Against A Dark Background (19 page)

‘No,’ Sharrow shook her head. ‘I haven’t been near a doctor for . . . fourteen, fifteen years?’

Cenuij scraped the last few bits of the doll into the bag. ‘Not since Nachtel’s Ghost, in fact, after the crash,’ he said. He sealed the disposal bag. ‘So it was a nerve-gun.’

‘I hope so,’ Sharrow said, staring towards the window where Miz was standing again, looking out over the dusty city.

‘You want this?’ Cenuij asked her, holding up the bag with the doll’s remains in it.

She shook her head and crossed her arms, as though cold.

They booked a private compartment on the dawn-hour AisYadayeypon Limited. Three hours into the journey the train left the last vestiges of Outer Jonolrey’s prairies behind and decelerated across the first jagged outcrops of karst for its last stop before the eastern seaboard. They completed their breakfast and watched the pale-grey, intermittently spired landscape below start to dot with houses, solar arrays and fenced compounds.

They were the only people who got off. The straggled town felt like frontier territory, lazy and open and half-finished. The local vehicle dealer had the six-wheel All-Terrain waiting in the station car park; Miz signed the papers, they collected a last few supplies from a general hardware store and then set off into the karst along a bumpy, dusty solar-farm road that roughly paralleled the widely spaced fence of inverted U’s supporting the thin white lines of the monorails.

Sharrow looked up as something moved above her on the monorail. Cenuij looked down, his scarf-enfolded head showing over the edge of the rail eight metres above.

‘What exactly is going on?’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘No idea.’ She looked at Dloan, still listening to the monorail’s circuits, then along to the next support leg, where Zefla was sitting in the shade, her head bowed.

‘Well, that’s fine,’ Cenuij said tetchily. ‘I’ll just stay up here and get heat-stroke, shall I?’ He disappeared again.

‘What an excellent idea,’ Sharrow muttered, then tight-beamed to the point on the rail two kilometres away where Miz was. ‘Miz?’

‘Yeah?’ Miz’s voice said.

‘Still nothing?’

‘Still nothing.’

‘How long till the next one’s through in the other direction?’

‘Twenty minutes.’

‘Miz, you are absolutely sure-’she began.

‘Look, kid,’ Miz said, sounding annoyed. ‘It’s the regular fucking express, the Passports were issued yesterday and my agent in Yada says a Huhsz front company hired a private carriage on this train, today, about five minutes after the Passports hearing broke up. How does it all sound to you?’

‘All right, all-’she began.

‘Whoa,’ Miz said. There was silence for a few moments, then Miz’s voice returned, suddenly urgent. ‘Got something on the phones . . . definite vibration . . . should be it. All ready?’

She glanced at Dloan, who was holding one hand to his ear. He looked up at her and nodded. ‘Here it comes,’ he said.

‘Ready,’ Sharrow told Miz. She whistled to Cenuij, who stuck his head over the top again. ‘It’s on its way,’ she told him.

‘About time.’

‘Got the other foil ready?’

‘Of course; putting the gunge on now.’ He shook his head. ‘Stopping a monorail with glue; how do I get into these situations?’ His head disappeared.

Sharrow looked at the squatting figure a hundred metres up the line. ‘Zef?’

Zefla jerked. Her head came up; she looked round and waved. ‘Business?’ her sleepy voice said in Sharrow’s ears.

‘Yes, business. Try to stay awake, Zef.’

‘Oh, all right then.’

Dloan shut the junction box in the monorail leg and started climbing up the hand-holds towards the top of the rail.

Sharrow felt her heart start to race. She checked the rifle again. She brought out the HandCannon and checked it too. They were undergunned for an operation like this, but they hadn’t had time to get all the gear they’d wanted together.

The morning after she’d been dropped in Nis by the Solipsists and met up with the others, they heard the Passports would be issued within the next twenty hours.

Miz told them his plan; Cenuij told him he was crazy. Zefla’s considered opinion on its legal implications was that it was ‘cheeky’.

They had just enough time to set up the All-Terrain purchase for the next day and storm through Aïs in a variety of taxis, buying up desert gear, bits of comm equipment and the heaviest automatic hunting rifles and ammunition the Aïs county laws would allow them to have. Just another day or so and Miz could have had heavier weaponry flown in and cleared through one of his front companies, but the Passports were issued on time that day and they had no choice but to make their move.

Their final purchases had been three large discs of coated heavy-duty aluminium foil - spare parts for a portable solar furnace - and some glue. While Man and Miz had been buying those, Sharrow had been in the hotel, placing a call to a descendant of one of the Dascen family’s servants, a man rich enough himself to have a butler and a private secretary both of whom Sharrow had to go through before she got to Bencil Dornay, who cordially and graciously invited her to his mountain house, along with her friends.

‘-ast!’ Sharrow heard Miz say.

‘What?’ she sent back, rattled by the tone of his voice. There was no reply. She stared into the distance, where the white line of the monorail disappeared into the desert shimmer.

‘I can see it!’ Cenuij shouted from above.

An infinitesimal silent line appeared on the liquid horizon, barely visible through the trembling air. The tiny bright line lengthened; sun burst off it briefly, flickering, then blinked out again.

Sharrow stood up and clicked the visor magnification to twenty. It was like looking at a toy-train set reflected in a pool of wobbling mercury. The train was still a couple of kilometres away from where Miz was lying on the top of the monorail. She watched the shadows of the support legs flicking across the train’s nose as it raced along under the rail, a tearing silver line curving through the heat.

She counted.

‘Shit,’ she heard herself say. The shadows were strobing across the train’s aircraft-sleek snout at almost three per second; the supports were spaced every hundred metres and the expresses normally ran at about two-twenty metres per second; that was the speed they’d based their calculations on. She drew a breath, to tell Miz to throw the foil over early, when she saw a flash under the monorail.

‘Foil’s down!’ she heard Miz yell.

If Miz’s plan was going to work, the train’s needle radar should now be picking up the echo of the foil screen and slamming the emergency brakes on.

‘It’s going too fast,’ she beamed to Zefla. ‘It’ll overshoot’

‘On my way,’ Zefla sent back, and started running towards Sharrow.

A roaring, screaming noise came through the tight-beam; Miz was just audible above the racket, shouting, ‘Feels like it’s braking. Here it comes!’

‘Start running!’ Cenuij called down to Sharrow.

‘I’m running, I’m running,’ she muttered, sprinting across the corrugated karst towards the next support leg.

Two kilometres away, Miz lay on the top of the monorail, his cheek held just off the burning surface. The vibration and the noise bored through him; the humming from beneath built into a teeth-aching buzz that seemed to threaten to jolt him right off the rail. He spread himself out, trying to clamp himself to the rail with his hands and feet. Beneath him, the circle of foil he’d dropped into the path of the train vibrated gently on its plastic stays, its coated surface reflecting the train’s radar. The noise and vibration rose to a crescendo as the furiously braking train screamed past underneath.

‘Shi-i-i-i-t!’ Miz said, his teeth chattering, every bone in his body seeming to judder. The vortex of air swept up and over him, lashing at his clothes.

The bullet nose of the decelerating train hit the circle of foil, ripping through it instantly and sending the shredded pieces fluttering through the air like a flock of falling silver birds.

The train roared away, still braking. Miz jumped up. ‘I’d put that second foil down now, kids!’ he tight-beamed, then ran to the support leg and started climbing down towards the All-Terrain.

Sharrow slowed, looking back down the curving line of support legs; light and shade flickered at their limit. She ran on through the parched air, still slowing, and waited for the second circle of foil to drop above her. She could hear the train now; a distant roar.

‘Going fast, eh? Zefla grinned, dashing past.

The second foil reflector dropped and spread ten metres ahead of Sharrow. She stopped, breathing hard, a furnace in the back of her throat. Zefla jogged on, fifty metres in front of her. Sharrow looked back; the train came on, still slowing; the noise stayed almost constant as the slipstream ebbed and the wail of protesting superconductors gradually faded as the train drew closer.

Then it was above her, the carriages flicking past just a couple of metres over her head; the train’s sleek nose hit the second foil screen and held it, tearing it from its stays so that the glistening membrane wrapped round the snout of the front carriage, snapping and cracking around it until the train drew to a stop.

She was just behind the rear of the last carriage; it hung, swinging slightly from the white line of track. She ran on, jumping ridges in the limestone and following Zefla, her gun out ready in front of her. Zefla glanced back.

Suddenly something dropped out of the train from the second-last carriage, between Sharrow and Zefla. In the same instant as it came fluttering down from the still-swinging hatch she recognised the gold and black shape as a Huhsz uniform. Sharrow knew Zefla would dive for cover just there. Sharrow went in the same direction, dropping into the cover of a corrugation in the karst, her gun tracking the falling uniform.

The Huhsz officer’s cape hit the ground as empty as it had been when it left the train. Dust rose. She aimed at the opened hatchway. A hand gun and face appeared. She waited. Hand gun and face withdrew again.

A movement to her right made her heart race briefly before she realised it was the shadow of the train on a long ridge of karst by the track-side; she was seeing what must be Dloan and Cenuij’s shadows as they got into position above the train.

Sharrow shifted her position a few metres along the shallow trench into better cover.

Something else fell from the train, at its nose; the foil screen flashed and glittered, rustling to the ground.

‘Shit,’ Sharrow breathed. She touched the side of her mask. ‘Foil’s fallen off,’ she broadcast. ‘Break something.’

‘Right,’ Dloan’s voice said.

They’d smeared the second foil with glue so that it would stick to the front of the train, but obviously it hadn’t held; now the railway’s technicians and controllers back in Yadayeypon would be looking at their screens and read-outs and seeing a clear view in front of the train and probably no indications of damage. Soon they would start thinking about letting the train continue on its way again.

There was a pause, then a loud bang from above. Sharrow relaxed a little; that ought to be Dloan and Cenuij doing something terminal to the train’s power supply. A brief grinding noise overhead, and the sight of the second-last carriage settling down a little lower and sitting very still while the other carriages swayed slightly, confirmed that its superconductors were no longer holding it up inside the monorail; the train was trapped.

She glanced back, down to the end of the train and beyond. A line of dust a kilometre or so away was Miz in the All-Terrain. She looked back to the hatch; a larger gun appeared, and a face; the gun sparkled.

The ridge of karst Sharrow had been crouched behind earlier dissolved in an erupting cloud of dust and a rasping bellow of noise as a thousand tiny explosions tore through the brittle, eroded stone. Sharrow was too close to do anything but curl up and try to shield herself from the shrapnel slivers of stone whirling away from the devastation. Debris pattered against her back; a couple of the impacts stung like needles. She tried to roll further away, then when the noise stopped but she could hear rifle shots, leapt up, firing.

Bullets sparked round the empty hatch; the hatch cover itself clanged and jerked and swayed as Zefla’s fire hit and pierced it from the other side.

There was a percussive thump from the hatch; something flashed into the ground and exploded. The air was filled by a crackling noise and the ground under the hatch leapt and danced with tiny explosions, all raising dust about the initial impact site; there was an impression of blurring, buzzing, furious movement in the air.

Sharrow ducked down, cursing. She pulled a small flare from her satchel, lit it and lobbed it to one side of the spreading ripple of explosions.

They’d fired a flea-cluster round. The individual microgrenades each had twelve random, explosive bounces to find the heat signature of a human being nearby, then they would blow up anyway. Properly used they were devastating, but the canister was designed to be lobbed, not fired straight down into the ground; she guessed less than half the micro-grenades had survived the initial shock.

Sharrow kept down, waiting for one of the deadly little pebbles to land at her feet, doubting that any of them would be distracted by the burning flare. Then a stuttered ripple of noise announced the tiny grenades had self-destructed. She peeked up, gun ready.

A head appeared looking down from the hatchway. She shot it. The man’s head jerked once, as though nodding at something; then it hung there, and a limp arm flopped out of the hatch. Blood started to fall towards the dark cape lying on the karst. The arm and head were pulled away inside. She fired the rest of the magazine, watching most of the bullets spark and ricochet off the train’s underside.

‘Fuck this,’ Sharrow said. She kept the rifle trained on the hatch one-handed, reloaded it, then pulled the HandCannon out of her pocket, put it to her mouth and sprang the magazine, catching it in her teeth; she turned it round with the hand holding the pistol, pushing the magazine home again. She tight-beamed to where she thought Zefla was. ‘Zef?’