The bulk lifter sped in closer, dropping thrust to match the Hinterlight’s pace. The massive void-hatches of the Hinterlight’s port hangar bay were open, and strobing guide lights lit up the gaping mouth.
Expertly, the bulk lifter shimmied in closer, and then banked around on a flurry of attitude jets, hard burning, and entered the bay.
The void-doors began to shut.
The Hinterlight turned its nose and began to climb in a slow, westward turn. It passed over the ramparts of the crater wall, and then its massive thrust-tunnels fired in a great sheet of light and it began to power up and away into the illuminated heavens.
‘WE’RE HEADING INTO space,’ Zael said.
Kys stopped and turned round to look at him. ‘How could you know that?’ she asked. Until less than a month before, the boy had never even seen a spaceship. He didn’t understand how they worked. He couldn’t recognise the tremor of translation if it jumped up and bit him.
‘I just know,’ he said. He tapped his forehead.
‘Nove tell you?’
He shuddered. ‘No. Well, maybe. Not in person. I just keep hearing things.’
‘Like what?’ Kys asked.
‘Like… gravity well exit.’
How would he know a phrase like that, Kys wondered? She waved him on. The low-deck corridor ahead was gloomy and creaking as the ship’s mighty frame responded to the vast influence of gravity.
‘Where are we going?’ Zael asked.
‘Enginarium,’ she replied. ‘If we can’t stop the bastards taking this ship, we can maybe stop them using it.’
Kys raised the pistol she’d borrowed from Nayl’s cabin and led the way down the darkened tunnel.
AHENOBARB KNELT DOWN and stroked Kinsky’s limp face. He produced a cloth from his belt and dabbed away the perspiration from his partner’s brow.
‘You’re sweating,’ he remarked.
‘The bastard’s making it hard for me,’ Halstrom replied from the throne behind Ahenobarb. ‘Once we’re done with this, I’ll kill the frigger myself.’
‘But you’re okay?’ Ahenobarb asked. He could hear Halstrom’s fingers clattering over the main command controls. ‘Yes. We’re clear now. Commencing climb into gravity well exit.’
THE LIGHT CARGO holds were towards the bow section of deck four. The Hinterlight had two principal holds, a legacy to its days as a trader, to accommodate gross cargo. But often, a free trader was required to ship smaller masses of high-cost goods – fine wines, artworks, precious stones. The small cargo holds were built for that purpose, a series of armoured chambers that could be locked off, sealed and, if necessary, environment controlled individually.
Feaver Skoh’s hunters had rounded the crew of the Hinterlight into small cargo five. The entry hatch was still open, and two of the huntsmen stood sentry at the doorway. Inside, thirty-eight terrified personnel were huddled together.
Skoh himself was standing in the gangway outside when Madsen arrived. The rest of his gang loitered around, leaning against walls, smoking lhos, chatting. Skoh was talking to Duboe. He’d just released the cavae master from the Hinterlight’s holding cells.
Duboe was thin and filthy. There was a wild look in his eyes, and he was compulsively rubbing his wrists, free from their shackles for the first time in a long while.
They looked round as Madsen approached. She was walking behind Thonius, who was pushing Ravenor’s chair. Thonius was sweating and pale. Though frictionless, the chair had been hard to manoeuvre and direct with just one hand after all. He was shaking and exhausted.
Duboe slid past Skoh and strode towards Madsen.
‘You bitch!’ he yelled into her face. ‘You frigging bitch! You knucked up my mind!’
Madsen recoiled with distaste from Duboe’s wretched breath.
‘Get over it, Mr Duboe,’ she admonished. ‘It was necessary.’
‘Necessary? Frigging necessary?’
‘That’s enough, Duboe…’ Skoh said as he approached.
‘No!’ Duboe cried. ‘Bad enough that this freak mind-frigged me every day!’ He kicked the side of Ravenor’s inert chair. Thonius winced. ‘No, she and Kinsky came at me too. They fried my mind, Skoh! Fried my frigging mind!’
Skoh looked at Madsen. She met his stare. ‘You know what’s at stake here, Mr Skoh. We tolerate your little commerce on the side. Greedy? Maybe… frig, we pay you handsomely enough. But I guess the flects are too choice an income source for the likes of you to ignore.’
‘The likes of me?’ Skoh said quietly. Madsen gave him a withering look. ‘Contract thirteen is all that matters. We pay you well for your services. More than enough to cover the risks involved.’
‘The risks are great, Mamzel,’ Skoh said. ‘Running a Fleet blockade…’
‘Oh, tell it to someone who cares!’ Madsen snapped. ‘We’re only here today, in this fix, because your hungry little sideline in flects almost gave the game away!’
Skoh shrugged and looked at the deck. Madsen turned to face the edgy Duboe. ‘And for what it’s worth, Mr Duboe… of course we screwed with your mind. Yours, Siskind’s, every other bastard who mattered. Those were my orders, that’s what I ensured Kinsky did. We had to make sure none of you idiots gave the game away to the frigging Inquisition. Ravenor is a bastard, a blade-sharp bastard. Any hint of the truth, and he’d have been on us. We had to be sure that anything he learned from mind-searches just drove him further and further into this trap.’ Duboe glowered at her, but nodded. ‘No one wants the frigging Inquisition on his back,’ Skoh conceded. He smiled at Madsen. ‘And my congratulations, Mamzel. It’s a fine trap you’ve devised, beautifully executed. Taking the bastard’s team down on Eustis would have created a terrible problem. Questions, follow-up investigations… But if his ship goes missing out here, out in Lucky Space, lost with all hands…’
‘I’m glad you appreciate the finer points,’ Madsen said.
‘You still frigged up my mind,’ growled Duboe.
Skoh turned and slammed Duboe up against the wall.
‘Live with it,’ Skoh said into Duboe’s face ‘If you’d run your end of the op better, this would never had been necessary.’
Skoh looked over at Thonius and the chair.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Ravenor himself,’ Madsen replied. ‘And one of his lackeys.’
Skoh walked over to Ravenor’s chair. He knelt down and embraced its hull, laying his head against it. ‘You hear me? You hear me in there, you little crippled bastard? You’ve cost us plenty. You’re going to die for that. You and all your frigging crew. All your friends. You’re going to die in the heart of the local sun. And when it happens, they’re all going to be as helpless and frigging useless as you.’
He rose, and waved over two of his hunters. ‘Put the cripple in a hold all on his own,’ he said. The hunters began to steer Ravenor’s chair down the gangway into one of the empty holds. Skoh grabbed Thonius by the shoulder. ‘You’re going in with the others,’ he said, and frog-marched him into small cargo five.
He kicked Thonius as they reached the door, and Thonius went sprawling onto the small hold’s deck. He screamed in pain. Madsen joined Skoh at the hatchway. ‘Forty-six, you reckon?’ she asked. ‘All told, Mamzel Madsen. Eight fatalities during the sweep. Some knucks don’t know when it’s a good idea to surrender.’
Madsen scanned the miserable faces in the hold. ‘I don’t see Kys or Swole. Or, for that matter, the boy.’
‘We weren’t told about a boy,’ Skoh said.
‘A kid, from Eustis Majoris. His name’s Zael. He’s not here either.’
‘The kills my team made were all adult males…’ Skoh began.
‘I thought you were meant to be expert huntsmen,’ Madsen mocked. ‘There are two adult females and a kid loose somewhere on this ship.’
Skoh flinched slightly, his professional pride wounded. He called his men close in a huddle. ‘Munchs, Dreko – Guard the prisoners here. The rest of you… section
this ship, deck by deck, tight-hunt order. Two women, one boy. I’ll give a bonus payment for each head you bring me.’
The nine game hunters nodded and hurried away down the hall. Madsen could hear the zip of las-weapons charging up and the whirr of cyberdrones being launched.
Madsen looked up at Skoh. ‘By the way, you’re brother’s coming aboard just now.’
‘He got the others?’
‘All three,’ Madsen smiled. Trap’s closed.’
‘MR THONIUS? MR Thonius?’
The voice penetrated Carl’s dream. It had been a nice dream. He’d been in an up-hive outfitters on Thracian Primaris, being measured for a suit of the most gorgeous plum tarnsey. But the bloody tailors had kept sticking their pins into his right arm.
Stab, stab, stab…
He woke up. Faces peered down at him. One of them was the medicae, Zarjaran.
Thonius woke up fast. He was in the cell. He was a prisoner.
Zarjaran examined his arm. ‘You’ve burst some stitches, Mr Thonius,’ he said. ‘There is some weeping around the wound, and some tissue tearing.’
Thonius looked around. He saw Magnus, the second helmsman; Cliesters, the enginarium chief; Kobax from the ship’s galley; the Navigator Twu, wrapped in a blanket.
They were all frightened. Them and all the others. Scared to death.
They were staring at him because he was the only member of Ravenor’s personal cadre to be captured with them.
They were expecting something of him. They were expecting something ridiculous. Like he’d get them out. Like he’d somehow be able to do something amazing and free them all.
‘Help me up,’ Thonius said. Zarjaran hoisted him a little.
Thonius looked at the open hatchway of the hold. Two of Skoh’s huntsmen stood in the frame of it, weapons ready.
What kind of frigging miracle did these people want from him?
He wasn’t that brave. He’d never been mat brave. He was Carl Thonius. He wasn’t a hero at all.
THE PALL OF vapour filling the port hangar began to disperse, and the lumen strips on the interior hatches went green, indicating atmospheric equalisation. The whine of the bulk lifter’s thrust drive shrank away into the silence of system shut down.
On the top of the battered lifter, Kara Swole raised her head and slowly unwrapped her arms from around the bars of a lateral stanchion which she’d been clinging on to for the duration of the flight.
She was shaking badly. The old vacsuit had done its job, but only barely. Its insulating sub-layer was poor, and her core temperature had dropped sharply. With trembling fingers, she unsealed the helmet and took it off, her teeth chattering. Her cheeks and lips felt raw with cold.
From below, she heard the lock mechanism disarm on the lifter’s side ramp. She pulled off the rest of the threadbare old suit as quickly as she could. There was no time to warm up, no time to feel sorry for herself.
The compact rucksack she’d been carrying ever since emerging from the crate in the kitchens of the Reach was still with her – she’d strapped it around her belly and fastened the baggy vacsuit up over it. Kneeling, her hand still shaking, she put the rucksack down and peeled open the seam-seal. Inside it, side by side, was a matched brace of Tronsvasse auto-pistols. She’d been carrying them concealed as a back-up for Nayl’s team, though given the brutal efficiency of the Vigilants she was glad she hadn’t been forced to produce one. She was fond of her hands.
Even if they were shaking like hell now.
She slipped the pistols out and checked the loads. Each handgrip held a clip of thirty caseless rounds.
Below her, with a grating rumble, the lifter’s side ramp began to unfold.
First out were two men in dingy flightsuits. They hurried into view on the hangar deck and made their way over to the banks of crew service machinery built into the hangar wall to begin a turnaround prep for the lifter. It seemed to Kara that the lifter wasn’t intending to stay long.
‘Let’s go,’ Fernan Skoh said with a nod of his head. Gorgi and Verlayn flanked the three prisoners as they came down the ramp, Skoh at their heels.
‘Any time now,’ Gorgi muttered to Nayl. ‘Soon as Skoh’s brother gives me the nod, I’m going to mess you up bad.’
‘Really?’ said Nayl, without interest.
‘Shut up, Gorgi,’ Verlayn said.
‘You shut up!’ Gorgi said. ‘I’m gonna take my time and mess this one up real nasty for what he done to my face.’
‘What?’ asked Nayl. ‘Improved it?’
‘You bastard!’ Gorgi barked.
‘Shut up, Gorgi,’ Skoh said from behind.
‘Yeah, shut up, Gorgi,’ Nayl agreed.
Gorgi snapped. He lashed out with his left hand and smacked Nayl hard across the face.
‘Gorgi!’ Skoh snarled.
But the man already had his autosnub pressed to Nayl’s forehead.
‘You frigger!’ he screamed. Two shots rang out, their sounds magnified by the large chamber. Gorgi’s head broke apart in a pink mist and he tumbled backwards like he’d been yanked on a chain.
‘Emperor!’ Preest shrilled in dismay.
More shots rained down from high above them. Most were aimed at Verlayn, and they dented his battleplate with enough force to knock him down.
Nayl looked round. Up on the back of the lifter Kara Swole was unloading serious fire, an auto in each hand. Mathuin grabbed Preest and pulled her down to shield her. Sprawled, but far from dead, Verlayn blazed back at Kara with his laspistol. Fernan Skoh broke and ran back under the lifter, out of the field of fire. His hands still cuffed, Nayl threw himself after Skoh. He caught up with him beside the lifter’s rear port landing gear and felled him from behind with a two-handed smash, his fingers laced together. Skoh went down, and his bolt pistol skittered away across the metal decking.
Firing sideways with both autos, Kara leapt along the length of the lifter’s top-side as Verlayn’s desperate las-shots sparked and careened off the bodywork around her. The two flight crew over by the hangar wall came running back, pulling autosnubs and adding to the hail of fire coming Kara’s way.
Nayl hit Skoh with both fists again, but Skoh rolled and kicked out, snapping Nayl’s legs away. With his hands bound, he couldn’t compensate his balance and fell badly. Then Skoh was on him, kicking him and bending down to jab in punches. Cursing, Nayl grabbed Skoh’s torso armour with his cuffed hands and threw Skoh headfirst over him.
Shots dented the hull plating around Kara, and one sliced through the fabric of her bodysuit on her left thigh. Another, one of Verlayn’s las-rounds, zipped past less than a hand’s breadth from her cheek. With a squeal of alarm, she ducked and widened her arms, firing the weapon in her left hand at Verlayn, and the one in her right at the crewmen. The latter jerked and tumbled over dead. The decking beside Verlayn punctured and holed.
Nayl scrambled up, but the cuffs made him clumsy and Skoh was faster. The game agent threw a punch into Nayl’s face that dropped him again, momentarily unconscious. Skoh bent down and picked up his bolt pistol.
The clips in each of Kara’s guns were nearly spent. The firefight had only been running for a scant fifteen seconds since the first shot, though it felt like an eternity. She’d been really hosing. She took her fingers off the triggers for a split-second, ignoring the rounds exploding all around her, and took aim to make her last few loads count. She fired the left handgun, a single shot at Verlayn. His polished blue armour had withstood the caseless punishment, but now she hit the left eyepiece of the battleplate’s visor. Verlayn’s helmet snapped back and he rolled over. Then she turned both guns on the remaining crewman and blew him apart.
‘Zeph!’ she yelled, and hurled one of her autos into the air towards him.
Nayl came round just as Skoh put a boot on the chain of his cuffs and pinned his arms to the ground. Skoh pressed the muzzle of the bolt pistol into Nayl’s left eye socket.
Leaping up off Preest, Mathuin reached upwards with his cuffed
hands and caught the spinning autopistol by the grip. He swung it round and shot Fernan Skoh through the heart from twenty metres. Skoh lurched backwards off Nayl, slammed into the lifter’s landing leg, and fell on his face.
‘Holy frigging Throne…’ Preest murmured, dazed and terrified.
Mathuin looked down at the weapon he held. The clip was out. That shot had been the last one in the mag. ‘Indeed,’ he agreed.
Kara clambered down the side of the lifter. Blood was running from the gash in her thigh. Under the lifter, Nayl rolled Skoh’s body over and found the mag-key for the cuffs. He freed himself, picked up Skoh’s bolt pistol and limped back to join the others.
Kara jumped off onto the deck and smiled at him. He saw her face was pinched with cold, the lines of her nose and cheekbones florid with sunburn. The vacsuit’s faceplate hadn’t been up to much either, especially for someone riding a lifter bareback through the Firetide storms.
Nayl embraced her and held her tight for a moment. ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said into her hair.
‘Not the easiest thing I’ve ever done,’ she replied.
They got the cuffs off Preest and Mathuin. Preest gave Kara a hug too. ‘I thought we’d left you behind,’ she said, her voice brittle with relief. ‘I thought we were going to die.’
‘Oh, have faith, mistress,’ Kara smiled. ‘You had Nayl and Mathuin with you, the toughest sons of bitches this side of Macragge. They’d have thought of something.’ She looked at the two men, who were busy collecting weapons and ammunition from the bodies. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said.
Mathuin shrugged. ‘No, I thought we were going to die too.’
‘I had a plan,’ Nayl said.
‘Sure you did,’ said Mathuin.
‘I did,’ Nayl grumbled.
‘What? Goad that Gorgi guy into giving you a head-shot?’ Mathuin sneered.
‘It was a start. I was improvising.’
‘Look,’ said Kara. ‘I don’t want to play the doom-sayer… especially as Mathuin has that role covered. But we should book. This lifter was clearly expected. We’ve postponed death, not escaped it.’