‘Worth it, to see that,’ he says.
Stir milk into coffee and you get a dip surrounded by milky legs that blend into rings. That’s our galaxy we’re looking at. We’re on the outer edge of the outermost ring, looking in. ‘Not over yet, sir.’
‘Why? You got an idea?’
‘A few . . .’ Well, one actually.
‘Need help?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Carry on then.’
Permission given, he retreats to where Aptitude waits, ten paces behind us, her face raw with cold and oxygen starvation. Neen’s glance says he knows it’s supposed to be fifty paces, but what can he do?
The oxygen is too thin, the wind savage and there’s nothing to eat come morning but corpses. That might do for what’s left of the Wolf Brigade, might do for me if it came to it. But Debro would rather starve, and so would Aptitude. And so, I suspect, would our new emperor.
‘Clear me a comms channel to the captain.’
Diodes do a fancy dance as Leona’s ghost leaves off preaching heresy and begins to flirt her way through the mining ship’s security routines. Pretty please, I hear her say. Promises, promises. And then, Got you.
‘Talk to the AI instead,’ she suggests.
‘Why?’
‘Might as well start at the top.’
Taking the planet buster from around my neck, I flip the lid and turn the enamel band to prime its core. Then I hold it up, so the SIG can lenz it through to the ship. When that’s done, I broadcast my message.
If the ship leaves, we will die. Since we will die, I have no hesitation in taking the AI with me. Even if the ship frees its anchors, it cannot outrun the explosion. The AI, the ship and its crew will be ripped to small pieces.
If anything remains of them at all.
All we ask is passage to the nearest planet. Since we have gold, we can offer to pay our way. Alternatively, we can all die. But that seems wasteful.
‘Sven,’ Leona’s ghost says when I’m done, ‘that was almost thoughtful.’
It takes five minutes for the firing to stop. And then a long hatch in the ship’s belly drops, and a buggy bounces down the ramp. For a second it hesitates in the shadow of the ramp. But when no shots are fired, it comes towards us.
Ginal Ord is first officer on the Heart of Darkness, an independent but licensed mining ship, registered out of Finmu, capital of this arc of the halo. She is authorized by her captain to negotiate.
Her voice in our helmets asks who represents us.
By now Vijay stands beside me, as do most of the others. Shil still won’t meet my eyes, which is to be expected. Debro waits, purple-skinned but refusing to show how cold she is. Neen and Iona stand shoulder to shoulder. While Aptitude watches Vijay, whose gaze flicks from the approaching buggy to where the Wolf Brigade lieutenant who talked to me about parole has troopers stripping valuables from the dead.
‘Do we really have gold, Sven?’
I nod towards the lieutenant. ‘He does, sir.’
Vijay smiles a tired smile. ‘You realize,’ he says, ‘it’s usual for senior officers to have captains or above as their ADCs?’
‘Yes, sir . . .’
‘Better get Neen to find you some new pips.’
Takes me a moment to work out what he means.
And then Neen grins as he hacks the rank badges from a dead captain and Iona fumbles with frozen fingers for her needle and thread, while the buggy draws to a halt and opens its glass pod to release a woman in a cheap exoskeleton.
‘Sir,’ I say, ‘what do you think of their ship?’
‘Well,’ Vijay replies, ‘it’s large.’
That’s one way of describing it. Imagine that a mad sculptor soldered together every rusting rocket and ruined hangar from the Emsworth landing fields to make a steel slum, then bolted on gun turrets armed with industrial lasers, sprayed the whole thing red and welded his handiwork to massive boosters.
‘Do you want it?’
‘Sven . . .’
‘Just a thought, sir.’