I flinched, but stood my ground; if it had wanted me dead, I would never have seen it coming. The thing betrayed a flickering succession of partial outlines as it moved – faint but consistent distortions of the light which the eye seized upon as edges – but once it halted, I was left staring at nothing but afterimages and guesswork. A six-legged robot, three meters high? Actively computing my view of its surroundings, and programming an optically active sheath to match luminosities? No – more than that . It stood protruding halfway into the floodlit forecourt, without even casting a shadow – which meant it was realtime holographing the blocked light sources, its polymer skin lasing out a perfectly matched substitute beam, wavefront by wavefront. I had a sudden, sickening realization of what the people of Stateless were facing. This was alpha military tech, costing millions. EnGeneUity weren’t messing around with cheap aggravation, this time. They wanted their intellectual property back, product reputation unscathed – and anything which stood above the reef-rock would be cut down if it got in the way.

The insect said, “We’ve already chosen the journalists’ pool, Andrew Worth. You’re not on the invasion hit parade.” It spoke English, perfectly inflected right down to a hint of amusement, but with an unnerving geographical neutrality. Whether its speech was autonomous, or whether I was talking realtime to the mercenaries – or their PR people – I had no idea.

“I don’t want to cover the war. I’m here to offer you a chance to avoid some … undesirable publicity.”

The insect scuttled forward angrily, delicate moiré patterns of interference fringes blossoming and fading on its camouflaged surface. I stayed rooted to the spot; my instinct was to flee, but my muscles felt like jelly. The thing came to a halt, two or three meters away – and vanished from sight again. I didn’t doubt that, at the very least, it could have raised its forelegs and decapitated me in an instant.

I steadied myself, and addressed the solid air. “There’s a woman on this island who’s going to die if she’s not evacuated in a matter of hours. And if that happens … SeeNet are ready to broadcast a documentary called Violet Mosala: Martyr to Technolibération .” It was the truth – although Lydia had put up some resistance, at first. I’d sent her faked footage of Mosala talking about the reasons for her planned emigration – all more-or-less what had really been said, although I hadn’t actually filmed it. Three SeeNet newsroom editors were hard at work incorporating that – and some of the genuine material I’d filed – into an up-to-date obituary. I’d neglected to include anything about the Anthrocosmologists, though. Mosala had been about to become the figurehead for a major challenge to the boycott – and now she was infected with a viral weapon, and Stateless was occupied. Lydia had drawn her own conclusions, and the editors would have been instructed accordingly.