Maximum Offence (27 page)

‘So . . .’ I tell the SIG. ‘Speed this crate up before we run out of air.’

———

A curve of habitat comes up to meet us. Can’t believe we’re not going to hit it, but between them, the SIG and Haze have this covered. We turn slightly, fire boosters and release something that would be a drag parachute if we weren’t in vacuum.

‘What’s that?’

‘Medusa bell,’ says the SIG. ‘Big about fifty years ago.’

‘What happened?’

‘They didn’t work.’

So why fire it?
Except whatever it is it must work slightly, because we slow and then twist sideways, scraping across the side of Hekati. I can see clouds and valleys through the glass as we pass, and what looks like a village far below.

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah,’ says the gun. ‘Imagine having to—’

It doesn’t get to finish its sentence, because something brings us to a sudden halt before we clear Hekati’s rim.
Something
being a harpoon that slams through the side of our vessel, spreads its tines and locks solid. What little air was left is sucked through the rip.

‘Asteroid drill,’ says my SIG.

And then we lurch sideways, as an unseen hawser jerks tight, slamming me into a bulkhead. Another two harpoons hit, another craft slams into us and our outer door blows. We are being boarded.

The first man fires a spread net that should lock down the crewpit. It fails to open, so I head for the ceiling, slamming my gravity glove against cheap mesh. Tiny hooks give me enough leverage to stamp on the faceplate of a Silver Fist. His head twists sideways, so I stamp again and something snaps.

‘Cheap shit,’ says my gun. It’s talking about his helmet.

Never fought in zero gravity before. It’s like swimming without the water. Also never fought with only one arm, zero gravity or not. A hell of a lot harder than swimming without water. For a start, I can’t hold on and fire anything at the same time.

The answer hits me a moment before a stun truncheon tries to do the same. Flipping sideways, I glue both boots to a wall and put a flechette into the helmet of a Silver Fist lieutenant in the doorway. He is low-ranking and it’s not as if they’ll really miss him.

Blood explodes in a thousand floating droplets.

‘Pretty,’ says my gun. The SIG is the only weapon working.

At least, the only one on our side. Neen is busy yanking the trigger of a ship’s pulse rifle. He’s done all the right things, like charge its precoil, but it still won’t fire. So he uses it as a club. A Silver Fist goes down clutching his faceplate.

‘How come—?’

‘Because I’m not cheap shit,’ the SIG tells me, not bothering to let me complete the question.

‘Switch back,’ I say.

‘No, hollow-point.’

‘Flechette.’

It switches clips with bad grace. I love flechette. You get minimum recoil, with maximum kinetic energy, and carbon darts fragment on impact. I drill a hole through a man behind Neen, and watch his suit suddenly become form-fitting. As the air goes out of it and vacuum begins sucking, blood flies through a tear.

A Taser bolt hits where I should be.

Only I’m somewhere else. Except it’s not where I should be, because I’ve forgotten my arm.

‘God, I love this.’

‘Now that’s fucked,’ says the SIG. ‘Only alive when you’re at risk of being dead.’

‘Telling me you don’t feel the same?’

It shuts up. And I’m still grinning, when I realize my last shot was explosive.

‘That was—’

‘Needed,’ insists the gun.

The SIG is right. A trooper in body armour has been unpacked into small pieces. But it has cost a large chunk of our bulkhead behind him.

‘Stop,’ demands a braid.

Flesh like leather, five braids swaying as it looks from side to side.
No helmet,
I realize suddenly.
No suit. How the fuck . . . ?
A stamp fixes my boots to the floor and I have my SIG to his head when my gun announces: ‘Shutting down.’

‘No, you fucking don’t . . .’

It shuts down anyway.

‘I said
stop
.’ The braid glares at me.

Everyone else is still, I realize. We’ve got Silver Fist all around us. A dozen of the bastards. They have proper gravity boots and working Tasers. We have sticky-soled suits and whatever we can swing as clubs.

‘You hear me?’ asks the five-braid.

‘Oh yeah,’ I say, reaching for my laser blade. ‘I hear you.’

Blue flame flickers and the knife comes to life in my hand.

‘Sir,’ says the five-braid. ‘That’s—’

What is it with everyone and this illegal technology shit? He’s standing in sub-zero airless vacuum, with his skull stuffed with metal and wriggly bits, tubes run from his ribs like badly designed machinery, and he’s objecting to my knife?

‘I’m going to kill you.’

The five-braid shakes its head. All those metal snakes waving like undersea weeds. ‘No, you’re not,’ he says, nodding behind us. ‘You’re going to put that knife down. Because if you don’t . . .’

I turn, taking care to move slowly. Half my attention is on the braid and the rest on a scene playing out in the crewpit. One of his men has a pistol to Haze’s helmet.

‘He’s a braid,’ I say. ‘Feel free.’

The five-braid glances between me and Haze, examining the boy’s bulky suit with interest. At a nod, the trooper drags Haze close and peers into the helmet, checking for himself.

‘Why . . . ?’ the five-braid demands, and then changes it to, ‘How?’

‘Captured him.’

Now’s when it might come unstuck.

‘Where?’ demands the braid.

‘Why, how, where . . .’ I toss the words back at him. ‘Got any other questions you want answered?’

Scowling at me, the braid says, ‘Turn that off.’

‘Fucking make me.’ For a glorious moment, it looks like the five-braid might. I’d be so lucky.

‘If you don’t,’ he says, ‘we’ll shoot this one instead.’ Pointing one finger, he indicates Vijay.

‘Go ahead,’ I tell him. ‘He’s a fucking useless little fuck anyway.’

The five-braid stares at me, reassessing. ‘Who are you?’

‘Sven,’ I tell him. ‘Colonel Sven Tveskoeg, Obsidian Cross, crown and oak leaves.’ My name means nothing to him. The only bit that interests him is my rank and the medal.

‘Colonel?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Death’s Head?’

My silence is my answer.

Nodding, he asks, ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Taking some well-deserved R&R.’ Gesturing around me, I ask: ‘What the fuck does it look like?’

‘Looks to me,’ says the braid, ‘like you’re running away.’

Fuck
, he’s fast. My blade passes through where his neck should be and he laughs. It’s enough to make me like him. Well, almost. Only my attention is on a Colt SW cinder maker, the one with the flip-down wire stock and the short power pack.

A Death’s Head captain holds it.

Well, according to the patch on his chest:
Captain Diski, Obsidian Cross, First Class, Death’s Head Ninth Regiment.

‘Move again,’ he says, ‘and I’ll burn you back to fucking ash.’

‘That’s
burn you back to fucking ash, sir
.’

He grins, and glances at the five-braid, who nods. A second later, his gun is lowered. ‘Introduce me,’ says the braid.

So I point out my team. ‘Lieutenant Vijay, Sergeant Neen, Trooper Emil, Trooper Franc, Sniper Rachel, plus our prisoner. Don’t know what his name is. He doesn’t say much.’

Haze gazes back, his face impassive behind glass.

‘Where did you say you captured him?’

‘Didn’t,’ I tell him. ‘But it was outside Ilseville . . .’ My voice is sour. ‘We were leaving at the time.’

When the city doesn’t register, I name the planet and that gets a slight flicker of recognition. Luckily, he doesn’t know how far away it is. It is easy to forget how campaigns that seem all-important to those fighting them mean nothing to everyone else. We were one of OctoV’s little side bets. One that shouldn’t have come off, almost didn’t come off . . .

And then did.

‘It’s over then?’ says the braid. ‘We took it back?’

I shake my head. ‘We held it, you took it. We tried to take it back.’ My shrug is slight. ‘Too many mercenaries, not enough professionals.’

The braid nods, despite itself. The Enlightened have firm opinions on mercenaries and those opinions are not kind.

STEPPING THROUGH A DOOR, EXPECTING A SECOND AIRLOCK, I find myself in the hold of a combat carrier. Benches run down both sides of a hangar. Maybe two hundred seats either side. The deck between them is metal, studded to stop boots sliding. Flip-up rings litter the floor. The craft obviously carries cargo as well as troops.

‘You can unsuit,’ says the five-braid.

When no one does, he barks an order to the Death’s Head captain. All that happens is the captain releases the fastenings on his own suit, drops it to the floor and steps out of it.

Colonel Vijay watches me, so I give him the nod.

‘You trust them?’ he asks, tapping his audio button and using up most of what remains of his battery pack.

‘Not sure,’ I say. ‘Let’s suck it and see.’

The five-braid smiles. This tells me two things. He’s listening in on our audio channel, and he doesn’t expect us to be a problem. I’m happy with both of those. Although I can see from the expression on Colonel Vijay’s face that he doesn’t understand why.

‘Could have done with some of these.’

The colonel glances at me.

‘Combat carriers. At Ilseville.’

He nods, doubtfully. We make the rest of the trip in silence.

It’s not a long trip, more a hop. Although the braid flicks dimensions and returns, saying he’s fixing our greeting party. Showing off, I guess. Letting the enemy see they’re outgunned. Any minute now, he is going to make his offer.

You can bet on it.

Glad I don’t, because he is more subtle than that. He just runs us over the hump of Hekati’s ring and down the outside. And guess what, I can do subtle too. The braid thinks we’re expecting an airlock into Hekati. He doesn’t know we already know about their ship. So, as our craft skims the far edge of Hekati and rolls lazily on its approach, I’m planning to be surprised, but not too surprised . . .

Fuck that.

We are a minnow.

And the vessel we approach is a shark.

As the Uplift mother ship comes into view, the shock tries to rip breath from my body and I have to bite down to stop myself being impressed. The others are slower to get a grip and Rachel actually points. We’re not even fleas on a dog cocking its leg against their post.

Take a vessel larger than the entire Bosworth landing fields and glue it to one of the smaller ring worlds. I’m not surprised Hekati is hurting. The Silver Fist ship is gripping her like some rapist.

This is what it is.

An air tube, fat as a motorway, penetrates Hekati through a gash sealed with stonefoam. The ship and habitat are fucking, that is what it looks like. Water pipes pulse as the ship takes what it needs. The Uplift even have their gravity generators off, each rotation of the habitat giving gravity to their ship as well.

Just how vast the Uplift vessel is I discover as an iris opens and our craft rises through the opening, then flips itself over and touches down on a deck large enough to swallow any city on Hekati. It is a five-minute walk to the edge of the field.

Welcome to
Victory First Last and Always, says a voice.
Flagship of the Third Uplifted Legion
.

When Neen puts his hands to his head, I realize the sound isn’t just inside my skull. Whatever speaks doesn’t sound human to me. I’m still thinking this, when Rachel sobs, and I turn to find Haze trying to catch his own vomit. A second later, he’s on his knees and not bothering about catching anything much. Blood runs from both nostrils. A dark stain says he’s pissed himself.

‘
What’s happening?
‘ demands Vijay.

It’s the five-braid who answers, though he takes time out to glare at me first. ‘Formatting,’ he says. ‘Always tough.’ And then gets to his question. ‘How did you know he was Enlightened?’

‘His hair fell out, his scalp started bleeding.’

‘So he definitely didn’t have braids when you captured him?’

‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘Those are new.’

The braid considers this. Obviously decides it’s possible. At his nod, two guards break from a squad by the wall to carry away Haze between them. Given he’s pissed himself and drips vomit they treat him well. But then he is Enlightened. Only now, he’s an Enlightened who just formatted, and that doesn’t sound good to me.

‘And us?’ I demand.

‘Oh,’ says the five-braid. ‘We’ll get to you later.’ I struggle to keep my temper, which amuses him. It doesn’t come easy. Vijay and Neen stand beside me, and Emil stands a step behind them, flanked by Rachel and Franc. So far, he has kept his mouth shut. A bit of me wonders if having given his parole really means that much to him. The other bit assumes he knows I’ll cut his throat before he gets out more than one word.

VICTORY FIRST LAST AND ALWAYS
runs to digital time, a hundred kiloseconds to a d/M, which translates as 1.125 standard days, or the time it takes light to travel 29,139,826,917,600 metres in a vacuum. Not sure what is wrong with miles and hours myself.

The mother ship’s mostly shut down. It is still giving off an infrared trace, the SIG tells me. How obvious this is against Hekati’s own signature is another matter. Maybe that’s the point. The
Victory First
is certainly busy bleeding the habitat dry.

Oxygen and power are taken freely. Piggybacking the habitat’s spin to give the mother ship gravity puts an intolerable strain on Hekati. But everything the Enlightened steal is one less thing they need to produce for themselves. One less clue for anyone hunting heat signatures or electromagnetic traces.

It’s not the U/Free from whom the Silver Fist hide.

It’s our glorious leader. I work this out for myself and feel smug about it. Thinking isn’t so hard when you get the hang of it.

‘You all right?’

‘Sure,’ I tell my gun. ‘Why?’

‘Oh,’ it says, ‘I’m registering a headache.’