The area within the funnel, right up close to the screen, shaded red. ‘Orlandine’s last recorded position was within this area, and it seems likely that Erebus is here too. Now, all that lies between them and Earth is Solar System Defence.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Nothing of consequence.’
‘That seems somewhat remiss.’
‘It is remiss. Erebus has played this perfectly.’
‘Perhaps you could explain?’
‘Since Erebus’s attack seemed concentrated in this particular quadrant, extra forces were moved in from all surrounding areas. That this attack occurred on the other side of the Polity from the Prador kingdom was not noted. The ECS quadrant forces over on that side are positioned near the Line over there, ready to intercept and if necessary follow in any attacking Prador fleet. They are far distant from Earth so would take some time to reach it. The forces on this side, Erebus has already nailed down. Forces elsewhere within the Polity should be able to get to Earth more quickly… However, Erebus and Orlandine have a straight run on Earth and will now have the time to conduct a sustained attack.’
Cormac considered the scenario. By appearing incompetent in attacking an ECS fleet outside the Polity itself, and thus revealing itself, Erebus had perhaps led the AIs into a false sense of security. They had assumed they were dealing with something that did not think as logically as themselves, was perhaps even a little insane. They had not expected such a new dimension to the attack — this USER disruption generated by their own runcible network. Or had they? Still he found himself questioning the lack of a more active response from them. And still there were serious questions to be answered about that Ipatus Chang woman. But, even if the AIs were careless of any damage this would inflict on the human race, they must surely care about the damage that could be inflicted upon themselves. Erebus might now bring down Earth, and with the homeworld bring down the Polity’s de facto ruler: Earth Central… Of course, whatever Cormac thought about all this was irrelevant now. There would be no fleet out of Salvaston, so he could do nothing about either Orlandine or Erebus.
Then again…
Maybe there was something he could do. In being able to send himself through U-space he possessed an utterly unexpected ability, one even beyond Erebus itself.
‘I take it you have a substantial stock of CTDs aboard?’ he suggested.
‘I have.’
‘Anything small enough for me to carry in a backpack?’
‘Most of them are that small… physically, anyway.’
‘Sort one out for me then — largest destructive potential but not too heavy.’
‘What are you planning?’ asked Smith.
‘I’m planning to remove at least one of Erebus’s allies — this Orlandine character,’ Cormac replied. ‘King, when you’re ready, head us towards that war runcible’s last known location.’ He looked round at his three companions, who were watching him expectantly.
‘Horace Blegg thought he could transport himself through U-space,’ Cormac began. ‘We now know that isn’t true.’
‘And?’ enquired Smith.
‘I can.’
Smith’s expression revealed a convincing emulation of bemusement and disbelief. Cormac shuddered, feeling himself become somehow insubstantial, as the bridge dome greyed over and the King of Hearts dropped into the mentioned continuum. He closed his eyes, concentrated on stability, then in his gridlink replayed the images that the attack ship AI had earlier displayed in the viewing dome. After a moment he accessed the ship’s server to obtain precise measurements of the geometry of the funnel displayed, for he had noted that the mouth was very narrow, maybe too narrow. The measurements soon confirmed this.
‘King,’ he said, ‘to get to Earth, both Erebus’s wormships and the war runcible will need to pass along a narrow corridor between intersecting spheres of U-space disruption. I see that this won’t be easy for them.’
‘Practically impossible,’ King concurred. ‘It would be easier for them to surface into the real then make a series of short jumps wherever the wash from the disruption allows.’
‘So they will have to travel sub-light for appreciable distances?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know what I’m considering?’
‘Be nice if we damn well knew too,’ observed Arach.
‘Very well.’ Cormac paused, knowing the others would not like this, since it meant they would have to remain aboard ship. ‘With all that Jain technology at Erebus’s disposal, I don’t know why he made Orlandine seize that war runcible, but that she did so must mean it is critical to Erebus’s plans.’
‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ said Smith.
‘Bully for you,’ grumped Arach.
‘The war runcible is heavily armed,’ Cormac explained. ‘King could not possibly destroy it, hence the need for the Salvaston fleet. However—’
‘How did I know there was a “however” coming?’ interrupted Arach.
‘However, if King can get me close enough, I can transport myself and the CTD across to take the war runcible out of the equation.’
‘That’s if King can even get you close,’ Smith observed, ‘or finds it not surrounded by wormships.’
‘Do you have any other suggestions?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘So you go across alone?’ Arach was clearly disappointed.
‘Alone, yes.’
‘Seems pointless.’
Cormac eyed the drone. ‘Well, I guess I could just curl up, turn off and do nothing.’
Arach swore, then turned round and scuttled out of the bridge.
‘Have that CTD ready for me soon, King,’ Cormac instructed.
Certainly it seemed Polity AIs might be involved in some Machiavellian scheme, and in the end he would damn well have some answers, even if he had to physically tear them out of Earth Central itself. However, right now he would continue to do his best for those it was his duty to protect, which included some hundred billion humans living in the Sol system.
As the two Dragon spheres penetrated deeper into the accretion disc, the attacks on them became infrequent. However, Mika found much more to interest her here. Occasional bacilliforms, lenses and segmented fragments of wormship structure put in an appearance, but they were rare and, it seemed to her, acted as if lost. It was the other things now being revealed by her scans that absorbed her interest. The twin spheres penetrated clouds of small ovoids that they repelled with hard-fields, since these objects were so small and numerous it was impractical to destroy them with collision lasers. These were, in fact, Jain nodes — trillions of them — and to Mika’s mind the harbinger of the future destruction of the Polity unless something could be done to completely erase them from existence. Then other larger objects began to appear, and it seemed to Mika that the Dragon spheres were travelling into some Jain-tech evolutionary past in which only the oddities were on display.
The first of these new phenomena to come into view was a mass of leech-like biomechs wound through a quadrate framework that had seemingly been squeezed into a vaguely spherical shape at least a quarter of a mile across. An early version of a wormship, perhaps, or some kind of mutation from the final version? It was difficult to tell. Certainly it was nowhere near as lethal as a wormship since, though the leech-things showed greater activity as the two spheres approached, seemingly reaching out beseechingly and shedding Jain nodes like puffball spores, the whole construct just hung in space as the spheres parted to circumvent it and then made no attempt to pursue them. Mika was busily studying her scans of this construct and thus ascertaining that it contained no drive of any kind when the next new object hurtled like a hunting barracuda out of the murk.
This biomech was a fifty-foot-long torpedo impelled by a dirty-burning Buzzard ram-jet. Collector fields sprouted from either side of its forequarters, the accretion material they were gathering glowing red-hot as it entered shark’s-gill intakes, so that the object appeared to be sprouting external salamander gills. Its front end opened a tri-mandible mouth as it approached, pink inside like a fuchsia, and Mika was reminded of the calloraptor hybrids Skellor had created for his attack on the planet Masada. She gathered as much data as she could on this thing, and as quickly as possible for, accelerating towards the other Dragon sphere, its future lifespan could be no longer than a few minutes. Eventually a white laser stabbed out from the twin sphere straight down its gullet. Fire exploded from its back end, leaving just a hollow tubular shell glowing red inside, as it tumbled past in the wake of the sphere that had killed it.