‘Disappointed,’ he panted over his shoulder, ‘with the Parthenon war machine. Aren’t you supposed to be as good as a hundred Colonials, or something?’
He couldn’t see the expression behind her visor. ‘Low on ammo,’ she said curtly. ‘All that chain shot. Don’t want to get down to fists.’
A moment later and he thought he’d lost track of Kris and Trine entirely, but it was him going off course. Solace had to snag his arm and haul him back on track. Then Kris yelled out a warning and there was gunfire dead ahead, whickering through the crowded spaces between trunks and hacking out explosive splinters of not-quite-wood.
Solace forged past and he saw two scars appear on her armour, the force of the impact sending her stumbling left. Just projectile shot, nothing that would cut through her protection, but worse could come next.
‘Go!’ she ordered the three of them. ‘Go, keep going. I’ll catch up.’
Kris looked rebellious but she had literally brought a knife to a gunfight and it wasn’t enough. Another yell from Solace sent them plunging deeper into the jungle, struggling up a rise using twisting roots as a ladder and startling a pack of metre-long hopping things. The air whined with tiny specks of life, swarming in glittering helices wherever the sunlight broke through the canopy. And all around them the locals were ramping it up, a cacophony of clattering and booming as various monsters registered their displeasure.
‘Idris, where are you going?’ Kris shouted, and he realized he’d just gone off again. He’d veered to the top of a rise, stubbled with trees standing out like hairs on a fright wig. He slithered halfway back down, whacking his knee hard on a trunk he swore had lurched into his path. This damned planet. Kris and Trine were waiting for him. From somewhere behind he heard a scream and then sobbing: a man’s voice, not Solace.
‘My old acquaintance, my fellow veteran, would you just not?’ Trine demanded testily. They had abandoned an upright posture entirely for the rough going, using all their arms to skitter about, legs arched high like a grasshopper’s. And then Idris’s lips moved and he said, ‘This way.’ The words came from the part of him he wasn’t quite on speaking terms with, the same part that knew unspace and had touched the mind of a destructive god.
‘What?’ Kris looked up the rise. ‘No way. We need to stay low.’
His mind filled with attempts at explanation, but he didn’t have the words and they didn’t have the time. ‘Just . . . this way.’ And then he was off, trusting that she’d follow him and Trine wouldn’t want to be left alone. Trusting that Solace would find them. Trusting . . . trusting himself, which was a hard thing to do at the best of times. Ints go mad, everyone knows that. And nobody knew it better than an Int.
When Idris reached the top of the next rise he risked a look back and saw movement below. Solace had spotted them and was running their way – pausing for a moment to send a single shot back then picking up the pace again. Off to her right a sudden fit shook a couple of the trees as return fire lashed at them. Then he was scrabbling past the rise and running too, flat out running over the treacherous ground, Kris and Trine following behind him. Something had a hook in his mind and he battered through the clutching foliage, bounced off spiny trunks and fell headlong. He wrenched himself up from roots that tried to find out what he was made of and whether they could eat it. It’ll be real funny if there’s just a monster at the end of this with its mouth open, waiting for me.
Hilarious.
Then he saw a shadow through the trees: huge and grey. For a moment he thought it really was a monster, but he was pelting headlong, too fast to put the brakes on. He ended up slamming into a rough, overgrown wall and sitting down hard. Beside him, Trine scuttled to a halt, with Kris a dozen paces behind and gasping for breath.
‘What have you found?’ Trine’s clipped voice issued from their torso. ‘Menheer Telemmier, you creature of remarkable surprises, what’s this?’
‘Defence,’ he got out. ‘Walls.’ And then Solace was coming, virtually scooping up Kris on her way.
It was an Originator site, just a single structure – but it was tall, not just buried foundations. It reminded Idris of the abandoned shell of some marine mollusc. He could make out three concentric sets of walls with random holes in them, ending in jagged rock teeth about three metres up. The jungle had overcome its Originator squeamishness here, and trees had grown up close to the walls. Vines snaked over their pitted substance as though questing for meaning.