Line War by Neal Asher Page A

reactors remained to the ship, and the useful output from the nearby sun was minimal. However, sensory tendrils were probing down through compacted dust and rock to analyse the mineral content below, to seek out radioactives, hydrocarbons and any other possible energy sources. There were sufficient materials available for reconstruction, but energy was the key - and time.
     
    It struck Legate 107 as very unlikely that Polity AIs were unaware of its location. The mission to destroy the Dragon-made hybrids on Cull had been considered a suicide venture from the start, and this brief escape from destruction was a bonus. Perhaps 107 could actually turn things around? The legate wondered if this brief spark of optimism found its source in the old Golem Eleven he had once been. Almost certainly ECS was watching, and almost certainly the final blow would fall with the minimum expenditure of energy and well before this wormship looked like becoming a danger again.
     
    U-space signature . . . Something had just arrived. Legate 107 began scanning at once, and briefly caught a glimpse of some hawklike ship disappearing under a chameleonware effect. It wasn’t the best chameleonware, but then the wormship’s sensors weren’t currently in the best of condition. The legate kept catching glimpses of the ship as it drew closer, but never enough to target it with the wormship’s remaining weapons, for whoever was piloting it always seemed quick to anticipate 107’s targeting routines. Was this the final blow arriving now? Legate 107, now separated from the will of Erebus for some time, considered the possibility of concentrating simply on self-preservation. In reality it was the wormship itself that ECS would want to . . . negate. For intelligence gathered so far indicated that the Polity AIs had no idea that all Erebus’s main vessels were controlled at their heart by remoulded Golem or war drones. Whoever or whatever was coming would therefore be no wiser.
     
    Legate 107 abruptly came to a decision. ECS clearly knew where this wormship was, and so would never let it leave. Maybe what was approaching now was just some sort of survey probe, maybe not, but that did not change the basic facts. The legate gave firm instructions to the structure surrounding it and began to gather up resources, which in a fully functional wormship would have taken less than an hour. The legate leaned back in the throne it was bonded into and observed as the cell closed in about it from the sides and from above, while simultaneously elongating fore and aft. Blisters began to appear on the inner walls, forming at their core the components of an escape vessel. In the distance, from within a conglomeration of protective segmented structure, a sphere of blue metal, two yards across, oozed into view and slid along the ground towards 107 like a slime-attached egg on the upper surface of a snaking tendril. This object was a U-space drive. Though a fully functional wormship might be able to build such a component anew, it would severely test the resources of what was left here. This drive, therefore, was one of the worm-ship’s own.
     
    The small vessel growing and assembling about the legate now began to shudder. Before the U-space drive could reach it, numerous umbilici began attaching in order to pump in fuel and other vital materials from all around. Viewing through outside sensors, the legate saw that the segments fore and aft of the one it occupied had now shrunk down to mere spindles. The one the legate occupied had extended and taken on the shape of the head of a thickened spoon. Veins pulsed in its surface, its colour changing from a reddish brown to a greenish silver, as its hull armour hardened. Then, something unexpected occurred.
     
    There was a figure making its way through the strewn remains of the wormship: a tall humanoid in archaic pre-runcible dress, a heavy object tucked under one arm and a multiple-barrelled weapon clutched in the other hand,