With the two other Avalonians behind them and the woman leading, Moria and George walked over to one of the corridors leading into the station. Here the wreckage was even worse with walls torn out, jags of metal protruding, insulation and fried optics hanging free. Some grav-plates were torn up so they necessarily crossed areas where the grav fluctuated disconcertingly. There was blood on the floor, lots of it, but what really turned Moria's stomach was the sight of an armour shoulder-plate with part of the shoulder still inside it. Moria halted, resting one hand against an undamaged section of wall and tried to get her nausea under control. The woman turned impatiently, then her expression softened.
"I know, it's horrible, but we are being forced to make horrible choices," she said.
"When the going gets tough the tough get going," George intoned.
Moria could not help herself, she abruptly burst into laughter, and when she finally got that under control she felt a sudden gratitude towards him. Once out of the corridor she tried to put the image of that shoulder-plate out of her mind, and nearly succeeded by the time they reached their destination and their guards departed.
Jebel Krong and a Golem waited in one of the small lounges overlooking Trajeen, which lay much closer now, as the runcible was being moved back to stable orbit around the planet following the test. Moria recognised the Golem as that constant companion of Krong's: Urbanus. Immediately she asked about the runcible technicians queuing for departure.
"We're evacuating the complex," explained Urbanus. "It seems rather foolish keeping these people here where they make a nice easy target for the Prador. Anyway," he shrugged, "I'm sure they won't want to be around when we blow this place."
Obviously Moria knew all about that, though still she could not help but feel a rebellious anger at the act being so casually mentioned. Glancing at George she discerned no reaction to the words from him. His head just kept swinging from side to side, studying his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time.
Krong turned from gazing out at the view, and gestured to one of the sofas. "Please, take a seat."
"How was the AI destroyed?" Moria asked while she sat.
"One of the Separatists managed to take control of a grabship delivering a runcible buffer section. He dropped the section straight on top of the AI and the massive discharge fried everything."
George, now seated beside Moria, stated, "Providence is always on the side of the big battalions."
Krong stared hard at him for a long moment before replying, "Or the big, well-armoured spaceships that are coming this way." The man then turned away from George dismissively and eyed Moria. "You are only here as a courtesy, and because I am very curious to know why the AI felt the need to put you in charge of this place during the last microseconds of its existence. AIs do not do such things on a whim."
"But I am not in charge, am I?" Moria noted, that shoulder-plate momentarily returning to haunt her.
"Let us say I welcome your input."
"Most helpful," Moria pretend smiled. "Then let me say I too am curious about the AI's motives." Aug com with this man did not give a full impression of him. In the same room with him, she felt afrisson of fear. Here stood someone driven, dangerous, she could feel it in the energy that kept him on his feet and see it in his expression—one she could only describe as pitiless. Perhaps recent events were causing her to overreact.
"Do you have any suggestions?" he asked.
The AI's motives were opaque to Moria, only suggestions as to lines of enquiry occurred. "Have you tried the planetary AIs—those running the runcibles on the surface?"
"I have, but they possess little time to spare for me. They're running the runcibles at maximum rate, open-port all across the Polity. They are also organizing planetary defences. Apparently George," he shot a penetrating look at the AI's human representative in the room, "passed on to them no information about your appointment. Perhaps the reasons for it became apparent in those last moments, prior to it making the decision. It could also be that information was lost in the subsequent net collapse."
"Perhaps if I knew more about what happened and what is likely to happen?"
Krong held up a hand, then addressed his companion, "Urbanus, take George with you and try to question him. Use signing, writing—anything you can think of. If necessary, see if you can fit him with an aug and try to access his brain directly. Liaise with one of the planetary AIs; maybe we can come up with something useful."
"If the decision was made in the last moments," Urbanus observed. "George here will probably possess no knowledge of it. I understand he remained out of communication, in a U-jump, when Conlan destroyed the AI."
"Nevertheless he was part of that AI."
Urbanus nodded and stepped forwards to place a hand on George's shoulder.
George stood meekly and said, "The worth of a thing is what it will bring." He followed Urbanus from the room.
"That is both annoying and worryingly close to making sense. I think he might be trying to tell us something," said Krong.
"Proverbs are like that… this… Conlan?"
Krong looked at her piercingly. "Your aug is unusual, I understand?"
"It is."
"So too is Conlan's, but he played for the other team. He organised an attack up here to seize this place while he himself piloted the grabship. We were forewarned and managed to stop the former but not the latter. We now have Conlan locked in a cell."
That raised all sorts of questions that Moria ran through and discarded as irrelevant. She concentrated on the heart of it: "Why?"
"He worked for the Separatists here who were apparently being financed, indirectly, by the Prador Kingdom. Apparently the Prador promised to destroy all the AIs and put humans back in charge again."
Moria snorted derisively.
"My thoughts too. Once this place came under Separatist control with the AI destroyed, Conlan was to link in, using his aug, to the connection between this runcible and the one at Boh, taking control of all systems there that were once controlled from this end by the AI. It seems he would have been able to prevent reattachment of the units of the complex there by shutting down environmental controls and seizing control of meteor collision lasers. The technicians there would have been fighting to survive and would have had little time to do the runcible any damage before the Prador arrived to take it." I see.
"You don't seem surprised."
Moria shook her head. "George was slowly uncovering what it's possible for me to do with such an augmentation. Subversion of computer systems was involved but I can see how it would be possible."
"I had a difficult time accepting it myself but for the sophistication of the attack. I thought he was overestimating his abilities." He grimaced. "He did, though apparently not those ones."
"What's happening now?" she asked.
"Two Prador ships are on their way here so any spatial defence we could mount in the limited time will be… ineffective. We've a vessel already in transit to Boh to pick up the technicians there, and once it is loaded, another will be following, its crew detailed to conceal CTD space mines within that runcible's structure. We are also mining this one. There is a Polity dreadnought called theOccam Razor in pursuit of those two ships, but…" Jebel shook his head. "I haven't seen anything we've got manage to stop just one of those bastards."
"So we burn our crops behind us," Moria stated.
"Yes. Intriguing and frustrating though this puzzle concerning your promotion might be, I still have to work on the basis that the best way to stop the Prador seizing these runcibles is to obliterate them. My strongest wish is that the Prador on one particular ship take the Boh runcible aboard before discovering the mines." He gazed out at Trajeen again now.