'What was that all about?' Stanton asked Pelter.
The Separatist tapped his organic aug. 'Dragon, trying to get control of me through him.' He pointed at the sagging bulk. 'He already had Svent and Dusache and a few hundred others here.'
'Dragon. You mean that Aster Colora—'
'Yes, I mean precisely that.'
'What about the others now?'
'It's subde control. He no longer has it.'
There was the thump of a pulse-gun to Stanton's left. He looked over and saw that Mennecken had finished off the remaining shavehead. Mr Crane was standing close and gazing down at the body, his head moving birdlike. Pelter glanced at him and Crane froze.
'Now we load up these crates. You will come in the dropbird with me, John. The rest of you go over in the transporter.'
Stanton nodded.
'What about these?' Corlackis asked, pointing his pulse-gun at Svent and Dusache.
'Remove their augs,' said Pelter.
'Could be dangerous without shutdown.'
Pelter just stared at him. Corlackis shrugged, then pulled something from his pocket. There was a click, and chainglass glittered. He stooped over Svent and Dusache.
'What about yours?' Stanton asked.
Pelter closed his eyes. In that moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. He reached up and gripped his second aug. It seemed to be squirming in his grip.
'This, you mean?' he asked, his voice tight and vicious.
Stanton stepped back. No telling how Pelter might react. He gripped the handle of his stun gun and kept his face expressionless. Abruptly Pelter snarled and tore the aug from his head. He threw it hard against the floor and stared at it. After a moment he stamped on it, men again and again. Finally he ground the fleshy remnants to pulp under his heel.
'That - about mine,' he said.
The layer of cloud was breaking like a crust, to expose lemon cracks. Pelter eased forward on the controls and the dropbird slid away from the warehouse, then up into the air. All its lift came entirely from the AG transport plates, and all its forward motion from the tilting of those plates. Because there were no turbines and no thrust from any other quarter, and because of the bird's aerodynamic shape, it was eerily silent. There was also something spooky, Stanton felt, about looking through the side of the screen and not immediately being able to make out the body and wings of the craft in which he was travelling.
As the bird picked up speed, there at last came sound: a high keening of the wind. Pelter eased off on the controls, tilting the plates to brake speed while engaging the airbrakes along the wings. Stanton gripped the back of the pilot's seat with one hand and pressed his other hand against the roof of the cockpit. There was no co-pilot's chair here, so it was necessary to stand up to obtain a good view. Ahead of them was the transporter that Corlackis was piloting. By comparison it was an ugly lump in the sky - if you could make a comparison with something practically invisible.
Pelter eased the joystick over, and the bird banked over Port Lock. Stanton held himself in place and looked down. From here the arcology buildings were a blocky maze interspersed with the blue-green of acacias and the harsh green of new growth, which had not been there before the storm. All across this area, flood pools and drainage dykes mirrored the breaking sky. There was also a lake cut with the wakes of water scooters. The citizens of Port Lock were coming out to play now, after their confinement. Stanton envied them their small concerns. It was easy to feel a kind of superiority from invisible heights.
As the bird banked over onion towers and the disparate blocks of hotel towers and offices he took a firmer grip. The lake slid from view and ahead he saw the band of wasteland between the city and the spaceport. Two ships, one the featureless grey tank of an insystem carrier, and the other a bulbous wedge of a metallic green, were settling towards the crowded field. The spaceport, with its many ships, had the appearance to Stanton of a small baroque town on the outskirts of the city, where perhaps an alien race dwelt in its distorted houses.
'You'll have to watch those as we come in,' he said.
'I do know what I'm doing,' Pelter replied.
He took the bird to one side of the port over the acacias and tangled hulks, and brought it down in a tight spiral. Stanton glanced at him and saw, for the first time since Cheyne III, an expression on his face that might be interpreted as enjoyment. Pelter brought the bird down slow and easy, only a few metres above the tops of the trees. They soon came to the fence and eased over it. Stanton looked to his right at the gate. Four guards were watching the transporter landing by the Lyric. They were oblivious to the bird.
'By law, all cargoes should go in through the gate. Overflying a landing field carries a heavy penalty. How do you want us to deal with this?' Stanton asked.
Pelter leant forwards in the pilot's seat, a nasty expression on his face.
'They're coming over,' Corlackis said through the open com from the transporter.
The four guards were walking across the open ground towards the Lyric. Stanton wondered just how much they were thinking of charging for this particular infringement. He looked at Pelter.
'You could pay them off,' he said.
Pelter eased the bird down over the other side of the fence. He brought it lower and lower and slowed it almost to a walking pace.
'Stay in the transporter. Don't go out to meet them. I'm just going to try something,' he said.
Stanton ran his hand down his face. He knew precisely what Pelter was going to try. Since he had removed that aug, something vicious had risen inside him and now demanded satisfaction.
'Did you know,' said Pelter, 'that this bird is made almost entirely of chainglass?'
'I know, Arian,' said Stanton.
The dropbird was about a metre from the ground now, and the guards were walking in a tight group only 100 metres ahead. Pelter eased it up to something above walking pace and quickly closed in on the four men.
'It's almost like one big blade.'
At the last moment he tilted the two plates at odds to each other. The bird spun. Stanton saw one man cartwheeling through the air, another cut in half, but didn't see what had happened to the remaining two. Pelter levelled the plates, tilted them back the other way to stop the spin, and then eased the bird onward to the Lyric. Stanton could see the wings now. They were red.
'What you have to understand, John, is that I win because I think quickly and can work out the fastest solution to a problem,' Pelter said.
And there I was assuming it was because you're a ruthless psychotic bastard, thought Stanton. He kept that thought to himself, and looked ahead at the open A hold of the Lyric. The entire sphere had been split horizontally in half, the top half held up ten metres above the bottom by hydraulic rams. Pelter eased the bird up and into the gap. Inside, the clamps and straps to fix the bird in place were ready. Pelter eased it down into place with a delicate clonk, then he shut off AG. Stanton moved back through the cabin to the side door, as the Separatist unstrapped himself. He eyed Mr Crane squatting in the middle of the cabin and just wished that things could end right now. He was going soft; he knew it. He had seen the signs in others. He popped the door and climbed out onto the transparent part of the wing, then slid to the deck. Further along the wing he saw that a pair of overalls were stuck in place with blood. He walked across the deck to the open hatch to the sound of Crane, then Pelter, emerging from the bird behind him. On the ramp he stared outwards as lemon sunlight broke through the clouds.