An abrupt feeling of pain. Shut off. Ebulan lost contact with the blank that had just shot Pilot. He now sent the one over at the weapons console to go and look, and meanwhile transferred direct control to himself. Now he had full views outside, tracking on the attacking SMs, and could also see through his remaining blank’s eyes. He fired off the defensive lasers, shifted shields and strafed the sky with particle beams.

Pilot wasn’t dead - just a hole through his chest. Old Hooper. Ebulan’s blank drew his weapon, but his arm, and the hand holding the weapon, thudded to the deck.

Another attack from the SMs. Ebulan released five missiles on random trajectories to pull them off.

What? The last blank went too, collapsing into pieces. Pilot held a shell cutter, and was coming this way. What? Armoured doors were opening and closing back there. How? Something above, but now control codes were going haywire, and external vision was fading. Behind Ebulan, the shell cutter screamed as it bit into the armoured door. He spun around and stared at the door in horror, blind now to everything outside his ship.

* * * *

Sniper gazed down at the planet through the Prador drone’s eye pits, and all he got was an image in shades of grey. Well, he thought, if that was how they saw the universe, it was no wonder they were so unfriendly. Switching back to his remaining palp-eye he got the same image in panoramic colour, before turning that eye to the stars. Might be the last time he saw them, he thought, then berated himself for getting all slushy. Then reversing AG on his cobbled-together vehicle, he plummeted for the planet below.

‘Hey, Warden, what’s the SP?’ he asked.

‘Sniper, I see that underestimation of you has been somewhat of a fault in your enemies. Do you think you’ll manage to stay on target?’

‘Yeah, but I might not get there all in one piece.’

‘Then,’ said the Warden, ‘you’ll be glad to know that I’ve just broken the Prador control code, and the master of that ship is not having a very good time.’

‘Well, if you’ve broken the code, that means you’ve got some capacity spare to receive me,’ replied the war drone.

‘You’re prepared for subsumption then?’ asked the Warden.

‘Not really,’ said Sniper, ‘but it beats actually dying.’ As he said this, he felt the underspace link with the Warden open and consolidate. This was strictly his option, and it seemed like an open pit-trap to him. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘a guy once called me ugly inside and out.’

‘And what was your response to that?’ asked the Warden.

‘Cut his head off,’ Sniper replied, and so saying began to hum a tune over the ether. Then the old war drone grated out the words to a song: