19

 

SVERL

The armour around the housing for Room 101’s central AI core was weak—so wound through with microbot incursions that it had taken on the structure of worm-eaten wood. It was also brittle: crystallized and laced all through with microfractures. The prador drone spat a single missile at the central door and the thing shattered like old glass, slinging fragments into the chamber beyond. The drone slid in there, Bsorol following.

“Clear,” he reported.

Second-children entered and spread out, and Sverl came through next. He gazed at the wreckage, then at the objects sitting in an area towards the centre. Their sad story was all too clear.

“There’s nothing here for us,” he stated. “We need a place that can be armoured and easily defended.” He reached down and picked up a chunk of the rotten door. “We’ll need deep detection all around.”

The AIs had been desperate back there near the Lance, using a brief burst of energy. But during their internecine war they had wasted all their internal weapons against each other and thoroughly degraded exterior station defences. Spear and the others had known they could not hold off the King’s Guard, and that the only way to stop the attack was by killing Sverl. Yet in coming here, it seemed that Sverl had left them behind. Perhaps they were frightened of this place . . .

Bsorol waved a claw back the way they had come. “That autofactory back there looks as good as anywhere. I can set up an easy perimeter, install some security . . .”

“Then that is where we shall go.”

Sverl turned, headed back to the shattered door and also gazed back the way they had come. He felt conflicted. The station AIs and their various robots didn’t worry him—soon enough he could take control of or otherwise subdue them—so why did he want to build defences? Was it instinctive for a prador to install these in a sanctum? Was it the sure knowledge that the assassin drone Riss was after him? Or was it due to his doubts about Thorvald Spear? No, that parasite assassin drone might be dangerous, but, devoid of its usual weapons, it would be no real threat. As for Spear, the man might be becoming an enigma with strengths that weren’t easily measurable, but his chances of getting past Bsorol and Bsectil were remote. No, Sverl knew why he wanted a new defensible sanctum—he was terrified of Penny Royal.

Sverl launched himself from the edge and began heading back, his children belatedly moving in around him. One of the two war drones forged ahead and the other stayed behind; Bsorol and Bsectil were on either side, and his eleven remaining second-children arrayed themselves all around him. All were impelled by jets of compressed air from their armour. Soon they arrived at a protruding half-circle of metal almost like a balcony and entered the tunnel at its rear, which finally debarked into the coin-shaped autofactory. Sverl reckoned this place had made some form of robot for installation in dreadnoughts—assembled in a final construction bay adjacent. However, he could not divine the robots’ purpose from the scattering of wrecked machines remaining here.

He moved out to the centre, anchoring himself by a column robot, now sans arms and sensors. Bsorol, Bsectil and the rest of his children began to see to his security. Soon they were cutting and welding metal all round, bringing in armour and other items from elsewhere. They were building a sanctum around him, so he could encyst in this station. Sverl observed them at work and issued instructions every now and then, and occasionally linked into the detectors and sensors they were installing—ironing out kinks and closing gaps. When they no longer needed his supervision, he mentally ranged out to explore his surroundings.

Soon he found that this area in the heart of the station was all but devoid of AIs—the nearest being the singer back by the runcible. Perhaps proximity to the Factory Station Room 101 AI had been fatal. It struck him that maybe, in some perverse way, the previous attacks upon him had been territorial. Since the previous one, no robots had pursued him, and he found no sign of any AI preparing to attack him now. The nearest AIs were in fact somnolent, dislocated. Those at the hull of the station were still defending it from the King’s Guard’s assault, but with robotic thoughtlessness, just responding and not thinking ahead. He narrowed a probe, selecting just one of these. Then, using every subterfuge he had available, he winnowed data from it. What he found was disturbing.

The AI he’d targeted did know that the King’s Guard had pursued a Polity destroyer here and it did know why they were attacking. But Sverl’s presence here wasn’t a priority, because the solution to it was in hand. When Sverl tried to find out what that solution might be, logic descended into chaotic vagueness. The AI did not know any specifics, but did know that Sverl was no longer its concern. Nervously rubbing his mandibles together, Sverl recognized outside interference and guessed its source.

TRENT

Trent steadied himself against the edge of the Lance’s airlock, his visor display briefly informing him his suit was running its cooling system. His visor was now as dark as a welding glass. Yet, even on this dim setting, he could see everything out here in stark clarity. This place had once efficiently turned out warships just as fast as practically possible. Now Trent couldn’t help but be reminded of a long ago VR experience, of swimming over a coral reef on Earth. The construction bay was colourful and alive with strange growths. The only reminder of where he really was came from the nearby burned-out and still glowing remains of robots, ‘structor pods and attached tentacles. He could also see a distant rising plume of debris from yet another explosion, composed of smoking vaporized metal. This latest weapons strike was in the same area as all of the most recent ones—deep within the bay, about five miles away. He wondered if the King’s Guard out there had detected Sverl leaving the Lance and were now firing at the prador’s present location. Then he followed Spear.

Spear propelled himself from the edge of the airlock to the wall of the bay. As he followed, Trent kept replaying the events inside the Lance in his mind. Spear had been in bio-espionage. However, the data Isobel had obtained on him mentioned nothing about martial training nor special uploads, beyond the standard ones at least. Yet during his fight with the robot intruder, he had moved almost as fast as a Golem. Surely, it had taken more than human strength to drive something, no matter how sharp, straight through the rear lobe on that robot’s head. That had to be war drone armour. But it wasn’t just that—it was his attitude. They had faced something that could have killed them all—but upon bringing it down, he had behaved as if it had been a minor hindrance. Then he proceeded to fire off the destroyer’s weapons mentally, eliminating the threats all around it. And that was another skillset the man hadn’t possessed before.

That was why Trent was following him, wasn’t it? Spear was now their best bet for survival so the sensible thing was to stick with him, follow his lead and try to protect him. Trent felt he should stay to guard the Lance against attack, but how could he do that? The cold caskets inside it—his responsibility—would be no safer with him there. He cringed inwardly, aware that his concern was more about the one casket containing Reece; many complex feelings arose from that. He had felt her choice to go into hibernation as a kind of betrayal, and now wondered if his decision to follow Spear was a tit-for-tat disloyalty in return. He shook his head in irritation, annoyed that he apparently did not possess the mental equipment for dealing with these emotions.

“How are you going to track Sverl?” he asked Spear as they moved out from the Lance. He turned to take in the interior of the massive final construction bay.

The thing was miles across. It was like looking over some endless industrial cityscape. Sure, plenty of that organic-looking stuff was visible, like the tentacular writhe of ‘structor pod growths. And over to his left, he could see a mountainous worm cast with umbilici protruding from the open mouths of its tunnels—just like the feeding heads of barnacles. However, larger static structures like cranes, giant grabs and resupply towers overshadowed these. Some structures had also taken on a slightly organic appearance, but only because they had been half-melted. Large areas had been torn apart or incinerated. Out in the actual space of the bay drifted wrecked ships, shattered robots and other not so easily identifiable debris. Those barnacle heads were probably feeding on this kind of thing. In places, this stuff had coagulated like piles of asteroid rubble. A slight movement was detectable overall too—probably due to the tidal forces of the hypergiant that Room 101 orbited. In other areas, because of the recent strikes, it was worryingly more than slight.

“Tracking Riss is a problem, but Sverl is no problem at all,” Spear replied over suit radio. “There are data sources, sensors, computers and minds all around us. I can access these, and a large party of prador isn’t easy to conceal.”

“And if we come across another robot, like that one inside?”

Spear turned towards him and held up the spine he carried. It had already proved to be effective in Spear’s hands, but strictly on a one-to-one basis. If more than just one robot attacked, then the weapon Trent carried would be better. Upon deciding to go with Spear, he had quickly gone in search of something sufficiently effective. He’d found that the second-children hadn’t taken everything they’d brought aboard. Just the installation of a manual trigger mechanism had made the small particle cannon usable, and a curved butt to go under his armpit had made it less unwieldy. He felt he carried their main defence . . . or was he just not seeing something? He remembered the spine seeming to change shape as Spear pulled it out of that robot, and shuddered.

They entered a long tunnel in the wall and propelled themselves to drift along it. Trent did not like this way of travelling in zero gravity and vacuum. You could only move as fast as your suit wrist impeller could propel you—not great if you needed to get out of something’s way. But this was how Spear chose to move and if Trent had resorted to walking on gecko boots, he would not have been able to keep up. On that thought, he wondered if he actually wanted to continue. Perhaps he should go back.

Towards the end of the tunnel, at a junction, something became visible crouching on the floor. It was a construction robot and didn’t appear hostile—in fact it just appeared to be doing what such robots usually did. Every now and again, it emitted arc flashes from one of its tool-head arms. It was welding cracks in the floor. Nevertheless, Trent aimed his particle cannon down at it as they drifted over. It showed no response to them at all.

“So, Riss got her collar off,” said Spear.

“What?”

Spear indicated the robot with a wave of one hand. “Riss subverted that robot, programmed it mechanically and had it cut off her collar.”

“Right,” said Trent. He’d had an aug of his own and it had been a sophisticated one, but he’d never been able to penetrate and read the memory of a construction robot. That was usually the province of specialized technicians, who programmed the damned things. Trent considered for a moment, then looked back. He could see no sign of the collar. Had Riss taken it with her or something?

At the end of the tunnel, they reached a T-junction where they shed their momentum against the wall—then they stuck in place with their gecko boots. Even here, deeper inside, Trent’s visor had only notched its filtering down a little. The light of the hypergiant flowed throughout the station like an ambient fluid.

“This way,” said Spear, and began trudging along the wall, which of course now appeared to be the floor.

“How do you intend to stop Riss, if she’s set on going after Sverl?” Trent asked.

Spear paused and looked round. “I’ll try reason and I’ll try pleading. However, if I get close enough, I’m pretty certain that I can now gum up that drone’s workings.” Spear grinned, first tapped his hand against the spine then raised it to tap at his helmet just over his aug. He turned and moved on.

Trent was certain that neither he nor anyone else he knew of would have been able to “gum up” the workings of an assassin drone. Spear had been a formidable character when Isobel Satomi first met him, and he was steadily becoming more dangerous.

“Then the next question I have to ask,” said Trent, “is why?”

Spear halted, but didn’t look round. “You told me that you have been cursed with empathy, so where is it now?”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact that Riss intends to kill Sverl should be enough . . .”

Trent felt something tighten up inside him. Yes, that was wrong, but surely survival dictated—

“But perhaps I should explain to you how Riss intends to kill Sverl,” Spear continued. “The enzyme acid I used to free the shell people of their grafts was a refinement of one that destroyed both prador and human tissue—and Riss has it. Can you just imagine how agonizing it would be to have your body dissolve in acid?”

Trent felt slightly queasy about that but stamped down on the feeling and tried to stick with logic. “If Sverl lives, we all die.”

“No, we have time—the King’s Guard are only, as far as I can gather, whittling down the station’s defences right now. Their leader told me, secretly, that the real attack will commence in . . . ten hours.” Spear turned round. “I have time to stop Riss and get us all back to the Lance and away.”

“With Sverl?”

After a pause, Spear just said, “And then we will see how things transpire.”

This man was very confident in his abilities. However, just seconds after their exchange, it became evident his confidence might have been premature.

Trent had no time to react. Spear was walking along ahead when a section of metal under his feet seemed to drop like a trapdoor, which of course was impossible in zero gravity. Stuck by his gecko boots, Spear’s lower half disappeared up to his hips. Then a pair of skeletal Golem arms appeared, wrapped in organic tech with heavy joint motors. They reached out, silver hands clutched, and dragged him out of sight.

BLITE

“What’s it doing out there?” asked Greer as she threw herself down in a seat. They were all getting frustrated on the planet’s surface, as they tried to make sense of activities around the distant Factory Station 101. They were also trying and failing to monitor Penny Royal.

Blite shrugged as he sat down. He’d used ship’s sensors to scan Penny Royal’s activities in the ruins and the data were unclear. The AI had found two objects that it had immediately destroyed. They appeared to possess roots like some weird plant, with their tendrils spreading out through the ground for miles around. But beyond these facts, he knew no more.

“It’s studying the ruins I guess,” he said.

“And with no explanation offered,” said Greer flatly.

“None,” Blite agreed.

“I’m getting sick of this,” she said. “Perhaps we should have just stayed in the Polity and submitted to whatever examinations the AIs wanted to make.”

“Perhaps.”

“You don’t agree?”

“I don’t, and neither do you.” Blite reached out to call up a view of the AI and noted that it had changed shape. Its spines were all pointing upwards as if, like a flower that responds to daylight, it was closing up for the night. This was now due, as the hypergiant sun was falling behind the horizon.

“No, you’re right,” said Greer, staring up at the screen.

“This is unfinished business—we all felt that at Par Avion. We’ve allowed Penny Royal to drag us along with it, and we’re seeing and experiencing wonders. We don’t understand some of them and no clear explanation is offered when we demand one, but the wonders are still there.”

“And there will be a resolution,” said Brond, stepping into the bridge.

“You’re sure of that . . .” said Greer, looking round.

“We’re just not seeing the whole picture as yet,” he said. “I don’t understand why Penny Royal delayed the King’s Guard from getting here—but is now making no effort to stop them doing what they’re doing.”

“The delay was to prevent the king being involved and getting killed, apparently,” said Blite.

“Yeah.” Brond moved over to his seat and sat down. “But it now seems we’re going to see Sverl and all the rest simply being annihilated. That doesn’t seem like quite the right climax to the kind of manipulation we’ve been seeing.”

“I agree,” Greer replied. “But then, what do we know?”

Brond called up a large frame on the screen to display the King’s Guard attack upon Factory Station Room 101.

“I was studying this earlier,” he said. “Every now and again a shield generator blows on the station. And if you were conducting a bombardment, this would seem like the perfect opportunity to concentrate fire on the weak point. However, it’s not happening. Every time one of those projectors goes, the Guard concentrates their fire on the next strongest point.”

“They could be knocking out defences ready to board,” Blite suggested.

“Maybe,” said Brond. He waved a hand at the screen helplessly. “But why would they do that, if their aim is to eliminate Sverl as a threat?”

CVORN

From fifty light hours out, Cvorn studied the huge Polity factory station sitting in orbit of the hypergiant, then used his aug to check historical files. He quickly absorbed everything available about Room 101, but Sverl’s choice of this destination still puzzled him. Further research revealed that Sverl had been in the prador fleet that had previously attacked the thing, but that was the only connection he could find. What did it mean?

After hours of frustrated speculation, he finally abandoned further research, tuned his sensors up to maximum and waited. Within the next few minutes, he predicted, he should see Sverl arrive here. The other prador had already arrived in this system but of course the light from that event had yet to make its slow crawl out to his location. This was good, though, because now he would be able to see exactly what had happened there. He’d be able to see what had fired on his old destroyer. He waited, scraping his mandibles together, his stomach complaining. He trotted off to get some more stomach remedy, only to spill it on the way back when his system sounded its alert.

His gaze fixed on his screens, with recorders running and sensors ready to focus where they were directed in an instant, Cvorn saw Sverl’s dreadnought arrive. Shortly after that, his own now-defunct destroyer arrived—out by the red dwarf. Sensors refocusing, he watched it begin to orient, then throw up protective hardfields between it and the suddenly revealed threat. When Cvorn saw what was coming up out of the EMR haze around that sun, his stomach complained even louder and seemed to try to escape out of his rear.

King’s Guard . . .

They had been hiding close to the sun, which demonstrated the superiority of their armour and cooling systems. Studying data, Cvorn noted numerous firings of lasers, but they weren’t directed at any particular target. These were quantum-cascade refrigeration lasers to expel excess heat. His old destroyer did the best it could, but was thoroughly outmatched. The Guard just chewed it up and then U-jumped. Cvorn tracked back to Sverl’s ship, because that had to be their real target. Now he saw Sverl’s ship was coming apart, but surely it hadn’t been hit by anything yet? Then he saw the Polity destroyer accelerating away from the ship—just as the King’s Guard materialized and opened fire. The drama played out next at the factory station, now under bombardment from the Guard. Sverl had no doubt been aboard that destroyer and was now underneath those defences . . .

Cvorn champed with frustration. The king had recognized the danger Sverl posed and moved to destroy him. Cvorn could do nothing but watch this play out. And if, as seemed certain, the Guard destroyed that station, all his plans would come to nothing. His allies in the Kingdom would not move if Sverl escaped the Guard’s grasp—because they knew that they would be unable to convince other prador of Polity perfidy without hard physical evidence. In fact, infighting would ensue and their new alliance would probably break up. Cvorn had no doubt that some would look for advantage by betraying the others to the king, and slaughter would follow.

New data came in: an open com message from the Guard to the station. And Cvorn listened to the ultimatum the Guard delivered to its new occupants. So, there were humans on the station with Sverl, and the Guard were trying to turn them against him. That might work, but whether it did or didn’t, Cvorn had already lost. Sure, if the humans killed Sverl that would achieve the Guard’s aims just as well. But, either way, Sverl was dead, and all Cvorn’s plans in ruins.

SPEAR

Yeah, using a spine from Penny Royal, I’d brought down a hostile robot. But it had been something all but mindless and was nothing like my new aggressor. Even as I dropped down into a darker area, my visor having to reduce its filtering, and tried to wield the thing—something snatched it out of my hands. I saw Grey in glimpses, propelling me along with touches, shoves, and the occasional tight grip about one of my limbs. I was helpless, and I realized this was something I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. I didn’t like it at all.

He took me along a maintenance duct running parallel to the tunnel Trent and I had walked along. Then we switched through numerous changes of direction. I kept track of all this on a schematic I’d downloaded from the memory of a maintenance robot.

“Spear? What’s happening?” asked Trent over suit radio.

“Seems I’ve been grabbed by Sverl’s Golem,” I said. But I wondered. Grey was a Golem Sverl had apparently freed, so he could be taking me anywhere. I tried to contact the father-captain, but he wasn’t talking. I then tried to talk to Grey, but he ignored my queries.

“What do I do?” asked Trent. “I managed to follow you a little way but you were being moved just too fast.”

Grey was slowing, soon dragging me into a recently cut hole in a yard-wide pipe. He finally released me inside what looked like an empty fluid tank. I tumbled out into this, hit metal and bounced away, then managed to use my wrist impeller to stabilize myself. I propelled across to one curved surface, where I engaged my gecko boots. Immediately, I felt the station shaking through my feet and wondered if the King’s Guard were growing impatient.

The pipe I’d entered through seemed the only way in—other connected pipes were too narrow to offer an escape route. I now turned to face Grey.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked through a channel I’d left open.

Grey crouched against the wall of the tank a few paces away from me, watching me intently, and did not reply. He was holding the spine close to his torso. I auged out and, through the sensors of a small palmbot checking superconducting cables for faults, I found Trent at a maintenance duct junction. I then used my aug to replay my chaotic memory and map my route on the schematic—while simultaneously radio-pinging Trent to get his location.

“Trent,” I said, “turn on your suit cam and send me its feed code.”

“Gotcha,” he replied.

A moment later, on our communications channel, his feed code arrived. A moment after that, on a virtual screen in my aug, I was seeing what he was seeing.

“Head to your right,” I instructed him. “When you reach the next junction I’ll instruct you further.”

Trent headed off. Meanwhile, as I checked out his route through the sensors of various robots, I began to locate those that might be a problem. Unfortunately, some of them had now moved into the route I had taken, as if attracted by the commotion. I needed to send Trent on a different course.

“You cannot stop it,” said Grey, communicating at last.

“I can’t stop what?” I asked.

“The solution,” Grey replied.

Ensuring the Golem was hearing nothing of my instructions to Trent, I said to the man, “See that tube above your head?” Trent looked up at it. “That’s it—along that about twenty feet you’ll find a hatch. Go through that.” Trent propelled himself up into the narrow tube and began crawling along it.

“What solution?” I asked.

“To Riss and Sverl,” the Golem replied.

“So what is Sverl doing?” I asked.

“Hiding from his fate.”

“You’re not working for Sverl, are you?”

“You are the random factor.”

“It’s a reactor room,” I told Trent, seeing he’d now opened the hatch. “Go round it to the door and just wait there for a moment. Don’t go through the door.”

“Trent Sobel,” said Grey, “is now positioned for his shot. In a moment you’ll have him step through that door and fire up at the pipe junction.” Grey pointed to where a smaller tube opened above us just a few paces away. “You hope to escape before I can react.”

I stared at Grey. He’d either penetrated our communications or was reading my mind. I realized I hadn’t been thinking clearly. The thing about Golem was that they had superior senses. I had no doubt now that, like me, Grey had tracked Trent through various robot sensors. I had no doubt that the Golem was picking up his heat signature and other emissions from his suit. I could not simply bring him to me in this tank in the expectation that the weapon he carried would be enough. But something didn’t add up.

“You are offering me no clear explanation of your actions,” I said to Grey. “I understand now.” I began to walk towards him. “You’re still working for Penny Royal and what that AI intends here is plain: Sverl is a problem it wants to solve. The solution is Sverl’s death.”

“Stay where you are,” said Grey, all calmness, but he rose to his feet.

I began to get some intimation of what was wrong now. Penny Royal had instructed Grey to stop me from interfering. However, he was treating me like something extremely dangerous and not simply a weak human being with mental augmentation. I considered how I had killed the robot. No, it wasn’t that. I considered what had just been playing out. Grey had allowed me to think I might have a chance with Trent. Delaying tactics. Physically, Trent and I were no match for this Golem, so it had to be something else. And Grey held it.

I reached out for the spine, for that connection, and felt the synergy of thousands of minds working in consonance. I probed deeper into the thing, beyond storage and into its underlying function—the same function that had earlier enabled me to change its shape. I found its geometry and threw myself forwards as I changed it. The spine shattered into a hundred knives and shoaled from Grey’s grasp, reforming as I came up to seize it and sweep it round. It caught one of Grey’s groping hands, tugged only slightly, and sent that hand gyrating away. Now my contact was closer and the multitude of links clear to me. Grey was there too, inside the thing. It perpetually recorded him, perpetually controlled him, and I severed the link. With a snap, silent in vacuum, he folded up, foetal.

“Trent,” I sent, transmitting directly from my aug, “step through the door. A coolant tank sits up to your right on your present orientation. You’ll see a pipe extending from it to the left. Fire on the point where it joins the tank.”

A second later, fire erupted from there, metal falling apart like wet paper and hot gases billowing. The beam cut through—turquoise, and violet at its heart—then shut down.

“You will be too late,” said Grey, slowly unfolding.

“I’m now coming out of there,” I told Trent, just in case he decided to fire again. I launched myself down between the glowing edges of the hole.

“Was it your idea to have the spine in there with us?” I shot at Grey. It was my escape route and, to prevent my escape, Grey should have further separated me from the thing. Perhaps he had managed to subvert the black AI’s control of him just a little, his intent being that I should cut his link to the spine and thereby cut Penny Royal’s control of him. Or perhaps everything had played out here just as the AI had intended.

“We have to move fast,” I told Trent, as I caught hold of one of the tank’s bracing struts and propelled myself towards him. “We have to stop Riss.”

RISS

Coiled in an air vent over a corridor made for humans, Riss gazed out through the grating. She was watching the second-child guarding the end. She stayed utterly still as she used her inducer hardware to probe both the sensors positioned along the wall and the computing in the child’s armour. Like a safe-cracker listening for clicks, she slowly and carefully shut down some sensors, then tuned down the sensitivity of others. Next, she worked on the second-child’s armour. It had a lot more defences than the prador armour she had encountered during the war—the modifications almost certainly due to Sverl. However, Riss meticulously worked through them, cracking codes, shutting down motors, severing communications.

The second-child, which had previously been fidgeting, grew still. Riss engaged her chameleonware and flew at the grating like a released spring. It tore free on one side and she shot out to hit the opposing wall, stuck there for a moment, then slithered down to the floor and along that to face the prador. It could still move its eye palps and had seen the grating tear open. Almost certainly, it now knew that Riss was here.

Riss gazed at the thing. Though the armour was highly modified, it still possessed the vulnerabilities of the old prador armour to her. She could now dive underneath the thing and, bracing against the floor, drive her collimated diamond ovipositor straight in through one of the leg sockets’ weak points. The enzyme would dissolve the thing in no time at all—fluids and gases spurting out of pressure valves. Then, after a few hours, there would be nothing left but a shell full of liquefied remains. Riss knew precisely how it went, because she’d used hydrofluoric acid before against a prador. The parasite eggs, should she choose to use them, would take longer to act, and the process would spread the parasite to many other prador in this child’s vicinity. But was there any point in killing this second-child? In fact by immobilizing it, rather than just moving straight in to attack, had she already decided not to kill it?

Riss shook herself, not liking where her thoughts were taking her. Her mission objective was Sverl, so there was no point killing this creature. Anyway, her supply of the enzyme and the eggs was limited . . .

She slithered underneath the second-child and up to a corridor junction, scanning ahead all the time. At the junction, knowing what lay around the corner, she squirmed up one wall and along the ceiling. The corridor, though it did possess a ceiling and a floor—oriented by lights in the former and a stain-eater carpet over the latter—was zero gravity. Predictably, the prador in the coin-shaped monorail station at the end was oriented as if the grav-plates were on. Riss knew that all organic creatures found it difficult to shake their attraction to the ideas of up and down. The concepts were integral in both human and prador thought and language.

Riss slithered on until she was just about to enter the monorail station and there halted. The sensor equipment the prador had positioned here was a lot more sophisticated and Riss had been in error—grav-plates were in fact on. Here the prador had designed things precisely to trap her. If she stuck herself to any surface, remora fashion, there were vibration sensors programmed to detect her particular form of locomotion. If she used her internal grav-engine, or maglev, that would be detected too. Usually she could subvert the computing attached to the grav-plates. However, the prador here, most likely Bsectil, had installed some very different hardware that wouldn’t allow that. Riss could penetrate it, but its coding was changing randomly and it was perpetually reprogramming itself too. Bsectil, meanwhile, was heavily armoured and difficult to scan; he had a Gatling cannon in one claw, and the tip folded down from another claw to reveal a particle cannon.

“I know you’re here,” said the first-child over open com.

Something else was happening. The second-child behind had just started moving again—its armour unfreezing. Riss tried another penetration back that way, but coding changes and reprogramming were occurring there now too. Analysing signal traffic, Riss spotted her error. The vibration sensors had been set to tune out certain things, but when one of those things didn’t occur, they broadcast an alert. The thing that had stopped had been the movement Riss had thought was the second-child fidgeting. This then had been a perfectly designed trap.

“Reveal yourself and nobody has to die.” Bsectil waved a claw at something lying on the floor nearby—another collar.

Riss did nothing but continue scanning and gathering data. She could detect other prador in the area repositioning. They thought they had her now, which demonstrated a lack of dimension to their thinking also found in humans. Certainly, she had no way through here, but she was designed to navigate apparently impossible routes.

Riss stuck her spread head down against the surface she was on, hooked up and stabbed her ovipositor straight into that surface. At high speed, she moved her tail in a circle, widening the hole, then flipped round and nosed into it. On the floor above this ceiling, the prador had welded an armour shield in place, with vibration sensors scattered along it. However, they’d done nothing about the ceramo-foam insulation, sandwiched between armour and ceiling. Vibrating her head at just the right intensity, Riss nosed into that, it turned to dust ahead of her, and she burrowed at high speed. Just as she pulled her ovipositor out of sight, Gatling slugs began punching through the ceiling all around her. One hit her, full on, nearly cutting her in half. She kept moving, the smart materials of her body at that point reforming and rejoining.

Particle cannon fire hit the ceiling next, burning it away and ablating the ceramic foam. By then she was past the armour, across the corridor above and writhing up along a narrow power duct leading to the small home of a beetlebot. She moved out across a floor and along, punching another hole and heading down again. All around prador were moving towards her, because her chameleonware just wasn’t good enough any more. As she slithered along one wall, it exploded just behind her and a particle beam cut forwards. She propelled herself away with maglev, engaged her grav-motor and planed forwards. An autolaser picked her up but reflected away, as railgun missiles turned the ceiling into a colander. But Riss squirmed into a severed power duct and kept going.

It should have been exciting and it should have been fulfilling, but it just felt like a nasty chore. As she worked her way along beside superconducting cables, she bounced attempts to communicate with her. Some of these were from the surrounding prador and from Sverl himself. Strongest, and growing stronger, were the probes from Thorvald Spear, who was rapidly drawing closer.

They’d armoured the autofactory, surrounded it with sensors and weapons and set some particularly clever traps. These showed a deep understanding of her nature and her abilities. But, as ever, there was always a hole. In this case, it lay beside this duct and just ahead. Riss stopped to use her manipulators on a series of pin rivets, punching them out from the inside and squirming out as the inspection plate dropped away. The temperature around her quickly ramped up and things began to melt and burn, but she was into the mouth of a compressed-air pipe before the beam of a particle cannon punched through. Her skin was microscaled like a butterfly’s wing—and when she controlled those scales individually, they could be utterly frictionless where required. Or they could be the opposite. She shot down the pipe in a smooth series of peristaltic heaves, but then suddenly she was slowing. Sverl had just pressurized his sanctum. Vacuum began to suck Riss back, and if she didn’t do something, it would draw her back into the path of that particle beam. She collapsed one side of her skeleton and stuck herself to the side of the pipe, allowing the air past. Then she inched forwards, caterpillar fashion, her skin fully in remora mode.

I’m going to die, she thought—she just wasn’t moving fast enough now and the prador would soon target her. But fate intervened in the form of Gatling fire, chopping through the infrastructure all around her. One slug hit the pipe behind, pinching it shut and cutting the pressure differential. Riss expanded her skeleton and accelerated again, shooting up into Sverl’s sanctum. She hit what was debatably the ceiling, and stuck there in an invisible coil.

“The drone’s in,” Bsorol clattered.

Just then, grav came on, nearly tearing Riss from the ceiling. Bsorol was close to Sverl, brandishing a particle cannon and a Gatling cannon just like his sibling. He also had anti-personnel lasers and a small hardfield generator mounted on the exterior of his armour. The laser fired, obviously tracking via vibration sensors, and hit Riss precisely. She shot away across the ceiling but the laser stayed on her, locating her for Bsorol, who opened fire with both his major weapons. Riss scribed a circle around above the first-child, a slight hint of gleeful amusement arising and then dissipating. One and a half circuits were enough, then a huge circle of ceiling—a foot’s thickness of laminated bubble-metal and armour—crashed down right on top of Bsorol.

Riss flung herself clear, scribed a neat arc through the air and came down just behind Sverl. He spun round and Riss hesitated. Then she felt an intermittent vibration through the floor—the particle cannons of the King’s Guard tearing into the hull of the station.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shutting down her chameleonware because it seemed so cowardly now.

This was a mistake.