Blegg squinted down the slope at the red foliage. ‘We know that if they wanted to wipe us out, it would be no problem to them: they could just drop a warhead. I would say they are reluctant to destroy a possible source of information, potentially valuable, and certainly easier to obtain than, say, trying to capture a Centurion.’
‘So they’ll still try to grab us?’Thorn enquired.
‘That’s what they tried in the jungle. Why else send in what were effectively ground troops when you could sit in the sky and burn the jungle down to bedrock? I believe the killing only started when the dracomen’s resistance to Jain technology got them reclassified as being not worth the effort to capture.’ Blegg looked around to the remaining dracomen and Sparkind positioned in surrounding terrain, then to the autoguns, and finally up at Arach crouching atop the nearby cube. ‘They will come again, and this time their assault will be more organized. We just have to decide what to do.’
‘How difficult is that?’ said Arach. ‘We fight.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Blegg.
Cormac understood the man’s reservations. NEJ and the other ships remained out of contact, and it seemed likely they had either fled the enemy or been destroyed by it. So now this small ECS force lay isolated at the bottom of a gravity well, with little more than hand weapons available, and the forces arrayed against it seemed huge. In situations like this soldiers generally considered how they might die.
‘I for one have no intention of allowing myself to be captured.’ Cormac reached into his pocket and removed a small multipurpose grenade—a chrome cylinder no larger than a cigarette lighter, but with a charge capable of turning a human body into so much bloody fog. He gestured with the grenade towards Blegg. ‘You, however, have another option. You can escape. You can translate yourself through U-space.’
‘Yes, there’s always that,’ Blegg replied. He sounded tired. ‘But so can you.’
Cormac grimaced and returned the explosive to his pocket. ‘That is our last option,’ he said, not entirely convinced the option lay open to himself anyway. He needed first to open and absorb Jerusalem’s memory package, and it seemed unlikely he would be given the time for that. He looked around, then focused on Thorn, who had now removed his monocular from his visor. ‘Thorn?’ he enquired.
Thorn replied, ‘With us out in the open, all they need to do is sit up in the sky and pick us off with stunners or lasers, whatever they choose.’ He patted a hand against the envirosuit he wore. ‘The dracomen might stand a chance but we’ve no chameleonware.’
‘The cave system, then,’ Cormac commented.
‘So it would seem,’ said Thorn. ‘All we have to do is survive down there until rescue arrives—if it is coming at all.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Should we send the dracomen into the jungle? They would stand a better chance out there.’
‘I will try giving that order to Scar, but I don’t see him obeying it,’ Cormac replied.
‘Movement,’ said Blegg, abruptly.
Thorn turned and raised his monocular again. ‘Humanoid figure—a familiar one.’ He made to pass the monocular to Cormac, but Cormac waved it away. Ramping his visual acuity, using a program in his gridlink controlling the muscles around his eyes and configuring signals direct from his optic nerves, he soon identified the Legate walking from the jungle and up the slope towards them. He beckoned Scar over to him while he watched.
‘Scar,’ he said, ‘I am going to talk to this… Legate. And when it doesn’t get what it wants, I suspect we’ll be back into a fire-fight. Myself and the rest of the humans, and Arach, are going to run for the cave system and blow the entrance behind us. I want you to take your people into the jungle—with your camouflage you have a better chance of surviving there.’ Scar just stared at him for a long moment. Cormac continued, ‘This way some of us might survive to deliver a report to ECS forces when they arrive.’
Scar held up one hand, clawed fingers spread. ‘I will send five into the jungle.’
‘This is not open to negotiation, Scar.’
‘No, it is not,’ the dracoman replied, and moved away.
The Legate was now only a few hundred yards away, and Cormac thought it laughable how the entity held its hands up and open as if to show it carried no weapons. He knew all its weapons would be inside it. Once the entity had approached to ten yards away, Cormac stepped forwards. ‘I think that’s about close enough. So tell me, what do you want? I would guess you haven’t come here to surrender to us.’
‘It is good that you retain your sense of humour,’ said the Legate. ‘Allow me to acquaint you with realities.’ It pointed upwards with one overly long finger and, in that instant, com was restored and Cormac received a time-delayed information package from the NEJ. He held this package in his gridlink, as loath to open it now as the memory package gifted to him by Jerusalem. He suspected bad news, but more than that he suspected their com codes had been cracked by whatever this being before him represented.
‘Nobody is to open that package,” he instantly broadcast from his gridlink.
It almost seemed the Legate heard him as well. ‘We have not yet broken your com codes, since the algorithms that control them were created by AI. Had we broken them, be assured that you would now be under my control, as would all here, AIs or those using gridlinks or augs.’ The Legate turned its nightmare head slightly towards Horace Blegg. ‘Including you.’
Cormac decided he must take the risk. ‘All of you, accept nothing via my gridlink for the next minute.’ Out loud he said, ‘Blegg, Thorn, back away from me.’ He looked up at Arach. ‘I want you to soft link to me. Any sign that I’m subject to a subversion program, you take me down then—’ he stabbed a finger at the Legate, ‘then you take him down.’
‘What the—?’Thorn began.
Horace Blegg slapped a hand on his shoulder and began drawing him away. ‘Information package from the NEJ—we don’t know if it is genuine.’
As a further precaution, Cormac reached in his pocket and thumbed up then held down the dead man’s switch on his grenade. Only then did he open the package.
Haruspex and Coriolanus were visible ahead, glaring bright in the light of the near sun. ‘We have all released beacons broadcasting this package, so hopefully it will get through to you,’ Jack informed him. ‘We are attempting to sling-shot around the sun, to make a run on the USER which is located on a moon orbiting the other living world here. While that USER continues functioning, estimated time to the arrival of Polity forces here, one year. Only if the USER is shut down will that estimate reduce. We will reach the USER in seventeen hours. The expected time of arrival thereafter of the dreadnoughts, less than a day.’
The package contained more information, but that was the gist of it.
‘I have no idea what that message contained,’ said the Legate, ‘but presumably you now understand your situation. You are alone here and even a minimal chance of rescue is a long time off. Pure logic should now dictate your next actions. You cannot escape, and if you fight you will all either be captured or killed. I now offer you a deal.’ One long hand gestured to encompass the Sparkind and the dracomen. ‘In exchange for the lives of all these. You’—one finger stabbing towards Cormac—‘and you’—now towards Blegg—‘will hand yourselves over.’
Cormac thumbed the dead man’s switch on the grenade back into position. He did not for one moment believe this entity would allow the others to live, no matter who handed themselves over. Or perhaps they really would be kept alive, which might be worse.