Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two (32 page)

Max closed down the holo once more.

‘I’ve got a suggestion.’

‘What’s that?’ said Pavel.

‘Let’s not find out. Let’s shut down Schenck while his plans are still inside his head, and nowhere else.’

‘You’ve got my vote,’ said Clayton.

No one pointed out that this was no democracy.

‘All right,’ said Clara. ‘I’m going to bring it out into the open. We’ve all been worrying about it, I’m sure.’

Clayton said, ‘Analysing, not worrying.’

‘If they’ve taken out Admiral Asai, do they know about us? Do they know who we are?’

‘We’re still here,’ said Pavel. ‘That’s a good sign.’

‘Can we counterattack?’ asked Clayton. ‘Besides assassinating Schenck, which he’ll be taking precautions against in any case, how do we stop them?’

Max was regarding Clara.

‘Is Schenck associated with secessionist philosophy in most people’s minds, would you say?’

‘Er … Those who follow politics, yes.’

‘Hmm. I’m pretty sure you’re right.’ Max looked at her, then Pavel. ‘In which case, a little information campaign might be in order. If we leave realspace, it’s not just that humanity will do business with the Zajinets. Scientists created us once, and they can do it again. A shortcut might include capturing some of us, perhaps with a bit of vivisection thrown in.’

Clayton’s scowl signalled dislike of such an indirect response.

‘I do have an additional idea,’ Max went on. ‘It involves using some skilled Pilots, preferably neutral in all of this, and preferably without their knowledge.’

‘Recruiting innocents?’ asked Clara.

‘It’s a tough game we’re in,’ said Pavel. ‘I thought you realized.’

To save Clara some face, Max said: ‘You’re right, but there’s some information we need to disseminate. Information I’ve been sitting on for way too long.’

Pavel shook his head.

‘Any information known to come from you, Schenck’s people will find a way to discredit.’

‘That’s why I need to churn things up,’ said Max. ‘And with luck, come back with eye witness testimony.’

Before they would agree to the plan, the others demanded to see Max’s ship. His departures and arrivals had been covert for many years: few of his colleagues still living knew what she was like, his vessel. That felt poignant: thoughts of ageing might carry overtones of desolation for anyone, but more so for Pilots; for they were not always solitary beings: sometimes they were symbiotic partners.

The quartet stood in a place deep inside and orthogonal to the core of Ascension Annexe.

‘Where is it?’ Pavel looked around. ‘I can’t sense a—’

An opalescent wall dissolved.

‘There,’ said Max.

She hung at the centre of the hangar.

Hello, my love
.

Max smiled, not allowing tears to form.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Clara.

The ship was huge.

At last
.

Dark-blue and midnight black, thick delta wings webbed with startling white, throbbing with power and potential.

‘I’ve heard old stories about you, Max.’ Pavel stared at her, the ship. ‘Rumours from the past. Now I know they might be true.’

Clayton was smiling.

‘He can do it, can’t he?’

Jed Goran stepped out of the fastpath rotation and onto a polished dark-green and silver platform overlooking Cantor Circus. Rowena James from Far Reach Logistics was there, along with a tousle-haired Pilot it took Jed a moment to recognize.

‘You’re Davey Golwyn,’ he said. ‘The man who got a huge number of folk off Fulgor.’

‘Well, yeah.’ Golwyn shrugged. ‘Me and a couple of thousand others.’

From Fulgor, Jed had carried only Roger Blackstone and Roger’s comatose girlfriend, Alisha … plus Carl Blackstone’s legacy, now growing by the day inside Ascension Annexe.

Perhaps I should have stayed to rescue more
.

But the risk had been vast, and he had made a promise to Carl Blackstone, without whom no one would have escaped the Anomaly.

‘So.’ Jed turned to Rowena. ‘Is this a big job you’ve got for us?’

‘Pretty much. I’m waiting for a few more– Ah.’

Fastpath rotations were forming all around them. Over the next few seconds, eleven more Pilots stepped through onto the platform.

‘OK, everyone.’ Having greeted each Pilot by name, Rowena looked around the group, smiling. ‘I’ve a nicely tricky schedule lined up, so I thought I’d use only the best Pilots I know for the job.’

‘But they weren’t available so you called us instead,’ said Felipe Copeland, an old rival of Jed’s. ‘Right?’

Rowena laughed. ‘Absolutely not. Follow me, children. Everybody hold hands.’

Jed held out his hand to Felipe, who gave a hooked-little-finger salute in return.

Skilfully, Rowena summoned a fastpath rotation to envelop them all, and they passed through to a promenade that ran along a vast cavernous area of docks. Jed’s ship was already there as requested by Rowena, hanging among the fifty or so ships he could see. He presumed the others also had their vessels waiting.

Scarlet light blazed at the promenade’s far end.

‘Emergency?’ said Golwyn.

A blocky, shaven-headed man came tumbling through a rotation. Two younger men in Admiralty uniforms came running after him, but he gestured and the air rippled, and his pursuers dropped.

‘I’ve seen him before.’ Jed remembered the state funeral, of Carl Blackstone along with his wife, and the man who had appeared on Borges Boulevard only to be arrested. ‘Who is he?’

Rowena had a holovolume open.

‘Guy called Gould, chief suspect in Admiral Kaltberg’s murder, according to this.’

From below, in the gleaming abyssal depths of the docking volume, a dark, powerful-looking ship with white-webbed wings was rising.

‘Call security,’ said Jed. ‘Let’s get him.’

Arms rising, he summoned a fastpath rotation to take him the short distance to where Gould was running. To curve around such a tiny spacetime interval was difficult, the geometric equivalent of minimal leverage; and the rotation did not begin to manifest until Davey Golwyn joined in, adding his manipulation to Jed’s with energetic skill.

‘Nice one,’ said Jed. ‘Come on.’

The two of them jumped through.

‘Shit.’

‘Nice try though, Pilot Golwyn.’

‘Call me Davey.’

The air was twisting where Gould had performed a short-hop rotation of his own, coming out to stand on one of those powerful wings on the rising craft. Already, a man-sized oval was melting open on the fuselage, allowing him to enter.

‘Where the hell is security?’

‘There’s no general alarm.’ Davey looked around the docks. ‘You think maybe there’s some kind of sabotage involved?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jed. ‘I think maybe I don’t want to stand around and watch while a murderer escapes from Labyrinth.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Davey grinned at him. ‘We
are
the best Pilots that Rowena knows, right?’

‘Allegedly.’

In unison, each looked for his own ship; in response, each ship pulled back from her berth, bobbed up, then headed for the promenade where their Pilots stood.

‘Good luck, man,’ said Davey.

‘Luck,’ said Jed.

They jogged in opposite directions, making distance between them so their ships would have no problem in coming alongside. Up on the platform where Rowena stood, columns of twisting air told of fastpath rotations being summoned; while out in the dock space, other ships rose from their berths.

Looks like the hunt is on
.

But the dark powerful ship with the white-webbed wings was heading for the exit portal; and with no sign of security alerts, there was every chance she would fly straight through, bearing Gould into open mu-space where the probability of capture diminished. Jed’s silver-and-bronze ship settled level with the promenade, and he ran onto her delta wing as she opened to let him inside, while adrenalized joy washed tidally through every cell of his body.

Rowena and the last of her summoned Pilots, Justina McGowen, watched from the platform.

‘Sorry,’ said Justina. ‘Not really my business, you know?’

Besides Jed and Davey, eight of the others had transported themselves close to their ships and were rushing to board, while two had created fastpath rotations to take them to the Admiralty where they could raise the full-on alert that should already have occurred.

‘All right,’ said Rowena.

She herself was one of the Shipless, though her skill in visualizing complex geodesics raised interesting questions in the minds of those who knew her.

Justina had recently paid off a massive fine for infringing Admiralty regulations, and her body language was more pulled-in than usual. Whatever the analysis, fast aggression was not on her agenda.

‘The freight schedule is off, is it?’ she asked.

‘I think I’d better reschedule, Juss,’ said Rowena. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Right. Later, then.’

‘Yeah.’

There was a dispirited fuzziness to the fastpath’s rotation; then Justina slipped inside and it twisted from existence.

‘Shit,’ added Rowena.

Out in the docking volume, Jed’s ship was following Davey’s through the exit portal, both flying faster than allowed. Seven others followed. Another ship was tilted at an angle against the promenade, having collided in the haste of her manoeuvre, though Rowena had not heard the bang.

Because I’m too scared
.

Beside her, the air shivered as another rotation manifested itself. Clara stepped out.

‘Hey, sis,’ she said.

Rowena could only swallow.

‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Clara added. ‘For Labyrinth.’

‘Are you sure they’re not in danger?’

At this, Clara’s facial muscles tightened. For all her training, and the Admiralty role she did not discuss but which Rowena had long held suspicions about, they were sisters who could not, standing this close, sustain a lie to one another.

‘Oh, no,’ said Rowena.

The last of the ships slipped through the exit portal and out of sight.

As Max-and-ship tore through the portal, Labyrinth’s farewell resonated in the control cabin.

=Good luck=

‘Thank you.’

Then ship-and-Max were out in the golden void, taking a geodesic hard enough to challenge the pursuers without losing them. Ahead was a scarlet nebula that served as a destination for now, while black fractal stars lay sprinkled against the glowing stuff of mu-space.

The rear-view holorama showed nine ships following.

Good enough
.

Max slipped out of conjunction-trance.

‘They won’t catch us before transition.’

I know
.

He smiled as he dropped back into unification, and whether it was Max-and-ship or ship-and-Max who took a long, banking, geodesic-shifting turn was moot as the conjoined pair flew on, so very fast, as they were born to do.

Behind them, the pursuers accelerated.

On the second day of the return journey to New York, when they were almost alone in the railway carriage – except Americans called it a car – Gavriela asked Payne about the hand-to-hand combat session she had witnessed, and the quotation fastened to the wall of the training hut.

‘In war you cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness
.

Either you kill or capture, or you will be captured or killed
.

We’ve got to be tough to win, and we’ve got to be ruthless –

tougher and more ruthless than our enemies.’

Payne said: ‘Our own Colonel Applegate set up the training programme, but the start point was him watching a Limey, said Captain Fairbairn, demonstrating his stuff on attackers who ended up in the laps of the audience, all of them senior military officers.’

‘It looked effective.’

Gavriela realized her analysis was likely to offend Payne – as in, how dare a woman offer an opinion on the matter? – but he nodded before adding an explanation that surprised her.

‘The government are worried about
after
the war, when the soldiers are civilians again, but trained in silent killing and the rest. That’s why G-men are being trained harder than anyone, though we’re expecting to remain Stateside. It’s for later.’

In Britain, planning was geared towards surviving the war or winning it, not beyond.