'So what kind of nightmares did you have?' Hannah asked.

He waved a hand dismissively, took hold of the suit and began the laborious task of putting it on. 'Massive demons folded up like asteroids and moving through darkness, and my terror of being crushed by them, and bodies floating about in vacuum.' He shook his head. 'All perfectly apposite, of course.'

How true, Hannah felt, and how much closer to current reality than when he stepped into that cryopod. Were his nightmares just the usual mental clearing of detritus and sorting of the mental filing system, or could something have been bleeding through from surrounding reality via the hardware in his skull? That was something she would have to check.

'So did I miss anything?' he asked, finally closing up his VC suit.

'With nightmares like that,' Hannah replied, 'probably not.'

Right on cue, Saul addressed the entire ship through the PA system. 'Course change in eight minutes a full fusion thrust.' Then, just for the ears of those in the Meat Locker, 'Hannah, go and use the primary control centre and medical bay at the end of the Locker. It contains eight acceleration chairs.'

'What's going on?' Da Vinci asked as they all at once began heading to the nearest end of the Meat Locker.

'Your massive demons are ripping each other apart,' Hannah replied.

Jupiter wanted his ship; wanted to suck it down along with all the solar system debris it had swallowed over its billions of years. Saul reapplied the thrust of the Traveller engine to fling his ship into close orbit, vast plains of cloud sliding below and seemingly no curve to the horizon ahead. They were very close to the gas giant now, too close, since its pull was interfering with the vortex generator, and the magnetic fields slinging the mercury around inside it were limited to sustaining its present speed rather than increasing it to what was actually required. However, Saul now needed the speed for, upon spotting the Command arrive outside the Jovian system, he had decided to change his target.

The Fist was obviously the more heavily armed, heavily built, and it possessed more fusion drive potential. From studying images of it, Saul had also ascertained that it probably carried troops aboard and, unlike the Command, was capable of limited atmosphere engagement and even of landing on low-gravity worlds. Obviously the designers had factored in the option of Saul's own ship crashing onto some solar system body but still remaining functional enough to blow landing craft out of the sky. It was a big powerful ship, then, and one to be completely avoided if at all possible.

His ship fell in an arc around Jupiter, still under drive from the Traveller engine, but with the Mach-effect drive at its minimum, since there was now even more of a chance of his enemy detecting it. The increased density of gas here was heating the hull appreciably, with occasional flickers of incandescence running over it. Induction from Jupiter's magnetic field was increasing the power entering Casimir storage, while also blowing components with monotonous regularity. Saul could feel the structure straining all around him and observed his knuckles whiten as he gripped the arms of his chair just like everyone else aboard, just like all the humans. He relaxed his grip, took a drink from his suit spigot and considered for a moment some purely human concerns, such as how he had not eaten solid food for over a hundred and fifty hours. He then dismissed them: such physical needs he could deal with later, if he still had a living body to feed.

Tense hours passed and he noted some of the personnel moving about carefully, seeing to their own human requirements: emptying the urine packs of their suits, using toilets, finding something to eat. Fear was a limited, genetically programmed reaction impelling one to fight or flight, so it had no place in space warfare, where engagements could last for days, weeks or even years. Perhaps this was something Saul should ponder on for the future, because he had no doubt whatsoever that the aggression humans had taken with them into space was not unique a if he had a future.

Saul's next announcement sent those wandering about back to their acceleration chairs, for it was time to snap their gravitational tether to Jupiter. Using a combination of Mach-effect a mostly to kill the gyroscopic effect of the vortex generator a and steering thrusters, he turned his ship, the combination of thrust and Jupiter's pull increasing to the point of blackout for some. This lasted for an hour, then the slingshot snapped, and they were away, arcing out from Jupiter and on course to intercept the Command, even while the Fist's course was taking it out of sight behind the gas giant.

Saul cut the Traveller engine, floated light against his straps, and made one slight correction with steering thrusters. Inevitably, with the amount of debris drifting in Jovian space, something slammed through the hull like a bullet going through a soda can. This object, massing at no more than ten kilograms, turned partially to plasma on striking an inner lattice wall and hosed the shell of Arcoplex One with fire. There were no injuries and the structural damage was minimal, a result which couldn't last. He watched the moon Lysithea slide by far to one side, then adjusted his course slightly to an optimum to miss the numerous moonlets lying a further ten million kilometres out.

Measuring a slight downward fluctuation in the speed of its tangential approach in-system, Saul calculated on the Command having fired something in the region of ten railgun missiles back towards him. Realizing that Saul was avoiding the Fist and was now pursuing the Command, the commander of the latter ship had fired probing shots to drive him away from direct convergence; like light taps delivered by a boxer assessing an opponent.

'Brigitta,' Saul began. The Saberhagen twin had just woken up from a long sleep in her acceleration chair, while her sister was still sleeping. Both of them had been using stimulants for some time but had at last succumbed to the needs of their bodies.

'What?' she asked blearily.

'I am taking control of your railguns,' he replied She just nodded numbly and without surprise as he usurped control. He needed greater than human accuracy now. Amalgamating in one mental program the Mach-effect drive, steering thrusters, gyroscopic stability, astrogation data and the infinitesimal changes to his ship's vector caused by railgun launches, he fired one shot every three-point-six seconds for just over a minute, adjusting his aim incrementally after each shot. Seventeen railgun missiles sped towards the Command, each with a calculated impact probability of twenty-three per cent, but only if it did not alter its course. He could manage no better than that due to the inaccuracies in targeting, and noted to himself how the steering racks of the railguns needed to be coated and microscopically polished, and some Vernier adjustment added. After that, a nudge with a steering thruster took his ship to the periphery of the fusillade from the other ship. He did not want to stray any further away, since complete avoidance would defeat his purpose in coming out here in the first place. And the situation was such that he could not avoid both these ships until the Rhine drive was ready again.

As the ships drew closer together, the Command used one of its side-burners to shift course abruptly to avoid the seventeen approaching missiles, and from that action he was able to assess the capabilities of its detection gear. The Command's instruments would be able to detect major Mach-effect shifts in Saul's own ship, but whether the crew might be looking out for something like that was another matter entirely. Small shifts would not be noticed, which was handy now as Saul reached the periphery of the fusillade coming back from the Command.

A small nudge with Mach-effect and a brief flare of steering thrusters altered his course just so. The two railgun missiles that had been on target now dropped to one. This struck fifty metres down from the top pole of the ship, punched through the hull and sliced through most of the intervening structure before turning into an explosion of white-hot ceramic and molten steel as it peeled away part of the internal space dock and took off the back end of the Mars-format space plane. This resulting detritus, still having lost little of its momentum, travelled down parallel to the axis of the ship, through lattice walls finally to blast out forty metres to one side of the Traveller engine, leaving an impressive plume.

With diagnostics and structural sensor data running straight into his extended mind, Saul noted just a small loss in the redundancy within structural integrity, some damage to the EM shield and Mach drive, already being tended to by a proctor and its herd of robots, and generally, just a fractional loss in battle readiness. The two who had been working in the space plane, and who had been using its acceleration chairs, died too fast for their backups to register the moment of their deaths a turned into white-hot gas in less than a second. Their memory would be one of just sitting in acceleration chairs, and their next conscious experience would be either some interaction through the ship's system or waking up inside new clone bodies. Saul had yet to decide on which but, for the interim, the backed-up copies of dead human minds were kept in a state of unconsciousness.

'Further acceleration,' he announced, firing up the Traveller engine for another course change, while also noting that only half its fresh fuel remained.

The reaction followed just minutes after, as the Command changed the orbital spiral of its course inward for better convergence. Those aboard it were now thinking that their single hit had been enough to dissuade him from his attack run, that he realized he was heading into a fight he could not win, and they were therefore moving to block him. He turned his ship again to take it up out of their plane, as if he wanted to head out and over them away from Jupiter, but also increasing orbital convergence. They moved to block again, firing their railguns back at him once more. Saul returned fire, but also fired ahead of both ships at a moonlet called Hermippe, knowing that the debris cloud would push the other ship even nearer to him. It would be a slugging match now as their courses drew closer together, rather like ancient battleships pummelling each other.

'Brigitta,' he declared, 'soon you'll get the chance to try out your new toy.'

'About damned time,' she replied, before sipping from a flask of coffee.

Angela was awake also now, and busy checking tactical data on her screen. Others were thoroughly aware of the situation too; Le Roque studying Saul's battle plan and issuing instructions to those he had designated as 'fire control' and who were now heading for EVA units. Squads of robots, controlled by the chipped, were ready for quick deployment within the ship. Everyone now had their suits tightly closed up and, when not remaining strapped in their acceleration chairs, were ready with breach patches and welding gear. It was the best they could all do, Saul decided, but still many of them were going to die.

The next strike peeled up hull metal at the equator of Saul's ship and glanced off the heavy armour around the vortex generator, blast walls absorbing the shot and asteroidal ice turning instantly to searing steam. The vortex generator remained untouched, however, and there were no personnel in that area, since Alex was conducting his hunt close to a hundred and eighty degrees further around that same ring. Saul still felt a moment of disquiet at that one strike since, without the abrupt Mach-effect nudge, the missile might well have penetrated the armour and struck the vortex generator, which was even now slowly winding up to speed. Another strike went in above the Traveller engine, taking a chunk out of its support pillar. He deliberately induced a misfire, leaving the fusion drive sputtering and burning dirty, before shutting it down. Robots ascended the pillar to make repairs, quickly slicing away wreckage and transporting up replacement beams. Meanwhile, the other ship decelerated to bring it closer; doubtless its crew assumed he had lost the ability for massive course changes.

Explosions lit the way ahead as Hermippe threw rubble and molten rock out into vacuum. The Command fired side-burn fusion engines to avoid the debris and brought itself closer still. Two hits on the Command followed: one a glancing blow near the nose that slagged some kind of weapons turret, and the other one punching right through its main body, the burning gas throwing it into silhouette. Another hit on Saul's ship ensued, slicing in transversely and carving a molten trench through the side of Arcoplex Two. Breach alarms screamed there and bulkhead doors slammed shut internally around the area as it bled air. Through one cam, Saul peered at a group of four people strapped to acceleration couches and gazing up in disbelief through their visors at the long hole above them, its glowing lips open to the rest of the ship.

Another missile came in, almost perfectly on target, its line of flight destined to take it straight through the centre of the ship and just metres from where Saul himself sat. One Mach-effect nudge threw it many metres to the side, where it smashed explosively into the inner bearing of the Arboretum. The whole bearing assembly then fragmented; the cylinder world's shaft at that end dislodged and swung fifty metres to one side. Chunks of ceramic flew in every direction and the mercury content of the bearing spewed out in a glittering cloud. Saul registered twenty-eight backups disconnected from their primary sources: fourteen incinerated when a plume of plasma from the initial missile impact played over their accommodation unit, twelve of them vaporized inside the building in which the bearing was housed, along with one broken neck and one shattered skull in the Arboretum itself. Saul also noted that there had been sixteen people in that accommodation unit a two of them yet to be chipped and now having lost any chance of eternity.

Enough a they were close enough now.

'Brigitta,' he said through gritted teeth, 'now.'

15.

The Data Saved Us That the Gene Bank samples and data were essential to save Earth's ecosystem was just another misconception on the part of Serene Galahad and her advisers. When seeds buried thousands of years ago could still germinate, when a single bacterium could multiply into billions in the time it takes to plant a tree, and when the exigencies of evolution could turn a mouse into the equivalent of an elephant or a tiger, Earth was not dying. Earth was sick, however: the disease was called manswarm and, with the Scour, Serene Galahad had administered the antibiotic, whilst her sprawl clearances were the salve applied to Earth's scabrous hide. But, even if manswarm had not been so reduced by her activities, the resource crash would have served the same ends as the Scour a and Earth would have regenerated itself, in time. This is a fact of biology and not of blind optimism. Earth has seen numerous extinctions throughout its existence, and in every case that engine called life has never stopped. It was in fact a kind of arrogance to suppose that humans could be so supremely destructive. And, even with that data, much of the life of our present time will still be little more than fossils in rock, a billion years hence.

Earth Serene stared at Ruger as one of her security team disarmed him. Unlike Trove, he resisted not at all, just wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and emitted a few further chuckles.

Why was the man laughing?

Elkin had confirmed, by a random sampling of the data stream, that the Scourge was indeed now transmitting the uncorrupted Gene Bank data. It would take maybe half an hour for the transmission to complete and Ruger a she glanced at the laptop now gyrating in the air above one of her spiderguns a had no way of stopping it if he decided things weren't going his way. Ruger had to realize it was all over for him now.

Serene turned to Elkin and drew a finger across her throat. Elkin gave a signal and all the lights blinked out on the floating cams a signifying the ETV transmission was ended. Serene felt the situation was now back within her control, and that she had some decisions to make. With the data in her hands, she could now, if she so wished, just recall her three ships, but she decided at that moment not to. Various experts had assured her that the Gene Bank data alone, though lacking the genetic codes in the full gamut of samples, would assure the future of Earth's biosphere. However, getting hold of those samples, and capturing or killing Alan Saul and his rebels, would be a huge bonus.

'Bring them,' she instructed Vaughan, gesturing towards Trove and Ruger.

By now all the Inspectorate staff aboard the station would be dead, and it was time to consolidate her position here. She would express some surprise upon learning about the full extent of the Scour deaths on board, then order Calder's arrest and, after some assessment of the remaining staff, put someone else in charge. After that she would return to Earth, back to what she now knew to be her comfort zone, there put the finishing touches to her cover stories, execute Calder for unleashing the Scour here, then have a long talk with Ruger about his inappropriate humour.

'Ma'am,' said Sack, now up close to her side.

'What?' she asked, as the future opened out before her in her mind. She would indeed carry through her plan to turn the human race into something more manageable. She would continue demolishing unoccupied sprawls, restocking the oceans, begin establishing forests, jungles and other ecosystems and turn Earth back into the halcyon garden it had once been. With so much to do, she was anxious to be away from here and eager to get started.

'The screen,' said Sack.

Serene looked up and saw that the ETV talking heads had now been banished, and that Calder was gazing out from the screen. Everyone now swung round to watch.

'Oh, good,' said Calder, 'I have your attention.'

Serene did not like his tone at all. She quickly scanned about: the bay was covered by her personnel; the dead Inspectorate staff they had found here were neatly stacked away in a nearby storeroom. Sharpshooters covered the entire area, but were almost superfluous while her three spiderguns were deployed.

'Your arrogance, Serene Galahad, is astounding,' continued Calder. 'Did you honestly think that, with the resources and scientific personnel you put at my disposal, I could not work out what you did? Did you honestly think I would not find out that the biochips, manufactured in your Aldeburgh Complex, were the actual source of the Scour, and that you yourself controlled them?'

Cold dread ran its claws up and down Serene's spine. She glanced at the expressions all around her, some puzzled and some doubtful, yet others suddenly attentive and turning towards her. They expected her to make a response.

'And do you, Calder,' she said, forcing a tired smile onto her lips, 'honestly expect anyone to believe that?' She gestured to those gathered all around her. 'Would I surround myself with staff who have all lost family to the Scour? No, I would not. I surround myself with these people because they are as dedicated as I am to exacting vengeance upon the mass murderer Alan Saul. And now you, in your pathetic and desperate attempt to usurp me, are scrabbling for some way to turn them against me.' He was about to speak, but she quickly overrode him. 'Do you also honestly think that, having such an option available, Messina and his Committee would have expended such a wealth of resources on sectoring, and on developing the Argus network?'

'Oh, classic,' said Ruger abruptly. 'And yet none of it matters at all.' Then he burst out laughing again.

'Shut him up!' Serene snapped, and felt some degree of satisfaction when her order was instantly obeyed and a rifle butt connected with Ruger's head.

'Good try,' said Calder. 'Your lies may well have worked on those around you, but that's irrelevant now. I knew straight away once you had activated the biochips, and gave you the news you were expecting. It was, of course, necessary to supply some bodies from our morgue here, for veracity. And now, Serene Galahad, it's time for you to pay.'

White light flashed near the end of the bay, metal screamed and a cloud of debris expanded. Serene felt something crash into her, tearing her gecko soles right off the floor. She struggled against Sack's grip, though he was only performing his job and dragging her to cover. More explosions ensued and then gunfire erupted. Sack pulled her down by the airlock leading to Ruger's shuttle, just as a spidergun opened fire at a group of figures already swarming into the hold, sending shattered bodies tumbling. She pulled close to Sack, suddenly wishing she'd taken things further with him, for he was her rock, all she could trust. A thrumming seemed to fill the air, Serene's fone emitted a sound like water dropping into a chip pan, then she saw one spidergun fold up like a fist and another go tumbling aside, loose-limbed.

'Tank-busters,' explained Sack.

Vaughan and other security staff had launched themselves into the air and were firing their weapons furiously. Serene watched ceramic bullets smacking into some of them, then a ten-mil machine gun sounded, tearing up the floor in a line that terminated at Elkin and her two aides, who just flew apart.

'We need cover,' said Sack, glancing aside as the men guarding Ruger and Trove dragged them over.

Serene just stared, with mouth agape, as fragmentation grenades turned the entire bay into bloody chaos, and her security team died. She spotted Vaughan, the silver bars on the arm of his VC suit singling him out, bouncing off the floor only to rise again, his legs reduced to bloody tatters below the waist. About twenty of her people had closed in around her, crouching down and firing at the seemingly endless stream of Inspectorate personnel entering the bay, before themselves steadily falling. Then abruptly Sack was dragging her somewhere else, and she only realized he had opened the airlock door once she was through it.

'Ten of you here!' Sack bellowed.

There were moving bodies blocking all views, some of them bloody, one of them screaming, and bullet impacts were horrible meaty thwacks all around her. Then came a detonation, bright, blinding, setting her ears buzzing. The next moment they were inside the shuttle, yanking the door closed against a chaos of shouting and screaming, then hammering fists and the sounds of bullets impacting. She felt more than heard the docking clamps disengage, heard screams turning to grunts as someone administered an anaesthetic. Slowly she began to unfreeze, but then, seeing she was strapped into an acceleration chair, she realized the immediate danger.

'Do not use the engines!' she yelled, struggling to undo the straps, towing herself towards the cockpit. 'We cannot leave the station like this!'

From the co-pilot's chair Sack looked round at her. 'We know about the railguns, ma'am. We're just holding position for now.'

Serene glanced at Trove, now sitting in the pilot's chair, her hands resting flat on the console, Sack's gun jammed into her side.

'Good,' said Serene, fighting to keep a note of hysteria out of her voice. She had to keep control. She had to retain an aura of confidence. She glanced back into the crew compartment, saw that only two of her security team had made it inside, and one of them was strapped into a seat, the top half of his VC suit stripped away, dressings fastened across his chest and over the stump of his right arm. His eyes were closed and a morphia patch had been applied to his neck. The other had a combat dressing on one side of his face, burns showing under its edges and, by his bloody hands, had obviously been responsible for applying the dressings to his wounded comrade. Now he stood guard over their other prisoner, whose head was bloody, but who grinned at her nevertheless.

'So, what's so amusing, Ruger?' she demanded.

'You can't ever leave because this Calder controls the construction station and, from what I just heard, its railguns too,' he said. 'And, anyway, none of it matters a fuck.'

'So you don't mind dying,' Serene replied.

'I do, but at least it's going to be quick.'

'I wouldn't be so sure about that,' Serene spat.

'Oh, I reckon a multiple-megaton nuclear detonation will surely do the trick.'

'What?'

'Hey, Trove!' he called out. 'Is he on the move?'

'Yeah,' Trove replied from the cockpit. 'I checked before this goon made me undock. He's broken away from the tug, and his fusion drive just started. We've got half an hour at best.'

'What are our chances of getting clear?' Ruger asked.

Serene looked at Trove, who gazed back at her with dead eyes.

'At the crawl speed of this heap of junk inter-ship shuttle?' said the pilot officer. 'The expression "snowflake in hell" springs to mind.'

'What are you two talking about?' Serene asked succinctly.

'Oh,' said Ruger, 'I forgot to mention that Captain Scotonis is still aboard the Scourge. He knows you controlled the Scour outbreak and that you're therefore responsible for the death of his entire family. He's been trying to locate you, and you then made it nice and easy with that ETV broadcast.'

'What's he going to do?' asked Serene, not at all liking Sack's flat stare nor the silent attentiveness of her other personnel here.

'He's a bit pissed off,' said Ruger, 'so he's going to drop the Scourge right on top of your head, and detonate its entire nuclear arsenal.'

Serene just stared at him, unable to think of any sensible reply. This could not be happening. She had so much to do, so many plans, she who held the destiny of planet Earth in her hands.

The Command Bartholomew had known it wouldn't be easy, but now the reality was hitting home as the damage and casualty reports came in. But Tactical were sure that Saul's fusion drive was out, and insisted it was only a matter of time before they could confirm a full strike on the other ship's vortex generator. This had annoyed Bartholomew somewhat, since after seeing the footage of what had happened to the Vision, it was obvious that a tactical assessment wouldn't be required in order to confirm such a hit. Saul's ship would spew mercury travelling at relativistic speeds, and probably tear out most of its equatorial infrastructure.

'Are we close enough for the maser yet?' he asked of his command crew.

'Too disperse still, Admiral,' replied Lieutenant Cole.

The maser beam was not completely coherent, so its effective range was measured in just thousands of kilometres within vacuum. Nukes were impossible at this range, since they could not be accelerated to railgun speeds without producing major internal damage, while their lasers, though able to reach the other ship, would waste their effectiveness against its hull. No, it would have to be the railguns for a while yet, and meanwhile Saul wasn't a passive target.

Bartholomew sniffed smoke in the air, redolent of burned meat. He'd lost half of his engineering team and shut down com to the affected part of the ship when it became necessary to close bulkhead doors and fill the place with fire-retardant foam. If there were survivors, they could be dug out later; for now they would just have to endure.

The ship lurched as another missile hit home. Damage-control diagnostics filled one corner of his large curved screen and, reading them, Bartholomew swore vehemently. They'd just lost one of the side-burn fusion engines.

'Repairs?' he asked.

'Going swiftly,' Cole replied.

Bartholomew switched over to the stats on the first hit, and called up a frame giving a view of the damage done, where robots were swarming over the wreckage. At least they were functioning above spec. It amazed him how fast they were making repairs. If they continued at their present rate, hull integrity in that section would be back to optimum within the hour. This was all doubtless due to the comlifer they had aboard, because Christopher Shivers had managed to iron out a lot of computer-control inefficiencies.

The admiral focused his attention on the main image on the screen: the spherical ship that had once been Argus Station was now speeding along almost parallel to them. They'd hit it, what, six times thus far, and had still failed to take out the vortex generator. Readings showed that it was still many hours away from full functionality but, even so, it must not be allowed to function since Saul would almost certainly then run. Bartholomew leaned back. Well, at least he should be thankful that his own ship's generator was still intact.

'Can we reposition yet?' he asked.

'Still too much in the way,' replied Cole. 'It's as if he deliberately chose to intercept us here and negate that option.' Then he added, 'He's firing steering thrusters again.'

Of course he chose the battleground, realized Bartholomew, watching the glare of the thrusters now turning Saul's ship.

'That should give us a better angle on his vortex ring,' he stated, yet felt a sudden disquiet. He wasn't dealing with an idiot here, so such an alteration in the other ship's attitude had to be for a good reason.

Three flashes, just one second apart, ignited inside a port in the other vessel.

'Something coming,' said Cole a and he had time to say no more.

The lights went out, screens went to static, and the PA system howled. The ship shuddered like a beast taking an abattoir bolt to the head. Emergency lights kicked in as lightning arced from Cole's console, and he shrieked. Bartholomew felt heat wash over him and, with an ear-tearing blast, the doors into the bridge buckled inwards. In the corridor beyond he saw a burning body flailing through the air, and then flame spread to envelop the ceiling. The next moment, he found himself tumbling through the air, still strapped into his chair, then slamming into a computer wall. He reached out and grabbed hold.

'Abandon to secondary bridge!' he shouted, though not sure if anyone was listening.