"And this you will explain to me?"

"First, during the Prador counterattack, because your father and I were running attack viruses from a grav-platform, we were at the edge of the CTD blast that killed your father's Sparkind unit, killed thousands of others and brought down an atmosphere gunship. Prador war drones then came in and slaughtered many more. Apart from the crew of the gunship Rickshaw, we were the only survivors of the battle in Sector 104. Your father took that hard, but was professional enough to continue. It was what happened later that made things worse."

"I picked up something about that Sector 104," said Cormac. "What could be worse than that?"

The drone continued in leaden tones, "You must understand that the Prador wanted to drive us off this world so they could have unrestricted access to the human population. They wanted those people alive for coring. We knew that and we had to do something about it. At the time it seemed impossible for us to evacuate the population of South Hessick."

"South Hessick Clearance," said Cormac.

"You know about it?" Amistad enquired.

"Only those words—access is restricted."

"Three cities in South Hessick were certainly doomed, we thought. There seemed no possibility of rescuing even just one person from them. And it took all our guile and the very best chameleonware technology to even get to a position where we could launch missiles at those cities."

Cormac felt a shiver go down his spine; so that what was meant by "clearance."

"They were occupied by Prador forces?"

"No."

"Slavery."

"Precisely." The drone sighed. "As we saw it, the choice the people in those cities faced was the most horrific treatment imaginable followed by a living death, or quick, utter extinction. We gave them the latter—it was merciful." Even through its leaden tone the drone sounded dubious. "Afterwards your father went slightly crazy as did some other survivors of the counterattack, including myself. Hate is a great driver. We took appalling risks, we disobeyed orders, we lost many, but we did the job. We got to the first Prador adult in a hardened bunker established under one of the depopulated cities; then, losing almost ninety per cent of our personnel, we managed to kill the other one in its undersea base."

"I've accessed some of this," said Cormac, "but the details are never clear. How did my father die?"

Seemingly ignoring the question, Amistad continued relentlessly. "As you know, the remaining adult Prador commander was frightened by this and fled the planet. Having seen us kill the first adult and knowing we were going after the second, the AIs predicted something like this might happen. They rapidly deployed one of the new dreadnoughts of the same design as the successful My Mary Rose and managed to kill that commander on his way back to his ship, subsequently taking out that capital ship as well. From then on, Prador ground forces began to lose direction. The arrival of more Polity dreadnoughts further turned the tide in space and they could then give air support down here. Still, it took us a month to finish them."

"How did my father die?" Cormac asked again.

After a long, long pause the drone turned towards him again. "This is the thing I have to tell you, Cormac. You're father did not die here."

"They know I'm here but they can't find me," said Carl Thrace. Cormac began edging a hand down to his side, towards where he had shoved Pramer's thin-gun into his waistband.

"Now now," Carl raised a finger. "You are acquired, and if you do anything incautious my friend here will just have to burn out your guts."

Glancing round at the case, Cormac saw the mosquito autogun had risen high on its legs and was turning. He knew the effectiveness of these machines, having set them up himself with Carl. He wasn't so stupid to think he could beat one to the draw. He tried auging outside, sending a message to the local AI, to ECS, but got only static.

"Using me?" he repeated, realising Carl must somehow have isolated this area of the exhibition.

"Certainly—they must be desperate," said Carl. "They know I'm here to sell the remaining CTDs to one of the big Separatist organisations and they want to stop that. They've got their agents swarming about but they're easy enough to avoid if you're not stupid. My guess is that they hoped your presence here would draw me out and, obviously, they were not wrong. Imagine my surprise when Omidran Glass sent me the image of someone who was looking for me." Carl tilted his head, his expression amused. "She sent it just before they arrested her aboard her ship."

"So why is it that I drew you out?" Cormac considered his reasons for being here. If the AIs had not wanted him on a world where Carl was likely to be, it would have been easy enough for them to stop him. Serendipity, perhaps, though that was certainly something no AI would believe in.

Carl drew a squat nasty-looking pulse-gun and pointed it at Cormac's head. "Take out the thin-gun, drop it on the floor and kick it over here."

As he reached for Pramer's gun, Cormac briefly considered trying to use it, but though he might be able to get off a shot at Carl alone, the autogun would have time to individually burn off his fingers before he pulled the trigger. He carefully took out the gun, dropped it, and kicked it over, though not all the way over. Carl smiled and shook his head, stepped forward and squatted to pick the weapon up. He slid it into his pocket, then stepping to one side and circling around Cormac, said, "You drew me out, Cormac, because you interest me." He grimaced. "For the years I was with you I thought you just a recruit, then subsequent events convinced me you must be an ECS agent, then further events have apprised me of the truth: you are a recruit, but a surprisingly adept one. Also, Cormac, I have come to dislike you to the extreme. You are adept, intelligent, and painfully irritatingly moral. You see the world in black and white, and so would make perfect ECS agent material. This is why I am making it my personal business to kill you."

The static in Cormac's aug stuttered, burping up just a time and one word. The time was twenty minutes and the word was "chainglass." Obviously, out there, an AI or agents of ECS had some idea of what was going on in here, but what were they trying to tell him? Twenty minutes was perhaps how long it would take them to get to him—too long, he suspected. But «chainglass»? He glanced across at the autogun. It was one of the very first designs of such a weapon, but the design had not changed very much since. Rather than solid projectiles he could see that this one fired pulses of ionized aluminium, which could cut through just about anything, given time. However, he abruptly realised he was wrong about the speed of this gun, for it would take at least a few seconds for those same pulses to cause a collapse of the incredibly long molecules of chainglass, and the weapon was sitting in a chainglass case. He realised then that the calculations of ECS went deeper than Carl supposed. The AIs knew that Cormac's presence here would draw Carl out because Carl was arrogant, and those who were arrogant tended to be overconfident, and make mistakes, like this one.

Cormac threw himself towards the drop-shaft, sudden pulse-fire lighting up the display case and a thunderous crashing behind him. Something slammed into his right shoulder blade as he rolled over the lip and dropped into the deactivated shaft, and he smelt burning flesh as he fell. Not again, he thought, visions of autodocs hovering over him. But he would be lucky to survive long enough to end up in a medbay, rather than a morgue.

The drop was only ten feet, which was more than enough, especially when Cormac fell back slamming his shoulder against the drop-shaft wall. He swore then thrust himself through into darkness—the power obviously completely out in the "esoteric weapons" section.