‘They’ll all die, of course,’ Chevron observed, speaking out loud.

‘And that is a problem to you?’ Erebus wondered, using human speech at the same slow rate while checking through the Golem’s mind on every level below that of their communication.

Chevron shrugged. ‘Security is very tight. At one time you could carry personal armament if you chose to. Even that is no longer allowed.’

Ah. Erebus saw what was bothering Chevron: the humans might all die too quickly. Erebus withdrew from full connection, returning to communication by data transfer.

This is not a problem. The runcible AI will see that though the attack was very professional, its faults were utterly human, and therefore ascribe it merely to a separatist source. You will have your time.

‘And when will I have that time?’ Again Chevron spoke out loud. This anthropoid tendency did not worry Erebus. Chevron had stranger habits.

When three particular runcible installations have ceased to exist. And that will have occurred within fifty hours.

‘My people have open bookings, are all located within the vicinity, and are all prepared.’

Not wanting to maintain a U-space link over so great a distance longer than necessary, Erebus now withdrew totally. Chevron was ready and would do what was required once the time was right. Erebus returned its attention to the attack along the Polity border.

One of the runcible worlds needing to be shut down was now out of the equation. At the cost of twelve wormships deployed to divert fire from a massive Polity dreadnought, another six had managed to make a run on the world called Ramone and slam a one-ton rail-gun missile straight down into the runcible complex in its capital city of Transheim, thereby taking out the planetary AI. The six ships had then been destroyed by the same massive dreadnought. Erebus recognized the Cable Hogue and felt a surge of what it could only describe as nostalgia. For in another age Erebus had fought beside that same ship against the Prador.

It would not take long for a new planetary AI to be initiated on Ramone, but it would take much longer to reinstate connections to the massive geothermal power stations buried under the continent on which the city of Transheim sat — stations that provided a vast amount of energy for operating the runcible network.

There were numerous runcibles on an oceanic world called Prometheus, but fifteen of them were notably different from the rest. Before that particular world had been colonized by the Polity, all its surface water had been frozen. Massive heat sinks deep under the ice, connected by superconducting cables to fifteen sets of oversized runcible buffers, had eventually thawed out the ice, and now, when there were abrupt drops in runcible traffic or, in some cases, surges of traffic in particular directions within the same quadrant, excess energy needed to be bled away. When that happened, whole oceans on Prometheus sometimes heated up by a few degrees.

Prometheus was occupied by amphidapt humans, their population level exploding from the start. They lived in undersea cities or inhabited the few island chains. Four of the fifteen runcibles had been located on the islands, but three of them were now gone, and the islands themselves now looked as if they had turned volcanic. Four of the undersea runcibles were gone as well after rail-gun missiles had punched down to strike them in the depths. It would not be long before the remainder were knocked out too, since the fifteen runcibles had mostly been located in areas of low population density, while the Polity AIs had concentrated their defences over the major cities. Remiss of them, though an understandable miscalculation, since all the attacks had been launched against Line worlds of high population. They had thought Erebus’s intent merely to destroy human life.

Erebus had yet to initiate its attack on the two Caldera worlds, for the massive solar collectors and power stations on and about those worlds could easily be adapted for use as weapons. Erebus was here using a different approach, which would reach its resolution within the fifty hours given to Chevron. Once the installations spread around an inner hot planetoid did their job, most of its substance would be blasted towards the Caldera worlds. The destruction wreaked should be extensive enough to knock them both out of the equation too, leaving them no longer able to supplement power usage within the runcible net. The wormships perpetually orbiting the planetoid meanwhile prevented ECS from seeing what was occurring on the surface. At the last moment they would pull away, then follow the debris plume in to finish off any of the power installations remaining. Doubtless the Polity AIs assumed the ships were positioned there to await further orders, and were meanwhile using the time to—

Something wrong.

From numerous different perspectives circling in orbit of the planetoid, Erebus observed a massive explosion erupt between two of the refrigerant-containing spheres. It was clearly an imploder blast: a globe of white fire expanding, then abruptly beginning to contract as the weapon involved generated its temporary massive gravity field. However, since this blast occurred in atmosphere, a shock wave spread out beyond the matter-disrupting hypocentre. It struck the two nearest cooling spheres, rocking and distorting them. Liquid nitrogen poured out of fractures, a fog boiling up to quickly obscure view within the human spectrum.

Was this the start of some attack?

The wormships in orbit began frantically scanning their surroundings for the cause, for any ECS ships would soon reveal themselves when they deployed further weapons. Watching through its thousand eyes, Erebus noticed something else strange occur. The refrigerant was pouring along the pipes towards the next spheres on either side. Upon reaching them, those adjacent spheres in turn released their contents into the next set of pipes — just the flow shock being enough to break the spheres’ internal glass thermos bottles. It was evidently a huge design flaw, and Erebus could blame nothing but itself. The whole strategy was now a write-off for, without the detonation of the rift CTDs, the planetoid wouldn’t…

Like a chain of arc-light diamonds springing into existence, the CTDs began to detonate even though Erebus had sent no signal. But not enough of the spheres had yet released their refrigerant for this final nudge to tear the planetoid in half and eject the mass of debris required. However, this should still be sufficient to cause some major planetary redesign. The surface of the planetoid nearest to the detonations distorted. A continental plate collapsed, creating an unbearable pressure that had to be somehow relieved. It came out of the rift: trillions of tons of magma squirting out at a speed way beyond escape velocity on such a rapidly spinning world. It sprayed round like an equatorial flame-thrower. Erebus realized at once that, however impressive, this blast had ejected too little material too soon, so would prove no more than a nuisance to the Caldera worlds.

‘Oh deary deary me,’ said Fiddler Randal.

‘When I find you,’ said Erebus, replying in the same slow drag of human speech while again applying a huge range of computing resources to track down the source of that damned voice, ‘your suffering will be eternal.’

‘Now, am I getting just a hint here that you might feel a little irked? Perhaps in the future you should get in a few Polity designers to check your stuff over before you try to use it?’

Rage surged through Erebus, through all of Erebus. Worm-ships juddered to a halt wherever they were located. Walls of rod-forms abruptly collapsed. Polity ships, facing imminent destruction, suddenly found their seemingly single-minded opponents distracted, shooting inaccurately, gaps appearing in what had been adamantine defences. Ten seconds later, this anger faded, and the attacks were back on track. Then Erebus saw the danger, a full half-minute after it should have done. And already a full ten seconds too late.