I felt the howling gale of the Sky Fortress’s twelve engines, three in each corner of the massive armoured aircraft, as it flew overhead and started to drop towards the mud. It cleared away swathes of Them with railgun and cannon fire. Point defence lasers formed a grid of light in the sky as they shot down incoming Them missiles. The huge craft rocked as some of the missiles made it through, exploding against its pitted armour plate. It didn’t land so as not to risk sinking into the mud. The wind from the heavy-duty vectored thrust engines blew everything away that wasn’t nailed down. That was the last I saw of my arm.
Door gunners opened fire as the massive rear cargo hatch opened. This was when I had expected us all to run into it and fly away, but our rescuers wanted to get their APCs on board. I wondered if this was because they looked so cool with wolf mouths painted around the cabs of the vehicles.
Gregor organised the Wild Boys to cover the vehicles being loaded. The Sky Fortress’s weapons aided us. The cargo crew were resupplying our rescuers with ammunition and they joined in, laying down blistering amounts of fire. I was still pointing and firing my empty Mastodon.
‘On! Now!’ Gregor was in my face dragging me into the cavernous cargo bay. We joined the strangely silent dogs and the cybrid centaurs. The dogs’ maws were covered in black ichor. The centaurs’ sabres were dripping with the same.
I heard engines scream. The Sky Fortress lurched and seemed to slide forward. The aerial view from the remote showed the front of the gunship covered in Berserks. The airframe seemed to be trying to shake itself to pieces but finally the Sky Fortress took to the sky, Berserks tumbling off. I heard nearly every type of Them munitions hitting the armour of the mighty gunship.
‘They come for us, yes?’ the one who had rescued me asked. I nodded. He was covered head to foot in ichor. ‘What I don’t like about them is there is nothing to eat.’ He picked at his armour. ‘What is this? Liquid. I want to taste flesh.’ He reached down and ruffled the hair of one of the fearsome-looking dogs. ‘I am Vladimir!’ he suddenly shouted. I think I may have jumped. I was wound pretty tight. He swept his hands over his assembled troops. ‘These are my Vucari!’
‘Wild Boys,’ I managed to say and then sat down hard as Brownie crouched next to me opening his med kit.
It felt like a throbbing white-hot knife had been shoved into my skull, and now there were people near. It was still dark. I could hear the whine from a number of small hover vehicles and whinnying from a horse.
I rapidly assembled the compound bow I’d bought in Dundee. It had been made on the Rigs by a one-armed Royal Engineers vet out of salvaged plastic and metal. She was a superb craftswoman. I’d always been impressed by her stuff but never able to afford any of it. The pull on the bow had been adjusted to take into account my boosted strength. Overkill for the deer I was planning on hunting, but I’d need it if I pissed off a bear. I strapped the case of arrows to my belt. The arrows had been machined by the Engineers’ vet from carbon fibre and steel, with plastic flights.
I headed out of the tent and headed rapidly at a right angle from the direction of the vehicles and horse, keeping low as I moved through the woods. I could hear people talking now but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
I wanted eyes-on. I lay down in the wet undergrowth and slowly and what I hoped was quietly began crawling towards the edge of the woods. I reached the treeline and looked down the slope of the hill. There were six of them. The lowlight capability of my eyes amplified the ambient light and gave my vision a green tinge. I zoomed in. Five of them were sitting on upmarket civilian versions of the scout hovers favoured by Mudge on Sirius. The sixth guy was on a horse, holding the reins of another saddled horse missing its rider. I looked around but saw no one.
The four on the hover bikes seemed excited about something judging by their animated conversation. They wore what looked like expensive outdoor gear that hadn’t seen much of the outdoors. All of them were either holding some kind of expensive shotgun or hunting rifle or had similar weapons in sheaths attached to their scout hovers. If they had implants I couldn’t tell, which probably meant they were wealthy and could afford the sort of cybernetics that didn’t look like cybernetics. They all had either gymnasium-toned builds or were getting plump, which was a distinct sign of wealth. I wondered what they were out hunting. Me?
The one on the horse was different. He was quiet for a start. His outdoor gear was expensive but practical and well used. There was no sign of implants but his face was quite badly scarred and even by the way he shifted in his saddle and scanned the area I could tell he was a veteran. He was weather-beaten and had a hard look to him. He was also older than the others. He looked to be in his fifties, which again suggested money.
‘Jakob Douglas!’ the one on the horse shouted.
How’d they know? Of course. My talk with God – all they had to do was ask. I suppressed a groan.
‘I’m Calum Laird. This is my land,’ he continued. ‘Come out. We’d just like to talk.’ At these words there was laughter from the other five. They were beginning to look like a drunk lynch party to me.
Fuck it, might as well meet the neighbours. I stood up and stepped out of the treeline, bow drawn taught, arrow notched.
‘What do you want?’ I called.
Everyone jumped bar the guy on the horse. They either reached for their weapons or started to bring the ones they were holding to bear on me. I loosed an arrow at the fastest one. It hit the side of the scout hover close to his leg and penetrated deep into the vehicle’s engine block. I was impressed with the bow and my accidental accuracy. The man yelped and the scout hover slowly sank to the ground. I had another arrow notched.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I warned. The guy on the horse still hadn’t moved. ‘I just want to be left in peace.’
‘You’re squatting, you filth!’ the chubby guy on the recently murdered scout hover said.
‘Alasdair, that’s enough,’ Calum said, then to me: ‘I just want to run my land without trespassers moving in. So I guess we don’t always get what we want.’ It wasn’t a Highland accent – he came from further south – but I couldn’t place it. His tone was even and there was no trace of the upper-class accent of his companions.
‘Looks like you’ve got a lot of room here. You’ll barely notice I’m here and I’ll only hunt when I have to.’
‘It’s his land, you piece of terrorist scum!’ Alasdair practically squealed. There was muttered assent from the other four riders. So it seemed Alasdair had an opinion on the events at the Atlantis Spoke.
‘Alasdair, is it?’ Alasdair didn’t respond. ‘You open your mouth to me again and I’ll spit your piggy head with an arrow. Do you understand me?’
I didn’t want to kill but this guy was really rubbing me the wrong way. Alasdair started to open his mouth and I wondered if I could hit a testicle with the bow.
‘Shut up, Alasdair,’ Laird said quietly. This was a man used to giving orders. ‘I know who you are: 5 Para Pathfinders, SAS, mutineer, dishonourably discharged, Atlantis, what little we know about what went on in the Dog’s Teeth. Impressive record but you sound like a lot of trouble.’
‘That’s all behind me. Like I say, I just want to be left alone.’
‘I’m not so sure it’s that easy, your cavalier attitude to rights of ownership aside…’
‘I lived in an eight-by-eight plastic cube with no fucking windows. How much room do you need?’
‘Hey, I worked for this, pal!’ Now he seemed to be getting angry. There was obviously a bit of street in him.
‘If you’ve read my record then you know I’ve worked for a living.’
There was a snort of derision. ‘Look, I respect your record, but that aside, I let you live here, where does it stop? People are already trying to break out of the cities and move onto land they have no right to.’
‘You shouldn’t use the cities as prisons then. Maybe give everyone an equal chance at the good life.’
‘Where do you think I come from?’ he demanded.
I wasn’t sure so I didn’t answer. ‘So where do you want to go from here?’ I asked instead. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I can get all six of you.’ Though the other horse was bothering me.
‘I’m pretty sure you can’t get any of us, otherwise I wouldn’t have come up here.’ He seemed pretty sure of himself. Now that horse was really beginning to bug me. ‘Though I’ve a better idea. Instead of you getting dead, why don’t we go back to the house, have a dram and talk this over.’
Alasdair opened his mouth to protest.
‘I will fucking shoot you, Alasdair,’ I warned him. His mouth closed with an audible click of teeth on teeth. ‘That seems reasonable as long as the conversation ends with me staying here and being left alone.’
‘We’ll see. Kenny?’ Kenny seemed to rise out of the ground behind me. Kenny was wearing a gillie suit and pointing an old but perfectly serviceable hunting rifle with a big enough calibre to make a mess of even someone as
