‘What about this one?’ asked a voice from outside.
‘Leave her. She’ll be dead in a minute, if she’s not already,’ said Eldene’s captor.
A second soldier, then a third, entered the ATV, and after a few minutes a fourth one closed the door behind him. The one threatening Eldene drew away his weapon as he raised his visor. It was strange, thought Eldene bizarrely, how little you could tell from someone’s appearance; for she had frequently encountered plump, cheerful-looking proctors who were always ready with quips and funny anecdotes whilst they were lashing the skin off a worker’s back. This man, though, with his hawkish face and twisted mouth, looked just plain evil and obviously relished the fact.
He gestured towards Apis with his weapon. ‘Check him out. He may still be alive.’
‘Should have gone for a head-shot, Speelan,’ said one of the newcomers.
‘No, I think the good Deacon will be wanting words with these people.’
‘What about the other four?’
‘We forget about them. I don’t want to hang around here any longer.’ He glanced through the front screen. ‘Maybe that hooder will deal with them.’
Eldene kept silent. To speak out, she knew from long experience, only brought unwanted attention. Transferring his gaze back inside, Speelan stared at her as if he had momentarily forgotten her presence. Almost negligently, he drew back his pistol and cracked its barrel down against her temple.
Sometimes it did not help to have the kind of mind in which blocks of logic keyed together so precisely, and life-and-death facts revealed themselves like nasty gumboils. Dragon was gone: buried under a mud slide that had raised the soil level in the pit of the crater by at least ten metres. But what the hell did that matter one way or the other, with what was coming?
‘I can’t and I won’t believe Scar is somewhere underneath that,’ said Cormac, as ever revealing nothing of what he felt.
Gant disagreed. ‘He may be there still, but if he is you can guarantee he’s not dead.’
‘Unlike some I could mention,’ said Thorn.
‘I’m not dead,’ Gant pointed out. ‘How can I be? I’m a machine.’
‘This isn’t helping,’ said Cormac before Thorn could formulate a reply. ‘Gant, why so certain he’s not dead?’
Gant shrugged, turning so that the snout of his cradled APW pointed down into the slowly refilling crater. ‘As you know, he doesn’t need to breathe oxygen. As I understand it, he is just more efficient when he is surrounded by a gaseous oxidant he can breathe in to burn his body’s fuel. He can use other types of atmosphere, as we’ve already found out, and I know that without any atmosphere to breathe he can run on his body’s fuel for days before simply going into stasis.’
‘And how do you know all this?’ Cormac pretended interest in the answer.
‘Mika. Not from her directly, but she’s built up quite a database on dracomen.’ He nodded towards the crater. ‘He could be in stasis under there – or digging his way out even now.’
‘But do we wait to find out?’ Thorn asked.
Cormac studied the two men while he considered the present situation. Maybe they should stay and wait to see if Scar would indeed dig his way out, because it seemed to Cormac that any other efforts were futile. The Theocracy would destroy the rebel army, either on the surface in straight combat, or underground – along with the rest of the population there – by kinetic missile. And it was all such a pointless drama: the squabblings of geese in a pen outside an abattoir. Cormac felt hopeless: he’d fallen so far he was not sure he could get back up again.
‘Do we wait?’ he asked Thorn.
‘To achieve what?’ asked Cormac.
Perhaps this time the bitterness came through in his voice for both Thorn and Gant looked at once confused, then not a little apprehensive.
‘We should return and help Lellan Stanton,’ said Thorn. ‘She’s an effective commander, and committed to the Underground cause. She deserves whatever we can give her, little as that may be.’
Only half-hearing what the man had said, Cormac continued to stare down into the crater. Then something clicked. ‘Lellan Stanton,’ he said, turning back to the pair of them.
‘Yes?’ inquired Thorn.
‘You arrived here in John Stanton’s ship Lyric II. But how did you get through undetected?’
‘The ship had chameleonware. Pretty sophist—’
‘And this ship is now up in the mountains somewhere?’
‘Yes . . .’
Cormac turned away from the crater and set then a rapid pace back towards the ATV. Hurrying along behind, Thorn asked, ‘You’re thinking of hitting that Ragnorak device with it, aren’t you?’
Cormac let out a brief bitter laugh, abruptly halting and turning to face the other two. ‘Maybe I haven’t painted a clear enough picture with what I already told you, or with what I passed on to Lellan. Perhaps that’s because I left out one pertinent fact.’ He glanced at Gant. ‘Your partner understands, I think, but I’m not sure he’s allowing himself to understand completely.’
‘Skellor?’ said Gant, and Cormac thought the pale grimness overtaking the Golem’s expression was a superb emulation of the real thing.
‘Precisely, Skellor. Skellor subverted an AI dreadnought using Jain technology, and is direct-linked to a crystal matrix AI, and surviving. I told you this, and I told Lellan this, though I’m not sure just how much of it she understood.’
‘Enough to know he’s dangerous,’ said Thorn.
‘Dangerous,’ Cormac echoed leadenly.
‘Tracking him down and stopping him will become an ECS priority – something like him cannot be allowed to exist,’ Thorn added.
‘Yes,’ said Cormac. ‘And if Earth Central knew about him, it would already have ECS tracking him down and stopping him, as you put it. You see, the fact I’ve missed out is that only we few on this world actually know about Skellor. We few, and whoever else we may have spoken to here.’
A look of horror slowly crept into Thorn’s expression as he realized what Cormac was telling him. ‘He’s coming here . . . he won’t risk letting the news get out . . .’
‘He killed the entire crew of the Occam Razor,’ reminded Gant.
Turning to continue on his way, Cormac added, ‘And he’s coming here in control of that ship, one capable of incinerating everything on the surface of this world, so, frankly, fuck the stupid little rebellion here and its suppression. If Lellan’s transmission doesn’t get through, I have to get off this world and warn the Polity. And with me off and away from here, and Skellor knowing about it, maybe he won’t be so inclined to hang around killing every human being in this entire system.’
For a second or two Cormac stared at the clearing, and the two tracks disappearing into the flute grasses, and wondered which particular deity was crapping on him from a great height.
‘Mika!’ shouted Thorn, running forwards to stoop by the bloodied form sprawled on the ground. Signalling Gant to move over to one side, Cormac pulled his thin-gun and followed Thorn out into the clearing. Glancing at Mika, he knew she had been wasted: the position of the bloodstains informed him of the entrance and exit wounds, straight through her chest on the right-hand side. Poising his gun to one side of his face, he looked down at the tracks left by the ATV. Who was responsible? That girl? Fethan? Whoever it was, he would kill them.
‘Look, stop fussing. I’m all right.’
Cormac registered the voice, but recognizing it just did not coincide with any kind of reality for him. He watched, dumbfounded, as Thorn helped Mika to her feet. He then stepped forward and caught her under the elbow as she appeared about to collapse.
‘I’m all right. I’m all right,’ she insisted.
‘You’ve been hit,’ protested Thorn.
Cormac tried to reassess what he was seeing: the spread of blood around one hole under Mika’s right breast and a greater leakage of blood around a larger hole ripped out of the back of her jacket, the insulating la
yers splayed out like a thistle head: entrance and exit wounds. Thorn clutched Mika as she slumped drunkenly against him. Cormac used the barrel of his gun and one finger to gently part the ripped fabric on her back. There was plenty of blood there, but underneath it a nub of purplish-pink flesh like a deep-rooted tumour.
‘Physician heal thyself,’ he murmured, releasing the fabric and stepping back, as he remembered the creature he had killed in Skellor’s laboratory – the creature Mika had later studied so intensively.
She glanced round at him, a certain amount of calculation creeping into her woozy expression. ‘It was soldiers, Theocracy soldiers.’
At Cormac’s shoulder Gant said, ‘Survivors from that lander, probably.’
‘You well enough to walk?’ Cormac asked her.
Mika nodded.
‘Then we follow them – at least they’re heading in the right direction.’
‘What about Fethan?’ asked Gant.
‘He’ll catch up, I assume.’
Later, as it became apparent that Mika no longer needed anyone’s help, and while Thorn moved ahead with Gant, Cormac leaned close to her and said, ‘Doctor, you’ve been taking some of the Outlinker’s medicine?’
‘I have,’ Mika replied.
‘And it’s good, I think?’ he said.
‘Better than good,’ said Mika, tapping her finger against the contents indicator on her oxygen bottle. The indicator had gone from green through orange to deep dark red, which meant that the bottle was completely empty. Cormac wondered if, when she had earlier changed her bottle for a new one, she had done this just to keep up appearances, or if, like Scar, she operated more efficiently when breathing a suitably gaseous oxidant.
Even though Speelan delivered his report with a terseness and rigidity of control that was almost machinelike, Aberil could feel fear coming through the link. Whether that fear was of the hooder still out there, or of the expected wrath at Speelan’s loss of a lander and twenty-four men, Aberil could not make up his mind. In fact he felt no wrath, just curiosity at what their two captives – one of them obviously an Outlinker – would have to say for themselves. The Proctor, Molat, who had been brought to him earlier in the day, had provided no information of tactical value and was beginning to bore him. Only the story about the siluroyne had been interesting because Aberil had known the Proctor was lying about something, but sufficient pressure had only revealed Molat’s silly guilt over the sacrifice of an underling. Obviously Proctor Molat had reached the limit of his advancement within the Theocracy.
‘Where is the rebel army now?’ he asked generally.
‘The other side of the swamp basin, First Commander,’ replied his logistics officer.
‘So they’re retreating towards the mountains, without us having to force them across the basin. It’s too easy really.’
‘I don’t think Captain Granch thought so, First Commander.’ The officer looked pale as he turned towards Aberil. ‘He has ordered the withdrawal of his remaining fighters.’
‘Granch, what do you think you are doing?’
The captain of Gabriel was quick to reply.
‘My apologies, First Commander, but they must return for refuelling and arming, with the spaceport being now unavailable.’
Aberil grinned across the room at Proctor Molat who, like everyone else in the command lander, was listening in.
‘The one bomber we have retained is reactor-run so I do not see why it should be recalled. I am in fact adamant that it should not be.’
Granch: ‘First Commander, it cannot get in close enough, with those Polity machines there.’
Aberil: ‘Granch, I know perfectly well that your son is aboard that plane. It will, however, remain in high orbit until required – is that understood?’
Granch did not reply, but the logistics officer spoke up. ‘The bomber is returning to high orbit, sir.’
Aberil turned to Molat. ‘You see: softness, lack of faith, nepotism. We must be harder and harsher if we are to proudly take our place in the universe before God.’ Then, before the Proctor could reply, Aberil turned away from him and sent over the ether, ‘How far away are you now, Speelan?’
‘I have the command vehicle in sight, and will be with you within minutes, First Commander,’ came Speelan’s abrupt response.
‘Bring your prisoners directly to me here,’ Aberil instructed. ‘And without further damage to them.’
Before Speelan could reply, another presence intruded:
‘Aberil, I do hope you are not allowing your little games to distract you from your main objective.’
Aberil was out of his seat in a moment. The sheer force of the Hierarch’s communication almost had his head ringing, and he felt that force could not be explained just by the message being transmitted through a high channel, formerly used solely by the Septarchy Friars.
‘This is not a distraction, Hierarch. I predict that by tomorrow’s sunrise Lellan’s forces will be perfectly positioned in the mountains for our nuclear cleansing. But I am very much concerned at why an Outlinker would want to be down here on the surface, let alone how he got here.’
On a lower channel now, Loman spoke conversationally. ‘Don’t spend too much time finding out, if you consider it that important, use drugs, not torture.’
Aberil did not let himself object to having to forgo the pleasure of causing pain. He in fact became suddenly wary of making any response, for even on the lower channels there was something quite overwhelming about the communication from his brother.
‘Your will, Hierarch.’
The link closed, and Aberil swallowed and took a deep breath. In the expressions of Molat and the others, he read a hint of fear and bewilderment. They had all registered the contained power in the Hierarch, and all of them understood it not at all.
Not for the first time, Carl reached up and patted at the Polity wound dressing on the side of his face, as he stared across the swamp basin to the flute grasses on the far side. If they just opened up with their pulse-rifles they would be sure to hit some Theocracy soldiers, just as no doubt the reverse applied with the enemy and their rail-guns, but ammunition was not limitless on either side and the thick grasses had a tendency to eat up the momentum of any projectile, be it an iron slug or a pulse of ionized aluminium.
‘These bastards have got thermal mesh in their body armour,’ said Uris, staring at the screen of a small heat detector he had managed to salvage from the tank before the vehicle got pulverized.
‘Either that or you were imagining things,’ said Targon.
In suitable reply, a full clip of rail-gun slugs hammered into the flute grass to the right of them, with a sound like the revving of a worn diesel engine. They went face-down, flak blankets pulled over them, as the high stalks collapsed in pulpy dark green fragments. A short way off, someone started screaming, then something suddenly curtailed their noise. Another fighter broke cover and tried to dash across a channel inhabited by low plantain to seek better cover on the other side. A second rail-gun opened up, and the man just flew apart.
‘Where the fuck is that coming from?’ asked Carl.
Hunched up with his flak blanket over his back, Uris studied his heat detector, then abruptly gestured with his open hand. ‘Ten metres back from the far edge – just left of the plantain channel over there!’
‘Beckle!’ Carl shouted.
Beckle did not need specific instructions. He quickly set up the small mortar he had been given – as an inadequate replacement of his pulse-cannon on the tank – and fired off three rounds. Two explosions blew loam and roots into the air, but in the detritus thrown up by the third explosion Carl, as he stood up, was sure he spotted a human arm. He and Targon raised their weapons over their heads so as to clear the flute grass, and opened fire on the same area where the explosions had occurred. But then grenades started detonating to their left and the rail-gun fire became so intense that the air filled with a sleet of blasted-up mud and scraps of vegetation. Carl did not nee
d to give any orders – his men were running again, forcing their way through thick growths of grass, stomping across already trampled spreads of moist purple leaves, staggering through muddy channels so wet that only black plantain could root there. Off to their right, others were running . . . falling . . . dying. In their own little group it was Targon who went down first. Turning to fire back behind, he looked down for his weapon and, in numb surprise, only saw his two arms ending at the elbow. He began to yell, but collapsed into the ground like a statue made of red ash, a burst of fire just eating him away.
‘You bastards!’
Beckle fired the mortar and its shell slammed into a half-seen ground car on which a heavy rail-gun had been mounted. The explosion flung the vehicle out of view, and someone ran screaming to one side – his Theocracy uniform burning, then blazing white in an oxygen fire as his air bottle ruptured. The recoil of the mortar saved Beckle’s life, as it sprawled him on his back below a fusillade that cut down the cover he had been fleeing towards. Carl drew his fire across, the glowing shots from his rifle acting like tracer fire as he brought it to bear on the soldier who had been shooting at Beckle, and cut him in half.
‘This is not good!’ bellowed Uris, dragging Beckle to his feet.
‘We’re outnumbered and outgunned,’ Beckle spat, as the three of them dived for cover in a small crater lying behind a mound of tangled roots and earth obviously hinged up from it by a recent explosion.
‘Well, you know we can’t win down here, so we just have to prolong it,’ growled Carl.
‘Be nice to come close, though,’ said Beckle.
‘Shut up, Beckle,’ said Uris, then grabbed Carl’s shoulder and directed his comrade’s attention to the other occupant of the crater. The woman sitting there was clearly an ex-pond worker, for she still had a scole attached to her body. That she was now cradling most of the contents of that body did not seem to affect the scole at all – it was still looking healthy as it drew on what remained of her blood. Keeping his head well down, Carl crawled over to her, and felt for a pulse at the side of her severely burnt neck. After a moment he shook his head and slid back to join his companions.