The Engineer Reconditioned (12 page)

"Not a clue. It could be a shuttle behind that chaff or an Alpha dreadnought. At least they're holding off."

"Yeah, but for how long?"

"They'll hold off," said Conard. "This is a classic terrorist hostage situation."
Yes
, thought Kellor,
and we all know the usual messy denouement of such situations: no win for
anyone but the fanatics
. And this situation was getting messier every moment. First the four soldiers taken out in the CTD blast just, as far as Kellor could see, because they were at the top of Conard's shit list. Then the loss of contact with the shuttle planetside. Now this. It was time to resolve a thing or two. Before he could turn his attention to that Speck said, "Wait a minute. We've got a communication coming through."

"Put it through on holo," said Kellor, and turned his chair to a flickering cylinder appearing in the middle of the floor. In it resolved a woman's face. Kellor thought the captain of the ECS ship very attractive, in an Amazonian way.

"Who am I speaking to?" she asked.

Kellor glanced at Conard. Conard nodded.

"Speck, let the General talk to her," said Kellor.

Speck operated the controls to the ceiling holocamera. The woman's image turned toward Conard. In the bridge of the ECS ship Conard would now be projected.

"Conard," she said, and Kellor immediately noted a hardness to her face.

"Sergeant Windermere, you have risen through the ranks."

"No doubt they still call you The General."

"They do. What can I do for you, Windermere? You know the situation and you can do nothing. If you bring your ship any closer or intervene in any way, the three CTDs, which were stolen from the Droon complex on Titan, will be fired at this planet."

"I had hoped to appeal to some source of common sense there. You realise, Conard, that you won't get away from this one unless I allow you to go."

"What do you mean by that curious statement?"

"I've been authorised to allow you to pull away and leave unmolested so long as you do it now. So long as you call back those gunships."

"That would be so fine for you," spat Conard. "Then ECS can just drift on in and pick up a science to subjugate us all."

Ah
, thought Kellor,
now this conversation is getting interesting.

"What science? You destroyed the Jain and its machine when you destroyed the
Schrödinger's Box
."

"I cannot believe that your scientists learned nothing in that time."

"They learned a great deal and it was instantly transmitted into the net. By now the things they learned are common knowledge to thousands of researchers."

"I am supposed to believe that? ECS would not allow such technology into the public domain. No. I will make certain."

Conard signalled for communications to be cut.

The cave was huge. The sea flowed into it and the roof was fifty metres above. Chapra followed the shuttle inside and before it was necessary for her to turn on the gunship's lights, Judd put the shuttle down on a stony shore.

"I'm not sure I want to go out there," said Chapra.

Abaron nodded in agreement. On the shore stood two lobster creatures, each about three metres long.

"I bet they've got triangles on their backs," he said to Chapra. They both remained seated as Judd and Jane came over from the shuttle and boarded.

"The other gunships are very close. Why have you remained in here?" asked Jane.

"We were a little worried about them," said Abaron, pointing.

"They are the equivalent of your PSRs. They are here to demount the guns from this ship and set them for defence."

"Okay," said Abaron, and stood.

Chapra noted he had acquired a handgun from somewhere and tucked it in his utility belt.

"Come with me," said Judd once they were outside the ship, and he led them to the dark mouths of caves worn into the stone at the head of the dark beach. From behind them came a ripping crash. They turned to see that one of the lobster-things had ripped a gun turret out of the gunship. They turned back when Judd took up a veined sphere and shook it to produce a chemical light. As they entered the cave, Jane passed them on her way out. There must have been another entrance. When two Janes came walking toward them carrying objects like living rifles, they began to understand. The Junger twenty-eight was a square-sectioned stubby cross with a spherical cockpit at one end. On the arms either side of the cockpit were sideways projecting gun turrets each containing one rapid-fire ten millimetre cannon and one pulsed laser. The cannon's rate of fire was adjustable from one to five thousand shells a second. Each spherical shell contained enough explosive to vaporise a human being. The lasers could cut a human being in half. Slung underneath were missiles that could not be used in the close confines of the cave for fear of collapsing it on the ship. The opposition had no such fears. With a low droning the first Junger entered the cave as fast as its pilot dared in the confines. A burst of fire from its right turret gun jerked the shuttle fifty metres into the air and slammed it against the back of the cave. At that point a missile from a demounted launcher hit the Junger. The flash was brief and bright enough to blind. Molten metal and fragments of white hot ceramoplastics hit the walls of the cave. The next Junger went the same way and perhaps because it managed to take out the beached gunship two more followed it in. Rapid fire hit these. Bits of them hit the walls of the cave. When no more gunships followed, the two lobster-things with turret guns mounted on their backs, retreated into the smaller caves at the back of the beach. They were well clear by the time the incendiary missiles swarmed in and converted the main cavern into a furnace. They only came out of hiding when the bombardment had finished. A hot glow from molten spots on the walls lit the way for the soldiers who flew in using AG

harnesses. The lobster things made a rain of human wreckage in the steam until there were no more bullets for their guns. They kept on aiming and firing, like the mechanisms they were. Pulsed energy fire cooked them on the beach.

The first soldier to encounter the enemy in the smaller caves hesitated too long. He just found it too difficult to open fire on a naked pubescent girl. The girl raised something like a metre-long razor fish and it repeatedly spat at him. The soldier hung in the air screaming as worms bored through his environment suit and into his flesh. The next soldier shot the girl, hurling her back with her chest burst open and jetting smoke. Then it was his turn to scream when the worms leaped from his comrade and started on him. The General's aides were both young men, and probably very inexperienced. Kellor had noticed that people who did not feel secure in positions of power tended to gather other people around them who were not too much of a threat. He, on the other hand, felt completely secure and had as his first officer and com officer, Jurens and Speck, who were both hardened mercenaries with years of experience. Kellor glanced at Jurens and gave a slight nod when Talist, the aide Jurens had chosen, went to puke in the toilet just off the bridge, then returned his attention to Conard. There would be no sound from the toilet, but there might be a bit of a mess. Jurens' preference was a knife for close work. The young man in the hologram was trying not to cry. Blood was pouring from two circular holes in his cheek and in the background other soldiers were screaming.

"Little girls!" yelled Conard. "Fucking worms!"

The whole incredible fiasco brought home to Kellor that there could be only one result now. There seemed no chance of him thieving some of this Jain technology, and he still had no idea who Conard's contact was. If he judged Conard right, the man would go tactical next, and if that didn't bring the ECS

ship in, Christ knows what would. He glanced aside as Jurens came out of the toilet looking annoyed. Kellor attributed this to the patch of blood on his first officer's trousers — Jurens made a mess but was normally very good on not getting it on himself.

"We'll have to use the tacticals," said Conard.

It gave Kellor no satisfaction to be right. He gave the nod to Speck, who had moved close to the other aide. Speck preferred the garrotte for close work. He was so completely casual as he opened out the shining wire and looped it over the aide's head. One quick jerk and a ballet twist and step away. The aide staggered, making horrible gobbling sounds and spewing blood everywhere. His head still remained on his shoulders by dint of the garrotte stopping at his vertebrae. Conard spun around and saw the man stumble and fall: the spastic movements, the bubbling tube of an oesophagus sticking out where it should not. He turned back and froze, staring into the hollow-mirrored cube that was the hole-making end of Kellor's favourite little plasma gun. Kellor smiled. That moment again.

"No tacticals," he said. "Tell him."

Conard glanced at the hologram. The young soldier could only see Conard, and was too far gone in shock to know something was wrong.

Conard said, "Fire all the tactical nuclear weapons into that cave."
You've killed me
, thought Kellor, then lowered his weapon and incinerated Conard's groin and thighs so the man dropped screaming to the deck. Speck quickly transferred the holocamera to Kellor.

"Obey that order and you won't get out of there alive," said Kellor to the soldier. "And if you return now there'll be a good bonus in it for you." He knew he'd made a mistake right from the first word. The soldier stared at him for a moment then cut com. Kellor looked down at Conard who had stopped screaming and was now groaning. There would have been no pain at first anyway, thought Kellor, though there was pain now. He deliberately stood on Conard's thigh so the cooked skin tore away from muscle. Conard started screaming again and scrabbled at his wrist holster. Kellor stamped on his hand then removed Conard's little gun. He'd almost forgotten about that.

The sounds of battle died though the screaming lasted for some time after. The Janes did not scream. They fought even with the most hideous wounds. Abaron had seen one of them stooping over a struggling soldier, choking the man with something. It was only when Abaron stepped in close and shot the man in the head that he realised the Jane had the stump of her wrist jammed in the man's mouth. That Jane had nodded her thanks and run back into the fray. Abaron retreated behind the slabs he and Chapra had chosen as their last place of defence.

"What's happening now?" he asked. "Have we won?"

"You heard what Judd said," said Chapra. She lay with the singun propped before her, staring out to where the cave was lit by luminescents spattered on the walls and floor. Suddenly she tensed, then relaxed. Judd and two Janes came quickly to join them.

"We must go deeper," said Judd.

"Oh my God," said Chapra, perhaps guessing.

The ground shifted and rock began to rain down. Abaron had time to see a wall of fire hurtling towards them before a Jane pushed him down and pressed herself over his head — protecting his precious brain. Without that protection his death might have been less protracted and painful.

"Have you got them on com yet!" yelled Kellor. He knew he was losing it. "For Chrissake try again!" Speck kept sending, kept trying to get something.

"Shut up!" yelled Kellor and fired once, silencing Conard's crying. He turned back to the com consoles and screens. Tactical nukes, a hundred square kilometres incinerated. Thank Christ the CTDs remained aboard under ship control. He peered at the readouts on another screen. Nothing but chaff and fuzz. Well, if the ECS ship attacked he'd make a fight of it, maybe get away ... Then the
Cable Hogue
shut down its screens and jamming. There was an energy surge. Some kind of particle weapon. All the screens went out for a moment. When they re-established Kellor saw that the remaining gunships were now just metallic fog.

"Get us out of here!" he screamed at Jurens as he reached for the controls to the CTD launcher. Perhaps it would delay ... perhaps ...

"Oh Christ," said Speck, dull horror in his voice.

The sheer hopelessness of the situation made Kellor hesitate for a moment, a second. In that second he knew how they had felt, all those opponents, in their moment of defeat. And in that second the dreadnought wrenched the
Samurai
from orbit, killing most of its crew with the massive acceleration. The flattened and distorted ship left a trail of fire across space, then rode a light-speed gravity wave towards the sun, where the antimatter in the CTDs would make not a wit of difference. The nine minutes of that journey were the longest of Kellor's life as his shattered body lay hard against the deck. With the ship inside the gravity wave he did not feel any more acceleration. What held him down was a fluke of broken computers and distorted conduits that had re-established artificial gravity at six gees. He couldn't even scream.

Diana was still boiling. Vacillation and bloody incompetence and when there came the inevitable enquiry she knew they'd manage to make the shit stick to her. If she'd had her own way she'd have gone straight in and they wouldn't have had a chance to use nukes. She looked at the screen showing the blasted ground the shuttle overflew.

"How far?" she asked.

"Ten kilometres. We should be there in a few minutes, Captain," said the pilot, obviously a little nervous. Diana snorted. Well perhaps they could salvage something from this mess. She glanced at Alexion, who had remained curiously reticent after witnessing the destruction of the mercenary ship. People took their first taste of war in different ways. His reaction to the ground blast had been a look of extreme pain. His precious Jain, gone.

The shore soon came into view and the pilot brought the shuttle down by the ATV parked there. Troops were standing by the ATV dressed in full environment and radiation suits. Diana pulled down the visor on her gear and headed for the lock. Alexion meekly followed.

"Where is it?" she asked the commander, before he had a chance to salute. The man pointed down the beach. "Okay, let's have a look." Diana walked down the ash-covered sand to the figure sat upon a rock.