‘Back it up. Back it up,’ yelled Keech, the snout of his APW flicking from the Skinner to Frisk, then back again. Janer knew that with the setting randomized, as Keech had explained earlier, the monitor could not risk taking a shot with Erlin and Anne so close to his targets.

Abruptly the male mercenary turned and ran. The other one, the woman, stayed by Frisk’s side, abruptly opening up on the slab behind which Ambel and Ron were crouching. Shells exploded against the rock, flaking off large chunks of it and showering them both with hot splinters.

Janer drew a bead on the Batian woman and let the autosight pick her up. He pulled the trigger and saw her flung back, her crabskin armour flaming and smoking. She rolled away and, still clutching her weapon, scrabbled for cover.

Frisk snatched up the laser she had dropped earlier, pointed it straight at Anne’s head, and pulled the trigger, then pulled it again and again, raging as nothing happened. Janer swung his carbine towards her, but the auto-sight kept tracking back to the fallen mercenary. So he fired on manual and set a tree behind Frisk to smoking. Frisk threw her useless weapon on the ground, then turned and ran. Janer let the sight slip back to the female mercenary, but she had now made it to cover.

‘Clear shot,’ said Keech distinctly.

Janer assumed he meant on Frisk. He did not.

A purple flash lit the air as the Skinner was knocked flat. It howled in fury.

Just then, Ron leapt from behind the rock slab with his machete raised.

‘We’ll finish it!’ he bawled, charging towards the fallen monster. Janer tried another shot at Frisk as she dodged through the trees, missed, then swore and looked around. Boris and Roach had vanished, though he hadn’t seen them go. Keech suddenly rose and leapt out of hiding. The monitor fired once into the woods and a muted purple flash showered burning leaves some distance behind the escaping Frisk. Then he turned and looked over towards the Skinner. Ambel came running to stand at his side.

‘You’ll kill it,’ he said flatly. As Ambel nodded, Keech went on, ‘Then Frisk is mine.’

The monitor set off at a trot down the slope taken by Frisk.

Ambel went after Ron, who had nearly reached the fallen Skinner. Janer followed.

It had all become just too much. The work offered by Svan had seemed attractive enough at the time: a month at most spent on a low-tech world where apparently Sable Keech had arrived, without backup. It had been described to him as a job combining protection of the client, who would meet them there, with the burning of a few natives, and which would culminate with the hit on Keech, for which they would receive a bonus on top of their usual daily rate. However, from that first moment of incredible luck, stepping out in the shuttle and seeing Keech right before them, it had all started to go terribly wrong.

First Nolan being blown away by a dead man, then a rhinoworm trying to bite their dinghy in half and deposit them in a leech-infested sea, then that screwup on Tay’s island, then the journey in the Prador spacecraft with those monstrous stinking creatures all around, then — after finding a suitable ship — the swim through the sea with leeches grating at his armour and other things trying to drag him down. He hadn’t believed the stories about Hoopers, until he’d seen how hard they really were to kill, until he’d seen what happened to the hardest and most professional of his comrades, until he’d seen Dime the… There had been no relief after that. He’d relaxed his guard for just a moment and lost two fingers to a thing out of an ancient cartoon. Then the prill… Tors screaming…

Shib ran blindly. He didn’t know where he was going. He just wanted to be anywhere that thing back there wasn’t. The sails, the prill and the frog whelks were bad, and the leeches worse still. His insides folded with shame at how he’d reacted, but there had been nothing else. He’d just been unable to move. Even the pain of that leech grinding into his face hadn’t unlocked his paralysis of fear. Now… now that thing…

When it had stepped out of the trees behind the black woman, Shib had questioned his own sanity. There were horrible things on many worlds, and he had seen several of them, but this thing was beyond all that. It was something out of fairy tales and hell. It was evil. He had felt that instantly. With this thing there could only be pain and horror. Yet it had once been a man. He’d waited desperately for the order to fire on it, waited for Svan herself to open up on it, longed to see it obliterated.

‘Jay, darling.’

That had been enough and Shib had cracked. No way. Just no way. I’m gonna kill the bogeyman. Only it didn’t die. The shells he fired made holes in its diseased-looking body, but it just howled and looked even more pissed off. He felt shame again that he was running. But at least that thing was behind him now.

And, as he ran, Shib slowly began to regain control of his fear. As he slowed down and glanced back, he heard the sounds of a firefight. Perhaps if he circled round and attacked those newcomers from behind… No. Svan wouldn’t be convinced. She knew he had run and would kill him for it. There was no give in her when it came to things like that. Gasping, Shib came to a halt. There had to be some other way off this island — off this planet. Perhaps if he directly contacted the Warden, he might get picked up, turn over evidence and testimony…

Movement to the right. In one motion, Shib dropped, turned and fired. His shot cut between the trees and the shell exploded out of sight. He backed up, realized with sudden horror that he was standing underneath a leech-infested peartrunk, then he turned and ran on.

Again: sounds. He was sure he heard running feet, human feet. Was it Svan come to deliver the Batian punishment for his desertion? Perhaps it was one of those others and he could cut a deal. Maybe there was an easier way out of here?

‘Shib, isn’t it?’ spoke a voice to his right. Shib stopped, dropped to one knee and brought his weapon up. This time, if anyone showed, he wouldn’t miss. But no sign — no sign of anyone.

‘You know, Shib,’ said the voice, this time further to one side. ‘Goss was three hundred and twenty-two years old, and she sure knew how to make a man happy.’

‘I reckon he ain’t interested in that,’ said another voice behind Shib. Shib turned and fired, then ducked and ran, expecting fire to be returned. He released one other shot in the direction of the first voice, abruptly changed course, saw perfect cover between two boulders and ducked into it.

‘He’s a nervy one, ain’t he, Boris?’ said the damnable second voice. It was close now.

‘Sprzzte phobe,’ said something else.

Shib glanced to either side. He could feel fear rising in him again. He shouldn’t have stopped here. He should have kept on running. Hoopers. Hoopers everywhere.

‘You all right down there?’ asked Roach, leaning over the rock.

Shib fired at him, but he was already gone.

‘Over here.’

Shib glanced to one side, where a Hooper with a long walrus moustache had now stepped into view. He was unarmed, but oddly held the burnt-out SM that Shib distinctly remembered throwing into the sea. Then the mercenary recognized this Hooper — and also the one he had seen just before. This one had gone into the sea, and the other they had left tied to the mast of a burning ship. They had survived, but not for much longer. Shib swung the snout of his weapon round as the Hooper tossed the SM towards him.

‘Here, catch,’ the Hooper said.

‘Sprzzzt,’ said the SM, and abruptly accelerated. It slammed into Shib’s stomach, and his shot went wild and blew a crater in the ground before him. He tried to bring his weapon to bear again, couldn’t get his breath. Then the other Hooper was beside him and he had time only to see the man’s grin before a fist like a lump of rock came speeding towards his face.