‘Missed!’ shouted Drum. ‘But I won’t.’

The antiphoton burst struck Vrell’s side and tipped him over. One of his main claws burst open, spraying steaming flesh all about. He lost two hands and the weapons they held — one of them the shrapnel rail-gun. Vrell uttered a shrieking gobbling sound and backed away at high speed from the searing heat. The antiphoton blast had burnt out two of his eyes and cracked his carapace. At that moment his remaining back leg dropped off and he abruptly made the transition from adolescent to adult. With this sudden transformation came a new set of imperatives: the first of them survival.

On his four remaining, though unsteady legs, Vrell turned and ran.

Because of the ground’s vibration, Keech had steadied himself against a tree, but wished he hadn’t when a leech the size of his arm dropped on his head and coiled round his neck. He reached up and caught hold of its front end just as its questing mouth tried to take his ear off. Wrenching it away in disgust he hurled the leech to the ground then, knocking down the setting on his APW, he fired at the foul creature. The leech disappeared as the ground erupted in a purple blaze that threw up a wall of debris and hurled all three men backwards. The sound of the explosion echoed through the dingle.

‘It’s stopped,’ observed Keech, flinging a smouldering branch from across his chest, and standing up.

‘What?’ said Boris, sitting up and gazing about with a slightly stunned expression. After a moment, he located the SM and rested his hand on it.

‘The shaking, the ground’s stopped shaking,’ explained Keech.

‘Yeah,’ said Roach. ‘And didn’t you say something earlier about that damn gun’s settings being screwed?’

Keech flashed him a look of annoyance then turned to Boris. ‘You OK?’

Boris pulled a sliver of wood from his shoulder, then nodded. He stooped and picked up SM13 and carefully brushed ash out of the ribbed pattern of the machine’s casing. At that moment light flashed in the sky, then the sky darkened. Clouds like bruises swirled overhead, then were dragged into lines.

‘Some kind of explosion — probably Prador weapons,’ Keech observed as he moved on.

He’d gone perhaps ten paces when the same piglike shriek they had heard earlier came from ahead of him, accompanied by the sound of something crashing through the dingle.

‘It’s all happenin’ now,’ muttered Roach, as he and Boris came up behind Keech.

Tracking the noisy progress of whatever it was out there, Keech then moved on again.

Shortly they came to the path recently broken through the dingle. Here peartrunk trees had been pushed aside and discarded branches crushed flat. Keech glanced both ways along it, then turned to the others.

‘What is that?’ he asked flatly.

Roach just could not prevent himself looking sneaky, while Boris stared at the ground like a guilty schoolboy.

Keech went on, ‘It’s the Skinner, isn’t it?’

Boris mumbled something.

‘What?’ Keech snapped.

‘The Skinner,’ Boris explained. ‘Reckon it found its body, then someone else found it.’

‘Hoop?… They’re killing Hoop?’

‘I reckon.’

Keech glared at the both of them, then turned into the path heading in the direction from which those squeals had come. Boris plodded after him without comment. Roach looked rebellious for a moment, then sighed and followed as well. They walked with more caution now, because of leeches in the crushed foliage, but even more because of what they were following. Ahead of them, they heard that squealing yet again, and all three of them halted. Keech stared at the settings on his weapon for a moment. He was just about to continue along the path, when Roach caught his shoulder.

‘Someone comin’,’ the crewman warned.

Keech gestured off to one side, and the three of them quickly moved into the shade of a tilted pear-trunk tree. Three other people soon appeared on the track behind them.

‘That you I see sneaking about in there, Roach?’ said Captain Ron.

‘It weren’t my fault,’ said Roach.

Keech stood up and stepped into the open. Janer momentarily followed him with the raised snout of his laser, then guiltily lowered it.

‘Seen any Skinners hereabouts?’ asked Ron.

Keech looked at him sharply.

‘Can’t miss him,’ continued Ron. ‘Big blue fella even uglier than Roach, and thoroughly pissed off. He went this way.’

Keech glanced farther up the track they had been following. He gave a grim smile. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Sniper scanned the atolls lying far to the right of him, and tried once again to get a signal through.

‘Hey, Warden! What the hell are you doing?’

This time — the first time in many minutes — the Warden replied. ‘What I am doing, Sniper, is decoding a Prador thrall-controller-code, and I would be thankful if there were no more interruptions.’

‘What about us?’ Sniper asked.

‘Head for the island, and take over there from Twelve. This is not yet finished,’ the Warden replied, then disconnected.

‘You hear that? We’ve got to go and take over from Twelve,’ spat Sniper, who always started to get a little tetchy when he didn’t have anything convenient to blow up.

‘Wonderful,’ said Two, who was developing a definite sarcastic mien.

‘Right on,’ said One, who was still a bit wobbly since receiving the Prador rail-gun hits.

Six never even got a chance to reply, as an explosion knocked it tumbling off course, then a second missile blew it into red-hot scrap.

‘Scatter!’

One enforcer drone shot into the sky and two planed out to the left. Sniper went right, heading for the atolls. On his cleaned-up radar return, he got nothing for a moment, then the two Prador war drones shot up out of the sea and, ignoring the two enforcers, both came after him.

‘Great,’ Sniper muttered, then sent to them, ‘Why don’t you go play hopscotch on a black hole?’

The Prador replied with two missiles each.

‘Touchy,’ Sniper sent — abruptly changing direction and leaving a cloud of chaff behind him. The missiles went through the chaff, swung round, and zeroed in on him again. Sniper shot up higher and released a cluster of little parachute mines. These mines perfectly intersected the course of the missiles as they changed direction. Two of the missiles blew and one went tumbling off course, corrected, then shot back towards the explosion of the others. It, too, detonated shortly after.

‘Mmm, heat-seeking.’

Sniper arced over and accelerated towards the atolls, with the remaining missile closing in. He went low to the surface and headed straight in for one of the atolls. The missile meanwhile drew closer and closer. At the last moment, Sniper shut off his fusion engine and dropped straight down into the sea. The missile went over him and, with its sensors confused by the sudden disappearance of the heat source it was pursuing, did not correct in time and slammed straight into the atoll.

Submerged in the shallow water, close to the atoll’s narrow beach, Sniper raised his antennae and scanned. The two Prador drones were still heading right for where he had gone in.

‘Right, how you gonna get out of this one, big shot?’ Sniper muttered to himself. Still in the water he hurriedly altered programs and fed them into his smart missiles. That Prador missile that had tumbled away had given him a bit of an idea. As the Prador drones drew closer, he shot up into the air, paused for half a second, then fired off four missiles. One missile hit a screen and exploded, one exploded under rail-gun fire, the remaining two simply tumbled away — and the Prador came hammering on in. Sniper accelerated for the atoll, then was knocked sideways as rail-gun fire was trained on him. He felt his plates buckling and a couple of his legs fell away. Turning in midair, he opened up with his APW — a short burst only as there was little power left in the laminar batteries. One of the Prador swerved out of the way, but the other continued in for the kill.