"Do you have any suggestions?" he asked.

The AI's motives were opaque to Moria, only suggestions as to lines of enquiry occurred. "Have you tried the planetary AIs—those running the runcibles on the surface?"

"I have, but they possess little time to spare for me. They're running the runcibles at maximum rate, open-port all across the Polity. They are also organizing planetary defences. Apparently George," he shot a penetrating look at the AI's human representative in the room, "passed on to them no information about your appointment. Perhaps the reasons for it became apparent in those last moments, prior to it making the decision. It could also be that information was lost in the subsequent net collapse."

"Perhaps if I knew more about what happened and what is likely to happen?"

Krong held up a hand, then addressed his companion, "Urbanus, take George with you and try to question him. Use signing, writing—anything you can think of. If necessary, see if you can fit him with an aug and try to access his brain directly. Liaise with one of the planetary AIs; maybe we can come up with something useful."

"If the decision was made in the last moments," Urbanus observed. "George here will probably possess no knowledge of it. I understand he remained out of communication, in a U-jump, when Conlan destroyed the AI."

"Nevertheless he was part of that AI."

Urbanus nodded and stepped forwards to place a hand on George's shoulder.

George stood meekly and said, "The worth of a thing is what it will bring." He followed Urbanus from the room.

"That is both annoying and worryingly close to making sense. I think he might be trying to tell us something," said Krong.

"Proverbs are like that… this… Conlan?"

Krong looked at her piercingly. "Your aug is unusual, I understand?"

"It is."

"So too is Conlan's, but he played for the other team. He organised an attack up here to seize this place while he himself piloted the grabship. We were forewarned and managed to stop the former but not the latter. We now have Conlan locked in a cell."

That raised all sorts of questions that Moria ran through and discarded as irrelevant. She concentrated on the heart of it: "Why?"

"He worked for the Separatists here who were apparently being financed, indirectly, by the Prador Kingdom. Apparently the Prador promised to destroy all the AIs and put humans back in charge again."

Moria snorted derisively.

"My thoughts too. Once this place came under Separatist control with the AI destroyed, Conlan was to link in, using his aug, to the connection between this runcible and the one at Boh, taking control of all systems there that were once controlled from this end by the AI. It seems he would have been able to prevent reattachment of the units of the complex there by shutting down environmental controls and seizing control of meteor collision lasers. The technicians there would have been fighting to survive and would have had little time to do the runcible any damage before the Prador arrived to take it." I see.

"You don't seem surprised."

Moria shook her head. "George was slowly uncovering what it's possible for me to do with such an augmentation. Subversion of computer systems was involved but I can see how it would be possible."

"I had a difficult time accepting it myself but for the sophistication of the attack. I thought he was overestimating his abilities." He grimaced. "He did, though apparently not those ones."

"What's happening now?" she asked.

"Two Prador ships are on their way here so any spatial defence we could mount in the limited time will be… ineffective. We've a vessel already in transit to Boh to pick up the technicians there, and once it is loaded, another will be following, its crew detailed to conceal CTD space mines within that runcible's structure. We are also mining this one. There is a Polity dreadnought called theOccam Razor in pursuit of those two ships, but…" Jebel shook his head. "I haven't seen anything we've got manage to stop just one of those bastards."

"So we burn our crops behind us," Moria stated.

"Yes. Intriguing and frustrating though this puzzle concerning your promotion might be, I still have to work on the basis that the best way to stop the Prador seizing these runcibles is to obliterate them. My strongest wish is that the Prador on one particular ship take the Boh runcible aboard before discovering the mines." He gazed out at Trajeen again now.

"Particular ship?" she asked.

He glanced back at her. "One of those is the ship that destroyedAvalon Station. The one that set this war in motion and made me the man I now am." Something bitter, perhaps a little insane, flashed across his expression, then he seemed to take it under control as he turned to face her fully again. "Unless the rate of progress of the two ships changes, they should be here within the week."

Moria shivered; he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, Trajeen precisely haloing his head. Two of the moons were visible; Vina, identifiable by its speed of transit, swung over above him like some ominous sign. He seemed a prophet of doom.

"How many will be evacuated from the planet by then?" It never occurred to her to wonder if she would be among them.

"Not even ten per cent," he replied. "I think we're done talking now." He turned back towards the window.

In her aug she received a transmission from him containing all the records of recent events. It was a dismissal.

Vagule's thoughts cycled with frosty precision in his flash-frozen brain. With his spherical armoured body ensconced on one rack in the drone cache, he observed through his sensors eight others of his kind arrayed in similar racks beside him. Communication being possible he listened in to some of the exchanges between the other drones:

"Father will send us into battle soon and we can kill humans."

"I look forward to demonstrating my loyalty to Father."

"Kill the humans and all Father's enemies."

"I have detected a fault in my rail-gun which will make me less able to serve Father."

"Call for maintenance—to not be perfectly maintained is disloyal."

"I have called for maintenance."

And so it went: the continuous affirmation of purpose with discussions straying into the subjects of weaponry, tactics and occasionally into analysis of previous engagements. Vagule, who could do no less than feel utterly loyal to Immanence, also understood that loyalty to be imposed by electronic means just as it was previously imposed by his father's pheromones. His past life lay open to his inspection and he remembered his father's treatment of him with painful clarity. It seemed that though disobedience was no option, his ability to think about his lot was no longer confused by those physical pheromonal effects. However, most of those here were second-children who only vaguely recollected being anything other than war drones. They did not possess an underlying stratum of memory to run counter to their imposed loyalty. There was, however, one other drone here like himself.

"You are the new drone," said that other.

"I am Vagule."

"Yes, a first-child Prime."

"Who are you?"

"I am Pogrom and I too was a first-child Prime, though only your presence here has reminded me of that."

Vagule knew nothing of any first-child called Pogrom and only then did it occur to him that others went through the same experiences before him.

"When were you a first-child?"

"Back on home-world when Immanence still possessed four legs and both claws and before this ship was built. I do not know how long ago, only that thirty first-children have served since then."

Thirty?

Vagule realised hundreds of years must have passed. "What was your infraction?"