18

Erlin was wondering how much longer she, and Anne, had to live. Shortly Frisk and her pet Batians would start to consider them a hindrance rather than useful hostages. As soon as that time came there would be no hesitation to kill them. The Batians would do it with workmanlike precision. It was what they were employed for, after all. Frisk, however, would do it with great enjoyment, and probably as slowly and painfully as possible. Erlin had enough judgement of people to recognize a raving psychopath.

‘Halt here,’ ordered Svan.

As she and Anne stopped in the centre of the courtyard, Erlin could see the crew-woman working her wrists against the cable-cuffs securing her hands behind her back. She thought to warn her of the futility of trying to break woven ceraplast, but changed her mind — she did not know, after all, how old Anne was — and instead looked away to survey her surroundings.

It was impossible for Erlin not to think about what had once happened here: the horror of it all. A thousand years ago, Jay Hoop and his crew of pirates had landed on this island to establish a permanent cache of arms and loot. At one time or another, all of them had been bitten by the leeches and to their surprise subsequently discovered that they did not grow old and die, but while growing older, were becoming stronger and more resistant to injury. With the confidence this imparted, for centuries they had terrorized the quadrant, using this planet — named Spatterjay, after Jay Hoop’s nickname — as their base. Then had come the Prador, and the war, and…

A distant horrid shrieking distracted Erlin from her rumination. She looked around and saw Frisk move over to one side of the courtyard, and then pace along it.

‘We’ll go this way,’ she gestured to a door in the wall. ‘I’ll lead.’ She pointed at Erlin and Anne, ‘You two follow me.’

The two captives crossed the courtyard and began to trail Frisk through the warren of dank corridors, past rooms scattered with such objects as could survive seven centuries of rot and decay. On the floors lay items of ceramal and glass, silicon and artificial gemstone. Remaining from personal units, comps, and the many other devices carried by the citizens of the Polity seven hundred years ago, were the practically indestructible chips — the metals and plastic long having corroded and decayed to dust. There were also ornaments and storage crystals, visors from soldier’s helmets, diverse items of ceramal armour. Erlin was thoroughly aware that these objects were things once carried by Hoop’s captives — things that during the war became of least value to Hoop and his crew. They had wanted the persons who wore them.

Frisk led them further through the Hold till they reached a high tunnel on the other side. Beyond the tunnel mouth, the dingle was crushed and flattened.

‘Svan, go and check for tracks,’ called Frisk.

Svan trotted past them, sped through the tunnel, and began to examine the soft ground beyond. Frisk looked back at her two prisoners and grinned.

What figure had Keech once quoted? Ten million. Ten million humans cored here during the Prador-Human war. And this woman had been one of the murderers. Erlin now knew what Keech had meant when he had predicted Frisk would no longer have the face by which he had known her. The thought of it sickened her.

‘They did come through here, but there’s some sort of animal footprint as well,’ called out Svan.

With a smirk Frisk followed her into the tunnel. Anne and Erlin remained where they were, until Shib barked at them to get moving too. Through the tunnel and out into the dingle, Svan walked ahead and Frisk shifted to one side. Erlin reflected about how she herself had come here to learn from Ambel how to live — but now it seemed she had in fact come here to die. She turned suddenly when she heard a horrible high-pitched scream behind her.

The mercenary, Shib, had made the mistake of brushing against a tree. He was now wearing a leech like a feather boa, and seemed unable to overcome his disgust enough to grab it and throw it away. The creature flowed round his neck, and drove its mouth in against his cheek. Even now the mercenary could not react.

Svan ran past Erlin and grabbed at the leech. With a yank, she tore it from his face and flung it to the ground. Shib still stood there, keening, a circle of flesh missing from his cheek, his teeth now exposed underneath. Svan backhanded him across the other side of his face, once, twice, knocking him to the ground. The keening suddenly stopped.

‘Get up.’

Shib slowly rose to his feet: shame, fear and madness fighting for predominance in his expression.

‘Keep moving you two,’ said Svan, heading back to lead the way. Erlin thought her insane to leave this humiliated man at her back. When Shib drew his hand laser she assumed he was going to burn a hole through Svan’s back. Instead, he incinerated the leech, and reholstered the laser.

‘Get a move on,’ he snarled at her.

SM12’s cockle-shell body was of an extremely rugged construction: its outer shells formed of centimetre-thick foamed steel, and its internal components braced in a ceramal-composite lattice, but even so it knew that the pressure a kilometre down would collapse it as easily as a snail in a vice, if it did not prepare. Floating on the surface, Twelve folded away its single laser, then using an internal system pumped crash foam at high pressure into all its internal cavities. Next with its shells slightly open, it turned off its AG and sank like the lump of metal it was.

Five hundred metres down Twelve observed with interest one of the herbivorous deep-water heirodonts cruising past, the leeches on its body turned to strands by the pressure. The creature resembled a truncated whale, its face, however, just a wall of feeding sieves; its body short and roped with muscle, studded with round fins, and terminating in a wide vertically presented tail. It suddenly dived when it was past the SM and, as it went rapidly down, the leeches clinging to its skin began to break away. A little relief it would find in the depths, before having to return upwards to feed and be fed upon.

Twelve followed it down, the drone’s crash foam collapsing into a thick hard layer around its internal components. The substance offered some protection, but the SM knew that some parts of itself would inevitably get damaged. Essential components, however, would be fine, being constructed on the whole of hard silicon composites and foamed ceramal.

Seven hundred metres down, and the SM’s self-diagnostic program told it that a reflective cylinder in its laser had cracked. Twelve had expected this to happen, as there was no way of injecting crash foam, or even admitting seawater, into the cavity within the cylinder — and to do so would have screwed the optical perfection of the system anyway. The rate of its descent was also slowing in proportion as the density of the water increased. The drone dared not reverse its AG to pull itself down faster, as that would be too easily detected. Shortly it passed the heirodont, which was now thinner than it had been above, the water having compressed it too. The creature’s eyes glimmered from their pits as it turned and sculled hesitantly towards Twelve, but the drone was well past it before it could decide if this strange-looking object was animal or vegetable.