Hilldiggers

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Again thanks to everyone involved in bringing this book to the shelves, including as always my wife Caroline and my parents Bill and Hazel. Special thanks to Keith Starkey for his 'overview' rather than critique of the specific and to Peter Lavery for never letting up despite a million of my words passing under his pencil! Also included must be those others working at Macmillan and elsewhere: Rebecca Saunders, Emma Giacon, Steve Rawlings, Liz Cowen, Jon Mitchell, Liz Johnson, Chantal Noel, Neil Lang, Stephen Dumughn, and many others besides.

Bill Asher

8 July 1927 to 15 February 2007

I wish you could have seen this.

Tigger—during the War

Orbital mechanics had made the war in the Sudorian system almost a seasonal thing, and now the conflict was stuttering to its usual halt as the two contending worlds drew further apart. Since neither side possessed underspace drives or adequate concealment technology, the logistics of sustained conflict over the growing distances involved became increasingly difficult. Tigger—a four-ton drone fashioned in the shape of a chrome tiger embracing a large sphere, like some baroque bonnet ornament from an ancient ground car—observed the attempts to prolong the fighting by the deployment of supply stations and the launching of swarms of rail-gun accelerated missiles. But these last attempts were doomed to failure, hence the reason this war had dragged on for so long. The drone turned away, still easily managing to remain unnoticed through the use of advanced chameleonware. As he headed towards the planet Sudoria, he observed vicious space battles between Sudorian hilldiggers and teardrop-shaped Brumallian ships—the latter the product of biotechnology—and registered how once again these contests were reaching a stalemate.

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