by Alex Stewart
“Keep that up, and I might not wait for the Leaguers to shoot you,” Ertica said.
“Right. So what’s the plan?” He hunched forward in his seat, bristling with eager anticipation.
“The plan’s flexible,” I told him.
He nodded, in instant understanding. “You don’t actually have a plan, do you?”
“I’ve got the outline of one,” I said. “Broad strokes, the big picture—”
“We’re winging it,” Clio said. “Get in the sled, see if we die when we get there. Or afterwards, when they bounce us.”
“Been there, done that, still breathing,” Rollo said. “Just so I know.”
“Why are you doing this?” Ertica asked, turning to Clio with an air of faint puzzlement. “The rest of us are desperate, but you’ve got a choice. The Guild’s got your back, you can just walk away any time you want.”
“I took a contract,” Clio said, staring at me in a way that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. “And I made a promise. That’s enough for any Guilder.”
“Sure it is.” Ertica couldn’t have sounded less convinced if she’d tried. “You’d have put your neck out like this for anyone, right?”
“Simon’s not just anyone,” Clio said, and went a peculiar shade of red. “He’s a . . . friend.”
“And a damn sight luckier than he knows, apparently,” Ertica said, getting to her feet. “Are we ready?”
“Ten minutes,” Clio said, rising to hers. “Just need to pick up my kit.”
“What’s the point?” Rollo asked. “We’re all going to die anyway.”
“And if we don’t, I’ll be the one with clean underwear.”
“Fine,” I said, recognizing a tone of voice with which I’d become familiar aboard the Stacked Deck. “You’ve all got ten minutes to collect anything you want to take with you.”
And after that, we’d be committed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
In which I take my farewell of a friend.
Against all the odds, and my expectations, my fraying luck held a little longer. No alarms went off as we left the internment area, and I locked the hatch behind us. Even Rollo seemed subdued as we made our way back to where I’d parked the sled, but he perked up as soon as he saw it, and vaulted straight into the driver’s seat.
“Can I drive?”
“Why not?” I said, trying not to notice the look which passed between Baines and Ertica, and which began to make sense to me the moment we were all aboard. He wasn’t exactly a reckless driver, but clearly enjoyed pushing machinery to its limits, and if I hadn’t become so familiar with the AI’s expertise at collision avoidance on the journey over here I would probably have been a lot more nervous than I actually felt. As it was, though, I simply took advantage of being able to delegate the driving to someone else to mesh-in to the communications grid. There wasn’t time, or the lack of distraction, I needed to try breaking into any of the secure areas, but I was relieved to note that there still hadn’t been a general alarm call to look out for a fugitive.
“Left, down, left, up, second right, left . . .” I called to Rollo, wishing he’d got some neuroware so I could simply have kicked him a copy of the map.
“Got it,” he confirmed each time, and, to his credit, he did, however little warning I gave before the junction was upon us.
Are they going to start shooting at us soon? Clio sent. Because it can’t be any worse than his driving. Which struck me as a little unfair. It was certainly no more unsettling than the traffic lanes of Numarkut had been, although the number of human drivers in the mix added an element of unpredictability, even with their transgenically enhanced reflexes.
You think this is bad, wait till you see him with something on wheels, Baines added.
“That’s the bay up ahead,” I said, indicating a line of heavy duty cargo haulers, their flatbeds loaded with crates and boxes, peeling off from the main artery. “See if you can follow them in.”
“Okey dokey,” Rollo said, the first real live person I’d ever heard actually using the phrase, and sideslipped us neatly into the stream of traffic. In a civilian facility, like the docks of Skyhaven, that would have put us in the queue for a battery of security checks, and I monitored the surrounding dataflow for something similar, but my luck was still hanging on by a thread which refused to part: since the entire base was effectively a secure area, the only things being checked were cargo manifests.
“Inspection crew for the Tom Shelby,” I told a bored-looking corporal, who waved a handheld in our direction as Rollo slowed to pass through the checkpoint.
He sucked his teeth. “Personnel are supposed to go in through the lower gate.”
I breathed a faint sigh of relief. I’d been banking on the assumption that the covert invasion of Rockhall was being conducted on a strictly need-to-know basis, and grunts this far down the food chain would expect the ersatz freighters to be crewed by civilians. Which meant the real crews would be dressed like them, rather than in uniform. If I’d been wrong, though, we’d all have been in serious trouble.
“Can you cut us a little slack?” Ertica asked, leaning over the side of the passenger compartment to give him a grandstand view of her décolletage. “It’s such a long way round, and we’re on a tight schedule.”
“What the hell.” The corporal shrugged, unwittingly consigning the rest of his career to oblivion, and waved us through. “Just this once.”
“Nicely done,” Clio commented acidly, as Rollo got us moving forward again.
“Works every time,” Ertica said smugly. “Flash a bit of cleavage at a man and you can get away with murder.” She glanced pointedly at Clio. “Assuming you have any.”
“This’ll do,” I said hastily. “Put us down somewhere inconspicuous.”
“Got it,” Rollo confirmed, as we broke through the choke point to find ourselves in a cavern full of sleds, most of them parked, others landing and taking off in a continuous hive of activity. Drones buzzed around the stationary vehicles, lifting loaded pallets off, or replacing them with empty ones, while several dozen people milled around directing them, gesticulating at the drivers, or, in one or two cases, picking up particularly precious items of cargo to carry themselves. “How about over there?”
“Fine,” I said, spotting the gap he’d noticed between a pile of unloaded crates and an air recirculator, which, judging by the sheen of sweat on some of the torsos on view, wasn’t working quite as effectively as it might have been. To my surprise he judged it to a nicety, tucking the sled into the narrow space without touching the obstructions on either side.
“Right,” I said, quite redundantly given the company I was keeping, who were probably even more used to skulking around than I was, “just walk away calmly, as though you’ve every right to be here. And try not to attract any attention.”
“That’ll be easy,” Ertica said sarcastically.
Although she turned an inordinate number of heads on the way, however, we did manage to get through the loading bay without being challenged; probably because everyone we encountered automatically assumed that someone so clearly visible must have a right to be there, and the rest of us just faded into the background by comparison. I’d taken the precaution of preparing some idents, in case we were challenged, but didn’t actually need them until we reached the docking bay itself, where the usual array of towering domes rose from the floor in front of us.
“Which ship?” A guard with a gun slung ready for use stepped forward to challenge us, handheld at the ready, while a couple of her colleagues stood a few paces away, not quite pointing their own weapons in our direction, but ready to do so in an instant if necessary. I put my hand in my pocket for an imaginary handheld, and meshed with hers.
“Guess,” Rollo said cheerfully. “But if you need a hint, it’s not a warship.”
“The Tom Shelby,” the guard said, reading the information I’d kicked over from the handheld’s screen, and smiled at him. “Who’d have thought it.” S
he turned back to me, automatically assuming that the one in uniform was the one in charge. “Number five.”
“Thanks,” I said, keeping the conversation to a minimum, and beginning to move off.
Then the guard stepped forward a pace, blocking Clio, and forcing her to stop. “Isn’t that a Guild patch?” she asked, pointing to her jacket.
“Yes, it is.” Clio nodded, keeping her voice noncommittal.
“I thought you were all Toniden Line crews.” A faint edge of suspicion entered her voice, not quite hardening into certainty yet. I tensed, and tried to hide it.
“We are.” Clio nodded again. “I won it.”
“In a card game, I suppose.” The undercurrent of suspicion was growing, I could feel it, and I tensed, ready to defend myself if necessary.
“In a fight,” Clio said.
“Now that I can believe.” The guard laughed, and stepped back, waving us through.
“Well done,” I said, once I was certain we’d passed out of earshot.
Clio just nodded a sober acknowledgement, not bothering to comment. It was just as well she’d already removed the ship’s patch for the Stacked Deck, I reflected, as Guild custom demanded on leaving a crew: I was fairly sure the news of the arrest of a Commonwealth spy had spread all over the base almost at once, along with the name of the ship which had brought me here, and if the guard had seen it on Clio’s jacket, our little enterprise would have come to a rapid and ignominious end.
“That’s the one,” Baines said, pointing out one of the nearby domes. It looked almost identical to the others, and the cradle the Stacked Deck had settled into on our arrival; the only difference I could see was that seven of the equatorial cargo doors were closed, while an armed guard stood watch over the remaining open one.
“Leave the talking to me,” I said, as we approached him, our forged credentials hovering in my ‘sphere ready for use. But before I could transmit them to the waiting handheld, the communications band lit up with the message I’d been dreading. My face and description were being flashed to every visor and handheld in the base. “Sod talking, just run.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the guard we’d been chatting with raise her weapon, the troopers with her following suit, and talking urgently into her comm. I felt the tug of passing graviton bolts as the soldiers opened fire, taking me off balance as they sped past, fortunately missing us by what felt like fractions of an inch. The guard on the ship raised his gun too, with the preternatural speed I’d noticed in Jas.
But Rollo, astonishingly, was even faster, dropping to all fours and barreling forward in a series of leaps even the guard’s enhanced reflexes were too slow to follow. Before he could bring his weapon to bear, Rollo was on him, crashing into his chest and knocking him off his feet.
“Come on!” I yelled, although no one else needed any encourage-ment. I was a few paces ahead of the pack, but Clio was hard on my heels, running with the easy athleticism I’d first noticed in the cargo hold of the Stacked Deck, and Baines was lumbering forward, his head down, with the unstoppable momentum of a landslide. Ertica was lagging a little, but not by much, and as soon as I’d reassured myself of that I looked away; not all her motion was entirely forward, and I really couldn’t afford to be distracted right now.
I charged into the cargo bay and took refuge behind the thick metal wall, finding my surroundings almost identical to the mid level of the Stacked Deck; a flurry of graviton bolts followed me, and left a series of dents in the far bulkhead. Clio followed, hurdling Rollo and the guard, who were both thrashing about on the floor outside trying to damage one another, and sprinting for the panel controlling the hatch as soon as she was aboard. Baines was next, disappearing straight into the bowels of the ship. I’ll take the power plant, he sent, as the cargo elevator began to descend, and I kicked back a brief acknowledgement.
Ertica followed an instant later, ducking behind one of the crates, and began to make her way more cautiously towards the steps to the catwalk leading to the central stairwell. “I need to get to the bridge,” she called, although climbing up there would leave her dangerously exposed.
Simon, Clio sent. Security lockout.
Damn. I probed the panel she was at with my sneakware, and began frantically switching datanomes. Jas’s security code wasn’t on the ship’s system, unsurprisingly, and even if it had been, chances were it had been disabled by now.
The guard stopped moving, and Rollo got up, scuttling inside the ship on his hands and knees, trying to present as low a profile as possible to the incoming fire.
“Is he dead?” I asked, and Rollo shrugged.
“Maybe a bit. Hope not. They tend to hang you for that sort of thing around here.” Then he grinned. “But on the bright side, they’ll probably shoot me before they get the chance. And talking of which . . .” He held out the guard’s gun. “Any idea how to use this? They’re about to rush us.”
“Some,” I said, throwing myself flat on the deck plates, and snuggling the stock into my shoulder. I’d spent plenty of time on the firing range training and competing as a pentathlete, although I’d never expected to use those skills in anger. Well, I hadn’t counted on my brawling skills coming in handy either, but that had worked out all right on Numarkut. Giving up on the security panel for now, I kicked the sneakware over to Clio. Keep cycling through the substitutions, I sent, hoping I’d done enough of the preliminary work. It would undoubtedly be quicker if I did it myself, but right now I needed to concentrate on other things.
Fortunately, the gun was both simple and robust, which is what you wanted in a military weapon, rather more so than the ones I was used to, which fired steel pellets along an acceleration coil. It had a trigger, a safety catch, and a power setting, currently set to a medium output: which, if I remembered Tinkie’s enthusiastic descriptions of the kit she was allowed to play with at work, was more than enough to put someone down hard, even with body armor to absorb the impact. Judging by the dents in the bulkheads, though, the Leaguers weren’t too bothered about conserving power, or taking us alive; a clean hit from one of those grav bolts would be enough to pulverize an unprotected ribcage, or crack a skull like a breakfast egg.
I risked a quick glance round the rim of the hatch, and saw that Rollo hadn’t been exaggerating for once: the guards we’d already seen had been reinforced by others, and more were arriving all the time. The blizzard of bolts was supposed to keep our heads down, and was more than doing its job, while a second team prepared to rush the hatch.
Well, fine, two could play the discouragement game. I squeezed the trigger, momentarily surprised by the lack of recoil, and the trooper I’d centered in my sights obligingly toppled over backwards. A couple of his squad mates grabbed him, and dragged him into the cover of a pallet mover. He was still twitching, to my great relief, so at least I wasn’t a murderer. Yet.
“You got one!” Rollo yelled superfluously, and slapped me on the back.
“Go help Ertica,” I said.
“You’re no fun.” But he scuttled off anyway, keeping his head down, leaving me free to concentrate on picking the fleas off our backs. I downed two more before they got the message, and began trying to flank us instead, staying behind the cover of a couple of loaded cargo sleds, which crept forwards across the docking bay floor at a steady walking pace. The drivers were keeping their heads well down, hunkered low inside the cabs, for which I could hardly blame them, but which didn’t leave me much of a target.
“Lock down the other doors!” Ertica shouted. “Otherwise they’ll be in through the rest of the bays!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Clio snapped back, while the security system continued to repel every attempt she made to mesh with it.
We’ve got power, Baines sent from Engineering. We can lift any time.
Any time we got the hatches sealed, and Ertica to the bridge, anyway.
Got it! Clio sent at last, and the hatch began to grind closed. Sensing the initiative slip
ping away from them, the troopers behind the nearest of the advancing sleds began to lean cautiously around it, snapping off what shots they could. I shot one of them, who fell back, dropping his weapon, then shifted my aim to the next.
And froze. It was Jas, I was certain of it, despite the distance and the obscuring effect of her helmet and visor. She had a clear line of sight on me, too.
We stared at one another for a split second which felt like a lifetime, then she squeezed the trigger.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In which a starship is embarrassingly rechristened.
The bolt impacted on the edge of the closing hatch, inches from my head, leaving me stunned by the nearness of the miss. Had she hesitated deliberately, waiting until the thick metal intervened, or was she genuinely trying to kill me? Under the circumstances I could hardly blame her if she was, but I’d like to think her offer back in my cell had been at least partially genuine—and part of me still regretted not taking her up on it.
There was no time to brood, though: no sooner had the hatch thudded into place than Ertica and Rollo were sprinting up the staircase, their footsteps echoing on the open metal treads.
“Rollo, gunnery. Guilder, you’re with me.”
“You bet I am,” Clio muttered, sprinting towards the foot of the stairs. “If that viridescent tart thinks I’m letting her out of my sight—” She broke off, and glanced over to where I was scrambling, a trifle unsteadily, to my feet. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said hastily. “Bit of a near miss, that’s all.” I trotted across to join her, still feeling a little nauseous from the narrowness of my escape. “But you’re right. Better keep an eye on Ertica.”
“You hardly do anything else,” she said, but for once there was no heat in her voice. “Come on.”
The bridge of the Tom Shelby, or whatever the ship was really called, seemed very different from the one on the Stacked Deck. For one thing there was no steady stream of data cascading through my ‘sphere, everything being routed through the array of consoles in the center of the room. There were half a dozen of these, all facing inwards, where the operators could best exchange information verbally, and by the time Clio and I arrived, Ertica had already installed herself at the largest, where small screens repeated and summarized the data being displayed on all the others. Clio bristled at the sight of the Freebooter in the Captain’s chair, but let it go for now, settling herself in front of the communications board instead.
