Shadow of the Scorpion

4

The numerous views through sheets of chainglass directly into the English Channel were often turbid, but when they cleared they were astounding. Magnifying sections picked out local sea life, bringing up clear pictures of rays, cod shoals, glittering storms of a GM version of whitebait that had escaped the farms and burgeoned in the oceans over two hundred years before. As Cormac understood it, the idea of wiping them out with a tailored virus had been proposed a century ago, but put on hold. These rugged little fish filled certain niches that had been emptied and were a ready source of food for other creatures. In fact, other emptied niches were steadily being filled in the same way, with life re-created from dry museum specimens. The oceans now teemed.

Neither Dax nor his mother had mentioned last night. Both of them were drinking from litre bottles of Coke and had earlier popped a few Aldetox. In fact they weren't saying much at all, and both of them were wearing sunglasses.

Departing the maglev station they headed straight out into the tubular streets of the undersea city, one Loyalty Luggage chest groaning along behind them on roller leg spokes like a particularly fat and short-legged dog. Ian had his own case hanging from his shoulder with his own necessities inside, which obviously didn't include such ephemera as clean underpants and socks—they were in the luggage.

"The Watts?" suggested Dax.

"Of course," said their mother. The Watts—named after some long-dead science fiction writer—possessed the best undersea windows, airlocks and diving facilities. They'd stayed there before on numerous occasions and one of Ian's most enduring memories was of their father taking all three boys out into the sea for the first time. Back then they didn't have the full-skin pressure suits so the hotel's rooms had been pressurized and actually venturing beyond it had not been an easy option.

As they headed for their destination, Cormac scanned his surroundings for places he recognised, but everything, barring the exterior shapes of the streets themselves, had changed. A lot of the shops seemed to be closed down and the usual cornucopias of goods were not on display.

"It's hitting here," Dax observed.

"Everywhere," their mother replied. "I don't think it's because of lack of supply, but more to do with guilt about supply."

"There's a war on," Cormac piped up.

His mother raised her sunglasses to expose reddened eyes and gave Dax one of those knowing looks that irritated the boy immensely.

"That's the opinion," she said. "It seems to have brought out the Puritan in many."

Dax shook his head. "Stupid," he said. "Most of what's sold here won't even impinge." He paused for a moment, thoughtful. "Unless things get a lot worse."

They continued along the concourse and eventually arrived at the portico of The Watts. Arrayed across the front of this building were five heavy oval chainglass doors, which were the original pressure locks for this building. Hannah placed her cash card into the slot of a console beside one door and on the touch-screen made her room selection. Peering up at the screen Cormac was gratified to see she had requested three interconnected rooms, all en-suite, so he would have his own room, his own space. The last time they had come here he had shared with her, while Dax and Alex had their own rooms. He felt this meant he was not so much of a child anymore.

The nearest pressure door opened upon insertion of one of the three key cards the console had provided and he and his mother stepped through into the lock while Dax waited his turn with the Loyalty Luggage. They entered a vestibule containing a central auto-kiosk packed with those items the hotel's guests might need while venturing out into the city. Around the walls numerous doors opened into the accommodation areas while between them were mounted screens showing undersea scenes.

"They were going to get rid of them," said Dax as he came through, gesturing back to the pressure doors.

"A lot of people objected and there were moves to put a preservation order on them," Hannah replied. "The hotel owners finally realised they were an attraction rather than a hindrance to their usual guests—keeps the non-diving riff-raff out."

She walked over to one of the doors at the end of the vestibule, inserting the key card again, which gave access to a long corridor with rooms along either side. When she halted by one of the doors on the left, Cormac became even happier, for he remembered enough to know that the rooms on this side were those nearest to the sea, so were provided with real undersea windows.

"You're there," she said to Dax, pointing to the room they had just passed and tossing him one of the cards. "And you're there," she said to Cormac, handing over another card and gesturing to the next room along. "I'll send the luggage to you, Dax, once I've unpacked, and you can send it to Ian." She paused for a moment. "I mean Cormac."

Cormac inserted his key card into his door, entered and closing the door behind him gazed about himself with relish. A large bed lay to his left, interactive netscreen up in one corner opposite the bed, large blacked-out window taking up the entire wall to the right of that, plenty of cupboards, some low comfortable chairs arranged around a coffee table and a door to an en-suite in the right-hand wall. He stepped over beside the bed, dropped his shoulder bag on it, then picked up the room remote from the bedside table. It took him just a moment of checking through the touchplates to find the window control. He walked over, turned one of the comfortable chairs round to face it, plumped himself down in the chair, then hit the control to make the window transparent.

Starting in a swirl pattern right in the centre, the photoactive liquid, sandwiched between two layers of chainglass, began changing from black to transparent. Cormac remembered spending hours gazing through a window like this. He remembered the crustaceans bumbling along the bottom out there: the masses of winkles gathered like multicoloured pearls, the whelks oozing across the glass and the occasional scallop jetting past; the hermit crabs, lobsters and edible crabs; the shrimps, prawns and crayfish; and the endless varieties of fish. But what sat out there was not quite what he expected, and he shrieked with fright.

Giant iron scorpions were not in the guide book.

The autodozer garage was surrounded by a security fence with cameras mounted on the posts. Floodlights were on, their glow extending out into the darkness and also reflecting off the polished bodies of two mosquito autoguns patrolling inside like skeletal metallic guard dogs.

As he strode towards the big gates, torch beam stabbing down at the churned earth ahead of him, Cormac glanced back at his three companions. Stiletto, who Cormac now knew to be called Pramer, wore a false hand in place of his blade and appeared quite fitting for this role, since many of those who did this sort of job boosted their musculature and took pride in being able to carry out heavy work normally the territory of some drone or Golem. The other two didn't really fit. Layden was a scrawny, pale and sickly individual who just looked plain uncomfortable in his baggy overalls, and Sheen was a teenage girl with a perpetual expression of sulky rebellion. No problem, their physical details had been logged into the personnel databank.

Cormac halted and peered up at the security drone extending out from the gate post on a stalk like some iron and plastic seed pod. It tilted towards them and after a moment said, "Admittance approved." He stepped aside and now Layden received the same approval as did Pramer, then Sheen moved into place. With her the drone paused for a moment, and tilted as if curious about what it was seeing. Cormac suspected the AI was deliberately racking up the tension—it didn't want this to appear too easy for them.

"Identicard," the drone demanded.

Cormac was amazed at the teenager's sudden calm as she reached into her engineer's belt bag, took her card from amidst the numerous small packs that would open out into monofilm rucksacks, and held it up. He saw the flash of laser scanning pass over the card and hand, then after a moment Sheen received a grudging "Admittance approved," whereupon a personnel door popped open in the main gates and they entered.

"It must be your acne," said Pramer.

"Fuck off," Sheen replied.

Cormac had already instructed them to confine their talk to the kind of exchanges expected from such workers, but hadn't expected these two to show such talent for it. Not a word could be uttered about their real reason for being here, since watch programs would be listening for key words and phrases and assessing for out-of-character behaviour. Grinning, he glanced at Pramer, but was surprised to see he seemed chastened by the teenager's reply. Odd, decidedly so.

Beyond the fence lay a plasticrete yard, much of it chewed up by the action of dozer treads, along the back of which stood a row of huge garages each containing the heavy equipment being used about the Prador dreadnought. Cormac waved for the others to follow and headed for the third door along. Here he took out his identicard and pressed it into the reader beside another personnel door, which opened for him. The others followed suit and trailed him inside to where a row of dozers loomed like steel dinosaurs.

"Number one," he instructed, pointing to the first in the line.

The dozer was a five-hundred-ton monster with caterpillar treads, a dozer blade to the fore and two rear excavator arms, which could choose from a selection of buckets within the machine's body. It possessed no cab for a driver since the machine could be slaved to AI, loaded with a submind or telefactored to some other operator. There was no necessity for the thing to be permanently full-AI since such intelligence would be wasted on a piece of earth-moving equipment.

"Sheen, Layden." Cormac directed their attention towards the tool racks along one wall.

Layden walked over and collected a console and length of optic cable. His technical expertise was why he had been "invited" — that invitation spiced with a promise of a large supply of whatever drugs were slowly killing him. Sheen collected a screwdriver kit—she was just along to carry one of the CTDs and possessed no expertise that Cormac could see. He himself strolled round the dozer inspecting its treads while Pramer went over to peer inside the compartment containing its digger buckets.

This dozer had recently developed a fault in the mechanisms used to shift the elected digger buckets into position for its digger arms at the back. It had been difficult to convince Samara that Carl had managed to introduce the fault preparatory to using this as a back-up way of getting into the ship. But the Separatists here really wanted those CTDs and were quite prepared to lose personnel just to find out if the opportunity of obtaining them existed. It was noticeable, however, that Samara had not seen fit to include herself in this, and that as far as Cormac knew, her only close associate here was Pramer: a thug who, for reasons Cormac had yet to fathom, had fallen out of favour with her.

"Let's see what we've got," said Cormac.

Sheen had taken out a multidriver and was removing a small panel from the side of the dozer. Once this was off, Layden plugged the optic from his console into one of the revealed sockets, and input instructions. With a low whine the first enormous dozer arm immediately elbowed upwards extracting a two-yards-wide earth scoop from the bucket compartment, which it swung to one side—sending Pramer dodging from its path—and crunched down on the plasticrete. With a clonk, pins disengaged, then the arm rose again leaving the earth scoop on the floor, while within the dozer's body, mechanisms moved the next bucket forward in the compartment. The second arm engaged with this, lifted it out, and deposited it on the floor too, while the first arm swung back for the next implement

"Seems okay," said Cormac, "but best to be sure." Removing a small memstore from his pocket, he now headed over to the com console set in the wall beside the tool racks. Upon reaching the console he noticed Sheen watchfully coming up beside him, and guessed her purpose here might be more than it appeared. Perfectly to script Cormac called up the dozer specs and then the relevant maintenance log, which showed them presently working on said machine. He inserted the memstore into the relevant slot in the console and set its contents to load. Deliberately looking pleased with himself he nodded to Sheen then turned to head back.

The digger arms were now laying out the last of a selection of ceramo-carbide rock drills in neat rows on the floor to either side of the dozer's rear end. These were the last items from the digger compartment. As Cormac walked over, one arm detached from a drill then swung over to engage again with the large earth scoop and there pause.

"Ready?" he asked Layden.

The man nodded and unplugged the optic, and Sheen, back at her post, quickly replaced the cover she had removed. By now Pramer had climbed inside the compartment, quickly followed by Layden who retained the essential console, then Sheen. Cormac stepped into the cramped compartment just as the digger arm started moving again. After a moment the earth scoop swung across then in, blocking out the light as it crashed into the slot at the mouth of the compartment. After a moment a greenish hue filled the space as Pramer stuck a chemical light ball to one ceramal wall.

"Can we talk now?" asked Layden.

"Certainly," said Cormac, "but I'd advise against doing it too loudly—there's still ears out there."

"Tell me about the program you used?" Layden was very doubtful that any human could create a program capable of penetrating the security around the dreadnought, for he possessed sufficient expertise to know what it would be up against.

"It was a mutagenic worm," said Cormac. "Carl knew more about it than me. It apparently causes a viral fault to develop in the garage memory, and erasing the fault erases that part of the memory too. The AI will know maintenance was scheduled but the details will be gone."

"The drone?"

"Shares memory with the garage com system—quite primitive. Most of the security in the area is outside these garages."

Layden frowned. "Very useful guy, this Carl."

Cormac pretended anger. "Which is why you people were stupid to try killing him."

"Not my people." Layden held out his hand to Sheen who passed over the screwdriver kit, from which he selected a multidriver with which he started removing the screws securing a panel within the compartment.

"How long?" asked Pramer, while fiddling with his artificial hand.

"Twenty minutes," Cormac replied. "Then this dozer sets out to shove a spill away from the north side of the ship. Despite its supposed fault it'll be used because only the dozer blade will be needed, not the digger arms."

Cormac sat down with his back against one wall. All the others made themselves comfortable too then fell into desultory silence. Cormac closed his eyes and tried to force himself to relax, or to at least display a veneer of that state. But inside he was tightly wound, both scared and elated, all too aware that at any moment this could all go badly wrong and he could end up dead. He had never felt so alive.

"What are you going to do with them?" asked Layden.

It took Cormac a moment to realise the question had been directed at him. He opened his eyes and saw that all three of them were gazing at him as they awaited his reply. He could have shrugged this off mercenary style and said that was none of his concern, but he too was supposed to be a Separatist, he too was supposed to be a fighter for the Cause.

"That will be decided by the Central Committee." Agent Spencer had queried him upon his return from the meeting with Samara and had been most interested in that. It was understood that the Separatists here had not, since the Prador bombardment, been able to organize themselves into the usual cell structure. There were still those in charge and it was still possible to find an easy way back to the leadership. He went on, "But if it was up to me I'd get them offworld—hit a runcible AI on one of the high-population worlds like Coloron where it would do most good."

"Really," said Layden, blank-faced.

Cormac realised he was making an error here, for Layden was a reluctant recruit and knowing the possible consequences of his actions might result in him being more reluctant still.

"But whether they will ever be used like that is a moot point," he added.

"Why not?" Layden asked.

"Trading," said Sheen.

Cormac flicked a glance at her, certain now that there was more to her than met the eye.

"Precisely," he said. "They'll be traded to richer groups for things of more value to the long-term struggle: personal armament, money, secure computer time, propaganda."

That was accepted writ, but the truth was somewhat more sordid. Those who ran planetary Separatist organizations usually ate high off the hog. Their ultimate aim might be the downfall of the ruling AIs but the real short-term goals were racketeering wealth, drugs to sell for more wealth and power within the organisation. That all fell apart when someone delivered a major blow, which wiping out a runcible AI with a CTD would have been, for it usually resulted in Earth Central Security coming down hard on those who previously had been an irritation not worth expending resources to be rid of.

The dozer vibrated slightly, which was the only warning that its heavy internal fly wheels were winding up to speed. It then jerked forwards, rumbling across the plasticrete, flinging Layden sprawling. Cormac noted how fast Sheen moved to catch his console before it swung on its optic to smash against the compartment wall, and slotted the memory away for future reference. Light from external floodlights abruptly lit a halo around the earth scoop behind them as the dozer departed the garage. Layden picked himself up and accepted his console back from Sheen, giving her a sour look as he took it.

"Watch yourselves," said Cormac. "This isn't set up for passengers."

This was a lie, because alterations had been made to this dozer's structure and operating procedures. A machine like this was quite capable of hammering, without damage, straight over the massive potholes and rocks about the ship, but that might have resulted in broken bones for any inside so it would be taking an easy route. Also, no other dozer had an access hatch inside the bucket compartment to its controls—that security weakness had been taken out long ago.

"I've accessed its cams," said Layden.

Cormac stood and carefully made his way over to the man; the other two gathered round too. The console screen now showed the view ahead, which at that moment was of a track winding between piles of stone, mud and charred and shattered skarch trunks and their decaying leaves, with the occasional glimpse of mosquito autoguns patrolling the area. After a few minutes, the rear upper surface of the ship became visible off to the right, behind a high security fence. Following the track towards this behemoth, the dozer halted at high gates between two framework watch towers, while they opened, then continued down into a shadowy quarter-mile-wide box trench cutting round the rear of the dreadnought. Soon six autodozers and two KiloTees came into view ahead, working to clear a fall of the trench wall. Four of the dozers were pushing heaps of mud and stone before them to the two others which were using earth scoops to load KiloTees—autotrucks capable of shifting and tipping loads of a thousand tons.

Cormac studied the wall of metal to their right, curving up towards the sky. A scaffold had been erected against it, epoxied to the exotic metal armour and stretching up for eight hundred feet.

"This is where we get off," he said.

Layden immediately banished the picture, called up some queued programs and set one running. He then pulled off a lower piece of the console—a remote control for it.

"Shouldn't we wait until we're closer?" asked Pramer.

Cormac shook his head. "Get too close to the other dozers and they'll pick us up with their cams, then we'll have autoguns down here faster than you can write your will."

"Right."

With a clonking and scraping the earth scoop retreated from view on its arm and they moved to the back of the dozer. It was moving fast, but not as fast as such a machine usually travelled along ground like this. Cormac jumped first, managing to keep to his feet because he had no wish to break his fall by rolling in the mud. Layden landed badly, sprawling in the porridge of mud and stone. Pramer rolled neatly and came swiftly upright. Sheen landed with graceful ease and walked over. Cormac wondered if she was a teenager at all. Maybe her look was just cosmetic camouflage, spots too.

Cormac studied them all for a moment, nodded, then set out at a steady trot towards the scaffolding. Glancing back he saw them following, heads bowed, trying to move as fast as they could over the uneven ground. Doubtless their lack of weapons made them very nervous.

Mounted upon a foamstone block right next to the ship, the scaffolding was completely in shadow. As he stepped onto the block Cormac paused to watch a number of those scavenger creatures he and Carl had seen, scuttling away from him to drop down the gap between the back edge of the block and the hull of the ship. Then he stepped up and moved over to an elevator platform and studied its controls.

"We're in luck," he said as the others mounted the block behind him. He turned to them, noticing how Layden was gasping and looked almost on the point of collapse.

"How so?" asked Pramer.

Cormac gestured to the platform. "Simple clamp wheels and electric motor—no monitoring system so we can use it without being detected." He studied Layden. "Which seems a good thing, because I'm not sure all of us would have been able to climb up there, let alone climb back down carrying a CTD."

"Yeah," said Layden, gazing determinedly at Pramer. "I need something."

Pramer nodded as if he had expected this, reached in his pocket and took out an inhaler which he tossed across to the man. Layden took three pulls on the thing in quick succession, then abruptly stood more upright with colour returning to his complexion.

He grinned. "Better… much better."

Obviously some sort of stimulant, Cormac realised, though there were so many different kinds it wasn't worth trying to guess which one. He stepped onto the platform, waited until the others were in place, then hit the up arrow on the simple touchpad. Clamp wheels closed on the four poles positioned at each corner of the platform and began turning, rapidly taking them up. More scavengers scuttled out from underneath the platform itself, and Cormac wondered why they were here. Was the port above them the one out of which those Prador second-children had dumped human remains?

Soon the autodozers and KiloTees were the size of toys below them and they could see all the way in both directions along the massive trench. The air was fresh and clean for a little while, then started to take on a putrid smell as they neared the entrance into the ship. Eventually the platform jerked to a halt beside a metre-wide circular port in the hull. Stretching inwards evenly spaced around this port were eight crescent-section rails, their inner faces micro-ridged all the way down with doped superconductors. Coolant pipes, s-con cables and various control systems ran through the jacket enclosing all this. It would have been impossible to enter had not a hole been cut through at the base of the port. Cormac eyed the ladder, epoxied in place and stretching down into darkness, took out his torch and turned it on, then climbed down.

The ladder got them into a chamber over five hundred feet long, with the rail-gun sitting above them like a fallen redwood. To one side lay the magazine and related mechanisms: a belt feed still loaded with one-ton iron-and-ceramic projectiles whose impact energy when fired delivered the destructive potential that in the past had been reserved for atomic weapons. Two more torches came on, their beams stabbing here and there about the interior.

"Stinks," said Pramer.

Cormac nodded and took his palm screen. He displayed the map he had made and studied it for a moment, quickly realising he had forgotten nothing about the route.

"You say there'll be no one here this late?" asked Layden. The man looked wired—pupils dilated and motions all jerky and overextended.

"It's unlikely there'll be anyone this deep in the ship, though there might be some nearer the main entrance." He waved a hand about him. "Dealing with this is not so crucial anymore, so the work is confined to the daylight hours. They also don't like coming in here at night, since it was during the night they lost personnel."

"The Prador," said Layden, eyes wide.

"They think they got the last of them."

"They think?"

Cormac eyed Layden with pretend contempt, shook his head and moved on.

The corridor beyond smelt even worse, but then it did not have the ventilation. Ship lice dropped from the uneven walls and scuttled across the floor towards the torch beams. Kicking them away hardly discouraged them, so every few paces at least one of the four needed to crush one of the creatures under a boot heel. They climbed down a ladder bonded to the side of a Prador drop-shaft, where the lice were even more of a danger as they tried to nip fingers or drop on heads. More corridors, one now filled with the stench like that of rotting seafood from Prador second-children heaped on a gravsled outside the Captain's Sanctum. Here the ship lice did not bother them, so busily were they feeding on the corpses. Cormac led the three past these and eventually brought them to their goal.

The room was narrow. To the right was a plain if slightly uneven wall, but to the left was no wall, just the exposed section of a carousel. Many of the compartments in the face of this huge wheel were empty, but three contained smoothly polished cylinders each about two feet long and ten inches in diameter. As Cormac understood it, this was not an actual loading carousel, but just one component in the mechanisms the Prador captain used to select the explosive load for the missiles he was firing.

"Don't look like much," said Pramer.

"Perhaps not," said Cormac. "But detonate one of these in your home city and that city would be gone, along with a fair portion of the coastline too."

Pramer nodded, then reached out to grip the top of one and pull it—it seemed immovable. "How do we get these out?"

"You pull very hard," said Cormac. "The clamps are sprung, but to a tension for Prador."

Pramer started heaving at the CTD, putting all his considerable muscle bulk into the effort. Cormac reached in from the side and tried to help, but though the device moved out of its clamp slightly, the moment they took the pressure off, it snapped back into place.

"We need a lever." Cormac stepped out into the corridor and headed back towards the Captain's Sanctum. It did not surprise him to find Sheen walking beside him, still watching him warily.

"There," he pointed. The remains of the gas-propellant guns the Prador second-children had used lay jumbled in a pile to the rear of the gravsled loaded with their corpses. Cormac and Sheen sorted through the mess, selecting lengths of hard Prador metal that might be suitable. Cormac was just hefting a flat length of square bar, its end flattened like that of a crow bar, when a high girlish and terrified scream echoed along the corridor.

"Layden," said Sheen.

This was not part of Cormac's plans. A man would not scream like that because ECS had come to arrest him, but because he was terrified and in pain. Only two causes seemed probable: either Pramer had done something to him, or something else had just arrived.

Armed with their makeshift weapons, Sheen and Cormac charged back towards the other two, and upon rounding a corner saw Pramer hurtling towards them. He skidded to a halt, and Sheen tossed him one of the handles from the gas guns: a heavy metal ring attached to a short, thick chunk of metal, sharp all around its edges from where it had broken away. He gripped it in his natural hand and hefted it like a massive knuckle-duster, then turned. Cormac noted his artificial hand was missing to expose a short stabbing blade dripping something like green oil. Then the Prador second-child came.

Cormac felt that familiar surge of adrenaline, the tightness in the gut and a feeling as of hot water being poured down inside his spine, but it didn't seem so intense this time. Maybe this was because this Prador wasn't the size of the ones that had been gassed back in the Sanctum corridor, or maybe it was because he was becoming accustomed to the feeling. Certainly, with a shell over a metre across and claws big enough to snip off someone's head, this Prador was not something you wanted to encounter without a large gun in your hand. Cormac eyed the length of metal he held, then the Prador as it ceased its pursuit and began scuttling from side to side in the corridor, obviously wary of attacking the three humans facing it. Seemingly without effort Cormac remembered everything he had been taught about Prador physiology. The manipulatory arms folded underneath the creature's body weren't anywhere near as dangerous as the claws unless they were holding some weapon, and they weren't. The top of the shell, behind the visual turret and eye-palps, would be as hard as stone, as were the claws themselves. There were only a few vulnerable points.

"Hit the visual turret, leg joints and claw joints nearest the body," he said. "Don't let that fucker close a claw on you, or you're dead."

"No shit," said Sheen, stepping to one side and hefting a chunk of metal like a long-handled cleaver.

The Prador second-child came to a decision and surged forwards, its claws spread wide ready to snap closed on any available flesh. Cormac hesitated for a moment, seeing how he and his companions were going to get in each others way, then abruptly ran towards the creature. The Prador emitted a hissing squeal, snapping its claws open and closed perhaps in an attempt to intimidate. Before they came within reach of him, Cormac threw himself over the creature, somersaulting in mid-air with a claw just brushing his head, and came down feet first on its carapace. He had time for one swipe with the metal bar bringing it down hard on one eye-palp, crushing it into the creature's visual turret, before his momentum spilled him behind.

Shouldering into the floor, he rolled and came upright, the creature stopping and half turning towards him. But Pramer and Sheen now attacked, and undecided which way to turn, it presented only one claw to them, while being unable to deploy its other against any of them. Sheen fenced with the snapping claw, while Pramer tried to get in close to use his shorter-range weapons. Seeing an opportunity, he ducked in close and managed to drive his makeshift knuckle-duster straight into the monster's mouth, breaking one mandible.

Rushing in on the rear quarter of the creature, Cormac leapt and came down with both feet on the knee of one leg. The leg broke and the creature squealed, partially collapsing. Cormac brought his bar down on another leg, breaking a joint. Foaming from its broken mouth it turned fully towards him. He hit the base joint of the claw swinging towards him, then backed off. Sheen hit another leg, severing its sharp tip, and the Prador swung back towards her, but it was Pramer who did the most damage. He leapt onto its back, drove his knife down hard, punching through carapace to anchor himself, then began pounding on its visual turret with the gun handle until the carapace there began to crack and green gore to spatter.

Cormac now concentrated on the claw shoulder joint on his side and, copying him, Sheen attacked the other claw joint. They both realised Pramer was in a position to finish the job, only needing those claws kept away from him. Five heavy blows and the claw on Cormac's side was dragging on the ground. Sheen, though she did not disable the claw immediately, obviously opened a gap in the carapace, for she drove her lump of metal deep in beside the claw joint.

The creature jetted foamed bile from its broken mouth. Its visual turret was all but gone, and now the blows Pramer was delivering were punching down into its main body. Abruptly it collapsed completely, its legs shivering and breath rasping wetly. Pramer sat back, and began picking unpleasant gobbets from his arm. Stepping up beside him, Cormac gazed at the hole the man had punched through, estimated the positions of the internal organs, then drove his bar in at a sharp angle. The Prador convulsed, its breathing ceasing all at once, though its legs continued shivering. Cormac turned the metal, then sawed it back and forth, finally pulled it out.

"Is it dead?" asked Sheen.

Cormac stepped away for a moment, turning his back on them. The surge of nausea had come quickly, but taking steady breaths for a moment he forced it into retreat before turning back to face them.

"If not," he said, "then it soon will be. I was able to sever its main ganglion." He rested a hand momentarily on Pramer's shoulder. "Thanks to our champion here."

It was an odd feeling. He admired both Pramer and Sheen for their bravery, liked them a little better than before, yet he was going to betray them and, one way or another, that betrayal would lead to them dying.

"What happened to Layden?" he asked the big man beside him.

"Pulled his guts out," said Pramer.

Sheen tugged her chunk of metal from the Prador's shoulder joint, but it responded not at all now. Cormac pulled out his gore-soaked implement, stepped down to the floor and headed back towards the cache of CTDs, the other two falling in behind him. Within a few minutes he saw that Pramer had not exaggerated: Layden was sitting up against the wall of the corridor opposite the door into the cache, a pool of blood spreading all around him and his intestines trailing in a long line right back to the door. On the wall above the man Cormac noted the spatter marks and surmised that the Prador had driven its claw into his guts and flung him, those intestines unravelling like the string of a yo-yo. He walked over to the man, squatted down beside him and checked his pulse. Nothing. An artery had been cut inside him and he'd quickly died of shock and blood loss. It was a good thing that the artery had been cut, else he would have suffered a long and lingering death—Samara's instructions were that the CTDs took precedence over injured comrades.

"Dead?" Sheen enquired.

"Thoroughly," Cormac replied. "Let's get this done and get out of here." He reached down and opened Layden's belt bag, removing the remote control, took up his metal bar and followed the other two into the cache. Cormac and Pramer levered out the four CTDs and placed them down on the floor while Sheen removed the monofilm rucksacks from her belt cache, unfolded them, and placed the CTDs inside. The weapons were very heavy and Cormac considered suggesting they leave one behind, but knew that after what they had just been through, that would be the wrong thing to say.

"We'll carry it between us," he said to Pramer.

Donning their rucksacks they stepped out of the cache, Pramer and Cormac holding a strap each of the fourth rucksack, it hanging heavily between them.

"What about him?" asked Pramer.

"They'll know someone got in here when they come to move the CTDs," said Cormac. "But maybe we can cover things a bit."

They put the spare rucksack down and, taking a leg each, they dragged Layden to the Prador, over it, then to the gravsled stacked with the gassed second-children. With some heaving and shifting, and much swatting away of ship lice, they managed to shove him out of sight underneath one of the dead creatures. Next they returned for the freshly killed Prador, managed to pick it up between them and carry it back to heave up onto the same stack. Returning for the extra CTD, Cormac observed smaller ship lice, perhaps those unable to compete in the scrum about the dead Prador, scuttling out from hollows in the walls. He saw two conducting a tug of war with a length of Layden's intestine, others were snatching up bits of carapace and Prador flesh, while still more had come to revel in the sticky pools of human and alien blood.

"Should clear up more evidence of our visit," he said as they retrieved the fourth CTD and made their way out. Pramer gave him a sour look and Sheen a blank one.

On the elevator Cormac checked the remote control and saw it was primed to stop the autodozer and open it, and he had no doubt that once inside the machine he would be able to stop it at the designated point on the return journey, then instruct it to dig a hole for the CTDs, and fill it in again. There they would disembark and go their separate ways.