The picture in the book now showed the room much expanded, the table piled with chewed bones and other detritus from some huge feast. The three gabbleducks were monoliths of alien flesh, bone and muscle that almost filled the rest of the room.
Somebody was talking really fast in a foreign language and she really wished that person would shut up. As she ascended through various levels of awareness, Eldene acknowledged to herself that though she knew what a 'foreign language' was, she had never actually heard one spoken. Obviously it was someone else jabbering away in the orphanage dormitory… no, in the workers' bunkhouse. She'd have to tell them to shut up in a moment. It was quite enough that she was cold and her bed felt slightly damp and lumpy…
As Eldene finally woke up, Fethan whispered in her ear, "Say nothing and make no sudden movements."
Eldene opened her eyes and stared at him. Fethan was crouching right next to her, holding the stinger across his lap. He was clearly visible in the silver-blue light of Amok — one of the larger Braemar moons — and as he glanced at Eldene, his eyes reflected that argent light. With delicate precision, he pointed out into the night.
Carefully Eldene eased herself upright, confused about what had woken her, but wary enough to obey Fethan's instructions. A breeze was evident and for a moment she thought she had been disturbed by the fluting of the grass. Then that other sound repeated, and she froze.
It was just like someone speaking utter nonsense very fast and affirmatively.
"Y'scabbleubber fleeble lobber nabix chope!"
Easing herself higher, Eldene peered in the direction Fethan was pointing. In the moonlight, it did not take her long to discern that something was nosing along the edge of the grasses. All she could see for a moment was a body like a boulder and a long duck bill swinging from side to side, then the creature reared onto its hind legs, opened out its sets of forepaws from the wide triple keel of its chest, and blinked its tiara of greenish eyes as it prepared for its latest oration.
"Y'floggerdabble uber bazz zup zupper," it stated portentously.
"God in Heaven," Eldene whispered, groping for her gun.
Fethan reached out and caught her wrist. "Still and quiet," he hissed. "Gabbleducks are only dangerous when not making any noise."
Gabbleduck!
Eldene had not really believed in them, but now the truth confronted her. She watched as the creature dropped back down and nosed back out into the flute grass, crushing a trail away from them and muttering as it went. When Fethan released her wrist, Eldene let out a suppressed breath and relaxed back against the rock.
"They eat grazers, you said?"
"Yeah, though you'll be unlikely to see any of them, as they run before you can get too close."
Eldene reached for her water bottle, but Fethan tapped her on the shoulder and stood up. "There's something else."
Eldene watched him climb up onto the outcrop, then unwrapped herself from her tarpaulin and followed when he gestured her to do so.
"Lot of activity out there tonight," said Fethan as Eldene joined him, failing to not crush the hemispherical molluscs under her feet no matter how carefully she trod. Fethan pointed over the flute grass, in the direction they had come.
The thing stood on two long thin legs that raised it high above the grass itself. Its body had the shape of a thick bucket seat, its long curved neck extending from what would have been the backrest. Below this neck, Eldene could just make out numerous sets of forearms folded as if in prayer. It had no head as such; the neck just terminated in a long serrated spear of a beak. While she watched, it took one delicate arching step that must have carried it over five metres. She noticed its foot was four-toed and webbed.
"Heroyne?" Eldene guessed.
"Yeah, a small one," Fethan affirmed.
As she watched the heroyne, Eldene felt tears filling her eyes — her recent experiences had been frightening, these creatures were frightening, yet both in their way were wonderful and in utter contrast to her grey toil under the Theocracy.
"Thank you," she said.
Fethan acknowledged this with a nod, and the both of them stood there for some time watching the heroyne as it strode on, occasionally spearing writhing shapes, occasionally shaking its beak at the jabbering of the gabbleduck. The rest of the night Eldene slept only intermittently, woken in turn by the increased fluting from the grasses, the momentary return of the gabbleduck, by nightmares of a heroyne towering over her and tilting its head while it decided if she might be good to eat — and by a tight ball of something in her stomach that she could only describe as happiness.
Gant smelt burning and just knew there was something wrong. He wondered if this knowledge could be put down to instinct, then he wondered if such an abstraction could have survived the copying process that had resulted in his present self.
"Aiden? Cento?" he said into his wristcom, while drawing his pulse-gun. Then he damned his own stupidity — he was in a security area so radio signals could not penetrate the shielding incorporated in the walls. All communications from here had to be via direct line wires or optic cables. Moving to one of the coms set in the wall itself, he spoke the same words. His voice should have activated the device and his words caused it to relay them to the required recipient, but there was no response. He tried the touch-pads and found them dead.
Of course, his next action should have been to get the hell out of there, then return with a shitload of backup. But Gant was Sparkind and a Golem android now, and utterly confident that there was little he could not squash on his own. He ran to the door and flung himself through it, rolled, and came up into a crouch to spot potential targets. No movement. The guy sitting at the console looked wasted, and the other…
Gant suddenly had one of those moments of revelation that in others often necessitate a change of underwear. Golem, He tried to communicate with it on the same level as Cento and Aiden did with himself — direct radio transmission, mind to mind — but got nil response. Someone had killed this Golem. The head was a blackened ruin, which did not necessarily mean much as the mind was contained in an armoured case in the chest. But the lack of movement or communication did signify. Swinging round, Gant quickly moved back to the door and headed for SA1. He was only a few paces down the corridor when the blast from a riot gun lifted him into the air and deposited him on his back.
"The ship you were on, the General Patten, was completely destroyed by Dragon," explained Cormac.
Apis stood in a gravity of one gee. The exoskeletal suit that the Golem, Aiden, had earlier found in the Occam's stores, bulked him out so he now looked to have the musculature to withstand this gravity. The thick grey material covered him from his feet to under his chin, where it flared to cup his head. There was also a coms helmet that went with the suit, but they told him he would have no need of it, just as he would be unlikely to need the hood that folded up from the back, or the visor that could rise to meet it from the chin rest, or the weapon-system connection ports. For this was a suit specifically manufactured for military use.
"Yes, I knew that," he said, staring straight back at Cormac.
"Did you know many of those aboard?" Cormac asked, sitting. Apis moved carefully to another chair and sat down. He would be all politeness, but he wondered what this grim man wanted from him. The Cormac of The Dragon in the Flower — the book detailing the events preceding Dragon's supposed suicide on the planet Aster Colora — did not strike him as the kind to waste time on socializing, especially with a teenage Outlinker. They were now heading into a potential war zone, with a titanic dying alien clinging to the outside of the ship. Surely there were more important things that required his visitor's attention?