‘After its attack upon the hybrids,’ he said, ‘Erebus should have known we would work out exactly where it would strike next. It should also have known the precise disposition of Polity ships in the area, and realized what the level of our response would be. Obviously you yourself will be able to make a more accurate calculation than I can, but I would reckon the chances of success of the second attack, with just one ship, were little better than 50 per cent, with a somewhere above 90 per cent chance of the wormship being destroyed whether it was successful or not. Erebus was clearly prepared to sacrifice one of its ships with those odds, therefore has ships to squander. But then I saw that during the attack on the Polity fleet.’
Yet another information packet arrived. Azroc studied it and was puzzled.
‘Perhaps this was intended to draw your eye away from its other two attacks? Or perhaps the other two attacks were to draw your eye away from this one? Certainly there could be no special resistance to Jain-tech on a world like that.’
Jerusalem now informed him, ‘I have received a transmission from the agent investigating this incident. It would seem that a legate landed on that world…’
The screen now showed an image file of the said legate, first at the city of Hammon then later at the ranch house where it murdered the two humans.
‘Who were they?’ Azroc asked.
‘We do not yet know. Evidence of their identities was deliberately erased.’
‘I see. And the wormship, it escaped?’
‘There was nothing there to prevent its attack or to stop it leaving.’
Very puzzling, all of this, but then the actions of this Erebus had been puzzling from the very start. He tried to make some sense out of all this. That many more-powerful minds than his own, with greater access to processing power and numerous data sources, were working on the same problem did not impinge. They would all be thinking in a very similar way, while he, being outside their box, would have to think there.
‘The wormship at Masada was destroyed. The one at Cull was severely damaged but it escaped — so did you track it down?’ he asked.
‘It was dealt with,’ the AI replied curtly. ‘I was considering sending a mission there to see if any useful information could be obtained.’
‘I doubt it.’ Azroc tried to stay outside that box. ‘Anything else there?’
‘Nothing relevant.’
‘So what else do you have?’
Now the screen divided into four, first showing four distinct suns — bar codes along the bottom of each screen division giving their spectra — then next flicking to various positions in those relevant solar systems. The first showed the face of a gas giant, a swarm of fifty wormships drifting across it in silhouette. The second showed a similar number of ships scattered throughout an asteroid field. In the third they were orbiting a gas giant, and in the fourth they formed a ring around a small hot planetoid in close orbit about a sun.
‘These four squadrons of wormships have been discovered, so far, and resources are already being moved into place to counter them. They appear to form part of a general pattern of attack.’
‘If you could elaborate?’
‘The fourth of these to be discovered was only found by making predictions from the first three. The first three were all located near inner Line worlds with human populations above one billion, and all within a hemispherical section of the border a thousand light years across.’
‘Again this makes little sense… unless you go back to supposing that Erebus is careless of resources, and therefore considers its forces so overwhelming that conventional logistics and battle plans are irrelevant.’
‘Ah,’ said Jerusalem. ‘Even as we speak another group of fifty wormships has been discovered within the border area.’
The screen divisions disappeared to be replaced by an image of wormships hurtling through void, only stars visible behind them. The point of view tracked them for a while, then the picture whited out, and the clip returned to the start.
‘A watch station, now no longer able to watch,’ observed Jerusalem, adding, ‘And more.’
The screen again divided, this time into six views including those Azroc had seen first. The extra two views were of the one he had just observed and another showing wormships tumbling above a regolith horizon. Then came further divisions. Azroc watched as the original views were consigned to the left-hand upper comer of the big screen, as more and more came in. Within half an hour there were eighteen confirmed sightings, and Polity vessels were searching for more — for it seemed a certainty there would be more.
‘They’re not attacking?’ he finally queried.
‘I really wish I could answer yes to that,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘However, bombardment of at least two worlds has already commenced.’
Vulture perched on the console of the Harpy. Both Vulture and this ship’s AI had been named after winged beasts (though of course only Vulture itself had truly become one), but such a similarity in names was nearly the only common ground they shared. Despite his present form as a bird, Vulture could still communicate on AI levels, and of course had tried striking up a conversation with Harpy.
Easier to strike up a conversation with an abacus.
Vulture had once been the AI of a little ship like this one, owned by similarly dubious characters but, by contrast with the thing controlling this vessel, Vulture had been a Polity AI with a powerful and complex mind and some vague adherence to Polity principles.
‘So how are you doing?’
‘Question object confusion.’
‘Erm… been anywhere interesting lately?’
‘Back formation supposed: Have you. Interest irrelevant.’
Vulture began to get some inkling of what he was dealing with here. ‘What are you?’
‘Prador Control System Apex 45 Gorland.’
Ah, so — whether this ship’s control system was a genuine AI was a debatable point. Such systems were what the Prador enemy had used to control the U-space engines in all their ships. Basically, they took one of their own first-children and cut out its brain and a large chunk of its nerve tissue, which they wired into the ship itself. Substantial reprogramming of this offspring’s living brain ensued, followed by a freezing process. The resulting mind could think within limited parameters, it could store up memories and experiences within the narrow remit allowed, but the Prador would never allow it to grow outside that remit. Despite this limitation, Vulture decided to keep trying to communicate with Apex 45 Gorland to bring it out of its shell, so to speak, since the other occupant of this particular craft was even less communicative.
Vulture had already tried to discover how Mr Crane had managed to trace that downed wormship. He suspected the Golem somehow had access to the Polity AI nets — past evidence seemed to suggest so.
The ECS personnel on Cull had been much surprised when Crane and Vulture entered the runcible facility being constructed there. Ignoring the swiftly dying protests of the technicians — the runcible AI having ordered them, for their own health, to back off — Crane had input some coordinates into the runcible and then stepped up to the cusp. Vulture hurriedly landed on the Golem’s shoulder as he stepped through. Their subsequent arrival on another Line world, and then transport on a rickety shuttle to a smaller world in the same system, had been… interesting. But how had Crane known about the arms deal going down? Vulture could only suppose that the Golem not only had access to the nets, but to secure levels of them too, either that or Polity AIs were colluding in the Golem’s crusade.
Most of the time Mr Crane sat silently at the console, gazing at the U-space-greyed screen, occasionally inputting some command that negated the red warning lights that kept coming on, occasionally turning his attention to his toys laid out before him like a chess set. Every so often he would pick an item up, maybe the chunk of crystal Vulture was certain now had been obtained from a world named Hayden’s Find and seemed likely to be a chunk of the Atheter AI found there, maybe the set of binoculars, or the rubber dog.