On the coast, you can tell that Hekati is artificial. It’s hard to ignore a shoreline that rises away from you. Up here, where outcrops and peaks shorten the horizon, we can go whole days thinking we’re somewhere real.
High on a mountain dawn is turning the rocks pink. And a warm wind is chasing away the night’s cold. It is a beautiful morning. Obviously enough, I am doing my best to ruin it for our new arrivals.
Want to see metal melt like wax? Use a SIG-37 with cinder capacity. It makes most plasma rifles look as efficient as trying to melt sheet steel with a candle. Burning the fleas back to silvery puddles creates a rivulet of molten metal that ignites thorn bushes and dry bracken as it dribbles downhill towards a ditch.
‘Pretty,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘But you’re-’
‘Wait, sir.’
Scrambling from the ditch, a mercenary takes a direct hit from my left. The slug ricochets off the armour on his shoulder, but that’s not the point. He’s rattled. Hitting dirt, he rolls behind a rock. If he has any sense, he’ll stay there.
‘Sir.’ Neen’s gaze flicks from me to the colonel.
‘What?’
‘Haze, sir . . . He’s worried.’
My sergeant is in a difficult position. Haze isn’t paid to worry. In fact, I’m not sure he is paid at all. He was probably conscripted on the basis of food, shelter and all the ammunition one man can fire.
‘Not surprised,’ I say, nodding towards what remains of the pods. ‘Listening to that lot melt must hurt his head.’
Now it is Colonel Vijay’s turn to look worried. ‘Those were AI?’
‘Semi AI at the most, sir.’
One mercenary faces me. The other faces Rachel, who has them both locked down. ‘Your choice,’ I tell the gun.
An over blast lights the dawn sky like a gigantic firework.
The SIG-37 places its shot perfectly. Anyone else, and we’d’ve been down there scooping up chopped meat, if we could be bothered. As it is . . . When the explosion clears, a merc sticks his rifle round a rock and shoots back.
‘Ceramic carapace,’ says the SIG, making it sound obscene.
Jumping fleas, full-body armour, a blind refusal to know where they are outnumbered . . . Now why does that sound familiar?
Neen still wants my attention.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘What’s Haze worried about?’
My sergeant hesitates. That tells me I’m not going to like it. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘Haze tapped into Hekati’s AI. Didn’t mean to. It just happened. And while he was tapped in . . .’
I’ll give Haze just happened.
Firing off a shot, I duck as a mercenary fires back. They’re harder to kill than fagan lizards. Of course, you need to know what a fagan lizard is for that to make sense. ‘And while Haze was locked in . . . ?’
‘He piggybacked the sky cams. There are Silver Fist coming this way.’
I grin.
‘That’s not good, sir.’
‘ Why not? ‘
‘Sir,’ he says. ‘With respect, sir. We left our supplies back at camp. On Colonel Vijay’s orders. So we could travel light.’
‘What did you leave, exactly?’
‘Tents, sir. Food, sir. Most of the ammunition.’
‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, now . . .’
Punching a superior officer is a capital offence. Almost everything in this army is. It’s worse if he’s a staff officer. Then they shoot you, patch you up and shoot you all over again. Otherwise, everyone would do it.
But I’m still not going to take it out on Neen.
Seeing my anger, Colonel Vijay stays out of range. If he had any sense he would know just how close he is to being fragged by his own side. But he has all the sense of a blind kitten. Women probably find him sweet.
Me, I just want to pull the pin on a grenade.
‘Stay here, sir.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To tell the others to stop wasting ammo.’
A couple of seconds later, our rifles fall silent. A second or so after that, the mercenaries do the same. With luck, we destroyed their supplies when we hit those pods.
‘Haze,’ I say, ‘you jacked into Hekati’s system?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he says. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Why?’ I demand.
‘Can’t help it, sir . . .’ He must know how stupid that sounds.
‘What did you discover?’
‘Accessed the schematics, sir. She keeps track of all transport moving inside her torus. She always has done, there used to be seven and a half million-’
He sees my face and skips the lecture.
‘Transport?’
‘A Hex-Seven, sir.’
An X7i landing craft? On Hekati’s sea?
‘And a copter, sir. It’s shielded.’
The Hex-Seven is irrelevant. We are miles from the coast. Anything that happens here will be over before its crew arrive. But the copter . . .
‘You know where it is?’ I ask Haze.
He shakes his head.
‘Find out.’
‘Sir,’ he says, ‘that means . . .’
This boy isn’t a natural soldier. He isn’t a natural anything. Haze is a braid on the wrong side. Given half a chance, the Silver Fist will slice my throat, rip out my implant if only I had one, and poke their way through what is left of my brain. What they will do to Haze is far worse.
And yet he’s still sticking in there. That is courage of a kind.
‘Oh fuck,’ Haze says. He’s talking to himself. ‘They’re watching us . . .’ Scrabbling for his pad, he flips it open and flicks his fingers across its surface without glancing down.
‘Permission to request help, sir?’
Help? I’d ask Haze where he thinks we’re going to get help, but he’s gone back to his pad and is scrabbling frantically at its keys. So I nod, realize he can’t see, and say, ‘Permission granted.’
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you. Thank you . . .’ Takes me a moment to realize he’s not talking to me.
In the distance, a tiny explosion lights the side of our mountain.
A few seconds later, there is another.
Then another.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Colonel Vijay.
We ignore him.
‘See them?’ I ask Neen, who hands me his field-glasses. I don’t need binoculars to know what is happening. Low-level lenz, the tiny comm-sat cameras that act as eyes for an advancing army, are dropping like hail into the valley below.
It is time we left.
Keeping our heads down, we make it to a stone hut before a copter skims overhead, heading for where the mercenaries still are.
An Uplift trooper hangs from the hatch, a machine gun resting on his knee. A heat sensor hangs under the copter’s body. Watching them go, I’m grateful the sun’s already made the slate roof hotter than we are.
A minute or so later a battle starts behind us.
Silver Fist, meet the Mercenaries. Mercenaries, meet the Silver Fist .
A belt-fed opens up and then falls silent. Grenades echo so loudly that pebbles trickle down the valley sides. I know how to read gunfire. Whoever the mercenaries are, they’re going down hard and taking a dozen Silver Fist with them.
It’s brutal, but the conclusion is foregone. As mortars drown out small-arms fire, a belt-fed opens up one final time. When it stops, it’s from choice.
A single shot brings silence.
Neen says the soldier’s prayer. All any of us can hope for.
Shouldering our weapons, we crest a ridge, switch tracks and begin the climb to a higher valley. Thorns drag at our legs and sweat dries before it has time to bead on our skin. The sun beats down and the wind is hot.
‘Our supplies,’ says Colonel Vijay.
‘Lost, sir.’
He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it again.
‘We should stop soon,’ he says finally.
He is afraid to make it a direct order in case I disobey. He’s not sure what he will do if that happens. I am, he’ll do nothing. And his instinct is right. If he tells me to go back for the supplies or to stop this march, I’ll frag him where he stands.
‘Soon, sir,’ I say.
‘Good,’ he says, as if we’ve reached some agreement. A few hours later, he suggests stopping again. This time I don’t even bother to answer.