Neal Asher - The Line of Polity

"So it can't let them bleed?" Apis gaped in disbelieving horror.

"What about humans, then?" asked Eldene.

Stanton tested his coffee with his finger, then rocked back on his heels and opened his pack. For a moment the two forgot their morbid curiosity as he handed out potato bread and preserved sausage.

"Humans get treated just like the other kinds of grazers they occasionally catch," said Stanton, himself munching on a piece of sausage. "The hooder has to make the assumption that they are fungus grazers, so dissects them as meticulously, even though discovering no black fat in them. You heard the results of that." Stanton tipped some brandy into the coffee, then after taking a sip from the mug, he offered it around. He was glad when both the youngsters showed a disgust at its taste and declined more.

"That seems to be all finished now over there." He gestured over his shoulder to where the plain had earlier been boiling with fire. "We'll finish up here, then head on in. I'd stay longer, just to be sure, but" — he gestured to the remaining two oxygen bottles resting on the aero-fan's floor — "we don't have that luxury."

"Where will you go now — to the Underground?" asked Eldene.

"My ship first," Stanton replied. "That's where I keep everything that's precious to me." He looked around. "I don't think there's much more I can do here. Hopefully ECS will come soon, and perhaps it'd be better if I were not around when it does."

"What about us?" asked Eldene.

"You go underground," he said, staring at them directly, "and you wait for the Polity." He could see that they were curious to know why he should not hang about when the Polity arrived, but he did not feel inclined to give any explanations. For a minute he just sipped his way down through his cup of coffee, listening for sounds of movement in the surrounding vegetation. The laser strikes had driven away much of the local fauna, but most certainly the smell of broiled meat would bring the said fauna back, and he did not care to be around when that happened.

"Of course, you know what the irony is?" They looked at him attentively and he went on, "Eating human flesh just makes hooders, and the rest of them, sick. It's the oxygen I think — too rich for them."

"Yes, that is ironic," said Apis, exchanging a look with Eldene.

After packing away his bits and pieces, Stanton stood and gestured them back to the aerofan. Soon the three were settled on board, hurtling over a charred landscape below a black sky bright with a surplus of moons.

It was a bright and beautiful night to be skimming over the foothills, their two aerofans warded on either side by the battered and fire-blackened cylinders of the war drones. It was a fantastic night to be alive, and Gant wondered if he would have appreciated it any more by being so.

"There are creatures in the sky ahead of us," said Rom, its voice coming surprisingly loud to them in the roar of the wind, it being sent by directional beam.

"Probably kite-bats," Lellan said, turning towards Cormac. "Don't worry about them, they'll get out of the way."

Gant noted Cormac's quick glance, but did not have to be told to keep alert. He nodded and patted his pulse-rifle. Slung across his back was the APW he was saving for any situation warranting artillery. Focusing ahead, with his vision set to infrared, Gant made out a great flock of flying creatures circling the mountain peaks. Some of them were even roosting on peaks, turning them into a bluish melee of angled limbs and wing fabric.

"How far to the entrance?" Cormac asked Lellan.

"A couple of kilometres yet," the rebel leader replied. She pointed down with her thumb. "There are breakout caves all across here, but there's no point even trying them. Aberil was so keen we shouldn't escape that he bombed every one of them during his landing."

Gazing out into silvered night, the agent said, "You know, Skellor will be watching us right now." He gestured towards the war drones. "We're probably about the only mechanical things airborne, and with those two along…"

"Well," said Lellan, "unless he can also track you through stone, we'll soon frustrate him."

"He may even possess that ability," murmured Cormac.

Something was tickling the edge of Gant's memory. He knew that he could easily run a program in his head to track down that memory, but that would make him more Golem and less Gant, so he wanted to retain his imperfect recall. The flying creatures did not seem to be dispersing, in fact more were taking to the air, and now the whole flock was swirling in this direction. He could now see them much more clearly, and some of the others must already be able to see them through their night visors. There was something familiar…

"These kite-bats," he said, "is it the mating season or something?"

"They don't have a mating season." Lellan was leaning forwards to peer into the darkness. After a moment she pulled back on the steering column, abruptly slowing the aerofan so that Rom and Ram, and the other fan carrying Thorn, Carl and Fethan, shot ahead — then had to turn to wheel round to come back.

"Those are not kite-bats," Lellan decided.

Glancing at the agent, Gant asked him grimly, "Were there any winged calloraptors on Callorum?"

Reluctantly, it seemed to Gant, Cormac donned the night glasses Lellan had provided, and replied, "Never really looked into that. Mika would be the one to ask."

Just then, Carl brought the other aerofan alongside, and Fethan shouted across, "What are those things?"

Speaking into the comlink hooked at her neck, Lellan replied briefly, "The enemy, I think." She looked to Cormac and Gant for confirmation.

Cormac pulled up his sleeve and fingered in some complex attack programs on his lethal little weapon's holster console. Shuriken started clunking in its holster, as if eager to get out. Cormac withdrew it, and held it in the palm of his left hand. With the right hand he drew his thin-gun. He turned to Gant. "How many of them, do you estimate?"

Without even resorting to any of the counting programs that were available to him Gant said, "A couple of thousand visible. There may be more."

"Use the APW — I think the need to conceal our presence became superfluous long ago," said Cormac. Then to Lellan, "We need to get to that cave as fast as we can. Just burn through them and keep going… agreed?"

Lellan had no better suggestions so she nodded, even though Gant guessed she resented the agent usurping her authority.

Cormac went on, "Does the cave have defences and, if so, what kind?"

"In the entrance we'll be using there's one pulse-cannon in the shaft leading down, and another one in the lower tunnel, then armoured doors guarding the main cavern. They just won't get through," she replied.

"Don't bet on it," said Cormac, gazing at the boiling cloud of creatures ahead. "These fuckers don't die all that easy."

Lellan stared at him for a moment then looked across to see she had Carl's attention, before making a chopping motion with her hand for them to move ahead.

"We go straight through," she informed them all. In reaction there came the cycling whine of U-chargers operating inside the war drones as they brought their energy-profligate weapons systems online. Lellan tilted her joystick forward and Carl followed suit. Both aero-fans tilted and accelerated. Moving ahead, the war drones turned in midair from floating pillars to rollers barbed with weapons. Then suddenly they were into a thunder of flapping wings, amid horrible cawings and hissings issuing from triple-jawed mouths opening all around them like satanic fuchsias. Cormac tossed Shuriken over the side, as the two drones opened up on the creatures. Swathes of violet fire left green afterimages across their night-vision glasses and visors. Gant and Thorn had also opened up with APWs, burning into this sky of moving flesh. Screaming, half-incinerated raptors dropped out of this turmoil — their wing skin seared away to leave nothing but black spiderish bone slashing at the air. Smuts of soot clouded the air like negative snow, and the flames raised a stench as of burning sesame oil. As he selectively fired into the huge flock of creatures wherever it seemed thickest, Gant saw a half-burnt raptor land on the rail and Cormac emptying the entire clip of his thin-gun into its visage to prevent it scrambling aboard. When it became evident that the creature would just not die, Gant himself turned and blasted it — and most of the rail — burning down into its fellows underneath, where Shuriken shimmered back and forth, slamming through any that tried to attack them from below.