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, when 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.