‘That’ll give us four or five hundred metres of ship to crawl through,’ Nicolosi said, leaving us in no doubt what he thought about that. ‘Four or five hundred metres for which we only have a very crude map.’
‘We’ll have directional guidance from our suits,’ Martinez said.
‘It’s still a concern to me. But if you’ve settled upon this decision, I shall abide by it.’
I turned to Sollis. ‘What you said just then — about not spending a minute longer aboard Nightingale than we have to?’
‘I wasn’t kidding.’
‘I know. But there was something about the way you said it. Do you know something about that ship that we don’t? You sounded spooked, and I don’t understand why. It’s just a disused hospital, after all.’
Sollis studied me for a moment before answering. ‘Tell her, Nicolosi.’
Nicolosi looked placidly at the other woman. ‘Tell her what?’
‘What she obviously doesn’t know. What none of us are in any great hurry to talk about.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘ “Oh please” what?’ I asked.
‘It’s just a fairy story, a stupid myth,’ Nicolosi said.
‘A stupid story that nonetheless always claimed that Nightingale didn’t get blown up after all,’ Sollis said.
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘What story?’
It was Martinez who chose to answer. ‘That something unfortunate happened aboard her. That the last batch of sick and injured went in, but for some reason were never seen to leave. That all attempts to contact the technical staff failed. That an exploratory team was put aboard the ship, and that they too were never heard from again.’
I laughed. ‘Fuck. And now we’re planning to go aboard?’
‘Now you see why I’m somewhat anxious to get this over with,’ Sollis said.
‘It’s just a myth,’ Martinez chided. ‘Nothing more. It is a tale to frighten children, not to dissuade us from capturing Jax. In fact, it would not surprise me in the least if Jax or his allies were in some way responsible for this lie. If it were to cause us to turn back now, it would have served them admirably, would it not?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, without much conviction. ‘But I’d still have been happier if you’d told me before. It wouldn’t have made any difference to my accepting this job, but it would have been nice to know you trusted me.’
‘I do trust you, Dexia. I simply assumed that you had no interest in childish stories.’
‘How do you know Jax is aboard?’ I asked.
‘We’ve been over this. I have my sources, sources that I must protect, and it would be—’
‘He was a patient, wasn’t he?’
Martinez snapped his glasses from his nose, as if my point had taken an unexpected tangent from whatever we’d been talking about. ‘I know only that Jax is aboard Nightingale. The circumstances of how he arrived there are of no concern to me.’
‘And it doesn’t bother you that maybe he’s just dead, like whoever else was aboard at the end?’ Sollis asked.
‘If he is dead, you will still receive twenty-five thousand Australs.’
‘Plus the extra ten we already agreed on.’
‘That too,’ Martinez said, as if it should have been taken for granted.
‘I still don’t like this,’ Sollis muttered.
‘I don’t like it either,’ Nicolosi replied, ‘but we came here to do a job, and the material facts haven’t changed. There is a ship, and the man we want is aboard it. What Martinez says is true: we should not be intimidated by stories, especially when our goal is so near.’
‘We go in there, we get Jax, we get the hell out,’ Sollis said. ‘No dawdling, no sightseeing, no souvenir-hunting.’
‘I have absolutely no problem with that,’ I said.
‘Take what you want,’ Martinez called over Norbert’s shoulder as we entered the armoury compartment at the rear of the shuttle’s pressurised section. ‘But remember: you’ll be wearing pressure suits, and you’ll be moving through confined spaces. You’ll also be aboard a ship.’
Sollis pushed bodily ahead of me, pouncing on something that I’d only begun to notice. She unracked the sleek, cobalt-blue excimer rifle and hefted it for balance. ‘Hey, a Breitenbach.’
‘Christmas come early?’ I asked.
Sollis pulled a pose, sighting along the rifle, deploying its targeting aids, flipping the power-up toggle. The weapon whined obligingly. Blue lights studded its stock, indicating it was ready for use.
‘Because I’m worth it,’ Sollis said.
‘I’d really like you to point that thing somewhere else,’ I said.
‘Better still, don’t point it anywhere,’ Nicolosi rumbled. He’d seen one of the choicer items, too. He unclipped a long, mattblack weapon with a ruby-red dragon stencilled along the barrel. It had a gaping maw like a swallowing python. ‘Laser-confined plasma bazooka,’ he said admiringly. ‘Naughty, but nice.’
‘Finesse isn’t your cup of tea, then.’
‘Never got to use one of these in the war, Dexia.’
‘That’s because they were banned. One of the few sensible things both sides managed to agree on.’
‘Now’s my chance.’
‘I think the idea is to extract Jax, not to blow ten-metre-wide holes in Nightingale.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be very, very careful.’ He slung the bazooka over his shoulder, then continued down the aisle.
I picked up a pistol, hefted it, replaced it on the rack. Found something more to my liking — a heavy, dual-gripped slug-gun — and flipped open the magazine to check that there was a full clip inside. Low-tech but reliable: the other two were welcome to their directed-energy weapons, but I’d seen how easily they could go wrong under combat conditions.
‘Nice piece, Dexia,’ Sollis said, patronisingly. ‘Old school.’
‘I’m old school.’
‘Yeah, I noticed.’
‘You have a problem with that, we can always try some target practice.’
‘Hey, no objections. Just glad you found something to your liking. Doing better than old Norbert, anyway.’ Sollis nodded over her shoulder. ‘Looks like he’s really drawn the short straw there.’
I looked down the aisle. Norbert was near the end of one the racks, examining a small, stubby-looking weapon whose design I didn’t recognise. In his huge hands it looked ridiculous, like something made for a doll.
‘You sure about that?’ I called. ‘Maybe you want to check out one of these—’
Norbert looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot. I don’t know what he did then — there was no movement of his hand that I was aware of — but the stubby little weapon immediately unpacked itself, elongating and opening like some complicated puzzle box until it was almost twice as big, twice as deadly-looking. It had the silken, precision-engineered quality of expensive off-world tech. A Demarchist toy, probably, but a very, very deadly toy for all that.
Sollis and I exchanged a wordless glance. Norbert had found what was probably the most advanced, most effective weapon in the room.
‘Will do,’ Norbert said, before closing the weapon up again and slipping it into his belt.
We crept closer. Tens of thousands of kilometres, then thousands, then hundreds. I looked through the hull windows, with the interior lights turned down, peering in the direction where our radar and infrared scans told us the hospital ship was waiting. When we were down to two dozen kilometres I knew I should be seeing it, but I was still only looking at stars and the sucking blackness between them. I had a sudden, visceral sense of how easy it would be to lose something out here, followed in quick succession by a dizzying sense of how utterly small and alone we were, now that the lighthugger was gone.