Tanaka was bored, as bored as he had ever been. He yawned, stretching his arms out above his head only to rap his fists against the walls of the control room. He cursed into the heavily cycled air and rubbed at his smarting knuckles.
Today had been his day to stand guard in Tiamat's throne room. He'd got up extra early, worked out, washed, suited up, submitted himself to a long list of security checks and had been ready to start his shift only to be transferred to other duties at the last moment, without explanation. Now he found himself sitting in the cramped control room of an observation station, hanging in low orbit above Pangboche crater, tasked with monitoring the coming and going of shipments to the base below.
The station was tiny, little more than a hollow ball of steel and ceramic that had been placed in orbit above the old Pangboche observatory to assist in testing and calibration of the 'scope. It had been abandoned for some years by the time the Red Dragons had claimed it, and it smelled like it too. The place had a hot, musty smell to it, like an electric heater that had been switched on after months spent gathering dust. And it was dark. Most of the light fittings were busted, so that much of the illumination in the control room came from the controls themselves.
Tanaka hardly mourned the loss of his shift babysitting Tiamat, but with preparations complete and operations due to begin a little later that morning, there was now next to no traffic arriving at the station, meaning he was sealed up in this baked bean tin with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs.
On the other hand, at least he could scratch his nose here. Tanaka reached up and scratched his nose. It wasn't itchy, but he just enjoyed that he was free to do it now.
The console beeped suddenly. Tanaka looked down at the circular sensor readout to see a series of chevrons, each representing a large, incoming object, trailing onto the screen. The telemetry indicated that the objects were already very close; the sensors on this old bucket didn't have much of a range, since their only function in the past had been to avert collisions with maintenance craft.
A moment later a different area of the console began to beep insistently, its warning ringing from the walls of the claustrophobic space. There was a hail coming from one of the incoming craft. Tanaka didn't answer right away. Instead, he plucked a magnetic clipboard from a bulkhead at his right and began to flick through the pages. There was nothing scheduled for today. Tanaka replaced the clipboard carefully and then touched the button to answer the hail.
"Identify," he said, curtly.
"Pangboche 2," came a jovial male voice. "This is Aces High. I've got a rush shipment from VDO Industries. If you could just let me know where to set her down, I'd be much obliged. Over."
"I haven't got any deliveries scheduled for today," Tanaka said.
"Dunno what to tell you buddy," said Aces High with a verbal shrug. "We got a call for a rush job in the wee hours of this morning. Real important apparently. Over."
"Important?" Tanaka was concerned now. Had he been told to expect a delivery, but forgotten about it?
"That's right. Listen, you didn't hear this from me, but I heard tell that this order came direct from Andrew Von De Oniyate himself. Over."
Tanaka spotted his salvation. "Then you'll have e-papers from the company," he said.
"Sure do. Transmitting 'em now. Over."
A message came up on one of Tanaka's monitors, flashing text that read 'Receiving'. A moment later the message was replaced by the image of a signed and stamped delivery order. A little green check mark in the corner of the screen confirmed that the e-signature was good.
"Okay," said Tanaka as he forwarded the notice down to base. "You and your friends need to close to within half a klick of the station, and then descend directly towards the crater. Do it slowly, do not change speed or direction at any point. You'll be directed to your landing site by Pangboche 1."
"Thank you very much, Pangboche 2," said Aces High. "Over and out."
The comm line closed. Tanaka switched the view from the e-papers to the external camera. Sure enough, a line of three space haulers was approaching the station, visible above the fuzzy arch of the Martian horizon. Two of the trucks appeared to be the usual container ships that one might see holding up gate traffic any day of the week. The third was a flatbed with some huge, irregular mass strapped to its back, covered by a heat-shielded tarp.
Tanaka watched the convoy close in, his eyes switching between the camera feed and the sensor screen and back again. All seemed normal, until at around one klick out, the lead truck began to slew to one side.
Tanaka hailed the lead truck. "Aces High, this is Pangboche 2. What are you doing?"
The trucker picked up. "This is Aces High. Sorry, having a little trouble with the ol' thrusters. I really need to get the tech guys to take a look at 'em. Over."
"Aces High, cease your manoeuvres immediately," barked Tanaka. Something was very wrong. "Return to the agreed course."
"Working on it," replied Aces High. "Over."
As the truck jack knifed it revealed the gaudy decals plastered down its flank. They depicted an intricate tangle of green, thorny vines, blood-red roses, and a scattering of playing cards. The centrepiece of the design was a large, hyper-stylised rendering of the ace of spades, the spade symbol at its centre superimposed with a huge, screaming skull.
"Aces High, cease your approach. Retreat to a distance of-" Tanaka stopped mid-sentence as a burst of gas and debris erupted from around the edges of the truck's container. Propelled by the escaping gas, the decorated wall of the container tumbled away into space, laying bear the truck's contents.
Within, tethered to a bar that ran along the roof of the container, hung a line of small, mismatched spacecraft, perhaps ten in all. These were not the black-market military surplus and salvaged syndicate craft that had been trickling in over the course of months, bolstering the ranks of the revived Red Dragons. These craft were ugly, well-worn brutes, no one the same as another.
"Whoops," chuckled Aces High over the comm. "Looks like I shed my load. How embarrassing. Over." That last word carried a weight that dragged Tanaka's heart down into his stomach.
"Aces High, please retreat to a distance of ten klicks," he said. His words were robotic, a conditioned response in a high stress situation. "You will wait there until an escort craft arrives, at which point you will be guided to the surface." Tanaka continued with his scripted instructions, even as he spotted movement among the rank of ships on the monitor. "A landing site will be assigned, and your cargo unloaded." An ugly, blocky craft painted a sickly mustard yellow was spinning up one of its rotary guns. "After which-" The craft opened fire.
Strangely, the sound of puncturing metal arrived a moment before the muzzle flashes showed on the camera feed. As the station shook and groaned around him, Tanaka thought incongruously of the shitty electronics responsible for the delayed image.
Then came the roar of the hull tearing, the gasp of escaping air. And then the cold.
ooo
VT watched from the cramped cockpit of Coffee's ship as the cannon slung beneath its hull shredded the heart of the tiny station. The thing was barely larger than a communications satellite, capable of supporting a couple of techies while they ran calibration and testing in tandem with their colleagues on the surface. It was unarmed. This much she'd learned from her research into the Pangboche facility over the last couple of days.
She also knew that the mini station operated as an orbital gatehouse for the nest of Reds that was gathering strength beneath the crater below. This she'd learned from a buddy of hers she'd spoken to whose name had shown up on Von De Oniyate's list. Apparently said buddy had been made to sign an NDA before taking the job, but somehow VT doubted he'd see any legal consequence for his loose lips.
Pieces of the shattered satellite sparkled in the sunlight as they tumbled away into their own decaying orbits. With any luck, the unfortunate occupant would have had time to pass on confirmation of a registered shipment, but not enough to send down warning of an attack.
A light blinked on the console. Coffee answered the hail. "Go ahead," she said.
"Hey, ladies," came the voice of their chauffeur. "That was some fine shooting."
"Only kind of shooting I know," Coffee replied with a smirk.
"Aces," VT cut in. "They take the bait?"
"So far as I could tell. How in the hell you got a hold of an actual e-signed document I'll never know."
VT smiled. "I know a guy," she said.
The trucker made a mental note to pat Andy on the back for a job well done. Though from what she'd heard of the call, blackmailing his father had been its own reward.
"Alright, Aces," said VT. "Cut us loose."
"Can do," came the reply.
The little craft shuddered and rattled as it was released from the docking clamp. Immediately Coffee began to manoeuvre out of the container.
"Thanks," said VT. "Now get the hell out of here. You're gonna want to get as far away as you can before the shit hits the fan."
"No arguments here," said Aces. "I'm a lover, not a fighter. Speaking of which, is your friend doin' anything later? I like a lady who can handle herself in a fight."
"Sorry, honey," Coffee purred. "I'm married to my career."
Aces laughed. "That's too bad. Well, good luck ladies. See you later, Heavy Metal."
"You too, Aces," said VT. "Over and out."
Coffee cut the line as she dipped the nose of the ship towards the surface of Mars, the cockpit window filling quickly by the vast shield of Olympus Mons. The monstrous volcano, dead for aeons, stared up at the approaching ship like the hollow eye socket of a fallen giant. The crater yawned wider and wider as the ship dove into the atmosphere, then slid to the north as ship's true destination, the Pangboche crater, moved to the centre of the window.
"Your buddies still out there?" asked VT. She couldn't see Coffee's sensor display, and her door window was showing nothing but the haze of the planet's atmosphere.
"They're still there," said Coffee, glancing at the dash. "Don't worry, they won't ditch while they're livelihoods are on the line." Her tone was one of mild rebuke.
"Hey, I didn't mean anything by it," said VT, defensively. "I'm just used to having a better view of things, is all."
"Yeah, well you just let me worry about the view."
VT craned her neck, searching around the edges of the main window for any sign of
Coffee's contacts. There were supposed to be another eighteen ships out there - not enough to fight an army, just enough to cause a little chaos - but she couldn't see a single solitary one of them. VT hadn't meant to question the bounty hunters' honour, but now that Coffee had brought it up, it was becoming a bit of a concern.
The ship shook as it struck the outer layers of the thin Martian atmosphere. A ghostly white haze appeared around the edges of the window as the ship's rapid but controlled descent generated vapour trails from its contours. The grey-brown surface of the planet itself grew more defined with each second that passed, Pangboche crater looming ever larger. Once, long ago, the crater would have been visible to Earthbound astronomers as a shadowed concavity in the dusty Martian bedrock. Today it appeared as a smooth counter, black and white counter resting on the southern slopes of the extinct Olympus Mons. This was the ten-kilometre-wide Pangboche Telescope, shadow pooling in its eastern half.
"Won't be long till they spot us," VT warned. "You have any inspirational words for your friends before we go in?"
"No," was Coffee's terse reply.
"You sure? Might not hurt to put a little fire in their bellies before the fight."
Coffee groaned with frustration. "Fine," she said, and put out a general hail on the pre-agreed frequency. Call signs blinked onto the comm screen as the members of their entourage picked up. "Listen up, jerk wads," said Coffee. "You know the plan. We get down low, find a way into the tunnels under the crater, and start shooting shit up. And remember, if you die in there, your share gets split between everyone who wasn't dumb enough to get killed." The bounty hunter closed the channel before anyone had a chance to respond.
VT looked over at her partner. "Poetry," she said flatly. "And what do you mean by 'share', anyway? I thought you fellas were fighting to preserve your way of life."
"Not everyone is as principled as yours truly," Coffee replied.
"You expecting to find a treasure chest in there or something?"
"We'll worry about that later."
VT rolled her eyes. If bounty hunting had a national anthem, those words would feature prominently in the chorus.
They were close now. The telescope stretched the whole height of the window, and the x-shaped system of struts and cables that held the huge receiver in place above the dish was clearly visible.
A hail came in, this one on a broad frequency range. Coffee picked up.
"Unidentified craft, this is Pangboche 1," said a stern, female voice. "Please identify yourselves."
Neither VT nor Coffee responded, or even moved. The hail went unanswered by everyone else in the squadron; it had been agreed beforehand that the lead ship would do all the talking. Coffee continued her dive towards the crater.
"I repeat, please identify yourselves," the voice came again. "An escort will be dispatched to-"
"Hey," VT cut in. "Sorry about the surprise, there. Didn't mean to startle ya. We're here with the delivery. You should have the e-papers there."
There was a tense pause.
"I see it here," said the woman. "But the craft IDs are for two containers and a flat bed."
"Yeah," said VT. "But we thought this would be the easiest way to get our delivery to you."
Another pause.
"This paperwork is for… one hundred thousand rounds of ammunition," said the syndicate agent, sounding confused.
"Yes," said VT slowly. "And we thought this would be the easiest way to deliver it to you." She reached over and cut the line.
"Probably won't take her long to work out what you were getting at," said Coffee.
"Sorry, couldn't resist. Besides, we're already here."
And they were. While VT had been conversing with Pangboche 1, Coffee had piloted the ship down almost to the rim of the crater. As expected, there was no one to greet them. The Reds had been relying on secrecy for defence; regular aerial patrols would have attracted the wrong kind of attention to what was meant to be an innocent if eccentric science project.
The ship had dropped down just outside the rim of the crater when Coffee flicked on the comm again. "Alright, boys. Break!"
A second later, the bounty hunter pulled hard on the controls, hauling the ship into a rattling bank that took it onto a course running clockwise around the crater's edge. Another eight craft would be following in a close line, with ten more following a path in opposite direction around the rim.
"Keep an eye out," said VT.
They were looking for a way in. The rock beneath Pangboche crater was riddled with tunnels and chambers. Some were artificial but many were natural, created back when the volcano was active and exposed when a huge space rock had carved a chunk out of the mountain's flank. These tunnels had served as maintenance access for the telescope, and both VT and Coffee had agreed they would be a good place to hide a burgeoning syndicate attack force. What they didn't know was where exactly the entrances were and how heavily defended. After much discussion, they had reached the conclusion that "we'll know 'em when we see 'em".
A billion years of volcanic debris streaked by the window as the ship raced around the crater's perimeter, the slope of its side slicing the view into grey-red and pale-blue halves.
"There," said VT.
"I see it," Coffee responded.
Their slipshod excuse for an entrance strategy seemed to have paid off as a broad concrete platform emerged from around the side of the crater. The semi-circular landing pad, perhaps just big enough to support a ship the size of the Bebop, stood proud upon a spider's web of metal struts that thrust down into the ancient rock below. Several sets of floodlights were arrayed around its edge, and a ragged, arching hole gaped in the crater wall where the platform met the rock.
Coffee swung the ship out wide, away from the crater. It was a hard manoeuvre, one that caused the ship to shudder and its engine to cough. For one nauseating moment, VT thought Coffee's improvised repairs would give out and that the ship - pilot, passenger and all - would be dashed to bits on the slopes of Olympus Mons. But the ship soldiered on, long enough for its owner to throw it into another hard turn back towards the mountain. Coffee threw the throttle forward and, with no small complaint, the ship roared towards the tunnel opening.
As the craft bore down on the platform, VT spotted a couple of small figures out on the concrete. Sunlight flashed from the visors of their environment suits as they gesticulated to the incoming ship. Seconds later they were gone from view and the tunnel, lit dimly from within, spread across the window like an ink stain.
Coffee grinned wolfishly. "Special delivery, assholes."
The ship plunged into the darkness.
ooo
Lo stared at the darkened windows of the bridge. He had absolutely no idea what was going on out there, and he couldn't decide if it would be better or worse if he did. The Bebop was under radio silence and would remain so until she received confirmation from the surface that the attack was underway. That signal would be little more than an intermittent beep from the comm console, partly because anything more would attract unwanted attention to the presence of the Bebop in orbit, and partly because the Bebop's comm system wouldn't be able to handle a great deal more. Lo's jury rigging had held up while they were stationary on Earth but had all but shaken apart during the rigours of take-off and gate travel.
All he could do now was sit and fret over what might happen next. And there were so many things that could happen. So many things that could go wrong! What if VT and Coffee's bluff didn't fool the outpost, and syndicate ships came swarming up into orbit to obliterate their little convoy? Or if the bounty hunters got down to Mars, only to be destroyed by an overwhelmingly superior force, leaving the Bebop defenceless? Or, what if the orbital police got involved again? There were any number of ways in which Lo could end up dead. Or worse, arrested by crooked cops, tried in a crooked court and sentenced to life in a crooked prison. Was there even such a thing as a crooked prison? Knowing Lo's luck, there probably was.
Andy didn't seem to have any such concerns. The bounty hunter-cum-samurai stood at the head of the bridge, a look of serene boredom on his face. It was as if the man wasn't happy unless he was placing his own life, or someone else's, in grave peril. Lo didn't think he'd seen anyone grin as broadly as Andy had done as they'd dashed across Avla City on horseback, evading the police and his father's private security among the city's narrow back streets and alleyways.
"Have we had a signal yet?" asked Andy, for the third time in the last five minutes. It had been that long since the last beep from the comm, signifying that the bounty hunters had engaged the outpost station.
"Not yet," said Lo. He tried and failed to hide the tremor in his voice. Why had he agreed to all this again?
"I can't believe we're stuck babysitting the cat again," Andy complained. "We should be out there, engaging the enemy in honourable combat."
Lo said nothing. He was more than happy to be on babysitting duty, though in reality that wasn't the job they'd been given. The remaining members of the Bebop's crew had been tasked with getting word out of what was going on under Olympus Mons in the event that VT and her ramshackle flotilla were unable to dismantle the conspiracy themselves. Not that Lo had any idea of how to do that. He had pointed out to VT that none of them knew who they could trust within the Martian authorities, and that the media was controlled in no small part by a man known to be in cahoots with the very syndicate they were fighting.
"You'll think of something," VT had said, and slapped Lo on the back so hard he'd almost thrown up.
That was easy for her to say. She'd probably be dead by this afternoon, leaving Lo with the responsibility of saving the solar system. No pressure.
Lo suddenly felt like throwing up again. He began to sway in his ill-fitting mag boots like a pale-green sea anemone.
Zeroes drifted by in Lo's peripheral vision. The cat was fast asleep, turning slowly end over end like a fluffy asteroid. Lo envied Zeroes his nonchalance in the face of mortal danger. Or perhaps it was just animal ignorance. Either way, it would be nice not to feel like his stomach was trying to climb out through his mouth.
Lo almost popped out of his boots as the comm beeped suddenly.
"The signal!" said Andy, turning to face Lo. "They're on their way in."
This was it. VT, Coffee and their allies were beginning the assault in earnest. Suddenly the electronics salesman forgot everything that was supposed to happen next. His mind was instead awash with images of a handful of tiny bounty hunter craft darting into gaping, pitch black tunnels, only to be shredded by numerically superior defenders.
"Hey, TV Guy!"
Lo came back to reality, and to Andy snapping his fingers in front of his face.
"What are you waiting for?" Andy asked.
Lo shook his head. "Huh? Oh! Oh, right."
He turned to the comm console and opened a short range comm channel.
"Uh, hello Mr. Wolfman," he said. "This is the Bebop. Um, er, we are good to disengage." Lo waited, but there was no response. "Oh! Um, over."
"Acknowledged, Bebop," came the response. "Disengaging now. And for the hundredth time, you don't have to call me Mister. It's just Wolfman. Over."
"Oh, sorry Mis- uh, sorry Wolfman. Over. I mean, over and out."
What sounded like a sigh came from the speaker, then the channel closed. A moment later a series of loud clunks rolled through the Bebop's hull - the sound of the clasps that secured the tarp being released.
Lo reached across the comm console to where the RC unit he'd been working on was fixed magnetically to the navigation table. He pulled it loose and flicked a large, silver toggle to turn the unit on.
It was the strangest thing. The radio control handset that Lo had found just lying around amongst the mechanical detritus in the ship's hold had been paired with the ship's short-range communication system, which itself had been cross wired with the navigation and engine systems. Lo had no idea how it had been done, but he was certain that it had something to do with the anarchic tangle of wires he'd found behind a number of access hatches in key areas of the ship. And crucially it meant that, through this humble little grey box, one could pilot the hulking Bebop as if it were some gigantic child's toy. It was anyone's guess why a person might hack their ship's systems so that it could be controlled by a common RC unit, but it was fortunate that they had. Neither Lo nor Andy had any clue how to fly the Bebop, but any idiot could use a radio control toy.
"Okay," said Lo, the words riding out on a slow, calming breath. "Pulling away now."
Lo eased forwards on one of the analog sticks. The ship's thrusters rumbled to life and the Bebop lifted slowly away from the flatbed.
Zeroes woke immediately and began waggling his limbs to adjust to the new motion, so as not to collide painfully with the navigation table.
Lo released the stick and allowed the ship to drift away from the bed of the truck that had carried it concealed through the Earth gate. Silently the tarp slipped away from the windows, as if the Bebop were opening its eyes after a slumber of its own. Lo felt a momentary dizziness as the darkness peeled away to reveal the blurred arch of the Martian horizon. And then they were free, following an orbit independent of the flatbed.
The short range comm beeped. Andy reached over and answered before Lo could react.
"This is The Last Samurai," he said. "What's the four-one-one, good buddy. Over."
"Uh, okay," said Wolfman. "You're clear, Bebop. I'm heading out. You wish Heavy Metal Queen the best of luck from me, alright? Over."
"That's a big ten four, good buddy," said Andy. "The Last Samurai, over and out." He ended the call, then turned to Lo. "Who the hell is the Heavy Metal Queen?" he asked, frowning. "Truckers are weird."
Lo didn't comment. Instead, he watched as the cab and then the flatbed of Wolfman's truck emerged from the bottom the forward window, the silvered side of the heat-shielded tarp winking in the sun as it retracted into the bed's flank. The truck's engines blazed from blue to white as the craft boosted out of Mars orbit, quickly becoming lost among the countless satellites above the system's most populous planet.
Lo let out a shaky breath. "I guess we're on our own," he said quietly.
ooo
Either the tunnel was longer than VT had expected, or the tension of their mad dash into the belly of the red Dragon stronghold was warping her sense of time. The ship's speed smoothed the rough tunnel walls to a grey tube, broken at regular intervals by rings of service lamps whose hard light sent shadows racing across the cockpit of Coffee's ship. Ahead, the tunnel stretched into shadow, a wall of darkness that seemed never to get closer.
Somewhere behind Coffee and VT there would be two more bounty hunter craft. The plan was for the nine ships that had peeled off to the left to circle the crater clockwise. At each tunnel they encountered three ships would plunge beneath the crater, with the remaining ships continuing on to the next tunnel. The ten that had gone counterclockwise would do the same, with one ship left outside at the end. That last remaining pilot had been ordered - to the extent it was possible to order a cowboy to do anything - to continue circling, harrying any hostiles she might spot outside the crater. Chances were that she'd bolt at the first sign of any real trouble, but at this moment it felt like a minor concern.
"Five seconds," said Coffee. She wasn't watching the window, but a screen on her dash that showed the shape of the tunnel ahead. Any moment now they'd enter a hollow that the ship's sensors had picked up the moment they'd entered the tunnel.
A couple of seconds later the tunnel began to slant upwards. The ship pitched to follow, and an oval of pale-blue light dropped into view at the centre of the window - the tunnel exit.
"Three, two…" The oval expanded to fill the window in the time it took to draw breath. "One."
A rumble as the ship crossed the environmental control boundary, and they were through.
The sensor system had given VT and Coffee all the stats they'd needed regarding the cavern's dimensions, but as with so many of nature's wonders, numbers did little justice to the reality. The ancient magma chamber - a tiny blemish in relation to the volcano that had birthed it - spread out for a hundred meters to the left and right, and over sixty meters upwards. Vast walls of rock, mottled and striated and picked out by man-made illumination, appeared frozen in the act of melting. Stalagmites hung thin and gnarled from the bowled roof like dun-coloured icicles, threatening to fall at any moment and shatter the pitiful works of man below.
The floor of the cavern brooded beneath a huge concrete platform, similar in construction to the one VT had seen outside but on a far greater scale. Once this had been a loading area, where personnel and equipment were received and dispatched by the scientific facility above. This place, much like the monstrous Olympus Mons, had lain dormant, gathering grey Martian dust as the years passed. But now it was active again, the concrete crawling with human figures and dotted with spacecraft.
And there were a lot of space craft. VT had got a good look at the landing area in the moments after Coffee's ship had burst into the cavern. There were scores of small ships down there, many of them identical, with the unmistakable sleek lines of military-grade hardware. They looked outdated - probably surplus - but with a depleted police force and overstretched army already struggling to cope with civil unrest, this would be more than enough to seize control of a sizable crater city. And there was a good chance there were other caverns, just like this one, situated all around Pangboche crater.
"That is one shit load o' hardware, right there," said Coffee.
"I noticed," said VT.
Coffee turned hard to the left and headed to the periphery of the landing area. Below, helmeted figures were sprinting across the concrete towards the carefully arrayed craft, like termites rallying to defend the nest.
"Don't like the looks of that," said VT, as she saw the tell-tale glow of an engine warming up.
"Well, I got just the thing for it," said Coffee. She glanced at her targeting computer, then squeezed the trigger.
A line of tracers surged from below the craft, sailing clean over the top of the parked syndicate fighters and straight into a flood light pylon at the edge of the landing area. Sparks erupted from the metal frame. The brilliant glow of the spots faltered, then died as the framework gave way and the whole structure collapsed into the dark space below the concrete floor. Roughly a quarter of the platform was plunged into shadow, leaving the spotlights atop Coffee's ship as the only source of light in the immediate area. A light that now swept ominously across the cavern wall as Coffee pivoted towards her next target.
"Hope they brought their seeing eye dogs," she said as she opened fire on the next pylon in line.
The second pylon went down in a hail of sparks, sending a dozen or so pressure-suited figures scurrying across the concrete in the failing light. At almost the same moment, a warm orange glow washed across the walls of the cavern and a dull thump rattled the hull of Coffee's ship. VT peered past Coffee and out the pilot-side window to see a ball of flame ballooning from the centre of the landing area.
"Looks like your friends are holding up their end," she said.
"I'd hardly call 'em friends," Coffee replied. "But they have their uses."
Another burst of flame rose from the opposite side of the cavern as the other two bounty hunter ships continued to strafe the grounded syndicate craft. Their assault wouldn't last long; there were simply too many ships for the attackers to destroy before the enemy got airborne and overwhelmed them. Already, engine glows were showing across areas of the cavern that the little squadron had yet to reach. But the idea was not to destroy the Red Dragon fleet, but instead to sow chaos in the ranks. Once things got too hot, the bounty hunters would retreat the way they had come, as instructed, and do their best to make the tunnel impassable on their way. To that end each squadron had been allocated at least one craft armed with explosive projectiles.
Coffee was making ready to bring down the last of the pylons just as the first squadron of a half dozen syndicate ships was taking to the air. Their thrusters threw up clouds of dust as they rose threateningly from the landing platform, ready to hunt down the intruders. She took another glance at her dash.
"Our boys are bailing," she said. There was no scorn in her voice. Her tone was business like, indicating that the next phase of the plan was underway.
The bounty hunter looked up again and squeezed the trigger on the stick. Another burst of tracers, and the pylon ahead sank into darkness, the ghostly groan of its demise barely penetrating the ship's hull. The cavern was now almost entirely dark.
"Going dark," Coffee said, and shut off the ship's spot lights.
The vast space was now an ocean of black, occasional flares of red or white or blue splashing across on the concrete below as thrusters flared to life. The engines of the few syndicate craft already airborne swam about in the gloom like weird sea creatures, fluorescing in the primordial night.
"Watch yourself," VT muttered, acutely aware that Coffee was now flying blind. The bounty hunter was relying on a coarse topological map provided by her ships sensors and on what she'd seen of the cavern walls before the lights had gone out to avoid a collision.
"I got it," said the bounty hunter softly.
The seconds stretched as the ship cruised through the shadows, both pilot and passenger mindful of the dual threats of an enraged enemy and the ageless stone walls that might at any moment shred their fragile little craft. VT's mind wandered during those tense moments, darting from one mundane thought to the next so as not to dwell on dangers that were entirely beyond her control. She wondered why she and Coffee suddenly felt compelled to whisper now that darkness had fallen. She tried to remember if she'd told Andy and Lo when Zeroes was due his next meal, and how much to give him. She thought about how much Ural would be enjoying himself if he were here right now.
She smiled and shook her head. "Big dumbass," she whispered to herself.
"You say something?" Coffee asked.
"Hmm? No, nothing. Hey, look there!" VT pointed at the cavern wall, her outstretched arm picked out in green and black by the light of Coffee's instruments.
A small dot of yellow light hung stationary in the darkness, hinting at the presence of a window in the cave wall with a light source beyond. It was either a crew access door or an observation window. They'd have to get a lot closer before they could tell.
"I see it," said Coffee.
She shifted the stick, taking the ship away from the sheer wall of volcanic rock that brooded in the shadows, and turned for the spot VT had indicated. As they got closer it became apparent that the window was only very small. With any luck it would be a porthole in a door. But they would have to be certain before they made their next move.
"Alright," VT breathed. "Light it up."
Coffee switched on the spots.
It was a door. The brushed-metal portal shone dimly in the hard, white light. A stairway zig-zagged down into the darkness below.
A couple of seconds later they were taking fire. The syndicate pilots, who had spent the last couple of minutes swirling about in the darkness, chattering to one another in an effort to work out which radar blip was the enemy, had spotted the sudden blaze of light and opened fire on its source. But the attacker had aimed in haste, their tracers flitting past the window of Coffee's ship like wind-slanted rain.
Coffee ignored the danger and gently brought her ship closer to the door, close enough that VT could almost read the yellow warning stickers pasted to its face.
"Hang on," said Coffee.
The door almost filled the front window from top to bottom when, with a deft flick of the control stick, the ship turned its passenger side to the wall and came almost to a dead stop in mid-air.
Another two bursts of tracer fire, one a near miss, but the second striking home with the sound of puncturing metal. VT couldn't tell where they'd been hit, but the cockpit seemed unharmed.
Coffee took a couple of loud, steady breaths through her nose, as if she were building up to some herculean effort. She nudged the stick to the left, swinging the ship slightly in that direction, then looked right, past VT to where the access door waited beyond the passenger-side window.
"Knock knock," she growled, and threw the stick to the right.
The sudden motion to starboard threw VT painfully against her safety belt, and again as the ship pitched to port. For an instant the world was a muddle of sensations. The crunch of the ship striking the access door and the surrounding wall. The wail of warning signals as the ship railed against its mistreatment. The blur of light and shadow as the cockpit rocked about her with the force of the impact.
"We're in," said Coffee.
VT blinked, shook her head and glanced out of her window. There she saw the metal door, scuffed and buckled, hanging from its one remaining hinge. And then ship was moving again, flitting between streams of incoming fire. VT grasped the edge of her seat, gritting her teeth against the sickening motion.
"Pop the door!" Coffee barked after another nauseating evasive manoeuvre.
"On it," replied VT.
Releasing her grip on the chair she flicked open a palm-sized plastic cover at the base of her door, then slammed the butt of her fist against the large red button beneath. There was a hiss as the door seal was broken, then an ear-splitting crack as an explosive charge spat the door from its housing. The door hurtled across the open space between the ship and the access door, striking the latter with a clang that was audible even over the roar of the engines. Both objects rebounded from the impact, tumbling over the safety rail and into the darkness.
"Get ready," said Coffee.
The bounty hunter swung the ship towards the exposed doorway once again, this time with greater care, crushing the safety rail and bringing the ship almost flush with the wall. The manoeuvre demonstrated remarkable skill on Coffee's part, but it was slow. The ship was a sitting duck.
"Move!" shouted Coffee.
"I am moving!" VT roared back as she fumbled with her safety belt.
The buckle popped free just as another burst of fire sounded from outside. With the door gone the sound of the tracers burning through the air was terrifyingly loud.
VT scrambled from the seat, hopping the thirty- or forty-centimetre gap that had opened between the ship and the doorway without a thought for the abyssal darkness lurking below. Her feet had barely touched the coarse carpet tiles beyond when she felt a shove in base of her back. She turned to find Coffee standing behind her, staring indignantly as if she had been made to wait a little too long at a cash register. The ship's ignition key was in her hand. The roar of the ship's engine had ceased.
Both women turned and watched, backing away as the ship sank from sight, taking with it the landing and staircase in a crescendo of warping metal. In just a couple of seconds, the doorway was just a solid black rectangle, framed by the sterile white walls of the narrow corridor in which they stood.
"Burn your bridges," said Coffee, softly.
VT gave a huff of nervous laughter before what thin amusement she felt was burned away in the spotlights of one of the frustrated syndicate ships still prowling the cavern.
"Shit!" VT shouted as she turned on her heels and sprinted for a T-junction a short distance up the hall.
The sound of the rotary guns spinning up was a terrible throb in the trucker's ears as she scrambled away, giving way to the gut churning punch of igniting rounds as the guns coughed to life. VT launched herself to the left just as the first of the rounds came scything down the corridor.
Lying face down on the coarse blue carpet tiles of the corridor, VT was struck by the jarring contrast between the bland decor and rug-cleaner scent of a common office space, and the frantic rattle of heavy arms fire and smell of burning metal. The absurdity of it was enough to make a girl dizzy. It was no wonder she'd always hated the thought of an office job.
VT shook off her reverie just as the fusillade was winding down. She rolled over, propped herself up on her elbows and looked back at the junction where, barely a metre from the soles of her boots, the carpet tiles and plasterboard had been shredded to a stinking, blackened ruin.
"Me 'n' my big mouth, huh?" came a voice, low and muffled as if from the other side of a pillow.
VT looked to her left to find Coffee right beside her, stretch out on the hard floor covering in a pose that mirrored her own. She had no idea how the bounty hunter had got there, or which of them had made it to cover first. VT shook her head as if to dislodge something from her ear canals. She was getting a little tired of being deafened.
"Come on," she said, rising painfully to her feet. "Nap time's over. We've got a job to do."
"Yes, ma'am," said Coffee as she stood. Despite herself VT was a little chagrined at how easily the younger woman regained her feet. "So, what now?"
"Now, we go find the Big Boss," said VT.
"Alright then," said Coffee as she batted the dust from her skirt. "You got the floor plan?"
VT frowned. "Uh, I thought you had it."
Coffee paused her preening and glared at VT. "I put it in the glove compartment, remember? I told you to take it out when we were getting ready to go."
Coffee had said that. VT thought about feigning ignorance, but it seemed pointless at this stage, so instead she just said, "Shit."
"Shit is right," growled Coffee. She turned from VT and with a bark frustration drove the butt of her fist against the plasterboard wall. "Well, now what the hell do we do?"
VT hoped the question was rhetorical.
Somewhere nearby a door opened with a gentle click. Both women turned, drawing their weapons and training them along the hallway. The hint of a face, looking at them from a couple of doors down, vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the door slamming shut in its wake.
VT and Coffee looked at one another.
VT shrugged. "We could always ask directions," she said.
ooo
Andy hadn't done anything awesome in days.
Granted, the horse thing had been pretty cool. In fact, he kind of wished someone had been filming it. It would've have made great news footage, like the time he'd duelled a fellow bounty hunter atop a crumbling building, or the time he'd parachuted from a burning crack den using nothing but a soiled mattress to slow his descent. Both of those incidents had got him on TV. But no one seemed to be nearly as interested in Musashi. It was perhaps the greatest tragedy of Andy's life that news crews were more interested in the exploits of boring old cowboy than those of a noble and improbably handsome samurai.
But he no longer had access to his horse - either of his horses, in fact - so now he was stuck drifting through space, with nothing to do but wait for something awesome to come his way. It struck him then that this was the exact situation he'd been in when he'd got tangled up in this adventure in the first place.
"Damn it," he muttered to himself. "Why am I stuck up here when all of the fun is down there?"
"Hmm?" said the TV Guy.
Andy glanced across the bridge to where the little man was sitting, fidgeting with the doohickie he'd dug out of storage earlier in the week.
"Nothing," said Andy. "Just strategising." He raised a clenched fist. "We must be prepared when the time comes for us to take up arms."
"Oh, okay," said the TV Guy. Inexplicably, he didn't seem at all inspired by Andy's words.
Andy turned back to the window, and let out a long, weary breath. Being awesome was an exhausting business, and he couldn't help but feel that his efforts were being wasted on the people around here.
He stared down at the surface of Mars. There he could see the irregular outline of Olympus Mons, its heart dark and pocked like a huge zit on the planet's crust. Andy had hoped that if he looked hard enough, he might just be able to spot the tell-tale streaks and flashes of a firefight somewhere in the vicinity of the old volcano. But it was a forlorn hope. The fact was, he was stuck up here. Doomed to boredom and obscurity, and to the company of wholly inadequate comic relief.
TV Guy had shown so much promise. He had both the build and demeanour to make an excellent sidekick. But rather than setting Andy up for one-liners or comically screaming like a little girl, the death-defying thrills of adventure just seemed to make him go all quiet and sad and sweaty. Andy had always thought of PTSD as something that only happened to other people and apparently, he was right.
And then there was the cat. All it ever did was sleep and trail hair everywhere. Not only was it kind of gross, but it reminded Andy uncomfortably of his short career as a vagrant.
There was still no sign of activity from the planet below. By now VT and Coffee would be tearing through the syndicate hide out, having gun fights and running away from explosions and doing all the stuff Andy loved to do. Why had VT chosen to take Coffee over him anyway? That woman was a menace! She was arrogant, irresponsible and reckless - not at all good bounty hunting material. Andy would have been a much better choice for the mission. Okay, so he didn't know how to pilot Coffee's ship, but he was a quick study. How much different could it be from riding a horse anyway? All you had to do was learn the right commands, hold on tight to the controls, and remember not to stand behind it.
But no. Andy had been left behind, left to sit here and rot while the TV Guy fiddled with his gadget and the stupid cat tumbled across the bridge, shedding fur like a hairy comet.
A beep sounded from somewhere in the room. Andy turned and looked at the TV Guy, who just looked back with a shrug that said 'don't look at me'.
The beep came again.
"Isn't it coming from the comm panel?" Andy asked.
The TV Guy looked down at the console. "No, no one's hailing us," he said.
Another beep. Andy was sure that the delay between beeps was shorter this time. He frowned and looked around the bridge.
Another beep, and then another. They were coming rapidly now.
"Try the pilot seat," said the TV Guy. He was pointing at a chair slung over a meter above the deck plates on the ship's port side.
Or was it starboard? No, port. It was definitely port.
Andy grasped the arm rest of the chair and pulled his magnetic soles loose from the floor. He drifted up a few inches, then stopped himself as his head came level with the pilot's console. A moment later the TV Guy was alongside him; he had to admit the little guy was getting better at this whole zero-G thing.
"What is it?" asked the TV Guy.
Andy looked at the sensor display, where a swarm of little yellow dots was drifting in from the side of the screen opposite the yellow arch that represented Mars, and smiled.
"Looks like things are about to pick up," he said.