by Dan Abnett
Thonius looked at Frauka, flat on his back on the deck beside Kinsky's chair. The blood stain across the front of his shirt was huge and dark, and a pool of blood was spreading wide across the deck under his torso. Frauka had never been a friend really, but he'd been alright. No one deserved that kind of ruthless demise.
For the umpteenth time, Thonius cast a look at Ravenor's inert chair. He gazed at the psionic nullifier unit mag-clamped like a giant barnacle to the front of the chair's casing, wishing it, willing it to fall off or deactivate. Mentally, he turned over every possible idea he could think of for removing the nullifier. Every scenario ended with him dead on the bridge floor.
Aching pain was weakening him. Thonius began to wonder if he was simply not brave enough. He'd always thought of himself as brave, until the heathen moot on Flint. Look how bravery had abandoned him there. He fought off the memory. He was an agent of the Throne. Bravery was expected of him. Maybe he should just get up and have a go, damn the consequences.
Then he thought of Halstrom. Halstrom had been brave. He'd refused to cooperate, even with Madsen's gun at his head. And look how much good his bravery had accomplished.
A vox-chime sounded, and Madsen looked to her console.
"Hinterlight, go," she said.
"Lifter. We're inbound for rendezvous. Request you keep your course and speed and open your hangar."
"Stand by, lifter," Madsen said. She looked over at Halstrom. "You hear that?"
"Yes," said Kinsky via Halstrom's leaden, weighted voice. His fingers moved heavily across the command console keys. "I'll hold this vector steady. Open the port hangar and light the guide paths."
"Good," Madsen said. She turned back to her console and tapped in a series of instructions. "Lifter? This is Hinterlight."
"Read you, Hinterlight."
"Port hangar is opening. Link your transponder to the guide signal and get aboard. Make it quick, please."
"Understood," the vox answered, distorting a little in time to a brighter than average solar flare outside. "You've got them all?" Madsen asked. "All three."
"Soon as you're aboard, have them taken to the light cargo holds on four."
"Light cargo holds on deck four, got it."
"And get the lifter prepped for turnaround. We're on a clock here."
"Understood, Hinterlight. Lifter out."
Madsen closed the channel and lit up an auspex display that showed a small, blinking rune closing in on the port side of the larger icon that represented the Hinterlight.
"They're coming in," she said.
"I know," Halstrom said, with effort.
There was another vox-chime, but it was from the internal intercom system.
"Madsen? It's Skoh. We've finished our sweep. Got most of them."
"What does 'most of them' mean, Mr. Skoh?" Madsen replied, acidly.
"Forty-six persons, including the Navigator. No sign of the females you mentioned."
"I'm coming down," Madsen said. She got to her feet and looked at Ahenobarb. "Watch him," she ordered, indicating both Kinsky and Halstrom.
"Always," the giant answered.
Madsen looked at Thonius and gestured with her pistol. "On your feet, interrogator. Time to join the others."
Thonius got up slowly. It was a painful process.
"Madsen?" Halstrom asked without looking round. He was still staring intently at the readout displays, his fingers moving with over-careful precision on the controls.
"Wthat?"
"Take him with you." Halstrom replied, gesturing at Ravenor's chair with one hand. "I don't want him here. Makes me uneasy."
"Over here." Madsen snarled at Thonius. He limped over. "Disengage him and bring him."
Thonius nodded. He crouched down and disconnected the psi-booster cables from Ravenor's chair and closed the access ports. Then he reached under the chair body and deactivated the mag-damps that held it fast to the deck. Even with one hand, it wasn't difficult to push the chair around on its frictionless grav plates.
For a moment, Thonius looked at the nullifier clamped to the chair's body. It was within reach. How did it detach? Could he do it with one hand, with a simple tug? Could he do it before they realised? Was he brave enough?
"Don't even think about it," Madsen said. She was staring at him. Mocking. She knew exactly how brave he was.
And that was not remotely enough.
The hold space of the bulk lifter was a battered, worn, poorly-lit box of metal, its floor and walls scarred and dented by centuries of cargo handling. Nayl, Mathuin and Preest sat in one corner against the wall in a silent huddle, watched over by Verlayn and Gorgi. Free from the weapon restrictions of Bonner's Reach, Verlayn was covering them with a laspistol, and Gorgi had an autosnub. Gorgi had stopped fiddling with his damaged face, and was now scrubbing petulantly at the bloodstains down the front of his chequered armour with a cloth. "Here's an idea... give it a rest," said Verlayn from behind his helmet.
"Here's another... shut the frig up." Gorgi replied.
In the aft portion of the hold, blast hatches led through to the drive chambers. Forward, a flight of metal-mesh steps led up to an open hatch through which they could just see a cockpit area, lit by instrumentation. There were two flight crewmen up there, and Fernan Skoh sat at the top of the steps behind them, loading a bolt pistol.
The ride was rough. Every few seconds, the lifter lurched or shivered. Fragments of metal junk and pieces of cargo packing rolled and skittered back and forth across the oil-stained hold floor.
"Coming up on it now, Fernan." Nayl heard one of the flight crew call.
Skoh got up and leaned in through the flight deck hatch. He'd holstered his bolt pistol and was holding on to the hatch frame with both hands as the buffeting and jarring increased.
"We're riding something's mag-stream." Preest whispered to Nayl.
"Shut the frig up," Gorgi said, aiming his snub at her.
Skoh was talking to the flight crew. Nayl strained to hear.
"...as soon as we're down. You understand? Full spec turnaround and repower. I want this bird ready to fly again in thirty minutes."
"No problem," said one of the crewmen.
"Better not be," said Skoh, turning and sitting down again on the top step. "This is our ticket out when that hulk starts its death dive."
The blaze of Firetide was now approaching its maximum burn. The whole sky was writhing with incandescent flame patterns and scorching blooms of light.
Running lights blinking, the bulk lifter edged in. It was a big craft, but entirely dwarfed by the spaceship it was closing upon. Moving sedately, the Hinterlight was a colossal form ahead of it.
Beneath them, the white dust of the Lagoon displayed their comparative shadows, big and small, both jumping and twisting in the light of the overhead storm. The crater rim was coming up, a vast, jagged curtain of sheer black mountains. At their current rate, they would clear the Lagoon in four minutes.
The bulk lifter sped in closer, dropping thrust to match the Hinterlight's pace. The massive void-hatches of the Hinterlight's port hangar bay were open, and strobing guide lights lit up the gaping mouth.
Expertly, the bulk lifter shimmied in closer, and then banked around on a flurry of attitude jets, hard burning, and entered the bay.
The void-doors began to shut.
The Hinterlight turned its nose and began to climb in a slow, westward turn. It passed over the ramparts of the crater wall, and then its massive thrust-tunnels fired in a great sheet of light and it began to power up and away into the illuminated heavens.
"We're heading into space," Zael said.
Kys stopped and turned round to look at him. "How could you know that?" she asked. Until less than a month before, the boy had never even seen a spaceship. He didn't understand how they worked. He couldn't recognise the tremor of translation if it jumped up and bit him.
"I just know," he said. He tapped his forehead.
"Nove tell you?"
H
e shuddered. "No. Well, maybe. Not in person. I just keep hearing things."
"Like what?" Kys asked.
"Like... gravity well exit."
How would he know a phrase like that, Kys wondered? She waved him on. The low-deck corridor ahead was gloomy and creaking as the ship's mighty frame responded to the vast influence of gravity.
"Where are we going?" Zael asked.
"Enginarium," she replied. "If we can't stop the bastards taking this ship, we can maybe stop them using it."
Kys raised the pistol she'd borrowed from Nayl's cabin and led the way down the darkened tunnel.
Ahenobarb knelt down and stroked Kinsky's limp face. He produced a cloth from his belt and dabbed away the perspiration from his partner's brow.
"You're sweating," he remarked.
"The bastard's making it hard for me." Halstrom replied from the throne behind Ahenobarb. "Once we're done with this, I'll kill the frigger myself."
"But you're okay?" Ahenobarb asked. He could hear Halstrom's fingers clattering over the main command controls. "Yes. We're clear now. Commencing climb into gravity well exit."
The light cargo holds were towards the bow section of deck four. The Hinterlight had two principal holds, a legacy to its days as a trader, to accommodate gross cargo. But often, a free trader was required to ship smaller masses of high-cost goods - fine wines, artworks, precious stones. The small cargo holds were built for that purpose, a series of armoured chambers that could be locked off, sealed and, if necessary, environment controlled individually.
Feaver Skoh's hunters had rounded the crew of the Hinterlight into small cargo five. The entry hatch was still open, and two of the huntsmen stood sentry at the doorway. Inside, thirty-eight terrified personnel were huddled together.
Skoh himself was standing in the gangway outside when Madsen arrived. The rest of his gang loitered around, leaning against walls, smoking lhos, chatting. Skoh was talking to Duboe. He'd just released the cavae master from the Hinterlight's holding cells.
Duboe was thin and filthy. There was a wild look in his eyes, and he was compulsively rubbing his wrists, free from their shackles for the first time in a long while.
They looked round as Madsen approached. She was walking behind Thonius, who was pushing Ravenor's chair. Thonius was sweating and pale. Though friction-less, the chair had been hard to manoeuvre and direct with just one hand after all. He was shaking and exhausted.
Duboe slid past Skoh and strode towards Madsen.
"You bitch!" he yelled into her face. "You frigging bitch! You knucked up my mind!"
Madsen recoiled with distaste from Duboe's wretched breath.
"Get over it, Mr. Duboe," she admonished. "It was necessary."
"Necessary? Frigging necessary?"
"That's enough, Duboe..." Skoh said as he approached.
"No!" Duboe cried. "Bad enough that this freak mind-frigged me every day!" He kicked the side of Ravenor's inert chair. Thonius winced. "No, she and Kinsky came at me too. They fried my mind, Skoh! Fried my frigging mind!"
Skoh looked at Madsen. She met his stare. "You know what's at stake here, Mr. Skoh. We tolerate your little commerce on the side. Greedy? Maybe... frig, we pay you handsomely enough. But I guess the flects are too choice an income source for the likes of you to ignore."
"The likes of me?" Skoh said quietly.
Madsen gave him a withering look. "Contract thirteen is all that matters. We pay you well for your services. More than enough to cover the risks involved."
"The risks are great, Mamzel," Skoh said. "Running a Fleet blockade..."
"Oh, tell it to someone who cares!" Madsen snapped. "We're only here today, in this fix, because your hungry little sideline in flects almost gave the game away!"
Skoh shrugged and looked at the deck. Madsen turned to face the edgy Duboe. "And for what it's worth, Mr. Duboe... of course we screwed with your mind. Yours, Siskind's, every other bastard who mattered. Those were my orders, that's what I ensured Kinsky did. We had to make sure none of you idiots gave the game away to the frigging Inquisition. Ravenor is a bastard, a blade-sharp bastard. Any hint of the truth, and he'd have been on us. We had to be sure that anything he learned from mind-searches just drove him further and further into this trap." Duboe glowered at her, but nodded. "No one wants the frigging Inquisition on his back." Skoh conceded. He smiled at Madsen. "And my congratulations, Mamzel. It's a fine trap you've devised, beautifully executed. Taking the bastard's team down on Eustis would have created a terrible problem. Questions, follow-up investigations... But if his ship goes missing out here, out in Lucky Space, lost with all hands..."
"I'm glad you appreciate the finer points," Madsen said.
"You still frigged up my mind," growled Duboe.
Skoh turned and slammed Duboe up against the wall.
"Live with it," Skoh said into Duboe's face. "If you'd run your end of the op better, this would never had been necessary."
Skoh looked over at Thonius and the chair.
"Who's that?" he asked.
"Ravenor himself." Madsen replied. "And one of his lackeys."
Skoh walked over to Ravenor's chair. He knelt down and embraced its hull, laying his head against it.
"You hear me? You hear me in there, you little crippled bastard? You've cost us plenty. You're going to die for that. You and all your frigging crew. All your friends. You're going to die in the heart of the local sun. And when it happens, they're all going to be as helpless and frigging useless as you."
He rose, and waved over two of his hunters. "Put the cripple in a hold all on his own," he said. The hunters began to steer Ravenor's chair down the gangway into one of the empty holds. Skoh grabbed Thonius by the shoulder. "You're going in with the others," he said, and frog-marched him into small cargo five.
He kicked Thonius as they reached the door, and Thonius went sprawling onto the small hold's deck. He screamed in pain. Madsen joined Skoh at the hatchway. "Forty-six, you reckon?" she asked. "All told, Mamzel Madsen. Eight fatalities during the sweep. Some knucks don't know when it's a good idea to surrender."
Madsen scanned the miserable faces in the hold. "I don't see Kys or Swole. Or, for that matter, the boy."
"We weren't told about a boy," Skoh said.
"A kid, from Eustis Majoris. His name's Zael. He's not here either."
"The kills my team made were all adult males..." Skoh began.
"I thought you were meant to be expert huntsmen." Madsen mocked. "There are two adult females and a kid loose somewhere on this ship."
Skoh flinched slightly, his professional pride wounded. He called his men close in a huddle. "Munchs, Dreko - Guard the prisoners here. The rest of you... section this ship, deck by deck, tight-hunt order. Two women, one boy. I'll give a bonus payment for each head you bring me."
The nine game hunters nodded and hurried away down the hall. Madsen could hear the zip of las-weapons charging up and the whirr of cyberdrones being launched.
Madsen looked up at Skoh. "By the way, you're brother's coming aboard just now."
"He got the others?"
"All three." Madsen smiled. "Trap's closed."
"Mr. Thonius? Mr. Thonius?"
The voice penetrated Carl's dream. It had been a nice dream. He'd been in an up-hive outfitters on Thracian Primaris, being measured for a suit of the most gorgeous plum tarnsey. But the bloody tailors had kept sticking their pins into his right arm.
Stab, stab, stab...
He woke up. Faces peered down at him. One of them was the medicae, Zarjaran.
Thonius woke up fast. He was in the cell. He was a prisoner.
Zarjaran examined his arm. "You've burst some stitches, Mr. Thonius," he said. "There is some weeping around the wound, and some tissue tearing."
Thonius looked around. He saw Magnus, the second helmsman, Cliesters, the enginarium chief, Kobax from the ship's galley, the Navigator Twu, wrapped in a blanket.
They were all frightened. Them and all the others.
Scared to death.
They were staring at him because he was the only member of Ravenor's personal cadre to be captured with them.
They were expecting something of him. They were expecting something ridiculous. Like he'd get them out. Like he'd somehow be able to do something amazing and free them all.
"Help me up," Thonius said. Zarjaran hoisted him a little.
Thonius looked at the open hatchway of the hold. Two of Skoh's huntsmen stood in the frame of it, weapons ready.
What kind of frigging miracle did these people want from him?
He wasn't that brave. He'd never been that brave. He was Carl Thonius. He wasn't a hero at all.
The pall of vapour filling the port hangar began to disperse, and the lumen strips on the interior hatches went green, indicating atmospheric equalisation. The whine of the bulk lifter's thrust drive shrank away into the silence of system shut down.
On the top of the battered lifter, Kara Swole raised her head and slowly unwrapped her arms from around the bars of a lateral stanchion which she'd been clinging on to for the duration of the flight.
She was shaking badly. The old vacsuit had done its job, but only barely. Its insulating sub-layer was poor, and her core temperature had dropped sharply. With trembling fingers, she unsealed the helmet and took it off, her teeth chattering. Her cheeks and lips felt raw with cold.
From below, she heard the lock mechanism disarm on the lifter's side ramp. She pulled off the rest of the threadbare old suit as quickly as she could. There was no time to warm up, no time to feel sorry for herself.
The compact rucksack she'd been carrying ever since emerging from the crate in the kitchens of the Reach was still with her - she'd strapped it around her belly and fastened the baggy vacsuit up over it. Kneeling, her hand still shaking, she put the rucksack down and peeled open the seam-seal. Inside it, side by side, was a matched brace of Tronsvasse auto-pistols. She'd been carrying them concealed as a back-up for Nayl's team, though given the brutal efficiency of the Vigilants she was glad she hadn't been forced to produce one. She was fond of her hands.