Gridlinked

'Vocal communication from Dragon.'

'No reply, but let's hear it,' said Cormac.

'Cormac! Cormac!' screamed the speaker. Only then did Cormac see the pterosaur head amongst the pseudopods. It rose out of them and came up against the camera.

'Cormac!' it screamed again, spraying the lens with milky saliva.

'Sounds pissed off,' said Thorn.

'Yes, and scared,' said Cormac.

Mika looked at him sharply, then returned her attention to the screen.

'Give me what is mine!' shrieked Dragon.

'Wants the dracoman,' said Mika.

'Do you wish Isolation unsealed?' asked Hubris.

'No, keep it sealed. If it wants its dracoman, then it'll have to take the whole chamber.'

'There will be extreme damage to the interior of the ship.'

The Dragon head appeared next in Isolation. 'Open! Open!' it shrieked.

Cormac began to rattle his fingers on the console. He was humming a tune and chewing his lip at the same time. After a moment he said, 'Then prepare for extreme damage to the interior of the ship… Tell me, what could the intruder-defence systems do now?'

'Specific nerve gases, low-intensity lasers, EM pulse-guns, evacuation of sealed areas—'

'Use low-intensity lasers and the EM guns.'

'Beton-twelve nerve gas—'

'Just!… as I said.'

Over the intercom they heard the high-speed crackling of the pulse-guns. Pseudopods began to fly apart and become charcoaled with black lines; but where one pseudopod was destroyed, another took its place. The ship convulsed.

'Charge up proton guns.'

'Charging. Stress readings all round Isolation Chamber One. Stress reading along all corridors to drop-shaft. Stress readings in drop-shaft.'

The screen showed walls and struts being torn away in Isolation, wads of insulation falling, pipes bursting and snaking through the air on jets of vapour, then it showed walls buckling and being pushed back into the corridors. One scene flickered out as a camera was destroyed. The screen then showed the whole of Isolation Chamber One peeled down to its armour, and being shifted by the pseudopods.

'Cormac! Cormac!' screamed the Dragon head.

'Target that head.'

The head was suddenly latticed with black lines, and then EM pulses began to blow pieces of it away. It shrieked and drew back out of Isolation. The chamber was dragged along after it, tearing walls, folding out ceilings. Sparks rained down, and cameras went out one after another.

'Isolation chamber in drop-shaft. Stress readings at drop-shaft doors. Ventilation seals breached, closing secondary seals.'

Just then there came into the room a smell of burning flesh and metal, and another smell - so strong it was almost a taste - of cloves.

'How long until proton guns enable?'

'Forty seconds. Mark.'

Suddenly the scene revealed was of the shuttle bay. The mutilated Dragon came on-camera. Its jaws opened and slammed forwards. The camera went out.

'Not too happy, I would say,' said Thorn.

'General idea,' muttered Blegg.

'Dragon has isolation chamber. Detaching. Flooding drop-shaft with crash-foam. Massive air loss. Crash-foam not holding. Closing shuttle-bay doors.'

The screen showed the shuttle bay from another angle. The bay doors were labouring to close against a hailstorm of crash-foam and wreckage. The debris was hurtling out into the vacuum.

'Pull away, maximum acceleration. Fire proton guns when ready.'

Dragon receded from the doors. A purple flash ignited space and a charred hole fifty metres across appeared in its scaled hide. Cormac watched for a moment, then removed a black cylinder-section from his pocket, with a miniconsole on it. He poised his finger over a flashing touch-plate.

'That's a—' began Thorn.

'Remote detonator, yes,' said Cormac impatiently, then asked, 'Distance, Hubris}'

'One kilometre. Mark. One and one half kilometres…'

The proton guns fired again, but this time the purple flare was not on Dragon's surface. It ignited over an invisible membrane and did no damage.

'Dragon preparing to return fire.'

They could all see the ripples crossing its surface.

'Distance?'

'Three kilometres. Mark. Four and a half. Mark. Six kilo—Fire imminent! Fire imminent!'

Cormac pressed his finger down. Everything under that membrane turned to light. The membrane broke and the screens whited out. Hubris bucked and they were flung to the floor.

Epilogue

The bleak sun inched above the horizon and a new day fell across the ruination that surrounded the complex. Above the corroded-bronze sky Samarkand was gaining yet another feature; a spreading orbital cloud of frozen gobbets of flesh, pieces of bone and metal… Dragon remains. Hubris, poised geostationary above the complex, watched this cloud spread with an aesthetic appreciation only available to AIs having the full spectrum of senses it possessed. With another fraction of its sensorium it listened in through the computer of the departing mini-shuttle. In a completely disconnected way it knew that it too was being used in this way, by a mind as many orders of magnitude greater than it, than it was of the computer.

'It woulda looked at everything y'said and did,' said Blegg, then he chugged down a large cup of whisky and grinned wickedly.

With his own cup resting on his knee, Cormac stared down at the floor of the shuttle with the unseeing gaze of exhaustion. He was finding it difficult to grasp that his plans had paid off.

Eventually he spoke. 'I guess it's a case of knowing who your enemies are.'

Blegg looked at the bottom of his cup in annoyance, took out his flask, shook it, and then smiled benevolently. Cormac had never known anyone like him. He probably knew exactly what had happened, yet managed to appear completely unconcerned. A strange man was Blegg. He rested his head back and closed his eyes.

It seemed only a minute had passed before Blegg was shaking him awake. He looked up at the screen and saw that the shutde was coming down on the edge of the complex, in a storm of CO₂ crystals. He waited until he felt it touch down before he spoke.

'Aiden, ask Samarkand II how the stage-two run-cible's coming along.'

The Golem got up from his pilot's chair as if he had not heard. Samarkand II answered the question over the shuttle's speakers.

'The stage-two runcible is undergoing rough alignment. This will take approximately fifteen minutes. I will fine-tune it in one tendi of a second.'

If ever an AI had been guilty of conceit, Samarkand II was that one, diought Cormac. He moved to the door of the shutde as a covered walkway attached itself like a lamprey. As he waited at the door for the air beyond to heat up, he turned back to Blegg.

'You know, they have a carrying pouch inside them. Dragon knew everything that was going on here. It just grabbed them to make sure they were internally clear of the mycelium. It didn't want us finding that.'

'Y'not wrong. That where the CTD went?'

'Yeah, but it had to cut away some material to get it in.'

The door diumped open like the door to a fridge, and they entered the walkway. Soon they were passing by the milling technicians, and Samarkand II's voice droned over the speakers.

'Stage-two runcible alignment test commencing… Test complete. Still too far out for insertion of five-D cusp.'

The larger containment sphere of the stage-two runcible now rested under a large dome with floorspace all around. The open door to the containment sphere was big enough for heavy transport sleds. Cormac recognized the familiar figure of Chaline next to the door. He walked up to her and saw she was directing the adjustment of machinery under the black glass floor inside: the same kind of machinery as he had destroyed in the stage-one runcible. Dislodged floor panels were resting up against the wall of the sphere.