Anderson grimaced, but decided not to comment on how Tergal might not be the best choice for guarding his back.

Gyrol moved to go, then paused. ‘Strange rumours filtering down from the Plains—are you involved in that?’

‘What kind of rumours?’

‘Strange creatures… Nomads changing their routes to avoid certain areas. Like I said: rumours.’

‘Dragons?’

‘That was your word—not mine.’

‘Yes, I’m going to take a look.’

‘Take care, knight.’

‘I will.’

Anderson stood up as Tergal now approached. It was definitely time to leave town.

7

Ambient temperature was rising rapidly and, with his grub-like heaving along the ground, Cento realized he would not reach the survey ship before his motors started seizing up again or one of the huge rocks that kept raining down crushed him finally into the ground. But even with all the carnage around him—lava sleeting through the acidic air, pyroclastic flows pouring down from the distant caldera, and the continual earthquakes—he did have a line of sight to the vessel, and could still use his radio. His brief query elicited no reply. The chance that there was someone alive there, but unable to use a radio, he considered remote. Then linking to the ship’s computer—Shayden had never bothered to replace it with an AI—he descended into code as he gave it instructions. As a pall of smoke cleared, he saw that those instructions were being followed.

Vessels such as this one were used for orbital survey as well as landing, so contained robot probes. These devices were made for sampling atmosphere, limited surface scanning for mapping and the occasional retrieval of airborne or spaceborne objects. Cento observed a rear port opening and the probe sliding out to hover beside the ship. It was elliptical with a sensory head mounted on its front end, and the six grasping arms folded underneath it complemented its beetlish appearance. Smoke veiled all again, but the link remained and Cento could feel the probe coming towards him. Soon it penetrated the smoke, a sleet of lava pattering its upper surface. It drew closer, bucked when a large lump of semi-molten rock hit it and bounced off, but kept on coming. Such devices were rugged, but hardly made for this environment. Cento was relieved when it finally drew to a halt above him.

The Golem reached up and gripped one of the probe’s arms. It folded down two more arms and with three-fingered claws gripped one of his hipbones and his neck, then with a thrum of AG lifted him from the boiling ground. Quickly it turned and flew back towards the ship, depositing Cento at the last by the open airlock, before turning to head back to its launch cache.

Cento observed the two incinerated corpses lying nearby, then began dragging himself inside the ship. There he pulled himself upright and tried to close the lock, but something had destroyed its mechanism. He dragged himself to the cockpit and hauled himself up into the pilot’s chair where, after strapping in, he tried to use the ship’s more powerful transmitters. Nothing—no contact with the carrier shell, so no way to link through to the U-space transmitter it had on board. Unsurprised at this lack of response from the shell, Cento initiated the lander’s autolaunch. The computer refused, of course, because of the open airlock. Cento paused, then put it offline and took hold of the joystick. It would be a rough ride, but then he was used to those.

The virtual image he constructed was of a sphere of glowing points, all linked by spidery lines to a central nexus glowing brightest of all. That was the network, the entity of Dracocorp augs, suspended in grey void. Reality bore little resemblance, for the station orbiting the red dwarf was like a thick coin five kilometres across, spiked and glittering with sensory arrays and with a half-kilometre-high docking tower protruding from its centre. Few ships were docked there, and fewer still occupied the surrounding space. Skellor wondered if ECS was even aware that this station, placed for the long-term study of this carnelian star, was no longer entirely theirs. The query he received from the runcible AI contained there certainly gave the impression that this place was still Polity property. Working through the Vulture’s systems he responded, giving a false identity for his ship and for himself, both of which would be impossible to check in less than a solstan month — should the runcible AI feel any need.

‘Ruby Eye welcomes you, trader Scolan,’ the AI began over com.

‘Glad to be here. It’s been a long journey.’

‘And the purpose of your visit?’

‘Probably alcohol poisoning. I’ve been too long in this tin can.’

As this exchange drew to a close, Skellor could feel the runcible AI probing the Vulture for information, but the ship’s responses were his own, for his subversion program had certainly found and killed every last shred of personal identity the ship’s AI had retained. When the link finally broke, he flew the Vulture towards the tower and his designated docking station, slowing and turning it at the final moment into that framework. Buffers extended and absorbed the last of the ship’s momentum, then four universal docking clamps swung in towards the ship from above and below, and gripped it with large gecko adhesion pads. An embarkation tunnel then telescoped out from the tower, groped about a bit on the hull of the Vulture till it eventually found the airlock and connected.

Skellor stood up from the pilot’s chair and turned to regard Mr Crane. ‘Now, time to go to work.’

Crane swept up his toys and pocketed them. Skellor could not resist another probe inside the Golem, for he was learning—from a mind filled with disconnected but bloody memory—that Mr Crane was very good indeed at the profession to which he had been perverted.

It was night and, in the shallows that lay beyond the channel excavated into the seabed alongside the jetty, pearl crabs gleamed like underwater stars. Striding out along the gritty strand, his pulse-rifle propped across his shoulder, Evans thought Alston was overreacting. The Pelters just did not have the firepower to come in here mob-handed. Maybe they had more men than the two hundred guarding this island. But they would not be as well trained as Chaldor’s mercenaries or Evans’s own men.

‘Clear here,’ he said into his comunit.

It seemed pointless to eyeball the beach when no craft could come within twenty kilometres of the island without being picked up on radar. Yes, they might come in underwater, but that way would be unable to bring in anything to deal with the autogun emplacements set into the mountainside below Alston’s fortified home. By air was of course out of the question, as that would bring Polity monitors in here quick as blade beetles.