Dark Sky (Keiko) (39 page)

‘Tell you this, I ain’t never gonna call this girl a rat trap again,’ Apirana commented, although he eyed the ramp’s incline dubiously. ‘Ah man, this is gonna hurt.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Jenna said encouragingly, putting one hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

As it was, after the first couple of steps Apirana threw his crutches into the shuttle and simply went up the ramp in a sort of three-legged crawl, his injured foot held up out of the way. Jenna followed, trying not to laugh at him no matter how odd he looked, while Rourke brought up the rear. Once at the top she called the ramp up again and collected Apirana’s crutches for him, then breathed a final sigh of relief.

Then she became aware of Rourke sliding down the wall.

‘Whoa!’ Panic gripped her and she reached out to catch the older woman, abruptly becoming aware of exactly how light she was. ‘Tamara?!’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Rourke muttered, setting her gun down on the deck with a
clank
. ‘I’m just so damn tired … I’m getting too old to stay up all night organising revolutions.’

Jenna tried to laugh, although in truth she was more shaken up than she wanted to show. Rourke was made of steel: always had been, always would be, so far as Jenna had been concerned. She might look tired, might talk about dropping the ball, but there was no way that she could
actually
burn out, right?

‘Let’s get you two to your cabins,’ she suggested, looking between them, ‘you can both get some—’

There was a deep thud on the sort of scale of a leviathan clearing its throat, and the
Jonah
actually seemed to shake a little.

‘—rest,’ Jenna finished uncertainly. How loud did something have to be for them to be able to hear it inside an airtight spacecraft, for crying out loud?

‘Bridge,’ Rourke gasped, trying to lever herself to her feet. ‘Go, I’ll catch up!’

Jenna got to her feet and ran, clattering up the steel steps at the side of the cargo bay and hammering at the release on the airlock at the top until it opened. She flew down the short corridor that led to the bridge, slapped the release for its door and was through before it was halfway open, just in time to feel another thud which seemed to reverberate through her bones. The cockpit’s viewports gave her a little over a 180 degree arc of vision, and she craned around to see what was going on. The hangar bay seemed lighter than it had before …

Her mouth fell open in genuine shock as she saw the
Pouco Jacare
hovering on thrusters, its nose angled upwards roughly forty-five degrees to the horizontal. Above the far side of the hanger was a hole, an actual
hole
in the doors that sealed the hangar bay off from the world above and the storm raging there. Through that hole was pouring light and, more ominously, sand and rocks.

She snatched up the comm and fired it up to broadcast on an open channel. ‘
Jonah
to
Pouco Jacare
,
Jonah
to
Pouco Jacare
…’ She paused for a moment, trying to summon the right words. ‘What the
fuck
are you doing, you demented idiots?!’

+
Jenna, that you?
+ Ricardo Moutinho’s voice crackled jovially over the comm. +
See, we’ve logged into the automatic weather sensors they have here and taken a reading on the storm up there. It’s not so bad at the moment, the gusts are only a few hundred miles per hour – nothing Jack can’t handle, if he’s careful. So we’re going to get some altitude and start broadcasting using this girl’s comms system, and try to reach our people that way, since the Uragan comm systems are still offline and I don’t intend to wait for hours until they come back on again. Over!
+

Something streaked from under the nose of the
Pouco Jacare
and detonated a split second later on the hangar bay roof with another titanic impact and a corresponding widening of the hole, causing Jenna to flinch in terror. Bits of debris tumbled down, clattering off the luckless shuttle which was berthed on the far side, and the flow of sand and rocks from above increased.

‘You’ll bring the damn roof down!’ Jenna almost screamed at him, blinking away the white after-images of the explosion.

+
Well, yeah. That’s sort of the idea, over.
+

‘Do you have any idea the size of rocks which these storms can shift?!’ Jenna yelled. ‘If one of those gets in we’ll be crushed!’

+We
won’t be, we’ll be in the air. You’re welcome to follow us. If you can.
+

Another missile erupted from the
Pouco Jacare
’s concealed and highly illegal guns, and in the wake of this explosion the remaining part of the huge door covering that half of the bay fell in with a rending crash. Jenna covered her face reflexively and uselessly, but it was at least on the far side of the hangar: the shuttle directly beneath the falling door seemed to crumple under the immense weight of metal, although she couldn’t see exactly what had happened, but nothing struck the
Jonah
.

+Pouco Jacare
out.
+

The
Corvid
-class shuttle, held in place by Jack’s expert piloting, fired its thrusters and roared up through the hole it had created into the maelstrom beyond, leaving nothing behind except more temporary damage to Jenna’s retinas. She wiped at her eyes desperately to try to clear them, then jerked aside with a yelp of alarm as a rock the side of her head clattered off the
Jonah
’s nose, narrowly missing the viewshield. She was fairly sure it could have taken an impact of that sort anyway … but as she looked at the volume of sand, dust and rocks already pouring into the hangar, she had a nasty feeling that larger ones were on their way.

‘What the …?’

Rourke had appeared behind her. The older woman’s expression was surprisingly blank, although in that moment Jenna wasn’t sure if it was because Rourke had recovered her usual composure or was simply too tired to react.

‘I …’ Jenna waved a hand helplessly at the scene in front of them.

‘Too much to hope for that he would leave without a parting shot,’ Rourke muttered. ‘What a wonderful choice he’s given us: stay to be buried or crushed, or follow him into the storm and die out there by being blown into a ridge.’

‘What do we do?’ Jenna asked desperately, looking at her.

Rourke just gazed out at the storm with tired eyes, and said nothing.

MURADOV HAD REACHED
for the gun at his belt the moment Drift stepped through the door, but froze as Drift covered him with his pistol. ‘Captain …’

‘Chief,’ Drift replied cautiously. ‘I’m really sorry to do this, but there are still three members of my crew out in your city and I can’t be having them suffering breathing difficulties.’ His attention was very nearly arrested by the huge window directly behind the desk where Governor Drugov was standing: it appeared to look out over what might have been a canyon on Uragan’s surface, although it was hard to see anything much given the thick yellowish clouds of gas and detritus whipping past. On the other side of the office was another window, this one looking out over the lush garden they’d come in through. He pulled his gaze away with an effort and refocused on Muradov, whose face twisted in frustrated consternation.

‘You idiot, Drift! I was arguing
against
him!’

Drift frowned. ‘Kuai?’

‘Yeah?’ the mechanic’s voice came from somewhere outside the doorway.

‘Is that right?’

‘Why d’you think they were shouting? ’Course he was arguing, I told you
Drugov
wanted to gas everyone.’

‘Well, shit. Sorry, Chief.’ Drift shifted his aim to cover the governor instead, whose beetling brows lowered still further at this impudence.

‘Alim!’

Muradov brought his gun up to point directly at Drift’s temple. ‘Captain, please lower your weapon.’

It wasn’t like Drift wanted to be shot in the head. For a moment he considered backing down and just letting the two officials have it out between themselves, but when he’d intervened Drugov had simply needed to say Muradov’s name and the Chief had immediately moved to obey. Drift didn’t think that boded well for the people inside Uragan City. Rourke, Jenna and Apirana were his top priority, of course, but they weren’t the only ones out there. He couldn’t help but think back to the
Thirty-Six Degrees
, crippled and hiding in the ice belt around Ngwena Prime, where a dozen men and women had died as he’d overridden the airlocks to vent their precious atmosphere into the void. They’d been bad people, to be sure, people who’d sought profit through theft and violence, but they’d been at least nominally
his
people. And if he wouldn’t be the one to kill these people in Uragan City, well, perhaps the fact that there were two million of them was enough to make him stand firm to ensure they didn’t suffer a similar fate.

Someone had once said that for evil to prevail, all that needed to happen was for good men to do nothing. Drift didn’t consider himself a good man, but perhaps he had his moments.

‘Chief,’ he said, trying to sound as calm and reasonable as he could with a gun aimed at his head by someone he was pretty certain was a former Red Star Army veteran, ‘I think I’m on your side here.’

‘You are pointing a weapon at my planetary governor,’ Muradov snapped, ‘that does not fit my criteria for “my side”.’

‘I thought he wanted to kill everyone in this city?’ Drift demanded, not looking away from the bearded Drugov and wondering how much of the conversation the governor could understand. He’d have expected a planetary official to have a good grasp of all the major governmental languages, but he hadn’t heard Drugov speak anything except Russian so far. ‘Do you think that makes him qualified to
be
a governor?’

‘Captain, how are you expecting to solve this by threatening him with a gun?!’ Muradov demanded, sounding truly exasperated.

‘Simple,’ Drift replied flatly, ‘if I see him doing anything that looks suspicious, I’m going to shoot him.’

That
got a reaction: Drugov couldn’t hide the widening of his eyes and the colour starting to drain from his face. Drift severely doubted the other man had ever been in a life-threatening position before, and possibly hadn’t really believed until this moment that Drift would actually do anything.
Well, I hope you believe me now.

‘Captain—’

‘Damn it, Chief, you know I’m right!’ Drift snapped, trying to ignore the black hole that was all his peripheral vision could see of the barrel of Muradov’s gun. ‘You were arguing with him too.’

‘I was hoping that reason could prevail, I never intended to
threaten him with a lethal weapon!
’ Muradov snarled.

‘Well that’s what he’s doing to two million people, right now!’ Drift shouted back. ‘I saw you when you realised that troops were being called in, Chief. You didn’t
want
war on Level Five, even after rebels bombed your transport and tried to kill you and your squad. You didn’t want
anyone
to die!’

‘Of course not, but—’

‘That’s what
he
wants!’ Drift continued furiously. ‘He’ll kill them all! Hell, he’ll probably kill us, too: are you really prepared to risk that this mansion’s airtight and its oxygen supply won’t get compromised?’

‘As to that,’ Drugov spoke up in English, cautiously raising one finger, ‘there are twenty full environment suits and additional rebreather masks in that cupboard.’ He pressed something on his desk and a partition in the wall to the side of his desk suddenly slid aside, revealing what looked like nothing more than a wardrobe for a chemical spill clean-up team. ‘Despite this disrespectful behaviour, you and your people may use them if necessary.’

‘Word of warning, amigo,’ Drift said, ‘the next time your finger touches anything on your desk, I pull this trigger.’

‘So what would you have me do,
Captain
?’ Drugov demanded angrily, his placatory facade vanishing. ‘Sit and wait until the rebels break down my doors and kill us all?’

‘Sooner that than kill an entire city,’ Drift told him, ‘but no. I was thinking we all get into your shuttle and my pilot gets us off this planet.’

‘That is not going to happen,’ Drugov bit out, resting his knuckles on the desk in a vaguely simian gesture which Drift supposed was intended to make him look intimidating.

‘So how about if I shoot you and then we take it anyway?’

‘Only I have the access and ignition codes,’ the governor sneered.

And Jenna’s not here. If she was, I might be inclined to chance it.
‘I don’t buy your act,’ Drift told him bluntly. ‘Once the rebels start coming through your garden gates, I reckon you’ll reconsider.’

‘I do not intend to wait that long,’ Drugov replied, then switched his attention to Muradov. ‘
Alim, ubei etogo cheloveka!
’

Drift’s Russian was good enough to recognise an order to kill him, despite what Drugov might have thought. There was a fleeting moment of terrible indecision when he wondered whether to pull the trigger, spatter Drugov’s brains over the wall and have done with, and then …