“Greg, a little faster, please,” Julia said out of his cybofax. There was an edge in her voice.
“Right.” He began to step out.
A rip gun was fired behind them, the sound of its shot rumbling round the engineering bay. It was the signal for a whole barrage to begin.
“What’s that?” Charlotte asked, raising her voice above the clamour.
“Rip guns.”
“Crikey,” said Fabian, he squinted at Greg with his one good eye. “You mean a neutral-beam weapon?”
“No messing.”
They reached the hull. A silent rank of drones was drawn up beside the transverse frame ladder. Greg didn’t have time to question their presence. He turned on to the walkway that led towards the prow, sandwiched between the gasbag and the solar cell envelope. It curved away ahead of him, fading to grey.
The rip guns had stopped firing.
“Get going,” Julia said. The drones began to move out on to the engineering bay girders.
Fabian watched them go curiously. “Do you have hotrods working for Event Horizon?” he asked.
“One or two,” Julia answered.
“Fabian, not now,” Charlotte said.
“Sorry.”
The walkway made Greg think of the eidolonic loop he’d left Chad in. The engineering bay had disappeared from sight behind, and more walkway kept unfolding in front, seemingly endless. They were moving at a jog now. Charlotte’s panting was loud in his ears. His own breathing wasn’t too good either.
There were five rip-gun shots fired in rapid succession. The sound barely audible.
“Last of the drones gone,” Julia said. The cybofax wafer was in his top pocket again, banging on his chest. “The three tekmercs are covering all the options. One has gone down the transverse frame ladder, another is climbing up.”
“And the third’s coming after us,” Suzi finished.
“Right,” said Julia.
“Run faster?” Greg asked.
“He’ll still be able to catch you. You’re only a hundred and eighty metres ahead of him.”
“The next transverse ladder?”
“No, you’d be sitting ducks on that.”
“Stand and fight. The Tokarev might penetrate the armour.”
“No,” Julia said. “I’ve got your escape route mapped out. Keep going, twenty metres. Stop by the next doughnut gasbag.”
The only way Greg found it was because of the deep concave fold in the plastic where the two bags pressed together. He came to a halt, breathing hard. Charlotte stopped behind him, her face drained.
“Are you all right?” she asked Fabian.
The boy flipped some of his ragged hair off his face. “Yes.” They still hadn’t let go of each other’s hands.
“What now?” Greg asked. He kept his nerves alert for the sound of the tekmerc, wondering if he should order another gland secretion after all.
“Start hyperventilating,” Julia said.
“What’s this bollocks, you hustle us along here for exercise classes?” Suzi snapped. “Have you glitched?” She was the only one who wasn’t breathing heavily.
“No, listen,” Julia said. “I want Greg to slice open the doughnut gasbag with his Tokarev. Then you hold your breath, and slide down the inside. You will stop right above the keel walkway. Greg cuts the plastic again, and you drop out.,
Suzi gave Greg an imploring look. “If both of us fire at once, we can snuff that tekmerc.”
Greg wasn’t so sure. Suzi’s idea was all down to chance. Julia’s had logic behind it. Machine logic, admittedly. And of course, she didn’t have to do it herself.
“The tekmerc can just follow us down the doughnut,” he said.
“No,” Julia said. “It’ll tear like paper under the weight of the armour. He’d fall straight out of the airship.”
“All right, we’ll try it.”
“Shit,” Suzi said. “Fluid.”
Greg looked at Charlotte and Fabian. “Do you two understand?”
They both nodded, both looked scared.
“Whatever you do, don’t breathe in while you’re inside the doughnut,” Julia said. “Helium isn’t toxic, but there’s no oxygen. You’ll asphyxiate.”
Greg got his breathing back under control, and drew the Tokarev. “Everybody ready?”
“Do it,” Suzi said.
He aimed at a point level with his own head. “Breathe in now, and follow me straight away.” He hoped to hell the two kids would do as they were told, Suzi would have trouble bullying both of them. Or maybe not.
The vivid red beam pierced the plastic, and Greg swung it down to the walkway, opening up a two-metre slit. With the Tokarev held in his right hand, he sat on the walkway grid, pushing his feet into the open gash. The blackness inside the doughnut was impenetrable, it almost seemed to slop out on to the walkway. He ducked his head under the hand rail, and pushed off.
The Messerschmitt exploded without warning. Julia had to replay the external camera memories to understand the sequence of events.
Two Typhoon air-superiority fighters arrowed in from the north, silver-grey needles with wings retracted, using the airship as a radar shield. Not that the Messerschmitt would have had many options even if it had detected them, not when they travelled at Mach eleven. One went over the Colonel Maitland, the second went under. Three Kinetic Energy Kill missiles slammed into the Messerschmitt at Mach seventeen. Then the fighters were gone.
A fireball enveloped the Messerschmitt, billowing out. It was slapped by the supersonic backwash from the two fighters; invisible hands compressing it back into a lenticular shape. Chunks of flaming wreckage spewed out from the ragged edges, spinning through the air, arching down towards the distant ocean.
The Colonel Maitland was shaken violently by the Typhoons’ passage. Julia monitored the buffeting they inflicted on the already damaged fuselage framework. Stress sensors reported a dangerous amount of weakening in the midsection.
She sounded the evacuation alarm before the bridge crew had a chance to evaluate the situation; klaxons blaring out all through the airship. The hatches on the survival pods popped open.
The Messerschmitt’s halo of ionized flame contracted, wrapping itself around the broken fuselage. The plane rolled lazily, then began the long fall towards the water.
External camera, starboard fuselage. Two Event Horizon transports were decelerating fast; big XCV-77 Titan stealth hypersonics with a cranked delta planform. They were virtually standing on their tails to aerobrake, underbellies glowing cerise; airflow vortices created spiral vapour trails that streamed off each wingtip, as if they were stretching out giant white springs behind them.
With the jamming blanket lifted, Julia opened a communication link to the lead Titan. Her living self was plugged into the transport plane’s sensors, anxious for information. She compiled a summary of events since the Messerschmitt’s attack, and squirted it over.
Get Greg and company back into the gondola, her living self said, I’ll brief the crash team to lift them.
OK.
Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc eight, female: “Oh, Jesus wept. The deal’s been burnt. Event Horizon planes, big buggers.”
Leol Reiger: “Ian, Keith, Danny, get back to the gondola. Move!”
Tekmerc five: “Coming, Leol.”
Julia: “Last chance, Leol Reiger. Put down your weapons, deactivate your armour. It’s all over.”
Leol Reiger: “Screw you. Everybody, Charlotte Fielder is to be snuffed. If you see her, kill her. How do you like that, rich bitch? You tell your people to stand off, I’ll let her live.”
Julia: “No deal.”
External cameras, overview. Both Titans were slowly circling the Colonel Maitland like prowling wolves, disgorging the security crash team from their open loading ramps. The hovering armour-suited figures formed an encircling necklace around the airship, electronic senses sweeping it for signs of tekmerc activity. When their deployment manoeuvre was complete, they began to close on the gondola.