Celedon observed, via runcible control, five humans falling through the Skaidon warp, then another five, then another three. There should be another forty-seven humans—and one other. Through Arach’s senses, the AI studied the humans. They bore no visible sign of Jain infestation. Five of them wore the overalls favoured by runcible technicians; there was a four-person Sparkind team, two human and two Golem; the rest obviously civilian scientists, diplomats and crew, all augmented, some of them to haiman level, which meant they were both human and AI. They were all armed, their clothing dirty and ash-smeared. One of the haimans carried a large lozenge of crystal encaged in black metal—probably the AI Victoria from the ship of that name on which they had been passengers.

‘That’s all of us, shut it down as soon as you can!’ shouted one of the overalled figures—a woman with wide green eyes, cropped dark hair and skin as black as obsidian. Celedon identified her as Chaline Tazer Irand, the technician in charge of setting up the runcible in the Small Magellanic Cloud, 830 years in the future.

‘Where are the others?’ Celedon asked through Arach, as that drone shepherded these people towards Isolation.

‘Dead,’ the woman replied, her face exhausted of expression. ‘At least I hope so.’

‘The Maker?’

‘He wants to die with his kind,’ she told him tightly.

Now something else tried to come through. Celedon denied it permission, it being nothing the AI recognized—neither human nor Maker—and tried to shut down the runcible. In response to this, a deluge of information packages came through the gate, many of them opening automatically, and the gate simply would not shut down. Despite the precautions it had taken, the AI saw it could not hold out against this attack. Wormish fragments of code spilled into the gate’s processing spaces and began attempting to assemble.

‘Jerusalem?’

‘Are you asking for permission?’ the other AI enquired. ‘You know what to do.’

Though couched in verbal terms, this communication lasted only a fraction of a second. Long seconds dragged thereafter as the AI waited until the evacuees reached the quarantine airlock and bulkhead doors closed behind them. This gave the attacker enough time to subvert the systems controlling gate maintenance and diagnostics. Since a selection of robots, ranging from the nanoscopic up to ones the size of termites, carried out internal maintenance, this meant the attacker now controlled physical resources. Time for Starfire.