The drone light bobbed down into darkness, and Cormac caught a glimpse of mirrored reflection. He halted and punched a particular attack program into his shuriken’s holster, then took it out and tossed it into the air in front of him. It spun up and hung there, revolving like a metal-saw, but with its blades moving in and out as they had after it had destroyed the seeker bullet that had Cormac’s name on it. Cormac viewed it with suspicion: it was not supposed to do that. Tenkian, again. No one really knew what the weapon-smith did with his microminds, but it was often said that some of his weapons developed minds of their own, so to speak. Just so long as shuriken did its job, Cormac would be happy.

Twenty metres more and Cormac saw a flailing of chrome legs—as the drone light shot to the side of the tunnel and went out. He halted and listened at the dark. There was no alternative. He reached down to the holster and felt his way to the enable button. He pressed it and listened to shuriken whir away from him.

Only a few seconds after shuriken had gone there was a crashing from the darkness, and a familiar sound as of an air-compressor starting. He heard a scrabbling, the crash of a heavy body going down, then the metal-saw whine of shuriken striking. Sparks flared in the tunnel ahead and in their light Cormac caught a glimpse of a nightmarish shape. The sparks went out, flared again with a second strike, then a third, a fourth. When the only sound he could hear was the sound of those strikes, Cormac advanced, sending another drone light ahead of him.

The creature that lay dismembered on the tunnel floor resembled the one in the shaft on Samarkand only in that it was silvered and had insectile legs. Cormac realized immediately that the Maker had taken as its template the same centipedal things he had previously observed. Sure now that the creature was not going to be getting up again, he hit the recall on shuriken. It poised over the body with its blades going in and out, as if wondering whether to disobey and hit it again, but then it returned to its holster. Cormac plucked the drone light from the air, punched a different setting on it, and sent it out at a constant twenty metres ahead of him. A glance at the scanner showed some anomalous readings not so far ahead and a bit below: the Maker. He advanced.

* * *

Thorn stared up at the cave mouth and swore creatively, then pushed his hand against his stomach and winced. Mika had done an excellent job of knitting his intestines together, but no way was he in any condition yet to go potholing. He turned to her.

‘We shouldn’t have let him go alone,’ he said.