Maybe that warning from Dragon was all nonsense, for the creature’s pronouncements did not always make sense. Reaching the rail car he had used on the way in, he climbed in and pressed the button to send it on its way. It took him back along the narrow maintenance track to the residential section. Stopping it below his apartment block, he climbed out, holding open the door for some people to climb aboard who he guessed were part of the replacement balloon crews, for they took the car back towards the blimp towers. He halted for a moment to gaze up at Ogygian in the night sky. How could he possibly abandon his plans now? That was where he was going, up there, and he would drag his people along with him, too. He sighed and walked on.
As he re-entered the building, something momentarily gave Tanaquil the creeps. He felt someone was watching him as he entered one of the lifts lining one side of the short lobby. Inside the lift, he pushed his key-rod into the reader. The doors began to shut, pausing for a moment as if jamming against something, then closing with a bang. As the lift took him up, he began to feel even more spooked: he was sure he could feel something, smell something, hear faint sounds of movement. Eventually the lift halted at his apartment, and he gratefully abandoned the claustrophobic box. It was then that a hot hand closed on the back of his neck and threw him forward onto the carpet.
Tanaquil hit the floor on his shoulder, scrabbled forwards, then turned, coming up in a crouch. Someone was there in his apartment. All he could think was that Jeelan had let them in. But there was no one there, and he looked around in panic. Had he merely tripped? Had he imagined that grip on his neck?
‘You were out early,’ said Jeelan, walking naked from the bedroom and rubbing at her eyes. She stopped. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t—’ Tanaquil began.
Jeelan screamed, bringing her hand up to one side of her head as something horrible just appeared there out of thin air. He saw a fiat leaf-shaped body, too many legs, blood.
From the ceiling?
She staggered back suddenly, as if someone had shoved her, hitting against a cabinet made of lacquered carapace, and slid to the floor. Tanaquil rushed towards her, seeing her hand poised over the thing grinding away at the side of her head, but she seemed unable to touch it. Before he could reach her, something slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him flat on his back. Gasping, he tried to struggle upright. Jeelan was now showing the whites of her eyes only. She was drooling. Then suddenly he could no longer see her, as a figure appeared out of nowhere beside him and brought a knee down on his chest and a hand to his collar.
‘Jeelan!’
A hand slapped him once, almost casually, but it was like being hit by a piece of steel. Tanaquil tasted blood, felt pieces of broken tooth in his mouth.
“What do you—’
Something scuttled down the man’s arm towards the hand around Tanaquil’s throat. Tanaquil tried to knock the horrible thing away but, in one swift and brutal movement, his attacker caught both of Tanaquil’s hands in his own free one, the fingers closing tight and hard as manacles. The insect crawled across Tanaquil’s cheek, grabbed tight hold behind his ear, as if each of its spidery legs ended in fish hooks, then it began to chew in. There was no pain at first—too much adrenalin—but soon it grew horribly. Before Tanaquil could yell out, something filled his head like a nest of hot wires, and yelling became a privilege he was not allowed. Next, the assailant had moved back, and Tanaquil found himself standing up. He felt Jeelan standing too, through some connection to her—just like the web of similar connections he felt to other people all over this area. It became a spreading web as the insect things located Tanaquil’s people, one by one.
‘There,’ sighed Skellor. ‘I may have lost Mr Crane, but soon I’ll possess the entire population of a city.’
Tanaquil gaped at this nightmare that had walked into his life.
Gazing at a realtime image of the colony ship on a wall screen, Cormac wondered if anything of relevance might be discovered there. But it was always best to take every opportunity to stack the deck, and that ship was a large item of hardware to have as an imponderable. Cento and Fethan had departed some time ago under the impetus of their suit jets, though it was not as if either of them needed suits for any other purpose, and they would secure the vessel.
Cormac glanced aside as Gant cracked the airlock of one of the Jack Ketch’s small landing craft—the kind designed for the insertion of Golem shock troops but now suitably rigged to support human life. It was the grey of inert chameleon paint, a slug shape ten metres long. Seeing the dead soldier beside it immediately after his previous thoughts about Cento and Fethan, brought home to Cormac how few actual humans there were on this mission: just Thorn and himself, and now he was beginning to wonder about the latter.
Wearing a combat spec envirosuit, Cormac followed the soldier into the lander and took a seat behind him which had only recently been bolted to the floor. In the narrow space behind both of them, bars ran along the ceiling. This area was designed so that the skinless Golem could pack themselves in standing upright and gripping the bars. No allowance had been made for comfort, since none was required. Also bolted to the floor were boxes containing the supplies they might need: an autodoc, food and drink, and numerous lethal toys.
‘Take us down,’ Cormac said, strapping himself in.
Ahead, the doors of the small bay irised open with a rushing exhalation. Gant pulled up on the joystick, then eased it forward; the craft rose on maglev and nosed through the invisible meniscus of an advanced shimmer-shield. Clear of the ship he ignited thrusters that were almost inaudible, but the acceleration forced Cormac back into his seat. He knew Gant was taking it easy: this craft was without all the usual safeguards added to one intended for humans, and using its full potential would have resulted in Cormac getting jellied in his chair.
Soon they were dropping away from the red spectre of the Jack Ketch, through infinite blackness and star glitter, towards the jewel of the planet.
‘Take us to the crater first. I want to eyeball the site.’
At first, the lander hurtled nose-down to the planet, but when it entered atmosphere Gant turned it to use its main motors for deceleration. Through the screen they observed their red contrail and the deep black of space fading to a blue in which the stars dissolved, then a pale turquoise into which clouds fell like the ghosts of boulders. As the soldier brought the lander’s antigravity online, Cormac could just see the horizon. Then the soldier turned the ship again so that very quickly the horizon tracked round and rose. Soon he had the ship tilted down towards rumpled-up yellow mountains and a dusty desertscape.
‘Fethan wants a word,’ Gant said abruptly, and stabbed a control to turn on one of the console screens.
Cormac turned his attention from the exterior view to the screen. ‘What have you found?’
‘There are crew onboard,’ the old cyborg replied, a skeleton crew.’ He winced at his own pun and continued, ‘We booted up the main computer and looked at the manifest, then Cento cracked the encryption on the captain’s log. Seems the captain spent too long out of hibernation staring at nothing and harping on about the emptiness of space, and by the time the ship got here he was into deep psychosis. He’d decided he was not going back into deep space, nor down onto the planet, so, while the rest of the crew were down on the surface helping get the colony established, he recalled the landers.’