‘Jerusalem?’
After a long pause the AI replied over intercom, ‘My phasic modular B folderol.’
‘Is it really?’ Azroc enquired.
‘Ipso facto total bellish.’
‘Yes, mine is too.’
‘Repairing.’ Static hissed from the intercom, then came a sound suspiciously like someone kicking a piece of malfunctioning hardware. ‘OK. Better.’
‘You’ll talk sense now?’
‘When the occasion requires.’
‘Are we through?’
‘We are near the edge, but the damage I was sustaining has reached its limit. I have lost fifty-eight hard-field generators and had to eject twenty-two fusion reactors. Unfortunately that should have been twenty-four, and now one third of my volume is contaminated with radioactives.’
‘Structural damage too?’
‘Yes, but only to secondary internal structures. My main skeleton will realign.’
Even as Jerusalem said this a great groaning and crashing echoed through the ship. Azroc focused on the floor crack and observed it beginning to close, beetlebots quickly scuttling out of the way. In fact the whole hedron appeared to be twisting back into shape, and as this happened, the raised piece of floor his chair was mounted upon began to settle down again. It was as if, like some human fighter, Jerusalem was casually pushing its dislocations back into place while spitting out chunks of broken tooth. Now the constant din of industry grew in volume, and within the hedron Azroc noted numerous welding arcs and crab drones zipping back and forth with circuit boards or other components clutched in their claws. Glancing down he saw that the crack in the floor directly below him had not yet closed, but the pipes had been reattached and he could see the milky glimmer of nanobot activity at the crack’s edges as they drew material across to bridge it, while a crab drone arrived beside the raised section of floor to cut off its protruding edge and make similar repairs.
‘It has occurred to me to wonder what you hope to achieve by getting clear of the interference,’ said Azroc. ‘You are a large vessel and I know you possess some lethal weaponry, but even so what can you do against Erebus?’
‘There is,’ replied Jerusalem, ‘a high probability that one other large Polity vessel will be able to penetrate the interference.’
‘Then what?’
‘Erebus is certainly launching an assault on Earth,’ said the AI. ‘We should still be able to fight a delaying action.’
Twenty hours later the great ship once more dropped into U-space turbulence, and Azroc was once again able to use the hand interface. The Jerusalem surfaced into the real less than an hour later, smoothly this time, and without anything breaking.
‘I see,’ said the Golem.
Yes, a delaying action.
Its surface bright with a million points of light that were almost certainly welding arcs, the titanic Cable Hogue hung there, waiting in vacuum.
18
Another of these mythical characters is the ridiculous Mr Crane, a ‘brass’ Golem who, like the gods of old, is neither good nor evil, just capricious and dangerous. In him I see the ultimate expression of how humans regard the Golem android. In the far too numerous stories about him we see that he can become everything we fear about them, for he can be an indestructible killing machine, an insane mechanism capable of the viciousness of humans, an amoral murderer. Yet he can be everything we might love and admire too, for he can be just, he can be the relentless crusher of evil and protector of the weak and innocent, and he can even be the strong and reliable friend. And, as the stories tell us, nothing can stand in his way, no doors can keep him out. This last point is the most relevant, I think, for the brass man is a combination of two things: demon and guardian angel. He is a point of transition, representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, the past moving into the future. He is our modern version of the god of doors, for he is Janus.
— Anonymous
Mr Crane tumbled through vacuum, vapour steaming from his clothing, his hand clamped on the top of his head to hold his hat in place as if there might be a breeze here to dislodge it, and a hand shoved in his coat pocket, probably to keep a firm hold on his odd collection of toys. Arach, tumbling too, abruptly jetted gas from a humorously placed vent in the rear of his abdomen, made some adjustments with steering vents located underneath the points where his legs joined his thorax, and then drifted over to Cormac. The drone closed a limb about Cormac’s waist, jetted more vapour and propelled the both of them over towards Crane, who reached out and grasped hold of one extended spider limb. A few more jets of gas brought them to a standstill relative to the war runcible, and now Cormac had a clearer view of what was happening.
Rod-forms and chunks of Jain coral were scattered all about them. Ahead, the war runcible was almost lost amid decohered wormship structure and vinelike growths extruding from the countless rod-forms adhering to its hull. Cormac could see the bright flares of oxygen fires burning aboard, and every so often detonations would fling debris out into space. All this was happening in the silence of vacuum, which somehow made the scene seem more poignant.
‘There are eight drones still remaining aboard,’ Arach informed him over his envirosuit radio. ‘But they don’t intend staying there much longer.’
Cormac could not help them now. Even if he could transport himself back inside through the U-space distortions while not ending up as a decorous moulding in one of the internal walls, he could only bring out one or two of the surviving war drones at a time — and getting themselves out here was something they were perfectly capable of achieving on their own. Anyway, he had more than enough problems of his own right now. Linking to his suit he discovered that his remaining air supply totalled forty minutes, which, by deliberately forcing himself into a somnolent state, he could extend by half — but that appeared to be the extent of his life.
‘Anything about Orlandine?’ he enquired.
After a pause, during which he no doubt communicated with the remaining war drones, Arach replied, ‘There was a beacon operating previously from her interface sphere, but it shut down shortly after she departed the runcible. Knobbler estimates she’s a few hundred miles out by now.’
Orlandine controlled Jain technology, so it seemed to Cormac that the blast that had flung her from the runcible was unlikely to have killed her. However, he still did not give much for her chances. Surely Erebus would find her and wreak some hideous vengeance.
Then, as they hung there in space, a shadow fell across them, and thoughts of what Erebus might do were brought firmly to the forefront of Cormac’s mind. He gazed towards the shadow’s source and watched a wormship slide eerily past. His view utterly unfiltered and straight across hard vacuum was a good one, and he realized how weirdly beautiful was this vessel. His estimate of his own lifespan might be too optimistic, he decided. The worm-ship, however, showed no sign of being aware of their presence and continued on down towards the runcible, where, as well as the decohering two that were spreading over its surface, three others were also now docked. Perhaps Orlandine would be missed, just like he and his companions had just been, or perhaps Erebus now knew their precise location — and hers — and would either fry them or pick them up later. As he watched the runcible, a massive detonation aboard one of the docked wormships flung out nearly a third of its structure.
‘Our hissing cockroach,’ said Arach.
‘Pardon?’
‘Erebus is trying to capture the war drones,’ the spider drone replied, ‘but it’s not a great plan. Like myself every one of them has a CTD located deep inside its body, just in case of capture by an enemy. I guess the cockroach just waited until he could do the most damage.’