Their skin was dark blue, and they all possessed leech tongues, too. Lannias had a forehead now divided into segments, and Shalen’s face jutted forwards as if turning into something bestial. But with robotic precision they all continued reattaching the optic and power feeds, and reinstalling the support equipment. Only Drooble, right next to him, showed any hesitation in his movements. And Orbus noticed a small scabby split had appeared in the back of the man’s neck, over his thrall.
As he placed an optical amplifier against the casing and began pulling the clips across to hold it in place, Orbus considered his present situation. He had known something like this might happen, having heard Drum’s story, but what now? He was only moments away from being able to pull the thrall from his own neck—its control of him now slipping away. Afterwards, he could continue with the job in hand without any noticeable interruption, as Vrell’s instructions were firmly embedded in his memory rather than in the thrall itself. However, if the Prador at any time changed those instructions, or checked the thrall linkages, it would soon realize it no longer controlled him. Orbus wondered what would then happen. The thrall, once being rejected, could not be reattached. Vrell would either core him fully, or else kill and eat him. Not the most promising of choices.
He must escape, then, or die trying. He again glanced at these four members of his crew. He would free them of their thralls, as perhaps, despite their inclinations, they would realize what choices remained to them. Orbus reached up, stuck a finger into the wound in his neck, hooked it around the thrall’s body, and pulled hard. The thing came out like a huge splinter, its wriggling legs coated with yellow pus. Reaching back to the tool chest, Orbus took out a large clamp, closed it on the thrall, then dropped both clamp and thrall underneath the engine casing. Had he destroyed it, Vrell might have been alerted. Now, with the heavy clamp on it, the thing would not be able to crawl away to alert the Prador. Drum had only got away with destroying his thrall because he had been enslaved to it by voice, not through a direct radio channel. Orbus then finished attaching the amplifier, before turning to Drooble, as he reached over for something on a work surface extending from one side of the tool chest. Orbus stabbed a finger into the opening wound at the back of the man’s neck, and quickly hooked out his thrall.
‘Oh, oh the bastard,’ said Drooble.
‘Keep working,’ said Orbus, taking up another clamp.
Drooble gave him a wild look, the tip of his leech tongue questing around his chin, but he found enough sanity to obey his Captain. Orbus then moved around the engine casing, and positioned himself beside the next of his co-workers.
Kladites packed the foremast stair leading up to the enclosed bridge, which was also crowded. Including Ron and Forlam, there were five Hoopers here at the controls, besides John Styx and Santen Marcollian. Erlin was standing back against a wall, with Bones behind her, his bladed bony fingers at her throat. Two Kladites stood either side of the Captain, their weapons trained on him unwaveringly. A putrid smell permeated the air. Bloc, standing behind Aesop with his back to the forward window, was obviously the source of the stench.
Something was obviously going seriously wrong with Bloc’s preservation routines. Rather than resembling a dried-out mummy, he now bore the appearance of a corpse that had lain rotting on a riverbed for some time. Some of his grey skin had slewed aside from the back of one hand and also from his neck, to reveal white flesh beneath. The transparent syntheskin on his skull had bulged up like a damaged fingernail, and the grey morass underneath it was veined with vivid yellow. His spectacle irrigator sprayed intermittently, and both his eyes wept constantly. When he moved, looking from side to side as if expecting attack at any moment, the exposed white flesh of his neck became beaded with yellow pus.
Janer realized Bloc was long overdue for going into a tank, since the Spatterjay virus, which in a living body fed upon dead tissue, was feeding on his entire body—rotting it away.
‘Well, this is interesting,’ said Janer. ‘What are we doing here?’
Why had Bloc decided to do this?
‘You—over there.’ Bloc directed Janer to go and stand beside Erlin.
Janer did as instructed, turning to Erlin with, ‘What’s going on?’
Ron interjected bitterly, ‘Seems Bloc doesn’t want anyone trying to get to the Prador ship to rescue the crew of the Vignette.’ The Captain ignored the two Kladites covering him, though his angry gaze never strayed from Bones. ‘Now why is that, do you reckon?’
Vignette? Janer quickly put together the facts just made available to him, and came to the only conclusion possible: the Prador must have grabbed the crew, so they were human blanks now, slaves. That then was one source of Ron’s anger. He remembered their conversation outside the Baitman when they had first encountered Wade. ‘Never underestimate how Old Captains feel about that,’ Ron had said, referring back to thralldom and the Prador. The other source of his anger was the threat to Erlin, who all Old Captains now looked upon as something of an icon.
‘It is not your right to speculate,’ Bloc bubbled. ‘You will all remain here, and everyone else must remain below decks.’
‘Ah,’ said Ron, ‘that’s to prevent anyone going over the rail to make that rescue attempt.’ He finally now looked around.
‘That is correct,’ Bloc replied.
‘What’s your interest?’ asked Janer.
Bloc glanced at him. ‘You will all stay here,’ he repeated.
‘Why?’ demanded Ron. ‘I can understand you keeping some of us here, but what about the rest of them?’ He pointed at John Styx, Santen Marcollian and the Hooper crew. ‘This lot could cause you no more problems than those below decks, and it is a bit crowded in here.’
Bloc froze as if this was too much input to process, then after a moment said, ‘Very well. You’—he pointed at Ron—‘will remain here along with Erlin and Janer.’ He turned to John Styx. ‘You too will remain.’
‘Then I will stay too,’ said Santen Marcollian.
Styx looked at her. ‘Santen, please leave with the rest.’
Bloc seemed to have some trouble with this, since his eye irrigators were drenching his face again. ‘You will both stay… as hostages.’
‘There you go,’ remarked Ron, looking towards Forlam, who was now heading for the door with some others. ‘So you lot remember, no one is to go over the side and submerse.’ While Forlam looked back at him he added, ‘Anyway, there’ll be no one to lead a rescue, what with that Polity drone, Thirteen, having been destroyed by laser.’
Janer winced at this flagrant hint, but it seemed to have shot straight over Bloc’s putrefying head. The four Hoopers and the reif filed out of the bridge and headed below decks.
‘What now?’ Janer asked.
‘We wait,’ said Bloc. ‘We wait until it’s all over.’
The sun was due to rise at any time now, and was turning the sky into a rainbow maelstrom. Ambel thought about the battle they had witnessed the previous evening. He had recognized the glare of particle beams cutting the sky, laser flashes and the dull crump of explosions. But then it had all suddenly ceased, and only minutes later gold-armoured Prador and spherical war drones had been speeding overhead, to the sound of Captain Drum’s curses as he waved his fist at the sky. Either Vrost had won the victory he sought, or for some other reason the Prador captain had recalled its forces. Ambel, though, now had more immediate concerns.