Three Times The Trouble (Corin Hayes Book 3)

by G R Matthews

  I selected some music from the suits library, turned the volume up and started cutting.

  I… I just died in your arms tonight…

  Chapter 48

  By the time we’d cut a hole big enough to squeeze through I was running out of songs.

  The panel of hull metal we’d cut out had been hauled to the side with magnetic clamps revealing the insulation beneath. Made of the same stuff we’d sprayed between the layers of the tent, it was a pain to cut through and the welders were useless. They would melt the foam but as soon as the heat was removed the sea water cooled it and it set harder than before. Removal was the chore of cutting through it with thin blades and stacking it out of the way.

  There wasn’t much room left in the small shelter. It is, I think, a curious fact of physics that a solid object cut into small chunks takes up more space than the original object. The foam was full of tiny little air bubbles which made all the small chunks want to float towards the surface, only to be trapped against the ceiling. Even with the help of the exoskeleton, my arms were beginning to tire.

  As I removed the last block of foam and we had full access to the inner metal hull, Qiao moved past me. I turned to type a stern note of complaint, only to see her stick a small sensor against the wall and tap a few commands on the keyboard attached to her arm.

  Just a second later the tinny, almost incoherent sounds of activity rang in my ears. A microphone picking up the noise of those inside. I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to pick out voices, instructions and commands. Nothing.

  “Can you clear it up?” I typed to Qiao. A block of foam bumped my helmet and I moved it away with a slow wave of my arm.

  “Best I can do,” she answered.

  The clock on my HUD showed us to be ahead of schedule. Which was great, except we’d built a lot of slack into that time. It meant we’d be sat in our communal coffin for a long time, listening to everyone on the other side of the hull going about their own business. It also meant we couldn’t make too much noise. According to the blueprints Hai San had shown us, we should be just outside a small room, hopefully empty, of the warehouse. A clonk, bump or thump on the metal hull would sound out in that space and if anyone were there, or passing by, they would hear it without a shadow of a doubt.

  “Set the explosives,” Qiao ordered and I set to work.

  Taking the grey, in the light of my torch, putty from the bottom of my pack I started forming long thin snakes of the stuff. These I pressed against the hull, making sure there were no gaps or breaks in the continuous line. There was room for just one of us in the hole we’d cut in the foam and that was fine with me. I didn’t need to be bumped and jostled as I worked with this stuff.

  True, it wouldn’t go bang until the detonator told it to, but it paid to be careful with anything which had potential to blow the head clean off your shoulders. Only, it wouldn’t be clean. It would be one hell of a mess, but at least you wouldn’t be around to clean it up. That’d be some other poor sods job.

  Once the line was complete, I dragged a small rectangular torch from my belt and turned it on. I couldn’t see a thing. No light emitted from it that my eyes could detect, but when I played it across the grey putty the effect was clear. It changed colour, grey to red. This process took even longer than laying the putty against the wall and it was more important. Hardening the outside, so Hai San’s explosive expert had said, would prevent a lot of the heat and any concussive force from being blown back at us when we set it off. Which was good. It meant I had to make sure every millimetre of the putty which faced into the coffin was coloured red. A small patch of grey and there was a chance that something nasty could happen. A big chance.

  The sounds from inside changed and I stopped. I turned to Qiao and raised a questioning hand. You can see the face of a Fish-Suit user, but the change of medium between Oxyquid, Plexiglas HUD, water and the back again tended to mess up the view somewhat. Not a Frankenstein’s monster mess up, but it wasn’t always the sweet visage you were born with that the other person saw.

  Her face adopted a puzzled expression, one eye closed, other eyebrow cocked and what appeared to be her tongue stuck out, just a little way, from her mouth. She didn’t move for a few seconds. Just as I went to type a query, she moved, typing her own message. I waited.

  “Probably nothing,” she said. “I can still hear movement inside. Something is being moved around. Can you hear that scrape?”

  I nodded, and sent through an affirmative.

  “Carry on, we have time still. Hai San won’t be,” the computer created voice was overwhelmed by the sound of an explosion on the other side of the hull. It reverberated through my skull, shaking my brain. We felt it through the hull too. It boomed, and the hull trembled, creating shock waves which rumbled through my bones, setting my teeth on edge, and echoed off the rigid tent wall.

  “Early?” I sent.

  “Yes. Get that explosive hardened. Now.” You couldn’t shout in a Fish-Suit but I could imagine her doing that right now.

  I got to work. Just two metres to go and the noises from inside sounded loud and chilling in my earpieces. Shouts and screams. The sounds of battle. I tried to put them to one side, to ignore them, as I finished my job. It was tough and harder still to keep the questions from tumbling through my mind.

  Why did they attack? Were they seen? Were they betrayed? We still had two hours left, what had happened? What was going on inside? Round and round and round they went with every square centimetre of putty that changed to the colour of blood.

  “Done,” I typed.

  “Detonators,” she responded and I took the little sticks, silver on one end, black on the other, and placed one at each corner of the door I’d outlined in putty. Unspooling the thin wire from each, winding them together at the end and wrapping the now thick wire around a contact point on the small device attached to my belt, I felt my heart speed up. I sucked in a great lungful of Oxyquid to steady my nerves.

  “All done,” I said.

  “Checking,” she answered and we were quiet for a moment. The sound of shouts and battle filtered through my headphones as I waited for Qiao to make a decision. Go now or wait? After the initial rush at the first explosion, she had calmed. It wouldn’t pay to go early. Perhaps this wasn’t the forces of Hai San attacking, but someone else? It was possible. Maybe. Unlikely though.

  “Detonate,” the words appeared on my screen and the electronic voice sounded in my ears.

  I pressed the button on the device and a small electric current ran up the wire and set off the explosives. A thump, a clang and, strangely, a whistle. For a second, nothing happened and then the metal hull in front of us fell inward. The edges of the cut door glowing red and sparks raining down onto the floor below. A nanosecond later all the water in the little coffin rushed out onto the floor and air rushed in.

  The pressure pushed me forward and I sprawled across the deck in the warehouse. I grunted as Qiao landed on top of me and rolled off, her elbows and exoskeleton digging into me. This was the most dangerous moment for us. Surrounded by the thick Oxyquid, dressed in a Fish-suit, for all our grace and manoeuvrability in the water, we were flopping fish out of it. A quick bash with a stout stick and we’d be on the dinner plate before the day was over.

  I flicked the controls in the suit, scrolled quickly through the emergency menu and selected the correct protocols. It asked me to confirm and I jabbed the little sensor in my glove as if that would make it go faster.

  There was a click and a hush. Every seal on my suit released and the Oxyquid joined the spreading water. I forced the helmet off my head and coughed up the gel from my lungs. Ribs heaved and cracked, a fire raced up my throat and the Oxyquid spattered on the floor in front of me. Air, warm, dry and smelling of people, machinery and that odour that only cities have replaced the soft and silky liquid that let me breathe in the deep oceans.

  Sounds of fighting were much more pronounced now that I was free of the suit. We’d fallen in
to a closed room. There was a window opposite the opening we’d created and a door to the right of it. Qiao was struggling to her feet, discarding her suit and flicking the gel from her exposed skin. The skin-tight undergarment was shedding the Oxyquid without her help, doing as it was designed to do.

  I followed, piling my own Fish-suit in the corner. These things were expensive and built around one person. I didn’t want to get anything mixed up or, worse, lost.

  “Stop fucking around,” she snapped, “and help me here.”

  In the water, buoyancy made heavy objects lighter. It was a strange effect, but one we relied upon. The packs we’d brought with us would have been immovable if it weren’t for that effect. We had another pack, lighter and waterproof. I dragged it out of the coffin-shaped room and dumped it on the floor. Qiao grabbed the other pack.

  Unzipping the first, I lifted out the crossbow we’d brought with us. A complicated affair that she snatched out of my hands and began to construct by pulling and twisting bits into shape. I shrugged, it was her weapon not mine, and moved to the second bag.

  Our job was simple, to attack from the rear. Qiao was the sniper. I was the spotter and guard. From the window, Qiao could pick her targets and strike silently. I could point out targets to her and make sure we weren’t attacked without warning.

  In the second bag was a wedge, for the door, and I kicked it into place. Even if the door was unlocked it would be a struggle to open now. I drew out the last two items from the bag, shoving one wrapped package into my waistband in the small of my back. The second was the weapon I’d selected from Hai San’s stores.

  Chapter 49

  There’d been all sorts of weapons in the store. Swords with hooks on the end, thick bladed knives, three-section staffs, thin ropes and chains with heavy weights attached to the end, straight swords, large swords that would take two hands to wield, iron rings with spikes on them, and others that I couldn’t even begin to describe. I went simple, a stick with lump of metal on the end. It suited me, folks had been calling me a useless lump for much of my life.

  In the warehouse proper, and down on the floor, the soldiers of Sio Sam Ong, the yellow belts and bandannas marking them out, were fighting for their lives. The prohibition against modern weapons did nothing to reduce the ferocity of the battle. I saw, in a glance, a woman from Hai San, who wielded a double-edged straight sword, parry a strike from a hatchet wielding attacker and flick the sword out, back along the path of the strike. The attacker fumbled their weapon, dropping it from limp fingers, turned round, ignoring the warrior of Hai San, blood spurting from the gash across his neck and dropped the floor. His legs twitched and went still.

  I stopped to stare, a fearful fascination with death and the life affirming realisation that at least it wasn’t me. The Hai San woman turned seeking a new opponent and was cut down by a large sword wielded by a small man who sprang out from behind some crates. I saw her mouth open in shock and pain. I didn’t hear her scream.

  There was a click from beside me, followed by a soft twang and a hum. Qiao had discharged her crossbow and I traced the line of the shot. At the back, not far from the doors which had been blown open, no problems with using explosives to gain entry I noticed, a Sio Sam Ong warrior clutched at his lower back and twist around to look behind him. He fell to his knees and didn’t see the Hai San, red belt and bandanna, plunge two thick bladed knives into his side. I’d imagine he felt them and my guts made their presence known.

  “Do you have to?” Qiao said, reloading the crossbow.

  “Sorry,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “It doesn’t look pretty out there.”

  She stared at me for a moment. “You were a soldier.”

  “Yeah, but not a good one,” I said and looked out of the window, putting aside the blood and screams. “Over to the right, three of them.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw her raise the crossbow to the window sill; rest it on the frame for stability and sight down the stock. Another twang and hum. One of the Sio Sam Ong soldiers pitched forward, face first into a crate, bounced off and fell, limp, to the floor. His two compatriots stopped in their tracks and looked around. I pulled back from the window and Qiao ducked down out of sight.

  Outside the battle continued. In the planning of the attack, we’d thought we might get off seven or eight bolts before someone noticed. In the end it was just six. Enough to tip the balance I hoped.

  The sixth bolt was aimed at a group of five Sio Sam Ong who’d come barrelling through the open door. They’d clearly been out on some sort of patrol or mission and were returning to the base.

  “There,” I pointed out of the window at the new group of arrivals. At this distance it was impossible to make out their features, but the way one of them stood and moved reminded me of someone.

  “Got them,” Qiao answered and took aim. I saw her shoulders relax as her hands cradled the crossbow. Her chest rose and fell in calm, regular breaths and, between an inhale and exhale, she loosed the bolt. I swung my gaze, trying to follow the small silver messenger of death on its passage across the warehouse. The crossbow was a powerful weapon, deadly and for the most part silent. A sniper’s weapon. Qiao ignored the bolt, retreated from the window and began winding the bow string back for another shot.

  “Missed,” I said, staring through the window. The group had ducked for cover behind some boxes and crates when the bolt had struck near them. I couldn’t be completely sure it had missed its intended target, but no one had collapsed, fallen back or forward, no one rushed to help, there was none of the shock or panic I expected to see. And then I saw one of them raise a hand and point in our direction. “I think they know where we are.”

  “How?”

  “They’re pointing at us,” I answered. Maybe the bolt had got stuck in a crate and had betrayed us, or maybe I’d stood in the window too long. I wasn’t going to admit to that.

  “Fuck,” Qiao said. “Guard the door and I’ll see if I can drop a few more before they get here.”

  “They’re still fighting out there,” I pointed out. “They might not come up here.”

  I didn’t believe my own words and Qiao certainly didn’t. The look she gave me had me feeling a great deal of sympathy for her partner. If she had one, we weren’t on those kind of terms yet.

  “Right,” I said, taking a step back and hefting the hammer in my hand, “I’ll guard the door.”

  “They’re coming this way,” she said.

  “Don’t look at me,” I answered, hefting the hammer, “this thing is more for close in work.”

  “I was just pointing it out,” she replied, turning away and sighting down the crossbow once more. “Be ready.”

  Another bolt flew out into the warehouse, followed by a squawk of pain. It was, as I’ve heard said, a target rich environment. Which meant there were more of them headed our way. I turned the hammer over in my hands again. A smooth wooden shaft leading to a heavy ball of metal, it would be no good for knocking nails in but when it came to knocking heads I’d bet it came up trumps. It had to, my options were limited.

  The thrum of the strings sounded again and I heard Qiao swear as she fought to reload the bow one more time. There was a clatter of feet on the metal stairs outside. More than one set of racing footsteps. I kicked the wedge further under the door and cast a look around, fixing the layout of the room in my head. A few desks, a monitor or two, a filing cupboard, the paperless office was still a pipe-dream, and some chairs. Not a lot to get in the way, but enough that the wrong step might see me trapped against something. Best to be ready.

  The footsteps stopped as something, someone, slammed into the door. It shook in its frame but didn’t open. Next the handle was ratcheted as few times as those outside tried to determine if it was locked or not. Voices sounded over the noise of the fighting below. The sing-song language of the Sio Sam Ong, flowing up and down the scale, a strange harmony to the words and a cadence alien to me. It went quiet outside.

  I flicked a
glance at Qiao, she had the crossbow loaded and trained on the doorway. Stepping a little to the side, just to make sure I wasn’t in the way, I gave her a nod. She’d have one shot with that weapon and no chance to reload. Next to her, on the floor, I saw her back up weapons, two thick bladed knives, each as long as my forearm, ending in a sharp point.

  Another thump against the door. Heavier and with more force this time. The wedge shifted, skidding on the smooth metal floor. I stretched my foot out and added my weight to holding it steady. If we could hold out for a little while, the fight on the floor would be over and, hopefully, someone from the Hai San side of things would be up to help us out. Hope. Always hope.

  A third thump against the door and I felt the wedge slide under my foot. I took the chance and removed my foot for a second, giving the wedge a re-seating kick to push it further under. At some point, the wedge would be far enough under that either it, the floor, or the door would give way. My money was on the door. It looked cheap.

  Thump, thump, thump. Again and again they hit the door and it shifted a little each time. First there was a small crack and a beam of light stabbed in from the outside, a shadowy flicker of something moving. Next there was a gap large enough to see through. Another thump and you could’ve put a hand through the gap. I wasn’t tempted, I liked having two hands. A thump, a crack, a hideous splintering staccato of the plastic door coming apart and they were in.

  A bolt took the first one in the throat, his mouth opening in a battle cry that turned into a gurgle, a splash of blood and the tumble of his body.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 50

  Stupid bloody tradition.

  In an age with firearms, large and small, where grenades could be made to kill, stun or blow someone into tiny little pieces, the restriction to use only weapons from an ancient past to settle grudges was pointless. It didn’t make anyone less dead. In fact, probably the opposite. Not less dead, but wounded more severely. A bullet could make a mess of flesh, but often it passed straight through leaving a neat little hole in the front, and sometimes a larger hole at the back, but surgeons were used to it, they could treat it.