‘Where?’ The man leapt over the desk and brought her down. He began smashing his fist at her face but, even in a prone position, she blocked the blows. It seemed a wild and inept attack. Other monitors soon piled into the room to subdue him. But similar scenes were repeating all around the planet. Thirty-five million people wearing Dracocorp augs, which turned grey against their heads, began attacking others and demanding to know the location of ‘the Legate’. Then the weapons began to appear: personal armament, guns from Separatist caches, guns ripped from the hands of monitors. In a tube station a woman screaming ‘Legate!’ fired a pulse-rifle repeatedly into a panicking crowd.

Coloron initiated every single drone available, and quickly diverted resources to autofactories to manufacture more. Many of these drones carried pulse-guns capable of being set to stun. Pillar-mounted drones began dropping from ceilings or rising out of floors. A ceiling drone finally knocked out the woman in the station, but then a man close by took up her rifle and fired it into her head, on full automatic, before the drone brought him down too. Chaos growing everywhere: fires, mobs . . . panic in the huge runcible complexes. Just in time, Coloron altered the instructions to the drones deployed there, and they turned their weapons away from the armed personnel now pouring through the runcibles.

They swept through the ten MA runcibles in groups of five, at fast, five-second turnover, scaly and ferocious creatures pouring into the lounges and embarkation areas, all of them heavily armed and lethal. This became just too much for the crowds already fleeing those mad individuals who were attacking their fellow citizens indiscriminately. They began crowding towards the exits as the dracomen moved swiftly through the area. Those driven mad by the Dracocorp augs soon began dropping fast under stun fire, till within minutes no owner of such augs remained standing in those areas. And still the dracomen poured through.

A gridlink channel opened—secure ECS coding and direct to the AI.

‘We require sitrep,’ a voice murmured.

Coloron scanned for an identifier but found none. The AI was just about to cut the channel when an information package from EC came through the runcible, explaining that the dracomen minds could operate like gridlinks, and it was one of them that was communicating with Coloron. The AI then transmitted an overview of the present situation, updated every minute, or sooner if something critical occurred. The dracomen responded immediately. Some of them hurtled over the top of the mobs crammed into the exits, stepping on heads and shoulders, others shot reptile-fast along the walls and ceilings above them. Then they were positioned ahead of the crowds, driving them back into the complex.

‘Four minutes to turnover,’ they reported.