The gunner would be no help. The turret had taken full weight as the carrier had come down and the man was now folded in a tangle of metal and seat padding. The sergeant was unconscious. Stanton looked outside again. The more badly damaged of the two Golem had taken something from what remained of Mr Crane. It held that something up, before tossing it on the ground. Stanton recognized the long lozenge shape of a Golem's mind. The other drew a pulse-gun and fired. The mind shattered and the two Golem moved off. Now, that had been something Stanton was glad not to miss. He focused his attention on the scattered brassy remains and couldn't help but wonder where the suitcase was. It then occurred to him that amongst those remains lay the solution to his dilemma.
Stanton nicked the ring on his finger and twisted his right hand round so it was out and open. What was left of Crane's coat jerked into the air, and the Tenkian dagger through and away. It hit the shattered window and went straight through, turned in midair and slapped its handle into Stanton's hand. Stanton turned it and began sawing through his bonds.
'Cormac'
Cormac turned and put his back against a tree. His comunit was still on.
'What is it, Aiden?'
'What are you doing?'
'I'm after Pelter.'
'I will be with you shortly'
'No, you won't. You'll secure the camp and sort out the mess there. I can handle this.' There was a moment of silence before Aiden replied.
'Very well. As you order, Agent. You had best be aware then that the shuttle Viridian informed us about has landed a quarter of a kilometre in on the course you were following. It may be that this is how they intended to escape.'
'Thank you. I'll be back with you soon.'
Cormac turned the unit off, then set out again. Within minutes he found the AGC transporter, with burns all across its hull, and what remained of Dusache clinging to the wrecked missile launcher. The ground was smoking and the air acrid. Cormac approached cautiously, then crouched when he saw movement beyond the platform. A shadow flitted through the trees and the smoke ahead of him. He fired once with his thin-gun. There was a yell, and pulse-gun fire returned with startling accuracy. Cormac hit the ground and tasted leaf-mould and lichen. His sleeve was smouldering. He rolled to the side, behind an oak, as the leaf-mould and lichen caught fire. Still rolling, he fired past the other side of the tree. There was a scream, the sound of someone stumbling, then falling. A smell similar to that of roast pork wafted on the smoky breeze.
Cormac rose to his feet with his gun still pointed where he had last fired it. To one side there was a tree. From behind it he could hear someone gasping raggedly. He approached.
The man lay with his back against another tree, his pulse-gun in his hand. His body was burned from neck to groin. Cormac had hit him once through the shoulder, but the wound from that was a neatly cauterized hole. These other burns were from the flare off high-energy turret-gun hits on the transport. Cormac moved in slowly and quietly. When he was less than a metre away, the man turned and attempted to bring his gun to bear. Cormac kicked it from his hand.
'Svent,' he said, 'where's Pelter?'
'Stupid… stupid,' said Svent.
Cormac just watched him and waited. Svent looked up.
'Should have got out. Could see that… when it was off.'
'What?'
'Aug…'
'What aug?'
'Scaly
'I'll ask again. Where's Pelter?'
'Ain't tellin' you that… Why should I tell you that?'
'Because if you don't, I'll kill you,' Cormac suggested.
Svent glared at him, then his glare turned into a nasty smile.
'Don't turn,' said Pelter. 'You don't know where I am, and you won't be able to turn faster than I can pull this trigger.'
It had never been Cormac's way to think too long about such situations, nor to throw himself on the mercy of any enemy. If Pelter had seen how it had been for Angelina, he would have known this and immediately shot him in the back when he had the chance. Cormac dropped to one side taking one snap shot from under his left armpit as he went. Something slammed his left biceps and he smelt burning as he rolled, then dived, snapshooting at a half-seen figure. He heard Svent scream as he reached cover behind the tree. Pelter had hit the little mercenary with his wild shooting at Cormac.
Behind the tree, Cormac inspected the burn on his arm. It was not serious, but that arm would soon be useless. Nevertheless he would wait. He stood up with his back against the tree, holding his thin-gun up beside his face. Any moment now…
Pelter could not believe it; you stood still when someone with a gun was demanding it. You did not run for cover in the hope they would miss. He backed up, firing single shots off at the tree while his mouth seemed to turn ceramic. The ache in his head, since Mr Crane's destruction, was growing in intensity, as if striving to fill the void left by the android's absence.
No Mr Crane now. No one left at his back. Nothing now between him and that thin-gun.
'Fucking die!' he shouted and blasted at the tree again.
Three times. Three times he'd had the agent in his sights, and three times he had failed to kill him. Maybe they had been right at the start… maybe Ian Cormac was some kind of android.
Pelter stopped firing and continued to back away. He kept his weapon directed towards the side of the tree where Cormac had disappeared. When the agent stepped from its other side, he stepped straight into Pelter's nightmare - straight into that vision ever imprinted on his missing eye.
The barrel of the thin-gun seemed attached to Pelter's forehead by some invisible rod, and he seemed to feel the searing extension of that rod through his forehead and out the back of his skull. He pressed down on the trigger of his weapon and tracked fire sideways. But the time it took him to redirect his aim was not time enough. Silver light flickered in the barrel of the weapon the agent held.
Pelter saw only blackness.
With a puzzled frown, Cormac walked over and looked down to examine Pelter. Apart from the hole burnt cleanly through the Separatist's forehead, the man was already a mess: not only was the link suppurating in his head, but his clothing was ragged and filthy, and he stank. This was not the Pelter Cormac had known; this was a man ravaged by some daemon. What else could account for such lack of self-regard? Cormac wondered just what had driven Pelter to become this thing that lay before him.
He was also puzzled by the terror he had heard in the man's voice. Death was always a distinct possibility for one of Pelter's tendencies, and always something to fear. But terror? Cormac glanced down at his thin-gun, pocketed it and walked away. He guessed he would never know the answer.
28
Contra-terrene device (abbr. CTD) is one of those euphemistic labels Earth Security comes up with every now and again, normally to stick on something associated with terms like 'megadeath', 'gigadeath' and 'Oh, shit!' A forty-megaton CTD could easily be mistaken for a simple thermos flask, and there are parallels. Only, if you open one, you will not find hot coffee inside; you will find antimatter, briefly.
The antimatter is held in an's-con magnetic coil, which is also powered by a bleed-off from it. Theoretically a CTD will not explode without a complex code being keyed into its detonator. The canisters have reputedly been shock tested to a 10,000-kilometres-per-hour flat collision with case-hardened ceramal, and heat-tested to the melting point of the same. One has to wonder what the meaning of 'test' is here, because no one seems to know if the canisters survived said 'tests'. Other questions that occur are: was there anything in the canisters when they were tested - and where are the people who tested them?