Gary Gibson - Final Days

Saul flinched instinctively as the first shots rang out. He saw one of the three men accompanying Maalouf drop to the ground, blood pouring from one side of his head. Maalouf either started to run, or was dragged, in the direction of a doorway. Saul caught a brief glimpse of a van skidding to a halt nearby, its tyres screaming on the tarmac.

Donohue and another man, both armed with Cobras, jumped out of the van and began shooting. Farad’s viewpoint spun wildly, then ceased moving, showing nothing but the evening stars and the dark limb of Al-Khiba far overhead. Saul then caught sight of Eren backing into the same doorway, stepping over Maaloufrn,&os body before he crouched down to return fire.

Narendra made a gesture and the footage came to an immediate halt. ‘Eren was lucky to survive that encounter,’ he explained, ‘so he would very much like to know the identity of those men who killed Farad.’

Saul figured there had to be at least four in the assassination squad. The shots already fired before the van arrived meant that at least one person other than Donohue and the second gunman had taken part in the hit, while a fourth would have been in control of the van.

‘I can’t tell you who any of them are,’ Saul lied.

Narendra stared at him as if he didn’t believe a word.

‘The team you say were following me,’ Saul asked, ‘was it the same lot?’

‘Yes, it was.’

At that precise moment, Saul heard a low booming sound, not unlike a thunderclap. At first he thought it had come from the projector, then realized it came from somewhere outside the apartment. Narendra stood and listened, as if frozen, then suddenly broke into action, rushing to the door while directing a flow of dialogue at Eren.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Saul, following, but Narendra reached out a hand to stop him.

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, then left the room.

Saul watched as the two men conversed in low, urgent tones. Eren was standing up now, his shotgun gripped ready in both hands. He moved away from the door until he was no longer directly visible to either man, and took the opportunity to push aside one corner of a lowered blind and peer out through the window behind.

He found himself looking directly along the entire length of the valley containing the city, towards the Newton Array at its far end. A dense cloud of grey and black smoke now rose above the Array, and was already beginning to pool under the giant canopy.

For one heart-freezing moment, Saul wondered if the Array had been sabotaged in the same way as the one on Galileo, thus stranding him light-years from home. But then the smoke thinned out a little, and he saw it rose not from the Array but from a tall building immediately next to it. Flames licked out of the building’s upper windows.

As he stared in awe, one side of another building, directly opposite the first, exploded into flames and black smoke, sending debris and glass tumbling downwards. A second low booming noise reached him a few seconds later, followed by the distinctive crackle of small-arms fire.

Saul tried to open the window, but found it wouldn’t budge. He pressed his forehead against the glass to peer down, and saw he was still a long way above the ground. Jumping out of there would only get him killed.

He stepped away from the window and headed back ver to the door. He saw Eren looming over Narendra, his voice turned angry. Narendra backed away, and Eren swung his shotgun at him like a club, battering him across the side of the head. The broker collapsed as if either unconscious or dead.

Saul darted back out of sight, squeezing behind the door into Farad’s office. He waited there, gripping the door handle, until he heard Eren’s heavy footsteps approaching.

The moment he stepped inside the office, Saul slammed the door into Eren’s face. But Eren batted it away with ease before barrelling into the room and levelling the shotgun. Saul lunged forward to try and wrench the shotgun out of his grasp, and for a moment they struggled for control of it.

The young guard who’d been set to watch the entrance came running into the living-room, and instantly brought his weapon to bear on Saul. Without thinking, Saul pulled himself close to Eren, twisting both of them around until Eren’s back was facing the guard. The larger man’s body jerked violently as the Agnessa’s bullets punched through his spine. He slumped forward, lifeless.

Saul grabbed hold of the shotgun and let himself fall back under the weight of Eren’s corpse, then heaved it to one side. Aiming the shotgun at the guard, he squeezed the trigger, and a fist-sized hole appeared in the man’s chest. The guard fell backwards in an awkward heap, the Agnessa clattering on to the wooden floor beside him.

Saul shuffled backwards until his shoulders were up against the wall beneath the window, his breath emerging in short, rapid gasps. He kept the shotgun trained on the living-room as he listened for the sound of running feet. He waited there for at least another minute, before slowly pushing himself upright and making his way back into the other room.

He kneeled beside Narendra, who lay face-down on the floor, and heaved him over. One side of the man’s head was crusted with blood, but he was clearly still breathing.

Narendra moaned, his eyes blinking open.

Saul rifled through Narendra’s pockets until he found a slim aluminium case containing a single set of contacts, then glanced back at Narendra in time to see his eyes start rolling up in their sockets.

He shook him fiercely. ‘Narendra!’ He held the case up where the other man could see it. ‘Look at me. Are these my contacts?’

Narendra managed to focus on the case and muttered something Saul couldn’t make out, before his eyes slid shut once more. Saul shook him again, slapping the man’s face and cursing, but it was clear a response wasn’t going to be forthcoming any time soon.

He pinched the contacts out of the aluminium case and dropped them on to his eyes. Relief surged over him like a wave once it became clear that they were his own. He tried first to access the local emergency data sources but found, to his consternation, that they were currently all down. Calling for help clearly wasn’t going to be an option any time soon.

There was no one to be heard, so if any of the neighbours had noticed any sounds of shooting or violence, they were doing the sensible thing and staying well out of sight.

Saul hurried back into the apartment, stepping over Eren’s motionless body as he once more entered the office. It took only a moment to locate all of the unencrypted video files on Maalouf’s network, before copying everything over to his own contacts.

A quick browse on the spot showed him that there were many, many other files than just the video logs Narendra had already shown him. He noticed documents in their hundreds, all marked for much higher levels of clearance than his own. Technically, his duty was to leave them untouched and hand them over to his immediate superiors.

To hell with that , he decided.

Saul abandoned his blood-spattered jacket, finding another that was a near fit in the bedroom wardrobe. It felt loose around his shoulders – Farad had been a couple of sizes larger – but it was long and roomy enough to conceal the Agnessa within its folds. Lastly he rifled the dead guard’s pockets until he found a box of spare ammunition, then headed down the stairwell as fast as he could, pointedly avoiding the elevator.

Once he was back outside, he looked out across the whole of the canopied city stretching out below. He walked rapidly away from the building he had been held in, sticking to the shadows and keeping an eye out for anyone who might be showing an undue interest in him.