Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Glass exploded from the stratatoi firing at them, but Nashara wiggled the minigun and the stratatoi bounced off each other to duck for cover. The entire space of the balcony became a flensing cloud of glass flechettes from exploding windows, and Nashara’s stomach strained against the damaging recoil. Tracers lit the end cap up, exposing balconies and windows.

Bullets winged by, cracking the air. But none hit.

The balcony dropped away and a spin began. Nashara let go of the trigger, and the group tumbled on, ropes chafing and cutting skin. The sunline and the dark curves of the habitat spun around them in a dizzying whirl. For a second it felt as if they were falling away from the underside of a giant mountain. But then as Nashara was spun around, they hung at the bottom of a giant vortex of darkness. Tiny specks next to a spire reaching up through the eyewall of darkness into a foggy night, where it disappeared.

She’d felt like this in night parachute jumps, the look of the land as she broke out of the clouds and looked down at the patchwork of land and civilization. People as tiny specks on the landscape she looked down upon them like a god.

A raging forest fire lit up one side of the habitat in odd orange hues. Dried-up lakes looked like gouged-out craters. Empty rivers could be glimpsed at the center of the conflagration. And then hints of towns and cities lurking in the reflection of the fire cast from the undersides of dirty black smoke clouds that drifted up and out over the land, starting to spiral down the length of the habitat due to Coriolis forces.

“Just close your eyes, Jared, keep them closed,” Kara whispered. “Just keep them closed.”

Nashara closed her own as well for a second after sizing up the rate of rotation. She could see a cloud of spent casings slowly dispersing on her left, falling away from them.

Then she opened her eyes again and pulled out the small machine gun and began firing. Shots to her left, then down, then down again, right slightly, all timed to the sunline’s flashing by her field of vision.

It all slowed down, each flip coming gently, until finally she righted them, then used another few shots to orient herself back down the sunline.

She estimated that she’d gotten them up to seventy kilometers an hour, but from their perspective it felt as if the group fell slowly down the giant spire toward an inky bottom.

Stratatoi followed them, a perfect circle of figures in the air, their backs to her, firing their machine guns to chase them.

“Think they go catch up?” Ijjy asked. They had pulled well away from the balcony in the last couple minutes; it dwindled into a morass of other smaller windows that clustered around the sunline. Farther out, as the apparent gravity increased, ruined gardens on careful slopes dotted the outer rims, along with walkways. Four minutes down, twenty or so to go, Nashara thought.

“I don’t see any other miniguns, they’re using light machine guns.” Nashara slitted her eyes. “Carrying clips, so maybe five hundred rounds max. Lighter caliber, lighter bullet speed. I’d say they could get going just a little bit faster than fifty or sixty kilometers an hour if they save ammo to stop.”

“The Satrap doesn’t care about their lives,” Kara said.

“If they use up all their ammo they could catch up, yes,” Nashara said.

“So how you go solve that?”

“The kids facing forward?”

“Yeah,” Sean said.

Nashara settled the minigun against her midsection again, wincing. The skin there had bruised. The stratatoi scrabbled in the air as the roar started. All five of them jerked around as Nashara swept the minigun around in a precise cone of fire. Red clouds of blood burst out from the stratatoi. Nashara made a face.

Again they spiraled out of control. The dim glow of the sunline got closer as they veered toward it.

“The sunline!”

“I see it, I see it,” Nashara muttered. She pulled out the small machine gun and fired off in its direction.

It wasn’t enough. She used the minigun again, and it howled. They changed course, and then Nashara pointed it back at the stratatoi and fired it again. The sunline blurred above them.

“Moving quick,” Sean said. A bit faster than ninety kilometers an hour, yes. But the nearest stratatoi had been killed. Limp in a spreading cloud of their own blood, they fell behind.

Nashara relaxed in the crude harness and watched the end cap fade into the inky dark. She listened to the distant burst of gunfire from stratatoi working on catching up. It sounded like popcorn for several minutes, and she used the firefly sparks of the muzzle flashes to track how many and how fast. Several bursts from the light machine gun emptied her clip for another few kilometers per hour added, and she swapped it out.

Fifteen minutes to go.

At the balcony, now just a tiny, toy like piece of the end cap, a section of the sunline vented steam and fire, then lit up. The whole end cap reappeared five miles behind them.

“Kara, is it morning yet?” Nashara shouted. “Because the sunline is turning on.”

“No, it shouldn’t be doing that yet.”

Crap. Nashara handed the minigun to Ijjy as another section of the sunline lit up. It silhouetted a new cloud of stratatoi with its brilliance.

“The Satrap is going to try and burn us out of the sky,” Nashara said. If they moved far enough away from the sunline, the pressure of the moving air inside the habitat would act just like gravity, speeding them up to match the spin and dashing them to the ground.

And six of the stratatoi were catching up, the dots of black growing in size compared to the general cloud. They had a machine gun in each hand and clips of ammo hanging like necklaces around them.

Nashara waited for a minute as another section of the sunline vented steam and lit up, then fired a burst with the machine gun. One down, another limp body tumbling through the air. Nashara fired to correct the motion started from that.

A second burst as they grew in size.

The four now still alive spun around to face her.

“How we doing?” Sean asked.

“They’re getting close.”

Gunfire cracked past them. Nashara fired again. Three. Again. Two and one. The lone man whipped past them as he replaced the clip in his gun.

“Ijjy, Sean!”

Both men fired pistols at the same time as the man fired the machine gun. Kara screamed. “Jared!”

“Get him?” Nashara asked.

“Yes,” Sean said. “But he got the little boy.” Kara kept screaming.

“Easy, easy,” Ijjy whispered. A stream of blood trickled by Nashara’s left. She heard him rip fabric, and the blood stopped trickling by.

Kara sobbed and both Ijjy and Sean shifted.

“How bad?” Nashara whispered.

“Bad enough,” Sean whispered back. “Got it stopped, wrapping it up, but we got to get to that ship quick now.”

Nashara still looked back at the sunline, lighting up section by section, another cloud of stratatoi popping their way toward them. “Ten minutes.”

Another section of the sunline vented and lit up. It was going to catch them at the same time as the stratatoi. Tinny, distant screams from stragglers reached them. A third of the habitat was lit up, shadows cast from tall buildings.

Nashara fired the minigun and felt one of her ribs crack. She ignored the pain and let the gun continue, just another few seconds, then stopped. “That’s as fast as we dare go.” In fact, slightly more.

“Half the ammo gone?”

“Yes.” She opened the ammo box floating in the air by her. It had been reduced by half. Smoke from the minigun streamed back as they flew on. The air around the barrels rippled from heat.

Nashara watched another section of the sunline come on and licked her lips.