by Alex Lamb
‘I don’t care,’ said Voss. ‘Do it.’
While officers scrambled to their defensive stations, tides of warring drones spilled up from the planet like tongues of flame, apparently oblivious to the ships and habitat. A fan of g-rays lanced out from the invading drones, turning hundreds of nearby defenders into blast-waves of radiation.
The station had just seconds to react. The deck under Ann’s feet shuddered as radiation alarms began to sound.
‘Primary buffers at twenty-three per cent!’ someone yelled. ‘This tub wasn’t built for action.’
‘Another wave incoming,’ shouted Koenig.
The next wave knocked Ann off her feet. Sirens started screaming. The lights went out.
14.6: WILL
Will stumbled as the station lurched. The command deck SAP began blurting out warnings.
‘Nem-cloaking compromised, compensating with albedo reduction. Primary Casimir-buffers compromised, secondaries activated. Life-support primaries compromised, secondaries activating …’
Emergency illumination flickered into life. If he was going to make his move, Will knew it needed to be now. At this rate there might not be another chance, and Pari was taking far too long to wake up to the dangers she faced. Unfortunately, a wall of armed Spatials stood between him and the pod bay. Will didn’t let that bother him.
He crouched and sprang over the guards’ heads, landed three metres away and sprinted for the bay doors. At the same time, he reached out with his mind and seized control of the command deck’s SAP. With his triggers already in place, the station’s security toppled like a damp sandcastle.
To their credit, the guards reacted fast. Their killtech had been designed by copying Will’s secondary nervous system, after all. They brought their guns around and peppered the wall ahead of him with bio-bullets.
Will dived to avoid the fire. He wasn’t sure what would happen if the bullets hit, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty. An officer nearby wasn’t so lucky. He spun in a spray of blood, dropping like a limp rag. One of the Spatials slapped the emergency lockdown stud on his chest, sealing the pod-bay doors.
Will felt anger rise back up and claim him. Lives were being wasted when all he wanted to do was leave. Suddenly, it was all too much. The League had bent his entire life out of shape. The people he’d called friends had lied to him for years while they plotted mass murder. And now they were shooting at him. Well, if that was how they wanted it, he could play that way.
He threw himself back towards the closest soldier, diving under his arc of fire to tackle him. The man screamed as Will’s impact pulverised his legs. Will reached up, seized the smart-gun from the Spatial’s hands and hurled it at the second-closest soldier as he turned to fire. The soldier’s head splashed apart, his bioceramic helmet splintering like old wood.
The others whipped their guns around, but not nearly fast enough. Will blurred forward again. The two Spatials directly in his path received swift, precise blows to the chest. Both died instantly, their bodies bursting like wet paper bags. Will sped through their spattering remains.
By then the other four soldiers had started firing. Will used the closest as a human shield and drove into their midst in the blink of an eye. Before they could react, Will struck out, punching the closest and kicking another so hard that his body armour shattered. He took the remaining soldier in a dive, ripping the gun from his hands and dislocating the man’s arms as he did so.
The entire process took approximately three seconds and proved more satisfying than it had any right to.
‘Anyone else want to piss me off?’ said Will.
Parisa Voss stared at him in shock. ‘Bioblocker!’ she yelled.
Gas started jetting from the ceiling.
‘Shit,’ said Will. Evidently Pari had that little precaution running on an independent circuit.
He took off for the nearest exit but could feel the stuff attacking his skin already. The vapour had to be lousy with alien cells. As he sprinted, the strength fled from his limbs. Pain engulfed him and he toppled to the floor, tumbling end-over-end with the force of his own velocity. He struggled to right himself as smart-cells screamed into his mind from all over his body. His vision blurred as the alien organisms started to eat his eyes.
Just as his hope began to fade, a pair of arms reached down to grab him. To his surprise, they dragged him towards a maintenance hatch, then pushed him through and sealed it behind them.
‘Are you okay?’ said a woman’s voice.
Will lay on the floor spasming in a state of internal war. Where he could seal and repulse the alien cells with polymer vesicles, he did so. Where he couldn’t prevent attack, he simply sacrificed his tissue, binding it up in a mucus matrix. About three per cent of Will’s body mass sloughed off onto the floor around him in a puddle of pinkish fluid.
He gasped for breath. ‘Just,’ he croaked.
He coughed up a mass of something disgusting onto his chest – some fraction of the lining of his lungs, by the looks of it. His skin burned hot in a frenzy of self-repair.
‘Good,’ said Ann Ludik. ‘Because we probably only have seconds before they come after us. There are maintenance pods this way. We can use them to get out.’
Will felt a surge of wholly irrational resentment at being rescued by his betrayer but knew he wasn’t in a position to do anything stupid about it. She picked him up and dragged him onwards, down an emergency stairway to the level below. Someone started hammering on the hatch behind them before they hit the next level.
Will blinked at her as his vision cleared. ‘Why help me?’ he wheezed.
‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘I’m coming with you, that’s all.’
Had he been rescued by anyone else, Will would have accepted the gesture at face value. Coming from Ann, however, he wasn’t about to take any chances. They tumbled together through the open door of a maintenance pod.
‘Pod, take us—’ Ann started, but Will was already on it.
The door sealed and the pod raced away towards the shuttle bay. As they accelerated, Will sealed off comms between the command deck and the rest of the station. He deployed tactical and emergency-response SAPs to move the station out of harm’s way and accelerate the repairs. He wanted Pari locked down, not dead – though dead was tempting. Through the cameras on the command deck, he saw her yelling orders and watched her stunned officers regrouping.
The maintenance pod dumped them at the shuttle bay just as another wave of blasts rocked the floor. Snakepit Station had become a bystander in an extremely dangerous war. Ann pulled Will from the wall where he lay wheezing and ran with him to the hatch that led to the shuttle.
Will rammed his mind into the hatch control and ordered it open. Nothing happened. Ann slapped the stud on the wall with the same lack of effect.
‘Shit!’ yelled Ann. ‘That Nem alert ramped us to maximum security, which means the docking equipment is running on a locked-out loop. We need someone in the station to get to a manual cut-out and hook us back in.’
‘A robot,’ Will wheezed. He started scanning the station for one he could use.
‘Won’t work,’ said Ann. ‘If they go near the cut-outs they get a shutdown pulse. It’s an anti-hack measure.’
Will glowered at the stubbornly sealed hatch before them. This was, no doubt, another layer of security added just for him. How thoughtful. ‘They let us go,’ he said, ‘or they lose their air. Tell them.’ He brought up the environmental controls from the command deck and got ready to dump some oxygen.
‘No,’ said Ann. ‘I can solve this. Give me a minute.’ She reached for the comms on the wall. ‘Call Kuril Najoma, maximum priority,’ she said, facing the camera.
Will jacked into the call and watched for tricks. A window displaying a large man’s astonished face appeared. As he took in Ann’s expression, an anxious frown crept over his feat
ures.
‘You want another favour,’ he said glumly.
She nodded. ‘Someone needs to manually unlock the docking circuit.’
‘I’m going to get in trouble for this, aren’t I?’
‘Undoubtedly. Can you do it?’
He looked pained. ‘Yes. Because if you have any idea what to do next, that puts you one up on everyone else around here. Just don’t forget about me. And if they shoot me, put up a little plaque or something.’
Ann nodded. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘A nice one.’
‘Good luck, Captain,’ he said. ‘It’s been fun working with you.’ He cut the call.
‘They’ll kill him,’ Will croaked.
Ann shook her head. ‘I’m hoping they’re better than that.’
Five seconds later, the hatch opened.
Ann picked Will up and carried him into the pod. It slid down the rail and deposited them at the shuttle’s airlock where they faced another sealed door.
‘Again?’ said Ann.
‘No,’ growled Will. ‘It’s a shuttle. I’ve got this.’
As the shuttle began to complain about unauthorised access, Will seized it with his interface and squeezed it till it wilted.
‘Welcome aboard,’ it mewled.
Will struggled weakly up the access tube and had to let Ann clip him into his seat.
‘Strap in,’ he said as he took over the ship’s helm-space. ‘We’re leaving.’
Ann dived into the crash couch behind him as Will unlocked the docking clamps.
The shuttle fell away from the station while Will pressed himself into the autopilot SAP. He ignored its wails of panic at the frenzied whirl of battle that surrounded them, threw half his submind attention onto impact evasion and punched them out into empty space under three gees of thrust. His healing body wouldn’t be up for much more than that for at least a quarter of an hour.
Avoiding drone impacts and blast-waves in that furious mess would have reduced a human pilot to a gibbering wreck in seconds, but Will hadn’t been human for years. He hurled the shuttle this way and that, fighting for every kilometre. When they were no more than ten minutes out, Ann started shouting.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’
‘The Ariel Two,’ said Will. ‘Where’d you think?’
A pair of drones chased by them, narrowly missing. The shuttle slewed wildly to compensate.
‘Why?’ said Ann. ‘Turn back! Both the Chiyome and Parisa’s scout are closer. In this mess it’ll take us nearly an hour to reach the Ariel Two, even at these gees. We need to get out of here immediately and let Earth know.’
‘And leave Ariel Two in Pari’s hands?’ said Will. ‘Not a chance.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ said Ann. ‘There’s too much crossfire. We can come back for it.’
Will felt a fresh surge of anger. ‘It’s my ship,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to let her use it for her fucking war.’
‘But it’s still under repair!’ said Ann. ‘Take the Chiyome!’
Will saw the logic; he just didn’t like it.
‘If we do this, we do it on my terms,’ he snarled. ‘You betrayed me, Captain Ludik. And that ship of yours is as full of alien weapons as that station we just left. Forgive me for not being in a rush to let you anywhere near it.’
Besides, the Ariel Two had more gallons of his smart-blood aboard than most habitat domes had water. With resources like that, he could properly analyse Snakepit’s bioweapon. He could make a difference.
Another blast-wave hit, swatting the shuttle like a fly. They entered a dizzying spin while the pilot SAP wept damage alerts at him. They’d lost attitude control and taken rads. Life-support primaries had failed, giving them just six hours on backups. However, that wasn’t likely to be a problem. The wave had knocked them sideways, out of their orbit and onto a trajectory that ended on the planet below. They were falling like a rock, straight through the swirl of combat.
Will yelled obscenities while he struggled to turn their tumble into a controlled dive. A blizzard of drones flashed past them on every side as Snakepit loomed up to say hello.
15: DESCENT
15.1: MARK
Mark stood frozen as the Flag gestured at them with the barrel of his gun. He looked eighteen at most, his dark, blank eyes radiating a capacity for casual violence. He wore a padded combat jacket with a type of smart-collar Mark had never seen before.
‘You trespassing,’ he told them proudly. ‘This the realm of the Citizens of the True Light.’
He spoke quietly into his collar in a language Mark didn’t know but the look on his face suggested that finding them here qualified as an early Christmas.
‘Let me handle this,’ said Venetia. ‘I recognise the group.’
Mark still wasn’t sure Venetia was the right person for the job. He was a fellow Earther, whereas her voice and appearance screamed Colonial elite. But she supposedly had the local knowledge, so Mark grudgingly kept his mouth shut and hoped she knew what she was doing.
‘We’re glad you’re here,’ said Venetia. ‘We’ve been looking for you. We want to defect. How soon can you take us to your settlement?’
The young man holding the gun glanced back and forth between them, looking slightly nervous now. Apparently, this didn’t happen.
‘No,’ the young man insisted. ‘You all our prisoners. No deals.’
‘Fine,’ said Venetia. ‘Prisoners, then. We’re being hunted by the New Luxor police. How soon can we leave?’
The young man spoke into his collar again, this time more urgently.
‘I say when we go,’ he told them. ‘That how it works.’
A minute later, three more Flags arrived, including one slightly older man with artificially whitened irises and black prosthetic ridges sticking out of his face.
‘I’m Den,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge here. Kal says you talking weird shit. How about you all kneel down on the ground and try again.’
The Flags waved their guns.
Mark and the others knelt carefully while Venetia explained a second time.
‘The police will be here very soon,’ she said. ‘Lots of them. We have information that affects your sect. Your whole community is in danger from imminent attack and the colonists don’t want you to know. They’re trying to stop us from getting to you.’
‘We in danger from nobody!’ said Kal, shaking his flenser. ‘They show up here, we flesh them good.’
‘Shut up,’ said Den. ‘Keep talking, lady. You offering data?’
‘We’ll tell you everything we know,’ said Venetia. ‘High-class data. Lots of it. But we have to get out of here before the police show up and kill us.’
‘They all liars,’ said Kal. ‘They too eager. Just want to get into Britehaven. Then use a bioweapon or some shit.’
Mark could contain himself no longer. It was all taking too long. Venetia was only confusing them.
‘If we wanted to do that, why open our mouths?’ he said. ‘You were going to take us there for ransom anyway.’
The Flags stared at him. Venetia and Zoe both shot him warning glances.
‘We got a smart mouth!’ said Kal. ‘You want I should kill him for the glory of God and our father, the one true risen Prophet?’
‘Not yet,’ said Den. ‘Man’s got a point.’ Den looked them over with his deliberately unsettling eyes. ‘I got no idea what to make of you,’ he said, ‘so we take you back. If this all a big story, we get a ransom anyway. If not, we get data. Either way, we follow God’s plan and make fresh glory for the Citizens of the True Light, praise be to the Prophet and his mighty works.’
His collar made a peculiar chiming sound, like bells being struck, as if to underline his point. Den looked satisfied.
‘Bring them this way,’ said Den. ‘Kal, you up in front. Don’t want you
fleshing them in the back for no reason.’
As the Flag raiding party led them from the room, Venetia leaned in close to Mark.
‘Be extremely careful,’ she told him. ‘Please. Whatever you believe.’
Mark nodded and kept his mouth shut. Privately, he suspected that the men who’d found them weren’t vicious or brainwashed, just poor and desperate. He’d seen poverty on Earth and knew what it could do to people. He’d been down to the notorious Lowdex of Tower Three, where families of five or six lived in three-metre-square pods. He’d walked through the Philadelphia refugee zone after they shut down the towers and lifted people-packs for weeks during the relocation effort. If you subjected anyone to enough hunger and fear they always got a little crazy. Press a gun into their hand and it only made things worse.
While Mark had no love of the sect Leading, he could easily see how, for many of the Following, any way off Earth was better than none. There had to be millions of people lining up and willing to claim they were die-hard Revivalists if it would get them a ticket out.
Den led them to a tunnel where a small airlock had been glued into the wall and sprayed over with rockdust camo. Den pointed at the lock and ordered Kal into action. Kal complained briefly but climbed inside anyway. He came back five minutes later with three ancient-looking environment suits and air-masks. The valves on the masks had been fitted with leashes. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time Den’s team had taken hostages.
Mark and the others hurriedly pulled the heated suits over their clothes while the Flags watched with weapons aimed. They’d probably never seen people so grateful to put on such ratty equipment. Zoe actually groaned with relief as the thermal circuit kicked on, soliciting nervous laughter from their captors.
Two of the Flags climbed through the tiny airlock, leaving them with just Den and Kal.
‘In you go,’ said Den.
One by one, they followed the others into the tunnels beyond, where three electric carts sat waiting. Den’s men ushered them aboard and together they set off into the dark.