Carl didn't react for a moment, which Cormac hoped meant his jibe had struck home. Carl eventually replied with, "It doesn't matter. In a little while a great many trained ECS soldiers will be turned to ash, which will more than make up for Separatist losses here."

Where the hell was he? Cormac just could not locate the source of his voice—doubtless some effect of the surrounding vegetation.

"Seems to me your ash will be mixed in too—you don't have any transport out of here now," he said.

"Ah but I do," Carl replied. "I've got an ATV on the way in to pick us up. Tick tick tick, Cormac. It's a shame you won't feel the fire with the rest, since I'll shortly be in position to get a clear shot at you."

The comment was obviously designed to drive him from cover, but nevertheless it might be true. He surveilled everything within view, but could not yet see any sign of Carl. Where was the CTD?

"I won't let you detonate that CTD, Carl," he tried.

"Tick tick tick—there's nothing you can do to stop it now," he said.

Cormac unshouldered the tool bag, reached inside and set the bomb timer to three seconds.

"Where is it?" he asked, expecting no answer.

"Why it's in the ruin of course," Carl told him. "Do you think you can get to it in time? I suggest you start running now before I finish adjusting the sight on this knackered old pulse-rifle."

Another attempt to drive him from cover, but he had to do something. He did not know Carl's position, but he did know the position of the trooper who had opened fire on him earlier, and could maybe do something about him. He dropped his twinned pulse-rifle and stood, sliding his back up the tree and hanging the handles of the tool bag from his right hand. Reaching across he took a slow breath, reached in the bag and hit the priming button, then stepped out to the left, spun and hurled the bag like a hammer straight toward where the trooper was hiding. Pulse-gun fire cut past the other side of the skarch, then jerked across, slamming into fibrous wood just as he ducked for cover again. The trooper had targeted the side of the skarch to his own left, expecting that that would be the side a right-handed gunman would break cover from. Had he been any less proficient, Cormac might be dead now.

Cormac grabbed up his twinned pulse-rifle. The detonation immediately followed, blasting fire and debris past him. He waited a moment more, to be sure he wouldn't be hit by flying objects, then ducked from cover again, this time from the other side of the skarch.

The bomb had obviously landed by the base of the half-fallen skarch. Long woolly splinters of smoking wood were pointing at the sky. The blast had excavated a crater and fire was spreading through the papyrus-like leaf-litter surrounding it. The skarch, obviously released from its final attachment to the ground, had crashed down flat. Cormac circled it quickly, coming in behind. He saw a backpack by the fallen trunk and three other objects. One of these was a smaller pack of pulse-rifle forestocks—those containing the power supply and aluminium dust charge. The other two objects were feet, protruding from underneath the heavy trunk. Ducked low, because Carl was still out there somewhere. Cormac ran over, then quickly stretched upright to look over the fallen trunk. The man was scrabbling at the ground, but he wasn't going anywhere. Cormac considered putting a shot through his head when something smashed into the back of his own legs.

It felt as if the world had been pulled from underneath him and he crashed down beside the trunk. All the wind seemed to have been knocked out of him. Where was his gun? He looked around for it and realised he'd dropped it over the other side of the trunk. Then his attention focused on his legs. They were smoking. His left leg was bloody and charred, but his right leg was worse—all the flesh flensed away from knee to ankle, just the bones there, blackened.

"I told our friend there I was going to get round behind you," said Carl. "But I thought it better to just step back and use him as bait."

Cormac looked up, just in time to get a rifle butt straight in his face. Next he felt hands checking over his clothing, flipping him over and checking again. All he could do was struggle ineffectually until Carl kicked him over onto his back again.

"So you escaped," said Carl.

Cormac dragged himself backwards. He needed to get up, needed to stop this… Carl was squatting in front of him, gazing at him curiously.

"But I don't think you are an agent, not now," Carl continued. "Running straight down to the ruin was a dumb mistake of the kind they don't make."

Cormac tried to shrug casually, but it didn't come off that well. The agony was rolling up from his legs in waves and he was starting to shake violently. Carl stood, walked over to the backpack and picked it up by its straps. He walked round Cormac, climbed up onto the trunk and walked along it to where it rested between two upright skarches, then, shouldering the pack, he found handholds on its scaly exterior and climbed. Twenty feet up he hung the pack straps from a large, dry leaf bud, then climbed back down again. Pausing halfway back along the trunk he drew his thin-gun again then jumped down on the other side. After a moment came a shot. A sound Cormac had only been half aware of from the other side of the trunk, ceased at once. Carl had just killed the trapped man. There came further sounds, then Carl dropped down beside Cormac.

"It's a shame," he said, "but I haven't the time to get him out from under there, and he would be a bit of a burden if I did." Carl checked the time display imbedded under the fingernail of his right forefinger. "My ride should be here shortly. In an hour we'll be beyond the blast perimeter." He gazed up at where he had hung the CTD from the skarch, took a remote control device from his pocket, pointed it up there and pressed a button. It beeped, then he hurled the remote away.

"I'm not going to kill you, Cormac," he continued. "In fact, if you can climb that skarch, you might even be able to save yourself and over a thousand ECS troops." He smiled. "Ciao," then he stood and walked away.

Cormac felt his consciousness fading. He tried to fight it, drifted, jerked back into a world of pain at the sound of an ATV pulling away. No chance of climbing that fucking oversized weed—he doubted he would be able to even get himself up onto the fallen trunk. But there was another option: his rifle. Laboriously, using one workable and one maimed arm, he began dragging himself along the ground to the other side of the fallen trunk.

Blackout.

Cormac recovered consciousness in a panic, having no idea how long had passed, for he possessed no handy timepiece under his fingernail. Dragging himself on he finally reached the crater. The ground all around was smouldering, and he must drag himself through embers to reach his goal. He did so, and it added little to the agony he was already suffering. The dead man came into sight and Cormac looked around frantically for his weapon, any weapon… They were gone. Carl must have picked them up and hurled them away. Cormac lay there with his face in the fibrous leaf-litter, swearing, but without much energy and with his voice slurred. It would be so nice just to stay in that position and wait until everything went away.

Cormac forced his head up, turned and began crawling away from the fallen trunk. Somewhere out here lay his weapon and maybe others. He couldn't see them, but surely there was a chance…

The thing crashed through the skarch canopy like a giant ingot of lead. Cormac gazed in bewildered recognition upon a nightmare iron scorpion scrambling through the leaf-litter towards him. It poised above him, silhouetted against the sky, huge, long claws each over a foot long opening and closing, then those claws came down and closed upon his body. Something groaned and he felt the hard metal digging into his torso as those claws tucked him underneath a head sporting lethal weaponry and green peridot eyes. Acceleration. The thing now crashed up through a canopy and Cormac glimpsed acres of dead forest below like a maize field long overdue for harvest. The last thing he saw was a searingly bright light igniting and the disc of a shockwave spreading out from it, shredding the skarches in its path.