Cormac remembered the news stories he had seen as a child; about the livestock farms on Prador-occupied worlds—the livestock being humans who had never known any other life but that farm. How were such people now? Had their minds been edited of the horror?
"We seem to be straying from the key subjects," he said, "which are my father and the Hessick Campaign."
"Come with me," said the drone, now directing its antennae up towards the top of Vogol's Stone and leading the way. They walked up to the very edge, a thousand-foot drop below and much of the Olston Peninsular and Hessick County spread out before them. Amistad pointed a claw towards the purple misty line of the Cavander mountains. "Pushing from there we did manage to drive them from the peninsular, straight into the sea. But that was precisely what they wanted us to do. They wanted us out of the mountains where they could deploy against us more effectively."
"And the AIs didn't realise this?"
Amistad turned slightly to peer at him. "Of course they did, but the thinking was that if we could push them back for just a little while we could rescue the bulk of the population of Hessick County as far as the peninsular."
"So how did that go?"
"Your father and I were not involved in the main push. Along with numerous other Sparkind units and war drones our jobs were sabotage and assassination. We went in ahead of the main Polity forces, under chameleonware, to hunt down the three adult commanders on the ground, and any other first-children commanders we could find along the way."
"I know about that," said Cormac. "It was the assassination of two of the commanders that drove the remaining one to flee."
Amistad snipped a claw at the air. "Later, that was later…. We didn't manage to get close to any of them at first, though we did manage to take out some of the main first-children, like friend Vogol here. The subsequent main assault went very well, we thought. We pushed their forces back into the sea and were set to bring in atmosphere ships to evacuate some cities. It was only then that we began to find many of the cities were empty, and it was then that the Prador detonated the CTDs they'd spread strategically about the peninsular. While our forces were still in disarray, some thousands of concealed Prador war drones rose out of the sea and attacked. We started losing very heavily and had to retreat." The drone paused and gazed steadily at Cormac. "It was these events, and what we did during that retreat, that finally led to your father's death."
"And this you will explain to me?"
"First, during the Prador counterattack, because your father and I were running attack viruses from a grav-platform, we were at the edge of the CTD blast that killed your father's Sparkind unit, killed thousands of others and brought down an atmosphere gunship. Prador war drones then came in and slaughtered many more. Apart from the crew of the gunship Rickshaw, we were the only survivors of the battle in Sector 104. Your father took that hard, but was professional enough to continue. It was what happened later that made things worse."
"I picked up something about that Sector 104," said Cormac. "What could be worse than that?"
The drone continued in leaden tones, "You must understand that the Prador wanted to drive us off this world so they could have unrestricted access to the human population. They wanted those people alive for coring. We knew that and we had to do something about it. At the time it seemed impossible for us to evacuate the population of South Hessick."
"South Hessick Clearance," said Cormac.
"You know about it?" Amistad enquired.
"Only those words—access is restricted."
"Three cities in South Hessick were certainly doomed, we thought. There seemed no possibility of rescuing even just one person from them. And it took all our guile and the very best chameleonware technology to even get to a position where we could launch missiles at those cities."
Cormac felt a shiver go down his spine; so that what was meant by "clearance."
"They were occupied by Prador forces?"
"No."
"Slavery."
"Precisely." The drone sighed. "As we saw it, the choice the people in those cities faced was the most horrific treatment imaginable followed by a living death, or quick, utter extinction. We gave them the latter—it was merciful." Even through its leaden tone the drone sounded dubious. "Afterwards your father went slightly crazy as did some other survivors of the counterattack, including myself. Hate is a great driver. We took appalling risks, we disobeyed orders, we lost many, but we did the job. We got to the first Prador adult in a hardened bunker established under one of the depopulated cities; then, losing almost ninety per cent of our personnel, we managed to kill the other one in its undersea base."
"I've accessed some of this," said Cormac, "but the details are never clear. How did my father die?"
Seemingly ignoring the question, Amistad continued relentlessly. "As you know, the remaining adult Prador commander was frightened by this and fled the planet. Having seen us kill the first adult and knowing we were going after the second, the AIs predicted something like this might happen. They rapidly deployed one of the new dreadnoughts of the same design as the successful My Mary Rose and managed to kill that commander on his way back to his ship, subsequently taking out that capital ship as well. From then on, Prador ground forces began to lose direction. The arrival of more Polity dreadnoughts further turned the tide in space and they could then give air support down here. Still, it took us a month to finish them."
"How did my father die?" Cormac asked again.
After a long, long pause the drone turned towards him again. "This is the thing I have to tell you, Cormac. You're father did not die here."
"They know I'm here but they can't find me," said Carl Thrace. Cormac began edging a hand down to his side, towards where he had shoved Pramer's thin-gun into his waistband.
"Now now," Carl raised a finger. "You are acquired, and if you do anything incautious my friend here will just have to burn out your guts."
Glancing round at the case, Cormac saw the mosquito autogun had risen high on its legs and was turning. He knew the effectiveness of these machines, having set them up himself with Carl. He wasn't so stupid to think he could beat one to the draw. He tried auging outside, sending a message to the local AI, to ECS, but got only static.
"Using me?" he repeated, realising Carl must somehow have isolated this area of the exhibition.
"Certainly—they must be desperate," said Carl. "They know I'm here to sell the remaining CTDs to one of the big Separatist organisations and they want to stop that. They've got their agents swarming about but they're easy enough to avoid if you're not stupid. My guess is that they hoped your presence here would draw me out and, obviously, they were not wrong. Imagine my surprise when Omidran Glass sent me the image of someone who was looking for me." Carl tilted his head, his expression amused. "She sent it just before they arrested her aboard her ship."
"So why is it that I drew you out?" Cormac considered his reasons for being here. If the AIs had not wanted him on a world where Carl was likely to be, it would have been easy enough for them to stop him. Serendipity, perhaps, though that was certainly something no AI would believe in.
Carl drew a squat nasty-looking pulse-gun and pointed it at Cormac's head. "Take out the thin-gun, drop it on the floor and kick it over here."
As he reached for Pramer's gun, Cormac briefly considered trying to use it, but though he might be able to get off a shot at Carl alone, the autogun would have time to individually burn off his fingers before he pulled the trigger. He carefully took out the gun, dropped it, and kicked it over, though not all the way over. Carl smiled and shook his head, stepped forward and squatted to pick the weapon up. He slid it into his pocket, then stepping to one side and circling around Cormac, said, "You drew me out, Cormac, because you interest me." He grimaced. "For the years I was with you I thought you just a recruit, then subsequent events convinced me you must be an ECS agent, then further events have apprised me of the truth: you are a recruit, but a surprisingly adept one. Also, Cormac, I have come to dislike you to the extreme. You are adept, intelligent, and painfully irritatingly moral. You see the world in black and white, and so would make perfect ECS agent material. This is why I am making it my personal business to kill you."