Then, after the last platter had been sent back to the recycler, the hierograve stood. ‘Let’s go get your ship back,’ he told them, ‘and spread truth to the universe.’
‘Let’s do just that thing, my children,’ Rollo agreed, pushing back his bench and nearly unseating Barney, who’d been sharing it.
Sathiel was obviously leery of his grandfatherly face being seen subverting station authority. Instead he sent his deputy to appease station security, heading up a little red-clad delegation. Rollo was at her heels, talking with Kit about the next job the factor had lined up. ‘Anywhere but here,’ he was saying, and Solace wondered how much of the galaxy was out of bounds to the man.
‘Hey.’ It was Idris, unexpectedly at her elbow. ‘Going native on us?’
A sharp answer died on her lips. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing right now,’ she admitted. ‘Let’s just get everyone out of here first, then we can reset to where we were.’
‘I appreciate it, though,’ he said implacably. ‘Helping us. Ship-family matters out here. More than cults, governments and what planet you come from. It’s only when you spend your life planetside that people lose their minds over that sort of thing.’
‘And you don’t want to be part of anything that big,’ she finished for him.
‘I do not, no. No more of that for me, sorry.’
The cultists were at the bay access hatch now and signalling to be let in, but their friendly collaborators inside were apparently playing it coy. Olli just trundled her walker forwards and found a diagnostic socket she could plug into. An eyeblink later she had the door open, with a derisive sound that said absolutely everything about Lung-Crow electronic security.
There were three lifeless bodies on the other side. They wore station security uniforms and they’d been burned by beam weapons. The lead cultist let out a yelp and shrank back, but Rollo just bulled forwards, shouting, ‘Goddamn it, my ship!’
The door on the far side of the security check was open and they piled through. There hung the hideous-beautiful flower of the Oumaru, still clutched in the Vulture God’s grasp. There were more dead security on the catwalk, plus a couple of ragged-looking spacers – whose co-conspirators were even now at the Vulture’s open hatch.
‘Bastards!’ Rollo hissed and snatched up one of the security men’s guns, running for the cover of the railing. Solace was already moving, grabbing a weapon for herself, bitterly regretting that her armour and accelerator were inside the ship.
There were four men at the Vulture’s hatch, which probably meant some were already inside. Most were human, and their leader was mostly human too. The non-human part was that lobster-bee thing that had merged with his back. A Tothiat, Sathiel had called it, and now Solace was kicking herself because she hadn’t asked what that meant. She shot him anyway. The security guns were hardly Mr Punch, so wouldn’t knock holes in the wrong walls. They punched a hole into the Tothiat easily enough though, right into the left side of his gut. He fell back against the Vulture God’s hull. Rollo tried a shot, too, striking sparks from his own ship. Barney had a third gun but was fiddling with it, and Solace had to yell how to disable the safety.
She risked a glance around. Kris and Idris were just taking cover, which was probably for the best. Olli was bustling forwards on her walker frame, her eyes fixed determinedly on the ship. Medvig’s tripod body stalked after her, their remotes corkscrewing through the air towards the hijackers.
The men at the hatch were scattering for cover and Solace drilled another through the leg so that he landed hard on the gantry, howling in pain and distracting his friends. Barney and Olli pushed forward at that, clattering up shaky metal steps to a higher railing where they’d have a vantage point. The engineer was grimacing furiously but hadn’t fired a shot yet. What the unarmed Olli felt she could contribute, Solace couldn’t guess.
A figure appeared within the Vulture, not a human but a crablike Hanni – and it was tracking Barney with some kind of weapon mounted atop its shell. Solace shot it over the rim of its half-raised shield arms, hitting the clutch of limbs and mouthparts below its eyes. The creature’s many legs jerked and it toppled limply out onto the gantry.
‘Go!’ said Rollo, taking his own advice and making a run for his ship. Solace registered a growing shudder throughout the bay and realized that someone on board had engaged the Vulture’s mass drives, ready to rip the vessel – and its salvage – free of the station’s hold.