since the time Cormac had charged in while he had been having sex with Marella. She had been sitting astride him naked, bouncing up and down—the image was forever etched in the young boy's mind. Cormac knocked on the door.
There was no answer for long seconds, and Cormac was about to open the door to peek inside when he heard the sound of movement from within. He waited a little longer and, disappointed, was about to head to his own room when there came a gruff, 'Come in, Ian.'
'Dax! We're going to—'
The sight that greeted him brought him to a confused halt. This was Dax? His elder brother had always been a big, heavily muscled young man with jet-black hair and an easy smile. This thin, haunted individual with flecks of grey in his hair, just did not seem like the same person.
'Dax,' he said, but could think of nothing else to add.
Dax was still wearing the camouflage fatigues of an ECS medic—the blue uniform had been abandoned during this war since to the Prador a medic was just as much a target as any human being. He stood with his back to the window, and was smoking a cigarette—something he had once frowned upon even though body nanites could negate the adverse health effects. 'You're thin,' Cormac finally managed.
Dax nodded contemplatively then stared with what Cormac could only feel as a complete lack of engagement. After a moment he shrugged, shook his head, then tried a weak smile.
'It's hard out there, little brother,' he said.
Hoping for some return to normality, Cormac asked enthusiastically, 'Tell me about it!'
'No.' No excuses, no explanation or justification, just
'What's it like?' Cormac wheedled.
Dax just shook his head, then after a moment turned to the window. After a drawn-out silence he said, 'We'll talk once we've reached Tritonia—maybe I'll feel better then… maybe.'
After another long delay, Cormac finally retreated, closing the door softly behind him.
They were going to take the hypertube in the morning, and when he was sent to bed Cormac observed his mother opening a bottle of whisky while Dax sat in strained silence smoking cigarette after cigarette. Already deft in the art of learning things he shouldn't, Cormac left his p-top open on the side table, its camera screen directed towards the two of them, the microphone functioning, all its other functions in silent mode. Retiring to his bedroom he turned on his room console, linked in, and watched his mother and brother.
'— when I'm ready,' his mother was saying, 'and if it doesn't get to him first.'
Dax gulped his whisky as if to sate a terrible thirst, then replied, 'Do you want me…?'
'No, that won't be necessary,' she replied. 'So are you going to tell me, Dax?'
More whisky. 'What's to tell? It's a fucking nightmare out there.'
'But you knew it would be.'
Staring at something distant, Dax said, 'Our first assignment… we set up a treatment unit for flash-burn victims. They came in with their skins coming off. We handled it to begin with, but then one of the Prador scout ships started taking out our supply ships. We handled that—using nerve blockers and anything else we could scrape together.' He shrugged. 'They weren't in any pain, but they just kept on dying on us. Then Prador ground troops attacked and we had to withdraw. About eight hundred of our patients we just couldn't move—it would have killed them. Our commander was green and he decided that we should leave them with nerve blockers in place. Maybe the Prador would ignore them. That commander ended up being shipped back with other wounded when one of the ECS regulars found out what he had done. Smashed him up real bad.' Dax looked up at his mother. 'You know what Prador do with the wounded?'
'I think I can probably guess.'
'Maybe you can, but it's in the detail. They eat them alive.'
'So they died, which would have happened if you had moved them. At least they weren't in any…'
Dax shook his head. 'No, mother—they took the nerve blockers off first, then they ate the worst cases and spent a number of days with the remainder. They're as technically advanced as us, so they know how to keep someone alive.'
'That's… horrible.'
Again the shrug. He held out his glass for more whisky. 'After that things were moving too fast for us to set up the big portable hospitals. Mostly field work. I've seen just about every injury you can possibly imagine.' He drank, shook his head. 'Tough bastards, some of those regulars. When you see a guy walk up to you carrying his own severed arm, the stump cauterized by laser, and when he tells you he wants it reattached quickly so he can get back to his unit…' He paused. 'Are you sure you want to hear this?'
'I want to hear. I want to know that he faced nothing trivial.'
Dax drew on another self-igniting cigarette. 'It's day after day after day of it. You think you're getting used to it, then find you aren't. Me and three of the other guys were sent to one location where we found two soldiers hanging from a snake tree. They'd been skinned alive, fitted with drips feeding them antishock drugs and fluids, and were still alive. Two friends climbed that tree to cut them down. Booby-trap. A thermal grenade went off and fried all four up there. I wake up hearing them screaming, and I can't go anywhere now where pork or bacon is being cooked.'
Mother looked sick. She took off her sunglasses to expose raw eyes. This was affecting her badly, Cormac guessed, his spine crawling. He wished he'd left his room light on.
'Then there's the Olston Peninsular,' Dax continued relentlessly. 'About a hundred troops waiting for transport back to camp. They got picked up and no one really noticed there was something odd about them. They came into the camp where I was waiting to tend any injuries. They just left their transports and started opening up with their weapons. Killed four hundred before they were all themselves killed. I watched an autopsy on one of them. Cored and thralled.'
'What?' his mother asked.
'Humans taken captive… I don't know the full story, there's something about an alien virus in them that makes them more durable. Part of the spinal cord and the brain removed—a metal Prador thrall unit sitting in their place.'
'I don't know what to say to you, Dax.'
'There's nothing to say. I'll get all I need in Tritonia.'
'Editing?'
'Damned right. There's people I work with who know how to deal with all sorts of stuff they can never remember having dealt with before. I'll get the bad memories cut away, cauterised out.'
Dax stood, a little unsteadily, and stretched. He turned and walked directly towards Cormac's point of view and gazed straight into the p-top screen. 'And I think you've heard enough now,' he said, and closed the screen down.
The moment he entered the old city, Cormac knew he was being watched by someone other than the one tailing him, for this place was known to be scattered with pin-cams. With the street map at the forefront of his mind, he scanned the row of ramshackle shops to his right, and chose a clothing shop in about the correct position. He walked over to the plastic-draped racks of streetwear, raised some of the clear film as if to inspect a suit, then abruptly turned to look behind, but his tail was good, already turning away to select some food from a vendor's display. Cormac grimaced, then entered the shop where the young girl in charge immediately approached him.
'Hi,' he said cheerfully. 'I need a fog robe and mask.'
'We have a wonderful selection of…' She began guiding him to the racks on the left, but he stepped to the right where packs of the cheapest exchange garments lay, and selected a robe and mask—necessities here if you didn't possess an envirosuit, since acidic fogs frequently descended in the evening. She reluctantly followed him over when he held up an octagonal ten-shilling piece, then placed it down on a counter beside him. He quickly tore open the pack and donned the baggy protective robe and the mask.
'I want to get out through the back of this place,' he said.
She eyed the coin, which was about five times the value of his purchase. 'I don't want to be involved in anything illegal.' It was a rote protest and a test to see if she could push up the price. He didn't have time for this, for the one following him would shortly be in here.
'You won't be involved in anything illegal if you let me through, though if Shelah's husband comes in here
