The Covenant of Genesis

Guantanamo.’ Chase pulled the floating craft round to face down the crevasse. ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’ she asked.

‘Not really. You?’

‘Not at all.’

‘In that case, I’ll drive, you shoot.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat, the paracraft wallowing with the extra weight. The steering column dipped as he brushed it, hinged to act as a flight control. Sophia sat beside him, hefting the SIG. Over the engine’s grumble, they could hear the buzz of the other paracraft. ‘Ready?’

‘Hardly, but—’

Chase rammed the throttle forward.

The engine screamed, a freezing backblast whipping round them from the wall of ice behind. The paracraft leapt forward, slewing almost sideways before Chase managed to redirect the steering vanes behind the fan and straighten out.

‘—I doubt that makes any difference,’ she finished.

Chase looked back, his view partly obscured by the cloud of ice particles the paracraft was kicking up in its wake. They were leaving the boulders behind with surprising speed - but their new ride was already showing its weaknesses. Hovercraft had very little grip at the best of times, only the friction of the thick rubber skirt against the ground, and on newly frozen ice it was practically zero. ‘Jesus!’ he gasped. ‘It’s like trying to steer a bar of soap along the bottom of the bath!’

‘They don’t seem to be having any trouble,’ Sophia said. The second paracraft had rounded the barricade and was sweeping after them in a long, carefully controlled drift.

‘Bloody show-offs!’

They burst out into the sunlight, the crevasse’s walls falling away as they reached an ice plain. In the distance, Chase saw the tilt-rotor heading in their direction. Holding the wheel with one hand, he raised the radio. ‘Matt! We’re moving - we’re in a hovercraft!’

‘Hovercraft, huh?’ Trulli’s voice crackled. ‘You know, nothing you guys do surprises me any more. I see you.’

‘But we’ve got company - hold back until we get rid of them!’

‘How’re you going to do that?’

Chase gave Sophia a pointed look. ‘Shooting at them would be a good start.’

‘I was waiting for a decent shot,’ she sniped. ‘But I can just hose them with bullets if you like. It’s not as though I only have one magazine or anything.’

‘Just shoot them!’

Sophia fired, keeping the SIG on single-shot to improve her aim. It didn’t make much difference, the buffeting of the paracraft throwing both her shots wide.

The new threat spurred on their enemies, however. The gunner fired back - on full auto, bullets cracking the fan’s fibreglass casing. Sophia gasped and ducked. ‘Shit!’ Chase yelped as a piece of debris spun past him. He looked over his shoulder to see the other paracraft change course and fall in behind them - so that Sophia’s line of fire would be blocked by the fan.

He tried to bring the vehicle back into her view. The paracraft turned - too fast, spinning round its centre of gravity while still racing across the ice field in a straight line. He attempted to compensate, but they had already made a half-turn so that they were facing their pursuers . . . and with the fan pointing backwards, they were rapidly slowing.

‘Oh, nice driving!’ Sophia sneered as she squeezed off a pair of three-round bursts at the approaching paracraft. She and Chase both ducked as the gunner returned fire. The windscreen shattered, bullets plunking through the hull. There was a flat whap! and a shriek of escaping air as the skirt was punctured, the paracraft’s nose dipping as the bullet hole widened and split the rubber.

Chase steered one way, the Covenant driver the other as the two paracraft whipped past each other. Sophia tracked the other vehicle, still firing and scoring hits - but only to the bodywork, not its occupants. She glanced at the SIG’s magazine, which was made from a translucent plastic, showing how many bullets she had left. It was half empty. ‘Running low!’

‘So make ’em count,’ was the only advice Chase could offer her as he fought with the controls. The damage to the skirt had made the paracraft even more unwieldy, the nose pitching downwards. ‘Get in the back. I need to balance this thing!’

The other paracraft turned with considerably more grace, performing a sweeping ballet across the ice compared to his duck-on-a-frozen-pond manoeuvring. He searched for anything that might help him. The BA609 was circling, holding back out of rifle range. There were some ice ridges that might provide partial cover, but everything else was smooth and glossy where the lake water had frozen over the past day.

There had been a hell of a lot of water, though. The plain wasn’t that big - some of it must have drained away elsewhere . . .

Sophia dropped on to the rear seats, the shift in weight raising the paracraft’s nose slightly. She reacquired her target and fired another burst, this time hitting only ice. Chase clutched the radio. ‘Matt! I need a spotter - can you see any crevasses or cliffs?’

‘Yeah, about ten o’clock from you,’ came the reply. ‘There’s a cliff - a big cliff.’

‘Thanks!’ He changed course, making a quarter-turn to the left to see the cliff edge in the distance, a thin bite out of the horizon. Quickly getting closer.

He adjusted his heading, the second paracraft disappearing behind the fan. The spray would obscure its view of what lay ahead, hopefully until it was too late. He looked over the paracraft’s other controls, finding a lever that might prove helpful . . .

‘They’re catching up,’ Sophia warned.

‘Get down,’ Chase told her, reducing the throttle. The paracraft’s engine, mounted beneath the fan, would give them both some protection. But not much.

‘Why are you slowing down?’

‘I need to get them closer.’

‘Closer?’

‘I’m going to turn so they’ll come round on our left.’ The cliff was now clearly visible ahead, the absence of any landscape beyond it suggesting quite a fall. ‘Shoot if you get the chance - otherwise just hold on tight!’

She braced herself across the rear seats as Chase kept driving. One hand on the wheel, the other on the control lever, he readied himself for the inevitable gunfire. The Covenant men were gaining fast, moving in for the kill—

Shots hit the back of the paracraft, splintering the bodywork and ripping into the engine bay. Chase flinched as a bullet whipped past him and punched through the dashboard. The engine noise became raw, ragged.

More shots—

‘Now!’ Chase shouted, slamming round the wheel.

The paracraft spun - and Sophia blindly fired the SIG’s remaining bullets on full auto as it swept round. The gunner was hit in the shoulder, blood and shattered bone spraying into the air. He fell back, screaming.

Chase’s paracraft kept spinning, pirouetting about in a half-turn—

He pulled the lever.

The paracraft switched from ground to flight mode, all power being transferred to the main propeller as the smaller lift fans under the body were shut off. The rubber skirt instantly deflated, dropping the paracraft down hard on to the ice. It grated along, the combination of friction and the rearward blast from the fan rapidly slowing it. The other paracraft shot past, zooming out of the obscuring spray to see the cliff edge dead ahead—

Chase’s paracraft ground to a stop less than two feet from the drop. The other vehicle wasn’t so lucky, shooting over the edge of a vast frozen waterfall and arcing towards the ground hundreds of feet below.

Chase watched it fall, Sophia sitting up behind him. ‘Nice of them to drop by, eh?’

She made a disgusted noise. ‘Eddie, even Roger Moore would think that joke was—’ Her eyes widened as the plunging paracraft sprouted a second parachute, the scarlet canopy snapping open to arrest its fall. Engine roaring, it spiralled back up towards them. ‘—premature!’

Chase revved his own engine, yanking the lever back to re-inflate the skirt. The paracraft slithered away from