill the Bastards. The Bodyguards swept through all the labs, scooping up Scientists and guarding them and hurling them down evacuation chutes into the AmRover Bays where other Bodyguards were waiting to protect them and get them out of Xabar.

The Kill the Bastards had the best job; they got to fight. They fought in Fives, tightly knit units who trained together and whose reflexes had merged so that they functioned almost as a single entity.

Two Soldiers in each Five were Berserkers. Their job was to keep up a continual hail of covering fire against whatever enemy they faced. They wore heavy body armour with no force field, their arms were adapted to serve as plasma guns, they could also fire grenades or mortars, they could even fire explosive shells from their breastplates.

A third Soldier acted as the Sniper, and this was their ace in the hole. Snipers wore a lightly armoured reflective suit that made him or her close to invisible. They carried a laser pistol in one hand and a smart rifle firing three-inch nuclear bombs in the other. When the Berserkers launched their frenzied attacks on an enemy, the Sniper slipped along with them, impossible to see, rolling and ducking and diving, firing precision shots at the enemy’s vulnerable points.

The DRs, however, had no vulnerable points. Their armour was impervious to an ordinary plasma blast. Bullets bounced off them. And they were fast, fast enough to dodge a missile fired at point-blank range.

But they lacked intelligence. The DR robot brain was a sad and simple thing, able to initiate only the very simplest of actions, but for most of the time the DRs were controlled remotely by humans, or, as now, by Juno, a quantum-computing AI of near-infinite capability.

So in this particular war the Sniper’s role was to break the Juno connection, with carefully judged electromagnetic pulses that, for four or five seconds, broke the beaconband link to the Mother Ship.

The battle raged. For ten minutes, the Humanoid DRs swaggered swiftly from room to room, incinerating all within with their plasma guns and energy balls. But then, in the eleventh minute, the Fives struck back. Berserkers fired vast sheets of energy while emitting ultrasonic and subsonic and sonic blasts to disorientate, while the Snipers rolled and weaved and ducked amongst them, firing electromagnetic pulses at the head of the DRs.

Every successful headshot stopped the DR in its tracks, just for a few moments. And in that brief window of time the fourth member of the Five stepped forward — the One Sun. The One Sun was a Soldier wearing a body armour that was built around a gun, a portable energy cannon of exceptional power, based around a cold-fusion generator that in a single focused beam could in a few seconds emit a huge blast of energy — allegedly, as much power as the Earth Sun generates in a single hour.

And that, the super-gun, that was the One Sun.

Energy, screaming, balls and trails of fire, rolling bodies, ceilings crashing in, silvery monsters flitting like deadly moonbeams out of the way of explosive shells, and suddenly the pause, the one still beat, as the Doppelganger Robot stood stunned and the One Sun fired the plasma cannon. Whoosh.

The flare of the One Sun was intense, and focused. The Doppelganger Robot burned with an awesome heat and was gone. And then the air itself turned white as a pillar of raw energy soared upwards, upwards, searing the air in an energy-tornado that cut effortlessly through the Canopy and rocked and billowed the clouds and carried on upwards until it seemed to be be seeking to touch the sun, until finally the energy liberated by the One Sun began to slowly dissipate in space.

Then, back on the ground, the One Sun was reloaded by the fifth member of the team, the Bat Carrier, who carried the team force field, and the replacement BBs. One 20 cm x 10 cm-sized Bostock battery contained enough energy to fire a single round from the One Sun. The Bat Man carried fifty of them, clad in body armour like an armadillo.

Energy, screaming, balls and trails of fire, rolling bodies, ceilings crashing in, silvery monsters flitting like deadly moonbeams out of the way of explosive shells, One Sun. Whoosh.

Then the Bat Man helped the One Sun reload, and it all began again.

Professor Helms sat in the AmRover, longing to escape. He was pale and shivering, and disorientated. Sorcha sat opposite him, listening intently to her MI, watching the scene outside on the screens. He tried to speak to Sorcha. “We should —” he began, but he lost his train of thought.

“Don’t be such a fucking coward, man,” Sorcha snarled at him, and Helms registered how unfair she was being. He was cold, and he was also hot, and he was confused. It occurred to him he was in shock.

“We should — go,” he eventually managed to say.

“When I say so! Survivors. We’ll wait.” Sorcha’s brusque words shook Helms. He felt that he wanted to weep.

“Let’s go now,” screamed another of the survivors.

“When I say so. We wait till then,” Sorcha told her, and her subtext of “Heed my words or you will die, fucker” shone through.

The doors of the AmRover opened, and two more Scientists were hurled in by Soldiers. “Five more minutes, no more!” Sorcha snapped to the helmeted-up Soldier who was escorting them.

“Some DRs came down the evacuation chute, sir.”

“Did you destroy them?”

“Yes sir.”

“Five minutes, no more.”

“Four minutes, forty-five seconds now, sir.”

The sounds of grenades exploding in the hangar outside them echoed around the AmRover cockpit. The Soldier returned to the fray.

“You were right,” Sorcha told Helms. “Juno has gone rogue. The DRs are . . . What is happening, Richard?”

“How should I know?” Helms muttered feebly. Then: “Gamers?” he hazarded.

“Could be,” she conceded, and a spasm of rage convulsed her. “The bastards!” she muttered.

Helms tried to speak, to agree with her, but he couldn’t.

“Who the fuck do they think they —”

“Yes! Who the fuck! Damn it all!” Helms’s eyes glittered with rage.

Sorcha locked stares with him.

For a moment the two of them were bonded, united in adversity.

The moment popped. “We need to go,” he told her. “I can’t — we can’t risk staying any longer.”

Then a burly soldier — Sergeant Anderson — clambered into the AmRover. His body armour was pockmarked with plasma blasts and was literally steaming.

“Are we done?” Sorcha asked, over the MI radio.

“We’re done,” Sergeant Anderson replied.

“Sergeant,” Helms acknowledged.

“Professor,” Anderson said curtly. He was a big, scowly, curt man; Helms didn’t like him much. “Those fucking bastards!” Anderson roared.

Helms nodded, numbly; indeed, fucking bastards they were.

“How could those mfs do a thing like this?” Anderson raged.

“I don’t — know,” said Helms. “I can’t believe — so many — so much . . .” His words trailed off.

Anderson curled a lip. “It’s a Glorious battle,” he conceded.

“Please, let’s go,” wept a female Scientist in the cockpit.

“Yes,” said Helms. “We should go.”

“Let me just . . .” Anderson carried on mid-air typing. Sorcha saw a flashing red symbol that showed the booby bombs were primed.

“There are still people coming down the chutes!” she protested.

“You think so?” said Anderson, and Sorcha turned and looked.

A Humanoid DR emerged head-first from the evacuation chute and began firing. Anderson revved the AmRover and drove out fast, into the New Amazonian jungle.

One two three four five six seven eight BOOM.

The boobytrap bombs they’d left behind exploded, destroying a half dozen or more Humanoid DRs. The AmRover almost overbalanced but Sergeant Anderson kept control.

“Good call,” Helms conceded, as Sorcha started up the AmRover. Anderson retracted his helmet.

“So can someone explain what the fuck is going on!” screamed Anderson.

“We think, maybe Gamers,” said Sorcha.

“Or the CSO has gone mad,” Helms offered.

“That bastard already is mad,” said Anderson, heretically, and grinned.

As they drove off, Helms could see the dome of Xabar had shattered utterly, scattering shards of hardglass far into the jungle. He could see the debris of exploded AmRovers, he could see limbs and heads scattered on the road in front of him. And he tried to ignore it all, the signs of carnage all around.

He forced himself to gather his thoughts, to remember his strategy.

He willed himself to once again be in control of his emotions, and to keep the terror out of his voice.

And eventually, he succeeded.

“Rendezvous all survivors Map Reference D 43,” Helms said calmly into his helmet mike, “please.”

Django was astonished at the havoc around them. Missiles were raining down, the DRs were running amok, randomly shooting at the labs and at each other. There were dead bodies everywhere, and the walls of the corridors were stained with blood and entrails.

But Django wasn’t afraid. He revelled in danger. This was what he was born for — to be a warrior in battle, not a desk jockey or a lab Scientist!

As a child, Django had nursed a powerful secret: the certain knowledge that he was better than other people. Not smarter, though he was pretty bright. Not more beautiful, though he did have moderately smouldering Latin good looks. Not braver, or more resourceful, or more imaginative.

Just better.

His father had been and still was a civil servant on Kornbluth. His mother had died in childbirth, or so Django had been told.

But he’d always disbelieved that story. Wasn’t it far more credible that she’d been a freedom fighter murdered by the Galactic Corporation’s secret police? Or that she’d been an astronaut, sent on a perilous mission in the certain knowledge that even if she wasn’t killed, she’d never see her husband and kids again?

Django never told anyone his secret — the truth about his “better-than-others-ness”. But it had sustained him through his difficult early years as a bullied child. His contemporaries at school had always picked on Django. But it was not because he was vulnerable, or disadvantaged; it was because he was rude to them, because he mocked and taunted them.

The teachers at Django’s school constantly berated the rest of the class for the awful way they treated Django. And Django had just sat and smiled, because he knew that being the most bullied child in school made him special, and, well, better than those doing the bullying.

One day, he had resolved, with unquenchable confidence, he would show them all. They would all regret having bullied Django; they would concede their own lesser status!

And, perhaps, Django mused, this was his moment. Perhaps this was when he would become the hero of the hour, and go down in history?

Django hurried towards the evacuation chute and was two yards away when a DRscalpel crashed through his helmet and ate his face.

Django’s screams were stifled when his tongue was consumed, and he died in agony, mute, of his injuries.

Mia dived into the chute and found herself in Number 3 AmRover Bay. Two DRs were shooting at each other, and the plasma sheen on the walls of the hangar gave it an orange glow.

Mia aimed her laser snipe and picked off the DRs one by one, with a single focused beam each through the two robot brains. She hated plasma guns, they were just raw brute energy. But though she was a civilian, she had a skill-chip that made her a championship-level markswoman with a laser pistol and she relished a chance to use her skills.

But why, she wondered, anxiously, has the world suddenly gone completely mad?

Hugo Baal was still in the lab when Private Clementine McCoy rushed in and grabbed him. She saw with dismay he didn’t have his armour on. “Evacuate,” she screamed, “means get the fuck out of here, now!”

Hugo blinked and realised he was in the midst of a crisis. “You came to save me?” he marvelled.

“You big dolt,” Clementine told him, and tugged him away.

A Humanoid DR appeared at the doorway and Clementine fired a plasma blast. The DR sustained a head injury but carried on moving.

“Instructions, please,” the DR said calmly, back in robot-mode, walking around in stupid circles, and Clementine and Hugo ran past it to the evacuation chute. Clementine dived. Hugo hesitated. Then he saw DRs in the corridor. He eased his fat frame into the chute.

And found himself tumbling down, as if on a fairground ride, and ended up in the AmRover Bay. It was a scene of bloody horror and destruction. A shattered DR body lay on the floor. The limbs and blood of its victims formed a carpet between them and the one surviving AmRover.

“Move!” screamed Clementine, and Hugo picked his way across the dead and dying bodies, ignoring groans and whimpers, until he reached the AmRover. They clambered in. Clementine started up the AmRover.

“Quite the resourceful one, aren’t you?” he murmured.

Ben Kirkham was trying to work out where the missiles had come from. If Juno had fired them, why hadn’t he seen a radar trace from space five or ten minutes before impact? But if Juno didn’t fire them, then . . .

On his virtual screen, Ben could see a Replay image of Xabar’s dome shattering into pieces. “So much for unbreakable,” he muttered. He hated having no MI link to Juno, and found that talking to himself was a comforting alternative.

“Ben, this is Helms, I’m outside Xabar with a small group of survivors, where are you?”

“I’m still inside. How come you can talk to me, the MI link is down.”

“I, ah, installed a radio network that will connect up the MI transmitters within a range of half a mile. Just a precautionary measure, you know. Ben, please, I implore you, get out of there now, we need you! AmRover Bay 1 is blown, head for 3 or 2.”

“On my way,” said Ben, exultantly. He fumbled in the cabinet for his boxes of pills — his mood-stabilisers, concentration-boosters, anti-depressants, and of course his anti-psychotics — and realised he was wasting time so he ran out empty-handed to the evacuation chute. He took a deep breath and dived into it.

Sheena had led twelve Noirs out of the base via the back doors and towards the Shuttle Bay. And there they found themselves subject to withering attack from the DR sentries whose job it was to guard the Shuttle from would-be hijackers.

Santana and two others were killed in the first wave of the attack. Sheena and the rest took cover behind the vast bombproof storage sheds. The DRs began firing mortars that blasted pockmarks in the toughmetal walls of the sheds, but as the bombs flew and landed and exploded, Sheena used her secret command codes to summon a fleet of dumb missiles which flew out of the storage shed. The missiles circled; then Sheena launched them in a full-frontal attack on the the DR position.

She then used a virtual display to guide their trajectory, controlling thirty missiles simultaneously. The “dumb” missiles kinked and danced in the air, dodging the mortar bombs, hurling out chaff, and astonishingly avoiding the continuous waves of plasma fire that the DRs were hurling at them.

Then the missiles landed, one at a time, each one scoring a direct hit on an outwitted Doppelanger sentry, pulverising each of them instantly.

The nine survivors, including Jim Aura, then formed a defensive formation around Sheena, and ran towards the doors of the Shuttle Bay.

Concealed Sniper Guns killed three of them en route. But six survived and managed to climb on board the Shuttle.

“We’ll go into space,” said Sheena, “and from there we’ll —”

The Shuttle exploded. The six Noirs fell out of the ship through the emergency hatch, pursued by shafts of shattered toughmetal. They were being attacked by three Humanoid DRs.

“Back inside,” said Sheena, but a laser beam locked on to her helmet. She rolled over and tried to block the beam. Her helmet shattered but Jim Aura picked her up in his arms and ran with her.

The Sniper Guns opened fire again; five more Noirs died. But Jim ran fast, and evasively, still with Sheena in his arms, and hurled himself through the back doors and into the base. He found himself surrounded by death and screams, and a whimpering young woman with a gut wound begged him to help her. But he ignored it all and ran towards the evacuation chute, and leapt backwards into it, dragging the two of them down it in a tight embrace.

At the bottom of the chute he was helped to his feet by Sheena. Her eyes were burned out by the laser blasts, leaving empty sockets, but she lifted him easily up off the ground.

“Which way?” she said calmly.

Energy, screaming, balls and trails of fire, rolling bodies, ceilings crashing in, silvery monsters flitting like deadly moonbeams out of the way of explosive shells, One Sun.

Once more a robot butcher dies, in a blinding flare of plasma energy. The Five pause. The Batman reloads another battery into the One Sun plasma cannon.

A deadly moonbeam pauses, then flits again. It is a Humanoid DR moving fast, impossibly fast, dodging shells. Plasma blasts hit it but are absorbed by its armour. Then it stands still to aim its gun and plasma fire is fiercely focused on it as One Sun reloads.

But the Humanoid DR has a One Sun of his own. It fires once, at the Bat Man.

A flare of light extinguishes the man, the armour, the casings of the Bostock batteries.

And all the energy contained in all the guns and the batteries erupts in a single and utterly devastating moment.

“Glory!” scream the Berserkers but their cries are lost.

“Stop. Look back,” Sorcha said.

The AmRover stopped. They could see the fire on the screens but they moved as one to the Observation Bubble to see with their own eyes. Helms stared with horror at the sight.

A pillar of fire burned on the site where once Xabar stood. Above, the green Canopy vanished in palls of smoke.

“What the hell . . . ?” he murmured.

“The Bostock batteries blew,” Sorcha explained. “No one is left, nothing is left.”

“Are we safe?” asked Helms. He feared a conflagration that would consume the entire planet.

“We’re more than twenty kilometres —” Sorcha began.

“That much heat!” insisted Helms. “If it spreads towards us —”

“Fuck,” said Sergeant Anderson, realising the implications.

“The city force fields are still in place,” Sorcha said. “Even though the dome is down. That will contain the energy. It’ll be focused upwards. Like a torch beam.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s happened before,” Sorcha said casually. “Twice that I know of. It’s a pretty effective weapon of war in fact; the strategy is, we blow the BBs inside a force-fielded city, and destroy all enemy forces contained within.”

Helms was shocked at her callous tone.

“That’s what you call a weapon?” he said savagely. “Everyone in that city is dead because —”

“They’re dead because they chose to give their lives for us,” Sorcha told him bluntly, and Helms felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry.”

“They were brave Soldiers.”

“I said, I’m sorry,” said Helms, at a loss.

Sorcha shrugged, accepting his apology.

“They gave their lives,” Anderson intoned, into his MI-radio, to reach out to the survivors in the other AmRovers.

“They gave their lives,” Sorcha echoed.

“So are we safe?” asked Hugo Baal, who was now in AmRover 5.

“Fuck no,” said Sorcha.

“Nothing could survive an explosion like that,” protested Sergeant Anderson. “Those fucking robots must all be —”

“There are at least a dozen DRs patrolling outside the boundaries of Xabar,” Sorcha explained. “And more robot bodies in the basement bunkers, five miles outside the city walls. Plus an entire battalion guarding the Space Elevator. Plus, Juno has antimatter bombs, fusion bombs, and more DRs in storage. We don’t stand a chance,” she concluded.

Helms retracted his helmet, and gestured at Sorcha to do the same. Anderson, too, retracted his helmet, so he could hear Helms speak.

“I believe,” said Helms, carefully and confidentially, “that there’s a chance, if luck is on our side, that we may in fact prevail.”

Sorcha shot him a baffled look. Anderson scowled, sceptically.

“I’ll explain,” said Helms, softly, “later.”

Xabar burned. Huge columns of smoke rose into the sky, and high in the tree canopies, arboreals and insects and birds in their nests coughed and spluttered as the black smoke possessed their habitat.

And as the fire peaked and peaked, the pillar of fire stood higher and higher upon the ashes of the city as the heat of the exploded Bostock batteries coalesced into a tube of burning plasma that ripped a hole in the air and evaporated clouds and scorched a path through the stratosphere until it collided with the empty blackness of space itself.

The huge yellow star at the heart of the New Amazon system peered down at the planet that circled it, and that spat energy at it, as for a few astonishing hours the planet itself hurled a bitter sunbeam towards its own sun.

But soon, the fire would burn out. No trace of the domed city would remain, no trace of soil or earth, and only the bare exposed mantle of the planetary crust would give testament to the vast explosion that caused the Burning of Xabar.

There had been nearly four hundred people living in Xabar. Fifty-two of them gathered at the jungle rendezvous point. The others were lost elsewhere in the rainforest, if they had managed to escape from the city in time. And if they didn’t escape, they were dead, and not just dead; obliterated, their every last molecule seared and shattered by the heat.

“Django?”

“Dead.”

“Major Johnson?”

“Dead.”

“Alan Carr?”

“Dead.”

Helms surveyed his meagre army, and felt despair at how many had been lost.

But at least William and Mary Beebe were here. And so was Ben Kirkham. And old Hugo Baal. And the Noir, Sheena, he’d always admired her. She wore a black band around her eyes, but her expression was intent, and curious.

But his deputy, Professor Craddock, was dead. Commander Martin was also missing presumed dead. And so were most of the Techies, the Technician corps who had kept the dome running efficiently all this time.

Helms stood up, and beckoned the survivors to heed his words. He had recovered his composure by now, and he worked hard to keep his tone light, yet sombre and professorial.

“This has been,” he said, “a truly terrible day.”

Haunted eyes stared at him. Helms was no orator, but he knew the power of silence. He stood, and was silent, and let his regret seep out of him.

“We have,” he explained, “survived an attempt to destroy us and our mission. We don’t know the reasons behind it, we only know that the Juno computer answers to the CSO and the other members of the Galactic Corporation Board. And for whatever reason, they have decided we should die.”

“You can’t know that,” Sorcha argued.

“Of course I know it,” Helms snapped. “What other explanation could there be?”

“Earth rebels,” said Sorcha, confidently.

“If they were rebels,” Helms said gently, “they would have killed the Soldiers. They wouldn’t have killed us.”

“You don’t know that,” said Sorcha, but there was doubt in her voice.

“What happened to the dome?” said Ben Kirkham. “Why did they blow up the dome? How did —”

“That was Juno,” said Helms. “It fired its ship’s stealth torpedoes at us. That’s why we had no warning of it. And then the DRs were ordered to kill on sight everyone they saw. But fortunately,” he added, “our security measures evacuation procedures were of course fully implemented. And, crucially, I authorised a retaliatory strike.”

There was a satisfyingly stunned pause at this last comment.

“Professor?” said Sorcha, baffled.

“What the hell are you on about?” marvelled Ben.

“Let me show you,” said Helms. “Look up at the sky.”

They looked up, through the gap in the canopy. It was daytime, but a single star shone bright. Juno, in close orbit around the planet.

“Now lower your helmets,” he told them, and they did so.

“Increase your anti-glare to maximum,” he advised them, over the MI-radio link.

They did so.

“Now watch.”

For a long long time, almost twenty minutes, nothing happened. But no one stopped staring, not even the Soldiers; there they all stood, en masse, looking up at the sky, seduced by Helms’s utter self-confidence. They waited and waited, for they knew not what: a symbol, a sign, a rescue mission?

And finally, they saw it; the bright star of Juno was joined by a host of other stars. Flashing lights were flickering all around it, and they all recognised it as the distant token of a vast space battle.

Juno was being attacked!

“We have twelve interplanetary missiles as part of our armoury on New Amazon,” said Helms. “All twelve were fired at Juno.”

Sorcha was visibly shocked at this; so was Hugo. Sergeant Anderson grinned. Respect!

But then a cackling laugh assailed their ears over the MI-radio link, and all turned to see Dr Ben Kirkham, in paroxysms of mirth.

“You idiot,” chortled Ben.

“It’s our only hope of survival,” Helms explained. “While Juno is still up there, we can’t —”

“It’s Juno. Juno!” said Ben, in his most cutting, patronising, talking-to-an-imbecile tones. “Professor, with respect — WANKER! WANKER! Those missiles don’t stand a chance!”

“I’m aware that Juno is —”

“You’ve signed our death warrant. The battle was over. But now, once Juno has blown those missiles out of the sky, she’ll be good and angry. And she’ll —”

“She won’t —”

“Of course she will, you abject fool! Juno sits inside a Corporation battleship! She has state-of-the-art defensive —”

The sky lit up as a huge fireball ignited. It was like a sun going nova. Without the anti-glare shields, all watching would have been blinded.

Then the glare ebbed, and the sky was empty. Juno was gone.

One by one, they all shucked their helmets back.

“OK, you win,” said Ben, grudgingly, and Helms fixed him with a triumphant stare.

“Antimatter bomb?” guessed Hugo.

“Indeed, so,” said Helms triumphantly. “And now Juno is gone. The Quantum Beacon is gone. The remaining DRs still have their robot brains, but they can’t be controlled by Juno or by anyone on Earth.” He gave them a few moments to absorb this, then he added the killer coda: “And so, we are free!”

There was a longer, more stunned silence.

Helms patted his hands together, softly, dropping a broad hint that the assembled throng might now like to consider applauding him for his handling of the crisis. A few obedient souls did so, but most stood silent and incredulous.

“Free of what?” asked Hugo, endearingly baffled.

“Free of the CSO and his evil regime,” explained Helms, barely hiding his impatience.

“Oh, that,” Hugo acknowledged, absently.

There followed a further awkward, indeed painful silence. A ghastly miasma of dead air engulfed them.

And Sorcha and Ben and Mia and Hugo and all the others looked at Helms sceptically, all of them thinking the same thing.

Free? What the hell was Helms on about!

They didn’t have a base camp, three quarters of the Soldiers were dead, they were trapped in the deadly New Amazon jungle, surrounded by Godzillas and killer plants and a vast array of unpredictable and unknown predators, with limited reserves and no way of recharging their plasma guns and AmRovers if they ran out of power.

Free?

They travelled as far as they dared through the afternoon and into the early evening. Then night fell, fast, with shocking darkness.

On Sorcha’s orders, they made a wagon train out of the AmRovers, and lit the camp with the headlights. A few stars were visible through a small gap in the thick canopy above. But beyond that gap, the sky was blotted out.

The mood among the survivors was a blend of fear and elation. The camaraderie was intense, even between Scientists and Soldiers. All of them had faced a common foe. For the first time ever, they felt as if they might actually be on the same side.

Helms supervised the building of a fire, using Flesh-Webs as tinder and Aldiss tree bark for logs. It took them almost an hour, but it was time well spent. The smoke drove away insects and mini-birds, the flames soothed and reassured, and the crackle of the fire created a comforting and familiar backdrop to the scary sounds of the night. And with sentries posted, the survivors sat around the fire and felt the glimmerings of relief.

And there they sat, or stood close by on sentry duty, and each of them and all of them were lost in thought and reflection.

William and Mary Beebe were closest to the fire, savouring the heat, and each other’s nearness.

Hugo Baal sat typing up his journal, sniffing occasionally as the smoke drifted across, carrying with it reminiscences of other fires, other expeditions, other tragic losses.

Ben Kirkham sat a little way back, on a hummock of New Amazonian soil and rock, as far away from Baal as he could contrive. He marvelled at his own uniqueness, and at the Professor’s ingenuity in destroying Juno. Who would have thought the scrawny little bastard had it in him!

Sorcha, sitting nearer the fire, was tormented with guilt. A war had been fought and she had fought it. But if her enemy was the CSO, and the Galactic Corporation — did that make her a traitor?

Tonii Newton, standing at his sentry post, savoured a secret joy; the joy of being alive.

Nine other Soldiers were encircling the camp. Some were using the AmRovers as their cover in case of attack, some were standing in the shadow of Aldiss tree trunks; all were standing fiercely to attention. Eight other Soldiers kept guard in the five AmRovers, including Private Clementine McCoy; two per vehicle, sitting in the cockpit in front of the sonar and energy-detecting screens, ready to fire up the AmRover engines and turn them back into weapons of war.

But unlike Tonii, all these Soldiers were full of bitterness that they had been forced to flee, rather than staying and fighting and dying a Glorious death.

Mia Nightingale sat inside AmRover 3, away from the comfort of the camp fire, checking her film footage. Her coverage of the Attack on Xabar was astonishing. She watched again, as men and women died screaming, and DRs blasted plasma into flesh with callous efficiency.

Around the fire, thirty-three other survivors were clustered. Some sat alone, reflective, or depressed; some gathered in groups sipping whisky or wine from their emergency rations, sharing quiet reminiscences of friends now gone.

Dr David Go also spoke to no one. He saw Anderson pissing where he sat, and felt rather disgusted by it.

Sheena, Queen of the Noirs, sat close to the fire, and felt the heat of the fire on her cheeks; and imagined she could see the flames.

Jim Aura sat next to her and stared at Sheena, as firelight painted glory on her face and cast shadows around her blinded eyes.

And sitting near her, Professor Richard Helms, saviour of all his people, stared also into the flames, seeing patterns where they did not exist. The fire spat white sparks, which shot high then died out. Smoke billowed out, black and purple, from tough Aldiss tree bark. Flames crackled and voices whispered.

“Fuckings DRs.”

“Can’t believe we —”

“Always knew it would —”

“We had no choice but to —”

“Did you see how I creamed those m —”

“I hate this fucking planet.”

“What do we do now?”

“No going back.”

“I’m glad at least that —”

“Oh my sweetheart, why am I alive while you are —”

Helms spoke very little that night. He listened to the conversation that swirled about him, the words of regret and loss and hope and confusion, he drank in the rich stench of the rainforest that surrounded them, and marvelled at the strange sounds all around.

“What’s that?” asked Sorcha at one point, as she heard a strange noise among the cacophony of strange noises in the jungle beyond.

It was a sound like a man being flayed, slowly. An awful screaming that started on a high note then rose higher and higher in an upward glissando. Then it began again. And again.

“A Howler Cockroach,” said Hugo. “It’s about this small.” He indicated with his finger and thumb the tininess of the beast. “It expels air from its thorax, which in fact is its head, to create that noise. We don’t know why.”

“Plant or animal?” asked David Go.

“Animal. Insectae. It’s very similar to an Earth cockroach in fact. Small, with a hard skin, and segmented. Convergent evolution in action yet again.”

“That one?” Jim Aura mimicked the noise. It was a slithering, sucking noise, that had a chilling effect on all who heard it. It was like the sound of a soul leaving the body. Slurp, slurp.

“No idea.”

“Volpes terra, a land shark,” said Helms softly.

“Never heard of it,” Hugo conceded.

“It’s like a koala bear, with fangs.”

“That one?” Sorcha whistled the notes.

It was bird song, melodious and rhythmic, though every note was subtly out of tune to human ears.

“That’s a Godzilla.”

“They sing?”

“Through their tail. The tail is not primarily a weapon, it’s a vocal organ.”

Helms nodded, confirming this hypothesis, which he in fact had initially suggested, and later proved.

“What’s that?”

It was a grating, clacking noise, like two sticks being rubbed together.

“Don’t know,” Hugo conceded.

Hugo glanced at Helms, who shook his head. Both made a mental note to explore this mystery further.

“And that?” asked Sorcha. “The bells?”

Bells were ringing in discordant array. Big bells, and small tinkling bells. They listened intently to this melodious, eerie symphony of bells, with jangling chords and metallic arpeggios, which merged with the sounds of the Howler cockroaches and the constant crackle of the camp fire.

“Amazonius campanologus,” hazarded Hugo.

“Nice try.”

“Did you know,” said Sorcha, “that the trees make a noise if you stab the trunk? Like a dog barking.”

“I’ve heard that sound. Must be air being expelled.”

“Or this planet has trees that can bark.”

“Maybe,” said Tonii, mischievously, “on this planet, the trees bark and piss on the dogs?”

“Except there are no dogs.”

“There’s that headless thing.”

“The No-Brain.”

“Quadrupes sinecep.”

“Maybe that could be domesticated.”

“It tried to kill us.”

“It’s still feral, like a wolf. Maybe we could tame it.”

“No,” said William Beebe, “it’s not cute enough.”

“What is cute enough then?” asked Mia Nightingale. “Hmm? What could we have as a pet? As our team guinea pig?”

“Nothing is cute,” said Mary Beebe, firmly. “That’s an anthropomorphic projection.”

“I bet a baby Gryphon would be cute,” said Tonii.

A silence fell.

“So what next?” asked Mary Beebe.

“We survive,” said Helms, softly.

“The CSO tried to kill us!” said Ben Kirkham, enraged.

“We don’t know that,” Sorcha told him, firmly.

“Something made Juno go rogue.”

“I always feared,” said Mary Beebe, “that one day the computer would turn on us.”

“Computers kill humans all the time,” Sorcha reasoned. “They’re a weapon of war. But all of us were logged on the database as Friendly! Juno knew each and every one of us by name and was duty bound to protect us. Someone would have had to override that with new code. But who?”

“It has to be the CSO. No one else would have authority.”

“But why!” raged Ben Kirkham. “It’s all so fucking — random.”

The camp was now richly lit by the red glow of the fire. The AmRover headlights had been switched off and the sentries stood in shadow, but they had set up panoramic torches on posts to light all the possible approaches to their camp. Occasionally a luminous insect flew by, fast, drawn by the fire’s light then deterred by its heat. But otherwise, the golden lights of the flames and the encircling flares of the panoramic torches were all that stood between them and pitch-black nothing.

And as the flames flickered, Helms’s mood was growing increasingly sombre.

“Time we all hit the sack,” said Sorcha, with military firmness.

“I think I’ll linger,” said Ben.

“Me too,” said Hugo.

“We’re making an early start,” Sorcha told him icily.

“The campsite must be cleared by 5 a.m., anyone who falls behind schedule will be abandoned,” Tonii added.

Hugo blinked. “Oh,” he said, and stood up. “Are we setting alarms?”

Professor Helms laughed, softly and mockingly.

“I think the jungle will wake us up,” said Mary Beebe.