Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (36 page)

Chapter 24

“Come on, you
lazy old cow!” Lucy aimed a kick at the nav-console, the trode-tiara on her head lighting up red to indicate pilot distress. She’d gone into a deep sulk upon being told she had to fly the
Aguila
rather than take charge of the Covert Ops stealth ship. “No way she’s a better pilot than me,” she had grumbled back in the Cerberus docking bay, jerking her head at the professionally taciturn woman checking over the stealth ship’s landing gear.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why I need you with me. Think I’d trust anyone else to shoot this hoop? Forget it.”

It had been enough to mollify her, but her frustration with the aged freighter’s handling became more evident the closer we came to lunar orbit. Maintaining station among the ragtag fleet that had launched from Cerberus wasn’t easy, given the souped-up engines and manoeuvring thrusters added by their mod-happy owners. There were thirty ships in total, all crewed by veterans willing to volunteer for Riviera’s ad hoc fleet. There wasn’t a matching type among them and every hull was decorated in the graffiti that seemed to be a Cerberus trademark. The number surprised me. I’d been expecting more than a few to share Mr Mac’s reluctance; they all had the scars and prosthetics to testify to a genuine and justified grievance against the planet we were trying to save. But Riviera’s word, taken with Kruger’s support, had been enough to secure us a decent sized attack-force.

The burn to lunar proximity took the better part of three hours where the fleet settled into a geosynchronous orbit over the southern pole. Riviera calculated that the bulk of the moon would shield us from both Earth-based and CAOS scans. The reaction of either side to the appearance of a fleet of armed vessels at this juncture was unpredictable and I didn’t want to risk any unfortunate consequences. CAOS news feeds had been mostly shut down since Central Governance formally declared an existential threat, but the Downside stations were still blaring out a constant commentary on the unfolding crisis. All in all, it didn’t paint a pretty picture.

“The UN Security Council has enacted the Global Defence Protocol, requiring all member states to place their military resources under UN Central Command… Offers from the Vatican to act as intermediary in negotiations with CAOS have so far gone unanswered… Reports indicate all off-planet Federal Security resources have been recalled to Earth orbit…”

“ETA thirty minutes until we show on the corvettes’ long range scans,” Riviera told me. “Better prep your people.”

I nodded and made my way to the cargo bay where my assault force waited. Cerberus’s military surplus included enough combat ready vac-suits for everyone but they were all wartime vintage, no shiny new Pendragons here. Luckily, Kruger’s people hadn’t skimped on maintenance, so they were fully operational, if lacking in firepower. To compensate, the force carried a mix of up-to-date assault rifles and grenade launchers, apart from Janet who maintained her strict anti-gun policy even now.

“It’s all been checked,” she told me as I ran a critical eye over her suit’s seals and power couplings. “Timor was very thorough.”

I moved back to meet her gaze and knew there was nothing I could say to make her sit this out. A shared hero-complex was probably one of the things that bound us together. “It won’t just be bots this time,” I told her. “Real people, and they need to die.”

She gave a short nod and forced a smile. “I know.”

“Are we there yet, Dad?” I turned to see Phaedra standing with Erik and the rest of her people, all suited-up and bristling with weapons. The novelty of taking their first off-planet trip seemed to have faded pretty quickly. The reality of restricted and decidedly non-aromatic surroundings had a tendency to bleed the wow-factor from spaceflight. I could also tell they were missing the ocean, this was the first time any of them had spent an appreciable time away from a large body of water.

“Half hour to go,” I said, raising my voice to address them all. “We’ve been through it already but it pays to be clear. I lead Alpha team to the bridge.” I nodded at Leyla, now sufficiently recovered for micro-grav combat, Janet and Timor. “Beta,” I gestured at Mr Mac, Simon and Phaedra’s people, “escorts Lucy to the engine room. We need maximum damage and maximum confusion. If we take the bridge or the engine room this thing is pretty much over.” I paused, knowing the occasion called for some rousing words but finding myself at a loss. “You know the stakes,” I muttered finally. “End of the world. All that shit.”

Mr Mac gave a brief but loud snicker. “Wow, Shakespeare lives.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Alex,” Lucy said via the voice-comm. “Looks like their outlying scout-drones picked us up sooner than expected. We’re getting a transmission from the
Jason Alpha
. No encryption. They’re asking for you.”

Vargold wants a chat. What the hell?
“Put it through.”

A pause then his voice came through the cargo bay speakers, as unwavering and softly confident as before. “Inspector McLeod?”

“Mr Vargold.”

“I see you’ve been very busy.”

“You’ve been busier. I’m guessing there’s no point in asking you to call the whole thing off?”

A faint sigh of amused dismissal. “That would make me a coward, like Craig or Lisabet.”

“That why they had to go? Had a crisis of conscience and decided they weren’t on your programme anymore?”

“Craig spent months trying to drown his weakness with drugs and sex. To no avail it seems. He covered his tracks pretty well, but not well enough and it became apparent he had requested a covert meeting with Fed Sec, at Lisabet’s urging and, I suspect, with Wallace’s connivance. I really shouldn’t have allowed him that typewriter. Strange, the three people besides myself that did the most to make this happen, with scant need of encouragement I might add. And yet they all fall victim to cowardice at the final moment.”

“I guess the prospect of orchestrating planetary genocide will do that.”

“It was fairly inconvenient, forcing me to adopt an accelerated schedule. Still, Craig’s demise did give me the opportunity to point an accusing finger at Fed Sec when the time came. For what it’s worth I do regret the necessity of involving you, but a martyred hero garners more sympathy than a drug-addicted business tycoon dying in a brothel.”

“All so you can play out your avenging angel fantasy. Your son’s death was terrible, but fifty billion charred corpses won’t bring him back.”

“I’m aware of that. I’m also fully aware that I may very well die today, as are the people who have joined me in this endeavour. I greatly wish you would too, Inspector. After all, an objective observer might well conclude, given your history, that you’re on the wrong side.”

He paused and I said nothing, drawing a satisfied grunt from the speakers. “I see the thought had occurred to you, too. And why wouldn’t it? They made you a slave for the crime of being born in orbit. They made you fight a war, torturing and killing for years. They maimed your wife and made you put her out of her misery. And let’s not forget their little project at Ceres. And these are the people you want to save.”

I glanced over at Phaedra, black and white eyes steady in her silver grey face, fully confident in me. “There are people and there are people,” I told Vargold. “Spliced, modded, or pure as the genetic snow. But they’re all just people. Good, bad, crazy or just trying to get through life. Then there are delusional pieces of shit like you. I’m going to kill you, Mr Vargold. Not just because you’re a genocidal nutcase, but because you killed my friend, and he was better than you.”

I told Lucy to kill the comms-feed and requested a sit-rep from Riviera. “It’s already working,” he reported. “Two corvettes and a swarm of bots already moving to intercept. Vargold may be a businessman, but he’s no admiral. All helmets on. Prepare for deployment in under ten minutes.”

We watched the first phase of the assault unfold on the cargo bay holo, the
Aguila’s
optics relaying the flurry of explosions as the bulk of the Cerberus fleet engaged the bot-swarm surrounding the two corvettes. The Cerberus ships moved in small groups, attacking in relays according to a preset pattern, firing short but intense missile salvos and cannon bursts then immediately going evasive. Their escape manoeuvres seemed random at first glance but in fact followed similar vectors designed to drawn the corvettes further and further away from the
Jason Alpha
. Although Riviera’s overall strategy seemed to be working, it soon became apparent that Vargold hadn’t recruited complete idiots as a large portion of bots broke away from the main group and made straight for us.

“Flak boats, you’re up,” Riviera commanded. “Fast movers on the flanks. Lucy, time to do your thing.”

The
Aguila
gave a shudder as Lucy cranked the main plasma-drive up to maximum, obliging us to take a firmer grip on our hand-holds as the g-forces kicked in. The holo showed a wall of explosions directly in our path as those Cerberus ships equipped with flak-guns blasted away at the approaching bot-swarm. Inevitably, a few made it through. I counted one ship destroyed and another two badly damaged before the faster ships swept in from both flanks to complete the destruction of the bot-swarm, leaving clear space between us and the two other corvettes. They were putting up a flak-screen of their own, a half-circular shield of blossoming orange flame growing larger by the second as Lucy set course for the
Jason Alpha
.

“Now’s the time,” I heard Riviera say, receiving an immediate and terse response: “Roger that. Three seconds. Stand-by.”

It was only a small flicker on the holo, a burst of light as the pilot of the Covert Ops ship fired off four of Kruger’s plasma shrikes at once. Two were caught by the flak screen, flaring so bright the holo whited out for a second, then faded to reveal the sight of the remaining pair impacting on one of the corvettes. A plasma shrike won’t detonate on contact, instead the depleted uranium warhead will cut through successive layers of armour and deckplates until its on-board AI detects it’s gone as deep as it can and decides to ignite the half-tonne of highly energised plasma in its reservoir. So there was a short delay before the rear of the Corvette’s hull blew apart in two near simultaneous explosions. Its flak screen died instantly as it rolled on its x-axis, spewing debris and bodies, atmo burning away in a red flash.

“I’m hit,” the Covert Ops pilot reported in a clipped wet sounding grunt. I noticed the ship’s stealth mode was off and she was now a small black arrow streaking towards the second corvette. The arrow began to jink as the Corvette shifted its flak barrage, corkscrewing ever closer as explosions chased it across the void.

“Fire your ordnance and withdraw,” Riviera ordered the Covert Ops pilot.

“Targeting’s down,” she replied, then gave out the kind of deep, grating cough that told of a bad chest wound. “And it wasn’t just the ship that took a hit. McLeod, you there?”

“I’m here,” I said.

“Tell the General I always thought he was a prick.”

“Happy to.”

She waited until the corvette was at point-blank range, less than a kilometre, before firing all her remaining plasma shrikes. At that distance, she had no chance of surviving the resultant explosion, but then, neither did the corvette.

“Fast movers take point,” Riviera said as the shattered hulk of the corvette drifted out of view. “Clear the road.”

The smaller ships formed a wedge formation half a klick ahead of the
Aguila.
They were mostly converted racing skiffs or joyriders; fast, one or two person craft, their unarmoured hulls augmented with unsightly weapons pods. They blew through the remnants of Vargold’s bot-swarm in a few frenzied but costly seconds, half-a-dozen or more falling victim to interlocking cannon and missile fire, but they’d done enough to get us where we needed to be.

“One pass over the upper hull to clear the on-board defences,” Riviera told the surviving fast-movers as the
Jason Alpha
loomed in the holo, a dark, oddly featureless monolith about a quarter the size of the Slab. “Turn for home,” Riviera ordered as the fast-movers swept over the hull, leaving numerous fiery flowers in their wake. He overrode the resultant chorus of dissent with a harsh bark. “If this doesn’t work we’re dead anyway. Return to Cerberus. They’ll need you when this is over.”

The holo turned red as Lucy activated the targeting system and a circular reticle appeared dead centre of the
Jason Alpha
. The
Aguila
auto-fired two plasma shrikes the instant the reticule stopped pulsing, both missiles spiralling through lines of tracer fired by the cannon the fast-movers had missed. One was blasted apart two hundred metres short, but the other made it through. Unlike the other shrikes, it had been modified to detonate a few micro-seconds after impact, doing minimal damage to the target’s superstructure but leaving a nice big hole wide enough to accommodate the
Aguila.

“Hold on to your lunch,” Lucy grunted, the strain of concentration telling in her voice as she took us through the storm of cannon fire, throwing the bulky freighter around like a stunt-ship. A few hard, percussive thumps indicated we were taking hits, forcing Lucy to even more extreme feats of g-pulling dexterity. Janet and I were obliged to grab hold of Timor as he lost his grip and almost went tumbling through the cargo bay.

“Helluva party, boss,” he gasped, grinning behind his visor.

The ship shuddered as something much bigger than a cannon shell impacted on the hull, a brief haze of grey smoke filling the bay before being whipped away as Lucy vented the atmo. “What was that?” I asked her.

There was a pause before she replied, voice dull, “A bot kamikazed into our starboard side. Damage is… manageable. You’d better get ready, sixty seconds to touchdown.”

“Weapons hot!” I told the boarding party and disengaged the safety on my primary weapon, a Ruger 10mm recoilless assault rifle and grenade launcher combo. Big and heavy, it was a micro-grav only weapon and had no non-lethal mode which suited me just fine today. I turned to the holo as Lucy took us into the jagged rent torn in the
Jason Alpha’s
upper hull, the forward lights illuminating a broad deck beyond. From the General’s intel package I knew this to be the
Jason Alpha’s
central rec area, a broad plaza of gymnasiums and eating tables where those chosen for the first journey to the stars would spend their off hours. Judging by the few dozen bodies floating about we’d caught some crew members in the middle of watching Vargold’s great triumph on a huge holo display that now filled the darkened interior with aggravating strobe-light. Lucy hit the retros at exactly the right moment, the
Aguila
rearing back and settling onto the deck with a surprisingly gentle clunk of magnetic clamps.