"Wake him up," Vega said, and Mark rolled his eyes in the darkness.
"Sure," he said sarcastically. "Pass me the smelling salts and—"
He was interrupted by a sharp crack that sounded like gunfire in the darkness, and it took him a moment to realise that somebody—maybe even Vega himself—had just slapped the comatose man hard enough to make his teeth rattle.
After a moment, he heard another slap.
No response from Herb.
"Does that ever work?" Mark asked with a grin that nobody could see, but he was sure they could all hear.
"Who knows?" Vega spat back. "I could try and slap some sense into
you
if you'd like? Call it a scientific test."
Mark's grin widened.
"I think you're starting to like me, Steve-O."
Vega didn't respond.
"Get some water," he said. "There's a bathroom here somewhere. Maybe dunking him will wake him up."
"Or he could drown," Mark said affably.
"Ledger, shut the fuck up. One of you, get that bastard awake by the time I get back."
"Back?" Mark said sharply. "Back from where?"
"I'm going to the park," Vega replied. "That engine you can hear? That's a helicopter, and it's close. And getting closer every second. It could be here to help us, but I've got a bad feeling it isn't."
Mark bit down on the sarcastic response that formed in his mind when he heard the urgency in Steven Vega's tone. The unmistakable note of concern.
"Ledger, give me your lighter," Vega said, and Mark fished it from his pocket without question. He flicked the flame to life for a moment and held it out until he saw Vega's hand reaching for it.
For a moment, as their eyes met across the flame, Mark thought he saw a flicker of something pass across Steven Vega's gaze. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it might have been gratitude. Not for the lighter, he realised, but for the fact that he was handing it over without being an arsehole about it.
He nodded at Vega, and let the flame die as he dropped the lighter into the man's meaty palm.
"Wait for me here," Vega said. "If he wakes up, get him to talk."
"Uh, get him to talk
how
?" Mark asked.
"However you can," Vega said, and with that, he turned away from the group of men and strode to the door.
Mark heard him retrieve the pistol from the door handle, and a faint swish as he pushed the door open.
And then he was gone.
For a moment, silence reigned, and Mark realised that all the remaining members of the security team were waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
"Okay," he said finally. "You heard the man. Let's get some water and wake this guy up, and then let's get some fucking answers."
*
Vega made it to the park just as the first bolt of lightning sheared the sky, providing a brief moment of illumination for the grateful passengers who had managed to make their way to the Oceanus' central space in the thick darkness.
For that moment, as the lightning took a snapshot of the ship with a pale blue flashbulb, Vega saw that, for the most part, the passengers were wrestling with confusion and disorientation rather than outright fear.
The jeering and surprised laughter had died away, and Vega had an idea that many of the passengers had already looked at their mobile phones and discovered that they were as dead as everything else.
As he moved through a huge decorative archway into the park itself, he heard muttered conversation about the storm; passengers wondering if maybe the ship had been struck by lightning, causing a power surge.
From more than one group of people, he heard
EMP
, and knew that fear would replace the confusion soon enough. For the time being though, most of the faces he saw in the park before the darkness returned were all focused on one thing; the same thing that Vega himself concentrated on: the distant light in the sky that approached, and the hum of the engine that got louder with each passing second.
He squinted at the approaching light, trying in vain to make out the shape behind it. From the sound of the engine, the chopper was large, but Vega didn't think it could possibly be large enough to carry the requisite amount of fuel for a trip to the middle of the Atlantic. The chopper hailed from a ship, he was certain of it. Only one question remained.
Friendly or unfriendly?
Vega had holstered his pistol before he stepped into the park, keenly aware that if any of the passengers realized that there was a man carrying a firearm in their midst—even one wearing a security uniform—it might spook them even more than they already were. He knew only too well that darkness could breed panic quickly, and that panic was likely to be the single greatest danger the passengers on the ship faced.
Unless that helicopter was as unfriendly as the squirming in his gut said it could be.
The men that had set off the EMP device didn't trouble him as much as they had earlier: if Ledger had successfully put down two, Vega guessed that they were unarmed. It stood to reason that if you wanted to hunt down a witness before he could escape, you'd send guns after him—if you had any.
If he was right, that meant that the men who had crippled the boat were tasked only with cutting the power and leaving the Oceanus vulnerable. The real danger would come later.
Vega had hoped that 'later' would be
much
later; enough time to give him a chance to prepare the staff, though he had no idea what he might be preparing them
for
.
Yet there had been virtually no delay between the EMP strike and the arrival of the chopper. It couldn't be coincidence. Whatever the terrorists had hobbled the ship for, it was going to happen quickly, before the staff and passengers could respond.
The spotlight on the front of the chopper flooded the park, blinding the people below and making it impossible to see anything other than the vehicle's dark silhouette.
Vega saw immediately that his guess had been wrong. The chopper was much bigger than he had anticipated. Judging by the hulking size of the silhouette, it was almost big enough to be a twin-rotor.
His nerves began to jangle as the wind generated by the spinning blades whipped through the park.
Such a chopper could easily be carrying a fully armed squad of men. He'd ridden inside helicopters himself which comfortably held twelve soldiers, and he knew all too well that a single chopper could drop a world of pain onto whatever was unfortunate enough to be directly below it. A force like that landing on the Oceanus would mean instant failure for Vega. Whatever the people attacking the ship wanted, they were organised and they were efficient, and that struck him as very bad news indeed.
So you've decided, then. They
are
attackers.
Vega cast the thought aside, and slipped the pistol from the holster as the chopper hovered directly over the centre of the park. Being in the marines had long ago taught him to expect the worst. Hell, that was practically lesson number fucking one.
Any minute now
, he thought,
I'm going to see men rappelling down
.
He lifted the pistol, sighting it, all thoughts of panicking the passengers forgotten.
And then the helicopter released its cargo.
And the screaming started.
*
Edgar led his brothers into the night air, breathless from pounding up more than a dozen flights of stairs, just as the chopper moved directly over the park.
It was, he thought, perfect timing, though the word
perfect
seemed like a bad fit for the situation.
Nothing on the Oceanus was
perfect
. None of it brought Edgar the satisfaction he had expected.
He had done his duty; fulfilled his destiny, and somehow it just left a hollow ache in his stomach.
Edgar's duty had cost him his youngest brother, and almost certainly the trust of the two brothers that remained. He didn't doubt that Herb would have said it had also cost him his soul.
He watched the helicopter drop its payload onto the centre of the park, and dark thoughts gathered in his mind as the screaming began. He brushed them away. Only one thing mattered.
Get to the extraction point.
It dropped with a crash that sounded like the walls of Hell collapsing, and the screams that followed were pure horror and pain; a far cry from the jeering hoots of surprise that Vega had heard when the lights went out.
This was the screaming that, in a different life, he had heard from wounded marines; from
dying
marines. The terrible noise that humans made when they understood that death had sunk its claws into them and had no plans to let go.
The helicopter had not dropped a team of armed men into the midst of the passengers.
Instead, as Vega watched in stunned astonishment, the vehicle dropped what looked like a large shipping container. A heavy steel box which smashed into and partway through the deck, crushing several of the passengers that stood directly below it.
Some would be dead, Vega thought, and felt oddly detached from the notion. Clearly, some were also alive and injured, judging by the anguished howls of agony: he could well imagine the arms and legs pinned beneath the container; limbs turned instantly into sliced ham.
The night air filled with the screams of those that were close enough to see the devastation wrought by the dropped container, but still Vega stood rooted to the spot, the gun in his hand forgotten.
He'd seen plenty of combat; plenty of frantic firefights, and the presence of death had lost the power to stun him a long time ago. What held Vega in stasis was utter confusion. He could make no sense of what was happening in front of him.
His mind made several passes at possible scenarios: terrorism, pirates, hijackers. None of it seemed to tally.
He broke out of his paralysis only when he saw the chopper move to the left, soaring above his head, to hover over the small sports court on the top deck.
It paused there for a moment, and Vega squinted, just about able to make out a ladder tumbling down from the belly of the vehicle, and a dark figure beginning to climb. And then another. Another. Three small silhouettes, climbing quickly toward the waiting chopper.
The other men that Ledger had mentioned. The ones that had set off the EMP.
They were getting away.
With a roar, Vega raised the pistol and opened fire.
*
The rope ladder was hard enough to hold onto; blown chaotically by the wind that was kicking up further with each passing moment as the storm above intensified. The bullets made the task of clinging to the wildly swinging rope all the more difficult.
Edgar was so focused on the climb and on resisting the howling wind that it took him a moment to realise that the cracking noise he heard below was gunfire.
He almost lost his grip entirely when the bullet tore through his right thigh, and he bellowed as white-hot agony erupted. It took all of his concentration to loop an elbow over the next rung and cling on.
He had almost made it as far as the waiting chopper when the blast of the gun reached his ears, a microsecond after the flesh of his leg parted to allow the hot metal through. Dropping from the ladder back to the deck would almost certainly result in serious injury, and maybe even death. With both of his brothers also on the ladder below him, Edgar falling might mean all the Rennicks losing their grip.
He gritted his teeth, biting back on the pain, and for a moment it felt like his mind was shorting out.
When his senses cleared, he stared down at the park furiously, and saw another muzzle flash.
This bullet passed close to his head; close enough that he heard—and maybe even
felt
—the air rippling as it passed.
The Oceanus had an extremely modest supply of firearms, which were kept in a locked weapons cupboard in the security suite, with the staff fully expecting that they would never need to use them. Edgar had no idea how anybody would have had time to respond to the blackout; time to retrieve the firearms, but it didn't matter. Someone down there had put two and two together and decided a gun was necessary, and now they were shooting. Even worse, they were shooting
accurately
.
Another crack, and Edgar heard an explosive shriek from the ladder below him. He looked down, and saw Seb falling, and the gaping hole that had been torn in his brother's chest.
For a long, terrible moment, Edgar's eyes connected with Seb's as he fell. Seb looked confused, like he wanted desperately to ask Ed what was happening, right up until the moment that the deck met his torso and answered all questions with brutal finality.
Another crack.
Another.
Edgar grunted, hauling himself up with his three uninjured limbs as quickly as possible, opening his mouth to roar that the chopper needed to get the hell out of there, but the words proved unnecessary.
He saw a hole punched into the flank of the chopper, still several feet above him, and then the world began to tilt and sway crazily as the pilot decided that the VIPs he had been instructed to pick up weren't that important after all.
The chopper began to veer away from the Oceanus sharply, and Edgar heard a distant scream below him and knew that Phil, too, had lost his grip on the ladder; knew it even before looking. When Edgar did look down he saw his brother’s broken body splayed across a row of sun recliners. It almost looked as if he was peaceful down there, just stretching out and relaxing.
Except for the fact that one of his legs was extended at an impossible angle, pulled up behind his back.
Phil wasn’t moving.
Another brother lost.
A storm of fury erupted in Edgar's mind, and he wrapped himself around the rope ladder as tightly as possible, trying desperately to maintain his grip.
Two more tiny insignificant pings, sharp and metallic, told Edgar that the chopper had been hit again, and he had a moment to hope that the pilot wouldn't respond with panic before the helicopter leapt up into the night like a wounded animal, tearing the ladder from his grasp, and all that was left for Edgar was rage.
And falling.
*
Vega felt a certain grim satisfaction as he emptied the entire clip at the departing chopper. He doubted the last few rounds had come anywhere close to the target as it soared crazily away from the Oceanus, but enough of the bullets had done damage. Two of the men trying to escape the ship had definitely fallen from the ladder, and Vega thought he had hit the third.
Not bad.
He squeezed the trigger until it clicked apologetically at the retreating chopper and then returned the pistol to its holster. There was more ammunition back in the weapons locker, but even if there hadn't been, Vega would have kept the gun. He always rolled his eyes at those dumb action movies in which actors emptied their weapons and then tossed them aside as if they were suddenly useless.
Guns were
never
useless. Even an empty pistol carried a certain sort of power. It wasn't the type of thing that you separated yourself from willingly; not when there was trouble in the air.
And there was trouble. A whole fucking heap of it.
What did they just drop on the ship?
Vega turned away from the departing chopper and focused his gaze on the centre of the park. Several small flames, which he presumed came from cigarette lighters just like the one he had taken from Ledger, illuminated the area near the small pond.
The area that held the strange container and the screaming.
Vega jogged toward the lights, stumbling into several panicked bodies in the darkness. Many of the people in the park were fleeing blindly, and Vega figured that was probably as much to do with him shooting as the bizarre appearance of the helicopter.
"Security," he barked as the crowds around the shipping container began to thicken. "Let me through."
Some of the mass of bodies parted for him, but as he neared the devastation at the centre of the park, he found he had to push his way through.
He did so unapologetically, barging onlookers aside until he stood inside the feeble glow cast by a dozen lighters.
There was blood everywhere.
Vega guessed that more than a handful of people had been killed outright when the container dropped like an anvil on top of them. He saw several others pinned in the wreckage. The container was heavy enough to have punched halfway through the deck, and the middle of the park looked like a warzone. Some of those pinned were screaming in horror as they surveyed what had become of their limbs; others just stared numbly. Some looked unconscious, or had possibly already succumbed to massive blood loss.
"Back," Vega shouted. "Security, get back!"
The words had little effect on those who he presumed were related to the injured and the dead, but the crowd around the container—mostly people trying to help, he guessed, though he wasn't sure what could be done without serious medical intervention—retreated a few steps.
"Are there any doctors here?" he yelled, and saw a woman and a man nodding, ashen-faced. They were already tending to the injured, and Vega left them to it. He had no medical experience, and there was only one thing on his mind, far more important than injuries.
The container.
He stepped over the prone bodies carefully, walking around the huge box until he located the doors. They looked securely shut, and almost unremarkable, aside from one small addition. Something that Vega thought didn't belong on such a container at all.
He pulled Ledger's lighter from his pocket and lit it, leaning closer to the object.
It looked like a locking mechanism placed across the heavy steel doors, but Vega saw immediately that it was no ordinary lock.
A tiny array of lights blinked on the device, below a featureless panel.
He felt around it with his fingers until he found a catch, and he flicked it aside.
The panel fell open to reveal a digital display.
Vega stared at it for a second in shock, but his gut had already recognised the device for what it was, and his stomach lurched painfully.
The display read
01.17
.
01.16.
01.15.
A timer. Counting down.
Just over a minute remaining.
Oh, shit.
Vega turned away and screamed at the gathering of people behind him.
"Run!"
Vega felt the people in the park backing away slowly, though the injured and their loved ones remained. There was no way to get them to move, and so he didn't even try. Still, at least some seemed to have heeded his warning, and he felt the darkness at his back emptying a little. Yet they moved slowly, tranquilised by their confusion. Very few were running.
He thought about running himself, but found his feet locked in place. The confusion had him in its clutches, too, he supposed. The need to know just what the hell was happening on his boat.
The first thought that crossed his mind when he saw the timer ticking down was
bomb
, but with each passing second he suspected that could not be the case. The men that had attacked the Oceanus had already smuggled a bomb aboard somehow, and the intention when they set it off hadn't been to destroy the ship, but to ready it for the arrival of the container.
There would be little point in going through all the work of disabling the Oceanus just to have a chopper drop a bomb on top of it. They could have done that at any time.
No, the container was something else, and Vega needed to see what it was; felt his mind tugged toward the object almost of its own volition.
His instincts raged at him to flee, but curiosity had a say in matters. Vega began to move backwards, but very slowly, creeping away from the container inch by inch, keeping his eyes trained on the blinking lights. On the countdown.
He pulled out the empty pistol, and raised it. If there were armed men in that container, confronting them with a weapon drawn might at least make them pause.
But there weren't armed men. Of course there weren't. If it had been men inside, they would have been injured in the fall. Whatever was inside that container, it wasn't men. Wasn't a bomb, either.
He tried to judge how long he had been standing there, trying to work through the problem in his mind. Forty seconds? Sixty?
He had no idea.
Until the locking device on the container doors bleeped loudly and fell away, landing on the ruined park with a soft
thud
.
A couple of the injured people around the container yelped in fright, but Vega didn't hear them. He focused only on the doors, sighting them at the barrel of the empty gun, waiting for them to...
The doors swung open, and for a moment all Vega could see was the dark space inside the container; too dark to make out anything. Empty?
No, not quite
, he thought.
Movement
.
Another bolt of lightning scorched the sky, and for a moment the park, the container and the ruined bodies around and underneath it were brilliantly lit, almost as though God wanted Vega to see, and to understand.