armoured at full strength. One doesn't walk into a likely trap with a blackpowder pistol and a sharp stick. I wore body armour, and carried my power sword and boltpistol. The others were similarly heavy with bat-tlegear. If we were caught now, maintaining the pretence we were twists would be the last of our problems.
Ten kilometres south, through the swirling, sticky mists, we could hear the chugging, rending sounds of the harvesters as they moved on their way. Every few metres there was another bloody smear or furry pulp, the remains of crop rodents caught in the reaping blades of the factory machines.
'You'd think/ said Inshabel, pausing to wipe the gooey sweat from his face, 'that the wildlife would have got used to the farm-factories by now. Learned to get out of the way.'
'Some things never learn/ Husmaan muttered. 'Some things always come back to the source/
'He means food. He always means food/ Nayl chuckled to me. To Duj, everything comes back to food/
According to mill statistics/ said Aemos, 'there are four billion crop-rats in every demitare of field space. Rivers of them flee before the harvesters. We've seen one rat-corpse for every twenty- two metres, which suggests only two-point-two per cent of them were unlucky enough to be caught in the blades. That means the vast percentage fled. They're smarter than you think/
He paused. Everyone had stopped and was staring at him.
What?' he asked. What? I was only saying…'
'That old geezer fantisises about maths and stats more'n I fantisise about the lay-dies/ Nayl told Bequin as we moved forward again.
'I'm not sure which of you I'm supposed to feel more sorry for/ she said.
Husmaan held up the tracker the Porcupine-girl had given us and shook it. Then he slapped it a couple of times for good measure.
We waded through the plant fibre and came level with him.
'Problem?' I asked.
'Damn thing… too old/
'Let me see it/
Husmaan handed it to me. It was a piece of crap, all right. Battered by a lifetime of hard knocks, with a nearly flat powercell. A nice touch that, I thought, noting Lyko's careful planning. An unreliable tracker made this seem so much more genuine. A brand new or well-powered unit would have been as good as a written invitation beginning 'Dear people chasing me, please come here and get killed.
I shook the device myself and got a good return. Just enough juice to lead us to our deaths.
That way/1 said.
It was close to noon. The sun was up, but the sap-mists hadn't dissipated. We were bathed in a warm, yellow, filmy glare. According to the tracker, we were about half a kilometre from the auction site.
'They're expecting me and Nayl, so we'll go in with Bequin/1 wanted an untouchable close to me. 'Inshabel, cut east with Aemos. Husmaan, west. Covering positions. Don't move in unless you hear me vox a direct command. Understand?'
The three nodded.
'If you find anything, keep it Glossia and keep it brief. Go/
Nathun Inshabel armed his lascarbine and moved away to the left with Aemos along a harvester track-bed, leaving tacky footprints in the glassy,
crashed residue at the bottom of the huge rat. Husmaan's hempcloth-wrapped long-las was already armed. He darted away to the right, quickly lost in the mist.
'Shall we?' I said to Bequin and Nayl.
'After you/ Nayl grinned.
I made one last command by vox, in Glossia code, and we trudged into the ripped thickets of the chew-after.
The Phant's people had used flamers to clear a wide space in the morass of the chew-over. We could smell the burnt pulp-fibre from several dozen metres away.
The mist was still close, but I could make out several crop-runner trucks, skimmers and land speeders parked in the blackened clearing. People bustled around them.
What do you see?' I asked Nayl.
He played his magnoculars round again. 'Phant… and his twist cronies. The horned guy, and that eyeball creep. Maybe a dozen, some of whom think they're hidden around the perimeter. Plus the prospective buyers. I make… three… no, four, all hive-types, with minders. Sixteen other bodies, all told.'
I yanked up my hood. 'Come on.'
'There's an alarm strand round the site.'
'We'll trip it. That's what it's there for.'
The alarm strand was an ankle-high wire-cord tied taut between the churned root clumps. Every metre or so, the air-dried shell case of a storm bug was carefully tied to it, forming a little, hollow-sounding bell. They rattled and jangled as we deliberately plucked the wire.
In a moment, ragged-robed twist muscle loomed out of the murdered undergrowth, aiming matchlocks and blades at us.
'We're s'here for the auction/ I told them, holding up Phant's tracker. 'S'invited/
'Name?' croaked a frog-headed thing with a crossbow and a spittle problem.
'Eye-gor, from off. With his twists/
Frog-head waved us into the site. The others assembled before the low, flak- board stage on which Phant Mastik stood, looking round at us.
'Eye-gor! Off-world twist, with two others/ Frog-head announced.
Phant nodded his heavy, tusked head and Frog-head and his men backed off, putting up their weapons.
++S'glad you could make it, twist++
'You the Phant. You the twist with the stuff. But… I s'hear my own name loud, not these others/
++Let's all be known, then the sale can begin++
Phant looked down at the other buyers. One, a stunning female up-spire hiver in a tight bodyglove nodded. 'Frovys Vassik/ she said through a pan-lingual servitor-skull drone that floated at her shoulder.
She was clearly speaking some high-caste dialect cant which the drone was translating. I assayed her and her two male bodyguards quickly: Dilettante wealthers, would-be cultist types, well-armed and armoured with all the wargear spire money could afford.
'Merdok/ said the next, a frail, white-suited, elderly man leaning on a cane and wiping perspiration from his brow with a japanagar lace kerchief that had cost more than the lowly Phant's entire outfit. He had four minders, squat females in rubberised war-rena suits, each with an electronic slave-leash collar around her throat.
Tanselman Fybes/ said the bland-faced man to Merdok's left, stepping forward with a courteous nod. He was dressed in a bright orange cooler-suit, with large, articulated exchanger vanes sprouting from his shoulders. His breath smoked in the personal veil of cold air the suit was generating around him.
He was also alone, which made him instantly more dangerous than the hive retards who had brought muscle.
Той may address me as Erotik/ said the last, a bitch-faced crone who had inadvisably wedged her ancient body into a close-fitting, spiked, black bodyglove, the mark of a death-cultist.
