David Gunn - Maximum Offence

She’s quick.

Already aware of what I am asking.

You’re dying , I tell her. Your shell is ripped and your mirrors are broken. You cannot stop what is happening. When you die, those you protect will die .

The fact Hekati doesn’t disagree tells me she knows it.

Why let them suffer in darkness? I say. There is a kinder way . . . I feed her the memory of my blade sliding beneath Franc’s ribs.

‘Death or glory,’ I tell the colonel.

He smiles, realizes I mean it and loses the smile. You don’t need to be Haze to work out which of these is more likely.

‘Endgame?’ he asks me.

‘Yes, sir,’ I say.

‘Carry on.’

Firing up the drive, the SIG charts our quickest route into the asteroid belt. We have a hundred fighters looping in a circle towards us but we can reach the belt before they reach us if we burn everything we have.

‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Kill anything that gets in our way. Use the lasers.’

He salutes.

‘Shil . . .’

She looks at me. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘About what, sir?’

The fact you were captured. The sheer bloody mess in which we find ourselves. The fact people don’t always like chaos, and I forget that.

‘Ilseville,’ I say.

Shouldn’t have said some of the things I said to her there. Shil almost shrugs, and then catches herself. ‘I’m sorry too, sir.’ Sounds like she means it.

‘Refasten the harpoon ropes.’

Saluting, she turns on her heel and leaves the crewpit. I send Rachel and Emil after her with orders to calibrate the harpoon guns. I have no idea what it means, but the SIG assures me it’s necessary.

‘Haze . . .’

He turns, face slick with sweat.

‘You all right?’

He takes a deep breath, steadies himself. ‘Yes, sir,’ he says. ‘The braid knows you talked to Hekati. He doesn’t know what you said.’ There’s something envious in his gaze. I’ve talked direct to a habitat.

The timing on this is going to be tight.

An asteroid field waits. A few minutes for us, and fifteen seconds for a Z7x, running at half speed. But fighters are short-burst machines, and we are luring them away from their mother ship. Plus the visible edge of the field might be ahead, but we’re already passing into its margins. An area that contains dust and grit. Even tiny slivers of rock will kill you if they hit you fast enough.

Hekati . . .

No answer.

Just rage and sadness.

And a slow burn in a power core that once kept mirrors angled to the ring and air scrubbers working, and tides running around a ring world, when physics says this was impossible.

When that core blows, it is going to destroy everything in its path including us; unless we can hide ourselves behind something big enough to protect us from its blast. And the only thing big enough out here is an asteroid. Of course, to be protected, we’re going to have to tie ourselves to the asteroid first.

‘Sir-’ says Haze.

‘I know.’

Leaving him standing there, I go to find Rachel and Shil. They’re in an observation bubble slung below the tug’s nose. That’s how old this craft is. The glass is thick, though its radiation shielding is worn and dust has frosted the bubble enough to make the emptiness beyond look grey not black.

Our ship twists once.

‘A fighter,’ says Neen, his voice echoing from a wall speaker.

‘Status?’ I demand.

‘All clear,’ he says.

What we felt was the SIG taking evasive action. The fighter doesn’t have time to loop round again. It doesn’t have room either. We’re closing that gap on the asteroid field fast.

All we need now is for this to work.

A fold-down sight hangs open in front of Rachel. She is making cross-hairs line up with each other. ‘You almost done?’ I ask.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sir . . .’ Haze has panic in his voice. ‘Hekati’s core is going critical.’

Looking up, Shil glances at Rachel, and then catches my gaze. ‘That’s good,’ I tell her.

She looks like she wants to disagree.

‘Shil,’ I say. ‘Trust me.’

Strange how women always twist their mouths when I say that. After choosing a vast asteroid, I have my gun position us behind it. And then I tell the SIG-37 to take us as close as it can without crashing into the thing.

‘OK,’ I say to Rachel. ‘Now fix me a line.’

Should be easy. We’re a Z-class mining tug for Godsake. And I’m sat in an observation pod – with five harpoons slung below me, a joystick for aiming – next to one of the best shots I have ever met. ‘Do it,’ I tell her.

Rachel’s first harpoon skids across the asteroid’s surface, disappears into space and drags the line behind it. Shil has re-fixed the wires. I know that, because the whole tug twitches slightly when the harpoon reaches the end of its run.

‘Concentrate.’

She aims carefully.

This time a small section of asteroid cracks free.

‘ Sir ,’ says Haze. ‘ We should -’

Only I’m not listening, because I am staring at the shiny scar revealed by the last harpoon. Rachel’s third attempt snags on a small outcrop, but begins to come free the moment we start the winch. So we stop winching and leave the harpoon snagged where it is. Whatever is under that asteroid’s skin, there’s no way we are going to fix a harpoon into it. We might as well try to hang a picture by nailing glass.

‘Haze,’ I say. ‘How long?’

He knows what I’m asking. How long before Hekati explodes? How long before the mother ship gets us in range? How long before a Silver Fist fighter noses its way through the boulders out there and takes another shot?

‘A minute,’ he says. ‘Maybe a minute thirty.’

It takes me ten seconds to scramble out of the harpoon pod, another fifteen to grab a helmet from the wall and fix it over my suit.

‘Running safety routines,’ the helmet says.

It shuts down in a squawk of protest as I override its routines. ‘Open,’ I tell an airlock.

The bloody door stays shut.

‘SIG,’ I say.

Lights glitch on a control panel, and now I have two emergency systems screaming at me. They’re wasting seconds I don’t have. They’re wasting seconds none of us have. Inner door opens, inner door shuts.

The outer door blows at the SIG’s command. And I exit the tug like a cork from a bottle, straight into the side of the asteroid. I might as well try shoulder-barging a cliff.

‘Take care,’ says a voice.

How sweet of Colonel Vijay to remember me at a time like this.

A rib broken , I think, perhaps two . Blood fills my mouth, but that’s me biting my tongue when I hit. I barely notice, because I’m too busy clinging to the asteroid surface.

‘Please, God,’ someone says.

Sounds like Shil. We can’t end like this. I won’t let it end like this.

As my fingers hunt for a fresh grip, my boot finds a crack and I scrabble hand over hand towards the harpoon above me. It straddles a gap between the floor of the asteroid and a rocky outcrop. The line is kinked round the harpoon’s middle and that helps keep it in place. A simple yank will set it free.

But I don’t want to set it free. I want that line tied tight enough to tether us to this bloody great rock.

‘He’s not going to make it . . .’ They have the comms channel open, and I can hear resignation in Colonel Vijay’s voice.

‘Yes, he is,’ Shil says firmly.

I grin.

‘Sir,’ says Haze, ‘Hekati’s about-’

‘Closer,’ I order. As the tug shifts, I grab the line and wrap the slack once round the outcrop. I’m about to wrap it a second time when Haze’s scream tells me to let go the line. He’s right. As the world ends, it snaps the line tight and ties us to the outcrop. At least it feels like a world ending.