Cormac nodded: he did know. He followed Thorn past a series of rooms occupied by the reptilian creatures. Finally the two men came to the cylindrical training chamber, with gravplated floors at either end and a zero-G section in the middle, which spanned the ship. Here Cormac observed dracomen at play, or training themselves to kill—there probably being little difference. He headed over to a stair and climbed to a platform positioned just below the zero-G section, his feet light on the metalwork where the gravity effect from the plates at one end of the cylinder partially cancelled out the effect from those at the other. Thorn moved up beside him.

‘Okay, Jack, what do you have for me?’

A line cut down through the air below disporting dracomen, and out of it folded a humanoid figure.

‘This is the Legate,’ announced Jack.

Cormac studied the image for a moment. ‘That tells us very little. Any AI or any human could take on that exterior form if they wished. Do you have any idea what’s inside it?’

‘Thellant attempted a scan of this particular entity, but that revealed only an empty shell. I surmise from this fact that his scanning equipment encountered sophisticated chameleonware. Other facts do confirm that the Legate can make itself invisible.’

The figure in question revolved slowly in the air like some musical doll, the tune played being the sound of fleshy impacts as dracomen continued their contests, above and below, totally ignoring the image. Cormac applied directly to Jack for information, and received a potted history of the association between Thellant and the Legate.

‘So, an enemy of the Polity—nothing new there—but the technologies it employed have heretofore not really been the province of Separatists.’ Cormac paused, applying analytical programs to the history provided, then said, ‘Give it all to me, Jack.’

A hundred times larger than the potted history, this next block of information stretched his gridlink storage space, cutting down space for those programs he needed to analyse it. He reached up to press his fingers against his temple as if expecting a headache. His sleeve dropped back and he glimpsed Thorn’s look of surprise, then amusement, at seeing Shuriken holstered there once more. He ran a search program to find what he could delete to make more space. The memory download from Jerusalem sat temptingly in the list appearing. He returned it to storage, deleted old programs and dated information, then returned his attention to Jack’s new information. Patterns began to emerge.

‘An outside force stirring up our rebels,’ he concluded. ‘Do we have any way of going after this character?’

‘Thellant’s memories did not supply that info. However, cross-referencing his memories with information provided by Coloron has provided us with something.’

‘Don’t draw it out, Jack.’