Smith suddenly turned and fled, propelling himself along the tubeway, perhaps knowing he would lose in any physical encounter, but not knowing that Saul could hardly see him. Saul tried to slow him by interfering with the operation of his limbs, but Smith had closed down that route too and, in retreat, presented a sheer and slippery surface that Saul could find no purchase on. Tracking him by cams, Saul stuck with him to the limit of his own domain.

Smith hauled himself to a halt before moving beyond the last of the cams that Saul controlled. Hand pressed to his knife wound, he gazed up at the nearest lens.

‘We will conclude this matter later, Citizen,’ he managed to gasp.

Then he was gone.

Outside the tubeway itself the robot-on-robot battle continued, but the ones Smith controlled were now steadily retreating. This might look like a victory, but Saul knew otherwise. Smith might have pulled back, but mentally he seemed stronger. Though by using the element of surprise Saul had carved out a little realm for himself, Smith still controlled the rest of the station, its personnel, and the bulk of the robots. And now those jagged flashes of light were killing the last traces of Saul’s human vision, his side hurt even more than his head, and he was beginning to cough up foamy blood. Without medical attention he could soon die here, he realized, but he needed to give himself a breathing space.

Taking a firm grip on the readerguns he did control, he began opening up on security personnel, but even now many of the troops were withdrawing into those grey areas where the readerguns were out of commission. Only those whose escape routes were blocked by the guns or robots that Saul controlled were still trapped.

As he lay there, blood bubbling in his lungs, Saul perceived a number of options. He could continue this local slaughter until no one remained standing against him, but with cold calculation he realized that he might need personnel on his side to finally win this place. That meant demonstrating some compassion, even if it wasn’t genuinely there. He therefore shut down readerguns and put his robots on hold.

‘Lay down your weapons,’ he broadcast to those trapped soldiers, through personal fones and spacesuit com systems.

Through a thousand cams, he watched security-force personnel still firing on the robots poised to fall upon them. Some had already destroyed readerguns that had turned on them, that had been blocking their retreat. Hundreds of messages slid into the network, seeking instructions from the commander, or from Smith and his immediate subordinates, but so far no replies seemed to be forthcoming.