5
They metabolize oxygen in a similar manner to Human beings, though the blood they use to transport it is based on copper rather than iron. However, never has a creature been more suited to space without having undergone some sort of modification. Certainly anoxia will kill them, but not as quickly as it will kill a Human. They can withstand the extreme cold of space, since it finally drives them into a natural cryosleep rather than killing them. Pressure changes are not a problem to them either and, supplied with oxygen, they can survive in vacuum. It has been noted incidentally that, because of this, the atmosphere integrity of Prador ships would never pass Human inspection. They possess numerous limbs for moving about in zero gravity, numerous ‘underhands’ with which to manipulate their complex environment, and numerous eyes with which to observe it. The shame is that they bring to that same environment the minds of psychotic lobsters.
– From HOW IT IS by Gordon
The war drone is easy, for Sniper has much experience in dealing with them. They aren’t particularly bright and tend to over-focus on the current attack, so the distract while putting a missile up the tail-pipe routine works in eight out of ten encounters. There is also, he feels, a deep underlying psychological problem with Prador war drones: for, being run by the surgically excised and then flash-frozen cerebral matter of first- and second-children, and being utterly subject to the will of the Prador controlling them, it is impossible for them to pursue their evolutionary imperative to finally become adults and themselves reproduce; they can take no pleasure in the basic things in a Prador’s life, like eating and bullying their juniors, and they will never be anything but war drones until the day some enemy missile shafts them from behind. In essence, he suspects war drones possess no hope and that deep down they want merely to die. However, this armoured Prador most certainly does not want to die.
The moment he wraps his tentacles about the beast, Sniper immobilizes its most dangerous limbs, namely the ones wielding its rail-gun and particle cannon, then pulls himself in close and begins extruding a thermic lance. This method of penetrating exotic-metal armour was used in close-quarters combat between drones during the war, and Sniper engages close like this because he wants the Prador to think he is trying to avoid combat that resulted in large burning holes throughout Montmartre and lots of bloated Human corpses floating about in vacuum, which is precisely the case, though Sniper is also being sneaky again.
As the Prador struggles to bring its particle cannon to bear, Sniper hurls the two of them on antigravity upwards through the ceiling. He strains against the claw, the motors in the Prador’s armour seeming to evenly match the strength of his tentacles. Smashing through the ceiling, they enter a cavity where smoke and debris sketch lines towards where Sniper cut his way in from the tubeway, causing the atmosphere breach, and the gale of escaping air now draws them towards the tubeway, just as Sniper wants. As they enter it, he apparently manages to stick a small mine to the Prador’s armour. The blast flings them both along the tubeway in one direction, but the mine is too small to do anything more than score the Prador’s covering. Sniper, however, had not intended it to do any more. Now, with a flickering of a com laser, the Prador tries to open communication.
Sniper prepares himself for any computer viruses or worms, and allows com.
‘The moment you penetrate my armour, you’re dead too,’ the Prador informs him.
‘Really.’ Sniper is thoroughly aware that armoured Prador like the one he is grappling contain tactical fusion bombs to completely obliterate them. On Spatterjay he witnessed Vrost’s armoured guard either destroying themselves or being destroyed remotely by Vrost, whenever there was danger that an opponent might defeat them, and thence possibly discover what their armour contained.
‘If you persist I will be forced to fire my particle cannon,’ says the Prador coldly. ‘I will not hit you, but Human casualties will result.’
It is trying to plumb Sniper’s apparent weakness and he shuts off the thermic lance, though still holding it in place. ‘So, what do we do now?’
‘You must release me.’
Not a chance. Letting this bastard go free would be like releasing one’s hold on a rattlesnake and expecting it not to bite. At that very moment they ricochet off the side of one of the tubeway transports parked along this section of the route. It is enough to dislodge the stalemate and the Prador now brings its particle cannon partially to bear on Sniper’s shell. For the first few seconds the beam simply bounces off, then it begins to penetrate the layer of nano-chain chromium, and burn. Sniper reignites his thermic lance.
‘We can come to some arrangement,’ says the Prador.
Just words, Sniper knows. The only accord they can possibly reach from this point onwards is that in which only one of them remains alive. Prador do not deal, especially those of them like this one, which is not an adult and certainly under orders it cannot disobey.
They hurtle out of the tubeway into a small dock, smash against the hull of a small private transport, then fall out and away from Montmartre. Now, having kept the Prador distracted long enough to get it out of the station, to where its self-destruct won’t kill a few thousand inhabitants, Sniper decides it is time to stop playing around. Scanning all about himself, he sees the Gurnard’s shuttle dodging shots from a rail-gun fired regularly but inaccurately from the station – one of the big ones shooting off missiles weighing in at four hundred pounds each. The Gurnard itself is now accelerating in towards the station, firing a powerful maser that is turning at least a few of those lethal missiles into lines of burning gas. Briefly igniting his fusion drive, he sends himself and the Prador hurtling towards the firing line of the big gun, meanwhile factoring in Orbus’s manoeuvres and the tracking of the throat of the rail-gun, whereby he makes some quite esoteric ballistics calculations – something he is very very good at.
‘Okay, let’s come to an arrangement,’ says Sniper.
He extends his tentacles, now applying their true full strength, stretches out from the Prador and turns his fusion drive right round towards his opponent’s visual turret, ignites it at a precisely judged moment, and finally releases his hold. The two hurtle apart, and the Prador, thoroughly blinded, tumbles back towards the space station, shrieking, while firing both its particle cannon and rail-gun randomly about it.
‘I’ll arrange for you to meet Mr Big-Fuck Rail-Gun,’ jibes Sniper.
The missile, travelling at one quarter the speed of light, slams into the Prador and turns the creature, and itself, into a hot cone of plasma reaching rapidly out into space. The fusion bomb inside the thing’s armour does not even get a chance to explode, but it still makes a big enough firework display.
Sniper now abruply swings himself round. The rail-gun is still firing and still a danger and, even if it were to result in the death of the operators of the great weapon, that would not have influenced his subsequent actions. However, he knows the loading and firing mechanisms of the gun are automatic, and that it is actually being aimed from some remote control-room. Between spates of firing, the missile he launches enters the throat of the big gun and detonates, spewing molten metal out into vacuum. It does not fire again.
Sniper accelerates past this geyser of molten metal, abruptly changes direction and shoots back inside the station structure. Whatever else they were here for, the ostensible primary task has not yet been accomplished. Soon finding the dock, he once again enters the tubeway system and works his way back to Smith Storage. He rather doubts that what he seeks still exists, for surely the King’s Guard he just killed must already have destroyed the evidence? The warehouse is now in complete vacuum, and grav is out. Ruination lies within, much of the contents of the warehouse floating about in big clumps of debris. Sniper carefully begins to scan all this, and very quickly finds a large package sprayed over with crash foam. Perhaps, for its own obscure reasons, the Guard did not follow orders? Sniper grabs up the package and rapidly heads back out of the station, for even at that moment station staff are fitting an airlock to the other side of the bulkhead door.
It feels to Vrell like his brain is boiling and, through the haze of pain and confusion caused by the data overload, he now understands his mistake. He foolishly assumed that, though not a normal Prador adult, Vrost was handling data at the rate of one, for he held the position of an adult. Vrell has badly underestimated Vrost, because the Captain of this ship was processing data at about twice the usual rate – at the rate Vrell himself found himself able to handle back on Spatterjay. But after doubling up Vrost’s control units to insert them into three rooting modules, Vrell is now receiving four times the data density of a normal adult.
It hurts.
Lying on his back with his legs waving in the air, for a little while he is just too confused to know what to do. Then, through the haze, he manages to regain some self-control and extend an underhand to grab one of the doubled-up control units and pull it free. Even with this relief of the pressure, the density of data flowing into his mind is almost too much but, determined not to sacrifice another unit, he concentrates first on just flipping himself back onto his legs, then on encompassing the data.
Slowly, through the units, he begins to assimilate just what now lies under his control. Turning, still a little unsteady, he sends a particular coded signal, and in response all the alcove storage units along one wall pop open. They are packed with equipment for Prador, since even the captains of vessels like a large selection of tools close at claw.
Through these units he can also get visual and audio feed from about a hundred and fifty of the King’s Guard, and knows a further fifty-four feeds are absent because he is currently receiving requests for Vrost himself to respond from two hundred and four sources. The war-drone cache aboard also lies within his compass, though all but three of the drones are somnolent and can only be activated through the pit controls of the console. Access to many other ship systems, like diagnostics and damage control, is his too. However, through these units he cannot detonate the fusion tacticals in the armoured suits of the King’s Guard – those being offline, since the Guard are inside the ship – and he cannot control the ship’s weapons, life-support or anything else of use against the Guard. Obviously Oberon learnt the lesson of the war: that transmitted com can be intercepted, decoded by AI, then turned against his kind.
Gazing through the sensors of various suits of armour, and through the ship eyes, Vrell sees that the group of Prador originally ordered to recover some part of Vrell himself from the highly radioactive area of the ship – in fact one of the many highly radioactive areas of the ship, he now finds – have just ceased work. Normal Prador, unless ordered to do otherwise, will continue with their task until it eventually kills them all. These ones know something is up and are waiting to find out what.
‘—optic com to local broadcast is out,’ the leader of their unit is announcing. ‘No response via ship broadcast. We did not get him here.’
The reply from a Prador only a short distance from the Sanctum is, ‘Currently investigating.’ That particular Guard is not visible, so doubtless it is now in the part of the ship Vrell previously occupied up above the Sanctum.
‘Optic feeds cut,’ the Prador confirms. ‘He heated the hydraulic fluid to force the door cylinder.’
‘He is inside the Sanctum?’ the other enquires.
‘One Guard disabled outside the Sanctum currently dying – nanite penetration of his suit – currently seeking confirmation.’
Besides that one group comprising nearly thirty of the Guard, it seems the rest of the Guard occupy the area all around the Sanctum, so really Vrell does not want to send any self-destruct orders, because such a concentration of blasts will kill him too.
What to do?
Though Vrost was communicating with those outside via the optics Vrell severed above, the Captain also possessed the option to talk to them through the control units – the ‘ship broadcast’ mentioned. This is an option probably only used when communications do not need to remain utterly secure. However, with Vrell still not knowing the full convoluted extent of Vrost’s security measures, which almost certainly extend to how communications are couched, the Guard will soon realize he is not Vrost. Noting that the disabled Guard in the corridor outside has been dragged off into a side corridor to be interrogated by two of his fellows, Vrell listens in.
‘Dropped from . . . wall panel,’ the dying Prador manages.
‘Is it Vrell?’
‘Do not know shape . . . Vrell.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Mutated . . . black.’
‘It is Vrell,’ the two interrogators confirm to each other at the same time.
Further questions receive no answer as the Guard member finally expires.
Damn, Vrell needs more than just these control units, he needs the pit console, and that is disconnected above him. He squats down to mull the problem over.
Of course, once the nanite penetrates the glathel seals of all those suits out there, which, according to Vrost, will now take less than two hours, the remaining Guard will cease to be a problem. However, the dying Guard having confirmed that Vrell is in here with their Captain, the rest at once begin shifting some of the heavy equipment previously being used to repair the ship. Vrell recognizes most of the machines they bring towards the Sanctum, and knows that the big short-beam cutter, which is based on the same technology as the particle cannon, and the massive hydraulic clawjack, will be enough. If he does not find a way to stop them, they will be in here within their remaining time. That they will die shortly after finishing him off is no consolation.
The drones . . .
The three war drones, apparently detailed to search the ship for him, still follow a search grid, so are not in the communication loop with the King’s Guard. War drones are usually quite dumb, and stubborn to a terminal degree, so Vrell decides to try something.
First sending Vrost’s pheromonal signature, he orders them, ‘Secure . . . com,’ whilst deliberately breaking up the signal. ‘King’s Gua . . . mutiny . . . attacking Sanctum . . . protect.’
Even if the drones fall for this ruse, it won’t be enough to stop the King’s Guard, but maybe it will delay them for just a little longer. Vrell focuses his attention on the alcove storage and quickly scuttles over. After a brief search he finds precisely what he wants: a spray gun for putting protective coatings on different surfaces, and containers filled with a selection of such coatings, in different colours.
Ebror watches carefully as his fellows bring the required equipment down the drop-shaft leading to the corridors located on the same level as Vrost’s Sanctum.
‘Take the cutter down first,’ he instructs.
Ever since Vrost fell out of communication, authority has devolved on Ebror as, at three centuries old, he is the most senior second-child remaining alive after the appalling carnage Vrell wrought here. Like all of the King’s Guard, Ebror possesses a greater degree of self-determination than normal Prador children. This is because, though all the Guard are utterly incapable of disobeying their father, and are in fact pheromonally and psychologically locked into obedience, there being so many of their kind it is very infrequent that any one amongst them will receive a direct order from King Oberon. Ebror’s orders come from the next one up in the hierarchy from himself, which in this case is Vrost, and he can always question, within limits, the source of those orders. It is also the case that the Guard are more intelligent than normal Prador, and not faced with the prospect of being killed by their father once they begin to mature. Ebror has been a second-child for three centuries and knows that, because of the virus matted through his body like river weed, he will never become a first-child.
‘When you get those doors open,’ he instructs, ‘we go straight in.’
Of course, it is now a certainty that he will not remain a second-child for much longer. Checking an internal display he studies the counter that numbers the remaining minutes of his life. Briefly, he wonders why he is bothering, and feels a momentary surge of irritation at Vrost for not at once enabling the Guard to detonate their own fusion self-destructs. He knows why, though: Vrost hopes to stay alive, somehow, and does not want the Guard, should they somehow find out about it, obeying the order to destroy the ship which Oberon has almost certainly sent. Right now, a destruct order sent to every suit aboard would do the job nicely.
‘Ebror,’ reports one of those now moving the big cutter out of the drop-shaft, ‘one of the war drones just turned up.’
Ebror feels another surge of irritation. He does not like dealing with any Prador who is not a member of his own family, and members of Oberon’s family are never turned into drones or ship minds. The drones in the cache here are part of this ship’s original complement and older even than him, in fact they date from the war. They are run by the flash-frozen brains of the children of some Prador adult who took the wrong side when Oberon usurped the previous King. That adult, the previous Captain here, was taken alive and sealed up with crash-foam in some wall aboard. It has always been a matter of debate amongst the Guard which wall that might be.
Ebror descends the drop-shaft and exits behind the moving mass of machinery. Engaging antigravity in his armour, he ascends to the ceiling and passes over above it all and, descending on the other side, spots the war drone hovering at the end of the corridor, both its side-mounted rail-guns directed towards the team that is moving the machinery.
‘Why are you here?’ Ebror asks. ‘You were ordered to grid-search for the intruder.’ None of the Guard had bothered to tell the three drones to stop searching, really, they were a bit superfluous anyway and only of use in any action occurring outside the ship.
The drone simply says, ‘Protect Sanctum.’
‘Who ordered you to protect the Sanctum?’ asks Ebror, already guessing.
‘Captain Vrost.’
‘Listen, drone,’ Ebror hisses. ‘The order you received comes from the intruder, who even now is inside the Sanctum with our Captain.’
‘Protect Sanctum,’ the drone insists stubbornly.
Damn, if the Guard continue trying to bring the equipment through here, the drone will attack them. Ebror has no doubt that he and his fellows can destroy it, but meanwhile, the equipment might get damaged. He swings round to the team moving the machinery. ‘Take it down there for now.’ He points with one claw into a side corridor then, shutting off the outside address, opens a private channel to one of those ranking directly below him in the Guard hierarchy. ‘Agreen, what’s the situation now?’
‘One drone at each end of the main sanctum corridor, and one sitting right before the doors,’ the Prador replies. ‘They’re not listening.’
Ebror again feels one of those familiar surges of annoyance. The drones are simply stubborn robots following orders, but he cannot help but feel resentment at the knowledge that for them time is not an issue here. Being of a different genetic heritage to the Guard, they will not die even if the nanite does penetrate through to their microscopic frozen brains.
‘Very well,’ he says, ‘bring down the big portables. We’ll deal with this problem once the equipment is out of the way.’ He does not add the need for alacrity, since they are all aware of the limit to their lifespans.
Ebror rises into the air again and retreats behind the cutter and the enormous clawjack, then ascends through the drop-shaft. Already some of the Guard are moving towards the shaft entrance above, towing behind them equipment of a rather different nature. With some satisfaction he eyes the missile-cluster launchers, thermal mortars and particle cannons, all of them perfect weapons for combating drones confined by corridors.
‘Don’t wait for further orders,’ he instructs those carrying these weapons. ‘Just destroy them as quick as you can.’ Stopping beside a group of eight of the Guard who are burdened with weapons, he says, ‘Bring those and come with me.’ Then, as he heads off with the same eight in tow, he explains his plans to Agreen.
‘Understood,’ his junior replies.
The intruder, Vrell, Ebror realizes, is obviously a seriously clever and dangerous individual who has used his only recently acquired knowledge of the ship layout to perfect advantage. Ebror intends to do much the same.
‘This way.’ He waves a claw towards a side tunnel, which in turn leads to a corridor running back parallel to the previous corridor. In his armour CPU he pulls up ship schematics and begins to analyse precisely where he wants to be. As he finally leads the eight into an empty storage room which, by the lingering smell, was obviously once full of food, the rumbling and crashing of weapons fire issues from below.
‘Why are we here?’ asks one of the eight.
‘We are here because drones are stupid,’ Ebror explains. ‘You two’ – he points a claw at the two carrying missile-cluster launchers – ‘stand here, and here.’ He directs them to either side of an empty patch of floor, then reaches over and takes a pack of thermal mortar bombs from another Guard and, twisting off their safety caps, places them one by one evenly spaced in a circle on that floor. ‘When they start to drop through, launch your missiles straight down.’
Ebror now sends an internal signal through his armour, whereupon the tips of his right claw drop away. Pointing the twinned throats of his particle cannon at the mines he planted, he sets it for wide dispersal – enough to turn them white-hot but not enough to blow them out of position – and then fires. Within a second all but a few of the thermal mines ignite with a sun-bright glare, turning into balls of heat intense enough to cut through just about anything. They begin sinking into the floor, which begins to sag. Even before Ebror can give the order, the two Guard step over this inferno and fire their cluster missiles downwards. Seven missiles from each launcher punch down through the softened metal and detonate below. The massive concussion throws the floor up, hurls all the armoured Prador waiting there up against the ceiling in an eruption of debris, then they crash down through the weakened floor into the corridor below, and Ebror has the satisfaction of seeing the drone positioned outside the Captain’s Sanctum rolling aside, now just a shell of armour hollowed out by fire.
‘Agreen!’ he calls. ‘Situation?’
‘The one at the drop-shaft access is down,’ Agreen replies.
‘That way!’ Ebror shouts to his comrades, firing his particle cannon towards where the surviving drone is retreating towards them, its hardfields up before it, under fire from the other end of the corridor. Immediately a hail of thermal mortars and clusters of missiles hurtle towards it. The drone has no time to defend itself from behind, and the non-stop blasts fling it forward, its hardfields failing, straight into the attackers before it. The back-blast picks Ebror and his companions up off the floor and flings them back too, but that’s what their armour is for and they soon recover. Some of those the drone crashed into are not so fortunate, and Ebror sees that a few of them have fallen.
‘Get that equipment down here now!’ he bellows, all too aware of how quickly his time is running out. Less than an hour remains of the two hours which, he estimates, is how long it will take to break into the sanctum – unless this Vrell has even more surprises for them.
Those still mobile quickly drag aside their comrades who are either stunned or dead, then roll back the big drone shell and push it down into the drop-shaft. Soon they draw the particle-beam cutter into view. Running on big heavy wheels rather than maglev, it looks like a sawn-off version of the weapon used in warfare, with its cooling fins, massive power supply and numerous armoured s-con cables leading to a straight and simple barrel. As soon as they position it before the double doors and lock its wheels, Ebror clambers up behind it, inserting his claws into the guide-pits. He swings the barrel off to one side of the doors, meanwhile checking ship schematics via his CPU, then targets the shaft of one of the big hydraulic cylinders within the wall.
The beam appears with a thump: a rod of blue light lancing between barrel and armoured wall. At first it splashes – hazy violet fire spreading down to the floor and up to the ceiling – then, when the thick metal there hits the right temperature, a mass of molten globules explode from a steadily deepening hole. Soon he is through the thick armour, and the hydraulic shaft is visible. This, being composed of a simple steel alloy, evaporates under the intense blast, and a crash and explosion of sparks issue from the hole as the cylinder drops inside the wall. Three more hydraulic shafts follow, then Ebror cuts two large holes in the middle of the doors, on either side of the diagonal line where they meet, into which the jaws of the clawjack can now be inserted. He clambers back down to the floor.
‘Move it!’ he bellows, when it seems several of the Guard here are getting a bit tardy, but then he sees one of his fellows staggering to one side and collapsing, and realises the nanite is beginning to kill them.
Those still able to function unlock the short-beam’s wheels and help Ebror move it aside.
‘Agreen, the clawjack!’ Ebror instructs.
‘I am sorry,’ says the junior, his legs giving way underneath him.
‘Get the dead ones out of the way and fetch that clawjack in here,’ Ebror orders those who are still able. Most obey him instantly, but he notices others just turning round and heading off to find somewhere quiet to do their dying. Ebror himself even considers doing the same, but does not relish the prospect of contemplating his end in silence.
Soon they draw the clawjack, which is simply a giant hydraulic claw, into position and insert its tips into the holes Ebror has cut. Its driving motor begins humming and its hydraulic cylinders drive the claw apart. Freed of their own hydraulics in the walls, the two heavy doors begin to part.
‘Prepare yourselves,’ Ebror instructs needlessly.
He looks around to see about fifty of the Guard now cramming the corridor, but even some of these are starting to sag and collapse.
‘You two.’ He gestures two of them towards the doors, and they move into position unlimbering heavy rail-guns.
The moment the gap draws wide enough, the beam of a particle cannon stabs out from inside, hitting one of the two directly. Both retreat, one with his armour smoking. The beam lances out again, hitting the clawjack, while one of them pokes his weapon through the gap and fires at some target Ebror cannot see. The firing ceases abruptly. Can that be it? Has Vrell been hit? When the doors draw far enough apart for an armoured Prador to enter whilst tilted on its edge, the first Guard goes in, rapidly followed by the second. Ebror scuttles up behind them, wondering why his legs are beginning to hurt; then, checking his time display, he understands. The two ahead of him open fire again, but only briefly, then Ebror is in behind them.
Vrell is dead.
Ebror walks unsteadily over to the black monster that crouches immobile against one wall, to inspect the great wet cavities gouged in its body by rail-gun fire. Since, like all the children of Oberon, he has been instructed directly by his parent to never remove his armour unless in absolute privacy, Ebror has only ever seen his own mutation. How his fellows look inside their armour is a mystery to him, and he therefore wonders if any of them look like this. Vrell is horrible, for there seems something soft about him.
Ebror now turns to Vrost. ‘Captain?’ he asks tentatively.
He expects no response and receives none. Either Vrell managed to somehow penetrate Vrost’s armour, or the nanite did his work for him. Ebror’s legs give way. Now his entire body starts to burn and he bites down on a scream. Aware of how the nanite works, he knows the pain will be intense for a while, but even now it is drawing in a numbness behind it as it destroys his nerves. Already he cannot feel his legs.
Other members of the Guard enter the Sanctum, some to prod at the black mutated Prador corpse, one or two collapsing, others wandering off to find somewhere else to die. After a little while the only movement is from flames issuing from a hole in one wall as hydraulic fluid burns. Smoke sits in a flat fog against the ceiling. Then some sensor comes back online, or some system repairs itself, and cold gas extinguishes the flames. Ebror has now receded to a small point of awareness. Most of his body feels like dead meat and his eyes ache and start to grow dim. Hearing a hiss and crump, and seeing an armoured suit opening, he feels only vague curiosity until it impacts on him that the open suit is Vrost’s. The Prador now standing before the suit is hard and black and lethal-looking. Vrost?
‘I wonder if you can hear me?’ the figure says.
Ebror can’t respond; does not want to respond.
The black mutated Prador continues, ‘I was right to assume that none of you even knows what Vrost looks like. All you did know was that a black mutated Prador came in here, so it was a small enough task to give Vrost’s corpse a black coating, arm him with a particle cannon, and then fire it remotely.’
Ebror continues fading . . . and ceases to care.
With internal flesh parted, three pairs of egg sacs lie exposed in a gullet-like cavity. As Sadurian steps forward, the two chrome-armoured third-children move respectfully to one side. She stoops to the sacs and presses her fingers against them, checking the tension of their surfaces to ensure they are fully charged with Oberon’s sperm, for sometimes a mating can be unsuccessful, with the female ending up dead and disembowelled before the King concludes his business. These sacs are certainly full, so next Sadurian pulls an ultrasound micro-scanner from her belt and places it against one of them, pulling up an image on the screen of eggs shaped like Human blood corpuscles floating amidst a mass of strange objects like fleshy tuning forks.
Some of the two-pronged sperms spear their targets and are gradually drawn inside – as is usual in a normal Prador mating – but others spear eggs and merely suck the substance out of them. These sperms are actually eating the eggs they attach to. Running a program through the scanner, Sadurian calculates the proportion of each kind of sperm, then pauses to observe a new phenomenon: sperms attaching themselves in reverse to eggs and using them as a base to attack other eggs and sperms. She isn’t greatly surprised, because there is always some new phenomenon like this at each mating, what with the King’s sperm being just as vicious and adaptive as the creature that produces it.
‘Okay,’ she says, ‘we’ve got about twenty per cent hostiles.’ She turns to just one of the two Prador. ‘Delf, get it collected and down to the laboratory as quickly as you can. Use autobot separation for the first hour, then nanobots thereafter. But do it in batches of just half a litre – we don’t want a transferable mutation this time.’ They’d lost the product of an entire mating last time when using little nano-robots to hunt down and kill the hostile spermatazoa. The Spatterjay virus had caused a rapid mutation in one sperm enabling it to chemically kill nanobots and then, within minutes, this mutation had spread virally to all the other spermatazoa, including those that weren’t hostile. It was a disaster and Oberon had not been greatly pleased since: though he enjoys mating, it is not something he can indulge in very often, what with females physically suitable for him having to be grown and then surgically altered especially for the purpose.
The armoured third-child Delf now punctures each sac in turn with the spout of a vacuum collector – the spout resembling a female’s ovipositor and the collector a small magnetic pump connected to twin chainglass collection bottles. With a sucking gurgling sound each sac deflates and the bottles fill with a pale orange fluid. When Delf is finished, he detaches the two bottles and carefully places them in a padded box, before inserting the pump and spout of the collector into a sterilizing sheath. Then he quickly retreats with his prize and heads off through the aseptic corridors. No other Prador will stand in his way and if any should foolishly assume he is a normal third-child who can be treated with violence, that foolish Prador will soon end up eating the hot end of a particle cannon installed in Delf’s armour.
‘Yaggs,’ Sadurian addresses her second Prador assistant, then points towards the dead female. ‘Eggs sacs, oviduct and ovipositor and required muscle groups. We’ll use these this time rather than the machines – make it all as natural as possible.’ Of course Prador cannot pick up on the Human sense of irony, though they have plenty of a sense of their own.
Yaggs quickly turns to the droge, removing gleaming surgical tools from its numerous compartments, and begins cutting out the required items. They need to be utterly scoured of hostile sperm before they can be used; after which the egg sacs can be refilled with fertilized eggs for the initial growth stages, then inserted into a birth mollusc. It is all a very complicated process, but the King’s juice is a lethal thing. Even in the early days, when females could still survive the actual matings with him, his sperm would eventually spread throughout their bodies and consume them like some flesh-eating virus. In fact the stuff has been used as a method of execution for those who displease the King sufficiently, though it only consumes those uninfected by the Spatterjay virus. The King’s own children it doesn’t kill, though after a long period of suffering what remains of them has to be destroyed.
Making a last cut around the back end of the female, Yaggs withdraws a great muscular sac and, as he does so, the attached spike of the ovipositor is pulled out of a hole in the rear of the female’s armour. This oviduct and ovipositor, with the muscles that drive the fertilized eggs from the former through the latter, the third-child now places in a refrigerated compartment within the droge. Next he moves on to cutting around the flaccid eggs sacs, then suddenly pauses before going down flat on his stomach. As a huge shadow draws across this diorama, Sadurian feels a shiver run up her spine. There comes a heavy crump to one side and she glances over to see a complex armoured foot indenting the floor, serrations running in triple ridges up the leg above it, to the first heavy joint.
‘We’ll be done here soon,’ says Sadurian, without looking up.
The foot rises and withdraws from view. The King is obviously in no mood for conversation, for he does not reply, but just moves away. Later, Sadurian knows, he will return to the dead female, and when the King is finally done, and the ship-lice after him, there will be nought to clear away but a few remnants of hard carapace.