The missiles he fired moved ahead of the ship quite slowly. Cormac focused beyond them, pulling up images in his gridlink and on one of the subscreens. One of the rod-ships had drawn very close to the rearmost shuttle—less than fifty yards away from it. At present relative speeds, no missile would reach the assailant before it reached its target. Perhaps it would be forced to slow, as laser strikes were turning its front end blue-black and it trailed smoke and occasionally belched oily flame from splits in its surface. Suddenly, however, the attacking object surged ahead, as if finding some grip on the very air. It thumped down on the shuttle and stuck to it. Cormac instantly cancelled it as a target.

Com: ‘Shuttle Two, gravharnesses now. Get out of there!’

Shuttle and rod-ship began to plummet. Cormac tracked them tightly and kept focused in. The rod-ship deflated as it extruded a hundred rootlike growths to wrap around the shuttle.

‘The lock’s jammed, screens covered,’ came Bhutan’s reply. ‘Will attempt to blow—’ Just then the beleaguered shuttle’s drive abruptly cut out and, encompassed in a mass of organic growth, it began tumbling through the sky. Screams issued over com, and Cormac listened only briefly before he shut down the connecting comlink and instantly sent transmissions to the other shuttles instructing them to accept nothing further on that channel. Sparkind did not scream easily, but Cormac knew just how quickly Jain technology could take control of a human being. Then, in the time it took him to blink, the white flash then massive blast of a tactical CTD erased the shuttle. Someone aboard had retained enough presence of mind to know they would not be getting out of there alive, and took the enemy with them.

Belatedly, two further explosions as a pair of the missiles destroyed the last two attackers.

‘That could have gone—’ Cormac began, but suddenly a shadow drew across the sky, and under it a bright light flared. Before the sound of the explosion impinged, horizon and jungle were already whipping past the screen. Then came the massive blast and Blegg’s vessel was spinning and falling through burning debris. Cormac considered warning the dracomen to brace themselves for impact, and rejected the idea. It seemed pointless to state the obvious.