She reminded herself not to get cocky. Just because they’d got themselves some paddles didn’t mean they weren’t still up shit creek.
They rose into the night sky, Tenochtitlan dropping away beneath them. In mere moments they were level with the summits of the ziggurats, the tops of the towers. Shoreline lights twinkled in the distance — so far and yet, now, so near. Below her, Mal could see fires raging in at least three areas of the city. The eye screens on her faceplate reduced the brilliance of the fires to the muted throb of embers in a grate, but these were still clearly, from their size alone, serious infernos. One whole ziggurat was ablaze from lowest tier to highest, sending up dense clouds of smoke. An tanker aerodisc was scooping up water from the lake and dumping it onto the flames, but in vain. Elsewhere there were intermittent strobe flickers of l-gun fire. It was a garish, hellish scene. Mictlan itself surely had nothing that could compare.
If there is a Mictlan, Mal thought. The gods were real, but somehow that made the myths attached to them seem less plausible, rather than more. It was like the first time she’d realised, around the age of thirteen or fourteen, that her parents weren’t the infallible, matchless beings she had believed them to be. They were just humans after all, with as many faults and failings as she had. It was that kind of loss of innocence. Nothing was safe any more, nothing sacred. Every measure she knew had had to be recalibrated.
When she and Reston had gained sufficient altitude, they set a course for the shore.
They had gone a mile — less — when trouble reared its head.
“Airborne troopers, please identify yourselves.”
Mal and Reston looked around. Looked at each other. Was someone talking to them?
“I repeat, airborne troopers, currently eastbound out of Tenochtitlan. Who are you and where do you think you’re going?”
The challenge had come over the comms link, but neither of them could see where it originated from.
“You two,” said the voice testily. “The ones heading away from the combat zone. I’m talking to you. Please respond. Over.”
“Er, yes,” said Reston. “We’re, er… This is us. Where are you?”
“Right up your backside.”
And there, behind them, out of nowhere, loomed a Serpent gunship. Mal and Reston slowed to a hover, and the aerodisc braked accordingly. A trio of pilots were visible in its cockpit. One of them spoke into a microphone handset, and the suspicion-filled voice resumed in Mal’s and Reston’s ears.
“Sound off,” it said. “Name, rank, platoon.”
“Uhmmm…” Mal was stumped. They hadn’t banked on something like this. “I’m Lieutenant…” She groped for a Nahuatl surname. “Yolyamanitzin.” It was the last one she’d heard, the first one that came to mind.
Unfortunately, Reston had had the exact same idea, and just as Mal was dubbing herself Yolyamanitzin, so was he. He even awarded himself the same rank as her.
“Let me get this straight,” said the pilot. “You’re both lieutenants and you’re both called Yolyamanitzin?”
“Yes,” said Reston. “Funny thing, eh? And we’re not even related.”
The pilot wasn’t buying it. “And your platoons? Which? Viper? Boa? Cobra?”
“Viper,” said Reston decisively. “Both of us. Another coincidence.”
“Nice try, dickhead. Serpent platoons are known by numbers, not the names of snakes.”
“Yeah, nice try, dickhead,” Mal muttered.
“So, really, who the hell are you two? And give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow you out of the air.”
“We’re on a special mission,” Reston said, stalling for time. Surreptitiously he flicked a switch and his l-gun started to power up. “Top secret. For the colonel.”
“Yeah, pull the other one. What accent is that anyway?”
“British,” said Reston, and in English he added, “Vaughn. Brace for evasive action.”
“What was that?” said the pilot. “Didn’t catch that last bit.”
“I said…”
And Reston opened fire.
Someone on board must have been anticipating this very move, because just as Reston unleashed the bolt the gunship flipped up onto its starboard side. His shot grazed the hull, leaving only a scorch. Then, still canted almost perpendicular, the aerodisc lunged forwards, its front-facing l-gun nacelles belching plasma.
But Mal and Reston were already racing away, flat out, in reverse. The gunship gave chase. More plasma bolts blistered around them, and they both twisted and sidewinded. There was no skill to their manoeuvring, only desperation, but the suits of armour were superbly responsive, almost as if they wanted what their wearers wanted. One bolt struck Mal a glancing blow. She was barely aware of it. She felt like laughing. But the next instant another caught her full on, and although the armour took the brunt, it seemed there were limits to the levels of energy discharge it could absorb. Mal was sent spiralling through space. Flecks of brightness whirled against a dark background. She couldn’t tell what was up or down, what was firmament or lake surface. She struggled against the spin, and finally managed to correct it and right herself. Her head took a few seconds to catch up with the rest of her.
As the dizziness cleared, she got her bearings. The gunship was hounding Reston hard, and only by some miracle was he eluding its fire. He managed to loose off the occasional shot of his own, but the disc outclassed him in terms of both gunpower and airspeed. He was fighting a rearguard action and it wasn’t doing him any good; it was only a matter of time before the Serpent pilots got in the two or three hits in quick succession that would polish him off.
“Reston! Keep that thing busy. I’m coming to help.”
“Whenever you like, Vaughn. No hurry. What are you going to do?”
“I have an idea, although I’m not too fond of it.”
They were using English. The pilots would be aware they were hatching something but wouldn’t know what.
“Well, like I said, no hurry. Whatever works for you. Any time in the next three seconds would be fine.”
Mal took a deep breath — I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe I’m doing this — and soared towards the gunship. It opened up at her with its rear nacelles, but she made herself the zippiest, most elusive target imaginable, corkscrewing and loop-the-looping unpredictably, like a fly avoiding the swatter. Soon she was above the disc, out of the line of fire from any of its guns. She dived down and crash-landed on it, belly-flopping. Momentum carried her slithering across its roof to the front, where the cockpit windshield was.
Clinging on with one hand to the ridge of the windshield fairing, she started hammering the glass with the other. The pilots yelped in alarm. Over the comms link, the one who’d spoken earlier shouted at her that she was a madwoman. What was she trying to do?
“What does it look like?” she replied in Nahuatl.
The gunship went into a series of crazy bucking-bronco manoeuvres, the pilots doing everything they could to throw Mal off, but she hung on, still doggedly punching the windshield. The glass was tough but the suit of armour, or perhaps the woman inside it, was tougher. Spiderweb cracks appeared. Then a hole. Finally, with a sudden sucking crash, the entire curved sheet of glass caved in. Wind pressure drove the fragments into the cockpit at bullet speed. Mal heard screams. She detached herself from the disc and shot upwards.
The gunship slowed to a complete halt. Reston did a hairpin turn and aimed his l-gun at the hollowed-out windshield frame, and pumped a full-charge bolt into the cockpit. The disc rocked and shuddered. A tongue of flame erupted from the front like a dragon’s breath.
The gunship began a leisurely, seesawing descent, like an autumn leaf falling. It hit the lake surface quite gently, with a discreet splash. Its neg-mass drive was still functioning but was cycling down, so the disc remained buoyant on the water for nearly a minute before it began to sink. Still afire, it slipped into the darkness below with a surge of boiling bubbles and a hiss of steam.