Shadow of the Scorpion

9

Cormac gazed at the crowds standing in the large waiting area of the editing clinic and briefly wondered where Dax had got to. Perhaps he had gone to the toilet, or to buy more cigarettes. Soon, he knew, they would enter Door Eight where a smaller waiting room was situated, then they would go into the editing suite itself, where a Golem nurse, telefactored from a local AI, would conduct the editing process on Dax. It would take some time, of course, because Dax was a medic, and much of what lay between his ears was too useful to lose. Ah, perhaps Dax was already in there being worked on… no, that couldn't be right, for they had remained in the smaller waiting room until the work was done… but that was in the past… it had already been done.

Cormac looked around, realised he was sitting, then glanced across at his mother who was sitting beside him doing something with her lap-top. She had a look of extreme concentration until she realised Cormac was gazing at her.

"I was just making sure I kept copies," she explained. "They're notoriously unstable in the carbon memstores they're using here." Then she paused, as if reviewing what she had just said, and cursed quietly to herself. After a moment she went on, "Are you all right now?"

Cormac had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. He just gazed at her, unable to articulate the weird déjà vu he was experiencing—the sensation of reliving memory, and being offended because memory wasn't matching up to reality. Hannah popped a memtab from the side of her lap-top and dropped it into the top pocket of her shirt, slid the device back into its carrycase and hung the strap from her shoulder. He continued staring at her while something tried to realign inside his head, then he abruptly realised that memory came after reality, not before it. They were not here with Dax—that was all in the past and Dax was, right now, many light years away on a world called Cheyne III.

"What?" he said, then after a long pause. "What happened?"

Hannah stood, her hand closing on his and pulling him to his feet. He felt a bit wobbly and realised he must have been asleep or something.

"You felt faint," she explained, "and this was the nearest place where you could sit down." They moved back into the aisle and started heading towards the exit. "Best I have you checked out," she added, "though it's probably due to the excitement of the last few days."

Cormac still could not quite get things clear in his mind. They'd seen off Dax at the runcible port in Paris, then returned by lev-train to Tritonia, but he couldn't remember if they'd returned to The Watts Hotel or were still on their way back there.

They stepped out into the street where his mother scanned about carefully before towing him off in the direction of The Watts. Yes, he remembered now. They had returned to the hotel to clean up and change, before heading out to try a local restaurant. He couldn't remember if they had eaten. It certainly felt to him like they hadn't.

"Weren't we going to get something to eat?" he asked.

Hannah came to an abrupt halt and gazed down at him. "Do you feel up to it? I thought it better to get back to the hotel for a rest…"

"I'm hungry," he complained.

She smiled a secretive smile then turned them right round again. Within a few minutes they came opposite a restaurant where the tables and chairs spilled out onto the street through the arched frontage. Inevitably, considering its location, this place served seafood. The holographic and moving sign above the arches depicted a crab holding a large gun in one claw with which it was blasting all about itself. The gun then, evidently, ran out at which point the crab began backing away from the human who now stepped into view—Jebel U-cap Krong—who advanced with a pulse-gun in one hand and a mine in the other. The crab ended up backing along a plank over a large cooking pot of boiling water, into which it fell when Krong jumped onto the back of the plank.

Cormac was mesmerized; he loved this place at once.

They seated themselves at one of the outside tables, whereupon they were approached by a metalskin android with a head like that of a platinum ant. Cormac immediately made his selection from the menu and the android said, "Good choice," then turning to Hannah, "Crab salad for you too, madam?"

Cormac adjusted his night goggles and gazed about for a moment, impressed at how well they worked for he could hardly distinguish his surroundings from how they had appeared during the day. Could this be a hindrance? Might he neglect to take advantage of concealing darkness because he was less aware of it? Then again, it might also not be a great idea to get complacent and assume all his enemies blind, for any of them could be sporting similar goggles. Nevertheless, he adjusted them slightly so his surroundings took on an unnatural tint, just to remind him that it wasn't day, then returned his attention to his companions. Not much of them was visible at the moment for like Cormac they all wore chameleoncloth fatigues, and until they moved it seemed three disembodied heads, six hands and various pieces of unconcealed hardware occupied this clearing in the woods.

Gorman, when wholly visible, just looked like a thick-set and brutal thug. He carried a lot of body weight, easily, his head was stubbled with grey hair, his neck bulging, his eyes grey and his teeth slightly crooked and yellowish. He smoked cigars, liked eating mouth-strippingly hot curries and drinking vast quantities of beer, but only when off-duty and relaxing. The rest of the time his appearance and general demeanour belied the speed of his mind, his reactions and the way he assessed the data coming in through the small flesh-coloured aug affixed behind his ear like some sort of growth. Travis was neat and lean and ridiculously good-looking, with jet black hair tied in a pony tail and startlingly green eyes. He grinned a lot and his sense of humour was distinctly odd. Crean's appearance was Asiatic, big-breasted and lush, dark-haired, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. It had taken a little while for Cormac to realise that, like Travis, she was a Golem. Gorman was so obviously human, and delighted in being so.

"These gods like to have their ugly pets along as a contrast," said Gorman, stabbing a lit cigar to where the two Golem were assembling a mosquito autogun.

Mills was the missing member. A Separatist sniper had hit him right in the head with an explosive bullet. It was Crean who got to the sniper first. Tore him in half and hung the bits from a tree. Cormac hadn't understood how Gorman seemed to be so accepting of Mills' death, until he learned from Travis that Gorman had been edited. This reminded Cormac of when his brother Dax went for editing during the Prador/Human war, and of the other events of that period, and of the drone he now knew to be called Amistad. He reached up and touched the bean-shaped lump of computer hardware behind his own ear. In his new aug he had files about Amistad he wanted to review at leisure, but with the VR training and now this fast deployment, he hadn't had a chance. Also, stored in the aug was a message he had been drafting to send to his mother, Hannah, asking why he himself had been edited as a child, and what memories were missing.

"So here's the plan," said Gorman.

Cormac made that odd unnatural effort that called his inbox up in a frame that seemed to the right of his vision but actually wasn't in it, and saw that he had received one message. He opened it and studied a visual file showing a mug-shot of someone immediately recognisable: Sheen, one of the Separatists who had accompanied him during the raid on the Prador ship.

"Any problems?" Gorman asked.

"I'll let you know when you tell me the plan," Cormac replied.

Gorman grinned. "Okay," he said. "Agent Spencer wants her alive. Sheen is Samara's sister and is likely privy to much that went on at the top."

"Sister?"

"You didn't know that?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"Everyone else in the caves is dispensable." Gorman shrugged. "In fact, that's all they are. They've got no information we want nor do we want to bring them in for trial, since sentence has already been passed on them all." He studied Cormac carefully. "Can you handle this?"

Cormac nodded, but swallowed dryly. This was so different from killing those who had attacked you and intended to torture you. It seemed too cold, too harsh. Would he hesitate? Might he find it difficult to pull the trigger on someone unarmed, even if that person was a Separatist? He picked up his stubby machine pistol from where it rested on the ground beside him, then stood up. The weapon was perfect for this kind of work, being easily manoeuvrable in confined spaces and, unlike most pulse-weapons, its discharge was invisible. It also bore a fat silencer that not only absorbed the crack of the shot, but also broadcast an inverted phonic waveform that covered most impact sounds. The result was, in most cases, utterly silent and eerie killing. Its magazine contained two hundred bullets, each projectile a high-pressure explosive p-shell just a millimetre across and three long. All four of them carried weapons like this, and also wore pepperpot stun guns holstered at their belts for when they came upon Sheen.

"Okay," said Gorman, standing up. "Time to get bloody." He pulled up the hood of his fatigues, pulled across his face mask and slipped on his gloves. Via his aug Cormac instructed his goggles to respond to the recognition signal each of his fellows was broadcasting. Gorman immediately became visible again, as if clad in some orange suit—it wouldn't do for Cormac to end up shooting his own side because he couldn't see them.

The two Golem, also now apparently clad from head to foot in orange, had finished setting up the mosquito and now stepped back from it. The weapon abruptly stood up on its six silvery legs, disappeared for a moment, then reappeared as a red outline as it engaged its chameleonware and Cormac's goggles picked up its signal. It then abruptly targeted them each in turn, recognised them then moved on, finally falling into a routine of surveying the tree-covered slope leading down into the valley before them.

"I'm glad you're so confident of your programming, Travis," said Gorman sarcastically.

Cormac realised they'd onlined the gun without doing a test, an option considered risky until they were sure its recognition software was working properly. Travis glanced round at them, and Cormac imagined his usual maniacal grin under his face mask.

"I delayed the loading of its dust magazine," the Golem said. "If my programming had been wrong it would only have given you a bit of an electric shock."

"Nice," Gorman replied. "And it'll recognise Sheen when we bring her out?"

"Of course it will!"

Crean now spoke directly to Cormac. "Don't let him get to you. The chances of him programming a mosquito wrong are about the same as any of us getting hit on the head by a meteorite."

Gorman flinched, put a hand on his head, and peered up at the sky.

Nice little humorous exchange, just before the four of them went down into that valley, then entered the cave hideout to slaughter people.

"Let's go," said Gorman, and led the way down the slope. The two Golem strode along beside him for a moment, then abruptly headed off at speed. Cormac glanced back at the autogun, which was now loping along behind him and Gorman like a loyal hound. Checking the assault plan in his aug he saw that the two Golem were heading out wide on either side to come in above the cavemouth from either side of the valley. His own and Gorman's routes diverged ahead, so they would also come upon the opening of the cave from two different directions.

"Go forty per cent infrared," Gorman advised. "They're sure to have guards out here." He reached out and slapped a hand on Cormac's shoulder. "You come on any, you take them down nice and quiet before they can send a warning."

Now they parted company, the mosquito following Gorman. Cormac located himself on a map of the local area called up in his aug, then transmitted the data from that to a small screen display mounted in the upper surface of his gun, which shortly displayed a low lumen arrow pointing to his destination. The reason for them splitting up and approaching from four different points was precisely so that at least one of them would hit the expected guard outpost. They didn't want anyone positioned behind them when they finally went into the caves. Continuously checking ahead and moving swiftly and silently from tree to tree, he advanced. It was a small glow-worm luminescence that gave them away.

I've found some watchers, Cormac sent using the text function in his aug.

Can you take them? Gorman enquired.

Cormac adjusted up the infrared in his goggles. The small glow of heat was from an ancient style of lamp. Obviously it had recently been used and its filament had yet to cool down. Now, with infrared at a hundred per cent, Cormac could see the spotlight itself, the hide below it, and the glow of two bodies inside.

I believe so, he replied.

Belief is not sufficient, came Travis' interjection.

Quite, said Gorman. And make sure you check identification first.

Of course: one of those two could be Sheen.

Cormac raised the magnification of his goggles as he got down on the ground and began to crawl towards the hideout. He shut off the cooling function of his clothing so nothing would be visible from its vents should those ahead possess night goggles. Now they would not be able to pick him up in infrared, since his chameleoncloth fatigues also possessed a near perfect insulating layer, hence the need for cooling and vents. Immediately his temperature began to rise and he started sweating.

He worked his way carefully forwards, using as much cover as possible, avoiding twigs and patches of dry leaves, moving as he had been trained in a slow muscular motion that produced very little noise. He hadn't believed it possible to be so silent until training in VR, but this was his first time doing it for real, so he was as careful as he could be. In ten minutes he reached within five yards of the hideout. One of the figures was peering out through the front of the hide and by its bulk it was evident to Cormac this wasn't Sheen.

"At least it ain't raining," said a male voice from the hide.

Cormac reached forwards, pressed a hand against the tree directly in front of him, then using that to take his weight, slowly eased himself upright.

"Always fucking positive," replied a second male voice. "We get to spend the night out here with beezle grubs crawling up our arses and you're seeing the bright side?"

"It could be worse."

"Yeah, the coffee could be cold and there could be grit in my pie." The man paused for a moment. "Oh right. The coffee is cold and there is grit in my pie."

"Yeah, okay—

Two men, that meant Sheen wasn't here, so Cormac must kill both of them. For a moment he considered other aspects of his training—the stuff about an enemy being humanized, about maintaining an emotional distance—but he found, even having listened to these two talking, that he was utterly cold. Yes, these were two people with lives of their own, with kin, families, maybe wives and children, but he also knew that it was quite likely that had he been tied up before them that one of them would have been bitching about "grit in his pie" while going to fetch the blow torch. He soft-linked via his aug to his weapon, throwing up a targeting frame in his goggles, stepped out from behind the tree and walked forwards, bringing that frame over the head visible before him.

"Hey, I think I see—"

Cormac pulled the trigger and his machine pistol shuddered and whispered. Pieces still glowing in infrared splashed out behind the man as most of his head disappeared. The other was now visible through the hole in the front of the hide, crawling quickly on hands and knees to reach for a pulse-rifle nearby. Cormac hit him once, slinging him against the back earthen wall, then centred the frame over his head as he tried to haul himself upright. The face, almost skull-like in infrared, cratered, and the top of his head lifted like a lid.

Cormac paused for a moment, took a slow easy breath, then again turned on the cooling function of his clothes. With a red mist rising from the vents about his waist, he moved to the side of the hide, found a door and kicked it open, then altered his goggles to optimum night function: everything clear as day. The man he'd hit second was still breathing, but in short little gasps, his right leg shivering and blood spreading on the ground underneath him. The other one was down on his knees, what remained of his head resting against the front wall of the hide, blood painting a stripe down the wall. There was brain tissue spattered everywhere, the odd piece of hairy skull and, grotesquely, one ear was stuck to the back wall. After a moment the one still breathing, ceased to breathe.

"The problem has been dealt with?" Gorman enquired through the verbal com function of Cormac's aug.

Cormac realised that Gorman had probably been monitoring Cormac's weapon so knew when it fired, how many shots were fired, and when it ceased firing.

"The problem has been dealt with," he replied, quietly, calmly.

"Continue to the cavemouth," Gorman ordered, "but stay alert—just because you've killed some guards doesn't mean there aren't any more out here."

Cormac stepped back out of the hide, then following the direction arrow atop his gun continued along his course. Oddly, he had felt no surge of adrenaline before the assault, and now wasn't shaking and didn't feel sick, which heretofore had been his reaction in violent situations, with the exception of that time when he had faced torture. "Stone Killer" was a description that occurred to him, but it seemed far too dramatic, he felt that maybe he was just becoming accustomed to the life….

There were no further guards either in the bottom of the valley where a stream wended its way between the trees, nor on the slope leading up to a rift of stone in which the dark mouths of caves were clearly visible. Cormac paused twenty yards below the caves and scanned his surroundings. He soon saw Crean and Travis coming down the cliffs like orange spiders and Gorman, mosquito still walking at his heel, coming up through the trees to his right. Gorman came over to him while the two Golem waited up by the caves.

"Were there any other guards?" Cormac asked.

Gorman pointed upslope. "Travis found a watch tower, but it was automated for air defence—no problem for us." He glanced back behind him. "I found another hide just like your one. Not a problem either." Gorman pointed a finger up the slope and set out. Cormac fell in behind him and soon they were up with their backs against the rock wall between two caves.

Travis gestured with a thumb to one cave. "This one—the other two only go back about ten metres. There's an autogun about five metres inside."

Gorman tugged at his fatigues. "Will this get us through?"

Travis shrugged. "One way to find out." He stepped in front of the cave mouth, then ran inside. There came a cracking sound then a fizzing as from a severed cable. After a moment he strolled out lugging a primitive auto pulse-gun trailing various cables.

"Apparently not sensitive enough to pick up chameleoncloth," said Travis, driving the gun barrel-down into the earth.

Gorman now turned to the mosquito. "Stay," he said. The mobile weapon took a few paces back, tilting its body up towards him like an obedient hound watching its master. Quite odd the way weapons like this sometimes behaved, which was apparently due to their original Tenkian design. The four entered the cave.

Gorman and Cormac took point, Gorman holding his machine pistol casually at his hip, slowly swinging it back and forth. Cormac copied him, the targeting frame in his goggles veering from wall to wall of the cave. Gorman doubtless saw a targeting frame too, though did not wear goggles since the mods were actually in his eyes. They stepped past the autogun tripod and followed the cave round to the right. After a moment Cormac had to knock down the light amplification of his goggles, for the cave was lit ahead. Twenty yards further in they reached a junction of three tunnels. A woman stepped out of the right-hand one. Cormac brought his frame over her as she turned: black hair, wiry frame and apparently quite young. He triggered once and she slammed back against the wall, spun and went down.

"Fuck," said Gorman via aug.

"It wasn't her," Cormac replied.

"Michele?" someone called, stepping out of the same cave shortly after her. This man must have seen her abruptly fall, but had heard no shots nor the impacts of any bullets. He gazed down at her for half a second before shots from Gorman abruptly flung him on top of her.

"Crean, Travis," Gorman sent, "take the side caves."

Cormac and Gorman moved past the caves, checking that no one was in sight, then the two Golem ducked in quickly behind them. Stepping round the corpses, Cormac took another look at the girl's face. No, definitely not Sheen. It occurred to him that he should feel something about killing a young woman. He felt nothing at all.

They moved deeper and deeper, Cormac constantly needing to reduce the light amplification of his goggles, until, feeling stupid, he called up the menu related to the goggles and set them on automatic. Shortly after that he heard the murmur of voices from around a corner ahead. Gorman held up his hand, halting them.

"Remember—check your targets."

At that moment, the familiar sound of pulse-gun fire echoed from behind them—obviously one or both of the Golem had been spotted.

"Fast now," said Gorman out loud.

They broke into a jog and rounded the corner. Here the cave opened out and against one wall set a stack of crates beside which a group of three people stood smoking cigarettes. Beyond them, the cave sloped down, lined along one side with regularly spaced doorways from which the light shone. Cormac tracked the arc of a cigarette as it curved towards the stone floor. Reaching for the pulse-gun at his hip the smoker squinted back up the tunnel towards Cormac and Gorman. The man could not actually see them, but he could see something and those shots had made him suspicious. His two companions were reaching for pulse-rifles resting against the crates. Two machine pistols purred and the three went down as if someone had instantly removed alternate bones throughout their bodies. Now shadows loomed and flitted as people began exiting what appeared to be rooms carved into the rock.

Gorman slowed to a walk. "Let's not get overexcited," he said. "You check the first one."

Someone came out of a room and sprayed pulse-fire up the cave. Gorman nailed him immediately and Cormac wondered about checking identities now, but then realised the collapsing figure was too big to be Sheen. More pulse-gun fire from around a door jamb five doors down. They both slammed back against the wall, then Gorman tossed a small spherical grenade down that way. It went off with a smoky crump and hurled sooty fragments all about the corridor and through the open door. Somebody groaned and a rifle clattered to the floor. Cormac moved to the first door pulling a similar grenade from his belt and tossed it in ahead of him, waited until it went off, then immediately ducked in. A big man, wearing only a pair of shorts, was staggering from a bunk. At once Cormac realised the man could hardly see to aim the thin-gun he was holding, even if Cormac had been clearly visible, for the neurotoxin in the grenade worked fast. Cormac knew. Now, for the first time, he hesitated. There was no need to kill this man for, in a moment, he would be unconscious.

"Pramer," he said in surprise, now recognising the real reason for his hesitation.

"You," said Pramer, abruptly swinging his gun towards the doorway where Cormac stood.

A slight pressure on the trigger and the machine pistol hummed contentedly to itself, and Pramer staggered back, shots stitching up his front. A cloud of vaporous blood and bits of flesh and bone exited his back as he crashed against the bunk beds, then he abruptly sat down as if suddenly very weary. Blood gouted from his mouth. Cormac brought the targeting frame onto his head, triggered again and watched the top of Pramer's skull disappear, then turned to exit the room. Now he was suddenly angry, and not entirely sure why.

Gorman stood poised by the next door.

We've got her, Travis informed them all.

Gorman leant around the door jamb and fired twice. "Okay," he said, "we're out of here—fast."

Gorman was past him and heading back along the cave at a run before Cormac realised it was over—they'd got what they'd come here for. For no reason he could quite fathom he ducked back into Pramer's room, studied the man for a short moment, then picked up his thin-gun. A trophy? He felt that to be so, but no trophy of any victory. He turned and followed Gorman, for a moment feeling utterly bewildered. Pulse-gun fire issued from behind. He turned, fired, saw someone fold up. No need to check targets now. In moments they reached the junction where Crean stood firing intermittently back down the way she had come. Travis stood there with a body slung easily over one shoulder, nodded to Gorman and Cormac, then broke into a fast run for the exit. As they followed him out, Cormac noticed Gorman removing a short black cylinder from a pouch on his belt. He primed this with his thumb then sent it skittering back into the cave. Cormac recognised the item: gas grenade, probably Hazon. In a moment they were outside and moving back into the trees, the mosquito still poised at the cave entrance behind them to finish any that made it that far.

"Good work, people," said Gorman.

Cormac wondered who would come here to clear up the mess. Certainly someone would come, for there might be information in there useful to ECS. He wondered momentarily if the cave would then be sealed. Probably not; they'd just take what might be of use and burn the bodies.

As they headed down into the trees Cormac heard yelling, and the mosquito opening fire. He didn't look back.

It being imperative the prisoner stayed alive, no lethal weapons were to be put within her reach, so Cormac and Gorman armed themselves with stun batons only. Cormac thought it all a bit over the top, but then he had been a captive too, and look what he had managed to do. Gorman was smoking one of his big cigars, the contented look upon his face as he digested the huge chicken madras he had eaten, tempered only by the fact that he had been unable to wash it down with numerous beers. But later, he said, they'd drink some beer later.

"We normally don't get to see this side of things," he announced.

"Then why are we seeing it now?"

"This is for you," Gorman replied. "I've seen it before and know what's involved, but you haven't and ECS likes its Sparkind to be thoroughly aware of the consequences of what they do. None of this 'I didn't know' or 'I was only following orders. You can choose to leave the military at any time, you know."

The cell block corridor appeared little different to how such corridors had looked for hundreds of years, though someone from a past age might have mistaken the pendent ceiling drones for light fittings. They halted at an armoured door with a screen display fixed centrally. Gorman tapped the screen and it came on, showing the interior of the cell and reassuring them that the prisoner wasn't crouched beside the door ready to jump them. Though it seemed unlikely she would be in any condition to do so, since she would still be suffering the aftereffects of stun toxin and a robust scanning routine. Gorman pressed his hand against the side palm-lock and the door swished open silently, and they stepped inside.

A bed, wash basin and toilet were provided. The bed was fixed to the floor and the wash basin was a flimsy thing that folded down from the wall. Neither provided an opportunity for the prisoner to hang herself, just as the bed possessed no sheets that could be turned into ropes and the paperwear she wore consisted of a tissue that turned powdery when torn. Also, there were no sharp edges to be found in here, nor anything that could be turned into a sharp edge. Via pin-cameras positioned in every upper corner of the room the prison submind kept perpetual watch, and other hardware in the walls monitored the prisoner's vital signs. ECS did not want its captives to die here, though it had been known to happen. Gorman had already related to Cormac a story of the man who managed to drown himself with his own urine, though he was revived shortly afterwards, and a story about a woman who tore out her own jugular artery.

"Hello, soldier Cormac," said Sheen, easing herself upright and swinging her legs off the bed. He noted that she looked bruised, with a couple of raw spots on her bare arms. However, no one had beaten her, for the marks were a result of the full-spectrum scan she had undergone, just to be sure she had no pieces of syntheskin attached about her body. They had learned their lesson with Carl.

"Stand up," said Gorman, then removing his cigar butt from his mouth, dropping it to the floor and crushing it out.

"No civilities then?" Sheen enquired.

She still looked like a teenager, but the information they had available about her put her age at fifty-two. Her present appearance was the result of cosmetic work, perpetually maintained by whatever suite of nanomachines she was running.

"You heard the man," Cormac said. "You can walk out of here or we can carry you out—makes no difference to me."

"Ooh, tough talk."

"Zap her on the tit—that usually gets their attention," said Gorman.

Cormac began to step forwards, but Sheen abruptly lurched to her feet. He and Gorman moved in on either side of her, Gorman closing a hand just above her elbow, his stun baton held in his other hand casually down at his side.

"Let's go." He marched her towards the door, Cormac, as instructed earlier, falling in two paces behind Sheen.

"You have to keep them off balance," Gorman had also told him earlier. "If they're untrained you usually have no problem because they continue to maintain the hope that somehow they're going to survive, to get away with what they've done or that ECS might be forgiving if they cooperate." He had paused for a moment to lave a piece of poppadom with lime chutney and chomp it, washing it down with a swallow of fresh mango juice. "This one isn't going to be like that. She's trained and she's wily, and she knows that no one is given amnesty by ECS. Ever. She'll go for one of us once we leave the cell corridor and step outside the range of the security drones, and she'll fight for her life knowing that if she loses, her life is certainly forfeit."

At the end of the cell corridor the door stood open. Gorman turned her into the corridor beyond. Sheen lurched sideways as if losing balance, then turned, her foot coming up in an arc towards Cormac's head. It was smoothly done. Perhaps she hoped Gorman would lose his grip and that she would have time to relieve Cormac, obviously the least experienced of the two, of his baton. Gorman's grip was iron. He turned slightly, dragging her truly off-balance whist planting a foot against the back of the foot she kept on the ground. As she started to go over backwards, her kicking foot coming well short of its target, Gorman casually touched the baton to her chest.

Sheen gasped, then hit the floor on her back convulsing, her spine arched. Gorman and Cormac stepped forwards to grab a wrist each, and they dragged her the rest of the way, leaving shreds of her paperwear clothing in the corridor behind.

Sheen never truly lost consciousness, though she did lose some awareness of what was happening to her and where she was. That awareness only returned once she was strapped on the surgical table. She focused first on Agent Spencer, who stood at her head fiddling with a pedestal-mounted autodoc, then on Gorman and Cormac who stood beside the door.

"I'll tell you nothing," she said.

Gorman grinned, then groped about in his top pocket for a cigar, which he lit with an old petrol lighter.

"As you have recently experienced, Cormac, when an aug is installed," Agent Spencer continued the explanation she had been making before Sheen's interruption, "the patient cooperates in the interfacing process, enabling the aug software to recognise its targets and thus guide in the nanofibres to synaptic connection."

"Which takes me back to my previous point," said Cormac. "It's a difficult process to first install an aug, even with the recipient's cooperation, then a lengthy learning process afterwards to get it to work properly—the recipient's mind learns how to use the aug and the aug itself learns how to interpret the recipient's mind."

"So I'm just meat now," said Sheen. "You're just going to ignore me?"

Agent Spencer picked up an item from a glass tray mounted on the side of the autodoc. It was a large, translucent plastic plug with a hole bored through the centre, attached to a skin-stick strap. Spencer kept it from Sheen's sight, which was easy enough with the Separatist's head secured in a clamp.

"On the contrary, Sheen," she said. "You are a very valuable piece of meat and you are going to receive my utter attention over the next few hours."

"You can't—" was all Sheen managed before Spencer leant across, clamped a hand on her chin, pushing her jaw down, and shoved the plug deep into her mouth, pressing the skin-stick strap down on her cheeks. Now all Sheen could do was make sounds from deep in her throat.

"It's to stop her swallowing her tongue," Spencer explained. "Or biting it off." She now moved the autodoc into place beside Sheen's skull.

"You were saying?" Cormac enquired.

As he understood it, the process was easier to conduct if the subject remained conscious. He understood that some would find all this rather distasteful, cruel even, and feel it something those of a civilized society should not do. Trying to feel some sympathy for Sheen, since they had fought together, he only felt cold. Criminals like Sheen tortured and killed with utter abandon, they ruined people's lives and, when they wanted information, they got out the blow torch and disc grinder.

"Yes," Spencer continued, "interfacing with an aug is an act of cooperation. Limited synaptic contacts are made and both mind and aug learn to use the communication channels they provide. Increasing the amount of contacts can lead to problems: destructive feedback, destructive synergy of the kind that killed Iversus Skaidon when he invented runcible technology and, of course, organic damage. In this case we are worried about none of these."

Cormac noted the sudden look of panic on Sheen's face. She'd just realised what Spencer intended doing to her. Perhaps she'd expected interrogation under drugs and torture, or maybe just a plain old execution, but ECS was more civilized than that.

"We'll be making multiple nanofibre connections, recording synaptic and neuro-chemical data all the while. The process records the structure, both architectural and neuro-chemical, of her brain, meanwhile building up a virtual model of it. It takes an AI then to deconstruct that model and interpret the data from that deconstruction as thoughts, images and memories."

"And Sheen's brain?" asked Gorman, watching Cormac as he asked.

Spencer glanced up. "It's mush afterwards. We maintain the connections to keep the autonomous nervous system going and the body is handed over to ECS Medical. I think they're trying for direct download now of recorded minds."

Sheen's eyes were wide as she stared sideways at the autodoc. Terror? Maybe, though Cormac doubted she would be so scared of death. More likely she was frightened about all she was due to betray.

"Download?" queried Gorman. "I'd heard it's theoretically possible…"

"I'm told the physical and neuro-chemical structure of the brain has to be changed to accept the mind in waiting," said Spencer. "It is actually restructured by nanomachines throughout the download process and takes several months."

"Interesting," said Gorman. "I've been thinking about getting myself a memplant." He tapped the side of his skull."

"Even more interesting if you ended up occupying the body of your killer," Spencer quipped. She now tapped a control on top of the autodoc and it immediately extruded a probe like a chrome-and-glass tubeworm against the side of Sheen's head. She started yelling from the back of her throat, the sound made into an odd whine by the aperture of her mouth plug.

"Goodbye, Sheen," said Spencer. "The next person you encounter will be the AI that takes apart your mind and turns it into a report for ECS."

After a little while the sounds Sheen was making tapered off to a sighing. Cormac crossed his arms and watched for a while longer.

"Is it necessary for us to be here any longer?" he finally enquired.

"Why?" asked Spencer. "Are you uncomfortable with all this?"

"No, bored, and Gorman was going to buy me a beer or two."

Spencer waved her hand in dismissal.

Some hours later, Cormac returned, and watched the blank-faced drooling thing that had been Sheen being wheeled out on a gurney to be taken to the spaceport. He thought it good that in her new incarnation she would serve some useful purpose, beyond that his concern was nil.

"Waky waky," said Gorman, slamming into the room and whipping the heat-sheet from Cormac's body—his presence turning on the light.

Cormac's instincts told him he had been asleep for about thirty seconds, but his aug told him precisely fifty-five minutes had passed since his consciousness fled into the pillow.

His instincts also told him that his immediate course of action should be to punch Gorman on the nose, turn off the light and return to bed. However, he swung his legs over the side and sat on its edge for a moment, deliberately not swearing at his unit leader, since that was precisely what Gorman expected.

"Some problem?" Cormac asked.

"Get your stuff together," said Gorman, scanning the room's sparse collection of belongings and frowning, "we're shipping out."

"Why?"

"Apparently Agent Spencer will be giving us chapter-and-verse aboard the attack ship," Gorman explained.

Now Cormac did swear, and his unit leader grinned. He had known that if the fact that they were still under orders from Spencer wasn't enough to get a reaction, then knowing they would shortly be aboard an attack ship would. His work done, Gorman departed whistling tunelessly and leaving the door open behind him.

Cormac stood up, walked over to close the door, then returned to his bedside locker from which he removed a self-heating coffee and a stim-patch. He pulled the tab on the coffee and set it down, and after stripping off its backing pressed the stim-patch down on his forearm. He pulled on disposable undergarments, his envirosuit and then dragged his pack out of a cupboard, into which it took him only a moment to shove a few more belongings, and by that time the stimulant was kicking in and the coffee steaming. Next he released his pulse-rifle from its coded rack by pressing his hand against the palm-lock beside it. The clamps dropped open and he took the weapon out and hung it by its strap from his shoulder. From under his pillow he took Pramer's thin-gun, which he shoved into his belt, then he was ready—just in time to receive a demand through his aug for his presence outside the barracks. Sipping hot coffee, he headed out.

Gorman, Travis and Crean awaited him in the darkness outside, standing beside a low-slung ATV with big, smooth tyres, its chameleon-paint body only revealed in this darkness by its scratches and unpainted replacement components. He noted that only Gorman possessed a pack, it lying on the plasticrete grating beside his leg. The two Golem carried nothing, not even weapons, and they wore chameleoncloth fatigues oversuited with white paperwear for courtesy's sake. Upon seeing Cormac, Gorman immediately hoisted up his pack, turned to the ATV and pulled open its side door to reveal the lit interior. It seemed almost as if he was opening a door in the very darkness. He climbed inside, Crean and Travis following. Cormac took the opportunity to employ a visual enhancement program in his aug, which made everything surrounding him more visible, but turned the body of the ATV into something that kept flickering in and out of visibility. When he ducked into the vehicle he saw that Gorman and Crean had taken the two front seats, Gorman in the driving seat, while the two behind were for himself and Travis. Cormac shoved his pack in the space behind the remaining seat and climbed in, closing the door behind him.

"Where to?" he asked.

"Where you came in," Gorman replied, immediately setting the ATV into motion.

The landing field was fifty miles from here, so Cormac could not understand why they were using a ground vehicle to head for an apparently urgent rendezvous there. He didn't have time to ask just then as he quickly strapped himself in before Gorman threw the ATV round the corner at the end of this street in the military township. The vehicle, with its computer-controlling suspension, tyre pressure, individual wheel torque and the actual grip of the tyres, shot around the corner as if on rails and continued accelerating.

"Okay," he said, "why on the ground?"

"Travis," said Gorman, concentrating on his driving.

The Apollonian Golem turned to Cormac. "Though you are the prime target, having offed a considerable number of Separatists here, those surviving won't balk at killing us too, since we are also responsible for many deaths."

"It's still not clear to me why we're not flying."

"Agent Spencer's departing gift to the forces here was to request our presence over an uncoded channel," Travis explained. "Sheen's deconstruction has revealed that the remaining Separatists have missile launchers concealed within the vicinity. The AI has calculated a high probability that a launcher will be deployed to shoot at the automated gravcar that will depart in about four minutes."

"I see," said Cormac, awaiting further explanation but receiving none.

Gorman had now taken them into a track winding between the carnage of felled skarches left by the Prador vessel's crash landing. All around lay a jumble of thick trunks draped in dry leaves, jags of cellulose spearing into the air and trailing fibres like frayed rope, the whole scene scattered with the bright yellow-green of new sprouts stretching up towards the sky. Even with augmentation all this was only just visible through the screen—Gorman had not put on the lights so he must also be using his own visual augmentation. Soon the track began winding to the left around a hill, past a couple of parked autodozers which had been used to clear the track, then turning uphill. Here, where the hill had sheltered the area from the direct shockwave from the crash landing, the skarches were still standing, and beginning to sprout grassy yellow flowers, but upon reaching the top of the hill they found it utterly clear of vegetation. Gorman skidded the vehicle to a stop and disengaged the drive.

"How long?" he asked.

"About a minute," Crean replied.

"Let's take a look then," he said, turning to Cormac, who opened the door.

They climbed out into a sultry evening, some local animal making a gobbling sound from downslope in a deadfall. Gorman nodded to a nearby stone promontory and led the way up to it. From here they could see the pattern of felled skarches spearing inland to where the Prador ship had crashed. The vessel was invisible behind the distant hills of detritus it had thrown up, but the work lights created a sunrise glow over there. Directly below them lay the military township, partially conjoined to the shore city, and beyond lay the sea, a couple of ships and some smaller boats visible upon it.

"The missile could be right here you know," commented Travis.

"I doubt it," said Gorman, "but let's hope not." He added, "Here it comes."

Even as he spoke a gravcar rose from the township, its navigation lights switching on as it accelerated up and out to the left of them. Almost immediately there came a flash down in the skarch wreckage perhaps two or three miles to their right, and a dim spot of light ascended, curved over, and began heading towards the car.

"Close," said Gorman, "but I win, I think."

Something flickered and the missile briefly trailed a luminescent green cloud before, with a thunderclap, turning into a long cloud of fire.

"Laser," commented Travis.

"Now the bet is on as to whether—"

There now came another thunderous crash to their right from the missile's launch site. Peering over there Cormac saw the ground seem to bubble up for a moment then erupt in a localized explosion.

"Rail-gun strike," he said, just to try and feel part of all this.

"Exactly," said Travis, turning to Gorman, "which negates the bet." He grinned crazily. "You thought ECS would use a particle beam."

Gorman shrugged. "Fifty-fifty really, once the launcher was located outside of any populated areas."

"And if it had been fired from the city?" Cormac enquired.

Gorman turned to him. "We had squads decked-out in night gear ready to move in once the power supply in the grid area concerned was cut."

Cormac nodded. They knew all this was going to happen and had been making bets on how it would happen, which all brought home to him that, though he was the fourth man in this Sparkind unit, he was not actually part of it yet.

"Let's go," said Gorman.

They returned to the ATV to continue their journey to the makeshift spaceport on this world. As Cormac stepped inside the vehicle after the others, he pulled the stim-patch from his arm and discarded it, reclined his seat and was soon dozing fitfully, only coming fully awake an hour later as they arrived at their destination. Through the screen he saw a ship down on the acres of plasticrete: a lumpen vessel like a giant beetle, battle-scarred and old and with ramps down from which a row of gravtrucks were disembarking before rising into the air to fall into a precisely quadrate formation. The four departed the ATV and began heading towards this vessel.

"I would have liked to have bet on both the firing position of that launcher and the weapon deployed against it from orbit," he commented to Gorman.

"Would you have won?" Gorman asked.

"Yes," said Cormac. "They would have wanted to be close to the city to fire the missile but not actually in the city where they could be located and apprehended. If they'd known we had anything up there capable of taking them out, they would not have fired at all. And a rail-gun strike was used because though it would kill whoever was near the launcher, it would leave evidence for investigation, whereas a particle beam strike would have incinerated everything… also the beam strike might well have started a fire in all that dead skarch wood, which would have required further resources to extinguish."

"Good job we didn't include you," said Gorman.

"Why didn't you include me?"

"There was no certainty you would be coming offworld with us until just ten minutes before we left—it seemed that the AIs were having some debate about that."

"Why am I coming with you?"

"Two reasons," Gorman replied. "The first concerns our mission to capture Sheen. I've seen the analysis of everything that happened in there. You killed Pramer—without much hesitation it would seem."

"And the second reason."

"I'll leave Agent Spencer to tell you about that."

Soon they were aboard the large shuttle and ensconced in one of its cabins with the Polity agent. The explanation was quite simple:

"Carl Thrace," Spencer supplied.

The cabin was cramped and seemed as packed with equipment as Spencer's office down in the military encampment. The two Golem stood back against one wall while Gorman snagged the only free chair and Cormac sat on a plasmel crate which, by its label, contained fragmentation grenades. Cormac wondered if Spencer dragged around a collection of stuff like this wherever she went, or if she had merely taken a cabin previously vacated by another of her kind.

When no one else seemed inclined to ask, Cormac enquired, "What about him?"

Spencer was sitting at a cluttered desk gazing at a screen, occasionally pressing buttons and manipulating a ball-control she held in her right hand. "After searching through millions of hours of scan data the Hagren AI eventually managed to track his course from when he abandoned you in the Dramewood," she said without looking up. "The ATV delivered him to a rendezvous with an old hydrocar limousine—" Now she did look up. " — driven by Sheen, who took him to a guest house in the old city. The data showed no sign of him leaving the guest house, but Sheen was kind enough to inform us that, as well as having syntheflesh patches for concealing weaponry, Carl has a whole kit for drastically altering his appearance. The AI checked its recordings and tracked everyone who left the hotel—all but one have been tracked down and eliminated from the search." She now turned her screen towards them to show a portly individual with yellowish and slightly scaly skin, and mouth tendrils that wound into a large spadelike beard. He was clad in brown leather and wore leather trilby. "He's calling himself Marcus Spengler now."

"I'm still not quite sure why I'm here," said Cormac.

Spencer eyed him for a moment. "There was some discussion about whether to allow you to continue in the Sparkind. Though you have shown an aptitude for the job, your training is lacking. The powers that be were considering sending you for further training while the rest of your unit—" She flicked a glance at the other three. " — took a vacation."

"Damn," said Gorman. "What made 'em change their minds?"

The room lurched at that moment and a deep vibration shook the vessel they were aboard. There was no doubt it was now launching.

"My request changed their minds," Spencer replied. "My aim is to bring Carl Thrace down and I prefer to work with those whose methods I'm familiar with." She glanced at Cormac. "I wanted Cormac included for two reasons: having known Carl for two years he might well be able to identify him despite any disguise but, most importantly, Carl Thrace will recognise Cormac."

Bait, thought Cormac.

"I take it Thrace has left Hagren?" suggested Travis.

"After leaving the guest house," Spencer replied, "he headed for the inland commercial spaceport and boarded a small but very fast light-cargo hauler."

"Smugglers," said Gorman.

Spencer nodded. "Almost certainly, since that ship's destination seems to be the Graveyard."

Gorman cursed, and well he might.

"Get some rest now," said Spencer. "We dock with the Sadist in three hours."

"The Sadist?" Travis enquired.

"AI humour," said Spencer, "go figure." She waved them away.

After Spencer had dismissed them, Cormac received a message in his aug from the ship's AI giving a schematic of the ship itself and the location of a cabin he could use for the brief time he was aboard. Crean and Travis headed off somewhere else in the ship, perhaps to occupy themselves with Golemish things while the soft humans of their unit sought home comforts and sleep. Gorman accompanied Cormac, since his own cabin was nearby. As they walked, Cormac considered everything he knew about the Graveyard. Originally this borderland and buffer zone between Prador and Human space was called the Badlands, but the name was soon dropped in favour of the more accurate description. Polity AIs did not intervene there or, rather, they did not intervene overtly, beyond sending in the odd warship to drive off any Prador vessels that were getting too close to the Polity for comfort. The place had become home for some nasty types, but the worlds and stations they occupied were few in number compared to the other once-habitable worlds that could now be described as war graves.

"It should be an interesting experience trying to find him there," Cormac opined.

Gorman snorted derisively. "You can bet it'll get dirty and bloody within an hour of us making landfall."

Cormac paused by the door to his cabin and Gorman slapped him on the shoulder before continuing on to his own. "Get your head down, boy—you're going to need your rest."

Cormac pressed his hand against the palm-lock and the door slid open. He stepped inside and looked around, feeling a grab almost of nostalgia on seeing that he had been given a four-berth cabin just like the one he, Carl, Yallow and Olkennon had arrived in at Hagren. Obviously this ship, having dropped off its passengers, had room to spare. He dumped his pack and his pulse-rifle on an empty bunk, then stepped over to the wall to pull the screen remote from its slot and turn on the room screen. Immediately the screen showed an image of the ground far below and quickly receding.

The old city and the military township were no longer visible, though the Prador ship's crash site showed as a shape like a small eye just inland. Trying a few other views he got the curve of the horizon and the glint of one or two objects in orbit. Magnification brought into focus a coin-shaped satellite and a ship shaped like a canal barge with three U-space nacelles jutting equidistantly on vanes at its rear. It was an old-style attack ship and he wondered if it was the Sadist. Logging on to his present ship's server he requested details on all ships in the vicinity and discovered that it was. He peered down at the remote and found a touch control marked «voice» and pressed it.

"Ship," he said, "can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you," replied the voice of a grumpy old woman, "and my name is Pearl."

"Nice to… be aboard you, Pearl," Cormac replied. "Can you tell me why it is going to take us three hours to dock with the Sadist, when it's clearly visible out there?"

"The attack ship is waiting on further targets below and, for our own safety, it's best not to dock when it might open fire at any moment."

"Fair enough."

"Is that all?"

Cormac considered something else he'd been delaying for some time. "I would like to send a message to Earth…"

"And you're telling me this why?"

"I… I've never done this before." He felt a bit stupid, for he knew how to go about sending a simple message, even if it was over a vast distance. The truth was that he wanted to talk to someone about it. However, this AI's attitude did not encourage conversation.

"Simple enough," said the Pearl AI, "you just address it correctly and send it to my server where it'll sit in the queue until I make my next U-space transmission, which should be in about three minutes. Now is that all?"

"That's it, thank you." Cormac hurriedly thumbed the «voice» control again.

Now he sat on one of the bunks and called up the message in his third eye to review it. First he described his journey from the training camp on Mars to Hagren, then he went on to describe some of what had happened on that world, though his internal censor had been working overtime. As he reviewed it, he wondered if this was the same sort of message his father had sent to Hannah while he had been away fighting the Prador. At the end of the message came the bit of most importance to him:

Having been promoted to the Sparkind it has been necessary for me to have an augmentation fitted and, only during this process, did I discover that my mind has been edited. The medical data indicates that this was done to me when I was between the ages of eight and twelve, but since there was so much editing going on during the Prador war, the AIs did not feel it necessary to keep detailed records. I know no more than that memories have been extracted from my mind and remaining memories of the time have been "cut and pasted." What can you tell me about this, Mother? Which of my memories did you feel it necessary for you to destroy?

For some time he had been toying with the wording of this last bit, unsure if he was being too harsh, or not harsh enough. In the end he placed it in a packet file, attached his mother's net address, and sent it. There: it was done now. Cormac rested back on the bunk and tried to catch up on his sleep.

It evaded him.