Shadow of the Scorpion

cut, else he would have suffered a long and lingering death—Samara's instructions were that the CTDs took precedence over injured comrades.

'Dead?' Sheen enquired.

'Thoroughly,' Cormac replied. 'Let's get this done and get out of here.' He reached down and opened Layden's belt bag, removing the remote control, took up his metal bar and followed the other two into the cache. Cormac and Pramer levered out the four CTDs and placed them down on the floor while Sheen removed the monofilm rucksacks from her belt cache, unfolded them, and placed the CTDs inside. The weapons were very heavy and Cormac considered suggesting they leave one behind, but knew that after what they had just been through, that would be the wrong thing to say.

'We'll carry it between us,' he said to Pramer.

Donning their rucksacks they stepped out of the cache, Pramer and Cormac holding a strap each of the fourth rucksack, it hanging heavily between them.

'What about him?' asked Pramer.

'They'll know someone got in here when they come to move the CTDs,' said Cormac. 'But maybe we can cover things a bit.'

They put the spare rucksack down and, taking a leg each, they dragged Layden to the Prador, over it, then to the gravsled stacked with the gassed second-children. With some heaving and shifting, and much swatting away of ship lice, they managed to shove him out of sight underneath one of the dead creatures. Next they returned for the freshly killed Prador, managed to pick it up between them and carry it back to heave up onto the same stack. Returning for the extra CTD, Cormac observed smaller ship lice, perhaps those unable to compete in the scrum about the dead Prador, scuttling out from hollows in the walls. He saw two conducting a tug of war with a length of Layden's intestine, others were snatching up bits of carapace and Prador flesh, while still more had come to revel in the sticky pools of human and alien blood.

'Should clear up more evidence of our visit,' he said as they retrieved the fourth CTD and made their way out. Pramer gave him a sour look and Sheen a blank one.

On the elevator Cormac checked the remote control and saw it was primed to stop the autodozer and open it, and he had no doubt that once inside the machine he would be able to stop it at the designated point on the return journey, then instruct it to dig a hole for the CTDs, and fill it in again. There they would disembark and go their separate ways.

5

It moved fast despite looking heavier than a truck and despite being underwater. His room door opened and in a moment both his mother and Dax were there beside him.

'What is it?' Hannah asked. 'What's wrong?'

No sign of it out there but for a cloud of disturbed silt, which could have been caused by anything. Even before he spoke he guessed how this was going to run.

'That war drone was out there,' he said.

'War drone?' Dax asked.

Cormac turned to look at them, realising the remote was displaying the red fail light because he was clutching it too tightly and pressing down on too many controls at once.

'It was the one we saw in Montana, and the one I saw outside school,' he said, carefully unclenching his fingers.

'Are you sure?' Of course she had to ask that.

'I'm sure,' said Cormac.

'Outside your school,' Hannah repeated, her voice flat.

She and Dax exchanged an unreadable look, then returned their attention to him.

'Ian,' she said, 'it was probably one of the maintenance bots.'

Dax took up her line. 'They're always working out there, scraping off the barnacles or keeping the windows clean or unblocking vents—this place requires a lot of maintenance.'

Cormac recollected a word he'd recently looked up on his p-top, because he'd just caught the tail end of a conversation between his mother and Dax which he felt sure was about him. The word was patronising. He was being patronised; he was being treated with condescension. Determined to protest about this he gazed at his mother and brother, but then he noticed something. His mother was not looking at him but at Dax, who was pallid and appeared frightened, as with a shaking hand he opened a packet of self-igniting cigarettes, only just managed to get one to his lips and puff it into life. Cormac understood then that his own fright, which was fading fast, was of the least concern. There was something badly wrong with Dax.

'When's your slot?' Hannah asked Dax.

'Any time today, though there's no guarantee I'll get in quickly.'

'We'll head over to the clinic now,' she said, to which Dax replied with a mute nod. Hannah turned to Cormac. 'Unpacking can wait—we're going out now.'

Dax turned and left the room, trailing a cloud of smoke behind him, and their mother followed. Cormac turned to the room window, picked up the remote control and blanked it. So he had seen the war drone out there. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe, for reasons he just could not fathom, it was following him. What did that matter? War drones were only harmful if you were a Prador.

Cormac opened his bag and took out his p-top, quickly calling up a site he had found earlier that covered in lengthy detail the effects of PTSD, which throughout this war was aggravated by alien environment shock, sometimes given the antiquated term 'shell shock' but which referred to some of the effects upon soldiers of certain esoteric weapons deployed across the front, and the other stresses resulting from the numerous protective inoculations and nano-technologies running in a soldier's bloodstream. He understood that Dax was suffering from something that came under the general term 'battle stress.' He hadn't read through much of the site, but he knew now that these aftereffects could kill, in many different ways.

His mother poked her head into his room. 'Are you ready?'

Cormac closed his p-top and hooked it on his belt. He moved to follow her out, but had to pause for a moment while the Loyalty Luggage entered and settled on the floor.

'I'm ready.' He followed her out into the corridor.

Dax was smoking again, and he chain-smoked all the way out of the hotel and along the streets of Tritonia until they arrived at the clinic. The building frontages here were little different from those of other streets, with bubble windows, stone facades and pressure doors. However, down the side of one entire street the bubble windows were blanked out so they looked like blind white eyes, the actual pressure doors had been removed and cams were mounted above each entrance, and there were electronic noticeboards scattered at intervals all the way along. Cormac realised at once that 'the clinic' occupied the whole side of this street, which was also crowded with a high proportion of people wearing ECS uniforms, many of whom where either leaving or entering the clinic.

Before they themselves entered the third door, they had to wait for someone else to come out from inside. The man was a soldier clad in desert fatigues, but Cormac recognised the discrete military decorations of a Sparkind. There was something vague and dreamy about his expression, which seemed in contrast to the burn scarring on the side of his face and his ceramal artificial hand. He nodded to them pleasantly, then moved off into the crowded street.

'Why the hand and no cosmetic surgery?' their mother wondered.

Dax glanced at her. 'Resources get stretched a bit thin out there, sometimes a hand like that is more useful than one of flesh.'

'But his face?'

Dax shook his head as he stepped through the doorway. 'Some retain their scars in memory of lost comrades.' He bowed his head, leaning against what had been the interior of a pressure lock, suddenly panting for a moment. 'Sometimes, out there, a scar like that means more than medals or military rank.' He shook his head, trying to dispel something, then continued inside.