Vengeance (4 page)

Three new stars winked into existence in the sky to the north. Bright spots, moving rapidly against the silky back cloth of the night sky.

“Dammit,” Price said.

“They’ll see us for sure,” The Tsar said.

“We gotta move,” Wall said.

“Move where?” Barnard asked.

“Raise the sail,” Price said.

“But …” The Tsar began.

“Just raise it,” Price snapped. “There’s no time to argue.”

Wall and Barnard were already pulling on the sheets. The sail rustled as it rose up and the air pressed into it.

“Monster, can you get us across in front of the ship?” Price asked.

“Can try,” Monster said.

“Then tack behind it,” Price said.

It was going to be close, whatever happened. The derelict, smouldering ship was almost upon them, but the air patrol was coming in fast.

The yacht was moving now but not quickly enough, Price could see that. The ship was too close, the bow cutting through the water directly at them. The yacht was only just beginning to accelerate.

“We’re not going to make it,” Wall said.

“We have to make it,” Price said.

“We’re not going to,” Wall said.

The ship seemed so close that Price could almost reach out and touch it. A large black hull, unlit, blotting out the stars, the water splitting into two dense swells at the vee of the bow. The superstructure was gone. What was left was a twisted, smoking skeleton. The hull was scorched but intact.

The clean ocean breeze was tainted by an acrid stench of burning oil and metal, and something else that Price didn’t want to think about.

Closer it came, heading directly at them. The yacht seemed sluggish; too late Price realised that the ship was blocking their wind. Their sails were limp. The yacht was moving, but barely. And still on came the ship, and so too did the three moving lights in the sky to the east, growing brighter all the time. In just a few seconds they would be like a rabbit caught in headlights. And about to become roadkill.

“Brace yourselves!” Price called, as the metal bow of the ship bore down on them. “Brace yourselves!”

“This ain’t good!” Wall shouted.

“Monster, get us out of this!” Price called out, unnecessarily. He was doing his best.

She glanced up at the oncoming aircraft then back to see the metal edge that was the bow of the ship towering above her, rising up, prior to crashing down and surely pulverising them in the process. She shut her mouth and held her breath to stop herself from screaming.

But, in a small miracle, it was the ship itself that saved them: the pressure wave of the hull puffing into their sails, pushing them forwards and away, just a small nudge, but enough that the surging bow wave lifted them, pushing them over and through. The yacht leaned, over and over, until Price was sure it would capsize, but then suddenly righted itself.

As it did, Monster spun the wheel, and there was a crunching sound as the side of the yacht rammed hard up against the metal side of the ship.

The whole area flooded with light, but that only made the shadow around them, in the lee of the ship, seem even darker. And the light lasted only a second. The air filled with sound, so loud it seemed solid, and the tailjets of three Bzadian jets clawed glowing strips across the sky just above their heads. Now the aircraft were rising, the floodlights snapping off, leaving them in darkness.

“Accelerate to maximum speed,” Zane said.

His attention was no longer on his cameras. The ship and the strange signal on the thermal imaging were all but forgotten. He was staring at his threat scope.

In the time it had taken them to fly over the ship, the six blips that were enemy aircraft had halved the distance between them.

“Enemy aircraft speed estimated at mach 5.” Shelz’ah sounded frightened.

Zane didn’t blame her. He was starting to get a little uneasy himself. “They don’t have anything that fast,” he said.

“They do now,” Nikoz said.

The three Razers were already accelerating and climbing. As they regained supersonic speed, he saw a vapour cone appear like a fuzzy circular disc around Nikoz’s and Shelz’ah’s tailfins, and he knew the same was around his own. There was no sound though. When you were travelling faster than sound you could not hear the sonic boom you created. Nikoz and Shelz’ah stayed in formation at his wingtips.

Zane keyed his radio. “Coastal Defence Command, this is Patrol Echo Three Four.”

“Go ahead, Patrol Echo Three Four.”

“We are under attack by unknown human aircraft. Something new. Travelling at hypersonic speeds. We are inbound at max power but would appreciate a little help here.”

“Understood, Echo Three Four, routing an air defence wing in your direction.”

Zane breathed a small sigh of relief. Their backup was on its way. All they had to do was stay out of reach of the humans for a few more minutes and the six-on-three odds would be turned on their head. His airspeed indicator passed mach 3.

“Thirty kilometres and closing,” Shelz’ah said. Her voice was not steady. “Enemy speed estimated at mach 6 and still climbing.”

Mach 6 and climbing! Zane checked his scope. These new human planes were catching up as if the patrol was standing still.

“Twenty-five kilometres,” Shelz’ah said.

“Azoh! We’re not going to outrun them,” Nikoz said. “We’re going to have to turn and fight.”

He was right. They wouldn’t reach the safety of their air cover in time. Not by a long shot.

“We’re not going to turn,” Zane said. “Oh my mark, switch power to your reverse thrusters. We’ll slow right down, launch countermeasures and let them zip right by. See if they can outrun a rocket.”

“They’re coming right at us!” Nikoz yelled. “Twenty kilometres. Eighteen!”

“Why aren’t they firing?” Shelz’ah asked.

Zane didn’t have an answer. The enemy jets were well within missile range.

“Why aren’t they firing?” Nikoz repeated Shelz’ah’s words.

“Keep it together,” Zane said.

“Azoh! Azoh! Azoh!” Nikoz was panicking now. “We gotta get out of here. I’m breaking left.”

“No!” Zane said. “Stay together, combine countermeasures.” If the three planes stayed in a group, their air-defence systems would work together to defeat whatever missiles the humans could throw at them.

“We just need to keep them off us until the backup gets here,” Shelz’ah said.

Shelz’ah, the rookie, was the calm one, Zane thought. Nikoz, the veteran, was the one who was losing it. Maybe that was because he had never been in this situation before. It was different when you had the upper hand.

“Get ready to slam on the brakes,” Zane said. “In three, two, one … now!”

He switched all power to his reverse thrusters. His craft shuddered as its speed dropped away, mach 3, mach 2 …

He saw the human planes flash past overhead. They were small, with narrow wings both above and below the fuselage. Biplanes. There were four tailfins like a rocket, shrouded in the mist of a supersonic vapour cone. Whatever they were, they were like no other human craft he had ever seen. The sky went crazy. The clear air exploded with the violent energy of multiple, overlapping sonic booms, close by. His plane was wrenched from side to side and up and down. His instruments went haywire.

As he fought for control of his craft, he heard Shelz’ah yell, “Incoming! Breaking right!”

Zane checked behind and saw nothing. And then, in the last few seconds of his life, he realised.

The missiles were not behind him. They were in front. The human planes had reverse fired missiles as they had passed, launching them at almost point-blank range.

Shelz’ah’s plane turned to the right, deploying countermeasures. Zane launched his own and flung his unresponsive plane after her. Nikoz had broken left.

He opened his mouth to speak but it became a scream as Shelz’ah’s Razer turned from a sleek predator of the sky into a jagged ball of flame. Half a second later, so did Zane’s.

“Boo-yah,” Wall said, watching three flaming stars trailing down the sky.

“Tide beginning to turn,” Monster said.

“Damn right,” Price said. “They’ve had it all their way for far too long. Now the shoe’s on the other foot.”

“No. I mean tide beginning to turn,” Monster said. “Need to get moving. We must getting into bay before low tide.”

“Okay, we’re out of here,” Price said.

The yacht was so close to the hull of the patrol ship that it seemed to be glued there. Now it peeled off, and the burnt-out ship quickly left them behind, bouncing and tossing in its wake. Out of its wind shadow, their sails filled once again and the yacht began to move, turning back to the east.

The wind turned with the tide, in their favour, flicking around behind them and skimming them across the wave tops like a pebble across a river. Price looked back at the smoking hulk of the ghost ship as it slipped away to the south, plodding its mindless way on a voyage to nowhere.

They had survived, but only by luck and the grace of the scream jets. Should they have raised their sails earlier? Was she being too cautious? Price felt a little sick. She could have got them all killed. She wished someone else, anyone else, was in charge of this mission. But that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t back out now.

She looked up at the sky as the scream jets passed back overhead, unseen, but unmistakable with the overlapping thunder of their sonic booms. She waved a hand in salute and thanks, knowing it would not be seen.

A contented sigh came from the back of the boat and she turned to see The Tsar standing at the railing, peeing off the stern.

“Tsar, you’re all class,” Barnard said.

Price smiled and turned back to the front of the boat. With the wind behind them she could no longer smell the land, but it was there. The huge landmass that the aliens called “New Bzadia” but humans still called “Australia”.

At least they were back on track.

They had an important package to deliver.

[0230 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[BZADIAN CONGRESS, CANBERRA]

The war had been good to Colonel Nokz’z. Mostly.

Had it not been for the war he would have had nothing. He would have
been
nothing. He was under no illusion of that. At first they had said there would be no war, but there was war and when the war started they needed Nokz’z, or at least people like Nokz’z.

Brutality did not come naturally to the Bzadian species. It had once, but that was a very long time ago. War, violence, bloodshed, it had all disappeared over the centuries as their world had evolved. Bzadia had become a safer, gentler place. A dull, boring place, in Nokz’z opinion. Without death, or the threat of death, what was life? Just a meaningless cycle, the same day over and over and over again.

Weapons had gradually crumbled or been dismantled, existing only as curiosities in museums. Discussion was preferred over argument. Diplomacy over fighting. But to prepare for migration to a savage, violent world, Bzadians had been forced to rediscover their history. Warrior personalities, once reviled, were now revered.

Nokz’z considered himself a throwback to a glorious time. If not for people like him, they would have no chance against the barbarians that inhabited this planet called Earth.

Bzadia needed people who could do what he could do. Who would do what he was prepared to do. He was not like the others, Nokz’z knew that. He took pleasure in things that would horrify most of his kind. He knew that he was despised by many of his associates. But they tolerated him. They needed him. He told himself they secretly admired him and what he did, although he was too smart to really believe that.

Some of his compatriots felt sympathy for the humans, considering them noble savages who would eventually come to accept and tolerate Bzadian rule. To Nokz’z they were vermin, pests, and he was the exterminator.

But he did not tolerate failure, especially not in himself. And what had happened in the Bering Strait could be called nothing less. A small team of scumbugz, disguised as Bzadians, had disrupted the carefully laid plan for the invasion of the Americas. On the precipice of success, their million-strong army had been stopped in its tracks by four or five humans. Not just humans, children!