Maximum Offence (33 page)

‘Report,’ I order Neen.

‘All present, sir,’ he says.

And he’s right. Because Haze is in the doorway behind us, looking like sin on a bad day. At a nod from me, Neen tosses him a spare Silver Fist rifle, and we all watch as he fumbles the catch.

Colonel Vijay sighs.

‘What now, sir?’ I ask.

‘We find ourselves an escape deck,’ he says.

‘Sir,’ I say. ‘What about the missing U/Free observer?’

‘He’s gone, Sven. Got that from the general himself.’

‘Dead, sir?’

The colonel looks at me, glances at the others, and then walks me across to a corner of the general’s suite, his head bent close to mine. ‘Sven,’ he says. ‘There was no observer. OK? Let it go . . .’

It’s my turn to stare.

‘We needed cover stories. That was our second. You know, the first one was we’re on a cultural mission. And then, for the people who don’t believe that . . . we’re looking for a missing U/Free.’

‘And the U/Free agreed to go along with it, because they think we’re here to sign their treaty? But really,’ I say, glancing at his trophy, ‘we’ve been here to collect that all along and there was no observer?’

‘You’ve got it,’ he says, slapping me on the back.

There are days I fucking hate politics.

———

Racing up the corridor, a Death’s Head trooper from the Ninth Regiment freezes, unsure what’s happening. After a second, he salutes. Idiot.

‘A false alarm,’ I say.

He gapes at me.

‘Malfunctioning sirens,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘Return to your unit.’

The man nods and turns. Only a Silver Fist captain is turning the corner behind him and he isn’t as stupid. He is, however, slow. He’s still pulling his pistol when I put a throwing spike in his throat. Colonel Vijay kills the original trooper, who dies still looking puzzled.

Bundling down a corridor, we head for a door. The elevators are locked down. That is good, because it keeps the enemy away. Also bad, because it means we might need to fight on the stairs. Should the Silver Fist work out that having elevators arrive and not leave is a better option still, then we’ll really have a battle on our hands.

‘Sven,’ says my gun as I skid-turn, and rip my fighting arm into the throat of a sergeant rounding a corner towards me.

Colonel Vijay shoots the man behind him. The man behind that turns to run and dies with one of Franc’s knives in his back.

‘
What?
‘ I demand.

‘Remember me?’

You can always tell when the SIG’s jealous. It gets snippy. ‘This arm’s useful,’ I say.

‘No,’ says the gun. ‘It’s rusty, out-dated, and
ugly
.’ The SIG places special emphasis on the last. ‘And it’s slowing you down.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Weighs more than a combat trike,’ it says. ‘Bloody thing was meant to handicap you. Only you’re so stupid you decided to keep it.’

‘You’ll get your chance soon enough.’

‘So you keep saying.’

Catching up with me at the stair door, Neen opens it and through I go. Takes me ten seconds to reach the first bend and check it is clear, eleven to return. As I step back into the corridor, Neen raises his rifle. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he says, lowering it again.

‘Next time hold your aim,’ I tell him.

Colonel Vijay is listening.

‘What if someone was coming through behind me?’

He’ll remember next time. For an ex-militia grunt with barely six months as an NCO he is turning into a pro. Actually, he’s turning into a veteran. Neen goes red when I say this.

‘Round here,’ says his sister, ‘it’s adapt or die.’

When Neen shoots Shil a frown, the colonel laughs. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant Tveskoeg can recognize a compliment when he hears one.’

———

Standing by a Silver Fist launch that looks more like a small space liner, Colonel Vijay says, ‘We’ll take this one.’ The
Wild Wild Wind
has elegant lines, its own escape pods and an array of antennae bristling along the top. It’s also easily big enough to take all of us and still have room to spare.

Obviously enough, the SIG disagrees.

The craft the SIG wants sits behind the one Colonel Vijay likes. It’s a B79 bomber and a third the size of the launch. A silver skull on its black nose-cone reinforces what we already know. The craft belongs to the Ninth.

‘This one,’ says the colonel, tapping the little liner.

The SIG is not having it.

As they argue, lights start flickering on the bomber’s hatch. At first they’re out of sync with those on the SIG. Slowly the sequences begin to match. When they match exactly, the hatch shifts slightly, stops, and then pops open.

‘Well, hello,’ says the gun.

A second later a ladder folds down.

‘B79, new model,’ says the SIG. ‘Now with sixty-four rockets, instead of forty-eight. Added stealth screening. Uprated quad-barrelled machine gun, fully automatic obviously. Semi AI navigation, fully AI combat brain . . .’

Haze is practically drooling.

He’s sold. The others are looking at Colonel Vijay.

‘Well?’ says the gun.

OK, he’s sold as well. Who wouldn’t be with that firepower? And we need to move anyway, because the sirens are dying, and that is not good. It means someone is finally taking charge.

‘Fighters,’ says Haze, glancing at a wall screen. ‘They’ve scrambled fighters.’

‘Gets worse,’ my gun says.

‘How?’

All the overhead strips go out. On cue, the escape deck’s emergency lights fire up. Only to go out just as quickly. A second later, Neen turns on his rifle’s torch. It produces enough light for us to see our way to the bomber.

Neen thinks that’s the problem solved. He hasn’t thought it through.

If the emergency power is dead, then how do we fire the explosive bolts holding the outer wall in place? Without these, the wall remains and the escape deck keeps us trapped. Until their CO works out a way to hook us out of here. Personally, I would flood the place with nerve gas.

Colonel Vijay agrees. ‘Has that bomber got an air system?’

‘Of course,’ says the gun. ‘It’s got an Alexo3 ferric—’

‘Everyone inside,’ he says.

The SIG’s still running its sales pitch for the purifier, though it stops when it realizes no one is listening. The steps flip up, and the door hisses down, and we are airtight inside fifteen seconds. I’m beginning to like this machine.

‘Permission to . . .’

Colonel Vijay nods. ‘Go ahead, Sven,’ he says.

Slapping my hand on a plate next to the pilot’s seat, I let the B79 scan my palm and then give it my name, rank and service number. I give it the real ones. If it is as clever as the gun says, then it can match the hand scan to my service records anyway.

A line of words scrolls across the glass plate.

Information already entered
.

‘Genotype human equivalent. Status DH class 2, override . . .’

It’s reading a bloody identity chip fitted when I was on the general’s mother ship. Knew I had one in that arm Colonel Madeleine made me. Obviously got one under my skin somewhere as well.

There are three combat seats in the B79.

The colonel gets one, because he’s ranking officer. I get one, because I’ll be handling the cannon. Also, Vijay might be younger than Neen, but he is not stupid, he knows who’s winning this war for him.

Haze gets the last seat, because he’s a braid.

I run that thought back, decide I agree with it, and realize just how bloody odd that sounds. ‘Sit there,’ I tell Haze. ‘Before I change my mind.’

Emil is not happy. He outranks Haze in theory. As do Neen and Franc. But they’re not braids, and they don’t chat up machinery the way the rest of us joke with whores. That leaves five people without proper seats.

A low ledge runs round the back of the crewpit. Five people sitting together on the ledge should help cushion each other from the worst of the acceleration shock. All we have to do is what we did in that tug.

‘Tie yourselves into place.’

‘Sven,’ says Emil, sounding horrified. Turns out, he’s flown in a B79 before.

‘So you’ll know what to expect,’ I tell him. ‘And it’s
sir
. You’re a trooper in the Aux and you’ll remain one until I tell you otherwise.’

LIGHTS FLASH IN FRONT OF US. FLASH, FLASH FASTER, AND THEN stutter to a halt. A second run ends the same way. And then a third. I know what the ship’s AI is glitching against, but we have enough time to let it reach its own conclusions.

‘Give me three sixty.’

Screens come to life around the crewpit.

At my nod, Haze revolves the entire pit, letting me check the new arrivals. The lenz in the hangars might be blind, but we have our own on this ship and they’re showing us a major and fifty Death’s Head troopers bundling through an emergency door, and stopping in the darkness, backlit from the stairs.

‘Idiot,’ says Neen.

Also lazy and arrogant. Any half-decent NCO would kill those lights before coming through. If we were out there, we’d have cut them down by now. But luckily for the major, we are in here and keeping the surprise.

At an order from a corporal, the lights go out.

Lasers play across the emptiness of the hangar. A couple of NCOs turn on the torches on their rifles. And then, the panels on the ceiling above us all flare into life again.

‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘Perhaps . . .’

‘We should think about leaving?’

He nods.

‘And maybe not,’ the SIG says.

Lights or not, the wall bolts are still powered down.

As Haze checks that the SIG is right, a dozen Silver Fist hurl themselves through the opening doors of an elevator, guns drawn. They stand down the moment they realize there is no enemy in sight. Another three elevators open a second later. We’re drawing ourselves a big crowd, and soon someone is going to begin scanning the pods and work out where we are.

‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Do you want me to take the attack outside?’

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘It’s all going to plan.’

That earns me a stare from Colonel Vijay.

So I grin, letting adrenalin flood my body. This is the bit I like. Only we’re not there yet. More troopers must be on their way, and I would hate to deny anyone their share of the fun.

It takes five minutes before a braid appears.

The first thing he does is send a dozen Silver Fist to check the fancy-looking launch next to us. Maybe he reckons we can’t all get into the B79 bomber. He’s wrong, but looking at Shil, Rachel, Franc, Neen and Emil tied under a cargo net behind me, I can see how they might feel he’s right.

When the Fist start coming towards us, I decide it’s time to move. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘The bolts are still dead.’

I know that. Why does he think the B79 won’t start? My gun is going to override the safety routine that prevents ignition. ‘Fuck the bolts, sir,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to put a rocket through the wall.’

‘You can’t,’ he says. ‘There’ll be an
equal and opposite
.’

‘A what, sir?’

‘Newton’s Third Law,’ he says. ‘You must remember.’

God . . . Do I look like someone who knows Newton’s Third Law?

Turns out it’s not a problem. If firing a rocket will make us slam into the escape craft directly behind us, then surely all we have to do is fire our engines at the same time? One can cancel out the other.

Seems I have reduced Colonel Vijay to silence. But that’s OK, because the SIG is back up and chattering probabilities.

Our best choice is three rockets, apparently. That gives us a seventy-eight per cent chance of removing the wall, with only a thirty-eight per cent chance of killing ourselves. Four rockets would guarantee the wall but total our odds of surviving in one piece.

Two rockets, barely worth discussing.

‘Three,’ I say. ‘Fire the engines at the same time. And then hold us steady.’

The gun wants to tell me this can’t be done and then decides it can. Obviously, such a feat will take brilliance and inhuman levels of skill.

It’s disgustingly smug as it says this.

As I wait for the SIG, a helmet drops from the crewpit roof, so I slot it over my head. Flipping down the visor reduces the pit to a ghostly haze. I have schematics where the bulkheads are. And I’m looking at the hangar outside as if there’s no hull in the way.

‘Not meant to work like that,’ says Emil.

Flipping the visor up, I discover my helmet schematics are also on screen, and the ex-Ninth officer is looking around at the walls of the crewpit in shock.

‘Get used to it,’ says Neen.

———

Every fucking thing in the hangar not nailed down begins moving as the wall blows out and vacuum sucks away what it can. Firing retros, the B79 lurches forward and then reclaims its position.

The troopers closest to the blast are lucky. They die quickly. As do the ones standing behind our engines. It’s the rest who suffer. A roiling wall of flame swallows them for a second, before they’re sucked into space, their lungs rupturing as air is dragged from their bodies.

It is a bad way to go. We know it without needing to see it on screen.

‘Behind us,’ shouts Haze.

Slipping to the left, the B79 shudders as something glances off its side. Retros fire, and we stabilize again. ‘Neat,’ says the SIG. ‘Though I say so myself.’

The vessel it dodged tumbles once, slides sideways and blocks our exit. It’s bigger than we are, a lot bigger. We’re staring at the general’s launch.

Emergency routines are running in the hangar. If a whole hangar has to be sacrificed that’s what will happen. The troopers nearest the exits aren’t stupid, they know that. That is why they’re gripping on for dear life, while scrabbling over one another to get out.

A sergeant fails to make it through a door.

We get one half, from shoulder to knee, which is sucked towards the broken wall. The rest of him disappears inside the elevator. It’s not going anywhere because the lift shafts have already sealed themselves. ‘Clear our way,’ I tell the gun.

‘My pleasure.’

Launching a fourth missile, it fires a fifth just for the hell of it.