“Fortunately for you,” he said over his shoulder, moving away to open a nearby storage locker. “This little arrangement of ours won’t last. The body can only take so much after all. So rest assured you’ll probably suffer a cardiac arrest in about forty-five minutes, not that you have that long.”
He pulled a modified EVA suit from the storage locker and began to put it on. It seemed the standard model wasn’t constructed for Belter proportions so he had stitched together four separate suits with a distinct lack of tailoring expertise, making him resemble a poorly made rag doll by the time he clicked the helmet into place. I stifled a shout of pain and concentrated on the command display, picking out a graphic showing a countdown.
“Of course I’ll need to blow the hatches,” Markov said through the helmet’s speaker, floating closer to peer down at me. “Clear a path to avoid any embarrassing encounters with my crewmates. But don’t worry, this compartment is air tight, need you to keep the window open whilst I make my way out. We’re only two AUs from a clan-ship trade route. When that bot you put in the fission reactor opens its canister… Well, bang that size is bound to draw an audience. Shouldn’t have to float around for more than a day or two before someone comes to investigate. Easy time for a Voidborn.”
“L-” I managed through a cloud of spittle, jerking with the effort. “L-lucy…“
“Sorry. Only room for one. And isn’t it a little late for all this chivalric concern?”
My eyes flicked to the countdown, thirty minutes.
“Yes,” Markov said, tracking my gaze. “I’m afraid this predicament is going to last until the reactor blows.”
He propelled towards the exit then twisted about, spreading his too-long arms in an elaborate gesture of farewell. “I killed the great Slab City Demon. Pity I’ll never get to tell anyone…” He trailed off as the exit slid open behind him, turning to regard the figure who hung there, a bulky silhouette with a long-bladed knife in his hand and a single red bead glowing in his shadowed face.
Markov’s helmeted head swung to the scrambler still sitting on its sticky pad, at least two metres out of reach. “I… I have a way to defuse the nuke…”
Jack’s knife moved too fast to follow, whatever it was made of proving harder than the helmet’s visor, punching through the glass to produce an instant explosion of crimson. Not a man given to moderation, Jack drew the knife back and brought it round in a surprisingly elegant pirouette, the blade slicing through layers of mylar and insulation to sever Markov’s head. The neck piece was fitted with a sealing mechanism so the blood cloud wasn’t as big as it might’ve been. I had a glimpse of the Belter’s gape-mouthed face as the helmet ascended to collide with the ceiling, bouncing off to be punted through the exit by Jack’s booted foot.
He grabbed a handful of Markov’s voluminous suit and used it wipe the blood from his knife, sheathing it as he drifted closer, impassive gaze tracking over my spasming body. “Mina took a look at your tactical,” he said. “Made for interesting reading. So let’s talk.”
Chapter 7
“Very nice,” Jack murmured, stubby finger playing over the sleek form of the ship schematic, the holo shimmering a little from the disturbance. We were in the command centre, me wrapped in a foil blanket, sipping something warm and sweet from the beaker Lucy had handed me. To my surprise Jack had returned the neural interface and it was a relief to find Markov hadn’t felt the need to add any more firewalls to his hack, so shutting off the countdown hadn’t been a challenge.
“Attack ship,” Lucy surmised as I fumbled over a response. Markov’s ministrations had left me a little speech deprived. “See the missile launchers on the prow and the stern?” she went on. “Haven’t seen anything like it before though.”
“They c-call it a Wraith class assault c-cruiser,” I stammered, calling up the specs.
“Woah,” Lucy gave a soft laugh as she peered at the scrolling data. “Double the payload of any military ship in the void and twice as fast into the bargain. I’d really like one for Christmas, Daddy.”
“Fully s-stealth capable,” I added. “Could blast an orbital to pieces before they knew it was there.”
Jack stroked his chin and I could see his greed for the ship was at least the equal of Lucy’s. “So this is what they’re building at Ceres.”
“Not just one,” Mina said, tapping an icon to expand the display. “According to the logs, over the past four years the Malthus II has delivered enough ore to construct at least a hundred of these. All in the shadow of Ceres where no-one ever goes.”
“And they’re nearing completion,” I said. “Expect the n-next step will be to start covertly ferrying out the crews from Earth.”
“All so they can start the war up again.” Mina shook her head. “Didn’t they have enough the first time?”
“S-start and finish,” I said. “Look at the fleet make-up, all attack ships. No troop carriers, no salvage or engineering vessels. They’re not planning war, they’re planning g-genocide. Wipe out the orbitals, put an end to CAOS, t-turn the clock back to the good old days.” I looked at Jack over the rim of my beaker, sucking down more warmth and feeling the shakes finally begin to subside. “Bad for business, wouldn’t you say, cap’n? Everything Upside and beyond will become a militarised zone. Hardly conducive to a piratical lifestyle.”
“Neither is prison,” he replied. “We do this and we get full immunity. Non-negotiable, Demon guy.”
“I don’t have that kind’ve authority…”
“Bullshit. You can hard-vac an entire Fed Sec battalion on your own initiative, you can work a deal for us.”
All annoyingly true. The colonel had given me carte blanche to deal with any threat posed by the Malthus II, but wiping the slate for someone like Jack still stuck in my policeman’s craw. No patriotism or altruism at work here, I knew. Or even his ingrained hatred for all forms of authority. He wants one of the Wraiths all for his very own.
“OK,” I said, making little effort to keep the reluctance from my voice. “Dependent on a successful outcome. This goes south, all deals are null and void.”
“This goes south we’ll all be null and void.” He pointed at my neural interface. “And no more playing captain for you. No offence, but it’s not really your forte. Markov’s little mutiny should’ve told you that. I saw what he was thinking from the moment the idea popped into his head. How d’you think I found you two? Been keeping tabs on him since we came aboard. Now hand it over.”
“With no guarantee you won’t flush me out the nearest airlock?”
“I could’ve sliced you six ways from Sunday already, and you know it. Give.”
Remember your leverage, Captain, the Colonel’s voice piped in. He still hasn’t checked the safe.
I removed the security locks on the interface and tossed it to Jack. He placed it on his forehead and called up my attack scenario for Ceres, wincing in derision as it played out.
“This is your oh-so-cunning plan?” he asked. “Just blast on in there and open a canister of plutonium in the back-up reactor? Glorious one way trip to instant oblivion, huh? Hoping they’ll put up a statue back on the Slab?”
“Personal survival is a secondary concern in the circumstances.”
“Not for us,” Mina said in a hard tone, face dark with maternal anger. “Luckily, we have an alternative.” Her fingers danced on the tactical interface, my scenario reforming into something altogether more elegant, but also complex.
“Too many variables,” I said when it played out.
“You aren’t in command anymore,” Jack reminded me, smiling for the first time since I met him, besmirched ivory gleaming dully in a leather mask. “And I’m not sure you even rate as third mate in this happy crew.”
*
“So, you were really gonna kill us all, huh?” Lucy’s frown was just visible behind her visor, the specular reflection on the glass preventing me from discerning if she was truly pissed or indulging in another teasing session.
“That’s right.” I put the tagger to the shock-absorbing plate on the front of my suit and aimed at the lump of gently spinning rock highlighted on my heads-up. I’d left the Pendragon back on the Malthus II, an Exocore standard mining suit was a better choice for this duty, bristling as it was with dedicated sensors. The tagger gave a hard push against my sternum as it released its projectile in a cloud of vapour, a small titanium tipped marker latching onto the ‘troid and blaring a signal the retrieval bots would home in on later.
“No hesitation?” Lucy persisted. “Twinges of conscience?”
“I’m a soldier.”
“That right? I thought you were police?”
I said nothing and propelled on ahead, concentrating on the heads-up. The debris field was highlighted as a hazard in the nav readouts covering the approaches to Ceres. Medium range scans had confirmed it as chock-ful of the necessary material. So far we’d found twenty rocks with the right density, Mina estimating we needed at least two hundred. First-hand confirmation by human eyes was a tried and tested method of speeding up the process.
“Your mom knows a lot about mining operations,” I said as Lucy lined up on another rock.
“She was an engineer before the war,” she replied, grunting a little as she fired her tagger. “When dear old dad found us on that liner, we were on our way to rendezvous with an exploration vessel heading for the Kuiper Belt.”
“Long-haul contracts take years to fulfil. You’d’ve been in your twenties by the time you got back.”
“Always got the feeling we weren’t coming back. She doesn’t talk about the war, but she must’ve learned all this intel-analysis stuff somewhere, and she has nightmares all the time. Lotta’ bad shit in her head, but I guess you know all about that.”
When we get to Ceres you’ll earn a few of your own, I replied silently.
We’d tagged another forty rocks by the time Mina’s voiced buzzed in my ears via the comms laser. “Contact bearing red twenty. Engine signature indicates civilian tug.”
“Not this close to Ceres,” Jack said. “Got to be Fed Sec.”
The tug popped up on my heads-up a few seconds later, a pale dot in a green targeting reticule making me wish I’d opted for the Pendragon after all.
“Getting an encrypted hail,” Mina reported. “Feeding it through.”
A short flare of static then a voice, male, British accent, every bit as militarily precise as the late Commander. “One hundred hours ahead of schedule, Gertrude. What’s up?”
Gertrude? That was her name?
“The commander is off the bridge at present, sir,” Mina replied. “This is Sub-lieutenant O’Keefe. We’re experiencing a minor problem with the ore processors.”
A pause as the tug grew ever larger in my visor. “Scans show only about twenty-five percent of your security net is active,” the Brit observed. “Got problems there too?”
“Ran into heavier than expected micro-impacts a few hours ago. So close to Ceres the Commander thought it safe to start repairs on a rotational basis.”
“Against protocol. Not like her.”
Mina modulated her tone, trying for the jovial subordinate role. “Well, it’s been a long trip, sir.”
Another pause, then the reticule in my heads-up turned red. “His weapons just went active,” I said.
“I see it!” Mina snapped back, exhaling slowly before addressing the tug once more. “Anything wrong, sir?”
“Standing orders, lieutenant. Approaching vessels exhibiting irregular behaviour are to be subject to close inspection. Deactivate your net and open up the cargo bay. Oh, and it’d be best if you got the Commander out of bed, don’t you think?”
“Yessir!” Mina confirmed, switching channels. “Lucy, get back on board. We’re burning out of here.”
“No,” Jack stated softly. “Do as he says, Mina.”
“Jack…”
“It’ll be fine. Trust me.”
I turned to see the security net go off line, the ordered matrix of dots transforming into drifting specs of light, like dust in water.
“Wave!” Lucy said, flourishing her tagger like a flag pole. “Be nice to our brothers in arms.”
I duly waved at the tug as it drifted past, main engines off-line. It was a good facsimile of a Scarab class work-horse, typically referred to as a bug back on the Slab, complete with faded paintwork and minor hull damage, but the disguised weapons pods were open and the array of missiles and EMP emitters clearly visible. She fired her retros two hundred metres short of the cargo bay as the doors slid open to reveal an inky black interior.
“Problem with the lighting system too?” the tug captain enquired.
“No,” Jack said on the open net, the Dead Reckoning’s main lights blinking on, yellow tiger eyes in the shadows. “No problem at all.”
At that range the tug never had a chance, the first missile salvo shattering her forward hull and tearing apart her sensor array. A scream of static in my headphones told me Jack was jamming any last-minute warning the tug captain might be trying to transmit. The Scarab spiralled away from the Malthus II, trailing plasma and rent metal, missile launchers swivelling desperately as she tried to get a lock on the Dead Reckoning, all way too late. Jack proved himself every bit as capable a pilot as Lucy, skillfully keeping on the ruined side of the tug as he maintained his barrage, plasma shrikes and hard-tipped cannon shells pulverising the Scarab into wreckage in a silent display of pyrotechnics. The bodies spilled out when the superstructure split apart, red-eyed, ice-pale faces looming in my visor as I zoomed in. Overconfident. Didn’t think to suit up.
Jack destroyed a lingering chunk of wreckage with a final burst of cannon-fire before turning the Dead Reckoning about and heading back to the cargo bay. “Gather up the mess,” he told me and Lucy. “Another ship might happen along later.”
*
The Scarab’s crew totalled six individuals, four men and two women, faces too distorted with decompression and burns to gauge their age, but I’d be surprised if any were more than thirty years old. Six plus the crew of the Malthus, plus Maddux, plus Markov… I shook the grim arithmetic from my head, pushing the last of the corpses into the centre of the cargo bay. Jack had ordered up a crew of maintenance bots to cart them to the smelter, no point leaving them floating around to enrich the atmosphere with their singular aroma.
I was surprised to see Lucy scraping puke from the inside of her helmet when we de-suited, face pale and eyes a little moist. Not quite so calloused, I realised. Just a kid after all.
“Stop staring,” she told me in a thin voice.
“Sorry.” I ripped away the disposable thermal liner and reached for my coveralls.
“I’d really like to have sex now.”
I turned to find her stripping away her own liner, moist eyes bright as she floated naked, firm, toned flesh sheened with sweat and making me calculate just how long it had been. It was like this with Consuela during the war. Not always, just sometimes, when something really bad went down, when the latest near-death experience or frenzied firefight left us shivering and coiling in the dark. Death, always the most potent aphrodisiac.
“I can’t help you with that,” I said, turning away and mentally awarding myself a medal.
“Got a Mrs Demon back on the Slab?” she enquired, voice still thin, void of emotion. If rejection burned she wasn’t showing it. “That why?”
I thought about Janet and the faint hope that I might actually see her again when this was over. She’ll see it in an instant, I knew. All those bodies floating around my head. Screwing a seventeen year old girl would be the least of my crimes. No more nights curled up on the sofa watching Star Wars.
“I see there is,” Lucy said, reading my face and forcing a smile. “She’s older right?”
“Considerably. Just like me.”
“Uhlstan was older. Still fucked me though. Jack didn’t mind long as we kept it discreet. Girl has her needs after all.” Her voice had taken on a small quiv
er and she hugged herself, shivering.
I sighed, buttoning up the coveralls and propelling to the exit. “Life of crime has its downside, Jedette,” I said, voice deliberately harsh. Kindness would be cruel right now. “Better shake it off if you want to live through this.”
Chapter 8
I spent another four hours helping Mina in the mass accumulator, the cavernous rectangular tube that made up the bulk of the Malthus II. It was over a kilometre long and constantly exposed to hard-vac, meaning lots of tricky manoeuvring between the array of massive toruses tracking the length of the tube from the opening to the smelter.
“Weaponising one of these is strictly illegal,” I commented. “There’s a whole bunch’ve of treaties about it.”
“When we get to trial, I’ll tell them you forced me at gunpoint.” She grabbed a hand-hold and punched a button below a faded sign reading: ‘Exocore Industries Mass Driver - Wotan Class.’
“Wotan,” she muttered, shaking her head. “They do like their mythical allusions. It’s just a series of ultra-high powered electro-magnets, old but reliable. Sucks in any rock with a high iron content, kinda like a giant vacuum cleaner.” She gestured for me to watch as she punched a sequence into the control panel. “Luckily whoever designed it also saw there’d be the occasional need to blow as well as suck. We just need to up the velocity. Hundred kilometres a second should do it.”
“We got enough power for that?”
“Just, if we max out both reactors and shut down all other systems.” She gave a sigh of annoyance as the panel lit up with a plethora of warnings, rapidly punching in the overrides with practised ease.
“Done this before?” I asked.
“Done a lot of things before. Just like you.”
“You were in the war.”
“Wasn’t everyone?”
“Way you talked to that tug captain, very convincing.”