‘Your client has told me that, in due course, Ian Cormac will go to the planet Viridian,’ said Pelter. Grendel was moving back. His two heavies had their hands poised over their stomach holsters and were looking questioningly at the back of Grendel’s head.

‘What is this, Pelter? You’re offline,’ Grendel said.

Pelter went on. ‘On Viridian I will be waiting for Cormac and there I will kill him. Your client’s intentions in this matter are not clear to me.’

Suddenly Mr. Crane surged forwards, his shoes kicking up sparks from the plascrete. As he had before he grabbed the two shaveheads by the fronts of their shipsuits and lifted them high in the air. A gun clattered to the ground and a second one flashed. There was a thump and smoke rose from Mr. Crane’s coat. There was no visible effect on him. He slammed the two men together and dropped them. One of them lay with his skull distorted and an eyeball displaced. Blood poured from his nostrils. The other man had managed to get his arms up in time. He was still alive and trying to drag himself away with two broken arms. Grendel turned and looked with horror at his two protectors. He turned back to Pelter.

‘You can’t do this. My client . . . they will come for you,’ he said.

Pelter shook his head. He tapped his organic aug. ‘You are the control here. I said I would not be controlled. Your client—’ he spat the word ‘—is too far away to have that much influence. Without you, there is no one here to give orders.’ He looked round at Mennecken and Corlackis. ‘Kill him,’ he said.

The two mercenaries straightened up. Stanton saw the confusion leave their expressions. Now they knew what they were doing. Two pulse-guns thumped as Grendel gave a frightened yell. The two hits caved in his chest, but such was his bulk that he did not immediately go over. A third hit took his arm off at the elbow, and a fourth took off the top of his head. Amazingly he walked a couple of paces after this before going over and sagging on the ground like a rotten fruit.

‘What was that all about?’ Stanton asked Pelter.

The Separatist tapped his organic aug. ‘Dragon, trying to get control of me through him.’ He pointed at the sagging bulk. ‘He already had Svent and Dusache and a few hundred others here.’

‘Dragon. You mean that Aster Colora—’

‘Yes, I mean precisely that.’

‘What about the others now?’

‘It’s subtle control. He no longer has it.’

There was the thump of a pulse-gun to Stanton’s left. He looked over and saw that Mennecken had finished off the remaining shavehead. Mr. Crane was standing close and gazing down at the body, his head moving birdlike. Pelter glanced at him and Crane froze.