Ruthless (27 page)

Johnny began tugging at it, but it was stuck.

Malcolm's minions were clambering out of the lander, reaching for their guns. Johnny pulled his Westinghouse and fired off a couple of rounds in the night. The men ducked, crouched, and rolled, taking cover behind the lander they came from.

Johnny looked back. Wulf was almost at the lander and time was running out. He looked down at the crown, and then back at the
China
lander, and decided that Tuka, or Malcolm, or whoever he was, was the real prize. Time to go.

Firing off a couple more shots behind him, Johnny began to stumble towards the
China
lander, its engines now whirring into life. Someone on the
Sherman
lander saw what was happening and began to power up their own craft.

Dammit, thought Johnny. He dropped to the icy ground, crouching into the smallest ball as he could, the bullets from the surviving minions whining off nearby rocks and thwacking into ice. The occasional ping behind him indicated that they were also bouncing off the
China
lander's meteroid armour.

Johnny sighted through the open entrance hatch of the lander and set his Westinghouse to rapid-fire. The gun bucked in his hands as he sprayed the
Sherman
lander with bullets, way over the heads of the men firing back at him. Pings and ricochets announced a series of hits on the lander, but its shields were tough. It could take it.

The delicate internal electronics, however, were another matter. Several of Johnny's bullets made it through. A few ricocheted inside. One hit something important, and smashed it.

The lights on the
Sherman
lander suddenly went dark, the noise of the engine cutting out. Johnny's alpha eyes saw a minion in the cockpit slapping a console and shouting at it.

The firing stopped. It started to register that there was now only one operable lander on Kajaani, and it wasn't theirs.

Somewhere in the distance, a snow tiger howled.

"Sneck it," said a voice, and the minions leapt to their feet. Johnny jumped up and sprinted for the
China
lander; he wasn't going to hang around. Bullets zinged past him as he stomped across the precarious ice towards the welcome warmth of the
China
lander.

He reached the entrance hatch and dived through. "I'm in," he said. "I'm in."

Blarg hit the rockets and the lander began rising into the air, the entrance hatch still closing as the vehicle tilted and pointed itself at the multicoloured sky. A final spray of bullets shattered on its meteorid shield as it turned with almost mocking slowness.

Then, its main motors cut in, and the lander pushed up towards the horizon, leaving behind a circle of sputtering torches in the snow.

DAUNTLESS

The flight deck of the
Sherman
was a mess. The new owners were hijackers, not cleaners, and they had no desire to get their hands dirty, at least not in the conventional sense. The bulkheads were smeared with blood that showed up black in the half-light of the emergency power systems. It was all that remained of the
Sherman'
s brave crew. The corpses were circling Kajaani as temporary satellites, slowly spiralling down towards an inevitable cremation in the planet's outer atmosphere.

The crew had not had a whole lot on them. Most of them were working their way towards Earth, and possessed only items of sentimental value, like useless family photographs. Left to their own devices, Lev and Torogone had soon run out of interesting things to do.

One crewman had had an interesting stack of magazines at least, which Torogone was still flicking through. They featured a number of women from old Earth, with details of their mating likes and dislikes, and gynaecological information that Torogone found educational. He kept his feet up on the control desk and thumbed idly through issue after issue.

Lev still held out hope for something in the cargo. The outer containers might contain something valuable, but only in a raw state: jewels possibly, or precious metals. Nothing else would survive being kept outside the central shielding. But the chances were higher that it was nothing but coal, or oil, or flat-pack furniture. The internal compartments were similarly unexciting. Many were refrigerated containers shipping dull produce to Mars. A few contained luggage and possessions, but anyone taking a Mars-bound flight instead of one that headed straight for Earth was likely to be low on cash.

Lev figured that there would be no more surprises on the ship. He hadn't found a cowering crewman for two hours, and the one they
had
found had been dealt with swiftly and with minimal waste of bullets. The dead bodies were cast out of the airlock, and now all he had to do was wait for his boss to come back from this wild goose chase.

And then he found her. In hindsight, he supposed that he really should have checked that particular compartment first. Coffee was still illegal on Earth, so why anyone would be shipping it by the tonne to the Sol system was a mystery. It should have set his personal alarm bells ringing immediately, but he was having a bad day of it. He'd just assumed the coffee was for Martian colonist consumption, or possibly for another outer Sol world, and forgot about it. He'd almost walked straight past the container, but something made him look. And when he opened it, nestled in among the expected vacuum packs of caffeine, there was a stasis coffin.

Lev was immediately excited. Travelling in a sleep-machine was nothing unusual, but stasis was a little bit more expensive. And smuggling someone in stasis meant that they had something to hide. A fugitive perhaps, or a war criminal. Whoever it was, they were prepared to pay to be kept out of trouble.

Lev peered through the frosted glass. The container's occupant was a woman. This was an unexpected bonus. He hadn't seen a real woman for a while. In fact, he had been so keen on finding one, he had actually volunteered for the
China
job instead of the
Sherman
. He figured there would be a lot more action going on the
China
, what with all the civilians and tourists and all that. But Tuka had given the
China
job to Nimbus and his idiot friends. Lev squinted a little more, looking for telltale marks of skin grafts, warts or scales. From the neck up at least, this woman was human. That was good, too. Lev was tired of mutie females. They smelled wrong, and they all had chips on their shoulders, some of them literally. They could also be too clingy. Lev himself could almost pass for human, as long as he kept the tail tucked away, so mutie girls saw him as something of a catch. He really couldn't care less. He wanted something else. He wanted something like... this.

Everything about the woman in the stasis tube spelled class. Her skin was radiant, she had beautiful long eyelashes, and she was a blonde, too. Lev liked blondes. This one wouldn't wait, he couldn't resist. And the great thing about breaking someone out of a stasis tube was that they spent several hours woozy as hell. She wouldn't even be able to put up much of a fight.

Lev licked his lips, and popped the control panel on the stasis pod. He scratched his head, and tried to remember the correct procedure for waking someone up. Preferably, he thought, there would be a big red button with Wake the Sneck Up written on it, but he knew that was unlikely.

The small screen sparked into life and offered him a number of options. The one marked Stasis Off looked like the best bet. He reached a trembling finger towards the keypad and chuckled to himself. He pressed one button, then another, answering a series of questions on the chamber menu. It was like ordering something in a restaurant, and Lev laughed again. This was fun. Would sir like his victim woozy, or slightly comatose? Medium comatose would be a thought, mused Lev. He could always enjoy her full consciousness later on. But it was going to take a while for her to come round, even if he started the process now.

Something smacked into the
Sherman
, causing the entire hull to reverberate with a dull booming sound. For a fleeting moment, Lev cowered, afraid that the ship had been struck by a meteorite. But he heard no giveaway hissing or crashes, merely the low scraping of an airlock cycling open. The lander had docked again.

"Torogone!" he yelled up the central passageway. "They're back." Torogone was an idiot. He was supposed to be monitoring the skies, looking for a sign of the returning lander and be ready to help guide it in by Morse code if necessary. Obviously the lander had managed it all alone.

The lovely lady in the stasis chamber would have to wait. That was fine with Lev, it's not like she would go running off or anything. Although it suddenly occurred to him that someone else on the
Sherman
might have first dibs. He should keep her hidden. He would deal with it later.

Lev stepped over the bodies of a couple of dead crewmen. Oops, he thought, should have chucked these out, too. Someone was going to have to scrub the bloodstains off the walls as well, if they were ever going to sell the
Sherman
on. But that was Tuka's decision.

Lev knew his orders. On any job like this, the danger would come from the edges, from the moments where separate foolproof plans were forced to interlock with other supposedly foolproof plans. That little moment, the handover, the exchange of prisoners, the counting of the money, that was when things could go wrong. So, just to be sure, and to give a good impression to Tuka, Lev drew his gun before he swung open the inner hatch.

He didn't recognise the man who was crawling out.

"Hi," said Johnny, peeling off his gloves. "Which one are you?"

"Lev," he said, confused.

"This way boys," said this stranger to some guys behind him, clambering down and turning to help someone. A huge hulking figure squeezed out of the cramped access tube, his feet hitting the deck with a loud thunk. Behind him, Lev could hear complaining and squelching and eventually saw a wet-looking squid creature. Behind the sweaty pink thing was an ugly looking youth, and even more voices could be heard beyond. Lev had no idea who any of these people were. But he remembered the way things had been when the
Sherman
lander set off. He had shut the hatch himself. The access tunnel had been a utilitarian green. This one was a friendly orange. This wasn't his lander. It was time for some answers so Lev raised his gun. He was sure there was a rational explanation, but he was snecked if he was going to stand around and wait for them to offer one. Lev wanted to know what was going on, and they were just about to find out that he could be ruthless.

Lev felt a broad pain across his wrist. Someone had kicked him, but he was too busy at the time following the arc of his gun as it sailed across the corridor. The ceramic pistol bounced off the bulkhead and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

Johnny's hand darted out and seized Lev's throat. Lev panicked as Johnny's strong fingers folded his windpipe. Lev felt cartilage bending and tearing inside his neck as Johnny's grip tightened. It had all happened before Lev had a chance to draw a breath, and now he realised that he couldn't. Lev tried to prise Johnny's hand off of him, but he couldn't. Johnny had already forced him up against the wall, his body pinning Lev's twitching legs, and his free hand pinning Lev's right arm. Lev's left arm dangled uselessly at his side, broken by the kick.

"Nothing personal," whispered Johnny. "But we're pressed for time and you're a murderer." Johnny did not even look at Lev. Instead, he was inclining his head towards the bow of the
Sherman
, indicating to the others to get moving.

Lev didn't want to die. He was open to offers. If the new arrivals wanted him to be one of them, he would be cool with that. He just wanted the searing pain in his throat to go away, and some air to make its way to his spasming lungs. But his hands wouldn't move, and his legs were pinned to the wall, and he knew deep down that this was it; this was the last thing he was ever going to see.

His vision dancing with the black light sparkles of asphyxiation, Lev saw something from the corner of his eye. It was a Betelgeusian pilot dragging the comatose form of Lev's boss up into the access tube. Something had happened on the ground, something had gone wrong, and now the ship was under attack and Lev was dying. Lev's killer finally looked down at his victim, and Lev saw the cold, featureless eyes of true ruthlessness.

Signals from Wulf and Squid told Johnny that the coast was clear. He pulled the bandit close to him and twisted his neck. The snap was the loudest noise in the corridor since the ship had docked. The Boy stared wide-eyed, wondering if now was a good time to ask how to do that.

Johnny dropped the dead body, dusting his hands.

"Do we split up?" asked Squid. The
Sherman
was a big ship. There could be bandits further back towards the stern. Johnny looked down the long corridor, the monotonous view broken at regular intervals by the fluorescent digits that marked each door to a sub-hold.

"Do what you like," he said. "I'm going to the bridge."

"Er... right," said Squid.

Wulf had already grabbed the first vantage point along the corridor, edging himself into the alcove made by a fire hose dispenser. He pointed his gun up the corridor and Johnny sprinted for the next area of cover.

"I'm not leaving this guy," said Blarg, dragging Malcolm along on a makeshift sledge of knotted environment suits. Squid pointed ineffectually back towards the stern.

"I guess we could look over there," he said.

"Fine," said Wulf. "But if they are taking you hostage, we are letting them kill you."

The Gronk huddled behind Wulf's leg and peered up the corridor. Johnny had taken refuge in the doorway to a sub-hold, crouching, and took aim up the hallway. Wulf immediately ran to seize the next position, with the Gronk scampering urgently after him. Blarg sat and waited, unwilling to start dragging Malcolm after them until a fair amount of the coast was clear.

Nigel and the Boy ducked into the nearest position of cover - another sub-hold. The Boy looked at Nigel blankly, and then forced a grimace. He was actually enjoying himself. Just wait till the guys back home heard about this; the Boy's greatest fear was that nobody would believe a word of it. This beat playing with a games console, and it was difficult to feel all that afraid while Johnny Alpha was on guard.