Polity Agent

Seeing the creature’s speed, and the rapid reaction of the dracoman diving from its path, Cormac realized he himself must move a lot faster to now stay alive. He located a long unused program in his gridlink and put it instantly online. His perception of time now slowed as his thought processes accelerated. The program simultaneously stimulated his body’s production of adrenaline. Then he raised his carbine—but far too slowly. Fire flared from his left, hitting the point where the creature’s legs joined behind its head on one side. It slammed into the ground ploughing up soil, the legs on its other side still gripping stalks and pulling down some of the sheltering leaves as well. Now in bright sunlight, it tried to rise again. Arach hurdled over towards it in an instant, a particle cannon’s beam flashing turquoise between his pincers, and incinerating the attacker’s head.

‘Let’s keep moving,’ urged Cormac. He reached into a pocket on the side of his pack and removed a flat case from which he extracted one of eight short glass tubes, which he now inserted into his envirosuit’s med-access. A prickling at his wrists as the stimulants entered his bloodstream, an abrupt coolness, and then he began sprinting. Blegg and the dracomen kept up with him easily. He knew he must be the slowest moving among them. As he ran, he opened the bandwidth of his connection to Shuriken, now feeling as ready as he could be.

The dracomen spread out wider, and became difficult to spot as they resorted to their own natural chameleonware. They could only be seen at all because at this rapid pace their shifting skin patterns could not keep up to speed with their changing surroundings, and because their weapons and equipment could not be similarly concealed. The second creature did not even get close. Glimpsing a shape speeding in towards them, Cormac initiated Shuriken and sent it spinning five yards out from his body, humming as it extended its chainglass blades, but the dracomen promptly fired upon the attacker simultaneously from three different directions. It body blew to fragments leaving only its limbs still clinging to nearby stalks. Arach scuttled inquisitively through this mess, Gatling cannons swivelling, then moved back into deeper jungle to one side of Cormac.

‘Aw, leave some for me,’ the drone called out to the dracomen.

It soon received its wish as a new type of beast joined the fray.

They kept running on, many other creatures attacking. Proton and pulse-gun fire all around, Arach seemed to be everywhere, concentrating his huge firepower on grouped masses of the alien assailants, in the process bringing down swathes of jungle in burning fragments. The long-legged things could extend their heads, Cormac discovered, as he sent Shuriken hammering through one telescopic neck. The detached head landed beside a fallen dracoman, who rolled aside quickly and came upright to fire down at it, as the head now scuttled off on its mandibles like some independent beast. The target bounced briefly in red flame and then flew apart. Cormac recalled Shuriken and sent it skimming towards another such creature. Premature action, as the headless body of the first one, still suspended in midair, extruded a long metallic tongue which wrapped around the dracoman and wrenched him back viciously. A strange groaning squeal ensued, then two separate halves of smoking dracoman hit the ground. Cormac fired his carbine, its flame meeting the tongue as it now shot towards him. Shuriken, almost as if angry about the dracoman’s death, hammered in and out horizontally through its own opponent, then chopped up and down vertically on its return course. The creature fell to pieces.

Blegg, beside him, keeping pace. ‘Seems they’ve decided we are the ones to be captured alive, and the dracomen are now dispensable.’

‘How many?’ Cormac asked.

‘Five dracomen down.’ Blegg pointed at something weaving towards them. It resembled a long iron nematode hovering a foot from the ground, sliding through the air with the writhing of a snake. A red scythe of fire hit it in the middle, then two shorter versions of the same thing darted away. They both swung round on the source of the shot: a dracoman, clearly visible now since in using their camouflage there was too much danger of hitting each other in this fire-fight. One of the metallic things slammed into his chest, and with a sound like a cleaver striking a butcher’s block, pieces of dracoman and long shards of metal exploded in every direction. More and more Jain-factored creatures were coming in from every direction. A dracoman was snatched up in triple jaws, and the explosion of its carbine energy canister hurled Cormac to his knees. Up again. Left arm numb against his side where smoking shrapnel was embedded. Pain blocking program initiated, then firing one-handed into a nightmare head looming over him. Blegg slammed into his side, just as Shuriken came screaming overhead and straight into the creature’s mouth.