A concert of voices replied, "Yes, Father."
Gazing through sensors in the drone cache, Immanence watched the nine spherical war drones accelerating out through the triangular space door. Checking designations he noted Vagule was the last of them. This must be just chance, for Vagule could now have no sense of trying to extend his span. Via exterior sensors the captain watched them speeding away, the proximity to the runcible being such that Boh cast a weak shadow over them and the ship. Now Immanence returned his attention to the approaching enemy.
"Bring it on human," he bubbled in the Prador tongue. "Just come a little closer."
Gnores hurtled from the assault docking tube punched through the skin of the station, and scrambled to a halt tearing up carpet in the embarkation lounge. He swung in a circle, rail-gun, particle weapon and a laser brought to bear on the branching corridors around him. He felt rather reckless and quite relished the prospect of a fight. It was a first-child trait, and another reason why first-children tended to need replacing. He knew this, but still could not feel any other way, just as he knew that his father might be preparing to remove him, and could do nothing but obey.
Fifty second-children now poured in, similarly armed but also carrying high-powered scanners. No attack revealed itself—not a human in sight.
"Follow the search pattern precisely. Those who deviate, unless required to by combat, will not be returning to Father's ship," Gnores told them. But if there was anything to find he did not expect it to be within these human accommodation units. The other fifty second-children, suited against vacuum and now spreading out around the entire structure, would be the ones to find booby traps, because if they were here, they would certainly be on the runcible device itself.
Gnores replaced all his weapons in his harness, then while walking around the embarkation lounge, listened into the com-chatter of the second-children, and to those channels open back to the ship, which kept him updated. Moving over to a wide window—something unthinkable to a Prador for here would be a weakness in its armour—he gazed at his father's ship, clearly visible just out from the runcible. The ship stood silhouetted against gaseous incandescence on its other side, and through those channels Gnores learnt it was intercepting a rail-gun attack.
"Gnores! Gnores! Gnores! A human!"
Gnores whirled around and accelerated across the lounge to the branching corridors on the other side. Many of them were far too small for him to enter. Besides, he did not know which one he should enter anyway.
On the com unit he now held in his claw, Gnores traced who spoke, reaching forward with one of his finer under-hands to manipulate the complex controls. XG-12, one of the batch raised to second-childhood shortly after they set out from the Second Kingdom. According to the map he should be a hundred metres over—
The human charged into sight with XG-12 snapping claws at his heels. Gnores drew and aimed his rail-gun, but then realised the human was unarmed. The creature paused, seeing him, then abruptly ran towards him, making all sorts of strange noises and waving about its soft upper limbs.
"Desist, XG-12. Return to the search."
The second-child slid to a halt, perhaps remembering Gnores' earlier threat and realising that this might not be defined as a combat situation. It turned away and ran off. The human staggered to a halt before Gnores, gasping, and still intermittently making those noises. Gnores realised it was trying to talk to him, only he carried no translator. He reached out and closed the tips of his claws on its lower torso and picked it up.
"Father, I have found a human. It is trying to speak to me but I do not understand it," he sent via one of the channels to the ship.
After a moment Immanence, having viewed Gnores' prize through the cameras mounted on the first-child's carapace, replied, "Gnores, it is not trying to speak to you. It is making those sounds because it is in pain. You have damaged it."
Gnores abruptly realised he had squeezed too tightly, for the lower torso of the creature split open and organs were bulging out. There also seemed to be a lot of red liquid dribbling onto the floor. Gnores dropped the human at once. He observed it coiling on its side and trying to push its internal organs back inside.
"I was sure it was trying to speak to me a moment ago," he said.
"Why do you not have a translator with you?" Immanence enquired.
Gnores felt a sudden flash of embarrassment. Though having brought every variety of hand weapon, scanning gear and equipment for accessing human computer systems, he had entirely forgotten about bringing a translator. Then came the fear. Father would severely punish such a lapse. Such a lapse would probably ensure his removal as a Prime. And there was only one way Primes wereever removed.
"But this place was supposed to be empty! My mission here was to scan for booby traps and secure—"
"Upon your return, Gnores," said Immanence, "we will discuss this further."
Gnores sagged as the comlink broke. He stared dimly into his future and realised it did not extend very far.Damned human! He sank into a fug of self-pity and wondered if his father was already ordering a drone shell to be brought up to his sanctum, or if all of Gnores would be food for second-children.The human — some payback there… Gnores forced his attention back to his surroundings. He would keep the human alive. He would be much more careful this time.
Maybe he could make that pleasure last until Immanence recalled him. He peered down at the floor and saw a bloody trail leading over to a nearby corridor, the human just dragging himself from sight. Gnores charged over and crashed into the corridor mouth—his shell too large to allow him ingress. For a moment he tore at the walls with his claws, but then the human opened some kind of access hatch and began pulling himself inside. Gnores drew his rail-gun and fired, but too late, for the human escaped.
Gnores stood grinding his mandibles together and drooling black saliva. After a moment he pushed himself back and whirled away. No matter. It wouldn't live very long with such injuries. They never did.
Now.The time was now. Moria restarted the positioning drives on the Trajeen runcible, and observed the massive gateposts separating from each other, slowly at first then accelerating, drawing out the Skaidon warp, the drives' white blades of flame pointing inwards over the meniscus surface. In her real-time model Moria observed theOccam Razorhurtling down towards Boh, and the Prador vessel dropping lower and lower to keep itself between its opponent and the runcible. Some of the Polity vessel's missiles came close to hitting the runcible itself. That would spell disaster, but, equally, revealing to the Prador that the Boh runcible was not the Polity ship's intended target would be disastrous too. But just maybe there lay a way around that. Moria accessed the runcible's meteor collision lasers and routed through to them a military ballistics program uploaded from the planet. Maybe that would be enough.