‘You forgot oxygen.’
The SIG begins to tell me it doesn’t need-
So I point out that unless it’s happy to drift in space with rotting bodies for company, it will factor oxygen in too. It’s still sulking when I use most of our remaining fuel to take us over the top of the cruiser, round the outside of the mother ship and over the edge of Hekati itself.
Red lights start flashing. A buzzer joins in. And, just in case we need more distraction, the crewpit screens override with a critical fuel warning.
‘Sven . . .‘
‘Look,’ I tell the gun. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
The mirror hub is ahead. A small silver castle where the struts meet in the centre of Hekati’s ring. Brightness flares our screens as we get between a mirror and the sunlight it’s reflecting at the glass that gives this habitat its sky. What fuel is left, I burn entering the hub itself and slotting ourselves into a dock.
Obviously enough, it’s fuel we can’t afford.
On the far side of the airlock, Ajac takes one look at my vomit-splashed uniform and steps back. Could be the stink, could be the bloodstained blades on my combat arm, or it could be the foulness of the air belching out behind me.
Iona stands beside him. She’s carrying Colonel Madeleine’s handiwork.
Yanking my combat arm free, I see her glance away. She waits until my old arm is in place before glancing back. ‘Knew you’d return.’
More than I did. Needles pierce flesh. After a second, I flex my fingers. Good enough for what I need to do now.
It takes me a minute to cut the net, remove the straps and begin carrying my crew into the corridor outside the airlock. Shil is first, and she weighs less than I expect. Her right shoulder is dislocated. As I settle her on the deck, she whimpers.
‘Shil,’ I ask. ‘Can you hear me?’
She nods.
‘This is going to hurt.’
A thump of my hand against her shoulder puts the joint back into place.
Spittle dribbles from her mouth; she has bitten her lip and wet herself, although Ajac pretends not to notice. His manners are better than mine are. ‘Can’t see,’ she says.
‘It’s the g-force,’ I say. ‘Makes your vision blurred.’
‘Can’t see,’ she repeats.
‘Shil,’ I say. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Ajac gets Franc out. If anything, she is even worse. When I look round from unbuckling Colonel Vijay, I see Ajac still kneeling next to her. Franc’s eyes are open and she’s staring at nothing. She’s staring at it intently.
Climbing unsteadily from his seat, Colonel Vijay says, ‘You want me to look at her?’
‘You can help, sir?’
‘Probably . . .’ He hesitates, reassesses. ‘Well, I can try. And there has to be a medical bay round here somewhere.’
We need a way out of here. We need a way to kill the cruiser. We need a way to get home. Three big needs, for a group relying on a B79 bomber down to five per cent of its power. There are ten of us now. And the bomber is still only built to take three. Answer is obvious, really . . . We need a bigger ship. More weapons. A better plan.
‘Haze,’ I say. ‘Don’t care how you do it. But check the power status of every ship docked in the hub.’
A roll of his eyes and he’s gone.
‘Doesn’t it freak you out?’ says Neen, then remembers to add sir. ‘I mean, when he does that?’
‘Freak you out when I do it?’
Neen wants to say that is different, but it isn’t. So I clap him on the shoulder. ‘Be glad I’ve got Haze to do it for me.’
There are seven vessels, including our B79 bomber. Three of the oldest are near dead, reduced to whimpering their names and begging for fuel. If Haze is right, one has been doing just that for over five hundred years.
Of the other four, the B79 is down to local boosters and an ion drive that might work if we had enough dry thrust to get it up to speed. That leaves three vessels. One is ours. Well, the U/Free hopper we arrived in. Another is so old the only reason it’s not dying is it’s dead already.
The final ship is chosen by default.
A Z-class tug ancient enough to have fins and dumb enough to be proud of a ten-foot nude painted on its nose. It’s old, it’s rusting inside, it’s filthy. I don’t care, really don’t care. Not after I crawl around inside a bit, and then go tell Colonel Vijay about its cargo.
Kyble was right. Luck is a whore.
But Luck likes fighters, and I think of her as a Vaclass="underline" magnificent tits and a dangerous smile. Always ready to step up beside you when it comes to making a stand.
Chapter 54
‘It’s got enough seats, you say?’
Yes, I thought that would appeal to Colonel Vijay. Looking around, the colonel spots the telltale signs of gravity flooring and that appeals to him even more. There is only so much floating vomit a well-brought-up young officer can stand.
‘What?’ he demands.
‘Glad you like it, sir.’
‘And this is what you wanted to show me?’
‘No, sir. That’s down here.’ He stares into a filthy hold revealed by the trap door I open.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course it is.’
A ladder leads to a crawl space below. Carrying a light from one of the rifles at my suggestion, the colonel flicks its beam across boxes, and then more boxes, piled into an area maybe ten paces by ten paces, but only half our height.
‘What’s in them?’ he demands. And then answers his own question by running his light across a long box stencilled with a skull in flames.
Danger.
Keep safe.
Do not expose to heat.
There are other warnings, but he has the message.
He’s crawling round the hold of a Z-class cargo tug packed with out-of-date and probably unstable explosives, asteroid miners, for the use of . . .
Each case is sealed in clear wrapping against damp and secured with double bands of cheap steel. Cheap enough to cut with my knife. Slicing the side from a case reveals blocks of something that looks like clay and smells like stale cake. ‘That what I assume it is?’ the colonel asks.
I nod.
‘Sven,’ he says, ‘I think it’s time you told me your plan.’
For something I make up as I go along, it’s quite convincing. That is the thing about senior officers. They’ll believe anything, provided you sound like you really, really mean it.
‘You know,’ says Colonel Vijay, ‘it might work.’
So, we have explosives, and a tug with enough power to get us to the asteroid belt. But we also have a Silver Fist mother ship, an epsilon-class cruiser hunting us down, and a force field locking us into the area around Hekati. What we don’t have are detonators.
‘Bound to be here somewhere,’ the colonel says.
Dragging cases aside, he finds a smaller box pushed against a bulkhead. The fuses are simple enough. Much like the ones the Legion use when cutting roads through mountains: one pulse to prime and another to fire.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Here’s what we do.’
My troopers are patched as best we can manage.
Mostly this involves painkillers, amphetamines and re-hydrating salts from the medical bay Colonel Vijay tracked down. Shil still stumbles occasionally and Rachel rubs at her hip. But neither one complains and that is good enough.
Emil pre-primes the detonators I give him. Colonel Vijay, Shil, Ajac, Haze, and Rachel begin carrying boxes of plastique from the tug to the B79 bomber. Franc’s off somewhere, licking her wounds in private. I only know that’s what she is doing because it’s what I would do myself. And Iona? Hanging round Neen as if they are joined by invisible wire.
But I have more pressing problems.
So far, the Silver Fist cruiser has taken itself out to the edge of the force field, to run a scan of the whole area. After this proves fruitless, it begins a more careful sweep; one that will take it over Hekati’s mirror hub in about five minutes. That is how long we have to make this plan work.