Marauder

by Gary Gibson

 

  She gasped and stared wildly around, one hand still gripping a bar of the window. There was no one there, and yet she knew she had heard a voice.

  It took her another moment to work out that the voice was coming through her implants. Someone was trying to communicate with her remotely, and was managing to do so despite the device Tarrant had injected into her neck. The voice was male, with a deep and resonant warmth to it that somehow soothed her jangled nerves. It certainly did not sound like the voice of someone intent on doing her harm.

  ‘Who are you?’ she spoke tentatively into the air.

  said the voice.

  Gabrielle hesitated, then did as she was instructed. The door had no visible handle of any type, and she had already tried pushing it open, to no avail. The lock was clearly electronic.

  To her amazement, it swung quietly open at her approach. She stared outside at the far wall of the cave in astonishment.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she demanded. ‘Who are you?’

  said the voice.

  Gabrielle swallowed hard, and stepped out onto the sloping floor of the cave. When no one challenged her, she scanned up and down the length of the cave, seeing that it was entirely deserted. Downslope lay only darkness.

 

  ‘What if someone sees me?’ she whispered.

 

  She pushed her breather mask into one pocket of her coat and headed upwards to where the cave accessed a tunnel drilled out of the rock. Overhead lights shone down on rows of parked trucks and racks of equipment.

 

  She halted. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who the hell you are,’ she whispered loudly. ‘How do I know you’re not working for Tarrant? And just where are you sending me?’

  said the voice.

  She held her ground, even though her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘That isn’t enough,’ she said. ‘Why are you helping me like this?’

  , said Bash.

  ‘What war?’ she hissed, peering ahead of herself as she proceeded further along the tunnel. And what the hell is the Wanderer? Up ahead she could see what looked like the entrance to another cavern. ‘Are you talking about the Freehold?’

  said the voice.

  ‘Who? Who’s Meg . . . ?’

  The voice – and the presence – faded at the same moment that a sliver of knowledge suddenly materialized in the back of Gabrielle’s mind, as if it had always been there. Somehow she knew where to find Megan – whoever she was.

  An increasing sense of excitement gripped her. Was this the same woman she had seen knocked down by a drone? She wanted to know who this person was, and how she had so badly disturbed Tarrant. Gabrielle had an intuition that the woman might even be able to answer some of her questions about the man she had once known as Karl Petrova.

  She found herself at the mouth of a cavern, its walls speckled with green and blue light emanating from some kind of fungi. Towards the centre of the cavern lay clustered a number of buildings. Megan, she felt sure, was inside one of them.

  Gabrielle walked as quietly and quickly as she could towards them, keeping a watchful eye out. On her right tarpaulin-covered stacks of machinery rose far above her head, while on her left stood a row of partially disembowelled trucks.

  She heard the sound of footsteps, reverberating from the cavern ceiling, and approaching from somewhere on the other side of the stacks. She crept on towards the last truck in the row, before crouching in the narrow space between one of its treads and the cavern wall.

  The footsteps came to a halt. ‘Control,’ said a man’s voice, ‘the security net’s still down. Any idea when it’ll be back up?’

  She waited and listened.

  ‘Well, if it’s localized,’ said the same man after a pause, ‘I’ll take a look and see if I can figure something out from this end.’

  Gabrielle hardly dared breathe. He sounded as if he was just right around the other side of the truck.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, after another pause. ‘Soon as I’ve checked that out, I’ll check on the girl Tarrant brought in. Sound good?’

  The man again fell silent. After a minute, Gabrielle risked a glance around the rear of the truck.

  She saw the back of a man’s head. He was wearing the familiar grey-and-white fatigues she had seen on other Freeholders. He had opened up a virtual console, most of it taken up by what looked like a map of the caverns. He had a rifle over one shoulder, and various tools arranged in sheaths on a multi-pocketed waistcoat.

  If he was on his way to check up on her, she might have only a couple of minutes before he raised the alert.

  A crowbar lay on the ground next to the truck, along with some oily rags and a pile of what looked like spare parts. She reached down and picked the crowbar up.

  One end of it accidentally banged against the side of the truck, the sound immediately echoing across the cavern.

  She froze with one hand over her mouth, her heart beating like thunder.

  She could hear the guard breathing loudly. He had to know someone was there.

  She listened. Just silence. But surely he must have heard . . . ?

  She forced herself to take her hand from her mouth and, gripping the crowbar with both hands, risked another glimpse towards where the guard had been standing.

  He was gone.

  ‘Get up,’ said a voice from immediately behind her. ‘And drop that fucking—’

  She turned, swinging wildly. His rifle was aimed straight at her head, but the crowbar caught him hard in the knee, and he collapsed against the truck treads with a howl of pain.

  She stood up and swung the crowbar again and again. He slipped to the ground, limbs twitching. She struck again . . .

  And again.

  When he finally stopped moving, she let the crowbar clatter to the ground. Then she turned away and vomited.

  It hadn’t felt like killing Thijs or the rest of them back on the Grand Barge. It had been different. And worse.

  She wiped her mouth clean and forced herself to pick up the dead man’s rifle before continuing on her way.

  The buildings seemed deserted, and yet her machine-senses drew her inside one of them and along a corridor, before stopping at one specific door. It felt . . . right.

  As the door slid open at her touch, she peered inside and recognized the woman who had caused Tarrant so much consternation. Slumped on the floor, with bandages visible beneath her shirt, she stared up at Gabrielle in utter disbelief.

  ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ the woman demanded weakly.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ replied Gabrielle helplessly. ‘You’re Megan, I think? Bash told me to get you out of here. My name’s Gabrielle, and I—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she declared, then dragged herself upright and came closer. ‘But what was that you just said – about Bash?’

  ‘He . . . he told me to hurry. That we didn’t have much time.’

  Megan’s face creased in blank astonishment. She pushed past Gabrielle and made her way back along the corridor and out into the main cavern. Gabrielle followed, unsure what she was supposed to do next.

  ‘That rifle –’ Megan suddenly turned back to her – ‘where did you get it?’

  ‘From a guard.’

  The woman cocked her head. ‘And what happened to him?’

  ‘I . . . he’s dead.’

  The
woman’s eyes narrowed, as if re-evaluating her. ‘You shot him with that thing?’

  Gabrielle swallowed. ‘No, I . . . hit him with something.’

  ‘That’s a heck of a thing for anyone to do, let alone . . .’

  The woman halted mid-speech. Let alone a girl like you, Gabrielle knew she had meant to say.

  ‘I didn’t have any choice,’ said Gabrielle, her voice rising. ‘He was going to kill me. I . . .’

  ‘Okay,’ said Megan, putting a hand on Gabrielle’s arm, her voice soothing. ‘Okay. I get it.’ She gestured to the rifle. ‘Tell me – do you know how to use that thing?’

  Gabrielle swallowed. ‘No, not really.’

  Megan waggled the fingers of one hand. ‘Then give it to me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Gabrielle. ‘You look like you’ve been hurt—’

  ‘Just give me the goddamn rifle,’ she snapped. ‘Now.’

  Gabrielle unslung the rifle and passed it over. Megan lifted it up to study a reading on one side of the barrel. ‘It’s only half charged,’ she said. ‘The guard you killed. Did he have any spare battery units on him?’

  Gabrielle opened her mouth, then closed it again. She clearly hadn’t thought of that. ‘I don’t know what they even look like.’

  ‘Well, this is only good for a couple of shots anyway,’ said Megan, sounding doubtful. ‘Damn thing’s so primitive it doesn’t even have active sighting.’

  ‘What’s active sight—?’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Megan dismissively, slinging the rifle over her own shoulder. ‘Now I want to be absolutely clear about this: when you say Bash sent you, do you mean he actually spoke to you?’

  Gabrielle frowned. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well, I mean I heard a voice through my implants. And he said his name was Bash.’

  Megan stared at her once again. ‘I don’t like being lied to,’ she said quietly. ‘So tell me again. What did he say his name was?’

  ‘Bash.’

  Gabrielle was dumbfounded to see tears glistening in the corners of the other woman’s eyes. ‘And he told you to find me?’

  ‘But who is he?’ asked Gabrielle.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ said Megan. ‘We need to look for him.’

  ‘But I don’t know even know where to start.’

  Megan regarded her dubiously. ‘You didn’t seem to have much trouble finding me.’

  ‘Yes, but that was different,’ said Gabrielle.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Look . . . I don’t know how I knew where you were, but I just knew.’

  ‘Like the knowledge had just been dropped into your head, like something you’d always known? Was that what it felt like?’

  ‘I . . . yes,’ said Gabrielle. ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘You’re a machine-head,’ said Megan quietly, ‘which means you’re supposed to know about these things. But I’m beginning to think you must have led a pretty sheltered existence.’ She nodded towards one of the neighbouring buildings. ‘Best place to start is the last place I saw him.’

  Megan led the way with quick, determined strides. ‘What happens if we manage to get out of here?’ asked Gabrielle, following her inside. ‘We’re thousands of miles from anywhere.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ whispered Megan, ‘it’s got to be better than what they’ve already got planned for us.’

  Megan unslung the rifle and signalled for silence as they came to one particular door, before nudging it open with the toe of her boot.

  There was a sharp exclamation from within, and Megan quickly stepped inside.

  Gabrielle waited outside. After a moment there was a single flash of light from within, followed by a strained grunt.

  ‘Get in here,’ Megan yelled.

  Gabrielle found Megan standing over the crumpled form of an elderly Freeholder with a scarred face and a smouldering hole in his chest that still flickered with flames. The smell of cooked flesh made her gag, so she hurriedly reached for her breather mask and pulled it back on.

  There was another man in the room, tall, dark-skinned and emaciated. He was seated in a high-backed chair surrounded by complicated-looking equipment, and merely stared past them with an unfocused gaze.

  Megan’s breath shuddered as she slung the rifle back over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t like doing that,’ she muttered.

  ‘Why?’ asked Gabrielle.

  ‘He fixed my shoulder.’ Megan stepped towards the man in the chair. Gabrielle wondered if he was mentally impaired or perhaps paralysed.

  ‘C’mon, Bash,’ said Megan, undoing the straps holding him in the chair. She slid one hand behind him, and the other under his arm, and tried to get him to stand, grunting with the effort. After a few seconds he slowly stood up, still demonstrating no apparent awareness that they were even there.

  Gabrielle’s mouth flopped open. ‘That’s Bash?’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  Megan regarded her wearily. ‘Something that’s going to take a really long time to explain.’

  ‘But he spoke to me . . . in my head.’

  ‘Then you might be interested to know,’ said Megan, ‘that, apart from one recent occasion that’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, he hasn’t said one damn word to anyone else in well over a decade.’

  It took Gabrielle several moments to absorb this. ‘But . . .’

  ‘You know what,’ said Megan, looking over at her, ‘how about we cut the fucking questions until we get out of here? And you can start to help by getting hold of his other arm.’

  Gabrielle did as instructed and, not without some difficulty, they steered him out of the room and into the main cavern.

  ‘Those trucks over there,’ Megan panted, ‘let’s see if one of them’s working.’

  Gabrielle pulled her breather mask off again, and waited beside Bash while Megan investigated the cabins of three separate trucks in turn before finding one that seemed to her satisfaction. She waved down to Gabrielle from the driver’s window, and Gabrielle guided Bash aboard the rear compartment. She was careful not to look anywhere near the dead guard’s body lying close by.

  Megan climbed through to the rear and helped her get Bash strapped into one of the compartment’s benches. A baby, thought Gabrielle, would be less helpless. It seemed impossible that the voice she had heard – so warm, so certain – could possibly have originated from this vacant-eyed and shambling shell of a man. Megan found a packet of disposable breather masks and strapped one over Bash’s face before taking another for herself. Gabrielle followed suit, then pulled her own mask back on.

  Megan paused as Gabrielle followed her through the connecting hatch to the main cabin. ‘Maybe you should ride in the back with Bash.’

  ‘No.’ Gabrielle shook her head adamantly. ‘I’m tired of being driven around places without having any idea what’s going on. I’ll sit up front with you.’

  ‘Look, I really think . . .’

  ‘We can stay here and argue all day,’ said Gabrielle, staring defiantly at the other woman, ‘or we can try and get out of here.’

  Megan held her gaze for a moment, as if testing her resolve, before nodding with a sigh. ‘Fine.’

  She had only just managed to get herself strapped into the seat next to Megan before the truck surged forward, bouncing up the slope and towards the connecting tunnel.

  ‘If you have some kind of a plan in mind,’ said Gabrielle, as they swerved at a sharp turn and into the tunnel, ‘I’d really like to know what it is.’

  ‘When they brought us here,’ Megan hunched forward, ‘there was a dropship parked right outside the entrance.’

  ‘I saw it, too.’

  They barrelled on past the cavern where Gabrielle had been locked up, before executing another ninety-degree turn into an entirely different part of the underground complex. ‘Well,’ said Megan, peering ahead, ‘that ship should be the best and fastest way out of here.’

  ‘But what if it’s not there any more? Or—’

  ‘It�
�ll be there,’ Megan snapped.

  A siren began to wail, low and sonorous. Gabrielle was surprised that it had taken them so long to notice that all three of their captives were making a break for it.

  Megan responded to the siren by driving even faster. They were heading up a long incline now, faint daylight seeping down from above and filtered through the atmospheric containment field.

  Gabrielle saw some figures emerge, gesticulating wildly, from behind a huge stack of crates. Before she could shout a warning, something blew out their windscreen.

  The truck swerved and crashed to a halt. Gabrielle stared down at the broken glass covering her lap, then looked over at Megan. ‘Are you all right?’

  Megan nodded, breathing hard. ‘You?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Didn’t get hit,’ said Megan. ‘That’s the main thing.’

  She worked the truck’s controls. It reversed, then shot forward and back on up the incline, picking up speed.

  ‘Get down,’ Megan yelled, ‘and stay down.’

  Gabrielle ducked and heard the sound of gunfire. Voices dopplered past, then the truck juddered slightly as it collided with something. More shots followed in their wake. The light up ahead of them seemed painfully bright after so long down in the dimly lit caverns.

  Megan pushed the rifle into Gabrielle’s lap. ‘I need you to shoot anything that moves,’ she explained.

  ‘But I’ve never used a gun bef—’

  ‘You said you wanted to ride up front, Gabrielle,’ Megan shouted, ‘so make yourself useful. Just point the damn thing and pull the trigger. It’s easy. You don’t have to even fucking hit anything, just so long as it makes them think twice about getting in our way.’

  Gabrielle nodded, her throat going dry, and grasped the rifle awkwardly in both hands. She squinted over the rim of the windscreen.

  Up ahead, just on this side of the containment field, she saw a figure climbing into a truck just a moment before it moved to block their way.

  Megan didn’t even slow down.

  ‘Wait,’ protested Gabrielle. ‘You can’t—’

  ‘No choice,’ Megan grunted, swerving at the very last second, aiming for the narrowing gap between the truck and the tunnel wall.

  They almost made it. Almost.