16
The massive amounts of EMR produced during space battles, making it increasingly difficult for our AIs to control telefactored weapons, resulted in the increasingly independent subminds which became our war drones. It then became necessary to increase their independence when they were used for assassinations and other covert missions, and to this end they were constructed with the ability to change just about any component of their bodies, and even to find replacements amidst stolen Prador technology. Sometimes these drones would come back almost unrecognizable, and some were even mistakenly destroyed because they so closely resembled Prador weapons. Over the intervening years since the war, such drones are still being found, like those Japanese soldiers hidden in the jungle after the Second World War on Earth, faithfully maintaining themselves in the remains of the Prador bases they destroyed, and unaware that the war they had been fighting ended centuries ago.
– MODERN WARFARE lecture notes from E.B.S. Heinlein
Vrell lands with a crash, his bulk demolishing one of the stalked arrays of screens, and nearly falling from the platform. He snaps out one claw and closes it on two of the Golgoloth’s diseased-looking legs either to drag the creature closer or to drag himself fully onto the platform. With a gristly crunch the two legs are torn free, whereupon the Golgoloth emits a gobbling shriek and swings one of its claws at Vrell’s head. Still scrabbling for balance, Vrell raises his rail-gun to block the intended blow, then finally manages to propel himself off the shattered screen array and onto the platform, to ram the barrel of his weapon just below the Golgoloth’s lower eyes. Then he hesitates.
‘You kill me, you die,’ says the hermaphrodite, its whole body quivering. ‘My external ganglia are killing off the last of the Jain computer-life, but earlier I had to cut the power supplies to both the weapons and the engines.’
‘That still does not explain your threat,’ says Vrell.
‘Perhaps, given time, you will be able to supplant me aboard my own vessel.’ The creature flexes itself a little, getting its quivering partially under control. ‘But to do so you will have to kill all my ganglia that are distributed throughout it.’
Vrell grinds the barrel of his weapon against the Golgoloth’s scarred shell, wondering if he is only doing so to somehow reassure himself. He eyes one of the lice-things on the Golgoloth’s body and notices that it appears to be half machine and half animal.
‘But you do not have time,’ the Golgoloth adds.
One of the arrays of screens still within Vrell’s view, which until then had been showing a scrolling schematic of some kind, abruptly displays a view of the distant planetoid, with impact sites now glowing on its surface. A moment later the whole planetoid erupts.
‘This was recorded while you were still lurking in the ceiling spaces above me.’
The creature seems more confident now, its quivering completely controlled. Now the view pulls back to show King Oberon’s ship and its surrounding dreadnoughts, before switching again to what Vrell presumes is a realtime view showing a spreading sphere of furnace-hot gas and chunks of magma.
‘I am propelling us away from the blastfront by using steering thrusters, which will double the time before it strikes.’
‘How long?’
‘Four minutes,’ the Golgoloth replies. ‘This ship can survive most impacts, but if one of these hits us’ – the screen view now focuses on a slowly distorting magma asteroid the size of Gibraltar, which is spewing out hot streams of lava from inside itself, like an ameoba groping for prey – ‘we’ll end up inside it, whereupon one of two things will happen: the heat will eventually overcome us, or we’ll end up trapped inside a cooling asteroid.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Vrell asks.
‘I suggest you let me just get on with what I am doing, which is repairing the power supplies to three fusion engines – enough for me to manoeuvre us out of the way of anything big that approaches. After that my intention is to repair the power supply to the U-space engines, though of course we will not be leaving here any time soon.’
‘Why?’ Vrell asks.
‘The U-engines cannot be deployed whilst this ship is still surrounded by such a density of gas and rock. Using the fusion engines, it will take four hours to get clear before we can employ the U-engines and, it seems, having demolished the planetoid and presumably the Jain too, Oberon is now taking an interest in me.’ Another change of screen display, now showing four of the big silver dreadnoughts heading straight towards them. ‘They will arrive here just a few minutes after the blastfront itself arrives.’
Vrell just stares at the image before him. He’d successfully wormed his way into the chamber and now holds a gun at the Golgoloth’s head, but that seems to be all the victory he can achieve.
‘Can you fight them off?’ Vrell asks.
‘Bearing in mind my current circumstances, why should I bother?’
‘Because Oberon will kill you.’
‘The pair of us certainly seem to have a problem which needs to be solved within the next minute, if I am to get those fusion engines functioning in time.’
Vrell suddenly very much wants to spread this creature’s brains all over the interior of the Sanctum. He needs to think, and think hard.
‘The moment I step away from you, I end up pinned against a wall behind a force-field.’
‘What do you suggest?’ the Golgoloth enquires.
It will take too long for Vrell to usurp control of this ship, but perhaps there is a simpler solution to his present dilemma. He turns his head slightly to glance over at Orbus, who is now standing right by the force-field currently separating him from this diorama. ‘Drop that hardfield wall.’
The Golgoloth doesn’t seem to like this idea much. ‘You mean let the Human in here?’
‘Yes, let the Human in here.’
‘What can he possibly achieve for you?’
‘It is always better to have allies,’ Vrell replies, groping with one of his underhands for various items attached to his harness. ‘And it is always better to have insurance.’ The sticky mine detaches and Vrell reaches out to press it in place underneath the Golgoloth’s mandibles.
‘Drop the field,’ says Vrell, feeling a slight bubbling amusement as the other creature tries, with its one good palp-eye, to peer down past its mandibles. ‘The mine I’ve just attached to you I now control through my harness.’ Vrell’s underhand is back at the point where he detached the mine, one hard little finger poised ready inside a small pit control. ‘You may be able to crush me to slurry with one of your force-fields, but will you be able to do it quickly enough?’
The hardfield shuts down and water sloshes as it finds its new level. Vrell watches Orbus wade across to finally halt beside the platform, which stands head-high to him. The Old Captain rests his multigun across his shoulder and peers carefully at the Golgoloth.
‘You got the bugger then,’ Orbus observes. ‘Maybe we should get in touch with Gurnard now?’ Obviously he has not heard the previous exchange nor seen the images on the screens.
Vrell abruptly withdraws the barrel of his rail-gun from the captive’s head. ‘Make your repairs, Golgoloth.’ Vrell moves to the edge of the platform, turns and abruptly drops off it to land beside Orbus. ‘Prador dreadnoughts will be arriving here within minutes,’ he explains to the Old Captain, ‘just shortly after the blastfront from the planetoid they destroyed.’
‘Get him to use his weapons against ’em,’ Orbus nods up at the old creature, which is again calling in its micro-drones and issuing silent instructions. ‘He’s got some really fancy gear aboard this ship.’
‘How long will it take you to reinstate your weapons?’ Vrell asks.
‘About forty minutes too long,’ the Golgoloth replies, knocking one drone away, then backing up to insert several underhands into pit controls. There comes an immediate surge that sends Orbus staggering, and causes a wave to splash up against the hardfield behind which the first-children still struggle helplessly.
‘So how are you going to survive this, then?’ Vrell asks.
‘I am going to throw myself on the King’s mercy,’ the old creature replies. ‘Which is to say, I do not think I am going to survive this.’
Vrell does not think he will either, though is determined not to give up easily.
The rail-gun is dead, its power supply cut, and it is a simple matter to find and sever the fibre-optic control system and then, in very short order, to dismantle a great deal of the hardware housed in here. Sniper finds motors which, with just a little alteration, can replace some of his own. He feeds lengths of optic fibre inside himself to be snatched up by his internal toolbox, which uses it to replace damaged optic looms inside him. He is repairing his com gear when the sleet of electromagnetic radiation hits, and he scuttles back out to the mouth of the gun.
‘Right,’ says Sniper, much appreciating the scale of the destruction he is witnessing. He watches the show for a little while, steering thrusters hurling up blades of flame all about him as the vessel he currently occupies tries to gain some distance from the blastfront, then he spots the approaching dreadnoughts. ‘Ah fuckit.’ Sniper ducks back inside and begins working again just as hard and fast as he can.
Two of his minor tentacles he sacrifices, so as to use their working motors to replace irretrievably scrapped ones in his other tentacles. He replaces some of his sensors with ship eyes and other such devices, pillaged from all about him. The moment he puts these online, he feels a surge of nostalgia, for during the war he had often looted available equipment and self-repaired like this. In fact, trying always to be prepared for any eventuality, Sniper had this new drone shell of his deliberately fashioned so that it could adapt to just about any fitting or wiring system. Accurately sliced lengths from the rails of the big gun here now replace the ones in his own, then a section of bar sliced into short lengths supplies at least a little ammunition. Rewinding the coils for his particle cannon will take too long – better to find something inside the ship for that, just as a gravplate from inside can be worked into a suitable replacement for his trashed gravmotors. He is quickly reassembling one of his tentacles when the whole ship shudders and a low thunder echoes from its inner reaches – the blastfront has arrived.
Hot gas gusts in from outside the rail-gun chamber, and a momentary hail of lava spatters through the hole Sniper has cut through the barrel, instantly cooling to stone as it strikes against metallic walls. Using some of his tentacles as shock absorbers, Sniper braces himself and continues working; rapidly rejoining vertebrae motors and replacing nano-chain chromium rings, then finally locking on the pointed sensor tip. Next he fires up the cutting spatula of one of his main tentacles and uses it to slice round a section of the blister’s inner wall, with a couple of lugs at its centre, and employing this as a shield, holds it before him as he re-enters the rail-gun barrel and eases his way up to the hull.
The shield takes a buffeting from hot gas, and rattles like a tin roof under hail. Far to his right, he can see the glare of a fusion-drive torch throwing out a long red contrail as it also burns surrounding spaceborne matter. Across the hull of the ship pass waves of molten-lava sleet, and every now and again something bigger hits, to spatter and release odd sparkling thermal reactions. However, even as he watches all this, the sleet begins to disperse as a massive shadow falls across him, and Sniper looks up to see the silvered hull of a modern Prador dreadnought blotting out the burning sky, its own drive flame slicing like a white scalpel drawn across blushed skin to release a trail of blood. He watches this vessel for a moment, then attempts to locate the other three – one over there, on the ship horizon, but no others in sight. They are positioned evenly about this ship, but what now, and why so close? Perhaps the environment prevents them using their usual weapons from a distance? No, silly idea.
Within the hull of the dreadnought, a row of ports opens and the nubs of what might be missiles poke out. Sniper retreats a little way, ready to take cover inside. But, upon seeing that those nubs possess wide flat faces, Sniper realizes he is in little danger from them. After a moment, the first of the row shoots out trailing a black cable. Some yards out, it ignites a series of small thrusters behind its head, to propel itself, and the huge weight of cable behind it, across the gap. The thing thumps down a hundred feet from Sniper, where it flares arc-light as it welds itself to the hull. Only as it hits can its truly enormous scale be assessed. The anchor head lies ten feet across and the cable – some form of braided metal – is two feet thick. A second of these comes hurtling across, then a third. Sniper ducks down again. No response from the vessel he is aboard probably means that not just this rail-gun but all its weapons are offline. Soon, those inside will become Oberon’s captives – unless Sniper can do something about that.
Carefully controlling his internal toolbox, he makes some final adjustments to his newly repaired com gear, and sends a coded radio broadcast. There is a good chance that all the surrounding crap will block it, but he has to make the effort.
‘Hey, Gurnard, can you hear me?’
After a lengthy delay during which Sniper picks up nothing but static, a surprisingly clear reply comes through. ‘Now, why is it that I’m not surprised to hear from you?’
‘‘Cus in your heart of steel you knew,’ Thirteen interjected, ‘that old drones don’t die. That just happens to everyone else.’
‘What is your status?’ Gurnard asks.
‘Seriously fucked over, squatting in a rail-gun blister trying to make some repairs.’
‘Your timing, is as ever, exquisite, Sniper,’ Gurnard observes. ‘Thirteen, currently residing inside one of my telefactors, has just landed on the surface of the Golgoloth’s ship.’
‘The Golgoloth’s ship?’
A package of information arrives and Sniper opens it in his mind. Right, the Golgoloth. Sniper feels sure he had picked up on something about this during his past, and has the sneaking suspicion the information is part of his missing memories.
‘Getting ideas above your station again, Thirteen?’ he asks.
‘Hey, I was the last chance for Orbus and Vrell.’
‘Right,’ says Sniper.
‘Where are you exactly?’ Gurnard enquires. ‘I cannot triangulate in this mess.’
‘The rail-gun blister sits directly below one of the dreadnoughts—’ Yet another of the tow lines slams down only a short distance behind Sniper, the hull shuddering, and a wave of magma spatters and arc-fire passing over his position. ‘In fact the blister sits right on a line of towing anchors, one of which missed me by about twenty feet just a second ago.’
‘From my point of view, all the lines are attached, so you must be below the one ship that is hidden from me.’ Gurnard pauses, perhaps trying to fit Sniper into whatever crazy plan it is now developing. ‘What are your requirements, Sniper? Perhaps I can get away with sending the other telefactor . . .’
‘I take it the Prador just ignored you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, let’s keep it that way.’ Sniper considers for a moment. ‘I take it your telefactor has gravmotors, com lasers and the usual arrays of stepper motors? Does it have limbs as well?’
‘Yes, yes, yes – and yes,’ Gurnard adds. ‘I think I see your location now, though not you. Take the starting line of anchors as twelve o’clock, and look to about two.’
Sniper gazes over in that direction and picks out something making its way across the hull towards him. Only when it turns to circumvent one of the anchors does he take in its shape. The thing is struggling under a load of hardening stone, he sees.
‘If your telefactor is a big metal bug,’ says Sniper, ‘then I already see it.’
‘It is indeed a big metal bug,’ Gurnard replies.
Sniper settles down to wait until the thing finally drags itself to the edge of the rail-gun port, now moving like some sea creature loaded down with a heavy layer of coral. It pauses for a moment at the edge, then drags itself down, and Sniper feels like a trapdoor spider waiting for its prey.
‘Did your plans include getting Thirteen out of this thing?’ he enquires.
‘I can use an explosive ejection routine,’ Gurnard replies.
‘Well, don’t.’
Sniper scours away some of the larger chunks of rock before propelling the telefactor through the hole into the rail-gun blister, and then towing it inside. Here he removes even more of the mess, slinging chunks of glutinous magma out into the barrel. A wing case rises, and a concertinaed hatch slides back to reveal a mass of crash foam which, in the next instant, is sliced through from the inside by a laser. Shaking off pieces of foam, Thirteen propels himself out.
‘Let’s get to work!’ the little drone says cheerfully, splitting his tail into a two-fingered manipulator.
Sniper grunts agreement, already spinning the telefactor over and beginning to pull off its legs.
‘I want you to release your first-children,’ says Vrell.
Orbus looks across at Vrell and wonders if the Prador has lost his mind. Pinned up against the wall there is as good a place as any for those buggers, and the only improvement to their situation he can see is if the Golgoloth should move the hardfield tight up to the wall, turning them into organic paintwork.
‘That will have the same effect upon me as you detonating that mine,’ the Golgoloth replies. ‘They will turn their weapons on me instantly.’
‘Yeah, now why is that?’ Orbus mutters.
Vrell persists, ‘You will withdraw the force-field far enough to allow them some freedom of movement, but retain it in place between us and them.’
Very odd, thinks Orbus, perhaps Vrell is remembering his own traumatic upbringing and feels some sympathy for them – a particularly un-Pradorish reaction.
The force-field abruptly withdraws, dropping the first-children to the floor. Whilst two of the children just cringe back against the wall, the other one shakily moves to the hardfield, presses a claw against it, then raises a gas laser and fires it, but with no target in mind. The beam, just visible in the moisture-laden air, strikes the hardfield and loses coherence. Orbus feels the warmth from it wash across him, but that’s all. The child shuts the beam down.
‘Do you want to live?’ Vrell addresses the three of them.
They make no reply.
‘They’re just aggressive fucks, like all Prador,’ remarks Orbus, then glancing at Vrell, ‘present company excepted.’
‘Prador are aggressive because to behave otherwise means death,’ says Vrell. ‘Those sufficiently aggressive and motivated get to survive into first-childhood, and in that state can live for some time and even extract some pleasure from life. A very few even get to become adults.’
Orbus snorts derisively. That seems an overly indulgent explanation of Prador aggression, and pleasure for a Prador first-child usually means stomping on its smaller kin, pain for all enemies of the species, usually followed by them being turned into dinner.
Vrell continues, ‘But no such options have ever been available to these, have they, Golgoloth?’
The Golgoloth doesn’t reply.
‘We are born, we grow and we are dismantled,’ comes the translation through Vrell’s com gear. It is the first-child with the laser that is speaking, even now backing away from the hardfield to rejoin its fellows. ‘We remain inside our confinement frames, our minds and our bodies constantly exercised to achieve prime growth and health for eventual transplantation.’
It takes a moment for Orbus to absorb all that, but still he can’t quite make any sense out of it. ‘What’s he on about?’
Vrell points one claw down at the yellow limbs he tore from the Golgoloth’s body. They float in the water, jerking here and there as ship-lice feed on them. ‘Those legs are not the Golgoloth’s own. This is how it stays alive.’
Orbus gets it. All those second-children out in the corridor, the ones he has killed and the ones Vrell massacred. Up till then, he had seen only the kind of creatures that tormented him in the past: horrible beasts to be annihilated as quickly as possible. No wonder they came here to kill their parent. He feels suddenly sick at having been there to stop them.
‘Confinement frames?’ he asks.
‘It has taken me a moment to see past the myths to register what is evident before me,’ says Vrell. ‘I now understand. The Golgoloth is a hermaphrodite and both father and mother to its children. Being such a close genetic match to it, they provide a ready source of transplant replacements to keep it alive. Obviously the Golgoloth will not want any creatures running free which likely possess its own innate intelligence, and who it uses for such an essential purpose.’
‘So they spend their lives locked up in frames, being regularly harvested for their parts?’
‘Yes.’
Orbus considers putting a few explosive bullets straight into the creature up there on the platform, but since Vrell himself hasn’t yet chosen that option, there has to be a reason. Most of his life he thought there could be nothing worse than Prador, yet here is the Golgoloth, which is something else again. He swears to himself that, once this creature ceases to be essential to his own and Vrell’s survival, he will not hesitate on the trigger.
‘Do you want to live?’ Vrell asks again.
‘We want to live,’ the first-child agrees.
‘This is the situation . . .’ Vrell explains it in short staccato sentences finishing with, ‘The Jain will kill you, Oberon and any other Prador will automatically kill you, your parent here will put you back in your frames and harvest you. Only with me do you have a chance to live.’
The first-child abruptly turns away, to go into a huddle with its two fellows.
‘Do they really understand?’ Orbus asks.
‘The Golgoloth kept their minds functioning, and those minds are like its own. They understand.’
The first-child turns back. ‘What do you want of us?’
‘I want you to gather all your fellows,’ says Vrell. ‘Your parent will then provide you with better weapons, which it almost certainly has aboard. Then I expect you to be prepared to fight, and probably die.’
‘Agreed,’ says the first-child.
‘What is you name?’ asks Vrell.
‘I have none.’
‘I will call you Geth,’ says Vrell, then turns away. ‘Golgoloth, drop the hardfield.’
The telefactor lies in pieces all about them, and Sniper feels so so much better, as if he is surrounded by the remains of a hearty meal. He and Thirteen have installed a gravmotor within his shell, his laser and hardfield generators are up and running, one of his particle cannons too, and even provided with the necessary particulate matter made by grinding up the telefactor’s wing cases, while all his tentacles bend and twist in their usual satisfyingly squirmy manner. All he needs now, to really get up to spec, is a nice supply of programmable missiles and mines, but that is perhaps too much to ask from the hardware currently available.
‘Okay,’ he says, ‘let’s see what these fuckers are doing.’
Thirteen follows him into the rail-gun barrel, and on out to the ship’s hull.
Space beyond is no longer filled with flame and magma sleet, but has by no means returned to black vacuum. The Golgoloth’s vessel sits in a cloud that is the colour of pink grapefruit juice, threaded with veins of deep red. As Sniper surveys his surroundings, he observes one of the big anchors detaching and slowly winding back into the dreadnought hovering above. Others have already detached, their cables black scribbles in the pink sky, clouds of rock-shards spreading from where they are being wound into their ports and some mechanism strips away magma hardened on them. Another detaches and then another. Soon all the cables nearby retract, and the dreadnought spits out a long white fusion flame that scores bloody smoke from the surrounding firmament as it begins to move off, finally revealing the King’s ship a thousand kilometres beyond it, but rapidly expanding in dimensions as they draw closer to it.
A further force wrenches at the Golgoloth’s ship, nearly unseating Sniper from the throat of the rail-gun, and sending Thirteen tumbling away. Sniper spears out a tentacle that snags the little drone, dragging him back.
‘What the fuck?’ Thirteen wonders.
‘The other achors are still attached,’ Sniper replies. ‘The other dreadnoughts are slowing us – I reckon we’re on the docking side.’
‘That a good place to be?’
‘I dunno.’ Sniper focuses on the King’s ship, upping magnification. He can now see three massive docking tunnels extruding from a point midway down its fifty-mile height. They are tubular, with blocky structures distributed some half a mile back from their outermost tips, and definitely aren’t the universal kind that finds the correct airlocks and adapts to them. The tips are sharp and barbed, so the docking procedure is going to be a violent one. Also, a swarm of familiar objects clusters in the area, like flies over shit: King’s Guard, thousands of them.
‘C’mon.’ Sniper withdraws down the rail-gun barrel and back inside the blister, turning his attention to where he has already cut away part of the inner wall. Spearing out his main tentacles, both cutters now running, he shears through a layer of foamed porcelain, quickly shoving blocks of it behind him, exposing an s-con cooling grid and numerous pipes and fibre optics lining the main outer armour of the blister, then exposing a cap beside the loading mechanism at the back of the barrel itself, through which all of these connections are admitted.
‘I could go through the door,’ Thirteen observes, ‘and take out the eyes.’
Sniper glances round at the little drone, who is pointing one division of his tail at a maintenance hatch underneath the rear of the particle-cannon barrel. The thing is quite small, so obviously isn’t for Prador use but for little robots – like Thirteen.
‘Then why are you still here?’ he growls.
Thirteen descends on the hatch to quickly tear off the covers over its various locks and then manually click them back. The little drone starts to labour at the hatch itself, but Sniper snakes out a tentacle, levers it up off its seals and slides it aside. Whilst Thirteen pulls himself through, Sniper turns back to the cap and exposes the rest of it. The outer armour of blisters like these is usually cast in one piece, so actually cutting through the armour to get out is not an option. He could do it but the whole process would be far too noisy, and would deplete his power. Here beside the loading mechanism, however, where all the power cables and optics enter, lies a capped hole just large enough for him to get through. He cuts away one skein of optics and drags it aside, exposing the weaker metal of the cap, stabs a hole through with his spatula-tipped tentacle and, as low-pressure air jets in, inserts another tentacle with its sensory tip active, and takes a look around.
Here, behind the blister, is a much larger chamber in which lie the mechanisms that rotate the whole blister like one giant eyeball. Over to one side lie the loading pincers, now empty, but one gleaming missile is partially visible in clamps situated behind it. Sniper recognizes it as one of the U-jump missiles this ship used against Vrell’s vessel earlier. Swinging the tip of his tentacle round, he watches as the outer maintenance hatch eases aside a little. Ruby light flashes and ship eyes positioned in the surrounding wall flare and smoke, scattering shards of a material like mica, then the hatch swings completely aside, and Thirteen shoots out.
‘Clear,’ he calls, ‘though I don’t think they were working anyway.’
Sniper rapidly tears away further cables, slices around the end cap and, shoving it before him, slides out into the same chamber. After a quick scan of the interior, he tows himself over to a rack positioned along one wall, which holds maintenance robots folded up like long-legged brass woodlice.
‘Seems this Golgoloth don’t mind using robots,’ he observes as he tugs one of the devices from its rack and begins slicing round it as if peeling an orange.
‘What are you doing?’ Thirteen asks.
‘If there’s maintenance robots here, they’ll have an ID,’ Sniper explains. ‘Can’t have the ship’s security systems reacting every time one of ’em gets down to work.’
The robot’s controls are simple and, plugging into it via the sensory tip of his tentacle, Sniper quickly riffles through what passes for its mind. He soon finds what he wants: a coded signal the thing broadcasts as it goes about its work. This message tells the ship’s security systems to simply ignore it, so he records the signal, sends a copy to Thirteen, and they both begin broadcasting.
‘Think this will work?’ the little drone asks.
‘So long as nothing with a mind is watching,’ Sniper replies. ‘Anyway, this Golgoloth thing is soon going to have a lot more to worry about than us.’
To the rear of the chamber stands a door large enough to admit Prador, but opening up this chamber, which via the blister now lies open to vacuum, will kick in emergency systems. Maybe that will attract the attention of the Golgoloth, but maybe not, since this area of the ship seems to have already sustained a lot of damage. It is a risk Sniper will have to take. He tears out the door’s pit control and works the optics behind it. The diagonally divided door begins to grind open, and air and a moist fog blast through. Immediately, streams of yellowish-green fluid jet from holes in the walls. Where this substance lands it foams and expands rapidly. The door shudders to a halt, the emergency systems shutting down all power to it. Sniper reaches into the gap as, behind him and Thirteen, the chamber begins filling with a great amoebic mass of expanding crash foam. He then tears the doors open and the two push through into the familiar interior of a Prador ship. Behind them, the crash foam oozes through the door, hardening in the atmosphere of the corridor, and the atmosphere breach seals.
Sniper samples the distinctly organic-smelling air. With a laser ping or two down the length of the corridor, he checks the aim of his rail-gun and particle cannon, then reaches out with one of his main tentacles to negligently crush a ship-louse to slurry. He feels like he has come home.
As the hardfield drops, the three first-children all immediately swing their weapons towards the Golgoloth. Vrell expected this and sends a signal to his own rail-gun, noisily spinning up the barrels, and three sets of mismatched palp-eyes swing towards him.
‘You do not kill the Golgoloth,’ he says.
‘Seems like a good idea to me,’ says Orbus.
Vrell glances at the Old Captain, noting that he too is training his weapon on the hideous creature. A beat passes when it could go either way, then the first-children lower their weapons. Vrell has judged the situation correctly. He now watches Orbus for a moment, and the Old Captain finally, reluctantly, lowers his weapon too.
‘What is the current situation out there?’ Vrell asks the Golgoloth.
The old hermaphrodite just cringes lower on its platform and does not reply.
Vrell points his rail-gun towards the creature and asks again, ‘What is the situation out there.’
‘We are about to dock,’ the Golgoloth replies. Behind it an array of screens abruptly displays the scene beyond the ship. When he sees the massive spears of the invasive docking tunnels approaching, and the surrounding horde of King’s Guard, Vrell feels utter dismay, but refuses to show it.
He turns to Geth. ‘Summon the rest of the children.’
‘I already have,’ the first-child replies, turning one palp-eye towards the door.
A second-child and an even smaller and more obviously distorted third-child move into view.
‘Golgoloth,’ Vrell continues, ‘we need weapons.’
‘Once I have provided you with them,’ replies the old creature, ‘there is no logical reason why you should keep me alive.’
Vrell has to admit the old monster has a point. How then to persuade it to provide what he wants? Vrell fires, rail-gun missiles punching holes into one of the floating pillars behind the Golgoloth. Shattered metal explodes out of the back of the pillar, power arcs inside it, and miniature lightnings skitter over its surface. It drops abruptly, crashes against the edge of the platform and topples, tearing numerous pipes, optics and cables from the Golgoloth’s body as it lands with a hissing splash in the water below. The Golgoloth shrieks and bubbles, backing towards the other pillar, green blood and other fluids dribbling from the holes torn in its body.
‘Provide us with weapons,’ Vrell repeats, ‘or I shoot out the other one, then I send the signal to detonate that mine you’re wearing.’ Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.
Immediately afterwards, a pillar – like the one that contained Vrell’s and Orbus’s weapons – rises out of the floor; however this one splits vertically in numerous places around its circumference, and then opens like a flower to expose its contents. These are disappointing to say the least: merely three particle cannons, two rail-guns, and a couple of short solid-state lasers.
‘These are not enough,’ Vrell observes.
‘They are all I have!’ the creature clatters.
Of course, it makes sense that the hermaphrodite would only have weapons for itself, seeing it is the only one aboard it would want to possess them. This, then, must be the Golgoloth’s personal arsenal.
‘Geth, go collect them and hand them out to those best able to use them.’
Geth and his two fellows splash forwards, and begin tugging the weapons from the pillar. Other children now enter the Sanctum: second- and third-children who all gaze up at the Golgoloth on its platform as if some terrifying god squats there. But of course, to them that is precisely what the Golgoloth has always been. This is exactly why Vrell expected the first-children to hesitate when given the opportunity to fire upon their parent.
The three first-children take up the cannons, whilst a selection of second-children take the rest. Other makeshift weapons are redistributed.
‘Now can we kill the father-mother?’ Geth asks.
At that moment a thunderous sound echoes throughout the ship, and the floor tilts, causing all the water to flow to one side of the Sanctum. Vrell staggers, sees Orbus slip over and numerous children caught in the flood.
‘Move out into the corridor!’ Vrell instructs.
Many of the children begin retreating hurriedly as Vrell regains his balance and aims his weapon at the second pillar. Abruptly some mechanism thumps below and the Golgoloth’s platform slowly sinks to just above floor level.
‘We have docked with the King’s ship,’ the creature intones.
‘Send to my harness a schematic of this ship’s interior, with all those docking points detailed,’ says Vrell. ‘And, believe me, I will know if the information is right.’
‘And then you will kill me,’ says the Golgoloth.
‘Send me the schematic.’
‘I will not.’
Vrell fires again, hitting the second pillar. The thing drops end-on, then goes over like a falling tree, again tearing its connections out of the Golgoloth’s body. The creature shrieks once and goes over on its side, then rolls from its platform, leaving a trail of blood, and splashes down into the water, with its limbs thrashing.
‘We know this ship,’ says Geth, from behind Vrell. ‘We can find what you want. Now kill the father-mother.’
They want him to do it, for they still hold this creature in too much awe. Vrell keeps his rail-gun focused on the Golgoloth, strangely reluctant to end the life of this ancient monster who, aware that its end is close, is now backing away.
Dragging himself to his feet, cursing and shaking off water, Orbus moves up beside Vrell. ‘I’ll finish the bugger, if you want.’
‘There is no need,’ Vrell replies, now identifying the reason for his own reluctance. He is about to kill a legend, to extinguish a large chunk of Prador history and remove from the universe something utterly unique, no matter how horrible. He studies the creature for a moment longer, then glances over at Geth . . . perhaps the Golgoloth is not so unique? Time to end its life now. But odd the way it is moving, turning and raising itself . . .
Vrell realizes something is wrong just a second too late, even as he fires his weapon. Rail-gun missiles slam into a sharply curved hardfield wall, some of them just flattening and dropping, but others ricocheting away. Half a second later, Vrell sends the signal to detonate the mine. No matter that a hardfield lies directly before him, that signal will bounce around inside the ship and quickly reach its destination. Only then does Vrell realize he has sent the signal too late as well. The Golgoloth is not standing entirely on the other side of the hardfield. One mandible, part of its mouth and an expanse of carapace below it now drop, and green blood belches against the hardfield that sheered them away. Then the attached mine detonates, blowing these severed parts to fog. The Golgoloth staggers drunkenly over to the nearby Sanctum wall, and the hardfield fades out as a section of that same wall revolves the creature out of sight.
Vrell hisses with annoyance, aware he has been played. Only by detaching the creature from its pillars did Vrell allow it to get itself into a position to escape. ‘We get out of here, now,’ he says, turning and heading for the door, only pausing to snag Geth – who has frozen to the spot – and send him reeling towards the door too.