by Neal Asher
Another shot with the flack gun and the bottle exploded. Someone shrieked over that way, which seemed a good thing to him. He stepped round the other side of the pillar, towards where Skyril lay. A flack gun like this only contained fifteen shots. He would need more. He fired repeatedly, was satisfied to see someone's arm and head fragment, continued firing as he stooped down by Skyril. Inside the tattered jacket, slick with blood but still intact: two more clips of explosive bullets. A shot seared across Cormac's shoulder. He considered the bastard task of reloading with only one useable hand, and gazed fully for the first time at his left hand. The monofilament had taken off his little finger, paring it away from the wrist. It had skinned one side of his thumb and taken off the end of it, flensed his palm and taken the skin off the back of his three remaining fingers. It was complete agony but, he could still move those fingers and that stub of a thumb. He used this bloody implement to take up the two clips, then dived for cover behind the pillar again.
A press of his thumb dropped the now empty clip to the floor. Cormac fumbled bloodily to put the next one in, got it into place then banged the gun butt against the floor to engage it all the way. What sounded like three pulse-rifles and some sort of projectile weapon were hammering at the pillar. He sat with his back against the foamstone, waiting for a pause, but it seemed there would not be one. Then a great chunk of stone peeled away and began to fall. A pause. He stretched himself on the floor then rolled out. Targeted and fired. Somebody shrieked and dropped, legs gone, stumps coming down on the plasticrete. Another dived for cover. He realised they cared more about their lives than he did for his, for they had not inhabited the place he had recently occupied. The one diving arrived in cover in pieces. Cormac rolled into a crouch, stood upright. The one with the projectile weapon was fumbling to reload. Cormac walked towards him as he opened fire, and just raised his gun to take careful aim. Material slugs whined past him, flicked his trousers, picked a chunk out of his biceps, pinged the side of the flack gun and hissed past his elbow. He breathed out, squeezed the trigger. His opponent's head disappeared and he slumped out of sight.
Something groaned and crunched. Cormac turned, and watched as the pillar he had sheltered behind twisted, tearing away roof trusses, and collapsed. Wiring and optics fell like lianas dragged down by a falling tree, and were followed by sheets of smoked chainglass which rang against the floor but did not break. He swivelled back, searching for further targets as a wave of dust rolled past him.
There was no one left.
7
Since Dax had seen through his little ruse with his p-top, Cormac had ventured into a local hardware store and bought an underwater pencil cam with a 280 degree viewing head and integral microphone. It now rested in a pot filled with pens and memory sticks sitting on a shelf in his mother's room—where she and Dax usually had their little discussions.
"The editing didn't take," said Dax. "I thought it might happen—wanted to retain too much."
Hannah just gazed at him expressionlessly. After a moment she said, "It was a bit foolish to take Ian out diving when you knew that."
Dax waved a hand, smiled. "He was in no danger. I made sure he had a fully cybernetic suit and for good measure requested a city submind to load to it."
Cormac swore quietly—a word that was a particular favourite of his brother's during these talks he had with their mother. So Mackerel had loaded to his suit at Dax's instruction. That figured.
"Did they get my turbot?" Dax asked. "As I understand it I speared a right monster out there."
"You don't remember?" she asked.
He shook his head. "They had to remove a lot more this time. Apparently the adrenaline and the sight of blood and death, even if it was that of a fish, caused a synaptic link to partially excised memories." He grimaced. "There was more to it than that, but it caused something akin to amplifier feedback with the result that the whole circuit was reinforced. They had to remove the lot."
"Your turbot will feed the customers of this hotel for the next week, and we've had a substantial amount deducted from our bill."
"Excellent! I look forward to trying some myself."
Cormac had already eaten some of the turbot while Dax had been away for editing again—it had tasted fine but the circumstances that brought it to his plate left him lacking in appetite. He continued to listen, hoping to hear something about the drone that had brought Dax in, but the conversation just did not go that way. Dax sat back, a glass of beer in his hand rather than whisky this time.
"Do you remember that time Dad went harpoon fishing around the wreck—that shark?" he said.
"I remember," said Hannah.
"Damn but we were shitting ourselves when he tried to get it through the lock back into the hotel. Even though he got it straight through the head it kept on moving. It was like being in a confined space with a sanding machine."
"Sanding machine?" Hannah looked distracted, almost disinterested.
Dax tapped his forearm. "If it wasn't for my suit I'd have needed a skin graft here. The shark's skin took off the outer layer right down to the protective mesh."
"Yes," said Hannah, "your father had just finished basic training then… That was when Ian was only two. David went to war just six months afterwards."
"Have you heard anything from him recently?" Dax paused, looking puzzled. "I'm sure I asked something about that, but can't seem to recollect—something to do with the editing I think."
"Just the usual," Hannah replied. "He keeps me updated with where he is, but mostly he's after news from here rather than telling me what he's doing. He knows I don't want to hear the detail, to know what attack he's been involved in or how it went. He knows I'll only worry about his safety…"
What was it about their mother, Cormac wondered. She looked quite ill and there was something quite odd in her tone.
"You're not interested?" Dax asked.
"I just want to know that he is alive." Hannah put her whisky glass to one side. "I'm very tired now, Dax. Can we call it a day?"
"Certainly." Dax drained his beer glass, then stood up to wander over to the drinks cabinet and place it there. "See you in the morning." Hannah stood up as he headed for the door, then caught hold of his arm and embraced him. Cormac felt slightly embarrassed—she wasn't usually so touchy-feely.
"Good night, Mother," said Dax, his expression puzzled.
Cormac thought now might be a good time for him to sign off. More diving tomorrow, and perhaps this time without any traumatic aftermath. He was about to switch off his p-top when he observed his mother sitting down in her chair again and taking up her glass. She wasn't heading as expected to her bed. She took up her whisky and held it up before her.
"Here's to editing," she said. "Please forgive me, David."
What on earth did that mean?
* * *
Cormac walked over and gazed about at the wreckage. Someone was making little grunting sounds and, stepping round a collapsed table and jumble of burning consoles, Cormac gazed down at a slug trail of blood, plasma and charred fragments of either clothing or skin. The person—it was not possible to tell if it was a man or a woman—had been hideously burnt from the waist upwards. Cormac considered it neutralized, and was about to turn away, then some sympathy kicked in and he fired once, the shot completely exploding the upper body and sending head and arms bouncing away at three compass points.
What now?
He searched the wreckage, the pain from his injuries steadily increasing as adrenaline washed away. Eventually he found the first-aid kit he sought inside the ATV's luggage compartment. It was difficult to open, for his left hand was now completely useless and as soon as he tucked the flack gun in the top of his trousers his right hand began to stiffen too. First he found some antishock capsules and swallowed two of them dry. Next he found some local analgaesic patches, stuck one above his left wrist and one directly over the burn on his thigh. Blessed numbness immediately spread in those areas, also taking the edge
off the agony of his hand and the elbow above it, which felt broken. Using a can of analgaesic spray skin he completely covered the ruin of his left hand. With a tube of wound glue held in his mouth, he squirted into the deep cut on his right wrist, closing the cut by tilting his wrist and waiting a moment for the glue to bond. Another patch went on his collar bone, then he paused. He didn't want to deaden himself completely—there was still work to be done. Now he found a micropore bandage and wrapped it about his left hand to give it more protection than given by the spray skin, which was already leaking in places. Sticky dressings on his other wounds, for more padding. Enough. Now weapons.
Weapons weren't difficult to find, since there were pulse-rifles scattered all about the area. He picked up five of these and tossed them in the passenger seat of the ATV, then, after further searching, he found a satchel of gecko mines and a pack of old-style bullet magazines for a machinegun, included them and, as an afterthought, threw in the first aid kit too—the effect of the analgaesics he had used was limited. He climbed into the driver's seat and checked the controls: simple start button and single joystick, which was useful when having only one hand. He set the electric motor running, pulled back on the stick and the ATV shot backwards, crashing over burning wreckage and wheel-spinning on a wet corpse as he turned the vehicle. Forwards now and it shot towards the door. No remote door control visible, no matter. The ATV slammed into the door, tearing it out of its runners, the roller mechanism crashing down on the roof. For a moment it hung draped over the vehicle, but when he turned it and brought it to a halt, the door slid off.
Now Cormac took his time checking out the onboard computer and communication system. As expected the radio and line-of-sight laser communications were encoded, sealed, it wasn't possible for him to send a message to ECS via that route. All that was available was a netlink, and that had numerous restrictions upon it. He was, however, able to tap in a text message and route it to his own infrequently used net-space and hope that an AI, somewhere, was keeping watch: Ian Cormac, location Dramewood, 'ware-concealed ATV carrying CTD to be deployed against ECS battalions, am in pursuit in similar vehicle. He was about to add something about checking targets, but then realised a satellite strike against the other ATV could not be used since that might breach the antimatter flask with the same result Samara and Carl had intended, though of course Carl had not intended to be in the vicinity.
Cormac dedicated a subscreen down in the bottom right-hand corner of the main console screen for any reply he might receive, then called up a local map on the main screen. It flicked up, showing the location of his own ATV within it. He spent a moment sending another message giving the coordinates of the Separatist base behind him, then stared at the map. He had hoped it would show him where the other ATV was, but it didn't. He frantically searched through menus, eventually pulling up a list. Highlighted was Veh3, amidst numerous other designations, presumably including Separatist positions in the woodlands and maybe even known ECS ones. He highlighted each «Veh» on the list and went back to the map. Four were visible. The one on a road behind him he assumed was the old ATV heading away, and there were two others out in the woods. He checked through menus again, selected the coordinates of the nearest vehicle then chose autopilot. The ATV immediately lurched into motion—chances were that the closest one had the CTD aboard. Now he turned his attention to the weapons on the seat beside him.
Checking the displays on each rifle, he chose the two with the highest charge and laboriously set about stripping both of them of their buttstocks and one of them of everything he could to reduce weight without impairing function. He also removed its electronic trigger mechanism, which would have screwed it up as a single weapon, but he did not have that in mind for it. The ATV was now jouncing over rough ground so this made his task doubly difficult. Glancing up he saw hundred-foot-tall diseased-looking skarches from which the husks were peeling. Obviously the Prador had hit this area with something, but he had no idea what.
Detaching the end of a wire from the remaining trigger mechanism he inserted it into the relevant plug in the wholly stripped rifle. Now, when he pulled the trigger, both rifles would fire at once. He taped the weapons together with surgical tape, tested their weight with the barrels resting across his left forearm, then grimaced to himself. Carl had shown him how to do this.
Next Cormac removed the power supplies from the other three rifles, which were essentially contained in their moulded forestocks. To two each of these he attached a pliable gecko mine and then he set the timers to four seconds once he hit the priming button. To the third he stuck the remaining four mines and rather than use the timer, he set just one of the detonators to a violent-movement setting with a delay of two seconds. He put this device back in the satchel, then proceeded to empty the machinegun magazines of bullets and pack them around it, along with anything hard and small within reach, including the plastic magazines themselves. Last, he lifted his feet up off the floor and, bracing his back against the seat, kicked out one section of the front screen. He was ready.
The other ATV was some miles away and Cormac realised that at the steady pace of the autopilot he would be unlikely to catch up with it any time soon. He clicked the autopilot off, took up the joystick and thrust it forwards. The vehicle accelerated abruptly, kicking up decaying matter dropped from the skarches around him. Now he began hearing the occasional susurration of a distant beam weapon firing, the crackle of pulse-gun fire, the thwocks of detonations and a vicious ripping sound it took him a moment to identify as that of a proton carbine. That last weapon probably meant there were Sparkind out here. He hoped to fuck that if he ran into any of them they'd not mistake him for a Separatist.
Abruptly he realised he was now rapidly closing in on the other vehicle. It had stopped. This must be where they were going to position the CTD.
"Samara," said Carl's voice from his console. "I am quite capable of doing this unsupervised, thank you very much."
Damn.
He kept driving.
"Samara, reply."
Carl was going to know something was wrong. After a moment Cormac noted the other ATV turning to head straight towards him. Abruptly the icon representing that vehicle just disappeared from the screen. Cormac quickly reassessed his plans. He switched the autopilot back on, still heading for the original coordinates, then turned his attention to the weaponry. Estimating distances and times he reached inside the satchel and reset the detonator from "violent movement" to a timing of eight minutes, and hit the priming button. It was the best he could do in the circumstances. Finding a catch on the passenger seat cushion he hoisted it up. There was a tool bag in a compartment underneath. He pulled this out, dropped the satchel inside then tipped the tools back in on top of it. More shrapnel. He placed the two other mines with attached power supplies into the tool bag, along with his twinned pulse-rifle, and taking this with him he opened the door and jumped.
Cormac hit the ground and rolled, then came up onto his knees swearing and really wishing he'd brought the first aid kit too. But he had no time for pain now. He carefully hung the tool bag, with the two bombs inside, from his left shoulder, then rested the rifle across his left forearm, tucked close to his body, and set off along the root-laden ground between the dying skarches, giving himself plenty of cover but staying parallel with his ATV. Taking into account the amount of time it took him to get from the vehicle, he began silently counting down from four-hundred-and-fifty. In a moment he was gasping, and the vehicle was pulling ahead of him. A sight to one side gave him pause: a wrecked mosquito autogun, a scattering of bloody field dressings and a single corpse in ripped-up chameleoncloth fatigues. This proved, along with earlier mention of another battalion coming in, that there was more going on out here than evidenced by the rumours Yallow had heard.
The ATV was still in sight…. three hundred, two hundred and ninety-nine…
Then he heard the whine of a distant motor, the crashing and bumping of something heavy moving fast th
rough the rough woodland. Then, at two hundred, it came into sight ahead. Cormac crouched behind a deadfall of skarches that had obviously fallen long before the Prador arrived to trash this world, and watched. Something shrieked and he dropped lower.
Rail-gun? A fucking rail-gun?
Chunks of metal flew from the vehicle he had occupied. It shuddered, but just kept on rolling. Pure luck that nothing had struck under the passenger seat, for the vehicle cabin looked like a pepperpot. The other ATV slowed. A second fusillade smashed into his own ATV, but still no detonation and still it kept on rolling. The other turned abruptly and stopped. His own vehicle rolled on and crashed into its side, its wheels still turning, then abruptly something inside it died and it shuddered to stillness.
Armed with pulse-rifles, three troops piled out. Cormac noted only the driver remaining in the other vehicle, so he assumed Carl and one other were still back at their original position. They showed no wariness of anyone occupying Cormac's ATV—why should they, anyone inside would have been paste. One of them climbed up and, after a bit of a struggle, pulled open the door, which just fell off its hinges to the ground.
…seventy, sixty-nine…
Damn, he was a minute out.
The man dropped back down to the ground and turned to his fellows. He said something, then waved a hand towards the surrounding woodland.
Shit.
Light glared inside the wrecked cab and then that cab just disappeared with a gravelly crump. Things hissed through the surrounding skarches, dropping thick, dry leaves and tearing off fibrous chunks in dusty explosions. A cloud of oily smoke occluded view, a red fire burning at its heart, and someone was screaming. Cormac guessed his countdown had been too slow. He stepped out from cover, gazed for a moment at a spanner imbedded in the deadfall he had been hiding behind, then jogged towards the mess. The increasing heat of the fire started shoving the smoke higher, but there was no sign of the three troops. He slowed to a walk, carefully surveilling his surroundings. Then he saw the inward face of a skarch coated with bits of flesh and tatters of clothing, and nearby a boot lying smoking like some cartoon depiction of the results of an explosion, only this one still had a foot inside. He trod on offal, warm under his bare feet and guessed only a meticulous search would find all the remains.
