Landing directly on top of the Separatist encampment would remove any element of surprise, since the shuttle’s arrival would be detected long before. This highway for the massive agrobots was the nearest place to the encampment for a shuttle to find a plausible reason for landing. Aelvor had somehow caused the agrobot to break down at this point, so anyone listening and watching would think their shuttle contained a maintenance crew. It was a good plan since, on foot, dracomen could cover the intervening terrain very quickly. Thorn, being very fit and physically strong, and possessing reserves at their maximum, could also have covered the forty miles of forest easily enough, but in his case it was a question of how fast. He remembered once running with Scar through the foothills of the Masadan mountains, hunting a hooder on which they intended to plant transponders so that the monstrous predator’s location would always be known. Their pace then had been an even jog, and Thorn had thought it time they picked it up a little.

‘Can you go any faster than this?’ he had asked the dracoman on that occasion.

Scar fixed him with that big-eyed gaze, ‘Can you?’ Thorn accelerated until he was running full-pelt along the stony trail. He glanced at Scar and saw that the dracoman’s pace seemed almost unchanged, yet still he kept up.

After a moment Thorn said, ‘Show me, then.’

One moment Scar was loping along beside him, the next moment he took off like an ostrich, kicking up wet shale as he accelerated. Thorn watched him go, tracked him moving further along the path, then turning left up the slope until soon out of sight. After about five minutes he heard something approaching to his rear, and glanced back to see the dracoman speeding up behind him. Scar again settled to that jogging pace beside him.

‘In miles per hour?’ Thorn had asked.

‘Ninety to a hundred ... on level ground,’ Scar replied.

‘Okay, maybe we’ll stick to my pace for now.’

It was a chastening memory.

Thorn now returned to the shuttle, donned his VR headgear, and began selecting views to observe. Soon the dracomen moved from tangled growth to clearer ground below the trees. They picked up their pace and became more visible, as their skin failed to compensate fast enough to the changing surroundings. Then, again almost as one, they returned to their natural coloration.

‘Scar,’ he said over com, ‘let me know when you’re about to attack. I’ll then launch and head over towards you. That might provide further distraction.’

Scar’s reply was merely a grunt, whereupon Thorn decided to shut up, sit back, and enjoy the show. A half-hour more of forest scenes resulted in him impatiently removing the headgear to go in search of a tab-pull coffee from the shuttle’s supplies. Returning to his seat and replacing the helmet, the first thing he heard was Scar’s voice: ‘We attack.’