‘Is that why you are here, Wade?’ he asked.

‘Certainly not. I’m here to learn some things, and to apprise an individual of certain truths, and possibly—though I hope this will not be necessary—to prevent a cataclysm.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘I can, but I won’t,’ Wade replied.

‘All right then. Can you at least answer me this: are you the agent of an ancient hive mind?’

Wade abruptly stood up, and Janer slid his hand nearer to his concealed weapon. He didn’t much rate his chances against Wade in this situation—in any situation really. The Golem turned his back, opened a cupboard, and from it removed a long box. This he placed on the bed and flipped open. Janer eyed the weapon revealed, and felt his mouth go dry. Sable Keech had once carried something like this. It was an APW carbine. Fire burned inside its glass body.

‘It was you…You fired on that hooder?’

Wade waved a hand dismissively. ‘Yes, of course. But let’s keep to the subject of our discussion. In a sense, I am the agent you describe.’

Janer closed his hand on the butt of his own weapon, expecting the Golem to turn on him at any moment. But even as Janer quickly drew his gun, the Golem made no move.

‘What the hell is that weapon for?’ Janer asked.

‘I might well ask you the same.’ Wade indicated with a nod the gun now pointing at him.

‘Self-defence,’ said Janer.

‘Equally,’ said Wade, ‘I have not as yet told you what else I discovered down in the bilge.’

‘I’m listening.’

Wade told him.

Ellanc Strone admiringly checked the working of the Batian weapon before placing it on his sleeping pallet next to a collection of grenades. Quite remiss of Bloc to have not collected all this. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror. Now it was time to move on. He had believed in the Cult for some years, but grown out of that, then come to hate it. He had in fact come to hate the whole idea of reification and would have gladly dispensed with the corpse he now saw before him. Only one thing stood in his way: money. Though the Polity did provide Golem, clones and sometimes the bodies of mind-wiped criminals for human beings recorded to crystal, the waiting list was fifty years long. To actually step over that list and buy a replacement cost a great deal and Ellanc’s funds did not stretch so far. His dislike of the Cult and its bastard offspring, also his need for money, were what had made him accept Lineworld’s initial offer to spy on Bloc. They were also the reason he had accepted the offer he recently received over secure com.

He would turn Bloc into a heap of scrap metal.

Ellanc donned his long coat, concealing the Batian weapon which hung from his belt underneath it. Quite probably he himself would be destroyed by the Kladites. However, Lineworld had made promises, guaranteed by independent arbiter, to load him to a Golem chassis, and pay him a disgustingly large quantity of money. Ellanc himself had made provision for one of his fellows to retrieve his memcrystal. Thereafter, Bloc’s people would be leaderless and easy prey for other Lineworld operatives, who were already on their way to Mortuary Island to await this ship’s return, and seize control of it before the next voyage.

It was 6.30 now, and time to get going. Ellanc stepped out of his cabin and strode along the deck that housed the reification’s staterooms, picking up his followers as he went. As Oranol joined him he said, ‘Remember, you do nothing. Don’t make any hostile moves—just ensure you get hold of my memcrystal.’

‘I understand,’ confirmed Oranol.

So he should—Ellanc would be paying him a lot of money for that understanding.

Twenty-five minutes later they reached the jigger stairwell and filed down to the meeting hall. They entered, looking around, but the hall was empty.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Oranol.

‘What’s to dislike?’ Ellanc asked. ‘Bloc is probably still trying to figure how he’s going to get out of this.’ Ellanc knew that Bloc was near bankrupt, and that definitely no further funds would be forthcoming from Lineworld.

‘Someone’s coming,’ said one of the reifs.

Ellanc listened—and heard a rumbling sound. Probably a troop of Kladites coming to back up some more of Bloc’s threats. Maybe some of those threats would even be carried out. Ellanc did not care really, just so long as Bloc came along with them. Precisely at the moment he turned, the door and half its surrounding woodwork exploded inward, and the hooder careened into the room like an out-of-control train.

The hard, segmented edge of the creature’s carapace cut across one reified woman like a saw, flinging her back with her clothing torn away and chest ripped open to expose shrivelled lungs. It slammed down on another reif, then instantly reared up again, tossing aside something ragged and spraying blue balm. Ellanc swung up his weapon, knowing it was useless. He fired continuously, explosions flashing along the creature’s surface, blowing small cavities and flinging off pieces of tough carapace. Another victim was smashed into the back wall, yet another cupped under the monster’s hood, while its new spiky tail lashed sideways and someone’s head bounced across the floor. It loomed up, with pieces of reification hardware and bones falling away from underneath its hood, whipped its head from side to side sending reifs sprawling in every direction.

Ellanc fired at it repeatedly, aiming for the same spot on the body segment just behind its head, trying to excavate his way in. Five reifs down in as many seconds, possibly more. This was worse than what he had witnessed back at the enclosure. The thing seemed maddened. He pulled a grenade and rolled it underneath the monster. It lifted slightly on the blast, a hole blown through the floor below it. Then it came down again and again, like a draughts player profiting by an opponent’s fatal error. One two three four: four others shredded to bones and tatters of milky flesh, torn clothing, spreading pools of balm.

‘Get out!’ Ellanc shouted needlessly. ‘All of you, get out while you can!’

Just seconds of distraction, and the tail, like a swinging steel girder, struck him in the chest and hammered him back against the wall. He glimpsed one of his fellows being smeared across the floor like a bug under a fingertip. Then darkness loomed over and above him as he struggled upright and brought his weapon again to bear. Perhaps striking it underneath the armoured hood would do it? Ellanc remembered seeing a Batian try the same, and fail, so instead he fired down at the floor by his feet as the hood slammed down on him. And had not the floor given way at that moment, the hooder would have collapsed him into a grotesque dwarf.

In a shower of burning wood Ellanc landed on the cowling of a big hydraulic motor. Fluid was squirting from a damaged ram, and the back end of the huge ship’s rudder was sliding towards him. On the other side of it, he glimpsed, in the tangle of pipes, rams and motors, a fire burning below the grenade hole, further over. He looked up and saw the vertical rows of burning red eyes, and glistening scalpel mandibles groping after him through the gap. But by the time he brought his weapon up, it had swept out of sight. He backed away from the rudder and sat down on a pipe. He gave a hacking sound, realized it was a laugh. For a dead man he had not felt so alive in a long time. Then, as doors behind him opened, he stood up and turned. Fire slammed into him, hurling him backwards. Hitting pipework, he tumbled to the floor. Error messages slid up into view, one after another. The smoke cleared enough for him to see Kladites standing beyond it.

‘A few others got away,’ announced one of them.

Another replied, ‘I don’t care—we get out of here now. You saw what it did to the others?’

Ellanc stared at the two of them. One turned and aimed his carbine at Ellanc’s upper torso, where his memcrystal and main control hardware was located.