Neal Asher - The Gabble

Watching this action, Jael was not entirely sure which side she wanted to win. If the Prador took out the two remaining golems they would go after the Atheter in the chamber behind her. Maybe they would just ignore her, maybe they would kill her out of hand. If the golems finished off the Prador they might turn their attention on her. And she really did not know what to expect from whatever now controlled them. Retreating and finding some other way out was not an option-she had already scanned Penny Royal’s network of tunnels and knew that any other route back to Kobashi would require a diversion of some miles, and she rather suspected that thing back there would not give her the time.

The decoy second-child lucked out with the next golem, or rather it lucked out with its elder kin. Firing its rail-gun into the gap between a spherical electric furnace and the wall, where one of the golems was crouching, the second-child advanced. The golem shot out underneath the furnace toward the Prador child. A turquoise bar stabbed out, nailing the golem, but it passed through the second-child on the way. An oily explosion centered on a mass of legs collapsed out of sight. The first-child used its other claw to nudge out its final sibling into play. The remaining golem, however, which Jael had earlier seen on the far side of the room, dropped down from above to land between them.

It happened almost too fast to follow. The golem spun, and in a spray of green the second-child slid in half along a diagonal cut straight through its body. The first-child’s claw and half its armored visual turret and enclosing visor fell away. Its fluids fountained out as it fell forward, swung in its remaining claw and bore down. The golem collapsed, pinned to the floor under the claw containing the particle weapon. A turquoise explosion followed underneath the collapsing Prador, then oily flames belched out.

Jael remained where she was, watching carefully. She scanned around the chamber, but there seemed no sign of any more of those horrible golems. The Prador just lay there, its legs sprawled, its weaponized claw trapped underneath it, its now-exposed mandibles grinding, ichor still flowing from the huge excision from its visual turret. Jael realized she couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. After a moment she stepped out, her weapon trained on the Prador.

“Jael Feogril,” its translator intoned, and it began scrabbling to try and get some purchase on the slick floor.

“That’s me,” said Jael, and fired two explosive rounds straight into its mouth. The two detonations weren’t enough to break open the Prador’s enclosing artificial armor, but their force escaped. Torn flesh, organs, ichor, and shattered carapace gushed from the hole the golem had cut. Jael stood there for a moment, hardly able to see through the green sludge on her visor. She peered down at something like a chunk of liver hanging over her arm, and pulled it away. Yes, a satisfactory outcome, apart from the mess.

“Jael Feogril,” said a different voice. “Drop the gun, or I cut off your legs.”

I was telling myself at the time that I needed detail on the location of the memstore.

Rubbish, of course. The energy readings had located it in the chamber beyond-somewhere near to the gabbleduck. I should have just fried her on the spot, then gone on to search. Twenty years earlier I would have, but now I was less tuned-in to the exigencies of surviving this sort of game.

Okay, I was rusty. She froze, seemed about to turn, then thought better of it and dropped the weapon she’d just used to splash that Prador.

With Gene walking out to my left I moved forward, crosshairs centered on Jael’s torso.

What did I want? Some grandstanding, some satisfaction in seeing her shock at meeting someone she’d left for dead, a moment or two to gloat before I did to her what she had done to the first-child? Yeah, sure I did.

With her hands held out from her body she turned. It annoyed me that I couldn’t see her face. Glancing up I saw that the beetlebots had about closed off the hole, because the earlier wind had now diminished to a breeze.

“Take off your helmet,” I ordered.

She reached up and undogged the manual outer clips, lifted the helmet carefully, then lowered it to clip it to her belt. Pointless move-she wouldn’t be needing it again. Glancing aside, I saw that Gene had moved in closer to me. No need to cover me now, I guessed.

“Well hello, Rho,” said Jael, showing absolutely no surprise on seeing me at all. She smiled. It was that smile, the same smile I had seen from her while she had peeled strips of skin from my torso.

“Goodbye, Jael,” I said.

The flicker of a high intensity laser punched smoke, something slapped my multigun and molten metal sprayed leaving white trails written across the air.

“Total malfunction. Safe mode-power down,” my helmet display informed me. I pulled the trigger anyway, then gazed down in bewilderment at the slagged hole through the weapon.

“Mine,I think,” said Jael, stooping in one to pick up her weapon and fire. Same explosive shell she’d used against the Prador. It thumped into my chest, hurling me back, then detonated as it ricocheted away. The blast flung me up, trailing flame and smoke, then I crashed down feeling as if I’d been stepped on by some irate giant. My chainglass visor was gone and something was sizzling ominously inside my suit. Armored plates were peeled up from my arm, which I could see stretched out ahead of me, and my gauntlet was missing.

“What the fuck are you doing here with him?” Jael enquired angrily.

“He turned up on Arena before I left,” Gene replied. “Just to be on the safe side I was keeping to the Pens until Penny Royal’s golem left.”

“And you consider that an adequate explanation?”

“I put Arena Security onto him, but he somehow escaped them and ambushed me outside.” Gene sounded somewhat chagrined. “I let him persuade me to give him the U-signal code from the gabbleduck.”

I turned my head slightly but only got a view of tangled metal and a few silver golem bones. “Ulriss,” I whispered, but received only a slight buzzing in response.

“So much for your wonderful ECS training.”

“It was enough to convince him that I still worked for them.”

So, no ECS action here, no Polity dreadnought on the way. I thought about that encounter I’d seen between the Prador cruiser and the dreadnought. I’d told Gene about it and she’d used the information against me, convincing me that the Polity was involved. Of course, what I’d seen was the kind of saber-rattling confrontation between Prador and Polity that had been going on in the Graveyard for years.

“What’s the situation here?” Gene asked.

“Fucked,” Jael replied. “Something’s intervened. We have to get out of here now.”

I heard the sounds of movement. They were going away, so I might survive this. Then the sounds ceased too abruptly.

“You used an explosive shell,” Gene noted from close by.

“What?”

“He’s still alive.”

“Well,” said Jael, “that’s a problem soon solved.”

Her boots crunched on the floor as she approached, and gave me her location. I reached out with my bare hand and slid it into slick silvery metal. Finger controls there. I clamped down on them and saw something shimmering deep into twisted metal.

“Collar!” I said, more in hope than expectation, before heaving myself upright.

Jael stood over me, and beyond her I saw Gene reach up toward her neck, then abruptly drop to the floor. I swung my arm across as Jael began to bring her multigun up to her shoulder.

A slight tug-that was all. She stood there a moment longer, still aiming at me, then her head lifted and fell back, attached still at the back of her neck by skin only, and a red stream shot upward. Air hissing from her severed trachea, she toppled.