‘Will it?’ I asked.
‘No, too large, too slow.’
‘Morag, can you link to Pagan and tell him we need him out here? What is it?’ I asked Rivid.
‘Not sure.’ The jolly Russian was gone; there was only concentration in his tone now. ‘The signal’s confused. They’re either trying to jam or it has stealth capability, sub-surface though.’ I didn’t like the sound of this. The capabilities involved were beginning to sound very military.
‘Could you-’
‘Multiple incoming! Secure for manoeuvres!’ the tinny amp suddenly screamed at us. We banked so suddenly I could have sworn I felt us touch the waters of the Atlantic. I heard servos whine as they struggled to open the hatches for the weapons pods.
‘Can we help?’ I shouted at Rivid.
‘Pagan, they are attempting to hack into my systems. I need you on comms!’ Rivid shouted. Pagan was still in his trance. I turned to Morag to find out why she hadn’t contacted him.
‘It’s all right. He knows and he’s on it. I’m going to help,’ she said, anticipating my question. Suddenly the bulkheads came to life. They were papered with a kind of thin viz screen. I could see various images from the cameras around the sled as well as sensor data. Heading towards us from the north were the contrails of two missiles. I’m not sure that witnessing the attack was doing my sense of helplessness any good.
‘Do you want me to jack into the weapons?’ I shouted over the sled’s screaming engines as we suddenly banked hard again. My only answer was a tirade of badly distorted Russian. I watched as beams of harsh red light from the sled’s laser anti-missile defences bisected the sky. It looked like a nearly constant grid of light as the missiles threw themselves into a series of defensive manoeuvres to avoid the lasers.
I knew that Pagan and Morag would be trying to repulse any electronic warfare attempts while simultaneously trying to jam or control the missiles. One of the missiles went up. All around me on the bulkhead screens everything seemed to be orange. The compression wave battered into the sled and I screamed, hating that I was in someone else’s hands. It was a conventional warhead but a large one. I thought the sled would flip. Instead it spun across the choppy grey Atlantic like a skimming stone thrown by a child. I still have no idea how Rivid managed to regain control of the sled. Though I couldn’t help but notice that the catheter had been used once he did. I knew how he felt.
‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Rivid’s tinny-sounding voice screamed. Mid-spin I was vaguely aware of him launching several surface-to-surface missiles of his own. I knew he’d link to Pagan and have him provide electronic cover for them, jam our unseen enemy’s countermeasures so the missiles would have a chance of hitting.
The problem now was the second missile. Even if the laser or the chaff and decoys that Rivid was now firing off brought the missile down it was too close and would probably still destroy us.
‘Three, no four, craft have been launched. Copters by the look of it. Making heavy burn for us,’ Rivid said. I didn’t see what he was worried about. Surely the missile was the more pressing concern. I could see on the bulkhead screens the missile coming towards us and on the sensor display the four incoming copters. Judging by their speed their rotors were stowed and they were just using jets.
Then the missile just dropped into the ocean. A moment later there was an explosion but the water dampened much of the force. I felt the sled rise and buck violently from the underwater blast but Rivid rode it through.
‘Nice one, Pagan,’ I muttered to myself. Hacking a missile in flight was more than a little impressive.
Ahead of us the bulkhead screen showed what was left of Staten Island and Brooklyn. We were approaching the headland at over five hundred miles an hour, the copters gaining on us. I saw a missile lock warning appear on the screen and then another.
We were through the Narrows. I could see the copters clearly now on the screen. I recognised them as US Navy. A missile lock warning disappeared, presumably jammed, but I saw a blossom of flame from one of the copters as the remaining locked missile was fired. Chaff exploded from the sled and laser cut the air again. Ahead of us New York was a grey city of broken spires reaching out of the water.
Rivid banked suddenly. Again the craft was at ninety degrees to the dark water. My audio implants dampened the sound of railgun rounds bouncing off the sled’s armoured body. The laser caught and destroyed the incoming missile and I heard the pointless return fire of the sled’s own railgun.
Suddenly we were in New York. The light dimmed as we shot down lower Broadway, the ruined buildings too much of a blur to make out anything about them. I only barely caught the explosion behind us as one of the copters went up.
‘What was that?’ I asked, meaning the copter’s destruction.
‘One of the city’s SAM emplacements,’ Rivid answered. I wondered if they had a reason not to target us.
Rivid weaved in and out of the partially submerged buildings as railgun rounds and exploding rockets covered us in debris. We played hide and seek through water-filled steel and concrete-walled canyons. We were chased under bridges made of collapsed skyscrapers. I was able to get a look at the lean, predatory, insect-like form of the copters following us, their forward-facing twin railguns reminding me of mandibles.
In the middle of a rocket barrage Rivid mangled the front of the sled as he crashed through a pile of debris into a building. Fire chased us through deserted and destroyed offices and out the other side as we dropped back down into the water. He shot uptown again. The sled was slowing down; its handling seemed less smooth. There were still three of them on us. We’d seen other missile emplacements and various other defensive systems but it seemed that the inhabitants of New York were not going to provide us with any further help.
‘Jakob, my friend,’ Rivid’s voice slurred from the cheap loudspeaker. ‘Do you think this is our swansong?’ I assumed the question was pretty much rhetorical. I mean I could’ve asked to be let out, and the copters may not have noticed us, but that seemed unfair to Rivid, who was presumably only in this situation because of us.
‘You could let us out,’ I suggested, sounding like a coward and a hypocrite to my own ears.
‘You disappoint me,’ Rivid said. He sounded sad. ‘I thought we’d go out fighting, yes?’ Problem was I hadn’t done any. The last time I’d felt this helpless was during a disastrous night drop on Dog 4. We’d watched our assault shuttle being overtaken by other burning shuttles tumbling out of the sky. Shot down by Them AA emplacements.
Rivid didn’t wait for an answer. He banked tightly around the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 34th Street. The copters were back on our tail, kicking in their afterburners, as we crossed Sixth Avenue. Rivid throttled down hard, the damaged engines screaming as he cornered north onto Fifth Avenue so fast he went halfway up the wall of a building in a wash of water. He shot up Fifth, throttled back and turned into a crumbling debris-strewn building that looked like it was once some kind of multi-storey car park. He gunned the protesting sled up a spiral ramp, using the weight of the armoured vehicle to knock ancient burnt skeletons of cars out of his path as he made his way to the roof.
On the roof Rivid brought the sled to a halt.
‘This is your plan?’ I shouted.
‘There’s very little planning going on,’ Rivid had time to say as the first copter rounded the corner of Fifth some two hundred feet above us. I could hear the muted thunder of railgun rounds impacting on the sled’s armoured hull. Two, then three missile lock warnings appeared.