18

Managing to turn itself far enough round to get hold of the leech with its mandibles, the heirodont brought mounds of slimy flesh up to its mouth and bit down. This, though, was still not enough to prevent the leech feeding. The prill now fleeing from the body of the heirodont, signified that the leech was about to detach, which it did, leaving in its victim’s side a huge round hole that might have been neat but for the broken bone and ballooning out of ripped organs. Too weak now to maintain its own hold on the leech, the heirodont released it, and dropped into the depths, trailing a new cloud of ichor and chyme. Down it went, its body compressing, and the outflow of vital fluids slowly decreasing, but not sufficiently to prevent a drop in pressure in its brain. Recovering consciousness only when it hit the bottom, it found itself surrounded by a mob of the giant whelks upon which it normally fed, they having come to investigate the emptied shell of one of their comrades. Its low-frequency screams then echoed through the depths as this mob squared away what they felt were certain . . . inequities.

Erlin was wondering how much longer she, and Anne, had to live. Shortly Frisk and her pet Batians would start to consider them a hindrance rather than useful hostages. As soon as that time came there would be no hesitation to kill them. The Batians would do it with workmanlike precision. It was what they were employed for, after all. Frisk, however, would do it with great enjoyment, and probably as slowly and painfully as possible. Erlin had enough judgement of people to recognize a raving psychopath.

‘Halt here,’ ordered Svan.

As she and Anne stopped in the centre of the courtyard, Erlin could see the crew-woman working her wrists against the cable-cuffs securing her hands behind her back. She thought to warn her of the futility of trying to break woven ceraplast, but changed her mind - she did not know, after all, how old Anne was - and instead looked away to survey her surroundings.

It was impossible for Erlin not to think about what had once happened here: the horror of it all. A thousand years ago, Jay Hoop and his crew of pirates had landed on this island to establish a permanent cache of arms and loot. At one time or another, all of them had been bitten by the leeches and to their surprise subsequently discovered that they did not grow old and die, but while growing older, were becoming stronger and more resistant to injury. With the confidence this imparted, for centuries they had terrorized the quadrant, using this planet - named Spatterjay, after Jay Hoop’s nickname - as their base. Then had come the Prador, and the war, and . . .

A distant horrid shrieking distracted Erlin from her rumination. She looked around and saw Frisk move over to one side of the courtyard, and then pace along it.

‘We’ll go this way,’ she gestured to a door in the wall. ‘I’ll lead.’ She pointed at Erlin and Anne, ‘You two follow me.’

The two captives crossed the courtyard and began to trail Frisk through the warren of dank corridors, past rooms scattered with such objects as could survive seven centuries of rot and decay. On the floors lay items of ceramal and glass, silicon and artificial gemstone. Remaining from personal units, comps, and the many other devices carried by the citizens of the Polity seven hundred years ago, were the practically indestructible chips - the metals and plastic long having corroded and decayed to dust. There were also ornaments and storage crystals, visors from soldier’s helmets, diverse items of ceramal armour. Erlin was thoroughly aware that these objects were things once carried by Hoop’s captives - things that during the war became of least value to Hoop and his crew. They had wanted the persons who wore them.

Frisk led them further through the Hold till they reached a high tunnel on the other side. Beyond the tunnel mouth, the dingle was crushed and flattened.

‘Svan, go and check for tracks,’ called Frisk.

Svan trotted past them, sped through the tunnel, and began to examine the soft ground beyond. Frisk looked back at her two prisoners and grinned.

What figure had Keech once quoted? Ten million. Ten million humans cored here during the Prador-Human war. And this woman had been one of the murderers. Erlin now knew what Keech had meant when he had predicted Frisk would no longer have the face by which he had known her. The thought of it sickened her.

‘They did come through here, but there’s some sort of animal footprint as well,’ called out Svan.

With a smirk Frisk followed her into the tunnel. Anne and Erlin remained where they were, until Shib barked at them to get moving too. Through the tunnel and out into the dingle, Svan walked ahead and Frisk shifted to one side. Erlin reflected about how she herself had come here to learn from Ambel how to live - but now it seemed she had in fact come here to die. She turned suddenly when she heard a horrible high-pitched scream behind her.

The mercenary, Shib, had made the mistake of brushing against a tree. He was now wearing a leech like a feather boa, and seemed unable to overcome his disgust enough to grab it and throw it away. The creature flowed round his neck, and drove its mouth in against his cheek. Even now the mercenary could not react.

Svan ran past Erlin and grabbed at the leech. With a yank, she tore it from his face and flung it to the ground. Shib still stood there, keening, a circle of flesh missing from his cheek, his teeth now exposed underneath. Svan backhanded him across the other side of his face, once, twice, knocking him to the ground. The keening suddenly stopped.

‘Get up.’

Shib slowly rose to his feet: shame, fear and madness fighting for predominance in his expression.

‘Keep moving you two,’ said Svan, heading back to lead the way. Erlin thought her insane to leave this humiliated man at her back. When Shib drew his hand laser she assumed he was going to burn a hole through Svan’s back. Instead, he incinerated the leech, and reholstered the laser.

‘Get a move on,’ he snarled at her.

* * * *

SM12’s cockle-shell body was of an extremely rugged construction: its outer shells formed of centimetre-thick foamed steel, and its internal components braced in a ceramal-composite lattice, but even so it knew that the pressure a kilometre down would collapse it as easily as a snail in a vice, if it did not prepare. Floating on the surface, Twelve folded away its single laser, then using an internal system pumped crash foam at high pressure into all its internal cavities. Next with its shells slightly open, it turned off its AG and sank like the lump of metal it was.

Five hundred metres down Twelve observed with interest one of the herbivorous deep-water heirodonts cruising past, the leeches on its body turned to strands by the pressure. The creature resembled a truncated whale, its face, however, just a wall of feeding sieves; its body short and roped with muscle, studded with round fins, and terminating in a wide vertically presented tail. It suddenly dived when it was past the SM and, as it went rapidly down, the leeches clinging to its skin began to break away. A little relief it would find in the depths, before having to return upwards to feed and be fed upon.

Twelve followed it down, the drone’s crash foam collapsing into a thick hard layer around its internal components. The substance offered some protection, but the SM knew that some parts of itself would inevitably get damaged. Essential components, however, would be fine, being constructed on the whole of hard silicon composites and foamed ceramal.

Seven hundred metres down, and the SM’s self-diagnostic program told it that a reflective cylinder in its laser had cracked. Twelve had expected this to happen, as there was no way of injecting crash foam, or even admitting seawater, into the cavity within the cylinder - and to do so would have screwed the optical perfection of the system anyway. The rate of its descent was also slowing in proportion as the density of the water increased. The drone dared not reverse its AG to pull itself down faster, as that would be too easily detected. Shortly it passed the heirodont, which was now thinner than it had been above, the water having compressed it too. The creature’s eyes glimmered from their pits as it turned and sculled hesitantly towards Twelve, but the drone was well past it before it could decide if this strange-looking object was animal or vegetable.

Now it was getting colder, and dark enough to necessitate Twelve switching from visual to low-intensity sonar, changing the emitted signal at random so that nothing constant could be detected. The Prador vessel lurking down here somewhere would be sure to have some kind of detection equipment out. A thousand metres down, and the lip of the trench finally came into sight. But Twelve did not bother to alter its course as it hit solid rock and, in a spray of silt, bounced over the edge. Using water jets, it corrected its tumble and studied the cliff face it was falling past. Down here, in weedy crevices, were whelks as big as houses riding on spreads of flat white tentacles; odd, diamond-shaped jellyfish adhered to clear surfaces, giving some expanses of rock the appearance of one great scaled beast; and long blue glisters hunting bulbous boxies that might easily be mistaken for soap bubbles. All very interesting, but all recorded and on file up on Coram. Twelve focused its attention downward, as the bottom of the trench floated up to meet it. It bounced in a cloud of silt and razor-thin shell fragments, then with great care extended the range of its sonic scans.

Nothing - nothing within range at least - but there was still plenty of the trench to search for it was many kilometres long. Twelve chose one direction at random, and with a blast of water propelled itself that way. Even before it properly got going, it noticed that one very regularly shaped boulder to its right was returning an odd signal. It risked a change in frequency and got an immediate result: the boulder was hollow. It had found the Prador ship already! But, no, that couldn’t be right; this object was much too small to contain an adult Prador. With care, Twelve moved in closer and closer to it then settled to rest on the bottom. A feeling almost like frustration came over it when it realized that nearly half of its scanning signals were now coming back to it with the same odd reverberation as had come from the unknown object. With chagrin, it admitted to itself that the pressure must have damaged its sonar. Unless . . .

In its cortex, SM12 mapped the shape of the boulder and compared it to images of Prador ships it had kept stored in a history file. This object was a flattened ovoid with one end seemingly sheared off. It therefore did not match the shape of any of the ships in Twelve’s file. However, it did match part of one. Twelve shot up from the bottom as it realized what it had found was a weapons turret, and that what it had just been resting on was not the bottom of the trench. Jetting higher, it scanned right across what it had landed upon.

‘Fuck,’ said SM12, who - unlike Thirteen and Sniper - was not normally given to profanity.

* * * *

The flood had turned the ground into a soft morass, and made it easy to dig himself in. Vrell remained utterly motionless as the mad human yelled and stomped about.

‘Come out, come out wherever you are!’ Drum yelled.

Antiphoton fire suddenly incinerated a tree only a few metres to Vrell’s right, dropping burning cinders on the ground all around the eye he had folded upwards from his visual turret. He slowly turned that eye and observed the human drawing closer, as he inspected the muddy ground.

‘Fucking Prador,’ growled Drum.

Vrell assumed this anger must be directed at him personally because he had been the one who had installed the thrall unit in this particular human. Didn’t this Drum understand that Vrell was only obeying orders? Vrell watched the human’s antics some more, while slowly sinking his eye deeper into the concealing mud. Soon the human would be right on top of him. What would he do then? A few hours ago, he would have leapt out of this muddy hide and blasted away with his weapons, but now . . . what if he missed? The human could kill him. Vrell felt terrified. Deep inside himself, he felt a certainty that violence was meant for others. His own task now involved frequent use of the complicated organ exposed by the shedding of his two back legs - the organ he now squatted protectively over.

The human came forward, till he stood right at the edge of the morass. He first tested it with his foot then put weight on that foot. Vrell remained utterly motionless as the foot trod down on his carapace. He observed Drum scratching his head, then slowly revolved his muddy eye as Drum walked right across the Prador’s back and off on to the boggy ground beyond. Once the Captain was out of sight Vrell shifted slightly, and again considered making his escape. On the other hand, Drum had not detected him here. Vrell decided to stay buried for a while longer.

* * * *

Captain Sprage stood on the main deck of the Vengeance_s his thumbs tucked into his thick leather belt and his pipe tucked into the corner of his mouth. He seemed oblivious to the bucking of his ship as it rode the swell, but stood there firmly, almost as if his feet were nailed to the deck. He observed that the waves were decreasing now, and the main danger was past. Surprisingly, there had not been that much danger. Yes, that first immense wave had sunk the Bogus and the Rull, but captains Jester and Orlando had survived their dunking in the sea, along with all of their two crews. The irony was that the undersea explosion causing the wave had also affected just about every sea creature in the area. Sprage pulled his pipe from his mouth and studied the leeches and glisters floating on the surface. He had counted fifteen different varieties of whelk, and noted that the underwater shock had broken open prill and that many were floating dead on the surface. He even noted some forms of life he’d never seen before: deep-bottom dwellers that had swollen into grotesque giant shapes on ascending to the surface. None of these creatures showed signs of recovering.

‘How come none of ‘em are reviving?’ he asked generally.

Windcheater lifted his head from the deck and peered over the side. Sprage took a furtive glance at the creature’s metal aug and wondered if that was the reason for the sail’s need to interfere with the status quo. On the other hand it had probably been bolshy long before, else why would it have acquired an aug in the first place? After a long hard look overboard, Windcheater swung his head round and up to the deck.

‘The hyper-shock has caused major cellular disruption. The EM burst killed between eighty to ninety-five per cent of the viral fibres. The combination of these two has taken each life-system beyond chance of recovery,’ said the sail with extremely uncharacteristic precision.

‘What about us, then?’ asked Sprage, scratching at his sideburns.

From where she was leaning on the rail, Tay turned and glanced towards the sail as Windcheater’s eyes crossed. Tay said, ‘You ran that last one through a weapons-site learning program. I suggest you try the Warden for your next answer.’

Windcheater uncrossed his eyes, tilted his head for a moment, and then parroted, ‘The hyper-shock only affected creatures in the water, and the EM burst was considerably damped by the dense wood of your ship’s hulls. The Warden estimates that any of the EM burst that did get through will have killed less than ten per cent of the viral fibres in your bodies.’

‘Beneficial, then,’ said Sprage, putting his pipe back in his mouth with a solid click.

‘Signal from the Pumice!’ yelled Lember from the nest.

Sprage took the small metal cylinder that Tay had given him, out of his pocket, and held it above the tobacco packed into his pipe. After a couple of flickers of red light, the tobacco began glowing again, and Sprage thankfully sucked in a good lungful of smoke. As he let it trail back out of his nostrils, he decided he had a lot to thank Polity technology for, not least being able to light up his pipe on a windy deck.

‘Relayed signal!’ shouted Lember. ‘They want to know if it’s time to go in!’

Sprage extracted his pipe. ‘Tell ‘em yes. We’ll moor for the night and land in the morning. No point blundering about in the dark on Skinner’s Island. That’d be unhealthy.’

* * * *

When Twelve shot screaming from the sea, the Warden picked up the gist of what it was saying, and reacted immediately. A high-speed analysis of its files provided some basis on which to make its suppositions. The AI was now eighty-seven per cent certain that the Prador aboard the war craft was the old Prador called Ebulan. Ebulan had been Hoop’s main Prador contact during the war, and at the forefront of some of its more risky campaigns. Confirmation then: Ebulan was here to cover his tracks. Any other Prador would have remained in the safety of the Kingdoms, and sent agents here instead to accomplish its ends. That Ebulan had come here himself was indicative of - to put it succinctly - which way he might now jump. Maybe Ebulan would not go so far as to directly involve his own ship but, that ship being a Prador light destroyer, the Warden was taking no chances.

‘Priority message: Gate for all incoming visitors is now closed. More instructions to follow.’

The Warden observed the effect of this announcement in the main concourse and in the arrivals lounges. People immediately began consulting their personal comps. In the first minute, the Warden counted two hundred enquiries directed through the consoles on Coram base. It fielded these with the same message, then directed its attention towards the code-breaker programmes it was running. No closer to cracking it yet, and that code was the easiest way through the skin of the Prador vessel should it eventually show itself. The Warden gave yet another command.

In the lounges and concourses, humans and altered humans observed - through the chainglass panoramic windows - weapons turrets cracking through the ice and sulphurous crusts, and rising into view. These turrets were black and grey and vaguely resembled the feeding heads of giant water worms. Some people nodded their heads and related to newcomers how this was the second time this had happened since they had been here. Children pointed out the various protrusions from the turrets, and identified them as anti-photon cannons, particle-beam projectors, racks of smart missiles, near-c rail-guns, and so on. Concerned parents remarked that there must be a deal of meteor activity occurring in this system and wondered why they had not been warned.

EXIT GATE IS NOW OPEN-PORT TO LOCAL SYSTEMS.

As soon as this message came up on the board, a silence descended in the base. Those very few ancients who were old enough to remember the Prador war, or even more recent conflicts, immediately headed for the runcible gate to get through before a panic started. Many of them remembered open-port evacuations of stations and moons near space battles. A few of them remembered what had subsequently happened to some of those stations and moons.

The Warden let things ride for a while as, after its first message, the exit gate had begun working to full capacity. It directed its attention planet-ward, to its submind on the Polity base.

‘Full lock down and defences,’ it instructed the submind.

‘Shit about to hit?’ asked the mind.

‘Most likely,’ conceded the Warden.

All around the Polity base, shield projectors began rising out of the sea. Huge automatic clamps closed over the three shuttles grounded there, and the platforms they were located on began to sink into the sea. Aircabs took off en masse from the jetties, as the base slowly drew in those jetties like a starfish pulling in its arms. The aircabs went at full tilt to the Domes on the nearby island, dropping in through the tops of them, then the Dome hatches irised shut. At the same time as these were closing, Polity citizens were rushing back into the Domes from the Hooper towns they had been visiting outside. Not all of them made it unfortunately, as the armoured doors rolled shut and left many terrified citizens outside with the bemused Hoopers. These Hoopers became even more bemused when turrets, much like those recently exposed on Coram, started rising out of the earth of their own island.

‘Attention all Polity citizens,’ the Warden announced. ‘A Prador light destroyer has been detected in-system with hostile intent. Proceed in an orderly manner to the gate.’

After this announcement, the Warden allowed information access to the hundreds of enquiries pouring in. Polity citizens learnt that ‘open-port’ meant they’d be thrown out through the gate as fast as was possible, to be fielded by those runcibles anywhere else that could handle the load. So they’d all arrive. . . somewhere. The Warden noted, with a small but pleasurable surprise, that there was no obvious panic. Its pleasure was tempered when it counted how many questions coming through concerned the Prador, and how many Polity citizens were learning for the first time about a war that had ended more than seven centuries ago.

* * * *

The terrain became increasingly rocky as they laboured up the slope, and the vegetation had changed to accommodate this. Here the peartrunk trees were squat and gnarled and tangled with the same vine-like growths that coated the boulders and slabs of rock jutting up through the soil. Janer walked a couple of paces behind Keech, the carbine resting across his shoulder. In the half-light, he noticed Keech grimace and probe his wrist, then clench his hand into a fist, then open it again.

Also studying Keech, a pace or two to one side of Janer, Captain Ron asked, ‘When you went after her ship, what happened?’

‘I hit some powerful defences, which nearly brought me down.’ Keech gestured with his thumb towards Boris and Roach. ‘On the way out I saw your ship burning and picked up these two on my way back.’

Ron stared at Roach.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ protested Roach.

‘I know that,’ said Ron, since he and Ambel had already had a long talk with Boris and ascertained most of the facts. He gestured to the probe Boris still carried and said to Keech, ‘What I’d like to know is what’s happening now.’

‘The Warden will be, let’s say, playing close attention to events down here,’ explained Keech. ‘Spatterjay might be officially Out-Polity, but it still comes under Polity protection. There was that much agreement between you lot and the Polity at least.’

‘What’s out there, then?’ asked Ambel, pointing seawards.

Keech gave Ambel a long look, then said, ‘Where there’s Prador adolescents there’s a Prador adult around too. In the absence of an adult, one of their adolescents becomes one very quickly. Prador adults are pretty careful about their own safety, so if there’s one anywhere here it’ll be heavily armed.’

‘Spzzckt light destroyer,’ SM13 chipped in.

They all stared at the drone Boris was carrying.

Keech continued, ‘A ship like that in hiding somewhere and Prador agents running around all over the place - that isn’t something the Warden would tolerate.’

‘But is it something the Warden can do anything about?’ asked Ambel.

Keech gazed at him again, and it was obvious to Janer the kind of thoughts that were going through the monitor’s mind.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Keech.

They trudged on a little further, until Ron suddenly halted, staring at the ground.

‘I reckon it’s circling back on itself. But if we go on any further in this light, we’ll lose the trail,’ he warned.

Janer sighed and slipped his backpack from his shoulders. Ambel gestured to a protected spot below a single huge slab jutting up diagonally from the ground. The six of them made their way over and sat in its dark shadow. Shortly, Ambel opened his bag and passed around dried strips of rhinoworm. Janer chewed on a length of it while pulling what remained of his heat sheet out of his pack. Roach began tugging lengths of dead vine from a nearby rock, and made a pile of them, then Boris ignited the heap with a quick burst from the laser he carried. He then looked to Captain Ron and tossed the laser over to him. The Captain caught it and pocketed it in one swift motion.

‘There’ll have to be payment for Goss,’ said Ron.

Boris nodded as he squatted by the campfire, and began poking it with a stick.

* * * *

Drum stumbled on through darkness, aware that he needed rest but knowing that, if he stopped for it, there would be no one to watch his back and that he’d wake up to find the leeches sucking on his face. He was tired, but most of all he was hungry. The injuries he had received from both Frisk and the Prador were well healed now, but they had drained his resources to the limit. He needed food to top up his strength, but particularly he needed Dome food to prevent him from going ‘native’. He considered stopping to light a fire, but decided against this. Warmth would only make him sleepy and would do nothing to keep the leeches away.

As he proceeded, Drum could hear the sounds of heirodonts feeding nearby, and their wails as leeches fed on them. This caught his attention for a while, but soon his head began to slump and he walked an increasingly wavering path through the endless dingle. Some unconscious instinct still kept him away from the trunks of trees, a touch on which could bring leeches raining down on his head. That same instinct did not however prevent his walking slap-bang into a metal post.

He stepped back and swore, then reached out and ran his hand over the corroded metal facing him. Slave post. Immediately he knew where he was and gained new hope of finding a place free of any concentration of leeches - a place where he could rest. He moved further through the remaining dingle as it gradually thinned and the light of Coram could reach the ground.

‘Who’s that bugger?’ spoke a voice to one side of him.

‘Whoisss? Wooisss?’ said a voice not entirely human.

‘That you Peck?’ asked Drum of one of the shapes visible nearby.

‘Tis.’

‘Who’s that with you?’

‘Forlam,’ said Peck. ‘He’s a bit buggered,’ he explained.

* * * *

When it was fully dark, Vrell finally summoned the nerve to pull himself from his muddy hideaway. This at first proved difficult because the mud had meanwhile dried into a hard crust over the top of him. When he eventually broke free, much of this crust still stuck to his carapace; a weight more difficult to carry now he was reduced to being quadrupedal.

With his extra burden, Vrell moved slowly down towards shore, anxious to make as little noise as possible. Even this proved difficult, since Prador were not by nature adapted for travelling through thick dingle; their home world consisted of shallow seas, wide and level tidal areas, and extensive saltpans. However carefully he moved, Vrell kept knocking over trees as he progressed, thus getting so many leeches swarming on him that every so often he had to stop to tip them off. The worst of it was that he was no longer invulnerable to the creatures. The sensitive burned flesh of his burst claw was open to their attack, as was the raw area on his side where his shell had been charred to powder. Every time he wrenched an eager leech from his wounds, he hissed like a steam kettle and cursed all humans.

Half the night, it took Vrell to reach the shore, and finally squatting on the beach there, he gazed out at the glowing lanterns of the ships moored in the cove. For a while he felt confusion, then he understood and lowered himself dejectedly to the sand. Of course: Drum. Somehow the Captain had foiled his father’s plan, which meant that he, Vrell, had also failed. Father would depart now and find some other means to accomplish his ends.

Vrell unfolded one of his remaining arms and gazed at the device held in his complex hand comprised of fingers and hooks. With the blanks all around him directly linked to his father, there had been, up till now, no need for this. But he had brought it along anyway, in the eventuality of all the blanks being killed. It was a communicator that linked him with his father’s destroyer. He could call now and speak. He could call now and ask his father for instructions. With a sinking depression, he lowered the communicator. He already knew what those instructions would be: something along the lines of, ‘Return inland, kill and die.’ This was not what Vrell wanted to hear. Instead of using the communicator, he slid himself down the beach into the sea to soak off the weight of mud on his back.

With the cool water soothing his wounds and the mud slewing from him, Vrell carefully studied his surroundings, noticing all the dead sea creatures floating on the surface. Seeing such a preponderance of dead leeches raised his spirits a little, till he began to think more positively. He had done all he could, and only failed because the odds were insurmountable. Perhaps his father would make the small diversion necessary to pick him up, before quitting the planet. Perhaps Vrell could get out to the destroyer and be taken aboard?

He again checked his communicator, switching to one of its many facilities. The beacon setting sent his location out to the destroyer, just as it revealed the location of the destroyer to him. It was still sitting out there at the bottom of its trench. Vrell heaved himself ashore and pulled the medpack from his underside. A few shell patches should be enough to keep any more leeches out of his wounds if he were forced to swim the huge expanse of intervening sea. He fervently hoped that would not be necessary.

As Vrell softened his shell patches and spread them with glue, he was aware that he was only delaying things. But then, the better he made himself feel, the more persuasive he could be with his father. He took his time affixing the patches, drying them afterwards with the blower from the medpack. When he had finished, and neatly stowed away the medpack, he noticed with some surprise that the sky was getting lighter. It suddenly occurred to him how visible he would soon become to the ships out in the cove. He backed up the beach into the cover of dingle, and again took out his communicator.

‘Father?’

There was a long pause before he received a reply.

‘Vrell, my son, you are an adult now,’ said Ebulan. ‘Have you completed your mission upon the island?’

‘I... I encountered more resistance than expected,’ said Vrell. As a Prador very new to adulthood, it did not yet occur to him to lie openly - only to bend the truth a little.

‘You failed, then,’ said Ebulan.

‘The fault is not entirely mine. Captain Drum came ashore—’

‘No matter,’ Ebulan interrupted. ‘I will be taking care of this matter myself, now.’

‘You’ll be coming here?’ Vrell asked, with renewed hope.

‘I will come.’

‘And you will pick me up?’

The grating, bubbling sound that issued from the communicator was the Prador equivalent of a laugh - something Vrell had rarely heard. He held the communicator away from his body, and gave it the full attention of all his remaining eyes.

‘Vrell, you are now an adult male, and as such you are no longer of any use to me. You are more of a hindrance and a threat. So when I reach your location and shower it with CTDs to kill off the Old Captains, your death will be an added bonus.’

‘But, Father—’

Ebulan cut off, and Vrell stared at the communicator for a long moment before his survival instinct belatedly kicked in. He stood up and made ready to charge down the beach to the sea. But the sight of twenty rowing boats heading for the shore had him drop back on to his belly like a falling dinner plate. He watched the men step ashore, as he slowly backed through the dingle, wondering if the ground back there was still soft enough somewhere to dig.

* * * *

Using his heavy claw and few remaining legs, Sniper crawled over to the Prador war drone, clambered up on to it, and peered into the wide crack through which he had gutted it. The drone’s central core was now a mash of Prador brain tissue, insulation material, and optic nerve linkages. In the bottom of its armoured shell lay pooled the amniot in which the brain had been flash-frozen. The drone was undoubtedly dead, but, Sniper noted with interest, many of its systems were not too badly damaged. Reaching inside with his precision claw, Sniper took hold of one of the optic linkages and pulled it up for closer inspection. The interface was a straightforward electrochemical job he had come across many times during the long-distant war. Often damaged himself, while far from a Polity facility, he had scavenged Prador technology to repair himself. Circumstances were not quite the same this time, but he didn’t want to just sit here stranded on this atoll, waiting for one of the Warden’s SMs to find him eventually.

Sniper pushed back from the Prador’s shell and, with an internal order, dropped his lower head plate. The plate stuck part way, buckled and partially welded in place by spatters of molten metal from his missing legs, so he grasped it with his heavy claw, and tore it away to expose his solid-state insides. Reaching inside the Prador shell again, he pulled out a mass of optic linkages, and one at a time plugged them into an interface he’d had installed inside himself seven centuries ago. After ten minutes of swapping optic cables, and sorting the machine code return signals, a high-pitched whine was emitted from inside the Prador shell, and it lifted itself a few centimetres from the atoll before clunking back down again.

‘Bollocks,’ said Sniper, and this time relayed the internal order that opened the lower plates of his body, to expose the densely packed machinery of his life.

Later, a recessed nozzle on the side of the Prador shell briefly spat a fusion flame that nearly rolled the shell itself over on top of the old war drone. With his head now nearly inside his dead enemy, Sniper hardly noticed, as he worked away, discarding pieces of twisted metal and burnt components, and replacing them with pieces removed from himself.

* * * *

‘Wake up,’ said the mercenary, Shib.

Erlin sat up quickly, half expecting a boot in her side. Anne was already up, squatting impassively by the ashes of the fire, wrists still twisting against her cuffs, eyes fixed on the weapons the Batians carried.

‘I need to urinate,’ said Erlin firmly.

Shib looked down at her. ‘Well then do so.’ The mercenary’s voice sounded watery and distorted by the hole in his cheek and the dressing covering one side of his face. Of them all, thought Erlin, he seemed to be coming off the worst. At some point, he’d lost a couple of fingers as well, she had noticed. She stood and looked about for something to squat behind: a tree or a rock. As she started towards the nearest tree, Shib jammed his weapon in her stomach.

‘I said “do so”. I didn’t say you could go anywhere,’ he said.

Erlin stared at him, then turned away. It was obvious that he was frightened and that his fear was making him vicious. She’d have to hold it. She’d be damned if she’d pee with him watching.

‘Come on, get them moving!’ yelled Frisk, trotting back into the campsite.

Shib jabbed both the prisoners in the back in turn, and they started to follow Frisk through a stand of peartrunk trees. Luckily no leeches fell. Beyond the trees, Svan waited with her weapon on her shoulder.

‘It looks easier further up,’ observed the female mercenary. ‘Fewer trees and less crap on the ground. Once we get up there, we should get a clear view all around.’

‘Let’s go, then,’ said Frisk, with a slightly crazy expression.

So Svan led the way, Frisk immediately following her, while Shib did his jabbing trick with the barrel of his weapon. Erlin thought gloomily that it was enough they were going to die - was it necessary to continually humiliate them as well?

They emerged out of thick dingle into a different terrain that was rocky and netted with vines. The peartrunks and other strange varieties of tree had the looser concentration here of a deciduous woodland. Leeches lying across their branches had the same hue and colour as their cousins nearer the shore. Putrephallus weeds grew singly, and the occasional lung bird spooked into flight was smaller and coloured like mouldy bread. As she walked Erlin brooded, and decided not to suffer any further indignity. She had come here seeking reasons to continue living - to discover how Ambel had achieved it. She had come here understanding that life on its own was not enough. She’d be damned if she’d give up everything else just for life itself. Anyway, she had an intimation that this increasingly frightened mercenary could be manipulated. She stopped abruptly and glared at Shib.

‘I’m going over there - to urinate behind those rocks.’ She indicated a cluster of vine-covered boulders. ‘You can kill me if you must. I leave that up to you.’

She turned on her heel and strode towards the boulders. She had expected to feel fear, but felt only a curious freedom. Shib himself said nothing, and Erlin was aware that the others had halted to stare at her.

Once out of view, Erlin struggled to loosen the catch on the side of her trousers. It would be too embarrassing to call for assistance. Stretching round until she felt she was going to sprain her shoulder, her cuffed hands finally managed to locate the catch. After blissful relief, struggling to get her trousers back up again she found she now could not fasten the catch. Dammit, she’d just go back and ask Anne to do it.

As Erlin walked from behind the boulders, she noticed the group had closed up, with Anne on her knees and the others standing over her. Erlin approached and stood before them waiting for some reprimand. Frisk just stared at her for a long while, then slowly drew the laser from her belt. Erlin noted a look exchanged by the two mercenaries.

‘You’re Hooper,’ Frisk said, ‘you have the virus.’

Erlin nodded.

Frisk went on: ‘I’ve decided I need only one hostage now. What I’m going to do next is laser you from the feet up. It’ll take a couple of hours, but I’ll enjoy every minute.’

Just then, everything happened at once. Anne shot to her feet, crashing right into Frisk, knocking the laser from her hand but throwing them both off balance. A huge shadow fell across Erlin and the two mercenaries stepped back - Svan looking wary but prepared, Shib with blank horror on his mutilated face. Something nearby let out a hissing snarl, in a vast exhalation.

Recovering her own balance Frisk tripped Anne, then kicked her hard in the side of the head when she tried to rise again. Then Frisk looked up.

‘Jay, darling,’ she cooed.

Erlin wondered just how hollow had been her sense of ennui with life. Here she was with her hands tied behind her back; the people in front of her wanted to kill her - and she had a damned good idea of what was standing behind her. She had never before felt so vulnerable and so mortal. Then she heard a friendly, familiar voice.

‘Erlin, get down!’ Ambel bellowed at her.

Erlin flew face-down on the earth just as Ambel’s blunderbuss boomed.