As Vrell softened his shell patches and spread them with glue, he was aware that he was only delaying things. But then, the better he made himself feel, the more persuasive he could be with his father. He took his time affixing the patches, drying them afterwards with the blower from the medpack. When he had finished, and neatly stowed away the medpack, he noticed with some surprise that the sky was getting lighter. It suddenly occurred to him how visible he would soon become to the ships out in the cove. He backed up the beach into the cover of dingle, and again took out his communicator.
‘Father?’
There was a long pause before he received a reply.
‘Vrell, my son, you are an adult now,’ said Ebulan. ‘Have you completed your mission upon the island?’
‘I… I encountered more resistance than expected,’ said Vrell. As a Prador very new to adulthood, it did not yet occur to him to lie openly — only to bend the truth a little.
‘You failed, then,’ said Ebulan.
‘The fault is not entirely mine. Captain Drum came ashore—’
‘No matter,’ Ebulan interrupted. ‘I will be taking care of this matter myself, now.’
‘You’ll be coming here?’ Vrell asked, with renewed hope.
‘I will come.’
‘And you will pick me up?’
The grating, bubbling sound that issued from the communicator was the Prador equivalent of a laugh — something Vrell had rarely heard. He held the communicator away from his body, and gave it the full attention of all his remaining eyes.
‘Vrell, you are now an adult male, and as such you are no longer of any use to me. You are more of a hindrance and a threat. So when I reach your location and shower it with CTDs to kill off the Old Captains, your death will be an added bonus.’
‘But, Father—’
Ebulan cut off, and Vrell stared at the communicator for a long moment before his survival instinct belatedly kicked in. He stood up and made ready to charge down the beach to the sea. But the sight of twenty rowing boats heading for the shore had him drop back on to his belly like a falling dinner plate. He watched the men step ashore, as he slowly backed through the dingle, wondering if the ground back there was still soft enough somewhere to dig.
Using his heavy claw and few remaining legs, Sniper crawled over to the Prador war drone, clambered up on to it, and peered into the wide crack through which he had gutted it. The drone’s central core was now a mash of Prador brain tissue, insulation material, and optic nerve linkages. In the bottom of its armoured shell lay pooled the amniot in which the brain had been flash-frozen. The drone was undoubtedly dead, but, Sniper noted with interest, many of its systems were not too badly damaged. Reaching inside with his precision claw, Sniper took hold of one of the optic linkages and pulled it up for closer inspection. The interface was a straightforward electrochemical job he had come across many times during the long-distant war. Often damaged himself, while far from a Polity facility, he had scavenged Prador technology to repair himself. Circumstances were not quite the same this time, but he didn’t want to just sit here stranded on this atoll, waiting for one of the Warden’s SMs to find him eventually.
Sniper pushed back from the Prador’s shell and, with an internal order, dropped his lower head plate. The plate stuck part way, buckled and partially welded in place by spatters of molten metal from his missing legs, so he grasped it with his heavy claw, and tore it away to expose his solid-state insides. Reaching inside the Prador shell again, he pulled out a mass of optic linkages, and one at a time plugged them into an interface he’d had installed inside himself seven centuries ago. After ten minutes of swapping optic cables, and sorting the machine code return signals, a high-pitched whine was emitted from inside the Prador shell, and it lifted itself a few centimetres from the atoll before clunking back down again.
‘Bollocks,’ said Sniper, and this time relayed the internal order that opened the lower plates of his body, to expose the densely packed machinery of his life.
Later, a recessed nozzle on the side of the Prador shell briefly spat a fusion flame that nearly rolled the shell itself over on top of the old war drone. With his head now nearly inside his dead enemy, Sniper hardly noticed, as he worked away, discarding pieces of twisted metal and burnt components, and replacing them with pieces removed from himself.
‘Wake up,’ said the mercenary, Shib.
Erlin sat up quickly, half expecting a boot in her side. Anne was already up, squatting impassively by the ashes of the fire, wrists still twisting against her cuffs, eyes fixed on the weapons the Batians carried.
‘I need to urinate,’ said Erlin firmly.
Shib looked down at her. ‘Well then do so.’ The mercenary’s voice sounded watery and distorted by the hole in his cheek and the dressing covering one side of his face. Of them all, thought Erlin, he seemed to be coming off the worst. At some point, he’d lost a couple of fingers as well, she had noticed. She stood and looked about for something to squat behind: a tree or a rock. As she started towards the nearest tree, Shib jammed his weapon in her stomach.
‘I said “do so”. I didn’t say you could go anywhere,’ he said.
Erlin stared at him, then turned away. It was obvious that he was frightened and that his fear was making him vicious. She’d have to hold it. She’d be damned if she’d pee with him watching.
‘Come on, get them moving!’ yelled Frisk, trotting back into the campsite.
Shib jabbed both the prisoners in the back in turn, and they started to follow Frisk through a stand of peartrunk trees. Luckily no leeches fell. Beyond the trees, Svan waited with her weapon on her shoulder.
‘It looks easier further up,’ observed the female mercenary. ‘Fewer trees and less crap on the ground. Once we get up there, we should get a clear view all around.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ said Frisk, with a slightly crazy expression.
So Svan led the way, Frisk immediately following her, while Shib did his jabbing trick with the barrel of his weapon. Erlin thought gloomily that it was enough they were going to die — was it necessary to continually humiliate them as well?
They emerged out of thick dingle into a different terrain that was rocky and netted with vines. The peartrunks and other strange varieties of tree had the looser concentration here of a deciduous woodland. Leeches lying across their branches had the same hue and colour as their cousins nearer the shore. Putrephallus weeds grew singly, and the occasional lung bird spooked into flight was smaller and coloured like mouldy bread. As she walked Erlin brooded, and decided not to suffer any further indignity. She had come here seeking reasons to continue living — to discover how Ambel had achieved it. She had come here understanding that life on its own was not enough. She’d be damned if she’d give up everything else just for life itself. Anyway, she had an intimation that this increasingly frightened mercenary could be manipulated. She stopped abruptly and glared at Shib.
‘I’m going over there — to urinate behind those rocks.’ She indicated a cluster of vine-covered boulders. ‘You can kill me if you must. I leave that up to you.’
She turned on her heel and strode towards the boulders. She had expected to feel fear, but felt only a curious freedom. Shib himself said nothing, and Erlin was aware that the others had halted to stare at her.
Once out of view, Erlin struggled to loosen the catch on the side of her trousers. It would be too embarrassing to call for assistance. Stretching round until she felt she was going to sprain her shoulder, her cuffed hands finally managed to locate the catch. After blissful relief, struggling to get her trousers back up again she found she now could not fasten the catch. Dammit, she’d just go back and ask Anne to do it.