by Jaine Fenn
‘We have things under control, at least for now, but I will call again if we need your help. Just rest and relax, Urien – and do not take any action that may reopen that wound!’
Though she would not burden him further with the details of the situation up above, if it looked like the Sidhe were about to retake the transfer-station Kerin resolved to warn Urien, so that he might flee. Not that she expected he would.
Taro had never really got his head round this ‘keeping fit’ fad, possibly because for most of his life he’d been too busy just staying alive. As he cranked the airlock shut behind him he could feel the sweat being sucked up by the v-suit. He allowed himself a few seconds to catch his breath before he got to work on the inner door.
As the door eased open his suit-light lit the familiar figure waiting for him on the far side, floating just above the floor. He was pleased to see Nual had appropriated one of the Setting Sun’s v-suits for herself; it might have some use as armour if it came down to a hands-on fight. He tried to com her, but her suit’s com wasn’t routed through the Heart of Glass’s system; something else they hadn’t had time to sort. Instead, he projected,
Taro tried not to get distracted by the intoxicating closeness of mindspeech.
Behind her, the transfer-station was in total darkness; the Setting Sun’s cargo-hold doors were shut, sealing the ship off from the transfer-station. He opened the airlock door just wide enough to get through, and squeezed out.
As they straightened after cranking the door, she grabbed him and he felt himself sucked deeper into her mind. He tried to ask
Jarek had watched Damaru with tech before, but he’d never seen anything quite like this. Except for his fingers, the boy was totally still. He had a half-smile on his face and a glazed look in his eyes. It was almost as though his consciousness had entered the machine – and given what he now knew about male Sidhe, it probably had.
It was ironic really, Jarek thought: the main threat Serenein’s space weaponry was designed to meet was not stray humans like him, but a concerted effort by the males, should they ever find this place. Yet here it was, being brought back online by a Sidhe male!
Jarek had another look around; while Damaru was deep in communion with the tech, his only function was to watch the boy’s back. A flash above caught his eye and set his heart racing, but it was gone before he could focus on it. He told himself not to panic: it was only the defences, doing their job. If anything, that should reassure him.
They rose slowly to hover just below the transfer-station’s ribbed ceiling.
Taro started as a faint tap sounded through the hull.
Taro knew about the mutes, the Sidhe’s human slaves: they had had their voices and wills stolen by their inhuman mistresses. He shuddered.
The resulting darkness was total, and Taro had to resist the temptation to hold Nual tighter in response. There was another faint tap, this one slightly louder.
Before Taro could object Nual stiffened in his arms. Then she exhaled.
Taro heard a new sound: someone was cranking open the inner door of the airlock. A beam of light played across the floor below them. Taro made himself breathe evenly. As the door opened he and Nual released their hold on each other and drifted a little way apart. The boarding party took the time to open the door fully, and then rushed in, way too quickly. They immediately lost their footing.
Taro swooped down and grabbed one of the stumbling figures. He felt a momentary resistance as the mute’s v-suit tried to hold its wearer to the floor, then he had him – and it was a him, too. For a moment the mute was too surprised to react, then he began to struggle. He was a bulky cove, and the v-suit made it hard to get a good grip. Time for a change of plan. Taro corkscrewed upwards; as he turned, he let go, flinging the mute away from him. The man cartwheeled off into the darkness in slow motion, his suit-light tracing a lazy arc. One down – or at least out of the way.
Two things registered on Taro’s consciousness at once. One was a dark and sensuous echo in his head. The other was a bright flash out in the real world.
He sussed the outside event first:
The world outside his head was moving with a pleasing precision and slowness, and he and Nual were already closing in on the second pair of potential victims, sweeping down wide and fast. The remaining mutes had got their collective act together and had their feet firmly anchored, so no chance of another snatch and grab. Just before the suit-light of the mute he was heading for briefly blinded him, he saw a raised hand, holding a weapon of some sort—
He jinked to the left, expecting a shot, but none came. Perhaps the cloak had hidden him, though with all this zipping around it was a bit of a liability. Too late to worry now. He adjusted course, coming in at head height, and slashed down and across, aiming for the mute’s neck. The blow connected, tearing suit and flesh, but Taro was already gone.
Taro’s target was wobbling comically, hands clasped to his neck; Nual’s second mute had lost his grip on the floor and was running on air, a slow spray of blood fountaining out from him. Taro could see there were still more than two unharmed mutes: three? No, four, at least – and they weren’t running away. The fight wasn’t over yet.
Damaru’s hand moved, a slight twitch of the fingers, though his face remained blank. He did it again. Jarek watched, fascinated, looking between the boy’s hand and his eyes.
Total stillness,
then another tiny jitter. Was Jarek imagining it, or was the boy looking somehow more here, more present in the real world, than he had been?
The jitter became a tapping and Damaru blinked, once. Slowly but steadily, he began to type.
Jarek held his breath. The screen remained blank.
A frown flitted across Damaru’s face. He tapped a finger on the flat-comp, three times. His gaze softened.
‘Come on,’ murmured Jarek, ‘You can do it.’
Taro shrugged his cloak out of the way and went in for another run. This time he got a solid hit: the mute was distracted by his two companions, who were dying messily around him, and he didn’t see his attacker until it was too late. He turned just in time to give Taro a clear target. The blade sliced deep into the mute’s throat, and blood spattered Taro before he could get clear. For a moment the scene was washed in red, until his suit absorbed the liquid and his visor cleared.
Nual was still struggling with her mute, but Taro, assessing the situation, decided she’d got it covered. He checked the door again: only one there now, a female, standing with her back to the door, nervously pointing a small pistol out into the dark. The hovering globs of blood appeared solid in the crazy flash of suit-lights, so the view was a bit muddled, but it looked like the door she was guarding was beginning to close. The last mute must’ve decided to leg it.
Taro was about to let Nual know the good news when her voice exploded in his head:
And something slammed into his back—
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Tap, tap, tap.
Jarek tried not to get irritated or impatient: if this was what Damaru needed to do, he should just let him get on with it.
Damaru gave up tapping the corner of the comp and started typing on the keyboard again, giving each key a solid thunk. Code entered, he lifted his fingers from the keyboard like a virtuoso ending a performance. As he did so the display on the inset screen changed.
CODE ACCEPTED.
‘Yes!’
Damaru started at Jarek’s exclamation, jerking his head back and blinking.
‘Sorry, Damaru, I didn’t mean to startle you – it’s just . . . You’ve done really well, Damaru. Really well.’
The screen displayed a new message: DEFENCE GRID RESTART IN PROGRESS.
Jarek grinned wildly, feeling some of the tension drain out of his shoulders. ‘I’ll get up first, Damaru, then I’ll help you. Understand?’
‘Understand.’ Damaru sounded tired but happy.
Jarek levered himself up and straightened slowly. He glimpsed something out the corner of his eye, and his brain initially assumed it was another defensive flash, but it didn’t look quite right, so he turned his head.
Halfway between the console and the edge of the transfer-station a suited figure was shuffling towards them in a crouch. It was pointing a gun in their direction.
Jarek whirled – and realised his mistake at once, as his feet lost contact with the solarfilm. He twisted in the air, his hand going to his chest.
The figure was raising its weapon.
Jarek slapped the controls for his pack, feeling the jets kick in.
He glimpsed a shimmer of silver rain, and something tugged briefly at the edge of his cloak.
His foot connected with Damaru’s shoulder and the boy squealed. He needed to provide cover for him. ‘Stay calm, Damaru!’ he said authoritatively. ‘Stay calm, and hunch down, low as you can!’
He went for his gun, which, like his attacker’s, was a needle-pistol: the choice of spacers who didn’t take prisoners.
The figure fired again, and missed again. Jarek saw the way its – his – arm jerked wildly as he took the shot: he obviously wasn’t used to fighting in micro-g, where recoil and inertia were issues, even with a needle-pistol. Neither was Jarek, but at least he understood the problem. He needed to get a stable footing before he could risk firing back.
He descended diagonally to land in front of Damaru, though he misjudged it slightly and the tether-line pulled taut as he touched down. Damaru yelped in his ear and the line pulled Jarek off true, jarring his left shoulder. He swivelled on one foot, slamming the other one down hard to get a good seal on the solarfilm.
Now he and the man were face-to-face. Jarek realised he was looking at a mute. They fired at exactly the same moment.
Later he realised it was Nual’s cloak that had saved him, but at the time all he knew was that the mute’s shot went wide, and his didn’t. A wound blossomed like an obscene red flower across the man’s chest and he staggered backwards, lost contact with the deck and began to float off. His sedate progress into space contrasted with the frantic, futile motions of his limbs. Jarek felt momentarily sick.
Damaru was still mewling over the com.
‘Don’t panic, Damaru, we’re fine now,’ said Jarek as he turned back to the boy. Damaru’s feet were still caught in the restraints, thank Christos; his tethered arm had been pulled straight by the tension on the line, while his body wriggled to compensate. He looked like he was doing some sort of bizarre dance, and for a moment, Jarek laughed out loud.
Then he saw a second figure, off to one side, raising a gun.
Nual started to fling aside the body of the mute she had just killed, then changed her mind. She brought it round as she turned, using the dead flesh as a shield while she flew towards the mute who had just shot Taro. She hadn’t had time to examine the weapons the mutes were using, but she was pretty sure Taro had taken a hit from some sort of high-powered stunner. He was just about conscious but a second shot could kill him.
With that thought came fear. The Minister altered his assassins to stop their instincts impairing their efficiency; when she had first awoken with the Angel mods seven years ago, Nual had been furious at his imposition. She had lost count of the times since that she had been grateful for it. The fear she felt now was not for herself, but for Taro, and part of her resented that – but not enough to make her hesitate.
Taro had been shot by the mute he had flung away earlier; the man had hit the ceiling and stayed there, clinging on with one hand, pointing his gun with the other. As Nual hurtled up to him he shot at her; light flashed and the mute she was using as a shield spasmed in her arms.
Then she was close enough to make eye contact. She froze him: he was conditioned to obedience and would have willingly become her slave – after all, she was far more powerful than the Sidhe who had sent him on this mission. Mutes were bred to serve, and to worship power.
Nual had no time for that. She stopped his heart, ignoring the rush of another life despatched, then discarded the first mute’s body and flew back to Taro. Only one mute remained standing, covering the now-closed door. Nual had hoped to board the shuttle and take on the Sidhe pilot, but that was not going to happen now.
Taro turned limply in the air. He had been trying to hold onto consciousness until Nual reached him.
This attacker had got closer than the first one: the bastard had been smart enough to use the distraction to sneak up on them, and he was also smart enough to work out that his gun worked differently out here – either that or he just got lucky. His shot hit Damaru in the arm, and the boy screamed and threw both arms up.
One of Jarek’s feet came loose from the deck as he turned to face the new threat. Damaru was completely defenceless, and somehow Jarek needed to draw the mute’s fire. He pushed off and threw himself in front of Damaru. What might have been a dramatic dive in gravity became a slow, cumbersome drift, but it had the desired effect: the man – another mute – refocused on him. Jarek realised he’d only get one shot, so he needed to make it count. Before the mute could switch his aim, Jarek fired, and hit his leg, shredding his kneecap. Even as the mute’s foot was kicked out from under him by the force of the shot, Jarek, experiencing the equal but opposite reaction, sailed inexorably back towards Damaru.
He tensed, though when the impact came it was gentle, barely more
than a nudge. Damaru’s wails took on a more panicked note, but he stayed connected to the deck. Jarek bounced away again, then he got his free hand to his chest and activated his pack. As he began to reorient he called over the com, ‘It’s all right, Damaru.’ Not that he was sure it was; it would be a few frantic heartbeats before he was in a position to find out if he was lying.
The second mute had continued to fall forward, and come to rest at a bizarre angle, like a human letter T, with one foot still attached to the solarfilm. Not that he was at rest: he shuddered and twitched as he died a slow and painful death, blood and air puffing out of his ruptured suit into the vacuum. His gun floated serenely above him.
Jarek looked away hurriedly, instead scanning his surroundings to make sure there weren’t any other nasty surprises. The first man had stopped moving and come to a halt some way off; there was no one else in sight.
Once he was sure they were in the clear, he turned to Damaru. Like the doomed mute, Damaru was attached to the deck by only one foot, but his movements were a lot more energetic; he was hugging his arm to his chest and gyrating crazily, his free leg kicking out at nothing.
Jarek landed, then tried to get Damaru’s attention, waving his hands at him and calling, ‘Damaru, I need to see! Please, let me see where he shot you.’
Damaru continued to wail and thrash about, which was not helpful.
‘Damaru!’ he ordered, ‘let me see your arm!’
‘Hurts! Cold!’
‘I know, I know – show me your arm, Damaru. Please.’
Damaru stopped flailing, though he kept a rigid hold on his injured arm. Though the wound itself didn’t look too serious, he also would be experiencing vacuum-burn. Unlike Taro’s highly advanced Alephan one, his v-suit didn’t have an emergency forceshield.
Jarek briefly cursed his decision not to bring a suit patch-kit with him; the tools they needed to do the job plus the propel-pack’s controller had taken up all his carrying capacity. He thought he heard the chime of an incoming com over the boy’s wails, but it would have to wait; Damaru didn’t have much time. There was only one option left.
