‘This changes nothing,’ said Halman, still staring at the abomination that hung from the dead-lifter’s forks. ‘We’ll secure this area, lock the space door with my personal code, then move back towards the plaza and meet up with the other teams. Then, if we haven’t seen Carver, we’ll spread out again from there.’
Waine began to say something, his voice still unsteady, but his words were drowned by a sudden burst of noise from the radio. It sounded like massed human voices, screaming, shouting. . .
For a second Lina couldn’t work out what was happening. She scrunched her eyes shut, as if by doing so she could lessen the volume in her ears, and a question began to form on her lips. She looked at Waine, and was alarmed to see the expression on his face.
Waine’s eyes fell wide open and he said something to Lina which was inaudible against the background noise. He pointed to the hangar door behind her. Halman stared in shock. As Lina turned to look, it dawned on her what that noise was.
A veritable mob of people were storming into the hangar, the massive figure of Ronnie Carver at their fore, taller than Halman and at least as heavy as Si Davis.
As she watched, the plasma cutter came alive in Carver’s hands, making her visor darken protectively. She clutched the pistol, completely forgotten, in one fist and stared dumbly as the mob rushed towards them.
Theo was quicker to react. He ran to meet the giant, levelling the pistol at him. He fired once and the beam briefly danced around the feet of the onrushing Carver. Theo steadied himself to fire again. Nothing happened. He held the gun up, looking at it in confusion. Lina saw a red warning light glowing on its body. And then Carver was on him.
Carver brought the cutter down in a mighty overhand swipe. Theo made to block the strike with his dead pistol, but the beam of the cutter went right through the gun, sending its end twirling away into the shadows like a propeller. Then the beam went through Theo, as if he was no more substantial than a cloud of smoke, dividing him roughly about the waist in a great rush of vapour. The two halves fell away, gas rupturing from his suit. Carver’s mob of followers spread out into the hangar, whooping and jeering, leaping into cover.
Lina stood stupefied and watched as Theo died. Who the hell were all these people? Where had he found all these people?
Halman was running already, under cover of the Kays, firing his laser pistol on the fly, without pause to aim. The roaring of the attackers still filled the comm, making communication impossible. Lina looked to Waine, totally lost, knowing that her life — all of their lives — hung in the balance.
Somebody in the attacking group was firing a laser, too, as they ran along the furthest row of Kays. The shots went wild, most of them zipping away into the cable-festooned darkness of the ceiling. One bounced off the mirrored cockpit glass of K6-4 and hit the dead-lifter, where it left a small and understated burn in its paintwork. It was clear, however, even to Lina’s stunned mind, that the shooter was aiming for her and Waine.
‘Quick!’ she yelled, unaware that her voice was inaudible beneath the continuous war-cry of the attacking group. She darted across the open deck, feeling horribly exposed, and under the nose of the nearest ship, her boot skidding on the ice, almost slipping out from under her. She hit the deck and looked back over her shoulder.
Waine was behind her, but he was not so fast. He took a hit from the laser pistol, high on one shoulder, and his suit shredded itself like a burst balloon. He collapsed, writhing and clutching at his throat, grabbing instinctively for Lina’s leg as she scrambled further into cover. She peeked out and saw him thrashing on the floor, twisting and arching like a fish out of water. Shots from the laser stroked the deck in front of her, probing, making her duck back again, powerless to help the man who now lay dying only feet away.
The roaring was subsiding now, and Lina heard Halman’s voice over the radio. ‘The prisoners!’ he shouted. ‘The prisoners!’ Other voices came from the radio, too — desperate, aggressive exclamations and screams of rage.
Halman was right, of course — it made perfect sense. Carver had freed the prisoners and brought them here to escape on the ISL. Not just one homicidal maniac any more, but sixteen of them. How could things get any worse?
Lina scampered round to the other side of her Kay and peeked out again. The prisoners were fanning out into the hangar, running in clumsy half-crouches, keeping to the shadows. Two of them dashed into the shade of the dead-lifter where she had been only moments before, peeping out at her with ugly, feral faces. They would flush her from her hiding place at any second, as soon as they had summoned up the courage to make the next dash.
‘Halman!’ she yelled, poised in indecision, feeling like an animal caught in a hunter’s sights.
‘Lina, follow me!’ he yelled back. ‘We have to get to the door!’ She couldn’t see him any more, but she knew he was right. They had to get away. There was no hope they could win this fight.
Without allowing herself to stop, think, and then possibly die in that moment of consideration, Lina launched herself out from behind the ship and onto the open floor of the flight deck. She caught another glimpse of Halman, pinned down behind a Kay to her right, exchanging fire with the laser-armed prisoner. She ran towards him, knowing that a beam of light could end her life at any second, leave her gasping and suffocating like Waine, or maybe just blinded and convulsing in agony on the floor. She thought about what might happen if Carver captured her, about what had happened to Liu. Dragon! she thought madly. It’ll eat you up!
She landed beside Halman with a jarring crash, laser beams playing on the deck behind her. He popped up from cover, but was forced to duck back again without even getting a shot off.
‘Shit!’ he cried.
Lina, staying low on her belly, edged round the landing gear of the ship and took a quick glance towards the door. The shooter was out of sight, hiding, and she couldn’t tell where he was. But Carver was running from cover to cover, closing in on them. She caught a glimpse of the face behind the visor, and it looked pink and stupid and horribly eager. And he was close. Her mind began to gibber in fear.
Halman popped up again, letting off another shot. An answering beam flashed silently past his helmet, missing him by perhaps a hand’s breadth. It seemed the enemy had got his eye in now. Halman ducked down again, cursing.
‘Come on!’ cried Lina, desperately seizing the initiative. She knew that if they stayed put, they would die for sure. Sadly, the odds didn’t look much better if they broke cover. But what other option was there?
She threw herself round the back of the Kay, squeezing between the ship and the hangar wall, safely out of the enemy’s line of sight, but also virtually blind to what was going on. Halman was right behind her. They ran, crouched, ducking under outcropping winches and brackets and ventilation units.
And then they came face-to-face with Carver.
They skidded, Halman falling over Lina, and the giant towered above them, the cutter held high for the killing blow. She saw the fingers jumping on their string around his neck and the face behind the visor, streaked with blood. Still crouched low, she tried to shy away into the wall itself, raising one hand in a pointless attempt to protect her head, knowing that she was about to die. Oddly, she felt only a drifting, timeless sense of calm now that it came down to it. Everything slowed down. Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears, like a war drum. The world flattened and spread like oil on water. This was the end.
But Halman rolled away, his training taking over, crashing into the wall, firing the pistol as he went. Either he had been something of a crack shot in his day, or he was lucky now. Whatever the case, the beam of the laser hit Carver right in the visor of his helmet. He staggered back, dropping the cutter, which sliced a neat segment from the radar dome of the nearest Kay before going out. He reeled away, into the open, almost hit by a shot from his comrade’s laser, hands to his helmet. He screamed into the comm — a sound of maniacal rage and frustration more than pain, groping blindly for the person who had shot him.