The shuttle landed with a thump, the two following shuttles settling shortly afterwards. Thorn glanced round, but did not need to give any orders: the doors were already open and dracomen disembarking. Scar was aboard one of the other shuttles, and all three shuttles contained the entire dracoman complement from the NEJ. Thorn stood up, waiting until they were clear, then followed them all outside. More dracomen were coming up from the arcology itself—those who had arrived via runcible. Communication between them was silent and a large proportion of the dracomen began bleeding away to assist in the battle raging around the perimeter of the Jain infestation. Thorn’s collar-mounted comunit beeped to let him know it was on.

‘Scar,’ he turned as that dracoman came up to him, ‘make sure they keep you updated. We need to nail this bastard fast.’ He glanced beyond Scar to where twenty other dracomen gathered, all loaded down with proton weapons, hand stunners, and a selection of multipurpose grenades.

Just then a flash ignited the sky with turquoise fire. Out over the arcology a pillar of flame ate round in a circle. Thorn blinked, turned his head away from the glare until it finally died. A thunderous crashing ensued and the shock wave hit, leaving people staggering, shaking the platform and even jouncing the shuttles on their sprung feet. A ball of fire rose into the air from the strike point.

‘Jack,’ Thorn spoke into his comlink. ‘I’m thinking that maybe we have a conflict of interests here. Coloron is still trying to take out the centre and, presuming that to be Thellant N’komo, we lose our reason for being here.’

‘Incorrect,’ the AI replied, ‘Coloron has just cut a perimeter. There will be no further attempts to burn out the centre. All ensuing strikes will be either to create new perimeters or simply to prevent physical spread outside MA.’

Panicked citizens leaving, leaving in gravcars, and maybe just one of their vehicles carrying some small part of what now grew inside here—that’s all it would take.

‘Okay ... do either you or Aphran have anything for me yet?’ Jack was still taking apart the recorded mind of Freyda, while the woman’s body, now a blank slate, went into coldsleep. This task took up much of the AI’s capacity, so the other prisoners had yet to be subjected to the same before being placed in coldsleep. Instead, Aphran had interrogated them throughout the journey here—not verbal interrogation but via their augs. It was a complex and wearing task, more like searching determinedly through scrambled files than asking direct questions.