The first boat to hit the shingle spills fishermen, who race towards us waving gutting knives and gaffs. The biggest one swings an anchor around his head, with a long loop of chain clanking behind. He’s bearded, bare-chested and huge.
At least as tall as me, and possibly broader. He’s also bald, with his ears bitten down to stumps on both sides of his head. Studded leather bands wrap his wrists and he is wearing a wide belt.
He grins.
I grin harder.
‘All yours,’ says Colonel Vijay.
As the man swings his anchor, I duck, hit the shingle, and come to my feet the moment the anchor whistles overhead. It’s heavy enough to go through anything it hits. Only it doesn’t hit anything. All it does is drag the man’s shoulders round and leaves him off balance.
A punch to the kidneys makes him grunt.
It should have dropped him and left him pissing blood for a week. But he’s strong, and he has that anchor on a back swing. So I drop to a crouch again, as my own weight in steel whistles above my head.
He grins. Legs apart, arms like tree trunks, the idiot grins.
The man has no idea what is going to happen next. He should obviously have spent more time in cheap bars. Clenching my fist, I punch upwards, and put all my anger with Haze into the blow. As my fist connects with his balls, three things happen.
He screams, he vomits, and he lets go the anchor . . .
This spins through the air, watched by his entire group. They should be watching the Aux, but most of the Aux are also watching the anchor, so it doesn’t matter. Although I will be talking to my troopers about that afterwards.
Arcing through the air, it narrowly misses the biggest of the boats our friends have just abandoned. I’m glad. Because that is the one I’m going to steal.
By now my fingers are hooked into the big man’s nostrils and his head is yanked so far back his throat practically calls to the blade in my hand. One look at my eyes tells him the end is close.
‘Sven . . .‘
Yes, sir, I know. Play nice.
Flipping my knife, I hammer its hilt hard into his skull and drop the man to the shingle.
‘Wasn’t quite what I had in mind,’ says Colonel Vijay.
‘You,’ I say, looking at Ajac. ‘Tell them we’re taking their boat.’
Voices rise in protest, and then still as Colonel Vijay reaches into his jacket. ‘Tell them we’ll be paying,’ he says.
An eye painted on her prow helps the MaryAnne know where to go. She’s made from oak and steers with a rudder. Her mast is a fir trunk stripped of branches, and her sail is purple, worn to nothing in places and heavily patched. One good storm will shred it. All the same, it fills with wind.
Ajac keeps the rudder angled. Moving us first one way and then another. I want him to go straight, but clearly sailing doesn’t work like that. It’s an unbelievably stupid way to travel.
Colonel Vijay says I only think this because I grew up in the desert. Since he doesn’t know this from me, he got it from my file or Haze told him. Can’t see any of the others opening their mouths to an officer.
Especially not one related to General Jaxx.
That’s the weird thing about Haze: the stuff that worries normal people doesn’t seem to bother him at all.
Iona and Ajac, on the other hand, are terrified.
Ajac tells me monsters live on the island. Iona insists nothing waits beyond it. That’s real nothing, empty and black. You fall and keep falling for ever. Sounds like a perfect description of space to me. Unfortunately, telling her this doesn’t help.
She doesn’t know what space is.
It hasn’t occurred to her that anything could exist beyond Hekati’s edge, so now she’s even more afraid. ‘You’ll be safe,’ insists Neen.
Iona looks doubtful.
So Neen swaps places with Rachel, who grins and shoots a glance at Haze. Only he’s busy gazing towards the island and his lips are moving. Could be prayer, but it looks more like conversation to me.
‘We’re the Aux,’ Neen explains. ‘We look after our own.’
By the time my sergeant finishes telling Iona why this matters, we’re almost there and she has her head close to his. Ajac is watching, with a resigned smile on his face.
‘Sure she’s not your sister?’ asks Colonel Vijay.
‘My cousin, sir,’ Ajac says. ‘That’s bad enough.’
Iona’s too deep in conversation with Neen to object. Haze is talking faster now, and at my side, I feel a shiver as my gun loads and locks. Either it’s picked up his mood, or it’s reading the same signs.
‘Danger?’ I ask the SIG.
‘Ninety-eight per cent probable . . .’ It hesitates. ‘Ninety-two per cent probable . . . eighty-seven per cent probable . . .’
Counting off percentages, it turns probable into likely and downgrades it to possible as it hits twenty-five per cent and keeps falling. When we hit count zero, the gun flicks clips to celebrate and Haze flashes me a grin screwed up enough to have mothers dragging small children off the streets in their hundreds.
Zero probability of danger? Doesn’t sound possible to me.
Rachel glances up when I call her name.
‘Unwrap that.’
She’s got her Z93z sniper’s rifle wrapped in an old sack against the sea spray, and she has done it without being asked. As I watch, she unrolls the cloth and extracts her stock, checks the bolt mechanism, slots the barrel into place, snaps in a clip and settles the scope.
‘Kill anything that looks dangerous.’
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay.
‘All right,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Kill anything I tell you.’
Haze is staring at me. Now he’s looking like one of those mothers in fear for her child’s safety.
‘What?’ I demand.
He doesn’t know how to say it.
‘Hekati’s intelligent, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Haze nods.
‘Super-intelligent, and peaceful?’
Another nod from Haze.
‘Then we’re not going to have problems, are we?’
And if we do? Well, Rachel’s carrying her Z93z, I have an SW SIG-37 and Franc is already freeing knives so obscure they probably don’t even have names. Except the ones she has given them, obviously.