The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1) (20 page)

‘FTL is hard on all ships, no matter how advanced,’ Shepherd said. ‘It shakes the hell out of the hull, confuses the navigational systems, hits sublight propulsion—everything. After breach, it takes a while for everything to come back online and zero in.’

‘How long?’

‘Usually less than a minute.’

‘That’s not much of an advantage.’

‘The Consul has just travelled from the Core. You know how long that takes? Three days and five different tunnels. FTL is debilitating, which is why most people sleep. We were never meant to travel this way—our bodies just aren’t made for it. His crew is not expecting us to be there, so we do it quick enough, they won’t be alert and might not have time to react.’

‘Might,’ the preacher said wryly.

A fearsome shard of black slowly materialised through the squall. Lightning swirled around it as it breached. Seven dark spears jutted from its nose, and on the underside of the hull was a long, deep fin. There were gun turrets along its spine. In the stern, four huge sublight drives glowed blue as they began to warm up. It was twice the length of Soteria.

‘Hiding is not an option,’ Shepherd said. ‘Right now they don’t know we’re coming.’ Soteria began to shake as she hit the upper layers of Herse's atmosphere. Tiny flecks of stone peppered the hull, and the temperature inside the cockpit grew. Sweat beaded on Shepherd’s forehead.
Just a little while longer. Don’t breach yet. Just give me a little longer.

‘The gunships won’t have been able to communicate with the Consul in FTL,’ the preacher said, nodding slowly.

Shepherd flexed his hands again. ‘What do you believe in, preacher?’

A second, identical ship followed the first through the breach. The cruisers were through, Shepherd guessed. They moved slowly away from the tunnel, the crew probably orienting the systems to Herse's space. Sublight drives were spooling up, ready to drive them down to the planet.

‘I believe in something greater than the Magistratus.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘It’s in all of us. It’s who we are and how we act.’

‘You think humanity is worth the effort?’

‘I’ve seen the darkness inside the human soul and the light which overcomes it. Yes, I think humanity is worth the effort.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

The nose of the Consul’s ship appeared the moment Soteria burst through the final layers of Herse's atmosphere.
No going back now.

The last of the atmosphere released its grip on Soteria’s hull and she felt suddenly smooth and even in his hands. The natural course to Herse Port meant the Consul was heading ninety degrees away from Soteria’s course towards the tunnel.
Centrifugal force hampers the manoeuvrability of heavier ships, which means wider turning circles. Use that. Get inside the turning circle, make the gun turrets work to find you. Find the black spot, where the least number can get firing solutions. Usually, it’s the stern—sublight drives screw with automated range-finding equipment.
This might give them precious extra seconds, and Shepherd intended to use every solitary one. Keeping the throttle at full, Shepherd broke for the tunnel as the last of the Consul’s vessels emerged.

The Consul’s own vessel was a leviathan, five or six times as long as Soteria and sleek like a whale. It moved slowly, and the lightning from the centre of the breach coursed over it like a blanket of electrical fire. As Soteria hurtled towards it, Shepherd could pick out the gun turrets evenly spaced along the sides and across the top—he counted eight in all, and guessed there’d be another five on the other side. Bile rose in his throat as he banked away to change the angle. The cruisers appeared not to have picked up Soteria yet, and he didn’t slow.

Two gunships dropped out of the cruisers and flew towards Herse.

As if suddenly moved by some unknown command, they turned and arced towards Soteria.

The tunnel was fifteen seconds away. Shepherd knew the gunships would meet them first. ‘We might be out of moves, preacher.’

‘Then it’s been a worthy attempt,’ the preacher replied grimly. ‘We will be remembered. We’re not alone.’

‘Eulogies are for the dead,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’re not dead yet.’

He banked slightly away from the tunnel’s opening, forcing the gunships to follow. Did they know she was unarmed? Would that affect their tactics?
No gravity up here, so energy management is different, but their pursuit curves won’t change. Keeping speed would normally be essential.
Soteria was faster up here—heavier, with drives that would outclass the gunships. Their pilots would know that. They would choose a lead pursuit, a course which aimed in front of her, to compensate for her greater speed, but they would have to turn late and tight to avoid overshooting. The gunships would only get one chance at a firing solution and Soteria would only get one shot at escaping. The tunnel would soon close.

Speed and energy are essential. They know that, they’re anticipating that. So do something different.
As the gunships closed on a lead pursuit, gaining a pure and perfect firing solution, the shrill whine began, just as Shepherd had hoped. The moment it pierced his ears, he yanked the controls hard and broke left into and across the path of the oncoming gunships.

They fired.

Soteria rolled and descended beneath the hail of pure white, rocking violently as a small clutch of missiles cannoned into the hull. The rest arced harmlessly away.

Klaxons screamed and the console lit up red, the orange halo across the blueprint of the ship gone and replaced by something infinitely more serious.

Hold on, baby.

The gunships had overshot, their chance gone, but there was no time for relief. The tunnel began to close.

We’re still too far!
Shepherd hammered the throttle to full and aimed for the centre of the aperture.
This is it, girl. Protect us one last time.
He watched the sphincter of azure and white curl towards the centre, closing inexorably and terminally, as they hurtled towards it. He had never entered a tunnel this tight, had no idea what it might do to the hull.

They were close now.

She rocked in his hands as if wind were tearing at the wings and the fuselage. He fought to keep her level and straight.
Every half-second is crucial. You can’t lose speed.
He had never seen a tunnel closing from this close up. Almost on top of him and, for a moment, he was taken by its beauty.
Beauty is so often wed to wildness. Play the hand you have. Never give in.

The tunnel closed behind them.

Shepherd left the preacher in the cockpit and found himself running to medical. When he got there, the door was already open. The woman he’d seen at camp, tending to Jordi, was leaning over the boy again now. He was lying still on the cot, his eyes closed, naked but for his underwear. His body was bruised and bloody, and Shepherd winced at the sight of the wounds on his leg and his ribcage. Someone had wiped his face, but the dirt and blood was still smeared around the edges and caked in his hair. He looked too young.

‘How is he?’ Shepherd asked.

The woman turned to him. She was older than he remembered—perhaps the bright lights in medical picked out more of the lines on her face, or perhaps the events of the last twenty-four hours had aged her. She stared hard at him before she spoke. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood and his ribs are broken,’ she said. ‘There’s an infection in the leg. I gave him some of the medicine you brought, but I don’t yet know if it’s strong enough to stop the infection.’

‘Use anything you need in here,’ he said.

‘That was my intention.’

Shepherd nodded and left. He walked quickly along the corridor until he reached the door to the passenger quarters. He pressed his palm against the panel and it slid open. A dozen terrified faces stared back at him; he searched the room until he found the one he was looking for. The jowled customs official was sitting in one corner, knees pulled up to his meaty chest. Shepherd stalked over to him and hauled him to his feet. He pulled the pistol from its holster and forced it up under the man’s jaw.

The fat man pulled away, terror flaring in his wide eyes, but Shepherd held him tightly, a fist closed around his lapels.

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to get away,’ he stammered. Then the fear in his eyes fell away and his face grew hard. Through tight lips he sneered, ‘I never wanted any of it. I didn’t believe like the others. I just wanted the money and a place to live that had heat and didn’t have rats. Food that wasn’t rotten.’

‘They’ll be looking for you. You’re a danger to everyone here.’

‘No more than you,’ he said. ‘I’ll disappear in my own time. I have as many tunnel co-ordinates as I could download. The Magistratus will change the access codes, so they won’t last forever, but I can still sell them on Jieshou. They’ll never find me after that.’

‘I find out you gave any of these people up, I’ll find you.’

For a moment, the man was silent as his eyes searched Shepherd’s. Then he sneered, ‘Empty threats. You think I’m more afraid of you than I am of a Consul? I made my choice, and selling these fools gains me nothing. Now, you’ve said what you had to say—be on your way, or shoot me.’

Shepherd let the pistol drop as he watched the man’s expression shift to one of loathing. Then he turned away and went to his quarters to sleep away the tunnel.

Shepherd found his quarters suddenly cold and alien to him. The comfortable familiarity was gone, replaced by something dark and unknown. He gazed at his desk, but was afraid to sit at it. Through the window outside, the strobed stars appeared like lines, but even the soft glow they cast seemed colder. He realised his throat was dry, and he leaned into the steel sink and washed his face and drank. As the adrenaline slowly drained away, his legs began to feel weak and brittle. He closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was on the horse again. Free.
That’s what this is all about—being free. Is it worth it? Is it worth the price we will all have to pay?

He collapsed onto his cot and slept.

When Shepherd woke, his head was full of fog and his tongue was dry. His muscles ached because the adrenaline had long since seeped away. He dressed and opened his door. The preacher was waiting for him outside his quarters, standing tall and filling the doorway. Shepherd sighed.
He let me sleep first. How kind of him.

‘Those men deserved proper burials,’ the preacher said quietly. His face was set, emotionless, but his eyes burned with sadness and resentment. ‘In war, people die. Yet they were human beings—misguided, but human nonetheless. We’re not animals.’

‘Those men would have killed us all in a heartbeat, and felt no remorse.’ Shepherd’s voice was hard and bitter. ‘Neither do I.’ It was a lie, and he knew it.

When the preacher didn’t reply, Shepherd felt compelled to say, ‘We had no choice. We needed something to level the field.’ It felt like an excuse.

‘Wars are all fought by men who either believe they are right, or who have no other choice. How they fight defines who they are when the blood stops flowing.’

Shepherd grabbed the preacher’s arm as the tall man turned to leave.

‘Back there,’ Shepherd said. ‘The systems she put in play. Did you recognise them?’

For a long time, the preacher said nothing. When he spoke, he looked tired. ‘No,’ he said, watching Shepherd. ‘But I remember talking to an old tech once, back in the service. He told me about a class of prototype vessels—five were built, I think—which were all decommissioned because the power plants consumed too much fuel when the experimental defensive modes were engaged. They were built to be Peacekeeper transports, at a time when it was felt that spurning weapons for better armour, more speed and new defensive technology was preferable. The techs thought getting the Peacekeepers into a fight quickly, and the ship out again, was better than having the ship slug it out with whatever firepower the other side might have—especially when it was unlikely the other side would have very much.’

‘You think Soteria was one of these prototypes?’

‘Possibly.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘They were all destroyed. Or so I was told.’

‘You’re thinking one got missed.’

‘The New Republic’s no utopia—people do what they need to in order to survive. It’s possible someone got one of them out. Unlikely, but possible.’

‘Why unlikely? I see Magistratus technology in the Bazaar all the time.’

‘The vessels I was told about had a second function; they were battlefield reconnaissance specialists.’

‘Intelligence gathering?’

‘Among other things. They were fitted with surveillance technology—cameras that could see in various fields, recording and communications devices and so on. But the real trick was that they had a comms sub-link into the main intel hub back at the Core. They could network in through long-range wire transmissions and send data back to facilities in the Core.’

‘Technology like that, she must have a tracker?’

‘If she did, I’d know about it.’ The preacher nodded to the device lying on the console. ‘I think we’re safe.’

‘But you’re not happy about this—I can see it all over your face. What’s on your mind?’

‘I was asked to facilitate your delivery to a specific location.’