"Before you wax too philosophical, perhaps we should sort out what we gonna do," interjected Fethan.

Cormac glanced at the old cyborg, then turned to Scar. "Are your people ready to move?"

Scar just showed his teeth in reply.

"Then," Cormac continued, "we cut a hole through the Theocracy army, and keep going until we reach the mountains. Then you" — he glanced at Fethan — "and Thorn will take us to John Stanton's ship."

"Then what?" asked Thorn.

Almost without thinking, Cormac drew his thin-gun and checked the charge. "Let's just see if we can get that far first, shall we?"

With shaking hands Aberil changed magazines then took aim with his rail-gun. Very badly he wanted to empty this second magazine into the creature's head, but that would be more than stupid considering he only had this and one other magazine, and there were certainly other creatures lurking out here. The siluroyne no longer moved, but then with half its head ripped away that was not surprising. Molat was still moving though, which considering how little was left of the Proctor, Aberil did find surprising. Swallowing the foul taste in his mouth, Aberil walked over to Molat and watched him finally die. That didn't take long for blood was draining from him like red wine from an upended bottle.

Finally Aberil jerked himself alert, as if coming out of a trance, and suddenly was once again aware of just how bad he felt. His face seemed just a swollen ball of pain, his broken teeth aching abominably, and an overall swelling beginning to close his eyes. As if that was not enough, he felt sure some of his ribs were broken, and he was beginning to suspect that the bloody froth he'd been spitting out was not coming from the ruin of his face but from one of his lungs.

Damn you, Stanton!

He had known for far too long that he should either have left that family alone or exterminated every last one of them. Drunk on the extent of the powers granted to him as a young proctor, he had committed crimes that had led to the creation of Lellan Stanton the rebel and her brother John the mercenary killer.

Moving now with painful slowness Aberil headed back towards the landing craft, occasional fumaroles of smoke or steam rising into the sky locating them for him. Not for one moment did he consider the possibility of his own death, for he was so sure of God's purpose for him. Yes, he worked hard to preserve his own life, as he had just done with this siluroyne, for not to do so would display a punishable arrogance — but it was all part of how he was being continually moulded by the deity. Even the beating he had just received at Stanton's hands had been part of this same process. No, Aberil would not die — he had far too much yet to do.

There… something moving.

As far as he could remember from what he had been taught as a child, siluroynes were extremely territorial, so this definitely would not be another of them. Hearing the sound again, he tried to discount the realization that whatever was making the noise was obviously a lot bigger than the siluroyne. The sound he next heard — a whickering of rapid sharp motion — shot him through with an almost supernatural dread.

The Lord is my shepherd…

Much louder now — the hissing passage of a long hard body writhing through flute grass and over compacted mud. Aberil picked up his pace, wheezing now and with flecks of red spattering the inside of his mask. He'd heard that sound before: who of the higher Theocracy had not watched holocordings of rebel prisoners pinned out like bait near their mountains? But this was ridiculous surely: hooders did not venture this far out onto the plain.

As the sound grew louder, Aberil looked aside in time to see a huge segmented body hurtling past him like a speeding train. It was heading in the opposite direction, but he listened hard and could hear it curving round. He ran. He could get to the landing craft… find something there… there would be help. Behind… it was behind him. He glimpsed nightmare there, and fired a burst of slugs at it. He turned and ran on, his chest constricting so that he couldn't get his breath. He stumbled down on his knees, pain daggering into his side, his vision blurred.

As a shadow drew across him, he emptied the entire magazine at it, then groped for the spare. He realized that to preserve himself from the agony to come, he should use that precious magazine on himself, but he couldn't really believe what was happening to him. Instead he emptied the last rounds into a looming darkness, and that seemed to have no effect at all. Scrubbing at his face to clear his vision, he looked up into a circular pit of darkness that contained row upon row of mandibles glittering like surgical steel and glass, amid a constellation of red glowing eyes.

"No," he managed to protest before the hooder slammed down on him.

Tented in its chitin, his screams became both muffled and echoey — as the creature commenced, with surgical precision, to feed.

Cormac held up his hand, and Shuriken came back to its holster without reluctance — perhaps sated by its excess of killing. Once it snicked back into place he turned towards movement registered behind, as two soldiers rose out of cover and began to level their rail-guns at him. A snap shot with his thin-gun knocked one over backwards with a hole through his forehead. Gant slammed into the second, knocking him two metres through the air before the man hit the ground, following fast to stab down with one hand, then stood up and shook blood from his fingers. Horrible, utterly horrible, though Cormac was not sure if what he was killing could actually be classified as fully alive.

Mostly, though, it was not Cormac and his companions who were accomplishing the wet work. The dracomen moved at frightening speed right into the rail-gun fire where iron slugs ripped through many of them, but these creatures were of extremely rugged construction and withstood more hits than any human could possibly sustain. Cormac even saw one of them fighting on with both of its arms blown away. It had still managed to bite out the throats of three Theocracy soldiers before gunfire from elsewhere finally cut it in half.

"Keep moving!" Cormac shouted. "And keep together."

Mika proved the most wayward — she kept wanting to stay with wounded dracomen, though whether to tend to them or to see what tissue samples she might obtain, Cormac could not judge. Gant and Thorn stayed on either side of him, whilst Fethan had gone running off with the dracomen and getting himself as bloody as they. Scar had come back occasionally to check if they were still alive.

"Where the hell are your people?" Cormac asked him the next time he returned.

Showing his teeth, Scar gestured in either direction along the Theocracy lines and gave a shrug. Obviously just punching a gap through those lines had not been enough for them — now they had achieved that objective it was time for them to play. Cormac could hear plenty of gunfire, but no screams from dying soldiers — but maybe those brain-burnt individuals did not feel pain.

The whining of an electric engine sounded to the right…

Cormac soon had Shuriken up a couple of metres in front of him, his fingers poised over the lethal device's attack menu on its holster.

"Time to ride!" Fethan bellowed, driving in with a balloon-tyred ground car he had just stolen — the blood on the driver's seat was fresh. All but Gant, the fastest mover anyway, boarded the vehicle as Fethan turned it towards mountains now looming in the purple haze of distance below the sinking gas giant.

"Check that out," Cormac instructed Thorn, gesturing at a pedestal-mounted grenade-launcher fixed to the back of the vehicle. Thorn pushed his way past Mika who was sitting on the metal floor with her back against the side. Seeing her pull out her laptop, Cormac commented, "Hell or high water won't stop your research on Dragon or dracomen."