Polity Agent

The Legate disappeared. One of the spider-drone’s Gatling cannons whirred and fired, spewing fire across the intervening ten yards. The Legate reappeared only yards from Cormac, juddered to a halt and survived longer than seemed possible under such a fusillade, then exploded into metallic shreds. Arach’s other cannon whirred and spewed fire. To the right and left of where the Legate had been, huge shapes nickered in and out of being—flat louselike bodies supported ten feet off the ground by bowed insectile legs, their nightmare heads unravelling squidlike grasping tentacles. Both of them collapsed, pieces of them exploding away, clearly visible now as their chameleonware broke down. Cormac squatted for cover and glimpsed Arach springing from his perch just as turquoise fire splashed down onto the rock cube, turning its upper surface molten. The drone ran, with all his weapons now directed up at the sky. Darker shadow fell over them as another spiral ship shut down its chameleonware right above. High intensity laser punching down: five or more dracomen turned instantly to flames. Autoguns now trained on the ship above, but one of them suddenly blasted to silvery fragments. And meanwhile a hellish army swooped up the slope from the jungle.

‘Thorn, mine the entrance as we—’

Thorn turned towards him, grinning perhaps… then he stood in an inferno, coming apart, face melting away from a screaming skull, before toppling disjointed in clouds of greasy smoke. Gone: in an instant.

Thorn…

Further explosions lit the garish scene as the autoguns found targets on the ship above. Even while paralysed mentally Cormac continued to function on an instinctive level. He sent Shuriken streaking down towards a pack of quadruped machines like headless brushed-aluminium Rottweilers, who led the charge from below. The star threw its blades out to maximum extent and howled along just off the ground, as if carrying the anger Cormac should now feel. He took out his grenade and gridlinked to its control mechanism. He ran a simple program, so that the moment he lost consciousness the grenade would detonate. He placed it in the breast pocket of his envirosuit, then, standing fully in view, aimed his proton weapon and, picking his targets in the leading ranks, began to fire. He slewed emotion, became colder. Fuck them, what was the point now in retreating to the cave system?

Shuriken hammered into a thicket of legs, sending many of the dog-things sprawling. Cormac fired continually as silvery flat-worms slid up over the fallen grey bodies like running mercury, each hit of his converted these things to disparate segments—which then extended out tendrils to rejoin and draw together again.

‘Cormac, get to the cave,’ came Blegg’s communication via his link.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Cormac replied.

‘Do you want reasons?’ Blegg asked. ‘Chalder just died trying to protect you, and others will now die to that same end. Get into the cave!’

A scan of his surroundings: numerous oily fires—difficult to discern which burning figures were human and which dracoman. From ten yards down the slope one of the flatworms reared up, its nose flaring open on a glittering interior. A stun blast smacked into Cormac’s chest and sent him staggering back, then down on his knees. Above him, a flattened torpedo shape, snakish legs tangled underneath, unravelling and reaching for him. Consciousness fading.

Let it go.

A black missile slammed into the hovering shape’s side, detonated and sent it cartwheeling out of sight, coming apart. Spider legs abruptly closed around Cormac and hauled him from the ground. Shuriken came screaming back to the rescue. He just retained the presence of mind to offline the grenade program, and recall the throwing star to its wrist holster, as Arach carried him to cover. Damp darkness then, and a blast throwing dust and rock past him. He finally let go of his consciousness—didn’t want it.

* * * *

Stalactites poised above Blegg like dragon’s teeth. Damp air groped about his face and somewhere he could hear water trickling. But he focused his attention inward to view another episode in his life, another death, this time on the planet Cheyne III.