The bacilliform ships did not shoot back, though they kicked out a huge amount of EM interference which increased as they conjoined. It seemed they were designed to initially blank out communication, then, if a ship drew close enough to one of those walls they formed, to completely disrupt its systems, including the AI mind inside. Jack suspected they served some other purpose as well, for individually they kept trying to make close contact with the Centurions—something none of them had yet managed to do. The lens-shaped ships deployed plenty of weaponry, but in a one-on-one fight were no match for the Centurions and were soon disabled or destroyed. Those accretions of hundred-foot-long metal worms, once they untangled, became lethal highly intelligent missiles themselves. But the remaining five big ammonite spiral ships remained the greatest danger, for they carried all the armament of a Polity destroyer—the wormish things being one weapon they deployed—and all the processing power of a runcible AI, for they quickly found solutions to the Centurions’ chameleonware. Each new program deployed lasted no more than half an hour—no time at all during a space battle.
Duelling with hardfields against a mile-wide lens-shaped vessel using telefactored warheads, Haruspex seemed in danger of being swamped by a rapidly forming wall of the bacilliforms. Jack sent a coded transmission to Haruspex then swung round in a sharp 400 gravity turn to put the NEJ behind that threatening wall. He fired a combined CTD and EM warhead at the rod-ships then, after a delay, followed it with a fusillade of near-c rail-gun projectiles. Haruspex immediately dropped out of the fight. The missile detonated amid the rod-ships, cutting a hole in the wall they created. The rail-gun projectiles shot through the hole, following the wave of EM radiation. The big lens’s instruments could detect nothing but the EM, so did not react quickly enough to the following projectiles. A hundred impacts collapsed one side of the lens like a punctured balloon. Both the NEJ and the Haruspex then used their chameleonware to cover their run towards the spiral ship pursuing Coriolanus.
‘I have the USER located,’ Coriolanus reported and sent coordinates.
Jack scanned and confirmed, and Haruspex agreed. During the recent battle they had managed to take readings of the interference strength of the device. It was located on a small moon orbiting the cold world—half the planetary system away from their present position.
‘We have to make the run,’ Jack informed the other two ships.
‘That will mean abandoning those on the planet,’ Coriolanus informed him.
Jack scanned in that direction and saw some of the enemy ships deployed down inside atmosphere. ‘My assessment of our current situation is that by running from the system on conventional drives we could survive. If we stay to protect Cormac and co, we will eventually be destroyed. The greatest hope for them is if we destroy that USER, then return to fight a delaying action until the dreadnoughts arrive. We can only hope our erstwhile passengers manage to survive on the surface.’
After a short pause, the other two ships concurred.
The moment his boots hit the soft ground, Thorn’s envirosuit muttered warnings in his ear and flashed them up on his visor. He turned those persistent warnings off, since he did not need the suit to tell him he occupied a highly radioactive area. The incinerated terrain ahead stretched for five hundred miles along the base of the mountains, and seemed likely to be the result of multiple nuclear explosions. However, in this heavy rain, he could see only a few yards ahead—in the planet’s lower gravity the raindrops falling slowly were twice the size of those on Earth, and also were turbid with ash as a consequence of explosions that had occurred here.
‘Out-spectrum vision—search,’ he instructed his suit.
After a moment a transparent band drew across his visor directly before his eyes, and within that band the rain seemed simply to be erased. However, above and below the band he could still see the downpour. Though accustomed to using this kind of sensory enhancement, he did not trust it, it being too easy to interfere with—already the surrounding radioactivity began to cause flecks across his vision. He now surveyed his surroundings.
The remaining dracoman shuttle from the NEJ was just landing, and the soldiers around him were checking their weaponry and loading up ridiculously large packs, while the four autoguns patrolled around them like hounds anxious for the hunt. No badinage passed between the troops. Many of them had known Bhutan and the others aboard the Sparkind shuttle that didn’t make it here.
‘I take it that’s where we want to go?’ Chalter pointed off to Thorn’s left where the lower mountain slopes were now visible. This area had been Cormac’s own choice for various reasons: it lay at the edge of the incinerated area, so provided the option of using the jungle for cover, and if that vegetation turned out to be occupied by a whole chapter of the flesh-eating monsters society, from here they could also head into the mountains, which were riddled with gullies, cave systems, and a sufficient mixture of hot springs, seams of metal, and radioactives from the recent explosions nearby to make it easier for them to hide from detection equipment.
‘Certainly is,’ Thorn confirmed.
The NEJ shuttle landed and the dracomen disembarked. Thorn noted that again they wore no protective clothing. Though there was sufficient oxygen here, any unequipped human would have drowned in this rain, and despite the downpour the temperature reached nearly 5 °Celsius. Thorn hauled up his own pack and shouldered it, then over com issued his instructions.
‘Seal up the shuttles and let’s move out. Sparkind, keep to your units—cover for imminent attack. Dracomen…’Thorn considered for a moment how he knew the dracomen could perform. ‘Scout ahead and find us cover: defensible positions, good visibility, but nothing to get trapped in. Let’s get moving.’
The dracomen took off at speed, bounding towards the lower slopes. Soon loaded up, the Sparkind units followed them, with the autoguns patrolling out to either side. A series of flashes then lit the sky and Thorn supposed Cormac was now engaging the remaining pursuers. He checked his footing before setting out, noticed red shoots of growth like droplets of blood scattered across the ground. Then a shadow began drawing across the sky.
‘Cormac, status?’ he asked.
‘Not too brilliant,’ the agent growled in reply.
The ship lay upside-down in dense red jungle. Through the screen Cormac could see a path of smashed thick stems and enormous smouldering leaves the ship had left as it plunged in backwards. Because he had been in similar situations before, he first instructed his envirosuit to close up completely, for any kind of poisonous air mix might be leaking into the ship. The visor shot up out of the neck ring and engaged with the helmet, which extended itself in segmented sections up around the back of his head, from the rear of the neck ring. He then looked across at Blegg beside him.
Horace Blegg had also closed up his own suit.
‘Interesting landing,’ said Cormac. ‘What the fuck happened?’
‘High intensity laser—drilled right through our engine,’ Blegg replied. ‘Did you notice the source?’
In the last moment, just before the explosion wiped out the ship’s exterior sensors, he had seen one of the spiral ships descending on them like an express elevator.
‘I think we need to get out of here—fast.’ Reaching up he hit his strap release and, spinning himself round as he dropped from his seat, came down feet first on the ceiling. Blegg landed there an instant after him. Scar was waiting to the rear of the cockpit, fangs exposed in what was definitely not a grin. Cormac searched round for Arach, then looked up at what had been the floor, and saw the drone still clinging there. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ The drone needed no more instruction. Without descending, it scuttled to the rear of the lander and dropped out through the airlock the dracomen had just opened.