Birdie Down Read online

Part Two

  Stand By Me

  17

  Above Constitution

  Scat followed the shuttle’s downward trajectory, the blood draining from his head and pooling in the pit of his stomach. No one spoke. No one moved. Even Li had stopped pestering Chan about when he could bring his bugcam back.

  A shadow moved across the forward screen. Smithy stopped in the doorway holding a bag of replacement stun gun batteries, ready to pull his friend’s leg about his weight again. He saw the look on Tyson’s face, sensed the general despair and quickly lost the grin.

  ‘Bad?’ he asked of Welks, quietly.

  Welks was not sure what to say. He did not have the big picture and he did not know who Smithy was. He deferred to Tyson.

  Tyson shook his head.

  ‘Not good, Smithy,’ he whispered. ‘We couldn’t warn them that the RAVs were following them in. They had switched their comms off to blend in.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Goosen’s down, man. We just tracked him to the surface. The RAVs took them out.’

  Smithy sat down on Bing’s seat at the console and stared at the screen, mouth open.

  ‘Tyson,’ Scat called out. ‘Throw up the visuals. Put it on the bench. I want to see what other assets Constitution has in that area.’

  When he was ready, Tyson pointed to the bench.

  Scat walked across and peered into it.

  ‘Identify anything that’s in the air,’ he called across.

  Two green dots appeared. The scale of the area made it look as though the Lynthax RAVs were in freeze-form, but it was evident from their altitude and tracking lines that they were circling the crash site. Below them a red ripple marked Goosen’s shuttle. A second red ripple, this one less distinct and more fractured, covered a wider area some way off to the west: possibly another downed shuttle.

  ‘Pull it out, Ty. Bring in Welwyn City.’

  Tyson expanded the image until Welwyn crawled into view along one end of it, around 400 kilometres away. An orange dot blinked in and out, its tracking lines going back a short distance to the space port. It looked as though it was headed to the crash site.

  ‘The orange is a rescue vehicle, Scat,’ Bing explained. ‘It’s airborne. ETA around ninety minutes.’

  The 3-D blinked out, then returned. It did it again.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ Scat asked.

  ‘Looks like the weather ... it’s an electrical storm,’ Tyson said, casting his eye over a second screen on the console. ‘If it’s a bad one we’ll lose the image.’

  Welks added something in a small voice.

  ‘But if it is, Ty, the RAVs won’t want to hang around. They never do.’

  Scat look intently at him. That sounded hopeful.

  ‘Well, come on, lad: tell us why,’ he demanded.

  Welks felt all the older, more experienced men watching him. He flushed.

  ‘Um, because ... actually I’m not sure. It’s just that when the shuttles get RAV escorts—like when they’re on anti-pirate drills and when we send shuttles down to collect materials—they never follow them in. They stay in orbit. Mr Matheson said it was because they don’t behave themselves very well. They’re ‘pedigrees’, so he says: for space. They can make a standard landing if they need to, but they’re not built for atmospheric combat.’

  ‘So the bad weather’s to our favour?’ Scat asked.

  ‘I guess so, sir,’ Welks replied. ‘Actually, sir, in these parts, most of the air traffic closes down—during a big storm, that is. Especially the electrical ones like this.’

  Scat tried to find an advantage in that, but his mind was cluttered with problems. The V4 was a slow and easy prey; it was an albatross that could not defend itself against an Outer Rim Force starflyer, let alone a type 2 frigate. They were short on fuel and they had no base of operations to which they could flee. Nor did they have a pilot to man a second shuttle. Outside of the V4 they had no allies, so there was no cavalry on its way. To make things worse, he was the only person on board this vessel who knew much about warfare, and no one knew anything about conducting a conflict in space.

  Scat was making this up as he went along.

  At best, Constitution’s bad weather could give him the breathing space he needed to work up a plan for getting Goosen back out of there. But a rescue operation would be risky and he had already risked it all. And maybe they would be chancing it all for a couple of corpses. Damn! He just needed a few minutes to get his head straight.

  Tyson picked up a bleep on his screen.

  ‘It’s the Raider, Scat. It’s pushing some,’ he remarked, tracking the Venture Raider’s progress. ‘It’ll be here in a few minutes. We’re in range now.’

  ‘OK,’ Scat replied. He had run out of time. ‘Li, bring your precious bugcam back. Do it now.’

  Li snapped to, leaping out of his chair. He fiddled with his remote as he paced up and down. Eventually he beamed a smile at Chan, and nodded excitedly. Scat did not need a translation: the bugcam was back in the rear hangar.

  ‘Welks: Are the hangar doors closed.’

  Welks nodded.

  Scat turned back to face the 3-D bench, closing his eyes briefly. He then steeled himself to leave people behind.

  ‘Then make the jump back out to the buoy station.’

  Tyson stared at Scat’s back and then at Welks. Welks looked uncertain. They were about to leave Goosen and Bing behind and they were not even throwing them a lifebelt.

  On the other side of the cabin, Smithy glanced about to see both the young men dithering. He could not blame them for being unsure. He was still trying to digest the news that Goosen was down and could be dead already.

  Scat sensed the hesitation. He felt the mood.

  ‘Come on! Get it done. Press the friggin’ button,’ he ordered.

  Welks pressed down.

  ‘We’re gone, sir,’ Welks said, still not using Scat’s name. He was not sure he would ever like him enough to use it. Not now.

  As the forward screen went blank Scat felt his veins turn to ice. Nettles was right; Marvin was right; Goosen was right—he had over-stretched. His personal beef with Petroff had coloured his judgement. Because of it he had just sacrificed a colleague. Correction—two brave friends. This was not yet a fully-fledged rebellion: it was a rebellion in its infancy. It was still an insurgency, a guerrilla action, and he had just ignored the first rule of guerrilla warfare—never to commit unless success was guaranteed. He disguised the guilt with an angry look.

  Then, from outside in the corridor, he heard the ringing of metal on glass.

  ‘It’s alright, Scat,’ Smithy offered, fishing a stun from his breast pocket. ‘I’ll go quieten ’em down.’

  Scat strode past him on his way to the door. He plucked the stun from Smithy’s hand.

  ‘Thanks for the offer, Smithy, but I’ll do it.’

  18

  Dragon Park, Constitution

  Tight lipped, Cummings scanned the ground around the V4 crew crash site, looking for signs of life. It did not help that his RAV was bouncing around in the thickening air.

  Of signs of life, there was none. That pissed him off. He should have made allowances: perhaps not taken the second shot. It was clear the dumb-ass rebel sitting in the pilot’s seat could not fly. He had checked the V4’s passenger manifest before suiting up, and aside from the Earth Representative, who had four hours under his belt, none of the others were shown to have flown anything more serious than a glider. He had gambled that the V4’s shuttle pilots would not have volunteered to work with the rebels—they were only weeks away from their yearly Outer-Rim bonus—and he had been right.

  Nonetheless, he should have waited until the rebels were clear of the convoy before taking them out. Damn!

  ‘Er, Archie?’ Muldrow said,

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The AGL’s complaining. Most of the guys have barfed inside their helmets.’

  Cummings looked up at the live feed coming from the
rear cabin. The Assault Group Leader was giving him the thumbs down. He glanced up at the closing skies and then back down to the crash site. Rain was sweeping across the forested terrain in torrents. Constitution’s quickly changing weather never ceased to amaze him.

  ‘OK, OK. Weather’s closing down and the fuel’s getting low. ... I know,’ he replied. ‘Lion 2, Lion 1: head for Welwyn. We won’t make orbit in this.’

  The reply from the second RAV was swift.

  ‘Lion 2. Thank jeeze for that, Archie. I thought we were going to camp out here. By the way, we’ve taken a few hits.’

  They both had. Lightening was streaking across the gloomy sky in ceaseless, flickering arcs. Cummings switched across to the local emergency services channel, advised them of the worsening conditions and then put a call through to the Venture Raider.