‘What are they like then, these third-stage creatures?’
‘Bigger, inevitably. The first one I killed was three metres long. Its carapace was dark grey, rather than bearing the usual sand-coloured camouflage, and another pair of legs had ridden up beside its head to form pincer arms that act just like that punch axe you carry. And of course it now ran on six legs. It did that.’ Anderson pointed to the rim of his sand hog’s carapace where two large puncture holes had been filled up with a web of the epoxy strips normally used to shoe a sand hog’s feet. Tergal observed this damage silently, then his gaze slid up to the long case fixed further up the carapace.
‘How did you kill it?’
‘Not with that—I got that later.’ Anderson waved a hand at the case. ‘I hadn’t properly learned my trade then, so used my fusile. Luckily the creature was more interested in my mount than in me, and it clung on even as I kept reloading to shoot bullet after bullet down its gullet. Meanwhile Bonehead slid his feeding head underneath it, and chewed on its guts. While that was happening its breeding section broke away and ran off on two legs—I never knew what became of that.’
Anderson had noted one of Bonehead’s two eye-palps—which had extruded from its sensory head earlier as they first came in sight of the sleers—turning towards him during this conversation. It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.
He continued, ‘Had it directly attacked me, there was little I could have done—it would have winkled me out of this armour easy as eating a sand oyster.’
Staring into the shade that lay between the Sand Towers, Tergal asked nervously, ‘So we could encounter such creatures here?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility. And we might even encounter a droon or an apek, or even a fourth-stage sleer.’
‘You only find apeks near lakes,’ argued Tergal. ‘And droons are either extinct or a myth. As to fourth-stage sleers, I’ve not even heard such a myth. Don’t tell me: your hog here lost its claw to one?’
‘No, an apek took that over by Lake Cooder in Bravence. And I’ve myself seen drawings of fourth-stage sleers—and droons—but I’ve never heard of any who have encountered them.’
‘Which probably confirms they don’t exist.’
‘Either that, or not many have survived to tell the tale.’
The reception committee consisted of technicians working in the docking tower who, upon seeing Mr Crane step out behind Skellor, suddenly decided to get busy about other tasks. He saw that all three men wore Dracocorp augs, and supposed the source of that bright point in the aug network had sent them to assess this new visitor. Now ignoring them, he strode on towards the security arch spanning the gangway leading to the centre of the tower. The arch was to alert the station AI to anyone entering with lethal biologicals or weapons capable of damaging the structure of the station itself. Skellor did not want to know what it might make of him or Crane and, stopping before it, he pressed his hand against the device’s white anodized surface. From his palm, Jain nanofilament eased between the molecular interstices of the metal, and spread, invading optics and tracking them back to the controlling submind.
Too late, that same mind became aware of the invasion. Skellor isolated it and linked, erased its immediate memory and substituted one comprising a single inoffensive human stepping through the security arch. With his other hand he waved Air Crane ahead of him. He then raided the submind for information about the station and its residents, delaying its restarting for a few seconds before pulling his hand away, the filaments stretching and snapping back as if he had just pressed his palm into treacle. He stepped through himself and, glancing back, noticed that two of the technicians had been watching him. They would have no idea what he had done, but they would certainly know he had done something, for there had been no alarm raised on the detection of a large armoured Golem.
Beyond the arch, the long high corridor, lit by spider-web lights inset in the ceiling, terminated at the mouth of a dropshaft. Stepping past and to one side of Crane, who was now peering down into the well, Skellor inspected the control panel. He chose ‘Main Concourse’, then stepped in. Descending, he glanced up to see Crane step into the shaft, clamping his hand down on his head as if he expected his hat to be blown off, but there was no air-blast as the irised gravity field rigidly took hold of him.
Exiting the shaft, Skellor surveyed a large open area floored with mica-effect tiles, its high ceiling supported by bulbous pillars reminiscent of the Bradbury Hotel on Earth, the lighting web extending across the ceiling giving it the illusion of depth. Spread across this expanse were seating areas, trees of all varieties growing in small walled gardens, bars and open-plan restaurants, and all around the edges, between the many exit tunnels, were lighted shop fronts. Right in the centre, in a circular lawn kerbed with polished agates, grew a huge baobab under whose low branches people rested or picnicked.
Skellor immediately noted that many people were eyeing him and Mr Crane. He was not worried over this—the nexus of the Dracocorp network would not get the time to react appropriately. He closed his eyes and, using those devices grown inside his body, mapped signal strengths throughout the station. He again created the virtual sphere, then input the blueprint of the station he had taken from the submind, deforming the sphere to fit it. The central glowing point was ahead, higher up and to his left. He made for the relevant tunnel, Crane dogging his footsteps like Dr Shade.
The tunnel, sectioned like a pipe and lit as elsewhere, had coloured lines traced along the edge of the mica floor to provide directions for those without augs. Checking the blueprint, Skellor saw he would have to take the next dropshaft leading to the floor above. Around the mouth of this shaft loitered people wearing Dracocorp augs.
Now for the reaction. Skellor first alerted Mr Crane, then inside himself recalled a stored viral program he had used aboard the Occam Razor. No longer being part of a large Jain structure as well as a Polity dreadnought, he did not have the transmission power he had used in the Masadan system. Back on the Razor a touch to any one of the Dracocorp augs worn by Separatist prisoners had been all he required to take control of them all—but theirs had been a nascent network, with no individual yet gaining ascendance. In the Masadan system it had been necessary for him to take control through the Hierarch, who was also the one in control of the aug network, which he had done through the sheer power and bandwidth of the transmitters available on the Occam Razor. Here, he must touch the ascendant Dracocorp aug and, to get to the individual wearing it, he suspected he would leave a trail of blood.
As he reached the dropshaft, seven people turned towards him. He scanned them at a low level, and saw that all of them were armed. He noted how they had prepared for Mr Crane: two of them carried APW handguns, and another a mini-grenade launcher. But they had carried out no scan themselves, and were reacting only to what they were seeing: a human and a simple, though large, metalskin Golem.
One of them stepped forwards; a catadapt man with a mane and feline eyes. He grinned, exposing fangs.
‘Welcome to Ruby Eye,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain how you came aboard without Security becoming aware of him.’ He gestured at Mr Crane.