‘You appeared like a projection once on the Occam Razor, but I touched you and found you solid,’ ventured Cormac.
Blegg waved a dismissive hand. ‘Projection integrated with hardfields—an easy trick.’
‘So all the ship AIs, Jack, Jerusalem, the lot… all colluded in this?’
‘They must have, when it became necessary for them to know about my true nature. Earth Central wanted its avatar to be a human leader, as well as a legend, something to give hope and encouragement. It is a trait of the human race to raise some of its members to high regard, quite often when they are not deserving of such, hence the cults of celebrity in earlier centuries. Earth Central wanted to choose one so up-raised, create that one… I resent not being allowed to know myself, even though I am a part of Earth Central itself.’
‘Are you so sure now?’
Blegg pointed to the mound of rubble heaped to one side of the chamber. There, Cormac assumed, lay their entry point. ‘Out there, the enemy knows, which is why it wants to capture me. That mere fact has brought online different programming within me. I realize now that I cannot translate myself through U-space. I never was able to. I step from Valles Marineris on Mars to the runcible there, transport to the runcible on Earth’s Moon, and step from there to the Viking Museum—all memories created in a virtuality.’
‘So down here, you will probably die with us, or be captured.’
‘I will die, if that is the correct term. There is too much of Earth Central within me for capture to be allowed. I will fight for as long as I can, then, when capture seems imminent, I will activate a nanite weapon inside me, and destroy myself. There will be nothing left. But the question that remains is can you escape in the way I cannot?’
‘I won’t leave them.’ Cormac gestured around.
‘But perhaps’, said Blegg, ‘you should find out if that option is available to you.’ He stood up and moved away.
Damn him!
Blegg’s newly discovered self-knowledge made him appear coldly fatalistic, though it did appear they were in a trap from which there seemed no escape. Cormac began moving around the chamber, till he found the remaining Sparkind all gathered in one area, laying out their remaining equipment and checking it over. One Golem, the side of his face burned down to ceramal, stood up when he approached.
‘Assessment?’ Cormac enquired.
‘We have taken heavy losses,’ the Golem told him. ‘Once they break through—at their rate of burrowing, we estimate in ten hours—with our present munitions, and factoring in their likely rate of attack, we should hold them off for a further half an hour.’
Not much hope here, either.
Cormac scanned around. ‘Did Scar survive?’
The Golem pointed over to the mouth of a nearby tunnel. Meanwhile, one of the human Sparkind, who had disassembled and now reassembled a pulse-gun, asked, ‘When we’ve nothing left to shoot them with, what then?’
Cormac instantly accessed information available in his link: Andrew Hailex, 64 years old, joined ECS as a monitor age 25, rose through the ranks then transferred ten years later to GCG — Ground Combat Group. Left after four years to marry and raise three children. Rejoined ECS at age 55 and trained as a Sparkind. Involved in several dangerous actions. Regularly sends messages to his family…
Hailex, of course, looked no older than Cormac appeared — maybe in his twenties—but then few people chose to look old. His scalp was hairless, probably naturally so for he did not possess eyebrows either. He bulked out his envirosuit so seemed likely to be boosted. He grinned—he’d lost a tooth—and his eyes displayed a pinkish tint. He rather reminded Cormac of Gant.
‘I’ll think of something, but if it turns out we have nowhere left to run, what remains for you to do I leave to personal choice,’ Cormac replied. ‘Our attackers are using something related to Jain technology and I rather suspect they won’t be interning us in a nice comfortable prison camp. I’m afraid I’ve no suggestions for you.’ Cormac grimaced, realizing how he had just paraphrased Blegg.
The other man’s grin faded, then he reached out and nudged an open case with his toe. Inside rested two polished aluminium objects the size of coffee flasks: two CTDs, low yield, but enough to raise the temperature in here to that of a sun’s surface.
‘Yes,’ said Cormac, ‘that’s one option.’
Moving off he entered the side cave to which the Golem had directed him. This stretched back only ten yards, and there Scar and two other dracomen sat by a pool down into which the cave roof slanted.
‘Scar, I want some of your people to scout out that fissure.’ Cormac stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.
Scar stared at him for a long moment, then blinked. ‘I have sent two there already.’
A beat.
‘Are you in communication with them?’
‘Always.’
‘What have they found?’
‘The fissure runs down sheer for fifty yards, then its angle changes to forty-five degrees for another four hundred yards before beginning to level out. My associates have just now reached that point. Seismic scanning ahead indicates a crawl of nearly two miles, then several pools from which tunnels extend under water.’
Cormac noted how the dracoman held his hand submerged in the pool he presently crouched beside, fingers spread out, and wondered if this somehow enabled contact with the two dracomen below.
‘These tunnels?’
‘I know no more yet, however the route to it is too narrow for the autogun, or for Arach.’
Cormac considered their options. If they remained here they’d certainly end up in a fight they could not win.
‘Recall them,’ he said. ‘We’ll be going down there anyway.’ He turned and headed back out into the main cavern.
‘Arach, over here.’
The spider shape reared away from the wall and scuttled over to him. Cormac studied the drone for a moment, then explained the situation.
‘No problem,’ Arach replied and, before Cormac could say any more, scuttled away again. Cormac now called over everyone else in the cavern and gave his instructions, finishing with: ‘Those that need it, get some rest now—we move in two hours.’
‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ said Samland Karischev, as he gazed out through the massive chainglass screen.
‘Brutus is feeling as frustrated and annoyed as we all are,’ replied Azroc.
Freed from his duties by the Coloron AI, Azroc had immediately transferred to the Brutal Blade, the utile dreadnought run by the AI Brutus, and sometimes jokingly referred to—because of its resemblance to some titanic beast’s liver plated with metal—as the Organ Transplant. Fresh from that devastated world, where an entire arcology capable of housing a billion souls had necessarily been destroyed, the opportunity for some payback filled him with joy even though he was Golem. And when Battle Wagon joined the fleet, now grown to twenty dreadnoughts, numerous attack ships and other warcraft, that joy only increased.
Serious payback: now one of the big boys accompanied them.
Karischev pointed through the screen at the distant vessel. ‘It doesn’t look like much. Why all the excitement?’
Azroc sighed. The Battle Wagon did not look particularly threatening, being a cylindrical object apparently devoid of sensor arrays or evident weapons. ‘It doesn’t look like much because you are now seeing it against a backdrop of vacuum and so do not really have any idea of its scale.’
Karischev, a squat bulky man with a friendly boulder-like face and watery brown eyes, struck Azroc as a bit of an enigma. The man carried no augmentations, either cerebral or physical, and obviously did not bother to change his appearance to anything more aesthetic, as it seemed most humans were inclined to do. He also commanded a strike force of Sparkind ground troops, assigned to Brutal Blade.