the ceiling like pillars, and just beyond them—
Cormac and Yallow simultaneously raised their pulse-rifles and took aim, but neither of them fired.
'If they'd been occupied your weapons would have had little effect,' said Dent. 'But it's good to see you're alert.'
Arrayed in a long framework were what looked like five large Prador second-children. But this was armour for the crablike monsters—open at the back and with carapace lids hinged out in two halves, all ready to be quickly occupied. Nearby stood a rack of weapons: vicious looking rail-guns, power-packs and magazines from which hung belts of projectiles, a row of gas lasers and one large particle cannon either for tripod mounting or to be carried by a first-child.
'If there's Prador here,' said Yallow, 'isn't it dangerous to leave stuff like this lying around?'
Dent just pointed towards the ceiling where material had been cut away and something inset. Though very little showed there, Cormac guessed a security drone had been installed. The AI controlling this excavation and reclamation wanted the Prador aboard to take the bait here, but Cormac suspected that any left alive would avoid so obvious a trap.
At the back of this hold another set of those doors, this time fully open, led into a dim corridor. Cormac and Yallow moved ahead to check it, and immediately brought their weapons to bear on movement along one wall. Ship lice: boot-sized, multi-legged arthropods that scavenged after Prador leavings and in essence served the same purpose as beetlebots aboard Polity ships, though they were also pests that needed to be controlled—the Prador version of rats in the walls. One bent its ribbed carapace into an arc and dropped to the floor. Cormac tracked it across with his pulse-rifle as it headed towards him, tri-mandibles clicking. Professor Dent stepped forwards to trap the creature under his foot, then brought his full weight down and twisted. His boot sank with a liquid crunch, gelatinous ichor squirting out from under his sole.
'Damned things,' he said. 'They're getting bolder as they get hungrier. If they get locked on to you, you have to cut behind the pincers to get the things out.'
'Charming,' said Cormac.
As they wound their way through numerous corridors then up one level via a ladder welded to the side of a very wide drop-shaft, Cormac realised Dent was following directions given on small flimsy screens stuck at intervals to the walls. Cormac and Yallow kept to the training manual by checking all areas at junctions before allowing their charge to come on, and Cormac felt that the professor was assessing their every move.
'Warheads in here,' he said at one point, gesturing to an open door to one side. 'Big rail-gun launchers to the port of the main turret.'
Why did they need to know that? It seemed an odd piece of information to provide.
'We go down here,' Dent added, pointing ahead to a corridor slanting steeply down into the depths of the ship.
This finally debarked into an even wider corridor. Cormac guessed they now must be close to the Captain's Sanctum for this new corridor was wide enough to allow a Prador adult through. A bad smell wafted along it to them and as they rounded a corner Yallow shed her pack and went down on one knee, taking aim. Cormac just continued walking.
'You don't quite have the reactions of your partner, it would seem,' commented Dent.
'I'm guessing they don't smell like that when they're alive,' said Cormac, now thoroughly aware that Dent was not all he seemed.
Chagrined, Yallow stood, hoisting up her pack again and cinching it into place.
The Prador first-child lay tilted against one wall. Most of its legs had fallen away, as had one of its claws, to expose carapace sockets in which ship lice were as busy as maggots. As Cormac watched, one of the horrible scavengers came out of the Prador's mouth between the rigid mandibles.
'How did it die?' Yallow asked.
'Most of them survived the crash,' Dent supplied. 'But they didn't survive the irradiation, the gassing and the subsequent assault.'
Cormac glanced at him. 'Irradiation?'
'Neutron tacticals were dropped here,' Dent replied. 'Then when the Sparkind assault teams arrived they drilled a hole through the ship's turret, which remained exposed above ground, and pumped Hazon nerve gas inside. Then they followed the gas inside and finished off what survivors they could find.'
'But some survived even that,' Cormac suggested.
'Yes, they were third-children in a sealed hatchery cum nursery. They grew into second-children by feeding on the remains of their relatives while we dug the ship out.' He gestured about himself. 'We reckon five or six survived out of about thirty of them… Anyway, we go here.' He pointed at a set of wide closed doors just beyond the first-child corpse.
'Why not gas the place again?' asked Yallow.
'A waste of resources for a few second-children,' Dent replied. 'Though we don't always know where they are, we're always certain where they're not.'
It seemed a strange statement to make, especially when Dent needed guards to escort him down here, and especially when people had been killed.
Dent went over to a Polity console that had been mounted beside the door, its optic feed plugged into the control pit where a Prador manipulatory hand would have usually entered a code and been sampled for genetic tissue. Deliberately positioning himself so neither Yallow nor Cormac could see over his shoulder, Dent worked the touchpads then stepped back. Something moved in the wall with a grinding crash, then with a whine of hydraulics the doors began to part along their diagonal split and revolve back into the walls.
Dent turned towards them. 'Don't be surprised by the—'
Something shrieked then crackled and it seemed some invisible rope snatched Dent sideways through the air, his body folding at the middle. Loose-limbed he bounced along the floor to lie in a broken heap directly before the door. Packs discarded, Cormac and Yallow crouched, covering each direction along the corridor. Something smashed into the wall above them, showering them with hot fragments. Cormac rolled for cover beside the first-child corpse, while Yallow backed up to the opening doors.
'In here!' she yelled, and reaching down dragged the professor through the widening gap into the Sanctum.
Where the hell had that come from?
Then Cormac saw them: Prador second-children coming down through a hatch in the ceiling. For a second he just froze, unable to process the nightmarish sight, then his training kicked in and he fired a concentrated burst at exposed carapace and glittering spider-eyes, and one of them lost its grip and crashed to the floor. The fallen second-child lay on its back with its legs kicking the air for a moment, then it abruptly flipped upright—one claw and the side of its carapace smoking. It raised some sort of jury-rigged weapon in one of its underhands. He nailed it again, across its visual turret, saw its two eye-palps fly away in burning fragments, then recognised that the weapon it held consisted mainly of a compressed gas cylinder. Briefly, an almost cryonic calm settled on Cormac as he assessed the situation and considered the best response. He aimed carefully at the cylinder, and squeezed off a concentrated burst of fire, the cylinder exploded, flinging the creature hard against one wall, but Cormac did not have time to relish the moment. More fire from above showered him with stinking flesh, shattered carapace and squirming ship lice.
'Get in here!' Yallow opened fire through the still-opening door. Cormac stood and ran towards her, felt something tug at his leg, and fell through into the Sanctum past her. As he tried to stand again, his leg gave way, and glancing down he saw blood, ripped Kevlar, exposed flesh.
Fuckit.
He felt his suit leg automatically begin to tighten to prevent blood loss.
'They're coming through the ceiling,' he said matter-of-factly. Cold numbness now suffused his leg as the suit injected analgaesics and antishock drugs. He turned his head sideways and vomited once, hard, wiped his mouth and turned back. He felt wired, like he'd drunk too much coffee, but the drugs were quickly numbing him.
'I spotted that,' said Yallow, then fired out into the corridor again.
Ignoring the sarcasm, Cormac went on, 'Looks like most of them out there, if Dent was right about only five or six surviving.'
