20

The giant leech surfaced and rolled as the molly carp tore out through its side, then dived, and with its flat tentacles dragged itself with all speed back to its atoll. The huge wound the leech had received would not have been enough to kill it, had not its bile duct continued pumping bile with increasing levels of sprine into the injury. So the leech died by poisoning itself, and as it died it sank. For some while, nothing came to feed upon the corpse, as the sprine diffusing into the sea deterred them. Once the poison had diluted enough, first to come were the boxies. In huge shoals they quickly snatched what they could, while they could. A small flock of frog whelks came next from a nearby islet, eager to feed on both boxies and leech. Then came hammer whelks sneaking up on their kin, shattering their shells with an enthusiastic racket that of course attracted turbul. . . then glisters. . . It was unfortunate that all this was still happening near the edge of the oceanic trench. Dinner-plate eyes observed the descending debris and tiny brains wondered what had attracted their fellow residents up there - so ascended to find out. And as an organic cloud again spread across the seabed, siphons, noses, antennae, and organs not easily described twitched and shivered, and nightmare mouths opened in anticipation.

Janer sat up, brushing embers from his hair. A black and red rain was falling about them, and smoke was belching up from the burning dingle below. He glanced across at Ambel who was still squatting by the Skinner’s hideaway, rubbing at his eyes.

‘What the hell was that?’ Janer asked.

The sounds of explosions had carried across the water, and they’d gaped up at the enormous ship hurtling towards them like a floating arcology, surrounded by energy displays, fast-moving objects and actinic explosions. Then: blinding greenish light, and fires and smoke all across the island, followed by an explosion that blew a cone of fire out of the bottom of the ship. The destroyer had then slid sideways and, trailing fire, slammed into the sea: a hot coal boiling into the depths.

‘Prador,’ muttered Ambel, blinking to clear the spots from his vision. ‘Don’t know what the Warden hit it with, but it was damned effective, I know that, lad.’

Janer took a shuddering breath, then raised his hand and opened it. Revealed was a single red crystal on a piece of cloth. Lucky he hadn’t lost it when he’d dived for cover. He looked round for the hexagonal box, took it up from where he had dropped it, and moved over to join Ambel. Setting the box on a nearby rock, he pressed a touch-plate on its side and a small door irised open at one end of it.

‘You know what this means?’ he asked the Captain.

‘I think I do,’ said Ambel, ‘perhaps more than you. Do you think for one moment that the Warden doesn’t know about this?’

‘Then why would the Warden allow it? Why allow the Hive here at all?’ Janer asked.

‘Balance,’ said Ambel. ‘The Warden has the overview, and knows that a balance needs to be struck here. You can’t have people as durable as Hoopers running around the galaxy without at least one Achilles heel.’ Ambel grimaced at the unintended pun. ‘They’d end up either destroying or being destroyed. Power must be tempered.’

Janer said, ‘Erlin says it’s rumoured that the Polity is scared of you people, so that’s why it prevents further development of this place. But she says she doesn’t believe that.’

‘Erlin likes to believe in goodness,’ observed Ambel.

‘And you?’

‘I prefer to believe in what’s true.’

‘You get to know what’s true out on your ship, do you?’ asked Janer, with a grimace. He manoeuvred his hand so the sprine crystal slid down the cloth that was channelled between his fingers, and into the opening in the box. The hornet waiting there grabbed the crystal and pulled it inside. Ten million shillings, brooded Janer. What the hell.

‘Thinking is something you find you do with increasing clarity as the years pass, and after a time you find there is very little you have not thought deeply about. Truth and clarity are one,’ said Ambel, seeming calm as he said this.

‘I guess that makes sense.’ The opening promptly irised shut. Janer stared at it for a moment then looked up at Ambel. ‘I wonder what your truth will be.’

The Captain had no reply for this.

Janer studied him for a moment, then nodded in response to an internal monologue. ‘The mind tells me everything is primed,’ he said. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

* * * *

The Skinner had little of human thought left to it. It now hated with the intensity of a human and it hungered like a leech. It had also come to understand fear, but knew it was safe here in the darkness.

Memory was a strange thing to it. Pictures and concepts occasionally connected in its hard fibrous brain, but it did not understand those connections. Its imperative was simply to eat and to grow, yet it had recognized some of those creatures out there.

‘Jay, darling.’

Those two words were somewhere deep inside it, and caused in it something that was like - yet unlike - hunger. The creature that had attacked it at the last, had aroused a deep fear and loathing somehow connected to another darkness and a time of long hunger. That creature had fed it, yet it had also hurt it, long before. It now wanted that creature, as it wanted all creatures. It wanted to feed on that creature, but it wanted it to be a long feeding: a long dismantling and a slow feast. But it was not strong enough just now. Its other part was dead, killed by that same creature. It must get away, go deep and feed on the things there, then return strong and ready for . . . more feeding.

In the darkness the Skinner shifted on its spatulate legs, and licked its black tongue over its teeth. Can’t get me here, it thought in its disconnected way, but I’ll get you. I’ll pull off your skin and chew on your bones. I’ll have you wriggling in my mouth, and I’ll have you scream like a unit for coring . . . Unit for coring? The Skinner was puzzled for a moment. It didn’t quite understand those . . . words. Where had they come from?

‘Hey, Spatterjay Hoop! We’ve got a present for you!’

It was the creature accompanying the pain giver: the one that had burnt the Skinner with red sunlight. The Skinner concentrated its black glare on the circle of light far above it. The circle was blotted out for a moment, and then there came a sound. It was a buzzing humming vibration. Again the Skinner was puzzled, until it found a connection, deep, so deep. From that connection rose an atavistic fear, and it backed deeper into the crevice in which it had wedged itself, again licking its tongue over its teeth. Something hard landed on its tongue, and it lifted that something up before its eyes and tried to focus on it with what little light was available. It could just make out something many-legged, a thorax, and a body like a severed thumb, painted with lines in luminous paint.

Then came the pain.

The Skinner tried to howl - but the rudimentary lungs it had grown did not yet have the capacity. It snapped its tongue back into its mouth and tried to worm even deeper into its crevice. The second sting was on its snout. It shot out of the protective crevice, and ran towards the light. The buzzing again. Another sting on its wing-ear. It could feel the dying pain spreading from all those areas. Its tongue felt flaccid, with a putrid taste. It scrabbled to get closer to the light, points of agony spreading out all over it.

It was in the light! The creature—

* * * *

Ambel stepped back, pulled from his belt the cloth he had earlier loaned to Janer, and wiped clean the blade of his machete. The Skinner’s head lay on the ground in two neat halves. Those halves moved still, but they were dying from the sprine injected by a hornet’s sting. The queen hornet flew out of the hole in the ground, circled for a moment, then landed on Janer’s shoulder. Janer turned his head to look at it, and suddenly felt a terrible tightness in his stomach. Good grief, what have I done?

* * * *

For a moment Keech thought he had gone blind but, after a time, vision began to return. He gazed up from where he lay on his side, and saw that a trench had been burnt into the slope above him and that the lips of that trench were of glowing magma.

Coherent thought did not return to him until minutes after his vision returned. And his first thought was: I hurt. His second thought was: Why am I alive? He’d closed his hands on her neck and she’d reached for his neck. Her grip had closed like a shear and he’d known she was going to tear his head off. Then had come that light as bright as the sun, and the explosions, and the fire. Particle beam - almost certainly from the Prador ship. The ship had to be gone now, or else this entire island would be nothing but magma.

Keech sat up and surveyed his surroundings. Frisk lay on the ground before him, her neck twisted and crushed, her windpipe torn out. He gazed down at his hands: they were locked into fists, and there were fragments of flesh caught between his fingers. He sent an instruction to the cybermotors in his ringers, and slowly his hands opened and, as they did so, he wished he’d kept them closed. For they felt as if they been worked over with a hammer.

‘Near tore her head off, you did.’

Keech slowly turned, feeling as if someone had hit him in his face with a spade. And as for his neck . . . An Old Captain he did not recognize sat on a nearby rock. On a lesser rock sat Boris, with the seahorse SM upright next to him, poised on its tail and with topaz light intermittently returning to its burnt-out eye. Roach and Peck were perched on two other rocks. Keech studied this tableau for a moment, before dropping his gaze to Forlam rested against the rock below them, his arms and legs firmly bound. The crewman had his lips sucked in, as if fighting to keep his mouth closed, and a particularly demented expression. Keech managed to raise a quizzical eyebrow.

‘He’s getting a bit dangerous,’ the Captain explained. ‘We need to get Dome food into him quickly, before he picks up too many nasty feeding habits. Need some of it meself, too.’

Yes, thought Keech, the Captain was gaunt, and had the same definite bluish tinge and slightly crazy look as he had previously seen in Olian Tay - though obviously his condition was nowhere near as advanced as Forlam’s. He wondered what had happened here. Forlam, he noticed, was now staring guiltily down at his feet, but his leech tongue was darting in and out of his mouth regardless. Keech stopped himself from shrugging - it would hurt too much - and just let it go. He didn’t really want to know about Forlam’s feeding habits; he was not sure how much more knowledge of Hoopers he could stand. He reached up, felt at the vertebrae of his neck, and hoped none of them was broken. Then he wondered how much it mattered anyway, as he himself was a Hooper now. He’d gone from someone dead to being someone so determinedly alive that a broken neck was probably something quite minor to him. And, so thinking, he stared across at Rebecca Frisk. He realized that the two shots he had managed to hit her with had probably been enough to save his own life. With her torn arm, she could not have been able to get a proper grip on his neck.

The Captain stood and walked over to him. He reached out a hand and helped Keech to stand.

‘I’m Drum,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to see her.’

Keech looked at him questioningly.

Drum gestured to Frisk, and Keech returned his attention there. Now he could see that her eyes were open, and her mouth was moving slowly. How long, he wondered, would it take her body to repair itself. How long until she stood again and killed again - and spread horror again.

‘She’s got a Hooper body,’ said Drum. ‘And we don’t want any more Skinners running around.’ Keech watched him as he put his weapon up to his shoulder. The monitor recognized it as being of Prador design, but designed for humans - for their blanks.

‘I know you can’t speak at the moment, Rebecca,’ said Drum. ‘I also know just how badly this is going to hurt you. I’ll try to be quick, though . . . well, actually that’s a lie. I’m going to do this as slowly as possible.’

Drum dropped the setting on his APW, and took aim at Rebecca Frisk.

‘No, don’t!’ someone yelled.

Keech watched the Old Captain lower the APW, then look about himself in bewilderment.

‘What’s that?’ asked Boris, pointing.

Keech glanced up at the small metallic object hovering above them. He was about to explain to them that it was a holocorder, when Olian Tay and Captain Sprage stepped into view. Tay was holding a screen in her hand, and had an avid look on her face.

‘You seem remarkably well,’ she said to Keech.

‘I’ve felt better,’ said Keech, ignoring the irony. But, even as he said it, he knew that was wrong. Despite how much he hurt, he felt wonderful - never better. Tay now turned to Drum. ‘I don’t want you to destroy her, Drum. She’s too valuable to be destroyed,’ she insisted.

Drum stared at her with a mulish expression and raised his weapon again.

‘You know, Drum,’ said Sprage, nodding to Frisk. ‘She’s caused a lot people a lot of hurt. Maybe it’d be a good idea if she had some time to think about that.’

Drum’s expression did not change, until Sprage pointed with the stem of his pipe back down the slope.

Now coming into view were two crewmen carrying a metallic coffin suspended from poles. Drum looked momentarily puzzled, then a slow grin spread across his face.

‘How much time?’ he asked, still grinning.

‘About as long as Grenant, I should think,’ said Sprage, glancing at Olian Tay for confirmation.

Tay said, ‘A few thousand years of waking in those coffins, before they’ve no mind left to speak of. I want them both to last a little while.’

While Drum laughed, Keech just looked on in confusion, until Olian Tay’s plans were explained to him. He then watched with grim satisfaction as the coffin was opened and the now slowly recovering Rebecca Frisk was laid inside. At one time he had felt that no amount of suffering could be enough punishment for one of the Eight. Now he was not quite so sure.

* * * *

Captain Ron was on his feet by the time they returned, and he held up his fist in a victory salute when he saw what Ambel was carrying.

‘Grendel is dead,’ said Ambel briefly.

Ron, the only one of them who understood the obscure reference, said, ‘Do you think there’s a mother as well, then?’

‘I hope you’ll explain that,’ said Erlin in mock anger.

Janer started paying attention then. He’d missed the earlier exchange, so deep was he in conversation with the Hive mind: making arrangements for his ten million shillings. He watched Ambel walk up to Captain Ron. Ambel was carrying the two halves of the Skinner’s head tied with the same length of string, and hung over his shoulder like a pair of huge grotesque shoes. He made to give them to Ron.

‘Best you keep it with you. It’ll look good,’ said Ron, then he pointed down the slope, past the scarred rock and burning vegetation, to where the dingle had escaped being flattened. As Janer gazed in that direction too, he saw figures emerging from under the trees. There were many of them, and all clearly Hoopers.

‘The Convocation,’ said Ambel, looking very directly at Erlin. He unhooked the sprine parcel from his belt and tossed it to her. ‘Remember what I said,’ he reminded her.

Janer wondered at that. Surely there would be no problems for Ambel now. Surely he had proven himself beyond doubt? He raised his image intensifier and focused it downwards at those approaching. Keech was walking with Captain Drum and another Captain who was smoking a pipe - something Janer had never before seen in his life. Others walked there as well, and Janer could easily tell which ones were the Old Captains. There was an assurance about them, a certainty.

Sprage, as Janer later learnt him to be called, was the first to test the crust on the cooling magma and cross over, so was consequently the first to reach them.

‘You got his parole?’ Sprage asked Ron.

‘Yes,’ said Ron.

Sprage nodded and drew on his pipe. With fascination, Janer watched the smoke trickling out of his nose.

‘We’ll decide it here then,’ said Sprage, then pointed at the two halves of the Skinner’s head. ‘But first we’ll have us a fire and be well rid of him.’ Only after he had said these things did he look Ambel directly in the eye.

‘You named me Ambel, so you must have known,’ Ambel said.

‘I knew who you were,’ agreed Sprage.

‘You did?’ Ambel asked.

‘Oh yes, I did - as I do now. You’re the same Gosk Balem we threw in the sea, the same one who burned Hoopers,’ replied Sprage.

* * * *

With the last intermittent faults ironed out of its AG unit, Thirteen rose into the air and surveyed its surroundings. There were nearly two hundred people gathered on the face of the hill. Twenty-three of them were Old Captains - including Drum, Ron and Ambel. All of them worked together to drag together fallen trees and build a suitably dramatic pyre on which to hurl the remains of the Skinner. It did not take much discussion for them to decide who would enjoy this moment, and it was Keech, using the laser he had retrieved from Janer, who ignited the pyre. As afternoon slid into evening, all stood in contemplative silence and watched the Skinner finally shrivel and burn away. There were no unexpected movements, no sudden resurrections, and there would be none. In its memory, Thirteen drew a line underneath this moment, then tried for the nth time to get a signal somewhere, to someone.

‘Warden? Warden? Twelve, do you hear me? What’s going on out there? Sniper? Sniper?’

Again there came nothing over the ether but an empty hiss. Something catastrophic must have happened, for even the Coram server was dragging its heels, and Thirteen could get little of relevance out of it.

The SM at the planetary base was the only one with anything to offer. ‘The Boss broke contact when that ship blew. He was fooling with Prador control codes, so maybe he got some feedback.’

Thirteen acknowledged this possibility, but doubted it very much. Deciding it could do nothing else until contacted, the little drone decided to continue observing and recording the events here. Seeing Sprage and Ambel standing somewhat apart from the rest, as the fire burnt lower, the drone dropped into the trees behind them and moved in close. The two Captains were silent for a long while until, after filling his pipe and getting it going, Sprage said, ‘Decision goes against you, and it’ll be the fire. No one’ll want you coming back again.’

‘Then I must be convincing,’ said Ambel. ‘Why did you say I am Gosk Balem? I have no memory of him. There’s nothing of him left.’

Sprage said, ‘The house may be gutted, even its inner walls and floors and ceilings torn out - but the house still stands.’

‘Very wise, and I’ll burn for that,’ said Ambel bitterly.

‘That’s something to be decided,’ said a voice out of the twilight. Captain Ron walked up to stand to one side of Ambel, then continued, ‘Time for you to tell it all again.’

Thirteen watched as the Captains and crews converged out of the twilight, their flickering shadows cast about by the flames. There was no formality here, and no requirement for it. Most of the Captains were gathered together, so this constituted a Convocation. Anything decided by these Captains, while they were together, would be written in stone. Thirteen rose higher and swung out to get a better view of proceedings, and immediately found that it was being accompanied through the air. That Olian Tay’s holocorder dogged its flight should have come as no surprise at all.

* * * *

Janer sat on a log with the queen hornet on one shoulder, and with interest watched the gathering. He liked Ambel and certainly didn’t want to see him burned alive, but if the decision went against the Captain, what could Janer do? He glanced at Erlin, who was watching events with something approaching terror in her expression. Janer noted that she had acquired one of the Batians’ weapons, and he wondered if she intended anything rash. If she did, he felt he must intervene - though he was not sure to what end. He turned to Boris and Roach, sitting on the log beside him.

‘What happened to the two mercenaries?’ he whispered.

‘They both got eaten by leeches . . . sort of,’ Boris whispered back.

Behind them a crewman, who could have been Goss’s twin, shushed them to silence. Ambel had begun telling his tale in a flat emotionless voice. Janer knew how effective that telling could be, but he’d heard it before and was getting bored now.

‘Where will you establish the first nest?’ he whispered.

‘The hole into which the Skinner fled seems a viable proposition,’ replied the mind.

‘You don’t sound wholly convinced.’

‘Until two hours ago I was. I have since spoken with an augmented sail called Windcheater, who has offered me a place on the rock where the sails roost. Windcheater has an agenda, I believe,’ said the mind.

‘World domination? Humans go home?’

‘No, Windcheater wants humans and everyone in here. He wants the Polity in. He wants the Hive minds in. He would like the Prador here, if he could get them. He has augmented his innate intelligence and is absorbing knowledge at an astonishing rate. I well understand this, as he has been starved of these things for many thousands of years.’

‘Thousands?’

‘A tentative estimate. The sails themselves don’t really know. They don’t die very often.’

‘One moment,’ said Janer. He turned to Boris, ‘What happened to that adolescent Prador?’

‘Still looking for it. Reckon it went into the sea,’ Boris replied, and was again shushed from behind. Janer noted that Ambel had not quite reached the end of his story, so returned to his conversation with the mind.

‘Still no answers to the question, why does he particularly want your nests on his rock?’ Janer probed.

‘Windcheater wants us all here because, the more Polity entities there are here, the more opportunities there’ll be for him and his kind. Specifically, I think he wants us on his rock so he can charge rent.’

‘And what form would the rent take?’ asked Janer.

‘Quite simply money - with which he can buy augmentations for all of his kind. AI linkups, high-tech tooling ... all the trappings of technology. As Windcheater so appositely put it to me, “Spend a thousand years sitting on a rock having conversations that consist mainly of comments on how windy it is, and you’ll have a true appreciation of library computers, walls and solar heating. “ I somehow suspect that in the near future Hoopers will have to learn to handle fabric sails and rigging themselves on their ships.’

‘Forgetting that, are you prepared to pay the rent? You could just as easily establish a nest here.’

‘The rock has its attractions. For one it is not easily accessible to Hoopers.’

‘You consider them a danger?’

‘I cannot say. How will they react when they discover that creatures with stings that inject sprine are about to colonize here?’

‘I guess it’d be worth your while to take a few precautions,’ agreed Janer.

Ambel had just finished his story, and now the Captains were asking him questions. What did he remember? Did he now consider himself free of guilt? Did he think there should be a statute of limitations on multiple murder? Would he be prepared to undergo an AI-directed mind probe? Ambel seemed to give the right answers to all these questions, then at the last, a question was flung at Captain Sprage.

‘Why did you insist he is the same Gosk Balem we flung in the sea?’ asked Captain Ron.

Sprage stood up and drew deeply on his pipe. The tobacco’s glow was reflected in his eyes so they glimmered like embers.

‘He’s the man. Memories are gone but the framework is still there. He has the morals, the understanding and the empathy that were Gosk Balem’s. Put in the same position as he was put a thousand years ago, and likely he would do exactly the same things again,’ said Sprage.

‘You’re saying he’d still throw Hoopers in the furnace?’ a Captain asked, eyeing Sprage doubtfully.

‘He threw just the brains and spinal columns of Hoopers into the furnace. The rest of the bodies were sold to the Prador, like empty cups to be filled with metal and Prador thoughts.’

‘Very poetic, Sprage. We all know about coring,’ growled someone in the darkness.

Sprage went on, ‘Gosk Balem was an ECS soldier who was captured by Hoop and his crew. They brought him here to be cored like the rest of their captives, but as he was ECS, and so obviously horrified by what they were doing here, Hoop decided to keep him alive in order to extend his suffering. They forced a slave collar on him, then put him to work at the furnace, burning the physical remains of coring. He had no idea then that those remains were still living and, even had he known, would he have chosen not to burn them? Would any of you?’

Silence met this question, so Sprage continued: ‘The Hoopers that were cored were too recently infected with the virus to have survived long in that ganglionic form. Those that weren’t eaten by leeches would have died or slowly transformed into leeches themselves. He never burned anything that still had a chance at life. He worked for Hoop because he made the choice of survival.’

‘Yeah,’ said Boris. ‘But he didn’t have the slave collar on all the time.’

‘Survival again,’ said Sprage. ‘Hoop removed his collar so as to further extend his torment. He could try to flee into the wilds, but it was unlikely he would have succeeded. Hoop really wanted him to try. Instead, he stayed and he continued feeding remains into the furnaces. And do you know why? Because while he was there, he might find the chance to act against Hoop.’

‘How do you know all this, Sprage?’ asked Ron.

Sprage took a short penknife from his pocket and scraped round in the bowl of his pipe. After knocking out the pipe’s dottle on the palm of his hand, he immediately began to refill it.

‘I know because I saw him doing something then that I only came to understand a few years after we caught him and threw him in the sea. The furnaces were powered by an old fusion reactor Hoop had removed from one of his landing craft. I still had my collar on then, while the virus established itself in me. I was three weeks, a month perhaps, from being cored. It was at that time I saw him carry a piece of reactor shielding and drop it in the moat.’

Abruptly Keech was on his feet, having been squatting by the flames. ‘He what?’ said the monitor.

‘The war was ending and the Prador retreating,’ said Sprage, ignoring Keech. ‘There’d been little chance of rescue during the war, but as it ended there was hope.’ He turned to address Keech. ‘You came here then. It was you who broke the program controlling the slave collars, and helped free those who remained. But how did you know where to come?’

Keech stared at Ambel, who was looking increasingly puzzled.

‘We knew from which part of the sector the coring trade was operating, but we didn’t know which sun or which planet. We swept that area searching for some kind of trace, some sign of spacecraft, orbital stations, field tech - we used all available methods to pick on high-tech usage.’

‘What finally brought you here, then?’ asked Sprage.

‘The distinctive signal from a fusion reactor. Normally you will never pick up on it, but this reactor was completely unshielded,’ said Keech.

‘Bugger,’ said Boris, still sitting beside Janer. He was not alone in his exclamation. There was a sudden surge of talk, till Sprage held up his hands.

‘I called him Ambel when I found him. I’d recognized him right away. I didn’t throw him back and I didn’t tell anyone because they might have voted to throw him back. I let him find his own life, and always hoped no one would ever know. He’s Gosk Balem all right. He’s the one who, over a period of years, stripped the inner casing from the fusion reactor so it would act as a beacon for ECS. He’s the reason every one of us old slaves is still alive. We shouldn’t have thrown him to the leeches in the first place. We had too much hate back then and we did wrong. Let’s not compound that error now.’

With a click, Sprage placed his pipe back in his mouth and then relit it. A roar of talk erupted again, while Keech walked up to Ambel and stood before him. A silence descended and the Hoopers watched. They knew how for centuries this monitor had hunted down and killed off members of Hoop’s former crew.

Keech held out his hand to Ambel, and Ambel solemnly shook it. Boris stood and walked over to his Captain. Other members of Ambel’s crew then emerged out of the darkness. Then Old Captains, and other crews. Hoopers were shaking Ambel’s hand, pounding him on his back. They were shaking each other’s hands and pounding each other’s backs.

Janer looked over at Erlin and saw that she was crying. The Convocation had clearly made its decision about Ambel.

‘Touching,’ said the Hive mind. Janer glared at the queen hornet on his shoulder, then stood and himself went to shake Ambel’s hand. Feeling a slight lump in his throat, he didn’t really want to listen to the mind’s cold analysis. Ambel was grinning as Janer approached. His usual calm had been fractured by . . . happiness.

‘Congratulations, Captain,’ said Janer.

He took Janer’s hand and shook it.

‘What now, lad? You’ll stay around a while?’ asked Ambel, still shaking Janer’s hand.

‘I think so,’ said Janer.

‘Good lad,’ said Ambel, slapping him on the shoulder with his free hand. The Captain then turned to Erlin and carefully took her in his arms.

Janer kept the grin on his face as he backed out of the crowd of jubilant Hoopers and went back to sit on his log. He tried to figure out if what Ambel had just done was deliberate. He glanced down at his shoulder and the mess on it that had once been the mind’s colonizing queen. From the Hive link came a buzzing scream, as of a circular saw going into hardwood. Janer grimaced and pulled the link out of his ear, to drop it into his pocket. The transfer had already been made and he now had ten million shillings in a private account. The future looked good.

* * * *

Thirteen decided that nothing more of any moment was going to happen near the fire, so it rose up over the trees and floated down the slope of the island to the beach. Here it settled to scan something else, so that its record of events here might be more complete. An accurate description might be ‘for morbid curiosity’, but Thirteen did not allow itself to think like that. The coffin had been placed in one of the rowing boats beached here, ready to be returned to Sprage’s ship. Thirteen hovered above it, and tapped the palm lock with its tail, but to no effect. The drone then projected a complex lasered image at the lock, then tapped it again, thus opening the viewing window. These particular actions it would edit from its final record, before allowing that record to go out on general release. It wouldn’t do for the Warden to know that one of its SMs had had been buying and uploading black software normally employed by the less salubrious members of society.

Through the window, the drone observed Rebecca Frisk thrashing her head from side to side and rolling her eyes. Every time her mouth passed underneath the panel, her breath frosted the chainglass. Touching the surface of the coffin with its tail to detect the vibrations, Thirteen surmised that the woman was screaming. Amazing how much energy she had. The drone tapped once on the glass with its tail, and Frisk stopped her thrashing to stare at it bug-eyed. She started to shout, to beg, her eyes filled with tears. The drone linked to the Coram server, trying to find a lip-reading program, but had no time to download the sluggish spurts of information before huge movement in the dingle at the head of the beach distracted it.

Thirteen shot high into the air, watching as the Prador came out on to the beach and, after counting legs, made an understandable mistake. It was the adult! Somehow, the Prador in the spacecraft had survived and come ashore!

‘Warden! Warden! The Prador is here!’ the drone screamed over the ether.

This time there was an immediate response. ‘Lemme see,’ someone said, and a huge threatening presence linked through Thirteen, and gazed through the little drone’s eyes.

* * * *

The humans were all still up the hill now involved in some sort of celebration. Earlier, parties of them had come down to fetch barrels of alcohol and various seafoods, but at last all movement was confined to the hill. Even the ships had been abandoned on this night of celebration and had he wanted to the Prador could easily have taken one. These primitive wooden ships were not what he was aiming for, though.

As Vrell held his communicator up before his eyes, he bubbled with satisfaction. The beacon was now operating and, even with the distortion through the water, he saw that his father’s ship was less than a kilometre away from the island. All he had to do was swim out to it and get inside. No problem there. He knew all the access codes, just as he knew that the ship carried spare AG units and generators. It would take him a long time to make repairs, possibly years, but he could always get himself some help if the surgical facility was still operational. He knew that Ebulan had always carried a stock of spare thrall units.

Vrell moved on to where the rowing boats were beached, and in one of them detected movement. Strapped to the woodwork of one of these boats was a large metallic container, and through its luminous window Vrell saw that inside it was Ebulan’s tool, Rebecca Frisk. For a moment, he considered taking her with him, and installing a thrall unit, but quickly rejected that idea. He did not want to leave any clue that he was still alive. He edged on past the boat and into the sea, and began swimming.

Ten metres from the shore he submerged to pass underneath the ships. Leeches, coming from the other side of the island to repopulate the irradiated water, grated at his armour and fell away. A glister attacked him, but he cut it in half with his working claw. Ten metres beyond the ships, he surfaced and kept going, occasionally emitting bubbling coughs of pleasure. He would repair the ship and take it out of this human-infested system so fast the Warden would not even have time to react. Once back home, he would assume Ebulan’s position, and then perhaps concentrate his attention on some of the females Ebulan had kept at his undersea residence. The future looked good. Nothing could stop Vrell now.

Behind Vrell, the oil-dark waters swirled as they were cloven by a steep head that left a deep trough behind. The molly carp had gorged on dead leeches, but its recent upsets and that odd intestinal complaint had left it feeling a void in its stomach - one that it just had to fill. Also, the tickling stinging sensation that had started in its head only minutes earlier only ceased as it turned in this direction - but it was glad to have been led here. The creature ahead of it left a very intriguing taste in the water; something like that of a glister but without the slightly rancid tang.

With its stomach rumbling the molly carp decided to investigate.

* * * *

On Coram, all the humans were now gone, and only maintenance robots independent of the Warden continued with their tasks. Outside the base the weapons turrets had sunk back out of sight, and the cracked crust of sulphur and ice had dropped back into place to begin the healing of scars. Deep in the centre of the complex, the physical container of what was essentially the Warden appeared no different from how it had always appeared. However, inside, things were very different indeed.

‘An easy mistake to make, but that’s not the one called Ebulan, not the one from the ship. It’s only just become an adult, and it won’t live long enough to enjoy the experience,’ Sniper informed Thirteen. ‘That molly carp’s jaws even dented my armour so they should have no trouble with Prador shell.’

‘Where is the Warden?’ asked Thirteen, from the planet below.

‘Dunno,’ said Sniper, withdrawing.

Finding his position in a recently vacated silicon vastness the mind of the war drone asked of his surroundings, ‘Is this subsumption, then? I don’t feel any different.’

From behind a wall of paradox and short circuits in that vastness, the Warden replied, ‘You know, Sniper, underestimation has been somewhat of a fault in your friends as well.’

‘Waddaya mean by that?’

‘I mean that, no, this is not subsumption, Sniper . . . for I had no wish to be subsumed by you.’

Sniper connected to the many links now available to him and inspected his vast surroundings through a thousand eyes, and he grinned . . . somehow.

* * * *