Placing the driver over the fourth bolt Blegg concentrated on his breathing and instilled calm within himself. The gravity switch meant he must keep the bomb to its present orientation. He clamped a hand against it and spun out the last bolt. Discarding the driver behind him, he then carefully eased the bomb away from the pipes.
‘How long?’
‘Two minutes.’
Blegg checked his watch. It would have been nice to be able to transfer himself and the device far from here, but neither gravity nor orientation applied in U-space, so such a transference might trip the switch. Amaranth would be safe; he would cease to exist. He turned slowly and walked along the catwalk to the steps, his martial training enabling him to move smoothly and evenly. Negotiating the steps was more difficult, but he reached the floor safely.
‘You need to get at least two hundred yards from the reactor,’
EC informed him. ‘Outside the door, turn to your left and keep walking. The area has been evacuated.’
The door was latched. Blegg pressed the bomb against the wall to keep it upright, opened the door and held it open with his foot as he entered the corridor beyond. His mouth dry, he continued that sliding walk.
‘How long, how far?’ he eventually asked.
‘Just keep going—I will tell you when to put it down.’
Trust Earth Central?
He checked his watch again. Thirty seconds more and he would put the damned thing down anyway and get out of there. Slowly the digits counted down.
‘Carefully place the bomb on the floor,’ EC told him, only seconds before he intended to anyway.
He squatted, followed instructions. The thing looked precarious propped up against the wall. Standing, he immediately opened that doorway that he, the only human being, could open. The bomb detonated shortly afterwards blowing a hole in the side of the station. No humans died.
Survival.
Thellant’s mind worked with a clarity he had never before experienced. The substructure now cut through the bedrock, from where Coloron’s forces had contained it, and was rapidly spreading through the rest of the arcology. Those people it now subsumed he could control completely, but he left them to some already established program integral to the Jain technology, which made them attack others to either kill or subsume them. Whether they managed to or not did not really concern him. Only the chaos they created really helped, for in the end he knew he could not win here. He was powerful, and potentially able to control this entire arcology, its population, even the whole planet, but that presupposed he would be left alone to achieve such control. Thellant knew the AIs would not allow the substructure to spread beyond this place, no matter the cost. Though it was part of him, because he retained much physical and mental integrity it was a part he could sacrifice and grow again elsewhere. He did not intend to be in this vicinity when the AIs incinerated the arcology.
Peering from the wreckage, Thellant observed the landscape of cooling rock and molten metal at the bottom of the trench. Looking through the substructure now rising in wall cavities, and spreading along ducts, optics and power lines on the other side, he saw Coloron’s forces pulling back—they knew their enemy to be out of containment now. For every ten yards gain he lost five yards to proton fire, but with hand weapons they could not destroy everything the substructure occupied.
What’s this?
A humanoid he first took to be an ophidapt grabbed a questing tentacle and shoved back the soldier it was originally groping for. The tentacle proceeded to inject nanofilaments into the reptilian body. The humanoid should have been instantly paralysed. Instead it fired a proton weapon into the wall, frying the substructure from which the tentacle extruded, then it flung down the severed tentacle and incinerated that too. Thellant focused intently on a recording of this event—replayed from one of the many computers spread throughout the Jain architecture like grains of salt. He discerned that Jain nanofilaments had instantly come under attack, managing to penetrate no more than the upper layers of the reptilian’s skin. In fact some kind of viral assault shot back up them, paralysing the structure in the wall just instants before the… Thellant consulted other sources… before the dracoman incinerated it. So, not just Polity AIs—he must contend with these things as well.
‘Thellant.’
What, what now?
The source of that flat voice disappeared even as he groped for it. Perhaps some program injected from that dracoman, now propagating back? Gone now, yes. But it was also time for Thellant to disappear. The area opposite him was secure for him now. He stepped into the open and headed across the bottom of the trench. The Jain substructure they might be able to hold back, but he intended to slip past.
On the other side he passed the black pit of a mineshaft plummeting down into the bedrock. Spilling out of this, like silver worms, were foot-wide peristaltic pipes issuing from the robotic boring machines far below. Some of these pipes were split open, spilling slurries of powdered haematite, bauxite and malachite. All of them entered a pumping machine, and from that normal pipes of half the diameter ran down one side of a maglev tunnel spearing into darkness. Parked in the mouth of the tunnel, a boring machine lay like some massive steel grub with a cylindrical head overly endowed with teeth. Thellant walked past this and on into the tunnel’s darkness. All around him via the substructure he observed further disquieting scenes.
The substructure was attempting to return soldiers it now controlled to Coloron’s forces, but the dracomen spotted them instantly and destroyed them, for it seemed these creatures could detect Jain growth even at a distance. Elsewhere, Coloron’s drones or Golem soon detected other returnees and their fate was the same. Fortunately no dracomen were searching in his current vicinity. He reached a curve in the tunnel and halted. Because the substructure spread through the wall cavity beside him, he knew the enemy awaited ahead.
Five arcology monitors and four drones occupied the tunnel, armed respectively with proton weapons and pulse-guns. A proton cannon floated above the maglev rails. It fired one shot, lighting up the tunnel, and demolishing a section of affected wall. They were now retreating, targeting the larger masses of growth as they went. Thellant pressed his hand against the wall, injected filaments from himself to make full physical connection. He halted all local growth, causing it to curl up and apparently die. He began shifting energy and resources to an area twelve miles to his left instead, and started a massive push there. This sort of thing had been happening for some time, as the substructure constantly probed for weaknesses. The opponents ahead ceased retreating—with the brute growth occurring elsewhere they could now recoup their resources. He waited five minutes before breaking into a trot and rounding the bend.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘They’re coming!’
None of those already controlled by Jain tech spoke, which gave him an edge.
‘Hold it there!’ one of the monitors ordered.
‘They’re coming!’ he shrieked.
Seconds only before the cannon swivelled towards him, but by then he drew opposite the blast hole in the wall. He stepped into it, fast, then accelerated along the wall cavity. Ducking below masses of fused optics, he ran faster than any normal man could run when upright. Behind him, red flame exploded along the cavity, pulse-gun fire punching machine-gun holes everywhere. He was hit five times, but only his human body suffered and he did not let that affect him. Proton flame seared the skin on his back. Then to his right: another wall hollow, cutting up through numerous levels. He climbed. Fire now below him, then tracking on past. Two levels up, he stepped out through a service door and into an empty corridor on the other side of Coloron’s main line of defence.