More ominous echoes resounded behind them. They ran down the hallway, across a through-deck junction, and on into the ship’s servitor bay. It was a large, long chamber with an oily, stained floor. Along each wall, dormant servitors rested in restraining cradles, most of them wired up to recharge transformers in the bulkheads behind them. In the cold green half-light, the rows of frozen, semi-human, semi-augmetic slave units seemed eerie and macabre. They’d all been shut down at a primary level. Red deactivation runes shone on every cradle.
Kys and the boy edged into the chamber. Like the double blast hatch they had entered through, the exit at the far end was locked open. Kys felt her way forward with her telekinesis, sensing the sidebays full of servicing units and tool racks, the dangling hooks and clamps of the overhead maintenance crane-tracks. Hanging chains swung gently in the slight through-breeze.
She felt – then heard – footsteps coming up behind them, running fast. Somehow, Zael seemed to sense them even before Kys, and he pulled at her hand. They moved to the side, off the open deck space in the middle of the chamber, and slid in between cradle racks until they were crouched and hidden in the deep shadows between a heavy monotask unit and the chamber wall.
+Not a sound,+ she nudged.
Zael nodded.
The ringing footsteps came closer and from their hiding place they watched as a man ran into the servitor bay. Kys recognised him. It was one of the junior enginarium adepts… Soben, was it? Sarben?
He was out of breath and very agitated. He glanced about frantically, and then clambered in behind the servitor cradles on the far side of the bay.
Kys wanted to call out to him… even mind-nudge… but there was no time.
Making a low buzz like an angry insect, a cyber-drone flew in through the hatchway. It was travelling at head-height, and as soon as it was in the bay, it decelerated and began to hover gently along, as if sniffing the air.
The drone was small. It had been built into the polished skull of some deer or grazer. The red glow of motion-tracker systems shone from its eye sockets. Under the base of the occipital bone, the drone’s tiny lift motor whirred and pulsed.
One of Skoh’s huntsmen came into the bay after it. Despite his heavy boots and thick camo-armour, he made no sound. He carried a large calibre autorifle in a confident, assured grip.
The drone drifted ahead of him, whirring and cycling. The hunter, his weapon braced in one hand, bent down and began peering under the servitor cradles near the hatch.
The drone passed the place where the adept had hidden himself and floated on, about to draw level with Kys and Zael. She felt the boy go rigid with fear.
Suddenly, the drone turned and snapped backwards, accelerating round in a wide arc. The hunter was up and running forward. The drone flew in behind the cradles on the far side of the bay and locked onto the cowering crewman.
The adept started to run, breaking cover to flee along the space between the cradles and the wall. The drone zoomed after him. Soben let out a cry and plunged out between two hoist cradles into the open to escape it.
The autogun boomed. Soben flew backwards through the air with a violent lurch and smashed down onto the decking.
The hunter approached the body. His drone re-emerged and flew along at his side. The adept was dead, but the hunter put another round through his head, point blank, just to be sure. Like a game-kill.
The calculated barbarity of the second shot made Zael wince involuntarily.
The drone immediately rotated in mid-air and stared its dull red stare right in their direction.
Instinctively, Kys lashed out with her telekinesis and swung together several of the hooks and lifting chains dangling from the ceiling.
The drone switched round again at the sound, and the hunter wheeled, firing another shot up into the roofspace. He stood for a moment, weapon still aimed, watching the chains and clamps rattling and swinging.
Then he lowered his weapon and headed out through the hatch with the drone at his shoulder.
Fernan Skoh led his captives out into an echoing stone vault in the lower levels of the Reach bastion. It was one of the hangar docks for shuttles and lifters ferrying to and fro from the starships anchored out over the Lagoon. A big, dirty-black bulk lifter sat on the apron, its thrust-drive already lit. The side ramp was open.
The mouth of the vault was open to space. Void-shields kept the atmosphere in, but the huge archway afforded them all a panoramic view out over the docks and quays towards the luminous white expanse of the Lagoon.
Outside, the sky was rippling with flame. Though not yet at its full might, the solar violence of Firetide was startling to behold.
‘Emperor damn it…’ Preest said suddenly.
‘Shut up!’ Verlayn spat.
Nayl and Mathuin followed Preest’s gaze and saw what she had seen. Several kilometres away to their west, a starship was gently clearing its void-dock as it departed the Reach.
It was unmistakably the Hinterlight.
‘On board, now,’ Skoh ordered, and pushed them up the ramp.
Kara watched them as they boarded the lifter. A hooter was sounding, indicating the hangar vault should be cleared promptly. Interior hatches and field-protected doorways were already sealing. Processors were beginning to pump the air out. In less than five minutes, the void shields would disengage and open the vault to space, allowing the lifter to take off.
Kara watched the last of the hangar personnel filing out. If she remained in the vault, she would die. But this was her last chance to stay in the game. This was quite possibly everybody’s last chance.
Though the hefty bulk lifter occupied the main space of the vault, ancient stone-cut stairs and ramps led up to secondary platform blocks overhead where small craft were berthed. She ran up four flights, and arrived on a wide stone shelf near the roof of the vault where two compact prospector pods were seated in magnetic clamps as they underwent automated refuelling from an energy bowser bolted to the chamber wall. Kara went to the edge of the shelf. She could already feel the air thinning and the pressure dropping. Below her, the lifter hulk was powering its thrusters up to ready. Its side ramp had sealed.
Kara ran to one of the pods and wrenched the hatch open. Nothing. She tried the other. In a storage compartment behind the operator’s seat, she found a shabby old vac-suit, worn and battered. The breather unit switched on into life at the second try. Its luminous dial showed about thirty per cent capacity. What was that? An hour? Ninety minutes if the suit had been well maintained. Well maintained, my arse, Kara thought. It clearly hadn’t. Maybe the unit would give her as little as thirty minutes. Which wouldn’t be anything like enough.
There wasn’t even a way of telling if the suit had been compromised. Maybe it had been slung behind the seat because it had a tear or a puncture. Or a holed inner glove. Or a perforated throat seal. Or a faulty pump. Or bled-to-hopeless batteries.
Kara stripped off her borrowed storm coat and began unfastening the suit’s corroded side clasps. She’d soon find out.
The buzzer sounded one last time, barely audible over the mounting drone of the bulk lifter’s engines. Deck lamps around the apron’s edge were pulsing and flashing.
Then the vault’s void shields disengaged. There was a great swirl of dust as the vault’s vestigial atmosphere rushed out, taking all sound with it.
Suddenly silent, its thruster jets blazing, the bulk lifter rose up off the stone apron and began to climb slowly, sedately out of the vault.
Pitted and rusted, the rough surfaces of its upper hull slid slowly past under the stone shelf.
A single figure, the firelight flashing off its visor for a second, leapt off the shelf and fell away, arms outstretched, tiny, towards the massive vehicle moving out below.
Two
The violent combustions and flares of Firetide lit up the whole sky as if the entire galaxy was burning. The flickering brilliance cast strange, jumping shadows from the bastion and its surrounding peaks out acros
s the dust of the Lagoon, which now looked yellow in the changing light.
Still only moving at a low, coasting speed, the Hinterlight moved well clear of the Reach’s void-dock area and soared out over the brilliance of the Lagoon, passing other ships resting at low-anchor. Astern, but moving much faster and accelerating on seventy-five per cent thrust, the bulk lifter left the hangar in the cliff-like wall of the bastion and gave chase. The distance between the vessels began to close.
On the Hinterlight’s bridge, Madsen settled into the primary helm position beside the central command throne from which Halstrom was running the ship. A particularly brilliant solar surge caused the main pict-source displays to distort and fizzle. Madsen winced at the glare and adjusted down the display resolution to dim the effects.
‘All right?’ she asked Halstrom.
Halstrom’s brow was furrowed, as if he was concentrating hard. Every few moments the muscles of his face gave a tic or a little spasm.
‘Kinsky?’ she repeated. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ Halstrom’s voice replied, flat and dead. ‘He’s fighting me, that’s all. Every step of the way.’ Kinsky’s body lay limp in the chair of the secondary helm station behind them. An unfinished game of regicide glowed on that station’s display screen.
Kinsky’s mind was inside Halstrom’s, forcing the Hinterlight’s first officer to pilot the vessel. Kinsky was a terribly powerful active psyker, but he had nothing like Ravenor’s finesse or training. He could not ware subjects, he’d never developed the technique. But he could get inside their heads, and essentially hijack them. None of Madsen’s team had decent shipmastering skills, so Kinsky was coercing Halstrom to use his expertise. It was difficult. Halstrom was resisting. Kinsky couldn’t apply too much pressure for fear of burning out the shipman’s mind altogether. It was a frustratingly difficult, painstaking process.
Frustrating for Mamzel Madsen too. She was a first class tech-adept and code writer, but she had zero helm training. She was beginning to wish they’d brought a pilot too. She had assumed that a gun to the head of Halstrom or Preest would be incentive enough when the time came. Now just driving the Hinterlight was occupying all of Kinsky’s mind, when he could be put to good use elsewhere.
Ahenobarb stood behind Kinsky’s recumbent form, watching over him as he always did. Every now and then he cast a look in the direction of Thonius. Thonius had recovered consciousness but remained where he had fallen, gazing wretchedly at the interlopers. A huge bruise from Ahenobarb’s fist blotched the right side of his face.
Thonius was desperate to act, but quite at a loss to know how. He was unarmed and weak, and the fall had badly jarred his damaged arm. Pain was throbbing through it so acutely he had to keep blinking tears away. Every time he moved even slightly, Ahenobarb or Madsen looked his way. He doubted he’d even manage to sit up without them noticing. And if he did…
Thonius looked at Frauka, flat on his back on the deck beside Kinsky’s chair. The bloodstain across the front of his shirt was huge and dark, and a pool of blood was spreading wide across the deck under his torso. Frauka had never been a friend really, but he’d been alright. No one deserved that kind of ruthless demise.
For the umpteenth time, Thonius cast a look at Ravenor’s inert chair. He gazed at the psionic nullifier unit mag-clamped like a giant barnacle to the front of the chair’s casing, wishing it, willing it to fall off or deactivate. Mentally, he turned over every possible idea he could think of for removing the nullifier. Every scenario ended with him dead on the bridge floor.
Aching pain was weakening him. Thonius began to wonder if he was simply not brave enough. He’d always thought of himself as brave, until the heathen moot on Flint. Look how bravery had abandoned him there. He fought off the memory. He was an agent of the Throne. Bravery was expected of him. Maybe he should just get up and have a go, damn the consequences.
Then he thought of Halstrom. Halstrom had been brave. He’d refused to cooperate, even with Madsen’s gun at his head. And look how much good his bravery had accomplished.
A vox-chime sounded, and Madsen looked to her console.
‘Hinterlight, go,’ she said.
‘Lifter. We’re inbound for rendezvous. Request you keep your course and speed and open your hangar.’
‘Stand by, lifter,’ Madsen said. She looked over at Halstrom. ‘You hear that?’
‘Yes,’ said Kinsky via Halstrom’s leaden, weighted voice. His fingers moved heavily across the command console keys. ‘I’ll hold this vector steady. Open the port hangar and light the guide paths.’
‘Good,’ Madsen said. She turned back to her console and tapped in a series of instructions. ‘Lifter? This is Hinterlight.’
‘Read you, Hinterlight.’
‘Port hangar is opening. Link your transponder to the guide signal and get aboard. Make it quick, please.’
‘Understood,’ the vox answered, distorting a little in time to a brighter than average solar flare outside.
‘You’ve got them all?’ Madsen asked.
‘All three.’
‘Soon as you’re aboard, have them taken to the light cargo holds on four.’
‘Light cargo holds on deck four, got it.’
‘And get the lifter prepped for turnaround. We’re on a clock here.’
‘Understood, Hinterlight. Lifter out.’
Madsen closed the channel and lit up an auspex display that showed a small, blinking rune closing in on the port side of the larger icon that represented the Hinterlight.
‘They’re coming in,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Halstrom said, with effort.
There was another vox-chime, but it was from the internal intercom system.
‘Madsen? It’s Skoh. We’ve finished our sweep. Got most of them.’
‘What does “most of them” mean, Mr Skoh?’ Madsen replied, acidly.
‘Forty-six persons, including the Navigator. No sign of the females you mentioned.’
‘I’m coming down,’ Madsen said. She got to her feet and looked at Ahenobarb. ‘Watch him,’ she ordered, indicating both Kinsky and Halstrom.
‘Always,’ the giant answered.
Madsen looked at Thonius and gestured with her pistol. ‘On your feet, interrogator. Time to join the others.’
Thonius got up slowly. It was a painful process.
‘Madsen?’ Halstrom asked without looking round. He was still staring intently at the readout displays, his fingers moving with over-careful precision on the controls.
‘What?’
‘Take him with you,’ Halstrom replied, gesturing at Ravenor’s chair with one hand. ‘I don’t want him here. Makes me uneasy.’
‘Over here,’ Madsen snarled at Thonius. He limped over. ‘Disengage him and bring him.’
Thonius nodded. He crouched down and disconnected the psi-booster cables from Ravenor’s chair and closed the access ports. Then he reached under the chair body and deactivated the mag-clamps that held it fast to the deck. Even with one hand, it wasn’t difficult to push the chair around on its frictionless grav plates.
For a moment, Thonius looked at the nullifier clamped to the chair’s body. It was within reach. How did it detach? Could he do it with one hand, with a simple tug? Could he do it before they realised? Was he brave enough?
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Madsen said. She was staring at him. Mocking. She knew exactly how brave he was.
And that was not remotely enough.
The hold space of the bulk lifter was a battered, worn, poorly-lit box of metal, its floor and walls scarred and dented by centuries of cargo handling. Nayl, Mathuin and Preest sat in one corner against the wall in a silent huddle, watched over by Verlayn and Gorgi. Free from the weapon restrictions of Bonner’s Reach, Verlayn was covering them with a laspistol, and Gorgi had an autosnub. Gorgi had stopped fiddling with his damaged face, and was now scrubbing petulantly at the bloodstains down the front of his chequered armour with a cloth.
&nbs
p; ‘Here’s an idea… give it a rest,’ said Verlayn from behind his helmet.
‘Here’s another… shut the frig up,’ Gorgi replied.
In the aft portion of the hold, blast hatches led through to the drive chambers. Forward, a flight of metal-mesh steps led up to an open hatch through which they could just see a cockpit area, lit by instrumentation. There were two flight crewmen up there, and Fernan Skoh sat at the top of the steps behind them, loading a bolt pistol.
The ride was rough. Every few seconds, the lifter lurched or shivered. Fragments of metal junk and pieces of cargo packing rolled and skittered back and forth across the oil-stained hold floor.
‘Coming up on it now, Fernan,’ Nayl heard one of the flight crew call.
Skoh got up and leaned in through the flight deck hatch. He’d holstered his bolt pistol and was holding on to the hatch frame with both hands as the buffeting and jarring increased.
‘We’re riding something’s mag-stream,’ Preest whispered to Nayl.
‘Shut the frig up,’ Gorgi said, aiming his snub at her.
Skoh was talking to the flight crew. Nayl strained to hear.
‘…as soon as we’re down. You understand? Full spec turnaround and repower. I want this bird ready to fly again in thirty minutes.’
‘No problem,’ said one of the crewmen.
‘Better not be,’ said Skoh, turning and sitting down again on the top step. ‘This is our ticket out when that hulk starts its death dive.’
The blaze of Firetide was now approaching its maximum burn. The whole sky was writhing with incandescent flame patterns and scorching blooms of light.
Running lights blinking, the bulk lifter edged in. It was a big craft, but entirely dwarfed by the spaceship it was closing upon. Moving sedately, the Hinterlight was a colossal form ahead of it.
Beneath them, the white dust of the Lagoon displayed their comparative shadows, big and small, both jumping and twisting in the light of the overhead storm. The crater rim was coming up, a vast, jagged curtain of sheer black mountains. At their current rate, they would clear the Lagoon in four minutes.