8
It has been well documented that those who survive catastrophic events, in which they see many of their fellows die, will suffer survivor guilt. This guilt is stronger still when they have done things in order to survive for which they have every reason to feel guilty. But the concentration-camp victim forced to stack decaying bodies or feed them into the furnace is not the one I am referring to here. No, it is the one who survives at someone else’s direct and immediate expense. When Jay Hoop and the rest of the Eight established their massive concentration camps on Spatterjay, they delighted in forcing such a situation upon their captives, and the horrible games they played are legend. They regularly conducted ‘hunts’ through the island dingles, using one captive as a ‘hound’ and another as a ‘rabbit’. If a hound did not bring down a rabbit during such a hunt, the hound himself went for coring; and if he did, then it was the rabbit who was taken away to have his brain and spinal cord cut out. Other groups of captives were forced to vote on who in their group would go for coring next; and similar groups were sometimes stuck in a room with just one open door, and the first five to fight their way out got to survive that day. Sometimes victims were made to perform sex-acts with animals, and men were instructed to rape and often torture women, other men or children for the entertainment of the Eight. If they did not follow instruction they were cored. In this way no depravity was neglected. Jay Hoop especially enjoyed forcing some of the captives to skin others alive, which goes some way to explaining his later incarnation as The Skinner. Many of those who thus survived the rule of the Eight on Spatterjay were later hunted down and killed by more innocent survivors. Many eventually killed themselves, though some still exist, it is said. Certainly they understand the concept of survivor guilt.
– From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans
The stink of Human excrement is almost a taste in the air, and the groaning, the crying and sometimes the screaming whenever someone wakes up to find a ship-louse chewing into him provides a perpetual racket. In the crowded hold, Orbus nudges the blanket-wrapped bundle at his feet, then reaches over to drag it closer. With shaking hands he opens the short penknife the Prador have not bothered to relieve him of, leans down and pulls at the stained blanket and, after a moment, a child’s arm flops out. It is still warm, so he checks for a pulse but finds none, then he reveals the head, and one glance is all he needs to confirm this little girl is dead. Her head is misshapen, crushed by an inadvertent blow from one of the second-child guards that comes in to snatch up the latest complement of corpses.
Checking about furtively Orbus sees that those nearby are too lost in their own misery to even notice what he is doing. Many are asleep, which is one of the best reliefs to the perpetual gnawing hunger, others just stare blank-eyed into shadows. The lack of light will help him here too, since he is some distance from the phosphorescent growths on the wall. He cuts into the muscle just below her elbow, sawing down to bone, then cuts down along the bone itself to just before her wrist, then out again, and extracts a chunk of flesh the size of a banana. Pulling the heat-sheet he has stolen from another corpse over his head, he leans forwards and tries to bite off a piece of the child’s flesh. It is raw, salty, and causes his mouth to well with saliva, but in the end he can’t get his teeth through it, so has to cut through it with his penknife held in front of his mouth. A great deal of chewing later, with bits of sinew lodging between his teeth, he finally swallows the great claggy lump and comes close to vomiting. But he cannot allow that, and soon the nausea passes.
The remaining flesh he cuts carefully into small pieces, feeding them one after another into his mouth, then he leans forward again and quickly cuts further chunks from the corpse, concealing them in his jacket. Upon spotting one of the other prisoners nearby beginning to take notice off him, Orbus covers the girl’s remains, stands up and moves steadily away. He takes a drink from the wall spigot – at least water is no problem here – before returning to seat himself with his back against the wall – a place he has made his own, and manages to retain because he remains physically strong while others weaken. He left just in time. A sudden hysterical screaming issues from the girl’s mother as she discovers what has happened to her daughter’s corpse. Later, the small self-elected group of vigilantes present beats to death a man who happens to be lying nearby, but even they are weakening and it takes them some time. Later still, the second-children come and empty a small bag of decaying human food on the floor, then with unerring precision collect both the girl and the innocent victim of the vigilantes. The mother makes no protest this time, which Orbus thinks unfair. She shrieked blue murder upon discovering some occupant of the hold had cut away parts of her little girl for food, yet keeps silent when these monsters take the dead girl away for precisely the same reason.
‘We are all going to die,’ says the youth seated against the wall next to Orbus.
‘I’m going to live,’ Orbus murmurs quietly.
The Old Captain snaps out of uneasy slumber, then carefully removes his fist from the hole he’s just smashed into the wall beside him. The lights in his cabin are on, activated by this sudden movement.
It wasn’t just a nightmare; if only that were the case. The memory has never before been so utterly clear and horribly detailed. He heaves himself up on his bed and rests his back against the wall, gazing into those memories, that clear one and others not so clear. The vigilantes caught four others who were surviving by using the same horribly practical method as himself. They killed two of them outright, but only managed to kill one of the other two while she was asleep. The remaining cannibal spoke out and won others to his side, even some of the vigilantes themselves. The choice was to either eat Human flesh or die. Orbus pretended reluctance, eating what was given to him, but supplementing it from the cache in his own jacket.
Orbus wonders why such an utterly clear memory has surfaced now, and finds a confusing answer just as a sudden surge of anger sends heat flushing down his back.
Vrell.
Before the mutated Prador seized both Orbus and his crew, everything had been so blessedly hazy. By subjecting him to old horror, Vrell shook him back to consciousness, yet . . . Yet, though he feels a deep instinctive rage against the Prador, he also feels a gratitude. The animal organic part of himself wants to retreat into rage, mindless violence and sadism, but everything superior to that – all that might be described as his higher self – is glad of this return to painful sanity. Yet, again, though he might be grateful that Vrell’s actions coaxed him to his present condition, the Prador had not intended to do him a favour. It had subjected him to hideous pain, drowning and thralldom, and even Orbus’s higher self feels that is a debt to be repaid. Then, again, is his higher self being influenced by . . .
Orbus angrily throws back the cover, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. He walks over to gaze at a wall mirror and inspects the massive bulk of his naked body, blue rings of scar tissue cicatricing its surface so it looks almost scaled. Centuries of leech bites, centuries spent in a place deep inside his skull where memories could not find him, and now standing here with a body that is more viral fibres than Human flesh.
Am I still Human?
He turns away and opens a cupboard, takes out his neatly stacked clothing and dons it, then swiftly exits his cabin and heads for the bridge, even now realizing that it wasn’t any surfacing of old memory that woke him, but the Gurnard surfacing into the realspace of their destination.
Vrell ignores the hissing and clattering racket behind him, instead studying intently the nanoscope images displayed on the hexagonal screens before him. It seems that the mutated third-child, now struggling perpetually against the clamps securing it to a surgical saddle, is a complete viral organism. Previously, its mutated genome had remained distinct from the viral fibres occupying its body, but now there is no distinction between them. The separate cells of its body are blurred together, and the engines of cell division and growth sit in a nub at the end of each viral fibre penetrating every cell. Using nanoscopic tools Vrell excises one of these nubs, opens out great lumpy strands of genetic tissue and begins mapping it. Five hours later he realizes that the processing space he has provided for this task is nowhere near enough, and so provides more.
Checking the ship’s records of genome samples, Vrell at length realizes that this creature’s nervous system regrew by using a combined blueprint of both the Spatterjay glister and hammerwhelk. He then sets programs to automatically check everything being mapped against records whilst the process itself continues. After ten hours, less than 3 per cent of the entire genome has been mapped, but even in that small portion Vrell finds that within its collection the virus holds strands of the genomes of the ocean heirodont, the lung-bird, the frog-whelk and of course the Spatterjay leech itself, though only fragmented strands. Vrell tips back with a sigh and considers what he is doing and how this might help him achieve his own ends, and realizes such research will probably be of no help at all. He understands then just how radically he himself has changed, for no real Prador would allow scientific curiosity to divert it from the serious business of vengeance.
Mildly distracted, he is considering the mass of genetic tissue now being revealed when an errant thought occurs to him. Since any planetary ecology has at its root, in the far past, the same life-form, there should thus be a sizeable duplication of code across various species. Even Prador possess much of the same code as simple seaweeds back on their homeworld. Vrell has so far found neither duplication nor junk genetic material, yet without these this sample is far too big and complicated. The entire ecology of Spatterjay could easily fit into about a quarter of it and, even if Human DNA and some of the other species they took to that world with them were to be included, that still leaves a lot of genetic material unaccounted for.
Vrell shakes himself. Stupid . . . and paranoid. Almost certainly the genetic bulk he is seeing is due to junk genome and pointless replication he has yet to discover. Life only conforms to the logic of environment, not the kind of mathematical logic of those who build artificial life-forms. There is always a huge amount of waste, redundancy, parasitic genetic tissue . . . Still Vrell feels an unease he cannot shake, for everything he is now seeing, besides lacking such waste, seems far too logically ordered, far too much like the construct of some builder rather than the product of normal evolution.
The program comparing the genetic material with everything on record steadily continues to build up a list, and only now does Vrell note how it is perpetually rescanning certain molecular constructs already mapped. Checking, he sees that it has there found complex strands it cannot identify. These must be from life-forms on Spatterjay yet to be discovered, and their genomes mapped. It is only upon closer inspection, upon discovering that the unidentified segments are a form of trihelical genetic material whose bases don’t even come close to that of the Spatterjay samples, that Vrell realizes he has in fact found something utterly alien. Perhaps, far in the past, there were other visitors to that world . . . It must have been far in the past, because the collection of genetic material seems to be layered in a historical pattern, and these are down deep – the deepest of all.
Vrell shivers, his unease growing. He now abruptly focuses his study upon the viral strands holding all this together, and allowing only parts of it to replicate. Gradually he builds up a picture of it in his mind, keying together molecular components and attempting to understand the underlying logic of its structure. Realization slams into him all at once. Now focused on the virus rather than its eclectic collection of genetic material he understands perfectly what he is seeing. A large proportion of this virus is no natural product of evolution, though evolution has made its weight felt and the thing has been changed by it. The virus was tampered with, added to, the additions being something made by an intelligent mind. Though these extras resemble what is described as life, they are in fact an incredibly complex collection of organic-base nanomachines working in perfect concert. And they must have been added long before either Humans or Prador crawled out of their ancestral mud.
A worrying thought now occurs to him. Could there be some connection between this and the odd code, and behaviour he has been noticing in the King’s Guard? No, surely not. Though what exists inside their armour might bear some resemblance to this creature, it has no source of nutrient and so will eventually become somnolent, and hibernate.
He backs away from the screens and turns to inspect the creature clamped into the surgical saddle, and notes that its shell, such as it is, has turned rubbery underneath the clamps, and the creature is already gaining a greater compass of movement. Suddenly reaching out, Vrell disconnects the clamps and, as the creature tries lunging for him, closes his claw about its body and carries it across to a large cryostore, opens the circular portal, then thrusts it inside and slams the door shut. Peering through a small window in the door, he observes the thing crashing about inside, knocking sample bottles out of their racks as, using a pit control, Vrell winds the internal temperature down to minus a hundred and fifty degrees Celsius. As the cryostore’s systems struggle to bring its interior temperature down to that level, the creature’s antics grow steadily more sluggish and here and there it begins to develop cracks in its body. But even when the pit control emits its even tone indicating that target temperature has been achieved, the thing is still moving.
Continuing to watch, Vrell notes that its carapace has turned a bright yellow, and that some tar-like substance has begun oozing out of the cracks to seal them. Still it moves, very slowly extending a transparent siphon into a puddle of spill from one of the sample bottles. Perhaps it was some organic sample, Vrell speculates, before even thinking to turn on the small screen beside the cryostore and study its manifest.
The store contains genetic samples of Terran life-forms, but this does not arouse any suspicions in Vrell. This thing has quite obviously detected a source of nourishment. He knocks the temperature setting down even lower, as the thing now squirts some black fluid down through its siphon – still liquid even at this temperature – into the sample, which dissolves, whereupon the creature slowly sucks it all back up again. Now, in utter slow motion, the creature raises one armoured tentacle and brings it down on another bottle. But its movements are becoming so slow, they are almost indetectable. Vrell moves away from the cryo-store, putting together in his mind a series of experiments he now intends to conduct. However, just then he receives a notification through one of his control units: a ship has arrived in this same sector of the Graveyard.
‘What is it that you are seeking?’ the Golgoloth asks, peering at the monster displayed on the screens before him.
‘I seek to become,’ replies Oberon, King of the Prador. ‘But I have a problem,’ he adds.
‘You have a problem,’ the Golgoloth repeats, simultaneously analysing that first statement, which is one Oberon often comes out with. Certainly, over the centuries in which the Golgoloth has communicated with the King, his form has changed radically. But precisely what does Oberon seek to become?
‘Do you for ever want to remain a refugee, Golgoloth?’ Oberon counters. ‘Would you not prefer to come home?’
‘Of course, but the ruler of the kingdom I fled has always shown far too much interest in me, and . . .’ the Golgoloth pauses momentarily, ‘. . . it is never healthy to be the subject of any ruling Prador’s interest.’
‘That statement is true,’ replies Oberon, ‘if the ruling Prador is of the normal Prador stock, but I, like yourself, can hardly be described as such.’
‘Even so, I still think it unlikely that your interest in me concerns my good health, long life and happiness.’
‘But this time I mean you no harm.’
The Golgoloth pauses. Over the centuries they have conducted this discussion in many different forms, and every now and then Oberon has offered amnesty if the Golgoloth will return to the Kingdom to work for the King himself. However, on every previous occasion the Golgoloth saw through that offer and discovered, through his own robotic spies within the Kingdom, that there was something specific the King was after that required the Golgoloth’s input. On early occasions that input included tracking down the Second King’s treasury, and also finding a secret military base where biological weapons were being developed. On a more recent occasion it was to find the Golgoloth’s own abandoned memstores that were packed with a mass of useful data about Prador genetics, and some more besides about the viral form of Spatterjay which, when Golgoloth resided within the Kingdom, had only been known about for a few decades. But now things have changed.
The Golgoloth gazes at the creature displayed on his screen. Once the King was a pure Prador, but is nothing like that now. The hermaphrodite knows Oberon possesses a formidable intelligence that, in the beginning, was the equal of the Golgoloth’s own. But that intelligence has grown over the centuries, perhaps now surpassing the Golgoloth’s, even though the Golgoloth has perpetually added to its own brain-power with internal and external ganglion grafts. This is perhaps why Oberon’s offers of amnesty have gradually tailed off, since Oberon, growing in mindpower, wants less and less from the Golgoloth. In fact, their infrequent communications have, over the last century, mostly been complex conversations of the kind Oberon cannot conduct with any of his fellows inside the Kingdom. The Golgoloth is a like mind, someone to bounce ideas off and with whom to debate increasingly obscure branches of science and philosophy, but otherwise has become an irrelevance.
‘What do you want?’ the Golgoloth asks.
‘You understand, of course,’ says Oberon, ‘that I no longer require anything from you related to your previous hidden influence within the Second Kingdom. You understand that if you were to return here now, you would be of value to me only as a mind that can grasp at least a little of my own compass of thought.’
‘Arrogantly Pradorish.’
‘The truth, nevertheless.’
‘So you’re asking me to come back just to be your buddy, are you?’
‘In time, perhaps, but really I am offering you something you’ll want to come back for – something you have always wanted to come back for.’
The Golgoloth shifts uncomfortably. ‘I am not sure there is anything in the Kingdom I want that much.’
‘Of course there is, Golgoloth,’ says the King. ‘Do you think I don’t understand you at all? You have remained alive for longer than just about any creature within either the Kingdom or the Polity, except – and this is the entire point – those creatures which were native to Spatterjay long before either Humans or Prador arrived there, for on that planet reside living sails and deep-ocean whelks who exceed you in age by an order of magnitude.’
‘This is no news to me,’ the Golgoloth interjects.
‘You, Golgoloth, have an appetite for life that exceeds that of our fellow Prador, and also possess the intelligence and skills to maintain that life. You butcher your children to provide you with an endless supply of transplants, and I have no doubt that you have obtained a sample of the Spatterjay virus. So why haven’t you used it?’
‘I proceed with caution.’
‘You proceed with fear and too rigid a grasp on your existence. You will never allow that virus into your body until you fully understand it and what it will do to you, what it will do to you over the ensuing centuries of your life, because, my friend, I well understand that you intend to live until the suns go out and, if at all possible, even beyond that time.’
The Golgoloth dips its head in appreciation. ‘An accurate assessment.’
‘And,’ the King now adds, ‘there is only one place where you can study the long-term effects of the Spatterjay virus on Prador – and only certain Prador you particularly want to study. And those are myself and my family.’
‘I see. So what is this problem I can help you with, for which you are prepared to allow me access to youself and your children?’
‘The problem is called Vrell,’ Oberon replies. ‘He is an adult Prador hiding in the Graveyard, an adult Prador recently infected with the Spatterjay virus, and as such a rather younger version of myself. He is dangerous, and I need him to cease to exist, and quickly.’
In light of this latest revelation, the Golgoloth immediately begins to assess in depth everything Oberon has already told him. Does the King genuinely fear he will be usurped by this younger version of himself? Surely not, for seven centuries lie between them, and Oberon has to be vastly superior in development to the younger version. Oberon obviously does not want to send forces straight into the Graveyard because, no matter how advanced the King himself now is, he is still an organic being and would be dropping himself into a whole world of hurt if he went up against the Polity and its artificial intelligences. So why this, now? Why, really, should the King be sufficiently concerned about this Vrell to be prepared to call on the Golgoloth’s assistance?
The Golgoloth onlines the ganglion, long unused and therefore sluggish to respond, in which he has stored all his knowledge about the Spatterjay virus. It has not used this ganglion for some time because, just as the King said, he wants to study the virus’s long-term effects – a line of research truncated here in the Graveyard. Once again it finds itself reminded that the virus is an artificial life-form that as well as holding within its matrix a collection of Spatterjay genomes, also holds there something utterly alien. Could the King’s present fear be something to do with that? Could it be that this young Prador might find something there that the King has missed, or take some course the King himself has neglected?
Or is it that Oberon has no real fear of this youngster? That this is merely a way of bringing the Golgoloth out of hiding?
‘I am waiting for your response,’ says the King.
The Golgoloth shakes itself out of its reverie. When dealing with a being as complex as the King, there are just too many possibilities, too many probable convolutions to his plans, his plots. However, if it is true that this Vrell is in the Graveyard, as described, the Golgoloth wants to study him.
‘I will find this Vrell,’ it replies.
‘Is that your only response?’
‘For the moment.’
With frightening speed for something so large, King Oberon moves out of view and the Golgoloth closes down the link.
Of course, a simpler explanation covers all this. Vrell, just like the Golgoloth itself, is a potential competitor, and getting competitors to try and tear each other apart is an old manoeuvre in the Prador Kingdom. Just politics really.
Stepping into the bridge of the Gurnard, Orbus gazes out at the glimmering stars and suddenly feels very alone. The ship seems unnaturally quiet with neither the drones nor Drooble present here. But it is impossible to be truly alone on a ship like this.
‘Have you detected the target?’ he enquires.
After a noticeable delay, Gurnard replies, ‘I have.’
‘That was quick.’
‘Vrell has placed his ship in close orbit around an unstable green sun, which is enough to conceal it from long-range detection but not enough to conceal it from me here.’
‘How far away is it?’
‘One and a half light-years.’
‘So why aren’t we closer?’
‘Our arrival in this sector of the Graveyard in one jump is something Vrell might consider a coincidence. But if we now jump to his present location, he will know for sure we are here searching for him.’
‘And?’
‘I was waiting for some input from my Captain and crew. And I also have further news to impart.’
Orbus walks round his Captain’s chair and seats himself there. ‘Where are they?’
‘Sniper, who has been spending rather a lot of time scanning the contents of my holds, is even now on his way. Thirteen, who has been supervising Iannus Drooble’s latest visit to the Medbay for intravenous nutrients, is bringing Iannus here.’
Orbus impatiently rattles his fingers on one chair arm, and after a moment becomes aware of a shadow looming up into the bridge. Glancing round he observes Sniper enter and then slide round to one side of him, settling down on the floor with a heavy crunch.
‘Orbus,’ the big drone acknowledges him.
‘What’s so interesting in the hold, then?’ Orbus enquires.
‘Some weird items down there.’ Sniper waves a spatulate tentacle towards the rear doors of the bridge. ‘There’s an entire ocean heirodont in stasis and another cylinder full of leeches.’ The big drone pauses for a moment. ‘Oddly, there’s even a cargo of sprine, and some multiguns specially formatted to deliver it as a weapon. . . . Any idea what that’s all about, Gurnard?’
Again the delay before Gurnard replies. ‘It was placed aboard by the same agent who approached Cymbeline about the original mission out here. He thought it might be useful to have some of the substance aboard, since it seems likely we will be encountering the King’s Guard, who are all virally mutated.’
Orbus feels himself go cold at the mention of sprine. It is an Old Captain’s get-out clause. The stuff is produced in the bile ducts of giant ocean-going leeches on Spatterjay when they make the transition from plug-feeders to eating whole prey. It quickly kills the virus within that prey, enabling the leech to then digest it. Sprine extracted from those bile ducts, and then refined, kills virally infected humans even faster. Old Captains, being virtually unkillable by most normal means, always like to keep some to hand in case life should became too unbearable for them. They also keep it just in case they fall into Spatterjay’s ocean, so they can choose a quick death rather than the nightmare of an endless agonized existence under the waves. But Orbus is puzzled.
‘Seems a daft idea when all the Guard always wear armour,’ he says. ‘I can’t think of many portable delivery systems that can punch through that.’
‘The multiguns will certainly not punch through Prador armour,’ Gurnard concurs. ‘I believe the agent just wanted to make another option available, no matter how remote the chances of it ever being used successfully. It is not as if it is taking up useful space . . .’
It seems a dubious explanation.
Thirteen floats in next, with Drooble in tow, clutching to his tail so that the drone looks like some sort of toy balloon.
‘Cap’n,’ Drooble murmurs, his expression slightly bewildered.
‘You all right now, Iannus?’
‘Never better,’ says Drooble, releasing Thirteen’s tail and going to take his usual seat at the horseshoe console.
Orbus studies him for a moment. Despite the ongoing medical care, he seems worse than he appeared directly after his first visit to Medbay. That sometimes happens, of course – a delayed reaction to the effects of the virus gaining ground in a patient’s body. Drooble requires watching, which is why, Orbus suspects, Thirteen is never far off. Orbus turns away.
‘Now, let’s get something straight,’ he says. ‘Our instructions are to find out what Vrell is up to, and possibly do something about him? I’m buggered if I know how we can achieve either.’
‘Ah, but we gotta use our own initiative,’ says Sniper sarcastically.
Orbus shakes his head, ‘For all we know, Vrell might have turned into a Prador version of the Skinner, so I doubt he’ll be reasonable.’
‘We don’t really know that,’ says Drooble, his voice somehow yearning in tone.
Orbus glances at him, wondering just what is going on in his mind, then continues, ‘I’m betting that the moment we move in close, he’ll attack and try spreading the Gurnard all over vacuum, and then he’ll find somewhere else to hide.’
‘Which is why,’ interjects Gurnard, ‘you need something to offer – something that might be of real value to him.’
‘Like what?’ asks Sniper.
‘Like an amnesty for crimes he committed within the Polity, and also the freedom to live there without interference,’ Gurnard replies.
‘You what?’ says Orbus in surprise.
‘You heard,’ the ship AI replies.
‘One of my crew died inside his ship,’ growls the Captain.
‘There is sufficient doubt about how that man died. We cannot prove it was not an accident, just as Vrell claimed at the time.’
‘Yeah, but is that very likely?’
‘Who can say?’ Gurnard wonders. ‘Who can say how certain members of the crew aboard your sailing ship, the Vignette, met their end over the years?’
‘So ECS is offering Vrell an amnesty,’ says Sniper, now that Orbus falls silent.
‘King Oberon wants Vrell dead because, through him, Polity AIs might learn about virally infected Prador and come to understand Oberon’s nature,’ says Gurnard.
‘Wait a minute,’ says Sniper. ‘What about this being a possible seizure of Graveyard territory or the first moves in an attack on the Polity?’
‘Though that idea was mooted,’ Gurnard observes, ‘it has now been dismissed. If Oberon wants to seize Graveyard territory he would do better to just seize it without warning, and the same rule applies to any attack on the Polity. Therefore leading Polity AIs have now gone back to first causes: Oberon wants Vrell dead, and the fact that he has positioned himself, and a portion of his forces, at the border inclines those AIs to now believe there is some time factor involved here. Oberon wants Vrell out of circulation fast, and is perhaps not prepared to wait until he decides to venture outside the Graveyard.’
‘Time factor?’ asks Orbus, looking up again.
‘Vrell has shown himself to be very dangerous indeed but we still cannot see how a virally infected Prador could pose a real danger to Oberon. Unless, of course, some other factor is involved. Earth Central believes there is something else about Vrell, something else about this whole situation, that is not entirely clear yet.’
The ship lurches abruptly, the screens greying out, then Orbus feels his brain trying to turn inside-out as the vessel drops into underspace.
‘How long will it take us to get there?’ Orbus asks.
‘With the current U-space geometry, just twenty minutes.’
Orbus nods, stands up, and abruptly departs the bridge. Doubtless, once they arrive, Gurnard will try communicating with Vrell, and just maybe things will proceed without too many problems thereafter. However, Orbus does not really expect things to go so easily, and so heads directly to the docking ring to find his armoured spacesuit. Upon his arrival in the suiting room, he gazes at the thing still folded into a strange sculpture on the floor and seemingly waiting for him. He steps into the boots and the suit starts to fold itself up around his body, quickly enclosing him, whereupon he steps over and picks up the multigun that keys into the suit. Pausing for a moment, he studies the weapon, then thoughtfully puts it down again whilst opening com through the suit itself.
‘Where are those multiguns that can deliver sprine?’ he asks Gurnard.
The ship AI’s reply is prompt this time. ‘I’ve just sent a guidance package to your suit, so follow it down into the hold.’
Orbus’s visor abruptly closes up, whereupon an arrow starts to blink down in the bottom corner. He follows it to the exit from the suiting room, then down a corridor leading towards the zero-gravity hold area. He pauses for a moment at the doorway into that large dark space, peers at quadrate frameworks packed with mysteriously wrapped cargoes, and begins checking his suit controls for the gecko function of the boots, or the impeller jets. There is no need, however, for out of the shadows comes one of those disconcerting earwig handler-robots. Clasped in its pincers is a package, a long, brushed-aluminium case, and he presents it. As Orbus takes it, the handler opens its pincers wide with a loud snap, then turns and jets itself back into its benighted home.
In the corridor outside the hold, Orbus opens the aluminium case to reveal a multigun inside, secured in shaped foam, with all its auxiliary devices, spare ammunition and necessary power packs. He begins hanging the spares on his belt, then pauses to inspect a tubular magazine: Sprine MXC – explosive needle bullets containing sprine. Checking over the multigun he also finds an option for firing a beam of magnetically accelerated sprine dust, but the rest of the weapon’s functions are much the same as those of the one he left behind in the suiting room. He takes it up and heads back towards the bridge.
‘I see you are taking precautions,’ Sniper observes as he reenters.
Ignoring the comment, Orbus heads for his chair but, peering at it, realizes that wearing this spacesuit he won’t fit. Instead he lays the multigun down on it, and turns to gaze at the greyness currently displayed on the screens. After a few minutes it flickers, and again Orbus experiences that horrible twisting sensation as the Gurnard surfaces into the real. A beat, and then the stars to one side are blanked out by a massive explosion.
‘Evasive manoeuvres,’ announces Gurnard flatly.
‘Are you speaking to Vrell?’ Orbus enquires.
No reply.
‘He’s a bit busy now,’ Sniper observes, as the ship lurches and the still visible starfields spiral. Something silvery flickers past one of the eye windows, and a boom echoes deep within the ship. Orbus feels grav fluxing underneath him.
‘A suit might be a good idea at that,’ says Drooble, standing up only to be flung sprawling as the ship lurches again.
‘Vrell is not talking,’ explains Gurnard, voice still monotone.
Orbus, still perfectly in balance, his suit motors and now the gecko function of his boots keeping him upright, turns to Sniper. ‘How good is your chameleonware?’
‘The best,’ Sniper replies.
‘Good enough to cover me as well?’
‘I guess.’
Orbus turns to Drooble, as the man drags himself back to his seat. ‘You have the bridge, Iannus.’ Back to Sniper, ‘You and I are going to find an airlock.’
Sniper turns and, with all speed, shoots out of the rear of the bridge. Orbus snatches up his weapon then runs after the drone, his suit again compensating for balance and powering him along so that, even with grav fluctuations, he runs smoothly.
‘I cannot stay here for much longer,’ announces Gurnard.
‘When we’ve gone, pull back, but try to keep track of him,’ Orbus replies, swerving to keep up with Sniper as the drone heads for an unfamiliar part of the docking ring. ‘I’m presuming you have some sort of negotiating package from Earth Central concerning this amnesty?’ Soon they pass through a cargo tunnel into an empty shuttle bay, the door automatically clanging shut behind. As soon as pumps begin to suck out the air, Orbus’s suit visor slams shut.
‘I do,’ Gurnard replies through his suit com.
‘Transmit a copy to Sniper, and to the memspace of my suit.’
‘Done.’
A little icon lights up down at the bottom of Orbus’s visor, blinks for a moment and goes out.
‘You sure about this?’ Sniper asks.
‘As sure as I can be about anything,’ the Old Captain replies.
Sniper’s tentacles enwrap his body and draw him close, as grav shuts down and the interlocking crenellations of the doors begin to pull apart. Then they are outside, falling through night, the Gurnard veering away just as the beam from a particle cannon scours past it. Momentarily they hover in the light glare of Gurnard’s fusion motors, then comes massive acceleration, which Orbus feels even in such a protective suit, as Sniper pulls them clear. The Gurnard folds out of existence, and Orbus finds himself hurtling down towards a Prador dreadnought that looks like it has been sent out too early from its construction yard.
‘This is going to be rough,’ Sniper informs him. ‘I can’t use my engine until we’re in real close, so we’ll hit hard. Your suit should be able to handle it, and you might be able to as well.’
A massive scaffold spears up past them, and a great wall of brassy metal hurtles up like the top of an elevator. Fusion flame, blinding, and Orbus feels himself being compressed into one side of his suit. Momentary corrections from steering thrusters next, then, rather than hit the wall of exotic metal, they slam into scaffolds and tension cables, Sniper’s shell taking the brunt of the impact. They crunch down in a maze of twisted metal, to finally land in a ninety-degree conjunction between something like a sheet of riveted steel and a wall composed of diamond-shaped chunks of foamed porcelain. Sniper’s tentacles star out all about them, holding them in place as the Prador dreadnought makes another one or two vicious manoeuvres, then zero-gravity gradually returns. Orbus just lies there thinking that only a tap will be necessary to remove him from this outer garment now. His whole body feels as if it has been smashed to jelly.