Neal Asher - Shadow of the Scorpion

"I'll be needing some help with those," he said. As he moved his pulse-rifle to hang before his stomach, Cormac caught Yallow's frown. Burdened like this they would not be so effective.

"Quick release button on the front," said the professor—obviously not an absent-minded scientist, but someone aware that soldiers needed to be able to respond quickly, and unburdened.

The two hoisted on their packs and the professor led the way out.

"We'll be going to the Captain's Sanctum, and since that is where the Prador adult was located it is deep within the ship," he said.

"As much armour as possible between itself and anyone attacking," said Yallow.

"Certainly."

They trudged out of the encampment and onto a wide road of crumbled stone and sticky mud, which ran level for a little while then cut down into a wide excavation. Soon they saw a metal ramp ahead of them, a heavy autodozer parked on it, perhaps to hold it down. The entrance itself was a sideways oval—designed to accommodate the shape of Prador, but much larger than the largest of their kind.

As they drew closer, the first thing Cormac noticed was the smell, which rolled out like a palpable fog, laden with the putrid decay of things washed up on a seashore, damp, miasmic. He saw Yallow hesitate when this hit them, her expression annoyed perhaps at the way she had reacted.

"You get used to it," said Dent.

"So some of the Prador in there are dead?" Yallow noted.

"Certainly—we haven't found them all." He glanced round at them. "But what you're smelling at the moment is a food store we only discovered recently, and then only because someone accidentally cut its power supply a week ago and its contents began decaying." He pointed back to a group of people clad in full envirosuits gathered around a couple of grav-pallets. "They'll be moving the rotten meat today."

Cormac wondered if any of that meat included something once described as "long-pig," for Prador were not averse to eating human flesh. He considered closing up the visor on his envirosuit, but Yallow hadn't, and the professor wasn't even wearing a suit. Perhaps better to go without his visor closed—even with all its systems operating, a closed suit tended to blunt the senses, and with Prador in here, on their home territory, he needed to stay sharp.

The floor of the hold felt utterly solid underfoot and distant walls appeared to be constructed of layers of ragged slabs on which grew pale green weed like dead man's fingers. There were stacks of Polity-manufacture bubble-metal crates near the entrance, but further back were objects that had occupied this hold before this ship came down. To his left a small scout vessel or shuttle rested like a squat submarine—a miniature copy of the vessel they had just entered since it seemed all Prador ships were modelled on the creatures' own form no matter how impractical that modelling might be. The craft was secured to deck rings by cables extending from holes in its sides. Behind the vessel were racks of thin, pale blue cylinders—perhaps ordinance of some kind for that same vessel.

At the back of the hold they came upon one of those diagonally divided doors needed to accommodate the Prador form. It was only partially open, a heavy lock bolt welded to it to engage in a hole drilled into the floor so it lay open only wide enough to allow humans through, and not wide enough to allow Prador second-children out. Doubtless the doors had not been permanently welded in place in case they needed to be opened further to take heavy equipment in. Beyond this door lay a smaller hold, on the right of which stacks of hexagonal crates rose to the ceiling like pillars, and just beyond them—

Cormac and Yallow simultaneously raised their pulse-rifles and took aim, but neither of them fired.

"If they'd been occupied your weapons would have had little effect," said Dent. "But it's good to see you're alert."

Arrayed in a long framework were what looked like five large Prador second-children. But this was armour for the crablike monsters—open at the back and with carapace lids hinged out in two halves, all ready to be quickly occupied. Nearby stood a rack of weapons: vicious looking rail-guns, power-packs and magazines from which hung belts of projectiles, a row of gas lasers and one large particle cannon either for tripod mounting or to be carried by a first-child.

"If there's Prador here," said Yallow, "isn't it dangerous to leave stuff like this lying around?"

Dent just pointed towards the ceiling where material had been cut away and something inset. Though very little showed there, Cormac guessed a security drone had been installed. The AI controlling this excavation and reclamation wanted the Prador aboard to take the bait here, but Cormac suspected that any left alive would avoid so obvious a trap.

At the back of this hold another set of those doors, this time fully open, led into a dim corridor. Cormac and Yallow moved ahead to check it, and immediately brought their weapons to bear on movement along one wall. Ship lice: boot-sized, multi-legged arthropods that scavenged after Prador leavings and in essence served the same purpose as beetlebots aboard Polity ships, though they were also pests that needed to be controlled—the Prador version of rats in the walls. One bent its ribbed carapace into an arc and dropped to the floor. Cormac tracked it across with his pulse-rifle as it headed towards him, tri-mandibles clicking. Professor Dent stepped forwards to trap the creature under his foot, then brought his full weight down and twisted. His boot sank with a liquid crunch, gelatinous ichor squirting out from under his sole.

"Damned things," he said. "They're getting bolder as they get hungrier. If they get locked on to you, you have to cut behind the pincers to get the things out."

"Charming," said Cormac.

As they wound their way through numerous corridors then up one level via a ladder welded to the side of a very wide drop-shaft, Cormac realised Dent was following directions given on small flimsy screens stuck at intervals to the walls. Cormac and Yallow kept to the training manual by checking all areas at junctions before allowing their charge to come on, and Cormac felt that the professor was assessing their every move.

"Warheads in here," he said at one point, gesturing to an open door to one side. "Big rail-gun launchers to the port of the main turret."

Why did they need to know that? It seemed an odd piece of information to provide.

"We go down here," Dent added, pointing ahead to a corridor slanting steeply down into the depths of the ship.

This finally debarked into an even wider corridor. Cormac guessed they now must be close to the Captain's Sanctum for this new corridor was wide enough to allow a Prador adult through. A bad smell wafted along it to them and as they rounded a corner Yallow shed her pack and went down on one knee, taking aim. Cormac just continued walking.

"You don't quite have the reactions of your partner, it would seem," commented Dent.

"I'm guessing they don't smell like that when they're alive," said Cormac, now thoroughly aware that Dent was not all he seemed.

Chagrined, Yallow stood, hoisting up her pack again and cinching it into place.

The Prador first-child lay tilted against one wall. Most of its legs had fallen away, as had one of its claws, to expose carapace sockets in which ship lice were as busy as maggots. As Cormac watched, one of the horrible scavengers came out of the Prador's mouth between the rigid mandibles.

"How did it die?" Yallow asked.

"Most of them survived the crash," Dent supplied. "But they didn't survive the irradiation, the gassing and the subsequent assault."

Cormac glanced at him. "Irradiation?"

"Neutron tacticals were dropped here," Dent replied. "Then when the Sparkind assault teams arrived they drilled a hole through the ship's turret, which remained exposed above ground, and pumped Hazon nerve gas inside. Then they followed the gas inside and finished off what survivors they could find."