by Jamie Sawyer
“Yes, yes. You first.”
“How do you know any of this, Novak?” I said. Although I was grateful for the rescue, I was still unconvinced as to the source of Novak’s intelligence.
“No time now. We talk later. Zero, she is in real danger.”
“Let’s just get out of here and worry about the rest when we can,” Lopez said.
Novak and his compatriots were already inspecting the grav-plates, testing whether they could be broken with the equipment they had with them.
“These guys friends of yours?” I asked.
Novak shrugged. “Like I say, prison is prison. I am prisoner for life, yes? We know each other, from gulag.” Novak tapped a finger to one of the markings on his forehead. “Sons of Balash. Is gang.”
“Is bratva,” agreed another prisoner. “Balash Bratva.”
“Friends turn up in the craziest of places, I guess,” I muttered.
Every one of the prison-workers had the same Cyrillic script on their faces, their gang tapestries very similar to Novak’s. The winged icon above each eye obviously denoted membership of a gang or crew. How they had ended up here wasn’t exactly clear: one paused to leer over me as I stood naked on the bench. The black-toothed grin suggested that on the outside, in any other circumstance, he and I would most certainly not be allies.
“Get us out of here, Novak,” I said, staring back at the prisoner.
Another quake hit the chamber. The place shook violently, the prisoners stumbling to keep their footing. One waved at Novak, speaking in Russian. Novak nodded in grim agreement.
“Hold still,” Novak said.
He had a massive pair of powered cutters, a heavy, oversized tool, now made lethal. Blue energy danced around the device’s tip. The blades looked capable of cutting through a starship’s hull, let alone the gravity-plate.
“Just do it,” I said. “And make it fast.”
“Always.” He grinned back.
“On my mark … Go.”
I closed my eyes, fully prepared for Novak to snip off a hand or foot, even if only accidentally. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Novak sliced into the table’s concealed generator, and it stopped working. I slid off the bench.
“Easy,” Novak said.
The other prisoners did the same for Feng and Lopez, and both Jackals were soon free. Lopez had to help Feng get to his feet, and I tried not to notice the bright red stain that he made as he slid free of the plate.
“I’m … okay,” he muttered, fighting off Lopez’s assistance.
“No, you’re not,” she said.
“I can … walk.”
“Get dressed,” Novak suggested. “Here.”
He produced three orange worker overalls, and three pairs of sturdy work boots. We dressed quickly: I was glad to have some clothing between my naked body and the prisoners’ eyes.
To Novak, I said, “Tactical report, trooper. Do you know Zero’s location?”
“She is through there.”
“Then let’s go,” Feng said.
“Hold on,” I argued. “We need to save Zero, but how is this possible, Novak? Did you plan all of this by yourself?”
I didn’t want to insult Novak, especially after he and his friends had just saved our asses, but there was no way that Novak had executed this alone. He and the other prisoners were gang heavies, not strategic masterminds.
Unsurprisingly, Novak shook his head. “No. Had help. Followed voice. In head, in ear.”
“Again with the voice, huh?” I said.
Lopez shared my incredulity, and rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Right, right … So you followed a voice in your head, and it led you here?”
“Voice is real,” Novak said defensively. “It say to give this to you, ma’am, when time was right. Guess that is now.”
He held out a dirty hand, and I realised what he was trying to say. There was an earbead in his palm. It winked a red eye at me: indicating that it was active, receiving a communication from somewhere. I frowned and took it from Novak.
“Where’d you get this?”
“From prison,” Novak said. “Another man, he give to me. Tell me that I should listen to voice, yes?”
The comms-bead flashed again, and Novak nodded his head encouragingly. It felt like the bead was beckoning me, inviting me down the rabbit hole. Hands shaking, I raised it to my ear. A voice at the other end instantly became distinct.
“It’s about time,” it said.
The words were spoken in Standard, but the audio was filtered, making the vocals distort into an electronic warble. Must’ve been using some sort of scrambling technology, maybe a locational displacement package as well. That would account for the distortion. The technology would make it both very difficult to identify the speaker, and to trace the location of the transmission.
“This … this can’t be happening,” I said. “Identify yourself, speaker. Are you real?”
“I’m real, all right, but that can wait,” the Voice answered. “You don’t have long. You need to do exactly what I tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to get you and your squad out of this alive,” the Voice said. “And because this has taken a lot of planning.”
Novak spurred me on. “Voice tells truth. Has not let us down yet.”
The prisoners nodded and murmured in agreement.
“This is happening across the prison,” the Voice continued. “The place is in revolt. It was the best cover we could get, in the timescale available.”
“What do you mean?” I probed.
The Voice sighed impatiently. “We’re trying to get you off-planet, using the prison revolt as a distraction. It will hopefully divert Directorate resources to elsewhere on the planet.”
“That’s all very convenient,” I argued. “Who are you?”
“Later. We can talk later.”
“I’m not risking my people on the say-so of some mystery—”
“I’m getting you out of there,” the Voice insisted. “Okay? That’s all you need to know right now. We have audio, we have visual, and your sergeant is in danger.”
Feng and Lopez both looked at me expectantly.
“I’ll need answers,” I said, “but I suppose they can wait.”
“Good,” said the Voice. “Your officer isn’t far from here. You need to get out of that room. Use the main door. It’s unlocked. Be quick or be dead.”
“Copy that.”
Cautiously, we entered the next chamber. It was a long, rectangular room. No Directorate at all, lit only by the glow of various monitors and terminals: holo-screens displaying colourful graphics, equipment that was decidedly more high-tech than anything I’d seen on Jiog so far. We crossed the threshold into the new room, and the hatch hummed shut behind us, making me jump with surprise.
“Through the room,” the Voice directed.
As we passed them, the monitor screens lining the edge of the chamber flickered, overhead glow-globes flashing erratically. The interruption was brief, gone before I’d properly considered it.
“Are you causing this?” I asked, nodding at the screens. Could whoever this was actually see that gesture?
He—I had the feeling, although I couldn’t say why, that I was talking to a guy—answered anyway. “No. Not intentionally, anyway. Move on.”
I checked the exits. Two options: one at the end of the chamber, and another on the right.
“Which hatch do we take?” I asked.
“Right flank,” the Voice replied.
“I don’t have a weapon. Will I need one?”
“The prisoners have tools. They can use those if you meet resistance.”
The hatch was big, blast-shielded. Covered with warning symbols and Korean text.
Lopez, one arm still wrapped around Feng’s shoulder, inspected the control console. “I think that it’s unlocked,” she said with surprise.
“It is.” Feng nodded. “I can read the text.”
Novak raised an
eyebrow. “Chino can read Korean, yes?”
“I was bred for joint operations,” Feng said, with a brittle grin. “Of course I can read Korean.”
“Open the hatch,” said the Voice.
“Do it, Novak.”
Novak activated the door. The panels slid open—
And a wall of wind hit me so hard that I was almost floored. The Jackals stumbled backwards.
What the fuck?
Hand protecting my face, I braced in the doorway.
Saw where we actually were.
A train.
We were on a moving train.
“I should probably have warned you about that,” the Voice offered.
“Yes,” I said. “I think that you should.”
“Better late than never. You’re on a train, travelling cross-country.”
“And that seemed like something you didn’t need to mention why, exactly?” I asked. I turned to Novak. “Did you know about this?”
Novak frowned, and his reaction struck me as genuine. “No! Directorate put us in box, move to work place. We work, go back to prison.”
The train, I guessed, was an advanced magnetic-levitation job. It was almost silent, except for the low electric hum of the engine, and that was easily dismissed as the running noise of the prison. The other effects of the train’s operation were probably being contained by an inertial dampener field, much like those used by starships. That would explain why we hadn’t been able to feel the effects of the intense speed at which the train was travelling.
“Have … have we been on a train all along?” I asked.
“No,” the Voice said with a little irritation. “You were in Jiog’s primary prison complex, which is several klicks south of your current location. Kwan had you loaded onto the train for interrogation. He was planning to take you off-world.”
Everything outside was moving, and moving fast. An industrial wasteland spread out in every direction for as far as I could see. An angry, ugly landscape lit by a pale star that barely managed to make its light felt. Black spires lurked in the distance—were fixed points of reference—but the sectors surrounding the track were nothing more than blurs of colour, rendered smears by the speed at which the train travelled. In the extreme distance, way, way behind us, was a collection of stout black structures, surrounded by a fortified grey wall. That, I guessed, was the prison, where we had been held for the past few days.
“Do you expect us to go out there, ma’am?” Lopez asked, shouting to make herself heard above the roar of the wind.
I swallowed. “It looks that way.”
“Feng’s in bad shape,” Lopez said.
“I’ll make it,” Feng said. “Stop making excuses for yourself.”
One of Novak’s crew shouted, indicating to the door behind us. Pounding came from the other side. Had to be Directorate troops, coming to investigate.
I turned to my squad. “Come on.”
“I—I can’t,” Lopez started, showing the true reason for her objection. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this—”
“No such word,” I said. “Novak, help Lopez with Feng.”
“Go now,” the Voice insisted. “Out, and along the side of the train.”
I peeked my head outside. Already I could feel the foul, acidy taste of the polluted air at the back of my throat, filling my mouth. I’d need a respirator, an oxy-tank, to breathe for anything more than a few minutes out there … The wind stung my bare face, but I braved it. If I can do this, we can do this, I told myself.
Slowly, cautiously, I put an arm outside. The train was armoured, its skin plated like the hull of a starship: grey, battered, mostly featureless. I gripped a panel, fingers finding the gap between two plates. It was a handhold, although not much of one.
The pounding on the door behind us increased in volume.
“Jackals, follow me,” I barked.
Both hands gripping the outer skin of the train now. My boots found a lip just below the hatch panelling. It was far from easy: my muscles ached with the tension of holding on to the moving train, wind rushing past, my ears, face, neck stinging with the cold.
“This is fucking insane,” Lopez said.
But she too came out of the train, copying me. Then Feng, Novak following him. Novak’s prison buddies at the tail end. As soon as we were all outside the train, the blast door slid shut behind us.
“Was that you?” I asked the Voice.
“Of course. It’s another obstacle between you and them.”
I got my first glimpse of the true scale of our transport. The train was a long, sterile snake of a thing, stretching out in both directions. Each train cabin was twenty or so metres in length, and several metres wide, big enough to accommodate internal chambers. It was quite frankly enormous. Titanic in length, like nothing I’d ever seen before.
“Keep your eyes forward,” the Voice threatened. “Keep moving. You need to get to the next carriage. Don’t look outside.”
“I’m trying not to,” I said.
“Try harder.”
What was out there that I shouldn’t be seeing? Shapes sailed past. Towers, the shells of blackened buildings. Something like an oil derrick appeared out of nowhere—suddenly there, right beside me. The train was moving so damned fast that I didn’t notice it until it was already hurtling by: so close to the train’s flank that it almost brushed my ass. There were dozens of skeletal structures all around the train tracks, some half-toppled into the sandbanks, others drooping overhead as though they had once had some function connected to the railway—
A brilliant, bright light filled the sky.
I froze for a moment. We all did, eyes to the falling star …
The noise. The same sound that I’d heard in the prison, then again in the interrogation room.
I instantly identified what it was.
A starship engine. Something landing in the desert.
“Holy mother of fuck,” Novak said.
A ship came down in the wastes. Streaking fire, it hit the ground hard. Its engines roared, made the air vibrate, the train shake.
And not just any ship.
“That was a Krell ship,” I shouted, to the others. “A bio-ship!”
“I told you not to look,” the Voice said.
Distracted, my fingers slid against the train’s hull. I slipped.
“Shit!”
Before I knew it, I was losing purchase.
The train took a bend. Tilted at just the right moment. My weight shifted, body suddenly against the train’s hull again. My fingertips braced the shallow details of the armour plating. A surge of adrenaline threatened to engulf me, my heart thundering in my chest: my whole frame humming with the vibration of the train.
“Move,” the Voice insisted. “You need to get to the ladder between the next two cabins.”
“There are more of them coming down!” Lopez said.
The sky was filled with falling stars, with Krell starships. They were moving too fast for me to get much of a look, but I could see enough. This wasn’t a chance encounter. It was an invasion. The Krell had come to Jiog.
“This is what Kwan was frightened of, isn’t it?” I asked the Voice.
“We can discuss this later. That sector is about to become hot. Just keep moving.”
I did as ordered. There was no thought here: no rational chain of action. One foot after the other, then one hand after the other. I filtered out everything else.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m on the ladder.”
“Go up.”
I nodded at my team. “Lopez, you and Feng go first.”
“Copy that.”
Lopez and Feng painstakingly climbed the ladder.
“Novak, you next.”
He yelled orders to his fellow prisoners, and they exchanged words in Russian.
“My people will follow after you,” he told me.
“Whatever. Just get up there.”
Novak hauled himself up, and I started the climb a
fter him. I thrust out a hand, snagged a rung. It was slick, the metal so cold that it bit into the flesh of my palm. Once I was halfway up, Novak extended a hand and I grasped it. He dragged me onto the train roof, waving to the rest of his gang that they should follow.
The wind whipped around me as I reached the roof of the cabin. Hair flying about my face, slapping against my neck. On both feet, I kept low to reduce air resistance. The drag was intense.
“Holy shit, this is bad,” Lopez said. “This is bad. This is really bad …”
“Stay with it, Lopez!” I ordered.
But try to reassure Lopez as I might, I shared the sentiment. Dozens of Krell ships were on the horizon—their bloated, shelled construction impossible to mistake—and bio-pods rained across the desert. Each impact produced a deafening thunderclap, threw up a column of dirt and smoke that stained the skyline. At this distance, I couldn’t identify what Collective the invaders came from—or, more pressingly, whether they were infected or otherwise. It didn’t much matter, I decided. They would probably kill us either way …
Meanwhile, the train powered onwards through the wastes like a—
Bullet.
“Down!” Novak yelled.
The crack of a kinetic pistol. A round sailed past me.
Directorate troops spilled from a service hatch in the roof, farther down the train. I counted three of them, and the first was already up and out of the cabin.
“Keep going,” the Voice ordered.
More rounds spanked the train’s roof. Sparked off the armour plating. Bright detonations in the dark: tracers and explosive-tipped rounds. Only the best for the Directorate’s Bureau of Shadow Affairs.
The train tilted left on its mag-lev rail, shifting to one side. I reacted instantly and went low. The balance of my body followed the motion of the train. The Jackals copied and managed to hold on.
Not everyone was so lucky. Only a couple of Novak’s crew had succeeded in getting onto the roof, and the others were still hugging the train’s flank. Several lost their footing. They tumbled off the train.
The closest Directorate commando—the asshole who had been firing on me—reacted a second late as well. The commando’s bulk slid sideways. Clutching at the roof, he went the same way as the prisoners: over the edge.