Mira silenced them with a chopping gesture. There was movement in the shadows at the end of the tunnel. Wind whispered and there was a scrabbling sound. She felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Was there an infrasonic component to the sound? Did the machine deliberately manipulate fear reflexes? Of course it did. Needles, guns and emotions were all weapons in its arsenal, why else would it erect such banners as the corpse hanging before them now?
She felt a vibration through her feet as a great mass began to move. The machine could have sent a horde of metal ants to infiltrate the chinks of their armour or it could have induced currents in the surrounding metal to burn them. Instead, it approached, and that could only be to present itself.
Suddenly a fanfare echoed down the passage and a hard violet light flared. Their visors filtered the extremes of light and they were able to make out the shape of the thing that crept toward them. It was, like most manshonyaggers, approximately in the form of a large black beetle with a heavy, sleek body supported between jointed legs and ornamented with the bosses and flanges of its various sensor and weapon systems. Multiple heads fanned out from its fore-portion and mobile clusters of lenses glinted like strange, elaborate crowns.
The machine stopped a few paces away. Whip-antennae uncoiled and feathery olfactory sensors licked the air. Mira stood her ground, hardly out of courage because there was now no point in flight. It was a colossal risk to even allow the machine to find her party and her only hope now was to play whatever game the thing intended and turn it to their own end. Her bowels tightened. She held up her diskos and let it roar and send out its own clean blue light. “Lordling!” she shouted, as if addressing a human. “Name yourself!”
