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.

Lellan was yelling something, but Cormac could not hear her above the racket as he removed the empty clip from his gun and replaced it with another. He leaned closer.

"I'm taking us lower!" she shouted.

Cormac nodded and hit Shuriken's recall. The device shot up from below the aerofans, where now lack of clearance from the ground gave no room for the raptors to manoeuvre, and it held station just out from Cormac's shoulder. Selecting a different attack program, he sent Shuriken off and running again. The difficulty he was finding with it was compensating for the two war drones. Shuriken's micromind possessed adequate facility to factor in the presence of 'friendly fire' from armed humans or the equivalent, but since war drones of this sophistication were a recent invention, it had no set program blocks to account for them. Cormac found that the nearest he could achieve was by describing the two drones to Shuriken as human exotroops with AG packs and heavy weapons. This seemed to be working so far, though he noted some hesitation in Shuriken's flight when it came close to either of the machines. The drones, being technically more sophisticated, ignored the throwing star as they continued to incinerate flying calloraptors.

Drawing his thin-gun again, Cormac aimed single shots at the calloraptors' wing joints; these hits, when he managed them, proving more effective than any number of impacts on the creatures' heads or bodies. These calloraptors were clearly not direct kin of those that Scar had shot on Callorum — but they did possess the same miraculous ability to heal themselves as the hybrid he had encountered in Skellor's laboratory. Nevertheless, even ability to heal did not negate the effects of gravity once a wing-joint shattered and the wing collapsed. The ones he thus crippled soon ended up far behind and out of the chase.

"We're coming up on it now!" Lellan yelled. She was flying one-handed, holding a pulse-rifle in her right hand, its light stock resting in the crook of her arm.

"Call the drones in behind us!" Cormac shouted back, then found himself knocked to his knees as a raptor, its wings burned down to the bone, crashed down on top of him. Like a bird the creature had no arms, so it grabbed at him with its powerful foot claws and tried to close its two remaining jaws on his shoulder. Even in such an extremity, Cormac realized the creature was not actually trying to kill, but merely immobilize him. The aerofan lurched aside as Lellan was nearly knocked over during the ensuing struggle. Cormac caught a glimpse of a rockface speeding past him to the left, then one of the drones dropping back overhead. With his hand gripping his attacker's throat he fired repeatedly into its skull, hoping the raptor's brain would not heal as quickly as the rest of it. Just then Gant grabbed the creature from behind and wrenched it upright, tearing away one wing and snapping its double spine. The broken bone in its back quickly realigning, it turned to attack Gant instead.

A sudden impact slid Cormac along the floor of the aerofan, now tilting at thirty degrees. He caught what remained of the rail on that side, his legs lunging out into empty space over rock speeding by. Then they were dropping down into a shaft, screaming raptors all around them still. Behind them flashed the arc-welder stuttering of a pulse-cannon, and they spun out of the main shaft into another tunnel. Struggling to climb back on board, Cormac spotted Gant and the calloraptor tearing at each other with hideous ferocity as they sailed past him. He glanced back to see a war drone, clad in a skin of attacking raptors, hit the cavern floor and bounce end over end. While avoiding this, the other aerofan clipped stone and flipped over, three bodies disappearing amid the mass of wings and nightmare mouths just as Gant had.

"Don't slow down!" Cormac bellowed, when he realized Lellan had started to do so. She gestured forward, just as pulse-rifles filled the cavern with a blizzard of blue stars.

"Now we're getting to it," said the woman as she observed Brother Nebbish with his robe of sackcloth, his expression of pious disapproval, the slight aura around his head, and a book clutched in his right hand.

"At last into the valley came Brother Nebbish, and when he saw how Stenophalis, Pegrum and Egris had failed, he was undaunted."

Nebbish was staring bug-eyed at the mess strewn across the valley floor as he walked into the place. The remains of the other three were huge in comparison to him, and he did not stand astride the valley.

"Warded by his faith and armed with the Word of God, Brother Nebbish demanded of the Hooded One, 'Come forth and face me! "

The woman choked on her laughter when in the picture the good Brother dropped his book, hauled his robes up over his knobbly knees, and took off down the valley like an Olympic sprinter.

"Standing always in the light of God, Brother Nebbish smote the monster with the iron of God's law, and the monster was bowed."

Nebbish had fallen flat on his face at this point, as the shadowy creature rose up to follow him. His face thick with ash, Nebbish looked back at it as he scrambled to his feet, and with his mouth hanging open in what had to be a perpetual scream, he sprinted on,