The tekmerc below the leader lost his grip, dropping down a metre. He was halted momentarily by three waldos that had punctured the armour, but the force of the jolt ripped their drills free. He fell, rebounding off the fuselage framework, arms and legs flailing madly. Then he hit a clear section of the solar cell envelope head on, tearing straight through.
External camera, aft fuselage keel. The tekmerc was a black pinwheeling doll against the calm blue ocean. Shrinking rapidly. He must have tried to activate his jetpack. Whatever damage the maintenance drones had inflicted, it was drastic. The jetpack erupted into a shower of minute slivers, dismembering the rest of the muscle armour suit.
Tekrnerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc seven: Continuous unintelligible shout.
Frank: “Leol-the drones, the fucking drones. They’ve gone mad.”
Leol Reiger: “What’s happening?”
Frank: Screams. Shouting, “Help us for Christ’s sake. It’s the drones. They’re killing us. Blind. They’ve blinded me. Can’t hold. Oh God, my hands-” Screams.
Tekmerc five: “Holy shit, listen to them, it’s likely they’re being eaten alive.”
Leol Reiger: “Shut up. Everybody, drones are hazards, shoot on sight. That goes for any other piece of mobile hardware. Ian, Keith, Denny, get up to that MHD chamber. Someone doesn’t want us there. Help Frank if you can.”
Tekmerc eight: “Jesus, Leol.”
Leol Reiger: “Just flicking do it. Right? Snuff anything and everybody in your way, but do it. Now move.”
CHAPTER 20
Charlotte Fielder really was astonishingly pretty. She was the first thing Greg saw when he came into the MHD chamber after Suzi, all dark-gold skin and tight white cotton. Nothing else registered at the same level, it was as though the background had suddenly become monochrome.
She and Fabian Whitehurst were clinging to each other. Greg reckoned a muscle armour suit would be hard pushed to prise them apart. They both stared at Suzi in trepidation.
“Don’t piss yourselves,” Suzi told them, lowering her Browning. “I’m one of the good guys. Right, Julia?”
“Yes,” Julia said, her voice booming out of speaker stacks. “Greg and Suzi won’t hurt you, Charlotte, nor you, Fabian, they work for me.”
Greg looked down at Nia Korovilla’s body. She looked so tranquil in her prim maid’s uniform. Hard to imagine her as any kind of hazard. Maybe Suzi had been right, after all. It irked him to think that she knew him better than he knew himself. But she certainly hadn’t hesitated to shoot.
Nia Korovilla’s presence kicked off a whole cascade of trepidation in his mind. Julia had squirted her data profile into his cybofax; according to that she had served on the Colonel Maitland for eight years. It meant she was a sleeper, a watcher keeping tabs on Jason Whitehurst. Which made no sense to Greg; if she’d been feeding someone with snatched bytes of Jason Whitehurst’s trading deals for eight solid years, then the old boy would have known. So if she hadn’t been doing that, what was she on board for?
“Leol Reiger has dispatched three more tekmercs up here,” Julia said. Her face was replicated in six flatscreens, dominating one wall of the den. “I won’t be able to delay them, not now they have been warned about the drones being under my command.”
Greg glanced hurriedly round the MHD chamber. It reminded him of home, the kind of grotesque merger of gear and pets that the kids slapped together as various interests went through nova bursts of intense devotion, only to be abandoned a week or month later. It was an archaeological record of a boy’s development. So much for his intuition telling him there was something out of phase about Fabian Whitehurst.
He tried to look at the MHD chamber from a tactical point of view. There was only the one door, and the walls behind the panels were solid alolithum. The tekmercs’ rip guns could break through that easily enough. Suzi was prowling along the line of gear consoles below the flatscreens.
“Tell you, we can’t stay in here,” Greg said. “You got us a hidey-hole ready, Julia?”
“Not exactly, but I think I can keep you and the tekmercs apart until my crash team arrives. There’s a lot of volume in this airship.”
Greg glanced at Suzi, who gave him a shrug.
“Sure thing,” she said. “This is all so fluid.”
“Come on, Charlotte,” Greg said. “We’ll get you out of here.”
Charlotte and Fabian actually managed to hold each other even tighter.
“No,” Charlotte said. She was sweating profusely.
Greg noticed the discoloration on her hand. The skin around two fingers was swelling, puffy with blood.
“Charlotte, please, the tekmercs that are coming for you make Nia here look tame.”
She stroked Fabian’s hair with her good hand. The boy’s eye had swollen shut, blood was drying on his lips and chin. “What’s happening?” she asked. “Please, I don’t understand any of this.”
“Julia,” Greg called.
Julia’s face vanished from the largest flatscreen, replaced by a view of the Colonel Maitland’s landing pad with the gutted wreck of the Pegasus still smoking. Charlotte gasped.
“That’s the plane we came in,” Greg said. “There were four people on board when it was hit by the tekmercs. That’s your alternative. Now will you please come with us.”
“I’m not leaving Fabian. Not if tekmercs are on their way here.”
Fabian looked up at her with complete adoration. Greg realized they weren’t going to be separated. And he had promised Jason Whitehurst exactly that. Bloody wonderful.
“We’re not asking you to leave him, Charlotte,” Julia said gently. “One moment.”
There was a burst of static.
Jason Whitehurst’s voice came out of the music deck speakers. “Fabian?”
“Yes, Father?”
Greg’s cybofax bleeped. He looked down at it.
“You stay with Charlotte and Mr Mandel,” Jason Whitehurst said. “It’ll be a lot safer for you. These damn tekmercs are all over the old Colonel. Bloody trigger happy brutes, they are. I’ll catch up with you later, I must see the crew is all right first, noblesse oblige, and all that. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Father.”
Greg showed the cybofax to Suzi. Her face remained impassive as she read the screen’s message.
“Splendid chap; bit of an adventure for you. Charlotte, my dear girl, what can one say? I’m most dreadfully sorry about all this trouble. Julia will explain later. You take care of Fabian in the mean time for me, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jolly good.”
Greg pulled a first aid box off the wall, and found a local anaesthetic infuser. Charlotte didn’t resist when he took her hand. He pressed the infuser tube to her wrist.
She gave a tremulous little sigh as the anaesthetic took effect.
“Careful you don’t knock the hand against anything,” he warned her.
She nodded meekly.
Suzi was wiping Fabian’s chin with a disinfectant tissue.
“OK,” Greg said. “Let’s move. Julia, which way?”
“Turn right outside, down to the hull, then head up towards the prow. I’ve loaded your route.”
He glanced at the cybofax, memorizing the Colonel Maitland’s blueprint with its superimposed red line.
It was cool outside the MHD chamber. The engineering bay heat exchangers constantly circulated the air in the gap between the hull and the gasbags, preventing the helium from becoming superheated and losing lift capacity. Greg thought it smelt vaguely of chlorine. It left an unpleasant tang at the back of his throat.
He led them along the walkway, the opposite direction to the way he and Suzi had come. Charlotte and Fabian followed him, holding hands; Suzi brought up the rear. The worst of his neurohormone hangover was lifting, but he wouldn’t be able to use the gland again today, not after two psi effusions like that.