Then Azroc’s eye fell upon other minor scenes: a shuttle being subsumed by a rod-ship, and spacesuited figures jetting away from it with painful slowness. Gusts of flame and gas as the shuttle’s laser targeted then incinerated each of these figures. Were they evacuees from this very ship? The Golem calculated the chances of that, and of one of those figures being Karischev. Azroc had by then shut down those parts of his mind concerned with the emulation of human emotion, though, as he did so he considered whether it was emulation, when copied so perfectly, or the thing itself? Perhaps the mere fact that he could disconnect himself from it did make it emulation. Such thoughts he concerned himself with as he waited for his own destruction.
Then the USER shut down.
It took the Golem some moments to realize what had happened, as com traffic rose to a scream and Polity ships began disengaging and running. Only as ships began winking out, dropping into U-space, could he accept that they might now survive. He began to bring parts of his consciousness back online; returning to life. The first shuttle to come in through the gaping hole in the side of Brutal Blade skidded along the shining deck and crashed into the wall below the dormitory windows. Another swiftly followed it, then another. Focusing in on the coms operating between Brutus and those aboard the shuttles, he learnt that seven out of the twelve small vessels had survived. Nothing said about Karischev, however.
Once the last shuttle slammed down in the docking bay, the Brutal Blade dropped into U-space with a ragged groan echoing throughout its structure. They were away; they had survived. Azroc removed his grip from the stanchion as the gravplates came back on and stabilized. He moved across to the nearest dormitory window and observed a shimmer-shield come on within the hole through which the shuttles had entered. Beyond this he observed repair robots, like frenetic spiders no bigger than a finger end, spinning metallic fibres across to slowly mend the gap. He moved away from the window and along through the dormitory. He observed a man lying on the floor, his spacesuit still intact, but himself horribly broken inside it, his spine snapped at right angles. Azroc stooped down and observed a small autodoc clinging to the suit’s shoulder, nestled in breach foam like a spit bug. Checking the doc’s readout he discovered that it maintained life—the doc shunted in at the man’s neck, keeping his head alive and thus the brain inside it. The rest could be repaired, or replaced later. Azroc stood up and moved on down into the shuttle bay.
Sparkind were disembarking, but Karischev himself was yet to appear. Recognizing the soldier’s shuttle, Azroc quickly headed over to it. The shuttle lay distorted, hot metal ticking and creaking as it cooled. Azroc realized then that it had not even made it away from the ship. Some weapon had carved a channel right through its hull, energy discharges frying its systems and welding it to the deck.
A Golem Sparkind reached the shuttle’s airlock ahead of Azroc, tearing it away from its distorted frame. Smoke gusted out, stinking of fried meat. Azroc ducked inside after the other Golem, and began checking for life-signs amid the incinerated remnants. Two remained alive, maintained by suit autodocs operating in much the same way as the one Azroc had seen in the dormitory. The rest of the bodies were casualties of war. He finally identified Karischev as the burnt thing still strapped in the navigator’s seat. The sick wrench of anger he felt was no emulation.
Epilogue
At first it seemed there might still be some life in the wrecked Centurion. Scanning it from a distance, King picked up energy usage from within the hull, localized heat sources, and other indicators that something might still be functioning inside. However, drawing closer, the AI attempted to open communication links but received no response, and now, inspecting the ship at close hand, King realized those earlier signatures must have resulted from its death throes, a leaking reactor, final fires dying down inside the vessel. It was hardly recognizable as a ship at all, now that it lay twisted out of shape in a cloud of its own debris. The likelihood of its mind having survived seemed low.
When the USER went offline in a way that indicated its destruction, King’s first instinct was to flee immediately. However, the AI suppressed that instinct. It had already rescued some humans for reasons it did not like to study too closely, so why not make certain here? Maybe a rescued AI would state King’s case later to the Polity? But it was really that undamaged weapons nacelle that swung King’s decision not to leave immediately. Yes, its contents might be depleted, but King needed such supplies desperately, and anything would be better than his present complete lack of armament.
The King of Hearts drew even closer to the ruined ship, pieces of wreckage bouncing and clattering from the hull before tumbling away into vacuum. King fired his two grapnels, closing their hardened claws into ripped hull metal on either side of the undamaged weapons nacelle, then began to draw the wreck towards him. After a moment he guided his remaining telefactor out of the accommodation specially constructed for the rescuees, back into the bay, and launched it into space. Bringing the telefactor down on the wreck’s twisted hull, he set it to cutting its way in, then returned his attention to the weapons nacelle. He scanned the nacelle and discovered it contained only two imploder missiles—not really a great haul, but better than nothing. He would get the telefactor to cut the missiles free after it checked out the mind inside the ship…
Then the comlink opened. ‘One false move and you’re toast, boy,’ came a voice.
‘Who is this?’ Something about the speaker seemed familiar to King, but he could not identify what because at present the communication came via radio and was voice only.
‘Inspect yourself, King.’
Through the telefactor, King did as instructed. Debris had clattered against him constantly during his approach to the wreck. Some of it, however, had not bounced away, and appeared too suspiciously even in construction to be mere debris. King paraphrased himself: Polity super-intelligences taken for mugs … A neat row of black hemispheres now decorated his hull from stem to stern. Space mines.
‘Now,’ said the voice, ‘I hope I have your attention, because if you do anything reckless and I send a signal to those mines, there won’t be enough left of you to make a decent-sized ingot.’
‘I have humans aboard.’
‘I very much doubt that, unless you’ve found a way to use them for fuel. I know your opinion of anything that is not AI.’
In response King sent images of those he had rescued. There came a delay before the response, as the recipient of those same images no doubt opened the information stream in secure space so as to check for both viruses and veracity.
‘You know ECS policy concerning hostages,’ said the other ship.
‘I know it, but these are not hostages. I rescued them.’
‘The King of Hearts changes his heart?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You know what the ECS response to you might be?’
‘I do… I have not yet decided how to resolve this.’
‘You will open yourself to me for inspection. Completely.’
‘You could be an agent of Erebus—and I would rather the mines be detonated than submit myself to that.’
‘You too could be such an agent… Very well, then, allow me access to your U-space communicator, or would you rather I detonated those mines right now?’
King opened an exterior link to his U-com, permanently monitored and ready to be closed down in an instant. He did not know the contents of the information package the other ship sent, nor what it received in return. But after a moment, the other vessel sent coordinates.