"Yeah," said Layden, gazing determinedly at Pramer. "I need something."
Pramer nodded as if he had expected this, reached in his pocket and took out an inhaler which he tossed across to the man. Layden took three pulls on the thing in quick succession, then abruptly stood more upright with colour returning to his complexion.
He grinned. "Better... much better."
Obviously some sort of stimulant, Cormac realised, though there were so many different kinds it wasn"t worth trying to guess which one. He stepped onto the platform, waited until the others were in place, then hit the up arrow on the simple touchpad. Clamp wheels closed on the four poles positioned at each corner of the platform and began turning, rapidly taking them up. More scavengers scuttled out from underneath the platform itself, and Cormac wondered why they were here. Was the port above them the one out of which those Prador second-children had dumped human remains?
Soon the autodozers and KiloTees were the size of toys below them and they could see all the way in both directions along the ma.s.sive trench. The air was fresh and clean for a little while, then started to take on a putrid smell as they neared the entrance into the ship. Eventually the platform jerked to a halt beside a metre-wide circular port in the hull. Stretching inwards evenly s.p.a.ced around this port were eight crescent-section rails, their inner faces micro-ridged all the way down with doped superconductors. Coolant pipes, s-con cables and various control systems ran through the jacket enclosing all this. It would have been impossible to enter had not a hole been cut through at the base of the port. Cormac eyed the ladder, epoxied in place and stretching down into darkness, took out his torch and turned it on, then climbed down.
The ladder got them into a chamber over five hundred feet long, with the rail-gun sitting above them like a fallen redwood. To one side lay the magazine and related mechanisms: a belt feed still loaded with one-ton iron-and-ceramic projectiles whose impact energy when fired delivered the destructive potential that in the past had been reserved for atomic weapons. Two more torches came on, their beams stabbing here and there about the interior.
"Stinks," said Pramer.
Cormac nodded and took his palm screen. He displayed the map he had made and studied it for a moment, quickly realising he had forgotten nothing about the route.
"You say there"ll be no one here this late?" asked Layden. The man looked wired-pupils dilated and motions all jerky and overextended.
"It"s unlikely there"ll be anyone this deep in the ship, though there might be some nearer the main entrance." He waved a hand about him. "Dealing with this is not so crucial anymore, so the work is confined to the daylight hours. They also don"t like coming in here at night, since it was during the night they lost personnel."
"The Prador," said Layden, eyes wide.
"They think they got the last of them."
"They think?"
Cormac eyed Layden with pretend contempt, shook his head and moved on.
The corridor beyond smelt even worse, but then it did not have the ventilation. Ship lice dropped from the uneven walls and scuttled across the floor towards the torch beams. Kicking them away hardly discouraged them, so every few paces at least one of the four needed to crush one of the creatures under a boot heel. They climbed down a ladder bonded to the side of a Prador drop-shaft, where the lice were even more of a danger as they tried to nip fingers or drop on heads. More corridors, one now filled with the stench like that of rotting seafood from Prador second-children heaped on a gravsled outside the Captain"s Sanctum. Here the ship lice did not bother them, so busily were they feeding on the corpses. Cormac led the three past these and eventually brought them to their goal.
The room was narrow. To the right was a plain if slightly uneven wall, but to the left was no wall, just the exposed section of a carousel. Many of the compartments in the face of this huge wheel were empty, but three contained smoothly polished cylinders each about two feet long and ten inches in diameter. As Cormac understood it, this was not an actual loading carousel, but just one component in the mechanisms the Prador captain used to select the explosive load for the missiles he was firing.
"Don"t look like much," said Pramer.
"Perhaps not," said Cormac. "But detonate one of these in your home city and that city would be gone, along with a fair portion of the coastline too."
Pramer nodded, then reached out to grip the top of one and pull it-it seemed immovable. "How do we get these out?"
"You pull very hard," said Cormac. "The clamps are sprung, but to a tension for Prador."
Pramer started heaving at the CTD, putting all his considerable muscle bulk into the effort. Cormac reached in from the side and tried to help, but though the device moved out of its clamp slightly, the moment they took the pressure off, it snapped back into place.
"We need a lever." Cormac stepped out into the corridor and headed back towards the Captain"s Sanctum. It did not surprise him to find Sheen walking beside him, still watching him warily.
"There," he pointed. The remains of the gas-propellant guns the Prador second-children had used lay jumbled in a pile to the rear of the gravsled loaded with their corpses. Cormac and Sheen sorted through the mess, selecting lengths of hard Prador metal that might be suitable. Cormac was just hefting a flat length of square bar, its end flattened like that of a crow bar, when a high girlish and terrified scream echoed along the corridor.
"Layden," said Sheen.
This was not part of Cormac"s plans. A man would not scream like that because ECS had come to arrest him, but because he was terrified and in pain. Only two causes seemed probable: either Pramer had done something to him, or something else had just arrived.
Armed with their makeshift weapons, Sheen and Cormac charged back towards the other two, and upon rounding a corner saw Pramer hurtling towards them. He skidded to a halt, and Sheen tossed him one of the handles from the gas guns: a heavy metal ring attached to a short, thick chunk of metal, sharp all around its edges from where it had broken away. He gripped it in his natural hand and hefted it like a ma.s.sive knuckle-duster, then turned. Cormac noted his artificial hand was missing to expose a short stabbing blade dripping something like green oil. Then the Prador second-child came.
Cormac felt that familiar surge of adrenaline, the tightness in the gut and a feeling as of hot water being poured down inside his spine, but it didn"t seem so intense this time. Maybe this was because this Prador wasn"t the size of the ones that had been ga.s.sed back in the Sanctum corridor, or maybe it was because he was becoming accustomed to the feeling. Certainly, with a sh.e.l.l over a metre across and claws big enough to snip off someone"s head, this Prador was not something you wanted to encounter without a large gun in your hand. Cormac eyed the length of metal he held, then the Prador as it ceased its pursuit and began scuttling from side to side in the corridor, obviously wary of attacking the three humans facing it. Seemingly without effort Cormac remembered everything he had been taught about Prador physiology. The manipulatory arms folded underneath the creature"s body weren"t anywhere near as dangerous as the claws unless they were holding some weapon, and they weren"t. The top of the sh.e.l.l, behind the visual turret and eye-palps, would be as hard as stone, as were the claws themselves. There were only a few vulnerable points.
"Hit the visual turret, leg joints and claw joints nearest the body," he said. "Don"t let that f.u.c.ker close a claw on you, or you"re dead."
"No s.h.i.t," said Sheen, stepping to one side and hefting a chunk of metal like a long-handled cleaver.
The Prador second-child came to a decision and surged forwards, its claws spread wide ready to snap closed on any available flesh. Cormac hesitated for a moment, seeing how he and his companions were going to get in each others way, then abruptly ran towards the creature. The Prador emitted a hissing squeal, snapping its claws open and closed perhaps in an attempt to intimidate. Before they came within reach of him, Cormac threw himself over the creature, somersaulting in mid-air with a claw just brushing his head, and came down feet first on its carapace. He had time for one swipe with the metal bar bringing it down hard on one eye-palp, crushing it into the creature"s visual turret, before his momentum spilled him behind.
Shouldering into the floor, he rolled and came upright, the creature stopping and half turning towards him. But Pramer and Sheen now attacked, and undecided which way to turn, it presented only one claw to them, while being unable to deploy its other against any of them. Sheen fenced with the snapping claw, while Pramer tried to get in close to use his shorter-range weapons. Seeing an opportunity, he ducked in close and managed to drive his makeshift knuckle-duster straight into the monster"s mouth, breaking one mandible.
Rushing in on the rear quarter of the creature, Cormac leapt and came down with both feet on the knee of one leg. The leg broke and the creature squealed, partially collapsing. Cormac brought his bar down on another leg, breaking a joint. Foaming from its broken mouth it turned fully towards him. He hit the base joint of the claw swinging towards him, then backed off. Sheen hit another leg, severing its sharp tip, and the Prador swung back towards her, but it was Pramer who did the most damage. He leapt onto its back, drove his knife down hard, punching through carapace to anchor himself, then began pounding on its visual turret with the gun handle until the carapace there began to crack and green gore to spatter.
Cormac now concentrated on the claw shoulder joint on his side and, copying him, Sheen attacked the other claw joint. They both realised Pramer was in a position to finish the job, only needing those claws kept away from him. Five heavy blows and the claw on Cormac"s side was dragging on the ground. Sheen, though she did not disable the claw immediately, obviously opened a gap in the carapace, for she drove her lump of metal deep in beside the claw joint.
The creature jetted foamed bile from its broken mouth. Its visual turret was all but gone, and now the blows Pramer was delivering were punching down into its main body. Abruptly it collapsed completely, its legs shivering and breath rasping wetly. Pramer sat back, and began picking unpleasant gobbets from his arm. Stepping up beside him, Cormac gazed at the hole the man had punched through, estimated the positions of the internal organs, then drove his bar in at a sharp angle. The Prador convulsed, its breathing ceasing all at once, though its legs continued shivering. Cormac turned the metal, then sawed it back and forth, finally pulled it out.
"Is it dead?" asked Sheen.
Cormac stepped away for a moment, turning his back on them. The surge of nausea had come quickly, but taking steady breaths for a moment he forced it into retreat before turning back to face them.
"If not," he said, "then it soon will be. I was able to sever its main ganglion." He rested a hand momentarily on Pramer"s shoulder. "Thanks to our champion here."
It was an odd feeling. He admired both Pramer and Sheen for their bravery, liked them a little better than before, yet he was going to betray them and, one way or another, that betrayal would lead to them dying.
"What happened to Layden?" he asked the big man beside him.
"Pulled his guts out," said Pramer.
Sheen tugged her chunk of metal from the Prador"s shoulder joint, but it responded not at all now. Cormac pulled out his gore-soaked implement, stepped down to the floor and headed back towards the cache of CTDs, the other two falling in behind him. Within a few minutes he saw that Pramer had not exaggerated: Layden was sitting up against the wall of the corridor opposite the door into the cache, a pool of blood spreading all around him and his intestines trailing in a long line right back to the door. On the wall above the man Cormac noted the spatter marks and surmised that the Prador had driven its claw into his guts and flung him, those intestines unravelling like the string of a yo-yo. He walked over to the man, squatted down beside him and checked his pulse. Nothing. An artery had been cut inside him and he"d quickly died of shock and blood loss. It was a good thing that the artery had been cut, else he would have suffered a long and lingering death-Samara"s instructions were that the CTDs took precedence over injured comrades.
"Dead?" Sheen enquired.
"Thoroughly," Cormac replied. "Let"s get this done and get out of here." He reached down and opened Layden"s belt bag, removing the remote control, took up his metal bar and followed the other two into the cache. Cormac and Pramer levered out the four CTDs and placed them down on the floor while Sheen removed the monofilm rucksacks from her belt cache, unfolded them, and placed the CTDs inside. The weapons were very heavy and Cormac considered suggesting they leave one behind, but knew that after what they had just been through, that would be the wrong thing to say.
"We"ll carry it between us," he said to Pramer.
Donning their rucksacks they stepped out of the cache, Pramer and Cormac holding a strap each of the fourth rucksack, it hanging heavily between them.
"What about him?" asked Pramer.
"They"ll know someone got in here when they come to move the CTDs," said Cormac. "But maybe we can cover things a bit."
They put the spare rucksack down and, taking a leg each, they dragged Layden to the Prador, over it, then to the gravsled stacked with the ga.s.sed second-children. With some heaving and shifting, and much swatting away of ship lice, they managed to shove him out of sight underneath one of the dead creatures. Next they returned for the freshly killed Prador, managed to pick it up between them and carry it back to heave up onto the same stack. Returning for the extra CTD, Cormac observed smaller ship lice, perhaps those unable to compete in the scrum about the dead Prador, scuttling out from hollows in the walls. He saw two conducting a tug of war with a length of Layden"s intestine, others were s.n.a.t.c.hing up bits of carapace and Prador flesh, while still more had come to revel in the sticky pools of human and alien blood.
"Should clear up more evidence of our visit," he said as they retrieved the fourth CTD and made their way out. Pramer gave him a sour look and Sheen a blank one.
On the elevator Cormac checked the remote control and saw it was primed to stop the autodozer and open it, and he had no doubt that once inside the machine he would be able to stop it at the designated point on the return journey, then instruct it to dig a hole for the CTDs, and fill it in again. There they would disembark and go their separate ways.
It moved fast despite looking heavier than a truck and despite being underwater. His room door opened and in a moment both his mother and Dax were there beside him.
"What is it?" Hannah asked. "What"s wrong?"
No sign of it out there but for a cloud of disturbed silt, which could have been caused by anything. Even before he spoke he guessed how this was going to run.
"That war drone was out there," he said.
"War drone?" Dax asked.
Cormac turned to look at them, realising the remote was displaying the red fail light because he was clutching it too tightly and pressing down on too many controls at once.
"It was the one we saw in Montana, and the one I saw outside school," he said, carefully unclenching his fingers.
"Are you sure?" Of course she had to ask that.
"I"m sure," said Cormac.
"Outside your school," Hannah repeated, her voice flat.
She and Dax exchanged an unreadable look, then returned their attention to him.
"Ian," she said, "it was probably one of the maintenance bots."
Dax took up her line. "They"re always working out there, sc.r.a.ping off the barnacles or keeping the windows clean or unblocking vents-this place requires a lot of maintenance."
Cormac recollected a word he"d recently looked up on his p-top, because he"d just caught the tail end of a conversation between his mother and Dax which he felt sure was about him. The word was patronising. He was being patronised; he was being treated with condescension. Determined to protest about this he gazed at his mother and brother, but then he noticed something. His mother was not looking at him but at Dax, who was pallid and appeared frightened, as with a shaking hand he opened a packet of self-igniting cigarettes, only just managed to get one to his lips and puff it into life. Cormac understood then that his own fright, which was fading fast, was of the least concern. There was something badly wrong with Dax.
"When"s your slot?" Hannah asked Dax.
"Any time today, though there"s no guarantee I"ll get in quickly."
"We"ll head over to the clinic now," she said, to which Dax replied with a mute nod. Hannah turned to Cormac. "Unpacking can wait-we"re going out now."
Dax turned and left the room, trailing a cloud of smoke behind him, and their mother followed. Cormac turned to the room window, picked up the remote control and blanked it. So he had seen the war drone out there. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe, for reasons he just could not fathom, it was following him. What did that matter? War drones were only harmful if you were a Prador.
Cormac opened his bag and took out his p-top, quickly calling up a site he had found earlier that covered in lengthy detail the effects of PTSD, which throughout this war was aggravated by alien environment shock, sometimes given the antiquated term "sh.e.l.l shock" but which referred to some of the effects upon soldiers of certain esoteric weapons deployed across the front, and the other stresses resulting from the numerous protective inoculations and nano-technologies running in a soldier"s bloodstream. He understood that Dax was suffering from something that came under the general term "battle stress." He hadn"t read through much of the site, but he knew now that these aftereffects could kill, in many different ways.
His mother poked her head into his room. "Are you ready?"
Cormac closed his p-top and hooked it on his belt. He moved to follow her out, but had to pause for a moment while the Loyalty Luggage entered and settled on the floor.
"I"m ready." He followed her out into the corridor.
Dax was smoking again, and he chain-smoked all the way out of the hotel and along the streets of Tritonia until they arrived at the clinic. The building frontages here were little different from those of other streets, with bubble windows, stone facades and pressure doors. However, down the side of one entire street the bubble windows were blanked out so they looked like blind white eyes, the actual pressure doors had been removed and cams were mounted above each entrance, and there were electronic noticeboards scattered at intervals all the way along. Cormac realised at once that "the clinic" occupied the whole side of this street, which was also crowded with a high proportion of people wearing ECS uniforms, many of whom where either leaving or entering the clinic.
Before they themselves entered the third door, they had to wait for someone else to come out from inside. The man was a soldier clad in desert fatigues, but Cormac recognised the discrete military decorations of a Sparkind. There was something vague and dreamy about his expression, which seemed in contrast to the burn scarring on the side of his face and his ceramal artificial hand. He nodded to them pleasantly, then moved off into the crowded street.
"Why the hand and no cosmetic surgery?" their mother wondered.
Dax glanced at her. "Resources get stretched a bit thin out there, sometimes a hand like that is more useful than one of flesh."
"But his face?"
Dax shook his head as he stepped through the doorway. "Some retain their scars in memory of lost comrades." He bowed his head, leaning against what had been the interior of a pressure lock, suddenly panting for a moment. "Sometimes, out there, a scar like that means more than medals or military rank." He shook his head, trying to dispel something, then continued inside.
They walked into a huge and crowded waiting room; the people here occupying row upon row of comfortable chairs, all with personal entertainment or net access systems, or the private booths along the side walls. Along the far wall was inset a row of bland-looking numbered doors, doubtless leading to where the clinic"s work was done. On either side of the aisle leading across this room stood pedestal-mounted palm readers. Dax pressed his hand down against one of these. After a moment it beeped, then issued him an electronic plaque from a slot below.
"Does it tell you how long you have to wait?" Hannah asked.
He peered at the plaque. "No, but I don"t expect I"ll have to wait as long as some here."
"Why not?"
He gazed at her with something like pity in his expression. "Because one soldier at the line is just one soldier, whereas one medic in the same place can put soldiers back together and keep them fighting."
"About saving lives," she said, the irony evident in her voice even to Cormac.
"Yeah, sure."
They found three seats at the end of a row, next to a woman who had a VR band across her eyes and a virtual glove on one of her hands. She was utterly motionless and there were tears running down from under the eye-band. Gazing around, Cormac saw that many were using the entertainment or information access systems. Very few people were talking. The far doors opened intermittently either to admit people or to let them out. It was noticeable how those coming out did so faster and with much more ebullience than those who went it. Those leaving quickly departed the clinic, without looking back.
"Here we go." Dax, who had just lit up another cigarette, showed them his plaque, which now displayed the number eight. They stood to head for the relevant door.
"You only just came in," came a flat voice from behind.
They looked round at a beefy boosted man in worn green fatigues and a wide-brimmed, camouflage-patterned hat. Dax pointed to the ECS Medical logo printed on the flap of his shirt pocket. The man rubbed at the side of his nose and nodded tiredly.
"Of course," he said.
As they continued towards the doors, Hannah noted, "You don"t argue with someone who might be plugging holes in your body next week."
"Precisely," said Dax.
Waiting beyond Door Eight was a very attractive, but strangely doll-like woman dressed in a nurse"s uniform. The room she occupied was a vestibule containing a few chairs and a vending machine for food and drink. It took Cormac a moment to realise she was a Golem-one of the early series with the less realistic syntheflesh.
"If you would like to come through," she said, gesturing to another door behind her. "Would you like your family to be present?"
Dax, who had already started for the next door, paused and glanced round at Cormac and their mother. "Yeah, why not?" He continued through.
Hannah reached down and took hold of Cormac"s hand, towing him in after her. Gazing at the aseptic surroundings Cormac recognised a nanoscope, an independent autodoc, a nano-a.s.sembler, netlink and an old-style bench-mounted diagnosticer on the worktops mounted around the walls. In the centre of the room rested a surgical chair with the required hydraulics to turn it into a surgical table, beside which stood the ubiquitous pedestal autodoc.