Neal Asher - The Voyage of the Sable Keech

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

‘You broke your restraints,’ said Silister.

‘Feeling a lot better now,’ said Orbus. ‘I ate big lice on the Prador ship and they staved off the change, so I’m not going to hurt anyone.’

Davy-bronte snorted contemptuously, levelling his weapon at Orbus’s head. The Captain stared at him for a long moment, then turned to the other two Old Captains as they approached. He nodded towards the Tank Room.

‘The restraints in there won’t hold me. Where do you want me?’ he asked them.

‘Where would everyone be safe from you?’ asked Ambel, striding forwards.

Drum remained a few steps back, slapping a heavy iron club against the palm of his hand.

‘I don’t reckon you’ve anything that could hold me on this ship. But, if you like, I’ll walk straight back in there’—Orbus again nodded towards the Tank Room—‘and Erlin can stick a nerve blocker on me, shutting down everything below my neck.’

Ambel frowned. ‘Yes, that would seem a sensible course.’

‘But I’ll hurt no one if you let me remain free.’

Ambel stepped up close to Orbus and stared into his face. After a moment he said, ‘Show me your tongue.’

Orbus stuck it out. The end of it was still hollow, and he could feel the hard bits inside it where plug-cutting teeth had started growing. But the Intertox and nutrients had worked quickly in him. After a moment he closed his mouth.

Ambel studied him for a long minute, then gave a sharp nod. ‘Find yourself an empty cabin—there’s plenty available.’

Silister and Davy-bronte and the other gathered Hoopers looked on doubtfully.

Orbus smiled tiredly and turned back to the rail. ‘In a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the night air for a while.’

Like a swarm of golden bees, the drones and the armoured Prador were beginning to disperse from around Vrell’s ship. This could only mean a strike was imminent.

‘That’s one big mother,’ observed Thirteen dryly.

Vrost’s ship was now plainly visible above the planetary horizon: a vast grey mass in the shape of a Prador’s carapace, but a shape losing definition under additional blockish structures, engines, weapons arrays and other less easily identifiable components. It was slowly turning and tilting, so its massive coil-gun—like a city block of skyscrapers turned horizontal and lifted above the main vessel on a giant curved arm—was all too visible. Sniper was surprised at Vrost giving so clear a signal of intent, but doubtless the Prador captain was now certain of making a kill. This close to the planet, engaging the U-space drive would tear Vrell’s ship apart, and no other drive would be fast enough to get it out of range. And his vessel now also represented little danger to those on the planet below, since anything left of it would burn up in atmosphere.

‘Let’s listen to what they’re saying,’ Sniper suggested. Cruising along ten kilometres behind, he snooped into the uncoded communications between the two Prador, and relayed it to the little drone.

‘Why have you ordered your troops back?’ the voice from the ship asked.

Vrost hesitated, perhaps wondering whether it was worth wasting energy on the soon-to-be-dead, but his curiosity won out. ‘I have moved them back because I do not wish them to get damaged.’

‘Coming to you as I have, I have demonstrated that I am no threat. Why should I then be a danger to them?’

They were both playing games, with layers of bluff and counter-bluff. Vrost and Vrell both knew the outcome of this encounter, and they both knew that the other knew, but Vrost had to be wondering if Vrell had accepted the inevitable and intended to go down fighting, or whether he had something else in mind.

‘You do represent a small threat to them,’ agreed Vrost. ‘But the shock wave and flying debris will shortly be a greater danger to them.’

‘I do not understand,’ said that voice again—Vrell.

Sniper understood the reason for this pretence at ignorance, more than did Vrost, and very much more than Vrell himself would be comfortable with. Sniper could tell Vrost everything, which would immediately scupper Vrell’s plans. But Sniper’s equally apportioned dislike and distrust of all Prador was tempered by his rapport with the underdog. In this situation he felt on Vrell’s side. Both of him.

Sniper interrupted. ‘Listen, shithead, very shortly Vrost will be cutting you and your ship to pieces. It doesn’t matter what you do now, you are dead. Down on the surface you managed to fend off some attacks, but only because Vrost could not employ the full power of his weapons without taking out half the planet. Up here he does not need to be so restrained.’

‘My name is not shithead,’ replied the voice.

‘Whatever,’ Sniper snapped. ‘You make a very clear target against the sky.’

A long pause ensued while the voice’s owner processed that.

On a private channel Thirteen asked, ‘Sniper, what are you up to?’

On the same channel Sniper replied, ‘Just reminding someone of something.’

‘Who is this?’ asked Vrost meanwhile.

‘Just an old Polity war drone who hasn’t lost his taste for turning Prador into crab paste,’ Sniper replied. ‘I can’t tell you how it gladdens my heart to see you two trying to kill each other.’

‘The state of your emulated emotions is not my concern.’

‘Bite me. Vrell, while you’re getting fried up here, why don’t you send out that war drone of yours for a rematch against me? I definitely owe it at least that. It doesn’t matter what you do now—you’re dead.’

‘I don’t get this,’ said Thirteen.

‘You will.’

Sniper wondered how long it would take for the underlying message to be understood. Then he was answered when weapons turrets on Vrell’s ship launched a swarm of black missiles. Many of them began exploding—quickly picked off by Vrost’s defensive lasers. Sniper tracked the rest, then grinned inside when their own drives ignited, turning them sharply towards the nearest of Vrost’s outside forces. A particle beam ignited space with turquoise fire from Vrost’s ship. It splashed against a hard-field before reaching its target, but on Vrell’s ship an explosion blew wreckage into space, as the relevant field projector overloaded. Then the coil-gun fired, but the projectile was intercepted with a similar blast from the particle cannon on Vrell’s ship. A wash of candent gas streamed past the smaller ship. The guards and drones were meanwhile occupied in either dodging or shooting down those missiles.

More salvos launched from both ships. Again the coil-gun, again the interception. EM explosions began to screw up Sniper’s reception, so he did not track the one missile with an atomic warhead that detonated only a kilometre from Vrell’s ship. The vessel tilted, some of its armour peeling away in the blast, then it righted and continued firing. Vrost’s ship was now accelerating. A nuke detonated on it, blasting a glowing cavity. Sniper realized the Prador captain was positioning his ship where there was no chance of any of his coil-gun missiles being deflected down towards the planet. Now came a U-space signature, weirdly distorted. Endgame.

‘There,’ said Sniper to Thirteen.

Seeing Vrell’s war drone blasting out into space, Sniper accelerated. Perfectly timed. The coil-gun began firing repeatedly. Four intercepted projectiles turned vacuum to furnace air. Power low for the particle cannons, the next was intercepted by hard-fields. A line of explosions cut down Vrell’s ship as projectors exploded. The projectile impacted, substantially slowed, but still slapped its target like some god’s hand. With fires burning inside it, a huge chunk of the ship fell away.