Free War Factory: Transformations Book Two by Neal Aher

lower holds there.”
    “Why?” Bsorol asked.
    “Because I am saving them all from the imminent destruction of their city.”
    “But why?” Bsorol asked again.
    Sverl mulled over various replies but knew none of them would make sense to Bsorol. He then realized how things needed to change. Perhaps the time had come to do something he had shied away from for many years. Perhaps he should allow Bsorol and his other children access to augmentation to widen their horizons. They needed to think beyond the mere instinctive urge to exterminate competitors, whether in other prador families or in alien races. But that was for the future. Right now only one option was available.
    “Because I want to and I am father-captain of this ship,” he replied. “And if you continue to question me in this manner you will shortly find yourself in a flash freeze case inside one of my kamikazes. Obey your orders, Bsorol.”
    “Yes, Father,” Bsorol replied, seemingly relieved at this simplicity.
    The ship had settled now and Sverl moved to insert his claws into pit controls. He then hesitated for a moment. By the speed of his reaction to Cvorn’s kamikaze, he had proved that his preference for using manual controls was foolish. He now mentally initiated the lowering of a ship’s ramp. This was the size of an ancient human aircraft carrier and had not been used before—it was intended for ground assault forces that Sverl had never carried. Meanwhile, he began closing bulkhead doors around the route to Quadrant Four and instructing his children in those tunnels and in the quadrant itself to depart. In their home territory his children could not be fully trusted with humans. He could order them to cause no harm, but defining that might be problematic. Since most of these humans were shell people, there could be confusion. The tap a prador would deliver to another of its kind to attract attention would leave even a shellman a quivering mess on the floor.
    The shell people outside were on the move again, rounding the ship to the lowering ramp, while more and more of them were coming out of the city. Luckily, the ramp would extend far enough from the ship for them not to have to cross rock melted by the ship’s engines and now still glowing with red heat as it solidified. Focusing in on those leading, Sverl saw that Taiken and his family were now at the forefront on a grav-raft—on its side the words “Taiken Fuels”—while just ahead of this hovered the surfboard shape of the Polity drone.
    “I don’t remember extending an invitation to you, drone,” he said over the ever-open channel.
    Sure, Sverl had been enough distorted by the changes he was undergoing to want to rescue the shell people of Carapace City, but a Polity drone, an actual member of his erstwhile enemy? Now considering this notion further, he initiated some powerful scanning of the approaching horde using instrumentation he had acquired from the Polity, amalgamated with prador technology, and since enhanced using his own growing knowledge and abilities. Just a second later, scanning flagged up a Golem too.
    “I’ll be no trouble,” the drone asserted.
    “Bullshit,” said Sverl, slipping easily into human parlance as he opened armoured blisters in his ship’s hull and extruded Gatling cannons to target the drone and the two Golem now detected in the crowd. “You are not boarding my ship.”
    Further scan results began to come in, revealing something odd about one of the gravcars. It looked battered and old but, reading its emissions, Sverl realized its grav-motors were at ninety-nine per cent efficiency. A further hard probe scoured away the chameleonware concealing the fact that it could be vacuum sealed, contained twinned mini-fusion jets and onboard armament, along with a wide selection of lethal hand weapons, including proton rifles, within reach of the three people inside.
    “I’ve been instructed to offer what protection I can to these people,” the drone