At present, through one of its eyes, the AI was observing with interest the arrival of an amphidapt from the runcible in the core ocean of Europa, in the Sol system. The attachment that came with this woman had her noted down as a separatist terrorist who might be attempting to smuggle leeches to the strange dark sea that was her home. After only moments of observation, the Warden lost interest and assigned SM24 to observe instead, as it did not understand how she believed she might bypass the bio-filters of the runcible. Not a molecule got through that the Warden was not prepared to allow through. Now it let its attention wander to a fight occurring just beyond the Dome gate. Just for the hell of it, it placed a bet for an E with the submind in charge of Dome security, and got odds that made it wonder if it was time to subsume said mind - for it obviously knew something the Warden did not. Shortly after that, the AI received a signal from a direction whence nothing had come in decades - in fact from one of its deep-space eyes. It gave the new matter almost a quarter of its attention.

The ship emerged out of underspace, leaving a coruscating trail as antimatter particles struck the disperse local hydrogen. Two of the Warden’s deep-space eyes flared out in an EM shockwave, so of necessity it had to observe from a distance. Around the ship the stars distorted, as if seen through a lens, as it fell into the system seemingly out of control. Braking on ram scoop motors, it threw out a torus of radiation as it dumped velocity and came down to half the speed of light.

‘Please identify yourself,’ sent the Warden, as it noted the pilot was experiencing difficulties. A jumbled theta-block of pictographic computer language then overloaded all the Warden’s receivers for two microseconds. It took the AI another three seconds to discover that there was little information of value in this communication, other than its form. By now the vessel had the Warden’s full attention.

‘Prador ship. Please identify yourself.’

The ship was tumbling, using ram scoop and ion drive intermittently, as it tried to slow. Leaving a long trail of fire behind it, it arced around the sun. Another block of information overloaded the Warden’s receivers. Four seconds later the AI got the gist.

‘Nature of U-space generator fault?’

The garbled reply lasted for a couple of seconds, then cut off as the ship went into U-space.