"Still no AG on their transports; Lellan's ahead of them on that," he said.
"What's all this about?" Eldene whispered, though she then wondered why she bothered to keep her voice down — the proctors could not have heard her over the racket generated by the transport's engines.
"Might be because two proctors have been killed in as many days, but I doubt that," said Fethan. "The Theocracy don't care so much for their proctors that they'd mobilize a transport. So I'd say Lellan's been stinging their arses — probably with a supply or worker raid. She likes to keep the bastards on their toes."
"Worker raid?" Eldene queried as the flight faded into the distance and she and Fethan finally crawled from cover.
"She'll normally select a work camp, go in with a transport just like that one, and liberate the lot of them. The only ones in the camp who object are usually the proctors, and their objections last only so long as it takes 'em to hit the ground. Lellan's not what you'd call reasonable when it comes to proctors."
"What about the lasers?" Eldene gestured to the sky.
"There are occasional windows of opportunity — when things can be done on the surface unseen. Before now Lellan has also stolen Theocracy transports and their radio identification codes. It's not something she gets away with very often, but when she does she makes the most of it."
They moved on through the flute grass.
Cento, Aiden and Gant met him as he stepped from the drop-shaft nearest the hold containing the craft. This hold was positioned over a kilometre from the bridge pod. Cormac noted that the two original Golem were in uniform and carried their JMC military-issue pulse-guns. Their expressions were unreadable. By contrast, Gant, whom Cormac was still loath to describe as a Golem, was not in uniform — it looked as if he had hurriedly dressed in whatever was to hand — however, he did carry the same weapon as the other two. Cormac made no comment on his presence. If he was out to prove something here, then let him do so.
"Scan shows only one person in there. There may be others in cold-sleep or undetected by scan. Stay alert. I want at least one alive if possible."
"Aren't we a little over-armed for this?" asked Gant.
"Recommend the softer approach when you've got something to lose," Cormac reminded him.
Gant muttered something filthy and fingered his gun. The drone led them through a sliding door into a cavernous hold, where the landing craft rested at the centre of a plain of ceramal deck plates. The grabship had returned to its rack position in a row of ten against the wall — they looked like giant metal insects clinging to a cliff. As he stepped through the door Cormac studied the captured craft.
It was of an old utile design much used before the introduction of cheap antigravity motors. Its body was a flattened cylinder terminating in a chainglass cockpit, behind which, like shoulders, were two ball-mounted thruster motors capable of firing in any direction. At the rear of the craft, behind another pair of thrusters, were two huge ion engines extruding outwards from the craft, these in appearance being simply two large spheres with the rears sliced off them. It had no landing feet let down and so lay flat on the deck.
The drone accelerated away from them to do one circuit of the craft, then hovered above its airlock which lay between the thrusters on one side. When they finally joined it, Cormac directed Cento and Aiden to the lock itself, not daring yet to touch this craft himself for standing before it was like standing before the open door of a freezer. Cento took hold of the manual wheel and turned it easily. There was a slight rush of air as pressures equalized, and when this door was open far enough, Aiden moved into the lock to release the inner door. Cento quickly followed him in with his pulse-gun ready. Cormac followed on with Gant.
Inside the craft, a skinny youth with bright yellow skin lay flat on his back, with Cento bent over him. Cormac took in the situation in a second and shouted to the drone.
"Drop the gravity — to five per cent, now!"
There was a moment's delay, enough for Aiden to step back into the main body of the craft from the cockpit, which he had been checking out. Cormac's stomach lurched as the gravity changed. He glanced round and saw Gant rising slowly into the air, his embarrassment evident, then returned his attention to Cento.
"Outlinker, unconscious, fractured ankle," the Golem announced after a brief pause.
"There's another in one of the cold-coffins: a woman. But the manifest numbers twenty-five on this craft," said Aiden.
"They're not here?" Cormac asked needlessly. He did not see Aiden shake his head. An Outlinker on a Masadan landing craft, now what did that mean?
"How long, do you think, before I can speak to him?" he asked Cento, who was probing the youth's ankle.
"I'll get him up to Medical, and thereafter it will be Mika's decision."
Cormac nodded and stepped back into the airlock. The drone rapidly backed out of his way into the hold.
"Tomalon, I'd like you to hold position until this is sorted. We could then get a better idea of what we're flying into."
The drone said, "You do not command this ship."
"I know," Cormac replied.
"I can give you twenty hours."
Apis Coolant was conscious in three.
Skellor tracked her as she strode along the walkway, then started to move in after she sent about their business the three drones accompanying her. He wondered for a moment just what sort of ship this was that required human maintenance personnel, then understood that the craft had to be old — perhaps something left over from one of the many conflicts during the early expansion of the Polity. That meant that its AI would not be such a godlike entity as the newer Polity AIs and therefore much of the ship was outside its control — hence the human maintenance personnel. It also meant that this ship probably had an interfaced captain, and perhaps even a command crew. Not knowing his own capabilities just yet, Skellor could not judge whether this would make his task more or less difficult.
Walking soft on the ceramal deck plates, he came up behind her. She wore an aug that had the appearance of faceted sapphire behind which she tucked a strand of her long blonde hair as she glanced up from her note screen and gazed about herself. She could not see Skellor with his chameleonware operating, even though he stood only a few paces behind her. Her aug first, he thought, to prevent her broadcasting a cry for help. He reached out, his hand only inches from her face, and paused to relish the thrill of being this close and yet unseen, of having this much power, then he closed his fingers around her aug and tore it from her head.
She shrieked and ducked down in reflex, blood welling from the spot where he had torn the aug's anchors from the bone behind her ear. Skellor tossed the aug from the walkway and watched it continue along in a straight line into the bowels of the ship, now that it was beyond the pull of the grav-plates. The woman pulled herself upright and looked about in terrified bewilderment. Skellor now took offline the Jain boosting of his body, for he had swiftly learnt that with it operating he had no judgement of his own strength. Then, just as he had been taught by one of the Separatist fight trainers, he side-fisted her temple. Catching her as she slumped, he re-initiated boosting and slung her over his shoulder as easily as if she were a sack of polystyrene. Extending the range of his 'ware field to include her he quickly moved off. Had other people been viewing this attack they would have seen her simply rise into the air and disappear.
One of the drones she had sent away approached down the walkway as he marched along it. Pressing himself against the rail, to allow it past, he smiled to himself — utterly invisible, even to machines with a greater spectrum of senses than a human being.
Soon he reached the abandoned hold, where he lowered the woman to the floor before sealing the door behind him. Now he had to learn how to take exactly what he wanted. Squatting beside her, he pressed his fingers into the raw wound behind her ear and sent filaments from the Jain substructure through her skin and into her skull. Using the same methods the substructure had employed to connect to his crystal matrix AI and to himself, he connected to her and, adopting the same decoding programs he had earlier used on the structure, he read her mind. First he built a model of her brain in one small memory space in his aug, then, decoding the workings of her mind, he began to transfer across everything that was her. Soon he found that he no longer needed the model and erased it. It was a destructive reading, he found: memories, experiences, skills, understanding… all those facets of this human mind he absorbed, but by doing so destroyed their intricate source — it was like memorizing a book and burning each page once it was memorized. When he had finished, he withdrew his fingers and observed that she was still living: still functioning on those autonomous impulses that he had not touched. Grimacing, he touched her again, found the relevant area of her brain, and stopped her heart.