Ruthless (28 page)

Nigel grimaced back at the Boy. His own feelings were a little more mixed, but he was still alive, and Johnny Alpha was taking the risks.

Then Nigel's expression froze. The Boy followed his gaze into the hold and saw nothing of importance. Several containers had been opened and gutted. The floor was scattered with cushions, duvets and light engineering parts. A couple of personal-effect trunks were smashed open and their mundane contents scattered messily across the floor. In the middle of it all, sat a stasis pod.

Nigel rushed to the chamber, crouching down to examine it. The Boy followed in characteristic silence, curious.

"Darling," whispered Nigel.

The Boy looked around himself worriedly.

"My love," said Nigel, stroking the top of the chamber. The Boy saw the female face inside it, and relaxed. Nobody had really explained things to him properly, but the Boy was a kid, and used to working things out from incomplete information. This was Nigel's wife.

"Sneck it," whispered Nigel.

The Boy looked at him quizzically.

"That punk was going to bring her out of stasis," said Nigel in anger. "I'm glad Johnny strangled the little snecker." Nigel tapped several buttons on the keypad, and swore again. A red flashing light on the panel spelled bad news for someone. Nigel looked at the Boy.

"I can't stop it," he said. "She's going to wake up."

Johnny and Wulf went by the book. After three minutes of running, taking cover, taking aim and covering the next step, anyone else would have given up. They met with no resistance and the ship was quiet. Bloodstains on the walls testified to what had happened to the
Sherman'
s original crew, but of the ship's new occupants, there was no sign.

After a few hundred metres, Squid had tired of the military assault game. He strode boldy into the middle of the hallway, several dozen paces behind. Squid figured that if there were any trouble, Johnny and Wulf would run into it way before him.

The Gronk, however, was nervous enough to stay close to Wulf at all times. The Gronk knew where it felt safest, and it felt safest with Mister Wulf and Mister Johnny.

Johnny and Wulf remained alert, even though their companions were beginning to think their hide-and-seek drill was slightly ludicrous. But each had the other covered, and that was how Johnny and Wulf did things. It had kept them alive for long enough, and they were in no rush to change their ways, no matter who was laughing at them.

Blarg waited by the access tube until the sound of their muffled footfalls had faded into the distance. Then, he figured, it would be safe to move. He grabbed a handful of the material laid underneath Malcolm's sleeping body and dragged him up the passageway. In the full gravity of the
Sherman
, Malcolm was not a light load.

"A little help here," Nigel said gruffly. Inside the sub-hold, he and the Boy were staring unmoving at a ticking display. Something was counting down.

"What's the problem?" asked Blarg.

"It's my wife," said Nigel. "Time is running out."

The time had come when even
Slut Machine
lost its lustre for Torogone. He slung the magazine across the control desk and spun idly in his chair. He stopped it when dizziness began to set in, and sat still for a moment, savouring the whirling sensation in his head.

He caught a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and figured it was just the magazine sliding to a position of rest on a pile of similarly pink-heavy paper. But no, there it was again; it came from one of the monitors.

Torogone stared in confusion at the image from camera ten, back from the depths of the ship. There was clearly a figure dragging something, and it wasn't Lev. The skin showed up dark in black and white, but the silvery topknot identified the figure as a Betelgeusian. There weren't any aliens on the
Sherman
crew. Who the hell was that? And what the hell was he dragging behind him?

Even as Torogone leaned closer, the Betelgeusian wandered out of shot, and he was forced to revert back to camera nine. Torogone saw who the Betelgeusian's human cargo was, and immediately felt relieved. Tuka looked injured, but at least he was alive, and someone had got him back to the ship. Probably someone from the
China
lander, he guessed. Maybe they had run into trouble on the surface.

Torogone idly began checking out feeds from the other cameras on the ship. Something wasn't right. In camera seven there was nothing. In camera six, an ugly looking mutant tramped sulkily down the corridor. In camera fifteen, two humans could be seen peering over a cargo pod in one of the holds. And in camera eleven...

In camera eleven was the twisted corpse of Lev, lying against a bulkhead. Torogone's heart went into double-time. He was in trouble, and he didn't know what to do. Lev was dead, and the ship was full of unknown people. Torogone wasn't used to this. He was used to being the assailant who struck terror in unsuspecting eyes. He had enjoyed taking the
Sherman
; those few early minutes when the crew didn't know that they were under attack and were unable to do anything about it.

He looked around the flight deck for some kind of clue, some kind of help. All he saw were the magazines that had helped him waste the last few hours, and some scattered cups of the
Sherman'
s rather good coffee.

One of Torogone's hands slapped onto another camera-view button, while the other scrabbled amid the bridge detritus for his gun. The ugly mutant was up to camera four now, skulking calmly along the passageway, his forehead glistening occasionally in the overhead lights. But in camera three Torogone saw a giant of a man with a huge hammer on his back, aiming a gun up the corridor towards the bridge, scowling in intense concentration.

Torogone finally found his own gun, one of the small ceramic pistols favoured by all in Tuka's gang. The feel of the grip in his hand made him feel a little more secure, although he dreaded to think how many rounds he had left. Camera two showed a man with tight curly hair and featureless white eyes, darting out from cover and running at something.

It took a moment for Torogone to work out the alignments. The cameras counted down towards the bridge, and camera one was focussed on the bridge itself. Which meant...

Torogone stabbed his finger down on the button that secured the bridge doors, but they were already sliding open. He thrust out his arm and squeezed off a round through the open gap, the ceramic bullet shattering on a bulkhead somewhere beyond the door.

Someone swore loudly, and a hand holding a Westinghouse snaked around the gap. Torogone stared at the large weapon, the preferred firearm of bounty hunters. It was not something he had ever seen aimed at himself before. He always associated the Westinghouse with high-energy shoot-outs with rival gangs. It was something he had clutched in his hand when he sneaked up on parties of imposter-gangs and other low-life scum. It was a friendly gun to him, not one that he could ever imagine firing at him.

A finger pulled the Westinghouse trigger, and the attacker fired blind into the bridge, letting off a salvo of rounds. Torogone toppled backwards from his chair and felt something gnaw into his back on the ground. He hated not knowing what the sneck was going on, hated the idea that these men were attacking him and wouldn't even explain why. He didn't want to die without a reason. He didn't deserve to die. He was just doing his job.

"I surrender!" he shouted, sighting carefully along the rudimentary gauges on his pistol. "Don't kill me. We can talk about this."

A giant ham of a Viking hand grabbed at the edge of the door and yanked at it heftily. Torogone saw his chance and let off a round at the hand. But the ceramic pistols weren't designed for delicate sniping work. They were simple constructions designed for criminals with the aid of surprise. The sights were off by a mile, and the slug shattered on the door itself.

"Ow," cried a Viking voice, more out of surprise than pain.

"That's it," said someone else.

Torogone saw the man with the curly hair poke his head down low on the door at knee-level. It was the last place Torogone was expecting to see an attacker. Torogone had been aiming up at head height, so he dragged his arms down, willing them to move fast. But today of all days, fast was not enough.

Torogone stared into the double muzzle of a Westinghouse blaster and started to say something. He opened his mouth, but saw the flash from the gun as it fired at him. There was a second round, but Torogone never saw it. By the time the second bullet had driven into his brain, Torogone was dead. His body would twitch for a few seconds more, and his heart would uselessly pump blood around his system for about the same time. But Torogone was a goner.

Johnny didn't waste time looking at the last of the bandits. He had other priorities.

"Blarg," he said. "Get up here. Leave Malcolm and get up here,
now
."

Johnny's first salvo had wrecked the comms console, but radio was no use in the Kajaani system anyway. Wulf sat at the console and looked for the easy buttons, the ones that put up the Idiot Screen.

"I'm firing the attitude jets!" yelled Johnny. He had to squint a little at the screen, but he knew what the screen was saying. Is sir sure sir wants to fire all the attitude jets? If sir does so, the different retro rockets will cancel each other out, and the ship will simply stay on the same course.

"Sneck off," said Johnny to the machine.

There was a distant rumble along the ship, not from the sound of the jets, but from the vibrations they caused as they shook the ship in all angles. To an outside observer, the
Sherman
appeared to suddenly put out flares in all directions. Johnny hit the fire button a second and third time.

Squid and Blarg arrived, the latter out of breath from running the rest of the length of the ship.

"Eww," said Blarg, looking at the mess. "Is all this blood his?" he asked, pointing at the dead body on the floor.

"Don't think so," said Johnny, his finger jabbing the fire button at regular intervals. "Someone tell me if Isaiah is signalling!"

Wulf and Squid began slapping each other away from the scanner desk as they tried to call up an image of the
China
.

"Blarg," said Johnny. "Get us out of here."

"Anywhere in particular?" asked Blarg, trying to push past Wulf to the Idiot Screen.

Someone - maybe Wulf, maybe Squid - finally called up the screen display. It wasn't anything quite as spectacular as the observation screen in the lounge in the
China
. The crew of the
Sherman
didn't have the time to leisurely watch the skies; they had had a job to do, and the screen reflected that. It was a simple area less than three-metres squared at the front of the ship. It shimmered into life, showing part of the white curve of the ice planet, and beyond it the livid red bulk of Kajaani's sun itself, fuming with wisps of trailing fire. The star really did not look healthy, speckled with sunspots that massed together and broke apart even as the men watched. Chunks of piercing white light appeared among the blackness, rolling away to form more cascades of red and orange. Closer to the planet itself, something small and metallic was twinkling in the reflected glare. Its orbit had taken it on a slightly different course, and the
China
was barely a speck in the distance, a couple of miles further around the curvature of the planet.

Suddenly, the far-off speck lit up, plumes of flame heading in all directions.

"He's firing his jets," said Squid.

The assembled bounty hunters waited for a moment, watching expectantly. Even Johnny tried to see the screen, scowling intensely at what appeared to him to be little more than a blank piece of wall.

The
China'
s jets fired again, and again, at one-second intervals.

"He has seen us," said Wulf.

"Cool," said Johnny. "Blarg, kick in the warp drive."

"To Mars?" said Blarg, seeing that the easiest course to follow would be the
Sherman'
s original trajectory, still held in the navigation computer's memory.

"Sounds good to me," said Johnny.

"And make it quick," added Nigel, arriving at the door, the Boy in tow.

"
Jah
," said Wulf. "I am not liking the look of der big red star."

"Sneck the star," said Nigel. "They've turned off the stasis field. Ruthie's going to wake up in less than two hours."

"Mars it is," said Johnny with a nod to Blarg. Isaiah was watching now, he would see the
Sherman
as it charged into warp. He would know what to do.

"Kicking in," said Blarg, hitting the launch sequence.

"At last," said Squid, "we're going home."

"Yeah," said Johnny, not all that enthusiastically.

The image on the screen shivered and bent as the warp coils extended a field around the
Sherman
. The
China
was obscured beneath a whirling hail of static, and then Kajaani and the ice world were gone, replaced by the multicoloured storm of warp transit. Blarg deftly turned off the screen before it drove everyone mad.

"We're safe?" said the Boy, quietly.

"With any luck," said Wulf.

"With any luck," said Johnny, sourly.

Back in the Kajaani system, the
Sherman'
s disappearance did not go unnoticed. A jubilant Isaiah called down to the passengers that it was time to go. This annoyed them intensely, as they had been enjoying an open bar for five hours, and most of them could barely remember their names, let alone the recent trauma of the attempted hijacking. There was also considerable disappointment that they would not be able to look any more at the boiling mass of Kajaani itself, which was presenting quite a spectacular light show.

From the bar area, Isaiah heard a few plaintive cries, asking if they could just stay a little bit longer, just another hour or so. But Isaiah was very firm. It was time to leave. Whatever it was that Johnny and his gang wanted to achieve, they had somehow managed. Those people with luggage on the
Sherman
would not have to fill in insurance paperwork. And for Isaiah, the time would soon come when he would be reunited with Isaiah Junior, who, as much as they bickered and fought, he loved more than anything else in his life.