Shadow of the Scorpion

Now the view swung from side to side as Crean glanced first at Travis to her left, then at Gorman and Spencer to her right and just ahead of her.

'Spencer wants you to bring the shuttle here and land it beside the gravcar,' said Crean, her voice issuing from the screen.

Maybe Crean was the only one prepared to talk to him, or maybe he was just being paranoid. Spencer and Gorman would certainly be a bit disappointed with him but not overly censorious, surely. He had risked their lives by allowing himself to go into combat when he was not functioning at a hundred per cent, but being new to the Sparkind, only recently promoted from the status of grunt, surely some leeway would be allowed? Cormac would have given anything to have heard their conversations since they departed for the terraforming plant. Or perhaps he was being both paranoid and egotistical to even think they had been talking about him.

'Okay,' he replied. 'I'm on my way.'

'How are you now?' she enquired solicitously.

For a moment he did not want to have this conversation, since he did not want any of the others to overhear, then he damned himself for his stupidity, because Crean was quite capable of talking to him without using her audible-voice generator.

'I am well enough,' he said cautiously.

'Don't sweat it,' she replied. 'Nobody expects perfection from you at once, and certainly not Spencer. She walked us into a situation which, because she had not completely assessed it, could have gone a lot worse than it did.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning she didn't know about the hooper, and she should have.'

'I see.'

Knowing that did make him feel a little better, but not much. Perhaps he was just being too hard on himself? His arm now properly dressed and the drugs in the dressing numbing both that and his nagging headache, he reached out and quickly initiated the shuttle's start-up routine, then gripped the joystick and pulled it up.

'Sadist, how are you doing?' he asked, as the craft's AG motors lifted it shakily from the ground. He boosted it higher with a couple of spurts from the steering thrusters, and watched the ground rapidly drop away.

'I will be above you in thirty minutes,' the ship AI replied.

Cormac was about to ask if Sadist could send a program to realign the grids in the shuttle's ion drive, since there was no longer any need for the craft to appear to be a Graveyard relic owned by dodgy inhabitants of the area, when he started to pick up military com in his aug.

'Over there,' said Gorman.

Crean's view swung across to focus on a gravcar grounded by one of the low buildings. A chameleoncloth tarpaulin had been slung across it, but obviously the wind had picked up one corner and dislodged it. Crean now began scoping out the surrounding area with magnification, focus and in spectrums not available to unaugmented humans. There seemed to be no weapons emplacements within view, but in infrared she detected a heat source within the nearest silo adjacent to where the car was parked.

'Two-by-two cover,' said Spencer, breaking into a trot towards the gravcar. 'Pulse-rifles down to electro-stun. We want Thrace alive if he's in there.'

Crean and Travis reached the grounded gravcar well ahead of Gorman and Spencer. Meanwhile, Cormac urged the shuttle out over the spaceport, checked his position on a terrain screen called up in a frame in one corner of the subscreen, then set the shuttle grav-planing towards the terraforming plant.

Now he asked, 'Sadist, can you do anything about the ion drive in this shuttle from up there?'

'I have sent an alignment program,' the ship AI replied. 'It will take two minutes to take effect.'

He could turn on the drive immediately and have the shuttle speeding to his destination, but running such drives dirty never did them much good. They also tended to be noisy, and he guessed that Spencer would not want him creating a racket while she and the others were creeping about down there. He decided to wait.

Crean studied the chalky ground about the gravcar, a visual program clearly outlining footprints for her. There were numerous patterns, so obviously Carl had been tramping about this area for some time, but most of them led to a single door in the nearby building. In a second Crean and Travis were over by the door.

'No booby-traps or sensors evident,' sent Travis, obviously having used his Golem senses to scan through the wall.

The moment she arrived, Spencer twisted the door handle and she and Gorman entered. Crean and Travis followed them in, pulse rifles up against their shoulders as they scanned the gloomy interior. From Crean's perspective, Cormac observed twisted and collapsed pipework, and big ceramic vats, some cracked or shattered. He observed frames picking out various points within that area and understood she was making threat assessments. Meanwhile, Gorman and Spencer reached double swing-doors through the further wall, one of the doors hanging by only one hinge. Now they covered the area behind them as Travis and Crean sped over.

'Your ion drive is now at optimum function,' Sadist abruptly informed him.

Had only two minutes passed? It seemed like hours. Cormac held off engaging the drive as he gazed at the screen. Crean and Travis went through the doors, Gorman and Spencer coming through behind them to cover the area they now hastily crossed. Here lay a long, low room walled with chainglass through which ran many transparent pipes; some sort of control area with numerous consoles were attached along those same walls. The area terminated against the curve of a silo, where a hole had recently been cut through. Using her infrared vision, Crean detected heat beyond, inside. Travis dived through the hole ahead of her, while she turned to cover the other two as they approached. Then she dived through, rolled and came upright in the cathedral space inside.

'No one here,' said Travis, out loud, as Gorman and Spencer now entered.

'The heat source?' Spencer snapped.

Travis gestured to a large crate with some fleshy-looking substance seemingly growing over it like a fungus. Crean, focused on this, detecting the heat signature inside the crate. They all walked over to inspect it. Cormac felt both disappointed and glad as he engaged the ion drive to accelerate towards their location. He certainly wanted Carl apprehended, but he wanted to be there when it happened.

'Shit!' Spencer exclaimed.

Cormac returned his attention to the screen, and saw that Crean was now gazing down at the face of Marcus Spengler. The stuff strewn over the crate was syntheflesh: Carl's syntheflesh disguise. Then the face spoke.

'Ah, you're here at last,' it said. 'Say bye bye cruel world.'

The face winked.

'Run,' said Spencer, and chaotic images ensued—too fast for Cormac to follow.

Then a light ignited on the horizon, and he looked up. A fireball expanded, so bright it seemed to eat into the Earth. He just stared, utterly understanding what had happened, yet still unable to accept it. When he looked back at the screen, it was blank.

The crash of the explosion arrived shortly after its glare, and it sounded as if the world was being smashed in half. The shockwave struck just as Cormac slammed the shuttle into an emergency landing, lifting the vessel off the ground, pointing nose down. It automatically fired stabilizing thrusters and Cormac felt a strange wave run through his body as the grav-motors tried to realign too. Immediately the surrounding air filled with white dust, blotting everything from view. He concentrated on bringing the craft level and landing it properly, but it still came down hard, and as its systems wound down into silence, he listened to the patter of some sort of hail against the hull.

'Gorman?… Crean?… Travis?… Spencer?'

No response over his aug, just static. The electromagnetic pulse from the blast might well have screwed up his aug… might have screwed up their augs…

Feeling numb, he unstrapped himself and headed for the side door of the shuttle, stood before it for a long moment, then went off to search the craft's lockers for some goggles, which he found—they were Gorman's. Opening the door he stepped out, then immediately stepped back inside when falling cinders burned his bare arms. After a further search he found an envirosuit which, with painful slowness, he began to don. When he finally closed it up he just sat exhausted, not quite sure how to proceed. Then came a query for linkage through his aug, and he realised, recognising the source, that the device had lost all its previous settings. He approved the query and a com channel established.