4.

They sailed away, for a year and a day—

Moria sipped her greenwine—an inferior quality to the one George provided—and gazed across the city bar. There were many more uniforms visible now: the plain green or khaki of ECS soldiers on leave, and occasionally those wearing chameleon-cloth fatigues underneath thin, white coveralls worn to make those soldiers visible, but easily torn away. These latter troops were always armed, always sharp-eyed and never drank. Auging in to the newsnets Moria had learned about a missile being fired at a military AGC and a bomb exploding in a bar like this one. She had seen a four-man team of soldiers—two of them Golem—marching away at gunpoint someone in civilian dress. Separatists. They were always present on Trajeen, and soon captured or killed the moment they acted, but now it seemed they had become more active.

"This place is doing a good trade," said Carolan. "The economic benefits of war."

"Well the troops need to be fed and watered, then you get the herd instinct operating for the civilians. They don't want to be alone when stuff like this is happening." Daven Xing glanced at Moria and winked.

Ellen—Carolan's companion—gazed at Daven over her beer as if he had just issued a wet fart. Moria couldn't decide if Ellen disliked him intensely, or the opposite and was trying hard to conceal it. At one time Moria would have been fascinated by the interplay and perhaps considered how best to defend her territory—just on principle since after being her lover for two weeks Daven no longer really interested her. But her last shift at the gate project changed her entire outlook. She possessed no patience for such games, or the interest in such petty concerns.

After another sip of wine, Moria considered her last three-month shift. She thought her first session with George might be her last, but he recalled her time and again, and after each session her job description changed. He kept promoting her, yet she no longer felt the same about that anymore as she explored the realms of her mind in conjunction with the Sylac aug. Some called her "aug happy" but it seemed so much more than that.

"I hear you've been wowing them in the Control Centre?" said Carolan. "In fact you've been the talk of the project for some time now." She glanced at Daven. "And that George has taken a very special interest in you."

"Who's this George?" asked Daven with mock jealousy.

Moria grinned at him. Yes, she was really no longer interested in him now. "George is the AI up there."

"But not just that," Carolan added sneakily. "He runs a submind in a tank-grown human body. A male human body."

"Ah, I see," said Daven.

Moria supposed it was time now for a little fencing—for her to defend her position. She could not be bothered. Shrugging, she said, "I never knew they could do that, nor that it is allowed." Seeing that Moria did not intend to take the bait, Carolan gave up on that line and the conversation turned to the moral implications of AIs using human bodies. Moria let it drift away from her and continued with her introspection. She had learnt more and encompassed more while working from the Control Centre, yet George, though no longer testing her and her aug, or promoting her, for there was no higher she could go, kept stopping by and increasing her workload, and she kept on managing to sustain each increase. A peevish annoyance at her presence was the first reaction from the others in the Centre, then growing respect and a kind of awe. Out of the eight individuals there, none was really in charge since they all worked a specific area of competence under George. However, Moria's area of competence just kept expanding and she realised that the others had come to defer to her. But obviously, elsewhere, gossip-mongers like Carolan were traducing her.

At the month end, George entered the Control Centre. "We are nearly ready now," he said. "We don't need the buffers at this end as the test will be a one-way transference to the Boh cargo runcible in two weeks' time." He looked around at them all. "You will monitor the automatics, gather data throughout the test at this end. I'll want the data built into logic trees in order of importance and with relevancy connections, even though they might be assigned outside the present field of study." He now turned to Moria. "The same is obviously required at the other end. When you return from your break, you and I are going to Boh."

And this was her break. Why did she now find it so difficult to involve herself at an utterly human level? Was she obsessing about her own self-importance? She felt not. Perhaps being so deeply connected into her aug and its functions she was simply becoming less human. She gazed at her companions, drained her glass, then stood, smiling tightly.

"I've some things I need to prepare before I head back, so I'm afraid I'll have to leave you now."

A predatory look passed from Ellen to Daven, and he gave Moria a speculative look in return. Leave them to it. The imminent runcible test was so much more important… and interesting. Moria moved from the bar feeling her companions' eyes upon her, and knew she would once again become the subject of their conversation. Outside the bar she stood in the street. The road and pavements were slick with rain water and the slime trail left by a groundskate presently flopping its way along a few metres from her. She stared at the reflection of Vina in that trail, glanced at a group of soldiers climbing from a hydrocab—probably just in from the growing encampment just outside town—and decided that if she hurried she could catch a shuttle to the runcible within an hour. Upon her arrival there she did not suppose it would be long before she was aboard a ship to Boh. There seemed little more she wanted to involve herself in down here, and so much more up there.

* * * * *

Second-child GJ-26, though honoured by being given the name Skulker, had yet to see his feed changed by Harl so he too could make the transition to first-childhood. As he crouched in blue gloom below matted tendrils and saucer leaves holding mucous-locked water in their upper, bright red surfaces, he understood the reasons for this, but could not help but feel some resentment. He was a small second-child, and becoming adept at concealing himself in this jungle made him a perfect scout for Prador land forces—an advantage they needed against the smaller, chameleon-cloth-concealed humans.

Skulker reached up, snipped through the tendril mat and pulled down some of the dished leaves. Carefully he smeared their slimy contents all over his carapace, claws and legs. Settling himself down for a while, he periodically checked the tackiness of his coating as it dried. When it finally reached readiness he began to scoop up organic debris from the ground and flip them all over himself. Leaf litter and pieces of dead tendril stuck, small fungal spheroids lodged amidst all this. Turning his eye-palps to inspect himself he finally finished the camouflage job with sprinklings of the grey underlying soil. Now he was ready.

First-child Harl's instructions were for him to spy-out the disposition of Polity forces arrayed on the jungle slopes above, then personally return with the information to the Prador temporary headquarters here, since there was now a suspicion that the humans had cracked their com codes. As on previous occasions he must flee if seen and not engage with the enemy unless cornered. Such instructions did not sit well with preadolescent or adolescent Prador, since that required that they override their instinctive aggression. Skulker did not find obedience so difficult. Intellectualizing the whole affair, he managed to displace the satisfaction of individual kills with the slaughter of many humans in which his information resulted.

Moving carefully, for the natural camouflage glue needed to dry, Skulker moved off between the plaited stalks and scaly sprouts of this planet's vegetation. On his light weapons harness he carried only a translator, grenades and a small assassin-spec rail-gun—the weapons he hoped never to need. In his heart he carried a hatred of the soft-bodied alien enemy, the sure knowledge that they would be defeated, and that he would survive to become a first-child Prime. Other Prador died. It would not happen to him.

After a kilometre the ground began to slope upwards and white rocks stained here and there with blue sap began to poke through. Now listening intently and stopping to sample the occasional strange odour in the air, Skulker froze when a meaty scent wafted towards him and he heard sudden movement ahead. It was difficult to see for any distance now, since spiny epiphytes sprouted in balls from the stems, stalks and trunks ahead. Skulker drew his rail-gun and held a chlorine smoke grenade in one of his hands ready to cover his retreat. Advancing, precisely sliding his sharp feet into the ground so as not to rustle the leaf litter, he closed on the sound and the source of that smell like some arachnoid spectre. Then upon seeing it, finally allowed himself to relax.

The creature's white teardrop body terminated at the narrow end in a ring of tentacles around a red gullet. Its hind limbs were long—the spiked knees high above its bloated back end—its forelimbs short and braced out sideways with twin toes buried in the ground. Skulker encountered many of these and had even tried eating one. That experiment resulted in squirming blue worms in his every bowel movement until he took a course of acidifier pellets to strip out the inner layers of his gut. It was not an experience he intended to repeat. In itself the creature would have been of no further interest to him, but its meal was.

The human's head was missing, as was one of its arms, one of its legs and a large proportion of the torso into which the native creature now dipped its head. Skulker moved out of concealment, noisily, but the creature did not seem to notice. Skulker then prodded it with his rail-gun. Finally acknowledging his presence it raised its tentacled front end and with a burping squawk launched itself up through the canopy, then went crashing away above.

Moving close to the human remains, Skulker began searching them. He removed a bracelet from the remaining wrist and played with the controls for a moment until some pictures began to appear on a small screen. These were all of humans doing whatever it was that humans did. One of them might be of the individual here. Skulker would not have been able to tell even if this one retained its head. He placed the bracelet in one of the pockets of his weapons harness—maybe Prador Intelligence would find some use for it—and continued his search, but found nothing more of note. He was eyeing the chameleon-cloth of the remaining uniform, when a new smell reached his senses over the meat smell, then he heard the voices.

"She's over this way," said one.

"Seems a damned long way for her to be carried by the blast," said the other.

"Wasn't the blast that carried her—one of those boschens dragged her from the temporary morgue. They've been doing a lot of that lately."

Skulker looked round in confusion for the voices sounded as if they were coming from upslope, yet he could hear movement from downslope and also to his left. He began to move stealthily to his right, where luckily the ground lay soft and thick with decaying vegetation.

"I don't know why they do it when human flesh poisons them—shame it doesn't do the same to the Prador."

"Poison would be good, but a gecko mine is so much more satisfying."

"True, very true."

Now there seemed to be movement over to his right, and after a moment Skulker smelt burnt metal, heard the hum of a grav-motor and a loud crackling—almost certainly one of those human AG gun platforms settling through the canopy. What to do? He could throw grenades now and run, but those on the platform would pursue. He could probably escape, but with none of the information first-child Harl sent him to obtain. Using a technique almost instinctive on home-world for burying oneself in mud, Skulker quickly buried himself in leaf-litter and soft dirt, with only his eye-palps and the snout of his rail-gun above the surface.

"Did you hear that?"

"Probably a boschen heard us and made like a frog… ah, here we are."

Skulker slowly turned his eye-palps. The two humans were behind him! How did they get there and what were those other sounds in the surrounding jungle? The gun platform sound seemed to have disappeared, and the smell of hot metal displaced by one of burning vegetation. Skulker decided to stay very still and do nothing until he assessed this situation, for he was very good at skulking.

"Not much left of her is there, Jebel?" said the female of the two.

"Lucky there's anything at all."

An ECS-issue enviroboot came down on Skulker's back, then the female stepped over him. The one addressed as "Jebel" stepped on him next, but halted and stood there with both his boots on Prador carapace. The tension inside Skulker grew to snapping point as the man leisurely surveyed his surroundings, then seemed to notice something at his feet.

"Oh dear," the man said.

"What's up?" asked the woman.

Skulker pressed one of his thin fingers into the priming pit of his grenade and slightly tightened the pressure on the trigger of his rail-gun. The man squatted down, his head only a metre from the second-child's eye-palps. He began to do something with his footwear.

"This damned ground isn't very good for enviroboots."

After a moment he finished his chore then stood and stepped from Skulker's back, clipping an eye-palp with his boot on the way. With one eye watery and blurred Skulker followed the man's progress over to the woman, who was unfolding a body bag beside the corpse. He should not have moved his eye-palps.

"Prador!" the woman bellowed, throwing herself to one side.

Skulker triggered his gun, but the man also hurled himself aside, acrobatically bouncing to concealment faster than Skulker could track. He heaved himself upright, showering litter, tossed the grenade. A stalk exploded beside him and another blast excavated a cavity in the ground before him. Flinging himself sideways, he tracked fire around, severing stalks and raining down foliage and tendrils. His grenade blew, spewing out poisonous smoke. Then he heard the whickering sound of a laser, a flash of brightness blinded him and sharp pain ensued. With his lower turret-eyes Skulker caught a horrifying glimpse of his two eye-palps dropping, smoking, to the ground. He turned and ran. More explosions all around him, more weapons fire cutting through the jungle, but now with no eye-palps he could no longer look behind him. Something singed his back end, cracking carapace.

"Over there! Get the bastard!"

Fire from a rail-gun cut down to his left from above and Skulker heard the drone of a gun platform. He shot to his right, turning sideways to fling himself through a gap in the jungle. Something whoomphed behind him and smoke and flame rolled above. Skulker ran just as fast as he could, bouncing from stems, falling occasionally, and coming close to obliteration far too often. The chase lasted an hour and only when the explosions and sounds of firing moved off ahead and to his right did he think he at last stood some chance of escape. The pursuit finally died away in the night, and knowing that without his eye-palps he could be nowhere near as effective as normal, he finally, reluctantly, returned to base.

"Report," said Harl, flicking his eye-palps once towards Skulker before returning his attention to a console he held in one large claw. Four other first-children stood nearby beside a Prador landing craft. With the eager assistance of numerous second-children, they were assembling a ground-effect particle cannon. Munitions stood in stacks underneath piles of cut foliage. Sixteen war drones rested in a line nearby and all around hundreds of second-children crouched in darkness. Skulker could feel the eyes of his fellows watching him. Though Skulker was valued, Harl did not much appreciate failure—pieces of Prador carapace scattered on the ground in this area were the result of other reports of failure brought to him.

"I encountered—"

Harl whirled round, all his attention abruptly focused on Skulker. "What is that on your carapace?"

"What?" Skulker tried to peer back with eye-palps he no longer possessed.

A tinny voice issued from somewhere just behind his visual turret. It took Skulker a moment to recognise it as that of the human male he earlier encountered. "It's a CTD gecko mine—yield of about five kilotonnes."

When the man stooped… doing something to his boot.

Skulker's shriek terminated in a blast that peeled back four square kilometres of jungle canopy and sunk a crater down to the bedrock. The blast did not utterly obliterate everything, for one drone shell, hollow, and glowing white-hot, quenched itself in an inland lake a hundred kilometres away.

* * * * *

While contemplatively running his finger in circles over the stippled copper surface of his new aug, Conlan gazed through the chainglass security screens to where a massive section of a storage buffer slowly slid on its maglev plates above the steel floor. He already knew that Marcus Heilberg was one of the designated grabship pilots for this run, but he had yet to crack the security protocol preventing him from finding this individual's location—information unobtainable by other, cruder means. Probably Marcus would still be in his quarters, since the run would not be proceeding for another twenty hours, which was just where Conlan wanted him to be. But where was his apartment?

The buffer section Heilberg had been assigned to transport, like a diagonally sliced piece of some huge chrome pipe, Conlan already knew all about. It could hold a charge in the terra-watt range. Already at half-charge, its laminar storage held enough energy to fry an in-system cruiser. They intended to position it just out from Gatepost Four ready for telefactor installation. Well, that was their plan.

His aug came through for him, giving him the location of Heilberg's apartment, and Conlan wondered at the superb efficiency of this device costing so small a sum even though fitted by a private surgeon. It first puzzled him to discover how little other augments could do in comparison to himself. How, for example, he was able to run a search-and-destroy program to wipe his old identity from many systems, and establish a new one. But then he became aware of AI searches being run through the planetary server, shortly before newsnet services brought out their story about Aubron Sylac's presence on Trajeen. Conlan realised he had deleted his old identity just in time, and now understood why his aug worked so well.

Viewing an internal model of the station, Conlan picked up his holdall and headed off to find Marcus Heilberg. He felt some relief to be moving again for he knew that the submind to the Trajeen Cargo Runcible AI, here on this station, would quickly begin running checks on anyone loitering suspiciously. Within minutes he stood before the correct door and rapped a knuckle against the door plate, before grinning up at the cam set above the door. After a moment the intercom came on and Marcus Heilberg enquired, "What the hell is it?"

Conlan held up one finger then stooped down to his holdall, removed a bottle of green brandy and held it up for inspection.

"Obviously not to be consumed now," he said. "We wouldn't want any accidents today. Jadris sent it by way of an apology. I'm to be your new copilot."

The door lock buzzed and clicked and Conlan stooped to pick up his holdall before entering. At that moment he noticed the blood soaked into the cuff of his jacket sleeve and felt a moment of disquiet—it was not like him to miss such details.

"What the hell is Jadris playing at?"

Aug.

Marcus Heilberg, a stooped, lanky individual with cropped black hair like Conlan's own, leant against a side table at the entryway from his kitchenette, pressing his fingertips against his aug, his expression puzzled.

"Can't seem to connect," he said.

Conlan scanned the apartment: blue floor moss, retro wooden furniture, pastel walls and picture screens repeating images of various spacecraft—probably those Heilberg once flew. The bedroom lay to the left, door open and no sign of movement inside. The kitchenette behind Heilberg was empty, the smell of frying bacon wafting out. The bathroom door also stood open, and from what he could see Conlan surmised there was no one in there. He strode forwards, the bottle held out to one side. "Bit of an unreliable bastard I gather, but at least his apology is worth something." He held the bottle higher, up-ended.

Fast—has to be fast.

Heilberg's eyes slid from Conlan to the bottle, just as it swept down against the side table. Frozen expression. Up with the jagged end, turning it slightly to present the most suitable edge. Momentary impact and resistance, then no resistance. The broken bottle sheared off two of Heilberg's fingers, one of which still clung by a strip of skin. It gouged down to his jawbone, sliced off most of his ear but, most importantly, cut Heilberg's aug from his head, which clattered bloodily to the floor as he staggered into the kitchenette doorjamb.

"Wha… why," the man managed, but Conlan did not stop to chat.

Face white, Heilberg turned and staggered into his kitchenette. Conlan kicked the man's feet out from under him and, discarding the bottle, came down in the centre of his back with his knee. Shoulder grip then and a swift jerk backwards. Heilberg's spine snapped with a gristly crunching. To be certain Conlan now took hold of his head and twisted it until he heard a similar sound. Then, having dropped the expiring man, he backed off, turned and swiftly checked the bathroom and bedroom. No one else home. What and why?

Jadris asked similar questions while Conlan cut off his fingers to obtain the information he required. The answer was manifold, though Jadris did not hear it for shortly after that question Conlan strangled him with a length of optic cable. His reply should have been: because humans are no longer free, because the human race cannot achieve its manifest destiny while enslaved by the AI autocrat of Earth and all its minions. But really, all that was just the party line—the call to arms of the Separatist cause. Conlan possessed a more realistic view of his own motivations. He hated AIs. He hated their smug superiority, their rigid control over the activities of human beings, most specifically himself.

In the Organization, Conlan had been the top archetypal super hit man. People feared him, feared his name, and treated him with deference and awe. Throughout his bloody career he accumulated enough wealth to buy one of those small islands just off the Cogan peninsular. Retirement seemed a good idea, with maybe one or two hits a year to keep his hand in, for Conlan enjoyed his work. Then ECS, guided by its AIs, in just one day came down on the Organization like a hammer. Mass arrests followed, the ECS agents not too bothered about taking prisoners alive. The Boss, with Conlan's help, managed to escape in his private ship—or so Conlan thought before he saw the news feed concerning the tragic steamrolling of that ship by the moon, Vina. Conlan only escaped by dint of his contacts in the Trajeen Separatists. All his accounts were closed down and all his property seized. All he then owned was his Armani businesswear and a wallet full of New Carth shillings.

Over the ensuing years rigid ECS police control backed by the superior forensic and analytical abilities of the AIs, drove organized crime on Trajeen almost to extinction. Conlan was forgotten—to most people just a bad memory of a bad time. They turned his island into a damned resort visited by members of the runcible culture who lounged on his beach or visited his house—now opened as a small museum to past atrocities. Only the Separatists, with their rabid fanaticism and the cell structure of their organization, managed to cling to existence. He stayed with them, doing what he could, but it never seemed enough. Then came out-Polity financing from those promising to destroy ECS—an alien race who managed to build a star-spanning civilization without the interference of AIs. Next came this wonderful aug to put him in such a prime position. That these Prador promised to allow the Separatists free reign in the Polity, once ECS was pounded into mincemeat, Conlan doubted. But his hatred of ECS and the AIs took him beyond those doubts. He would rather see the Polity fragmented or ruled by aliens, than under the control of those damned machines. He was prepared to die fighting them which, he guessed, made him just as much a fanatic as the rest of the Separatists.

* * * * *

At age thirty-five, which was young for an ECS commando, Nelson felt determined to learn from the older veterans around him and not do anything stupidly naive. Departing the lander on Grant's World, he gazed up at the rearing mound of bluish-red vegetable debris as his visor adjusted to the brightness. Glancing round at the rest of his squad he noticed they were now opening their visors. He checked the display down in the corner of his own and did the same.

"Shallow breaths," said Lithgow, "or we'll end up carrying you."

They moved away from the shuttle as it rapidly headed skyward again, and Nelson scanned the entire landing zone. Five square kilometres of jungle lay flattened by a planar bomb that had flung the wrecked vegetable matter into mounds all around the blast site. Probably because of these huge compost heaps, the air smelt of vinegar, ammonia and something putrid. Around the edge, just beyond them, he could see the pylons of autogun towers with twinned pulse-cannons tracking in gimbals across the jungle. Within the clearing stood a temporary city of domes and field tents. The domes were made by inflating hemispheres of monofilament and spraying on a mixture of a fast-setting epoxy and earth. The whole process had been conducted automatically by the base builder craft that plunged down here only two days ago. The troops, with their tents, had been arriving here ever since.

"Eyes up, here's the lieutenant," said Lithgow.

The Golem called Snake wore the shape of a man, but displayed little else in the way of human emulation. Nelson had seen many others like him lately, and Lithgow explained, "Emulation slows them down. They're not here to be nice and socially acceptable."

"Find yourselves a place and set up for the night. We move out at solstan 12.40." Snake tilted his head for a moment. "The whole camp breaks then because we'll be losing orbital cover by 15.00." He flicked a finger at them, then pointed towards the encampment before heading off with his sliding unhuman gait.

Lithgow, a burly woman who held the rank of sergeant, led the way to a clear area that could accommodate them. The troops shed their ridiculously large packs, which were pleasantly light in the three-quarter gees, and began pulling out their tents then stepping back while they auto-erected.

"Losing cover?" Nelson queried.

"One of those big fuck ships on its way I'd guess."

"Should we even be here then?"

"Should be smooth. They'll hit any large concentrations, but they don't want to trash this planet. It's got plenty of ocean cover and those big inland lakes—just the kind of place they like. That's why we're here."

Nelson figured that out and realised his chatter stemmed from him being wired. This would be his first action. For the others it would be no more than their second or third such fight with Prador troops and those hateful damned war drones of theirs. He turned away from Lithgow and set out his own tent to self-erect. It occurred to him, looking round, to wonder what troops from the past would think of this motley collection. They worked with a similar rank system as past armies because of the necessity of a chain of command, but there the similarity ended. They all wore fatigues of chameleon-cloth so seemed to be perpetually sliding in and out of existence as they moved about. Here greater emphasis was placed on individuality, this being an army of specialists. Nelson himself carried a heavy rifle that fired both laser and seeker bullets—he was the sniper of the group. Lithgow specialized in booby traps—a narrow field complemented by their other three explosives experts—one of whom carried tactical fission weapons in his pack. In their ranks were two code crackers, a linguist, an exobiologist and three medics who, as well as being able to deal with battlefield injuries, were also expert in specific fields: xenopathology, bioweapons and battle-stress analysis. And so it went. All carried laser carbines, grenades, missile launchers, mines—a whole panoply of death. The tac-officer, Lieutenant Snake, could override orders from above after assessing input from the various experts in the unit, and studying the exigent situation. Which was probably why he needed to be a Golem.

After stowing his gear in his tent, Nelson wondered what the hell to do next. Perhaps, he thought, I'm more like those troops from bygone days in that I need to be led. Lithgow sauntered over.

"Well, me and Genesh are going to hunt down a beer or two. Eat, drink and be merry as they say."

"What?"

"Never mind." Lithgow grabbed his shoulder and towed him after her.

The three of them walked on through the encampment, taking the most direct route towards the central domes. They stopped for a while to watch a telefactor operator, augs either side of her head, sitting cross-legged on the ground and putting two tripodal autoguns through their paces: squatting, running, and swivelling their twinned pulse-guns to pick out targets. The whole scene was weirdly reminiscent of some kind of dance.

"I wonder how well they'll do in jungle," commented Genesh.

They then passed a row of one-man ground tanks and stacked pallets of explosive ammunition. Nelson jerked to a halt when he spotted what lay on the next pallet.

"What the fuck?"

Strapped to the pallet, folded up tight, rested a three-metre-long scorpion, thickly daubed with camouflage paint.

"Lithgow?" asked Genesh, and it gladdened Nelson to know he wasn't the only one to be stumped by this sight.

Abruptly the scorpion started to move. It raised its front end and Nelson saw, in place of mandibles and the usual insectile head, a row of launch tubes and two polished throats of some kind of energy weapon. It slowly spread its claws, like a man stretching after a long sleep. Then, almost negligently, it reached back and snipped through the steel straps securing it to the pallet, and rose up on its legs. It turned towards the three frozen troopers.

"Any of those lice-ridden crab fuckers nearby?" it asked in the rough voice of a terminal smoker.

Only Lithgow retained the presence of mind to reply. "Not at the moment." She pointed. "They've been dropping along the coast about a thousand kilometres that way."

"Best I go give a few the old rocket suppository." It came down off the pallet moving smooth as mercury and headed off in the direction Lithgow indicated.

"Would I appear too naive if I asked what that was?" asked Nelson.

"That, my boy, was a Polity war drone. And if you ever thought AIs were sane and sensible, think again."

"But a useful lunatic to have on your side?" suggested Genesh.

Lithgow grimaced. "Yes, of course."

Eventually they found their way to one of the many commissaries. Here, like some alfresco cafe, tables and chairs were set out and umbrellas erected, though the umbrellas consisted of chameleon-cloth and when you sat beneath them that cloth palely matched the albescent sky. Lithgow and Nelson sat, while Genesh went off to find a few cold ones. Nelson noticed his companion staring at some nearby troops. He surreptitiously studied them himself, noting black webworms over their fatigues, heavy rifles much like his own strapped to a line of packs resting nearby, and that these troops wore utility belts ringed all the way around with gecko mines. Closer inspection revealed that many of them wore on their sleeves small gold buttons, and the occasionally large silvery ones, in the shape of crabs. One soldier rested his feet up on a table and a forage cap pulled low, but not low enough to conceal a chevron scar on his cheek.

"Who are they?" Nelson asked.

"Well, talking of useful lunatics to have on your side… those are the Avalonians."

Nelson shivered, despite the heat.

"Check out the guy with hat. See his scar?"

Nelson nodded.

"A Prador claw just missed taking off his head and snipped that in his cheek. He says it's a scar he intends to keep."

"You're saying that's—"

"Yup. You're looking at Jebel U-cap Krong."

Nelson eyed this slim and apparently not too noteworthy man. He knew what the "U-cap" stood for. Who didn't? Jebel up-close-and-personal Krong. Now Nelson remembered what the buttons represented. The gold ones were for second-children and the larger, platinum ones, were for first-children. To earn such a button you needed to get close enough to a Prador to plant a gecko mine on its carapace, and blow it to pieces. Krong wore two ruby buttons because he changed the counting method—his own sleeve having become too overloaded. Ten golds equalled one platinum,and ten platinum buttons equalled one ruby.

Genesh returned with litre steins of chilled beer, which they sipped while they talked. Nelson could not help but steal glances at the Avalonians and their leader. He felt some disappointment when Jebel and his troops abruptly stood and moved to take up their packs, before heading off towards the landing field. But he grinned to himself thinking how, for a little while, he sat in the presence of a legend. He did not realise he was about to become part of a legend himself: the planet the Prador ground forces could not take, the one they finally bombarded from orbit with antimatter missiles. Grant's World… the war grave.

* * * * *

The mask melded to his face like cool porridge, and after a moment it matched his facial expressions to perfection. It was old tech, but nonetheless effective. Eyeing the image of Marcus Heilberg staring back at him from the mirror, Conlan grinned, then reached into his top pocket to remove Heilberg's aug, still connected to his own by the length of optic cable he used to strangle Jadris. He long ago learnt that it took more strain than that ensuing from a strangulation to damage this grade of optic cable—strange the facts you picked up along the way.

His own aug having processed the download from the other aug, he now knew all he needed to know about Heilberg's next run—all the flight and security protocols, all the codes. Only one thing remained. He turned from the mirror, stooped to remove a small brushed aluminium box from his holdall, then headed for the kitchenette.

Heilberg's head now lay in a pool of his own blood. Conlan stared at the mess for a moment, then took hold of the corpse's ankle and dragged the body into the main living area, smearing a gory trail behind. Stretching Heilberg's right arm out, he placed the aluminium box down beside it and popped the box open. Most people wore their augs on the left-hand side of their heads if they were right-handed and vice versa, and most right-handed people used that hand on palm-readers. Of course, the situation being otherwise with Heilberg's right hand up against his aug, Conlan would have waited until he lowered it before using the bottle. He did not want this hand damaged.

From the box he removed a chainglass scalpel and cut around the wrist, careful not to sever any tendons. This done he used a small hook to stretch out the larger, severed blood vessels and place small clamps on them. Now the tendons, which he stretched out individually and clamped before cutting. The ends of the tendons leading up into the arm snapped out of sight, but those leading into the hand, because of the clamps, remained accessible to him. He continued his surgery, cutting the radius and ulna bones with a small electric saw and slicing remaining flesh. Soon the hand separated, and he set about replacing the clamps on the tendons with specially designed bayonet fittings and those on the blood vessels with similar though hollow fittings. He sprayed a sealant over the raw end to close off the smaller blood vessels and capillaries. This done, he stared at the hand for a moment before rolling up his sleeve and pressing four points in a particular sequence on his forearm. His right hand flopped—all feeling instantly departing it. A quick slice about the syntheskin around his wrist gave him access to the specially designed interface plug between his artificial arm—attached at his shoulder—and artificial hand. He detached the hand, then set about inserting the bayonets into their various ports, before finally pushing the bones into their central clamps—replacing his artificial hand with Heilberg's. He then wrapped around syntheskin tape to cover the join.

Now came the critical part as he waited for the interface port to make its connections. From a small reservoir within his forearm, artificial blood, at the required temperature and pressure, cycled through the hand. Servomotors would pull on the tendons. There was no doubt that both these operations would certainly work. The one that might fail was the injection of copper composite whiskers through flesh to the major muscles in the hand, since he did not have the time or equipment to make nerve connections. He waited, studying a readout screen situated in the aluminium box. When it finally gave him the go-ahead he flexed the hand, then closed it into a fist. Not quite right, and no feeling, no feedback, but it would serve.

Eighteen hours now until the flight. Conlan settled himself in Heilberg's apartment, first eating the bacon cooked under the grill, then attempting to sleep in Heilberg's bed. Time dragged. Conlan dared not take a pill to knock himself out, so spent an uncomfortable six hours in the bed. Later he showered, and wearing a towelling robe once belonging to the corpse—now wrapped in a sheet and shoved out of sight behind the sofa—he tried out Heilberg's disc collection. Finally he found more interesting entertainment in the intricacies of his own aug. Prior to leaving, he changed into a spare flight overall belonging to Heilberg. It wasn't easy with only one truly workable hand, but he did not want any blood on this clothing again. He placed his artificial hand in the man's flight bag, then took it up and headed off to find his grabship, glad to be going since the smell in Heilberg's apartment was becoming none too pleasant.

* * * * *

Immanence observed that the radiation levels were high, as was the quantity of orbital debris not present some months before. There were still some ECS ships limping around the system, but mainly they were just trying to survive. Captain Shree, in his ship parked geostationary above Grant's World along with four troop carriers, did not concern himself about them. The other, smaller Prador ships were conducting the cleanup operation. Shree's concern was for the planet below, and the damnable forces there.

"They are as difficult to remove as a ship louse bored into a shell joint," the captain complained. "I personally have lost two hundred second-children and three first-children, and have necessarily taken some third-children out of storage to raise to the next level. Surface Arm have lost nearly a million second-children, hundreds of first-children, and nearly twenty thousand war drones. The enemy has now established a runcible down there from which we keep picking up U-space interference, but cannot find, and they keep bringing in new forces. Unless we do find it, we cannot win."

"I am here to relay new orders from the King " Immanence told the other captain, revelling in his authority. "We will win here."

Shree made a gobbling sound, probably assuming this to be one of those "sort it out or die" orders from the Prador monarch, and now wondering if there might be any way he could pin failure on Immanence who was now the ranking Prador adult here.

The hierarchical system of the Prador had been medieval and vicious for centuries. The King ruled by dint of being the nastiest and most conniving of them all, and managed to maintain his rule by setting all those below him against each other and ruthlessly crushing any single Prador who became too powerful. Those below him determined their ranking by endless complicated infighting and brief alliances that usually ended in bloody betrayals. The captains of dreadnoughts, like Shree and Immanence, were of the highest rank, having accumulated enough wealth and power to buy into the resources and industrial capacity the King controlled. Those lower down the scale captained smaller ships or provided troops, while those lower still ran the infrastructure of Prador society. All adult Prador ruled huge families with an absolute power the worst human dictators would have envied. In this complicated hierarchical structure, Shree lay a stratum below Immanence. Captain Immanence allowed Shree to assume the worst for a while before putting him right.

"The King has decided that expending resources here to take this world would delay the push into the Polity for too long." Shree fell silent. Immanence now opened up the communication to all the Prador adults in the system, and all those first-children commanders whose fathers were back within the Kingdom. "AH land forces are to immediately withdraw from the planet. You have five days in which to comply. The ban on tactical fission weapons is now raised so you may use them to cover your retreat. We no longer have a use for this place."

Shree got the idea. "It seems a shame. This world would have made a pleasant addition to the Kingdom."

Immanence guessed the other captain had considered the possibility of staking claim to some portion of Grant's World. He himself would have liked to have done the same. It sometimes felt a little crowded back in the Kingdom and with space like this it would be possible for any adult to greatly extend his family using the same massive creche systems some adults used to provide second- and first-child fodder for ground combat. Increasing the number of children would logically lead to increases in wealth, industrial capacity, power. And maybe then, from such a position, said adult could contemplate a little regicide. Perhaps this too was a reason for the King's decision about this place.

During the ensuing five days, Immanence dropped small sensor drones to observe the retreat and evacuation. He watched retreating Prador cramming onto AG platforms and sliding low over jungle canopy while a line of detonation flashes behind them momentarily blanked vision. Massive fireballs rose and Shockwaves spread in perfect rings as they flattened jungle, which poured smoke flat to the ground before igniting violently. He saw human troops running and burning, then being swept up in ground winds like all the rest of the burning debris. Thousands of square kilometres of jungle burned, along with those human fighters occupying it. But in the air things were not going so well.

Immanence watched retreating Prador scramble quickly aboard troop transports at the assigned assembly points. Automatic guns and missile launchers covered them there, but not when the transports laboured into orbit. They were guarded by gunboats mounting lasers and missile launchers, and by spherical Prador war drones run by the transplanted cerebral and nerve tissue of second-children. But Polity AI war drones came in fast—weird machines often fashioned in the shape of living creatures. Immanence observed one such formation of things like silvery lice or chouds and shelled molluscs. They approached in a line, then broke, accelerating on fusion drives to employ a seemingly random attack pattern, which in instants resulted in two gunboats dropping, burning, from the sky and a line of four Prador war drones detonating one after another. Remaining Prador defence forces thoroughly engaged, a Polity drone in the shape of some segmented arthropod zipped up underneath the transport, clung for a moment, then darted away. The detonation of the mine it placed blew the transport to small pieces, the blast wave slamming into defenders suddenly finding their opponents gone. Over two thousand Prador ground troops were incinerated.

But it seemed the humans and the AIs were beginning to register the change in tactics and were pulling their own forces back on the surface. Analysing this retreat, Immanence narrowed down the position of the runcible to the north of one of the main continents. He targeted the centre of that spread of jungle. Some Prador forces still remained within the zone, but the loss would not be unacceptable. He launched a single antimatter missile, maximum acceleration all the way down. It cut an orange streak of fire through atmosphere, as it burnt away its ablation shield, and hammered into the ground. A mountain rose then flew apart in a growing sphere of annihilating fire. A fire storm spread, instantly, across thousands of square kilometres of jungle, and the ensuing Shockwave peeled up the topsoil from bedrock. From orbit he observed a massive disk-shaped cloud spread above the detonation site. Beyond, the devastation spread almost like a pyroclastic flow. Within minutes a million square kilometres of jungle turned into something like the surface of a world closely orbiting a sun. No sign, thereafter, of any U-space interference. The runcible was gone.

The evacuation was all but complete on the fourth day, though heavy losses were inflicted by Polity war drones, which carried the fight all the way up into orbit—the drones attacking until depleting all their weaponry, then slamming themselves as hard and fast as possible into any vulnerable Prador ship. At this point Immanence contacted Shree to say, "Now."

Antimatter missiles rained down on the planet, each one, at a minimum, causing devastation the same as that caused by the one Immanence had used to destroy the runcible. Within hours it became impossible to see the continents from orbit, for the atmosphere filled with smoke, steam and debris. Tsunamis slammed around the world washing thousands of kilometres inshore. A fault line reactivated three hundred kilometres inshore of one continent, and dropped everything behind it five metres into the ocean. Some inactive volcanoes exploded violently into action, one active volcano went out. Immanence supposed that, after a winter lasting a century or so, the jungle might return. It would take millions of years before this place evolved large life forms again. All but maybe a few of the large, alien life forms down there were dead.

"Satisfactory," said Immanence. "Now, Shree, with a little stopover to remove a Polity transfer station—a small matter, no more than a nibbling louse—you will accompany me to a system the humans name Trajeen, where we will seize from them a runcible that is not planet-based."

"Do we have need of such things?" Shree asked.

"Some of the technology may come in useful, but if not, what matter? Another human world there awaits our attention."

* * * * *

"What's with Jadris?" said the new copilot. "He can't just do that at the last moment—the AI wants those buffers in position and ready for fitting straight after the test."

"Too much green brandy?" Conlan suggested.

The woman looked at him with slight puzzlement and Conlan rather suspected his mimicking of Heilberg's voice might be wrong. "What did you hear?" he asked.

She shrugged. "He auged in to opt out of this flight, saying he was sick, then he took his aug offline, so he must be unwell to not be taking calls. But it's not like him to be so irresponsible."

Conlan studied her as she moved off ahead of him. She was an attractive woman with a bald skull, fine coffee skin and an evident athleticism that did not detract from her femininity. But then Polity cosmetic surgery made it possible for anyone to be attractive. Maybe she had been born an ugly troglodyte with warts, bad breath and suppurating acne.

At the security gate into the flight bay, she stepped ahead of him to press her hand against the palm reader, then walked through. He glanced up, noting the drone hanging Damoclean overhead, and placed Heilberg's hand against the reader. Nothing happened, no alarms and no sudden activity from the drone, and he walked through trying not to show any reaction.

"Green brandy you say?" she asked him.

Conlan scanned the four ships presently resting in the huge bay and felt a brief moment of panic. All four of them were grabships stripped of their claws, and all three held runcible buffer sections dogged under their forward cockpits. He had no idea which one was Heilberg's. Fortunately the copilot moved on ahead of him. He wished she would stop talking. He didn't know her name or what her association with Heilberg might be. They could have been lovers, they might have shared in-jokes and all that sad paraphernalia born of friendships.

Rather than head for any of the ships she turned to the right, and only when he called up schematics of this area in his aug did he realise she was heading for the changing room.

Idiot!

It would have looked hugely suspicious if he'd climbed aboard without donning a spacesuit first. Though these ships were very rugged, safety procedures on what was effectively a construction site required crew to wear spacesuits.

Within the changing area others were stripping off clothing before open lockers, hanging the clothing inside and then donning their suits. Relief again when he saw that each locker bore a name stencilled on the door. He walked up to Heilberg's and pressed his hand against the reader beside it. Nothing happened. Conlan just stood there swallowing dryly.

"Is that bloody thing still playing up?" asked the copilot.

"So it would seem," he replied, not knowing what to do next. She provided the answer for him by reaching over and thumping the wall beside the plate as she passed. The door popped open. Conlan felt a great gratitude towards—he checked the name on the locker she came to a halt before—Anna Vasco.

Conlan stripped off his clothing and donned the spacesuit, surreptitiously making adjustments so it fitted him properly. He glanced aside at Anna, and seeing her utterly naked, tanned and sleek as she pulled out her suit, felt a surge of excitement. She glanced at him, noting his attention, and, rather deliberately he felt, dropped her suit then bent over, with her naked behind towards him, to pick it up. Of course, he knew, by the standards of general humanity, that between his ears lay a twisted ugly mess. He was a psychopath, and he knew that his heterosexual wiring had fused with other parts of his psyche. Hence the prospect of killing a sexually attractive woman excited him in an entirely different way from how he felt about Jadris and Heilberg. Unfortunately, he could not pander to the part of himself requiring the act to be protracted. The woman must die quickly. Such a shame.

Suitably attired, and with their bowl helmets tucked under their arms, they headed out towards the ships. Again Conlan let Anna take the lead, and thus discovered that Heilberg's ship lay second from the left. They boarded, stooping through the cramped body of the vessel, which was racked out and packed with the kinds of hand tools Conlan often employed for purposes other than those intended. He smiled at a row of electric screwdrivers and remembered how it once took him many hours and many hundreds of self-tapping screws to kill one man, and the subsequent long-running joke in the Organization that if you crossed Conlan you were screwed.

In the bulbous chainglass cockpit Anna took the copilot's seat while Conlan strapped himself in where Heilberg once sat. Of course Anna's presence was for the same reasons as the spacesuits—a precautionary measure—and having little to do, she chattered. Conlan kept his replies monosyllabic so as not to offer any encouragement while they waited for their slot. Soon the two ships ahead of Heilberg's moved through the ship lock at the end of the bay, and his turn came. The maglev in the bay automatically drew the ship into the lock, the entry doors sealing behind. High-speed pumps screamed up to full function, their sound gradually receding as they removed from the lock the medium for carrying sound. The outer doors opened with a puff of residual atmosphere, and maglev, and the station's spin, threw the grabship out into vacuum. Showing confident professionalism, Conlan started the vessel's fusion engine—pointed away from the station—and made the required corrections to bring it on course for the cargo runcible.

"Is there something wrong with your hand?" Anna asked.

Difficult to hide, and her question would have been the first of many. One more task, then, for Heilberg's hand. He straightened it and chopped back hard, smashing Anna's nasal bones up into her head. She snorted a spray of blood all over the cockpit screen as she choked into silence. Conlan inspected the hand. The force of the blow had torn it from the interface clamps and it now stuck out at an odd angle from his forearm. He removed it, and replaced it with his own artificial one—glad of the return of feeling and sensitivity, for he would need all his faculties for what he intended. But before he set about preparing for that task,he unstrapped Anna from her seat and dragged her into the back. He found her presence distracting.