"What about Mr Crane? He thought for himself, and he nearly creamed that bastard Cormac."
"Unstable and dangerous. How many of our own did he kill?"
Skellor's curiosity was further piqued, and he immediately raided Aphran's mind for all information concerning this Mr Crane. In half a second he had all she knew. Encased in Jain architecture, he snorted derisively. "A brass metalskin Golem — a simple machine like that," he said aloud.
"Yeah, and how much closer did you get with Jain tech and a fucking delta-class dreadnought?" said one of the two Aphrans.
The other one tried to drown this with, "I love you I love you I love you Skellor!"
This didn't stop him finding the best way of hurting… both of her, and this was more satisfying to him than destroying a moonlet.
14
"And thus it was in the fiftieth year of colonization that the siluroyne came to dwell underneath the Bridge of Psalms and sorely troubled the low people of the compounds, and in the fiftieth day of the fiftieth year there came to that bridge the two pond workers, Sober and his wife Judge."
The picture the book displayed was of a mountainously fat couple made even more grotesque by the huge green and red scoles that seemed almost moulded into their bare chests. They wore only breeches and open shirts and were both so bristly and ugly that it was difficult to distinguish male from female.
"Greedy peasants," commented the woman.
The boy looked up at her and waited.
"You'll never see a fat pond worker," she explained to him.
The boy continued staring at her until she continued with the story.
"As the two workers crossed the bridge, the siluroyne climbed out before them and said, 'Give me my toll of flesh blood and bone. Terrified, the two could not say a word as the monster bore down upon them. Then Judge, more quickwitted than her husband, said, 'Let us live, and we shall bring you more flesh blood and bone than you can shake a stick at! Craftily the monster said, 'One of you will bring it to me whilst I hold the other here. Judge went and brought first the Brother whose sin was gluttony…"
In the picture the siluroyne held Sober in one of its multiple hands, whilst with the other it ate, one after the other, the sinning Brothers that Judge led to the bridge. Glancing at her son, the woman was glad he did not seem to notice when she missed reading out some of the sins committed by the Brothers — he was so busy watching those Brothers being crunched down and the gut of the siluroyne expanding.
Dawn crept in unnoticed, covered by the flashing of pulse-cannons and detonation after incandescent detonation. Slowly, the ancient walls and bastions surrounding the city became distinct from a purplish sky — gradually revealed in all their repro-medieval glory. In the past these huge limestone and plascrete defences had served the purpose of keeping the somewhat hostile wildlife out of the small inhabited area within. The growth in the population and the spread of crop fields into the wilderness had driven said wildlife back, and for a hundred years the walls had served only to prevent the city itself from spilling out across the land like some kind of poisonous technological froth. Now they once again served a truly medieval purpose, as this morning the enemy was at the gates.
Carl noted the position of the rail-gun in the north tower, as it opened up on one of the remaining tanks, which sped down the causeway between two squerm ponds. The racket of iron slugs impacting armour was horrendous and pieces fell away from the tank as it turned and motored down into one of the ponds, taking itself to cover. Carl hoped, for the sake of the occupants of that tank, that no slugs had penetrated. If the tank had been holed, and those holes were big enough, the occupants wouldn't even have time to either drown or suffocate before the squerms got them.
The transformer hum, followed by a strobe light, signified that the pulse-cannon had cooled down enough for Beckle to fire it once again.
"Got the bastard," he said.
"Are you sure about that this time?" Carl asked, observing the water slopping against the lower edge of their own tank's display screen, and the squerms in that same water scraping their way across the vehicle's surface, perhaps sensing that there was something soft to chew on inside the big tin can in their pond.
"Sure enough," Beckle replied. "It was the same one as before, I reckon they just wheeled it across from the other side."
Carl looked up at this latest burning cavity cut into the limestone, and opined that they would be wheeling nothing nowhere now.
"Let's get out of this hole then," he said, and thrust the steering column forwards and up. The tank's motor droned in response, while squerms and water slewed away from the screen. Immediately there came the rattling clanging of small-arms fire impacting on their armour, and Beckle replied by cutting chunks out of the city wall with his pulse-cannon. On the displays, and by glancing to either side, Carl saw that all the tanks were now advancing.
"Let's take down that gate," ordered Carl, speaking into his comlink. Missiles flashed from right and left, and the ancient grapewood gates disappeared in a cloud of fiery splinters, then the gate towers were soon collapsing into dusty piles of rubble. Carl drove his tank up onto one of these piles and, as the dust cleared, looked down into the city. Before them lay the sealed complexes and towers, the underground tunnels and roofed parks and greenhouses that made up the place — a place that people simply called 'the city' and sometimes forgot had once been called 'Valour', but then it was easy to forget a name like that in a place where one false step could mean death and where people could get into debt for merely breathing.
"I wish we could just go straight in," said Beckle.
"We'd kill thousands," warned Targon, again acting as their collective conscience. "It cannot be done like that." Carl observed the Theocracy soldiers dodging between the buildings, then swung the viewpoint to behind them. Over the chequerboard of ponds the infantry were now coming in on their grav-sleds, fans kicking up spray behind, and leaving agitated movement in the squerm ponds. He listened to his comlink, then glanced across at Uris who was receiving the same instructions via text and logistic diagram, before reversing his tank down off the pile of rubble.
"I could have hit a few," said Beckle. "I'm not that inaccurate."
"Too much collateral damage," said Carl. "Anyway, Lellan's coming out with a couple of carriers, and we're gonna join the attack on the spaceport now."
Spinning the tank full circle on its treads, he applied full power to send it away and around the city — away from aberrant missile-launchers, be they hand-held or tripod-mounted. He did not mention to his crew that they were one of only three remaining tanks now joining the attack on the spaceport. He didn't think that would be helpful or encouraging.
Listening in to Lellan's battle channels, Stanton raised the Proctor's set of binoculars and observed the first explosions as a heavy pulse-cannon opened up on the spaceport cranes. The response was immediate: armoured vehicles roaring across the huge foamed plascrete slabs to meet the attack; Theocracy carriers rising into the air, surrounded by swarms of aerofans; fire and missiles and explosions and, most importantly, all over there. Lowering the binoculars Stanton glanced down at the man from whom he had taken them. The man was young, inexperienced, had been arrogant in his new position of power, and Stanton had taken less pleasure in snapping his neck than he had in doing the same to the Separatist, Lutz. All the same, Aberil Dorth had been just like this young man all those years back, and look at what he had since become.