Cam's arm and injected painkillers. Thorn came to and vomited. Cormac just sat and clutched his own head.
'Emergency personnel to sector three, with fire retardants. Automatic systems out. All hull breaches temporarily sealed. All drop-shafts inoperative. Sector one closed to all personnel until coolant leaks traced and repaired…'
The list went on and on, yet there was no word of what had happened to Dragon.
'Hubris, what's going on? What's Dragon doing?'
The list continued to be recited by subsystem while Hubris spoke to them in the shuttle bay.
'Dragon has taken hold of this ship with its pseudo-podia. It is dragging us back to Samarkand. I have had to close down engines because of coolant leaks. All attempts to remove the pseudopodia have failed. I do not wish to resort to energy weapons at this range.'
There was a thump, and the entire ship shuddered. The shuttle groaned, then slid to the bay floor with a crash.
'What the hell?' pleaded Cam.
Hubris said, 'Dragon is attempting to gain entrance to the shuttle bay. I suggest you abandon this section and head for the communal area.'
As one, they turned to stare at the shuttle-bay doors. They were creaking, flexing.
'I have temporarily engaged drop-shaft one,' said Hubris.
They headed there as the armoured shielding slid away from the shaft. Cam went first, and was wafted up to the communal area. Thorn went next. Cormac turned and watched as the bay doors were slowly wrenched to one side. The shimmer-shield was out, but there was no danger from vacuum at that moment. Beyond the door was a wall of scaled flesh. And all down the edge of the door appeared pseudopods like blue-tipped fingers.
'Is it after me?' Cormac asked.
'We go,' said Aiden.
They stepped into the drop-shaft.
They gathered in the recreation room: Cormac, Aiden, Thorn, Mika, Chaline, and some of the technicians and crew. Cormac saw that one of the technicians was holding a bloody cloth to his head. Another was sitting holding his ribs. He wondered how many more had been hurt.
Hubris showed them the scene in the shuttle bay. The external doors were wide open now and pseudopodia were flooding the bay in a landslide of flesh, their cobra heads feeling along the walls like the fingers of a blind man.
'Intruder defence mechanisms online—'
'No,' said Cormac, 'belay that. Put me through to the shuttle bay.'
'You are through. Intruder defence systems offline.'
'Dragon, why have you attacked this ship?' He had a horrible feeling that he knew the answer; that he had just pissed it off and that it was after him. He somehow doubted, that being the case, that there was anything that could prevent him from being found.
'It's concentrating on the drop-shaft door now,' said Chaline. 'Stress readings are up.' Hubris said, 'Unauthorized access to information banks. Information being downloaded from shuttle-bay area.'
'What the hell?' said Chaline.
On the screen they could see that a pseudopod had attached itself to one of the wall consoles.
'Getting the layout of the ship, probably, and anything else of interest,' suggested Cormac.
They watched as the drop-shaft door crumpled and broke and the pseudopods flooded through.
'They have entry,' said Chaline unnecessarily.
'Perhaps it mistook Hubris for a she-dragon,' said Thorn. There was a giggle from behind him that soon petered out.
Cormac ignored the comment and stared at the screen, his hopes growing. The pseudopods were going down the shaft - away from them - not coming up it. Suddenly he knew what Dragon wanted.
'Hubris, what is the status of the dracomen?'
'They were unhurt in the incident, but have since undergone changes.'
The screen flicked to reveal the interior of the isolation chamber. The two dracomen were lying on the floor, curled in the foetal position. They had excreted some kind of fluid that had sealed them in cauls, so they appeared newborn. Cormac knew they were making ready to go back, but should he let Dragon have them? Would they make bargaining counters? He had to try, else Dragon might just take its dracomen and disappear.
'Dragon, if you persist in this action, the dracomen will be destroyed. We will—'
The ship shuddered again. There was a loud crash over the intercom.
'Pseudopods just took out the door next to Isolation,' said Hubris. 'Do you wish the dracomen destroyed?'
The screen flicked again to show the scene outside the isolation chamber. Pseudopods filled the area and were pushing at the armoured shutters over the viewing window. A voice, which Cormac recognized of old, came over the intercom.
'Bluff, Ian Cormac, is for those without strength. You will not destroy what is mine, for if you do, I will crush this ship.'
Dragon…
'The dracomen are in a sealed chamber… all I want is some answers. Why were they here? What happen—'
'You have limited choices. Open this sealed chamber, or I will simply remove it from your ship. To do so I will need to open out some areas…'
Dragon was right.
'Hubris, open the isolation chamber,' Cormac said quickly.
The shutters slid aside and the pseudopods burst through the window. They were in, then out, in a moment, and the dracomen were lost in the mass of writhing flesh.
'Pulling back to the drop-shaft,' said Chaline, though they could all see that for themselves. 'Hubris, what seal do we have if Dragon disengages?'
'Have seals for drop-shaft ready,' replied the AI.
Scene by scene, the screen showed pseudopods being drawn back. One view showed the seals sliding into the drop-shaft behind it like great coins. In the shuttle bay the pods slid back into the fleshy wall beyond. The ship shuddered.
'Dragon disengaging.'
They all felt the explosion of air leaving the shuttle bay. The great sphere of Dragon drew away. Along with other debris, the shuttle followed it into vacuum.
'Dragon disengaged.'
'Cento…' said Aiden.
'We'll get the shutde back,' said Chaline.
On emergency drives, Hubris limped back into orbit around Samarkand.
'Dragon didn't know all that was going on,' said Mika as she repaired Cormac's ribs.
He did not want to see what she was doing to him. He had seen quite enough blood and ripped-open bodies in his time not to be squeamish, but as always it was a different matter when it was your own blood and your own open body. The nerve-blocker on the back of his neck had, after adjustment, numbed him from the armpits downwards. But, as was always the case with such operations, he could faintly feel the tuggings and certainly hear the sounds. Cormac had wanted to just strap his ribs up and avoid this, but Mika had insisted because he was in danger of getting a punctured lung. He glanced aside at the pipes leading into the remote lung, and again experienced that weird feeling of disconnection. The blocker had shut off some of his autonomics, and his heart and lungs were on hold.
'What makes you say that?'
Cormac's voice sounded exactly the same to him, even though it issued from a mechanical larynx, much like that of a Golem, operating on the shunted nerve impulses from the nerve-blocker. The object was stuck on his shoulder with a skin-stick pad. It had the appearance of a large snail shell made of blue metal, and fixed sideways to a coin of perspex in which small lights glinted.
'Well, the dracomen are part of it. I would speculate they were something like remote probes or agents. It wanted them back for debriefing.'