Preest looked at her. The shipmistress was badly rattled, Kara could see that. This kind of stuff was definitely not what she’d signed up for. It was like Majeskus all over again. The fragile excitement she’d generated in herself at the start of the Reach expedition was evaporating fast. She was a trader, a void-voyager, not a Throne agent.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Kara said, reloading her autos, and felt stupid saying it. Preest just nodded.
‘Let’s move,’ Nayl said. He’d armed himself with Skoh’s bolter and Gorgi’s autosnub tucked into his belt. Mathuin had taken Verlayn’s laspistol. He handed one of the autosnubs the flight crew had been carrying into Preest’s hands.
‘I don’t care for guns,’ Preest said.
‘Humour me. Just put it in your pocket.’
Pinching the weapon between finger and thumb as if it was a scorpion-ant or a fresh stool, Preest reluctantly dropped it into the deep slash-pocket of her gown.
They left the hangar and slipped down the main access hallway of deck two. A glance told them all auxiliary systems were operating. The cold green light, the feeble air-push.
‘My darling’s running on back-up,’ Preest said.
Nayl nodded. ‘It’s a certain someone has taken control of the Hinterlight. Question is, how do we take it back?’
‘Kill ’em all?’ Mathuin asked.
‘Thanks for that, Zeph,’ Kara smiled.
‘Actually, that was top of my list of workable plans,’ Nayl said.
‘We have to–’ Preest began, and then stopped. She was scared, shaking. She cleared her throat before continuing. ‘We have to assess status,’ she said.
She led them away from the main access into a warren of sub-corridors that threaded the space between the primary holds to bow and the enginarium and drive chambers to stern. Progress was easy. All internal doors and hatches were locked open.
‘Just down here,’ she said.
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Nayl.
‘Diagnostic stations,’ Preest said. ‘There are about thirty located at various points on the ship. They’re for maintenance. Senior personnel can check all aspects of ship’s status from any of them.’
They reached a cross-junction in the dim sub-hallways. The diagnostic station was a shielded drum rising out of the deck at the centre of the cross. Preest slid back a cover to reveal the console.
‘It needs the ship’s master keys to operate it,’ she said.
‘How do we–’ Nayl began.
Preest removed her preposterously dangly earrings. The master keys, Nayl realised, were the main parts of each. She slid the keys into the paired sockets and turned both simultaneously. The console display shivered into life. Peering at the display, Preest began to touch some keys.
‘Shit,’ she said.
‘Shit?’ repeated Nayl.
‘I see what they’re doing,’ Preest murmured.
‘Which is?’ Nayl asked.
‘The bastards,’ Preest added.
‘Which bastards?’ Nayl said.
‘Damn it, that’s clever…’
‘What is?’ Nayl asked exasperated.
Preest looked at him at last, and pointed at the screen. ‘Someone’s rewritten the authority codes of my darling ship,’ she said. ‘Clever, clever, clever. Basically, they’ve shut down and locked all my darling’s primary systems – all of them, from drive and life support right down to lighting – and initialised all the secondary and auxiliary systems in preference. The Hinterlight is working on back-up, and that network has been entirely secured.’
‘Can you countermand?’ Nayl asked.
‘No, that’s the point. The clever part. This is a countermand. It’s personally encrypted. Whoever did this was a genius. They’ve taken over the ship using my own backdoor.’
‘So, what you’re saying… is that we’re totally screwed?’ Mathuin said.
Preest took a deep breath and removed her keys, shutting the console down. ‘No, Mr Mathuin. Nearly screwed, but not totally.’
‘Spit it out, mistress,’ Kara snapped.
Preest smiled at her. ‘My dear, no shipmistress worth her salt, no rogue trader, leaves herself open to this kind of piracy. I have secret, core-level protocols to overwrite this kind of crap. Whoever did this hasn’t found those.’
‘So, that’s good?’ Nayl ventured.
‘Get me to the bridge and I’ll punch in a few codes that will unlock the entire system,’ Preest said.
‘I’m thinking the bridge is probably not an option at this stage,’ Nayl said.
Preest nodded, as if she had expected that answer. ‘All right, get me to enginarium basic on deck six. Right down at the stern. Main cogitator is housed under the bridge itself, but there’s a redundant secondary cogitation stack concealed behind the principal drive chambers. In case of emergencies, damage to the main cogitators or whatever. I can work my magic from there.’
Nayl nodded. ‘Good. Great, in fact. But that’s a long march from here.’
Preest shrugged.
‘Right,’ Nayl said. ‘Zeph… get the mistress down to this back-up stack. Can you do that?’
‘I can try,’ said Mathuin. ‘What will you be doing?’
‘Me and Kara will be heading upstairs to work to the original plan.’
‘Kill ’em all?’ Kara asked.
‘Kill ’em all,’ said Nayl.
Ravenor had been pushed into a small cargo hold forty metres down from the hold containing the rest of the ship’s crew. It was dark. The door was sealed. The light on the latched-on nullifier flashed in the gloom.
The hold’s hatch opened and green aux-light fell in at a slant. A figure filled the doorway.
‘You’re a bastard. A frigging bastard…’ Duboe said as he shuffled into the hold space. ‘You hear me, you frigging bastard? You frigging knuck-wipe? I hope so. I hope you do. This is all ‘cause of you.’
Duboe faced the chair. He raised the boarding axe he’d pulled from a wall mount. With both hands, he turned the heavy weapon so the back of the axe-head, the pick, was lowered.
‘A good deal, I had,’ Duboe burbled. ‘A good trade. Then you and your freaks came in to frig it up.’
‘You know what?’ Duboe asked, as if somehow expecting Ravenor to answer.
‘You know what? This is payback time’
Duboe hefted the axe up and slammed it against the chair’s hull. Sparks flew. The blow had barely made a scratch on the chair’s surface. Duboe struck again and again. Apart from a few very slight scratches, his attacks had made no dent, though they had pushed the frictionless chair across the chamber.
Cursing, Duboe put his foot against the chair and kicked it over against the far side of the hold. It slid away and came to rest, bouncing off the wall.
Duboe ran at it and delivered another massive blow. He began to hack away with the boarding axe, driving the chair against the wall so it couldn’t roll away. Chips of paint began to fleck off the chair’s chassis, and dents began to appear as Duboe threw blow after unrelenting blow at it.
Three
The Hinterlight thundered on into the blistering flares of Firetide, its real-space thrusters powering it away from Bonner’s Reach. Already, the Reach was just a tiny, tumbling rock behind it. The solar storm had set the void ablaze. Gigantic forks of plasma and photonic energy lashed and slapped the vacship’s hull like striking lighting, causing the vessel to buck and shake.
It powered onwards, despite the onslaught, heading towards the unstable star.
Like a phantom, running with shields raised against the storm, a second spaceship closed in behind it.
Madsen and Feaver Skoh strode onto the Hinterlight’s bridge.
‘Who’s he?’ Skoh asked, gesturing to Ahenobarb.
‘Muscle,’ Madsen said. She walked over to the command throne and looked at Halstrom. His face was now contorted in a grimace of pain as he operated the helm.
‘Are we course-set?’ Madsen asked him.
 
; Halstrom looked down at his display with difficulty. ‘Not quite. Another fifteen minutes. Then we’ll be sliding into the star’s gravity well.’
Madsen smiled.
‘I’m reading a ship,’ Halstrom added. ‘Sprint trader, on the auspex, less than one AU aft of us.’
Madsen studied the helm display. She activated the main-beam vox and tuned it to a tight band. ‘This is Hinterlight. Identify yourself.’
‘My good woman,’ the vox crackled back, ‘this is the Oktober Country. Put Feaver on.’
Madsen turned to Skoh and he leaned forward. ‘Thekla?’
‘Good afternoon to you, Feaver. Everything in place, I trust?’
‘Of course. We’ve got them all locked down and the bastard’s ship will soon be heading for the heart of the sun.’
‘I am pleased. I’d hate to have to start shooting at you.’
‘That won’t be called for, Master Thekla,’ Skoh said. ‘Fifteen minutes and we’re done.’
‘Excellent, Feaver. I look forward to welcoming you aboard. Oktober Country out.’
Skoh straightened up and looked at Madsen. ‘All set,’ he said.
‘Thekla sounds like a live one.’
‘He is. But we’re set.’
‘Known him long?’
Skoh shrugged. ‘Sixty, seventy years. A working compact. Thekla’s been good to my family.’
Madsen nodded. ‘Was it his idea? The flects? Or yours?’
Skoh wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Neither. I think it was Akunin or Vygold. One of the original contractees. Thekla came in later. By then, all of the captains had seen the earnings from flects. We started to carry them every time we took a contract thirteen run. The returns were huge. Better than the Ministry pays us.’
Madsen shook her head, wondering. ‘Screw you,’ she said.
The vox-chime bleated.
‘Madsen. Report.’
‘Is Master Skoh there?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Let me speak to Master Skoh,’ the voice said.
Skoh walked over to the console. ‘Let me,’ he said. ‘That’s Rainfold, one of my crew.’
Madsen shrugged and stepped back.
‘Rainfold? This is Skoh. What’s the deal?’
There was a long pause. ‘Chief, we went down to the hangar deck. Your brother had been a long time bringing the prisoners up.’
‘And?’
‘Chief, they’re all dead.’
‘The prisoners?’
‘No, chief. Your brother and his crew. All of them. The prisoners are gone.’
Skoh’s eyes narrowed.
‘Skoh, I’m sorry,’ said Madsen, stepping towards him.
‘The kills are confirmed?’ Skoh said into the vox. Like he was talking about antelopes.
‘All confirmed, chief.’
Skoh coughed quietly. He paused a long time and then said, ‘Alert all hunt teams. Add the prisoners to your list. Hunt them down and kill them all.’
First the drone went by, then the hunter. The only sound they made was the low buzz of the drone’s motor, and that was lost in the background noise of the ship’s real-space drive assemblies. The hunter paused for a second, panned his lasrifle around, then carried on down the corridor and disappeared through the next hatch frame.
Kys and Zael emerged from behind some vent ducting. Visibility was poor down in the sub-decks, and the air was hot and dry. They were approaching the main heat sinks for the gravity generators and the corridor was lined with red insulating tiles that looked the colour of meat in the emergency lighting.
Heading towards the stern, they switched left through a low-ceilinged power-convertor chamber. It was even hotter in there, and cakes of dry dust clung to the magnetic vanes of the floor-to-ceiling convertor cylinders. Everything was vibrating slightly, resonating to the throb of the giant drives nearby.
At the far end of the chamber, they came out into another tiled hallway and started to move along it.
‘Oh!’ Zael said suddenly. Kys glanced behind her and saw the drone rushing towards them at head-height, sensors glowing. Twenty metres behind it down the corridor, the hunter appeared, raising his weapon.
Kys threw Zael down onto the deck and dived flat herself. Two las-rounds whined over them. The drone had also zoomed over them, and was turning back tightly to make another pass. Running forward, the hunter adjusted his aim.
Kys didn’t have time to get a decent shot at him. She seized the returning drone with her telekinesis and applied all the force she could. Already rushing back in the direction of the hunter, the drone accelerated and smashed straight into its master’s astonished face. The impact knocked him over onto his back.
As soon as she was sure he wasn’t going to be getting up again, Kys rose and started hurrying Zael on towards the enginarium.
‘Run,’ said Mathuin.
‘I don’t care for running!’ Preest protested.
‘You said you didn’t care for guns,’ Mathuin said, dragging her after him.
‘I don’t care for either!’
There had been one, maybe two, of Skoh’s hunting cadre in the outer enginarium bay, and Mathuin knew they’d been seen. He forced Preest to run across the large maintenance shop that separated the outer bay from their destination, the much larger vault of enginarium basic. The shop was a dirty, stained workspace, cluttered with portable machinery and tool-benches. Cogitators lined one wall, racks of machine parts and cartons of spares the other. There was a split level gallery above them with a lifting hoist.
No way were they going to get all the way to the hatch at the far end before trouble caught up with them. Certainly not if that was what Preest thought ‘running’ meant. Mathuin skidded to a halt and pushed her down behind a stack of bulk-format battery cells and turned back to face the door they’d entered by.
‘Stay down!’ he hissed.
Almost at once, a figure appeared in the doorway. Mathuin raised his laspistol and fired off a trio of shots that impacted around the hatch frame and discouraged the man from coming through.
In response, a salvo of rounds from a lasrifle came cracking in from outside the hatch. Mathuin ducked. Most of the shots impacted against tool benches before they reached him. Dislodged tools clattered onto the deck. A couple of shots went right over him and made it clear to the far end of the shop where they branded scorch marks on the wall.
Mathuin swung up and fired again. Again, the hunter in the doorway ducked back. A cyber drone came swooping into the room. Mathuin blew it to pieces in the air.
But the slight distraction had given the hunter time to get a better position in the doorway. And he wasn’t alone. His lasrifle licked out a fierce, prolonged blurt of fire that forced Mathuin back into cover and allowed a second hunter to roll in through the hatch.
The las onslaught halted. Mathuin began to lift himself up for a return shot when the second hunter opened up on him from the cover he’d found inside the hatch. This man had an autocannon. He hosed the shop with a furious rapid fire of hard slugs. Mathuin ducked again.
The bullets smashed benches over, dented locker doors, shattered the screen of a portable codifier and struck a power-pod trolley with enough force to make it roll sideways.
Hands over her ears, eyes shut, Preest shrieked in terror. Shots were hitting the weighty battery cells they were sheltering behind, rocking them. One cell fell off the top of the stack with a resounding slam.
The huntsman with the lasrifle had taken advantage of the suppressing fire his colleague was providing, and had got into the shop too. Las-fire now joined in support of the cannon. More wholesale destruction. Chips of metal were being blown out of the floor. More glass exploded. Despite their serious weight, another battery cell was knocked off the stack. Their cover was being taken away.
‘Can’t stay here!’ Mathuin yelled above the gunfire.
She nodded and followed him. They started crawling on their hands and knees back from the battery stack, kee
ping it between them and the shooters for as long as possible. Preest flinched at every close shot. They reached the power-pod trolley that the bullets had pushed along. Mathuin grabbed it and wheeled it around. It was heavy on its greased castors, but he could manage it. Through brute effort, he rolled it until it was completely between them and their assailants.
The pod began to shake and buck as shots smacked into its far side. Mathuin had to keep a tight grip to stop it being wrenched away. Still on their hands and knees, they began moving back down the shop towards the open hatchway to basic, Mathuin dragging the pod after them as mobile cover.
They reached the hatchway and Preest scurried through. Mathuin followed her. They were inside the gigantic vault of enginarium basic, the vast, flask-shaped forms of the principal drive chambers towering over them.
‘Can you get the hatch shut?’ Mathuin yelled. Shots were zipping through the hatchway over the pod.
Preest shook her head. ‘I told you… everything’s locked out.’
Mathuin put his entire, formidable strength behind the pod and gave it a colossal shove. It trundled back into the shop, knocking into benches.
The hunter with the cannon rose up, firing freely at the pod, assuming Mathuin was still behind it.
From the upright cover of the hatch frame, Mathuin blasted the hunter with his laspistol. He convulsed and fell, his still-firing cannon raking the shop roof.
Mathuin swung back into cover as the lasrifle opened up on him again. He grabbed Preest by the hand.
‘Come on, mistress. More of that running you dislike so much.’
They ran across the open floorspace of the vault towards the giant drive chambers. The train of Preest’s gown billowed out behind her. A few sporadic las-shots flew out of the open hatchway. Another twenty seconds, Mathuin estimated, and the remaining hunter would realise they had left the hatch area and come down through the shop after them.
Enginarium basic was cool and echoing. The principal drive chambers were cold and inactive. They were what powered the Hinterlight through translation point and into the immaterium. At the moment, the ship was cruising on the power of its real-space engines, which were housed in a separate section of the enginarium two decks above them.