The implication of her last statement was not lost on the drones. They began one of those fast debates of theirs, into which Orlandine interjected her own selection. Within a few seconds they had decided on Bludgeon for the task. The drone had been acting as a signal relay for some time, when not otherwise engaged in its hobby of creating multidimensional geometries. It was the perfect choice. The bedbug ambled forward, lifted its blind head towards her and awaited further instructions.

‘Before we get to work, there is one more thing I have to add.’ She now addressed them all. ‘You understand my objectives and you relish the prospect of action, but I want it to be clear that you understand the risk.’

‘We understand,’ said Knobbler. ‘We were made disposable.’

Orlandine gazed at the heavily armoured killer.

‘Yes, quite.’

The Golem Azroc strode out onto one floor of the newly completed Hedron aboard Jerusalem and gazed around. Hanging in space in the centre of this dodecahedral chamber was a holographic projection in a perpetual state of flux, constantly dividing into segments showing different spacial scenes — star systems, close-up views of planets, space stations, ships travelling through void — and different maps, logic trees, graphs, schematics. It was a mass of visual information changing too fast for the unaided mind to comprehend, but there weren’t any unaided minds present.

Surrounding this hologram, on every inner face of the chamber, were gravplated surfaces. On the one Azroc now strode out upon were concentric rings of consoles occupied by humans, Golem and haimen. Two other inner faces, or floors, were similarly occupied, while others were empty or occupied by only one or two figures. Throughout this chamber, holographic ship avatars appeared and disappeared, as conferences were conducted on the physical as well as the virtual level. Massive quantities of information were being shunted back and forth, and then acted upon: ship movements, defensive capabilities of vulnerable worlds, weapons-manufacturing statistics — the whole complex logistical web of this current Line war.

Earth Central and all the high-level AIs within the Polity had been preparing for something like this, but at present it was still considered a ‘local matter’. For Erebus had attacked a fleet outside the Polity and until now had shown no sign of doing anything else. No one quite knew what Erebus intended, for its actions thus far had seemed rather illogical. Remembering friends who had died, Azroc did not look upon the matter so coolly. Indeed, Azroc the Golem had discovered emotion within himself, welling up from somewhere below emulation, when he had found his friend roasted in a shuttle that had not even managed to escape the bay of the dreadnought Brutal Blade during Erebus’s assault.

‘So something has happened at last?’ he enquired of the air.

‘Certainly,’ Jerusalem replied.

‘And why am I here?’ Azroc asked.

‘You are here for your input.’

‘Really.’

Azroc knew himself to be substantially more intelligent and much faster of thought than any base-level human. He also knew that most humans viewed Jerusalem as something almost supernal and beyond understanding. It was all about orders of magnitude really: humans to Jerusalem were as fleas to an elephant, whereas Azroc placed his own elevation at about that of a cockroach. And now Jerusalem wanted his input? Azroc would have laughed if he hadn’t totally misplaced his sense of humour aboard the Brutal Blade.

The Golem again scanned about visually, then accessed fragments of what was happening on a virtual level. He noted that Jerusalem had assigned about one per cent of its processing power to him alone, and was further bewildered by that, for one per cent of such a giant AI was a huge amount. Why, then, did Jerusalem think Azroc’s input was important? He was, after all, just one Golem of many, with an AI mind outclassed by thousands of others already aboard this vessel. Azroc tried applying for access to information and processing power on deeper levels, but found himself blocked. After a moment of chagrin he finally worked out what was going on here: he was merely a sounding board for Jerusalem, perhaps one of many scattered about this chamber. He decided not to resent that as he disconnected from virtuality.

‘What is the situation thus far?’ he asked aloud, like any unaugmented human.

‘We prepare for conflict but don’t know where or what form it will take,’ Jerusalem replied.

‘Any idea of where Erebus is now?’

‘We have tracked down certain parts of the entity…’

‘Those being?’

‘Perhaps you should head for the big screen to your left?’

Azroc looked over at the adjacent floor of the Hedron, angling up from this one. Positioned upon it was a blank ten-foot-square screen, next to a platform composed of metal gratings upon which had been bolted a single empty chair and beside which stood a Golem hand interface — a narrow pillar topped by a sphere inset with the imprint of a skeletal hand. He strode over, stepping across the join between floors, and mounted the platform to head for the seat. Once ensconced there he felt a moment’s annoyance: here he was, just another component slotted into place in whatever machine Jerusalem was creating.

‘One of Erebus’s wormships attacked the planet Cull, where it destroyed all the human-sleer hybrids,’ Jerusalem informed him, as the screen began showing these same events.

Azroc frowned, then sent internal instructions to his syntheskin covering. The skin of his right hand internally detached itself, wrinkled for a moment, then puffed up, a split opening around the wrist. From this split he stripped off the syntheskin layer, like a fleshy glove, to reveal the gleaming skeletal hand underneath, which he then placed in the imprint in the sphere. After a moment, a connection established through the pseudo-nerves in his hand: it was a simple two-way connection, not a multitasking link. Through this he could either receive or request information from the AI, but no more than that. Jerusalem was deliberately isolating him from the webworks of data exchange all around, making him a devil’s advocate, someone with a divorced point of view — oversight without involvement. This was a technique often used by AIs when dealing with complicated situations. Jerusalem clearly wanted another point of view, maybe someone who could see the wood rather than the trees.

An information packet suddenly arrived, and it felt like his hand was burning until he applied translation programs to the stream of data coming up through his finger nerves. It simply detailed the events at Cull, but without any interpretation of them.

‘An attack either to mislead or to remove a danger,’ he announced. ‘But how could the hybrids be a danger to Erebus?’

‘There is evidence that they would show the same resistance to being hijacked by Jain-tech as dracomen do.’

‘I see. And were the dracomen similarly attacked?’

Another information packet came through detailing the worm-ship attack on Masada.

‘I would say that Erebus feels it has resources to squander,’ said Azroc.

The pause before Jerusalem’s reply was infinitesimal, but it nevertheless gave the Golem some satisfaction.

‘Why do you say that?’ Jerusalem’s question, of course, was a politeness, for in that minuscule pause the AI would have already worked out Azroc’s reasoning. However, the Golem then experienced a brief moment of confusion, for surely Jerusalem should have worked this out a microsecond after the first attack by Erebus. Was the AI now playing the kind of games with him it usually reserved for humans? What was its purpose in pretending to only understand this matter now? Azroc did not know and felt even more like a mere cockroach.