Line War

‘I think we’ve been here before,’ remarked Janger.

The ship AI’s remote was a Golem chassis clad in syntheskin up to the neck, above which a gleaming skull was exposed but with the rear of its cranium missing, and from there optics sprouted, trailing across the floor to plug into a nearby console. The Golem placed the queen back down on the board and tentatively moved a finger across to tap it on a castle.

‘Approximately thirty-two years, seven months, two days, fourteen hours, twenty-two minutes ago, as I recollect.’

‘I thought you just said “approximately”.’

‘Yes, I didn’t count the seconds.’

‘Smart arse.’

The Golem withdrew its fingers from the chess piece and scratched its metal chin. ‘If you want me to play to my fullest capacity, I’ll do so. However, the last time I did that, you discharged the chess set through the airlock and got the yahtzee out again.’

Janger sighed. It had always been a source of a

‘That damned U-engine shouldn’t need servicing for another twenty years,’ he grumbled.

‘Nothing wrong with the engine,’ Clarence replied.

The ship shuddered massively, enough to skitter some of the chess pieces across the board and topple a king onto the floor.

‘Give me visual,’ said Janger, stooping to recover the chess piece. He felt a sudden crawling sensation up his spine. As he understood it, there was something occurring near the Line, but that was far from here. Surely he was well out of it?

‘Pirates?’ he suggested, only half joking.

‘I am somewhat bewildered,’ Clarence confessed.

A virtual screen cut down from the ceiling, right through the living accommodation, so it now seemed as if half the entire ship had been sheered off at that point and he was now gazing straight out into vacuum.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

There was something sitting out there, something massive: a pentagonal frame structure. The space the pentagon enclosed was one the Clarence Bishop could easily pass through, for the structure was some six miles across.

‘It’s a war runcible,’ Clarence observed.

‘It’s a fucking what?’

‘They started building such devices towards the end of the war for transporting things not equipped with their own U-space drive — fleets of ships, war drones and weapons. That would have saved on the manufacture of such drives. There was even talk of using the runcibles as accelerator weapons too.’

‘Uh?’

‘Perhaps you recollect hearing about the Trajeen incident.’

‘Chucking moons about?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Okay, so what is it doing here now, and how come it knocked us out of U-space?’

‘Anyone in possession of such a device would have no problem causing sufficient underspace interference to knock a ship into the real. Why it is here and why it has targeted us, I can only speculate.’

‘Speculate then.’

‘Pirates,’ the ship AI replied.

‘We’ve got lasers,’ said Janger.

‘They’ve got particle ca

‘So resistance is futile.’

‘In my estimation, yes.’

The view now swung round and Janger observed some sort of spaceship docked alongside his own vessel. It looked fairly modern: a sleek craft with a pincer grab extending from its nose. Even as he watched, vapour puffed out from below it as one of the Clarence Bishop’s massive cargo doors began opening.

‘I take it you’re recording all this, and transmitting it?’ Janger enquired.

‘I’m recording it, but the U-space disturbances are preventing me from sending out a distress call.’

‘Right… give me an internal view of that hold.’

A rectangular frame drew itself into existence in the virtual screen, blanked for a moment, then as the camera adjusted light amplification, an image slowly resolved of a huge darkened hold. The space was packed with crates and large oddly shaped objects covered in crash-foam, all of them suspended in a quadrate scaffold. Janger detected movement and the camera swung to track it, then the view flickered and changed as another camera picked up that same movement from a different point of view.

‘Um,’ said Janger, not quite sure exactly what to make of what he was seeing.

‘Mantis religiosa,’ said Clarence.

‘Uh?’

‘The praying mantis — though this one appears to be fashioned of metal and is about eight feet long. I would suggest that what we are seeing here is an independent drone and, considering where it came from, that means a war drone that once fought the Prador.’

‘What’s it doing, anyway?’ Janger wondered.

‘Stealing our cargo?’ Clarence suggested.

The mantis drone appeared to be all sharp edges, which Janger could now see were perfect for cutting through the webbing security straps. Within a moment it had released a crate from the supporting scaffold and sent it drifting along towards the hold door. The camera followed the crate’s progress to where a horrifying-looking beetle of some kind diverted its course slightly, to another point where it was then fielded by what looked like a ten-foot-long aluminium scorpion. Pa

But what could he do? He was outgu

‘What are they stealing?’ he asked.

‘The components of a cargo runcible.’

‘What the hell do they need a cargo runcible for, when they’ve got that massive thing out there?’

‘A runcible is both the entrance and exit of a tu

‘And you didn’t stop that?’

‘I am impotent now. Something has seized control of me. That we can even look into the hold is either because we have been allowed to, or because the cameras were overlooked as being of little importance.’

Janger pushed his chair back, got up and rushed forward, straight through the virtual screen. On the other side of it he skidded to a halt by a row of lockers and yanked one open. From inside he pulled out a pulse-rifle, then an energy canister which he inserted into the gun’s stock. The rifle whined up to charge, yet showed a zero on its digital display. Janger swore and pulled out a second container, which clipped in place underneath the barrel. The display immediately shot up to 150.

But what now?

If it was a drone now coming through the airlock, he realized that a pulse-rifle would be about as effective as throwing gravel at an elephant — just enough, perhaps, to piss it off.

‘Shut off the screen,’ he said, backing towards the table. He then glanced at Clarence. ‘Can you help?’

‘I am at present paralysed from the neck down,’ the ship’s avatar replied.

‘Great.’

Janger returned his attention to the corridor leading to the airlock just as he heard the i