Cheryl reached round to the back of her head and undid the neck pocket of her fatigues. She pulled the hood over and fixed the mask across. Now she could take the risk of standing and having a look. Three men walked out from between the vines and into the yard of the crop house. They were talking and gesturing. The android just stood there with a briefcase clutched in its brass hand. It gave her the creeps. She auged up a visual intensifier program, and got XI0. Now she could study these intruders more closely. Two of the men looked the typical suited thugs that some organizations recruited. The third man, in his mesh shirt and baggy fatigue trousers, seemed to be in charge. There also seemed to be something wrong with him. She downloaded what she was seeing as a visual file, then slowly dropped back down. The face of the man she enclosed in a frame, and had the aug tidy up, was a mess. He had some sort of optical link that did not seem to have taken so well, and his face was haggard and scabby. She stood again to see what they would do next, and now set her aug to record everything she was seeing and hearing.

One of the suits crossed the yard to the transporter: an AGC that was simply an open-backed truck with a framework able to carry juicing stations. The other suit walked around to the back of the house, and soon returned driving Cheryl's personal AGC. So that was what this was all about: they just wanted transport. Good. Once they secured it and went on their way, whatever blocker they had would go with them. She watched while the android tore the framework from the back of the transporter and tossed it aside before taking its place there. Foamed steel frame: it had to be strong to take the weight of the juicing stations. Cheryl swallowed dryly. She had definitely made the right move. The other suit got into her AGC - she would have liked to have known how they broke the security lock - and the leader sat at the controls of the transporter. Soon they were up in the sky and roaring overhead, all turbines opened at full. Cheryl waited until they were out of sight before heading back into the crop house. She had almost reached the door when a hand caught her shoulder.

Cheryl reacted. She caught the hand, pulled on it, and drove her elbow back as hard as she could. No pulling punches; this was life or death. Her blow elicited a grunt. The next thing she knew there was a grip on the back of her fatigues, on her arm, and she was airborne. She hit the ground flat on her back, spun her legs to give her momentum, and then nipped up into a fighting crouch. The man standing before her was heavily built, had cropped ginger hair, and seemed to have been in the wars. As she pulled her pathetic chainglass pruning knife, just one thought went through her mind. Fuck: boosted.

'I could have let you go in,' said John Stanton, holding his hand to his torso and looking ill. Cheryl paused at that. If she ran, she would probably get it in the back. 'What do you mean?' she asked.

'They stole a personal AGC. So they'd have known someone was here.'

'So?'

'You army?'

'I was.'

'Then you should know about seeker bullets. Programmed levels of targeting. Five shots and two explosions. What does that mean, soldier?'

Cheryl got a sudden cold shudder when she realized what he was saying. 'You're not with them?' she asked.

'Not now,' said Stanton. 'And I suggest we put a bit of distance between us and this house.'

Cheryl put her pruning knife back in her belt and stood upright. She nodded and walked back to the edge of the vine field. The man walked along with her, and she noted how gingerly he was moving and that there was a drug patch on his neck. She wondered if he had not replied to her attack with a killing blow simply because it would hurt him too much at present. After a moment she took her attention away from him and directed it towards the field.

'Pickers run on chemical batteries that get warm,' she said.

He said nothing in reply to that, but it gratified her to see his expression when three pickers scuttled out of the field and headed for the house. He seemed about to ask something then, but he assumed a tired look and just watched the pickers go in through the door. Three explosions followed in quick succession. On a billow of smoke, a couple of black plastic legs came tumbling through one of the broken windows.

'Who are they - and who are you?' she asked.

'You got any more AGCs here?'

'No, and you haven't answered my question.'

Stanton shrugged and replied, because he could not be bothered not to reply, 'The ugly one is a Separatist bastard called Arian Pelter. The android is the psychotic Mr Crane. The rest are like me: mercenaries.'

'Why they here?'

'To die, if I have my way. Now tell me, where's the nearest habitation?'

Cheryl pointed. 'About ten kilometres that way.'

'And the runcible installation?'

'About a thousand kilometres beyond that.' Stanton looked in that direction, then back at the house. 'Right, I need the use of your medkit, and I need food and water. Consider these payment for your life.'

'Inside,' Cheryl said, and let him go ahead of her into the house. As he did so she sent the recording from her aug, and kept the channel open for real-time transmission. She thought it unlikely this man would reach his destination, once the police received her recording. She also thought it likely Viridian would be receiving a visit from ECS sometime soon.

From the mask, clean oxygen blasted into her face and she gasped at it. A light-headed euphoria flooded her, but only for a moment. Pain was secondary; oxygen was survival as it charged her cells. But as her organism became satisfied it now had attention to spare for that pain.

'One moment,' said a gruff voice.

There was a gentle fumbling in her neck ring, then pressure at the side of her neck as a drug patch was pressed into place. Through blurry eyes she saw a mesh ceiling and a thin bluish hand retreating from view. Out-linker, was her one thought.

'Fused across the join. We'll have to cut,' said the gruff voice.

'Then cut,' replied a woman's voice. 'She's probably still bleeding in there.'

A dentist-drill whine quickly followed on the words. She felt the Outlinker tugging at her suit. While he was doing that the edge went off the pain, but Jarvellis knew she needed more than a patch to block it completely. She was in a bad way. She didn't need to see her injuries to know that.

'That's got it. Get Sam over here.'

The suit seal crumpled as it disengaged and she felt the motors in the back of the suit hinging it open.

She screamed as something ripped in her hip.

'Shit, a lump of chainglass. Sorry, darlin'. Close off that artery, Sam.'

Jarvellis clamped down on another scream as something cold went into her hip. She heard wet slicing sounds and the pain became more intense. Another patch went down on her stomach and another on her knee. When she thought she could bear the pain no longer it started to fade a little. Now she felt something else pressed against her breast. A blessed cold numbness suffused it. She felt herself beginning to drift on the load of painkillers pumping round her blood supply. But the narrow hand would not allow this; it patted at her face.

'Stay with us. I want you to lift your head and look,' said the gruff voice.

Jarvellis just lay there. She didn't see any incentive to move. John was dead. The Lyric was gone. It was all over. The patting turned to a slap and the voice got angrier.

'Wake up, damn it!'

This seemed too cruel after all that had happened. Why couldn't they just leave her alone? She opened her eyes and raised her head to tell them to do just that, but in the end could not even manage to.

She lay on the ceramal floor of an airlock. To her left crouched a little robot the shape of a limpet. It had two multi-jointed arms, and she almost chucked when she saw how it had opened her leg to reach in and clamp the artery. The thigh, pad it was reaching over had a bloody dagger of chainglass right through it. Jarvellis did not want to know what might lie under the dressing on her breast. She inspected the other two occupants of the lock.