by Neal Asher
Glancing around, he realised that, though from the outside the cycads and palms had looked decorative, that was not their purpose. The palms were date palms and the cycads were a splicing that budded pineapple-like fruits along the edges of their thick leaves. Between these were sunflowers and sugar cane, with varieties of climbing beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes and other less easily identifiable fruit vines. The ground was covered with a mix of brassicas, salad vegetables, and a form of GM Jerusalem artichoke that produced huge, starchy roots and was a staple for food synthesizers everywhere. And scattered throughout all this were slow-moving agrobots like steel harvestman spiders with bodies the size of footballs with each limb terminating in some useful tool. A whole food-growing ecology was being maintained in this enclosed environment.
"They must have problems with contamination," he said, gesturing back to the airlock, "with anyone wandering in like we just did."
"A year ago," said Spencer, "you needed permission to land and went through a decontamination routine in those huts you saw by the spaceport. That all changed when the scum moved in here. They don't care what dies here—either plants or people." She was fingering the butt of a gas-system pulse-gun holstered at her hip, Cormac realised. He also realised that Spencer, under that usually cool façade, was an angry person. This did not bode well for the people they had come here to see.
"We go here," she said, and immediately a schematic of the building ahead arrived in Cormac's aug, with one of its interior rooms highlighted. "Tarren is usually sitting at court in his favourite bar at this time."
"The informant, I take it," said Gorman, "is one of the original inhabitants?"
"You take it correctly," Spencer replied.
The path they traversed, which was made of flakes of red stone—probably the local white stuff dyed for this purpose—wound through the growth to terminate at an arch. As they moved through this Cormac eyed an old-fashioned gimbal-mounted holocam above, turning to track their progress. The short entry tunnel opened into a central courtyard occupied by a series of ponds with water flowing and splashing between them down waterfalls or sprayed up in jets. Within the crystal depths numerous large fish, either trout or salmon, cruised back and forth restlessly. Doubtless these were another food resource.
Now they began to see a few more people. Some were wary and quickly found reasons to be on their way elsewhere. Other armed individuals also began to appear and follow them.
"How many… associates does Tarren have?" Gorman enquired.
"Oh, about fifty," said Spencer offhandedly.
"I see."
Pain again stabbed Cormac's forehead, but he could not pull out now.
They ducked through into another tunnel on the other side of the courtyard, took a couple of turnings, then came to a wide tunnel down along one side of which people were queueing. Cormac noted that generally these people wore cotton clothing in the same bright shades as their homes, were unarmed and looked scared. While those who were armed were heavy on the black leather, canvas webbing, odd items of envirosuit or even spacesuit, and didn't look scared at all. It should be simple enough to select targets, if that became a requirement.
"Keep an open link now," Spencer advised generally over their military comlink.
Next they turned in through the arch at which the queue of locals terminated, into a wide bar area with many supporting internal arches, scattered tables and low divans, star lights across the ceiling and here and there the occasional servitor-bot, each one immobile having obviously been used for target practice. Tarren was immediately identifiable, for he sat like some medieval king in a large armchair raised up on plasmel ammunition boxes. However, Cormac's attention was immediately drawn to others in the room. Prostrate before the throne was one of the locals, and over to one side lay another whose petition had obviously found disfavour, if the angle of her neck was anything to judge by. But most striking was the individual standing to one side of Tarren, a huge man clad in only a loin cloth, his skin oddly coloured as if tattooed all over with blue circles, and a star-shaped steel cap atop his bald skull.
"Fucking hell," sent Gorman.
Cormac, because he was only just becoming accustomed to using his aug, did not feel confident enough at subvocalizing to ask what was bothering his unit leader.
Tarren was a small, wiry little man clad in an armoured suit which Cormac assumed he favoured because it made him look a little more impressive. He wore an aug and sat with a hand resting on a hexagonal box affixed to the arm of his chair. He eyed them for a moment, then nodded to one of his men, who kicked the prostrate man to his feet and sent him on his way. This local scuttled past them as they advanced.
"This could be a problem," Spencer sent generally.
"We will both have to focus on him," came Travis' reply.
"If, or probably when, we encounter any problems," Spencer sent direct to Cormac's aug, "these are yours." An image of the room and its occupants arrived in his aug with four of Tarren's men highlighted over to Cormac's left. He tried to focus first on the image, then on the four men indicated, but felt distanced by the pain in his forehead. But he would not let this little handicap hinder him—he had managed to function with worse than this. There were about twenty of these thugs in the room and he wondered how the others had been assigned. And why were Crean and Travis focusing on only one person? He decided to try asking a question.
"Who Travis Crean focus on?" he managed, feeling clumsy as he tried to prevent his lips moving.
"I see," sent Spencer. "The big guy is a thralled hooper. Under his hand Tarren has a Prador control unit which is probably linked to his aug."
Cormac absorbed that and shivered almost in superstitious awe. He had heard about such creatures, but stupidly assumed they were all gone now, or were confined to the Prador Kingdom. Only a short while back his research, before taking the mem-load, had revealed to him that his father and Amistad had been keeping watch on "Prador snatch squads." He called up in his aug part of the text he had found then:
During the latter years of the war, these same squads captured humans who were then transported to the planet Spatterjay where they were infected with the local viral fibres, which impart great physical toughness and durability. The purpose of so infecting these captives was to make them strong enough to physically survive Prador coring: a process whereby the brain and part of the spinal column is removed to be replaced by thrall technology.
So, Tarren controlled a human once enslaved by the Prador, a mindless human, and one that, because of infection by the Spatterjay virus, would be very, very tough and difficult to kill.
"That's far enough," said Tarren, when they reached a point in the middle of the floor adjacent to the corpse of the local. The hooper had probably broken her neck with the ease of someone snapping a carrot.
Spencer halted and nodded towards the corpse. "Little problem with the natives?"
"Not an insoluble one," Tarren replied, "and really none of your concern. Who are you and what do you want here?"
"You can call me Spencer, if you wish, and I'm here for information for which I am prepared to pay quite handsomely."
"Just received a recent update from our informant—seems this little shit's pet hooper has killed eight people in the last week."
"And how are you going to pay for this information, supposing I even have it?"
Cormac could see where this was going. He kept his right hand positioned over the gas-system pulse-gun holstered at his hip, while the thumb of his left hand, apparently hooked into the waistband of his jeans, was also hooked around a stun grenade.
"Prador diamond slate," said Spencer, carefully reaching into the pocket of her coat and taking out a packet. She held it up and Tarren glanced to his hooper, who lurched into motion and walked over to stand before Spencer, holding out his spade of a hand. Spencer cautiously placed the package on that hand, which closed, and the hooper swung round and brought it to Tarren.
"Crean and Travis, whe
n we're done here and if you're both still intact, go and drive the rest away," Spencer sent. "We won't want to be disturbed for a little while."
No direct order given, but Spencer was certainly telling them this was about to get bloody. Or had she earlier issued some order that Cormac had missed?
Tarren accepted the package, a simple leather wallet with a buttoned-down flap, opened it and tipped out the contents. Four flat, clear octagonal crystals slid out onto his hand—a veritable fortune in diamond slate.
"So what is this information you want?"
"You recently had a visitor," said Spencer, "whose current name is Marcus Spengler, though you may know him by a different name, maybe Carl Thrace. His current appearance is of a fat bearded fellow with a tendency to dress in brown leather."
Tarren frowned and tipped the crystals of diamond slate back into the wallet, then placed that to one side on the arm of his chair. "He told me there would be people following him and he paid me to discourage them." He smiled and waved a finger at Spencer. "Now, as well as being a man of my word I am also a business man. Spengler told me to discourage you, but he didn't say I should keep quiet about where he went."
"And that would be?" Spencer enquired.
"Oh, he went out to what's left of this planet's attempt at terraforming. I'm not entirely sure what interest he has in the place, unless it was to find somewhere to hide that interesting piece of luggage he had with him." Tarren looked theatrically thoughtful for a moment. "I really ought to find out soon, since he only rented that gravcar for a day and has now been gone for five days."
"Thank you for the information," said Spencer.
"Don't kill him—I'll need to confirm this," she sent.
"Think nothing of it," said Tarren. "In fact that's all you'll be thinking of it."
"Hit them," came Spencer's cold instruction, as she palmed a thin-gun, raised it and fired a short burst of three shots, while swinging the weapon sharply across. Cormac had never seen anything quite like it, for each of the three shots separately struck three individuals, two of them beyond Tarren, and one of them the hooper. That shot punched a hole straight through the big blue man's forehead, but it seemed to affect him not at all as he began moving towards Spencer.
Something then clipped Cormac's shoulder, and stun grenades began to go off all about the room. He felt a surge of adrenaline whose cause was more embarrassment than fear, for he should not have been standing gaping. He threw himself sideways, simultaneously arming the grenade as he pulled it from his waistband, and sent it skittering across the floor to two of those Spencer had selected for him. As it exploded, he shouldered the floor, rolled and came up with his pulse-gun levelled. He fired once on automatic, sending one envirosuit-clad woman crashing over a table, then something punched him hard in the right biceps, spinning him round, his gun flung from a hand that now felt boneless. As he went down on one knee, he used his left hand to draw Pramer's thin-gun from where he had concealed it in the back of his trousers, but he knew he was just moving too slowly. His fourth target, a squat, ginger-haired man, had already drawn a bead on him with a cut-down pulse-rifle.
Then something flashed in from the side and the man cartwheeled in the air and crashed to the floor, the upper half of his back now at a completely unnatural angle to the lower half. Cormac glimpsed Crean pausing to fire at someone on the ground. It had been her, moving almost too fast to see. Now she streaked across the room, slamming into the hooper, just a second after that big man picked up Travis and just threw him across the room. This gave Spencer the opportunity she needed. Throwing herself forward she rolled past below the hooper's grasp, came up and flung herself on Tarren as he groped for a gun at his belt. She drove her fist into his gut and, as he bowed over, she reached down and tore the aug from the side of his head.
Tarren shrieked and fell from his throne, and as if this action had removed some sort of block, the surrounding cacophony suddenly impacted on Cormac: yelling out in the corridor, further shooting, someone shouting instructions in a language he didn't recognise. Then the noise grew dull again as the bar's double doors slammed closed. Now, within this room he heard the odd groan and a crackling sound of something burning, smelt a seared pork stench and saw a spreading strata of smoke. Turning, he focused on the hooper.
The big man, just like Cormac, was down on his knees, his head bowed forwards and a bloodless rip in the flesh of his arm slowly zipping shut.
Someone abruptly began groaning in agony.
"Gorman, shut that up will you?"
A single shot rang out; the groaning stopped.
Cormac peered down at his own arm.
"Fuck," he said—his biceps was cooked meat with a neat black hole punched through it—seemed his fight was over for now.
12
"Moving a little slow there, Cormac?" enquired Gorman, squatting down beside him.
Perhaps he could just keep quiet about it; he made a bit of a mistake, it was a blip, which with further training would not occur again. However, something relentless inside him wouldn't allow such dishonesty.
"Aftereffects of the mem-load," he explained.
Gorman peeled a patch combining pain killer and antishock meds from a roll and stuck it on Cormac's shoulder, none too gently. "You should have said."
"It didn't seem a problem at first, then we were in here and it was too late." It sounded a weak excuse.
Expressionless, Gorman turned away and gazed across at Spencer, who was sitting on Tarren's chest with the barrel of her thin-gun pressed up against his nose. She was talking low, too low to hear, and Tarren was replying. After a moment Spencer stood and stepped back, then gestured with her pistol.
"Stand up."
With blood running down his neck from where Spencer had torn away his aug, Tarren got warily to his feet and gazed around at the carnage. Cormac studied it too, and noted that, though not one of Tarren's people was standing, they weren't all dead, most of them having been taken down by stun grenades. But what about the rest of Tarren's men? Only then, looking round, did Cormac absorb that Crean and Travis were not present and that distantly he could hear sporadic gunfire.
Tarren now focused on the hooper, briefly glanced back at the control unit mounted on the arm of his throne, then returned his attention to Spencer.
"ECS doesn't come here," said Tarren. "When you've gone, more people like me will come back."
"But you won't," said Spencer. Tarren did not even get a chance to be afraid, before she casually shot him through the side of the head. She calmly watched him stagger and collapse, then walked over to the throne and, after taking up and pocketing her wallet of diamond slate, pumped numerous shots into the hexagonal control unit, smashing it open and setting it smoking, then she tore it from the chair arm, dropped it on the floor and stamped it to fragments.
"Okay," she continued, breathing heavily as she walked back past Tarren, who was still shuddering into death, a pool of blood spreading about his head, "Thrace did head out to the old terraforming station and hasn't been back. We'll head out there and see what we can find."
Cormac carefully regained his feet. Now he not only had a headache, but felt dizzy and nauseous again.
"What about him?" he asked, pointing at the kneeling hooper.
"We'll take a DNA sample for ECS Records," she said. "At least one more might then be accounted for out of the millions still listed as missing."
That wasn't quite what Cormac had meant.
"He's still alive," he said.
Spencer shook her head. "He died years ago when they tore out his brain. What's left will need to be destroyed, thoroughly. If what you see there is not fed the right antivirals and foods it'll mutate into something even nastier."
Just then the doors to the bar crashed open and in strode Travis and Crean, along with two of the locals, a man and a woman, both armed. The woman peered down at Tarren and grimaced. "You could have left him alive."
"I wouldn't want to turn you into a killer,
Adsel," said Spencer flatly.
Adsel, whom Cormac suspected must be the ECS informant here, said, "But that's what I and my friends will have to be here if we are to keep people like this away."
"Certainly, but you're not in any rush, are you?" She gazed at Travis and Crean. "Arms cache?"
"Yep," said Travis. "The last of his lot are running for their ships—" Travis nodded at Tarren. " — with the locals in hot pursuit."
"But we remain focused on the mission," said Spencer, gazing at Cormac, who was tying his wrist to one of his harness straps to support his injured arm. "We need a vehicle."
"There's one just outside you can use," said Adsel, who was now standing before the hooper, peering down at him.
"Good." Spencer nodded.
"Is he safe?" Adsel asked.
Spencer walked over, abruptly stooping and pulling an evil-looking stiletto from the top of her boot. She stooped over the hooper and with much apparent effort cut a slice of flesh from the top of his ear, which she then dropped into her wallet of diamond slate. There was no blood.
"Safe as can be," she said, "but you'll have to throw him into one of your incinerators if you don't want something nasty crawling around here when the virus in him decides it's time for him to start feeding."
"Right," said Adsel, stepping back. "Right."
All business, as if what she had just done was of no further note, Spencer asked, "Could you also get our wounded comrade back to our shuttle, should he need the help?"
Cormac was sickened by a reality which until now had been of a mild academic interest to him. He had seen the ruins, the spaceborne wreckage, the casualty figures; he had heard of Prador snatch squads and actually fought the creatures himself, but this, this hooper, brought home to him more than anything the horror of the war his father had fought and died in. Dragging his gaze away from the big man he focused on Spencer, trying to bring himself back to the moment. He considered arguing against being sent back to the shuttle, but rejected the idea. He had been a liability and now, with this injury, he would be even more of one. Doubtless, when Spencer and the rest had checked out this old terraforming plant and either captured Carl or ascertained that he wasn't there, he, Cormac, would be in for a tongue lashing. Quite possibly Spencer would decide she no longer needed his services.