‘It has occurred to me to wonder what you hope to achieve by getting clear of the interference,’ said Azroc. ‘You are a large vessel and I know you possess some lethal weaponry, but even so what can you do against Erebus?’
‘There is,’ replied Jerusalem, ‘a high probability that one other large Polity vessel will be able to penetrate the interference.’
‘Then what?’
‘Erebus is certainly launching an assault on Earth,’ said the AI. ‘We should still be able to fight a delaying action.’
Twenty hours later the great ship once more dropped into U-space turbulence, and Azroc was once again able to use the hand interface. The Jerusalem surfaced into the real less than an hour later, smoothly this time, and without anything breaking.
‘I see,’ said the Golem.
Yes, a delaying action.
Its surface bright with a million points of light that were almost certainly welding arcs, the titanic Cable Hogue hung there, waiting in vacuum.
18
Another of these mythical characters is the ridiculous Mr Crane, a ‘brass’ Golem who, like the gods of old, is neither good nor evil, just capricious and dangerous. In him I see the ultimate expression of how humans regard the Golem android. In the far too numerous stories about him we see that he can become everything we fear about them, for he can be an indestructible killing machine, an insane mechanism capable of the viciousness of humans, an amoral murderer. Yet he can be everything we might love and admire too, for he can be just, he can be the relentless crusher of evil and protector of the weak and innocent, and he can even be the strong and reliable friend. And, as the stories tell us, nothing can stand in his way, no doors can keep him out. This last point is the most relevant, I think, for the brass man is a combination of two things: demon and guardian angel. He is a point of transition, representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, the past moving into the future. He is our modern version of the god of doors, for he is Janus.
— Anonymous
Mr Crane tumbled through vacuum, vapour steaming from his clothing, his hand clamped on the top of his head to hold his hat in place as if there might be a breeze here to dislodge it, and a hand shoved in his coat pocket, probably to keep a firm hold on his odd collection of toys. Arach, tumbling too, abruptly jetted gas from a humorously placed vent in the rear of his abdomen, made some adjustments with steering vents located underneath the points where his legs joined his thorax, and then drifted over to Cormac. The drone closed a limb about Cormac’s waist, jetted more vapour and propelled the both of them over towards Crane, who reached out and grasped hold of one extended spider limb. A few more jets of gas brought them to a standstill relative to the war runcible, and now Cormac had a clearer view of what was happening.
Rod-forms and chunks of Jain coral were scattered all about them. Ahead, the war runcible was almost lost amid decohered wormship structure and vinelike growths extruding from the countless rod-forms adhering to its hull. Cormac could see the bright flares of oxygen fires burning aboard, and every so often detonations would fling debris out into space. All this was happening in the silence of vacuum, which somehow made the scene seem more poignant.
‘There are eight drones still remaining aboard,’ Arach informed him over his envirosuit radio. ‘But they don’t intend staying there much longer.’
Cormac could not help them now. Even if he could transport himself back inside through the U-space distortions while not ending up as a decorous moulding in one of the internal walls, he could only bring out one or two of the surviving war drones at a time — and getting themselves out here was something they were perfectly capable of achieving on their own. Anyway, he had more than enough problems of his own right now. Linking to his suit he discovered that his remaining air supply totalled forty minutes, which, by deliberately forcing himself into a somnolent state, he could extend by half — but that appeared to be the extent of his life.
‘Anything about Orlandine?’ he enquired.
After a pause, during which he no doubt communicated with the remaining war drones, Arach replied, ‘There was a beacon operating previously from her interface sphere, but it shut down shortly after she departed the runcible. Knobbler estimates she’s a few hundred miles out by now.’
Orlandine controlled Jain technology, so it seemed to Cormac that the blast that had flung her from the runcible was unlikely to have killed her. However, he still did not give much for her chances. Surely Erebus would find her and wreak some hideous vengeance.
Then, as they hung there in space, a shadow fell across them, and thoughts of what Erebus might do were brought firmly to the forefront of Cormac’s mind. He gazed towards the shadow’s source and watched a wormship slide eerily past. His view utterly unfiltered and straight across hard vacuum was a good one, and he realized how weirdly beautiful was this vessel. His estimate of his own lifespan might be too optimistic, he decided. The worm-ship, however, showed no sign of being aware of their presence and continued on down towards the runcible, where, as well as the decohering two that were spreading over its surface, three others were also now docked. Perhaps Orlandine would be missed, just like he and his companions had just been, or perhaps Erebus now knew their precise location — and hers — and would either fry them or pick them up later. As he watched the runcible, a massive detonation aboard one of the docked wormships flung out nearly a third of its structure.
‘Our hissing cockroach,’ said Arach.
‘Pardon?’
‘Erebus is trying to capture the war drones,’ the spider drone replied, ‘but it’s not a great plan. Like myself every one of them has a CTD located deep inside its body, just in case of capture by an enemy. I guess the cockroach just waited until he could do the most damage.’
‘Should one of those ships come after us, I’ll shift us again,’ said Cormac. ‘So don’t be in too much of a hurry to use your get-out clause.’
‘Sure thing,’ Arach replied. ‘I won’t use it anyway until I can’t shoot any more.’
That figured.
Seven war drones left. Cormac tried to see more clearly using his U-sense but found himself still gazing into chaos. He ran a program from his gridlink, tightening certain muscles around his eyes to increase their magnification, and then ran a secondary program to clean up the distorted image received by his optic nerves. Now the runcible and its enclosing attackers seemed to loom right over him. He saw the twinned spider now on the surface, boiling metal in a circle all about it, and around that again Jain-tech mounding up into a wave. The drone suddenly seemed out of munitions or energy, for it did nothing as the tangled Jain growth fell upon it and swamped it. Bearing in mind Arach’s recent comments, Cormac flinched in expectation of another large explosion as a bright light flashed through the writhing mass, but this time it was some beam weapon boring a tunnel. The twin spider hurtled out through this cleanly, then simply disappeared.
Another explosion on the surface, this time excavating a glowing crater. Shooting out from this he saw what he first took to be a biomech but then recognized as the drone Knobbler. A shoal of silvery objects streaked out after the escaping drone but then milled in confusion as it too disappeared.
The wormship which Cormac had earlier seen heading for the runcible now arrived. More drones were busy escaping, but it intercepted one of them, part of its mass opening to swallow the silvery scorpion whole. For a moment it was as if massive flash bulbs were going off inside the wormship. Cormac managed to turn his head just in time as the bright explosion expanded, ripping the entire ship apart. He then saw three drones slam together, some distance from the runcible, and also disappear like Knobbler. As he puzzled over this, he noticed his perspective was changing. Adjusting his focus back to normal, he peered at Arach and noticed that the drone was releasing a perpetual stream of gas, accelerating all three of them.