Anne returned her attention to the approaching three, slowly moving her hand away from her weapon. ‘I hope I don’t regret this,’ she said.
‘So do I,’ said Erlin.
The foremost of the three removed her helmet, and looked from Anne to Erlin with a deranged expression.
Here is something horrible, was Erlin’s immediate thought.
‘What have you done to my Jay?’ the woman asked.
So, this is Rebecca Frisk, concluded Erlin. Superficially she appeared an attractive young woman, but that this was merely a veneer over something old and ugly was also evident. Erlin kept silent.
Frisk turned from them and gazed at the Hoophold, smiling wistfully.
‘You’ll walk ahead of us,’ she instructed. ‘Try anything and you know what will happen to you.’ She gestured to Pland’s remains.
‘What about him?’ asked Erlin, gesturing at the unconscious Forlam, then instantly regretting that when one of the Batians turned his weapon on the prostrate crewman.
Frisk held up her hand. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. Gesturing with her laser for Anne and Erlin to move aside, she approached then squatted down beside Forlam. With one finger she pulled down his jaw to peer inside his mouth. She gave a small laugh and rocked back on her heels. ‘We’ll leave him here,’ she continued, then abruptly yanked the drip from his arm and cast it aside.
Anne went rigid.
‘The weapon — throw it on the ground,’ ordered Svan, levelling the snout of her weapon at Anne’s middle. Anne hesitated for only a moment, then undid her belt and dropped it to the earth. Svan now turned to Erlin, who wondered what she might want of her. The mercenary’s hand snaked out at Erlin’s belt, and she glanced down to see her QC laser being removed. How alert am I? she wondered. She’d been wearing the thing for so long, she’d forgotten its purpose.
‘Step back, both of you,’ said Svan, and the two captives did as directed.
Svan walked over to the belt, and stooped to withdraw the holstered automatic. She inspected it for a second, and then gave a bark of laughter before tossing it aside. The QC laser she tucked into her own belt.
‘Get moving.’ She pointed, as she stood up again.
Erlin and Anne turned and headed down the slope.
The Warden observed that the warning Windcheater had delivered earlier had been heeded, then concentrated its attention on another area of ocean. Even from one of the orbital eyes it had been possible to track the occasional flares of energy. It had to admit Sniper knew his business. Even with ‘attitude’, the enforcer drones remained pretty ineffectual in this situation. They were constructed for local police actions involving human terrorists, so could only cope with the kind of weaponry such groups normally possessed. They should still, though, have outclassed the antiquated war drone, just as the Prador war drones, with their heavy armour, outclassed them. But every time Sniper had come up trumps. The Warden suspected that Sniper had been constantly upgrading himself over the centuries that had passed since the war. Back then the old drone had certainly not possessed ballistic programs of such accuracy, nor did he own an antiphoton weapon. Even so, those Prador drones, with their armour and weaponry, should still technically have been superior. The Warden supposed Sniper’s victories indicated that it wasn’t the size of a weapon that counted, but how and when it was used. Each of Sniper’s victories was like that of a medieval pike man bringing down a mounted knight in full armour.
‘Signal detected. Transmitting,’ piped up SM1.
The Warden soaked up the signal and hoped that there would be enough information this time before the fighting recommenced. It carefully studied the quaternary code as it came in, then loaded it into the same program as the rest.
‘That’s it,’ concluded SM1.
‘Where is it?’ Sniper queried, as he hurtled towards the war drone.
‘No sign of any Prador war drone,’ said SM1, managing to sound utterly casual.
‘You know what this means?’ said Sniper to the Warden.
‘Enlighten me.’
‘It means that the Prador that’s down there can’t afford to lose any more of its drones, so has told them to head for cover rather than fight.’
‘Yes, so it would seem.’
The Warden was distracted now. That last two-second sequence had been enough for decoding. ‘Sniper, I have enough. You may withdraw,’ it sent.
‘Withdraw?’ Sniper asked.
‘Yes, that’s what I said. I see no reason to have any more of my SMs destroyed.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Sniper, shutting off with a crackle of static that sounded suspiciously like a raspberry. The Warden did not pursue this thought.
‘SM Eleven, initiate and upload to com relay shell,’ it sent to the satellite orbiting between itself and the planet. Two seconds later the satellite opened and spat yet another coffin-shape out into atmosphere. The Warden observed it for a moment, before concentrating a whole quarter of its processing power on the five seconds of coded transmission it now possessed. There was no point seeking to obtain any more, since if these five seconds couldn’t be cracked then the rest certainly couldn’t. After two seconds, the Warden ascertained that the code was based on random number generation from the quantum decay of a mixture of three rare isotopes. A real bastard, it thought. The Prador had never bothered much with building AIs, as they considered their own minds to be the pinnacle of excellence. This was unfortunate for them, as it deprived them of the knowledge that there was no such thing as a ‘random number’.
17
Emitting low-frequency screams, the heirodont thrashed about as the giant leech drove its mouthparts into it. One thrash of its tail had the whelk shell tumbling over into the abyss, like a disconnected diving bell. The pain for the heirodont was horrific, as the leech reamed from its body a tonne of flesh and blubber, and even chunks of the flat black bone that comprised its skeleton. In comparison the rider prill, which came scuttling in anticipation down the leech’s long slimy body, were only a minor irritation as they spread out from the predator’s head to slice off for themselves portions of skin and blubber, then squatted feasting with their little red eyes zipping constantly around their carapaces.
Vrell shifted uneasily, scraping his back legs on the deck. The adolescent Prador was feeling a strange sort of tension in his back end, under the ribbed plate that covered his rear stomach. He was also beginning to entertain thoughts about how unfair it was that he might soon die. Grinding his mandibles, he shook himself then brought his scope up to one of his eyes. There was no sign of any ships, but the relayed transmission from one of his father’s remote probes had already shown that the Convocation fleet had halted ten kilometres away. Vrell glanced at the relevant screen: all the sails had folded themselves up and there was still no movement there. The adolescent Prador turned his attention to the blank at the instrument console below the set of screens
‘Are we still being watched?’ Vrell asked.
The blank reached up and touched one of the screens. Four black dots slid across a white background, Prador glyphs flickering and changing beside each one.
‘AG signatures still present above us,’ said the blank.
Vrell turned in agitation, his sharp legs further tearing up the already splintered deck. Speaker, her one hand gripping what remained of the port rail, turned her head towards the adolescent. ‘Father,’ Vrell said towards her. ‘The Captains have been warned off. This is evident. They are not within the blast radius. Perhaps we should abort.’