After his initial tirade, something about the way Saul was speaking now sounded a bit off to Bartholomew. It all seemed to have become too correct, too exact and, from his experience with Christopher Shivers, he felt sure he knew why.

'I'm not speaking to all of Alan Saul now, am I?'

'You are speaking to enough of him,' the voice replied.

'So I am to be judged by a sub-program?'

'You are in no position to protest about that.'

'So what must I do?' Bartholomew asked. 'Must I beg for the lives of myself and my crew?'

'No. I will no longer respond to circumstances on the basis of emotion,' Saul replied. 'However, I have given limited self-governance to the personnel aboard my ship and, since this is a human matter, I have consulted with Technical Director Le Roque, who is the de facto governor of the human population.'

A human matter?

'What is his decision?'

'I have opened your communications to all of your own personnel aboard,' Saul declared. 'You will tell them to abandon their weapons and head for the nose of your ship. There you will be met by my police chief, Langstrom, who will conduct you into confinement in Arcoplex One. What Le Roque and Langstrom then decide to do with you is their own concern. You may address your personnel now.'

Bartholomew sat there gaping. What should he say? What could he say? Eventually, after a lengthy throat clearing, he began, 'This is Admiral Bartholomew. We have lost, we have been defeated absolutely, and the only alternative to surrender is for us to all die . . .'

When he had finished, the replies came in, neatly ordered one after the other, so doubtless Saul was still controlling their communication. Some argued with Bartholomew, but could not argue with the facts he laid out. Most simply agreed.

'Okay, let's go,' he said at last, when it was all over.

They went out through the bridge sphere airlock in pairs, one of them carrying out their navigator, who was unconscious but still alive. Bartholomew waited until they were all gone, extracted the laminar storage of the ship's log and inserted it into a belt pouch, for his defence just in case he ever faced trial on Earth, which now seemed unlikely. He already knew that Saul's robots were tearing his ship apart, but as he stepped out, the extent of it still came as a shock.

The corridor right outside had lost all its wall panels, its ceiling and even most of its floor. He gazed up through the wide-open structure of the ship at busy activity: the flicker of cutting lasers; golden worms seemingly entwined through everything, with their multiple limbs moving at a blur; diamond saws filling vacuum with a snow of glittering swarf; major ship components shifting, then being pulled away. His command crew could be seen further along the corridor, standing back from where one of his own ship's robots was taking up another floor plate ahead.

'Go over it,' he instructed. 'If he wanted us dead we would be dead by now.'

They launched themselves over the robot, which simply ignored them. Propelling themselves on through the ship, they made their way forward to join up with a party of three troops standing on a lattice of beams halfway from the core to the nose. Here Bartholomew gaped in amazement, for so much of the ship's structure was gone he could see clearly as far as the vortex ring, and beyond it out into hard vacuum. Peering ahead, he caught sight of Saul's vessel, in fact could see right inside Saul's vessel, because such a large part of its hull was missing. As they headed towards this, the whole ship around them shifted in the same direction, like some fish being swallowed by a giant sea anemone.

Others joined them on the way forward as they propelled themselves from beam to beam, and had to throw themselves clear of the paths of great loads of wall plates, beams, reels of cable and optics a and, in one case, the partially dismembered carcass of a fusion side-burner. Five people awaited them on the lip of the giant hole opening into the massive vessel ahead. They were armed, and began beckoning them down. Bartholomew paused against a beam, as those around him headed where directed. He counted just thirty-five of them surviving out of a crew of hundreds.

'You're Bartholomew,' said one of the five figures as he caught up with the rest.

'I am.'

'Okay, all of you follow me,' said the man he now recognized as Langstrom. 'Don't do anything stupid, and don't try to run. I won't bother going after you, but then I've no need to.'

Bartholomew gazed up at the stream of robots and materials flowing through the gap, and then back at the Command. Already it had become skeletal as far back as the wrecked main engine, and he could see right through its length and to the stars beyond. What, in the face of all this, would be more stupid? Was it fighting to the end and thus dying, or allowing oneself to be captured alive?

Earth Serene just could not believe the pain. She'd pissed in her suit, which was fine since it was designed to absorb it, but she'd also shit herself and it wasn't intended for that. As Sack had pulled the VC suit from her body, she had been sure he was going to rape her a rape her with a penis covered in that hard lizard skin. She didn't even try to fight him after he dealt the second blow. She knew how strong he was, and knew it would be futile. Let him have his way, let him do this to her and punish her. Perhaps it was necessary for her to undergo this metaphorical 'scourging' to free her of the sin of past crimes, and thence she could move clean-born into the bright future. What she had done, and what she intended to do, were of the utmost importance, so she should expect to suffer some pain along the way. Great deeds were often tied to great suffering. Didn't the saints and martyrs of the old religions of Earth know about that?

Once she was naked, he tied a length of the preconductor cable to the ankle of her undamaged leg, then to the wrist of her undamaged arm. So, he was going to tie her down first and then have his way with her. She noted that Ruger and Trove were still here, watching in fascination. They would enjoy her personal humiliation, and now she felt glad Sack had not obeyed her instruction to kill them. After this was all over, she would be able to hunt them down and punish them thoroughly for their crimes, including this present voyeurism.

With the cables in place, Sack began towing her along by her ankle. She shrieked again, then concentrated on keeping her shattered knee and elbow off the bony ground. She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry out any more. She would suffer this, and it would pass. Nearer to the bulldozer she became aware of the heat from its blade a as flames still leaped up behind it a and it was here Sack finally deposited her. He took up the cable attached to her wrist and tied its far end to a large chunk of wreckage. Next he returned and pulled the other length of cable round behind the dozer blade, and she could hear him scrabbling somewhere there. The cable flipped over the top of the blade, which rose at least eight metres off the ground, and he then appeared there, amidst the flames and smoke, and began hauling upon it.

How could he survive there in that fire? The suit must help protect him . . . but what about his hands and face? Serene abandoned these thoughts as the cable began tugging her, by the ankle, closer to the hot blade. However, the other cable attached to her wrist then tightened too, and she was lifted up off the ground, the pain of it bringing her near to blacking out. Higher and higher she rose, until she hung suspended at an angle, between the two cables, only the one connected to her wrist stopping her from swinging straight in towards the hot metal.

'Wonderful stuff this keroskin a you have no idea,' announced Sack, walking out from behind the dozer blade. Oily flames licked up his legs, his spacesuit was blackened and smoking, and he looked like a demon fresh out of the Pit. He paused and stooped to take up handfuls of bone gravel to put out the flames, seemingly oblivious to the burning oil clinging to his hands.

'Fire isn't much of a problem for it,' he explained, 'because it has fewer afferent nerves and can resist a lot more damage than normal human skin. Of course, even at the cost of being more vulnerable and less able to withstand damage, I'd prefer to have human skin, and my old face.'

'It can . . . be done,' Serene managed. 'You can have . . . your face back.'

'But I can't have my father back.' Sack gestured all around. 'And there are millions if not billions of people who also can't have their friends or family back.'

'Necessary,' Serene asserted.

'Oh, I agree,' Sack nodded. 'You did something that was horribly necessary in order to save the planet, but this is personal.' He walked over to the taut cable that extended from Serene's wrist to the piece of wreckage. He pulled it tighter to give himself some slack at the knot, which he untied. Next, holding the cable taut, he turned back to face her.

'My only problem with fire is a psychological barrier I have to overcome.' He slackened the cable slightly and thus set Serene swinging. 'I was told that the pain I suffered was just about the worst anyone can suffer, and that of course left scars inside me too.'

'You . . . don't do this.' He clearly wanted her to think he was going to burn her, and she decided it best to play along with this melodrama he was creating. He would toy with her for a while, but in the end he knew she was utterly essential to the future of Earth.

'But I do,' Sack replied, then stepped forward to allow her to swing in towards the dozer blade.

He wouldn't do this. He would pull the cable taut again at the last moment. He would not sacrifice the future to such petty vengeance. Serene continued to believe this right up until the moment when her naked body touched metal hotter than a clothes iron. Thereafter she lost the ability to think at all.

The sunrise was spectacular: deep purple clouds turning silver and gold on their undersides, then shading to amethyst shot through with blood red, before being seared by the sun, as it breached the sprawl towers, and then turning to lemon and orange. The clouds seemed to be rainbow islands in the sky, with the bays and coves of some fantasy land people could only dream of ever reaching a or only reach by dreaming. It was, Ruger felt, a sunrise he would remember, and one he could appreciate properly now the screaming had stopped.

'Do you reckon she's dead now?' Trove asked.

'I should think so,' Ruger replied. 'I'm surprised she lasted so long.'

The power of the sun began ramping up very quickly and the clouds lost their romantic appeal. Maybe a couple of kilometres ahead lay more sprawl, though it was difficult to tell for sure in the increasing heat haze, and now, in clear morning light, the surface they walked upon was all too visible. How many thousands . . . how many millions of the dead lay here under his feet?

'Looks as if we're getting some activity.' Trove pointed.

Ruger raised his gaze from the crushed ribcages and empty eye sockets to peer at several shapes rising above the distant sprawl. After a moment he identified a big rotobus, along with two outrider military aeros, heading directly towards them. He wanted to run, get himself to that sprawl and find somewhere to hide while he sorted out what to do next, but having spent so long in zero gravity, having suffered so many injuries and certainly also suffering from radiation sickness, he was having enough trouble just continuing to put one foot in front of the other.

'There's going to be trouble,' Trove commented.

'There's always trouble,' he replied bitterly.

'I mean, once everyone knows Galahad is gone, her delegates will be fighting each other for the top job,' Trove continued. 'I'm betting on numerous police actions, and lots of unfortunate accidents.'

Ruger wondered what relevance that would have for the pair of them inside an adjustment cell, because that was where they were undoubtedly going.

The three aircraft drew closer and closer but, unexpectedly, didn't come down to land beside them, instead continuing on to the crash site. Maybe they did still have a chance to reach the sprawl and there make themselves scarce. Ruger glanced back as the three craft settled near the giant bulldozer and the wreckage of their drop shuttle, which was now only partially visible through haze. Would they find Galahad still hanging up against that dozer blade, nicely cooked to a turn? Would Sack now face capture and a death sentence?

'Maybe we can make it,' he said, turning away and trying to pick up his pace towards the sprawl. Trove had no reply for him.

They tramped on for another half an hour, the sprawl buildings seemingly getting no closer. The sounds of the two aeros and the rotobus, again approaching, suffused Clay with a feeling of utter hopelessness, till he halted abruptly, and sat down on bones. Trove stood beside him, gazing back at the approaching aircraft, her arms folded and her expression bitter.

With a roar, the aircraft slowed down, circling out to one side of them. While the two military aeros hovered, the rotobus descended in a blast of ivory dust. Clay closed his eyes and waited, only opening them when he heard a grunt of surprise emerging from Trove.

Sack and two soldiers walked into visibility. One of the soldiers was the same one Sack had dismissed during the night; the other, by his uniform, was a general in the Inspectorate military wing. They came to a halt just a few paces away.

'You'll be needing medical attention,' said Sack. 'Though this is a sad moment, what with the tragic loss of Serene Galahad in that drop-shuttle crash' a he stabbed a thumb over his shoulder a 'the people of Earth must never forget their heroes.'

Clay slowly heaved himself to his feet.

'Heroes?' he echoed.

'Heroes,' Sack repeated. 'Against all odds, you managed to survive and get the Gene Bank data back to Earth.' He gazed at them blankly. 'Whoever now assumes the role of Chairman here will be thoroughly aware of the need to court you. Who knows? Your inevitable fame may even propel you into some high position within the new regime a maybe even the highest position of all.'

Clay Ruger felt the cogs and spindles of his mind abruptly run free and begin spinning at high speed. He stood up straighter and transferred his attention to the general.

'Sack is correct,' he stated. 'We are both in need of immediate anti-rad treatments, at the very least.'

The general nodded his head. 'We can fly you directly to the nearest Committee hospital, sir. And I personally want to thank you for all you've done.'

'Shall we?' Clay gestured towards the rotobus, now becoming clear in the dusty air.

'Certainly,' the general replied, waving them ahead of him.

'I hope you know what you're doing, PO Ruger,' Trove muttered to him, as they walked. 'Maybe it'd be better if we just kept our heads down.'

'There will be danger,' said Sack, who had silently moved in behind to shadow them, 'but I can recommend to you a good bodyguard, who could also employ the right people for security.'

Clay glanced at him. 'Any chance of a letter of recommendation from this guy's previous employer?'

Sack's smile, in return, was about the nastiest thing Clay had ever seen.

Epilogue.

Jupiter War The term 'war' had suffered much abuse over the centuries, what with it being used in hackneyed cliches to describe just about any concerted effort by any group of humans, from a nation downwards. The world had thus seen wars on hunger, poverty, disease, smoking, obesity, terror and climate change, and grown disconnected from the reality a just a century past a of nations using their industrial might to tear each other apart, of cities being annihilated and of millions dying. But this was not why the Committee decided to excise the word from official documentation or state-controlled media. No, the Committee, taking the meaning of war to be 'open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations', decided that, since we lived in a unified world, the term was obsolete. Any conflict involving soldiers, guns and bombs, up to and including the aforementioned annihilation of cities and millions dying, became an incident, a dissident suppression, a tactical excision or merely a police action. In light of this, and in an effort to rewrite history, the struggle with Alan Saul was described as an 'extra-solar police action'. However, because Saul had turned what was Argus Station into his own nation state, and gone head-to-head against the full industrial and military might of Earth, and won, Subnet pundits such as your author here insist on calling this the 'Jupiter War'.

The ship's new heavily armoured hull plates gleamed in the sun as the Alcubierre warp blinked out around it. Its new vortex generator, filled with mercury from the Command's generator and from further mining of a cinnabar asteroid, was maintained at full power and ready to fling the ship away again. Inside it, the Arboretum, Arcoplexes One and Two and the new and presently empty Arcoplex Three, were all spinning with steady efficiency amidst internal structure steadily expanding to fill all but one space. Meanwhile, the smelting plants and internal factories continued at their previous frenetic pace: their furnaces, presses, forges, automated mills and lathes, assembly plants and other machines besides, all were busily and raucously at work. The Traveller engine, now repaired, rebuilt, improved and refuelled, stood ready to fire up, but with the double-layered Mach-effect drive distributed around the inner layer of hull, it might never need to. The two plasma cannons, two heavy masers and six railguns were in pristine condition, ready with plasma caps, missiles and power supplies endowed with redoubled redundancy. And Saul hoped he would never have any need for them.

Through cameras in the hull he watched as the big new space doors opened and a space plane shot out on its way to the wrecked and depopulated Core Two space station. He then turned his attention to an old friend a an early design of robot kitted out for applying spray coatings, and the same one he had used to lead the attack against Salem Smith a as it perambulated around the hull, etching away metal and spraying bright yellow vacuum-set paint. Its task would be completed sometime after his jaunt in taking this ship out of the solar system.

Earth lay below and even from up here it was possible, with just human vision, to see that some areas were greener than they had appeared before the Scour. Saul analysed spectra in his mind and calculated on a close to ten per cent increase in such areas. He also calculated the force of the latest blast a this time on the American east coast a and knew that another tactical atomic had been used, rating at no more than five kilotonnes.

Serene Galahad's delegates a including officers ranking high in the Inspectorate military wing and others with no particular rank before all this a were busy fighting for power. Thus far, a large portion of the Inspectorate military had rallied to the flag of Pilot Officer Trove and Clay Ruger, whose power base lay in India and who had taken control of much of old Asia. However, they were up against an alliance of European delegates as well as the individual delegates who now respectively controlled the Americas, Australia and Japan, the Arctic and Russia, besides numerous smaller realms between.

Saul reached informational tendrils out to Earth. All the larger warring blocs had either snatched one of Galahad's comlifers or created their own to defend their computer systems and, with Saul's ship now in orbit above them, security was at its highest and those same comlifers alert to intrusion. Saul should not even have been able to penetrate, but all those blocs had managed to get hold of copies of the Gene Bank data he had sent to the Scourge. When he'd laced that data with every computer worm and virus at his disposal it had been in the hope of penetrating either that ship's systems or those of Earth. And the latter case had paid off royally now. He thus penetrated with ease, sliding in under their notice, sliding into twenty-two comlifer minds and simply rendering them unconscious. Free to mentally wander through all those disparate systems, he shut down every missile silo capable of firing anything into orbit, then as a precaution insured that the presently idle mass drivers could not be used as weapons either. Then he injected a virus he had created many months before.

In just three hours it spread around the world, seeking out specific information and erasing it. When its work was done, not one scrap of system-stored data remained of either Professor Rhine's or Professor Calder's research into the Alcubierre warp drive. The virus then became somnolent and hidden, awaiting the insertion of similar data from other forms of storage, whereupon it would activate itself again and wipe it too. As it sank into somnolence after those three hours, Saul considered his capability of reaching into the human mind via the visual cortex and thus manipulating data inside. But he drew a line at that, deciding that even he did not want to become that ruthless.

Next, he spent hours gathering further data and assessing more closely the situation below. He calculated that, for many years hence, none of the current power blocs would gain complete ascendancy. And if they continued fighting as they were, they would wreck much of the infrastructure of control. Really, it looked as if Earth was dropping back through time to when the separate nation states ruled, which suited Saul just fine. Further analysis rendered the result that, with the vortex generator data missing, none of the separate small blocs would regain the capability of putting up anything like the Command or the Fist, and when, in at least fifty years, a new world government or large power bloc seized control, it would take them a further fifty years to regain that capability. That would be enough, for Saul would be long gone by then. Withdrawing, he returned his attention to matters closer to home.

Two space planes, retrieved from the partially wrecked ghost station Core Two, had arrived hours ago. Meanwhile the work crew from the space plane he had sent out, along with pilots instructed to retrieve those planes, was busily checking to ensure that Core Two held no nasty surprises. This was prior to Saul shifting his whole ship over and taking the station inside through the massive new space doors, whereupon Core Two would be torn apart for salvage.

One of the Core Two space planes was currently being refuelled and checked over, to ensure it could manage atmospheric re-entry without coming apart. An hour remained before all the checks would be finished, and there might yet be some maintenance to carry out, yet all those departing his ship had gathered in one of the now-pressurized docking pillars.

There were twenty-eight of them, including Admiral Bartholomew and some of his command staff, also Technical Director Le Roque, along with disparate original Argus Station personnel and some other crew from the Command. Saul was disappointed by Le Roque's decision to return to Earth, but could understand it. The man had been struggling, and often failing, to keep people alive here for too long. He was tired and sick of it all, and he just wanted to go home. He also wanted to find out if his family was still alive in eastern Europe. In fact, all those gathered in that docking pillar were rather like him in that respect. Every one of them retained some hope that those they loved were still living somewhere down there. It seemed that such attachments outweighed the danger of returning to Earth. And their decision to go was strengthened when Saul informed those possessing them that they could take their backups down with them.

'I understand you are perfectly aware of the situation below?' he asked Le Roque through the man's implant.

'I'm fully aware and I'm still going,' Le Roque replied. 'We'll put down at Minsk and surrender ourselves to the delegates of the Russian and Arctic bloc. Your gift should buy us some good feeling there and, I hope, give us some leverage too.'

Saul conceded that. While rebuilding his ship, he had also set up a small project, under Dr Da Vinci, to map and make physical copies of the Gene Bank samples. Only ten per cent had been copied, while nearly forty per cent had been mapped, but this would be enough to give Le Roque and the rest their leverage. It would also give the same advantage to the Russian and Arctic bloc, but that would not be enough to save it from the growing power of the European Alliance, just as the European Alliance would not survive its internal infighting and the wedge that Trove and Ruger were driving into it. But Le Roque and the rest knew all about this, so with luck had their plans ready to survive the coming clashes.

'I hope you do find your family, Le Roque,' Saul said. 'Good luck to you.'

'And you,' Le Roque replied, 'whenever you too find whatever it is you're seeking.'

Saul swung his attention away, towards the remainder of those aboard.

The Meat Locker was open and ready, with staff and robots on standby, but only two had thus far chosen to go into hibernation. The rest were clearly waiting for some kind of resolution here, or perhaps for that moment when the ship got underway again.

In one of the smelting plants, Leeran and Pike were happy to be busy, and they didn't want all this activity to end. In Arcoplex Two, Da Vinci was still overseeing the machines that were mapping and physically copying the stored DNA, while he was occasionally also tuning in to Earth broadcasts with negligent interest. Over the last few months, Hannah Neumann had grown increasingly distant from him, and their relationship had cooled to frigidity. She was currently throwing herself into new research aimed at linking up human minds for serial and parallel processing, perhaps hoping for a future when humanity became all of one mind, and so less inclined to kill its individual parts. Professor Rhine, meanwhile, was considering knocking a few more big holes in conventional science by means of a hammer driven by perpetual motion, while the Saberhagens were working on a weapon based on some of his theories: a way of firing plasma bolts in a Rhine spatial fold, and thus delivering them faster than light.

In an anteroom just off the new heavily armoured store for backups, the Messina clone, Alex, was in the midst of one of his conversations with his old enemy, Ghort.

'We have to strive to make the reality of our existence conform to an ideal,' Ghort was saying, 'else life isn't worth living.'

'Which is fine if it's applied individually,' Alex replied, 'because my ideal might not be your ideal.'

'And because you are happy in your slavery.'

'No, because I accept that trying to change present reality, in the way you wanted, probably wouldn't lead to any improvement, and that it might only lead to my death.'

'Happy slave.'

Alex looked merely weary as he stood up from the console, their dialogue having reached its usual impasse. 'But you're lucky, since you get to try again,' he added.

'How's that going?' asked the facsimile of Ghort's face from the screen.

'Its growth is now about that of a two-year-old,' Alex replied. 'Raiman has decided to forgo accelerated growth whenever it's not necessary. It a and all the rest a should be ready by the time we reach our destination.'

They were talking about the clones, of course, and specifically about Ghort's clone. He would be the first of those in backup to test the process of loading to a clone body, which was some recompense for his crimes, as was his death. Saul had yet to decide what other restitution this man should make. That would depend upon how Saul himself changed his thinking over the ensuing journey, and what his aims might be by the time his ship arrived at its various destinations. The first of these was close, but the second was further away than any of them could possibly imagine. And, thinking on that, deep in that small part of him that was still flesh and blood, Saul felt some human impatience to be gone.

Hannah was surprised at how tearful she had felt upon seeing off Le Roque, but she attributed that to her bone-deep weariness. Finally, shutting down and secure-backing all the data on her research projects, she began to feel relieved. While locking away all her biological samples and growing organic interfaces in a freezer that would store them in a temperature only a little above absolute zero, she began to relish the prospect of enjoying a similar rest.

'I thought you'd want to send us all back to Earth, Saul,' she said, speaking into the air.

'I considered it,' he replied, always attentive but now never visible. 'But, even though I'm a selfish and murderous monster, I was still prepared to offer the people aboard a choice.'