‘Are we strolling into an interstellar war?’ wondered Blegg.

Listening in to the conversation, Jack wondered if they might be bringing one along with them.

‘There’s always that possibility,’ Cormac replied as he stepped out into the training area, ‘but why go pissing off the Polity if you’re already involved in such a serious conflict?’

‘Historically speaking, such actions from aggressors have not been unusual.’

‘And you would know, wouldn’t you,’ Cormac muttered sarcastically.

Through internal cameras, Jack observed Blegg and Cormac squaring off to each other once again, and relayed this image to the other ships. The contests fought between the Sparkind throughout this journey were interesting, but this one would be even more so. Jack supposed the two contestants were hardly aware of the betting going on between AIs behind the scenes, just as they seemed unaware that while they fought, they sometimes moved at AI speeds. Of course, since recent revelations to him, Blegg’s mood swayed between indifference and anger, so the results of the contests became less easy to predict. Then, just as the two agents exchanged their first blows, all four ships dropped into U-space.

Many hours later, ship time, the four resurfaced within the system. The Legate’s ship surfaced too, only briefly, then continued on. Jack once again scanned, but found little more than gaseous clouds and small masses of debris from the distantly viewed conflict here. But there was no time to grab any for analysis.

‘It’s not stopping here,’ observed the AI of the Haruspex.

‘There is nothing to stop for, since obviously this is no base,’ the Coriolanus AI interjected.

‘Map and track,’ instructed Jack, dropping into underspace yet again.

In the underlying continuum they compared figures, and traced the course of the Legate’s ship on its way out of the system.

‘The high albedo object—it is heading there,’ said Haruspex.

‘Nova or accretion disc?’ wondered the Belisarius AI.

‘Not a nova,’ said Jack, studying previous images. ‘Either an accretion disc or a sun being eaten by a black hole—though, if the latter, I would have expected more X-ray radiation.’

During their next jump through U-space Jack analysed data gathered from the system they had departed. Two living worlds there—one wintry and the other hot and humid. The battle seemed to have centred around the hot world and, checking recorded images, Jack saw evidence of some sort of impact on its surface -something worth checking further should the opportunity arise.