Read Polity 1 - Prador Moon for Free Online

suggested.
    “No, evacuation. All the runcibles are open port and the AI is getting people out as fast as it can.” He glanced at Jebel. “ECS dreadnoughts out there. You know what will probably happen when they engage that Prador mother ship, and there seems little doubt that they will.”
    Jebel understood: a station, in close proximity to whatever battle ensued, would be highly vulnerable—a liability. That did not, however, make him feel any better about it.
    A row of med bays lay just down from the unit. Urbanus drew to a halt before one door, stood gazing at it for a moment, then stepped aside pushing Jebel back. The door opened and an auto-stretcher planed out—-the woman upon it unconscious and clad head to foot in one of those tight suits Jebel recognised as the kind normally worn after major skin replacement. Urbanus guided him through the door to where two med-techs oversaw five surgical slabs and five menacing autodocs. Three of the slabs were occupied and on one of them a vaguely human figure was being tugged about by two of the docs. Jebel spied shattered ribs splayed out, blood-filled tubes and a lung inflating, legs gone at the knee and charred, weeping skin. The rest was a blur of gleaming appendages, the low droning of bone and cell welders, hissing, sucking and crunching sounds. He directed his gaze elsewhere.
    “This is him?” asked a thin, blonde-haired woman who poised over another autodoc, reprogramming it. She shot a glance at his missing arm. “Yes, I see it is.” Turning, she picked up the case Urbanus had brought from the other med bay, opened this and took out the Golem hand and forearm. “Up on the slab.”
    Jebel hesitated, feeling this was going too quickly.
    “On the slab now!” the woman bellowed. “I've people dying out there!”
    Jebel obeyed, guilty because his wound could have waited, and because he was receiving treatment ahead of others in greater need. And why? Because he had been trained in causing precisely the kind of injuries this woman must now treat. He lay back, felt the nerve blocker go into his neck without further delay, and his body turn into a numb piece of steak from below there. Then the autodoc whirred into place over his arm stump as if preparing to dine. Jebel closed his eyes.
    * * * * *
    Moria gazed up at what was now a familiar image to her, this time appearing on the public screen aboard the shuttle taking her back to the Trajeen cargo runcible: the big Prador chopping the human ambassador in half. Now the presenters were waxing lyrical in reference to this attack on the Polity's
    
     Avalon
    
     as that story slowly began to be displaced by stories of other attacks.
    “Well,” said Carolan Prentis, from the seat beside her, “xenobiologists have been crying about the lack of sentient aliens we've encountered. I wonder how they feel now?”
    Still feeling a little shaken, and thoroughly annoyed with herself, Moria glanced at her companion. Carolan wore her blue runcible-technician overall with the same pride as Moria, though her project ranking was lower. Her elfin face, which was undoubtedly the product of cosmetic surgery, reminded Moria of something out of a VR fantasy game (Moria grimaced at the analogy—who was she to know the difference between fantasy and reality?), though Carolan's dark brown eyes with their green flecks and her incongruous cropped blonde hair seemed likely to be the product of genetics. Undoubtedly some ancestor of Carolan's had undergone genetic redesign, for on each wrist a wheel tattoo overlaid scars where spur fingers had been excised.
    Moria turned away, gazing internally as her aug—now with the diagnostic finished and her netlink re-established—loaded information from various searches and began rebuilding programs she had earlier deleted. It surprised her to find this woman on the same shuttle as herself. Her surprise doubled to see Carolan now wore an aug too—coincidentally having visited Copranus City for a