Janer wondered just when Wade had been appointed military commander of this ship, and whether that was such a good idea.
Meeting them in the upper Tank Room, Erlin led the way to one of the restraint tables, this one with its restraints removed and an autodoc folded down underneath on the end of a jointed arm. As soon as the Hooper was down on his back, she pulled the chrome autodoc out and up so it was poised just to one side of the man’s waist. ‘What age Hooper are you?’
‘Hundred twenty,’ he replied. He was staring at the autodoc as if wanting to get as far away from it as possible. Obviously he was a Hooper who had yet to stray into the territory occupied by the likes of Forlam or the crew of the Vignette. Janer understood his feelings, for despite having been operated upon by such autodocs himself, he was still wary of the things. Perhaps it was some primordial instinct impinging—the atavistic fear of insects. This particular doc looked something like a shiny metal horseshoe crab, only with longer legs which were possessed of more joints and terminated in a variety of surgical instruments.
‘I’ve got to straighten this leg and that arm.’ Erlin flipped up a lid in the doc’s back, revealing a small console with a port for a memory tab. ‘If they heal like that, you’ll be crippled for the next couple of years until they straighten out naturally.’ Out of her top pocket she took a cylindrical container and pulled from it thumbnail-sized crystal tabs. Selecting one, she placed it in the port, then tapped instructions into the console. The tab contained enough memory storage to encompass a human life—similar tabs formed the basis of memplants.
‘Is it gonna hurt?’ The man tried to pull himself further away as die doc wiggled its multitude of legs.
‘I can’t inject you with anything. Even if I could get the injection in, the analgesic wouldn’t spread quickly enough anyway. But I’ve been well-supplied here.’ She held up a simple grey cube between her forefinger and thumb. Before the man could say anything more, she pressed it against the side of his neck.
The Hooper lay there blinking for a moment, then said, ‘I can’t feel me body—it’s like when I broke me back.’
‘Do you really want to feel it right now?’
‘Guess not.’
Turning to Janer and Wade, Erlin said, ‘I had to make a few alterations to the nerve-blocker. It needs stronger nanofilaments to be able to penetrate Hooper flesh through to the spine.’
‘And the doc?’ Janer asked.
‘Programmed for removing reification hardware initially, but I reprogrammed it to Hooper physiology.’ She closed the lid over the console in which she had inserted the crystal tab. ‘I’ve been studying Hoopers for quite a while now, and have operated on many of them. What I just put in here contains everything at variance to standard human biology from Hooper babies right up to Old Captains. He’—she stabbed a thumb at the prostrate Hooper—‘won’t need anything to seal severed blood vessels, only arteries, and the doc won’t touch any of them. But it will need to clamp open its incisions, and work fast to ensure the job is done before those incisions start healing while still open.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ said Janer, turning to watch the autodoc swing down the length of the Hooper’s body, abruptly slice open the man’s trousers, and then the calf muscle of his mangled leg, right down to the bone. ‘You won’t be needing any help?’
Erlin shook her head.
The doc was now cutting between fragments of shattered greyish bone that were already knitting together.
‘Then perhaps we should go back outside and help the others.’ He looked questioningly at Wade.
The Golem bore a curiously twisted expression Janer could not fathom. Internal communication? After a moment, Wade nodded and turned away.
‘Best lock the door behind us,’ he suggested.
Vrell eased his ship higher in the ocean until its weapons turrets were completely clear of the surface, meanwhile recharging the massive capacitors feeding the two particle cannons. He kept his weapons aligned with the location of Vrost’s ship, ready to again vaporize anything fired by the coil-gun. Other weapons he laser-ranged on numerous objects dropping through the atmosphere.
Things were turning nasty here.
Through the senses of his alternate self, Vrell observed its battle with the Polity drone. Overhearing the latest communication between the Warden and Vrost, Vrell guessed who that other drone must be, even though it now inhabited a different shell. Its subsequent familiar tactics confirmed this suspicion, but the danger it represented was minimal. He was aware of how its previous attack on this ship had only succeeded by a narrow margin and, should it try again, Vrell would burn it from the sky. Its previous success had only been due to Father’s thrall codes being subverted, so that Ebulan, being attacked by his own blanks, was distracted at the critical moment. Vrell, however, would not be distracted, and his only vulnerable code transmissions, to those aboard the ocean-going vessel now only a few hundred kilometres from him, he could break instantly. Ebulan’s mistake had been in thinking those codes unbreakable. But Vrell, having ventured into the realm of higher mathematics, knew no code was unbreakable. No, the greatest danger to him was still Vrost. He sent a summons to his own drone, and levelled one weapons array to cover it. He would need all of his resources if he was to survive this.
The calculations necessary to enable him to make repairs to the U-space engine were halfway completed. Vrell considered abandoning that pursuit, because to use the engine he must first get off this planet and well clear of its gravity well. It did not strike him as probable that Vrost would allow that. However, Vrell lost nothing by allowing those calculations to continue running, and some future opportunity might present itself. For the present he would take measures to protect himself, and those were predicated on the threat to Vrost of non-existent grav-tech weapons controlled by the Warden and Vrost’s resultant reluctance to destroy a ship-load of mobile corpses.
Vrell was not optimistic.
Stalemate. Sniper pulled away from the Prador war drone, and it pulled away from him. Assessing the damage done to him, Sniper was quite impressed. His internal systems were down to 70 per cent, his internal power sources were half depleted and only a few missiles remained in his carousels. Externally, his once bright armour was now battered and black, and he was even missing two tentacles. However, the Prador drone was not in the best of condition either: it was missing one of its claws, radioactive gas was leaking from a crack in its armour, and its shape was no longer entirely spherical.
‘You know, shithead,’ Sniper sent, ‘I’m saving a small imploder missile for that crack in your hide.’ With any luck this would make the Prador drone more protective of that area, perhaps thus leaving it vulnerable elsewhere.
‘My name is not shithead, old drone,’ it replied. ‘And such cheap ploys will not work with me.’
‘Right, gotcha. What’s your name, then?’
‘I am Vrell.’
Interesting.
‘Now that’s an odd coincidence.’
‘There is no coincidence—I am a copy.’
‘I see… I’m Sniper, by the way.’
‘Then know, Sniper, that we are evenly matched, except in one respect: my armour is thicker. Should we have finally depleted our respective armouries, I would have knocked you down onto one of these islands and pounded you into the ground.’
It sure was a lot more talkative than others of its kind that Sniper had met, and destroyed. ‘Would have?’
The Prador drone abruptly turned and opened up with its fusion engines, immediately accelerating away from Sniper.