"Desist, XG-12. Return to the search."

The second-child slid to a halt, perhaps remembering Gnores' earlier threat and realising that this might not be defined as a combat situation. It turned away and ran off. The human staggered to a halt before Gnores, gasping, and still intermittently making those noises. Gnores realised it was trying to talk to him, only he carried no translator. He reached out and closed the tips of his claws on its lower torso and picked it up.

"Father, I have found a human. It is trying to speak to me but I do not understand it," he sent via one of the channels to the ship.

After a moment Immanence, having viewed Gnores' prize through the cameras mounted on the first-child's carapace, replied, "Gnores, it is not trying to speak to you. It is making those sounds because it is in pain. You have damaged it."

Gnores abruptly realised he had squeezed too tightly, for the lower torso of the creature split open and organs were bulging out. There also seemed to be a lot of red liquid dribbling onto the floor. Gnores dropped the human at once. He observed it coiling on its side and trying to push its internal organs back inside.

"I was sure it was trying to speak to me a moment ago," he said.

"Why do you not have a translator with you?" Immanence enquired.

Gnores felt a sudden flash of embarrassment. Though having brought every variety of hand weapon, scanning gear and equipment for accessing human computer systems, he had entirely forgotten about bringing a translator. Then came the fear. Father would severely punish such a lapse. Such a lapse would probably ensure his removal as a Prime. And there was only one way Primes wereever removed.

"But this place was supposed to be empty! My mission here was to scan for booby traps and secure—"

"Upon your return, Gnores," said Immanence, "we will discuss this further."

Gnores sagged as the comlink broke. He stared dimly into his future and realised it did not extend very far.Damned human! He sank into a fug of self-pity and wondered if his father was already ordering a drone shell to be brought up to his sanctum, or if all of Gnores would be food for second-children.The human — some payback there… Gnores forced his attention back to his surroundings. He would keep the human alive. He would be much more careful this time.

Maybe he could make that pleasure last until Immanence recalled him. He peered down at the floor and saw a bloody trail leading over to a nearby corridor, the human just dragging himself from sight. Gnores charged over and crashed into the corridor mouth—his shell too large to allow him ingress. For a moment he tore at the walls with his claws, but then the human opened some kind of access hatch and began pulling himself inside. Gnores drew his rail-gun and fired, but too late, for the human escaped.

Gnores stood grinding his mandibles together and drooling black saliva. After a moment he pushed himself back and whirled away. No matter. It wouldn't live very long with such injuries. They never did.

Now.The time was now. Moria restarted the positioning drives on the Trajeen runcible, and observed the massive gateposts separating from each other, slowly at first then accelerating, drawing out the Skaidon warp, the drives' white blades of flame pointing inwards over the meniscus surface. In her real-time model Moria observed theOccam Razorhurtling down towards Boh, and the Prador vessel dropping lower and lower to keep itself between its opponent and the runcible. Some of the Polity vessel's missiles came close to hitting the runcible itself. That would spell disaster, but, equally, revealing to the Prador that the Boh runcible was not the Polity ship's intended target would be disastrous too. But just maybe there lay a way around that. Moria accessed the runcible's meteor collision lasers and routed through to them a military ballistics program uploaded from the planet. Maybe that would be enough.

Now the Boh runcible. She started the positional drives there, and watched the ring of white fire bloom. Conlan should be sending the second signal now. She did not have time to check with Jebel, and checking would not change matters.

Utterly unbelievable pain, almost equalled by the horror of being injured like that. Okay now, all wrapped up and back where it should be. The Prador had pinched his abdomen tightly in the tips of its claws, too tight. If it had gripped him only slightly differently it would have snapped his spine. His bulging guts pressed hard against the serrated inner edges of the claw, which cut in, and his intestines and the lower lobes of his liver belched through the split. He'd got it all back inside, and with the remains of his shirt bound it all in place, and tied that down with the optic cable, but the blood just kept oozing out. He was bleeding internally too. He could feel it. Death did not lie very far away.

EDDRESS REQUEST >

OFFLINE EDDRESS REQUEST?

ACCEPT?

"What the fuck?" he managed. He looked around at the cramped space, could hear the clattering sound of hard Prador feet not very far away. Perhaps they wanted to exchange messages, for they seemed quite anxious to reacquaint themselves with him. Conlan damned himself for a fool. The moment he saw one of those little bastards face-to-face he knew that running to them had been a suicidal move. The big one, like the one called Vortex appearing on the newsnets, he assumed to be a leader of some kind. Why hadn't it listened to him?

The eddress request remained and he considered taking the facility offline, but what the hell did it matter now? He accepted and immediately received a message:

YOU BROKE MY FUCKING LEG YOU PIECE OF SHIT.

VOCAL CONNECTION?

Conlan accepted that and sent, "I hope it really hurts. You still at the bottom of that shaft?"

Conlan felt he could do with some similar patches himself. Obviously, by his tone over the link, Jebel Krong floated up in the clouds.

"I'll tell you what. I haven't screwed your operation completely, but I still can. You send Urbanus for me, with some of those patches, and maybe I'll still do what you want."As he finished delivering that speech, Conlan realised that if speaking out loud he would have needed to pause for breath every few words.

Jebel's laughter came ghostly over the link."So the Prador weren't talking? Have they got you now, stuck you up on a wall somewhere? You really won't like what happens next. Remember me telling you?"

"They don't have me. I'm in hiding. I'm serious about myoffer."

"No can do, I'm afraid. This place is crawling with them. We're under a chameleon ware shield, local, blocking scan. No intention of moving right now. They'll probably find you soon enough. Bit of advice for you…"

"What's that?"

"Kill yourself"

"You are a bastard, Krong."

Laughter again, then, "And you're not?"

Conlan looked around. He lay in an air duct junction. The Prador might pick him up on their scanners, but they'd have to cut through a lot of metalwork to reach him. By then he could crawl on to somewhere else.

"How long till the runcible starts moving?" he asked.

"Any time now."

"If I send your signal, and survive… will you hold to your promise to me?"

"Of course, but I don't really see you surviving. Are you near a console now?"

Conlan wasn't, but further along a nearby duct a vent opened into some private accommodation and there would be one in there. He considered his survival chances. It would be so much easier to lie here and die; already he felt slightly cold and sleepy. Approaching the Prador again would almost certainly result in the scenario Krong once described to him and promised to mimic with pliers and metal snips. If he crawled to that room and sent the signal, Krong's plan might succeed. But then there were the Prador here. In that room he would be more vulnerable and he doubted he would be able to haul himself up to the vent again.