Free War Factory: Transformations Book Two by Neal Aher Page A

replied, but it was now dropping back.
    The two men and the woman inside the car weren’t shell people. They could have been just anyone from off-world. Judging by their physiques, augmentations and weaponry, they could be enforcers for some criminal gang. Sverl thought otherwise.
    “You are not boarding my ship, drone,” he said, “nor are the Sparkind unit and that lead Polity agent—those Golem twenty-eights running insufficient chameleonware and the three in that interesting gravcar.”
    “There are Golem twenty-eights here?” said the drone innocently.
    “You have thirty seconds,” said Sverl, immediately setting the countdown running. “Admittedly the firepower I will have to use will kill many shell people, but I would rather that than have your kind aboard.”
    The reaction was instant. The gravcar abruptly swung round in the air and came down in a hard landing ahead of the approaching crowd. Already the two Golem were moving, frighteningly fast, but only towards the car and not to the ramp. They quickly piled into the car and it took off, lighting afterburners when it reached a hundred feet and streaking up into the sky, doubtless heading off to hitch a ride with one of the rescue ships up there. The drone rose to fifty feet and hung in the sky for a moment.
    “Well, it was a long shot but worth a try,” said the drone. “So long, Sverl . . . it’s been interesting.”
    “So long, drone,” Sverl replied, feeling quite odd as the drone swung round and shot up after the gravcar. He realized the sensation was regret and a kind of loneliness—both feelings that prador experienced infrequently.
    Taiken’s raft soon reached the foot of the ramp and began to ascend. Other vehicles followed it up and then the steadily tramping crowd—all weighed down with personal belongings. Scanning towards the city, Sverl watched the stragglers hurrying out. Next, checking through cams inside the city, he was surprised to find it, as far as he could judge, empty of life. Perhaps the drone had been wrong about him not getting them all. Perhaps it had so couched its warnings of the city’s impending destruction that all had heeded them. Then again, these were mainly shell people, whose worshipful attitude to the prador had brought them here.
    Over the next hour, the shell people trooped aboard the dreadnought. Sverl issued instructions in human speech over the ship’s PA system and, as Taiken’s raft approached the massive oval diagonally divided door into Quadrant Four, he contacted Taiken via a comunit the man carried on his reaverfish skin harness.
    “Taiken, you are about to enter one of the eight quadrants of this dreadnought. My children have vacated it and you have access to the hold spaces in its lower levels. I have closed the bulkhead doors to other quadrants and am sealing them. Do not try to open those doors. I will instruct my children to do you no harm but instinctive reactions cannot be discounted. Also, pressure changes in the rest of the ship, which my kind can tolerate, could well kill humans—even ones changed as you are. Any questions?”
    “I am familiar with the design of the interior of prador ships,” said Taiken in an irritatingly superior manner that Sverl knew was aimed at the shell people near him. “I know how to obtain water from the dip holes and we have the equipment to access the power supply and convert it for any of our Polity-manufactured equipment. However, we may have insufficient food, though that depends on how long we will be aboard this ship.”
    “There are forty-eight tons of reaverfish carcasses in the hold you have access to,” Sverl replied. “They were frozen shortly after capture so, with the required additives, are suitable for human consumption.”
    Usually, prador allowed such carcasses to decay for a while to render them more to the prador taste for stored meat. Sverl had found his tastes changing, for now he liked his stored meat undecayed and had lost his