by Mike Brooks
Apirana beat him to it by taking two steps and stamping on the pair’s throats with two audible and rather sickening cracking sounds, then turned to look down at him. The big man’s mouth had developed a tic at its left corner and his eyes seemed just a little wider than usual. Drift recognised the danger signs; once Apirana’s blood was up he started to behave like the Berserkers of Norse legend, at which point it was safest to just stay behind him.
‘You okay?’ Apirana asked him, breathing a little more heavily than was perhaps warranted by his exertion thus far.
‘Yeah.’ Drift pushed himself up to his feet. ‘You?’ The Maori didn’t reply. Instead, his face twisted into a snarl of rage and he brought the cavernous muzzle of the immolation cannon up with a shout.
Drift didn’t waste time with questions: he threw himself forwards and sideways, trying to get out of the monstrous weapon’s firing arc before Apirana could incinerate him, but shots rang out before he’d hit the steel decking. The shots were not the whump of the cannon however, but the sharp-edged hammerblows of supersonic ammunition.
There was a shuffle of boots. Drift looked up to see Apirana stumbling sideways and then the Maori fell, a dark-skinned avalanche in ship fatigues. Behind Drift a rifle was wavering weakly in one hand of the first man he’d shot down, its owner still on his back and his face twisted in pain. Drift hadn’t reloaded his pistols and the barrel was swinging towards him, albeit slowly and somewhat shakily, so he did what he always did in these situations and improvised.
He shifted his grip on the pistol in his right hand to grasp it by the barrel, and threw it as hard as he could.
Luck, fate or excellent hand-eye coordination was on his side and the metal missile struck the crewman square in the face. Drift himself followed it a moment later, launching himself at the wounded man with a yell and grabbing the rifle before it could be turned on him. His opponent fought desperately, teeth bared in a grimace, but his strength was clearly fading. Drift compounded this by punching him where he could see a bullet wound on the man’s right pectoral, and that pretty much ended all resistance. Drift ripped the rifle out of his hands, stepped away from him and emptied the magazine up and down the pirate’s body while screaming obscenities. Then, feeling slightly sick at himself, he threw the weapon away and dashed to where Apirana had fallen.
‘A.!’ He checked the Maori over quickly. There was a bullet wound in the meat of Apirana’s right arm which was bleeding badly and a round had been stopped by the big man’s armavest just under his collarbone, but he was most concerned about the one which had penetrated and left a dark, wet wound over what he judged was roughly the bottom of the left ribcage. Could that have hit a kidney, if it had penetrated far enough? His grasp of anatomy had never been a strong point. ‘How bad does it feel?’
‘Gah!’ Apirana’s breath was coming fast and shallow, and clearly paining him. ‘Pretty fuckin’ bad, bro!’
‘Okay, hold on.’ Drift grabbed the small, syringelike dressing gun from the medkit on the belt of Apirana’s armavest and sprayed sterile, fast-setting foam into both wounds. It was hardly more than a sticking plaster, but it would slow the big man’s blood loss somewhat. That done, he activated his comm again. ‘Jenna, you still there?’
+I’m here.+ The young slicer’s voice sounded ragged. Of course, she would have seen the whole thing on the cameras. +Is he . . .+
‘A.’s still alive, but he’s wounded.’ Drift tried to keep his voice crisp, although it was as much for his benefit as either of the other two’s. ‘Anyone else heading our way?’
+It doesn’t look like it. Kelsier’s mob seem to have blockaded themselves in properly now and the Europans are having trouble getting to them.+
‘No one else coming through any secret doors?’ Drift coughed; the acrid, chemical stench of the immolation gel was mixing with the stomach-turning scent of charred human flesh and hair, and the resulting cocktail was making it difficult to breathe.
+Nothing I can see, Captain.+ Jenna sounded a little more focused now, which was something.
‘Right. Keep a lookout and shout at me if you see anything, okay?’
+Roger that.+
‘Right.’ Drift looked down at Apirana again, then up the corridor. ‘Where’s the entrance this lot came out of?’
+About twenty metres away, on your left.+
Drift grimaced and met the Maori’s eyes. ‘Think you can make it that far?’
‘Not fucking dead yet,’ Apirana growled, and held up his left arm. ‘Gimme a hand.’
‘Not a chance,’ Drift told him flatly, ‘you’d pull me over.’ He holstered his second pistol and got behind Apirana, helped the big man into a sitting position (not without a groan of pain on the Maori’s part), then threaded his arms underneath Apirana’s armpits. ‘Ready?’
Apirana nodded, and Drift hauled upwards. Or tried to.
It took two attempts, some truly sulphurous swearing from Apirana and black spots appearing in Drift’s vision but he finally managed to get the Maori onto his feet, although even that was clearly a massive strain for the big man. He was leaning heavily even then, an experience for Drift which felt somewhat akin to trying to support a small landslide, and together they staggered towards what looked like an innocuous section of wall marked by nothing other than a small keypad which could have controlled anything from ventilation to lighting. However, Drift could see the slightly wider gap between wall panels which hinted at an opening.
‘Jenna, any ideas?’
+Access code should be 32519, if I’m reading this right.+
Drift punched the numbers in and, sure enough, the wall panel swung almost silently inwards to reveal a tunnel: not regularly shaped and metal-lined like the corridors outside but simply the bare, dark rock of the asteroid, studded with intermittent lights and lined with cables. They stumbled inside and let the door swing shut again, but after a couple of steps Apirana hissed in pain and sank down against the wall.
‘Shit . . .’ Sweat was beading all over the Maori’s head, visible even in the dimmer light that now illuminated them, and his breath was huffing out around gritted teeth. ‘That’s me done, bro. You go get the little fucker, yeah?’ He reached up with a wince and unslung the assault rifle which until now had been dangling from its strap. ‘Gimme your gun, take this one. I’ll watch your back. No one’s coming through here unless they’re on our side.’
Drift felt his gut twist. Micah’s death was still raw, and Apirana had been a part of Drift’s life for far longer than the Dutch mercenary had. Despite his occasional terrifying rages, and even the recent nearstrangulation Drift had suffered at the big man’s hands, Apirana Wahawaha was a friend. Besides, quite apart from the pain and guilt involved, there was something terrifying about seeing someone as big and strong as Apirana reduced to a crippled wreck. His sheer size and vitality seemed like it should make him immune to all but the largest natural disasters, but at the end of the day he was flesh and blood like anyone else.
Drift took the proffered rifle and reloaded his pistol, then handed it over along with a couple of spare magazines. ‘You sure we shouldn’t try to get you back out there?’ he asked, nodding towards the door. ‘We could get Jenna to see if some of the Europans could come and pick you up. You need treatment.’
‘We got nothing on the Jonah which can help me,’ Apirana growled, threading his thick finger through the trigger guard, ‘nor the Keiko. Go get this bastard an’ then we can all fly off an’ see if the Europans’ll play nice an’ check out my guts.’ He scowled as Drift hesitated. ‘Go. I’ve got this. I’m fucking Maori. I might not be able to walk, but I can still fight.’
Drift swallowed, not trusting himself to answer. He nodded soberly, bumped the fist that the big man held out to him, and turned away to follow the tunnel.
GOING IN BLIND
The tunnel only went a short distance, perhaps twenty metres, before it took a right turn. Drift followed it and found another tunnel merging from the left, reassuringly
empty for now but far from ideal given that it meant Apirana was no longer covering the only way in and out. A short distance on from the junction his way was blocked by another door, this one a high-security model in heavy steel. He paused and activated his comm, wondering if the reception lines would have been run in here; if not, the rock would likely prevent his signal from being picked up by the network in the corridors outside. ‘Jenna?’
+Still here.+
He sighed in relief. ‘Good. I’ve reached another door. Any tips?’
+It should be the same access code, from what I can see.+
Drift double-checked his rifle, took a couple of deep breaths, and punched the code into the small keypad set into the rock on his left. A light flashed green and the door slid aside in two portions, allowing him to leap through with his weapon levelled . . .
. . . into a bedchamber. Or possibly a boudoir. Regardless of semantics, it was a room of low-level lighting with thick, luxurious carpet and dominated by a large four-poster bed of dark, polished wood, covered in what looked to be red satin sheets.
The other prominent feature was the chamber’s occupant.
She had large, dark brown eyes and high cheekbones on a face which probably didn’t quite fit into Drift’s criteria for ‘beautiful’, but for which the term ‘pretty’ seemed sorely lacking. Her skin was a golden brown not too dissimilar to his own in tone and she would have been an unremarkable, if pleasing sight in most other contexts were it not for one detail: the entire rear of her skull, from the top of her forehead to the nape of her neck, had been either replaced or coated with shiny metal. There was not a hair on her head higher or further back than her eyebrows, which were so dark as to be almost black, and raised high in fear.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, and spoke in a whisper. ‘Who are you?’
Drift kept her covered, checking the rest of the room over quickly. There didn’t seem to be any shadowy corners, or anything convenient for someone else to be hiding in or under. So far as he could tell there were only the two of them there, although there were two internal doors leading off from the main chamber: regular wood-effect plastic from the look of them, not like the metal airlock he’d just stepped through, or the one facing it on the opposite side of the chamber.
He focused on the girl again, raising the rifle slightly to show he was serious. ‘Where’s Kelsier?’
The girl didn’t speak, but twitched her silvered head in the direction of the airlock on the far side of the room. Drift nodded towards the other doors. ‘What’re these?’
‘Kitchen,’ she whispered, another tilt of her head indicating the one to her left. Then she looked to her right. ‘Washroom.’
Drift skirted the bed carefully, trying to make sure he kept focused on her while still being aware of the rest of his surroundings, until his hip was nudging the door she’d said was to the kitchen. He scowled at her. ‘Don’t move.’
She nodded meekly.
He bumped the door open with his hip and spun through, sweeping the rifle’s barrel across what did indeed prove to be a small but well-appointed kitchen. He debated opening the drawers to ensure they weren’t some sort of facade concealing a hiding place, but decided against it. It was clearly just a damn kitchen, and he didn’t have Kelsier pegged as the sort of man who was paranoid enough to build a bolthole into a kitchen located in a secret network of tunnels in the middle of a lonely asteroid. You had to draw the line somewhere.
The girl hadn’t moved, but he still kept an eye on her as he moved around to check the washroom. Again, everything seemed normal, and there were certainly no hiding places among the shiny tiles and chrome finish. He backed out again and regarded the girl steadily. She looked back at him, her expression hard to read but certainly not hostile.
‘What’s through there?’ he asked, indicating the airlock which was now behind him.
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not allowed out of this room.’
Drift nodded slowly. ‘What’s your name?’
Her voice was the barest whisper this time. ‘Emily.’
‘Well then, Emily,’ Drift said as reassuringly as he could, cautiously taking one hand off his rifle, ‘just keep your hands where I can see them. I’m going to take this sheet off to make sure you’re not hiding any weapons from me.’
The girl clutched the sheet up to her chest even tighter, if anything. ‘But—’
‘I just need to know you’re not going to shoot me in the back,’ Drift told her. ‘That’s all, I promise.’ He didn’t wait for her to reply, but grabbed the sheet and pulled.
The girl resisted for a moment, but only a moment; then the fabric slid from between her fingers and Drift yanked the sheets aside to reveal the rest of the bed, empty of anything remotely resembling a weapon unless someone had found a way to make a pillow deadly. It brought into sight Emily’s torso, which was slim and toned and had its modesty vaguely protected by underclothes that had certainly been designed for appearance rather than warmth, and also Emily’s legs, which were long and shapely.
And made entirely of metal, from the hip joints downwards.
Drift blinked for a second in surprise, then dragged his gaze back up to the girl’s face and, inevitably, her shiny scalp. ‘What—’
Now her expression changed, anger flashing over her face and turning it almost feral. ‘Don’t you dare pity me!’ She moved suddenly, bringing her legs around and under her into a crouch on the bed. Something else glinted at the nape of her neck: what looked like a metal spinal sheath, running down from the back of her skull.
Drift shook his head slowly. ‘I wasn’t . . . look, my business isn’t with you.’ This was all rather more of a headfuck than he’d anticipated. ‘It’s with Kelsier.’
Emily’s expression changed again, the anger fading into a tight alertness. ‘Are you going to kill him?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Can I watch?’
Drift tried to suppress a grimace. He didn’t know what Nicolas Kelsier had done to this girl, but part of his mind was offering suggestions about it that he didn’t really want to consider too closely. Her legs . . . He shook the images away; whatever had happened here, he had no desire to go in after Kelsier with this girl at his back. The last thing he needed was for an overenthusiastic amateur to see a chance for revenge and get in the way at the wrong moment.
‘No,’ he told her instead, ‘you need to get out of here.’ He gestured towards the airlock he’d entered by. ‘There’s Europan troops taking over this rock right now. Go find them, or head for the hangar bay. Either way, as soon as you see someone yell out that Ichabod Drift sent you.’
‘Ichabod Drift?’
He tried a grin. ‘Don’t wear it out!’ She stared at him blankly, and he shrugged mentally. You couldn’t win them all. ‘Seriously, go on. Oh, and if you take the left fork out there you’ll find a big ol’ Maori with a gun and a bad temper.’ I hope. So long as Apirana hasn’t bled out yet, or lost consciousness or something. ‘So you might want to take the right fork, actually. It’ll mean less explaining.’
She studied him for a long moment, dark eyes wide and calculating, then nodded slowly and backed away across the bed, eyes still on him. She pulled a white robe up from somewhere and slipped it around herself, then sidestepped towards the airlock which led to the tunnels beyond. Drift noticed that her feet, which even had individual toes, seemed to be shod in something dark, possibly rubber, for traction.
‘Go on,’ he said when she hesitated, ‘get going.’
Emily didn’t reply. She just nodded once, soberly, and activated the door. It slid aside and she stepped through, then turned in a whirl of white and silver and disappeared almost silently. The door hissed shut behind her and Drift was left with just the empty bedchamber.
‘Well,’ he muttered to himself, ‘that wasn’t at all weird.’ He turned to the next door’s keypad and, on the basis that it had worked so far, keyed in the same five-digit access code.
It worked again. The doors slid apart and he stepped through into the centre of Nicolas Kelsier’s operation.
It was not, in truth, particularly imposing. It was about half the size of the Jonah’s cargo bay in area, with a few terminal stations scattered about and humming stacks lining the walls. There were also multiple display screens, now showing nothing but static thanks to Jenna rerouting the signal from the asteroid’s surveillance cameras, and another security door across the room from where he’d entered. Attached to the wall on his far left was an icon, perhaps two feet high and about half that across: a sleek black rectangle of stone, possibly obsidian, with a lattice of gold lines running across it in geometric shapes. Underneath it, with his back to him and furiously doing something at a terminal, was Nicolas Kelsier.
‘What is it?’ the old man barked, not turning around.
‘Hola, Señor Kelsier,’ Drift replied, sighting down the barrel of his rifle, ‘se acabó.’ He remembered a second too late that Kelsier had never shown much of an aptitude with Spanish and, unwilling to let a dramatic line go unheard, repeated himself in English. ‘It’s over.’
He saw Kelsier stiffen as he was speaking. Then the old, grey head turned slightly and he saw the gleam of a pale blue eye swivelling towards him. ‘Ichabod. I might have known you would show up to be the little Mexican cherry topping off this shitstorm.’
‘It seems you’d forgotten how hard I am to kill,’ Drift remarked. ‘No, don’t turn around.’ He kept the rifle pointing at Kelsier and pulled Jenna’s drive out of his belt pouch with his free hand, then slotted it casually and quietly into an access port in the nearest terminal.