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

appetite for fresh meat steadily stripped from screaming and terrified enemies.
    “Good, I thank you, Father-Captain,” said Taiken respectfully. “Where are we going?”
    “I have yet to decide,” Sverl replied, shutting down the communication and sending the signal to open the big door into Quadrant Four.
    Sverl had no idea what he was going to do with these refugees. One option would be to dump them on another inhabited Graveyard world. But wouldn’t doing so just make another world a target for Cvorn? Of course it would. The only way they could truly be safe would be if he were to head for the border lying between the Graveyard and the Polity and hand them over to the AIs. Sverl had a problem with that. Beside the quite possibly lethal consequences of taking a prador dreadnought right to the Polity border, he knew that the Polity AIs were very interested in the works of Penny Royal, and they had to know he was one of them. He felt that if they did not inadvertently destroy him and his ship, they would try to grab him.
    So what to do?
    Sverl watched the main crowd from Carapace City enter his ship, then the seemingly endless stream of stragglers. He watched the first arrivals divide up various areas and select living spaces. They set up toilets connected into the ship’s waste systems, powered up human lighting, then toned it down to the correct ambiance for shell people, and began settling in. Outside he watched Bsorol, another first-child called Bsectil and five second-children who, in their suits, were indistinguishable from their older siblings, working their way around the landing feet and shoving the charges down into rock which had the consistency of thickening porridge. Next, through a watch post established on an islet jutting up far out in the ocean, he observed the approaching blast front from Cvorn’s kamikaze.
    A deep purple band extended across the horizon and steadily thickened, an anvil of grey cloud generating above it and then itself extending all the way across the horizon too. Multiple lightning flashes lit this scene as of a million arc welders working all at once. The purple band and the cloud melded into one and took on the appearance of a massive roller. This grew larger as it drew closer to the islet, finally occupying all space from the surface of the sea up to high in the atmosphere—a great curved wall the colour of human bruises. Ahead of it Sverl noted that the ocean had mounded and that when it finally arrived at Carapace City there would be a tsunami. However, making some rapid AI calculations, he worked out that the growing pressure inside the closing blast front would squeeze the ocean back out, and the resulting wave would actually be small. Also ahead of this front, gunshots of lightning perpetually stabbed down into the sea, as if intent on clearing the way for it. One of these fried Sverl’s watch post and abruptly cut off his view.
    Half an hour remained now as Bsorol and his crew returned through a maintenance hatch. One last party of humans was making its way up the ramp—two shell people guiding a small grav-raft on which they had mounted an amniotic tank, its occupant a shellman who had recently undergone drastic surgery. Doubtless the reason for their delay was in finding a way to shift his life-support gear. As they reached the head of the ramp, Sverl began to close it, then paused when he spotted two more shell people heading out from the city. Of course, though he had extensive surveillance of the city, he could not see into every nook and cranny, and there could be other refugees too.
    It had been Sverl’s intention to lift off and get into orbit before the blast front arrived, which meant he needed to close the ramp now and leave those two out there—and any coming behind them—to die. However, his ship was more than resilient enough to ride out the storm, especially anchored as it was. He decided to leave the ramp down and close it just before the blast front