But Sunderam didn’t appear to be listening. He was in a world of his own, slowly grinding one fist into the palm of the other.

  “I’m sorry, doctor. I’ve been given my orders and I will endeavour to carry them out the best way I know how.”

  Suddenly, he slapped both palms down on the table and looked straight at Morton.

  “Doctor Morton, I need your help.”

  “And I’ve already told you: no. My experience in this area is extremely limited. I can’t just wander in there hoping for the best. I’m a doctor, but this isn’t my field. Ethically, this whole thing’s a complete mess.”

  “Doctor, you don’t seem to understand: these procedures will go ahead with or without you. If you have any expertise at all I would ask you to put it to good use now before it’s too late.”

  Sunderam got to his feet and swiped his hand over the wall, instantly transforming into a giant screen.

  It showed a reclining male figure from the side. He appeared to be wearing a Confederation uniform.

  “No, no,” Morton cried, shielding her eyes, but she had already seen.

  “Captain Robert Faulkner. The surgeons tell me that he has a wide range of health issues, not the least of which is a heart condition. He will be the next subject in our programme. We begin the process at six tomorrow morning and I would very much like you to be there.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Webster had passed the rec room on a couple of occasions in the last few days and each time the noise emanating from inside sounded like they were engaged in watching a closely contested ball game. His intention had been to leave Lance Corporal Felix to it. According to Markham, Felix appeared to have a good grasp of what he was doing and certainly couldn’t be accused of shirking his responsibilities – he’d hardly left the rec room since they’d started the training.

  There was a definite buzz around the ship regarding what was going on in there. The sessions seemed to have become quite competitive, to the extent that Markham had published a strict rota to prevent troopers sloping off from their duty stations in order to go and watch what was going on.

  But the thing that had really piqued Webster’s interest was the fact that Nash had been seen down there and had shown more than a passing interest in the way that the troopers’ skills had developed in such a short time. He had thought at first that it would be enough for him to simply watch what was going on over the in-ship monitors but Silva had been particularly dismissive of that idea. The VR experience was, she pointed out, by definition an immersive one and so if Webster really wanted to get to know what was going on he’d have to go down there and experience it for himself.

  He waited until he was off duty before making his way to the rec room. As soon as he was through the door, the smell hit him: a mixture of stale sweat and strong coffee. There were six people standing awkwardly in the centre of the room with another ten sitting on couches ‘watching’ them. They were all sporting VR headsets apart from one private who was policing the event making sure that none of the combatants blundered into one another.

  Webster felt an immediate sense of disappointment. Was this what all the fuss was about?

  “Whoa! To your right! To your right!” someone shouted, accompanied by some good-tempered laughter.

  The private in the centre, saluted on seeing Webster enter and then brought over a complete headset for him to put on.

  “Are you playing or watching, sir?” she asked as she adjusted the goggles.

  Playing? He didn’t like the idea that the troopers were ‘playing’ at anything.

  “I’m just watching.”

  She spent a few seconds adjusting the fittings and then lifted it over his head. The sudden shift from reality to this incredibly rich imagined world was disorienting but the private was clearly used to such a reaction. She grabbed his arm as he started to sway and then led him over to one of the couches.

  They were on a tropical planet of some description with a volcano erupting furiously in the background. He wasn’t sure whether he was imagining it or not but there was a distinct smell of sulphur in the air. As he looked around, he saw that he was on a road leading to a rickety looking bridge. The detail was amazing and he kept breaking off to examine things. He marvelled at the fronds on a particularly broad-leafed plant, he could even feel the rubbery texture with his fingers. Inexplicably, there was a beer bottle sitting on one of the bridge parapets. He picked it up to study it. The bottle felt real in his hand and he found that he could even read the contents printed on the label. On a whim, he grasped it by the neck and threw it high into the air. It arced away from him, falling towards the river before disappearing from sight.

  “Sorry, sir, didn’t see you there.”

  “Felix?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Felix was saying. “Would you like to take part? I can sort you out some gloves?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Webster was finding he had more than enough mental stimulation to be getting on with. Unlike the ‘players’, spectators didn’t have to walk. They moved around simply by tipping their head in the direction they wanted to go. It felt a little counter-intuitive at first but after a period of lurching around, barging into people, Webster thought he was getting the hang of it.

  Then someone bellowed in his ear.

  “Heay, man, you do that one more time…”

  “Watch who you’re talking to, Marine.”

  Markham’s voice. He must have followed Webster in.

  “Hostiles approaching.”

  Webster turned a little too quickly in an attempt to look in the direction they were coming from but ended up lurching into one of the other Marines. Suddenly, all the guns were pointing in his direction.

  Then he felt a firm pair of hands grasp the sides of his helmet.

  “I’m just going to turn off your inertia control,” he recognised the sound of the private’s voice. “You won’t be able to move but you’ll still be able to look around.”

  “Got that,” he said, as his view stabilised. He was now standing to the rear of the suits so he could watch without getting in the way. Probably just as well. It wouldn’t do to make a complete fool of himself.

  Suddenly, the jungle on either side of the road exploded with gunfire. He couldn’t see what was going on because the suits were blocking his view but the sound of gunfire was enormous and almost overwhelming. He watched in fascination as a line of stray bullets riddled the floor in front of him, sending stone chips flying everywhere.

  It was almost comical the way that the suits got in one another’s way as they surged forward, there was just no sense to it. Why surge towards the enemy when they were so securely dug-in?

  Still, he had to admit that it was impressive.

  He watched as one of the suits fired off a deluge of missiles, each one leaving a blazing white contrail which disappeared off into the jungle.

  From his point of view this was far better than actual combat. In combat you were usually too busy keeping your head down to actually see much of what was going on. This way you could watch while appreciating what was happening. It wasn’t hard to see why Felix and his Marines found it so addictive.

  The engagement was swift and brutal but highly entertaining. As far as he could make out, the enemy had established themselves on either side of the road and although the trees didn’t provide them with solid defences it did render them virtually invisible and in that sense, very difficult to hit. The enemy ‘suits’ were backed up by a floating tank of a type he hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t sure whether it was based on an actual model or had just been mocked up for the purposes of the simulation.

  Either way, it acted as a target to draw the trooper’s fire. Because they couldn’t see the damage they were doing to their opponents in the jungle, they quickly became bored, plus it was easier to focus on the tank instead. Only, when the tank started blowing smoke, teetering on the brink of being destroyed, it simply reversed back up the road and out of their line of sight.

  But it was the fire being put down by their invisible opponents which posed the greatest threat. They were being raked with sledgehammer fire from which they refused to back down. From where he was standing he could see the lighter machines rocking from side to side as they were being hit.

  Why didn’t they fall back? Surely, they’d be much better off setting up a defensive line at the other end of the bridge. He couldn’t see the sense of it.

  A sustained burst from a plasma gun tore into one of the central mechs and stayed with him despite the pilot’s best efforts. The mech’s armour seemed to melt away, before a flare of yellow light enveloped the whole machine. The next time he looked, the mech was gone.

  The opposition, seeming to sense the troopers’ disarray, decided to press their advantage. On a prearranged signal, they all stepped out into the light. There were six of them, three on each side of the road and Webster watched as they fanned out. He knew immediately what they were doing.

  Establishing their own independent fields of fire.

  And, even though their positioning wasn’t perfect, by splitting into two separate groups they’d done enough to set up a crossfire with the troopers slap bang in the middle. The only thing for it now was for the Marines to fall back but still they stood their ground.

  The Mech’s firepower was simply staggering and, out-manuevered as they were they still managed to take down two of the enemy troops along with an impressive swathe of jungle canopy. But they were living on borrowed time.

  Caught out in the open like that they were just sitting ducks. The opposition didn’t even need to be particularly accurate, all they needed to do was to concentrate their fire in the middle of the group and they were guaranteed of hitting something.

  Needless to say it was the Mech at the centre of the action which felt the effects first as three of the enemy targeted him separately. He managed to soak up an incredible amount of punishment before a pod of Fire-and-Forget missiles finally tipped the balance, impacting all over his body. One of the missiles must have ignited part of his armaments too because the explosion, when it came, took out not only him but also the Mechs on either side.

  As the maelstrom of violence boiled all around them, Webster was surprised to hear a fine tinkling sound and watched as three soft metal butterflies rose into the air, each one dressed in the self-same colours as the armoured suits whose passing they marked.

  When the smoke cleared it revealed a gaping hole in the bridge’s superstructure which separated the two remaining suits. Though neither one of them wanted to back down, there was a certain inevitability to the action as their opponents simply outgunned them. There was no expertise involved, it was a simple war of attrition.

  It was when the enemy started deploying mortars that Webster decided he’d seen enough. He removed his headset and returned it to the private.

  Markham caught up with him in the corridor.

  “What d’ya think?”

  “I can’t say I’m that impressed.”

  “I know. Bit of a shit-show, right?”

  “Did they have absolutely no sense of tactical awareness, or was that just me?”

  “That’s the problem. They put those suits on – they think they’re invulnerable.”

  “Have they all been as bad as that?”

  “Some have taken to it better than others. Mensah, Walker, Barnes all showed promise. Oh, and Jackson. Don’t forget Jackson.”

  That got Walker’s attention. He’d been worried about Jackson ever since Grimes’ funeral. If they’d been back on the Mantis he’d have taken her off active duty and asked Dr Morton to take a look at her. As things had turned out though, that hadn’t been possible.

  “She any good?”

  “Good? No, she’s not good. Jackson is something else.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Silva had been right about Meyer, Ardent reflected.

  What was it she’d said of him? Officious and humourless. Well he was certainly that. And more.

  Ardent wasn’t sure what deal Silva and Webster had struck with him but she was under no doubt that Meyer would have got the better end of it.

  She’d met his type before, many times while she’d been governor. They were the sort of people whose every move was calculated to guarantee their ongoing success. Lacking any real initiative or discernible skill of their own, they tended to build their reputation on the backs of those around them, squeezing them dry of ideas before jettisoning these subordinates when the arrangement no longer suited them. They rarely took risks and if they did they would always have access to some poor unfortunate who would invariably shoulder the blame should things go wrong.

  Her own father had had an expression for people like this. He said they were the sort of people who wouldn’t send their ships to sea, for fear they might get wet.

  Whatever the deal had been, it was clear that Meyer had turned it to his own advantage. Here he was, in charge of a heavily armed Confederation vessel, staying behind to supervise a search and rescue mission he clearly had no interest in, while brave men and women were putting themselves at the point of the spear. The Dardelion was fast, that was partly the reason she’d commissioned it in the first place, but with only defensive capabilities it would prove no match against even a lightly armed aggressor.

  Ardent had worried at first that Meyer would prove difficult to work with on the SAR mission – fearing that her recent loss of status might have diminished her in his eyes - but the opposite had proven to be true. Meyer had seemed resigned to what had to be done, whilst showing no desire to actually get involved himself, he at least had the good grace not to interfere. Ardent had proven her worth by utilising her knowledge of the system to increase the effectiveness of the Renheim’s search parameters. She had been able to persuade a whole range of operators both civil and commercial to allow her to piggyback their communications equipment, thereby significantly broadening the range of their search.

  So far, they had recovered eighteen escape pods. It didn’t seem like much until you compared the figures to the computer’s projections of twelve. But still, the whole thing seemed to be taking forever and with the Da’al fast approaching, they were running out of time. With Parnashikan at the helm on Blackthorn, the evacuation of Blackthorn had begun in earnest. Casting aside any concerns about the possibility of ships being tracked back to Lincoln, they’d started loading the cruise liners first. She’d lost count of the number of ships which had struck out towards the Henrietta Gate in the last few days but they must figure in the hundreds.

  And who could blame them? With the umbilical to the planet lost, they had little alternative.

  Previously, Blackthorn had been facing a limited threat which they had every hope of containing but now, with the arrival of the Da’al fleet, all that had changed.

  Which was why she herself had decided on a separate course of action. She needed to start drumming up support for an armed resistance force. Her reasoning was simple: if she could persuade just a handful of ships’ captains to agree to set up a rallying line between Iscaria and Tigris, then they might be able to pressurise Captain Mahbarat into joining them. She didn’t know what his relationship with Parnashikan was like but she hoped to use what little influence she still retained to try and influence him into some positive action.

  Mahbarat had come to their aid once before so, she reasoned, there was every chance that he might do so again.

  This was, of course, well beyond her current remit and there was no question that, if Meyer got even a whiff of what she was trying to do, he would shut her down in a heartbeat. Still, she had to try. All she needed to do was recruit a number of die-hard ship owners and captains to her cause. The majority of commercial transports had already left but a large number of ancillary vessels, working ships, had stayed behind, along with a few of the industrial crews. A lot of them had family on Blackthorn and she knew that they’d be keen to see their loved ones make good their escape. If nothing else, their actions would help to buy the refugees some time.

  They were probably thinking the same thing she was.

  If everyone chose to cut and run then it would only make the Da’al’s work easier. With their superior propulsion systems they would make short work of a ragtag fleet of largely civilian vessels. They could pick them off at their leisure.

  But if she could get the roughnecks to work together, they might well be able to at least hamper the aliens’ plans.

  She waited until Farnese was coming to the end of his duty before requesting permission to contact the first person on her list. She sold it to Farnese as a courtesy call. Bud Selig was captain and owner of The Sundowner and Ardent knew him from wayback. They hadn’t always seen eye to eye in the past, Selig had a habit of sailing close to the wind with his interpretation of various interplanetary laws but Ardent also knew him to be a man of his word.

  If she could get him to commit to her cause then there was no telling who else he might be able to bring onboard.

  “Tell me again who this guy is?” Farnese was having to juggle far too many commitments and the strain was starting to show.

  Ardent had persuaded him to make the call to Selig from his wardroom where he would feel less self-conscious. While she was confident in Farnese’s skills on the bridge, she still felt he had a lot to learn about public relations.

  “Frans Jacobs was the one who persuaded the mining concerns to free up their comms to help our search for those pods. So far they’ve identified twenty-seven for us to follow up on.”

  “Okay, I get that. Name’s Jacobs, right?”

  “That’s right. I think it’s important that we thank him for all his help. He’d prefer that coming from you, plus there’s no telling what else he might be able to help us with. Would you like me to handle the rest?”