"Are you coming up here or not?" Stanton shouted.
Thorn finally hauled himself from the water and scrambled up the steps.
The catamaran's cabin was of a standard utile design: cylindrical, with a rear hold and a forward cockpit containing three control chairs. Thorn entered the hold and headed quickly for the cockpit, little comforted to be under cover when he noticed the many bullet holes punched through the walls.
While with his right hand guiding the vessel out to sea using a joystick that had probably, in a previous life, belonged to some kind of nil-AG aircraft, Stanton glanced at Thorn and nodded to the chair next to him. As Thorn strapped himself in, the mercenary swung across the targeting visor he had himself just used to take out the ramp, then kicked across the floor-mounted firing control he had been operating with his left hand. Thorn saw that the hinged beam the control column extended from, as well as the jointed arm supporting the visor, allowed them to be operated from any seat.
"Bit primitive," Stanton explained. "It was connected into this boat's harpoon, but I've replaced that with a weapons carousel. You've got twelve heat-seekers, three chaff, and three antimunition packages back there. Use them wisely."
Thorn pulled the column into position and swung the visor across his face, feeling its skin-stick surfaces adhering to him. Now he had a view straight back to the barge but, thumbing the swing control on the joystick he now gripped, that view swung in increments of ninety degrees, as the launcher on the rear of the catamaran swung round. Tilting his head back, he saw nothing but sky for a moment, before thumbing the launcher round again so the barge was back in the screen.
"We've got AGCs launching," he told Stanton.
"Most'll be running," the mercenary told him bluntly.
"Three are running in this direction."
"That's why I said 'most'," Stanton replied.
Finding the cursor control under his little finger, Thorn called up the mask's menu and scrolled down through it. The selection buttons Stanton had added — heat, chaff and anti-m — were red and of an entirely different font from the rest of the menu. He was about to choose one of these when a familiar voice spoke. "That you in there, trooper Thorn?" He quickly made a different menu choice and called up, in the corner of the screen, a mini-display that showed him Ternan's face. Zeroing the targeting box on one of the approaching AGCs, he then selected heat, fired off a missile, and had the pleasure of seeing her frantically slapping at controls while the three vehicles broke away. However, anti-munitions took out the missile before it reached its target.
"How long, Jarv?" asked Stanton, speaking into his wristcom.
"Seven minutes," replied a woman's voice.
"Why so slow?" he asked.
"Thousand-kilometre restricted zone. Came on just as you got to the barge — probably something to do with your friend there," she replied.
"Any Polity activity?"
"You bet. When they shot down that military transport, we got a swarm of craft taking off from Gordonstone. As soon as the 'ware generator went offline, two insystem attack boats launched from Cereb. They're about three minutes behind me."
"Great," murmured Stanton.
Thorn absorbed this, but kept his attention mostly focused on the pursuing AGCs. There were seven of them now, and there was no way this catamaran, even with its tractor drive flat out, could outrun them. Observing seven white dots then speeding from the AGCs towards him — quickly highlighted in flashing red boxes on the screen — he selected and fired chaff, shortly followed by antimunitions. Three missiles exploded in the cloud of glittering dust that the remaining four successfully punched through. The antimunitions package flew apart into its hundred component seeker explosives, two of which were detonated by two of the missiles, but the remaining two hammered on in.
"We're not gonna survive seven minutes," Thorn observed, firing one of the last two antimunitions packages.
The explosions were close, shock waves veering the boat in its course and shrapnel clattering against the cabin. Thorn pulled the visor aside in time to see a missile tumbling end over end into the sea beside them, and detonating just under the waves.
"Seven AGCs, and it looks like all of them have launchers." Thorn slapped the targeting visor back into place.
"Jarv," explained Stanton, "we're going to bail out. Thorn, empty that carousel. We're going."
Thorn took the cursor to each missile selection, rattling the firing button on each, then removed the visor and reached for his seat straps. Stanton was already through the door into the hold by the time he had his straps undone. Soon the two of them were moving back to the entry hatch. Thorn glanced to the rear of the hold, where the carousel was clicking round, and heard the missiles launching one after the other. Following Stanton down, he squinted through spray driven up by the outriders chopping through the wave tops. The two men jumped at the same time. Travelling at the same speed as the catamaran, Thorn hit the sea and bounced — the water feeling about as welcoming as concrete. Next, he was into it headfirst, whiteness all around him and copper salts bitter in his mouth. At his first breath on coming to the surface, he saw the catamaran already fifty metres away — missiles still launching from the rear of its cabin. The missile that then hit it, he did not see.
The central cabin just disappeared, like a balloon being burst by an orange explosion. Caught in the blast, one outrider went straight up into the air, then dropped like a dolphin having reached the summit of its leap, and disappeared. The remaining outrider, its tractor drive still functioning, motored on, towing a tangle of smoking wreckage.
"Perfect timing," said John Stanton from behind him.
Thorn sculled round to the mercenary and grinned at him, before looking beyond to where the pursuing AGCs were now coming into sight. Soon the seven vehicles were hovering over the still motoring wreckage of the catamaran. From one of them another missile stabbed down and destroyed even this. Then the attackers nosed out across the area.
"Shit," said Thorn. "You reckon they know we got out?"
"Perhaps," said Stanton.
Thorn shot him a look of annoyance, then began hyperventilating, ready to dive under the waves. Stanton seemed amused by this. Thorn was just about to submerge when a double sonic boom shook the sky, and there came a roar as of a giant steel beast. A blast of hot wind hazed the area with sea spray and a shadow blotted out the sky. The AGCs turned and fled, like crows driven away from a road kill, and Thorn gazed up at the trispherical ship as it descended, cables dropping from an underside hatch.
Stepping from the shuttle, Cormac looked around the bay and wondered at why it was so empty. Such a huge area had plenty of space for other shuttles, of which, judging by the number of ships outside, there needed to be many, yet there was none here but their own. He had begun to get an intimation of something not quite right when out of one of the row of drop-shafts to the rear of the bay emerged the welcoming party.
The two men were suited in grey businesswear and wore black intensifier eye-bands and executive polished-chrome augs. They preceded soldiers uniformed in light combat armour, with helmets which extended down one side of their heads — containing military coms and augs no doubt — and carrying pulse-rifles. But all these seemed inconsequential compared with what came up out of the shaft behind them, passed to either side of the group, and swung round in front. Here were two large polished cylinders floating vertically, with weapons mounted at each end. They were heavy-armour AI drones — very new and very dangerous. Even the Occam Razor did not have anything like this aboard. Cormac glanced back and noticed that the bay's armoured doors were drawing closed. He initiated Shuriken as the three Golem accompanying him moved out to either side of him.