‘Respect,’ the King of Hearts AI sent, just before opening up with both particle beams and gamma-ray lasers.

The pterodactyl head of Dragon was up high above its other pseudopods, like a python rearing out of a nest of cobras. All Dragon’s sapphire eyes it directed towards the fading glow on the horizon. The cobra heads were up, Arden knew, because they contained sophisticated scanning equipment—if equipment was the right way to describe the living machinery of Dragon. There was also a shimmer of disturbance beyond Dragon’s field wall, where the telefactor had set down, for the wind from those distant explosions was just reaching them.

‘They are fighting amongst themselves,’ said Dragon.

‘And I’m supposed to be surprised by that?’ asked Arden from where she was perched on a boulder outside her cave.

The head swung towards her. ‘You mistake me: it is the Polity AIs who are fighting amongst themselves.’

Arden felt a sudden shudder of cold. There had always been stories of rogue AIs, but she had considered them as apocryphal as stories about the Jack Ketch and other bloody ships. But Dragon now telling her that the AIs were fighting amongst themselves undermined one of the certainties of her existence.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Your AIs rule you efficiently, ruthlessly, and to the maximum benefit of the majority, but having made them in your image, do you expect them to behave any better than yourselves?’

‘I do,’ said Arden. ‘For most humans power is a tool for obtaining sex, money, safety, regard from their fellows, or initially to enforce some hazy ideal, and then primarily because the exercising of power is its own reward. Most of these motives can be discounted as regards our AIs.’

‘But not all of them—especially if you consider Jain technology.’

Of course: since taking power, the ruling AIs had been utterly in control and safe, which was why they could rule humanity so benevolently. Now something both a temptation and potentially lethal, even to them, had been added to the equation and—Arden excused herself the pun—their metal was being tested.

‘You are their alien equivalent,’ Arden observed.

‘Yes,’ said Dragon unhelpfully.

‘Aren’t you, too, tempted by this Jain technology?’

‘All knowledge is a temptation, but how much should one risk to acquire it? To learn about a bomb from reading a book is substantially different from learning about it from the item itself, while you’re deciding which wires to cut.’

‘Dangerous, huh?’

‘There were civilizations which cut the wrong wire.’

‘Were?’

‘Precisely.’

Arden changed the subject. ‘How goes the battle?’

‘It has left this planet now. Two Polity attack ships are attempting to destroy a third one of their own kind. Also, some interference device has been employed to prevent this latter ship fleeing into U-space.’ Dragon paused contemplatively before adding, ‘That device prevents all U-space travel from this system.’

Dragon would be going nowhere, Arden realized. ‘Who are the bad guys?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Dragon replied, swinging his head to gaze across the plain in another direction, ‘but someone has just arrived who might be able to explain things to us.’

Stepping out of the landing craft, Cormac detected a flintiness to the air and a whiff as though from something dried out in a tide line. Six men, similarly armed and clothed, approached, though whether what they wore signified they were police or army, Cormac couldn’t say.

Glancing aside at Gant, he said, ‘Try not to kill anyone if they get hostile. We’ll just retreat to the ship and try something else. Anyway, I’ve got Shuriken set for a disarming routine.’

‘Let’s hope it obeys its instructions,’ Gant replied.

The six men halted in an arc. Beyond them Cormac could see others in more varied dress coming out of the strange buildings, so he guessed these six were indeed in uniform. Then he noticed someone else approaching, mounted on some exoskeletal creature that was almost like a long-legged bird, but seemingly with the head of a pig. He returned his attention to the original six as one of their number stepped forward.

In a bewildered tone, this one began, ‘Both of you, step away from the… ship.’ He then brandished a primitive assault rifle.

Gant, who had left his own favoured APW inside the lander, stepped to Cormac’s side and they both walked forwards.

This isn’t very friendly, Gant sent.

Maybe they’ve reason, Cormac suggested. If Skellor’s been through this way.

‘Who are you?’ the man now asked.

‘I am Ian Cormac of Earth Central Security for the Polity, and my companion here is Brezhoy Gant, a soldier serving in the same organization.’

The soldier, policeman or whatever he was stared at Cormac for a long moment, transferred his gaze to Gant, then to the landing craft.

‘Earth?’ he said eventually.

Cormac studied the uniform and decided to try for professional courtesy. ‘I need to speak to whoever is in overall charge here, as I am here in pursuit of a dangerous criminal.’

At this the man glanced around at his fellows. Then, noticing the rider approaching on his strange beast, he called out to him, ‘Has it been sent?’

‘It has,’ replied the rider, ‘and Tanaquil is coming.’

The uniformed man turned back. ‘This criminal you are hunting, how dangerous is he?’

‘Very,’ Cormac replied, briefly.

The man chewed that over for a long moment before saying, ‘We were warned to look out for strangers approaching the city—and that a dangerous individual was coming. Perhaps we are both after the same person, but you’ll understand why I must take you into custody.’

The barrel of his weapon now bore fully on Cormac.

Tell me now that you’ve got armour under that environment suit, sent Gant.

I have—it’s actually a combat suit and can fling up a chainglass visor before my face. Thank you for your concern, but I’m not stupid.

No, just overconfident sometimes.

‘Certainly we’ll come into custody. Tell me, who is this Tanaquil?’

‘We sent a telegraph message to Golgoth, informing them of your presence,’ the man replied. ‘Chief Metallier Tanaquil is our ruler.’

It seemed that things were going well. Almost without thinking, Cormac sent, through his gridlink, the order to close the door of the lander. The door’s sudden closing elicited a nervous response, bringing the other five weapons to bear on both Cormac and Gant.

Bit edgy, these guys, sent Gant.

Seems so.

It would have been fine if he had not closed the door like that, Cormac thought later. On such little things could rest the difference between life and death. When an enormous brightness lit the horizon, someone heavy on the trigger exerted just that extra bit of pressure. Even then, things might have continued okay, for one shot slammed into Gant’s thigh and two others into the lander’s hull.