9
Even the Prador have their myths and legends, but they are very different from those that Humans propagate. They do not have gods, demons and fairies, nor has any past Prador been deified. Until the war ended and some cultural contact became allowed, it was assumed they had no conception of the supernatural. Now we know there are things Prador can fear even more than their own fathers. The Golgoloth is such a creature: an eternal monster who holds Prador young for ever captive, and in some vampirish manner slowly feeds on them to extend its own life. This is an odd myth and one wonders why young Prador so fear this creature, for it could cause them no more sorrow than their fathers already do. The adult male of any family fulfils amply the role of some spiteful god, with his power to kill on a whim or even to sentence his children to eternal hell.
– From HOW IT IS by Gordon
Ensconced once more in the Captain’s Sanctum, Vrell studies in minute detail the data recorded about the intruder ship, and comes to some immediate conclusions. Though to all intents the unknown craft seems like a cargo hauler with a rather odd and inefficient design of hull, it is clearly something more than that, for it possesses particle cannons and rail-guns which, just by measuring their bulk and positioning within the hull, Vrell surmises are of up-to-date Polity design. Almost certainly the ship is a covert Polity vessel and therefore its crew and AI work for Earth Central Security. But why did it come here?
Though armed, the vessel could not hope to match Vrell’s dreadnought, and it did not even try, instead running and U-jumping away just as quickly as it could, once having delivered its packages. Vrell, now somewhat more paranoid since his problems over the message he earlier received from Oberon, immediately consigned the one information package to secure processing space. Now taking every precaution available, he slowly and carefully opens it, studying its basic structure before going anywhere near its content. The thing seems fine – simply a message recorded in Prador com code – so finally Vrell listens to it, his mental finger poised on the off button.
‘I am the artificial intelligence aboard the ship you are presently firing upon and, of course, knowing your history I understand your paranoia. I bring you a message direct from Earth Central itself. The ruling intelligence offers you amnesty and sanctuary within the Polity, but obviously with some provisos. You must there obey Polity laws and you must give up your vessel, since we cannot have a fully armed Prador dreadnought travelling at will within Polity space. You must allow Polity AIs to study you for a period of no more than one Solstan year, during which time all your needs will be provided for and you are assured those investigations will not subject you to any discomfort. After that time you will become a free citizen of the Polity, provided with funds equal to the value of the vessel you hand over.’
Vrell listens to the message four or five times, then lays it out as Prador text for further study. Sending instructions to the mind controlling the dreadnought, he turns the vessel round rather than fleeing to some other location, as had been his intention. This offer requires further investigation for, though he still aims to exact some sort of vengeance for King Oberon’s shabby treatment of him, it might still be a good idea to leave some other options open. The offer, he realizes, is not a bad one, but what about guarantees? And of course, more importantly, what about the other two packages? What about the war drone and armoured Human who have just boarded his ship? What are their intentions?
Vrell turns to his screens, observing interior scenes throughout the dreadnought whilst simultaneously processing data through his shell-welded control units. The drone’s chameleonware is very good and Vrell would not have known the two were aboard were it not for their violent impact with part of the ship undergoing repair, and thus constantly monitored, and their subsequent penetration of another area of the ship he is also constantly monitoring: that section where the mutated third-children reside. The drone and the Human are currently moving through tangled superstructure, and seem to be showing no inclination to hide themselves. They are conversing, too, so Vrell decides to listen in.
‘Do you think he’s spotted us yet?’ asks the armoured Human.
‘Almost certainly,’ replies the drone, now moving into an area where the ship eyes can finally get a clear view of it.
Vrell feels a sudden disquiet, for he recognizes this drone as the one called Sniper. It is the one that once, in a previous drone shell, knocked his father’s ship out of Spatterjay’s sky and which later, in its present form, managed to penetrate that same ship and rescue some of the Human prisoners Vrell had seized. But this is also the drone that detected him returning to Vrost’s ship and yet gave no warning to Vrost. Vrell is ambivalent in his feelings about this Sniper, but certainly this is a dangerous drone that must be taken very seriously.
The drone continues, ‘If he didn’t detect us smashing into his ship, then almost certainly one of the ship eyes will have picked us up by now.’ Sniper points precisely at the eye Vrell is watching them from. ‘Like that one.’
‘So what do you reckon his reaction will be?’
‘He’ll either try to talk or try to kill us,’ Sniper replies. ‘My money’s on the latter option, so I’m guessing he’ll send some of the crew after us.’
‘But the ship’s crew is dead.’
‘Yup, but despite that they seem quite active.’
‘What?’
‘I’m guessing some sort of control program operating their armour. We’ve got dead Prador wandering about this ship in mobile coffins.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’
‘There’s also some nasty-looking things in this section of the ship, which are now starting to close in on us. I’m not entirely sure what they are.’
At hearing this, the Human checks the controls on his complicated-looking assault rifle, then holds it up in readiness, swinging it perpetually to cover any possible approach. Vrell checks through other eyes in the same area and sees that mutated third-children are indeed closing in, then returns his attention to the two intruders. Studying the Human intently, Vrell realizes that, though the man wears a bulky powered spacesuit, that does not fully account for his size. However, there is no facility for any kind of deep scan at the Human’s current location, so he cannot be sure. Yet, from what he understands of Human behaviour, Vrell realizes this man seems very ill at ease, despite being physically big, armed and armoured, and accompanied by a lethal war drone.
He studies the face he can see through the visor, but it is just a Human face, and they all look the same to Vrell. He considers opening communication with the two, but abruptly scotches that idea. By just watching and listening he might learn more. Perhaps, at some point, they will think he does not know they are aboard, and so say something more revealing. Certainly, once the mutants attack, Vrell will learn more about the armament they carry, which he cannot do simply by scan until they reach a part of the ship where intensive internal scanning is available.
The first mutant third-child ascends from below, its multiply jointed legs easing out of a circular duct so as to then heave its soft body out, till it pops like a cork coming out of a bottle. Vrell notes that though its body and legs resemble those of the one he captured, the rest of it is at wild variance. Its head is a long spike with eyes running all down the sides, it has sprouted leech mouths underneath it where its legs join its body, and it possesses a whiplike, two-pronged tail.
‘What a horrible fucker,’ says the man, immediately directing his weapon towards the monstrosity. ‘But there’s something a bit familiar about certain parts of it.’
‘The number of legs is the same as a Prador’s,’ Sniper observes, ‘and those things underneath it look suspiciously like leech mouths.’
The creature orientates itself, then hurtles towards them, leaping at the very last moment towards the Human. One of Sniper’s tentacles sweeps out and bats it to one side, where it hits hard against a canted wall. The thing quickly unpeels itself, and merely attacks again. Again Sniper smacks it against the wall, and again it starts to unpeel itself.
‘This could get rather repetitive,’ says the drone.
‘Well, it’s obviously hostile,’ the man observes.
‘Orbus, your speed of comprehension is blinding.’
Orbus.
It takes Vrell a moment to dredge up the memory and to realize why that name is so familiar. In that same moment, Orbus fires his weapon, its beam setting cutting the attacking creature in half.
Orbus was the captain of that sailing ship Vrell attacked on Spatterjay, capturing him and his crew to use as slave labour to repair Father’s spaceship. He is an Old Captain, of course, so that accounts for his size.
‘Look at the bugger now,’ says Orbus.
The two severed halves are still moving, folding in on themselves to produce two creatures but with a lesser complement of legs. And now other mutated third-children begin to appear and hurl themselves towards the newcomers. Sniper lashes out with all of his tentacles that are not gripping the twisted wreckage around them, sending the creatures crashing into the surrounding darkness. As the first of them begin to return, he opens up with a powerful laser, but even that takes a couple of seconds to render each of their assailants inert.
‘Let me try something,’ says Orbus, quickly making an adjustment to his weapon.
The next mutant to attack – a repellent creature whose legs are making the transition into tentacles, and whose body has become squidlike and sports two trumpet mouths surrounded by a ring of eyes – he shoots just once with some sort of explosive bullet. Detonating inside the creature, the bullet tears a gaping hole, but still that should not be enough to stop it. However, the creature clings to wreckage, utterly still for a moment, then it begins to shiver. Black fluid oozes from it, and its shivering turns to violent convulsions that actually tear it apart.
Vrell studies the images appearing on his screen with renewed interest. He knows at once what Orbus has used. He knows about sprine, but possesses none and knows nothing about its basic formula. Orbus fires again, and again, leaving disintegrating creatures clinging all about the pair of them.
Vrell abruptly opens up communication. ‘Continue along your present course until you reach the bulkhead wall. Turn to your right and proceed along the wall until you reach the bulkhead door, which I will open for you.’
‘That you, Prador?’ asks Orbus.
‘Who else did you expect?’
‘Sarcasm from a Prador?’ says Orbus, glancing at the drone.
‘Seems so,’ Sniper replies.
‘Do not let any of those mutated third-children into the rest of the ship,’ Vrell warns. ‘And please desist from destroying them completely, as I am currently studying them.’
‘Right,’ says Orbus, switching over to standard explosive bullets.
They proceed as directed by Vrell, the Old Captain shooting one or two more of the attacking mutants, but Sniper keeping them at bay mainly with his tentacles. Vrell meanwhile orders two of his mobile corpse crew down to wait on the other side of the bulkhead door, then sends the instruction for it to open just as Sniper and Orbus reach it. Orbus goes through first while Sniper bats away persistent mutants, then Sniper goes through, slamming the door quickly shut.
That King Oberon is agitated seems plainly evident. The envoy from one of the powerful but normal adults in the Prador Kingdom was granted a personal audience with the King and, as is usually the case when the King gives a personal audience to those who must not know what he has become, the luckless envoy did not survive it.
Sadurian gazes around at the resultant mess. The King has torn off all the envoy’s limbs and strewn them around the nice white floor of the audience chamber, then opened the envoy’s carapace horizontally to eviscerate it. Sadurian peers down at one palp eye lying detached on the floor a few inches from the toe of her right boot, then abruptly turns away. The ship-lice will deal with most of this carnage, then the King’s staff will come and remove the indigestible shell. Thereafter, the absorbent material of the floor will suck up the stains and self-bleach, returning to white sterility. Why the King favours all this open, eye-aching whiteness around him when all other Prador prefer their stinking caves remains a puzzle to her.
Sadurian heads for a distant door – one only large enough to allow access for herself and the armoured third-children that serve her. Beyond this she mounts a spiral ramp, moulded with long step-like indentations, and keeps climbing till finally stepping off onto a long gallery that runs across a sheer chainglass screen as high and wide as a cliff. She glances out onto the busy vacuum lying between Oberon’s ship and the accompanying dreadnoughts, then halfway along the gallery seats herself in a single padded chair. After a moment she opens her visor and takes a slow breath, before removing her helmet and gloves.
Though slightly lacking in oxygen, Prador air is as breathable for her as air on any high mountain on Earth, but Sadurian usually keeps her visor closed while moving about the ship, because her suit’s enclosed air supply keeps the more unpleasant odours from her nostrils – a frequent occurrence, since the Prador tend to leave their dead and the remains of their meals to the ship-lice, only cleaning up remaining carapace, bones or whatever when they become an inconvenience. Her armoured suit she wears constantly because, around Prador, it is all too easy for a soft Human to receive the most severe injuries through simple accident. But up here she is relatively safe, for this place is visited only by herself, her two servants and the occasional adventurous ship-louse. Unhooking her palmtop from her belt, she begins updating her journal, pausing occasionally to gaze at some distant dreadnought, or one of the smaller ships busy shuttling between the assembled dreadnoughts and the King’s ship.
The ripped-up envoy, a first-child, arrived from the Kingdom on one of the dreadnoughts and was then ferried over by its captain. Apparently there is trouble back home: a feud between two adults, whom the King has managed to keep from attacking each other for many years, exploding back into life now the King is out here at the border. One of the adults has been slain and now the remaining one is squabbling with the King’s Guard about the ownership of certain territories on the homeworld and also certain vessels in orbit about it. The King’s irritation is understandable, for normal Prador simply behave like vicious children once he isn’t nearby to keep watch over them, but that was hardly the first-child envoy’s fault. Sadurian feels a degree of pity for the victim, but this is tempered by her years in the Kingdom and the non-stop vicious brutality she has witnessed here. Perhaps, Sadurian thinks, the time has come for her to return to the Polity and reacquaint herself with her own humanity . . .
Almost as if this last thought had initiated it, Sadurian’s comunit speaks into her right ear. ‘I need to see you,’ says the King, speaking perfect Anglic with vocal apparatus grown inside his body nearly fifty years ago and supported by surgical alterations to certain structures of his brain.
Oberon is the only Prador Sadurian knows who can speak Human languages and understand the precise meaning of the words he uses. Most Prador struggle with translator machines that simply delete vague Human terms like altruism, philanthropy, friendship and love, or substitute them with some concoction like ‘beneficial alliance’. The King certainly understands these concepts, though he doesn’t give them much credence. He feels Humans are too often blinded by such words created in their primitive past, and which fail to accurately describe evolutionary reality.
‘Where are you?’ she enquires.
‘Above you, on the main gallery,’ Oberon replies.
Putting her palmtop away and pulling on her gloves, Sadurian heads over to the spiral ramp and climbs further. As always she feels a slight frisson of fear when heading for an audience with the King for, even though he has never attacked or even threatened her throughout many such encounters over the last century, that does not guarantee he will not do so this time. This seems especially true just lately, what with the King’s behaviour becoming more and more erratic.
Departing the spiral onto the wide, heavily reinforced and, of course, white main-gallery road, Sadurian gazes at her patron. Perhaps the King likes to surround himself with all this wide-open whiteness because he feels it serves to de-emphasize his sheer size? Perhaps so, but nothing can de-emphasize the primal horror he inevitably inspires in any individual, whether Prador or Human. With the light so bright and the surroundings so white, his dark chitinous angles, the dark red, green and black of his carapace, stand out in utter contrast.
The King turns, his great complex feet crumping down on the gallery road, causing slight indentations, so that Sadurian can feel the reverberations under her own feet, then he abruptly surges forwards to loom over her. Sadurian gazes up into the massive angular outer mandibles and sees how green Prador blood still stains them, and she listens to the sound of his inner mandibles sharpening themselves against each other like glass sickles.
She quickly closes up her visor. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asks.
‘Prador are the problem,’ declares Oberon, his voice issuing breathy and wet-sounding from a slit just below his main mouth. ‘How can they ever advance?’
‘You have,’ Sadurian observes.
‘I wish that were true,’ the King replies. ‘I now struggle to attain the next stage without losing myself.’
Never ever has the King been clear about what he is intending. Whereas all the Guard take viral inhibitors, stick to a rigorous diet of foods that also inhibit viral growth, and strive, at the King’s instruction, to retain some integral Pradorishness, the King does not. He eats viral meat – homeworld food animals long infected with the virus – and regularly experiments on himself with chemical and nanomechanical control of the virus, using robotic surgical equipment taken from a cache of the Golgoloth’s long before Sadurian even entered the Kingdom, so as to install in himself machinery and organic grafts of his own design, and somehow he now possesses a species of conscious control over the virus growing inside his body. But to what purpose?
‘What is this next stage?’ Sadurian asks, utterly sure she will receive no reply.
‘The stage when I become what the virus has intended to make me.’
Sadurian takes a pace back, dumbfounded. Is the King at last going to reveal his aims, and will Sadurian herself be allowed to survive that revelation?
‘And what will that be?’
The King’s inner mandibles grow suddenly still. ‘Do my latest children grow satisfactorily?’
Sadurian feels a deep disappointment. ‘Yes, Oberon – one third of them have survived to implantation and, going on past experience, we should lose less than ten per cent of them afterwards.’
‘And my third-children can continue this process?’
‘They can.’
‘Take this.’
Oberon twists his massive body suddenly, and something lands with a wet crack on the floor below him. Sadurian gazes at a segmented object the size of her own forearm – some part of the King’s hugely mutated underhands. She has seen this sort of thing before because, over the years, as the King’s form has perpetually changed, he has shed numerous chunks of himself, as if running through all the various mutations the virus can cause, then abandoning them. Swallowing drily, Sadurian steps over underneath the monster, glances up at the regular pattern of carapace on his underside, then stoops to pick up the deposited object before quickly moving back out of the shadow.
‘What am I to do with it?’
‘Study the viral form and then bring me your conclusions.’ Oberon turns away to gaze back out into space with eyes the colour of obsidian.
The two armoured Prador both bear particle cannons. Glaring at them, and conscious of that horrible churning in his stomach, Orbus finds it difficult to accept that what stand here are merely two corpses wrapped up in mobile suits of Prador armour. Perhaps his earlier feelings upon seeing that dead Prador inside the moon should be re-examined: a good Prador is indeed a dead Prador, but only if it exhibits the generally accepted signs of death – like not moving around.
‘I guess I should be used to seeing the walking dead,’ he observes, trying to keep his voice level.
The two of them part, and one gestures with its weapon along the wide corridor. For a moment Orbus expects to be disarmed, but the two undead make no other move.
‘These ain’t reifications,’ says Sniper. ‘No minds of their own and, if you think about it, they’re not really dead.’
‘Not dead?’ Orbus repeats. ‘Yes, quite.’
The Guard are virally infected so, despite having their nervous sytems burnt out like strands of fusepaper, whatever now resides inside those suits certainly isn’t really dead. The virus will be perpetually trying to mutate them into something more able to successfully feed it, just like those mutants inhabiting that part of the ship behind them, yet contained like this it will perpetually fail. Then, without nutrients will it finally die, devolve to some basic form, or become dormant? He feels this last option to be the most likely, for he knows that virally infected life can hibernate for centuries. He just hopes that whatever writhes inside that metal cage doesn’t figure out how to get out, because if it does it will be very very hungry.
Checking the exterior atmosphere display on his arm console, Orbus notes that it is at the Prador norm, and so he thumbs the control to open his visor. It is a mistake, for the smells inevitable aboard a Prador ship of this size hit him hard, driving dire memories to the surface. Suddenly predominant in his mind is the clear sharp image of Humans, crammed into a corridor like this one, being herded forward by second-children, those at the rear regularly being jabbed by claw tips. On that first occasion, as they were driven from Imbretus Station onto the dreadnought, those same claws were often used for their usual purpose, which resulted in torsos split open and bulging out their contents, arms and legs shattered, and the occasional crushed skull. Dying and dead were then dragged off by the second-children, and Orbus remembers two of them fighting over the corpse of a man and tearing it in half.
The Captain quickly closes his visor. However, it seems that those smells, having once entered his nostrils, will not go away. It is as if, like some organic key, they have unlocked some unwanted part of his consciousness. Wasn’t it at a junction like the one just ahead that the first-child appeared to watch the screaming crowd being hustled past, and picked out those showing any obvious signs of injury for immediate extermination? Hadn’t Orbus shuffled past and seen the mound of corpses behind the Prador, and seen how it stood in blood an inch deep on the floor?
While negotiating the numerous corridors, every surface, angle or item of Prador technology continues to impel horrific memories back to the surface of Orbus’s mind. They finally enter a wide-open area, where all around can be seen the bones of the ship. Orbus feels some relief now, for he never witnessed a place like this in that other ship, just similar corridors and finally that low-roofed chamber into which they were all crammed for the duration of the journey to Spatterjay . . . surviving on Human flesh.
‘The drone will remain there,’ says Vrell, speaking from one of his undead servants, and even as he speaks, further armoured Prador enter from side tunnels or from other gaps in the structure all around them.
‘Not sure I like that idea,’ says Sniper.
‘Nor am I sure,’ Vrell replies, ‘that I like the idea of you getting any closer to me. I have now scanned deep enough to detect that you possess the armament sufficient to penetrate armour, and have much else besides concealed under internal chameleon ware.’
Sniper spreads his tentacles helplessly. ‘Sorry, I can no more disarm than a Prador can lose his claws.’
‘Captain Orbus alone will accompany my Guard,’ Vrell states.
‘Not a problem,’ says Orbus, walking after the pair as they head for a nearby tunnel. But it is a problem, for they are once again entering parts of this ship that seem all too familiar. How long did it take that other ship to get to Spatterjay? The likely figure is two or three months, though it then seemed like a lifetime. Of course, upon arriving on that world the nightmare did not end.
The two Guard lead him to a long wide corridor, large enough to be used by adult Prador. He notes a burnt-out war drone lying against one wall, disfigured by weapons damage and scorch marks, while nearby lies a burnt-out suit of armour obviously in the process of being cannibalized. Then within a moment they stand before a wide set of doors that he guesses must be the entrance to the Captain’s Sanctum. Very shortly, it seems, he will be face to face with Vrell.
The doors grind open, rolling back into the walls from their diagonal split, the two Guards moving over to either side of them, and Orbus enters. Further signs of battle damage in here, and some huge piece of hydraulic equipment parked off to one side. Nearby stands a single highly modified suit of armour, closed but motionless. Then there is Vrell himself, turning away from an array of screens and pit consoles to face him. And Vrell wears no armour.
Orbus gazes at this monster, and is conscious of heat rising up through his own spine and sweat breaking out on his skin. Abruptly he distinctly remembers Vrell coming for him and his crew and then, one after the other, dragging them off to be enslaved. He remembers when his own turn came, a claw crushing his torso as Vrell dragged him away, then the surgical equipment slicing into his neck, and the spider thrall burrowing into his flesh like a huge iron tick. He feels a surge of livid anger, yet behind it a weird kind of tired acceptance and, almost without thinking, finds himself raising and pointing his multigun.
Vrell bubbles and clatters his mandibles, while the disembodied voice of a translator says, ‘Captain Orbus.’
Orbus’s finger tightens on the trigger. Yes, they could negotiate, offer an amnesty, whatever, but wouldn’t it be better if Vrell just went away? Here he is standing directly before Orbus, a virally infected Prador out of his armour; and here stands Orbus holding a multigun that fires sprine bullets. Orbus just cannot find any holes in his reasoning and, further, this might be the only opportunity he will be presented with. He pulls the trigger, though for a brief second it is not entirely clear to him that he meant to.
A stream of explosive bullets hammers across the sanctum, taking Vrell straight in the mouth, but then passes through him to detonate on the far wall. Unable to accept what he is seeing, Orbus switches to the sprine particle-beam and fires again, but the red blade of that passes straight through Vrell too, turning into a hazy cloud beyond. Finally accepting he is merely shooting at a hologram, Orbus turns round, knocking the gun to another setting, drops to one knee and fires at the closed suit of armour now already turning towards him. Conventional explosive bullets detonate all over the suit, but to little effect. The real Vrell lunges forwards, tears the weapon from Orbus’s hands and its power feeds from his suit, then hits him in the chest with his other claw, to send him sprawling.
‘Now I understand the basis of our negotiation,’ says Vrell.
‘I fucked up, Sniper,’ Orbus sends via com.
‘Yes you did,’ Sniper replies. ‘I am watching.’
Orbus sits up, taps his wrist display on, and calls up the menu for his suit’s Lamion assister motors.
‘What did you expect?’ he asks Vrell. ‘That I’ve forgiven you for what you did to me? What you did to my crew?’ But somehow his vehemence has gone, and he feels merely foolish. As Vrell slowly advances on him, Orbus glances at the menu, spots a certain power setting, and with a flick of his finger pushes it all the way to the top. He springs to his feet, feeling as if he wears no armour at all and his body has lost half its mass, then hurls himself towards Vrell, only to be smashed to one side by a swinging claw and sent crashing into a wall. Before he can even slide down it, the side of Vrell’s claw slams against him again, pinning him to the wall.
‘What are you doing, Sniper?’ he sends.
‘Oh, I’ll be there when I’m ready,’ Sniper replies. ‘I’ll just give you girls time to sort out your differences while I figure out what to do about the fifty armoured ghouls now surrounding me.’
Orbus gets his hands behind the claw and manages to push it away, dropping to the floor just as the other claw swings towards his head. He rolls down beside the Prador, Vrell’s leg is nearby. Orbus reaches out, grabs it and twists, feeling something give with a gristly crunch.
With a shriek Vrell pulls away and swings round, bringing one claw down like a hammer. Orbus catches it above his head, feeling the sheer impact drive his knees partway into the deck.
‘Have you presented our negotiating package yet?’ Sniper enquires. ‘That might be a good idea.’
Orbus heaves the claw to one side, dives and rolls, snagging up a big metal beam lying beside the hydraulic machine.
‘So I tried to kill you!’ he shouts at Vrell. ‘That doesn’t mean Earth Central’s offer doesn’t stand. It just means I don’t fucking like you.’ Orbus brings the beam down hard on the top of the visual turret of Vrell’s armour. The beam shatters, but leaves a dent, and Vrell staggers drunkenly. Orbus flings the stub of the beam hard at him, but it bounces off an abruptly raised claw.
‘What negotiating package?’ Vrell demands.
Orbus now realizes Sniper has been using open com so Vrell can listen in.
‘I can send it to you,’ Sniper suggests. ‘Once you stop trying to kill the good Captain.’
‘Why should I?’ Vrell wonders, again advancing. ‘Under your own laws of self-defence, I have the right.’
‘Okay – I’ll send it anyway.’
Orbus eyes the open doors leading out into the corridor, calculating if now might be the time to run. But Vrell pauses, frozen in place, claws held up high. Is that as a result of the package? The Prador abruptly turns and hurtles over to his pit consoles, armour hingeing away from his claws, as they enter two pits before him, underhands meanwhile reaching down to insert themselves into pits below him. Orbus realizes that if he attacks now he might stand a better chance, but then the entire vessel suddenly slams sideways, hard enough to send him staggering.
‘That you, Sniper?’
‘No, it seems we have a visitor.’
The Golgoloth feels some satisfaction at having its patience justified. Vrell’s dreadnought being that close to the sun certainly presented some problems, since the EMR there would tend to interfere with the Golgoloth’s network of ganglia, and there was always the possibility that Vrell might take advantage of that. However, the arrival of what is obviously a covert ECS vessel of some kind has finally lured Vrell out. Perfect. The other vessel, after Vrell’s attack on it, jumped out beyond the gas giant and is of no further concern to the Golgoloth. If it interferes again its remaining existence will be numbered in seconds. The Golgoloth focuses solely on the dreadnought.
Vrell’s ship is of an old design and undergoing substantial repairs, but either there is more damage than seems evident or something beyond recent events has been distracting Vrell, for, throughout the long two seconds it takes the Golgoloth’s massive ship to surface from U-space and open fire, there is no reaction. The stealth missile, which is really just a refined version of a Prador kamikaze with the frozen mind of one of the Golgoloth’s children controlling it, initiates its U-drive to take it across the intervening four million miles in no time at all, then opens up its fusion drive and slams into the dreadnought’s side, detonating to excavate a half-mile-wide crater and hurl out a cloud of debris. This gets Vrell’s attention.
The dreadnought abruptly accelerates and beam weapons cut across intervening space, shortly followed by a swarm of conventional missiles rising on the white stars of their drives. The Golgoloth’s ship, its hull a fifty-metre-thick layer of exotic metals and superconducting grids, simply soaks up this energy, even utilizing some for the ship’s own systems.
The Golgoloth meanwhile studies its surroundings. This system has a meagre supply of worlds: one molten ball close to the green sun, and a dead giant orbited by a couple of planetoids, but one of them will do. The Golgoloth focuses on the chosen planetoid and studies data. Its atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and sulphides, but there does not seem to be too much volcanic activity or heavy weather, at least not in its present location; and, protected by the magnetic field of the dead giant, it isn’t subject to too much of the solar wind either. In fact, surface conditions are such that any Prador, with an air supply only, could survive there for an appreciable length of time.
Using standard Prador codes, the Golgoloth sends the coordinates of the planetoid directly to Vrell’s ship, then launches two more U-drive missiles, which leap across the intervening gap, fusion reactors winding up to speed within them. The Golgoloth watches his detectors and notes the familiar signature of a U-space drive being brought online within the dreadnought. So predictable. The moment one of the missiles starts up its fusion drive, a particle beam stabs out from the dreadnought and the missile detonates with a massive EMR flash. The other missile, briefly undetectable by the dreadnought’s overloaded sensors, needs only to position itself with steering thrusters, then its systems fire up to create a massive magnetic bottle effect around it, almost simultaneous with it turning most of its substance into plasma. The briefly lived particle weapon spits its energy down into the dreadnought, punching through to a specific target. A detonation within glares through its superstructure, and the U-drive signature goes out. Vrell will not be leaving this system now.
Next the dreadnought flips round, its fusion drive and steering thrusters at full power to hurl it, once it completes its turn, straight at the Golgoloth’s vessel. The Golgoloth prepares his own ship for evasive manoeuvres, wondering if Vrell intends some ploy like he initially used against Vrost’s vessel – crashing his own ship directly into it then boarding. Even though confident of thwarting any plans Vrell might have once he has boarded, the Golgoloth does not want that to happen – best to be cautious with such a potentially dangerous intelligence. However, it seems Vrell intends nothing of the kind, for he makes another abrupt course alteration. Ah, he is trying to run for the sun, hoping to hide in the chaotic EMR output there. Another U-drive missile appears in the dreadnought’s path and detonates. A warning only. The Golgoloth again sends the coordinates of the planetoid.
The two Guards enter the Sanctum shortly after the first impact, and since they are both carrying particle cannons, Orbus guesses that Vrell has finished playing around.
‘Leave,’ Vrell orders him, which seems a good sign, since Orbus hasn’t yet been fried on the spot. He walks out between the Guards, who return him to join Sniper, where the drone waits surrounded by fifty of their fellows either standing in a ring immediately around him or ensconced in the surrounding exposed internal superstructure of the ship, though as events progress, even they begin to move away.
Massive accelerations set the ship’s structure groaning all about them, and explosions can be heard deep within it. Orbus’s visor closes automatically and he simultaneously notes a stratum of smoke in the air – which has to be poisonous or his suit would not have reacted so. Then come steady rhythmic sounds, machine sounds, and abruptly two more of the Guard put away their weapons and head off. Later, two Guards return carrying great loads of equipment and begin welding beams and heavy armour across one tunnel entrance.
‘What is that noise?’ Orbus asks.
‘Onboard manufactories,’ Sniper replies.
Orbus nods. ‘We need to find out what the hell is going on here.’
‘Vrell ain’t very chatty at the moment,’ Sniper observes. ‘But maybe he’ll let me ride some of his sensors.’
Sniper turns and cautiously begins to head towards one wall. The remaining ten Guards simply follow his course with their weapons, but otherwise show no reaction. Snaking out a couple of tentacles Sniper drags a great clump of fibre optics into view. Obviously that is a step too far, for five of the Guard immediately leap down from the surrounding superstructure and close in on him.
‘That got his attention,’ says Sniper, then, after a pause, ‘Ah, seems he doesn’t mind us taking a look now, since he’s no idea what he’s dealing with.’ Sniper picks out several optics, wrapping some of his minor tentacles around them. His eyes glare and a wall nearby dissolves into a view looking directly onto vacuum. Distantly, a steely orb can be seen, then after a moment magnification brings it right up close.
‘I don’t recognize that,’ says Sniper.
‘Can you give me some scale?’ Orbus asks.
A rule appears along the bottom of the image. The thing out there, which looks like a melon with one segment excised, bears a similarity to some ECS dreadnoughts, but its surface texture is composed of conjoined hexagons, like the honeycomb screens the Prador use, and it is all of ten miles across.
‘I am receiving further data,’ says Sniper. ‘That first missile U-jumped, so either whatever is aboard yonder ship possesses some very advanced technology or it isn’t bothered about sacrificing minds.’
‘Prador kamikaze?’
‘Very similar but much more refined and accurate,’ Sniper replies. ‘The second missile is a plasma converter – that’s what took out Vrell’s U-space engines.’
‘This is in the Graveyard,’ Orbus notes.
‘Yeah, so either that ship got in using some pretty superior chameleonware or it got in even before all the border stations were built. There’s no record that I know of regarding anything like this.’
Further acceleration then, for which Orbus’s suit helps him compensate. He sees one of the Guard lose its footing and go crashing to one side, which is unusual, since they possess considerably more legs than he does. Suddenly he doesn’t feel quite so calm about all this. If Vrell intends getting into a stand-up fight with that thing out there, it is probably all over for every one of them.
Vrell is trying to communicate, but the Golgoloth ignores that attempt and waits. The dreadnought turns again, decelerating and laying in a new course to the planetoid, but certainly Vrell hasn’t given up. Scanning deep into the dreadnought, the Golgoloth notes a great deal of activity, analyses it in an instant, and realizes that the young Prador is preparing to be boarded. Vrell is also pumping energy and materials into the onboard manufactories. Doubtless the result of that activity will become evident in due course. The Golgoloth follows, but keeps the distance between them at a steady four million miles.
Seventeen hours later, objects begins to spill from the dreadnought and apparently disappear. Interestingly, the young Prador has managed to put together some stealth mines. With a thought, the Golgoloth jumps his ship straight ahead, arriving twenty million miles ahead of Vrell’s ship, and waits again. Stealth missiles next, a great pack of them spearing out ahead of Vrell’s ship. The Golgoloth shifts his great vessel aside, then checks all relevant vectors before sending three of his U-drive missiles in return.
The missiles flash into being about the dreadnought, discharging all their substance in plasma beams at various targets on its hull. Two major steering thrusters simply explode and the ship’s course diverts just so, before the main fusion engine blows out a red cloud of radioactive gas, then sputters and dies.
Grav simply winks out and Orbus awakes, floating up from the floor to grab hold of a beam. Even though constantly under threat for twenty hours, sleep finally took hold of him. Fire gouts from a nearby tunnel, and then out through open superstructure into their surroundings. With no gravity to give it shape, it burns in Mandelbrot patterns through the air, perpetually going out and reigniting as it loses and finds whatever it is feeding on.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Sniper. ‘This isn’t hot enough to singe your ass.’
‘Right,’ says Orbus wearily. ‘What just happened?’
‘The attacker knocked out Vrell’s fusion drive too, and some steering thrusters,’ Sniper replies. ‘This ship is now effectively rudderless.’
Orbus has watched Vrell’s failed attempts with the stealth mines and missiles, and realizes the Prador is now in a cleft stick. He gazes at the image of the distant ship that Sniper is still projecting on the wall. It does not seem to be moving in for the kill, but that does not mean it won’t. He almost wishes it would.
‘I think we need to go and find Vrell,’ says Sniper, revolving slightly to observe the remaining five of the Guard. Orbus notes something odd then: one of them is tilted over on its side and struggling in zero gravity to regain its place in the superstructure, and all five keep making odd inadvertent adjustments to their balance.
‘Has Vrell got anything yet to say for himself?’ he asks.
‘No communication at all.’
Orbus releases the beam he was clinging to and turns towards the tunnel leading up towards the Captain’s Sanctum. The gecko function of his boots engaged, he begins to head in that direction. After a moment, Sniper disconnects from the fibre optics and his screen projection blinks off, then, with his tentacles lightly touching the floor, he propels himself after Orbus. As the two enter the tunnel and step out of view, the Guard show no reaction at all.
Everything is going quickly and badly wrong. Vrell knows of no vessel, either in the Polity or the Kingdom, that could so quickly disable a Prador dreadnought like this. Checking his sensors he sees he is now on a course that, even if he does use the remaining thrusters, will finally crash his dreadnought down on the surface of the planetoid. Best, then, to save power in order to make that landing just a bit less hard. But what happens then?
The big vessel is still keeping its distance, when in reality it could now come staight in and carve up the dreadnought at its leisure. Why does it want the ship down on that planetoid, why does it want Vrell down there? What the hell is it?
But these aren’t the only problems. The sealed-off section of the ship containing the mutated third-children has been breached, and already they are spreading throughout the ship, and now there is something definitely wrong with the Guard. He noted it first with the sluggish response of some of them to his direct orders, and the diagnostic probe he sent has revealed a steady corruption to their programs, those complex sub-AI programs. He has tried wiping and reloading copies of the original program to those worst affected, which worked for a little while before they started corrupting again. It seems it isn’t the program itself that is at fault, but some sort of hardware failure. This can only mean one thing: what is living inside those suits is beginning to penetrate their internal systems. He curses himself for neglecting one simple fact about Prador armour: it might be virtually invulnerable from the outside, but the same does not apply from the inside. How long, he wonders, before the fast-eject routine is tripped on some of them?
‘Vrell,’ says a Human voice.
Vrell swings his attention to one side, and sees that both the Human and the drone are entering his Sanctum.
Should have closed the door.
Through his control units, he links to those members of the Guard that were watching over these two and finds their programs so corrupted and so much processing space wiped out that all that remains of computer power is being employed just to keep them on their feet.
‘What’s happening, Prador?’ asks Orbus.
Vrell just gazes at the man for a long moment. ECS has offered him sanctuary, and this man and accompanying drone came to negotiate the terms. It is all irrelevant now.
‘We are going to crash,’ says Vrell simply.