by C. G. Hatton
Hil turned to me, desperation in his eyes, cursing, grabbing my arm, and lurching forward to grab the Emperor and drag us both into a run.
I kicked two of the grenades away, no idea how long the delay on them was, but there were too many, more rolling in, one hitting my back.
If we got caught in a stun blast, it was all over.
Hil yelled, “Don’t stop,” pulling us out towards a gantry.
There were shouts from across the open area ahead of us, glints off powered armour, shots starting to ping around us.
I could see others closing in from both sides, nothing ahead of us but thin air.
Hil didn’t stop and didn’t let go of us. We ran, all of us ducking and flinching as shots came close, reaching the edge of the metalmesh walkway and jumping as the stun grenades detonated behind us with a flash.
It could have been a two foot drop, it could have been fifty. It was probably about ten. But I landed badly, rolled, couldn’t stop myself and rolled off another gantry.
I don’t know how long I was out but it must have just been seconds. I blinked, head foggy, with Hil and the kid Emperor leaning over me. It was quiet. They pulled me up and back into the shadows under the walkway.
“You okay?” Hil whispered.
I nodded, trying to figure out where we were, head pounding. I wiped my hand across my forehead, smearing it with red, and gestured off into the darkness. “We need to go that way.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I saw the plans for the whole building when I was in the system.”
He looked at me funny but didn’t argue. “Come on. Give us a hand. Wu has bust his ankle but we don’t think it’s broken.”
Wu? First name terms?
The kid smiled at me and mouthed silently, “I’m fine.”
I think even if it had been broken, he wouldn’t have complained.
We crept through the maintenance area, working our way round as quiet as mice and finally bumped up against the ladder.
“This is it,” I whispered.
Hil hissed into my ear, “Get up there and check it’s clear. Is there any chance the drop ship could be there?”
“I don’t know.” I pulled my vest up and wiped away the blood that was trickling into my eye. “They’ll have overridden the commands if they’ve seen it.”
“Go find out. Don’t be long.” He bundled Wu into cover, taking aim back the way we’d come and said, “Go.”
I could hear the roar of gunships circling before I reached the top. I climbed out into bright, chilly sunshine and dropped down onto a stone battlement, huge pipes and machinery crowding the open space, and right next to where I tumbled out on the cold stone, the unmistakeable mass of a defensive weapons platform. I scrambled into its shade for cover and nestled in close. It was cold. It was weird to be so close to one that was inactive, like it was dead and had been for centuries.
There was a drop ship out on the landing circle in the flat centre of the roof. I had no way of knowing if it was the one I’d sent for or one full of troops. I watched as long as I dared then made a break for it. The ramp was down. I didn’t think, didn’t stop, could have been running towards a whole squad of soldiers for all I knew, made it inside and skidded to a halt. It was empty. I ran through to the cockpit. Empty.
The start up sequence was exactly as I expected. I ran through it fast and hit the ignition. Huge thrusters fired up as I ran back out onto the ramp, keeping in the cover of the bulkhead and peering back across the roof. Hil was next to the weapons platform. He waved as he saw me, disappeared for a moment and reappeared with the kid.
Wu was limping badly, Hil holding him up, both of them stumbling. They made it halfway across when a gunship started to bank round. I yelled. Hil was shouting. The engines of the drop ship were loud, rumbles reverberating through the bulkhead, the noise and heat drowning out the sound of the gunship approaching from above.
I ran out of cover, keeping low, headache punching hammers into my skull with each step, and ran to intercept them, hooking the Emperor’s arm over my shoulder and turning to run back. The gunship had its weapons turrets spinning round to target us as it dropped.
There was a shout from the far side of the roof, figures emerging, soldiers in powered armour and uniforms. I could see Arianne in amongst them, striding towards us, the Spearhead guy masquerading as the new Commandant barking orders and pointing.
Wu was struggling. “Leave me,” he gasped.
Hil upped the pace. “No way.”
“They won’t kill me,” the kid insisted. “You get away.”
Another gunship had joined in, hovering on the other side of us as we staggered towards that open ramp. They weren’t shooting at us, probably too public, too many people watching for them to risk it.
The kid stumbled. I blinked and was on one knee before I knew it.
Other soldiers were spilling out from the opposite side.
“LC,” Hil yelled. “I wanna see you fly this damned ship. I wanna beat you to the top of NG’s standings board.”
“No way,” I muttered and pushed to my feet, dragging Wu up and forward, glancing over my shoulder at Arianne and the Commandant.
Another drop ship descended between us, the heat of its exhaust billowing over us. I saw her run towards it. The Commandant was still shouting out orders.
We made it to our ramp and inside. I dropped the kid and stumbled forward, leaving Hil to punch the ramp button. I fell into the pilot’s seat and strapped in with trembling fingers, breathing too fast, the adrenaline rush making my heart feel like it was going to punch out of my chest.
I’d read manuals, played sims, sat on cushions on the burned out cockpit of a crashed shuttle pretending I could fly it. I’d never been this close to the cockpit of a real ship. The controls in front of me were all lit up, monitors scrolling data, VHUD active and the massive engines trembling beneath me.
Hilyer yelled that they were in.
I placed my left hand on the control panel, initiated the main board with my right, feeling it respond with a buzz that was like nothing I’d ever done, and took off. The ramp was still closing, the other drop ship rising at the same time as we did, both gunships circling and backing off as we flew up. Every alarm started screaming on the console, warnings coming in, demanding that we land. I couldn’t believe I was doing it. I couldn’t believe we were going to get away with it. I had no plan other than make orbit and see what happened.
We cleared the roof and dropped, flying lower and faster than I meant to over the parade ground, every twitch of the controls making it slew sideways. It was insane. More markers were appearing on the monitors as more gunships took off to intercept us. I increased speed and banked hard. It was like playing a game. To be fair, even without an autonomous AI on board, a lot of the flight systems were pretty much automated.
Then a red light flashed. A klaxon started to scream collision warning. And an automated voice that was way too calm stated slowly and clearly that multiple missiles were locked and on target.
I yelled out a warning, hit counter measures and pulled up as fast as I could without losing it. I spun round and threw us into a spiral.
Then I did something I still wish I hadn’t.
Imperial ships are all fitted with a neural interface. They’re pretty much useless these days with all pilots being fitted with a Senson implant but the military like their back up systems on their back up systems no matter how archaic they might seem. I tore open the access panel where the blueprints said the redundant cabling should be and ripped out the interface at the same time as I tore the bloody patch off my neck where Hil had cut out the Senson, exposing the raw connection of the neural link. I had no idea what would happen. I knew that without a Senson to filter the traffic, the human brain couldn’t cope with the data load but I couldn’t see any other option.
As the connection was made, there was a painfully blinding flash that felt like it seared along my optic nerve and a h
igh pitched static squeal that I heard but not through my ears. For a second, I was blind and deaf. I think I screamed. And then I was in.
Through the filtering of the Senson, the unreal universe of the AI mind was like a tranquil pond with logic strings gently swimming in data currents. Without the filter, it was chaos. A maelstrom of data that swirled with an unprecedented violence. Black holes and supernovas smashing into each other. If you’ve never experienced it, trust me, you never want to. It’s as close to what I imagine Hell is like as I ever want to get.
But through it all, I could see patterns in the chaos. I could make sense of the swirling vortex of raw data. I could see and isolate exactly what I was looking for. I could see the comms playing out on the screens, every unit, every vehicle, every gunship, every soldier in their suits of part-sentient powered armour, clearly identified, see all the others talking to each other, all the IDs registered in the automatic identification system except ours. I tore through the base AI, and hacked into the intelligence controlling every unit out there, all the comms, all the orders, all the identification tags. I activated the base defence grid and fed it a single ID as friendly. Ours. And then I scrambled all the others.
It was intoxicating. I wanted to stay. I wanted to go deeper, find an outside comms link, see where their orders were coming from, find out why they were shooting at us when they must have known their Emperor was on board. And I got really close, so close it was excruciating, but I was thrown out, tossed with a sickening lurch back into a reality that was spinning out of control. I pulled the cable out, with a nauseating stench of burnt flesh. I reckoned I was going to pay for that later, but right then there was too much adrenaline pumping round my system for me to feel much pain.
I pulled up on the controls, flying purely on instinct.
A missile skimmed across our hull and veered away, retargeting and flying straight into the drop ship pursuing us.
It exploded in a flare of light.
I froze.
That was the drop ship I’d seen Arianne running to.
I could hardly breathe. It wasn’t a game anymore. Debris hit our hull. I flinched, levelled out and banked hard.
The comms were in chaos.
Another missile flew right past our nose, locking onto a gunship and chasing it round until the crew shot it down.
I didn’t know what to do except fly as hard and fast as I could to get out of there. Another gunship locked onto us, launching a missile just as the base’s defensive laser batteries sliced through it.
I put the ship in a dive, twisting violently, trying to shake the missile, our counter measures used up and had no other option than to throw the ship into a combat drop.
The G-forces were unbelievable. I felt like I was being turned inside out, my stomach in my throat, my eyes burning, unbearable pressure in my ears and a weight pushing against my chest. I think I yelled all the way down. There’s nothing you can do to control the ship once you initiate that drop, short of hitting the abort and coercing the entire system back into manual control. In time. Before you hit the ground. I’ve seen pilots that can do it. Guild pilots are awesome. But I was fourteen, flying by hearsay and guesswork based on hours of reading manuals and playing sims, and honestly, I was so close to blacking out I could hardly see.
I was only half aware of our altitude, could do nothing as the missile took out one of our wings, and I squeezed my eyes shut as we slewed to a gravity-defying landing.
My chest felt like I’d been hit by a truck, my eyes like they’d been stuck with red hot pins. My nose was dripping red onto my lap.
I sat there, not sure if I could move, a deafening ringing bouncing between my ears.
Hil squeezed my shoulder and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“The ship’s on fire,” he said. “We need to go.”
Chapter 31
“Remind me to never fly with you again,” he muttered as we struggled down the ramp, carrying the kid between us. Wu had passed out, his chest wound bleeding again. I can remember thinking how ironic it would be if he croaked it, after all that.
The roar of the fire encouraged us into a staggering run to get clear. We almost didn’t. The drop ship blew sky-high and threw us off our feet. Once the ringing in my ears had eased, I crawled onto my knees and stood, looking back at it then looking around to see where the hell we were.
It looked like a shooting range, open ground all round. There was a low concrete building by a line of firing positions.
Hil was checking the kid over. “Let’s get in there,” he shouted, nodding towards the hut. “See if we can find comms.”
There was but it was all dead, like they’d shut down all uncontrolled comms. There was no access to anything, no chance of getting anywhere near the Academy’s AI or any kind of external communications. I made a half-assed attempt to connect but my head was fried. The adrenaline high was wearing off and things were starting to hurt. I rifled through the inert boards and terminals, tapping at screens, desperately hoping one would spring to life but there was nothing.
Hil was standing to the side of the window, peering out. We’d set the kid down on the floor, changed the dressing on his chest with stuff we scrounged from a medical kit that was in there and made him as comfortable as we could. He’d live or he wouldn’t. If I’d known for sure they were his people out there, we’d have given ourselves up. But they’d fired missiles at us. At him. Wherever the legit Imperial military was, it wasn’t in charge here anymore.
Hil turned around. “We’ve got incoming.”
I went and watched with him as they surrounded us, but out at a distance, like they were waiting for someone or something to happen, just wanting to make sure we couldn’t leave.
After a while, Hil cursed softly, went and raided a fridge that was humming away in a corner and came back with a couple of sodas. Then we stood there together, watching, as they closed in and set up a perimeter.
“Well, this sucks,” he said, raising the bottle and downing a mouthful.
I lifted mine to my lips again. “Why are they not just rushing us? What do they think we’re going to do?”
“If I had to guess,” Hil said, “they need to make it look like they’re trying to rescue the kid. We don’t know who’s watching. They need to make them look good. Make us look bad. Cover the whole thing up. Like I said, they’ll just kill him in the crossfire when they’re ready.” He looked at me. “Want another drink? I think I saw a pack of cards on the desk. You think you can beat me at poker?”
He was being flippant because there was nothing we could do. It didn’t feel real.
We found the cards and sat on the floor, next to each other, backs against the wall, waiting for them to move in.
“What did you mean…?” I said after a while and enough hands to know I could cheat better than him. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t break their programming?”
Hil rested his bottle on his knee. “I didn’t take their drugs. They were putting stuff in the food, didn’t you notice? I saw what they were doing, avoided anything that tasted weird and faked it. Didn’t you realise?”
I shook my head stupidly. He might have just been a year or two older than me but he was way more street-wise. “How…?” I started.
He shrugged. “You should have paid more attention in lessons. You might be able to remember stuff, LC, but you really suck at applying it.” He nudged me like he was joking but then he looked at me seriously. “I’ve come across crap like that before. I’ve been in prison, LC, real prison where they doped the prisoners to control them. The stuff they gave us on Redemption was all performance enhancing. I’ve never run so fast before. And they sent us out in tee shirts in sub zero conditions. That’s not normal.”
It hadn’t occurred to me.
“Spearhead was different,” he said. “That was the really bad stuff.” He paused to take a drink. “Mind you, not taking their drugs made whatever they were doing in those freaking pods painful. You al
l walked out like happy little zombies. I felt like shit. I had a pounding headache for hours afterwards, but I played along.” He looked at me, his eyes dark. “I played along because I wanted to. I knew exactly what we were being sent into and I thought I could pull it off. Get away with it and impress them enough to keep me around.”
“You knew it was the Emperor?”
He set the bottle on the floor and nodded. “I just didn’t know he was an eight year old kid.” He took the empty mag out of his gun, looked at it and tossed it aside. He looked back at me. “You resisted it. Can’t you remember? I heard them talking. They thought they were going to kill you with the level of drugs it was taking.”
“I don’t remember.” I hugged my knees. “Why did you change your mind?”
He looked at me like I was stupid. “Because he’s an eight year old kid. And I couldn’t do it. I thought I could. And I couldn’t.” He dropped his eyes. “I thought I had a real chance of joining something where I could stand out. Where I mattered.”
“You do. Come back with me.”
He stared straight ahead and it was a while before he said, “You do realise we’re not getting out of here alive?”
“We will. Come back with me.”
“No.”
“You have to stop running.”
“LC, don’t. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Hil, you don’t need to run away anymore. We’re guild. Come back with me. What about NG’s standings? You said you wanted to beat me.”
He laughed. “I said it to get you moving.”
“Not fair. You said it. I want to be top and I’ll fight you for it.”
“We’re not getting out of here, LC.”
As if in answer, there was a commotion outside, distant, like they were finally mobilising.
Hil picked up his bottle and got to his feet. “I bet they’ve been waiting for your buddy, the Commandant.”
He went to the counter, bust open the locks on a couple of cupboards and started pulling out boxes of ammunition. He threw me a handgun and a couple of magazines. They were live rounds. My stomach turned.