‘Aw, leave some for me,’ the drone called out to the dracomen.
It soon received its wish as a new type of beast joined the fray.
They kept running on, many other creatures attacking. Proton and pulse-gun fire all around, Arach seemed to be everywhere, concentrating his huge firepower on grouped masses of the alien assailants, in the process bringing down swathes of jungle in burning fragments. The long-legged things could extend their heads, Cormac discovered, as he sent Shuriken hammering through one telescopic neck. The detached head landed beside a fallen dracoman, who rolled aside quickly and came upright to fire down at it, as the head now scuttled off on its mandibles like some independent beast. The target bounced briefly in red flame and then flew apart. Cormac recalled Shuriken and sent it skimming towards another such creature. Premature action, as the headless body of the first one, still suspended in midair, extruded a long metallic tongue which wrapped around the dracoman and wrenched him back viciously. A strange groaning squeal ensued, then two separate halves of smoking dracoman hit the ground. Cormac fired his carbine, its flame meeting the tongue as it now shot towards him. Shuriken, almost as if angry about the dracoman’s death, hammered in and out horizontally through its own opponent, then chopped up and down vertically on its return course. The creature fell to pieces.
Blegg, beside him, keeping pace. ‘Seems they’ve decided we are the ones to be captured alive, and the dracomen are now dispensable.’
‘How many?’ Cormac asked.
‘Five dracomen down.’ Blegg pointed at something weaving towards them. It resembled a long iron nematode hovering a foot from the ground, sliding through the air with the writhing of a snake. A red scythe of fire hit it in the middle, then two shorter versions of the same thing darted away. They both swung round on the source of the shot: a dracoman, clearly visible now since in using their camouflage there was too much danger of hitting each other in this fire-fight. One of the metallic things slammed into his chest, and with a sound like a cleaver striking a butcher’s block, pieces of dracoman and long shards of metal exploded in every direction. More and more Jain-factored creatures were coming in from every direction. A dracoman was snatched up in triple jaws, and the explosion of its carbine energy canister hurled Cormac to his knees. Up again. Left arm numb against his side where smoking shrapnel was embedded. Pain blocking program initiated, then firing one-handed into a nightmare head looming over him. Blegg slammed into his side, just as Shuriken came screaming overhead and straight into the creature’s mouth.
‘Up!’ Blegg spun him round, drew a carbide commando knife, and in one quick movement levered the hot metal from his arm. ‘Not too bad,’ he observed
With movement returning to that arm, Cormac drew his thin-gun and fired off to his left with that, while simultaneously firing with the carbine past Blegg. The tracking and targeting program he was using was sending him cross-eyed. A whumph as a rod-ship crashed down amid them, crushing foliage and ejecting tendrils as thick as falling trees. Cormac saw another dracoman caught up as he himself concentrated fire on the deflating but spreading rod-ship. Spearing towards him, the ground lumped up like a worm track. He aimed downwards just as tendrils exploded from the earth and wrapped around his leg. Severing them with fire, he subliminally saw the captured dracoman slammed hard against the ground and discarded. Not even a complete thought sent Shuriken whirring over above the dracoman while it shook itself like a dog and staggered upright again.
Something else arced through the air, its source Arach, and its terminal whine familiar. Cormac ducked down as this missile landed amidst the spreading tendrils and exploded, spreading something like phosphorus across the ground. The blast seemed to propel Cormac through an area of new growth, where shoots like giant red asparagus speared up from the incinerated remains of stalks. He stumbled through a mass of red vines writhing under painfully bright sunshine, and out onto charred ground scattered with smaller blood-red shoots of new growth. Dracomen emerged either side of him, then Blegg came stepping out backwards concentrating fire up into the face of some attacker. Arach came last, two cannons swivelling and targeting independently, the shots ripping into fast-moving silvery opponents, the flash of his particle cannon stabbing out regularly like a fiery tongue. Without that drone, Cormac realized, this would have been over very quickly. He swiftly counted—eighteen dracomen surviving—then turned round to see mountain slopes ahead.
‘I’ve got you now,’ came Thorn’s voice over com.
Running down like silver dogs came four Polity autoguns. Drawing close, they squatted obediently and poured violet fire into the jungle.
17
USER (underspace interference emitter): this device works by rhythmically inserting and removing a massive singularity through a runcible gate. The U-space interference this causes will knock any ship within its vicinity back into realspace. The singularity is contained by an inverted gravity field which is in turn powered by tidal drag, since the singularity is spinning very fast. The containment field necessarily collapses in the U-continuum and reinstates when out of it again. Huge forces and huge amounts of energy are employed, most of it generated by the singularity’s spin, therefore, that spin gradually slows. When it drops below a certain threshold, the USER must be returned to an as yet unrevealed military complex—rumoured to be sited in orbit around a black hole — where titanic magnetic accelerators spin the singularity back up to optimum again. It is also rumoured that this technology has been available for some time, but AIs were loath to employ it because by artificially creating singularities (black holes, essentially), they are shortening the life span of the universe. Evidently they intend sticking around for a while, and the fact that USERs are now being employed might suggest the AIs have found a way to deconstruct black holes.
- From ‘Quince Guide’ compiled by humans
As a precaution, when the two dragon spheres came together, Mika had again donned her spacesuit. Good thing, too. She grabbed up her pack and quickly stuffed into it anything immediately to hand that might increase her chances of survivaclass="underline" food, drink, energy canisters and medical supplies. Closing up her helmet and visor, she headed for the shimmer-shield, pushed through, then opened the airlock beyond. Stepping outside she looked up to a view not cleaned up by computer like the view from inside. Bright actinic sunlight cut through from one side, between a curved ceiling and curved floor composed of draconic flesh. Masses of pseudopods were sliding down beside her—a massive but eerily silent avalanche. Scales slowly tumbled through vacuum around her, and nearby they dropped sharply on the gravplated walkway. She kicked them aside as she strode towards her craft. She noted, as the gull-door rose at her approach, the docking clamps folding into the metal of the manacle below.
‘Can you hear me, Dragon?’ she asked, halting for a moment.
Nothing.
What was happening? The two spheres were breaking their connection, and thus far she saw no sign of hostility between them. But would she recognize that anyway? Perhaps right now they were fighting some battle on a virtual level, or perhaps they adhered to certain rules of conduct for something like this? They were alien, and despite lengthy investigation remained alien still, so who was to know? However, as Mika ducked into the little craft, the dragon spheres seemed to her like two card-sharps standing up from the table, about to put some distance between each other, making room to manoeuvre before going for their weapons, each hoping to get the drop on his opponent.