The Line of Polity

19

"Third to the valley of the Hooded One came Brother Egris, and seeing how Stenophalis and Pegrum had failed, he was undaunted."

The Valley of Shadow and Whispers now resembled the aftermath of an explosion in an abattoir, and if seeing that mess did not put off Egris, then he must have been stupid and deserved everything he got.

"Astride the valley, he was silhouetted black against Calypse, and did not shine in his armour of iron, as he demanded of the monster below him, 'Come forth and face me! "

The woman shook her head and drummed her fingertip against the cold page. "Bad move, Brother. You should have left it to that arsehole Nebbish."

Strangely, Egris seemed to look out of the page at her for a second, as if annoyed at her interruption, before turning his back and gazing into the coagulating darkness below him.

"The Hooded One came forth, and he smote it with thunderbolts until its scutes flamed in the air, the very ground smoked, and all that grew nearby was burned to ash."

The woman pulled her finger away from the page, because the memory fabric had suddenly warmed as Egris began using some kind of unlikely weapon it seemed idiotic to use when clad from head to foot in metal The thing he held — something like a chrome saxophone with an image-enhancer sight — hurled lightning into the shadowed cowl, causing glassy things in there to glow like filaments.

"But thunder availed him nought, and out of dying fire the monster rose to pull him down into the Valley of Shadows and Whispers, and his armour parted like butter under the knife of the Hooded One."

The woman paused contemplatively before adding, "And Egris spread like butter too."

Molat had no wish to have this cripple impeding him, while there was quite obviously something unpleasant moving about back there, but Aberil had kindly picked up Molat's rail-gun to replace the one he had lost to the Outlinker, before instructing Molat to help the injured man. Speelan was not exactly generous in his thanks for this assistance: every time Molat stumbled, and every time he himself stumbled, it was all put down to Molat, and Speelan regularly swore at him.

"Be silent!" Aberil slurred when this swearing became too voluble.

Speelan fell silent and bowed his head — like Molat he did not much like now looking at the Deacon's face. Whoever it was that had dropped in on them so unexpectedly, he had certainly made a mess of it.

Aberil went on, his whispering distorted by his ruined mouth, "There's something back there, and if your cursing attracts it, then I will leave you to it."

"I'm sorry," said Speelan. "I'm sorry… it hurts."

Molat realized the man was obviously terrified that Aberil would do what he threatened, so meant every word of his apology. A gusting hiss he heard from behind, after the earlier movement in the grasses had long ceased, immediately raised other concerns in him.

"That's a siluroyne," Molat stated.

"Yes, you would know, wouldn't you?" said Aberil, looking him up and down contemptuously. "Come on, keep moving, there might be some craft still undamaged back there."

They came out into one of the ubiquitous channels, where the ground was wetter and the plant life distinctly different. Molat wondered if it was because the soil here was wetter that no flute grass grew on it, or if the ground was wetter because no flute grass grew on it. Such was the kind of chicken-and-egg conundrum that had been the speciality of those delivering religious instruction — your answer could always be wrong, and wrong answers were always punishable.

"Damn fuck you!" said Speelan, losing his footing and painfully crunching his full weight on the leg in which the pond worker girl had put a hole.

Molat restrained the surge of rage he felt at the injustice of it all. He could not afford to get angry with either of these two, as they could have him stretched on a frame with just a word… if they ever got back to safety.

"Keep your mouth closed," Aberil hissed.

Molat felt his own mouth doing exactly the opposite as he continued to gaze up into the sky. Calypse seemed now the breadth of an imaginary hand above the horizon, and the sun was gnawing at the edge of reality beside it. But these were common sights to Molat, and not what drew his attention.

"What's that?" he asked faintly, unable to find any other words.

Speelan glared at him, before turning to follow his gaze. With watery eyes in his ruined face, Aberil studied the Proctor as if suspecting some trick to distract him, before looking up as well. Molat's fascinated stare could not be broken. In the sky he was witnessing something fantastical. It was titanic, this golden ship with whole cities of instrumentation blooming on its surface, and it was knotted in something grey and incongruous, like some vast opaque topaz wrapped in the mummified corpse of some cephalopod.

"It's him," muttered Aberil. "He burnt Faith, and now he's here."

Just then, something that felt no awe of strange objects in the sky, but rather felt some gnawing hunger in its stomach at the sight of the three individuals before it, let out a gasping hiss to get their attention.

"Oh no!… No!" Molat shouted, finding himself fighting against Speelan's determined grip on him. Speelan would not let go, so Molat dragged the man along with him as he tried to flee the looming siluroyne. Subliminally he was aware of Aberil taking to his heels — not even trying to use the weapon he had appropriated. Speelan did not attempt to use his weapon either, so determined was he to cling on to Molat that he dared not unhook it from his shoulder. Fighting panic, Molat finally looked away from the monster into Speelan's terrified eyes, then he drove his fingers into their sockets.

Molat was already running when he heard Speelan scream, "No, please don't!" The gnathic crunching that followed was interspersed with further wails of, "No, don't! No!", terminated by a horrible bubbling wail. Escape was all Molat could think of, then in horror he heard the sound of the monster pursuing him, obviously not being satisfied with its meal of just one human being.

Oh no… oh no…

Perhaps it was because his terror was even greater, or perhaps due to the injuries Aberil had suffered, but Molat soon had the Deacon in sight and was fast catching up with him.

"Wait for me!" he shouted.

Aberil glanced back, but did not slow. Behind them both Molat could hear the siluroyne's grunting snarls as it pursued. He glanced back to see it clear a tall stand of flute grass and land with heavy and sinister grace. Just that glance was enough for him to realize the creature was not even exerting itself. He felt himself like something leaden and clumsy accelerated to the limit of its capacity, whilst the siluroyne kept moving in short bursts only to keep him in sight, between slowing down to a gentle lope as it studied its prey. In its nightmare features he seemed to read amusement, but that could have been his imagination.

"Shoot it! Shoot the fucking thing!" Molat shouted to the Deacon, as he got closer to him. Aberil glanced around, gasping for breath, and obviously suffering at this punishing pace. Molat pushed himself harder and reached out for the weapon slung from a strap over Aberil's shoulder. At the last moment Aberil turned slightly, aiming the snout of his rail-gun downwards. A rattling crackle and Molat felt the ground drop away from him. His legs gave way and, as he went over, he caught a glimpse of shattered bone and burst-open flesh. From somewhere came a horrible keening and whimpering and, as he tried to stand but went down again, he realized it issued from himself. A shadow then drew across him.

"Please… no…" he pleaded.

But the creature had no pity — nothing in its mien or expression that was in any way Terran and Molat now knew he had been mistaken about its apparent amusement earlier. Caught in teeth like blue hatchets, Molat saw a torn and bloody pair of uniform trousers. The three-fingered claws, big as garden rakes on doubled forearms, closed around his torso and up-ended him. Over his shrill screams Molat heard a rail-gun opening up and emptying its magazine, but by then the siluroyne had eaten his legs and was crunching into his pelvis.

"If I ever possessed any inclination to religion, I think I'd find it now," said Gant, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight as he stared up into the sky.

"Ignore it, then," said Cormac. "We have to focus on our goal, and just that." But even he did not feel any great ease in that assertion. What Skellor had done to the appearance of the Occam Razor was a blatant demonstration of his power, and that he managed to hold it so easily in low orbit yet further evidence. The Occam was poised there like a giant overseer directing some huge chess game on the ground below, ready in a moment to sweep board, pieces, everything away. Cormac tried to focus his attention on the game, and specifically on one of those pieces whose abilities he now did not really know for sure.

All that distinguished Scar from the rest of the dracomen was his weapons harness, his loose fatigues, and the facial scar that had given him his name. Cormac remembered Mika explaining how the dracoman could easily have erased that scar, but had retained it for some reason of pride, and now perhaps for some means of identification. Standing upon the burnt-out carcass of a lander, Cormac studied the dracoman a moment longer before returning his attention to the wilderness stretching before them. Now, with the budding of the grasses, the formerly green landscape was tinged with washes of red, white, yellow and metallic gold. But these flowering grasses were now shaking with some approaching movement.

"Okay, what have we got out there?" he asked. He had a good idea — just wanted confirmation.

"Soldiers," replied Scar, before Gant could.

Gant glanced at the dracomen. "Looks like the whole Theocracy army is heading our way." He looked from side to side. "We won't be able to move fast enough to get round them."

"We go through them," said Scar abruptly.

Cormac gazed down at the thousands of dracomen gathered around the landers or in the surrounding flute grass. Every one of them was indistinguishable from Scar when he had first encountered him, and many of them seemed to have similar appetites. They had found charred corpses lying amongst the incinerated landers and had obviously decided not to let the meat go to waste. The carnivorous scene appeared hugely primitive but for other dracomen checking over, with smooth expertise, the weapons they had also found. Cormac feared Mika was allowing her fascination with these creatures to outweigh her caution as she walked amongst them, scanning and sometimes even daring to take samples from them. But then perhaps she had less fear of injury now, with the alien mechanisms operating inside her body.

"Convenient that you arrived when you did," he said to Scar.

The dracoman grunted as he surveyed his fellows, then something seemed to claw at him from the inside, and he hissed before turning to Cormac again.

"You will let me live," said the dracoman, echoing Dragon's words, and Cormac wondered if it was truly the dracoman speaking.

"Polity law." Cormac gestured to the gathered dracomen. "It was a single entity that was guilty of crimes against the Polity, but I see no such single entity here."

And so it was. Before eagerly gathering up her instruments, Mika had observed to him, "Here's that missing fifty per cent of Dragon. Now we know what it meant about both dying and living."

Cormac continued speaking to Scar. "But what ECS decides to do is irrelevant at present, and genocide may yet be committed." He gestured up at the Occam Razor before scrambling down the lander to the ground. Scar and Gant quickly followed him, and the three moved over to join Thorn and Fethan, who were listening in on radio exchanges through Thorn's partially dismantled coms helmet.

"What have you got?" Cormac asked.

"Radio only," said Thorn. "Lellan's sending her army back underground. Some of her commanders are protesting, but they're doing what they're told. It would seem Lellan sees no purpose in keeping them up on the surface. From something I heard, they probably haven't enough supplies to stay up any longer. What about you?"

It was Gant who replied. "The whole Theocracy army is heading this way, and too rapidly for us to get around it."

"The whole subverted Theocracy army," Cormac added.

Thorn nodded, turning his attention to the ominous shape in the sky. "Why is he doing this? Why doesn't he just incinerate this whole place?" he asked.

Gazing up too, Cormac said, "I think he wants us alive for some reason, to use or to play with, whatever. I don't see what else could possibly keep him here."

"Not so omnipotent then," said Thorn.

"No," Cormac agreed. "Still human enough to want to make his enemies suffer, and prideful enough to want to show off. Let's just hope he doesn't move beyond that stage just yet."

"Before you wax too philosophical, perhaps we should sort out what we gonna do," interjected Fethan.

Cormac glanced at the old cyborg, then turned to Scar. "Are your people ready to move?"

Scar just showed his teeth in reply.

"Then," Cormac continued, "we cut a hole through the Theocracy army, and keep going until we reach the mountains. Then you" — he glanced at Fethan — "and Thorn will take us to John Stanton's ship."

"Then what?" asked Thorn.

Almost without thinking, Cormac drew his thin-gun and checked the charge. "Let's just see if we can get that far first, shall we?"

With shaking hands Aberil changed magazines then took aim with his rail-gun. Very badly he wanted to empty this second magazine into the creature's head, but that would be more than stupid considering he only had this and one other magazine, and there were certainly other creatures lurking out here. The siluroyne no longer moved, but then with half its head ripped away that was not surprising. Molat was still moving though, which considering how little was left of the Proctor, Aberil did find surprising. Swallowing the foul taste in his mouth, Aberil walked over to Molat and watched him finally die. That didn't take long for blood was draining from him like red wine from an upended bottle.

Finally Aberil jerked himself alert, as if coming out of a trance, and suddenly was once again aware of just how bad he felt. His face seemed just a swollen ball of pain, his broken teeth aching abominably, and an overall swelling beginning to close his eyes. As if that was not enough, he felt sure some of his ribs were broken, and he was beginning to suspect that the bloody froth he'd been spitting out was not coming from the ruin of his face but from one of his lungs.

Damn you, Stanton!

He had known for far too long that he should either have left that family alone or exterminated every last one of them. Drunk on the extent of the powers granted to him as a young proctor, he had committed crimes that had led to the creation of Lellan Stanton the rebel and her brother John the mercenary killer.

Moving now with painful slowness Aberil headed back towards the landing craft, occasional fumaroles of smoke or steam rising into the sky locating them for him. Not for one moment did he consider the possibility of his own death, for he was so sure of God's purpose for him. Yes, he worked hard to preserve his own life, as he had just done with this siluroyne, for not to do so would display a punishable arrogance — but it was all part of how he was being continually moulded by the deity. Even the beating he had just received at Stanton's hands had been part of this same process. No, Aberil would not die — he had far too much yet to do.

There… something moving.

As far as he could remember from what he had been taught as a child, siluroynes were extremely territorial, so this definitely would not be another of them. Hearing the sound again, he tried to discount the realization that whatever was making the noise was obviously a lot bigger than the siluroyne. The sound he next heard — a whickering of rapid sharp motion — shot him through with an almost supernatural dread.

The Lord is my shepherd…

Much louder now — the hissing passage of a long hard body writhing through flute grass and over compacted mud. Aberil picked up his pace, wheezing now and with flecks of red spattering the inside of his mask. He'd heard that sound before: who of the higher Theocracy had not watched holocordings of rebel prisoners pinned out like bait near their mountains? But this was ridiculous surely: hooders did not venture this far out onto the plain.

As the sound grew louder, Aberil looked aside in time to see a huge segmented body hurtling past him like a speeding train. It was heading in the opposite direction, but he listened hard and could hear it curving round. He ran. He could get to the landing craft… find something there… there would be help. Behind… it was behind him. He glimpsed nightmare there, and fired a burst of slugs at it. He turned and ran on, his chest constricting so that he couldn't get his breath. He stumbled down on his knees, pain daggering into his side, his vision blurred.

As a shadow drew across him, he emptied the entire magazine at it, then groped for the spare. He realized that to preserve himself from the agony to come, he should use that precious magazine on himself, but he couldn't really believe what was happening to him. Instead he emptied the last rounds into a looming darkness, and that seemed to have no effect at all. Scrubbing at his face to clear his vision, he looked up into a circular pit of darkness that contained row upon row of mandibles glittering like surgical steel and glass, amid a constellation of red glowing eyes.

"No," he managed to protest before the hooder slammed down on him.

Tented in its chitin, his screams became both muffled and echoey — as the creature commenced, with surgical precision, to feed.

Cormac held up his hand, and Shuriken came back to its holster without reluctance — perhaps sated by its excess of killing. Once it snicked back into place he turned towards movement registered behind, as two soldiers rose out of cover and began to level their rail-guns at him. A snap shot with his thin-gun knocked one over backwards with a hole through his forehead. Gant slammed into the second, knocking him two metres through the air before the man hit the ground, following fast to stab down with one hand, then stood up and shook blood from his fingers. Horrible, utterly horrible, though Cormac was not sure if what he was killing could actually be classified as fully alive.

Mostly, though, it was not Cormac and his companions who were accomplishing the wet work. The dracomen moved at frightening speed right into the rail-gun fire where iron slugs ripped through many of them, but these creatures were of extremely rugged construction and withstood more hits than any human could possibly sustain. Cormac even saw one of them fighting on with both of its arms blown away. It had still managed to bite out the throats of three Theocracy soldiers before gunfire from elsewhere finally cut it in half.

"Keep moving!" Cormac shouted. "And keep together."

Mika proved the most wayward — she kept wanting to stay with wounded dracomen, though whether to tend to them or to see what tissue samples she might obtain, Cormac could not judge. Gant and Thorn stayed on either side of him, whilst Fethan had gone running off with the dracomen and getting himself as bloody as they. Scar had come back occasionally to check if they were still alive.

"Where the hell are your people?" Cormac asked him the next time he returned.

Showing his teeth, Scar gestured in either direction along the Theocracy lines and gave a shrug. Obviously just punching a gap through those lines had not been enough for them — now they had achieved that objective it was time for them to play. Cormac could hear plenty of gunfire, but no screams from dying soldiers — but maybe those brain-burnt individuals did not feel pain.

The whining of an electric engine sounded to the right…

Cormac soon had Shuriken up a couple of metres in front of him, his fingers poised over the lethal device's attack menu on its holster.

"Time to ride!" Fethan bellowed, driving in with a balloon-tyred ground car he had just stolen — the blood on the driver's seat was fresh. All but Gant, the fastest mover anyway, boarded the vehicle as Fethan turned it towards mountains now looming in the purple haze of distance below the sinking gas giant.

"Check that out," Cormac instructed Thorn, gesturing at a pedestal-mounted grenade-launcher fixed to the back of the vehicle. Thorn pushed his way past Mika who was sitting on the metal floor with her back against the side. Seeing her pull out her laptop, Cormac commented, "Hell or high water won't stop your research on Dragon or dracomen."

She glanced up at him. "There's always so much more to learn about them."

"And what more have you learnt today?" he asked.

"A lot gets revealed about a body's structure when it is torn open," she said. "Scar is asexual, but his kin out there are not."

"I wonder if that would make Scar happy or sad," he said.

"I think you miss the point. Sex has more purpose than social bonding or physical gratification."

"Well, make the point clearer to me then," said Cormac, irritated.

"The point is that we are no longer dealing with just organic constructs. We are dealing with self-determining beings who can breed — a race."

"Well, that's nice," said Cormac distractedly. Then, "Can't this thing go any faster, Fethan?"

"I'm doing my bloody best," the cyborg replied.

Crouching down to retain his balance as the machine accelerated, now jouncing all over the place, Cormac continued to Mika, "Personally, I don't see the difference between a group of organic constructs and any naturally derived race, but I will be interested to know how the Earth Central AI sees it."

"You will let me live," stated Mika, echoing both Scar and Dragon.

"Still can't ask even the important ones?" he asked her. "I didn't promise anything, and what I promise is irrelevant — I wouldn't be the one to pull the trigger."

Mika was about to make some bitter comeback when Thorn's sudden frantic activity distracted her. They both turned as he slammed a cartridge of grenades into the launcher and swung the device round, then up.

Just then two shadows slid over above them.

The Occam Razor caught the last of the setting sun, and hung half-gilded in the sky long into the evening. Observing the massive thing through her binoculars, Lellan could not help but shudder. With the riotous fighting below it, this object seemed to represent some demon presiding over one of the numerous circles of Hell described in Theocracy dogma. She lowered her binoculars to observe men looking little better than walking corpses fighting those hellish lizard creatures. The dead on both sides strewed the churned ground and flattened vegetation, and now that most rail-guns were empty, the combat was hand-to-hand, or rather hand against claw and teeth.

"If you recalled our army, who would you instruct them to fight?" asked Carl, as he turned the aerofan back towards the compound embankment.

Lellan looked round at the Theocracy soldier, Sastol, who was the only other occupant of the aerofan. "Who is the enemy now?" she asked him.

"I do not know any more," he replied. "Perhaps they are." Unable to point, his wrists being secured to the rail of the aerofan, he nodded towards two heroynes striding through the flute grasses some distance away to their right. As Lellan and Carl turned to observe these creatures, one of them pecked downwards and came up with something that was recognizably a struggling soldier. Tilting its head back, it tossed the man around until it had him in the right position, then swallowed him head first.

"Sweet Lord," said Sastol.

The heroyne and its companion strode on in search of further prey, whilst the struggling lump slid slowly down its long neck to its stomach. Lellan considered going after it, but what would they achieve by blowing the creature open? The Theocracy soldiers now seemed little better than automatons, and apparently did not cease fighting even when captured. From what Sastol had told her of his own experience, she surmised that the soldiers did not have much individual mind left to them, and were merely following a program, albeit a complex one. As Carl finally brought the aerofan down onto the embankment, where they found Beckle and Uris attempting to get another aerofan up and running, Lellan noticed a light flashing on the essential part of the coms helmet she had hanging on her belt. Unhooking it, she placed the speaker button in her ear and spoke into its mouthpiece.

"Yes, what is it?" she asked.

"We have located agent Ian Cormac and his companions. What are your instructions?"

"Just bring them safely to the compound, Rom," she replied, wondering if the drone's voices had become distinct from each other the moment she had named them, or if they had always been that way. In appearance they had originally been indistinguishable, but even that was no longer so — the damage each had received giving them visible individuality as well. Bringing her binoculars back up to her eyes, Lellan began searching the horizon. Shortly she located the two cylindrical shapes heading directly towards the compound, and below them, intermittently visible between still-upright stands of vegetation, came a car with an interesting collection of passengers.

Fethan and Thorn, the one with a bushy orange beard and the other with a cropped black one, were easily identifiable from a distance. Lellan had no idea who the woman was, and presumed the other, silver-haired man to be the agent Cormac. The shaven-headed trooper who had, leaping aboard at speed, just joined them in the car, she presumed to be something more than human. Lowering her binoculars she turned to lean on the rail of the aerofan and peered down the slope of the embankment. "Any luck with that thing?" she asked Beckle and Uris casually. The two men crouching by the tilted aerofan, at the bottom of the bank, had its control column in pieces between them.

Uris looked up. "Needs a new column, but we can still run it."

"Then get it in the air and head back to the compound," ordered Lellan. "See if you can find any spares there. Also get everyone prepared to move out. We don't know what these creatures are likely to do when they've finished out here."

The two men stood and with one heave dropped the aerofan back into its upright position. In disgust Beckle kicked the pieces of its control column to one side.

"You will go with them," said Lellan, stabbing a finger at Sastol. He might have surrendered himself, and circumstances might have changed dramatically, but he was still Theocracy and she trusted him not at all. She watched as Carl unclipped the man's wrist-ties from the rail and stepped back with weapon drawn while the captive climbed to the ground.

Climbing onto the righted aerofan, Beckle sat with his legs either side of the control column base, and his arms inside the casing. Uris waited cautiously until Sastol was aboard, then climbed on behind him, his pulse-rifle covering the prisoner's back. The fans started with a slightly discordant drone, sending a spray of mud in every direction, as the machine rose and slid off over the chequerboard of ponds towards the compound. There, Lellan knew, Sastol would be wise to stick close to her two men, for the newly liberated pond workers had a penchant for removing the breathing apparatus of any Theocracy soldiers caught, then tossing them into one of the squerm ponds to see if they could survive even long enough to suffocate.

"We may find out what those creatures are all about," said Carl.

Lellan turned back to observe the approaching car, and watched in perplexity as one of the lizard creatures ran along behind it then jumped aboard without either attacking or being attacked. It seemed there were some things she still needed to know.

As the vehicle drew closer Lellan saw that more of the creatures were now emerging from the surrounding vegetation and running alongside the vehicle. Despite no signs of aggression towards the car's occupants, or of Rom and Ram considering the creatures a threat, Lellan turned to Carl. "Take us up and out a few metres."

Carl sharply did as requested, obviously glad to get out of reach.

"What's happening, Fethan?" Lellan called out when the whole strange procession had finally reached the embankment.

"Always the unexpected," the old cyborg shouted up.

As if in confirmation of that, for a second the evening grew brighter than day, then the whole plain erupted with fire and gouting explosions. With after images chasing across her retinas, Lellan saw Cormac conversing with the lizard creature in the car. The creature then turned to others of its kind gathered around the vehicle, and after a moment they melted away into the surrounding vegetation.

Then all was chaos as they fled the hellfire the Occam Razor laid down upon the land.

"Is this it?" asked the woman he guessed to be Lellan, removing her mask as they piled into the workers' barracks. "Is this the start of it?"

Tiredly removing his own mask, Cormac considered telling her that the start of it had been when Skellor arrived in the system, but what gain would there be in that information?

"I'd say Skellor has just realized what's been attacking the Theocracy army out there," he said.

"And what's that?" Lellan studied Scar with suspicion.

"Dracomen," said Cormac, also glancing at the dracoman. "Dragon's children, if you like." At this he saw her loosen her grip on the pulse-rifle she pretended to hold so casually. Because Dragon had destroyed the laser arrays, Cormac felt she must have some trust in that creature's intentions. He did not have time to disillusion her.

"This Skellor is attacking them? Why them specifically… and why now?"

Cormac thought he knew the answer to that, though he did not like it. "Because Dragon was one of those he came here to silence, and I think because I just got clear of the area, and because he likes destroying things."

"He doesn't want to kill you too, then?" Carl interjected, squatting next to an electric heater.

Cormac glanced at him. "In the same way that the Theocracy would rather capture your leader alive than kill her." He gestured at Lellan, who winced when she realized what he meant. Cormac turned to Scar. "What's happening out there now?"

The dracoman held up a claw and slowly closed it in a squeezing motion. "Many die, but we disperse and we hide."

Cormac nodded to himself — just at the last he'd spotted some burrowing into the ground. Skellor might be blitzing the area with laser strikes, but he would need to incinerate every square metre, to some depth, in order to kill every dracoman. He tried not to become too attracted to the idea of Skellor committing such genocide, and thereby obviating a future headache for the Polity. So far the dracomen had been most helpful, and had not committed any significant crime.

"They all listen to you," he said to Scar. "You are somehow linked to them." To one side, he was aware of Mika becoming more alert. "Is that why Dragon named you Cadmus?"

"They are my people," said Scar, with almost a touch of pride in his voice.

Cormac nodded. "Then you must stay here with them." He turned to Mika. "You'll continue watching them, and report?"

Mika nodded eagerly and turned to Gant. Silently he unhooked from his shoulder the pack which now contained the bulk of her instruments, and handed it across to Scar. Without any acknowledgement, the dracoman accepted the pack, its attention still firmly fixed on Cormac.

"You will let us live?" Scar repeated.

Cormac replied, "I'll try to save those of you that manage to survive, for now. Later, we can only hope — as the decision will rest in Polity hands… but I'll do all I can."

As he headed for the airtight door, Scar turned towards Mika. "She not survive with us," he said dismissively.

Mika smiled, then began unstrapping her oxygen pack, collar mask and piping. She handed these items to the soldier Uris, before following the dracoman towards the door.

"Oh, I'll survive," she said.

"What the hell?" said Lellan, stepping forward to prevent what she could only perceive as suicide.

Cormac caught her arm. "She doesn't need the oxygen we need out there." He gestured to the pack Uris held. "That thing's been empty since this morning."

"But how the hell does she…" Lellan fell silent as both the dracoman and Mika exited into the night.

"We, however" — he gestured to himself and Thorn — "do need oxygen. We'll need enough to get us to your brother's ship. We'll also need transport to get us there quickly."

"What — so you can escape, Polity agent?" spoke up a man who was obviously a prisoner — his wrists were bound, and he wore Theocracy uniform. There was also a dressing behind his ear where his aug should have been.

"No," said Cormac, aware that everyone nearby was much interested in his answer. "But so I can deal with our friend up there."

The prisoner snorted.

Lellan asked, "And how do you propose to do that?"

"Too many ears and eyes here," said Cormac, taking in the soldiers, ex-pond workers, and prisoners all jammed into this one airtight building. "You'll just have to trust me on that."

"I should trust you," Lellan repeated leadenly.

Cormac replied, "I am Polity, and in the end that has always been your only choice. Tell me, what other options have you ever had, and what options do you have now?"

Lellan fell silent for a moment, then said, "There's an oxygen refill tank in the building next door, and we have two working aerofans — enough to carry six people. We also have those two war drones that shepherded you in. When do you want to move?"

Cormac thought about that: once upon a time he'd enjoyed an utterly human pastime called 'sleep', but to indulge in that now was madness as Skellor could decide at any moment that he had been playing mortal games for long enough, and that it was time to totally flash burn the planet. Without thinking about it, he took out the reel of stimulant patches Mika had given him, tore one off and, reaching inside his shirt, stuck it to his torso.

"Right now," he said.

There was almost a feeling of disappointment in having located Ian Cormac so easily, but then locating was one thing and apprehending another — as Skellor had discovered the last time he'd nearly had the man in his grasp. With a thought he shut down the lasers that had been searing the plain and focused all his instruments upon the small compound itself. The destruction had raised clouds of smoke and steam that did nothing to improve his view, and anyway the dracomen had successfully dispersed, disappearing like fog in a hurricane. But they would go with the rest of the planet, once he had Cormac up here in his bridge pod to watch the show.

Alerted by the movement of people coming out of the barracks buildings, Skellor closed in the focus of a scope so he could see each individual clearly. It annoyed him that he did not have any weapon accurate enough to target any individual from up here. Most of the Occam's armament was apocalyptic — the smallest smart missiles aboard, with the appropriate range, delivered enough of a punch to take out a tank. With the right weapon he could have stripped Cormac of all his companions, before taking him; as it was, Skellor's remaining creatures on the surface would need to prove adequate to the task.

About to send his calloraptors down from the mountains, Skellor observed Cormac and some others taking off on a couple of aerofans, warded on either side by the two war drones, and heading in that same direction. All so easy, Skellor felt, and in a flush of boredom felt the urge to just wipe it all away — burn it all and move on. But then, deep in those alien structures of himself, he heard an echo of Aphran's laughter, and his vision settled clearly for a moment on Cormac turning to look up towards him. And Skellor decided to stay his hand.

The firing from orbit had been ceased for some minutes now, but Stanton was not going to head back to Jarvellis until he had drunk at least one celebratory cup of coffee laced with brandy.

"Whoever said vengeance is sweet certainly knew what they were talking about," he said, trying to put the other two at their ease.

"He killed your parents," said the boy, Apis, who claimed to be an Outlinker. "He probably killed more than them."

Setting a tin cup on the red-hot grid of his little stove, Stanton grinned to himself, then searched his utility belt for the coffee essence and a miniature bottle of brandy. The boy was groping for justification. He had obviously been as shocked by the duration of Aberil's agony as the girl had been. Though these two had reasons for vengeance themselves, they did not find it as sweet as did Stanton himself.

"Why did it take so long?" Eldene said at last, choking a little on her words. "Did it enjoy… torturing him?"

Stanton shook his head. "He could have shortened it all by taking off his mask and suffocating. Perhaps he didn't really think he was going to die," he said. Then, after studying his two charges for a moment, "There's no deliberate torture, really. Hooders just eat that way in order to survive. Their main diet is the grazers living in the mountains, which feed on some poisonous fungi there. The grazers' bodies are layered through with black fats that accumulate toxins. When the hooders capture them under their hoods, they need to slice their way through their prey very meticulously, to eat only what are called the creature's white fats."

"Why not kill first, though?" Apis asked.

Stanton tipped coffee essence into the rapidly heating water, then a handful of rough sugar crystals. Glancing at the boy he answered, "Apparently it's all due to the flight response. When the hooder goes after a grazer, the grazer immediately starts breaking down the black fat to provide itself with the energy to flee, and then its blood supply and muscles become toxic, too. So any serious damage to either could release poisons into the uncontaminated white fat."

"So it can't let them bleed?" Apis gaped in disbelieving horror.

"What about humans, then?" asked Eldene.

Stanton tested his coffee with his finger, then rocked back on his heels and opened his pack. For a moment the two forgot their morbid curiosity as he handed out potato bread and preserved sausage.

"Humans get treated just like the other kinds of grazers they occasionally catch," said Stanton, himself munching on a piece of sausage. "The hooder has to make the assumption that they are fungus grazers, so dissects them as meticulously, even though discovering no black fat in them. You heard the results of that." Stanton tipped some brandy into the coffee, then after taking a sip from the mug, he offered it around. He was glad when both the youngsters showed a disgust at its taste and declined more.

"That seems to be all finished now over there." He gestured over his shoulder to where the plain had earlier been boiling with fire. "We'll finish up here, then head on in. I'd stay longer, just to be sure, but" — he gestured to the remaining two oxygen bottles resting on the aero-fan's floor — "we don't have that luxury."

"Where will you go now — to the Underground?" asked Eldene.

"My ship first," Stanton replied. "That's where I keep everything that's precious to me." He looked around. "I don't think there's much more I can do here. Hopefully ECS will come soon, and perhaps it'd be better if I were not around when it does."

"What about us?" asked Eldene.

"You go underground," he said, staring at them directly, "and you wait for the Polity." He could see that they were curious to know why he should not hang about when the Polity arrived, but he did not feel inclined to give any explanations. For a minute he just sipped his way down through his cup of coffee, listening for sounds of movement in the surrounding vegetation. The laser strikes had driven away much of the local fauna, but most certainly the smell of broiled meat would bring the said fauna back, and he did not care to be around when that happened.

"Of course, you know what the irony is?" They looked at him attentively and he went on, "Eating human flesh just makes hooders, and the rest of them, sick. It's the oxygen I think — too rich for them."

"Yes, that is ironic," said Apis, exchanging a look with Eldene.

After packing away his bits and pieces, Stanton stood and gestured them back to the aerofan. Soon the three were settled on board, hurtling over a charred landscape below a black sky bright with a surplus of moons.

It was a bright and beautiful night to be skimming over the foothills, their two aerofans warded on either side by the battered and fire-blackened cylinders of the war drones. It was a fantastic night to be alive, and Gant wondered if he would have appreciated it any more by being so.

"There are creatures in the sky ahead of us," said Rom, its voice coming surprisingly loud to them in the roar of the wind, it being sent by directional beam.

"Probably kite-bats," Lellan said, turning towards Cormac. "Don't worry about them, they'll get out of the way."

Gant noted Cormac's quick glance, but did not have to be told to keep alert. He nodded and patted his pulse-rifle. Slung across his back was the APW he was saving for any situation warranting artillery. Focusing ahead, with his vision set to infrared, Gant made out a great flock of flying creatures circling the mountain peaks. Some of them were even roosting on peaks, turning them into a bluish melee of angled limbs and wing fabric.

"How far to the entrance?" Cormac asked Lellan.

"A couple of kilometres yet," the rebel leader replied. She pointed down with her thumb. "There are breakout caves all across here, but there's no point even trying them. Aberil was so keen we shouldn't escape that he bombed every one of them during his landing."

Gazing out into silvered night, the agent said, "You know, Skellor will be watching us right now." He gestured towards the war drones. "We're probably about the only mechanical things airborne, and with those two along…"

"Well," said Lellan, "unless he can also track you through stone, we'll soon frustrate him."

"He may even possess that ability," murmured Cormac.

Something was tickling the edge of Gant's memory. He knew that he could easily run a program in his head to track down that memory, but that would make him more Golem and less Gant, so he wanted to retain his imperfect recall. The flying creatures did not seem to be dispersing, in fact more were taking to the air, and now the whole flock was swirling in this direction. He could now see them much more clearly, and some of the others must already be able to see them through their night visors. There was something familiar…

"These kite-bats," he said, "is it the mating season or something?"

"They don't have a mating season." Lellan was leaning forwards to peer into the darkness. After a moment she pulled back on the steering column, abruptly slowing the aerofan so that Rom and Ram, and the other fan carrying Thorn, Carl and Fethan, shot ahead — then had to turn to wheel round to come back.

"Those are not kite-bats," Lellan decided.

Glancing at the agent, Gant asked him grimly, "Were there any winged calloraptors on Callorum?"

Reluctantly, it seemed to Gant, Cormac donned the night glasses Lellan had provided, and replied, "Never really looked into that. Mika would be the one to ask."

Just then, Carl brought the other aerofan alongside, and Fethan shouted across, "What are those things?"

Speaking into the comlink hooked at her neck, Lellan replied briefly, "The enemy, I think." She looked to Cormac and Gant for confirmation.

Cormac pulled up his sleeve and fingered in some complex attack programs on his lethal little weapon's holster console. Shuriken started clunking in its holster, as if eager to get out. Cormac withdrew it, and held it in the palm of his left hand. With the right hand he drew his thin-gun. He turned to Gant. "How many of them, do you estimate?"

Without even resorting to any of the counting programs that were available to him Gant said, "A couple of thousand visible. There may be more."

"Use the APW — I think the need to conceal our presence became superfluous long ago," said Cormac. Then to Lellan, "We need to get to that cave as fast as we can. Just burn through them and keep going… agreed?"

Lellan had no better suggestions so she nodded, even though Gant guessed she resented the agent usurping her authority.

Cormac went on, "Does the cave have defences and, if so, what kind?"

"In the entrance we'll be using there's one pulse-cannon in the shaft leading down, and another one in the lower tunnel, then armoured doors guarding the main cavern. They just won't get through," she replied.

"Don't bet on it," said Cormac, gazing at the boiling cloud of creatures ahead. "These fuckers don't die all that easy."

Lellan stared at him for a moment then looked across to see she had Carl's attention, before making a chopping motion with her hand for them to move ahead.

"We go straight through," she informed them all. In reaction there came the cycling whine of U-chargers operating inside the war drones as they brought their energy-profligate weapons systems online. Lellan tilted her joystick forward and Carl followed suit. Both aero-fans tilted and accelerated. Moving ahead, the war drones turned in midair from floating pillars to rollers barbed with weapons. Then suddenly they were into a thunder of flapping wings, amid horrible cawings and hissings issuing from triple-jawed mouths opening all around them like satanic fuchsias. Cormac tossed Shuriken over the side, as the two drones opened up on the creatures. Swathes of violet fire left green afterimages across their night-vision glasses and visors. Gant and Thorn had also opened up with APWs, burning into this sky of moving flesh. Screaming, half-incinerated raptors dropped out of this turmoil — their wing skin seared away to leave nothing but black spiderish bone slashing at the air. Smuts of soot clouded the air like negative snow, and the flames raised a stench as of burning sesame oil. As he selectively fired into the huge flock of creatures wherever it seemed thickest, Gant saw a half-burnt raptor land on the rail and Cormac emptying the entire clip of his thin-gun into its visage to prevent it scrambling aboard. When it became evident that the creature would just not die, Gant himself turned and blasted it — and most of the rail — burning down into its fellows underneath, where Shuriken shimmered back and forth, slamming through any that tried to attack them from below.

Lellan was yelling something, but Cormac could not hear her above the racket as he removed the empty clip from his gun and replaced it with another. He leaned closer.

"I'm taking us lower!" she shouted.

Cormac nodded and hit Shuriken's recall. The device shot up from below the aerofans, where now lack of clearance from the ground gave no room for the raptors to manoeuvre, and it held station just out from Cormac's shoulder. Selecting a different attack program, he sent Shuriken off and running again. The difficulty he was finding with it was compensating for the two war drones. Shuriken's micromind possessed adequate facility to factor in the presence of 'friendly fire' from armed humans or the equivalent, but since war drones of this sophistication were a recent invention, it had no set program blocks to account for them. Cormac found that the nearest he could achieve was by describing the two drones to Shuriken as human exotroops with AG packs and heavy weapons. This seemed to be working so far, though he noted some hesitation in Shuriken's flight when it came close to either of the machines. The drones, being technically more sophisticated, ignored the throwing star as they continued to incinerate flying calloraptors.

Drawing his thin-gun again, Cormac aimed single shots at the calloraptors' wing joints; these hits, when he managed them, proving more effective than any number of impacts on the creatures' heads or bodies. These calloraptors were clearly not direct kin of those that Scar had shot on Callorum — but they did possess the same miraculous ability to heal themselves as the hybrid he had encountered in Skellor's laboratory. Nevertheless, even ability to heal did not negate the effects of gravity once a wing-joint shattered and the wing collapsed. The ones he thus crippled soon ended up far behind and out of the chase.

"We're coming up on it now!" Lellan yelled. She was flying one-handed, holding a pulse-rifle in her right hand, its light stock resting in the crook of her arm.

"Call the drones in behind us!" Cormac shouted back, then found himself knocked to his knees as a raptor, its wings burned down to the bone, crashed down on top of him. Like a bird the creature had no arms, so it grabbed at him with its powerful foot claws and tried to close its two remaining jaws on his shoulder. Even in such an extremity, Cormac realized the creature was not actually trying to kill, but merely immobilize him. The aerofan lurched aside as Lellan was nearly knocked over during the ensuing struggle. Cormac caught a glimpse of a rockface speeding past him to the left, then one of the drones dropping back overhead. With his hand gripping his attacker's throat he fired repeatedly into its skull, hoping the raptor's brain would not heal as quickly as the rest of it. Just then Gant grabbed the creature from behind and wrenched it upright, tearing away one wing and snapping its double spine. The broken bone in its back quickly realigning, it turned to attack Gant instead.

A sudden impact slid Cormac along the floor of the aerofan, now tilting at thirty degrees. He caught what remained of the rail on that side, his legs lunging out into empty space over rock speeding by. Then they were dropping down into a shaft, screaming raptors all around them still. Behind them flashed the arc-welder stuttering of a pulse-cannon, and they spun out of the main shaft into another tunnel. Struggling to climb back on board, Cormac spotted Gant and the calloraptor tearing at each other with hideous ferocity as they sailed past him. He glanced back to see a war drone, clad in a skin of attacking raptors, hit the cavern floor and bounce end over end. While avoiding this, the other aerofan clipped stone and flipped over, three bodies disappearing amid the mass of wings and nightmare mouths just as Gant had.

"Don't slow down!" Cormac bellowed, when he realized Lellan had started to do so. She gestured forward, just as pulse-rifles filled the cavern with a blizzard of blue stars.