Dark Run (15 page)

‘Nothing,’ Jenna replied, shaking her head as her hands skated over her terminal. ‘The conference isn’t really making the news, there doesn’t seem to be any particularly heightened police presence . . .’ She looked back up at him. ‘It looks clear.’

Drift grimaced. ‘Never say that.’

‘I just said it
looks
clear, not that it
is
clear—’

‘Even so,’ he cut her off, waving a hand, ‘this is not a ship where we
ever
say something “looks clear”. Do I make myself . . . um, clear? It’s bad luck.’

‘And you laughed at my pilot hat . . .’ Jia muttered. Drift ignored her and turned back to his own terminal. The chrono in the corner ticked over to the next minute and stared at him accusingly as the ball of nervous tension which had been building in his chest sank abruptly through the pit of his stomach. He had a sudden impulse to yell at Jia to hit the afterburners and to hell with the flightlanes, but that would simply pull down a response from the authorities and Kelsier’s factors, whoever they were, would doubtless melt away even if the
Jonah
could get to the rendezvous before it was flagged down.

Something flickered on his terminal. He frowned at it and pulled it up: a new broadcast signal had started up from nowhere. The read-out showed that it wasn’t an audio transmission. It read a little like the weak Spine signals they’d been passing through ever since coming off the flightline and into populated areas, but stronger, and given the timing he was in no mood to take chances. ‘Jenna. You getting this?’

‘Hmm?’ She looked up at him and he slid the read-out across to her terminal. She frowned, redblonde strands falling across her face and being absent-mindedly tucked back as she studied it. ‘That’s odd. Gimme a second.’

‘You’ve only got seconds,’ Jia called over her shoulder, ‘we’re a few blocks away now.’ She jinked slightly and swore at someone unseen who’d presumably been, however briefly, where she’d wanted to fly.

‘It’s a data transmission,’ Jenna said, without looking up. ‘Encoded.’

‘Source?’ Drift asked, scanning out of the different viewports. Nothing looked any different to how it had a second ago, but his paranoia was screaming at him.

‘Close,’ Jenna answered immediately. ‘Within a . . . few . . . blocks.’

Drift looked at her, mouth suddenly dry, and saw that she’d reached the same conclusion as him.

‘
Shit
.’

‘Whoah!’ Jenna’s eyes widened and she tapped at her terminal again. ‘It’s being answered, there’s a two-way stream now.’

‘Source?’ Drift said again, mouth dry and scrambling across the cockpit to look over her shoulder, as though he’d be able to understand half of what she was looking at.
Come on girl, at least tell us which way to run . . .

She turned her head to look at him, expression filled with uncertainty and what looked uncomfortably like dread.

‘Our cargo bay.’

There was the taste of bile at the back of his throat. He stood still for half a second while his mind raced at different angles, then suddenly his gun was in his hand.

‘Jia!’ he barked. ‘Stay course, but eyes on the sky! Get ready to burn! Jenna, with me.’

The slicer slapped at her webbing release, grabbed her pad from the console and followed him at a dead run towards the cargo bay. They pelted past the galley and clattered down the steps towards where the four metal crates sat innocently in the middle of the floor, while Rourke, Micah and Apirana looked up in confusion and growing alarm.

‘What’s the problem?’ Rourke asked, swinging her rifle up into a ready position.

‘Something out there started broadcasting, and something in here started talking back,’ Drift replied grimly, eyeing the crates.

‘In here?’ Micah queried. ‘As in . . .’

‘In
here
, yes,’ Drift nodded impatiently, ‘the cargo bay. So unless one of you have activated a transmitter for some reason . . . ?’

All three shook their heads.

‘Well,’ Rourke said softly, dark eyes sliding to their cargo, ‘that changes the game.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘It
could
be something completely inconsequential which your contact just failed to mention would happen.’

‘It could,’ Drift agreed. ‘Do you think that?’

‘Do I look like I was born yesterday?’ Rourke snorted.

Drift nodded. ‘Yeah, me neither.’ He looked up. ‘A.? Tools.’

‘You’re gonna open
’
em?’ the Maori rumbled, taking three large steps to an equipment locker and pulling out a cutting torch which he casually tossed across the bay. Drift caught it in one hand, then the pair of goggles which followed it in the other, and pulled them over his head.

‘Damn right. And you’re going to start at the other end.’

He fired the torch up and narrowed the flame down to a thin blue cutting blade, which he applied to the lid corner of the crate nearest him. The metal started to glow a cherry red, succumbing to the torch’s powerful heat, and he dragged it down one side.

‘Jia?’ he heard Rourke ask behind him.‘How long?’

+Unless you want me to stop dead and tip off anyone watching us then we’re talking a minute, tops. What the hell is going on back there?+

‘Tell you in a minute,’ Rourke replied absently. ‘Ichabod?’

Drift finished his circuit of the crate and applied his boot to the lid, kicking it on one glowing edge to knock it clean off onto the bay floor with a clatter. He leaned over and looked in, heedless of the powerful heat still rising from the newly cut rim. Dark, twisted shapes came into view.

‘Scrap metal.’ He reached in, confused, and pulled up a hunk of something which might once have been an exhaust component for a vehicle of some kind, then dropped it back in. ‘What . . . ?’

‘Camouflage,’ Rourke said decisively, looking past him. ‘Keep going.’

‘I’ve got scrap too!’ Apirana shouted. Drift didn’t look up, but from the noise it sounded like the big Maori had kicked his lid considerably further. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

‘Get that last one open!’ Rourke ordered him, even as Drift was attacking the third crate. Down one side, down the second, the third, the last . . . He stepped back, kicked the lid off . . .

. . . and was greeted by the sight of a sleek, metallic cylinder with a few visible wires and a couple of flashing lights, linking it to what appeared to be a small terminal and digital broadcast unit. It filled nearly the full length of the crate, and was possibly as wide around as Apirana.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen.

‘Erm . . .’

‘
Fuck!
’

The scream – and it was a
scream
– had come from Tamara Rourke. Drift’s eyes snapped to her and he felt his heart rocket into overdrive. He had seen Rourke angry, disappointed, dejected, delighted, determined and reflective, and sometimes he even thought he’d been able to tell the difference. He had
never
seen her scared.

She pointed one quivering, dark-skinned finger at the crate. ‘It’s a
nuke
!’

Drift blinked. ‘What?’

Her eyes, wide and white with fear, flashed to his face. ‘It’s a
fucking nuke
!’

‘But . . .’ This was impossible. There had to be some mistake. ‘How do you
know
?’

‘There is a
nuclear bomb
in our cargo bay!’ Rourke yelled at him. ‘
Why are we still having this conversation?!
’

‘It’s transmitting,’ Jenna said, looking up at him from her pad, face pale,‘which means it was receiving.’

‘Which means it’s activating,’ Drift finished grimly. His mind whirled. What was Kelsier’s game? Was this a test? Some way of seeing whether he could, whether he
would
follow instructions, no matter what they were?
No, we were supposed to be handing this over right now. We shouldn’t have known about it activating at all.
So why would a Europan agent be sending an active warhead into a Europan city . . . ?

Unless they really fired him. Holy shit, they really did fire him for corruption, and this is the bastard’s revenge.

There was never meant to be a way out of this for us.

He looked around desperately. ‘Micah! Bomb doors!’ If they could deactivate the maglocks on the crates and open the drop-down doors which ran beneath their feet, they could— ‘No!’ the Dutch mercenary shouted. Drift stared at him.

‘What? Why?’

‘This is
Amsterdam
!’ Micah roared. ‘You’re not dropping a bomb on
my
country!’

For a split second, Drift considered shooting the mercenary dead and opening the doors himself, but common sense prevailed. He might miss, Micah would shoot back, the mercenary was wearing an armavest anyway . . . and besides, when it came down to it, the Dutchman was right.

This isn’t the old days anymore.

‘Jia!’ he snapped, activating his comm. ‘Full burn for the North Sea,
now
!’

+What? But—+

‘Do it!’ Drift yelled. ‘We’ve got an activating nuke down here and we need to drop it into the ocean! I don’t care if you have to—’

He was cut off as the
Jonah
lurched and tilted, sending them all sprawling across the floor, then sliding helplessly towards the aft bulkheads as their pilot threw power to what felt like the main boosters normally used for escaping a planet’s gravity well.

+You had me at ‘activating nuke’, boss.+

‘Gah!’ One of the cutting torches, now mercifully deactivated, skittered across the floor and bounced up towards his face. He shielded himself with his hand at the last moment, but simply succeeded in punching himself in the cheek instead as the metal canister hit him. Meanwhile Jia had apparently left the comm channel open and they were treated to a tirade of abuse, presumably thrown at other flyer pilots.

+
Cào n ıˇ! Cào n ıˇ ma! Cào n ıˇ made b ıˉ! Cào n ıˇ z u˘ z oˉng shíba
¯
dài. . .
+

‘Head for the North Pole, and don’t brake until I tell you!’ Drift yelled at her, fighting up to his feet against the acceleration. The last thing he wanted was for Jia to fire the retros as soon as she was over open water and them all to tumble the other way across the cargo bay, potentially accompanied by any crates they’d managed to unclamp. He straightened, took one step towards the crates and then stumbled sideways as Jia banked momentarily. ‘Damn it!’

+I need to go
around
things,
bai chi!
+

Drift growled and fielded Jenna as she staggered into him, then pushed the young slicer away again and lunged for the crates. He clawed his way past the first one, the top of which had thankfully cooled from the red-hot state he’d left it in, and slapped at the release mechanism on the maglock at the corner of the bomb’s container. It buzzed, and the green light blinked out. Rourke came down on the other side of it, hitting the floor and the release in one barely controlled motion.

+We’re over the ocean!+
Jia’s voice came over the comm.
+Ditch it!+

Drift scrabbled to the other end of the metal container and slapped again. Another green light disappeared, and a second later he heard the
smack
of Rourke’s hand disconnecting the fourth and final lock.

‘Get clear!’ Apirana roared. The big Maori had fought his way forwards to the controls for the bomb doors, the nickname proving unfortunately apt on this occasion, and was standing poised by them. Drift took two stuttering steps and then a leap, landed hard on the cargo-bay deck . . .

. . . and behind him, the floor dropped away.

The wind noise was immediate and deafening, and the entire ship started to judder as its aerodynamics were compromised and great gusts of air and spray slammed up into the bay. The salty smell of the sea hit his nostrils; a wild scent and shockingly strong, and Drift’s mind suddenly flashed backwards as he wondered how long it had been since he’d breathed air which hadn’t been recycled and filtered hundreds of times before.

Of more immediate concern, however, was the fact that the opened crate with the ominously blinking bomb had slipped through the gap and vanished into the rushing blue-green blur flashing below them. He waved at Apirana to shut the doors again and the big man obliged, jabbing at the control which started to bring them back up with a whirr of motors and hydraulics barely audible over the wind noise. Drift activated his comm again.

‘Jia, it’s off! Get us clear!’

+Trying! Incidentally,+
the pilot added ominously, as the roar of the engines went up another notch,
+we’ve got company.+

‘Company?’ Drift demanded, pushing himself upright once more and heading for the stairs. A moment after he hit them he heard a second set of boots behind him, and looked over his shoulder to see Jenna following him.

+Yeah, looks like we ruffled some feathers. We got Europan fighters scrambling to intercept.+

Drift grimaced. There was little chance of fighter aircraft having the sheer thruster muscle to catch a craft capable of breaking atmo, but it was unwanted attention nonetheless. ‘Lose them.’

+Working on that too.+

It was only a few seconds later that Drift made the cockpit and launched himself into his seat. He pulled up the frequency logs, scanning through for anything which might be relevant to them . . .

. . . and behind them, the whole world went white.

The explosion of a nuclear bomb in the North Sea had predictably chaotic consequences, the most immediately obvious being a titanic blast of water and steam which had engulfed the fighter aircraft pursuing them and caused every single radio channel to start shouting at once. Another was that all aircraft in the vicinity of the explosion immediately began fleeing with no regard for rules or regulations, meaning that the
Jonah
’s screaming flight northwards had suddenly become entirely unremarkable. Jenna had switched aliases again on the basis that for at least a few seconds everyone was going to have something else to worry about, and so it was that the
Tamsin’s Wake
changed direction abruptly and headed over Britain to touch down at a refuelling station in Birmingham.