“Yes. Pretty cold out in space.”

  “But we are working on it and should have it ready for full deployment in the next four hours.”

  “Excellent,” Winterson frowned. “So why is it I think that there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

  “Whilst we can deploy the weapon, we still haven’t solved the problem. Once we retract the weapon we can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again.”

  “In the height of battle. When it’s most going to be needed.”

  “If we were to build it again we’d perhaps look at using a different polymer alloy.”

  “But we’re not re-building it, are we? You need to get this rectified, captain. If we go round with the Sloth constantly deployed we’re going to find that our opponents might think about targeting it directly.”

  “I’ll get onto it, sir. Oh, and there’s one other thing. The PWO on Blackbeard is having some –shall we say – ‘personnel’ issues. I can look into it but I think it might be better coming from you.”

  Frans Jacobs. Again!

  “Very well, I’ll deal with it. But in the meantime, you need to resolve this deployment problem before it becomes a real issue.”

  “ I’ll get onto it right away, sir.”

  Winterson briefly considered putting off speaking with Jacobs until later but then thought better of it. If he was going to tear a strip off someone it might as well be someone who deserved it.

  The technician had been expecting Winterson and managed to establish a link within a few seconds using the 16 MIL-STD software all the ships had been equipped with, 16 Military Standard. The man indicated which screen Winterson was using before passing him an ear bead.

  When Jacobs’ face appeared, Winterson reflected on how well he matched his nickname: Raptor man. He wasn’t sure if they meant ‘velociraptor’ or raptors generally but he certainly had the look: the two wide acquisitive eyes, the vicious over- bite, the permanently fixed expression. All Winterson had to do for a quick victory was harness all that negative energy so that it could be turned on the enemy.

  “And what can I do for you, Captain Jacobs?”

  “Oh, admiral?” for a moment he looked surprised but then his fixed stare returned. “I’m glad that I managed to finally track you down. Have you given any more thought to our positioning in the Strike Group formation? Only I’d like to know either way.”

  “You’ll be relieved to know that I have given it a great deal of thought and had hoped to address it during our meeting. Unfortunately, that’s had to be delayed until tomorrow.”

  “And why exactly is that, admiral? I keep asking your guys but none of them seems capable of giving me a straight answer.”

  “Strategic Planning, as always, captain, we have a few last-minute hiccups to be dealing with but, be assured, we will deal with it tomorrow.”

  “It’s only that if it’s a tonnage issue I can assure you, we’ve got a lot more to offer in other areas and it’s just I’d never thought about the Blackbeard in a rear-guard action kind of way.”

  “Trust me on this, every ship in the formation has a key role to play. Traditionally, protecting the rear guard was seen as a great honour.”

  “Really!” Jacobs managed to instil the word with liquid venom.

  “Quite so. You’d be protecting our rudders from attack. And what’s a ship without its rudder? Dead in the water, Mr Jacobs. Dead in the water.”

  “Only we don’t use rudders anymore, do we, admiral?”

  “No. True, but the same holds true with most of our engines. By placing them towards the aft section we are leaving ourselves open to an attack from the rear.”

  This seemed to somehow pacify Jacobs. “I’ll pass that onto my team but would appreciate it if you’d re-consider.”

  “As I said, we’ll look at it again tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Except we might not have that long.”

  Winterson pinched the bridge of his nose. “And how is that so?”

  Jacobs leaned in towards the camera.

  “Yesterday, you said that the Da’al would take up position mirroring our own.”

  “Yes, I did say that. It’s standard practice in most engagements.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember that you even predicted a distance. What was it again?”

  Winterson exhaled quietly through his nostrils. “It’s not a prediction, Mr Jacobs. Eight hundred thousand kilometres. That’s merely applied military know-how. The enemy have, by now, built up a fairly accurate picture of the threat posed by our weapons. So they’ll know that eight hundred thousand kilometres is the limit of our long-range missiles. After that we can no longer guide them. And when a weapon like that goes ballistic they’re so much easier to avoid. So, in a contested environment like this, the enemy knows to keep their distance. Stay on the back foot, as it were.”

  Jacobs didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Just stood there squinting back at him.

  Winterson was pleased with how he’d handled himself. He’d managed to educate the little tugboat captain without actually offending him. All in all, an excellent result.

  But when Jacobs next spoke there was a real malevolence in his tone.

  “Only the Da’al don’t seem to have attended the same officer training course that you have.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

  “Your arbitrary rallying line. Eight hundred thousand klicks, you say? The Da’al crossed that line half an hour ago. Looks like you’re the one who’s on the back foot, admiral.”

  Admiral Winterson spun away from the screen, looking for Captain Hoyt. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Winterson searched around hopelessly, Jacobs’ voice still sounding in his ear, forgotten now as the reality of the situation slowly revealed itself. Had he succumbed to the worst of errors of judgement? Overconfidence?

  *

  “You’re just going to have to leave them,” Webster said.

  The two Marines were in the process of stripping down the two grav bikes. Without putting down his tools, one of them said, “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “You heard me, trooper. Now get going.”

  The two men looked at one another, then down at the bikes. They hadn’t been out of their crates for long. Near enough brand new.

  Reluctantly, they started packing away their tools.

  “No, time for that. We have to go now.”

  Neither of them were happy about it but they scooped up their tools and started over the ice. They’d no doubt divided the two bikes between them and would have had plans of where they might store them when they got back to base but Webster couldn’t care less.

  The clock was ticking and the irony was that after all these days of waiting, anticipating the arrival of the Montezuma, chances were that they weren’t going to see the big ship work its magic.

  Webster had watched as that other ship had blazed in green and blue across the sky before terminating in a long red streak.

  They had to get everyone loaded onto the Motar in the next ten minutes or that young Kaminsky guy would be taking off without them.

  The Heimdall might have been distracted by that other ship but that wouldn’t last and as soon as they realised what the Montezuma was attempting, things would start to change very quickly indeed.

  But still the Marines didn’t seem to register the urgency. A small group had stopped to pick up sacks of food and were struggling to get a grip on them.

  “Drop that right now,” he barked.

  One of the men stopped, ready to give him a piece of his mind but when he saw who was speaking he reined himself in, though only by a bit.

  “But Sergeant Markham said…”

  “And I’m telling you different. Now drop it and get to that transport.”

  The man held onto his prize as, one by one, the others dropped theirs and started to move off. Finally, weighing the package in his hands he raised it up to his chest before hurling it down onto the ice. The impact was enough to split the sack’s seams and pale white rice poured onto the ice.

  “Okay, now you’ve got that off your chest, let’s go.”

  Webster was jogging backwards when the first bombardment hit. A huge dark plume was thrown into the air about three kilometres east of their position but because of the fading light, the scale of what they had just witnessed didn’t sink in straight away.

  WHAM! Webster’s ears popped as a gust of warm air brushed his face.

  Then another sound in the distance but getting louder, like a sudden downpour.

  The lizard part of Webster’s brain kicked in and he started backing away. He’d been reading a report earlier about how to recognise an orbital bombardment and what to do if you got caught up in one, but none of that information seemed relevant now. In the distance he could see one of the jeeps that had been parked up by the bank. Its head lights began to shudder under the onslaught. Next thing it had been tipped onto its side.

  That was when everyone started running.

  The roar drowned everything else out as millions of tons of earth and ice fragments started raining down all around them.

  He saw one man get struck a mighty blow across the back of the neck and go down but there was no question of stopping to help as the darkness threatened to swallow them whole. There was only one thing to do and that was to keep running. Nothing else mattered.

  He was vaguely aware of being struck repeatedly across the back of the head and shoulders but this only served to spur him on. The fact that he was heading away from the Motar, struck him as being incredibly funny and he started to laugh. Only it didn’t sound like laughter. Sounded kind of like he was unhinged.

  He dodged around one of the scaffolding gantries which shuddered as it was struck repeatedly but still he kept going as the deadly hail came down all around him.

  Up ahead was the vast bulk of the ghost ship and he figured that if he could make that, then at least he’d have some shelter. There were various bits of rock strewn all over the ice and as he hurdled one, his foot slipped and his knee twisted from under him but his momentum was enough to keep him going and he half hopped, half bounded the last ten metres to safety.

  As he pressed himself against the hull of the alien craft, fighting for breath, he found himself safe on the edge of the tumult. The roar was so great that he just stood there, hypnotised, but then he chanced to glance over towards the Motar and saw the trail of bodies lying there out amongst the rubble. Then a solid cloud fell across them and even they were lost to him.

  The bombardment seemed to be over – at least for now. He imagined that this had been the Da’al’s idea of a warning shot across the bows. Their way of letting the Confederation forces know what was in store if they continued with their attempts to retrieve the ghost ship.

  Webster had watched as the Motar had risen straight up into the gloom, visible only because of the yellow flashing lights on its underside. At first he’d thought the pilot mad to even attempt a take-off in such conditions but then, what alternative did they have? If he stayed on the deck he’d just be a sitting target. They’d thought themselves to be safe as long as they stayed close to the Ghost Ship, assuming that the Da’al would be reticent to target anything quite so close to their main objective but now it looked as if even that assumption was suspect.

  He stepped out from under the curve of the Ghost Ship’s fuselage and squinted up into the gloom, hoping to get one last glimpse of the departing ship but he was to be disappointed. The Motar had made good her escape and now it looked as though the pilot, that Kaminsky kid, had known what he’d been doing, using the plume of dirt thrown up by the ground strike as cover in order to get away.

  Webster caught himself trying to estimate how many of the Marines had made it aboard. Not many, he thought. He’d seen too many of them strewn across the ice in the aftermath of the explosion. He briefly considered. The one thing he was confident about was the idea that Kate Marsh would have made it aboard. Webster had long suspected that she might try to give them the slip in the inevitable confusion surrounding their departure and so had entrusted Markham with the job of ensuring that she got safely aboard the Motar. The sergeant hadn’t liked the fact that he’d been given the job of chief babysitter but then he hadn’t had much choice in the matter. Webster hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to have her slip through their fingers at the last moment.

  Markham wouldn’t have wanted to take any chances with Marsh considering who her father was. He’d have made sure she was securely strapped in long before their intended departure time and he’d have stayed with her to make sure that she didn’t try and leave her seat.

  In retrospect, it might well have been the only good decision he had made in this whole debacle.

  But, as he strained to look up into the grainy night air, Webster wondered whether that would be the end of it. Just because the Motar had managed to claw its way up into orbit was no guarantee that they’d be safe. Craft like the Motar weren’t known for their maneuvrability , or their speed. If she failed to meet up with her mothership then all their efforts might well have been in vain. The Heimdall now seemed to be on the look-out for viable targets. The Motar was essentially a haulage freighter and wasn’t built with long-haul distances in mind. If she couldn’t link up with the Montezuma in the next few hours, she’d have no alternative but to return to the surface.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to have a serious re-think,” he said, experimenting with his voice in the cold, still air.

  He retraced his steps back approximately thirty metres, looking for possible survivors but in the darkness it was difficult to see where he was going and, after encountering his second body, he gave up on the idea.

  For the first time since he’d arrived, he viewed the pale glow of the Ghost Ship as a reassuring presence. Well, at least he’d have somewhere to spend the night.

  He couldn’t deny it. He’d felt a terrible sense of desolation watching the Motar lift off without him. Because now he was utterly lost and lacking a purpose. He had no idea what was supposed to come next. He could always go and see if any of the scientists had survived back at their camp but he didn’t hold out much hope for that. Those tents wouldn’t have provided much in the way of protection when the rocks started falling.

  He took a few more steps into the dark but was unsure how to precede. He shuffled his booted feet on the dry dirt surface. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d not made it to shelter. All it would have taken was one of those boulders to have followed a slightly different trajectory and it would all have been over.

  What if that was the way it was supposed to go, with the Da’al making huge inroads into the system, crushing everything in their sight. Perhaps Joanna had been the lucky one, being one of the first.

  He couldn’t help thinking about her then. About what their lives might have been like under different circumstances. Too soon to say if they’d ever have settled down together but such things were not impossible. He’d seen it so often before.

  Just because he wasn’t good at showing his feelings didn’t mean that he couldn’t change.

  The wind picked up then, driving fine particles of dust into his face, stinging his cheek.

  Time to turn back. He’d bed down inside the ship for tonight, see if things looked different in the morning.

  It was hard going. What little light there had been had now deserted them completely and he found that he had to kick out his feet in front of him before taking a step due to the uneven ground. He couldn’t risk making a costly fall at this stage in the proceedings. It was going to be hard enough trying to manage this with all his limbs intact. All it would take would be for him to slip and break his ankle and that would be it: game-over.

  He stopped walking. Turned his head to try and hear over the moan of the wind.

  He was sure he’d heard it. A soft, tinkling sound.

  Reminded him of the wind chime his mother had kept in the garden back home.

  Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he’d finally lost it.

  But then he saw a distinct chink of light followed by movement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The scientists’ camp was still visible from low altitude, a few colourful tents shimmering in the wind, but Noah reckoned that in a few short months it would be gone, completely obliterated.

  He couldn’t help but feel some responsibility for what had happened, the destruction that had been wrought but as his father had a way of putting it: “Work out what you can do and stick to it. Don’t try and get clever.”

  It was advice he’d do well to stick to now.

  The fact that they were alive at all was down to Tomas’ quick thinking. Noah’s first idea had been to get in to orbit as fast as possible after the bombardment began but Tomas had calmed him down. Told him to fly under the cloud cover. Told him it was thick enough to throw off even the most sensitive of orbital sensors.

  It hadn’t felt right keeping the Motar below two thousand metres and he’d spent the first ten minutes with one eye on the clock waiting for the kinetic round that would bring them down. Tomas had been right of course, if they’d stayed on the ground they’d be just another smoking pile of wreckage but up here, he could keep everyone guessing.

  Flying random patterns were the key, just so long as he didn’t get confused and crash the damn thing. His last movement had been a figure of eight which he was coming to the end of now. The top of the eight coincided with a group of three snow-capped peaks. He marked the area on his instruments checking it against his map which had it marked as a principle landmark.

  He felt a sense of relief as he circled the tallest of the peaks and started heading back towards the lake. He was even starting to get the hang of the Motar’s controls. Because of its top-heavy design everything had to be done nice and calm. There was no room for any sudden movements. Like skating on that lake down there, big, graceful swirls. No sudden turns or stops.

  The sight of the Montezuma descending through the clouds was something he’d never get used to. A full kilometre from stem to stern, it cut laterally across the face of the lake, its nine repellers working over-time just to keep it level.