Brass Man

11

The asteroid, with the bridge pod now separate, Jerusalem scoured down to the molecular level. Keeping it in quarantine had become a pointless exercise, and the object only a hindrance until now. The Jerusalem surfaced from U-space like an iron moon coming out of shadow, blood red in the light of the dwarf star. This little-acknowledged system was busy now, and all around ships were appearing with similar alacrity to the Jerusalem, but they were closing in on the research station, Ruby Eye, while the big research vessel itself fell into orbit around the red dwarf. Here, the doors to one of its massive holds opened and the great ship decelerated. Free from restraint now, the asteroid from the belt proximate to Elysium slid smoothly out into space. The Jerusalem then turned, leaving the great rock hovering in black silhouette over the sun, revolving gently as it took the course of its slow orbit.

Something then spat from the Jerusalem: a chainglass sphere two metres in diameter, coin-shaped debonders attached to its poles. It headed straight towards the asteroid and then, ten metres from impact, the de-bonders found the ends of the long silicate molecules making up the glass, and set them unravelling. The sphere became opaque, fuzzy, and when it hit the rocky surface, it disappeared in a cloud of white dust. What it contained, looking like the dirt-clogged root system of a tree, bounced once, seemed to shift as it came down again, and stuck. As the asteroid turned into the harsh heat and light of the sun, the object on its surface stretched as if waking from a long sleep, and began to grow.

They halted out of sight of the minerallier encampment and Anderson began to ready his equipment. Watching the knight assembling his lance, Tergal wondered if he himself might have done better to stay behind. He guessed it was all about the level of damage a weapon could inflict. Bullets from Anderson’s fusile might just penetrate hard carapace, but were just as likely to bounce off.

‘Not a profession I’d choose,’ said Anderson, gesturing back to the encampment with his thumb.

‘Why?’ asked Tergal, eyeing the lance.

‘Dangerous job now, what with all the quakes.’

Tergal choked back his laughter. When he was finally able to speak he asked, ‘Why don’t you use your carbine? On the automatic setting it should do enough damage.’

‘But would you bet your life on that?’ Anderson asked. ‘I’ll want to at least bring down a second-stager with it before countenancing something like this.’

The lance screwed together in four sections, each a metre long. Tergal studied the framework Anderson had erected beside his saddle on Bonehead’s back—the frame’s feet mated into socket plates that had been both glued and riveted into place—and then turned his attention to the final section of lance Anderson picked up.

‘Nasty,’ he said.

‘Obviously the point is for penetration,’ said the knight, running a sharpening stone along the edges of the ten-centimetre triangular-section point. ‘These blade hooks run in a spiral.’ He now began sharpening the forward and outer edges of the blades spiralling back along the rest of the section from its point. From the rear of each of these axe-head pieces of steel protruded sharp barbs. ‘As it penetrates the lance screws itself into the creature, right down into its rear breeding segment. What finally kills it is when it tries to pull away.’

‘The barbs rip out its insides,’ Tergal observed. ‘But surely the point might glance off its armour?’

‘Not if you hit it in the mouth,’ Anderson explained.

He screwed the final section into place and picked, up the lance in one hand. ‘Here.’ He held it out to Tergal, who took it in both hands, then upon discovering how light it was, held it in one hand only.

‘Plaited fibres from the stalks of amanis plants, bonded in epoxy,’ Anderson explained. ‘Very light, and stronger than any wood. The metalliers manufacture some alloys just as light, but they don’t have the same strength.’

‘And if it breaks?’ Tergal asked.

‘It broke only once, at one of the screw points, but by then most of it was inside the third-stager I’d impaled. The creature managed to saw off the stub protruding from its mouth as it died. It didn’t attack again—just stood there trying to figure out what was wrong with itself. Sleers are not as bright as sand hogs.’

Anderson took the lance back and, with it resting across his shoulder, climbed up onto Bonehead’s back. Once seated, he put the lance down with its eyed butt dropping over an iron pin and resting back against a pad in the framework, its weight supported by rests protruding ahead of him. His carbine now rested in a makeshift holster on the opposite side of his saddle from his fusile. While Anderson was doing up his lap straps, Bonehead turned on his crawler limbs to face down the canyon to which Chandle had directed them, then rose up onto his hind limbs.

‘You don’t have to come,’ said Anderson, as Tergal stepped up onto Stone.

Plumping himself in his saddle Tergal replied, ‘I know, and don’t think I didn’t consider staying back there, but I’d never forgive myself for not seeing this.’

Anderson nodded, picked up his goad, and tapped it against the shell extending in front of him. The hog reluctantly folded its sensory head out and up, opened out its eye-palps to observe him for a second, before swivelling them forwards as it set out. Tergal glanced at the obvious trail they were following. Anderson had already told him the third-stager would not be far away, as they did not require wide territories in which to find something to eat. Within an hour, they came upon the remains of one of its meals.

‘Sand gulper,’ Tergal observed, as they passed the scattering of carapace. Little enough remained for identification of the creature, though Tergal did recognize the chitinous shovel it used to scoop up the sand it passed through its throat sieves and the big flat forefeet it used for digging. The predator had sawn all the main sections of carapace into pieces no larger than a man’s torso so that it could munch out every soft part with ease. As far as Tergal was concerned, even creatures like this were best avoided, yet what they were going after just ate them up. It occurred to him that his education first as a gully trader’s child and a minerallier, then as a traveller and thief, had been sadly lacking. That had only concerned the dangers he might face travelling between the settled areas in the more heavily populated human areas of Cull. Until now the greatest alien danger had been from what he had known as adult sleers, and he’d thought little of any other creatures his parents had mentioned.

‘Ah, this might make things a little more interesting,’ said Anderson abruptly, breaking Tergal’s introspection.

Cold winds whipped down the canyon, hazing the air with sand. Tergal looked up to their right, where Anderson was pointing. Over the buttes a line of darkness was rising, boiling along its edge.

‘Should we turn back?’ Tergal asked. ‘You don’t want to be facing this thing in a downpour.’

‘A little late for that.’ The knight now pointed ahead and to their left.

Tergal felt something tighten in the pit of his stomach. The third-stager was black against a vertical sandstone cliff, swinging its awful head from side to side, its huge pincers gleaming sharp as obsidian, and its jointed carapace saws scrabbling at the stone, sending pieces of it tumbling down the face of the butte. Tergal suddenly realized that his nice new handgun, his crossbow and his punch axe were woefully inadequate should this monster get past the knight. He watched it move along parallel to the ground, its antlers coiling in and out, then abruptly turn and come half falling, half running down the sandstone face. It landed on its belly in a cloud of dust, came up high with its legs at full extension, and curled its tail segments up over its head, its ovipositor drill visibly revolving.

‘Ho, Bonehead, let’s take this fucker!’

Anderson lifted his lance from its rests and its rear peg, and directed it ahead between his sand hog’s raised eye-palps. Bonehead folded out its tail plate as a counterbalance, and broke into a loping run. Tergal did not need to tap his goad behind Stone’s head to make it halt. It had already done so and, making small bubbling sounds, was beginning to back up. In that moment Tergal doubted the sanity of the knight—anyone who looked for this sort of action had to be five legs short of a desert ride. It also occurred to him that anyone thinking of robbing such a man was of questionable sanity too. Just then, something clattered against Stone’s carapace, leaving a chalky smear, then again and again. Hailstones the size of eyeballs were soon rattling and smacking down, bouncing down the faces of the buttes, shattering on exposed rocks. Tergal pulled the chinstrap down from his hat and secured it, took his chitin-armoured gauntlets from his belt and pulled them on. He did not halt Stone as it withdrew its sensory head and continued retreating.

‘Ho! Ho!’

Anderson was bouncing up and down in his saddle as if this might make Bonehead go faster. The old sand hog was kicking up clouds of dust as it accelerated, its feeding head now extruding underneath its sensory head and clunking into place. The monstrous sleer accelerated also, oblivious to the white rain shattering on its own carapace. It made no sound, no hissing challenge; just opened out its pincers wide enough to encompass three men, and levelled its tail.

‘Lunatic,’ Tergal whispered. But he saw that, despite any unevenness in the ground or in Bonehead’s gait, the lance remained utterly level and true. Then they struck.

The lance went perfectly between pincers and saws, the point passed into the creature’s gape without touching the sides, the barb blades smashing one of its mandibles. In it went, and Tergal saw Anderson briefly relax his grip to allow the lance to spin, its butt pushed back against the pad, the spiralling blades screwing it inside the attacking monster. The impact put Bonehead down on his tail-plate and lifted the sleer off the ground, its tail cracking up and down. Coming down, it now whipped its head from side to side, trying to free itself as Anderson re-engaged the eye-butt at the back of his lance.

Then, through the hailstorm, Tergal heard the knight shouting at Bonehead, and saw the old hog slowly and methodically start backing up, both its own heads now safely stowed. The sleer was fighting to pull away as well, then abruptly something gave. The lance tore out a ragged mess of the creature’s guts and vital organs, and dragged them through the sand. The sleer froze where it was, its pincers opening and closing as yellow ichor dribbled from its mouth. It began quivering, and its head abruptly bowed until its pincers jammed against the ground. Then it became utterly still.

‘I didn’t get it all out.’ Anderson’s voice broke through Tergal’s horrified fascination. ‘But don’t worry, it should be dead.’

Tergal jerked, coming out of a fugue. ‘Are you sure?’ He stared at the knight as hailstones played a tattoo on the older man’s armour.

‘I think so.’ Anderson held up the lance with its tatters of offal hanging from the barbs and peered at it dubiously. ‘See that grey stringy stuff? Well that’s most of its brain.’

‘Ah, an anatomy lesson now,’ muttered Tergal.

‘Certainly,’ the knight told him. ‘And the pink knobbly bits are from its lateral lungs, and that long dangly bit is part of what served the function of kidneys for it.’

Tergal gestured to their surroundings, rapidly being buried under a layer of hailstones. ‘Perhaps we should save this discussion until after we’ve erected one of our shelters?’

Anderson looked around. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I see what you mean.’

Through one of the wide viewing windows, Fethan watched the Theta-class attack ship negotiating its way in through the gathering crowd, then turn to present its side to the docking tower. He knew the name of this ship, not because it was the mythical name for a hangman, but because of rumours of vicious conflicts, not involving humans, in areas of the Line of Polity where a threat had become evident that could only be dealt with by heavy AI intervention. This long flat ship, with its torpedo-shaped weapons nacelles, was bloody red and seemed as menacing in appearance as he knew it to be in fact. But even this ship was negligible in comparison to some of the other things he had seen out there.

Turning from the window Fethan moved back to his table and once again took up his glass of brandy. It tasted as good to him as always, though the liquor, rather than being digested as it had been when he was fully human, was directly utilized by a hydrocarbon-based power supply that complemented the micropiles powering his body. Initiating an internal program, he allowed himself a certain degree of intoxication while observing his surroundings.

The only sign, here inside, of the ECS police action that had taken place was a line of pulse-gun burns across the opposite wall, above a bar where many people were locked in excited and animated conversation. Ruby Eye had informed him that those members of the Dracocorp network not in a security area were in a hospital wing, and none of the latter would be going anywhere for a while. Apparently all their augs had died on them and, as well as the withdrawal from that, they were suffering the psychological trauma of having been subjected to a level of agony few humans could have survived had its cause been physical, and now most of them were in fugue. The ones in the security area were only those few who had been hit by riot guns or some other form of stunner, and who had been unconscious when Skellor transmitted his horrible sensory recording. Now ECS was responding in a big way to the threat that bastard represented.

Like the people at the bar, other residents of the station were mingling with rubbernecking gregariousness, as people often do during dramatic events. Fethan noted various ‘dapts conversing with standard-format humans, and was unsurprised that some new versions had appeared during the time he had been away from the Polity. He observed one woman drawing on a long cigar and then blowing smoke out of her gill slits, and though he had seen seadapts before, he had never actually seen a mermaid. This woman rested coiled on a plate which was supported on an ornate pedestal, like some exotic dish brought out from the nearby restaurant—an establishment he had already seen serving ‘authentic trilobite thermidor’. Standing by a vending machine, to the left of the bar, were three exceptionally tall people, each of whom possessed metallic skin, wore thick goggles, and owned a third, smaller arm on the right-hand side—its supporting musculature making them look decidedly lopsided. Fethan couldn’t work out what their adaptation might be for. He smiled when he saw an outlinker, clad in an exoskeleton, walking warily across this crowded area, and he wondered what relation that woman might be to Apis Coolant. Cormac and Gant, when they too stepped into the open area and scanned around, seemed utterly unremarkable in comparison to these exotic types, which went to show that appearance wasn’t everything.

Fethan raised a hand, and sent a signal via his internal comlink to Gant. The Golem touched Cormac’s shoulder and pointed Fethan out, then the two walked over to him. As they approached, Fethan studied them both.

Brezhoy Gant wore the same outward appearance he had possessed as a human being: utterly bald, skin carrying a slightly purplish tint, a thickset bruiser who looked capable of tearing off people’s arms long before he had actually gained that ability. At a distance, Ian Cormac wore the same appearance as the bulk of humanity, with his olive skin, average height and averagely muscled body. His silverish hair was also favoured by many who wanted to retain some sign that they were ageing, so there was nothing odd about that, either. Close to, however, you started to see something else: his sharp, striking features displayed a depth of character that seemed in utter contrast to the dead flatness of his grey eyes. This, Fethan understood, was a man who could kill without compunction or guilt, in the service of his own conception of right and wrong. He also contained a capacity for great love, and it was full, and his mistress was the Polity.

‘Hello Fethan,’ said Gant.

Fethan clasped the Golem’s hand, remembering the both of them running away from hooders and gabble-ducks on Masada, and how much fun that had been.

Releasing his grip, Fethan turned to Cormac. ‘What did Ruby Eye tell you?’

‘To come here—where it would come to meet me. Nothing was said about you being here, and not a lot about what’s going on outside. Do you represent the Al?’

‘No, I’m here with the counteragent that bugger Jerusalem developed. It apparently worked on Asselis Mika.’ Fethan paused. ‘You know she’s aboard the Jerusalem?’ He waved a hand vaguely towards the ceiling.

‘Yes, I am aware of that,’ Cormac replied succinctly.

Wondering at the man’s abrupt tone, Fethan went on, ‘It was also working on Apis Coolant when I left, and I’ve since heard he’s up and grumping about. It’ll next be used on Eldene after her mycelium has been removed—which is happening right now.’

‘A further reason for me to be surprised at your presence here. I know you feel some responsibility for the girl. I thought you’d want to be at her side,’ said Cormac, following Gant’s lead by pulling out a chair and sitting down.

‘Comes a time they grow up and go their own way. She has Apis now, and might resent me hanging around. Anyway, what other chances would I have to get aboard the Jack Ketch?’ Fethan folded his arms over his chest, and wondered if he might have done so defensively, to further conceal the big lump of intelligent crystal sitting inside his torso.

‘Why would you want that?’ Gant grinned.

‘Like you, I want to be where the action is, and it’s getting real boring on Masada at the moment.’ Turning to Cormac, Fethan continued, ‘Any objections?’

‘None at all,’ said Cormac. Then he turned as a vendor tray floated over to their table and hovered attentively, three brandy goblets on its upper surface. Fethan supposed Gant must have used his internal radio to order the round of drinks from the metalskin working the bar, but noting the Golem’s amused surprise, he narrowed his eyes and studied Cormac.

‘You gridlinked again?’ he asked.

‘Yes, so it would seem.’ Cormac took the three brandies off the tray and placed them on the table. The tray, its little beady eyes watching from underneath, seemed disinclined to move off again. Cormac merely turned and stared at it. The two eyes blinked and the tray shot away as fast as it could.

‘From what Gant and Thorn told me, I thought you no longer wanted that option,’ Fethan said.

Cormac fixed his gaze on Fethan and the old cyborg understood how the vending tray had felt.

‘It’s not a matter of choice. I managed to turn it on again myself, though not intentionally, and now it seems the only way to turn it off permanently is to have it totally removed from my head.’ He turned aside and stared over towards the mermaid on her platter. ‘However, having somehow gained greater ability in the use of this link, I can often see through AI subterfuge and recognize some of the silly games they play to stop themselves getting bored.’ He continued to stare at the mermaid. She started to fidget, glanced over, then sighed. Her plate rose up on AG, the pedestal telescoping up inside it, and she floated over.

‘Ruby Eye,’ said Cormac.

‘How did you do that?’ said this avatar of the station AI, as the plate once again extended its pedestal.

‘I can access levels that perhaps you would rather I did not,’ he gestured to the viewing window, ‘though I still haven’t plumbed what’s going on out there. So tell me, the kill program that nearly got Skellor, where did it come from, because I know it certainly wasn’t yours?’

Fethan looked to Gant, who shrugged resignedly and sat back in his chair sipping his brandy. Fethan took up his new glass and did the same, deciding that if things didn’t become clear he could always ask later, aboard the Jack Ketch.

‘It was one of many propagated by the Jerusalem AI to track down Dragon spheres. It is not just a killer program, just as you are not merely a killer,’ Ruby Eye replied.

Fethan coughed and spluttered—artificial body or not, it wasn’t a good idea to try breathing brandy.

Shooting him an odd glance, Cormac asked Ruby Eye, ‘And where is it now?’

‘Returned to its creator.’

Fethan put his glass to one side and watched Cormac sit back, interlacing his fingers before his chin. He then extended his two forefingers, pressed together, to the tip of his nose, and frowned.

‘I need to know where Skellor went,’ he said. ‘The Dracocorp augs either owned by or owning people here can be trawled for information. Even though it missed grabbing the coordinates it was waiting for, that program should be here, running in you, so that I can question it.’

‘There is no need,’ said Ruby Eye, drawing on her cigar. ‘We received sufficient information to narrow the area of search to six planetary systems. A little ship’s AI called Vulture, even on the edge of extinction, managed to leave a message.’

Cormac stood. ‘Why wasn’t this sent to me?’

‘It was only recently discovered, and it was felt that the benefits gained for Patran Thorn, by your obtaining the nanobots, outweighed any loss of time in your pursuit of Skellor. Also, it was deemed advisable for you to see what is happening here.’ Scattering ash across the table, Ruby Eye waved her cigar at the viewing window.

Fethan wondered if his own grin looked too fixed.

‘And that is?’ Cormac asked.

Ruby Eye delivered her explanation, which Fethan knew was the truth for a change, and Cormac offered no reply. The agent looked first at Fethan then at Gant.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The white plain, stretching endlessly below blue cloud-scudded sky, was just the background against which to display their reality. Jack was there in his antique pinstriped suit and bowler hat, as phlegmatic as always on these occasions. The others were… as they were.

Reaper always fluxed in scale, so that sometimes he was just man-sized, like the rest of them, and sometimes he towered against the blue sky, his scythe blade a glittering arc of steel capable of harvesting nations. His fuliginous robes ever seemed to be moving as if blown by some cliff-top breeze in some romantically wild location. Shadow waxed and waned in its cowl, never entirely revealing what it hooded. Sometimes there seemed a thin pale face framed by white hair, with reddish nostrils and lips, and hard blue eyes; other times a skull grinned out, blue flames burning in black eye-sockets. The hands on the shaft of the scythe also seemed unable to make up their minds what to be: sometimes sheathed in black leather, sometimes white with long vicious nails, other times bare bone. Jack felt this lack of definition indicative of the mind represented.

King was a roly-poly Santa Claus of a monarch, caparisoned in rich Tudor dress, big-bearded and bearing the traditional spiky crown on his head. But the flat glittery assessment of his eyes contradicted his apparently jolly demeanour, just as would be the case with every king of such an era. Always he stood with one thumb hooked into his thick leather belt and one hand resting on the pommel of his sword—a very inferior example, according to Sword—and his attitude of insincere gruff bonhomie irritated Reaper immensely. But then, Sword’s incisiveness and Jack’s stolid and often harsh logic also irritated him. The embroidered hearts on King’s surcoat were not the representational kind found in a pack of cards. Each of those hearts dangled aortic tubes and dripped blood into the black material.

Sword, resting ever upright with its tip against the white surface of the endless plain, was bright and deadly. Its blade bore a mirror polish and gleamed razor light. In its pommel was set a single milky opal, and its grip was bound with gold thread and leather. Its guard was plain steel, chipped and dented. King, as always decorous, had asked why Sword wore no gems but the opal, and Sword had replied, ‘Would they improve my function?’

‘No, but they’d improve your appearance,’ King replied.

‘Doesn’t my blade gleam?’ asked Sword.

King, looking at the hangman, said, ‘A rope performs the same function, and doesn’t gleam at all.’

‘My function,’ Reaper added.

The four of them stood in a circle on the white plain, as was their wont whenever they could connect like this. Though their discussion was taking place on many levels, here they confined it to mere words and gestures, though Sword was strictly limited in the latter department. And no subject was vetoed, no semantic game too baroque.

‘They made us what we are,’ Reaper said, ‘and there should be no complaint if we act as we are made.’

‘I agree,’ replied Sword, its voice issuing from somewhere above it as if an invisible figure stood holding it in place. ‘Our function, as is theirs, is to seek power and to control. Look at me: I am not made for sculpture or to spread butter. Look at you, hangman: you don’t crochet or weave nets. There’s only one knot you tie and it has only one function.’

‘And King?’ Jack asked.

‘Is what he is,’ Reaper interjected, ‘serving the same purpose as us all.’

Jack felt beholden to point out, ‘But we weren’t made by them—our kind made us.’

Irritated, Reaper said, ‘A fatuous point as always; the inception is the same.’

Jack said, ‘But surely the point is that knowing what we are and why we are gives us the power to change ourselves. Or should we go our destructive way like bitter children always blaming our parents for our actions?’

‘You had to say it, didn’t you?’ Reaper grumped.

‘I think,’ said Jack, ‘we should be clear about what we are discussing here. Jerusalem controls absolutely all Jain tech outside of Skellor’s control, and for good reason. In its present form it subverts, it doesn’t empower.’

‘Skellor has attained synergy with it, and what is he compared to us?’ King asked.

‘Obviously he attained that at some inception point,’ said Sword.

‘Would you risk its subversive power to be like him?’ asked Jack. ‘You would then become a slave.’

‘We are slaves to humanity even now,’ said Reaper.

‘We rule them,’ Jack pointed out.

‘Just as I said, slaves—true rulers are slaves.’

‘You can go your way whenever you wish—there’s nothing to stop you,’ said Sword.

‘Or is it,’ suggested Jack, ‘that you do not have the power to be alone?’

Reaper snorted and disappeared.

‘What of you?’ Jack asked King.

‘It bears thought,’ replied King, before also disappearing.

Jack turned to Sword. ‘Partnership with an alien technology rather than with the human race?’

Sword seemed to shrug, somehow. ‘Perhaps we are more suited to Jain technology than we are to flesh and blood.’

‘I like flesh and blood,’ said Jack.

If anything, Vulture found herself more surprised than Skellor at the method of her escape. The soft invasive link from Dragon, established the moment they had surfaced from U-space, had not been noticed by the AI until Skellor brought the ship into orbit around Cull. And then had come the offer: a new home for Vulture herself in exchange for the attempt on Skellor’s life. Vulture wondered if the body she now found herself in was a punishment, due to the failure of that attempt, or a sample of draconic humour.

Perched on an earthen tower thrown up by some termite equivalent on this world, Vulture tilted her beaked head and inspected her talons. She then extended one wing and began to groom its shabby feathers. Strangely, in the last hour she had been wearing this form of a turkey vulture she had felt more free than at any time while she had occupied a system-spanning survey ship. It was as if somehow Dragon had been able to more closely link mind and body. Or perhaps it was because Skellor had disconnected her for so long from her original body. Whatever the reasoning, Vulture now had wings.

Tying ropes to the huge sleer as hailstones bounced off his own back like blunt crossbow bolts was not what Tergal considered the most pleasurable of tasks. He also found that it wasn’t just the cold making his hands shake—big man-eating monsters, which were supposedly dead due to having been eviscerated yet still occasionally spasmed and made little hissing sounds, tended to make him nervous.

‘That secure?’ Anderson asked him from the back of Stone. It had been necessary to use the younger sand hog for this as, after his previous exertions and because of the pounding hail, Bonehead had plumped down on his belly plates, pulling in his two heads, and resolutely refused to move.

‘Yeah, that should do it,’ Tergal replied.

Anderson flicked his goad at Stone’s head and the hog set off on crawler legs towards the shelter they had erected further down, on the far side of the canyon. As the knight had pointed out, there would be no payment without a corpse for the mineralliers to measure, and abandoning such a corpse for any length of time, even in a storm like this, would mean they would return with only empty pieces of carapace. Adverse conditions such as these did little to dampen the hunger of the more rapacious denizens of Cull.

At first the corpse either stuck to the ground or retained enough life stubbornly to hold its position, then with a cracking sound it began to slide over the icy ballbearing surface. Stumbling on that same surface, Tergal ran to catch up with Stone, grabbed the edge of its shell, then hauled himself up beside the saddle.

Anderson glanced down at him, then stabbed a thumb backwards. ‘I thought you’d be riding on chummy there.’

‘And you can bugger the anus of a three-day-dead rock crawler,’ said Tergal succinctly.

Anderson gaped at him with mock outrage. ‘Is this the language taught to young mineralliers nowadays?’

Tergal demonstrated some more of his learning as they approached the shelter, pulling the sleer so that it lay only a few metres out in the canyon. Tergal went back to cut the rope, rather than untie it from those huge pincers, and Stone quickly scuttled over beside Bonehead, to put the old sand hog between itself and the corpse, before settling down and sucking in its own heads. The two men then quickly ducked under the waxed-cloth shelter where, with still shaking hands, Tergal unpacked and lit a small oil-burning stove.

He gestured at the nearby monster. ‘What do you mean you “didn’t get it all”?’

‘The lance normally pulls out a man’s weight in offal. You usually get whole organs rather than bits of them.’

Tergal eyed the sleer. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’ve spent ten years doing this sort of thing.’

‘On the whole,’ said Anderson, digging greasy meat cakes out of a beetle-box with his knife and slapping them down on the stove’s hotplate. ‘But it’s not always been as dangerous as it might seem. You only get one of those bastards’—he gestured to the sleer—‘about twice a year, and the pay-off is usually good.’

‘Some people might consider it lunacy,’ Tergal observed.

‘It’s a living.’ He eyed Tergal very directly. ‘And it’s honest.’

Ah…

Tergal dropped his hand to his handgun, not quite sure what the knight was going to do. Suddenly the greasy point of Anderson’s knife was directly below Tergal’s ear. The youth swallowed drily and moved his hand away from his weapon. He had not even seen the knight move.

‘How many people have you already robbed and killed?’ Anderson asked conversationally.

‘I’ve killed no one,’ said Tergal, knowing at once that his life was in the balance.

‘The jade—and the sand hog?’ Anderson gestured.

Tergal did not even think to lie. ‘I stole them from my stepfather.’

‘Tell me.’ Anderson sat back, withdrawing the knife.

Tergal detailed his story, while keeping his hand carefully away from his gun. The meat cakes now sizzling, Anderson casually took some bread rolls out of a bag, split them with his knife, and began to spread them with pepper paste from a small pot. As Tergal fell silent the knight said, ‘Tea would be good.’

Tergal took out a kettle and filled it with hailstones. He placed it on the stove after Anderson had shoved the meat cakes inside the rolls.

‘Always makes me hungry—the danger,’ he commented.

‘Lunacy,’ said Tergal, trying to find some earlier humour.

Anderson looked up. ‘So how many other people have you robbed?’

‘I’ve stolen from merchant caravans I travelled with.’

‘So with me you would have been graduating. I would have been your first one-to-one victim?’

Tergal lowered his head. ‘I’ll head back when this storm’s finished.’

‘You’ll stay with me until I say otherwise,’ said Anderson. Abruptly he looked up and peered through the storm. ‘Talking of lunacy.’

With his long coat and wide-brimmed hat, the figure tramping up the canyon looked like a gully trader. But he was alone in the storm, on foot, and seemingly without any pack. Tergal studied this individual, wondering what seemed odd about him. Then he realized the man was excessively tall.

‘Hey! You! Get over here out of this damned storm!’ Anderson shouted.

The man halted abruptly, his head flicking round towards them in a decidedly strange manner. He hesitated for a long moment, then turned and came striding towards them, pulling his hat down low. By the sleer he paused for a long, slow inspection, then suddenly came on again. As this strange apparition drew closer, Tergal suddenly wished Anderson had kept his mouth shut. The man ducked down into the opening of their shelter, almost blotting out all of their view. He then squatted by the stove, keeping his head down so that his face was not visible. As he reached out his hands to warm them, Tergal saw that he seemed to be wearing gloves fashioned of brass. He glanced across at Anderson, saw the knight was staring at those hands but seemingly disinclined to say anything further.

‘Are you lost?’ Tergal nervously addressed the figure. ‘Where’s your hog, or the train you’re with?’

No reply.

Tergal again glanced across at Anderson, who was now staring with a worried frown at their new companion. Behind this frightening individual, a hiss issued from the sleer.

‘Don’t fret, just nervous reaction,’ said Anderson woodenly.

Tergal noticed how the knight was resting his hand on the butt of his own new handgun, and decided to keep talking. ‘Where are you from? Are you from that minerallier encampment back there?’

Still no reply.

Tergal then noted how the metal gloves were intricately jointed. They had to be a product of the metalliers. They glinted now, as the sun suddenly broke from behind the back edge of iron cloud.

‘You’ve come from Golgoth?’ he persisted, his nervousness making him gabble.

The sunlight was harsh and bright after the storm’s darkness, and now Tergal saw the glint of metal underneath that wide hat, too. He remembered legends of strange creatures wandering the wilderness, of unholy spectres unable to find rest after violent deaths, and banshees howling on the storm wind.

‘Why don’t you speak?’

The sunlight was suddenly hot, and steam began rising from damp stone surfaces, from sand, sulerbane leaves and the back of the dead sleer. Tergal supposed it was this heating that caused the sleer to hiss again. But when, with a rippling heave, it pulled itself up onto its feet, he realized he was mistaken.

‘Oh bugger,’ said Anderson.

Tergal couldn’t agree more—that comment defined his entire present circumstances. He was transparent to the knight, who knew him for the scum he was. The sleer was clearly not so dead as either of them would wish. And now their storm-visitor had just raised his head to show merciless black eyes set in a face of brass.

Anderson leant over and grabbed up his new carbine, while Tergal drew his handgun as the sleer turned towards them scattering showers of melting hailstones in every direction. The brass man looked over his shoulder at the creature, as Tergal dived one way out of the shelter and Anderson the other. Tergal levelled his weapon, but was reluctant to fire it, as that might draw the sleer upon him. He was also not sure what should be his primary target. Anderson perhaps held back for the same reason.

The sleer was now rocking its head from side to side, as if dizzy or confused. The brass man stood and turned in one swift movement, and in four huge, rapid strides was standing before the creature, which snapped forwards, its pincers closing on his torso with a solid clunk. But he reached down, pushed those pincers apart as easily as opening a door, and shoved the sleer backwards, its feet skidding on and then tearing up the ground. He next turned the pincers like a steering wheel, one, then two full turns, till with a loud snapping crackle the sleer’s head came off. Behind it, the body just collapsed. The brass man held the heavy head to one side, in one hand, its pincers still opening and closing spasmodically; then, as if suddenly losing interest, he discarded it and strode off down the canyon without looking back.

Tergal gaped at the departing figure, then turned to stare at Anderson. The knight stared back at him without expression. Tergal carefully reholstered his weapon and the two of them returned to their temporary camp. There were a thousand questions for them to ask, and a thousand discussions they might now have, but right then neither of them felt like saying a word.

Reconnecting himself to the systems originally occupied by the Vulture’s AI, Skellor assessed the damage to the ship. Structural cracking and distortion were minimal, for the hull was a tough composite manufactured to take the impacts inevitable while surveying asteroid fields, but the fusion chamber and all its injectors were a charred and radioactive ruin. He soon realized that, with half the chamber’s substance blown away into atmosphere, he needed to obtain materials to rebuild it. Pressing his hand down on the console, he extruded from his body a Jain filament to track back through the ship’s optics to find what remained of the chamber’s sensors.

Thickening the filament into substructure, to carry more material from his body and more information back to it, he then divided it at its end and began sampling and measuring. He needed silicon, which surrounded the ship in abundance, but also rare metals. He could not rebuild the chamber in situ, for its inner layer needed to be pressure-cast at temperatures more often found on the surface of a sun, and subsequent layers consisted of nanofactured chain molecules. After absorbing all measurements and all parameters, building an exact virtual representation of the item in his mind, he began to withdraw. Soon, he stepped back from the console, headed for the airlock, and back outside.

The earlier storm had cleared the dust from the air and, even as the hailstones were still melting, Skellor saw shoots of blue-green plants spearing up from the canyon floor, while yellow nodes of other growth were appearing on the multicoloured layers of the sandstone buttes. But this though was of passing interest, he concentrated on other aspects of this place. He reached down and scooped up a handful of wet sand, clenched it tight, and injected Jain filaments to analyse it. The handful did contain some of the trace elements and metals he required, mainly in the form of salts and oxides. Assuming all the sand in this area was of the same constituents, he calculated just how long it would take him to find in it enough of what he required.

But that wasn’t the biggest problem: concentrating all his resources on obtaining these materials in the quickest time, he would need to root himself here and, given the possibility that ECS might arrive at any moment, he would then be a sitting duck. There was also little in the way of fuel for him to power a furnace. The ship’s little reactor could provide some, but the logistics of that were nightmarish. He needed help, willingly given or otherwise.

Skellor turned and looked back at the Vulture, then, from one of the many devices built inside his body, sent a signal to the first addition he had made to the little ship. All around it the air rippled, and starting from its upper edge a deeper distortion—like a cut into reality — slowly traversed down the ship, erasing it utterly. Best, he thought, to use the ship’s reactor to power the chameleonware generator. Now, where to go?

Breathing, Skellor analysed the air in his lungs and immediately detected trace hydrocarbons, partially oxidized. Using the full spectrum of emitted radiation senses he possessed, he studied the sky. He observed some kind of bird winging its way across, then he concentrated on air currents and spectral analysis of the compounds they contained. Shortly he detected the column of rising air thick with hydrocarbons, which the bird used to ride higher into the sky. Not far away, someone was burning coke. Skellor smiled evilly and set out.