by Neal Asher
The armoured personnel carrier stood out from the other vehicles, like a vulture amongst canaries. The private AGCs were of all colours, and small; some of them were open and more like flying sedan chairs, some of them were reproductions of the petrol-driven cars of old Earth, but few of mem were ugly. The carrier was battleship grey. In appearance and size it was a railway carriage minus wheels, and with all hard and uncompromising angles. At the back of it there were tail-mounted turbines, and along its length a number of stabilizing fins. There were turrets for automatic projectile guns and beam weapons. It was a formidable machine. As they approached, Cormac glanced from it to the red Cortina replica parked next to it.
'Hardly covert,' he said.
Arn was a sergeant in the ES regulars, but just as obviously a native of Viridian. He was a short stocky man with cap-cut, light blue hair, a bushy moustache of the same colour - and it seemed to be natural coloration - and dark pupil-less eyes deep-set in a craggy face. He studied them for a moment, then saluted smartly and opened the door to the carrier.
'Sergeant, you have weapons for us?' said Thorn.
'So too.' He saluted again.
'No need for all that,' said Cormac. 'Just show us the weapons and take us to Motford. I'll give a briefing there.'
Arn pointed out some crates strapped in the back of the carrier, then went to take his position at the controls. Cento joined him - looking hopeful, Cormac thought. Shortly the carrier was airborne and, when they were clear of the AGC park, the ion boosters roared. The carrier accelerated smoothly; it would have been quite possible to walk about inside while it was travelling.
'How much do you intend to tell them?' Aiden asked.
Cormac looked up in surprise from the crate he was opening. He had expected Thorn to be the one to ask that, as the Golem Thirties were decidedly taciturn.
'I see no reason to hold back on anything this side of the runcible. Only we ourselves will use the energy weapons, though. They're just extra muscle for when friend Pelter puts in an appearance.'
Aiden looked pointedly at the two innocuous boxes at the end of the case. Cormac lifted one out and pressed his thumb against the lock. It was keyed only to him. The box opened to reveal a gleaming cylinder, twenty centimetres long by five wide, with the letters CTD in a garish red pictogram, purpled by the light. On the end of each cylinder was a black cap with a miniconsole on it - remote or timer, the result was always the same. Cormac smiled.
'Perhaps we'll leave off telling them about these,' he said, and closed the box. It had 'JMCC: Enropower. I Kilowatt Hour" etched into the lid. The cylinders, though, were not powerpacks: they delivered a great deal more energy than one kilowatt, and in substantially less time than an hour. CTD stood for contra-terrene device. Thorn by then had opened another case, and was holding a weapon that had the appearance of a stubby carbine made of glass and old wood. Under the glass, salamanders writhed, waiting to be released.
When Cormac had finished his briefing, ten regulars dispersed to their sky-bikes, which were parked haphazardly on soggy lichen-covered ground. They were to fly escort, and all other vehicles were to be warned off. Arn lifted the carrier into the sky with a smooth acceleration. Cormac took one of the four seats at the control console, along with the sergeant and Aiden.
'These ruins, Sergeant, describe them to me,' he said.
'So too. They're what's left of an old ES ground installation, sir. There's just a few fragments of a shield dome surrounding a couple of underground missile silos. Surrounding that is a radial scattering of old storage buildings, nothing very large. There are supposed to be bunkers under the ground around the silos, but no one goes in there. Still hot.'
'Would it be possible to land next to the underground silos?'
'Not so. No clear ground, and the roofs of the buildings would never take the weight of this carrier.'
'What's the scale?'
'Whole site's about two kilometres across. Silos were for Hunter Tens, about fifty metres deep and ten in diameter, three of them. Don't know anything about the bunkers… sir.'
Cormac nodded.
'The description you've given is sufficient, Sergeant. Most concise. Put us down on the perimeter, wherever you deem suitable.'
The sergeant allowed himself a tight little smile.
'Sarge, we got someone on the edge of detector range. Looks like they're following.'
'You know the drill, Corporal. Warn them off.'
'They don't respond. Shall I send back Cheng and Goff?'
Cormac leant forward. 'Cormac here.'
'Colonel, sir!'
'What's your name, soldier?'
'Tarm, sir.'
'Very well, Tarm, I want you and this Cheng and Goff to go back personally. Warn them off. Turn them if you can. If they fire on you, take them out. Otherwise I want them driven back a fair way, but not so far they won't be able to pick up on us again. Do you understand?'
'I think so, sir.'
'Don't be thick, Tarm,' interjected the sergeant.
'Oh… Oh, I see. On our way, sir.'
Cormac glanced out the window of the carrier and saw three of the sky-bikes peel away and accelerate on pencils of fire. He turned to the sergeant.
'We'll be at the ruins by nightfall, I take it?'
'So too.'
'Put us down as close to the storage buildings as you can. What will the light be like?'
'Moon's up, but the light's deceptive.'
'Good. When we get there, have your men leave their bikes, set up their tents and disperse into the buildings. Do anything else you can think of to make the camp appear occupied.'
'A trap, sir?' Arn smiled his tight little smile.
'Oh yes,' said Cormac. 'But I want at least one of them alive. You have stun weapons?'
'We've got an armoury, sir.'
'Good, you'll have opportunity to use it.'
'He's ECS and he'll be running a team to shut down the local syndicates,' said Corlackis.
The woman nodded, her comunit earrings glittering in the green light. Stanton knew the type: she wore a skin-tight shiny plastic from neck to feet and her thick brown hair spread in dreadlocks, plaits and artistic tangles across her shoulders and down her back. He could just make out a small aug in the shape of a star behind her right ear. At her hip was holstered a long-barrelled pulse-gun of the kind that fired ionized gas. Real fancy, but no range. She was obviously fascinated by the silent, glaring presence of Pelter, and by Crane who was crouching behind him. Stanton lowered the police-issue intensifier, its lenses whirring as it tried to compensate for this movement, and then he upped the gain on the directional microphone. That none of them had thought to use the damper showed Pelter's arrogance had to be catching. That the local muscle chose to have this meeting on the veranda of this cafe bespoke another arrogance. They wished to demonstrate to the great Separatist leader that this was an area they controlled.
The three men and the other woman were much like their boss: the kind that Stanton had hired on many occasions. He judged them to be supporters of the Cause only in that it gave them an excuse for racketeering, like so many would-be freedom fighters, they had probably found the attraction of easy money harder to resist than a few hazy ideals. They affected dress similar to that of Mennecken and Corlackis, but Stanton knew that the two mercenaries could go through them in a second. That of course was not their intention. These people were fodder. Stanton knew exactly what Pelter intended.
It had taken Stanton a day to find out where to look. It was the area of the city of Motford that had the highest crime rate, where weapons were worn openly, and where dubious characters loitered on the streets. After then asking a few questions in bars, he had found out who was running things in the area. Following the woman had been easy. Nothing about her was covert. She swanned about in an expensive Aston Martin replica as she and her heavies went on their collection rounds. Patient watching had finally produced this meeting.
'Why did he head away from the
city?' the woman asked.
Corlackis replied smoothly. 'To set up a base of oper- ations. It's his usual technique: use local forces to establish a base where least expected, then, when he starts hitting you, you just won't know where to look. We saw it on Cheyne III. We spent months searching the most likely places and paying thousands in bribes to the local police. It was nearly all over before we discovered his base on one of the atolls.'
Stanton took his eyes from the intensifier and glanced behind, across the small AGC park on top of the building. Local police. He cursed the fact that they were so humanitarian here. This surveillance equipment, two stun pistols and a stun rifle had been the extent of his haul. The charge in the rifle he had used up at close range on the AGC, to burn the paint off. Not that it would have been much use to him. He could have been fairly sure of taking down the locals. But Pelter, Mennecken and Corlackis were another matter. Crane of course would have been unaffected. A stupid option, though. He wanted Pelter dead, not stunned.
'We can take him down,' one of the men drawled.
Stanton wondered how Corlackis kept a straight face at that.
'Not so easy if he has ES regulars with him,' he said.
'They're easy. Boys playing soldier games,' said the woman.
Corlackis shook his head. 'I admire your confidence, but would not want you to take on something you couldn't handle, nor would I want you to go unrewarded.'
The hook was in. Stanton shook his head at the ease of it all. They hadn't even asked why Corlackis and the rest would not be going in themselves. Corlackis now looked round at Pelter, who gave a nod. Corlackis tossed something on the table. One etched sapphire, Stanton bet. The woman snatched it up.
'Three more when the job is done,' Corlackis said.
'No problem,' said the woman.
The other four said nothing. They were too busy looking tough and confident behind their black eye-bands. Corlackis now reached under the table and picked up a cloth-wrapped bundle, which he placed before the woman. The woman reached across and nipped the cloth aside, completely unconcerned that anyone might see an assault rifle revealed.
'We have seeker bullets as well,' said Corlackis. 'We would not see you go in unprepared.'
'How many?'
'You can have this rifle and a sufficient quantity of seeker rounds. We've got laser carbines as well. As many as you need. We also have a nice compact mortar you can use.'
Stanton saw the greedy expression on the woman's face. She must think all her birthdays had come at once. Poor sap.
'We get to keep them?'
'But of course,' said Corlackis.
Stanton lowered the intensifier and shut off the microphone. He had heard and seen enough. He gazed out beyond the city line to the slabbed land beyond. Svent and Dusache had gone that way, after the military carrier and that was where the action would take place. Right now Stanton did not have a way of getting close to Pelter and killing him. Others did have the means. It did not matter to him how Pelter died, just that he did. He crouched back from the edge, stood up, then walked over to his stolen AGC. Pelter would leave soon, but Stanton had no intention of following him. He'd follow the five below. He would have no problem trailing such amateurs.
25
Ian Cormac: Yet another mythical creation of hero-starved humanity. Earth Central Security does have its monitors, its Sparkind and troops, and, yes, it does have its secret agents. But let us be honest about these people: they are, on the whole, grey and characterless. Again, this is all about what we want to believe. We want this superagent who so easily sorts out all the bad guys for us. Cormac is to ECS what a certain agent with the number 007 was to MIS. At best he is a fictional creation, at his worst he is a violent and disruptive role model.
From Quince Guide, compiled by humans
The light was like clotted blood and seemed to tangle the shadows in the chequer trees beyond the encampment in swirls and eddies, and strange globular buds glistened in the branches like molluscs. The encampment itself was lit by lights inside some of the tents. It had been Arn's idea to inflate a couple of survival suits with crash foam and sit them inside the tents. With a radio playing some monotonous atonal singing, the whole was quite convincing. Crouched behind a crum- bling wall, Cormac surveyed the trees through the night-setting on his visor. Amongst the native chequer trees, so named because of the pattern of their bark, were blue oaks: a variety much used in the later stages of terraforming projects, and called so because their acorns were blue. They grew very slowly, but were hardy enough to withstand extremes of weather not found on Earth. Beside Cormac crouched Thorn and the two dracomen. Aiden and Cento were somewhere in the trees, using thermal scanners to pick up on whoever might come. They had been gone for two hours.
'Why's the moonlight so red?' asked Thorn.
Cormac had wondered that, too. The sunlight was turned a weak green by the atmosphere, yet under reflected light from the moon it took on the colour of old blood. He had asked Cento for an explanation.
He informed Thorn, 'The green sunlight's caused by the atmosphere - aerial algae apparently. The moon has huge mixed deposits of cinnabar and fluorspar on its surface. That's where the red light comes from.'
'How come?'
'I asked the same question. Cinnabar is a red pigment; it's also mercuric sulphide. Mining it is the chief economic resource here. There's a runcible up there for transporting tankers of mercury all over the sector. The fluorspar is fluorescent. The combination of the two produces that red light, even when the daytime sky is green.'
'Oh,' said Thorn, and fell silent.
Cormac gave him an assessing look. Only as they had been speaking had he noticed that Thorn kept one of the proton guns resting against the wall next to him.
'Little excessive?' he said, nodding at the weapon.
Thorn picked it up and held it almost lovingly. In its main chamber the light was subdued: it writhed and shifted, a luminescent mist.
'Well,' said Thorn, 'I do have to test this chap.'
Cormac reserved comment on that. There was little chance that any of the weapons provided for this operation would not work. They continued watching.
'You are to be attacked by other humans?'
Cormac turned in surprise to look straight into the teeth of a grinning dracoman. It was the first question from one of them since they had been picked up by Hubris.
'Yes,' said Cormac, 'killers out for vengeance on me.'
'This would endanger mission.'
'Yes, it—'
The dracoman slid off into the night. It was gone before Cormac could say another word.
'Speedy chap,' observed Thorn.
The other dracoman moved up beside Cormac and took hold of his biceps. Its hand was an iron manacle closing.
'You will not be harmed,' said the dracoman.
Cormac tried to free his arm. 'Let me go, damn it!'
The dracoman lost interest in him and turned its head away. It did not release its hold.
'You're supposed to obey—'
'Someone coming,' came Aiden's voice over com. 'One figure approaching. Just walking in… Who is that coming from your direction? I thought—' There was a pause of a couple of seconds. 'I see. Did you send this dracoman out?'
'I didn't send it. What's it doing?'
'It's lined up like a pointer to the trace.'
'Just one figure approaching you say? You're not missing anything?'
'No, this scanner is the best, and Cento and I are also watching full-spectrum. There is no individual cha-meleonware that sophisticated.'
'Could it be the android?'
'No, not big enough and wrong heat emission for a metal-skin. It's a man, heavily built. He could be nothing to do with Pelter.'
'Aiden, I want whoever that is alive. If the dracoman goes for him, flatten it. Otherwise just keep watching and let him walk in.'
'Will do,' the Golem replied.
Cormac looked with irritation at the dracoman sti
ll clamped on to his arm, then watched the trees.
Aiden spoke over the com again. 'Our dracoman just got a bit frisky,' he said. In the background there was a sound as of someone shoving a knife into a tyre.
'What happened?' Cormac asked.
'I'm sitting on him,' said Aiden.
Cormac looked at the dracoman holding him. He could not help but appreciate the humour of the situation.
'Where's the man now?' he asked.
'Should be coming into sight.'
The figure that walked from the forest, with his shadow cast before him by the bloody moonlight, was immediately familiar to Cormac. He turned his attention to his shuriken holster. Its small screen was lit just enough in the darkness for him to make his selection of program, straining against the grip of the dracoman at every moment. When he had it set, he flipped the weapon into his hand and tossed it into the air. The shuriken shot away with a whickering sound. It stopped in midair only a metre or so in front of the man. The man halted, then he looked around.
'This will fool them, Ian Cormac,' he said, 'but it won't fool Pelter.'
Cormac pulled against the restraining hand and the dracoman reluctantly let him stand. It stood with him, baring its teeth at the shadowed figure.
'It won't fool who, John?' he asked.
Stanton made a careful gesture towards the shuriken. 'Can I come on in?'
'Just walk. It'll stay the same distance ahead of you. Don't make any sudden moves, and don't touch any weapons you might have,' Cormac told him.
