Line War by Neal Asher

visor shut down. He stepped aside again, but the Golem just continued striding in.

    Hit it! Hit it!

    Nothing.

    Yannis turned and ran, but before he’d even managed two paces a big brassy hand slammed down on his shoulder, spun him round, closed on his neck and hoisted him from the ground.

    He heard, ‘Particle weapons leave a metallic aftertaste.’ The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere below him. It was not the Golem talking for he was looking straight into its implacable face. Around his neck he felt something creak, then his neck armour collapsed with a cracking sound like thunder to his ears. His last thought as his head, now disconnected from his body, thumped to the ground, was, Metallic aftertaste?

    * * * *

    Gazing out through Heliotrope’s sensors, it was with a feeling of bitterness that Orlandine contemplated the massive object sitting out there in vacuum. This was not the kind of project she’d had in mind upon her return to the Polity, but now circumstances had changed. The computer virus from the wormship had changed them, for it had provided her with a definite purpose.

    Her purpose was vengeance.

    When, by destroying a massive USER based on an icy moonlet, Orlandine had opened the trap holding both her and the Polity fleet that Erebus first attacked, she had been leaving the Polity for pastures new. Somewhere, towards the inner galaxy, she had intended to build something grand with the fantastical technology she now controlled. Procrastinating for some time, she then realized that, no matter how grand it might be, the thing she built would be worthless with only herself to appreciate it, and so she had returned to the Polity. The remote place where the wormship found her had been her selected construction site. Not any more.

    Using every devious precaution she could think of, she studied the computer virus transmitted by the wormship and came to the conclusion that it bore some similarities to a memcording. Then, because it possessed all sorts of strange visual, audio and seemingly sentient components, she allowed it to run in a secure virtuality. Immediately, in this virtuality’s albescent space, something manifested and spoke.

    ‘Well, hello, Orlandine,’ said the entity, the virus.

    Orlandine gazed at the scruffy-looking man and knew that this could not be a human being.

    ‘What are you?’ she asked, while on other levels she investigated the structures of information that had caused this apparition to appear.

    ‘Me?’ He pointed with both forefingers at his own unshaven face. ‘I’m a seriously pissed-off dead man.’ He grinned. ‘The name’s Fiddler Randal.’

    ‘What do you want?’

    ‘Well, I want something to die - the something that killed me - and I want your help.’

    ‘Ah, and coincidentally you were transmitted to me by a wormship.’

    He shrugged. ‘I’ve managed to spread myself throughout Erebus.’

    A dubious contention, Orlandine thought, but nevertheless asked, ‘Why should I help you?’

    ‘Because that same something manipulated you; intended you to be a weapon it could use against the Polity.’

    ‘So you want Erebus to die - the same entity of which you seem to be a part,’ said Orlandine. ‘Now why should I try to kill it? Despite Erebus’s manipulation of me, it still gave me the greatest gift I could ever have wanted.’

    ‘Like making you a murderer?’

    Orlandine felt distinctly uncomfortable with that statement. Without doubt, Randal was referring to her partner, Shoala, whom she had killed while covering up traces of her escape with the Jain node that had been Erebus’s ‘gift’ to her.

    ‘That was my choice,’ Orlandine replied. ‘It’s one I regret, but it was mine alone. I cannot blame Erebus for that, only myself.’

    ‘Then you’re much more forgiving than Erebus is,’ said Randal. ‘You see, you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. Admittedly I had a hand in that, as I’ve had a hand in a lot of