David Gunn - Maximum Offence

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.

It moves slowly, the enlightened mother ship, the gap between Hekati and our enemy seeming to remain the same, although our sensors say it is widening. A Z7x fighter is fast, but with shit range. Victory First can follow to the other edge of the galaxy and beyond. We can’t outrun it once its engines hit full power, and we can’t outshoot it. All we have going for us is a head start. And that is not going to last us long.

‘Asteroid belt,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘We’ll hide there.’

‘Sir,’ I say, ‘they’ve got enough firepower to turn the belt to dust.’

‘And us with it,’ adds the SIG.

The colonel grins sourly. ‘So much for that idea.’

‘We could try U/Free space.’ Haze is right, we could . . .

Only Paper Osamu won’t be happy if we come trailing an Enlightened ship behind us, and General Jaxx will be furious. Any sentence passed by court martial on one of us is passed on the others. Little point getting home, only to be executed for treason. We need a better plan.

‘Hekati’s dying,’ says Haze.

‘Sven?’ Colonel Vijay says.

‘Thinking, sir.’

My gun snorts.

I’ve seen battle, I’ve killed. This is different. It’s genocide , which is a term I’ve only heard the U/Free use. But it sounds right for destroying a habitat and killing those inside. Hekati wants our help . I run Iona’s words again.

And we want Hekati’s . . .

‘Back through the ring,’ I order. ‘And take us out to the belt.’ To his credit, Colonel Vijay says nothing when I steal his plan.

‘Make it fast,’ I tell Haze. To Shil, I say, ‘Arm the harpoons.’

She scowls at me.

‘It’s what we’ve got,’ I say. ‘Only take the bloody tethers off first.’ The last thing we need is to drag some wounded Z7x in our wake. Assuming we’re still around to hit one.

‘And the drilling laser,’ I tell Neen. ‘Put that on standby.’

Hekati’s hub is so badly out of true we scrape an inside edge, shattering a sheet of glass higher than the tallest building in Farlight, because the hub is only small compared to the habitat itself. We shudder as we hit, my SIG feathers the retros and we are through.

The asteroid belt waits ahead.

Also behind us is the vast bulk of the mother ship, turning as fast as its boosters will allow. We’ve long since lost the braid. He broke audio as soon as he realized we’d stopped listening to him. Braids hate that.

I mean, most people hate being ignored, except me. I’m happiest in my own company. But braids take it personally. It pisses them off when lower species don’t know their place. And ours is out here in the belt.

‘Fighters,’ Neen says.

Three of them, coming in tight. Not the cleverest of formations.

‘Take them all,’ I say.

Our mining laser is meant to crack rock. So it’s not subtle. That makes it hard to aim and crude, but it’s still a laser and one of the Z7xs comes apart with a satisfying flash. It’s good luck that makes it wipe out the other two as it explodes.

‘Those harpoons ready?’

‘Yes, sir,’ says Shil, her voice clipped. If she’s afraid, it is well under control.