17

Prador language being a series of clicks, clatters and bubblings, we must be very careful of the words in our own language that we apply to them. We are told that our translation machines choose the word ‘king’ to describe the leader of the Prador, rather than autocrat or dictator, because Prador society is almost feudal in nature. The reality is that ‘king’ was settled on during the war because there was no need to demonize creatures our AIs had already seen fit to go to war with. The King, we are told, apparently chose the name Oberon for himself, but I do not believe that for a moment. I believe such appellations are all an attempt to mythologize the Prador, so that it becomes easier for us to accept the slurs against their nature and some of the frankly unbelievable stories of their cruelty. We must always remember that they are merely products of evolution like ourselves. They are not demons, nor are they devils sent from the Pit. They are not monsters and in fact are no better or worse than ourselves. There are no genuine monsters.

– Anonymous

The docking tunnels spear into the Golgoloth’s ship, causing great chunks of armour to tip like huge scales as the arrow points find their way between, punching through walls and superstructure, ripping out beams and shoving aside massive internal components. Only when the midway chambers impact with the outer hull does their progress halt. The tips of the docking tunnels open inside like the jaws of conger eels, ripping up further internal structure. King’s Guard, all geared up for a major assault, pour from the tunnels and begin to spread throughout the ship like some infection. Many of them, the Golgoloth notes, are moving directly towards its own Sanctum. It has considered fending them off but, though some of its internal weapons can penetrate that armour, the resulting mayhem will destroy most of the vessel, and then the King need only send more of his troops.

Crash foam, both from the ship itself and from the stores around the midway chambers, continues to well out, much of it getting blasted like snow into vacuum by the escaping atmosphere, but nevertheless the wounds are gradually sealing.

The melon-shaped vessel now rests right up against the King’s ship as if rolled against a cliff face. Squads of the Guard, out in vacuum, jet down to its hull and land with a racket that can be heard deep inside here in this emergency Sanctum. They quickly begin to open airlocks or otherwise tear their way in, efficiently searching, isolating and sealing off areas as they move through.

The Golgoloth whimpers both at the sight of these invaders and from pain as optics and pipes extend on telescopic arms from a new control pillar to mate into the dripping sockets in its body. Meanwhile a surgical robot, mounted on the end of a hinged arm, poises over the creature’s forward wound like a brass tree and, having already sprayed the area with coagulating and analgesic foam and carved out the remains of the Golgoloth’s mouth, is now knitting in missing muscle structure with a set of its spidery limbs. The Golgoloth glances at its emergency supply in the transparent cylindrical canisters arrayed along one wall, each containing various chunks of its children floating in preserving fluid, nerve tissue spread about them like water weed. Another robot attaches its flat cobra head to the top of one of these, and reaches inside with long insectile limbs to divide up a set of mandibles and the outer rim of a mouth so as to provide the Golgoloth with a replacement. Further down the row of canisters, a similar robot is carefully extracting some legs. All around, the small Sanctum is filled with the busy movement of complex surgical robots poised on the ends of big mantis arms, amid slithering ribbed tubes, and the scuttle of smaller robots resembling steel spiders.

Returning its attention to the screens, the Golgoloth realizes that Vrell and the Human – and its own remaining children, now numbering twenty – are making their way along a zero-gravity shaft towards the area where the upper one of those docking tunnels debouches. As they move, they methodically knock out ship eyes and security systems, with the result that internal countermeasure lasers keep going offline. The Golgoloth considers what to do next. Though no weapons are available to it in that part of the ship, it can easily power up a gravplated section near the end of the shaft, and thus turn that escape party’s progress into a one-mile high-gravity drop. The Golgoloth very much wants Vrell and his pet Human dead, but accompanying them is its main stock of body parts. Most likely such a drastic fall would smash all its children beyond usefulness, yet ironically Vrell and the Human, infected by the Spatterjay virus, might survive it.

Communication comes through.

‘You have been injured,’ Oberon observes.

The Golgoloth watches the surgical robot as its fellow swings over with one mandible and a set of outer mouthparts – muscle groups, tendons and stringy nerves hanging wetly from the back of them. The robot takes this replacement and threads nerves into the tips of long needles, stretching them tight to inject into raw flesh, there reconnecting them with microscopic carbon sheaths. Tendons next, pulled out with larger manipulators and cinched into place with organic clamps.

‘So what do you want?’ the Golgoloth asks, speaking through its control pillar.

‘I want you, alive,’ replies the King of the Prador.

‘Yet you take my ship by armed assault.’

‘You have Vrell aboard, and for all I know there are Jain there too,’ says Oberon. ‘How do I know I am even talking to the Golgoloth and not some simulacrum using our communication channel?’

The robot now moves the mandible and mouthparts into position out from the wound, after withdrawing the tools that reattached tendons and nerves. The Golgoloth can just about feel these new parts, feel them aching, whereupon a subliminal instruction bring another spray of analgesic foam. Reaching behind the new transplant the robot then begins connecting up muscles.

‘Stop playing with me,’ the Golgoloth says to Oberon.

The King dips his flat head in acknowledgement. ‘Very well, I want you under my power, totally under my power, then I will decide what to do with you. I want Vrell too, grovelling on his belly here before me.’

‘Now that sounds much more like a Prador King.’

Another robot is fetching over a piece of carapace, perfectly shaped to fit around the new mandible and mouth, its edges glistening with shell glue. And yet another robot waits in the queue, replacement legs ready.

‘I have to say I admire your surgery there,’ says Oberon.

‘Developed over a thousand years,’ Golgoloth replies grumpily. ‘I possess knowledge and expert technologies in advance of much found in the Kingdom.’ Always a good idea to press his case and thus try to dispel that image, planted in his mind by Vrell, of a heated spike with the name ‘Golgoloth’ engraved on its base.

‘Prador and Polity technology integrated, I note,’ says the King.

‘I do not share the Prador antipathy to intelligent machines.’

‘Yet I trust you have nothing operating there like the Polity artificial intelligences?’

‘No,’ says the Golgoloth. ‘I have my children.’

Everything surrounding it, like everything in the ship, is controlled by ganglia that are in turn linked through the control pillar to the Golgoloth’s mind. With a little effort it can become those machines surrounding it, like it can become its own ship. The repairs currently being conducted on its body are almost like the action of an autonomous nervous system.

‘When you are well again,’ Oberon says, ‘I want you to give me a location conveniently near to you where my Guard can collect you. Meanwhile I want to know where Vrell is.’

The Golgoloth checks throughout its ship. The Guard now control at least a third of it and are currently locking down fusion reactors and external weapons systems. But they have as yet to find the shaft Vrell is traversing.

‘They are here,’ says the Golgoloth, sending the location of the same shaft.

‘Thank you,’ says Oberon, his image winking out.

The shaped piece of carapace goes into place, steam rising from the glue as it instantly sets. The robot then squeezes glue around the holes ready to take the base of the mandible and the exterior shell of the mouth. These items, still poised slightly out from the Golgoloth’s body, muscles, tendons and nerves stretched like elastic, it allows to pull back into place. More steam as glue sets. The robot now attaches numerous pipes to holes that had been drilled through the new carapace, and fills any intervening gaps with collagen foam. For a moment the Golgoloth watches its new legs and new claw being carried over, then turns its attention to the ship eyes positioned in the vicinity of the shaft that Vrell is evidently reaching the end of. The Guard begin to close in, rapidly.

Orbus propels himself to the next safety-hold, a recess specially designed for a Prador foot, catches hold of it and halts his progress for a moment.

‘We are taking the attack to the King,’ Vrell said earlier.

The Old Captain thinks that a bad idea, but can’t think of a better one – not for Vrell at least. For Vrell to throw himself on the mercy of this Oberon creature makes about as much sense as Orbus throwing himself on the mercy of the leeches in his home sea of Spatterjay. Generally, Prador do not do mercy; they do torture and killing and eating. Orbus shudders as he gazes at the horde of the Golgoloth’s children propelling themselves past him.

The only other option would be to try and get themselves to the Gurnard, if it is still out there. Maybe find a shuttle . . . but that is hopeless too. They are securely docked with the King’s ship, totally surrounded by dreadnoughts and King’s Guard. Really, if there is to be an escape route, it will only be one the King himself allows. And here is Orbus’s main problem. The King wants Vrell, he wants the Golgoloth, but Orbus is probably an irrelevance. King Oberon might even let him leave unharmed, even assist his departure, just to make political capital with the Polity. But for that to be an option, Orbus must abandon Vrell and go his own way, and certainly he should not be now involving himself in some insane and utterly doomed attack on the King’s ship.

Orbus shoves himself back into motion, catching Prador footholds to throw himself up to speed again and quickly catch up with Vrell. Whatever Vrell does now, the end will be the same: no more Vrell. Orbus damns him, and damns the situation, but finds himself unable to abandon this mutated Prador.

‘So you’ve got it all planned out?’ Orbus asks.

Vrell is moving more slowly, he realizes, probably reluctant to reach his destination.

‘I infiltrated Vrost’s dreadnought,’ Vrell reminds him. ‘I managed to get to the Golgoloth . . .’

‘But what’s your plan right now?’

Vrell takes a long time replying. ‘The plan must be easily revised . . . the King’s ship is immense and there will be places in it where we can hide ourselves. If we can acquire some armour, we can proceed unnoticed and then find a way to the King himself.’

No plan, in other words.

Vrell abruptly draws to a halt and Orbus catches hold of the edge of the Prador’s shell to halt himself too.

‘Your weapon is loaded with sprine bullets,’ says Vrell.

‘Certainly, but they don’t penetrate armour.’

‘I am not thinking of armour.’

Orbus feels a sudden tiredness wash over him. ‘Spell it out for me.’

‘If I am to be captured . . .’ Vrell begins, then abruptly swings his head round to watch one of the first-children.

It has missed its hold on the wall and just tumbles past them, its limbs moving spastically. Glancing back, Orbus sees that others seem to be losing control of themselves too, and with his next breath he feels a tightness in his lungs and smells an odd perfume in the air.

‘Gas!’

Vrell shuts his mask at once, reaches out to close a claw about Orbus’s arm, and propels them both forward. From behind, a detonation lights the shaft, a shower of debris flying ahead of a cloud of fire unshaped by gravity. The blast travels along the shaft, tumbling the Golgoloth’s children ahead of it, chunks of shattered metal cutting into many of them like shrapnel. By the time the fire reaches them, and then Orbus and Vrell, it has turned to hot smoke. Beyond it, Orbus can see King’s Guard swarming into the shaft, all of them carrying short trumpet-shaped weapons which they at once begin to deploy. The first shot sends a black egg projectile screeing along the shaft. It hits amidst a group of the children, and small lightnings arc from it to surrounding bodies, then outwards to the shaft walls. But the children don’t react, the gas obviously having knocked them out. So why aren’t he and Vrell unconscious? The Spatterjay virus, as always.

‘Stunners,’ explains Vrell.

Polity stun-guns are nothing like this, yet Orbus supposes it unsurprising that this weapon is new to him, as certainly they are not in common use by these creatures. Most Prador weapons tend to have one setting only: lethal and messy.

‘Let me go,’ says Orbus and, as Vrell’s claw releases him, he throws himself forward. Both of them go rapidly hurtling ahead of the children, the end of the shaft now in sight. Behind, the Guard now reach the children, simply batting them aside and coming on. They aren’t interested in them; it’s Vrell they want. Then, at the end of the shaft, a glint of brassy colour, and the inevitable appearance of King’s Guard there too.

Vrell drives his legs against the edge of the shaft, skidding up glitters of metal. Orbus catches hold, the force wrenching his arm and spinning him round to cannon into the shaft wall. Vrell opens fire on the pursuing guards, but what use is a rail-gun against so much armour? Orbus realizes exactly what use when a cloud of the stun eggs disintegrates barely fifty yards away from them. Orbus clicks his multigun over from normal explosive bullets to those containing sprine.

‘Do it now,’ urges Vrell.

Orbus takes aim, utterly reluctant to pull the trigger, as yet another egg gets through, impacting the wall behind Vrell and scouring him away from it in a harsh bright discharge.

Vrell manages to clatter out something further, his translator obviously shorted by the stunner. Probably it is another demand for Orbus to end his life. Orbus sees black eggs hurtling towards him from two directions. He pulls the trigger just before the shocks turn his body into a stiff arc of flesh, and bright fire extinguishes his world.

The Guard drag out the crippled-looking Prador children in big cable nets. Two of the armoured creatures tow out Vrell between them, his legs enclosed in manacles and heavy clamps about his claws. Orbus they do not seem so concerned about, because he is in one of the nets too. All have been disarmed and are now either unconscious or dead. Sniper turns the tip of his sensory tentacle, where it protrudes from the nearby air vent, and watches Thirteen.

The little drone has coiled himself into something snail-like and attached himself to a twisted girder amidst the wreckage caused by the opening end of the docking tube. He looks just like another piece of hardware and the numerous Guard scattered throughout the area do not notice him.

‘Well, I could try and grab them,’ Sniper suggests.

‘You will not succeed,’ Gurnard replies.

The AI is right. Sniper has already played through a few scenarios in his mind. Certainly he can move quickly enough to secure Orbus and Vrell, but then, once burdened with them, he needs to get out of this ship, and as he does so, hundreds of the Guard will come down on him like a hammer. He might survive that, but it is highly likely that Orbus and Vrell would not.

The two Guard towing Vrell enter the docking tube first, and next come those towing the four nets loaded with Prador children. The moment the net containing Orbus draws near to his girder, Thirteen uncoils himself to shoot across like a jellyfish sting, quickly disappearing amid a jumble of limbs and distorted carapaces.

‘I’m in,’ he observes. ‘I detect traces of a short-acting derivative of Hazon nerve gas, though it appears Orbus has sustained a massive electric shock that even stunned his virus.’

‘He’s alive?’ Sniper asks.

‘Yes.’

Now the nets disappear into the tunnel, and Sniper wonders if that is the last he will see of any of them.

‘Where are you now?’ Sniper asks Gurnard.

‘Ten thousand miles out,’ the AI replies. ‘One of the King’s dreadnoughts just shifted over to my position and turned to face me. It seems they are paying attention to me now the main threats have been countered.’

‘So no chance of you zipping in here if I was to try grabbing them?’

‘No chance. They’d turn me into Swiss cheese.’

Sniper growls to himself, then ponders what the hell to do next. He is outgunned here and no matter at what angle he views the situation, and no matter how much of his centuries-long experience he calls upon, there is no way he can rescue Orbus and Vrell.

‘Perhaps it is time to talk to King Oberon,’ Gurnard suggests.

‘Whaddabout?’ Sniper does not like that idea at all.

‘Our mission here in the Graveyard was to neutralize Prador agents, and when Vrell arrived it was either to neutralize him or bring him over to our side. Events have now moved on and Vrell is now effectively neutralized. Perhaps we can now concentrate on using a little diplomacy to try and get Orbus back?’

‘Fuck our mission,’ says Sniper.

He turns within the cramped space he occupies, first scanning the wall he cut through in order to enter, then welded back in place once inside. Beyond it three of the Guard busily plug cables from their armour into nearby computer systems and, because of the signal that Sniper constantly broadcasts, detect nothing more threatening than a nearby maintenance robot. He turns to another wall, beyond which lies a tunnel the Guard have already checked and secured. He starts to cut.

‘I agree,’ says Gurnard.

Sniper is surprised.

The AI continues, ‘I was instructed to withdraw and leave this whole situation to Oberon, but I cannot just leave behind those I transported here. Vrell is beyond our help, I think, but we must get Orbus back and safely withdraw. I will now attempt to open communications with the King of the Prador. You, Sniper, should return to me here.’

Fuck that, thinks Sniper, but doesn’t communicate that sentiment. ‘Best of luck,’ he says instead, as he peels out a section of wall.

Numerous bracing structures lie underneath it. Sniper cuts through them also, slices through foamed porcelain, then through the farther skin of the wall, finally spearing his tentacles through to draw himself into the tunnel beyond. He jets his fusion engine once, its flame rusty yellow and sputtering, and hurtles down towards the end of the tunnel, scanning always ahead. There lies a T-junction, its righthand tunnel curving towards the hull. One of the Guard is waiting just around the corner and, as he speeds towards the junction, Sniper detects it moving to investigate the sudden burst of radiation from the fusion blast. He onlines his rail-gun, sets his particle cannon to a wide focus precisely measured to the size of the Guard’s visual turret, fires a steering thruster to slow himself a little and to divert his course just so. Shame he doesn’t have any missiles – he’ll just have to work with what he’s got.

The armoured Prador moves into view, the top of its carapace facing towards Sniper. It tilts upwards just in time to receive the blast of the particle beam straight into its eyes, before Sniper careers into it at full speed. The Guard smashes into the opposite wall, making a large carapace-shaped dent. The wall itself ripples with the shock, sending several panel fixings gyrating through the air. Sniper wraps his tentacles about the creature as it tries to bring its own particle cannon to bear. He rips the weapon from its claw and sends it tumbling away. No point trying to kill this damned thing as its armour is too thick, and anyway there is the possibility of it detonating the fusion tactical inside.

Sniper tries another approach. Now narrow-focusing his cannon, he burns out his opponent’s temporarily blinded eyes and with his tentacles probes into sensory pits for the other detectors it uses. A claw closes on another part of Sniper’s own damaged shell and begins to bend it upwards, but Sniper manages to turn the creature sideways, find a couple of its steering jets, and fire his rail-gun into them. The soft metal of the missiles he uses impacts inside, and Sniper thrusts himself away, snapping the creature’s claw free, and firing up his fusion engine again. The blast, centred on the Prador, sends it tumbling away, whilst Sniper hurtles on up the new tunnel. That particular creature will not be able to pursue, but now the others will have become aware of Sniper’s presence.

Slamming into the wall beside a Prador door at the far end of the tunnel, Sniper tears out its pit control and concentrates on subverting its optics. The door divides and starts to open. Glancing back, he sees the tunnel is still empty, but knows he has very little time. Scanning beyond the door, he observes another tunnel leading towards the internal spaces immediately around one of the big fusion engines. Good. Sniper turns away from it and heads off to his right, accelerating fast to where the next tunnel hits a large junction from which seven others branch off. Again he uses a wall for braking, then chooses the particular tunnel he wants, and heads up that one. Any pursuing Guard will hopefully assume he has gone through the door and then waste time searching for him in the complex around the engine.

Via further tunnels and by sometimes cutting through walls that aren’t armoured, Sniper finally reaches a portion of the ship that has sustained a great deal of damage. A corridor, so crushed that he has to turn himself on his side to negotiate it, terminates against a wall of crash foam far ahead. He fires up his engine again and shoots along the corridor like a bullet up a barrel, hammering into the foam which fractures enough for the air pressure in the tunnel behind him to blow chunks of it, and himself, out into vacuum. In passing Sniper snags a long twisted beam and swings round it to again halt his progress abruptly, this time thumping down into a distorted tangle of metal that was once a docking tube. He glances back at the hole he just made as new crash foam boils into it, then up towards the pinkish firmament far above him. He is sitting at the bottom of that deep crevice in the Golgoloth’s ship formerly occupied by that splinter craft the creature was forced to destroy. This is Sniper’s quickest way out.

Again the war drone fires up his engine, accelerating up towards freedom, finally hurtling away from the ship and out into space the colour of pink grapefruit, in the lee of the King’s ship. Unfortunately he is not alone, since over five hundred of the King’s Guard are hovering there expectantly in what is not quite vacuum.

‘Fuck,’ says Sniper.

‘You, drone, have caused me enough problems already,’ says a voice speaking through the com channel Sniper has open with Gurnard, ‘You will now surrender yourself to my Guard.’

‘Surrender, Your Majesty?’ Sniper enquires, scanning about and detecting precisely four hundred and eighty-eight particle cannons all aimed at him, plus a large bastard rail-gun swivelling on the nearby King’s ship so as to aim at him too.

‘I know the word is probably not one you are accustomed to, but if you want your Human and that curiously shaped little drone back in one piece, it is a concept to which you must rapidly become accustomed. I can perhaps overlook the fact that you terminated my agent at Montmartre, but I will not countenance any further attacks upon my children.’

Sniper points all his tentacles in one direction. It is a gesture any Human might recognize, were there any up and down in space and if the direction he is pointing them is upwards.

‘Alright, no need to get tetchy.’

Orbus feels like someone has taken a hammer to every bone in his body individually. He opens his eyes, but everything is too white and bright, so he closes them again. He is slumped down on a cold floor, gravity operating, and around him he can hear the familiar sliding and clattering movement of Prador.

Did I get him? He wonders. Did he manage to put a sprine bullet into Vrell and thus close another chapter of his own life? He hopes for Vrell’s sake that he did, but still regrets the killing. Odd, after all this time, to actually feel some sympathy for such a creature. He opens his eyes again. Still too bright, and he realizes that the floor he lies prone upon is pure white.

‘How you feeling?’ asks a voice.

Orbus tracks his gaze along the floor and focuses blurrily on the ribbed tail resting against it. He tracks on upwards to see Thirteen hovering there, gazing down at him with seemingly demonic topaz eyes.

‘Been . . . better,’ he manages, his mouth feeling like it has been sandpapered.

‘That degree of shock would have killed any normal Human, and was clearly enough even to kill some Prador – not all of the Golgoloth’s children survived – but then King Oberon was intent only on capturing Vrell.’

‘Yeah, I figured that.’

‘The Golgoloth’s surviving children, and you and me I think, are just here now to satisfy his curiosity.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘I snuck into the Golgoloth’s ship with Sniper—’

‘So the bugger survived. Should have expected that.’

‘—then I concealed myself amongst the prisoners. Not well enough, though. The Guard must have spotted me ‘cus they grabbed me the moment we entered the docking tunnel. They captured Sniper too – just outside the Golgoloth’s ship.’

‘The King?’ Orbus rolls onto his side and gazes, beyond Thirteen, at a group of the Golgoloth’s children all clustered together protectively. One of them is the one Vrell named Geth. He is glad to see the crippled creature has survived and realizes that, over recent events, something has utterly changed inside him. How is it that he can now like a Prador? Beyond the children lies a distant white wall, and high above is a white ceiling inset with elliptical vents. This seems a very odd place indeed.

‘The King,’ Thirteen repeats.

The little drone’s tail divides, one fork of it rising to point behind Orbus. The Old Captain heaves himself up on to one elbow, then slowly up until he is in a sitting position and, not yet trusting his legs to support him, he spins round on his bottom. When he sees what lies beyond the shimmering upright posts that surround him and the others, he very much wants to be up on his legs and running. Those posts, he realizes, must comprise some sort of electric fence imprisoning them. But he is glad they lie between him and the thing looming only a short distance away.

Here then is the King of the Prador. Supported on its eight thorny armoured legs, the creature stands ten feet high at its back, and when it now shifts one complex spiky foot, the entire floor vibrates. It is all chitinous angles of dark red, green and black, and its body is thirty feet long and louse-like, with unidentifiable items of technology surgically grafted into it, even down the length of its long saurian tail. The armoured segments of the body end in a spiked skirt radiating above the sockets the legs extend from, while clamped to its underbelly, Prador arms terminate in manipulatory hands of varying design. Because its forelegs stand higher and heavier than the three pairs behind, its body curves upwards to where it ends in wide armoured shoulders, from which extend its clawed arms, and from between these shoulders rises a long neck supporting a wide flat head. This resembles the head of a giant ant, though without antennae and possessing a complicated array of mandibles. The outer set are sawtoothed and jointed, and presently hang downwards like mantis arms, as if ready to snap out and grasp. An inner set, positioned directly over the mouth, look like sets of lubricated scythes.

‘Mother of fuck,’ says Orbus.

The King hears him and swings his head in his direction, revealing two midnight-black eyes, and Orbus involuntarily cringes back.

‘That is the usual reaction from Humans on first seeing him,’ says a voice.

Orbus glances over to see a woman standing outside the fence, eyeing him curiously. She is clad in some sort of armoured suit, and has cropped grey hair and mild brown eyes. She reminds him of someone, but that being the normal reaction of those of his extreme age upon encountering almost anyone, he is about to dismiss it until he realizes who: her face resembles that of a lover from long long ago.

‘How long did these Humans survive afterwards?’ he asks, shaking himself briskly, then clambering to his feet.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘the Humans usually brought before him are either criminals or ECS spies he wants to question, so they don’t last very long after the talking has stopped.’

‘And what about you, then?’

‘I work for him.’

‘And you are?’

‘Sadurian.’

Orbus recognizes the name, though is not sure where from, but it isn’t that of the lover he once knew. He swings his regard back to the King just as Oberon returns his attention to the figure immediately before him. Down there, on the floor, squats Vrell, securely manacled, and with his head tilted up like a dog awaiting punishment from its master. Orbus missed, then. He focuses on a couple of fresh grooves across Vrell’s shell just beside his neck, realizing that’s where the sprine bullets ricocheted off.

Now Orbus begins to study some of the other contents of this unusual room. To the left of Vrell are positioned arrays of hexagonal screens of typical Prador design. Immediately before these lies some sort of framework with pit controls below it. Beyond the King, part of the wall is taken up by a huge window displaying a vista of pink space in which a silvery dreadnought glitters. Other mechanisms rise here and there like chalk monoliths, or lie prone like white tombstones, with pit controls in their surfaces and much space between so the King can gain easy access to each. Returning his attention to Vrell and the King, he realizes the two are talking.

‘What are they saying?’ he asks.

Sadurian waves a gloved hand at Thirteen. ‘Your drone can translate.’

Orbus glances sideways at the iron seahorse.

‘They’ve just got through the initial introductions – and threats – but now it’s getting complicated,’ says Thirteen. ‘I’d better translate direct.’

‘. . . I used a counternanite based on the Polity Samarkand model,’ the King says, Human words seeming to issue directly from him, for Thirteen is using some form of voice-casting. ‘My Guard introduced it into the Golgoloth’s ship before entering, and it is also part of the Hazon nerve-gas derivative I used against them.’ The King swings a claw round and snaps it shut with a gunshot sound, towards the Golgoloth’s children. It strikes Orbus that something so big and evidently heavy should not be able to move its limbs so fast. ‘You are now clear of it, as is most of the Golgoloth’s ship. Vrost’s ship appears to be gone, along with the planetoid, so perhaps, apart from a few surviving examples the counternanite has yet to reach, it is no longer a threat to me or my children.’

Vrell dips his head in acknowledgement. ‘I am unfamiliar with this "Samarkand model" you mention. Did the counternanite attack the calcite structures or sodium bonds?’

The King abruptly surges forward, past Vrell, then settles himself down on the framework of bars arrayed over the pit controls before the screens. ‘Observe.’

The screens come on, displaying complex molecular maps and scrolling Prador glyphs. Vrell tries to turn his head, but cannot get it right round. The King glances back, and, with a crackling sound, the manacles drop from Vrell’s legs. He spins around and for a moment Orbus thinks he is going to run, but instead he moves up beside the King and peers up at the screen.

‘Interesting approach, but I would have targeted those sodium bonds. They were the weakest point.’

‘What the fuck are they on about?’ Orbus asks.

‘The nanite Vrell used to destroy all those aboard the dreadnought he took control of,’ Thirteen explains.

Orbus returns his attention to the two Prador.

‘Show me how you constructed those bonds,’ the King has just said.

Vrell looks over to one of the tombstone devices. Another set of manacles, like a solid frozen chain, unseen until then, clatters to the floor, thus freeing his underhands. Then, with two loud cracks, the clamps drop from his claws.

‘Your King is a damned sight more trusting than I would be in the circumstances – Vrell is no walkover,’ remarks Orbus.

Sadurian glances over at him. ‘My King is even more dangerous than he looks.’ She glances down as a ship-louse scuttles over, and steps carefully out of its way. Orbus notes that the louse is bigger than any he has seen before, and has trilobite divisions to its body. It tries to run past one of the posts to get to the prisoners. A jag of lighting crackles out, constant and glaring as an arc welder, and, with the smell of burning stew, fries the thing on the spot. This is a salutary reminder, because things seemed to be getting just too convivial here.

Vrell heads over to the tombstone, inserts three of his underhands into three small pit controls, and one claw into a larger one. A hatch slides aside to the fore of the tombstone and a mask-like device rises up before Vrell. He inserts his head into that, manipulates the pit controls for a moment, and then the images on the screens change.

‘As I suspected,’ says the King. ‘Perhaps you can now explain to me . . .’

The lights abruptly dim, for a moment, and Orbus wonders if Vrell has managed to do something clever operating through those pit controls. Perhaps the King thinks the same, for he shoots from the framework and comes down with a crash directly over the smaller Prador, his legs on either side, and a claw instantly in position about Vrell’s neck. He then slowly withdraws the claw, head coming up and black eyes focusing on the screens as columns of Prador glyphs begin to scroll down. He turns his head, and the entire far wall of the huge room, the one incorporating the window, becomes one massive screen.

Oberon steps away from Vrell. ‘It wasn’t enough,’ the King intones. ‘I must become.’

‘God help us,’ whispers Sadurian.

Orbus glances over at her, realizing she must be a very old Human indeed to instinctively use such a curiously archaic expression. Her face is pale now and she looks very scared. Groping down, she takes a palm console from her belt, and with shaking hands keys into it. He realizes in an instant that her fear is not of what is occurring outside, but because of the King’s words. Orbus returns his attention to the massive screen.

The image that lies before him resembles a nebula, straight contrails of orange vapour spreading out behind chunks of cooling magma set on courses unlikely to deviate for millions of years. Yet, within this, a dark spot appears and grows gradually into a spherical shadow. Along the bottom of the screen, bright light blooms, and a sudden acceleration sends everyone staggering. Ahead, a dreadnought slides into close view, then begins to recede as the King’s vessel draws away fast, and to either side the other dreadnoughts now fall into view. The King steps away from Vrell and quickly returns to his framework of bars, which have been bent by his recent rapid departure.

Vrell begins to rise from his own position, but the King glances over at him.

‘Stay where you are – I may need you,’ orders the King, then turns aside. ‘Sadurian, I must do it now.’

The enormous dreadnoughts move rapidly into a quadrate formation positioned between that growing darkness and the King’s ship.

‘What is that?’ Orbus asks, but when he looks to Sadurian for an answer, he sees her heading over to the King. To one side of the room a door opens and in scuttle two small chrome-armoured Prador, towing behind them a levitating upright cylinder bearing some resemblance to the kind of devices the Golgoloth uses. They hurry after Sadurian, and soon all three are standing ready beside the King.

‘Any ideas?’ Orbus asks Thirteen, puzzled.

‘Sniper is watching,’ replies the little drone, ‘and even he’s not sure about what’s going on.’

A square, ten feet across, etches itself into existence inside the big screen, magnifies once to bring one dreadnought up close enough seemingly to reach out and touch, then once again to take in the view beyond, then once more to spread that mysterious darkness all the way across it. At the centre of this shadow rests a weird bastardized vessel: a triangular dish resting in a structure bearing a vague resemblance to a collection of giant bones formed of brass. Attached to one edge of this, Vrell’s original ship is only just recognizable.

‘It is sucking up energy from the surrounding cloud,’ observes King Oberon. ‘I cannot even guess how.’

A star ignites at the centre of the triangular dish, and from that point a beam of . . . something spears out. It glares like the output from a particle cannon, yet along its length it is plaited like a rope. Just as King Oberon cannot guess how that strange vessel is now sucking up surrounding energy, Orbus cannot guess how this ship of bones produces such a thing.

Abruptly the view leaps out again, this time to show a dreadnought silhouetted against a vast electric-blue surface. Orbus has only enough time to realize he is witnessing the impact of that beam against a massive hardfield, just as white fire erupts from numerous ports in the dreadnought’s surface, and the field flickers out. The beam strikes hull, turning like a drill, and chunks of the big ship begin to break away like swarf, then briefly the same beam punches out the other side of the vessel in a shower of debris, before finally shutting down. Burning with numerous fires caused more by damage to its own internal systems than by heat from the weapon that struck it, the dreadnought rolls in a debris cloud, cored out like an olive – a mere husk.

‘Fuck,’ says Sadurian.

‘I am inclined to agree,’ replies the King.

Thirteen rises from the floor and moves over to hover in the air at Orbus’s shoulder. ‘It seems the Jain weren’t destroyed after all.’

‘Ah, those buggers . . . then I agree with her too,’ says Orbus.