Resolution (66 page)

But Kian was still interfaced with the ship. Even as he joined forces with Dirk in containing the device’s murderous system commands, he pulsed internal directives through the control cabin’s emergency processors, activating catastrophe-procedures in sequences that had never been envisaged by the engineers who built the vessel, executing protocols that should be impossible while engines were firing up.

Underneath the wing, an access hatch snapped open.

I’ve got it, Dirk.

His grip tightened against metal as he sensed his brother move.

An emergency TDV, orange lights flashing, came hurtling from a maintenance bay.

Behind it, fire tenders and other stragglers followed.

The wing was too high to jump at but Dirk could see the thing now, a white boxlike presence that did not belong, fastened by electromagnets to the main conduits; and that was no problem at all. A tug, a redirection of power, and the magnets became inert.

The white box dropped.

Got you.

Dirk caught it - damn, it was heavy! - but he held on, not dropping it, sensing that there were internal pulse-explosives ready to blow: the saboteurs had not relied solely on the ship’s own engines blowing apart under misdirection.

The TDV screeched to a halt beside him.

The driver, a round-faced man stained with grease, poked his head out. ‘Hey pal, you OK?’

‘Get away!’ Dirk swung the white box and himself onto the TDV’s flat bed. ‘Get us the hell away from here!’

‘Bozhe moi,
you got it!’

The vehicle spun on the spot, accelerated at a forty-five-degree angle away from the runway and control tower both, heading for the boundary and open desert.

Moved faster.

Kian’s first impulse was to slide down from the ship and try to get to the ground, but the TDV with Dirk aboard was two hundred metres away and still accelerating.

And there was a faint uneasiness born not of natural senses but his interface with the ship’s long-range sensor loops.

‘Sweet bleeding hell.’

Kian frowned, concentrated.

Below the wing, the access hatch snapped back up, locked into place once more.

‘Move it, move it.’

Kian pulled himself back into the cabin, not needing to see the scarlet ellipse flaring in the display to know that something big was coming. Something from the sky.

Two
ellipses.

‘Oh, God.’

The overhead hatch thumped down and his chair was morphing, grasping him like a gloved fist as the brakes came free and the great bronze ship began to roll.

At the boundary the TDV braked, its thermoacoustic motor whining to a halt. Dirk stood on the flat bed with one foot on either side of the white box, squatted down to grab it, back straight.

‘You all right up there, pal?’

Dirk braced himself...

‘If you want, I could—’

... lifted and swung, and the box made a short arcing drop, thudded into the ground.

In Dirk’s obsidian eyes, the yellow lights shifted, formed complex patterns.

‘Take us back,’ he called down to the driver. ‘Don’t hang around.’

‘Bozhe moi!’

The sudden lurch toppled Dirk so he fell on his side, but the glow remained in his eyes, and his gaze stayed fixed on the white box receding in the TDV’s wake.

In the control tower, Deirdre and the crew were frozen, staring at the events taking place below, only half-understanding them.

Then something - a rustle of cloth, the scent of fear - caused her to turn and see Solly backing away towards the exit, jowls trembling, mouth open like a landed fish, his face layered with shining sweat.

‘I... I d-d-didn’t w-w—’

Deirdre took two long silent strides forward.

And swung her foot into Solly’s groin.

In the rattling TDV, Dirk judged the distance was great enough.

He lowered his head.

BANG!

The flat hard sound smacked the air. Screeching, the TDV curved to a halt.

Black, stinking smoke belched from the twisted white remains: the bomb.

But Dirk was staring up into the sky, to the small dark point high above the horizon that grew visibly larger as he watched its diving trajectory towards the runway.

He snapped around to see Kian’s bronze ship begin to move.

Get out of here.

The strange vessel was more than a point now. Its configuration was alien, growing larger.

A Zajinet?

Come on, Kian. Get out of here.

The younger controllers sat on top of Solly’s squirming bulk until security officers came and fastened his wrists and ankles with smart-rubber bindings, while Bratko gave Solly’s ribs a kick which everyone pretended not to see.

But the alarms that sounded next indicated a new ship coming in high and fast, and there was no reason to expect an UNSA vessel. Sabotage had failed, and someone or something was shifting to the direct approach.

Deirdre stumbled back towards the tinted window.

The bronze ship with Kian inside was moving faster on the runway, gathering speed for take-off.