by Mike Brooks
‘It’s a data transmission,’ Jenna said, without looking up. ‘Encoded.’
‘Source?’ Drift asked, scanning out of the different viewports. Nothing looked any different to how it had a second ago, but his paranoia was screaming at him.
‘Close,’ Jenna answered immediately. ‘Within a . . . few . . . blocks.’
Drift looked at her, mouth suddenly dry, and saw that she’d reached the same conclusion as him.
‘Shit.’
‘Whoah!’ Jenna’s eyes widened and she tapped at her terminal again. ‘It’s being answered, there’s a two-way stream now.’
‘Source?’ Drift said again, mouth dry and scrambling across the cockpit to look over her shoulder, as though he’d be able to understand half of what she was looking at. Come on girl, at least tell us which way to run . . .
She turned her head to look at him, expression filled with uncertainty and what looked uncomfortably like dread.
‘Our cargo bay.’
There was the taste of bile at the back of his throat. He stood still for half a second while his mind raced at different angles, then suddenly his gun was in his hand.
‘Jia!’ he barked. ‘Stay course, but eyes on the sky! Get ready to burn! Jenna, with me.’
The slicer slapped at her webbing release, grabbed her pad from the console and followed him at a dead run towards the cargo bay. They pelted past the galley and clattered down the steps towards where the four metal crates sat innocently in the middle of the floor, while Rourke, Micah and Apirana looked up in confusion and growing alarm.
‘What’s the problem?’ Rourke asked, swinging her rifle up into a ready position.
‘Something out there started broadcasting, and something in here started talking back,’ Drift replied grimly, eyeing the crates.
‘In here?’ Micah queried. ‘As in . . .’
‘In here, yes,’ Drift nodded impatiently, ‘the cargo bay. So unless one of you have activated a transmitter for some reason . . . ?’
All three shook their heads.
‘Well,’ Rourke said softly, dark eyes sliding to their cargo, ‘that changes the game.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘It could be something completely inconsequential which your contact just failed to mention would happen.’
‘It could,’ Drift agreed. ‘Do you think that?’
‘Do I look like I was born yesterday?’ Rourke snorted.
Drift nodded. ‘Yeah, me neither.’ He looked up. ‘A.? Tools.’
‘You’re gonna open ’em?’ the Maori rumbled, taking three large steps to an equipment locker and pulling out a cutting torch which he casually tossed across the bay. Drift caught it in one hand, then the pair of goggles which followed it in the other, and pulled them over his head.
‘Damn right. And you’re going to start at the other end.’
He fired the torch up and narrowed the flame down to a thin blue cutting blade, which he applied to the lid corner of the crate nearest him. The metal started to glow a cherry red, succumbing to the torch’s powerful heat, and he dragged it down one side.
‘Jia?’ he heard Rourke ask behind him.‘How long?’
+Unless you want me to stop dead and tip off anyone watching us then we’re talking a minute, tops. What the hell is going on back there?+
‘Tell you in a minute,’ Rourke replied absently. ‘Ichabod?’
Drift finished his circuit of the crate and applied his boot to the lid, kicking it on one glowing edge to knock it clean off onto the bay floor with a clatter. He leaned over and looked in, heedless of the powerful heat still rising from the newly cut rim. Dark, twisted shapes came into view.
‘Scrap metal.’ He reached in, confused, and pulled up a hunk of something which might once have been an exhaust component for a vehicle of some kind, then dropped it back in. ‘What . . . ?’
‘Camouflage,’ Rourke said decisively, looking past him. ‘Keep going.’
‘I’ve got scrap too!’ Apirana shouted. Drift didn’t look up, but from the noise it sounded like the big Maori had kicked his lid considerably further. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’
‘Get that last one open!’ Rourke ordered him, even as Drift was attacking the third crate. Down one side, down the second, the third, the last . . . He stepped back, kicked the lid off . . .
. . . and was greeted by the sight of a sleek, metallic cylinder with a few visible wires and a couple of flashing lights, linking it to what appeared to be a small terminal and digital broadcast unit. It filled nearly the full length of the crate, and was possibly as wide around as Apirana.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen.
‘Erm . . .’
‘Fuck!’
The scream – and it was a scream – had come from Tamara Rourke. Drift’s eyes snapped to her and he felt his heart rocket into overdrive. He had seen Rourke angry, disappointed, dejected, delighted, determined and reflective, and sometimes he even thought he’d been able to tell the difference. He had never seen her scared.
She pointed one quivering, dark-skinned finger at the crate. ‘It’s a nuke!’
Drift blinked. ‘What?’
Her eyes, wide and white with fear, flashed to his face. ‘It’s a fucking nuke!’
‘But . . .’ This was impossible. There had to be some mistake. ‘How do you know?’
‘There is a nuclear bomb in our cargo bay!’ Rourke yelled at him. ‘Why are we still having this conversation?!’
‘It’s transmitting,’ Jenna said, looking up at him from her pad, face pale,‘which means it was receiving.’
‘Which means it’s activating,’ Drift finished grimly. His mind whirled. What was Kelsier’s game? Was this a test? Some way of seeing whether he could, whether he would follow instructions, no matter what they were? No, we were supposed to be handing this over right now. We shouldn’t have known about it activating at all. So why would a Europan agent be sending an active warhead into a Europan city . . . ?
Unless they really fired him. Holy shit, they really did fire him for corruption, and this is the bastard’s revenge.
There was never meant to be a way out of this for us.
He looked around desperately. ‘Micah! Bomb doors!’ If they could deactivate the maglocks on the crates and open the drop-down doors which ran beneath their feet, they could— ‘No!’ the Dutch mercenary shouted. Drift stared at him.
‘What? Why?’
‘This is Amsterdam!’ Micah roared. ‘You’re not dropping a bomb on my country!’
For a split second, Drift considered shooting the mercenary dead and opening the doors himself, but common sense prevailed. He might miss, Micah would shoot back, the mercenary was wearing an armavest anyway . . . and besides, when it came down to it, the Dutchman was right.
This isn’t the old days anymore.
‘Jia!’ he snapped, activating his comm. ‘Full burn for the North Sea, now!’
+What? But—+
‘Do it!’ Drift yelled. ‘We’ve got an activating nuke down here and we need to drop it into the ocean! I don’t care if you have to—’
He was cut off as the Jonah lurched and tilted, sending them all sprawling across the floor, then sliding helplessly towards the aft bulkheads as their pilot threw power to what felt like the main boosters normally used for escaping a planet’s gravity well.
+You had me at ‘activating nuke’, boss.+
‘Gah!’ One of the cutting torches, now mercifully deactivated, skittered across the floor and bounced up towards his face. He shielded himself with his hand at the last moment, but simply succeeded in punching himself in the cheek instead as the metal canister hit him. Meanwhile Jia had apparently left the comm channel open and they were treated to a tirade of abuse, presumably thrown at other flyer pilots.
+Cào n ıˇ! Cào n ıˇ ma! Cào n ıˇ made b ıˉ! Cào n ıˇ z u˘ z oˉng shíba¯ dài. . .+
‘Head for the North Pole, and don’t brake until I tell you!’ Drift yelled at her, fighting up to his feet agai
nst the acceleration. The last thing he wanted was for Jia to fire the retros as soon as she was over open water and them all to tumble the other way across the cargo bay, potentially accompanied by any crates they’d managed to unclamp. He straightened, took one step towards the crates and then stumbled sideways as Jia banked momentarily. ‘Damn it!’
+I need to go around things, bai chi!+
Drift growled and fielded Jenna as she staggered into him, then pushed the young slicer away again and lunged for the crates. He clawed his way past the first one, the top of which had thankfully cooled from the red-hot state he’d left it in, and slapped at the release mechanism on the maglock at the corner of the bomb’s container. It buzzed, and the green light blinked out. Rourke came down on the other side of it, hitting the floor and the release in one barely controlled motion.
+We’re over the ocean!+ Jia’s voice came over the comm. +Ditch it!+
Drift scrabbled to the other end of the metal container and slapped again. Another green light disappeared, and a second later he heard the smack of Rourke’s hand disconnecting the fourth and final lock.
‘Get clear!’ Apirana roared. The big Maori had fought his way forwards to the controls for the bomb doors, the nickname proving unfortunately apt on this occasion, and was standing poised by them. Drift took two stuttering steps and then a leap, landed hard on the cargo-bay deck . . .
. . . and behind him, the floor dropped away.
The wind noise was immediate and deafening, and the entire ship started to judder as its aerodynamics were compromised and great gusts of air and spray slammed up into the bay. The salty smell of the sea hit his nostrils; a wild scent and shockingly strong, and Drift’s mind suddenly flashed backwards as he wondered how long it had been since he’d breathed air which hadn’t been recycled and filtered hundreds of times before.
Of more immediate concern, however, was the fact that the opened crate with the ominously blinking bomb had slipped through the gap and vanished into the rushing blue-green blur flashing below them. He waved at Apirana to shut the doors again and the big man obliged, jabbing at the control which started to bring them back up with a whirr of motors and hydraulics barely audible over the wind noise. Drift activated his comm again.
‘Jia, it’s off! Get us clear!’
+Trying! Incidentally,+ the pilot added ominously, as the roar of the engines went up another notch, +we’ve got company.+
‘Company?’ Drift demanded, pushing himself upright once more and heading for the stairs. A moment after he hit them he heard a second set of boots behind him, and looked over his shoulder to see Jenna following him.
+Yeah, looks like we ruffled some feathers. We got Europan fighters scrambling to intercept.+
Drift grimaced. There was little chance of fighter aircraft having the sheer thruster muscle to catch a craft capable of breaking atmo, but it was unwanted attention nonetheless. ‘Lose them.’
+Working on that too.+
It was only a few seconds later that Drift made the cockpit and launched himself into his seat. He pulled up the frequency logs, scanning through for anything which might be relevant to them . . .
. . . and behind them, the whole world went white.
MUTINY
The explosion of a nuclear bomb in the North Sea had predictably chaotic consequences, the most immediately obvious being a titanic blast of water and steam which had engulfed the fighter aircraft pursuing them and caused every single radio channel to start shouting at once. Another was that all aircraft in the vicinity of the explosion immediately began fleeing with no regard for rules or regulations, meaning that the Jonah’s screaming flight northwards had suddenly become entirely unremarkable. Jenna had switched aliases again on the basis that for at least a few seconds everyone was going to have something else to worry about, and so it was that the Tamsin’s Wake changed direction abruptly and headed over Britain to touch down at a refuelling station in Birmingham.
Against the odds, they’d got away without being shot down or apprehended, which Drift considered to be a minor miracle in and of itself. However, it just made the fact that one of his own crew was holding a gun to his head all the more galling in comparison.
‘Tamara . . .?’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady. Jia had only just throttled back the engines and their whine was still dying away when he found himself staring down the deceptively small barrel of the one-shot palmgun Rourke seemed able to secrete just about anywhere. He’d even seen her pull it out of her underwear once.
‘“Tamara” nothing. You have some explaining to do,’ Rourke said. Her voice was quiet, but her eyes were like chips of dark ice.
‘Is now really the time?’ Drift protested. It wasn’t just an evasive tactic on his part; they were still on Europan soil and, so far as he was concerned, at risk of being picked up by the authorities. He risked a glance sideways: Jenna’s face was shocked while Jia’s was rather less readable, but neither of them seemed about to jump up and attempt to disarm Rourke. He couldn’t really blame them, given that neither pilot nor slicer were experienced in combat and Tamara Rourke could incapacitate someone twice her size with her bare hands.
‘Jia,’ Rourke said without turning her head, ‘get on the comm and call the boys to the cockpit.’
‘Gonna be kind of cramped,’ Jia commented. ‘Apirana ain’t small. How about we move to the canteen? Also, if you shoot him and the bullet goes through him it won’t damage something valuable if we’re in there.’
‘Thanks,’ Drift said bitterly. Jia just shrugged. Through the viewport behind her left shoulder Drift could see huge tankers crawling back and forth on the asphalt outside, massive hoses feeding fresh fuel into hungry tanks.
‘She has a point,’ Rourke conceded. ‘Get up.’
‘To go somewhere you are more likely to shoot me?’ Drift snorted. ‘It doesn’t appeal.’
‘Ichabod,’ Rourke said softly, ‘I’ve flown with you for, what? Eight years? I am really, truly hoping that you can explain to all of us why you took on a job which nearly destroyed a city, but I’m not going to wait for that explanation until you’ve had time to cook up one of your cover stories. Let’s go to the canteen so you can give us whatever good reason you have for me to lower my gun and apologise. Keep stalling, and I will shoot you, and then burn off this rock before anyone tracks us down.’
‘We can’t,’ Jenna put in timidly. ‘Word on the Spine and the radio is that the sky is closed.’
Rourke frowned, but to Drift’s disappointment neither her gun nor her gaze wavered. ‘What?’
‘Nothing leaves atmo without a scheduled launch window,’ Jenna said heavily. ‘Not just Europa; all governments have bought in. Looks like everyone’s got a bit twitchy about a surprise nuclear explosion; there’s talk of it being a Free Systems terrorist attack.’
‘Shit,’ Rourke muttered with feeling. Drift saw a moment of indecision flicker across her features before it was replaced with her usual calm determination. He knew that look, and it didn’t bode well for someone at the other end of a gun.‘Come on, Ichabod. Slowly. I don’t think you’re fool enough to try anything with me, but I don’t know how desperate you are right now. Let’s get to the canteen where you can explain yourself.’
Pretty damn desperate. ‘Okay,’ he replied instead, and started to rise. He could pretty much feel the noose tightening around his neck. He’d kept it at bay for nearly two decades, long enough to hope that maybe he’d outrun it, but perhaps he’d only ever been living on borrowed time. He couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of it being a mutiny which finally brought him down, though. He briefly considered trying to jump Rourke as Jia activated the comm and called Micah, Apirana and Kuai up to the canteen, but quickly thought better of it. It was the same choice as he’d faced with the Laughing Man: almost certain immediate death, or a chance to play things out and live a little longer, hoping that his luck would see him through somehow.
Granted, it hadn’t exactly worked how he’d hop
ed so far.
He’d half expected the trudge to the canteen, held at gunpoint with the three women behind him, to be some sort of never-ending ordeal. Instead it seemed to be over quicker than blinking, and he still hadn’t started to think through what he was going to say to his crew.
His friends.
Probably.
He usually leaned casually against the counter which separated the galley’s floorspace from that of the canteen while addressing his crew, and he instinctively took that position again now. The main differences were that he felt far from casual, and instead of lurking by the door Tamara Rourke stood in the middle of the floor with her gun still levelled at his face. Micah, Kuai and Apirana appeared in the doorway behind her and stopped dead at what they saw.
‘What the hell?’ Apirana asked, clearly taken aback.
‘This job’s smelled bad since we took it,’ Rourke said flatly, ‘and I think we all knew it a bit. Secret cargo, secret employer, our Captain’s been edgy and smelling of whisky and happy to shoot a couple of void station enforcers in the face instead of try to talk his way out of trouble like usual. But we all gave him the benefit of the doubt because whatever else has happened, he’s usually seen us right before. And then everything goes to hell, and I can’t be the only one wondering exactly what’s been going on.’
To his own surprise, Drift felt a stirring of at least semi-righteous anger in his belly. ‘You knew! Don’t play the innocent! You knew that I knew who was hiring us, and you let it go!’
‘Because I trusted you!’ Rourke shot back at him.
‘You did know?’ Apirana rumbled. Drift experienced a sudden quiver of fear as he almost felt the Maori’s gaze harden and definitely saw his jaw tighten. Apirana’s loyalty had always been rock-hard, but if the big man felt his trust had been abused then Drift didn’t like to think how he’d react. Great, now I’ve got two of them mad at me.
‘Ichabod,’ Rourke was saying firmly, ‘someone’s used us, and I’m not going to stand for it. In fact, someone’s going to die for it. I’d rather that someone be the man who hired us, but if you won’t give me his name then so help me, it will be you.’
