Shadow Of The Scorpion Part 20

"I have to say that on the second occasion I thought Amistad had told you everything, but the AI who conducted the editing process informed me otherwise."

Everything? Cormac wondered. What else was there to know?

"The drone of course told you enough for you to infer that David-your father-was dead, apparently." She now paused, a strange unreadable twist to her expression, which she concealed by looking down at her hands. "Amistad did not really understand much about human affairs and human emotion, but perhaps he did understand that what I was doing was wrong. It remained my choice, however, and Amistad had no right to go against my wishes in this matter."

Why did you do it, Mother? Was it because you controlled so much in your life and his death lay out of your control? Was it the past you really wanted to edit?

"However, your father's death was by no means the whole story. It was only when Amistad tried again to get to you while we were in Tritonia that I managed to confront him and persuade him to leave you alone, though only with the direct intervention of the AI running Tritonia and the near sh.o.r.es of Callais." She looked up. "There is much more you need to know about what happened to your father, but you were never told, so that story is not contained in these pieces excised from your memory. You deserve to know, I guess, and if you are anything like David I imagine you will not rest until you do know. But I am not going to tell you. I'm sorry, but I feel another has earned that right."

Again a long pause, while she stared directly at him. How, he wondered, had this mem-load been put together? Had she sat someone down before her and told him this story, then had it edited out of that other one's mind to be sent to him? Was the person who had sat here Dax?

"You are out in a particular area of s.p.a.ce I have not wanted to visit, ever since the end of the war. I don't believe in fate, destiny or any of that rubbish, but the workings of coincidence can sometimes be frightening. Amistad has been lurking out that way for many years, for reasons I... know. He learned of your presence out there and, I understand, managed to intervene in some small way during a military operation you were involved in? Whatever..."

Cormac felt a momentary huge amus.e.m.e.nt: it seemed the drone had at last learned to be diplomatic and had not gone into detail about that particular operation. But why had it contacted his mother?

"You told me you discovered that your mind had been edited when you were fitted for an aug, but I have to wonder if the drone's presence is really what set you to wondering... and perhaps checking." She shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were glistening with tears.

"Cormac, you are near the world called Patience, where the Hessick Campaign was fought and where your father... died. Amistad never managed to tell you the truth, so I will let him do so. He wants to tell you the truth there, on that world. I am sure, given the circ.u.mstances, you can ask for a leave of absence... Attached to this mem-load is a net address via which the drone can be contacted. Just call for Amistad, and he will find you on Patience... And please forgive me."

The scene blanked out and for a second it seemed as if he were just hovering in blackness, still ensconced in that chair. In that moment he felt a dread of the ill effects to come. Then all at once he was again flat on his back on the surgical table, an invisible dagger poised over his forehead. Now he felt a surge of anger and instead of just lying there waiting to feel pain and nausea, he thrust himself upright.

The optic threads linking him to the machine that had loaded that ersatz memory, drew taut, and without concentrating too hard he managed to order detach and they snapped out of his aug to be wound away. He reached up and slapped the aug cover closed, glanced aside at the roll of a.n.a.lgaesic patches, then swung his legs off the table and stood. Dizziness and nausea hit, but he just stood there breathing evenly and by force of will pushing those ill effects away. Next he checked his aug's inbox, and there found a small file awaiting his attention-it would be interesting to see what a war drone kept on its net site.

"Interesting," said s.a.d.i.s.t.

"Oh really?"

"However," the AI continued, "the coincidence of the world Patience being one of our possible destinations is not such a great one. Trainees are generally brought into this area because this is where ECS is still most needed, and it is also essential for would-be soldiers to see the effects of war which, in the final a.n.a.lysis, is what they are being trained to prevent."

"You're preaching," said Cormac.

"Is it so obvious?"

"Yes."

"And you still intend to resign from ECS?"

"I do, when you can finally bring yourself to tell me what I need to do."

"I felt it necessary for you to at least have a cooling-off period," said s.a.d.i.s.t. "I do understand that Crean's suicide hit you rather hard."

It had seemed the final straw, and Cormac had never known such mental pain, as everything finally impacted on that moment: Carl's betrayal and murder of Yallow, the injuries Cormac himself had suffered and the effect on him of killing his would-be murderers, the deaths of Gorman, Spencer, Travis and Crean, the discovery of his mother's betrayal. Now he felt bruised, things inside him broken, and of course it was plausible that this pain had been enough to drive him to resign his position in ECS. It was perfectly understandable, perfectly, yet a complete lie. He knew that as an ECS soldier, under the "rest and recuperation" order, there were things he would not be able to do, things he needed to do, on Patience. And how utterly fortuitous that this last mem-load had given him an unquestionable reason to go there.

"My decision to quit need not be a permanent one," he said. "But I do desperately feel the need to be out of it now... s.a.d.i.s.t, we have had this discussion before and my opinion has not changed. Tell me what I must do."

"Very well," said the AI, sighing like any human. "There are no doc.u.ments to sign, nothing like that. You merely have to state your intention to me."

"I resign from ECS," said Cormac immediately.

"Very well," the AI's voice now took on a different tone. "In four hours I will be landing at the Cavander s.p.a.ceport on Patience. When you depart this ship you may take with you only those items not directly issued to you by ECS. Here." An information package now arrived in his aug. "This is the coding sequence you can use to access your back pay. And please, Cormac, remember that at any time you can rejoin ECS in the same manner as you have just departed it."

"Perhaps I will, but I need time."

"Very well, Cormac," said the AI, and it seemed like both a goodbye and a dismissal.

Cormac pushed himself away from the surgical table and headed for the door, and it was only as he stepped out into the corridor did he realise his head did not ache, and he did not feel sick. Perhaps this was because this last mem-load had not been a chunk edited from his own mind, was in fact no more than a message delivered through the same medium.

He headed for his cabin, and immediately emptied his pack onto his bed and began sorting through the pile. It did not take long. In the end his own possessions formed a very small pile on the pillow: a few items of clothing, a carbide-bladed knife, a palm-top and finally Pramer's thin-gun. Why was it, he wondered, that he did not feel any great need for possessions? Even when he lived at home, with his mother, and later when he lived away for a while working autohandlers in Stanstead s.p.a.ceport, the belongings he treasured would only ever fill a small suitcase. All the ECS stuff went back into the pack, which he placed to one side of the room, with his pulse-rifle resting on top of it. He changed out of his fatigues into his jeans, T-shirt, enviroboots and jacket, and everything he truly owned went into the jacket pockets.

The Cavander s.p.a.ceport rested in the mountains on a platform below and to one side of the city it served, which loomed above on mile-high legs, each of which was a vertical city in itself. Cormac walked slowly down s.a.d.i.s.t's ramp, carefully taking in his surroundings: the sky a slightly orange-yellow and the shocking pink clouds, the smell like vinegar in his nostrils and the taste of metal in his mouth, the bounce to his walk as he departed s.a.d.i.s.t's Earth standard one gravity to this world's point nine, things like gulls drifting through the air, which he knew, from having studied information about this world when a teenager, to be strikingly similar to miniature pterosaurs, and of course that wonderful fantastic city itself.

"Goodbye, Cormac," s.a.d.i.s.t's voice echoed from the interior of the ship.

"Goodbye," said Cormac, glancing back as the ramp-hatch drew closed. Even as he set out across the s.p.a.ceport he heard the ramp clonk into place and saw the ship's shadow speed across the plasticrete as s.a.d.i.s.t ascended silently. He turned to watch it float higher and higher, then with a burst of thrusters accelerate into the sky. It receded rapidly to a black rod against those blousy clouds where its fusion drive ignited and it sped away. Now he returned his attention to his immediate surroundings.

This s.p.a.ceport almost looked like a city itself, what with the enormous ships down here like curved edifices. He eyed two great cargo haulers, like blunt bullets stood on their back ends, about them swarms of autohandlers trundling between blocky mountains of plasmel cargo crates, and people clad in overalls striding about importantly, clutching manifest screens or handler control modules. Beside one of these behemoths, a huge lading robot-a tall four-legged monstrosity with crane arms extending down underneath it-squatted over some vast cathedral of a container to attach numerous hooks in order to lift and shift the ma.s.sive weight. Perhaps the container held something for the Thander Weapons Exhibition, which had apparently only just opened to the public.

There were also numerous smaller vessels on this s.p.a.ceport platform, many of which bore the standard utile shapes seen anywhere, but others that were utterly exotic. One he recognised as a replica of a World War II aircraft carrier and another as a war barge, probably a restoration job, of the Solar System corporate wars. Still others were ECS fighting ships of one kind or another, probably decommissioned and voided of their original AIs, or self-decommissioned, their resident AIs deciding to go independent. On the whole, it seemed, that there were few private ships here without some sort of military connection.

They were all here for the exhibition.

Though that same exhibition was not Cormac's only reason for being here on Patience, it was the reason he had resigned from ECS, for he wanted freedom to move, to investigate. He had known Carl for two years and though so much about the man had been false, one thing certainly wasn't-his fascination with weapons. Perhaps it was foolish of Cormac to feel so certain that Carl had made this world, and the exhibition here, his destination, but it was a certainty he could not shake. Though this whole thing came under Polity aegis, and remained closely watched, he had divined from the stories about this event that a lot of illegal arms deals went down. Carl, he was sure, would have come here to sell his remaining two CTDs. Of course, certainty about that did not insure Cormac would find him, because there were hundreds of millions of people on this world, millions here in this city, and millions more who would be visiting the huge displays and demonstrations of armaments.

Spotting the exit buildings along the far edge of the s.p.a.ceport nearest the city, Cormac set out towards them. He knew there would be no need to present identification because s.a.d.i.s.t would already have informed the port or city AI of his presence, which would be automatically confirmed either by scan or a bounce query to his aug as he pa.s.sed through that building. However, he did not want to pa.s.s straight through that building, for there he must begin his search.

Numerous chaingla.s.s doors gave access to a lounge two miles long and half a mile wide, and scattered with bars and eateries. Net consoles adorned every one of the pillars supporting a chaingla.s.s roof that was a confection of moulded-gla.s.s girders, spires and hexagonal sheets. The moment Cormac entered the area an ident-query arrived in his aug and he responded by allowing his aug to send its brief summation of who he was. The lounge area, though huge, was very crowded and he noticed numerous security drones folded out from their alcoves in the heads of the pillars, and other floating drones of a bewildering variety of shapes zipping back and forth above the crowd. Even as he watched, a number of these drones converged above where four individuals, probably plain-clothed security personnel, politely detained a lone traveller and separated him from his luggage. Cormac wandered over in time to see one of them opening that luggage and taking out a hand-held missile launcher-the kind sporting a ring-shaped magazine. He had trained with similar devices and knew their missiles could cause enormous damage.

"We'll keep this for you until you depart, Mr Kinsey," said the one holding the launcher. "I hardly think this falls under the specification of personal defence."

Though the AIs did not proscribe personal armament, there were limits. Cormac moved on, finally locating a netlink terminal that wasn't occupied. Though he could have done what he was about to do by aug, that would have necessitated him making a request through the local AI or one of its subminds, and he did not want to subject himself to the potential of scrutiny. Working the touch controls and the simple keyboard, he accessed s.p.a.ceport information, specifically a record of all arrivals and departures. Eight ships had come in from the Graveyard within the required time period and because of that were subject to greater scrutiny than any other vessels. Making a file containing a copy of all the information obtainable about them, including links to related sites on the net, he then sent that file to his personal net-s.p.a.ce, before finally turning away and giving the console up to the first in the queue now gathering behind him. He then headed for the anachronistic-looking lifts on the other side of the lounge to take him up to the city proper.

It was evident, the moment he stepped out of the lift, that Cavander city remained a work-in-progress. Though complete buildings rose all about him, the skyline beyond was webbed with scaffolds, cranes, and here and there big grav-barges loaded with construction materials. The street he stepped out upon was lined with all the usual eateries, bars and shops, interspersed with numerous entrances to towering apartment complexes above. Down the centre of the street, set about twenty feet above the ground, were the two tubes of a fast-transit network, with escalators leading up to platforms arrayed about them. Cormac swung his gaze along the street, studying the crowds, noticing a preponderance for military dress, though not necessarily the contemporary kind. He recognised uniforms from the ages of Earth extending back centuries, and fashionable variations on such uniforms. He hadn't realised he'd needed to come in fancy dress.

An enquiry through his aug of the local server gave him lists of hotels still with accommodation available. Downloading a map from that same server, he used it to locate himself and then headed for the nearest hotel. The lobby was automated and he paid from his back pay, pleasantly surprised upon seeing the quant.i.ty of money available to him. And soon he ensconced himself in a small but luxurious room. Pulling up a comfortable chair by the window he gazed out across the busy city and now accessed his own net-s.p.a.ce, cast a swift eye over the messages therein, seeing one from his brother Dax and another from an old school friend, Culu, who was now a haiman working on some project in a distant reach of the Polity. He left these and instead downloaded to his aug the information he had sent there himself about the Graveyard ships on Patience.

Upon checking their departure points, where listed, he was surprised to find that one of them had recorded its departure world as Shaparon. It seemed too good to be true, for surely Carl would not have wanted to leave any trail, but then perhaps he had no choice in the matter and was relying on ECS being unable to trace every ship that left that world, on ECS expecting him to run for cover in the Graveyard, which would of course have been the most sensible move. Relaxing back, Cormac learned everything else he could about the vessel: it was owned and operated by an individual called Omidran Gla.s.s, an ophidapt, and it was then little problem to trace her net-s.p.a.ce and find out how to send her a message. He contemplated this for a long moment; it all seemed just too easy. Surely ECS would be onto this already? Deciding to give the matter further thought, he now considered another message he needed to send, and going to his inbox opened the information package giving him Amistad's net address.

The drone's website was nothing like a human one. It contained no biography, no public images nor any of the usual drivel humans were fond of collecting in their net-s.p.a.ces. The first page gave communication links, but the pages behind this were loaded with machine code, links to weapons sites with occasional pictures or schematics of some esoteric piece of hardware, and numerous vast and inaccessible files-perhaps stored parts of the drone's mind it no longer felt the need to carry about with it.

Cormac spoke a message, recording it in his aug, then sent it to the first com address given: "Amistad, I am on Patience, and I think there's something you want to tell me, something you have been wanting to tell me for a long time."

Then, having done that, he immediately went back to Gla.s.s' site and recorded and sent another message, deciding to be utterly blunt: "h.e.l.lo, Omidran Gla.s.s. You don't know me and of course I will understand if you tell me to go to h.e.l.l, but I'm trying to trace someone who was recently on the world Shaparon, who I think may have taken pa.s.sage on your ship. I would like to speak with you."

With the message on its way he set about running searches to try and ascertain this ophidapt woman's location, because he half expected her to reject his request. He also tried to find her pa.s.senger lists, but had no luck there. Then, surprisingly, he received a request for linkage from Gla.s.s. He accepted it and immediately an image of her appeared to his third eye. This being an aug communication, the image was obviously computer-generated, but her lips moved in perfect consonance with her words. She too would be seeing an image of him, recorded aboard the s.a.d.i.s.t.

"I see by your image that you're wearing an ECS uniform," she observed.

"It's an old image-I've resigned," he replied.

Her shoulders were bare and she seemed to be wearing a top of pleated blue fabric cut low, with twin straps around her upper arms. It looked like the top half of a ball gown, which seemed utterly incongruous on someone whose skin bore a greenish tinge and was spangled with small scales. Her jet-back hair flowed down behind her head, her eyes were those of a snake, and as she spoke he could occasionally see her fangs folding down a little as if she were preparing to bite.

"So who is this person you are seeking?" she asked.

"I know him as Carl Thrace, though he may possess a different ident.i.ty now and even a different appearance, since he's shown an apt.i.tude for that sort of thing. What I do know is that he was likely travelling with a large piece of Loyalty Luggage, probably in the shape of an antique sea chest."

She seemed to gaze at him for a long moment, but he realised her image had frozen. Obviously she was doing something else behind this. At that moment an icon lit in the top right of this third-eye image: message pending. Then her image abruptly reanimated. "I am presently aboard my ship and will be departing this world in two hours. There is no way you can get to see me, and this is certainly the last time we will talk like this."

Her link cut.

Cormac sat in tired frustration. His one possible contact was gone. In annoyance he opened the other message, but his anger evaporated as he listened to a sonorous voice. It made the skin on his back crawl.

"I have been waiting. Meet me at Vogol's Stone." Appended to this was a time... time to talk to a war drone, he guessed.

Located on the roof of Cormac's hotel, the gravcar rental office stood by a small fenced-off area of the roofport containing a row of three cars. All were utile vehicles of similar design, with two front seats, two rear ones that could be folded down to make a luggage s.p.a.ce, the whole compartment enclosed in a chaingla.s.s bubble, the rest of the upper part of the car being featureless brushed aluminium while the underside looked like a boat hull, with stabilizing fins. Unusually, the rental office actually had a human attendant: a young boy clad in bright yellow overalls. He sat at a work-bench scattered with strange archaic-looking engine components. Cormac gazed at these curiously.

"A marine outboard motor," the boy explained. "One that actually used to run on fossil fuels."

Cormac raised an eyebrow, since he thought that unlikely. Even on Earth such things would not be seen outside a museum.

The boy grinned. "No, not that old-they used them here before the war, and during it. Now that's the alternative." The boy pointed to the row of gravcars.

"I wondered about the hulls."

"Some people like the authentic boating experience out around the peninsular," the boy explained. "They also like to put a car down on the surface of the sea and use it as a diving platform-to go after Prador artefacts. Now, how long for?" He held out a palm-top.

"A day should cover it."

A linkage request arrived in Cormac's aug, identified by the figures on the palm-top screen, and he paid with a thought.

"The one at the end of the row." The boy pointed, then returned to his tinkering. As Cormac walked over to the car he wondered if the boy was really one of those odd adults who liked to retain the appearance of a child. He felt not, for positioned on the wall of the portable office, a sticky screen displayed images from the war, some of them being of Jebel U-cap Krong, but of course that was not conclusive.

The chaingla.s.s bubble automatically rose as he approached, so he stepped inside the vehicle, immediately taking hold of the simple joystick to lift the car from the roof even as the bubble closed back down again. A flock of gull-things scattered above him, spattering the vehicle with white excrement, which quickly slid from its frictionless surfaces. City traffic-control immediately took over and the car swept to one side and then up, joining a widely s.p.a.ced row of similar vehicles punctuating the sky. Tapping the console screen turned it on, and in a moment Cormac called up a map of the area, and a further search scaled the map down to show him "Vogol's Stone" some two hundred miles away at the tip of the Olston Peninsular. The moment he selected it as his destination, traffic-control turned his vehicle out of his present sky lane, then into another, the car accelerating. Within a few minutes the city was receding behind him and the screen alerting him to the fact that he could now take control of the car, if he wished. He so wished.

Below, mountains of grey stone speared above valleys filled with plants like pine trees, though with foliage both dark green and steely blue, and some areas Cormac recognised as being infested with skarch. Gradually, it seemed the grey stone was being sucked down into the trees, which were soon changing to autumn colours of deciduous growth. The mountains became hills, interspersed with the occasional lake along the sh.o.r.es of which the local "gulls" skated their bodies across the mud in search of their favourite delicacy: a thing that looked like a cross between a slug and a c.o.c.kroach. Next, Cormac began to notice occasional barren areas, some of them fenced off, all of them looking as if they had been ploughed. Spotting a plume of vapour from some machine working one such area he brought his car down low to take a look. It was a huge cylinder running on numerous sets of treads, conveyors of scoops lifting soil up into its mouth, blackened and smoking soil excreting from its a.n.u.s. The thing was a ma.s.sive soil sterilizer, there to kill potential Prador bugs or nanomachines. Cormac flew on.

Soon the barren areas melded and were only occasionally scattered with copses of trees. He saw great lines of sterilizing machines stretching to the horizon, other devices like mobile oil rigs trundling across the wasteland at a snail's pace, occasional ruined cities or towns, buildings melted and crumbling. Then, in the distance he saw the sea, and swinging out that way he was soon flying above a long rocky coastline against which waves broke to cast up plumes of water through crevices, and above which spume floated like confetti in the low gravity. His console screen pinged, scaled up the map and he saw Vogol's Stone lay only ten miles away. He was reaching the tip of the peninsular now, with sea both to his right and left. A series of sharp peaks rose ahead, marching down into the sea. His map gave him direction arrows, then pinged at him again once he arrived above his destination.

The stone had to be the single canted monolith jutting from a plateau cut into the side of one of the peaks, for there, right beside it, rested a familiar steely shape: a scorpion memory.

The weapons exhibition occupied the centre of the city where permanent buildings had yet to be raised. A three-dimensional mazelike structure, nearly two miles wide, had been a.s.sembled from portable, but ma.s.sive tubes of plasmel strengthened with girders of light bubble metal. Escheresque stairways interlaced all this, also drop-shafts and enclosed walkways. The entrance Cormac approached was a wide arch without human attendants but, the whole exhibition being computer-monitored, the doors would automatically close once an optimum number of visitors had entered, then reopen when the number dropped again. The long tubular foyer lying beyond was crowded but not unpleasantly so. Here, numerous exhibits stood in chaingla.s.s cases, on pedestals or hung from the plain white walls. Entering, he immediately received a query to his aug, allowed it, and studied the provided menu of options. There were numerous historical tours he could take, both general and specific: he could get an overview of weapons history or he could track the specific historical development of particular weapons. He could focus on a chosen era, for example just taking the tour of medieval weaponry, and enjoying ersatz battles between armoured knights. He could select particular battles and inspect every recorded detail, observe how the weapons of the time were deployed, to what effect, hear expert a.n.a.lysis, study tactics and logistics. It seemed there was something here for every variety of war and disaster junky.

Just inside the entrance Cormac cast an eye over a huge pedestal-mounted rail-gun, obviously of Prador manufacture, then turned and halted to gaze for a long while at a large oil painting. It depicted the battle between the Polity dreadnought My Mary Rose and a large Prador dreadnought, with distances shortened to fit both vessels within the frame. This was the first one-on-one encounter between such vessels in which the Polity ship was actually victorious, and as a child Cormac used to run a video recording of this as a screen saver on his p-top. Further along he regarded a display case containing a single Prador claw. Keying to the constant signal from the case, he uploaded information, discovering the claw was recovered in the vicinity of the battle depicted in the painting. Doubtless the rail-gun on the other side of the foyer had been recovered from the same location.

Entering a juncture of six of the tubular units beyond the foyer, he now needed to make a decision. Here the exhibitors had obviously chosen World War I as their kicking off point. Digitally remastered films from the time could be run on various screens or loaded to aug. The centre display was of the first ever tanks to be used in war: slow-moving iron monsters likely to kill their own occupants merely with the fumes from their engines. In one area, obviously surrounded by a sound-suppression field, visitors were availing themselves of the opportunity to fire replicas of the weapons used at the time: Enfield rifles, heavy revolvers, Maxim machineguns, and the targets available ranged from static silhouette boards to moving manikins that actually bled and screamed. Numerous VR booths offered similar experiences and more besides. It all depended on how much you were prepared to pay, for this whole exhibition was privately owned. Heading down from here would take Cormac directly into wars prior to the first to be numbered. Ahead lay the development of the tank, but only the kind that ran on treads, to his right the propeller-driven airplane, and to his left the machinegun, but only so far as that weapon used solid projectiles. Would such things interest Carl Thrace? Certainly, but nowhere near as much as what lay above, far above. Cormac headed for the nearest stair.

Stepping from the gravcar Cormac expected to feel some disappointment upon once again seeing this drone up close, or rather, up close when he himself was not on the point of death. The distant sight of the drone still roused in him all sorts of complicated feelings, along with the excitement he had felt as a child. It also seemed unchanged: still a big iron scorpion with peridot eyes and weapons ports below its mouth. But Cormac had changed, had experienced an array of situations and emotions, was bigger in every way, so perhaps the drone would look small, not quite so substantial as childhood memory told him.

Drawing closer to where Amistad squatted in the shadow of Vogol's Stone, Cormac realised that childhood or otherwise, edited or not, his memories where not lying to him. If anything, from an adult perspective, the scorpion drone was even more fearsome, for he now knew that there were numerous reasons to fear it. He knew that its armour was tough ceramal it would take a particle cannon to penetrate, that it contained enough weapons to tear a city apart, and that if any individual p.i.s.sed it off sufficiently, it would probably use its claws to tear that one apart, slowly, for since this machine was a product of the later years of the war, when the aim was to produce fighting grunts just as fast as possible, it was not necessarily stable or moral. Its weapons were supplied with power by laminar storage and fusion reactor, both of which the drone could detonate at will, and during the war its kind often did if they were somewhere the explosion could do huge damage to the enemy, or if they were in danger of being captured. To say that the ent.i.ty before him was dangerous was an understatement, for Amistad was a purpose-built killing machine with "b.a.s.t.a.r.d" being an essential part of its job description.

The drone rose up onto its numerous legs, the fat hooked sting in its tail looping above threateningly, and a single weapons port opening briefly. It raised one long lethal claw and gestured to the stone above.

"He was a Prador first-child, you know."

That sonorous voice sent a shiver down Cormac's spine. He gazed up at the stone and considered accessing information about it, but such ready knowledge was a conversation-killer. "So what was this Vogol's story?"

"He was the leader of a Prador battalion: near on a thousand second-children, war drones, armour, portable p-cannons. We smashed them, but he and a few of his kin survived and climbed to the top of the stone with hard-field generators and two p-cannons. He held us off for two whole hours. He's still up there now." Amistad flicked its antennae to one side. "Follow me."

The drone led the way out from the shadow of the stone around towards its canted back, where a stairway had been cut into the rock. This last was a recent addition, Cormac noted, because it actually cut through the burn marks and heat-glazing caused by the battle here. The drone's sharp feet sc.r.a.ped the rock sending flakes of stone tumbling down behind. Within a few minutes they reached a slightly tilted plateau, and there stood Vogol. The first-child was much larger than those of its kind Cormac had encountered aboard the Prador ship on Hagren, its sh.e.l.l lay nearly ten feet across and its colouration was a bright combination of yellow and purple. It stood perfectly still, a big rail-gun affixed to one claw, an ammunition belt and cables trailing to a power supply and heavy ammo box affixed to its underside. As he drew closer Cormac saw that a thick glaze covered the creature, and rods supported it, penetrating into the rock below. Vogol had been stuffed and mounted.

"I got to him first," Amistad informed him. "Just after your father managed to down their systems with a computer virus and put a shot through one of their power supplies. Vogol never gave up; even spitting stomach acid at me after I tore off all his limbs." The drone was c.h.i.n.king a claw against the stone below it as it gazed at the Prador. "Happy times."

"Tell me about my father," said Cormac.

After a long pause the drone reared up and spread both claws expansively. "I met him here on this world. He was a combat veteran and specialist in attack viruses, whose usefulness in creating such viruses was coming to an end because of his frustration with being kept out of the fighting. Just like you he was then transferred in as a replacement in a Sparkind unit." Amistad dropped down onto all legs and turned to face Cormac, not that there was anything in that face Cormac could read. "I first met him in the Cavander mountains where his unit, amongst others, and amongst independent drones like myself, was hunting Prador saboteurs. Being allowed to fight once again, he was taking more risks than he should and using Jebel U-cap Krong's methods: wearing chameleoncloth fatigues and sneaking up on Prador with gecko mines to take them out. The AI on the ground did not like this, but knew it had to give him some leeway."

It was good to hear this and Cormac was glad he had come, but he knew there was much more to be told. "This was during the Hessick Campaign?"

"No, a solstan month before."

"When did you meet him next?"

"You understand what the Hessick Campaign was?"

"The Prador occupied this peninsular, where they had numerous cities under siege. I'm not entirely clear why they wanted to fight a ground war here-why they didn't just bombard from orbit." Cormac shrugged. "It was a big and complicated war."

"Our understanding of the situation then," said the drone, "was that we were certain to lose this world, because if we won the ground war the Prador dreadnoughts would then move in to obliterate everything. But we were fighting a delaying action in order to keep the runcibles online, and ships coming in, wherever possible, to evacuate as many of the people here as we could." The drone brought one claw to clonk its tip against the stone, as if making a point. "Only as we began the campaign to drive the Prador from the peninsular so we could evacuate the besieged cities, did we find out the true aim of the Prador."

"Presumably to establish a foothold, but also to retain this world as a living environment," said Cormac.

"So we thought, but we could see no tactical advantage to them." The drone shook itself. "You of course know that this was the time when the traitor Jay Hoop was operating out of the world now named after him: Spatterjay. He was processing tens of thousands of human prisoners, ferried there by the Prador. He was infecting them with the Spatterjay virus in order to make them tough enough to withstand the installation of Prador thrall technology. It is estimated that before his operation was shut down, he processed over ten million human beings, but the likely figure is much, much higher."

Cormac nodded, a nasty taste in his mouth. He had already seen a product of that "processing," the hooper on Shaparon, the "human blank" as they were sometimes called: an abnormally tough human with most of his brain ripped out and replaced with thrall technology.

"That's why the Prador were here," Amistad continued. "Yes, they were fighting ECS forces, but they didn't want to bombard this place and kill everyone because they wanted the people. Their s.n.a.t.c.h squads were operating all across the planet. Cities we had thought destroyed during the fighting had in fact been emptied then subsequently demolished." The drone raised that claw and brought it down hard, splintering stone. "They were not here to gain some tactical advantage in the war, but for slaves."

The stair wound up past displays of combat knives, uniforms, handguns. Suspended in the central s.p.a.ce was a replica Stuka, then an American tank, then a selection of World War II machineguns. Opposite each of these were drop-shaft entrances to take those whose interest was more specific to the areas dealing with these items. The WWII room contained more weaponry than the one below, more logistical stuff too, though it was still possible to have fun blowing away a mannikin with a Sten gun. Divergent halls traced the development of jets during the war and for a number of years thereafter. One entire hall was devoted to atomic weapons used on Earth before Solar System colonization, and another traced the development of submarines, though with a brief diversion at the beginning into the submarine used in the American Civil War and WWI submarines. Cormac kept on climbing, heading for the Solar System corporate wars and beyond. Or course, up there, right at the top, the Prador/Human war occupied almost one third of this exhibition.

After World War II ensued smaller but no less intense conflicts: the Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, the numerous squabbles over fast-depleting oil supplies and the subsequent squabbles over other resources, then, until the human race established itself in the Solar System, everything was labelled a "police action" rather than a war. It was during this time that the leaden behemoths of government were bankrupting themselves and imploding and the corporations were growing in power. Effectively the governments were bought out by the corporations, a.s.set-stripped and consigned to history, then, because they were as human run as the previous governments and just as liable to greed and stupidity, the corporations began to fight between themselves for power and resources.

The whole of history was not covered here, for that would defeat the purpose of this exhibition. There was nothing here about the diaspora of cryo- and generation-ships during the time of corporate power, nor much about the political complications-they only displayed where relevant to some conflict or the development of some new weapon. Cormac paused by an early attack ship, apparently salvaged from the surface of Io, which was used during an a.s.sault on Virgin Jupiter by the Jethro Manx Canard Corporation-one of the survivors of those wars and a weapons development and design corporation still in existence now, though controlled by the AIs. Gazing about he saw that there were few visitors in this part of the exhibition. Perhaps those coming here who, like himself, had probably bought the bargain price week-long pa.s.s, were leaving these upper levels until later. He decided to take a side route from this point, for he remembered Carl expressing an interest in JMCC, in the weapons it developed, and in one particular designer.