by Jim Graham
Goosen’s jaw dropped.
‘Spelling had a son?’
‘Yes. For a short while. Now he’s dead: murdered.’
‘Oh, fark! No wonder the Old Man has been low profile of late. I bet he’s right pissed.’
‘He is. I suspect he’ll use his fortune to find out just who did the venting, and then deal with them before the law can.’
Goosen raised his eyebrows as he appreciated out how this news might affect things.
‘Well, on top of being thrown out of a job, and off Trevon, it’ll certainly help inflame passions. Do you want me to show it to them when we get on board?’
Scat shook his head.
‘I’ve given it to you to use if you need to. If you don’t need to use it, hold it back.’
Goosen was growing accustomed to Scat making things up on the fly, but this suggested there might be a plan, after all. He didn’t feel particularly stressed, but it was still a relief to think there might be one. He nodded eagerly.
‘Consider it done.’
87
At long last, Goosen received the call telling him that Nettles was on one of the Earth transports. The convoy had left Police HQ and was now heading towards the dam wall. It wasn’t a secret; it was also on the news.
40 minutes later, Stafford slipped inside the door and told him that Nettles had boarded a shuttle, and it was on its way to the V4. He then briefed Scat on the shuttle security arrangements,
They were straightforward but seemed somewhat naive.
The replacement cops, or Outer Rim Force troopers, left the shuttle by the cargo ramp and went straight to the passenger terminal for processing, leaving three of their number behind in the shuttle to receive and settle the deportees. One of them manned the ramp, while the other two watched over the passengers. Once the ex-cops settled down, the civilian crews unloaded the inbound cargo, and then loaded the cargo bound for Earth.
The two guards did not stay in the launch room; they joined their colleague at the ramp to watch over the loading, and to ensure the deported Trevon ex-cops did not try to leave. They carried stuns, nothing else.
Amazingly, the security guards didn’t stay with the shuttle when it took off, but joined their colleagues in the passenger terminal for processing.
The fact that there would be no security on the shuttle on its flight back to the V4 was a blessing. Scat hadn’t expected that, but it was no different to when Petroff deported him from Prebos so perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. He was increasingly confident things would go well.
Stafford softened the guards up with his story about how rioters had beaten him the night before. He showed them his nose and complained that he had also taken a few painful kicks to the kidneys. As he unloaded cargo, he made a point of leaving the cargo cart on the ramp or in the cargo area to go take an urgent pee. Scat was impressed. He hadn’t thought of that. Stafford must have been thinking ahead.
They switched places midway through the loading of the outbound cargo on the third-from-last shuttle. Scat followed the cargo cart out onto the apron, using the remote to guide an oversized container, just as Stafford had shown him.
The exchange went unnoticed. The ORF private at the end of the ramp was more interested in watching the developing Nettles story on his graf than he was the loser with the broken nose and the dickey bladder. It had just finished replaying images of the Earth transports crossing the Gap Plain and the shuttle taking off. Some talking head was now telling him what judicial processes were in store for Nettles when he arrived on Earth.
Out on the airport apron, Chan and Li added to the distraction. Li was flying his bugcam, making it race back and forth between two containers. It appeared to rebound between the two, like a rubber ball, only getting faster each time, the returns appearing instant. Goosen strolled across and explained it was simply changing direction as it sensed the obstacle. He told them that they could try getting in its way, or even try to stop it if they were game. One of them was. And he couldn’t. The other laughed as he tried.
Scat manoeuvred the cart down a high and crowded aisle and stopped halfway. Making sure no one was around, he stepped between the racking, pulled the backpack from its hiding place in the container, and then discarded his coveralls. When he was ready, he leaned out, looked back down the ramp, and signalled OK to Goosen.
Chan left Li and Goosen and walked the short distance across the pan to the ramp guard, who was watching his colleague make a fool of himself. When the guard was sure he understood what it was that Chan wanted, he shrugged. This little oriental guy was harmless, he thought. The worst the Captain could do is say no. He got on his radio.
The Captain passed the request up the line to the V4 Commander. He took the call while watching the news. The Commander remembered Chan from the Earth delegation’s outward flight to Trevon, and he remembered the Ambassador fawning over him, as if he was quite influential or was well-connected. He mulled it over for a few seconds and then agreed: they could come up and get some interior shots of the V4 as it prepped for ftl. The caveats: they interview him, sign a disclaimer covering liability, and agree to be shuttled back on the last of the shuttle flights. He wasn’t going to lay on any special transport: if they missed the last flight, they would leave Trevon with his cargo.
One of the guards frisked them before leading them down the cargo area’s starboard aisle and into the small launch room. Scat waited for what seemed an eternity before the launch room door reopened and the guard walked back out. He then left the shadows of the cargo area, slipped through the door before it closed, and stood at the back of the room, looking for Goosen.
He felt himself being slightly on edge. This was where it could go horribly wrong. He was flying blind over ground he didn’t know. If there were no free launch seats, someone recognised him, or someone conducted a head count, the game was over.
The small, soundproofed room was dark and ready for take-off. The safety briefing was playing on the screen out front, the head count already done. Across the room, at the far end of the back row, he caught sight of Goosen half standing from his seat, beckoning him over.
He crossed the back of the room to join them, and, as he took a seat, he looked around again.
Aside from a single crewmember pushing loose bags into overhead bins, Scat’s 2-man rebel assault party and his dedicated media team were sharing the launch room with 15 or so Trevon ex-cops, mostly young men in their 20s, all seated in the first two rows. In front of them was the flight cabin, closed and locked, probably as a security measure. It didn’t matter: on this trip, he wasn’t interested in the view.
All they had to do now was get on board the V4, avoid the V4 security detail, get to the command cabin and steal a trillion dollar ship from an extremely possessive company.
Scat and Goosen couldn’t help but exchange nervous grins.
Outside, Stafford walked back up the ramp to retrieve the cart, looking uncomfortable and holding his side. He lifted the container into its rack and then ran the cart back down the ramp to collect another one.
Thomas, being frustrated and with nothing left to do, waited for Stafford’s shift to finish. He would drive him back to Go Down and, on the way, explain the land deal.
As he waited, he watched the shuttle take off. After a few minutes, he lost it to view as it finally inclined to the vertical and broke free of Trevon’s gravity, leaving behind a white plume of gas against a darkening, star lit sky.
The Nettles rescue mission was on its way.
88
Some 30 minutes after launch, the shuttle manoeuvred to enter the V4’s busy rear cargo bay. Once it grounded, the shuttle rolled up to one of the V4’s internal docking units and established a lock.
The news crew waited in its seats until the ex-cops exited the shuttle, and then they were led through the lock into a narrow corridor that ran the outer length of the ship. As Scat pulled himself along using the handgrips on the walls, he caught glimpses of a br
ightly lit, green and yellow cargo bay through the corridor’s small internal windows. Most of the shuttles appeared to be aboard. The place was a frantic hive of automated activity.
Eventually they left the cargo bay behind them and broke off left, down a passage marked “Command and Administration”. A little way along they turned right, and there was the entrance to the ring.
Scat felt terribly self-conscious as he pulled himself the last few metres to the door. He was easily recognisable despite the cap and gauze dressing and was hoping that the guard on Trevon had not been too specific about how many were in the news crew. He wanted to get inside the gravity ring before going to ground again—if he had to, that is. Otherwise, he wanted to follow Goosen and the news crew directly to the command cabin.
Floating around the door and holding onto handgrips, two crewmembers watched them make their way forward. Scat breathed a sigh of relief: as expected, they carried stuns, but they were wearing technical specialist uniforms—they weren’t ORF troopers.
Once inside the ring, and as the ring began to rotate they waited for something or someone to show up.
The place was exceptionally bright, in stark contrast to the corridors they had just come through. Scat felt vulnerable again. Goosen introduced the celebrated Chan and then engaged the crew in idle chitchat, in an effort to keep the focus on him.
As they waited, Scat tried not to make a big thing out of looking up and down the ring. The hall was smaller than the accommodation reception. It was also white, but a little way up the ring to his right, the wall materials changed from undecorated white plastic to a subtle shade of green, suggesting a change in function. A large Lynthax-Maersk plaque on the outer wall confirmed it—the command cabin would be close by. Scat risked craning his neck to look at the wall opposite to see two sliding glass doors that reflected the flickering lights from within.
It was only around 20 metres away.
It wasn’t long before an officer came out of the room and shuffled towards them.
‘Evening, guys. Glad you could make it. My name’s Tim Harrison. I’m the Load Master. The captain has asked that you go right on up to the command cabin.’ He pointed back up the gravity ring. ‘But first, the usual pat down.’
Idle chitchat over, Li held his arms out from his sides to accommodate a frisking. One member of the crew looked beyond Goosen and gave Scat a curious look. His brow creased for half a second and then there was a flash of recognition. Scat had sensed the look, but he was already primed for violence, something the electrical specialist wasn’t.
With his hand already inside his backpack, he placed a foot against the door jam, leaned forward and pulled both triggers a half-second apart. The two specialists jerked backwards, bouncing off the gravity ring’s inner wall, falling to the ground with their stomachs and backs opening out onto the floor. Goosen gave Scat a startled look. Li and Chan recoiled away, lost their balance and fell to the ground where they crouched with their hands over their ears.
Harrison froze, and then his jaw slackened. Scat snatched the Grand American from the pack, let the smoking canvas fall to the floor, and swung the wooden butt into the side of his head.
By the time Goosen recovered the dead crewmembers’ stuns, Scat was already halfway to the command cabin doors, dragging the dazed and helpless Load Master along by the scruff of his neck.
At the entrance to the cabin, Scat threw Harrison down to the floor, recharged the shotgun with more solid shot and fired both barrels at the glass door’s magnetic lock.
Keeping his eye on what was going on inside the cabin, he held the smoking barrels up to the corridor smoke detector and charged them for a second time, again with solid shot. His eyes locked onto the Commander: the man appeared angry.
Goosen caught up with him as a few of the V4’s crew began to respond, but not understanding the source of the noise, and there having been no immediate tannoy warnings, they had rushed from their offices expecting to deal with a depressurized compartment or a blown fuel cell.
Some were carrying equipment.
None was armed.
‘Drop ‘em. Quickly!’ Scat shouted.
Goosen zapped one of them with a single bolt. It was enough. He went down without a murmur, his legs twitching. His two companions backed off as they realised the intruders were armed and not alone. At last, the tannoy sounded a warning to the rest of the crew.
Fire retardant gases poured from the fire points along the ceiling, and fire doors slammed shut throughout the ring.
‘And this one!’ Scat shouted again above the blaring noise, pushing Harrison away from him with a foot.
Goosen obliged, zapping him at close range.
That left Scat and Goosen alone at the command cabin door, looking to overcome a disabled but sticky electronic lock.
Scat could see and hear the Commander issuing instructions over the intercom. A few of the command cabin crew stared apprehensively at them from the other side of the console. In the rear of the cabin, one of the officers was unlocking a cabinet.
Goosen opened his hands, pressed them to the right-hand door and eased it to the right. Once it was open a fraction, Scat forced the tip of the shotgun through the gap and fired both barrels into the back of the Commander’s seat.
As yet, no one in the command cabin had retaliated: they couldn’t, not while the doors remained closed, but the longer they took to open, the longer they had to recover from the shock of the moment and hit back. Scat didn’t want to give them that time.
‘Farking get it open!’ he shouted.
Already the officer at the back of the room was powering up a short-barrelled weapon of some description, only pausing in horror as he saw the effects of Scat’s last two rounds.
Goosen put his weight behind his hands, heaved, released, and then heaved again. Finally, the door broke free, running back into the wall. Scat surged forward, firing Harrison’s stun gun at the officer in the back of the cabin, then at anyone else within range.
As Goosen and inert gases followed him inside, Scat jumped up onto the central console, and swung around to see who was still standing. No one was. The only movement he could see was the gas flowing across the floor and Goosen nudging a prostrate body with his foot. The only sound he could hear was the blaring alarm.
After days of planning, the frustrating wait and the nervous jockeying for position, the assault had taken less than a minute. Possibly two. But it was over.
Now for the hard part.
89
The cabin was small, and there were few places to hide. A quick head count confirmed a flight crew of five, if one included the Commander who was now slumped across his console, dead. Three of the cabin crew were throwing off the effects of their zapping, and one had thrown himself up against the bulkhead with his hands in the air. Goosen added to that number by returning to the corridor to drag in the two twitching bodies.
Scat wanted to make sure he had a pilot for the V4.
‘Which one of you flies this farking thing?’ he asked.
‘The Commander did. And it looks like … as if he’s … not able to.’ The unsteady reply came from a man in his fifties with close-cropped and greying hair, who was pulling himself up from the floor. Scat recognised him as the officer who had been powering up a weapon. He looked to be the second-in-command.
‘Aside from him, knuckle head,’ Scat cautioned, looking down at his handy work, then back up to the officer. ‘Offer someone up and now, or else these barrels go through your crew one at a time.’
The officer was a little shocked and still twitched, but his hand was steady enough to point out the crewmember who had thrown his hands in the air.
‘Me and Karat,’ he replied, catching sight of the weapon he had dropped to the floor.
Scat followed his glance and then dropped down from the console to kick it across the floor to Goosen.
‘Ftl us the fark out of here, now!’ he ordered.
The officer shook his head, less
in defiance than to clear his head. He was flexing his fingers.
‘I can’t,’ he replied. ‘We need to spool up, confirm the shuttles have returned, certify the loading, confirm our centre of mass, close off all bays … well, loads of things before we can go ftl.’
‘We don’t need to do it by the book, or worry about things falling off or out of this mother,’ Scat said, pointing out a younger member of the crew who had just pulled himself back to his console. ‘Short-cut it and get us the hell out of here in less than five minutes or that one is dead meat.
‘And you lose a knee.’
90
A little further down the corridor, Li recovered his senses and looked around. The corridor was empty for as far as the eye could see, right up to the fire doors in each direction. Even Chan had gone to ground somewhere in the pale green gas.
It was noisy, the swish of the ring drowned out by the shouting that came from up ahead in the command cabin, the hiss of inert gases emerging from the overhead fire extinguishers and the constant, blaring alarm. The air conditioners in this section of the ring had shut down so the stench of the shotgun discharges hung thick in the air. Then there was the smell of blood.
Li felt the shakes working their way into his hands and legs, but he saw the bugcam up at the command cabin door and knew he should join it. He wanted to experience the atmosphere that accompanied the visuals. If he truly were cut out for this kind of reporting, then he would find out over the course of the next few minutes.
As he stepped around the two dead specialists, he pushed down at an urge to retch. On reaching the command cabin, he glanced around in astonishment; amazed at the damage Scat had done in just a few seconds.