Lowering her intensifies she surveyed those of her forces ranged here behind the embankment. They had a window of some two hours before the fleet of attack ships came in over the Theocracy lines, and were using that time to best advantage.
The commissary was up and running, with huge aluminium pots — that had come from she knew not where — now boiling over a number of those wonderful Polity heaters, and squerms were being dunked, then their cooked and separated segments handed out. She liked the fact that her troops were stuffing themselves with great hunks of meat considered a delicacy up on the cylinder worlds, where it was served only on small sesame seed biscuits; and something more than that on other worlds where it was sold as a bottled food essence. She liked the fact that here and now, so many workers recently freed were for the first time eating the product of their own killing labour.
Beyond this commissary area, the troops had erected many tents, in or around which they were either sleeping or preparing their weapons. Rail-guns had been mounted all the way across the embankment, but only those guns that could not be fitted on some kind of vehicle, because static targets made short-lived targets. The two remaining tanks were still workable, and Lellan was now debating with herself about whether or not they could be used, since they moved slowly and again made easy targets. Perhaps it would be best to leave that decision to each tank's own commander.
In the end her hopes for the coming attack rested mainly with Polity technology. Against an airforce and thirty thousand aug-linked, fresh, highly trained — and also trained in higher gravity — Theocracy troops she could only field a scattered force of ten thousand tired fighters, a few hover-aerofans, and her grounded carrier. Never expecting to be able to come out onto the surface in full force, to fight, the Underworld had never really geared to that eventuality, so, though there was no lack of weapons, they did have a shortage of breather equipment, ration packs, and quite simple things like warm clothing. Lellan cursed the fact that the ten thousand she now had on the surface was one fifth of the number she could have fielded had she possessed the equipment. And she hoped that these two newest additions that were coming had been worth their weight in the breather equipment Lyric II could have carried.
Polity technology levelled the playing field a bit by giving her troops communications of an equivalent sophistication to the Dracocorp aug, and weapons either equivalent or better. The pulse-rifle was more sophisticated technologically, but the Theocracy rail-gun performed the same function with an efficiency that was little different: that function being to put holes in people. Her first hope rested with the 'hand-helds' that John had brought them in his last smuggling run. These light missile-launchers would be a boon in the coming air attack. With their magazines of five armour-piercing missiles that could run on intelligent targeting, Lellan knew her forces would be able to take down quite a few attack craft — but that wasn't enough. With so little cover for her troops and the impossibility of digging foxholes in the boggy ground, she wanted the air attack over quickly, as she was well aware of the devastation that daisy-cutter and multiple-warhead munitions could wreak, let alone a tactical nuke. She needed more of an edge, and the two who should have arrived here only a little while ago would hopefully provide her with that edge.
"Polas, where the hell are they?" she asked into her helmet comlink.
From the concealed control room in the mountains Polas replied, "It took longer than I thought to upload to them."
"Is there a problem with them?" she asked.
"Not with them, just with our gear. They each received the five-thousand-hour package we sent through the U-space transmitter, and all recent data. They would have sucked it up in seconds, but it was our system here that screwed. It was glitching because we just went realtime on our broadcast to the Polity, and we were also sending the increased ballot figures."
"Someone's replied?" Lellan asked, her previous queries going out of her mind.
"Yes, it's an AI dreadnought and it's boosting our signal into the runcible system for us." Polas could not keep the delight out of his voice. "Also, in preparation for orders from Earth Central Security, it's on its way here — ETA one hundred solstan hours."
Lellan was dumbfounded. It was working, it was actually working… but still there was much work to do if they were to survive this.
"Have you now finished with the uploading?"
"Yeah, and our two new friends are on their way with just one diversion, to ferry your brother to you as he's not that far out," Polas replied.
"Then my brother is in for some harsh words here for delaying them. The Theocracy line is only ten kilometres away from us," said Lellan, not yet managing to put as much bile into her words as was her custom.
"It was not your brother's idea," interrupted a voice that was unfamiliar to her.
"Polas? Polas, who is this?"
Polas replied, "That was CED Forty-two. It was its idea to fetch your brother."
"I thought they were supposed to obey orders," said Lellan.
"We do obey orders," came back doubled voices. Then one went on, "We have been monitoring the situation. No attack possible from Theocracy forces during our approach time… We approach now."
Three dots resolved in the sky. One of them was an aerofan, on which rode John Stanton. On either side of him, flying sideways on, with weapons and detection devices scanning all around, came the cylinders of the two heavy-armour AI drones he had brought from Elysium. Observing these objects Lellan well understood now what John meant when he explained that Polity AIs loved their euphemisms: CED stood for Controlled Elimination Device.
During their descent, the drones swung into upright positions on either side of the aerofan, so that when Stanton finally stepped from it, the appearance given was of a man stepping between two pillars — only these pillars advanced with him as he approached Lellan.
"Not a good uniform to wear around here," she said to him when he was close enough for her to see he was dressed as a proctor.
"I'll change in a minute," he replied, nodding towards her carrier. "But first let me introduce to you CEDs Forty-two and Forty-three."
Lellan felt a bit uncomfortable being required to address two armed and armoured cylinders that showed no characteristics of life, but then she was not so well travelled as her brother.
"I don't like that," she said. Then, when her brother gazed at her questioningly, "Forty-two and Forty-three. If these are AI, and accepted as being alive, then they should have names." She stepped forwards. "Which is which?"
The drones had now settled to the ground on either side of Stanton. He glanced at each of them, then shrugged. "I don't rightly know."
Lellan studied the one to her right, trying to find some feature on it to focus on in place of a face. Eventually she focused on a collection of lenses and antennae clustered below the panpipes missile-launcher on its end-cap. "You will henceforth be known as Romulus," she said, then turning to the other drone, "And you will be known as…" she hesitated, a twist to her mouth, "Ramus."