Forlam suddenly looked decidedly uncomfortable. He glanced round at the Hoopers behind him, then forwards at the armed Kladites.
‘Yeah,’ he said grudgingly.
Bloc felt himself growing calm. There was no need here for any demonstrations of power. The Hoopers were needed for repairs and for running this ship, his Kladites were armed, and in time he would gain full control of the hooder.
He turned to Forlam. ‘The rudder is damaged?’
‘Yes,’ said Forlam, eyeing the laser carbines pointed at him.
Bloc wished he could smile now. ‘Return to Captain Ron, find out what is required, and tell him to get repairs underway.’ He swung towards Styx. ‘All nonessential personnel should return to their cabins for the duration of this crisis.’
‘There’s still that nasty bugger down there,’ said Forlam sulkily.
‘The hooder, my people have told me,’ said Bloc, ‘is heading towards the bows. It will probably return to the chain lockers where it was hiding earlier.’
The male reif was the first to turn round and walk away. Forlam and the Hoopers followed.
The gun, though given a long pompous title by its inventor, holofiction labelled a singun. Very few people believed such a weapon existed, and of those only a small percentage actually knew it existed. It made no sound and there was no kick. Automatically ranging the first solid object at which it was aimed, it caused a mote of quantum foam in that object to begin turning out of phase with reality. This resulted in a hole which in turn generated a powerful singularity with an existence so brief its gravity field did not get a chance to propagate beyond a few metres. Everything within its sphere of influence was subjected to both tidal and crushing forces of the gravitic shell while it revolved out of reality then back into it. The result was inevitably messy.
The cowl of the hooder—all black and red and glittering razor edges—disappeared and reappeared in an instant too brief to register. There came a whumph, as of a one-tonne melon cast into a giant food processor. The mangled mess of carapace, woody flesh and organic glass cascaded to the floor, leaving the headless body of the monster thrashing in the bilge. Wade walked away from it, back towards Janer.
‘An effective weapon,’ said the Golem.
‘Certainly is,’ said Janer, gingerly holstering his gun.
‘You’re not going to use it on me, then?’ Wade asked.
‘Not for the present,’ Janer replied.
Now, Bloc decided, he would institute a disciplined regime aboard this ship. The Hoopers would make the necessary repairs; the reifications, without Ellanc Strone any longer to act as a rabble rouser, would only come out on deck as per the present rota—except for his Kladites and any other reifs he could persuade to join his army. The Kladites would act as his enforcers, but for any major revolt they might not be able to handle he could use the hooder… as soon as he gained full control of it. Bloc was well satisfied with this night’s work, but his satisfaction lasted only as long as it took Forlam and the others to move out of sight.
Suddenly, a wave of feedback slammed shrieking into Bloc’s mind through the channel open to the hooder. He felt the linkages to the thralls down below breaking up. The hooder—someone had killed his pet! His mind filled with a morass of pseudo-pain. The third channel continued operating, but flashing through to him cryptic signals from remaining functional thralls. It was all to much. Bloc could feel his grip slipping, and he staggered back, bouncing off Bones, then falling against the nearby wall.
OUTPARAFUNCT: B.P. LOAD INC. 10%
How quickly can power dissolve?
WARN: EXTREMITY PROBES NIL BALM LA71-94
VIRAL INFECT
To one side he saw Bones shaking as if electrocuted, then toppling over onto the deck. Through his other channel he sensed Aesop drop as well, but could do nothing about it. Warning messages were scrolling up before his inner vision, one after another, and he seemed unable to shut them down. The next thing he knew he was lying flat on his back, staring through a flood of artificial tears at the starlit sky.
MEMSPACE: 00024
‘Taylor Bloc, sir?’
Two Kladites were bending over him, reaching to help him up. He pushed their hands away and eventually lurched to his feet by himself. Everything was fizzing in his mind, and he could make no connections. No, he must not lose it now. He pushed the two Kladites back further, straightened up and looked around.
Bones and Aesop were down. Unbelievably, the hooder was gone. How had Captain Ron just done what the Batians failed to do? Bloc needed time to retrench, but he needed even more to show he was still in control.
‘Those two.’ He pointed at Aesop and Bones. ‘Take them to the Tank Rooms and tell Erlin to do what she can for them. I will be in my cabin.’
He turned and walked away, all effort focused on controlling his limbs.
13
Prill:
this sickle-legged creature is something of an oddity. Below a saucer-shaped carapace its ten legs are spaced evenly, and all hinge in the same concentric direction. These legs are flat and sharp, and in the water act like some strange cross between propellers and paddles. On land, though it can travel forward at great speed, it is constantly revolving. As a consequence, so it can keep its eyes on its destination—usually something to eat—its red eyeballs are not directly attached to its optic nerve, which lies in a band around its very small brain, but are squeezed around a lubricated channel in its carapace rim, constantly focusing light on the band of nerve tissue behind. The mouth is positioned centrally, underneath.
Prill lay millions of eggs in the ocean currents. Drifting, they hatch out diatomic prill, which make up part of the vicious plankton. Feeding in the ocean currents for some years, until they are about the size of dinner plates, they hitch a ride on larger oceanic carnivores, scavenging scraps from their host’s prey. As they get larger their bodies become more dense, till they eventually sink to the ocean floor, where they continue growing. Eventually internal body growth outpaces carapace growth, so they themselves become prey to the smaller denizens of the deep. Their carapaces and internal chemistry prevent virus infection, so prill will live no longer than a century or so. In this respect their closest relation is the glister—
Four fusion plants were now running. Two others were possibly salvageable, but one was highly radioactive and beyond repair. Through various cameras Vrell watched a dying blank plasma-cutting the supports and pipes around the pill-shaped unrecoverable one. Eventually it was hanging loose, only attached by its S-con cables, with coolant leaking out of a breach in its side. These cables being a nightmare to cut using heat, as they instantly conducted it away, the blank had to cut through with an electric saw, and eventually the two-metre-wide plant dropped to the deck with a crash. Stumbling a little now, the sickly blank attached a cable hook to one of the support lugs on the fallen object’s circumference. Using the electric winch of a rail buggy out in the main corridor, he hauled it out of the fusion room, then up off the floor so that it hung suspended from the buggy, which in turn clung to its ceiling rail. It was a labour-intensive task which would have been greatly simplified by using a mobile gravplate. Except the Warden might detect AG usage and investigate.
From the control room Vrell set the buggy moving, with the blank walking along behind it. After many laborious interchanges and a nightmarish moment when the rail began to tear away from the side of a down-shaft through which it curved, both blank and plant eventually arrived in the drone cache. There, Vrell’s drone unfolded its new armoured claws, took the weight of the plant and snipped the cable holding it aloft. Vrell closed the door into the cache, then opened the hull door. In flooded the ocean, slamming the blank against the back wall. Vrell relinquished control of the human, then watched the cache fill up and the drone take the fusion plant outside to dump it. Some hours later the drone returned, grabbed the still moving blank and shoved him outside too. Finally Vrell closed the hull door again. Despite being a tough Hooper, the human was dying anyway from the huge radiation dose it had received. Vrell concentrated now on other matters.