Catching up with me at the stair door, Neen opens it and through I go. Takes me ten seconds to reach the first bend and check it is clear, eleven to return. As I step back into the corridor, Neen raises his rifle. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he says, lowering it again.
‘Next time hold your aim,’ I tell him.
Colonel Vijay is listening.
‘What if someone was coming through behind me?’
He’ll remember next time. For an ex-militia grunt with barely six months as an NCO he is turning into a pro. Actually, he’s turning into a veteran. Neen goes red when I say this.
‘Round here,’ says his sister, ‘it’s adapt or die.’
When Neen shoots Shil a frown, the colonel laughs. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant Tveskoeg can recognize a compliment when he hears one.’
Standing by a Silver Fist launch that looks more like a small space liner, Colonel Vijay says, ‘We’ll take this one.’ The Wild Wild Wind has elegant lines, its own escape pods and an array of antennae bristling along the top. It’s also easily big enough to take all of us and still have room to spare.
Obviously enough, the SIG disagrees.
The craft the SIG wants sits behind the one Colonel Vijay likes. It’s a B79 bomber and a third the size of the launch. A silver skull on its black nose-cone reinforces what we already know. The craft belongs to the Ninth.
‘This one,’ says the colonel, tapping the little liner.
The SIG is not having it.
As they argue, lights start flickering on the bomber’s hatch. At first they’re out of sync with those on the SIG. Slowly the sequences begin to match. When they match exactly, the hatch shifts slightly, stops, and then pops open.
‘Well, hello,’ says the gun.
A second later a ladder folds down.
‘B79, new model,’ says the SIG. ‘Now with sixty-four rockets, instead of forty-eight. Added stealth screening. Uprated quad-barrelled machine gun, fully automatic obviously. Semi AI navigation, fully AI combat brain . . .’
Haze is practically drooling.
He’s sold. The others are looking at Colonel Vijay.
‘Well?’ says the gun.
OK, he’s sold as well. Who wouldn’t be with that firepower? And we need to move anyway, because the sirens are dying, and that is not good. It means someone is finally taking charge.
‘Fighters,’ says Haze, glancing at a wall screen. ‘They’ve scrambled fighters.’
‘Gets worse,’ my gun says.
‘How?’
All the overhead strips go out. On cue, the escape deck’s emergency lights fire up. Only to go out just as quickly. A second later, Neen turns on his rifle’s torch. It produces enough light for us to see our way to the bomber.
Neen thinks that’s the problem solved. He hasn’t thought it through.
If the emergency power is dead, then how do we fire the explosive bolts holding the outer wall in place? Without these, the wall remains and the escape deck keeps us trapped. Until their CO works out a way to hook us out of here. Personally, I would flood the place with nerve gas.
Colonel Vijay agrees. ‘Has that bomber got an air system?’
‘Of course,’ says the gun. ‘It’s got an Alexo3 ferric-’
‘Everyone inside,’ he says.
The SIG’s still running its sales pitch for the purifier, though it stops when it realizes no one is listening. The steps flip up, and the door hisses down, and we are airtight inside fifteen seconds. I’m beginning to like this machine.
‘Permission to . . .’
Colonel Vijay nods. ‘Go ahead, Sven,’ he says.
Slapping my hand on a plate next to the pilot’s seat, I let the B79 scan my palm and then give it my name, rank and service number. I give it the real ones. If it is as clever as the gun says, then it can match the hand scan to my service records anyway.
A line of words scrolls across the glass plate.
Information already entered.
‘Genotype human equivalent. Status DH class 2, override . . .’
It’s reading a bloody identity chip fitted when I was on the general’s mother ship. Knew I had one in that arm Colonel Madeleine made me. Obviously got one under my skin somewhere as well.
There are three combat seats in the B79.
The colonel gets one, because he’s ranking officer. I get one, because I’ll be handling the cannon. Also, Vijay might be younger than Neen, but he is not stupid, he knows who’s winning this war for him.
Haze gets the last seat, because he’s a braid.
I run that thought back, decide I agree with it, and realize just how bloody odd that sounds. ‘Sit there,’ I tell Haze. ‘Before I change my mind.’
Emil is not happy. He outranks Haze in theory. As do Neen and Franc. But they’re not braids, and they don’t chat up machinery the way the rest of us joke with whores. That leaves five people without proper seats.
A low ledge runs round the back of the crewpit. Five people sitting together on the ledge should help cushion each other from the worst of the acceleration shock. All we have to do is what we did in that tug.
‘Tie yourselves into place.’
‘Sven,’ says Emil, sounding horrified. Turns out, he’s flown in a B79 before.
‘So you’ll know what to expect,’ I tell him. ‘And it’s sir. You’re a trooper in the Aux and you’ll remain one until I tell you otherwise.’
Chapter 51
Lights flash in front of us.Flash, flash faster, and then stutter to a halt. A second run ends the same way. And then a third. I know what the ship’s AI is glitching against, but we have enough time to let it reach its own conclusions.
‘Give me three sixty.’
Screens come to life around the crewpit.
At my nod, Haze revolves the entire pit, letting me check the new arrivals. The lenz in the hangars might be blind, but we have our own on this ship and they’re showing us a major and fifty Death’s Head troopers bundling through an emergency door, and stopping in the darkness, backlit from the stairs.
‘Idiot,’ says Neen.
Also lazy and arrogant. Any half-decent NCO would kill those lights before coming through. If we were out there, we’d have cut them down by now. But luckily for the major, we are in here and keeping the surprise.
At an order from a corporal, the lights go out.
Lasers play across the emptiness of the hangar. A couple of NCOs turn on the torches on their rifles. And then, the panels on the ceiling above us all flare into life again.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘Perhaps . . .’
‘We should think about leaving?’
He nods.
‘And maybe not,’ the SIG says.
Lights or not, the wall bolts are still powered down.
As Haze checks that the SIG is right, a dozen Silver Fist hurl themselves through the opening doors of an elevator, guns drawn. They stand down the moment they realize there is no enemy in sight. Another three elevators open a second later. We’re drawing ourselves a big crowd, and soon someone is going to begin scanning the pods and work out where we are.
‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Do you want me to take the attack outside?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘It’s all going to plan.’
That earns me a stare from Colonel Vijay.
So I grin, letting adrenalin flood my body. This is the bit I like. Only we’re not there yet. More troopers must be on their way, and I would hate to deny anyone their share of the fun.
It takes five minutes before a braid appears.
The first thing he does is send a dozen Silver Fist to check the fancy-looking launch next to us. Maybe he reckons we can’t all get into the B79 bomber. He’s wrong, but looking at Shil, Rachel, Franc, Neen and Emil tied under a cargo net behind me, I can see how they might feel he’s right.
When the Fist start coming towards us, I decide it’s time to move. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘The bolts are still dead.’
I know that. Why does he think the B79 won’t start? My gun is going to override the safety routine that prevents ignition. ‘Fuck the bolts, sir,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to put a rocket through the wall.’