by Rob Boffard
“Don’t drive into the line of fire, then. OK?”
Carver flashes me a smile, then reaches out and pulls me into an unexpected hug.
“What are you going to do?” he says.
I point to the gun station, to one of the crates loaded with ammo.
“I’m a tracer,” I say. “I’m going to run.”
And without another word, I take off down the hangar.
I can feel the tension rising, crackling through the air. Stompers and civilians hunker down behind hastily placed cover. Stingers are checked, sighted, checked again. Everyone’s eyes are on the corridor leading up to the dock. Royo’s at the weapons table when I get there, talking to the stompers behind it. He’s still pale, but seems more upright, somehow. By now, the combined noises in the hangar have become so loud that he’s having to shout to be heard, but he stops when he sees me.
“Can’t be more than a few minutes before they get here,” Royo says. “You ready?” He hands me a stinger of my own, greasy with oil.
I don’t get a chance to respond. At that moment, a rocket – a whirring, spinning projectile, propelled on a roaring cone of fire – comes howling through the entrance of the dock.
79
Riley
The rocket corkscrews through the air, detonating right above the middle of the hangar, sending out a cone of flaming, spitting shrapnel. One piece lands near me, charred black, crunching off the deck. Somewhere distant, there’s a roar as Carver kicks the Boneshaker into life.
I dive behind a line of crates, my stinger out and trained on the doors. Two more rockets explode through the gap. One of them takes out a crane near the side of the dock, knocking two stompers sprawling. I see one of them skidding across the floor, a dark, smoking stump where his left leg should be. His face is a mask of pain and shock.
We’re returning fire – I can hear the boom of the long gun, the spitting bang of stingers – but it isn’t stopping the Earthers’ advance guard from charging through. There are more of them than I thought, using plate metal as makeshift shields, dropping them to form cover.
I’ve never been a good shot – and that’s under firing-range conditions. But I start shooting anyway, targeting the gap. One of them is running right at me – I fire once, twice, but hit nothing. As I get ready to fire again, I hear a thundering shot from my right. Anna: down on one knee, the long gun resting on a crate. She took down the Earther on the run, tracking his movement across the floor before shooting.
I don’t have time to thank her. I keep firing. This time, I find my mark, my bullets taking one of the Earthers in the shoulder. She spins out, knocked backwards. The air is thick with acrid smoke.
More of them. Now they’re using their own supplies as cover – crates on wheeled pallets, absorbing the gunfire, their surfaces denting as the bullets ricochet. Still more are breaking through the gap, running left, right, dodging out of the way. I hear Iyengar curse as a man she was aiming at vanishes behind cover.
There’s no sign of Mikhail, or Okwembu.
I’m useless here. It’s a damn miracle I hit even one person. I should be transporting ammo, keeping everyone else topped up. Frantic, I look around for the supply, spotting it a few yards away behind another barricade. I sprint for it, pumping my arms to push myself forward – and have to duck and roll as a length of metal pipe swings forward, nearly taking me in the face.
The Earther wielding it has come right through the lines, his eyes wild. The pipe is huge, so big that it looks like a roof strut, and he has to lean back to get enough force to swing it again. I feel rather than hear the pipe, like a sick vibration in the air. Just in time, I roll to the side, coming up as it bangs off the floor.
The Earther roars in anger, but I’m too fast for him, up in half a second and chopping him across the throat, right above his Adam’s apple. It knocks him back – amazingly, he’s still upright. Before he can regain his balance, I drive a knee into his stomach. That does the job.
Before he even hits the ground, there’s a whooshing thud to my left. I look around to see that Iyengar is on fire.
One of the makeshift rockets hit her. She’s screaming, tearing at herself in agony as flames bloom around her. With a horrible clarity, I see the skin on her face start to blister. Her fingers are stuck together. She falls face down, twitching.
Prakesh jumps to the front of my mind, and the feeling that comes with it is an impossible terror. I can’t see him anywhere. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. There’s too much noise, too much drifting smoke. Royo is shouting, trying to regain control.
I feel the rumble of the Boneshaker before I see it. Then Carver is pulling alongside me, sweeping me onto it. He hands me a clip over his shoulder, the metal slick with oil.
“I’ll drive, you shoot,” I hear him say.
I don’t have time to tell him that I’m a terrible shot. He guns the engine, and I nearly topple off the back as we scream off down one side of the dock.
80
Prakesh
“Get down!”
A hand on the back of his neck shoves Prakesh to the floor. Bullets whine overhead, the air rippling as it’s pushed aside. The front of the makeshift barricades, where his head was a moment before, cracks and splinters as a volley of gunfire tears into it.
The man who shoved him down is peering over the top of the barricade, his hand still on Prakesh’s neck. Prakesh can feel some sort of ring on one of the fingers, the metal cold against his skin. He looks up, the coppery taste of fear coating the inside of his mouth. The man has lank hair and an angular face. Syria, he thinks. Riley called him Syria.
There are two stompers alongside them, and, as they return fire, Prakesh gets to his knees. They’re in a good position in the shadow of one of the tugs, but even as he raises his head, another bullet whistles past his ear and he ducks.
Syria moves with him, grabbing the front of his shirt. He pulls Prakesh close, all but snarling his words. “You gonna start firing any time soon?”
Prakesh is holding a stinger with both hands. He doesn’t remember how he got it, who gave it to him, but he knows he hasn’t fired a single shot. Every time his finger finds the trigger, he freezes.
Syria throws him aside, blind-firing over the top of the barricade. Another rocket detonates, filling the air with the hot stench of smoke.
What am I doing here? Prakesh thinks. A few hours earlier, he was in the Air Lab, outrunning and out-thinking Julian Novak, protecting his colleagues. Now he’s in the middle of a firefight, asked to take even more lives than he has already.
“If you’re not gonna fire, give me your ammo,” Syria says, fumbling at the stinger in Prakesh’s hands.
In response, Prakesh raises himself up, swinging his arms over the top of the barricades. He pulls the trigger once, twice, three times, not even aiming. He knows there is almost no chance of hitting anyone, and he doesn’t care. He just wants it to be over, and the quickest way to do that is to drain his ammo. At any other time, the logical part of his mind would have protested this. But now, with the smoke invading his nostrils, it’s all he can think to do.
His stinger clicks empty. In the instant before he ducks under the barricades again, Prakesh sees Riley. She’s on the back of Carver’s contraption, tearing across the floor, drawing fire from the Earthers.
81
Knox
Knox sees Okwembu first.
She’s around the near side of the dock entrance, squatting on her haunches, utterly untroubled by the chaos going on around her. She wears the same prison jumpsuit she had on when Hale brought her to his surgery. She wears a thick jacket over it, the faux-fur collar bunched around her neck. There are other people around her, their heads bent close together. Knox can see their mouths moving, but he can’t hear their words over the gunfire. One of them – a craggy, scarred man with long grey hair – is gesturing wildly, jabbing a finger at the dock.
There’s a bang, and he ducks instinctively. He is on the other si
de of the dock entrance from Okwembu, leaning up against the wall. Whatever’s going on here, whoever these people are, none of them has noticed him yet. They’re focused on the battle, on pushing deeper into the dock.
He still has the syringe, its needle caked with dried blood and aqueous humour. He grips it tight. He’ll walk across, come up on Okwembu, and jam it into the side of her neck.
No, says Amira, crouched next to him. You won’t get within ten feet before they cut you down.
She’s right. Of course she is. He shakes his head, angry with himself. He has to keep it together. He’s still not strong enough – the walk over here has exhausted him, draining what little energy he has. His lungs are clear, but feel brittle, as if a breath that’s too strong will crack a hole in them.
“You!”
Knox feels a hand on his shoulder. He tenses – his reactions might not be what they should, but he’s still got the syringe, and he can still fight off whoever this is.
No, Amira says again.
Knox looks around. The man is tall, easily over six feet, with broad shoulders and a carefully trimmed moustache. He’s clutching a tattered backpack in his hand, and he looks Knox up and down, his eyes narrowed. “The hell happened to you?” he says, raising his voice as a fresh volley of gunfire crackles through the air.
Knox tenses his fingers on the syringe. Whatever Amira says, he can’t afford this delay. Hale is in there, he knows it, he just has to get to her. And he is acutely aware of how he looks, his face and clothing crusted with the evidence of Resin.
But the man’s eyes are jumping, unable to focus, brimming with adrenaline. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, almost to himself, digging inside the backpack. “Take this. Stick to the left flank, and we should be able to take out a few more of them.”
The stinger is black, home-made, the metal edges badly machined. Knox takes it with his free hand, palming the syringe with the other, leaving the needle sticking out between his middle and index finger. “Thanks,” he says.
And looks up to see the man’s shoulder explode with blood and bone.
Knox throws himself to the floor, out of the line of fire, pushing the screaming man aside. He doesn’t know where the shooter is, and he doesn’t care. He crawls into the dock, staying as low as possible, heading for one of the wheeled pallets stacked high with crates. His hand is sticky with sweat, and he keeps a tight grip on the stinger.
Somehow, he makes it to the cover. There’s a body behind it, curled in on itself, like it’s trying to protect its stomach. Knox shunts it aside, tries to think, tries to form thoughts under the noise. He’s lost his syringe somewhere – it must have fallen from his hand as he crawled. Doesn’t matter. Amira is there, down on one knee beside him. A thin stream of blood issues from her mouth, trickling down her chin.
He takes two quick breaths, then raises himself up, sneaking a look around the side of the crates.
The dock is coming to pieces around him. The parts he can see through the drifting smoke are a tangle of muzzle flashes and sprinting bodies. He tries to stay calm, knowing that it’s what Amira would do. Hale. Where are you?
He spots her at almost the moment the thought forms. She’s on the back of the vehicle, the one they had him on earlier, tearing across the dock with her friend at the controls.
And as soon as he spots her, he hears Amira speaking in his ear, the anger in her voice as clear as a pane of glass. He turns to look at her, and sees that the blood coming from her mouth has covered her entire face. Her eyes are black holes in a sea of dark red.
There she is. There’s the bitch. Kill her.
82
Riley
There are three Earthers crouched down behind one of the barricades. They’ve killed the stompers who were behind it, taking it for themselves. We’re heading right towards them – a thought has just enough time to form in my head, a crazy jumble of words like Can’t and Aim and Impossible. Then I’m firing.
I rise up off the seat to do it, aiming over the top of Carver’s head. I don’t even see where most of my shots land. But then one of the Earthers goes down, blood exploding out of a gaping wound in his temple. The other two turn, their eyes wide with shock, and then the Boneshaker is on them. The one on the left manages to get out of the way, diving right over the front of the line of the crates. The other isn’t as lucky. I feel his body crunch under our wheels as we ride right over him, the vehicle bucking so hard that it nearly kicks us off.
Carver hangs a hard right, the Boneshaker screaming alongside the tugs barricading the entrance. As he does so, I get a good look at the dock. My stomach drops, and it has nothing to do with the speed we’re moving at.
We’re losing. It only takes me a second to see that. The few stompers and Tzevyans left are pinned down, hunkered behind the barricades with only the tops of their heads visible. I can’t see Anna – just the tip of the long gun, standing upright. She’s either reloading, or she’s dead.
More Earthers come tumbling out of the gap. In seconds, my clip is dry, the slide slamming open. I raise myself up, putting one leg on the seat.
“The hell are you doing?” Carver shouts. He’s pulled the Boneshaker to the right, shooting diagonally across the dock, crossing the gap while there’s no gunfire from the others.
“Just keep going!” I shout. And at the moment where we zip by a tightly clustered group of Earthers, I hurl myself off the seat.
There are three of them, crouched low as they run, heading for cover. They turn at the sound of the Boneshaker, and I see the shock in their faces as I fly through the air towards them. My legs are tucked, with my knees pulled up to my chest and my arms out, elbows cocked back. In the split second before impact, I see that the one closest to me is Anton – the Earther who captured us back in Knox’s surgery. His eyes are huge, his mouth open in horror.
I have just enough time to think the words: I came back for you. And then my shin takes him in the face.
I’m moving so fast that his mouth is still open when I hit it. There’s a crunching sensation as his jaw shatters. It happens so quickly that he doesn’t have time to cry out; he just drops.
I’m already tucking for the roll, the ground rising up to meet me, and when it does it’s like sliding on oil, my body tucked in the perfect position. I rise up from the floor as the roll brings me up, striking out as I do so. Fist to stomach, elbow to chest. The last two Earthers go down.
Another boom followed by a crumpling sound behind me. Another Earther – one I hadn’t seen, a younger man with a trim beard – came up behind me. Now he’s nothing more than a trembling body, his chest a dark, open wound.
I turn my head to see Anna flick me a salute. The barrel of her gun is still smoking. More rockets, shooting out from somewhere unseen in the entrance passage, exploding above us in a crash of noise and smoke. I start to run to the side of the hangar, away from the line of fire, when one detonates right next to me.
It’s like someone took the world and yanked it away, leaving nothing but darkness and silence behind. Slowly, very slowly, flickers of light start to fade in, accompanied by a dull roar. My body has stopped responding: everything below my neck has checked out.
Amazingly, I don’t feel fear. I don’t feel anything.
I close my eyes.
I don’t know how much time passes before I open them again. Some sounds have come back: the booming of gunfire, people shouting. But I barely notice them.
Because Morgan Knox is standing over me.
Somehow, he made it into the dock. He crawled out of the hospital, found his way here, wound his way through the battle. He’s turned into something awful, barely a human being. His face is black with dried Resin. His mouth is open, and I see it’s coated his teeth, filling out the thin gaps between them.
He’s got a stinger. He’s holding it in both hands, aiming carefully. It’s less than four feet away. Impossible to miss.
Move, I tell myself. But the thought comes from far away.
&
nbsp; Knox’s open mouth forms a twisted smile. He sights down the body of the gun.
I try to form words, but I can’t. I can only watch as he squeezes the trigger.
83
Riley
In the instant before Knox shoots me, I move.
It’s more in desperation than anything else. I roll to the side, using my shoulders to wrench my body.
Knox fires. The bang slams my eardrums shut, and the bullet hits the floor right where my neck was. I can feel the vibrations travelling through the metal.
I let the energy in my shoulders travel. First to my torso, then my knees, then my ankles. I’m lying on my side now, my back towards Knox, and I kick out with my right leg.
My shin collides with his. He goes down, howling in fury. But as I roll back the other way, I see that he still has the stinger. He’s up on one elbow, trying to get a bead on me.
I get to my knees, my head pounding, white heat burning in my throat. Not fast enough. He’s going to aim and fire, and this time I’m not going to be able to stop him.
“Hey you.”
Knox pauses, looks to his right.
Carver’s boot takes him across the side of his head. He crumples instantly, folding in on himself. His head thuds off the floor, and the stinger spins away.
“That was for Kev,” says Carver.
He stares down at Knox a moment longer, then looks over at me. “You OK?”
I’m too stunned to speak. Knox is still breathing, but he’s unconscious, sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
“I’m fine,” I say. We’re off to one side of the dock, behind one of the tugs and out of sight of the entrance. The Boneshaker sits nearby.
“Can that thing still run?” I ask Carver, pointing to the Boneshaker.
