‘I hit some powerful defences, which nearly brought me down.’ Keech gestured with his thumb towards Boris and Roach. ‘On the way out I saw your ship burning and picked up these two on my way back.’
Ron stared at Roach.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ protested Roach.
‘I know that,’ said Ron, since he and Ambel had already had a long talk with Boris and ascertained most of the facts. He gestured to the probe Boris still carried and said to Keech, ‘What I’d like to know is what’s happening now.’
‘The Warden will be, let’s say, playing close attention to events down here,’ explained Keech. ‘Spatterjay might be officially Out-Polity, but it still comes under Polity protection. There was that much agreement between you lot and the Polity at least.’
‘What’s out there, then?’ asked Ambel, pointing seawards.
Keech gave Ambel a long look, then said, ‘Where there’s Prador adolescents there’s a Prador adult around too. In the absence of an adult, one of their adolescents becomes one very quickly. Prador adults are pretty careful about their own safety, so if there’s one anywhere here it’ll be heavily armed.’
‘Spzzckt light destroyer,’ SM13 chipped in.
They all stared at the drone Boris was carrying.
Keech continued, ‘A ship like that in hiding somewhere and Prador agents running around all over the place — that isn’t something the Warden would tolerate.’
‘But is it something the Warden can do anything about?’ asked Ambel.
Keech gazed at him again, and it was obvious to Janer the kind of thoughts that were going through the monitor’s mind.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Keech.
They trudged on a little further, until Ron suddenly halted, staring at the ground.
‘I reckon it’s circling back on itself. But if we go on any further in this light, we’ll lose the trail,’ he warned.
Janer sighed and slipped his backpack from his shoulders. Ambel gestured to a protected spot below a single huge slab jutting up diagonally from the ground. The six of them made their way over and sat in its dark shadow. Shortly, Ambel opened his bag and passed around dried strips of rhinoworm. Janer chewed on a length of it while pulling what remained of his heat sheet out of his pack. Roach began tugging lengths of dead vine from a nearby rock, and made a pile of them, then Boris ignited the heap with a quick burst from the laser he carried. He then looked to Captain Ron and tossed the laser over to him. The Captain caught it and pocketed it in one swift motion.
‘There’ll have to be payment for Goss,’ said Ron.
Boris nodded as he squatted by the campfire, and began poking it with a stick.
Drum stumbled on through darkness, aware that he needed rest but knowing that, if he stopped for it, there would be no one to watch his back and that he’d wake up to find the leeches sucking on his face. He was tired, but most of all he was hungry. The injuries he had received from both Frisk and the Prador were well healed now, but they had drained his resources to the limit. He needed food to top up his strength, but particularly he needed Dome food to prevent him from going ‘native’. He considered stopping to light a fire, but decided against this. Warmth would only make him sleepy and would do nothing to keep the leeches away.
As he proceeded, Drum could hear the sounds of heirodonts feeding nearby, and their wails as leeches fed on them. This caught his attention for a while, but soon his head began to slump and he walked an increasingly wavering path through the endless dingle. Some unconscious instinct still kept him away from the trunks of trees, a touch on which could bring leeches raining down on his head. That same instinct did not however prevent his walking slap-bang into a metal post.
He stepped back and swore, then reached out and ran his hand over the corroded metal facing him. Slave post. Immediately he knew where he was and gained new hope of finding a place free of any concentration of leeches — a place where he could rest. He moved further through the remaining dingle as it gradually thinned and the light of Coram could reach the ground.
‘Who’s that bugger?’ spoke a voice to one side of him.
‘Whoisss? Wooisss?’ said a voice not entirely human.
‘That you Peck?’ asked Drum of one of the shapes visible nearby.
‘Tis.’
‘Who’s that with you?’
‘Forlam,’ said Peck. ‘He’s a bit buggered,’ he explained.
When it was fully dark, Vrell finally summoned the nerve to pull himself from his muddy hideaway. This at first proved difficult because the mud had meanwhile dried into a hard crust over the top of him. When he eventually broke free, much of this crust still stuck to his carapace; a weight more difficult to carry now he was reduced to being quadrupedal.
With his extra burden, Vrell moved slowly down towards shore, anxious to make as little noise as possible. Even this proved difficult, since Prador were not by nature adapted for travelling through thick dingle; their home world consisted of shallow seas, wide and level tidal areas, and extensive saltpans. However carefully he moved, Vrell kept knocking over trees as he progressed, thus getting so many leeches swarming on him that every so often he had to stop to tip them off. The worst of it was that he was no longer invulnerable to the creatures. The sensitive burned flesh of his burst claw was open to their attack, as was the raw area on his side where his shell had been charred to powder. Every time he wrenched an eager leech from his wounds, he hissed like a steam kettle and cursed all humans.
Half the night, it took Vrell to reach the shore, and finally squatting on the beach there, he gazed out at the glowing lanterns of the ships moored in the cove. For a while he felt confusion, then he understood and lowered himself dejectedly to the sand. Of course: Drum. Somehow the Captain had foiled his father’s plan, which meant that he, Vrell, had also failed. Father would depart now and find some other means to accomplish his ends.
Vrell unfolded one of his remaining arms and gazed at the device held in his complex hand comprised of fingers and hooks. With the blanks all around him directly linked to his father, there had been, up till now, no need for this. But he had brought it along anyway, in the eventuality of all the blanks being killed. It was a communicator that linked him with his father’s destroyer. He could call now and speak. He could call now and ask his father for instructions. With a sinking depression, he lowered the communicator. He already knew what those instructions would be: something along the lines of, ‘Return inland, kill and die.’ This was not what Vrell wanted to hear. Instead of using the communicator, he slid himself down the beach into the sea to soak off the weight of mud on his back.
With the cool water soothing his wounds and the mud slewing from him, Vrell carefully studied his surroundings, noticing all the dead sea creatures floating on the surface. Seeing such a preponderance of dead leeches raised his spirits a little, till he began to think more positively. He had done all he could, and only failed because the odds were insurmountable. Perhaps his father would make the small diversion necessary to pick him up, before quitting the planet. Perhaps Vrell could get out to the destroyer and be taken aboard?
He again checked his communicator, switching to one of its many facilities. The beacon setting sent his location out to the destroyer, just as it revealed the location of the destroyer to him. It was still sitting out there at the bottom of its trench. Vrell heaved himself ashore and pulled the medpack from his underside. A few shell patches should be enough to keep any more leeches out of his wounds if he were forced to swim the huge expanse of intervening sea. He fervently hoped that would not be necessary.