Eldene looked around at the weird plants, the molluscs clinging to the rocks. She thought about the heroyne and gabbleduck she had seen in the night. Halting, she pointed at a hemispherical shell patterned with beautiful green, yellow, and white geometric shapes.
"Life," she said, "it's so complex — someone must have made it?"
"Ah, Creationism," said Fethan. "Let me tell you about evolution and a blind watchmaker…"
Eldene listened and grew angry. It seemed that everything Fethan said was empirically true, yet that all that had been beaten into her was also true — if you had faith. She grew angry because at her core she did have faith, and she was coming to realize just how that crippled her, and she envied Fethan's freedom of thought.
For a moment the grav in Medical went off, then it came back on and climbed to what felt to Cormac about one and a half gees, before dropping back down to about half a gee.
"What the hell?" he asked of the air. "Tomalon?"
He looked around at the others and saw that both Aiden and Cento had collapsed, and were showing no sign of getting up. Stepping over to Aiden, he looked down and saw that something had charred the syntheflesh of the Golem's forehead, burning and blistering it away to expose heat-tarnished metal. Gant quickly joined him in a crouch and helped him turn Cento over onto his back — the same was found there.
Gant gazed at him in bewilderment. "They just went out. I felt them go out."
"Tomalon!" Cormac bellowed.
In answer, Tomalon's hologram appeared in the middle of the room, cut in half by a surgical table, faint images of complex systems etching the air all around it. "This is recorded, so attempt no communication," said the Captain's voice.
Cormac buttoned down the question he had been about to ask.
The Captain went on, "Skellor is subverting the Occam Razor with Jain technology. It is an old ship and, in the event of attempted AI takeover, has the system facility for complete AI burn, which I initiated. This burn has not been wholly successful and he now has control of twenty-two ship's Golem, as well as life-support and the U-space engines."
Tomalon's mouth opened as if he was screaming, but no sound could be heard. His eyes suddenly became blackened pits and a complex grid-work of black lines traversed his holographic body from head to foot. "You must escape. You must escape," came his grating whisper. Then, "Occam… Occam… Occam…"
The Captain flickered and went out.
"What's happening? What's going on?" asked the Outlinker boy as Mika assisted him to his feet.
Cormac stared at Gant, then nodded towards the fallen Golem. "They were all downloaded, but their bodies were ship Golem so the burn program would have been hard-wired. They're dead," he said, wondering if it was correct to have described those two recordings of Aiden and Cento as alive, but deciding that would not be the best thing to say to Gant. Standing up again, he went on, "Well, you heard the man: let's get the hell out of here."
Standing also, Gant said, "All the Occam's shuttles will be in storage, and it takes the ship AI to get them out of it."
"Fuck," said Cormac.
Relentlessly Gant went on, "They'll also be mindless. You'd have manual control, but no automated systems."
"Your point, if one needs to be made?" said Cormac.
"No navigation," Gant replied.
"Double fuck," said Cormac succinctly. He considered for a moment, then gazed at Apis. "The Masadan landing craft. It's our only option."
"No U-space engines," said Gant. "It'd be years before we reached anywhere."
"Our main concern at present is staying alive," Cormac replied.
"Perhaps we should pay the bridge pod a visit?" suggested Gant.
"Much as I feel that we have made a most effective team," said Cormac, gesturing to include Scar in this statement, "I do not think we stand much chance against twenty-two Golem. We go, now." He headed for the door.
"Wait!" Mika yelled, grabbing up some equipment and throwing it into a case.
Turning, Cormac said, "Is that irreplaceable?"
"Yes," she said firmly, knowing precisely what he would have said next if she'd said otherwise.
Cormac turned to Gant. "How long would it take the Golem to get here from the bridge pod?" he asked, Gant being an expert on Golem capabilities.
"Ten minutes if the drop-shafts are working." Gant shrugged. "Ten to fifteen minutes longer if they're not."
Cormac stomped a foot against the floor. "Well, if the shafts are operating as well as these grav-plates, it's more likely the latter — the safeties would have cut in. I want you to hit the weapons locker on this level, then join us by my own and Mika's cabins. Bring as much armament as you can, and make sure that includes APWs. Go!" Only anti-photon weapons were truly effective against Golem — so at least they would have that edge.
Gant proceeded to demonstrate just how fast a Golem could move.
"You ready?" Cormac asked Mika.
She nodded, dragging a heavy case along the floor until Scar very kindly took it off her and tucked it under his arm as if it weighed no more than a polystyrene block.
Cormac studied Apis. The boy looked bewildered — no sooner had he learnt that his mother was dead than this chaos had hit.
"You have to stay with us, Apis," said Cormac. "We have to get off this ship, otherwise we're dead. I have no time to explain to you what is happening now."
Apis nodded. "Yes, I understand," he said, which was the best Cormac could hope for.
The grav-plates outside Medical were fluxing, and navigating their way down the corridor was no easy task, but this made it more likely the drop-shafts were in fact out. The drop-shaft at the end of this corridor confirmed Cormac's supposition, so they climbed a side ladder leading up to the residential level. It was only as they were exiting this that Cormac wondered how Scar was managing with that case tucked under his arm. Glancing down he saw that the dracoman was managing just fine one-handed — with his legs hinging in the opposite direction to humans, he almost did not need to use hands at all. Within a few minutes, they reached their first intended destination, and soon Gant was hurtling towards them loaded down with an assortment of weaponry, and concomitant power packs and other consumables. He skidded to a halt and dumped the weapons on the floor.
As Cormac stooped to see what had been acquired, he was annoyed to see Mika diving into her cabin — no doubt to collect more essential items. He handed Apis one of the APWs, and was about to point out to him how to operate the weapon when Apis shook his head.
"I know how this works," the boy informed him. "Are those who are coming against us responsible for my mother's death?"
"Sort of," Cormac replied, realizing the boy had obviously not taken in much of what had occurred so far.
Apis's expression hardened and Cormac was gratified to see that though the lad might be a physically weak Outlinker, he had some steel in him. Glancing over to Scar, he saw that the dracoman had managed to find a pull-out strap on Mika's large case and had now slung it across his back. The dracoman was stooping to make his selection from the mound of weapons.
Gant handed Cormac a pack. "I brought these along too. I can't use them myself as they're coded, but you're an ECS agent."
Cormac opened the pack and grinned. Inside, along with extra power cells for the weapons, were two small polished cylinders with twist timers set into the touch-consoles affixed to their ends. He took one out, pressed his thumb against the largest touch-pad, and a micro-screen lit up displaying seven zeros. Using two further touch-pads — one to advance each digit and one to move that control on to the next — he punched in a seven-digit number, then pressed once more with his thumb. The screen now displayed 'PRIMED'.