‘These four squadrons of wormships have been discovered, so far, and resources are already being moved into place to counter them. They appear to form part of a general pattern of attack.’
‘If you could elaborate?’
‘The fourth of these to be discovered was only found by making predictions from the first three. The first three were all located near inner Line worlds with human populations above one billion, and all within a hemispherical section of the border a thousand light years across.’
‘Again this makes little sense… unless you go back to supposing that Erebus is careless of resources, and therefore considers its forces so overwhelming that conventional logistics and battle plans are irrelevant.’
‘Ah,’ said Jerusalem. ‘Even as we speak another group of fifty wormships has been discovered within the border area.’
The screen divisions disappeared to be replaced by an image of wormships hurtling through void, only stars visible behind them. The point of view tracked them for a while, then the picture whited out, and the clip returned to the start.
‘A watch station, now no longer able to watch,’ observed Jerusalem, adding, ‘And more.’
The screen again divided, this time into six views including those Azroc had seen first. The extra two views were of the one he had just observed and another showing wormships tumbling above a regolith horizon. Then came further divisions. Azroc watched as the original views were consigned to the left-hand upper comer of the big screen, as more and more came in. Within half an hour there were eighteen confirmed sightings, and Polity vessels were searching for more — for it seemed a certainty there would be more.
‘They’re not attacking?’ he finally queried.
‘I really wish I could answer yes to that,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘However, bombardment of at least two worlds has already commenced.’
Vulture perched on the console of the Harpy. Both Vulture and this ship’s AI had been named after winged beasts (though of course only Vulture itself had truly become one), but such a similarity in names was nearly the only common ground they shared. Despite his present form as a bird, Vulture could still communicate on AI levels, and of course had tried striking up a conversation with Harpy.
Easier to strike up a conversation with an abacus.
Vulture had once been the AI of a little ship like this one, owned by similarly dubious characters but, by contrast with the thing controlling this vessel, Vulture had been a Polity AI with a powerful and complex mind and some vague adherence to Polity principles.
‘So how are you doing?’
‘Question object confusion.’
‘Erm… been anywhere interesting lately?’
‘Back formation supposed: Have you. Interest irrelevant.’
Vulture began to get some inkling of what he was dealing with here. ‘What are you?’
‘Prador Control System Apex 45 Gorland.’
Ah, so — whether this ship’s control system was a genuine AI was a debatable point. Such systems were what the Prador enemy had used to control the U-space engines in all their ships. Basically, they took one of their own first-children and cut out its brain and a large chunk of its nerve tissue, which they wired into the ship itself. Substantial reprogramming of this offspring’s living brain ensued, followed by a freezing process. The resulting mind could think within limited parameters, it could store up memories and experiences within the narrow remit allowed, but the Prador would never allow it to grow outside that remit. Despite this limitation, Vulture decided to keep trying to communicate with Apex 45 Gorland to bring it out of its shell, so to speak, since the other occupant of this particular craft was even less communicative.
Vulture had already tried to discover how Mr Crane had managed to trace that downed wormship. He suspected the Golem somehow had access to the Polity AI nets — past evidence seemed to suggest so.
The ECS personnel on Cull had been much surprised when Crane and Vulture entered the runcible facility being constructed there. Ignoring the swiftly dying protests of the technicians — the runcible AI having ordered them, for their own health, to back off — Crane had input some coordinates into the runcible and then stepped up to the cusp. Vulture hurriedly landed on the Golem’s shoulder as he stepped through. Their subsequent arrival on another Line world, and then transport on a rickety shuttle to a smaller world in the same system, had been… interesting. But how had Crane known about the arms deal going down? Vulture could only suppose that the Golem not only had access to the nets, but to secure levels of them too, either that or Polity AIs were colluding in the Golem’s crusade.
Most of the time Mr Crane sat silently at the console, gazing at the U-space-greyed screen, occasionally inputting some command that negated the red warning lights that kept coming on, occasionally turning his attention to his toys laid out before him like a chess set. Every so often he would pick an item up, maybe the chunk of crystal Vulture was certain now had been obtained from a world named Hayden’s Find and seemed likely to be a chunk of the Atheter AI found there, maybe the set of binoculars, or the rubber dog.
‘Where are we going now?’ Vulture asked, in utter expectation of receiving no reply.
Mr Crane glanced at the bird, then reached over and touched a nearby control. A subscreen blinked on to show a schematic of a planetary system along with its stellar coordinates. Because he still retained much of that part of himself required for running a ship, Vulture recognized these coordinates as being those of an inner Line world.
‘And why are we going there?’
Crane touched another combination of controls, which called up a picture of a wormship. This confirmed that Crane had access to information that was obviously not in the public domain. More delicate taps from his brass fingers, and the picture shrank to a small square consigned to one comer, from where it replicated across the entire screen — the same picture in a grid of seven by seven with one additional picture at the bottom. Fifty of them in all. Vulture wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but rather suspected it had something to do with the other vessel clamped underneath the Harpy — the vessel that still contained the bits of the legate that Crane had torn apart.
Vulture considered asking another question about Crane’s intentions, then decided he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know the answer. The Golem reached out to the controls again, banishing the images, then paused as some more red lights came on, before banishing them too. Vulture peered at another of the screens and studied the schematic that had come up there. The red lights provided the warning, and on the schematic was indicated the source of the error signal. As far as Vulture could work out, this error message came directly from the engine.
‘Anything wrong with the engine?’ he enquired.
‘Drive efficiency outside settings,’ replied the frozen mind of the Prador first-child.
‘How far outside?’
‘Twenty-eight per cent.’
‘Why no shutdown?’ Vulture asked, for a drop in efficiency of that amount was, beside being dangerous, more than enough to shut down the drive.
‘Not necessary — new parameters being reprogrammed.’
Vulture felt the feathers standing up on his back. ‘What is the efficiency now compared to its previous setting?’