Kris swore and whirled towards the approaching Voyenni, knife at the ready. But her scarf seemed to strike up a life of its own, tugging her towards the railing and the drop. She swore and swatted at the hand-like remote plucking at her.
‘Get with the program! On on on!’ Medvig signalled. Their remote sprang from Kris to land on an automated pallet stacked high with containers as it glided slowly alongside the shaft, a tonne of stately metal in motion.
Rollo didn’t hesitate, hauling Idris onto the pallet. A line of nacelles jutted from its upper surface, handles for gravitic steering, and Idris grimly wrapped his arms about one. Rollo boosted Kris up, then scrambled aboard himself. The Voyenni were already running, not seeing the plan but scenting there was one, and they now wielded short, studded bludgeons. Matters had gone past mere fisticuffs.
The pallet reversed dramatically, shunting pedestrians out of the way until it hit the buckling metal of the rail. ‘Grab on, organics!’ Medvig chattered in their ears. ‘Rough transit alert!’
Without warning they broke through the rail, dropping into five storeys of empty space. Idris heard panicked screams as they began to plummet. A stomach-wrenching second later and they were climbing back up the shaft, the pallet clawing for purchase against the city’s gravitic field.
‘Medvig – my children – you’d better all know what you’re doing!’ Rollo yelled.
‘In times of stress, have you considered singing happy songs?’ Medvig, as an intelligence distributed across a knot of cyborg roaches, loved highlighting human frailties.
They passed the platform they’d just abandoned and the Voyenni were there, waiting for them. Surely they’re not going to— but they were angry and their boss probably took failure out of their hides. One of them, the boldest or maddest, vaulted the crumpled rail. He hit the floating truck hard, one hand closed tight around a gravitic pontoon. Kris slashed the shoulder seam of his coat, drawing a little blood, but he hauled himself up, the truck lurching madly as his weight skewed its lift calculations. In moments, the second Voyenni had gone for the leap. He’d left it almost too late, hands grabbling for purchase and boots kicking as he tried to pull himself up.
Rollo feinted at the first thug, who blocked the punch contemptuously, receiving a blow to his gut as payment. Then he was on Rollo, lifting his opponent with the clear intention of just throwing him into the chasm.
Medvig’s remote jabbed metal finger-legs at his eyes and the Voyenni reeled back. One huge fist caught the spidery machine and dashed it against a container’s metal lid, smashing it into fragments. The Voyenni’s other hand still gripped Rollo, and the man looked strong enough to lob the captain into the void one-handed.
Kris stabbed him. She looked ice cold for the three heartbeats it took to drive her duelling knife into his ribs four times, then horrified as the man toppled away. Rollo went with him.
Idris twitched to grab him and almost toppled from the wildly skewing container himself. It was Kris who snagged Rollo’s wrist, bracing herself with a leg over the corner of the container. All of this had their conveyance skewed almost forty-five degrees from level, with everyone clinging to its uppermost edge to keep them from the chasm below. At that point the other Voyenni hauled himself up.
Idris kicked him in the face, resulting only in a snarl from his victim as he reached inside his jacket. Idris saw the stubby barrel of a gun – not a high-velocity accelerator, but a laser or chemical firearm would be quite sufficient to kill any or all of them.
Something swung overhead and he had the sense of an armoured figure with stubby wings – gravity handles just like the pallet’s pontoons. The Voyenni jerked his arm up, appreciating the greater threat was above. But the flying figure dipped in the air, grabbed the thug’s collar and jerked sideways, tearing the man off the container and into open air.
Idris winced, waiting for the drop, but the flyer swung its victim over a railing into a knot of gawking officials and space crew. Its work done, it ascended to hover above them, keeping perfect pace.
‘Is that . . .?’ Rollo stammered. ‘Kris, child, what did you do?’
You couldn’t mistake that armour. Grey-blue metal and armour-plastic plate, a uniform that had been refined since the war but never really changed. Everyone knew the elite soldiers of the Parthenon, but you didn’t expect to just run into one inside the Primate House.
‘Meet your new crewmate!’ Kris shouted.
Then they were up top, outside the dome and next to the docking ring. Past the lumpy, repair-scarred hull of an ore transporter and another couple of haphazardly parked ships was the reassuringly ugly hull of the Vulture God.