Shadow of the Scorpion

'I've accessed some of this,' said Cormac, 'but the details are never clear. How did my father die?'

Seemingly ignoring the question, Amistad continued relentlessly. 'As you know, the remaining adult Prador commander was frightened by this and fled the planet. Having seen us kill the first adult and knowing we were going after the second, the AIs predicted something like this might happen. They rapidly deployed one of the new dreadnoughts of the same design as the successful My Mary Rose and managed to kill that commander on his way back to his ship, subsequently taking out that capital ship as well. From then on, Prador ground forces began to lose direction. The arrival of more Polity dreadnoughts further turned the tide in space and they could then give air support down here. Still, it took us a month to finish them.'

'How did my father die?' Cormac asked again.

After a long, long pause the drone turned towards him again. 'This is the thing I have to tell you, Cormac. You're father did not die here.'

'They know I'm here but they can't find me,' said Carl Thrace. Cormac began edging a hand down to his side, towards where he had shoved Pramer's thin-gun into his waistband.

'Now now,' Carl raised a finger. 'You are acquired, and if you do anything incautious my friend here will just have to burn out your guts.'

Glancing round at the case, Cormac saw the mosquito autogun had risen high on its legs and was turning. He knew the effectiveness of these machines, having set them up himself with Carl. He wasn't so stupid to think he could beat one to the draw. He tried auging outside, sending a message to the local AI, to ECS, but got only static.

'Using me?' he repeated, realising Carl must somehow have isolated this area of the exhibition.

'Certainly—they must be desperate,' said Carl. 'They know I'm here to sell the remaining CTDs to one of the big Separatist organisations and they want to stop that. They've got their agents swarming about but they're easy enough to avoid if you're not stupid. My guess is that they hoped your presence here would draw me out and, obviously, they were not wrong. Imagine my surprise when Omidran Glass sent me the image of someone who was looking for me.' Carl tilted his head, his expression amused. 'She sent it just before they arrested her aboard her ship.'

'So why is it that I drew you out?' Cormac considered his reasons for being here. If the AIs had not wanted him on a world where Carl was likely to be, it would have been easy enough for them to stop him. Serendipity, perhaps, though that was certainly something no AI would believe in.

Carl drew a squat nasty-looking pulse-gun and pointed it at Cormac's head. 'Take out the thin-gun, drop it on the floor and kick it over here.'

As he reached for Pramer's gun, Cormac briefly considered trying to use it, but though he might be able to get off a shot at Carl alone, the autogun would have time to individually burn off his fingers before he pulled the trigger. He carefully took out the gun, dropped it, and kicked it over, though not all the way over. Carl smiled and shook his head, stepped forward and squatted to pick the weapon up. He slid it into his pocket, then stepping to one side and circling around Cormac, said, 'You drew me out, Cormac, because you interest me.' He grimaced. 'For the years I was with you I thought you just a recruit, then subsequent events convinced me you must be an ECS agent, then further events have apprised me of the truth: you are a recruit, but a surprisingly adept one. Also, Cormac, I have come to dislike you to the extreme. You are adept, intelligent, and painfully irritatingly moral. You see the world in black and white, and so would make perfect ECS agent material. This is why I am making it my personal business to kill you.'

The static in Cormac's aug stuttered, burping up just a time and one word. The time was twenty minutes and the word was 'chainglass.' Obviously, out there, an AI or agents of ECS had some idea of what was going on in here, but what were they trying to tell him? Twenty minutes was perhaps how long it would take them to get to him—too long, he suspected. But «chainglass»? He glanced across at the autogun. It was one of the very first designs of such a weapon, but the design had not changed very much since. Rather than solid projectiles he could see that this one fired pulses of ionized aluminium, which could cut through just about anything, given time. However, he abruptly realised he was wrong about the speed of this gun, for it would take at least a few seconds for those same pulses to cause a collapse of the incredibly long molecules of chainglass, and the weapon was sitting in a chainglass case. He realised then that the calculations of ECS went deeper than Carl supposed. The AIs knew that Cormac's presence here would draw Carl out because Carl was arrogant, and those who were arrogant tended to be overconfident, and make mistakes, like this one.

Cormac threw himself towards the drop-shaft, sudden pulse-fire lighting up the display case and a thunderous crashing behind him. Something slammed into his right shoulder blade as he rolled over the lip and dropped into the deactivated shaft, and he smelt burning flesh as he fell. Not again, he thought, visions of autodocs hovering over him. But he would be lucky to survive long enough to end up in a medbay, rather than a morgue.

The drop was only ten feet, which was more than enough, especially when Cormac fell back slamming his shoulder against the drop-shaft wall. He swore then thrust himself through into darkness—the power obviously completely out in the 'esoteric weapons' section.

'I am through to you now,' said a familiar voice in his head.

Forcing himself to subvocalize, Cormac replied, 'Sadist, so it was you…' He moved through the darkness, bumping against display cases, just trying to get as far from the mouth of the drop-shaft as he could, utterly aware that a mosquito autogun's vision did not depend on light.

'What was me?' the attack ship AI enquired.

'Sent me the clue about chainglass.'

'Oh, no, that was the Cavander AI. It will be able to get an ECS team to you in eighteen minutes now. It doesn't want to send anyone in until all possible exits are assessed and covered. Carl must have a way out that he thinks is secure so it needs time to find that.'

Great, so Cormac's function was to keep Carl here for that long. That those eighteen minutes might cost Cormac his life was probably factored into the calculation, but at an order of magnitude lower than the importance of capturing someone who had CTDs to sell. Cormac resented that, but even so knew it to be absolutely right. The lights came on.

'I reckon I have about fifteen minutes before they're on their way in,' said Carl, as he stepped from the shaft, the autogun squatting at his feet like some faithful chrome dog. Fortunately there were display cases intervening, though the autogun was not firing. Perhaps Carl did not want to damage some of the stuff in here. Cormac's gaze strayed down to a nearby plaque saying 'Sneak Knife.' The device inside, upon a glass pedestal, was just an opalized blade without a handle, though closer inspection through its translucence revealed some intricate technology inside.

'Can you help me?' Cormac asked Sadist.

'I would like to, but I am not authorised to do so.'

'What? Why?'

'There is one thing I could do, had you been a member of ECS. However, you are a civilian, and in the weighing of values, the loss of a certain item for research purposes outweighs your usefulness.'

Cormac wondered what that item might be and what calculations were being made. On what basis did the AIs that ruled make their calculations: on the loss of human life, potential suffering, danger to themselves, the Polity, or something beyond the exigencies of beings of flesh?

'I hereby rejoin ECS,' said Cormac.

Carl sent the autogun off like a sheep dog, around the display cases to his right, while he walked round to the left. Complicated code arrived in Cormac's aug, weird code, something he had never seen before. Some elements of it seemed quite archaic, while others strayed into the nonsensical. He could load it, but he was damned if he knew what it would do to his aug or even his mind.

'The author of that is one Algin Tenkian,' Sadist informed him. 'The device coming under your control will impress on you, hence its loss to the AIs who have often studied it. It will be yours henceforth.'

Pulse-gun fire slammed into the opposite side of the 'Sneak Knife' display case, and Cormac threw himself backwards, immediately loading the supplied code. The data expanded in his aug like some sort of computer virus,