'Why did he head away from the city?' the woman asked.
Corlackis replied smoothly. 'To set up a base of oper- ations. It's his usual technique: use local forces to establish a base where least expected, then, when he starts hitting you, you just won't know where to look. We saw it on Cheyne III. We spent months searching the most likely places and paying thousands in bribes to the local police. It was nearly all over before we discovered his base on one of the atolls.'
Stanton took his eyes from the intensifier and glanced behind, across the small AGC park on top of the building. Local police. He cursed the fact that they were so humanitarian here. This surveillance equipment, two stun pistols and a stun rifle had been the extent of his haul. The charge in the rifle he had used up at close range on the AGC, to burn the paint off. Not that it would have been much use to him. He could have been fairly sure of taking down the locals. But Pelter, Mennecken and Corlackis were another matter. Crane of course would have been unaffected. A stupid option, though. He wanted Pelter dead, not stunned.
'We can take him down,' one of the men drawled.
Stanton wondered how Corlackis kept a straight face at that.
'Not so easy if he has ES regulars with him,' he said.
'They're easy. Boys playing soldier games,' said the woman.
Corlackis shook his head. 'I admire your confidence, but would not want you to take on something you couldn't handle, nor would I want you to go unrewarded.'
The hook was in. Stanton shook his head at the ease of it all. They hadn't even asked why Corlackis and the rest would not be going in themselves. Corlackis now looked round at Pelter, who gave a nod. Corlackis tossed something on the table. One etched sapphire, Stanton bet. The woman snatched it up.
'Three more when the job is done,' Corlackis said.
'No problem,' said the woman.
The other four said nothing. They were too busy looking tough and confident behind their black eye-bands. Corlackis now reached under the table and picked up a cloth-wrapped bundle, which he placed before the woman. The woman reached across and nipped the cloth aside, completely unconcerned that anyone might see an assault rifle revealed.
'We have seeker bullets as well,' said Corlackis. 'We would not see you go in unprepared.'
'How many?'
'You can have this rifle and a sufficient quantity of seeker rounds. We've got laser carbines as well. As many as you need. We also have a nice compact mortar you can use.'
Stanton saw the greedy expression on the woman's face. She must think all her birthdays had come at once. Poor sap.
'We get to keep them?'
'But of course,' said Corlackis.
Stanton lowered the intensifier and shut off the microphone. He had heard and seen enough. He gazed out beyond the city line to the slabbed land beyond. Svent and Dusache had gone that way, after the military carrier and that was where the action would take place. Right now Stanton did not have a way of getting close to Pelter and killing him. Others did have the means. It did not matter to him how Pelter died, just that he did. He crouched back from the edge, stood up, then walked over to his stolen AGC. Pelter would leave soon, but Stanton had no intention of following him. He'd follow the five below. He would have no problem trailing such amateurs.
25
Ian Cormac: Yet another mythical creation of hero-starved humanity. Earth Central Security does have its monitors, its Sparkind and troops, and, yes, it does have its secret agents. But let us be honest about these people: they are, on the whole, grey and characterless. Again, this is all about what we want to believe. We want this superagent who so easily sorts out all the bad guys for us. Cormac is to ECS what a certain agent with the number 007 was to MIS. At best he is a fictional creation, at his worst he is a violent and disruptive role model.
From Quince Guide, compiled by humans
The light was like clotted blood and seemed to tangle the shadows in the chequer trees beyond the encampment in swirls and eddies, and strange globular buds glistened in the branches like molluscs. The encampment itself was lit by lights inside some of the tents. It had been Arn's idea to inflate a couple of survival suits with crash foam and sit them inside the tents. With a radio playing some monotonous atonal singing, the whole was quite convincing. Crouched behind a crum- bling wall, Cormac surveyed the trees through the night-setting on his visor. Amongst the native chequer trees, so named because of the pattern of their bark, were blue oaks: a variety much used in the later stages of terraforming projects, and called so because their acorns were blue. They grew very slowly, but were hardy enough to withstand extremes of weather not found on Earth. Beside Cormac crouched Thorn and the two dracomen. Aiden and Cento were somewhere in the trees, using thermal scanners to pick up on whoever might come. They had been gone for two hours.
'Why's the moonlight so red?' asked Thorn.
Cormac had wondered that, too. The sunlight was turned a weak green by the atmosphere, yet under reflected light from the moon it took on the colour of old blood. He had asked Cento for an explanation.
He informed Thorn, 'The green sunlight's caused by the atmosphere - aerial algae apparently. The moon has huge mixed deposits of cinnabar and fluorspar on its surface. That's where the red light comes from.'
'How come?'
'I asked the same question. Cinnabar is a red pigment; it's also mercuric sulphide. Mining it is the chief economic resource here. There's a runcible up there for transporting tankers of mercury all over the sector. The fluorspar is fluorescent. The combination of the two produces that red light, even when the daytime sky is green.'
'Oh,' said Thorn, and fell silent.
Cormac gave him an assessing look. Only as they had been speaking had he noticed that Thorn kept one of the proton guns resting against the wall next to him.
'Little excessive?' he said, nodding at the weapon.
Thorn picked it up and held it almost lovingly. In its main chamber the light was subdued: it writhed and shifted, a luminescent mist.
'Well,' said Thorn, 'I do have to test this chap.'
Cormac reserved comment on that. There was little chance that any of the weapons provided for this operation would not work. They continued watching.
'You are to be attacked by other humans?'
Cormac turned in surprise to look straight into the teeth of a grinning dracoman. It was the first question from one of them since they had been picked up by Hubris.
'Yes,' said Cormac, 'killers out for vengeance on me.'
'This would endanger mission.'
'Yes, it—'
The dracoman slid off into the night. It was gone before Cormac could say another word.
'Speedy chap,' observed Thorn.
The other dracoman moved up beside Cormac and took hold of his biceps. Its hand was an iron manacle closing.
'You will not be harmed,' said the dracoman.
Cormac tried to free his arm. 'Let me go, damn it!'
The dracoman lost interest in him and turned its head away. It did not release its hold.
'You're supposed to obey—'
'Someone coming,' came Aiden's voice over com. 'One figure approaching. Just walking in… Who is that coming from your direction? I thought—' There was a pause of a couple of seconds. 'I see. Did you send this dracoman out?'