‘Secure your ship. Prevent any aboard from moving against me,’ Vrell finally ordered.

‘You are Prador.’ Bloc’s observation contained something like yearning, and Vrell realized this stemmed from the reif’s fanatical interest in Prador thrall technology—control technology. Ignoring the further flood of questions that ensued, he turned the bulk of his attention to another matter in hand.

Despite his present desperate circumstances, Vrell was determined to confirm his suspicions about the King’s guard. The Warden had also obviously been as curious, hence Vrost’s action in destroying the one who had drifted too close to one of die AI’s satellite eyes. The armoured individual now in the drone cache had not detonated for one of two reasons. Either the EM that knocked it out of the sky had fused the relevant circuitry, or else Vrost somehow knew exactly the guard’s location and was awaiting an opportune moment to send the destruction signal—probably when Vrell himself put in an appearance. There was only one real way to find out.

The Prador heaved himself up off the floor and, with his tool chest trailing along behind him, headed out of his sanctum. He noted, as he travelled the dank corridors of the ship, how the omnipresent lice remained somnolent on the wall, only shifting a little on sensing his presence. Lack of food again. He himself had not eaten for some time, and for longer there had been little for the lice to scavenge. Now suddenly aware of his own hunger, he summoned the two leech-headed blanks from where they had collapsed in the corridor outside the holding area. They joined him just as he reached the door to the cache, where he picked one of them up in a claw and began tearing it apart and feeding gobbets of its flesh into his maw. As he ate he noted how much longer his claws had now become, and how their colour was a translucent black like some kind of glass. Then he entered the cache itself.

Vrell first eyed what was left of the hooder, squirming over near the portal. It seemed more lively than before, looked longer and thinner, and gaps were growing between its segments. The Prador decided it might be quite a good idea to dump the thing outside sometime very soon, then turned his attention to his prisoner.

The King’s guard was down on its belly with its legs folded underneath and its claws stretched out slack on the floor before it. Its armour seemed to conform to the pear shape of a Prador first-child, but now, on closer examination, Vrell saw that it was just too big for that. A Prador of this size should be an adult, and therefore lacking some limbs. This one seemed to have all its legs and both its claws, and doubtless, underneath, all its manipulatory arms. Vrell speculated on the possibility that some of these limb casings might be empty of arms or legs, and instead wholly motor-driven. He would not know for sure until he took a look inside it.

After opening his tool chest, Vrell removed a powerful short-range microwave scanner, and began running it over the golden carapace before him. Soon ascertaining which areas of the armour shielded no vital systems, he summoned his drone over with a thought.

‘Cut here,’ he directed, stepping back.

The drone extended its thermic lance, which ignited with an arc-light flash. Soon the room was full of metallic smoke, and fans hidden in the ceiling began automatically drawing it away. The guard tried moving its claws and legs, but they only quivered a little. It would, in a moment, realize that there was only one way it might survive, and that would be without the encumbrance of dead armour. Vrell felt some satisfaction when he heard the sound of locks disengaging. He silently relayed another instruction to his drone, and moved further back.

The armour opened with a sucking crump, the entire upper carapace rising on silver rods, then hinging back. The ejection routine was fast, compressed air blowing the occupant’s limbs from their casings. But not fast enough: as the grey and distorted Prador head lifted on a ribbed neck, and one claw and the legs on one side pulled free, the drone repositioned the lance and drove it straight into its grey body. The guard screamed, trying to bring to bear a short assassin-spec rail-gun. The drone snipped that manipulatory arm away, closed its claw on the creature’s neck, and drove the thermic lance deeper into its body, searching out the major ganglions. The guard kept struggling and screaming for some time, green blood and smoke issuing in gushes from its mouth and over its grating mandibles. Eventually its struggles diminished, but never entirely ceased. Vrell knew that, unless this body was utterly destroyed, it would regenerate, though into what was open to speculation. After the drone dumped it down on the floor, beside its armour, Vrell moved over to investigate.

The Prador was almost the same size as himself, and its mutation quite similar, the only differences being its lighter colour, the saw-tooth edges on its legs and a thicker carapace around its neck. Was this what Vrell would eventually become? Next he turned his attention to the armour.

The fusion bomb was easy to locate and remove. It did not require disarming for the EM blast had completely fused its U-space receiver. It was also accessible to the armour’s occupant, so clearly the latter was not expected to try shutting it off. This meant that these guards were utterly loyal to their chain of command, leading up to the King himself, which indicated pheromonal control. What then was this creature? What was Vrell himself? Were they adolescent or adult, or something else entirely?

Stepping back from the armour, Vrell studied it long and hard. He considered carefully all that its occupant implied—what it meant to the Kingdom and where he himself might fit in, if at all. Eventually he began to turn away, realizing at last the truth of his situation. He would not survive to leave Spatterjay in this ship, even with the U-space engine repaired.

He must die.

The Warden dispatched a recording of all recent events through an open link to Earth, and thereafter kept the leading AI up to date with current events. Earth Central could do nothing about what was happening here, except make promises of retribution.

‘I am in contact with Oboron,’ the Earth AI replied. ‘Obviously there is more to this than we suspected.’

No shit, thought the Warden, privately.

As a result of five coil-gun projectiles obliterated by Vrell’s particle cannons, incandescent gases billowed in high atmosphere. The blast from the second from last projectile, had it struck Vrell’s spaceship, would also have smashed the Sable Keech into burning fragments and scattered them across kilometres of ocean. The last projectile would have left little of the ship but ash, since when it was fired its target was parked right underneath the sailing vessel. Both missiles would have resulted in a wave sweeping past the island to strike the two approaching Hooper ships with the force of a bullet.

There seemed little doubt: the moment Vrell’s weapons were fully engaged defending himself from Vrost’s troops, that coil-gun would fire again, and then again. The Warden could do nothing. By his actions, Vrost had called the AI’s bluff.

Vrost, of course, could not resist commenting on this. ‘I must assume then that you have decided not to use your U-space weapons against me?’The translated voice of the Prador was flatly devoid of emotion, but the sarcasm was implicit.

The Warden replied, ‘I am consulting with Earth Central on the matter, and EC is talking to your King. I estimate it will take a few more hours before Vrell is completely engaged with your forces, and therefore before you can make an effective coil-gun strike. By then I will have received my instructions.’