‘Skellor?’ Cento wondered.
‘Most likely. The computer contained a record of previous contacts, but none this sophisticated. Now, the sender has slanted the test programs to one objective: finding serviceable shuttles attached to the hull. I surmise that the sender will then instruct shuttles to launch and call them to the surface. I will give you adequate warning.’
‘Why?’ asked Fethan, then silently cursed himself as all kinds of fool.
‘So the two of you can board. The laser is being fired directly from the platform city, and a shuttle will not be able to land there. Any coordinates given, I will suborn slightly so that the one you occupy lands somewhere that gives you time to disembark and get into hiding.’
Cento stated the obvious: ‘We go down with the shuttle.’
‘Precisely,’ replied the killer program. ‘If it is Skellor who has summoned the shuttle, you will not want to be aboard this ship when he arrives here.’
Fethan hefted his APW. ‘I’d have thought, for our purposes, here is precisely where we want to be. We could burn his shuttle before it got a chance to dock.’
Cento turned towards him. ‘And if that shuttle is concealed by his chameleonware?’
‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’
‘But is it a risk you need to take? Your hunter/killer program is here waiting for him to connect with this ship’s computer. This area of space is USER-blockaded.’ Cento held up his own weapon. ‘I would have thought your experiences on Masada, with creatures like the hooders, would have taught you not to have so much confidence in a weapon—or are you just anxious to waste your life?’
A number of things occurred to Fethan just then. He had lived a long time and wasn’t that anxious to die just yet, and yes he was putting too much faith in a weapon, but most importantly he had never told Cento what he himself had put into the ship’s computer. He could only surmise that the Golem and the Jerusalem program had been in contact with each other.
‘So we go to the surface?’
‘We go,’ Cento agreed.
The final deciding factor was that, in the ECS hierarchy, Cento outranked him, and in the end could probably drag even Fethan off this ship.
‘So this is what you want?’ Fethan stared up into one of the security cameras.
‘It is for what I am designed.’
Fethan briefly wondered about the morality of creating sentient programs that were quite prepared to go kamikaze to achieve their ends.
It had come from one of the two attacking ships, as they arrived, then spilled from the memory space of one of Skellor’s sensors into another. He had been about to blow them, thinking this some sort of viral attack, when the package defined its own parameters and waited. He downloaded it to himself and, hardly allowing it to touch him in any way, diverted it to one of the citizens wiping her mind first to make room for the incoming information. It was lucky that he did do this, for then a midnight wave passed through U-space and that dimension effectively disappeared. Skellor felt a cold sweat break out on his skin, and he instantly suppressed that human reaction. He had heard not even a rumour of this kind of technology, and that scared him.
Stepping back from the message laser and telescope, both now encased in coralline Jain substructure like some part of a shipwreck, Skellor turned to his human storage vessel, one of Stollar’s young female assistants, and using what remained of her mind as an arena, opened the package like a man lifting the top of a beehive with a broom handle. Quickly he read the external code and saw that this was a VR package, and realized where he was supposed to insert himself. He extended a virtual simulacrum, and pressed ‘play’.
‘Skellor,’ said King. ‘I would say it is pleasant to meet you at last, but whether we are actually meeting is a debatable point.’
Skellor pushed the timeframe, accelerated the pseudo personalities past these pleasantries. Reaper reared tall, and both these representations then said their piece. It was all smoke and mirrors:
‘We are here to help you escape… We will guide you through the USER blockade…’ Skellor applied to the personalities at a lower level to learn Underspace Interference Emitters, and understood what had shut him out of U-space. ‘… take you anywhere out-Polity you want to go… guard you… supply you… watch you.’
Nowhere was there any mention of what their payoff was supposed to be. No matter; limited objectives. They had drawn away the definitely hostile ship that had destroyed the Vulture, and given Skellor the breathing space he required. He returned his attention to the message laser, once again interfacing with the control systems he had contrived—talking to that behemoth above. Within an hour, he had ascertained that most of the shuttles were operable and, because they were old and there was no guarantee they would all reach the ground intact, he summoned them all. He was still watching the skies when his growing aug network brought to his attention the messages sent to Tanaquil from an outpost in the Sand Towers.
‘Ian Cormac,’ he breathed, with vicious delight.
Nothing was normal any more, and the churning in Tergal’s stomach made it difficult for him to keep still in his saddle on Stone’s back. Since hooking up with the Rondure Knight, he had seen a third-stage sleer, then witnessed it killed; he had seen a man of brass marching through the Sand Towers—and now? Now a fourth-stage sleer destroyed in the corrosive vomit projected from a giant droon, which he himself had actually fired on. Then that crazy and stunning rescue of the brass man by Anderson. And that escape…
He had never known sand hogs could move so fast. Stone had baulked all the way up onto the top of the butte, where Tergal had been entrusted to provide cover for Anderson’s rescue of the brass man from the monstrous fourth-stage sleer. But from the moment that jet of acid had hit the sleer and the enormous droon had revealed itself, Stone had become almost impossible to control. It bolted when Tergal fired on the monster, and then the following ride…
From butte to butte, taking them in its stride, leaping over canyons, half sliding and half running down sandstone walls, its feet driving into them like pickaxes, then onto the plain and moving so fast that the wind flattened Tergal’s nictitating membranes and distorted his vision. And now here: where they had seen flares of light igniting the sky to the east, and pillars of fire rising from the distant line of mountains around which black shapes buzzed… and then that strange object tumbling overhead. Tergal did not quite know how he should feel—perhaps exhilarated? But he was slightly confused and not a little scared.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
Anderson turned from his contemplation of the brass man striding along ahead of them. ‘Earlier I would have said volcanism, but taking into account our friend here and what we’ve just seen, I’d suggest we’ve got visitors.’
‘From Earth?’ Tergal asked.
‘Quite probably,’ Anderson replied, ‘but I wouldn’t look so happy about it if I were you. It seems they’re none too friendly with each other, so it’s anyone’s guess what they want from the peoples of Cull.’
A sudden wind picked up, blasting grit before it. Pulling up his hood and donning his gauntlets, Tergal nodded to their mechanical companion, whose long relentless stride kept him constantly ahead of the two sand hogs. ‘Where do you think he’s going?’
‘I guess that’s something we’ll find out if only we can keep up with him, though that’s becoming doubtful. He seems to show no inclination to stop, but we will soon have to.’
Tergal observed the fading light on the other side of the sky as the sun sank behind the horizon, and he could sense Stone’s weariness in the hog’s plodding and slightly unsteady gait. He did not yet feel tired himself but knew he could not continue like this all night, and besides he was getting hungry. He grimaced at Anderson, who took out his monocular to study the terrain ahead.