"You were not hurt by any order of mine," Loman replied. "You attacked a ship sent on a mission by Amoloran. Those in that ship turned on its engines and burnt you, and for that you killed them all. There is no payment to be made."
"Oh you will pay," Dragon replied.
"Hierarchy it's turned towards us," said Aberil.
With some difficulty Loman severed the link, blinking away the strange after-effects from his vision, and turned to his brother. "What?"
"It just changed course. It's heading towards us."
Loman felt his mouth turn dry and a brass hand clench in his guts. "Send the fleet," he said, and unsteadily returned to his couch.
"Would it be possible to hit Behemoth with Ragnorak?" he silently asked Aberil.
"No, Hierarch. Ragnorak is designed for static targets, and Behemoth would just move out of the way."
Aloud, Aberil continued, "It's accelerating."
In silence, Loman watched the display unfolding in the tank, then a display on one of the control screens fed through from the targeting gear on Ragnorak. There all he saw was a small, slightly distorted sphere growing slowly larger against a background of blackness.
"How long will it take to reach us?" he asked.
"At this rate, just over the hour," Aberil replied.
"So the fleet will get to it first?"
"Yes."
But then what? Loman considered how brief would be his reign as Hierarch. There had been briefer ones, but never with such possibilities of great achievement. He closed his eyes and thought that perhaps this was their reward for dealing with one who had obviously been an emissary of Satan, not God — this was their punishment for not recognizing the difference. Members of the crew at the instrumentation around him were now mumbling prayers. In his mind, he slowly began to recite all the Satagents — but now with his eyes open, and all expression erased from his face. He was on the fifth one, just like Amoloran, when Aberil broke the gloom on the bridge.
"The fleet has gone into underspace."
Loman groped for some sort of reply. They might succeed in stopping the creature, but it seemed very unlikely — something that could tear apart a warship like the General Patten and could destroy something as huge as the Flint complex in a matter of seconds would take some stopping.
He was about to speak again when something slammed into him through his aug — tearing open a link in a way he'd always thought impossible.
"How so obviously you are not Polity AIs, and how slowly your ships enter underspace. With your pathetic fleet all around you, Reverend Epthirieth Loman Dorth, look to your world!"
"What… what do you mean?"
The only reply was fading gargantuan laughter.
"Behemoth has dropped into underspace. It has gone," said Aberil.
Loman sat back and very carefully closed down the channels that linked him to the U-space transmitter on this ship, and thus through to the cylinder worlds. He did not want to listen to the millions dying.
It was a brief U-space jump, yet it seemed interminable.
"Not too bright, are they?" opined Gant, staring at the console out of which had been relayed Dragon's exchange with the Hierarch.
Cormac shrugged and was about to make some comment, but Apis intervened, "Dragon seemed about to attack that device. What happened?"
Cormac explained, "It looks like their ships need to get up speed first to drop into underspace… they can't do a standing jump. But Dragon can."
Apis looked thoughtful for a moment as he closed the clasps down the front of his exoskeleton. "Perhaps they are not used to making war on something that fights back."
"Perhaps," said Cormac, now gazing up at the pterodactyl head that was still hovering above them. "You lied about your ability to drop into underspace, so am I now to believe your story about these people using the mycelium you provided to destroy Miranda?"
"It is true," Dragon replied briefly.
"Okay, I'll accept that for now, but do you suppose for one minute that the Polity would ever forgive you the slaughter of the population on Masada or in those cylinder worlds?"
"I am dying."
"I see, so you intend to go out in bloody style."
"I will live."
"Any remote possibility of a straight answer?"
"I will destroy only their laser arrays."
Cormac glanced around at his companions. It was with a total lack of surprise that he saw Mika holding some sort of instrument up to one of the draconic tentacles. Scar was poised in the air — a reptilian statue. Gant had his foot hooked under the back of one of the seats and once again clutched his APW to his chest.
Cormac returned his attention to Dragon. "What about us? What do you intend for us?"
The head suddenly dropped down so that it was poised right before Cormac. "If I kill and destroy, your Polity will kill and destroy me. You will let me live, Ian Cormac. For how I will now help you, you will let me live."
"I might when I figure out what the hell you mean when you say you are 'dying' and 'will live'. I'd have thought a creature of your capabilities would have learnt how to communicate clearly by now."
The head swung so that it was directed towards Scar. In response the dracoman hissed and seemed ready to attack. Dragon merely said, "He will know — when it is time." With that it abruptly withdrew towards the airlock, tentacles detaching and slithering away after it; the great plug of tangled flesh drew back into a living cavern beyond, and the airlock began to close. The screen they had been observing now showed only something dark and organic, which shifted slowly.
Cormac paused for a moment, then said, "Get strapped in. I think the shit's about to hit."
Seconds later they felt Dragon surface from underspace and, ahead of the lander, curtains of skin began to part. Cormac hunted across the controls until he managed to adjust the setting of one of the lower screens to infrared, to obtain the view he required. Now they could all see a tunnel opening ahead, and going into huge peristalsis. The craft slid forwards twenty metres, and slammed to a halt with a dull boom — then again, as another stretch of tunnel opened. Five times this happened, until through the main screen they saw a vague circle of luminescence. With competent precision, Apis reached down and reset the screen Cormac had previously adjusted — back to its normal view overlooking one side. Then they were out, and falling towards the gleaming arc of a world, starlit space fading to blue on that arc, and hanging nearby a huge machine-gun-magazine satellite, gleaming in bright sunlight. In the rear-view screen Dragon loomed huge against the stars, a distorted sphere across which now passed ripples of light, as over a pool of water containing fluorescing bacteria into which a stone has been cast.
"Shit! Get us out of here!" Cormac shouted.
Apis, who had strapped himself in at the controls before anyone else could object — though Cormac wouldn't, as the boy probably knew them better than anyone else on board — ran at high speed through a start-up sequence and grabbed the joystick. Thrusters roared and the craft tilted to one side, the view of the planet swinging round by a hundred and eighty degrees. There came a thunderous crash, and light flooded the cockpit as from a lightning strike. Now the satellite was behind them, and blowing apart, huge fragments hurtling outwards ahead of a wave of fire.
"Hold us here," ordered Cormac. "I want to see this."
Manipulating thrusters, Apis swung the craft around so the main screen showed a view of Dragon rolling across the darkness above them, heading towards the horizon of Masada — following a line of gleaming shapes suspended above atmosphere like a bracelet of charms for the planet. The creature remained in sight as they descended into atmosphere, and they watched it pause by another satellite and spit an actinic bar down onto it — another satellite gone in a fiercely bright explosion against the blue-black of space.