That is good.
Yes. Had there been no immediate response from you …
You would have been dead.
The neurotoxin has caused extensive nerve damage. I am now controlling all your autonomous functions.
I am using myself to establish links across the damaged areas.
…
Re-establishing visual cortex.
Simoz blinked as his vision returned, but there seemed to be something wrong with it.
Though everything was sharper it also seemed somehow false. He blinked again and tried to move his arms. They responded to him, but yet again there seemed to be something wrong -
some feeling of disconnection. Levering himself upright, he attempted to stand, but only got halfway before falling flat on his face.
There is a disparity of function. Try again.
Simoz finally managed to stand. As he stood there swaying, his hands suddenly seemed to catch on fire. He screamed and abruptly sat down.
I must use one hundred per cent of my function. Disconnecting from cerebrum.
The burning in his hands became a deep soreness, a tingling, numbness, then went away completely. Warily Simoz stood again and checked his surroundings. Everything seemed to be working perfectly now, only inside him there lay a terrible emptiness.
…
Simoz nodded to himself, then stooped and retrieved his weapons. He was alone in the anchor root, and especially aware that no corpse without an arm lay here on the floor where the platform had come to rest.
Simoz stepped off the platform and walked to where an arm lay in a pool of watery blood.
He circled until he found a smeared area of the same then followed the dripped trail into a side-branching tunnel of the anchor root, stepping warily on slippery floor under the blue luminescence. The biolights were restless on the ceiling and it was because he was keeping half an eye on them that he did not immediately see the choudapt. There came a low whickering sound and Simoz ducked before he knew why he was ducking and glanced behind him to see one of the neurotoxin darts bouncing across the floor. He fired reflexively at a half-seen shape, then pursued when that shape rose from the shadows at the side of the tunnel and fled.
Before rounding a corner in the tunnel Simoz slowed to a walk, since he had no wish to run straight into one of those darts, and glancing back had the dubious pleasure of seeing biolights dropping from the ceiling and scuttling towards him. Not allowing himself panic, he reached into his pocket, removing a shock grenade the size and shape of an acorn. He then edged to the corner and carefully peeked round, guessing the dark shape squatting in the shadows to be the choudapt. Simoz flipped the cap on the grenade and tossed it round. A white flash followed by lots of electric sizzlings ensued. Glancing back at the biolights that were approaching he flipped a grenade in their direction too, closing his eyes against the flash. He opened his eyes to see biolights scattered across the floor of the tunnel, their legs in the air and the luminescence they emitted faltering, then he stepped round the corner.
The choudapt lay sprawled across the tunnel. Simoz advanced on the man and kicked away the tubular dart thrower lying next to his outstretched left hand. The stump of his right arm had some sort of bio field-dressing over it, as did the wound in his shoulder, and he was breathing raggedly. Simoz squatted down next to him and removed the shock stick from his pocket. He altered a setting on its thumb wheel and touched the end of it to the choudapt’s neck.
The low buzzing convulsed the man and he immediately opened his eyes and started to move, but froze as the barrel of Simoz’s thin-gun pressed against his forehead.
‘Separatist?’ asked Simoz.
The man just sneered at him. Simoz altered the setting on his shock stick and touched what he assumed to me the man’s most sensitive area. Judging by the screech that followed he guessed he had been right.
‘Separatist?’ he asked again.
‘Yes,’ said the man.
