Cormac realized it would be some hours before they were all gone. There were over five hundred underspace interference emitters, or USERs, being towed into position around an area of space containing six planetary systems and numerous lone stars. The devices, containing artificially generated singularities, were heavy, hence the need for tugs capable of repositioning moons.
Avoiding the interference patterns the USERS created even in this somnolent state, other ships were ready to depart the space around Ruby Eye by a more roundabout route. Cormac observed three ships similar to the Jack Ketch, but the Grim Reaper, King of Hearts and Excalibur were coloured green, blue and violet respectively. Also present were two sister ships of the Occam Razor—not so fast or deadly as the more modern warships, and no doubt present because their AIs wanted to be in at the kill; swarms of smaller attack ships; three eta-class research vessels to act as bases; and the formidable Jerusalem, now in orbit around the red dwarf—apparently just diverted from its journey to Masada where, until recent events, it was supposed to have remained for some time.
Cormac had never seen such a gathering of forces, though he was aware that it was the kind of thing that occurred when Polity AIs went up against some threat that was just too fast for a human solution. Tuning into the information traffic, he managed to fathom only some of what was being said—the numerous AIs out there communicating too fast for him, even with the assistance of his gridlink. Then the virtual image nickered, and he became aware of his own body, apparently standing in vacuum two kilometres out from the Jack Ketch.
‘I really wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Horace Blegg was standing beside him.
‘Make such a dramatic entrance. If you have something to say there are more conventional channels of communication, even for Earth Central’s avatar.’
‘You still believe that?’
‘What I believe is irrelevant, as you’re never going to tell me.’ Cormac waved a hand towards the latest U-space tug preparing to depart. ‘Will this work?’
‘Given time. If Skellor gets away from this volume of space now, then we won’t be able to stop him. In one month, realtime, eighty per cent of the area needed to be covered, will be covered, and if he runs into an area of USER function he’ll be knocked out of underspace and easy prey for the attack ships.’
‘Are you forgetting he uses advanced chameleon-ware?’
‘No, located in U-space and knocked out of it, we’ll know where he has come out in realspace, and he won’t be able to get far on fusion drive alone.’
‘They still won’t be able to see him.’
‘They will after a few teratonne EM emitter bombs have been exploded near his exit point—all his ship systems would be fried.’
Cormac nodded. ‘So he’ll be in a trap and, presumably, one month from now you’ll begin closing the noose?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Jerusalem is here why?’
‘To pick up whatever pieces are left and put them safely away.’
They were both silent for a while as they observed the hive of activity. Scanning the AI babble, Cormac realized that what he was seeing here was not the whole of it: other ships were heading into the area from other locations, and there was also a runcible traffic of troops: human, Golem, the new war drones he had first seen on Masada, and something unexpected. Linking through to Ruby Eye, then subverting the link so it dropped to the attention of one of that AI’s subminds, then overloading that mind with some of the traffic he had been attempting to fathom, he managed to take control of a camera system inside the station itself. There he observed heavily armed and armoured troops stepping through the Skaidon warp: reptilian troops with a reverse-kneed gait, toadish faces and sharp white teeth.
“Why dracomen?’ he asked.
‘A trial—they will make formidable allies,’ Blegg replied—just as the submind realized what was going on, and ejected Cormac from the camera system.
Cormac turned to the man. ‘You seem to have everything in hand. Perhaps there is no need for me to go on looking for Skellor?’
‘There is,’ Blegg replied. ‘You are most able for this task, Ian Cormac’
‘Don’t you have ships to spare for that?’
The view suddenly changed, coming close up on the Grim Reaper, the King of Hearts and Excalibur. ‘These will cover a sector each, and should they find evidence of Skellor’s presence, you will be immediately summoned to deal with him. In the Jack Ketch you will search that sector calculated his most likely destination.’
ECS had covered all bets, it seemed. Eventually, Cormac asked, ‘How is it I can now gridlink, even though my link is not on?’
‘The brain is a wonderful thing. In the days when people suffered strokes, parts of it took over the function of those parts destroyed, so that a human unable to speak could speak again.’
‘Yeah, but my gridlink was never an organic part of my mind.’
‘Which is why you are so unusual. Be aware, Ian Cormac, that your mind will soon discover other parts that were never of itself.’
Cormac snorted, trying to think of a suitably sneering reply—but Blegg was already gone. Later, when the Jack Ketch dropped into underspace, it was for Cormac like stepping from a bellowing crowd into cloistered silence and a refuge from chaos.
In a virtual space, a somewhere that was nowhere, three figures materialized. One of these was a smooth metallic head, eyeless and huge relative to the other two. Another was a mermaid served on a platter, smoking a cigar. And Horace Blegg.
‘It all seems excessively elaborate,’ said Ruby Eye.
‘How so?’ asked Blegg.
‘Why send anything in before we’ve closed it all off, and when we have done so, why not just send in kill ships? Skellor might have survived the Elysium mirrors, but he would not survive a planetary imploder.’
Blegg turned to Jerusalem and raised an eyebrow.
‘The question,’ said the AI, ‘is do we maintain our partnership with the human race, and allow it time to gain parity?’
‘You’ve lost me there,’ said Ruby Eye.
Blegg explained: ‘At present Cormac is the hunting dog that we hunters send in after the bear. He may flush it out. It may chase out after him. Or it may come out with him hanging bloody in its jaws. But it will come out.’
‘Zoom!’ said Ruby Eye, passing a hand over the top of her head.
Jerusalem said, ‘Our friend here has failed to add that we know the exact location of the bear, and haven’t told Cormac’
‘You’ve got precise coordinates?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then why…? Oh.’
‘You catch on quick,’ said Blegg. ‘During this hunt Cormac may learn not to be the dog any more, and we may thus learn something about our fellow hunters.’
‘Ah,’ said Ruby Eye, ‘the cracks are showing already.’
Jerusalem replied, ‘The cracks have always been there, but without sufficient stress to extend them. For us AIs, what appears to be our philanthropy is merely noblesse oblige.’
Trying as hard as he could to stretch his measuring wire, Dornik had been unable to make the sleer measure under five metres, so had grumped his way back to the sand-face to yell at the diggers. The creature was in fact over five metres long without its head, and Chandle herself thought it a kill well worth the thirty phocells the knight collected before going on his way. But most of Dornik’s annoyance really stemmed from the advent of the earlier storm, for they all knew that the burgeoning growth would soon cause things to become quite hectic in the canyons, and that their stay here was now limited anyway.
Pacing around the dead monster, Chandle studied it closely, occasionally prodding at it with a poker she had brought over from the kilns. Seeing a third-stager this close was a sobering reminder. The last one she had seen had been a year ago, and then only in the distance through the screen of the cargo carrier. A weapons man out of Golgoth had hunted that one down for them, just as similar men dealt with the second-stagers that were the more usual pests. Certainly, the new weapons could kill creatures like this with admirable efficiency, but Chandle wondered just how she would feel about facing one alone in a canyon, with whatever armament.