“You like this man?”
“Oh yeah.” Avatar nodded his head, heavy though it was. “He was meant to marry my half sister . . . They’d have been perfect.” Realizing what he’d just said, the boy laughed but didn’t quite recognize the croak that forced its painful way between his teeth.
“So what would this . . . son of Lilith do?”
“With the enemy? Take no prisoners.” Avatar could see it in his head, the way Raf would slide up to the door ahead, all set to kill the lot of them, never putting a foot wrong. Except, of course, Raf was some place unhelpful, trapped in El Iskandryia. A city without . . .
“Turn off the ship’s lights,” Avatar demanded.
“There’s a problem with that suggestion,” said the Colonel. “I can only override components of the electrical infrastructure in an emergency . . .”
“This is an emergency,” Avatar said, putting a space between each word. “Anyway, I thought you ran this ship?”
“Routine tasks only. Engine maintenance and supply systems. Onboard security and oceangoing navigation. The behavioural locks are solid and the parameters tight.” The Colonel’s voice was dry, almost matter-of-fact. “Believe me,” he said, “I looked . . .”
“The lights,” Avatar said as firmly as his shaking teeth would allow.
“To cut those,” said Colonel Abad, “I’d have to kill the ship’s entire electrical system.”
“Then do it.”
“The entire system . . .”
“Sure,” Avatar nodded. “I understand.”
The first thing Avatar saw was a tiny dance of light in the far distance, descending from the ceiling in a ragged two-step; slide and stop, slide and stop. A second firefly joined the first, followed by a third, their dance taking them towards the deck.
Not fireflies, Avatar realized, his enemy, far off across the hangar, working their way down open steps in practiced formation. The fireflies nothing but a faint splash of warmth between the bottom of a half-face night mask and the buttoned collar of a standard-issue jumpsuit.
“How many in total?” he demanded.
All he got was silence.
“How many?” Avatar hissed.
Again silence, cold as the darkness. The Colonel was gone, along with the distant strip of lights. The cold pipes strung just above the deck no longer rattled. And the riveted plate below Avatar’s feet was still, missing its heartbeat from the engine room beneath. Only the fireflies kept coming from far away across the deck.
Sliding himself through the open doorway, Avatar stepped rapidly sideways several times until he ended up behind a steel pillar. When he leant against it, the pillar felt no colder than his arm.
Cold was good if you got shot, according to the Colonel. It reduced internal bleeding. Of course, it also slowed your concentration, which made it easier to get hit in the first place.
Three in here, how many more outside?
Avatar tried to call up the picture Colonel Abad had shown him of that tiny helicopter just after it landed, doors popping open and dark-suited toys spilling out onto the deck. Six soldiers in all, maybe seven. Or was that eight . . . ?
Avatar shook his head, to free up his frozen thoughts, and knew that if he didn’t act soon, the fireflies would be here and there’d be no time left to unravel that one either.
Until he knew where the rest of the enemy were positioned, silence was more or less the only real weapon he had. Silence and surprise. Silence and desperation. Or how about silence and being too cold to care?
No one was going to argue with that one.
Back hard to the pillar, Avatar flipped open the revolver he’d stolen from the Khedive. Seven fat brass circles evenly spaced in a ring, one of them already used. As he pushed the cylinder back into place, Avatar realized this was it. Whatever that actually meant.
The hammer pulled back with a muffled click, an internal lever spinning the cylinder so that a fresh brass case presented itself under the hammer’s fall. Extending his shivering arm and gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Avatar sighted along the barrel at a firefly.
They were close now. Closer than he’d realized.
Time slowed and in the gap between the flash of the revolver’s muzzle and its sharp bark, the vacuum of a passing slug dragged a man’s voice from his ruptured throat. The man Avatar killed was at the back, the last of the three. It was luck, not skill. He’d been trying for a body shot.
Instinct made the two remaining fireflies turn in horror to stare behind them. By the time the first man glanced back, Avatar was pulling his trigger again. This time Avatar’s slug took the man under his chin, deflected slightly on the inside of his jaw and ripped apart his tongue, before liquidizing the man’s cerebellum. What was left of his occipital lobe splashed against the back of his helmet. For all that, the soldier still landed on his knees, then crashed forward to head-butt the steel deck.
The reek of shit mixed with the stink of cordite.
Roll, Avatar told himself, suddenly aware of the aftertaste of vomit in his mouth. That was what he should do. Avatar rolled, barely feeling the rivets that ripped into his shoulder. Then he rolled some more, stopping only when he clanged hard against a snaking pipe, the noise so loud it rang through the open area like a bell.
Instantly, a muzzle flared to his left, three quick flashes that sparked off the deck close to Avatar’s leg, way too close. Rolling up and over the pipe, Avatar scrambled along its edge until he had thirty seconds of blind panic between himself and where the bullets had landed.
Adrenaline was flooding his body and for the first time in hours Avatar felt properly awake. Maybe that was what it took, what he should have done from the start; get someone to shoot at him . . . Now if he could just get them to give him their combat rations as well.
The gun the other man carried was squat, with a long magazine that curved away from him. Its barrel was the length of Avatar’s thumb. Colonel Abad would have known the make, rate of fire and market price. Avatar just knew it looked dangerous.
Three shots, then another three. Each blip of the rifle’s trigger registered in three fire fountains as the soldier swung his gun at random and bullets ricocheted in tight triplets from the floor. The man’s big problem was that, despite the bug eyes of his official-issue combat mask, he fired blind. Avatar was just too bloody cold to show up on screen.
“So maybe I should be grateful,” thought Avatar sourly. Then he decided not to waste the energy and rolled back over the pipe. All he had to do was keep going towards the stairs. Twenty paces later, Avatar stopped to look back and again changed his mind. The soldier was still there, facing away from Avatar and staring intently at nothing much.
Avatar’s options were keep crawling or else do the deed. Only he couldn’t do that when the man’s back was to him, though it was hard to know why turning round to die might be an improvement.
“Hey . . . behind you.”
Bursts popping through the darkness above Avatar’s head. Different fireflies. When the man’s clip finally hit empty, Avatar clambered to his knees and took a shot of his own.
CHAPTER 52
28th October
“I’m finishing a story . . .” Hani looked up, her head balanced on one hand and her elbow resting on her knee. “But I can always end it now . . . ?”
She had her back to a wall and was sitting in late-afternoon sunlight, on a small balcony recessed into the sloped glass roof of the bibliotheka.
“No need.” The chief librarian looked momentarily flustered, as if having caught herself being unforgivably rude. Which wasn’t something that usually worried Madame Syria. “I just didn’t see you come in.”
“Are you sure you don’t need the machine?” insisted Hani, holding up her borrowed laptop, its solar panels still outfolded.