When our excitement at breaking through the force field fades, Colonel Vijay suggests I say a few words. And I agree that words need saying for Franc, but I am sick of the soldier’s prayer. Sick of reciting, Sleep well and a better life next time.
Done it once for Franc already. I owe her more than that.
We all do.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Met Franc on a battlefield. Didn’t expect her to live out the day. Didn’t expect her to keep the rank of corporal. Never met a better cook. Never met anyone better with-’
A knife, I want to say.
Only the kyp’s begun shitting in my throat.
And the tug’s crewpit loses focus as a vicious wave of emotion washes over me. Not my emotion, I know that. I’ll do sorrow for Franc. I’ll do respect, because she deserves it. But I won’t do panic.
‘Sir,’ says Haze.
‘What? ‘ Got my voice back.
‘You might want to look at this.’
Tapping a screen, he cuts the focus to bring Hekati closer. The engines on Victory First Last and Always glow with heat. I don’t mean its boosters, because this isn’t about shifting position or running a routine to check the coils still work. The fucker’s coming after us.
Eight nozzles, each the size of a cathedral dome, begin to shimmer with flame. The web of tubes lashing the Silver Fist mother ship to Hekati’s ring is still in place. As we watch, they begin snapping. And the sheer force of those engines tips the habitat out of true.
A torus is strong, but no engineer has allowed for this.
The panic I can feel comes from Hekati herself, and Iona can feel it too. That’s when I realize she’s precog. ‘Stop them,’ she begs. ‘Please. Do something.’
‘He won’t,’ says Ajac. ‘He caused this.’
Neen dumps the unconscious boy into a chair and abandons him without a glance. And, rubbing my fist, I decide Ajac will learn. He’s Aux now. It’s not as if he has anywhere else to go.
Looking at Neen, Iona says, ‘Hekati wants our help.’
‘You can talk to her?’
The girl shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I feel it here.’ She touches a fist to her heart, which tightens her tunic, and makes her breasts look bigger still.
Neen has trouble meeting her gaze.
And Shil’s shooting daggers at me, as if this is somehow my fault. But I’m busy thinking about what Iona said. Hekati wants our help.
We’re a Z-class mining tug. Slow, if good at manoeuvring. We have harpoons and a drilling laser. All our explosives went with Franc. Even if we manoeuvre over there before the Victory First finishes ripping itself free . . .
What do we fight it with?
Handguns?
‘Incoming message,’ says Haze.
In place of Hekati, we get a nine-braid.
A brigadier stands beside him. He was Death’s Head once. Ninth Regiment, the emperor’s own. Although it’s been a while since he was anything I would consider Death’s Head.
Colonel Vijay steps forward. But I’m already there.
‘A snakehead and a traitor,’ I say. ‘What a pair . . . You know,’ I add, looking at the brigadier, ‘you’re a fucking disgrace to that uniform.’
Opening his mouth, he shuts it at a glare from the nine-braid. Seems I should have insulted him first. The slight wasn’t intentional, but I am delighted all the same.
‘Surrender,’ says the braid.
He has a hundred and fifty dead, thirty-five missing Z7x fighters and an epsilon-class hole in his mother ship. We tricked his three-braid with a false surrender, and we fucked his systems destroying that force field.
And still he claims we can surrender.
Just how stupid does he think we are? Turning to Colonel Vijay, I say, ‘You want to do this bit, sir?’
He smiles at me. ‘Sven,’ he says, ‘you’re doing fine.’
Turning back, I look at their commander. He’s smaller than most Enlightened I’ve seen. A shock of metal braids sweeps back from his forehead and falls onto his shoulders. I can see shining bits of skull where the virus has turned his scalp to shell. He’s bare-chested, because braids are always bare-chested. No one has come up with a jacket that fits someone already wearing a bathroom’s worth of piping. His weathered face watches me examine him. And when I’m finished, his gaze holds mine so tightly it takes an effort not to look away.
‘Your name?’ I say.
The nine-braid stares at me.
‘It’s just,’ I tell him, ‘I like to know who I’m going to kill.’
He sneers. An Enlightened’s contempt for the rest of us. ‘We will crush you,’ he says, and I’m glad. It means we have all that shit about surrendering out of the way.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay, keeping his voice low. ‘Is this going anywhere?’
‘Want his name, sir.’
‘For when you kill him?’
I nod.
The colonel sighs. Seems the braid isn’t amused either. Glaring at me, he says, ‘Your deaths will be painful.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s a promise.’
There has to be a class somewhere to teach these people. Or perhaps they come out of the egg like that. He scowls and I grin, because this is more fun than I thought it would be. And then I remember Hekati, and it stops being funny.
‘Let me see the habitat,’ I demand.
Haze and the SIG scramble to put it on screen.
Between them, they clear our screens of the nine-braid’s face, and throw up pictures of Hekati instead. Some are taken from a comm sat, a few from inside the habitat, and one from Victory First itself.
They all show variations on the same thing.
The lines lashing the Silver Fist mother ship to Hekati are gone. The fat tube stealing Hekati’s air now bleeds into empty space. Water roars from the end of a broken pipe to split into a million droplets that separate, join, and separate again. Inside the habitat itself, high winds have risen to rip trees from the valley floor and scour grit from the mountainsides.
Only there is worse. Far worse.
A slab of Hekati’s outer shell the size of Zabo Square is missing where the Victory First ripped her anchor free. Multi-legged bots crowd the wound, but there is little they can do except kill themselves trying to mend a hole that cannot be mended.
‘Oh shit,’ says Haze.
Lining the hole is rubble and steel mesh as thick as trees. The mesh is broken, and rocks the size of Farlight cathedral tumble into space as the habitat revolves. Vast asteroids returning to the belt. Hekati is losing more than her air and water. She’s losing bits of her ballast. ‘Too late to surrender,’ says the colonel.
He sees my look.
‘Can’t save Hekati now.’
It hadn’t occurred to me we could.