‘Let’s listen to what they’re saying,’ Sniper suggested. Cruising along ten kilometres behind, he snooped into the uncoded communications between the two Prador, and relayed it to the little drone.
‘Why have you ordered your troops back?’ the voice from the ship asked.
Vrost hesitated, perhaps wondering whether it was worth wasting energy on the soon-to-be-dead, but his curiosity won out. ‘I have moved them back because I do not wish them to get damaged.’
‘Coming to you as I have, I have demonstrated that I am no threat. Why should I then be a danger to them?’
They were both playing games, with layers of bluff and counter-bluff. Vrost and Vrell both knew the outcome of this encounter, and they both knew that the other knew, but Vrost had to be wondering if Vrell had accepted the inevitable and intended to go down fighting, or whether he had something else in mind.
‘You do represent a small threat to them,’ agreed Vrost. ‘But the shock wave and flying debris will shortly be a greater danger to them.’
‘I do not understand,’ said that voice again—Vrell.
Sniper understood the reason for this pretence at ignorance, more than did Vrost, and very much more than Vrell himself would be comfortable with. Sniper could tell Vrost everything, which would immediately scupper Vrell’s plans. But Sniper’s equally apportioned dislike and distrust of all Prador was tempered by his rapport with the underdog. In this situation he felt on Vrell’s side. Both of him.
Sniper interrupted. ‘Listen, shithead, very shortly Vrost will be cutting you and your ship to pieces. It doesn’t matter what you do now, you are dead. Down on the surface you managed to fend off some attacks, but only because Vrost could not employ the full power of his weapons without taking out half the planet. Up here he does not need to be so restrained.’
‘My name is not shithead,’ replied the voice.
‘Whatever,’ Sniper snapped. ‘You make a very clear target against the sky.’
A long pause ensued while the voice’s owner processed that.
On a private channel Thirteen asked, ‘Sniper, what are you up to?’
On the same channel Sniper replied, ‘Just reminding someone of something.’
‘Who is this?’ asked Vrost meanwhile.
‘Just an old Polity war drone who hasn’t lost his taste for turning Prador into crab paste,’ Sniper replied. ‘I can’t tell you how it gladdens my heart to see you two trying to kill each other.’
‘The state of your emulated emotions is not my concern.’
‘Bite me. Vrell, while you’re getting fried up here, why don’t you send out that war drone of yours for a rematch against me? I definitely owe it at least that. It doesn’t matter what you do now—you’re dead.’
‘I don’t get this,’ said Thirteen.
‘You will.’
Sniper wondered how long it would take for the underlying message to be understood. Then he was answered when weapons turrets on Vrell’s ship launched a swarm of black missiles. Many of them began exploding—quickly picked off by Vrost’s defensive lasers. Sniper tracked the rest, then grinned inside when their own drives ignited, turning them sharply towards the nearest of Vrost’s outside forces. A particle beam ignited space with turquoise fire from Vrost’s ship. It splashed against a hard-field before reaching its target, but on Vrell’s ship an explosion blew wreckage into space, as the relevant field projector overloaded. Then the coil-gun fired, but the projectile was intercepted with a similar blast from the particle cannon on Vrell’s ship. A wash of candent gas streamed past the smaller ship. The guards and drones were meanwhile occupied in either dodging or shooting down those missiles.
More salvos launched from both ships. Again the coil-gun, again the interception. EM explosions began to screw up Sniper’s reception, so he did not track the one missile with an atomic warhead that detonated only a kilometre from Vrell’s ship. The vessel tilted, some of its armour peeling away in the blast, then it righted and continued firing. Vrost’s ship was now accelerating. A nuke detonated on it, blasting a glowing cavity. Sniper realized the Prador captain was positioning his ship where there was no chance of any of his coil-gun missiles being deflected down towards the planet. Now came a U-space signature, weirdly distorted. Endgame.
‘There,’ said Sniper to Thirteen.
Seeing Vrell’s war drone blasting out into space, Sniper accelerated. Perfectly timed. The coil-gun began firing repeatedly. Four intercepted projectiles turned vacuum to furnace air. Power low for the particle cannons, the next was intercepted by hard-fields. A line of explosions cut down Vrell’s ship as projectors exploded. The projectile impacted, substantially slowed, but still slapped its target like some god’s hand. With fires burning inside it, a huge chunk of the ship fell away.
‘He’s mine!’ Sniper sent to those of Vrost’s forces who had spotted Vrell’s drone and were hitting it from all sides. ‘Vrost, pull them off!’
Just then, Vrost suddenly discovered more critical concerns. Again that distorted U-space signature. Vrell’s ship juddered partially out of existence, shedding tonnes of armour like potato peelings. Then, with a screaming sound over every frequency, it flashed out of existence completely.
‘Fuck me,’ said Thirteen.
The ship reappeared a hundred kilometres closer to Vrost’s vessel, only it no longer looked like a ship. Now it was a meteor-sized mass of glowing metal travelling at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour. Vrost’s forces rapidly lost interest in chasing the drone, which was now falling into atmosphere, blackened and distorted and obviously without functional drives. Vrost himself kept firing every weapon available at what remained of Vrell’s ship. Sniper gave a salute to the hugely accelerated wreck, turned on his fusion drive, and himself dropped into atmosphere. Long minutes later, he spread his tentacles wide and came down on the burnt Prador drone like a hammer.
Having routed control to a joystick and simpler console mounted in the conning tower, Janer motored on the ocean’s surface under a starlit sky, only it was not just stars that lit the heavens. There had been some massive explosions up there, the glowing fallout from which was now dropping behind the horizon like a false sunset. Janer supposed Vrell had finally met his end at the claws of his fellow creature in orbit. He would find out eventually, but now he just wanted to get back to the Sable Keech, which was visible ahead of him, and there make use of the cabin and bed provided for him.
The big ship was slowing and turning, at the end of its journey, and had it been necessary for him to go in manually Janer doubted he could manage it, but the submersible possessed an automatic docking system. Before returning inside to start that procedure, Janer scanned the nearby ocean. On the console, the map showed him to be almost on top of the Little Flint, but he had yet to see it. Then, a few hundred metres out, he spotted that dish of black stone protruding from the ocean. This is what it had all been about: their voyage here. He hoped Bloc was satisfied.
With the hatch closed, Janer took up the primary controls and submerged the little vessel then, hoping he had got things right, he called up the docking icon, selected it with a tap of his finger, and sat back. The sub immediately dropped deeper and accelerated. Outside the water was dark, so he turned on the lights, just in time to see a frog whelk tumbling past, perhaps dislodged from the nearby flint. A few minutes later a massive wave of white water was boiling past above him, and he glimpsed the Sable Keech’s hull. The sub turned and rose, turned again and accelerated, then abruptly decelerated and veered. This happened twice more. Janer realized that the sub’s automatics were having problems compensating for the movement of the ship. On the third occasion a warning flashed up on his screen: IRIS door closed. He hit the nearby icon to open the iris and this time there was no deceleration. Suddenly the eye of the shimmer-shield was before him, then he was through it, the sub dropping half a metre with a shuddering crash. Clamps engaged, motors whined. He watched the sub enclosure revolve around him as the vessel was turned to present its nose to the iris, which was now drawing closed again.