by David Gunn
The cruiser is epsilon-class, a kilometre long and 330 metres wide. It’s vast, armed with fifty cannons and has flight decks for three combat wings . . . That’s a hundred and fifty Z7x fighters.
A list comes up before my eyes. Battles won by a single epsilon-class.
Victory First is made of nineteen epsilons slotted together. That is the beauty of Enlightened technology. It’s cumulative. The Z7xs fit into the sides of the cruiser, the cruiser slots alongside other cruisers to make the mother ship. If needed, the mother ship can be slotted with others to make . . .
Something the size of a small moon.
A ray-traced sphere flickers into my vision and then goes, along with coordinates that put it half a spiral arm away from us.
Speed?
Faster than we are. Well, the cruiser is. Although it takes time to get ramped up enough to use its ion jets.
And distance?
It could cross the galaxy, if the U/Free ever let it get that far.
All this makes me wonder how we outfight the Enlightened, because we do. Every planet they take, we retake, or take one in its place. The figures are vast, tens of thousands of suns and hundreds of thousands of planets. It seems impossible, beyond counting; until that thought brings the number of stars in our galaxy.
A million million.
Our glorious leader, OctoV . . . And the Uplift’s hundred-braid, Gareisis, the Uplifted and Enlightened. They mean so little to Letogratz that the United Free will accept any solution that stops us fighting. Doesn’t have to be fair. Why would it be? Not much else in life is.
Makes me wish I were still at Fort Libidad, scanning the dunes for ferox and desert tribes. And that makes me wonder what an ex-sergeant, who couldn’t count above twenty until a few months back, is doing counting stars.
‘So,’ says SIG. ‘You’re back.’
It shows me the cruiser on screen. ‘You plan on fighting that?’
‘Got a better idea?’
‘Well,’ it says. ‘We’re out of rockets, our shields are screwed and the power bank for the pulse cannon is critical.’ It pisses me off when the SIG gets snotty.
‘You forgot oxygen.’
The SIG begins to tell me it doesn’t need—
So I point out that unless it’s happy to drift in space with rotting bodies for company, it will factor oxygen in too. It’s still sulking when I use most of our remaining fuel to take us over the top of the cruiser, round the outside of the mother ship and over the edge of Hekati itself.
Red lights start flashing. A buzzer joins in. And, just in case we need more distraction, the crewpit screens override with a critical fuel warning.
‘Sven . . .‘
‘Look,’ I tell the gun. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
The mirror hub is ahead. A small silver castle where the struts meet in the centre of Hekati’s ring. Brightness flares our screens as we get between a mirror and the sunlight it’s reflecting at the glass that gives this habitat its sky. What fuel is left, I burn entering the hub itself and slotting ourselves into a dock.
Obviously enough, it’s fuel we can’t afford.
———
On the far side of the airlock, Ajac takes one look at my vomit-splashed uniform and steps back. Could be the stink, could be the bloodstained blades on my combat arm, or it could be the foulness of the air belching out behind me.
Iona stands beside him. She’s carrying Colonel Madeleine’s handiwork.
Yanking my combat arm free, I see her glance away. She waits until my old arm is in place before glancing back. ‘Knew you’d return.’
More than I did. Needles pierce flesh. After a second, I flex my fingers. Good enough for what I need to do now.
It takes me a minute to cut the net, remove the straps and begin carrying my crew into the corridor outside the airlock. Shil is first, and she weighs less than I expect. Her right shoulder is dislocated. As I settle her on the deck, she whimpers.
‘Shil,’ I ask. ‘Can you hear me?’
She nods.
‘This is going to hurt.’
A thump of my hand against her shoulder puts the joint back into place.
Spittle dribbles from her mouth; she has bitten her lip and wet herself, although Ajac pretends not to notice. His manners are better than mine are. ‘Can’t see,’ she says.
‘It’s the g-force,’ I say. ‘Makes your vision blurred.’
‘Can’t see,’ she repeats.
‘Shil,’ I say. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Ajac gets Franc out. If anything, she is even worse. When I look round from unbuckling Colonel Vijay, I see Ajac still kneeling next to her. Franc’s eyes are open and she’s staring at nothing. She’s staring at it intently.
Climbing unsteadily from his seat, Colonel Vijay says, ‘You want me to look at her?’
‘You can help, sir?’
‘Probably . . .’ He hesitates, reassesses. ‘Well, I can try. And there has to be a medical bay round here somewhere.’
———
We need a way out of here. We need a way to kill the cruiser. We need a way to get home. Three big needs, for a group relying on a B79 bomber down to five per cent of its power. There are ten of us now. And the bomber is still only built to take three. Answer is obvious, really . . . We need a bigger ship. More weapons. A better plan.
‘Haze,’ I say. ‘Don’t care how you do it. But check the power status of every ship docked in the hub.’
A roll of his eyes and he’s gone.
‘Doesn’t it freak you out?’ says Neen, then remembers to add sir. ‘I mean, when he does that?’
‘Freak you out when I do it?’
Neen wants to say that is different, but it isn’t. So I clap him on the shoulder. ‘Be glad I’ve got Haze to do it for me.’
There are seven vessels, including our B79 bomber. Three of the oldest are near dead, reduced to whimpering their names and begging for fuel. If Haze is right, one has been doing just that for over five hundred years.
Of the other four, the B79 is down to local boosters and an ion drive that might work if we had enough dry thrust to get it up to speed. That leaves three vessels. One is ours. Well, the U/Free hopper we arrived in. Another is so old the only reason it’s not dying is it’s dead already.
The final ship is chosen by default.
A Z-class tug ancient enough to have fins and dumb enough to be proud of a ten-foot nude painted on its nose. It’s old, it’s rusting inside, it’s filthy. I don’t care, really don’t care. Not after I crawl around inside a bit, and then go tell Colonel Vijay about its cargo.
Kyble was right. Luck is a whore.
But Luck likes fighters, and I think of her as a Val: magnificent tits and a dangerous smile. Always ready to step up beside you when it comes to making a stand.
Chapter 54
‘IT’S GOT ENOUGH SEATS, YOU SAY?’
Yes, I thought that would appeal to Colonel Vijay. Looking around, the colonel spots the telltale signs of gravity flooring and that appeals to him even more. There is only so much floating vomit a well-brought-up young officer can stand.
‘What?’ he demands.
‘Glad you like it, sir.’
‘And this is what you wanted to show me?’
‘No, sir. That’s down here.’ He stares into a filthy hold revealed by the trap door I open.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course it is.’
A ladder leads to a crawl space below. Carrying a light from one of the rifles at my suggestion, the colonel flicks its beam across boxes, and then more boxes, piled into an area maybe ten paces by ten paces, but only half our height.
‘What’s in them?’ he demands. And then answers his own question by running his light across a long box stencilled with a skull in flames.
Danger.
Keep safe.
Do not expose to heat.
There are other warnings, but he has the message.
; He’s crawling round the hold of a Z-class cargo tug packed with out-of-date and probably unstable explosives, asteroid miners, for the use of . . .
Each case is sealed in clear wrapping against damp and secured with double bands of cheap steel. Cheap enough to cut with my knife. Slicing the side from a case reveals blocks of something that looks like clay and smells like stale cake. ‘That what I assume it is?’ the colonel asks.
I nod.
‘Sven,’ he says, ‘I think it’s time you told me your plan.’
For something I make up as I go along, it’s quite convincing. That is the thing about senior officers. They’ll believe anything, provided you sound like you really, really mean it.
‘You know,’ says Colonel Vijay, ‘it might work.’
So, we have explosives, and a tug with enough power to get us to the asteroid belt. But we also have a Silver Fist mother ship, an epsilon-class cruiser hunting us down, and a force field locking us into the area around Hekati. What we don’t have are detonators.
‘Bound to be here somewhere,’ the colonel says.
Dragging cases aside, he finds a smaller box pushed against a bulkhead. The fuses are simple enough. Much like the ones the Legion use when cutting roads through mountains: one pulse to prime and another to fire.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Here’s what we do.’
My troopers are patched as best we can manage.
Mostly this involves painkillers, amphetamines and re-hydrating salts from the medical bay Colonel Vijay tracked down. Shil still stumbles occasionally and Rachel rubs at her hip. But neither one complains and that is good enough.
Emil pre-primes the detonators I give him. Colonel Vijay, Shil, Ajac, Haze, and Rachel begin carrying boxes of plastique from the tug to the B79 bomber. Franc’s off somewhere, licking her wounds in private. I only know that’s what she is doing because it’s what I would do myself. And Iona? Hanging round Neen as if they are joined by invisible wire.
But I have more pressing problems.
So far, the Silver Fist cruiser has taken itself out to the edge of the force field, to run a scan of the whole area. After this proves fruitless, it begins a more careful sweep; one that will take it over Hekati’s mirror hub in about five minutes. That is how long we have to make this plan work.
‘Four minutes, fifty-eight seconds.’
The SIG keeps with the updates until I tell it to stop.
We now have three minutes left before the cruiser passes overhead. Enough time for Neen to pack the nose of the B79 bomber with explosives. When he’s done, there is still room for more. So Shil, Haze and Rachel race back for extra boxes, and Neen stacks these inside the nose-cone as well.
The detonators go everywhere.
He could use only one, but why bother? We have a hundred, and they’re all set to the same frequency.
‘Two minutes ten,’ says the gun.
Colonel Vijay is watching. Well, half of him is. The other half focuses on Neen, who is bundling out of the B79’s hatch, looking pleased with himself.
‘Two exactly,’ the gun says.
Above us, a shadow can be seen. Our own little eclipse.
The cruiser already hangs between the sun and the mirrors. And now its shadow begins to creep down the inside wall of the mirror hub. Soon we’ll be able to look up and see the cruiser itself.
‘One fifty.’
‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘We need to get it launched.’
‘How long do we have?’
‘Now is optimum,’ says the gun. It likes fancy words. ‘But we’ve got a four-minute window.’
The colonel is staring at the B79. He’s obviously making his mind up about something, and his decision is to stay silent. When someone like Vijay Jaxx remains silent it’s because he believes events have moved beyond what his words can change.
Marching up to him, I salute.
‘Sven?’ he says.
‘What am I missing, sir?’
Glancing at the Aux, he shakes his head. His look says, let this go . . . Only I’m not good at that.
‘Sir?’ I say.
‘Found a glitch,’ he says. ‘You’re not going to like it.’
‘No, sir. Probably not.’
The Silver Fist are going to scan our bomber for signs of life, and they won’t find any. That’s what he tells me, keeping his voice low. The moment their braid realizes there’s nothing alive on board he will either jam every channel we might use to trigger a bomb. Or he’ll spam a fire command, and blow the B79 to bits before it can get close enough to do damage.
To make it work, we need a voice link between us and the bomber to make it sound as if we are on board. And we need to find a way to stop the bomber from showing up as empty when scanned for signs of life.
‘Half a dozen goats would do,’ says Colonel Vijay. That’s a joke, apparently.
‘Cruiser coming into sight,’ says the SIG.
And my gun’s right. The Silver Fist cruiser is that bloody great shadow above us blocking out the sun. As we watch, its nose creeps over the edge of the hub.
‘No time,’ I say. ‘We launch now.’
‘And then?’ asks Colonel Vijay.
‘We take the tug and head in the other direction—’
‘As fast as we can,’ he finishes for me.
It is not much of a plan, but it’s what we’ve got. And would remain so, except for Franc, who has suddenly reappeared on the edge of our discussion. ‘Permission to speak, sir?’
I nod.
‘To Haze, sir.’
‘Make it quick.’
Franc’s lip twitches. ‘Yes, sir,’ she says.
When she speaks to Haze her voice is a whisper, her words swift, and I can almost feel the tension burning off her. Just once, he tries to interrupt her, and she shakes her head. ‘My life,’ she says, loudly enough for the rest of us to hear.
‘Franc . . .’
‘You said so.’
Reaching for his hand, she opens his fingers and touches his palm to her lips. Then he puts his hand on her head and says something so softly that I doubt even Franc can hear.
‘Sven,’ says my gun. ‘We’re running out of—’
I slap it into silence.
Keeping her shoulders back and her chin up, she marches briskly towards me and stamps to attention. Should be Colonel Vijay she asks, but he is too busy looking appalled. As I return her salute, I already know what she intends to say.
‘Please, sir,’ she says.
And proves me wrong.
‘Take this,’ I say, ripping off my arm again. ‘It’s chipped,’ I add, when she looks puzzled. Genotype human equivalent. Status DH class 2 . . .
Reaching up, she kisses my cheek.
‘Thank you.’
For letting you kill yourself? I think. She must see that thought in my eyes, because she smiles. ‘For trying to give me back my scars.’
‘Trying?’
‘Already fading,’ she says. ‘The U/Free really fucked me over.’
Sweeping her gaze across the Aux, she goes for a smile. Most of them are playing catch-up, and Iona and Ajac don’t realize what is happening until Franc is inside the B79 and its hatch is hissing shut. And even then, they’re not sure they believe it.
Bolts blow, grapples release. The B79 shivers, and drops away.
A few seconds later, it lurches through the mirror hub to stop a mile or so above us, and away to one side.
‘Piggyback her calls,’ I tell the SIG.
Only it’s doing that already, and we hear Franc’s first contact. Most people would try for a hailing frequency. Franc punches the emergency button and relies on it to override everything else.
‘Three-braid Carson,’ says a man. ‘Who is this?’
‘Trooper Franc,’ she says. ‘I’m flying the bomber . . .’ Franc hesitates. ‘Well, it’s flying itself . . . No,’ she says. ‘It’s not flying at all. But when it does, it flies itself. Mostly . . .’
Never underestimate metalhead contem
pt for the un-Enlightened.
And don’t forget, she is female and militia, talking to a Silver Fist officer. He’s probably surprised she can talk at all. We wait, as he says something off screen, and then he is back.
‘Let me talk to your senior officer.’
‘You can’t,’ says Franc.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s unconscious.’
Anyone running software will know she is frightened. Assuming they’re too stupid to pick that up just by listening.
‘Everyone’s unconscious.’ She sobs, stops herself. ‘No,’ says Franc. ‘Not true. Mostly they’re dead, I think.’
‘You think? Can’t you run scans?’
‘No,’ says Franc, sounding young. ‘Don’t know how.’
The three-braid sighs.
‘I want to surrender,’ she says.
‘And your officer is alive?’
‘Yes. Only his mouth’s turning blue.’
‘Oxygen starvation,’ someone mutters almost out of range.
The three-braid hisses him into silence. The Enlightened is thinking. Unless he is scanning her. So we wait where we stand in the corridor, and Franc waits inside her bomber. Anything said between us will be overheard, so we say nothing. Three-braid Carson finally comes back on air.
‘Your weapons are active,’ he says. ‘Shut them down.’
Franc says nothing.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Only I don’t know how.’
Overdoing it, I think. And then I realize she’s not overdoing it at all. Franc means it. She’s not sure how to shut the cannon down. We leave her being talked through the control panel by a pilot from their end.
He’s good, and we’ve just got to, See the third touch-pad on the right, the orange one, well tap the bottom right corner twice . . . when I decide it is time for us to get out of there.
Chapter 55
SETTING OUR BOOSTERS TO SLOW BURN, HAZE KEEPS IN THE B79’s comms shadow as our tug drops away from the hub and leaves Hekati’s mirror ring high overhead. We’re going to be a small blip below a bigger blip.
Also, that hub contains Hekati’s AI, which should throw up enough electronic chatter to mask us from the braid in the cruiser above. At least, that is the theory.
‘Don’t need to know the detail,’ Colonel Vijay tells Haze. ‘Just need to know it’s going to work. It is going to work, isn’t it . . . ?’
