Cormac now concentrated on the claw shoulder joint on his side and, copying him, Sheen attacked the other claw joint. They both realised Pramer was in a position to finish the job, only needing those claws kept away from him. Five heavy blows and the claw on Cormac's side was dragging on the ground. Sheen, though she did not disable the claw immediately, obviously opened a gap in the carapace, for she drove her lump of metal deep in beside the claw joint.

The creature jetted foamed bile from its broken mouth. Its visual turret was all but gone, and now the blows Pramer was delivering were punching down into its main body. Abruptly it collapsed completely, its legs shivering and breath rasping wetly. Pramer sat back, and began picking unpleasant gobbets from his arm. Stepping up beside him, Cormac gazed at the hole the man had punched through, estimated the positions of the internal organs, then drove his bar in at a sharp angle. The Prador convulsed, its breathing ceasing all at once, though its legs continued shivering. Cormac turned the metal, then sawed it back and forth, finally pulled it out.

"Is it dead?" asked Sheen.

Cormac stepped away for a moment, turning his back on them. The surge of nausea had come quickly, but taking steady breaths for a moment he forced it into retreat before turning back to face them.

"If not," he said, "then it soon will be. I was able to sever its main ganglion." He rested a hand momentarily on Pramer's shoulder. "Thanks to our champion here."

It was an odd feeling. He admired both Pramer and Sheen for their bravery, liked them a little better than before, yet he was going to betray them and, one way or another, that betrayal would lead to them dying.

"What happened to Layden?" he asked the big man beside him.

"Pulled his guts out," said Pramer.

Sheen tugged her chunk of metal from the Prador's shoulder joint, but it responded not at all now. Cormac pulled out his gore-soaked implement, stepped down to the floor and headed back towards the cache of CTDs, the other two falling in behind him. Within a few minutes he saw that Pramer had not exaggerated: Layden was sitting up against the wall of the corridor opposite the door into the cache, a pool of blood spreading all around him and his intestines trailing in a long line right back to the door. On the wall above the man Cormac noted the spatter marks and surmised that the Prador had driven its claw into his guts and flung him, those intestines unravelling like the string of a yo-yo. He walked over to the man, squatted down beside him and checked his pulse. Nothing. An artery had been cut inside him and he'd quickly died of shock and blood loss. It was a good thing that the artery had been cut, else he would have suffered a long and lingering death—Samara's instructions were that the CTDs took precedence over injured comrades.

"Dead?" Sheen enquired.

"Thoroughly," Cormac replied. "Let's get this done and get out of here." He reached down and opened Layden's belt bag, removing the remote control, took up his metal bar and followed the other two into the cache. Cormac and Pramer levered out the four CTDs and placed them down on the floor while Sheen removed the monofilm rucksacks from her belt cache, unfolded them, and placed the CTDs inside. The weapons were very heavy and Cormac considered suggesting they leave one behind, but knew that after what they had just been through, that would be the wrong thing to say.

"We'll carry it between us," he said to Pramer.

Donning their rucksacks they stepped out of the cache, Pramer and Cormac holding a strap each of the fourth rucksack, it hanging heavily between them.

"What about him?" asked Pramer.

"They'll know someone got in here when they come to move the CTDs," said Cormac. "But maybe we can cover things a bit."

They put the spare rucksack down and, taking a leg each, they dragged Layden to the Prador, over it, then to the gravsled stacked with the gassed second-children. With some heaving and shifting, and much swatting away of ship lice, they managed to shove him out of sight underneath one of the dead creatures. Next they returned for the freshly killed Prador, managed to pick it up between them and carry it back to heave up onto the same stack. Returning for the extra CTD, Cormac observed smaller ship lice, perhaps those unable to compete in the scrum about the dead Prador, scuttling out from hollows in the walls. He saw two conducting a tug of war with a length of Layden's intestine, others were snatching up bits of carapace and Prador flesh, while still more had come to revel in the sticky pools of human and alien blood.

"Should clear up more evidence of our visit," he said as they retrieved the fourth CTD and made their way out. Pramer gave him a sour look and Sheen a blank one.

On the elevator Cormac checked the remote control and saw it was primed to stop the autodozer and open it, and he had no doubt that once inside the machine he would be able to stop it at the designated point on the return journey, then instruct it to dig a hole for the CTDs, and fill it in again. There they would disembark and go their separate ways.

5

It moved fast despite looking heavier than a truck and despite being underwater. His room door opened and in a moment both his mother and Dax were there beside him.

"What is it?" Hannah asked. "What's wrong?"

No sign of it out there but for a cloud of disturbed silt, which could have been caused by anything. Even before he spoke he guessed how this was going to run.

"That war drone was out there," he said.

"War drone?" Dax asked.

Cormac turned to look at them, realising the remote was displaying the red fail light because he was clutching it too tightly and pressing down on too many controls at once.

"It was the one we saw in Montana, and the one I saw outside school," he said, carefully unclenching his fingers.

"Are you sure?" Of course she had to ask that.

"I'm sure," said Cormac.

"Outside your school," Hannah repeated, her voice flat.

She and Dax exchanged an unreadable look, then returned their attention to him.

"Ian," she said, "it was probably one of the maintenance bots."

Dax took up her line. "They're always working out there, scraping off the barnacles or keeping the windows clean or unblocking vents—this place requires a lot of maintenance."

Cormac recollected a word he'd recently looked up on his p-top, because he'd just caught the tail end of a conversation between his mother and Dax which he felt sure was about him. The word was patronising. He was being patronised; he was being treated with condescension. Determined to protest about this he gazed at his mother and brother, but then he noticed something. His mother was not looking at him but at Dax, who was pallid and appeared frightened, as with a shaking hand he opened a packet of self-igniting cigarettes, only just managed to get one to his lips and puff it into life. Cormac understood then that his own fright, which was fading fast, was of the least concern. There was something badly wrong with Dax.

"When's your slot?" Hannah asked Dax.

"Any time today, though there's no guarantee I'll get in quickly."

"We'll head over to the clinic now," she said, to which Dax replied with a mute nod. Hannah turned to Cormac. "Unpacking can wait—we're going out now."

Dax turned and left the room, trailing a cloud of smoke behind him, and their mother followed. Cormac turned to the room window, picked up the remote control and blanked it. So he had seen the war drone out there. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe, for reasons he just could not fathom, it was following him. What did that matter? War drones were only harmful if you were a Prador.