Linehan throws himself down onto the first man, pulls him into the aisle, putting the man between him and his colleague while he pulls a loop of plastic wire around the man’s neck. A moment ago, it was one strand on Linehan’s shorn hairline. Now it’s become one with his victim’s jugular. Blood gushes everywhere. The second man already has a pistol out—and Linehan hurls his comrade’s body at him, rushes in behind it, and dives at the floor as the man starts firing through that dead flesh. People are screaming now. But Linehan pays them no heed: he’s tackling his assailant at the knees, knocking him off his feet—and then jumping to his own, kicking the gun away, bringing his boot down on the man’s face—and diving after the weapon, grabbing it, whirling around, firing a single shot at the man who’s pulling himself upward again—but who now grunts and slides back to the floor.
“No one fucking move,” shouts Linehan.
People were starting to. But now they’re stopping. Linehan gestures at Spencer, who steps into the aisle. As he does so, Linehan tosses him the pistol.
“Cover them,” he says on the one-on-one.
Spencer does. Linehan grabs the first man he killed by his shirt. He grabs the man’s pistol, shoves it into his belt. He pulls the corpse up onto a seat, shoves it up against the wall—and then seizes it by the back of its neck, starts smashing its head against that wall. He keeps on smashing until the skull cracks, breaks open like an overripe melon. The contents of the brainpan spill everywhere. Linehan starts rooting through them.
“What the hell are you doing?” yells Spencer on the one-on-one. He’s backed against the opposite wall, is using it as a vantage point from which to cover the passengers. The height of the seats means that they can’t see what Linehan is doing. Which doesn’t mean they can’t hear it.
“Software,” snarls Linehan. “Take the software from the head, find out who they work for. Find out what their fucking brand is.”
“We already know what their goddamn brand is,” yells Spencer. “I told you already. They’re federals.”
“How long have you been in the States, Spencer? Huh? How fucking long?” Linehan’s fingers are covered with blood and brain matter. His fists close on chips. “Federals means nothing. Which Command, Spencer? That’s the real question. Which fucking Command?”
“Presumably whichever one you split from,” screams Spencer. “When you stole whatever they’d found out about Autumn Rain. You’ve sold out your own kind, Linehan. And now you’re going to die at their hand. Tell me I’m wrong, Linehan. Go on. Tell me.”
“Gonna tell you right now you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” hisses Linehan, and for one sentence he’s both broadcasting and speaking. People around him whimper. “My country’s in deadly peril. My run’s the highest service I can offer her. And the last thing I need is holier-than-thou shit thrust in my face by some mercenary. You reading me? My life’s the least of my concerns. But we’ve got to find a way to live anyway. We’ve got to work together, Spencer. Together. You reading me?”
“Sure,” says Spencer, “I’m reading you.”
“So tell me how your hack went.”
“I don’t have control. I’m not sure anybody does. My guess is that this train’s been stripped down to its basic locomotion and emergency fail-safes.”
“Monitors?”
“Almost certainly gone.”
“Christ, let’s hope so.”
“What do you suggest we do next?” says Spencer. And even as he does so he’s reaching down, kneeling on the floor, reaching inside the shattered head.
“You’re lucky I didn’t clean him out,” sneers Linehan.
“Answer my goddamn question,” says Spencer.
“I suggest you do exactly what I say,” says Linehan. “We’ve got feds in both directions, and God knows how close they are. But I’ve got a plan. You’re not going to like it. The sheep around us are going to like it even less. But I can guess what Control’s orders were, Spencer. Get me to London. No matter the cost. Got it?”
“So what’s the plan?” says Spencer.
“Start racking up cost,” says Linehan.
B ail out,” Haskell says.
“We can’t,” Marlowe replies. “He’ll blow us to pieces. We need to wait for reentry.”
“But he won’t wait,” she says.
“Close the cockpit doors. Lock them.”
While she does that, he’s pulling himself down onto the floor of the cockpit, crawling beneath the instrument panels, finding the trapdoor that’s situated where floor meets sloping wall. He opens it—and finds himself looking down into the narrow chute that leads to the escape hatch. He descends within. He reaches the airlock at the bottom and hauls it open.
Now he’s in something that’s more of a closet than a chamber. Another airlock sits adjacent to him. He knows better than to try to open that one. He rigs that door with devices from his belt: sensors, mini-charges, more sensors. Then he pulls himself back through into the chute. He closes the interior airlock—rigs still more devices, clambers back up.
Haskell’s sitting there. She’s rigged wires from her head to the control panels. She wears a dazed expression on her face.
“I can’t raise anything on the zone beyond us,” she says.
“Do the cameras show anything in the cockpit-access corridor?”
“They show nothing on this ship. But I don’t trust them for shit.”
They train their guns on the cockpit door. They open it. The corridor beyond is empty.
“You cover the zone,” says Marlowe. “I’m heading to the cargo chamber.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I thought razors couldn’t move and remain in the zone.”
“The best ones can.”
“Ah.”
But he figures it must be a tough balancing act. He notices that she’s letting wires trail out behind her as the two of them push themselves off walls and move down the corridor.
“Wires are safer,” she mutters. “I’ve shut down as much wireless as possible.”
“Can you access the zone beyond this plane?”
“No,” she replies. “We’re being jammed.”
The two of them pull themselves into the room where they waited out the takeoff. They open the doors that lead to the cargo bay. That cargo bay contains the three remaining ways into the ship. Two are airlocks, one on either side. But they’re not the main focus right now.
“The elevator,” she says.
“I know,” he replies, sailing through air toward the airlock door that dominates the center of the cargo chamber’s floor. Metal beams run up from its corners: the beams along which the elevator that connects the two ships is intended to slot. The elevator is there to expedite the loading of cargo into the upper ship. But it’s about to be repurposed for a different kind of freight. For even as Haskell and Marlowe pull open that airlock door, they feel a vibration that can only be the lower ship starting to extend its shaft into the upper. That shaft’s only supposed to be extended when the ship’s parked.
But whatever’s activating it isn’t in the mood to quibble.
“Hurry up,” she says.
The door they’ve just opened gives way to a two-meter drop. At the bottom is the exterior airlock door. Ladders drop down the walls to it. Marlowe climbs in. He looks back up at her.
“Weapons,” he says. “And some of that pressure-friendly ammo.”
She pulls weapons from their racks along the cargo walls, hands them down to him one by one. He slots in ammo specifically designed for use in pressurized environments, starts to mount guns on the ladder’s upper rungs: everything from handhelds to heavy rifles. He sets them up so that they can swivel as needed. He configures them on automatic—rigs their sights and sensors so that they’ll fire as soon as they see anything that passes for a target. He links them so that they can be controlled remotely by Haskell through the cockpit node—positions them so that they’re all pointing down at the exterior do
or below. He climbs down more rungs, keeps setting up weapons. His feet are almost at the bottom of the shaft.
The center of the door beneath him starts to glow.
“He’s burning his way through,” he says.
“Get back up here.”
But Marlowe quietly continues his preparations. He’s setting the weapons for interlocking fields of fire, concentrating them on the center of the lower door. The glowing looks positively molten now. He starts making his way back upward, checking weapons as he does so.
“Hurry,” says Haskell.
The guns around Marlowe whir, turn on their axes. Even the ones he didn’t point initially toward the expanding glow are now swiveling upon it.
“Move,” screams Haskell.
The guns roar to life—Marlowe reaches in, snaps one off its rung, starts unleashing it on full auto: the recoil sends him sailing upward even as Haskell starts closing the interior airlock door. He wafts through.
Just as something swarms through the space he’s left.
Drones. A fraction of a meter in length. Scores of them. The mounted weapons are firing on high precision, cutting great swathes into that seething mass. The initial wave is getting annihilated. But the second wave is coming in from behind. They rise on gyros. They climb the walls. They open fire. Shots whiz past Marlowe’s head. Guns start to get knocked off their mounts.
The interior door slams shut.
“Holy fuck,” says Haskell.
“You got control?” asks Marlowe.
“I do.”
“Can we hold them?”
“I don’t know,” she says. She projects the view from the guns onto screens set along the walls of the cargo chamber. She projects the specs too: Marlowe can see how she’s running them through the cockpit circuitry, coordinating them to degrees that they’re not even capable of—rewiring the functionality in real time, letting their barrels turn, fire, hit shots coming at them, hit the drones that are doing the shooting. He notices that armor plates have been positioned some distance down the shaft so that she can’t touch the lower plane—notices, too, that the ammunition the drones themselves are using is the same as that of the guns he’s just configured: precisely calibrated not to penetrate the airlock around them—and, by implication, the hull. Morat seems to want to take them alive.
He seems to have the resources to do it, too. Because the drones are responding to Haskell’s onslaught in coordinated fashion—forming up in new waves of attack. They’re upping their game.
Rapidly.
“They’re pressing,” she says.
“Can you hold them?” he repeats.
“For now. Not for long.”
“We need to get the fuck out of here.”
“Sure,” she says. “How?”
“I get out on the hull and detonate the separation clamps.”
She stares at him. “You can’t do that.”
“Want to bet?”
“Those things are probably out there right now.”
“Which is the other reason why I need to get out there. Before they find another way in.”
Even as Marlowe’s speaking he’s rigging more charges within the two side airlocks. It takes him all of twenty seconds, throughout which the bedlam below continues. Her eyes blank, Haskell drifts in free-fall by the wall as she tries to shore up their defenses and find another opening in the hack.
Marlowe finishes with the charges, starts suiting up. It’s slightly lighter armor than he wore in South America. He gets on everything except for his helmet. He attaches another rack of charges to his belt, starts to pull himself back toward the cockpit. Haskell keeps pace with him. And while they move they argue.
“You go out there and you’ll die,” she says.
“We’re dead if I don’t.”
They reach the cockpit. She positions herself in front of the trapdoor that leads to the escape hatch.
“I won’t let you go.”
“You have to.”
“If you go through that door, I’ll never see you again.”
“Never say that,” he says. Her eyes struggle to focus on his. She steadies herself against the control panels. But he’s already stepping inside the cockpit—getting down on the floor, looking back up at her.
“I don’t care what’s out on that hull,” he adds. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she replies.
Marlowe steps inside the cockpit. He gets down on the floor, crawls beneath the instrument panels, finds the trapdoor. He opens it. He looks back up at Haskell.
“Go,” she says. She leans down, kisses him. “Come back.”
“I will,” he replies. He turns. Turns back again:
“But if I can’t.”
“But if you can’t.”
“We need some kind of insurance policy.”
“Meaning?”
He tells her. To his surprise, she agrees. She asks him to forgive her if it comes to that. He nods, pulls on his helmet, seals it. He crawls inside the chute. She pushes the door shut behind him.
He wriggles down, reaches the bottom. He opens the interior door, finds himself back in the tiny chamber. The sensors and charges he rigged are still there. He adjusts the latter so they won’t detonate if he’s the one who comes back in through this door.
Then he signals up to Haskell. She works the overrides, evacs the air. He works the door’s manuals and pulls it open.
The surface before him is less than a meter away. But it’s not the surface of the ship he’s in. And the space between them is just that: space. Marlowe holds on to the edges of the doorway, activates his magnetic clamps, carefully protrudes his head.
And looks around.
Metal stretches out in all directions, curving away at various angles. He’s between the bottom of his ship and the roof of the one that holds his in thrall. Dark lines connect those surfaces at the point where curves begin: wires and struts. There aren’t many. Past them’s only black.
Marlowe edges out of the escape hatch. He begins to crawl toward the closest struts. He’s got his camo as high as it’ll go. He’s trying to minimize contact with the lower ship. He’s hoping that those who designed its exterior sensors were realists—that its sensors are optimized against objects approaching it over great distances and speeds rather than people crawling like insects on the hull. But he’s not sure. He’s planning on avoiding the open. He’s hoping to remain sandwiched between the ships if at all possible.
He reaches the nearest strut, looks past it and down at the massive sloping wing of the B-130. It’s partially retracted. Though it looks wholly unstable, it’s actually one of the toughest things on the ship—almost as tough as the struts themselves. Marlowe can see where they bent when his ship tried to break free. They’re warped here and there. They’re far from broken.
He means to change that. He moves along them, rigging minute amounts of hi-ex at key points. In short order he reaches the rear of the Janus, still well short of the rear of the B-130. Its tail splays out above him like some monstrous bird of prey. Bisecting the tail from left to right is a line of color through an otherwise-black sky: black shading off into dark blue shading off into violet.
He stares for a moment at what remains of sunset. Then he turns and begins crawling across the area just aft of the Janus’s engines, reaches its other side. He takes out his largest charge and places it on the lower plane, just past the rearmost strut. He adjusts it so that its blast will slice straight downward.
But no sooner has he done that than he feels the topography around him tilt. The forces on his body rise. He doesn’t have much time. He starts in on the next strut.
Movement catches his eye. Close at hand. A lens on his suit swivels. He stares.
It’s one of the drones.
The ones he saw earlier were in rapid motion. This one isn’t. It’s sidling along the place where the B-130’s hull meets wing. It’s powered by what appear to be magnetized treads. It’s not maki
ng directly for him. He’s not even sure it’s seen him.
But now he sees another. It’s about the same size as the first, but of a wholly different shape. It’s like some kind of centipede—moving along on far too many legs, each one clinging to the ship’s side. Past it, Marlowe spots what may as well be its identical twin. Only this one’s on the wing. Beside it is another model altogether.
Marlowe carefully looks around. The situation’s as bad as he feared. The hull of the B-130 has come alive with these things. He spots at least a dozen more. There are several behind him too. They’re closing in upon one of the side airlocks. They don’t seem to have spotted him. They’re about to, though. He releases the safeties of his wrist-guns.
And the combat starts up.
Though it doesn’t involve Marlowe. Light streaks from several of the drones—lines of fire that just miss the B-130’s tail, but that strike things far beyond the ship. There’s an explosion. For a moment, Marlowe sees distant ships lit by the glare of that blast. And then another detonates with a flash that blots out those remaining.
But something’s returning fire. Something’s sweeping the B-130 with light that lights up Marlowe’s screens—something that knocks drones off the hull as though they’d never existed. Maybe the surviving ships. Maybe weapons deployed at longer range. Maybe both. Marlowe doesn’t care. All he cares about now is making it back. The black all around him is starting to dissipate. The metal’s starting to glow. He’s almost at the hatch once more. It’s still open. He’s three meters away. Now two.
The B-130’s retros fire.
This is just the initial thrust. It’s not full blast—the ship has yet to turn around to engage its main engines. Even so, Marlowe’s flung forward. He grabs for the hatch, misses. He sails straight past the nose of the Janus—straight along the forward roof of the B-130, out toward the B-130’s own nose. He fires his suit’s thrusters on reverse. It’s like pissing in the wind. He’s almost shot past all metal. He grabs out with the desperation of the man who knows there’s nothing past the thing for which he’s reaching save planet.
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