‘You will take us here,’ it instructed.

King brought the U-space engine online and expanded its field to encompass the wreck, before dropping them both into the U-continuum. He noted, through the channel open to his telefactor, that it had by now cut its way into the other ship’s hull. In a short burst of code he gave it other instructions, then felt some relief when he realized the other ship did not seem to detect the signal. He understood then that the mind in the wreck had played its only real strong cards. Its sensors must be severely damaged; what sensitivity they still possessed had been badly degraded by the radiation leakage from the cracked reactor. It would probably not even see the telefactor until the machine was upon it.

Slow hours passed, and finally the telefactor, after cutting its way through much wreckage, entered the chamber containing the other mind, thereupon sending its ‘ready’ signal to King. Now fully engaged through the telefactor, King was in a position to destroy the other AI mind. But… what would be gained?

‘Aren’t you going to do something, then?’ asked the mind in the wreck.

‘This changes nothing,’ said King.

‘Precisely… I’ve been watching your telefactor’s stealthy approach for some time and wondering what you intended.’

King felt slightly embarrassed, like a child caught by its parent in some obviously stupid act. He settled the telefactor down on its base and just let it stay there. Now, in underspace, he noticed much disturbance—many ships.

‘The fleet?’

‘Yes, what remains of it.’

Days passed, during which King observed his passengers settle into a routine, even offered them coldsleep facilities that some accepted. Cormac went first, King felt with some relief, then Andrew Hailex. The dracomen did not require such facilities, having already sunk into some form of hibernation. The Golem merely shut themselves down. King, finding the other ship uncommunicative, also switched himself to a state that truncated his perception of time, any thoughts easing themselves through his mind like ponderous sloths. Eventually the journey ended and, returning to full function, he surfaced into the real.

The planetary system lay within the Polity. Here an inhabited world orbited a hot white sun. It lay second from the sun, outside the orbit of a gas giant and inside the orbit of one cold world the size of Mars, beyond which lay an asteroid field—the remains of some shattered world yet to spread and gather into a ring around the sun. On the colonized planet’s surface, human habitations enclosed in polarized geodesies pocked jungle-swamped land masses as if they were blistering in the heat. The jungle was not alien, merely adapted earth-forms boiling across the landscape to transform the atmosphere into something breathable. Cooling plants like iron cathedrals lasered away heat from the nightside to orbital installations. Huge mirrors, still being constructed in orbit, reflected away some of the sun’s energy to be utilized in massive orbital factories. King swiftly understood that all this energy was being converted into coherent maser beams projected towards the cold planet, to power mining operations there and enable further terraforming. The hot planet, in some future time, would be a world much like the one King had departed, where adapted humans, sandapts and other thermodapts, and doubtless dracomen, could survive in the open. The cold world would probably end up supporting human ‘dapts at the other end of the thermal scale.

Such were the energies being thrown about here, King realized this was a perfect bolt hole for the remains of the fleet, much of which had already materialized within the system. Not only that, other Polity ships, other Polity forces began appearing. Listening in to coms traffic King identified one of them as a ship called the Cable Hogue—a vessel so huge that it could not orbit worlds with crustal instabilities or oceans, since its sheer mass would cause tides and earthquakes—a vessel once only rumour, even to King. Next King identified two Dragon spheres, hanging in space either side of the Jerusalem, which came bearing down on his present position.

Decision time… he could choose either certain destruction or utter submission. Then he realized he had already chosen. King felt, as much as an AI could, an overwhelming fatigue. He knew himself to be in the wrong about so much, and no matter how far he fled he would still be wrong.

‘You wanted me to open myself to inspection,’ he told the other ship he carried with him. ‘You could still be some agent of Erebus here to cause mayhem, so I will open myself to Jerusalem.’

At least, if Jerusalem chose to erase King’s mind, it would be fast.

King opened a link to the approaching ship, dropping his defences, and in an instant Jerusalem’s probe slammed inside him. He knew that, though he willingly allowed this, the sheer power of the mind behind that probe meant it could probably have been performed without his submission. Jerusalem sent HK programs inside King, riffling through his systems, inspecting memories. The link was utterly one-sided, so he gained little from the other mind. However, he did know that Jerusalem was similarly probing the mind of the wrecked ship, and other ships nearby too, just as other minds of equivalent power probed fleet ships throughout the system. Then, the probe abruptly withdrew, the HK programs scurrying after it like hunting dogs. King found himself linked into a three-sided communication.

‘Your decision,’ said Jerusalem to the other ship.

A signal was transmitted, and King observed the mines dotted along his hull deactivating and detaching.

‘A shuttle will now collect your passengers, and after that you may go,’ said the mind within the wrecked ship.

King could not understand. He had destroyed the Jack Ketch, killed another AI mind—so why were they prepared to let him go? Probably, he decided, they had no intention of letting him escape. Maybe they felt they still needed ships like him in the future conflict, and therefore hoped to re-recruit him. He detached his grapnels as he observed a shuttle and a grabship, departing from one of the Jerusalem’? bays, no doubt coming to collect his passengers and the wreck. The communication between Jerusalem and the other ship continued.

‘So you still survive,’ said Jerusalem.

‘I do… sort of.’

‘And Cormac survived. How… elegant. I will observe his debriefing with some interest.’

‘Will there really be anything of importance to learn?’

‘I said “with interest”.’

‘I see.’

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting a new ship body?’ Jerusalem enquired.

‘That would perhaps be a good idea.’

‘Would it? You seem to make a habit of wrecking them. You will take better care of a new one this time, won’t you, Jack?’

‘Bollocks,’ replied Jack Ketch.

Ah… thought King.

Gazing through the panoramic window in one of the Jerusalem’s lounges, Cormac watched the glint of drives coming on and going out. Through his gridlink he dipped and delved in the coms traffic and put together a general picture of what was now occurring in this system. The terraforming energies being employed here now lay under Jerusalem’s direct control, that superior AI serving the military governor of this entire system which was now, he guessed, equivalent to a fortress. If anything unexpected surfaced from U-space now, it would immediately become the target for arrays of masers, lasers, and the focused light of sun mirrors. Many systems in the Polity would doubtless be similarly prepared, had been preparing for some time. But he was also painfully aware of just how many stations and worlds lay vulnerable to attack from something like Erebus.

‘The AIs knew something like this was on the cards,’ said Mika.