‘This is my third request. Place your weapons on the floor and move back four paces,’ said the drone.

Cormac clicked a button on his shuriken holster. No doubt the drone saw this, because it began to emit an AC hum. Cormac wondered just what its reaction speed was. He knew it would go for the shuriken in the first instance, and that would be its mistake. As he readied himself, the AC hum abruptly cut off. Behind him the shutters clicked open.

‘Agent Cormac, welcome to Cereb police station,’ said the drone, and the wood-skinned door opened before him. He looked towards the bulky, uniformed woman who came through.

‘You were taking a little bit of a risk there, weren’t you?’ she asked him. Her voice was similar to the drone’s, but not quite identical. He studied her. Because her uniform, with its impact-absorbing layers and buried mesh, effectively concealed her physique, she appeared fat. By the heavy muscles that he could see supporting her head, and by the shape of her hands, Cormac guessed her to be a heavy-G adaptation.

‘Who might I be addressing?’ he asked.

‘First Constable Melassan, and you are the famous Ian Cormac of ECS, or should that be notorious? Aren’t you getting a little too high-profile for undercover work?’

Cormac smiled to himself and paused for a moment before replying. ‘Let me answer your first question first: I was taking a calculated risk,’ he said.

‘No, you’d have been stunned,’ said Melassan.

‘And I must say no to you. I would have launched my . . . attack weapon, and your drone here would have focused on it, assuming it to be the greatest threat. It would then have been locked into destroying something very reflective moving at the speed of sound. And while it was working that one out, I would have killed it with this.’ Cormac removed his thin-gun and held it out to her.

She took it and inspected it. ‘ECS issue. Very neat,’ she said and made to hand it back.

‘No, keep it,’ he said. ‘I won’t be able to take it through the runcible.’

She nodded and pocketed the weapon. ‘I still don’t understand why,’ she said.

He looked down at her and became suddenly quite aware that, though she was two heads shorter than himself, she did possess the capability of snapping him in half if he allowed her to get hold of him. He held up his arm and pulled down his sleeve to expose the shuriken holster.

‘This is a Tenkian. It is worth a great deal of money, it has sentimental value, and it has saved my life on many occasions. I would not have it casually destroyed because of an identification error. I owe it at least that,’ he said.

‘AI?’ she asked him.

‘Borderline. There has been dispute about the issue. What kind of Turing test do you use on a throwing star that does not speak?’