It took six minutes for the drones to come to an agreement. Present-day AIs and drones would never have taken so long, but then they weren’t as independent and irascible as these fighting machines. Five of them opted out, choosing to head for one of the shuttles aboard the runcible and take themselves away. Knobbler was one of the fourteen that remained.
‘Well, it has been a bit boring around here lately,’ that drone confessed.
‘I can promise you, that is about to change drastically.’
‘Okay, we’re in,’ said Knobbler.
On the area of charred ground it seemed that nothing remained of the two victims of the legate who had intruded on this world.
‘We’ll check that out afterwards,’ Cormac told Smith, then turned to Scar. ‘Perimeter.’
The dracoman set off at full speed, disappearing into the gloom between outbuildings and underneath the enormous rhubarb plants. Cormac now advanced on the house itself, Arach to one side of him and Smith on the other. He was very suspicious of this situation. Scanning, both from the King of Hearts and from the shuttle, had not revealed anything lurking around but, then again, Erebus’s chameleonware was just as good as any used by ECS. It also struck him as odd that the legate had so comprehensively destroyed those two individuals yet left everything else all around intact. Maybe Erebus wanted the Polity to know about this. Maybe this whole scenario was just a red herring… or a trap.
On the house veranda he drew his thin-gun and stepped up to the door, which stood partially open, and pushed it all the way open with the barrel. Taking a pace back he allowed Arach to go in before him. The spider drone roared into a hallway, then, tearing up carpet, shot into the main downstairs room.
Moving inside, Cormac looked around then nodded towards the stairs. ‘Smith.’ The Golem took the steps four at a time and swiftly moved out of sight. Cormac followed Arach into the main room.
There had been a fight in here. A sofa lay overturned against one wall, and a glass case had been smashed and a coffee table sliced perfectly in two. Cormac stooped down beside a pile of ash, poked at it with the barrel of his gun. Then he looked up and scanned around the room again. Drawers had been pulled out and emptied, a floor safe had been wrenched open like a tin can, and its contents incinerated inside. A headless dog lay in one comer, its skull burned down to nothing. It occurred to him that any ownership chips would have been destroyed too. After a moment he made queries through his aug to the house computer. Nothing, no response. Walking over to one wall into which was inset an access terminal, he tapped the butt of his gun against the touchscreen. It disintegrated to powder.
‘Smith?’ he enquired through his aug.
‘Nothing — I can’t yet find any way of identifying them. So far it seems all paperwork has been burned and all information storage wiped or completely destroyed.’
‘Why be so selective? Why not take out the whole house?’
‘Because we are being misled?’
‘Arach,’ said Cormac out loud, ‘see what you can find.’
The spider drone shot away and Cormac once again carefully surveyed his surroundings. So, this particular legate had come in, taken the two residents of this place outside, and then burned them down to ash. Prior to doing this, it had destroyed all evidence of their identity within the house, but surely had not made a very good job of doing so. There would be DNA traces either here or in the surrounding vicinity, so it made no sense. Still scanning, he then observed spots of blood on the carpet, and some fragments of skin… evidence that before taking the two outside, the legate had tortured them. Torture? Why such a crude method of extracting information? Or was this physical evidence there to mislead any investigator into thinking the two victims had possessed valuable information?
‘Do you have anything?’ he enquired of Kline.
‘Trace DNA, but it has been corrupted — some kind of viral rewriting process.’
‘I see.’
Cormac squatted down by the blood on the floor, then picked up one of the flecks of skin, wrapped it in a piece of cellophane and placed it in his pocket. Someone or, rather, something, was playing mindgames here.
‘Okay — keep searching, you two.’
He walked outside, heading straight over to the shuttle. Clambering up the ramp, he peered in at the three rescuees, who were now tucking into the food and drink Smith had provided.
‘Cherub,’ he said, and the youth looked up. ‘How long passed between you last seeing the legate at the city and seeing it here?’
‘Fifty-two hours,’ Cherub answered instantly.
Something very definitely stank here. Cormac turned away just in time to catch a blinding flash. Blinking, he saw an upper-storey window explode outwards, whereupon Smith hurtled out in a perfect dive. The Golem hit the ground, rolled and came upright, still holding his pulse rifle. Arach shot out next, rolling with legs caged around him. The spider drone came to a halt, unfolded and stood up.
‘Well, that was rude,’ said the drone.
Smoke was pouring from the roof, and in it the hot bar of an orbital laser stabbed down again.
‘Get out of there,’ came King’s instruction to them all.
Cormac ran down the ramp, in time to see the dracoman speeding in towards them, then returned inside, quickly heading for the pilot’s chair. Everyone scrambled aboard, fast. He started everything up again before reaching the pilot’s chair, and once there immediately slung the shuttle into the air, spinning it away from the house, its unfolded ramp tearing a sheet-sized leaf off the top of a nearby rhubarb stem. He set the drive on full, the acceleration thrusting him back into his seat. Protests from behind him. Ramp closing.
Then a massive flashbulb ignited their surroundings.
‘Oh bollocks,’ Smith managed, before it seemed a giant hand slapped the shuttle from behind.
Cormac couldn’t agree more. The shuttle went nose down, tearing through the tops of some bushes, then it skimmed out over a field that seemed to be full of blue maize. He wrestled with the controls, both manually and through his gridlink, brought the nose up and determinedly rode the shock wave out. Suddenly everything seemed to judder to a halt, and it was as if the shuttle had reached the full extent of a giant cable securing it. It tilted up, the field below it now burning, fire boiling across in an incandescent sea. Ash and burning debris rained past, then a side draught pulled them back down towards the ground. He feathered the drive flame, playing with magnetic containment, which created a stutter effect with the steering thrusters. This got them back on course, just, then he pushed for height. No comments from the back over the ensuing minutes — they all knew they were riding the edge of disaster. Finally, back to smooth flight.
‘So, Arach, what was that about?’ Cormac asked.
‘I detected a cavity below that house, and something inside it containing heavy metals,’ the drone replied.
‘What sort of heavy metals?’ Cormac asked tightly. Perhaps he should have first checked their surroundings with his new perception? Perhaps he should not be so reluctant to use it?
‘Cadmium, uranium and a dash of plutonium,’ Arach replied casually.