"Identicard," the drone demanded.
Cormac was amazed at the teenager's sudden calm as she reached into her engineer's belt bag, took her card from amidst the numerous small packs that would open out into monofilm rucksacks, and held it up. He saw the flash of laser scanning pass over the card and hand, then after a moment Sheen received a grudging "Admittance approved," whereupon a personnel door popped open in the main gates and they entered.
"It must be your acne," said Pramer.
"Fuck off," Sheen replied.
Cormac had already instructed them to confine their talk to the kind of exchanges expected from such workers, but hadn't expected these two to show such talent for it. Not a word could be uttered about their real reason for being here, since watch programs would be listening for key words and phrases and assessing for out-of-character behaviour. Grinning, he glanced at Pramer, but was surprised to see he seemed chastened by the teenager's reply. Odd, decidedly so.
Beyond the fence lay a plasticrete yard, much of it chewed up by the action of dozer treads, along the back of which stood a row of huge garages each containing the heavy equipment being used about the Prador dreadnought. Cormac waved for the others to follow and headed for the third door along. Here he took out his identicard and pressed it into the reader beside another personnel door, which opened for him. The others followed suit and trailed him inside to where a row of dozers loomed like steel dinosaurs.
"Number one," he instructed, pointing to the first in the line.
The dozer was a five-hundred-ton monster with caterpillar treads, a dozer blade to the fore and two rear excavator arms, which could choose from a selection of buckets within the machine's body. It possessed no cab for a driver since the machine could be slaved to AI, loaded with a submind or telefactored to some other operator. There was no necessity for the thing to be permanently full-AI since such intelligence would be wasted on a piece of earth-moving equipment.
"Sheen, Layden." Cormac directed their attention towards the tool racks along one wall.
Layden walked over and collected a console and length of optic cable. His technical expertise was why he had been "invited" — that invitation spiced with a promise of a large supply of whatever drugs were slowly killing him. Sheen collected a screwdriver kit—she was just along to carry one of the CTDs and possessed no expertise that Cormac could see. He himself strolled round the dozer inspecting its treads while Pramer went over to peer inside the compartment containing its digger buckets.
This dozer had recently developed a fault in the mechanisms used to shift the elected digger buckets into position for its digger arms at the back. It had been difficult to convince Samara that Carl had managed to introduce the fault preparatory to using this as a back-up way of getting into the ship. But the Separatists here really wanted those CTDs and were quite prepared to lose personnel just to find out if the opportunity of obtaining them existed. It was noticeable, however, that Samara had not seen fit to include herself in this, and that as far as Cormac knew, her only close associate here was Pramer: a thug who, for reasons Cormac had yet to fathom, had fallen out of favour with her.
"Let's see what we've got," said Cormac.
Sheen had taken out a multidriver and was removing a small panel from the side of the dozer. Once this was off, Layden plugged the optic from his console into one of the revealed sockets, and input instructions. With a low whine the first enormous dozer arm immediately elbowed upwards extracting a two-yards-wide earth scoop from the bucket compartment, which it swung to one side—sending Pramer dodging from its path—and crunched down on the plasticrete. With a clonk, pins disengaged, then the arm rose again leaving the earth scoop on the floor, while within the dozer's body, mechanisms moved the next bucket forward in the compartment. The second arm engaged with this, lifted it out, and deposited it on the floor too, while the first arm swung back for the next implement
"Seems okay," said Cormac, "but best to be sure." Removing a small memstore from his pocket, he now headed over to the com console set in the wall beside the tool racks. Upon reaching the console he noticed Sheen watchfully coming up beside him, and guessed her purpose here might be more than it appeared. Perfectly to script Cormac called up the dozer specs and then the relevant maintenance log, which showed them presently working on said machine. He inserted the memstore into the relevant slot in the console and set its contents to load. Deliberately looking pleased with himself he nodded to Sheen then turned to head back.
The digger arms were now laying out the last of a selection of ceramo-carbide rock drills in neat rows on the floor to either side of the dozer's rear end. These were the last items from the digger compartment. As Cormac walked over, one arm detached from a drill then swung over to engage again with the large earth scoop and there pause.
"Ready?" he asked Layden.
The man nodded and unplugged the optic, and Sheen, back at her post, quickly replaced the cover she had removed. By now Pramer had climbed inside the compartment, quickly followed by Layden who retained the essential console, then Sheen. Cormac stepped into the cramped compartment just as the digger arm started moving again. After a moment the earth scoop swung across then in, blocking out the light as it crashed into the slot at the mouth of the compartment. After a moment a greenish hue filled the space as Pramer stuck a chemical light ball to one ceramal wall.
"Can we talk now?" asked Layden.
"Certainly," said Cormac, "but I'd advise against doing it too loudly—there's still ears out there."
"Tell me about the program you used?" Layden was very doubtful that any human could create a program capable of penetrating the security around the dreadnought, for he possessed sufficient expertise to know what it would be up against.
"It was a mutagenic worm," said Cormac. "Carl knew more about it than me. It apparently causes a viral fault to develop in the garage memory, and erasing the fault erases that part of the memory too. The AI will know maintenance was scheduled but the details will be gone."
"The drone?"
"Shares memory with the garage com system—quite primitive. Most of the security in the area is outside these garages."
Layden frowned. "Very useful guy, this Carl."
Cormac pretended anger. "Which is why you people were stupid to try killing him."
"Not my people." Layden held out his hand to Sheen who passed over the screwdriver kit, from which he selected a multidriver with which he started removing the screws securing a panel within the compartment.
"How long?" asked Pramer, while fiddling with his artificial hand.
"Twenty minutes," Cormac replied. "Then this dozer sets out to shove a spill away from the north side of the ship. Despite its supposed fault it'll be used because only the dozer blade will be needed, not the digger arms."
Cormac sat down with his back against one wall. All the others made themselves comfortable too then fell into desultory silence. Cormac closed his eyes and tried to force himself to relax, or to at least display a veneer of that state. But inside he was tightly wound, both scared and elated, all too aware that at any moment this could all go badly wrong and he could end up dead. He had never felt so alive.
"What are you going to do with them?" asked Layden.
It took Cormac a moment to realise the question had been directed at him. He opened his eyes and saw that all three of them were gazing at him as they awaited his reply. He could have shrugged this off mercenary style and said that was none of his concern, but he too was supposed to be a Separatist, he too was supposed to be a fighter for the Cause.