Smith hissed with anger, and immediately readerguns opened fire, sending the three men tumbling away, but seemingly uninjured. The balled-up thing opened, into a chaotic collection of robotic arms terminating in twin-barrelled guns which at once began firing, so it seemed rather like a faming tumbleweed. Munitions debris spread out in a cloud as readerguns exploded all around the dock. Then, even as the onslaught diminished, the three figures in vacuum combat suits righted themselves and started firing too – at the four personnel who had come to greet them. Hannah found herself flinching as she watched bullets tearing into their bodies, jerking them about helplessly, spewing chunks of flesh and bone out in every direction.

‘Low-impact ammunition in the readerguns,’ observed Hannah. ‘You should have thought of that.’

Smith glared round at her and, by the look on his face, she half expected him to come over and hit her.

‘They were dispensable,’ he replied coldly.

Did he mean the human troops who had just died or the readerguns themselves?

In the dock itself, more troops in VC gear piled out of the airlock, as the big robot settled quietly to the floor. One squad of about twenty troops moved swiftly to the base of the dock and through, down beside the train there, whilst others began removing equipment from the space plane’s hold. Smith watched this activity for some minutes before speaking again.

‘I am assuming that you were watching that, Langstrom?’ he demanded.

Down in the righthand corner of the screen a frame opened up to show Langstrom. ‘I saw – and we’re ready. We’ve got ten-bores and rocket-launchers deployed,’ the commander grimaced, ‘which we’ll need seeing as they’ve got a spidergun with them.’ He glanced at something off-screen. ‘The first of them are not coming straight in but, as you predicted, they’re heading for the upper spindle anchor. Maybe they’ll pass through Arcoplex One to get down here.’

‘Most unlikely,’ Smith replied. ‘Though an arcoplex offers them cover, traversing it will be a slow process, for they would consider it necessary to use urban-warfare techniques. There are also few exits, all of which could provide ambush points.’

‘They’ll blow it?’ Langstrom suggested.

‘This is not likely either, since Chairman Messina will want as little damage done to the station as possible.’ Smith raised a hand to the side of his head, an unconscious gesture as new information became available to him. The screen previously showing Delegate Shanklin now revealed the first squad of invading troops deployed in and about the massive machinery at the far end of Arcoplex One. Some were gathered about an airlock, which opened even as she watched. One of them made some adjustments to a package, then tossed it inside before the outer airlock door closed again.

‘They are physically bypassing the airlock’s electronics,’ explained Smith. ‘In those circumstances there is little I can do.’