‘What the hell is that weapon for?’ Janer asked.
‘I might well ask you the same.’ Wade indicated with a nod the gun now pointing at him.
‘Self-defence,’ said Janer.
‘Equally,’ said Wade, ‘I have not as yet told you what else I discovered down in the bilge.’
‘I’m listening.’
Wade told him.
Ellanc Strone admiringly checked the working of the Batian weapon before placing it on his sleeping pallet next to a collection of grenades. Quite remiss of Bloc to have not collected all this. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror. Now it was time to move on. He had believed in the Cult for some years, but grown out of that, then come to hate it. He had in fact come to hate the whole idea of reification and would have gladly dispensed with the corpse he now saw before him. Only one thing stood in his way: money. Though the Polity did provide Golem, clones and sometimes the bodies of mind-wiped criminals for human beings recorded to crystal, the waiting list was fifty years long. To actually step over that list and buy a replacement cost a great deal and Ellanc’s funds did not stretch so far. His dislike of the Cult and its bastard offspring, also his need for money, were what had made him accept Lineworld’s initial offer to spy on Bloc. They were also the reason he had accepted the offer he recently received over secure com.
He would turn Bloc into a heap of scrap metal.
Ellanc donned his long coat, concealing the Batian weapon which hung from his belt underneath it. Quite probably he himself would be destroyed by the Kladites. However, Lineworld had made promises, guaranteed by independent arbiter, to load him to a Golem chassis, and pay him a disgustingly large quantity of money. Ellanc himself had made provision for one of his fellows to retrieve his memcrystal. Thereafter, Bloc’s people would be leaderless and easy prey for other Lineworld operatives, who were already on their way to Mortuary Island to await this ship’s return, and seize control of it before the next voyage.
It was 6.30 now, and time to get going. Ellanc stepped out of his cabin and strode along the deck that housed the reification’s staterooms, picking up his followers as he went. As Oranol joined him he said, ‘Remember, you do nothing. Don’t make any hostile moves—just ensure you get hold of my memcrystal.’
‘I understand,’ confirmed Oranol.
So he should—Ellanc would be paying him a lot of money for that understanding.
Twenty-five minutes later they reached the jigger stairwell and filed down to the meeting hall. They entered, looking around, but the hall was empty.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Oranol.
‘What’s to dislike?’ Ellanc asked. ‘Bloc is probably still trying to figure how he’s going to get out of this.’ Ellanc knew that Bloc was near bankrupt, and that definitely no further funds would be forthcoming from Lineworld.
‘Someone’s coming,’ said one of the reifs.
Ellanc listened—and heard a rumbling sound. Probably a troop of Kladites coming to back up some more of Bloc’s threats. Maybe some of those threats would even be carried out. Ellanc did not care really, just so long as Bloc came along with them. Precisely at the moment he turned, the door and half its surrounding woodwork exploded inward, and the hooder careened into the room like an out-of-control train.
The hard, segmented edge of the creature’s carapace cut across one reified woman like a saw, flinging her back with her clothing torn away and chest ripped open to expose shrivelled lungs. It slammed down on another reif, then instantly reared up again, tossing aside something ragged and spraying blue balm. Ellanc swung up his weapon, knowing it was useless. He fired continuously, explosions flashing along the creature’s surface, blowing small cavities and flinging off pieces of tough carapace. Another victim was smashed into the back wall, yet another cupped under the monster’s hood, while its new spiky tail lashed sideways and someone’s head bounced across the floor. It loomed up, with pieces of reification hardware and bones falling away from underneath its hood, whipped its head from side to side sending reifs sprawling in every direction.
Ellanc fired at it repeatedly, aiming for the same spot on the body segment just behind its head, trying to excavate his way in. Five reifs down in as many seconds, possibly more. This was worse than what he had witnessed back at the enclosure. The thing seemed maddened. He pulled a grenade and rolled it underneath the monster. It lifted slightly on the blast, a hole blown through the floor below it. Then it came down again and again, like a draughts player profiting by an opponent’s fatal error. One two three four: four others shredded to bones and tatters of milky flesh, torn clothing, spreading pools of balm.
‘Get out!’ Ellanc shouted needlessly. ‘All of you, get out while you can!’
Just seconds of distraction, and the tail, like a swinging steel girder, struck him in the chest and hammered him back against the wall. He glimpsed one of his fellows being smeared across the floor like a bug under a fingertip. Then darkness loomed over and above him as he struggled upright and brought his weapon again to bear. Perhaps striking it underneath the armoured hood would do it? Ellanc remembered seeing a Batian try the same, and fail, so instead he fired down at the floor by his feet as the hood slammed down on him. And had not the floor given way at that moment, the hooder would have collapsed him into a grotesque dwarf.
In a shower of burning wood Ellanc landed on the cowling of a big hydraulic motor. Fluid was squirting from a damaged ram, and the back end of the huge ship’s rudder was sliding towards him. On the other side of it, he glimpsed, in the tangle of pipes, rams and motors, a fire burning below the grenade hole, further over. He looked up and saw the vertical rows of burning red eyes, and glistening scalpel mandibles groping after him through the gap. But by the time he brought his weapon up, it had swept out of sight. He backed away from the rudder and sat down on a pipe. He gave a hacking sound, realized it was a laugh. For a dead man he had not felt so alive in a long time. Then, as doors behind him opened, he stood up and turned. Fire slammed into him, hurling him backwards. Hitting pipework, he tumbled to the floor. Error messages slid up into view, one after another. The smoke cleared enough for him to see Kladites standing beyond it.
‘A few others got away,’ announced one of them.
Another replied, ‘I don’t care—we get out of here now. You saw what it did to the others?’
Ellanc stared at the two of them. One turned and aimed his carbine at Ellanc’s upper torso, where his memcrystal and main control hardware was located.
‘No…’
Fire and smoke blasted up before his face, and Ellanc slid into blackness.
Janer gazed down at the weapon he was holding. It seemed he would be getting just about all the excitement he could stand. As he holstered it, he noted that Wade had now tilted his head as if listening.
Emulation.
‘Do you hear it?’ Wade asked.
Janer listened intently. He could hear nothing but the usual sounds of the ship and the sea, but then he did not have a Golem’s hearing.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘A distinctive sound, something like a tank rolling across wooden boards, then a Batian weapon… and now laser carbines,’ Wade told him. ‘Down in the stern.’
In a fraction of a second, with a kind of snapping sound, Wade was on his feet, holding his carbine across his stomach. Could he have got me before I pulled the trigger? Janer wondered, and answered himself: Probably. He reached round and opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and turned to head for the nearest foremast stair. Reaching it, he made to go down towards the bilge.
Wade caught his shoulder. ‘Not that way. We’d have to go through most of the bilge itself to get there. We go along the main deck and down.’
They climbed the stair and stepped out onto the nighted deck. There Janer witnessed something that almost physically jerked him to a halt. He felt a further rush of adrenalin, immediately followed by confusion, asmemories surfaced in his mind’s sea. Before him, a few metres above the deck and regarding him with topaz eyes, hovered an iron-coloured seahorse drone. Thirteen—the Warden’s drone that had been present during those events on the Skinner’s Island ten years ago.
‘You’re armed. Good. We need people armed. Can’t find any of Bloc’s merry crew. I reckon they’re down there after it.’
It took Janer a moment to realize Captain Ron was speaking to him from a few paces beyond the drone, and that behind him stood a crowd of Hoopers and two reifications.
‘What?’ Janer asked stupidly.
Ron stepped forward, the drone shifting aside for him. ‘Thirteen here tells me that nasty bugger is aboard.’
Janer nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ He gestured to his companion. ‘Wade just told me.’
Ron eyed the Golem. ‘How might you know that?’
Wade stepped forwards, pulled a knife out of his belt and handed it across to the Old Captain.
Peering over Ron’s shoulder, Forlam said, ‘Sturmbul. I wondered where he got to.’
Wade said, ‘What’s left of him is lying under a walkway down in the bilge. The hooder is down in the stern of this ship, and I heard weapons firing down there.’
‘Heard?’ Janer asked.
‘It has ceased,’ said Wade, glancing at him.
Ron peered at the APW that Wade held. ‘Mmm, well, best we go see what’s happened.’
Ron was armed with a heavy machete and a QC laser pistol. The others carried weapons which, in their variety, seemed to cover human history. They ranged from clubs and blades to muzzle-loaders, cartridge-fed weapons to various designs of pulse gun and laser. One of them even carried a machine gun. It was a pathetic collection of arms with which to go up against a hooder.
‘Have you been able to contact Bloc?’ Wade asked.
‘Can’t find the bugger,’ said Ron. ‘Didn’t try too hard.’
‘Maybe he’s down in the stern with his Kladites?’ Janer suggested.
Ron snorted. ‘Maybe leeches will fly. Best we get down there and lend a hand before anyone else gets ‘emselves killed.’
‘People die,’ said Wade, a strange expression on his face.
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Ron.
Wade looked up into the rigging, smiled, then said, ‘But surely you are risking your own life and the lives of others by becoming involved in this?’
Janer understood that the Golem was playing to an audience of one, for Zephyr’s hearing was just as good as Wade’s.
‘Nobody wants to die,’ growled Ron. ‘But life without risk ain’t living.’
‘Could it be,’ said Wade, ‘that life without the possibility of death is not life at all?’
Ron stared at him hard. ‘I don’t know what your agenda is, Golem, but we ain’t got time for it right now.’
Wade shrugged. ‘Well, we do have weapons…’
‘Come on!’ Ron turned and led the way back towards the stern.