17

Emitting low-frequency screams, the heirodont thrashed about as the giant leech drove its mouthparts into it. One thrash of its tail had the whelk shell tumbling over into the abyss, like a disconnected diving bell. The pain for the heirodont was horrific, as the leech reamed from its body a tonne of flesh and blubber, and even chunks of the flat black bone that comprised its skeleton. In comparison the rider prill, which came scuttling in anticipation down the leech’s long slimy body, were only a minor irritation as they spread out from the predator’s head to slice off for themselves portions of skin and blubber, then squatted feasting with their little red eyes zipping constantly around their carapaces.

Vrell shifted uneasily, scraping his back legs on the deck. The adolescent Prador was feeling a strange sort of tension in his back end, under the ribbed plate that covered his rear stomach. He was also beginning to entertain thoughts about how unfair it was that he might soon die. Grinding his mandibles, he shook himself then brought his scope up to one of his eyes. There was no sign of any ships, but the relayed transmission from one of his father’s remote probes had already shown that the Convocation fleet had halted ten kilometres away. Vrell glanced at the relevant screen: all the sails had folded themselves up and there was still no movement there. The adolescent Prador turned his attention to the blank at the instrument console below the set of screens.

‘Are we still being watched?’ Vrell asked.

The blank reached up and touched one of the screens. Four black dots slid across a white background, Prador glyphs flickering and changing beside each one.

‘AG signatures still present above us,’ said the blank.

Vrell turned in agitation, his sharp legs further tearing up the already splintered deck. Speaker, her one hand gripping what remained of the port rail, turned her head towards the adolescent. ‘Father,’ Vrell said towards her. ‘The Captains have been warned off. This is evident. They are not within the blast radius. Perhaps we should abort.’

‘You wish to abort, Vrell?’ said Speaker.

‘It is hard, Father. I wish to complete my mission.’

‘Vrell, you will complete your mission. There are twenty ships out there now. When that figure reaches twenty-one, as I am sure it will, then this ship will go out to join them.’

‘The blast radius will then not include the island,’ said Vrell, flicking a look towards the Old Captain at the helm. The man was scratching at the back of his neck again. Vrell was very unsure about this, as he couldn’t remember having seen any of his father’s blanks do that. He did remember how the Captain had fought when the back of his neck had been opened for the insertion of the spider thrall, and how still he had become once it had connected. He was not so still now.

‘Correct,’ said Speaker. ‘Which is why you will go ashore.’

‘Ashore?’ Vrell flicked his attention back to Speaker.

‘Yes, detonation of the device will be initiated by this unit. You will take three other of my units to the shore with you, and complete your mission there,’ said Speaker.

On the cabin-deck, Drum continued to scratch at the back of his neck. When the Prador clattered itself around to face the shore, he paused, then really dug in with his fingers. Finally he managed to get the leverage he wanted, and he had to repress a gasp of relief as the irritant started to come out like a particularly hideous splinter. When the grey cylinder of the thrall unit thudded to the deck, waving its legs just like a dislodged spider, Drum shifted his boot to one side and crushed the thing under one heavy hobnailed sole - then kicked it under the side rail into the sea. He had turned back into position and wiped his face of expression by the time Vrell could peer up at him again.

‘When should I set out?’ the Prador adolescent asked Speaker.

‘Vrell, you will leave immediately.’

The three blanks sitting waiting by the forecabin wall abruptly rose to their feet. Vrell studied them for a long moment before turning his back towards them and squatting. He felt a weird twisting in his back end as they clambered on to his shell and took a firm hold on the rim.

Speaker snapped her attention up to Drum. ‘Hard to port and full speed,’ she said.

‘I hear and obey,’ said Drum, and spun the helm.

Speaker regarded him intently. Drum still kept his face free of expression as he opened up the throttle and the ship surged towards the distant Convocation fleet. Speaker turned back to Vrell. ‘Now, I said.’

Vrell moved to the place where he had torn the rail away while boarding, and launched himself over the side. He hit the water with a huge splash, and one of the blanks lost his grip, clawed at slick shell, and fell into the sea. Vrell observed the blank kicking at the water as he tried to recover a grip. The blank went under, came to the surface again. Grabbing the man with one claw, Vrell hauled him up and back on to the carapace. The man slid down again, but finally managed to cling on, but with his legs trailing in the sea. In the water around his legs, there started frantic movement, but his face registered no expression.

Vrell turned and sculled for the shore, and in doing so experienced a strange surge of emotion. He felt glad he was no longer on the ship. Twenty metres further away, sudden red fire flung Vrell’s shadow across the sea. He turned for a moment to see smoke gusting from the ship’s deck, needled through with bars of laser light. He turned for the shore again and sculled faster, an exhilarated but guilty feeling shuddering through his body. Perhaps if he didn’t look, he would have no reason to go back.

* * * *

Something flashed in the sky, and a projector mounted at the prow of the ship began to hum. Further laser strikes were abruptly shielded from the smouldering deck timbers. Drum tilted his head slightly and saw lights flickering above, and fast-moving shapes blackly silhouetted against the sky. That machine on the prow had to be a flat-shield projector. He lowered his gaze and observed the blank at the console tapping in instructions. The missile turret at the stern of the ship swivelled and began to cough out missiles from a spinning carousel. White fire lit the sky, and behind it flashed lines of red incandescence.

Speaker, who had been staring upwards, brought her attention down to Drum again for a moment, then across to the blank seated at the console. That blank was punching out further instructions. Speaker turned, as if jerked round, and walked over to the aft hatch. She lifted it and started to climb down. Drum grinned and pulled back on the throttle. When it didn’t move, he swore and put on more pressure - but the metal handle snapped off in his hand. He cast the handle aside, then seized hold of the rest of the control and tore it from its optic cable. The ship still did not slow.

‘Bugger,’ said Drum.

At this, the blank on the deck below him abruptly turned from the screen and picked up the weapon propped against the console. Drum swore again, and ducked as purple fire lit the air, and both the front rail and helm exploded into splinters. Lying on the cabin-deck, by what remained of the rail, Drum peered over the edge to see the blank stand up and begin moving back towards him. He had few options: diving over the side, which would lead to a slower and more painful death than that the weapon would provide - or he’d have to try for said weapon. He edged back, in readiness to fling himself down on the approaching blank, but then the back corner of the forecabin exploded and the deck he was on sagged, suddenly sliding him toward the main deck. He halted himself by bringing his feet down what remained of the helm’s column.

‘A full coring would have been a much more efficient option,’ said the blank, aiming the weapon casually from his waist. Drum realized that it did not matter how casually the weapon was aimed, as even an indirect hit would kill him.

‘You really think you can get away from here, Prador!’ Drum yelled. ‘The Warden’ll tear you apart!’

‘That will not be your concern,’ said the blank.

There were three distinct cracks followed by a low snarl. A steel staple went skittering across the smouldering deck, then something long and pink, ending in a head full of charcoaled teeth, swung out from the mast. The blank had time only to look up at a black silhouette against the burning sky. The sail bit down hard and shook. The blank’s body fell to the deck and the sail raised itself up and spat the head into the sea.

‘Good job!’ Drum yelled, sliding down the sagging roof and leaping on to the main deck.

The sail blew disgustedly through its lips, as if it didn’t like the taste of what it had just bitten off. As Drum stepped forward, it glared at him then lunged. Drum dropped down with his forearms across his face - then gradually parted them when he realized he wasn’t about to lose his head too. The sail had halted with its snout half a metre from his face. Exposing its charred teeth, it snarled at him, then tried to speak.

‘Whas my names?’ it hissed, the stub of the tongue Shib had removed waving obscenely in the back of its mouth.

‘Anything you like,’ said Drum.

‘Goods,’ said the sail. ‘You wisl caulss me Winscasher.’ The sail turned away from him and sniffed the air. ‘Thiss ships nots neesd me.’

Drum edged past the creature and took up the weapon the blank had dropped. He inspected the controls then glanced to the aft hatch. He looked then at the turret still spitting out bursts of missiles, the shield projector swivelling to intercept incoming fire, then he gazed far out to sea. At this rate, it would not take very long at all to close in on the Convocation fleet.

‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said, and pointed the weapon at the deck.

* * * *

As soon as he reached the beach Vrell shrugged the blanks from his back and inspected the scrapes made on his carapace by the questing mouths of leeches. None of them had been able to get through his armour. Vrell then turned his attention to the three blanks. One of them was lying on the sand.

‘Why is this unit not standing?’ Vrell asked, and received no reply. His father’s attention had to be concentrated elsewhere at that moment. Vrell tried not to study too closely the surge of gladness he felt at that. Deliberately not looking out to sea he concentrated his attention on the fallen blank instead, and soon ascertained the reason for the human’s difficulties: the flesh had been stripped away from the lower half of his body.

‘Follow,’ said Vrell to the other two and led them into the dingle. Had the Prador adolescent looked behind just once, he would have seen the flashes of purple fire from the Ahab, and seen the ship foundering. The blank he left behind still kept trying to stand up under the instruction of his thrall unit. Instead, his fleshless legs collapsed under him every time.

* * * *

Through the eyes of its four enforcer drones the Warden watched as they tried to get past the shield projector on the Ahab. The images it received were hazed with smoke, flashbacks, and the explosions of the missiles that the screen intercepted.

‘APW fire!’ shouted SM7.

‘Not at us, you idiot,’ SM12 replied. ‘Eight and Nine, I want you to go in low over the sea, from the rear. You may get a window opened near that missile launcher. Use rail-guns to try to put a hole in the hull.’

‘Moving in,’ replied the two SMs, and soon the Warden had a clear view of them hammering in over the sea. Something cut a huge shadow above them for a moment.

‘That’s the sail,’ said SM8, tilting in midair. The Warden froze the image it received, and would have smiled had it the ability. It flicked back to Eight as the SM opened up with its rail-gun.

For one second the stern of the ship was exploding into splinters, then a flat-shield cut between, and before this the sea turned white with repelled fire. The two SMs cut up into the sky.

‘It’s listing!’ shouted Nine happily.

‘That wasn’t you, Nine. See if you can now get underneath the ship,’ said Twelve.

The two drones arced around in the sky, then hit the sea. The Warden received sonar and ultrasound images of leeches fleeing the area like squid, then an image of the bottom of the ship like an open lantern. Its timbers were splintered and broken, and fires were burning inside.

‘You may stand down for now,’ said the Warden. ‘If the ship does not go down soon, then hit it again.’

‘What about the Prador that went ashore?’ asked Twelve.

‘Leave it,’ said the Warden. ‘I don’t think it will be going very far. Also, SM Eleven will be with you very soon, in the com relay shell, and I want you take make sure it is unharmed.’

With that, the AI cut contact and returned its full attention to those five seconds of Prador code. Already it had separated thrall code from carrier signal. The thrall code definitely had five distinct threads, which meant the adult Prador somewhere under the sea was linked to two blanks still on the ship as well as the three accompanying the adolescent Prador.

‘SM Eleven,’ the Warden sent. ‘Here is the carrier signal. Trace and connect.’

Eleven, still decelerating into atmosphere, opened out its wings and extruded instrument pods and signal dishes. It was utterly without weaponry, its domain solely being that of communication and information.

‘Tracing underspace signal. Connected and decoded. Tunnelling link establishing . . . established,’ said Eleven.

‘Stand ready,’ said the Warden as it applied the full quarter of the processing power it was using to the carrier signal code alone. The signal separated into two strands almost immediately: send and return.

‘SM Eleven, here is your decoder program.’ It took a full second for the Warden to transmit the program. ‘Now, I want you to boost the return signal one hundred per cent. If it looks to be fading into shut-off, I want you to increase power and maintain at that level.’

‘Initiating,’ said SM11.

* * * *

Ebulan crashed against the wall of his chamber, then over-corrected with AG and slammed against the ceiling. He sent the shut-off code; the return signal started to fade, but then quickly reinstated. The signal wouldn’t stop coming in, and was far too powerful: one blank decapitated yet still broadcasting, one burnt and drowning, and another with the flesh stripped from half his body. Ebulan had never known such pain. He tried to tear the control interface boxes from his body, and the stumps where once he’d had legs shifted and quivered. He could do nothing for himself. In panic, he sent a signal that summoned his ten remaining blanks. He had to get these boxes off himself now.

The human blanks entered the chamber, moving unsteadily under the impetus of Ebulan’s erratic control. Under his instruction, two of the blanks came forward bearing shell cutters. He had one of them set to work on the box that controlled the blank abandoned on the beach, which was still trying vainly to stand. The shell cutter penetrated too deep and Ebulan jerked forward, pushing the blank holding it up against the wall and pinching him in half with the scalloped rim of his shell.

No pain. The return signal, from the blank he had just cut in half, immediately shut off. Ebulan backed away from the two quivering halves of what had once, centuries ago, been a human being. It had to be something affecting the return signal from outside, not a fault in the control boxes. . . . No, no that was impossible: the codes were quite simply unbreakable. Ebulan dispelled that aberrant thought and concentrated on controlling a second blank. This one carefully sliced down between control boxes and Ebulan’s shell, severing the filament links into the Prador’s nervous system. When, at one point, the blank cut deep, Ebulan bore this comparatively small pain without reaction and began, in his opinion, to think more clearly.

Ebulan stopped the blank when it came to the fifth box, and ground his mandibles as he bore the continuing pain from that box. All things in their time and place. He concentrated all his attention through that same box: seared skin in salt water . . . the continuous sensation of drowning as the body filled with virus fibres adapted to extracting oxygen from water . . . the hits of leeches coming in through the burn holes in the hull and the hatch . . . Ebulan elicited some movement from Speaker by having her open her one remaining eye. Too dark. He had her turn herself in the water-filled hold, sculling with her one remaining arm. It took a nightmare time for the display lights from the motor to come into view. He had her pull herself towards it, to grab the cowling and, bracing herself against the side of the ship, tear the cowling away to expose the blinking detonator. Leaving a delayed instruction in her thrall unit, he withdrew from her, then had the blank holding the shell cutter remove her control box too. Now to deal with the source of his pain.

Traitors. There were traitors on board his spaceship. Not the blanks, of course, as they could no more betray him than could one of the ship’s engines. He turned in midair to observe the nine remaining blanks, then instructed them to return to their stations. One after another, they filed from the chamber and the doors slid shut behind them. Through their eyes, he saw that everything outside appeared to be as it should. Ebulan bubbled and hissed.

At any other time Vrell would have had to be his prime suspect. But Vrell was not here now, and it would have been foolish for the adolescent to initiate an attack of which he could not take advantage. And Vrell was not that stupid. In fact, Ebulan had only recently put off killing the adolescent, for despite his imminent translation into adulthood Vrell had always proved very efficient and useful. Perhaps, though, the attack had indeed been planned by Vrell - and was carried out prematurely by the adolescent’s accomplices.

‘Second-children, come to me,’ said Ebulan to the air. Lights flickered in the stone-effect surface of the wall to tell him his summons had been acknowledged. After noting this, he moved over to one side of the chamber to study a cluster of hexagonal wall screens, all of them showing only white haze. He disconnected one of his control boxes to link through. As he did so, two of the screens lit up displaying scenes across atolls and open sea.

‘War drones,’ he ordered, ‘head for the island. Attack all my enemies. Do not cease till you destroy them all.’

‘We will kill the old drone,’ one of them promised.

‘As you will, but you will not return.’

A message began coming back, but Ebulan disconnected. The screens began to white-out, but he kept his attention fixed on them as the chamber’s sliding doors reopened and numerous hard sharp legs clattered on the flooring. As the doors shut, he slowly turned.

‘Second-children,’ he greeted the four adolescent Prador arrayed on the opposite side of the room - then he turned slightly towards the doors. There came two loud clumps as their locking systems engaged.

‘Father, what do you want of us?’ asked one of the second-children, slightly larger than the rest.

Ebulan’s AG hummed as he tilted and slid forwards rapidly. The four of them scattered, but he pinioned two of them against the wall. They both let out a siren wail as he rammed his huge carapace into them. One after the other, their shells collapsed with a dull liquid thud, their wailing died off in hissing gurgles. Ebulan now levelled and backed off, with pieces of broken shell and ichor clinging to his scalloped rim. He slowly turned to the other two, who were scrabbling desperately at the door.

‘There is no escape for traitors,’ he said.

‘We did nothing! It wasn’t us!’ the two screamed together.

Ebulan slid towards them. He’d catch one of them in his mandibles this time. It had been a while since he had tasted juvenile flesh.

* * * *

The blank with fleshless legs tried standing yet again, and fell over yet again. A shadow passed over him, but he was oblivious to it as he tried to rise for perhaps the fiftieth time. As the shadow passed over him a second time, he was jerked into the air with a snapping crunch. This time he collapsed to the sand minus his head, and did not try to get up again.

After it had crunched a couple of times more and spat out a mess of bone, flesh, and thrall unit, the sail dropped the Captain on the beach.

‘Thanks!’ Drum yelled as the sail’s wings took it booming off over the island. Turning his attention to the hideously mutilated corpse on the sand, he aimed the weapon he had brought, and fired at it once. Violet fire flashed with a sucking boom, and Drum staggered back. When his vision cleared, he found that all that remained of the blank were scattered fragments of burning flesh, and a quickly dispersing cloud of oily smoke. Thoughtfully he adjusted a slide control on the side of his weapon then turned to look out to sea.

The Ahab was completely gone. The ship he had sailed on for a hundred and fifty years, and owned for a hundred of those, was now a wreck at the bottom of the sea, and soon, he knew from all he’d overheard, it would be less even than that.

‘Payback time,’ he muttered, and, as if in reply to this threat, a giant flashbulb went off under the sea and the beach shifted.

‘Shit,’ said Drum, as before him the water began to bulge. Then the bulb went off again, and for a few seconds the sea turned red as far as the horizon. He turned and ran into the dingle.

Their trail ahead was easy to follow, as inevitably the Prador had flattened foliage as it progressed. Drum leapt a broken tree and kept moving as fast as he could. From behind him now came a deep rumbling, and he felt further tremors. Leeches fell from the trees and he snatched them off as he ran on. Ahead of him, the dingle began to thin and he was relieved to see the ground sloping upwards. The tremors now settled to a deep and continuous vibration. Drum emerged from under the trees just as an explosive wind struck. It hurled him on his face in spherule grass, while it blasted leaves and branches and even leeches past him. The force of the wind even slid him further along the ground.

As it began to ease off, he stood again and ran up the slope, slipping and sliding on the broken grass. As he reached the brow of the hill, the wave hit.

The flood climbed the beach and flattened the dingle. To one side Drum saw a ship flung inland that he instantly recognized as the Treader. He wasn’t high enough for safety, yet there was nowhere to run now but down the other side. A two-metre-deep torrent of seawater caught him halfway down the far slope and tumbled him the rest of the way. For a moment, he was tempted to release hold of his weapon and swim for it. Instead, he curled himself in a ball around it, and let the flood take him.

* * * *

‘What the hell was that?’ said Janer. ‘This a volcanic island?’

Peck managed just a bubbling sound, his broken bones moving about under his skin. The Captains, Ambel and Ron, both watched as the lights faded from the sky, then Ambel made another attempt at relocating Ron’s dislocated shoulder. It finally slid into place with a muted thud.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Ron, wincing and rubbing at his injured joint. ‘But we got problems enough of our own.’ He went over to his machete and gingerly picked it up. Inspecting its sprine-coated edge, he nodded with satisfaction.

‘What about you?’ Ambel asked Peck loudly, as if talking to someone hard of hearing.

In his bed of foliage Peck tried to nod in response, then stopped immediately when the bones in his neck crunched. He sat upright and reached to straighten his jawbone while Janer tried not to turn the other way. There was something really macabre about watching someone with so many broken bones still move about. After he’d finished prodding his numerous fractures, Peck used his shotgun as a crutch to pull himself to his feet. Both his arms and one leg had not been broken: that was the best that could be said for his injuries.

‘Good lad,’ said Ambel, patting him carefully on the shoulder.

Peck tried nodding again, and pointed back the way they had come.

‘We’ll be back when we’ve seen the bugger dead,’ promised Ambel. ‘I’ll bring you a souvenir.’

‘We’re going after it?’ asked Janer.

‘Too right,’ said Ron.

‘But it’s been poisoned with sprine,’ said Janer.

‘Didn’t seem in a hurry to die though, did it?’ said Ambel.

Ambel and Ron headed for the entrance to the garden. Janer looked at Peck, who waved at him to follow them. At the entrance, he glanced back and saw Peck begin his limping progress back out of the Hoophold. Beyond the garden, Ambel took the lead, and Janer wondered what to make of that. Did the Old Captain remember something of his own time here?

Shortly, the three came round to the other side of the wall over which the Skinner had scrambled. From there, its further course was only too obvious. It had ripped right through another wall into a courtyard, on the other side of which was a high tunnel leading straight into the thick dingle. By Janer’s estimation, they were now on the opposite side of the Hoophold to where they had entered. He followed Ambel and Ron through the tunnel to where the Skinner had opened a path of destruction through the dingle itself.

‘Should be easy enough to follow him now,’ said Ambel.

Ron gave him a look, but reserved comment as they moved on in.

* * * *

Vrell watched the flood subsiding in the dingle, then shifted his attention in the opposite direction. The island was large but that did not matter. Vrell had all the time he needed to track down the four of them: Frisk, Balem, Ron and Hoop. No one would be coming to rescue them, now that the Old Captains were all dead. Vrell began to contemplate his dismal future. If he did not get killed during this hunt, then he must kill himself so as not to become a danger to his father. This seemed his only option, though at that moment Vrell was beginning to wonder why his father could not come and rescue him. Having been separate from the normal domination of his father’s pheromones for some days, Vrell was even beginning to have thoughts he had never entertained before, and to brood somewhat more about the fairness of things. He also could not help thinking about his harem mothers, and that too elicited some strange feelings. On top of everything else, his back pair of legs felt loose. Perhaps it was these upsets to his equilibrium that made Vrell less observant.

The blank did not scream. The only sounds made were a huffing expulsion of air and then an oily cracking as he staggered, burning, back towards the dingle. Vrell crashed away through foliage to seek cover, and looking back realized that the other blank had not moved. It was clear that his father had not yet resumed contact, so he himself must give verbal instructions to the idiot thrall unit.

‘Take cover and return fire,’ Vrell grated.

As the blank turned at last to leap into the dingle, the beam of antiphotons struck him in the back. The two burning halves of him were all that reached cover.

‘We’re gonna have a barbecue, Prador!’ yelled Drum.

Immediately to Vrell’s left, a peartrunk tree exploded into burning slivers. Using his manipulatory hands Vrell drew four different weapons simultaneously. As he backed deeper into the dingle he felt the weirdly pleasurable sensation of one of his back legs breaking off. He aimed one of the weapons, depressed a trigger, and swept the weapon back and forth. Explosions tore apart the dingle below, and the sound of needle shrapnel hitting trees became a drawn-out high-pitched shriek. Trees and branches fell all around. Vrell next opened up with a heavy QC laser that sent flashes of red shooting through the ruined trees and set fires burning everywhere.

‘Missed!’ shouted Drum. ‘But I won’t.’

The antiphoton burst struck Vrell’s side and tipped him over. One of his main claws burst open, spraying steaming flesh all about. He lost two hands and the weapons they held - one of them the shrapnel rail-gun. Vrell uttered a shrieking gobbling sound and backed away at high speed from the searing heat. The antiphoton blast had burnt out two of his eyes and cracked his carapace. At that moment his remaining back leg dropped off and he abruptly made the transition from adolescent to adult. With this sudden transformation came a new set of imperatives: the first of them survival.

On his four remaining, though unsteady legs, Vrell turned and ran.

* * * *

Because of the ground’s vibration, Keech had steadied himself against a tree, but wished he hadn’t when a leech the size of his arm dropped on his head and coiled round his neck. He reached up and caught hold of its front end just as its questing mouth tried to take his ear off. Wrenching it away in disgust he hurled the leech to the ground then, knocking down the setting on his APW, he fired at the foul creature. The leech disappeared as the ground erupted in a purple blaze that threw up a wall of debris and hurled all three men backwards. The sound of the explosion echoed through the dingle.

‘It’s stopped,’ observed Keech, flinging a smouldering branch from across his chest, and standing up.

‘What?’ said Boris, sitting up and gazing about with a slightly stunned expression. After a moment, he located the SM and rested his hand on it.

‘The shaking, the ground’s stopped shaking,’ explained Keech.

‘Yeah,’ said Roach. ‘And didn’t you say something earlier about that damn gun’s settings being screwed?’

Keech flashed him a look of annoyance then turned to Boris. ‘You OK?’

Boris pulled a sliver of wood from his shoulder, then nodded. He stooped and picked up SM13 and carefully brushed ash out of the ribbed pattern of the machine’s casing. At that moment light flashed in the sky, then the sky darkened. Clouds like bruises swirled overhead, then were dragged into lines.

‘Some kind of explosion - probably Prador weapons,’ Keech observed as he moved on.

He’d gone perhaps ten paces when the same piglike shriek they had heard earlier came from ahead of him, accompanied by the sound of something crashing through the dingle.

‘It’s all happenin’ now,’ muttered Roach, as he and Boris came up behind Keech.

Tracking the noisy progress of whatever it was out there, Keech then moved on again.

Shortly they came to the path recently broken through the dingle. Here peartrunk trees had been pushed aside and discarded branches crushed flat. Keech glanced both ways along it, then turned to the others.

‘What is that?’ he asked flatly.

Roach just could not prevent himself looking sneaky, while Boris stared at the ground like a guilty schoolboy.

Keech went on, ‘It’s the Skinner, isn’t it?’

Boris mumbled something.

‘What?’ Keech snapped.

‘The Skinner,’ Boris explained. ‘Reckon it found its body, then someone else found it.’

‘Hoop? . . . They’re killing Hoop?’

‘I reckon.’

Keech glared at the both of them, then turned into the path heading in the direction from which those squeals had come. Boris plodded after him without comment. Roach looked rebellious for a moment, then sighed and followed as well. They walked with more caution now, because of leeches in the crushed foliage, but even more because of what they were following. Ahead of them, they heard that squealing yet again, and all three of them halted. Keech stared at the settings on his weapon for a moment. He was just about to continue along the path, when Roach caught his shoulder.

‘Someone comin’,’ the crewman warned.

Keech gestured off to one side, and the three of them quickly moved into the shade of a tilted pear-trunk tree. Three other people soon appeared on the track behind them.

‘That you I see sneaking about in there, Roach?’ said Captain Ron.

‘It weren’t my fault,’ said Roach.

Keech stood up and stepped into the open. Janer momentarily followed him with the raised snout of his laser, then guiltily lowered it.

‘Seen any Skinners hereabouts?’ asked Ron.

Keech looked at him sharply.

‘Can’t miss him,’ continued Ron. ‘Big blue fella even uglier than Roach, and thoroughly pissed off. He went this way.’

Keech glanced farther up the track they had been following. He gave a grim smile. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

* * * *

Sniper scanned the atolls lying far to the right of him, and tried once again to get a signal through.

‘Hey, Warden! What the hell are you doing?’

This time - the first time in many minutes - the Warden replied. ‘What I am doing, Sniper, is decoding a Prador thrall-controller-code, and I would be thankful if there were no more interruptions.’

‘What about us?’ Sniper asked.

‘Head for the island, and take over there from Twelve. This is not yet finished,’ the Warden replied, then disconnected.

‘You hear that? We’ve got to go and take over from Twelve,’ spat Sniper, who always started to get a little tetchy when he didn’t have anything convenient to blow up.

‘Wonderful,’ said Two, who was developing a definite sarcastic mien.

‘Right on,’ said One, who was still a bit wobbly since receiving the Prador rail-gun hits.

Six never even got a chance to reply, as an explosion knocked it tumbling off course, then a second missile blew it into red-hot scrap.

‘Scatter!’

One enforcer drone shot into the sky and two planed out to the left. Sniper went right, heading for the atolls. On his cleaned-up radar return, he got nothing for a moment, then the two Prador war drones shot up out of the sea and, ignoring the two enforcers, both came after him.

‘Great,’ Sniper muttered, then sent to them, ‘Why don’t you go play hopscotch on a black hole?’

The Prador replied with two missiles each.

‘Touchy,’ Sniper sent - abruptly changing direction and leaving a cloud of chaff behind him. The missiles went through the chaff, swung round, and zeroed in on him again. Sniper shot up higher and released a cluster of little parachute mines. These mines perfectly intersected the course of the missiles as they changed direction. Two of the missiles blew and one went tumbling off course, corrected, then shot back towards the explosion of the others. It, too, detonated shortly after.

‘Mmm, heat-seeking.’

Sniper arced over and accelerated towards the atolls, with the remaining missile closing in. He went low to the surface and headed straight in for one of the atolls. The missile meanwhile drew closer and closer. At the last moment, Sniper shut off his fusion engine and dropped straight down into the sea. The missile went over him and, with its sensors confused by the sudden disappearance of the heat source it was pursuing, did not correct in time and slammed straight into the atoll.

Submerged in the shallow water, close to the atoll’s narrow beach, Sniper raised his antennae and scanned. The two Prador drones were still heading right for where he had gone in.

‘Right, how you gonna get out of this one, big shot?’ Sniper muttered to himself. Still in the water he hurriedly altered programs and fed them into his smart missiles. That Prador missile that had tumbled away had given him a bit of an idea. As the Prador drones drew closer, he shot up into the air, paused for half a second, then fired off four missiles. One missile hit a screen and exploded, one exploded under rail-gun fire, the remaining two simply tumbled away - and the Prador came hammering on in. Sniper accelerated for the atoll, then was knocked sideways as rail-gun fire was trained on him. He felt his plates buckling and a couple of his legs fell away. Turning in midair, he opened up with his APW - a short burst only as there was little power left in the laminar batteries. One of the Prador swerved out of the way, but the other continued in for the kill.

Sniper accelerated straight towards it. ‘Well, I’ll take you with me, fucker!’ he sent.

The Prador extended its screen in front, but a second after, Sniper’s two missiles - which had now corrected from their tumble - hit it from behind. It still came on, its armour distorted, its screen out, and its engine powering intermittently. Sniper hit it with his APW, then swooped over the top of it as it hurtled towards the sea, a burnt-out shell.

‘You gotta watch that upswing!’ Sniper sent, but had no time to feel satisfaction when another two missiles swung abruptly up from the sea towards him. Again he changed course, curving down towards the atolls. The second Prador came hurtling towards him just above the waves. Sniper aimed himself at one of the atolls, firing off another three missiles. The atoll erupted in a fountain of broken coral, just prior to him flying straight into it. He shot out of the other side of this, trailing dust clouds and leaving two explosions behind him, then turned back towards the approaching Prador. As he fired his APW, violet fire hazed the air between them, terminating on a disk like a white-hot coin - the Prador’s projected shield. The disk went out, and the fire extinguished shortly after. Both drones fired missiles and opened up with their rail-guns. Two of Sniper’s missiles blew in between, but a third took a curve and came at the Prador from the side. After the explosion, Sniper had the satisfaction of seeing the drone lurch through the air, with a split opened in its armour - then the missile he had overlooked came up underneath him and exploded.

‘Oh bollocks,’ groaned the war drone, as he tumbled through the air. His APW was out, and though he still had missiles to launch, they could not get past the molten metal blocking his launch tubes - the same mess that had also scrapped his rail-gun. It was all academic really, as he had little chance of staying airborne for any length of time, with his AG gone as well. Intermittently he spotted the Prador war drone ahead of him. At least it seemed to be having as much trouble as he was. One last chance? Sniper fired his fusion engine at a precisely timed instant, opened out what remained of his legs, and slammed himself into the other drone. Immediately the Prador accelerated and rolled, trying to shake him off.

‘Y’know,’ said Sniper, ‘when the going gets tough . . .’ And with that he plunged his heavy claw through the split in the Prador’s armour. Its only reply to him was a thin screaming over the ether as it fell towards one of the atolls below.

* * * *

‘Sniper . . . Sniper?’ the Warden sent - and didn’t even get back a return signature. ‘SMs One and Two, what happened?’

There was an equivocal humming over the ether before a response came through.

‘Sniper had a run-in with two Prador war drones. We can’t find him,’ explained Two.

‘Yeah, he sure stuffed ‘em,’ added One.

‘But it seems they stuffed him also,’ Two then pointed out and, so saying, transmitted a replay of what it had captured and recorded of Sniper’s last moments.

Stubborn to the end, thought the Warden. In such a crisis Sniper could have linked through and transmitted himself, all of himself. But Sniper had preferred to remain individual, had not wanted to be subsumed. And so, the Warden thought, he is gone in heroic battle. What a waste, and what a disappointment - the Warden had been quite attracted to the idea of changing Sniper.

‘One and Two, join your brother drones off the Skinner’s Island,’ instructed the Warden, and then linked through to Twelve. ‘Twelve, I want you down in that trench, searching for this Prador vessel. We still don’t know quite what we are up against.’

‘On my way,’ sent Twelve.

* * * *

There were no probes in the area, so Ebulan dispatched the nearest one of them available. This same probe - built in the shape of a small Prador, with thrusters shell-welded underneath - burst from the sargassum where it had been squatting and rocketed up into the sky, then went hypersonic for twenty seconds before shutting down its thrusters and coasting to the edge of the tsunami. To Ebulan it returned an image of the fleet of ships riding the swells behind the initial huge wave, their sails belled to bursting. Maybe one or two of them had been sunk, but no more - the CTD concealed inside the Ahab had not been close enough to cause any real damage. The probe then transmitted back the information that objects were now approaching it at hypersonic speeds. This transmission was abruptly curtailed as the probe became an incandescent cloud of metal vapour.

Ebulan crashed around his chamber, in increasing anger, and it was some time before he could think clearly again. Vrell would soon be in the process of making the change, so would be useless to him now. The pheromones that kept a fully limbed Prador in a state of adolescence until the father of the family died were not present where the adolescent now was, and because the ‘change’ had been suppressed in it for so long, Vrell would make the transformation to adulthood very quickly.

The blanks out there might still be of some use if he dared reconnect their control boxes, but he did not. He did not want again to risk feeling the pain from their bodies. They never felt it as, though having nervous systems, they had no brains to understand the signals from them - he was the one with the brain. Their thrall units were the nearest things they possessed to intelligence, and those devices merely translated verbal orders to action, or acted as the interface between the blank’s nervous system and its controlling Prador mind.

No blanks, no Vrell, and no second-children either. Perhaps the war drones, then? Ebulan spun round and slid up to his array of screens. He used the control box of the blank he had cut in half earlier to try to link through. The whited-out screens threw up nothing but static. The drones had to be all dead?

It was painful to Ebulan to admit to himself that he no longer had any control over this situation, and therefore it might be time to pull out. The thought of doing so left an unpleasant taste in his mouth - like too-fresh human meat - and was just as upsetting to his digestion. What other options were there? He considered the armament carried by his ship. A brief flight and a sweep or two by the particle beams, perhaps a CTD for the island itself, and all who had any direct knowledge of his involvement in the coring trade would become so much airborne ash. All the forms of information storage that the humans so valued were as nothing to the Prador. Only living witnesses counted to them. Ebulan then pondered the consequences of such actions.

The Warden would certainly attack . . . but was that such a problem? The Warden, though it controlled formidable devices, could not move away from the moon. Its SMs, though they could destroy Ebulan’s war drones - something Ebulan still could not quite get to grips with, as he’d assumed there were only enforcer drones here - stood no chance of getting through this war craft’s armour, nor of surviving assault by its weapons. How formidable exactly were the weapons the Warden controlled? And would they prove so effective with a planet in between? Also, though there would still be living witnesses to his proposed actions, all they would truly witness would be an anonymous attack by a Prador destroyer. No one had yet seen Ebulan himself, as they had in the old days when he came here each Spatterjay year to collect his cargo of cored humans.

The more Ebulan thought about it, the more attractive the case for attacking seemed. It started hormones and juices surging in him that had not flowed for the last thousand years - as they had once done in that time when he still possessed all his legs and a scattering of arms. That Prador medical science had long established such feelings as the first signs of senility, he did not even stop to consider.