Zael was cowering in the door frame.
"Zael?"
"Yes?"
"What else did Nove tell you?"
Zael started to cry again. "She said... she said they would be coming in through the front door..."
The air gate was wide open. Feaver Skoh smiled as he marched in off the jetty, pulling back his hood.
"Let's go," he said to his men. They followed in behind him, stripping off their hoods and storm coats and setting down the crates.
His coat off and his tall, thick-set physique revealed in its armoured glove, Skoh adjusted his microbead earpiece into place. Behind him, his trackers were opening the pannier crates.
"This is Skoh. Come back."
A crackle. "This is Madsen. Welcome aboard."
"What's the situation, Mamzel Madsen?" Skoh asked.
Crackle. "Bridge is locked down, Skoh. Ravenor is tanked and out of the game. Your brother reports he has all three of the landing party prisoner. Just need you to sweep the decks and round up the crew."
"Read that. Numbers?"
One of Skoh's men slid the custom long-las out of a crate and tossed it to Skoh. Skoh caught it neatly and armed the weapon.
Crackle. "We estimate forty-nine. Mostly deck hands and juniors. Be sure to round up the Navigator. We reckon the inquisitor's staff members Kys and Swole are both aboard. Both female. Kys is a telekine. Swole is an acrobat. Neither should give you much trouble."
"Got that, Madsen. Piece of cake. Lock up the gate and move us off. Skoh out."
Skoh looked round at his eleven-man team. They were all game hunters, experienced men from Skoh's family business. All of them, now the storm coats had been shed, were revealed to be thick-set brutes in various types of camo-armour. Some carried long-las, some autocannons. All of them, like their master, festooned their armour with trophy teeth and scalps.
The outer hatch of the airgate slammed shut behind them. Then the inner skin closed.
"Let's move," said Skoh, leading them off into the Hinterlight's interior.
Hidden behind a bulkhead, Kys and Zael watched them thunder past. "Right, not that way..." she said.
"No," said Elman Halstrom.
"No?" echoed Lusinda Madsen. She poked her weapon against the side of Halstrom's temple and cocked it.
"I think I was clear. I will not obey your orders."
"Really? Look, Mr. Halstrom... you did see what I did to Frauka?"
"Vividly But I will not assist you."
Madsen smiled. "You really don't have much of a choice, Halstrom. It's been a lovely long voyage, long enough for me to penetrate your ship's systems and encode them to my countermand. It's not been easy, I grant you that. Your mistress, and Ravenor... have made the Hinterlight's systems ingeniously complex. But that's why the Ministry employs me. I can shut the ship down, I can start it up. Now sit down, Halstrom, and pilot this thing."
"No," Halstrom said.
Madsen looked across at Kinsky.
"Do it."
Kinsky swayed and fell. Ahenobarb caught him before he hit the deck and lowered him into the second helmsman's throne.
Halstrom stiffened suddenly, and whimpered. Then he sat down in the command throne and started punching keys. The main systems came back to life.
"Commencing undock procedure," he said, in a curiously flat voice. "Thrusters live. Helm active. Disengaging airgate clamps."
"Soon as we're clear," Madsen said, "head for the sun."
"Are you all right, Gideon?" Preest whispered.
Mathuin glanced round at her. He was still very woozy, leaning against the gallery wall just to remain upright.
"Yes," he replied. "But it's Zeph. Ravenor's not waring me anymore. He just... vanished. Like he was torn out of me. Never known a ride to be that tough."
"Shut up!" instructed the bounty hunter in the blue battleplate. His angular visor was still closed, and his voice came out as a vox-distort through a helmet speaker. He finished securing the set of mag-cuffs around Nayl's wrists. Mathuin and Preest were already bound.
The man in the chequered leather armour stood nearby, watching them. His broken nose was still bleeding, and his face was beginning to swell and discolour. He kept looking venomously at Nayl.
Nearby, the game agent was talking to two Vigilants as more of the Order removed the bodies. The agent was making some kind of formal representation to excuse the fight and express appreciation for the Vigilants' tolerance.
He handed over a bag of coins to pay for material damages. The Vigilants bowed briefly and began to disperse, taking the bodies with them. Tenders arrived to scrub the floor.
The game agent walked over to join his comrades and the trio of captives. He was talking on a compact vox.
"It's Skoh," they heard him say. "Power up, we're coming down."
"Understood."
"The game agent eyed the three of them. They all secure, Verlayn?"
"Yes," replied the man in blue armour, making a tilting nod with his sharp-featured helm.
"You've frisked them too? No multi-keys, hold-outs, concealed?"
"I've frisked them, Skoh." Verlayn replied, sounding a little piqued that his expertise was being questioned.
"Yeah, well it pays to be careful. Those two-" Skoh indicated Mathuin and Nayl, "in particular."
"When the time comes," the man in chequered armour growled, "he's mine." He was still staring at Nayl.
"We'll see about that, Gorgi," Skoh said.
"Promise it, Fernan! Bastard broke my face!"
"I said we'll see," replied Fernan Skoh firmly. "It's my brother's call. You ask him. He might give you the bastard as a treat. Now let's start moving."
Verlayn gestured with his blade, and the prisoners began to walk. Skoh and Gorgi fell in step behind them.
They walked them along to the far end of the emptied gallery, and then down a main stair onto a more populated level. Heads turned to watch them go by, but they were given a wide berth.
From a gallery on the far side of the salon, Kara got a good view of them. She hurried along the rail, moving on a parallel course, keeping them in sight. They reached another stairhead, and began to descend again.
Kara stepped back from the rail. She tried her compact vox again, but the channel was dead. Something had happened to the ship too.
She slipped on through the crowd, barely breaking step to lift a folded storm coat off a booth bench as she went by. The owner, deep into negotiation with a business partner and even deeper into a bottle of joiliq, didn't even notice it go.
Pulling the coat on, Kara reached the nearest staircase and hurried down through the crowd as fast as she dared without drawing attention to herself.
The deck plating shivered again. Then another deep boom rolled through the ship.
"We're moving." Zael muttered.
"Yeah, we are."
"Was that like that warp thing? Are we at warp?"
"Translation? No," said Kys. "Way too early. That's mag-locks uncoupling. Mooring lines detaching. We're barely rolling yet."
"What are we going to do?" Zael asked.
Now that was a frigging good question.
She started to speak, but another loud boom echoed down the companionway.
"More mag-locks?" Zael asked hopefully.
"No," she said, grabbing him by the wrist and starting to run. "That was gunfire."
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 locke
d 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 raiding 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 star-ding 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 star-ship 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 across 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 gl
are 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...