"Lellan wants to know what the delay is all about," said Jarvellis.
He replied, "The more open doors, connected ramps and gantries, and equipment in the process of being unloaded, the less the likelihood of an emergency takeoff succeeding."
"Cold bastard sometimes, aren't you?"
"And you would do it differently, my love?"
"Har-har-har."
Treaded missile-launchers and armoured cars were at last motoring from both ships when Stanton nodded to himself, laid his thumb across all five buttons, and pressed down. The screen he was watching whited out for a second then came back on to show metal frameworks looking like tinsel under a blowtorch; great slabs of plascrete riding up on arc-fire explosions; one ship tipped over and sliding down canted plascrete, the white-hot hollow of its interior exposed; the second ship trying to lift, but dragged sideways by the attached gantries and ramps, to crash down and bounce amid the growing atomic inferno. Like leaves before a wind, armoured cars, unidentifiable wreckage, whole slabs of plascrete hurtled out on the ensuing blast wave. The sound preceding it did not hit him at once, it just grew like the revving of some huge engine, became titanic, then, in sympathy, the ground began to move like a slow sea. Stanton recalled his holocam, quickly secured it and its screen back in their case, then he crouched, gripping the rails of the aerofan. He observed the cloud of smoke and fire growing alarmingly into view, before all the flute grass was flattened by the sudden wind, to reveal a carnage of fire and a wall of smoke and steam boiling outwards, interpenetrated, led and followed by debris. Crouching even lower, Stanton watched a slab the size of a playing field tumble overhead. To his right what remained of an armoured car bounced once, and spread white-hot fragments hissing through the vegetation. As the smoke and steam hit, he bowed his head and closed his eyes, wondering if perhaps just one CTD might have been adequate — and if it might have been wiser to observe the results from more of a distance.
The glow became a blazing eye on the horizon, ringed round with shades of lurid purple and orange, some tens of seconds before they heard the long drawn-out grumbling of the explosion and saw clouds drawn suddenly into lines and seemingly snuffed from existence.
Standing with his boot resting on one of the gun turrets, Thorn asked, "You knew this was going to happen, so what was it, then?"
Sitting on the other gun turret, Eldene observed the old cyborg as he too watched the distant glow, whilst combing his fingers through his raggedy ginger beard. When he finally did turn to answer Thorn's question, it was with a distracted air.
"Well, unless I miss my bet, that was the spaceport and any military landing there being attempted from the cylinder worlds. Can't confirm that yet, though, as com's all down," he said.
"EM pulse," said Thorn, gazing back at the orange glow. "So that was a nuclear explosion?"
"More than one, I think — small tactical CTDs." Fethan looked down at Eldene and grinned. "More wonderful things devised by the Polity."
"Anything that destroys the Theocracy is all right by me," murmured Eldene.
Fethan frowned at her but, before saying anything about that, tilted his head and said, "Ah, seems the Theocracy just lost two of their largest ships, along with any facility to land more of that size." He turned and pointed. "But not the ability to land, however."
A roaring had now grown distinct from the sound of the explosion, and it became evident this had little to do with the blast itself. Like shoals of grey sharks, the landing craft of the Theocracy filled the sky and slid overhead — hundreds of them. The three of them felt an urge to duck out of sight, but where was 'out of sight' with such a swarm of craft filling the sky?
"We're only small beer," said Fethan, "but best to get moving anyway. They might send someone out here once they've landed." He leapt down from the roof of the ATV and entered it. Eldene quickly followed him down then inside, but Thorn took a while longer.
"CTDs are not something the Polity hands out like lollipops, you know," he commented, upon finally re-entering the vehicle.
With half an ear to the ensuing exchange, Eldene set the motor to spinning up its flywheel, before engaging the hydrostatic drive and getting them under way.
"Seems John Stanton had no trouble getting hold of them," replied Fethan. "But why am I telling you this? You should know, as you came here aboard his ship."
"Sealed cargo and a hostile ship's AI — so I didn't get to find out very much. All I was sure about was the drug manufactories and pulse-rifles."
"Ah, so you didn't get a look at the two Polity war drones and the U-space transmitter?" said Fethan.
Thorn's reply to this involved a physically impossible sexual activity in conjunction with the edible but prickly fruit of a bromeliad.
"There is a girl present, you know," Fethan warned, and this time received an even briefer retort.
Eldene tried to suppress it — it seeming so inappropriate in present circumstances, and she had only understood half of what Thorn had suggested — but the giggle escaped her nonetheless.
"Ignore him," said Fethan. "These Earthmen are just foul and uncouth creatures."
That, coming from Fethan, had the tears running from her eyes, and she found that her suppressed laughter only escaped with more force.
"Watch where you're driving," Fethan added.
The little electric heater was an amazing device that folded into a case no larger than the palm of a hand. The grid opened out into a twenty-centimetre square that was suspended just off the ground by two U-shaped telescopic legs; the microtok was a flattened ovoid between these, simply supplied with water from a small filter pipe pushed into the damp ground. It was, Molat suspected, a device intended for cooking upon, but it put out a wonderful blast of warmth, and he could not summon the inclination to damn this piece of Polity technology. Like all proctors, he would have punished its possessor before adding the item to his own collection, but since that earlier possessor was presently rotting down into the thick loam of the planet, there was nothing much to do about him. Holding his hands out towards the square of red-hot metal, Molat looked across them at Toris.
"We'll head out for the landers. I for one will not surrender myself to the Underground in this uniform," he said, rather than relayed through his aug. It was more comforting to speak out loud in this darkness, and there was so much horror coming in over aug channels of late that he was beginning to develop an aversion to using them. Perhaps Toris felt the same, for he too replied aloud:
"They'll be going all out to attack our wonderful First Commander Aberil Dorth. We might be somewhere behind them or caught between the two of them."
Molat didn't like the tone he seemed to be getting from Toris ever since the destruction of the spaceport. Most proctors neither liked nor trusted Aberil Dorth — the man was psychotic at best — but that was not an antipathy you allowed yourself to voice aloud, or to even think if you could help it, since mistakes were easy to make over aug channels.
"Nevertheless," he said. "That is the only direction we can head to find safety."
Toris looked up, and seemed about to say something he might regret. However, a rushing rustling in the flute grass stilled further vocal conversation.
Toris: "What in God's name was that?"
Molat: "It sounded big, and I felt the ground move."
Toris: "You know there are heroynes and siluroynes out here?"
Molat: "Thanks for the reminder That's made me feel much better."
Molat turned off the little heater and stood up, blinking to clear the gridded after-images from his vision. Another hissing in the flute grass behind Toris had Molat pointing his rail-gun in that direction. Toris turned, with his own laser pistol gripped two-handed. Something odd about the grasses over there…? Then Molat realized what he was seeing: two deep dark eye-pits in which glittered eyes like faceted grey sapphires. Its huge head — which was the most yet to become visible — had the appearance of a bovine skull patterned with flute-grass stripes, and trailed two flat-tipped feelers from its lower jaw. The teeth, when they were exposed, had no camouflage, however, and gleamed like blue hatchets in the moonlight.