with the side hatch!'
I got as close in to the patch of weeds where she had fallen as I dared. The down-thrust of the plane could cause serious injuries. We jolted hard as I set down, throwing the throttles to idle. Aemos was opening the hatch, but he was old and slow and scared. Eleena couldn't reach over because he was blocking her.
I leapt out, pushing Aemos back into his seat, and thumped down into the wet nettles and burry fex-grass. The night air was sudden and cold. Another flare bloomed above us, and I realised the echoing spit I could hear was the enemy guns discharging in my direction.
I ran forward, searching for her.
'Medea! Medea!'
Now I was on the ground, it was nigh on impossible to tell where in the thigh- high grass she'd fallen.
'Medea!'
A las-round stung the air to my left. The closest of the raiders, running across the paddock, was only a few dozen metres away.
I realised I was unarmed. I'd given my boltgun to Sastre, and Bar-barisater and the staff were stowed in the flier behind me.
No, I had Medea's Glavian needle pistol. It was still in my coat pocket. I dragged it out and fired, aiming it with both hands.
My first shot hit the nearest raider and he fell over into the grass. My second shot winged another and he too disappeared into the rough scrub.
I glanced at the needler's mechanical dial. Two rounds left.
Bending low, I searched the grass with increasing frenzy as shots whined in close.
'Medea!'
And there she was, face down in the thick scrub. There was a bloody, burned hole in the back of her silk jacket.
I dragged her up and threw her limp body over my shoulder. The autopistol she had been using slipped heavily from her slack hand.
I stooped and grabbed it. The clip was half-full.
I swung round, trying to keep her from falling, and fired the autopistol wildly at the advancing enemy, relishing the satisfying roar and recoil of the hefty solid-slug weapon. Needle guns were elegant and deadly, but you barely knew you'd fired them.
This thing, chrome and square-nosed, kicked like a yurf, and spent brass cases rang as they flew from the pumping slide.
I started to ran back to the plane, expecting a shot in the back any moment. I heard las fire, but it wasn't coming from behind me. Eleena Koi was braced in the open side hatch of the flier, laying down covering fire with a laspistol I hadn't realised she was carrying. Aemos had got into the back, onto the bench seat, giving Eleena access to the door.
Aemos reached out and gathered Medea in his arms. Eleena seized her too and the three of us bundled the girl into the rear beside Aemos.
I was wishing so hard she wasn't dead.
Eleena fired one last time and fell back into the passenger seats. I jumped in, yelling at her to slam the hatch.
There was no time to strap in. Multiple shots slammed against the aircraft's flank. A window panel burst. Dents appeared in the inner skin, spalling fragments off the hull.
I hoisted us off the ground, and spun us to face the charging raiders.
I think, although I can't be sure, I said something singularly unedifying as I pressed the trigger. Something like: 'eat this, you bastards.'
I don't believe I actually hit any of them but, by the Golden Throne, they took cover.
'Sir!' Eleena yelled over the scream of the turbofans.
A ball of light was approaching from the other side of the spinney. I couldn't see the speeder, just its stablight shining like a white dwarf against the night sky.
Time to go.
I kept it low, but pulled away south across the paddock at full thrust, accelerating all the time. We were doing forty, forty-five knots by the time we reached the road. The woods loomed.
In an instant, I weighed my options. Go high, over the trees, and be a clear target for any pursuer. Go through, lights off, and drop speed dramatically to avoid collision. Go through, lights on.
I picked the third way.
The flier's lamps kicked on, lighting a cone of space ahead of us. Even with the lights, and the auspex and the proximity alarm, this course was borderline suicide. Within a few seconds, having only just avoided a head-on smash with a mature spruce, I had to drop the speed to thirty.
'You're… you're gonna get us killed!' Eleena wailed.
'Be quiet!' The black shapes of tree trunks whipped past on either side, forcing me to turn and bank hard, repeatedly, jagging left, then right, then left again. Branches, some as massive as trees in their own right, swept over us like arches or under us like bridges. Several times, we exploded through sprays of canopy, the engine-out alarm pipping as the fans fought to clear away the leaf debris choking them. The phantoms on the scanner screen were almost constantly red.
Eleena started to say an Imperial prayer.
'Say one for us all/ I barked. 'Aemos! What's Medea's condition?'
'She's alive, thank the stars. But her breathing's not right. Perhaps a collapsed lung, or internal cauterisation. She needs a medic, Gregor.'
'She'll get one. Make her as comfortable as you can. There's a medi-pak in the locker behind you. Patch her wound.'
Apart from being an insane death wish, flying at speed through dense, ancient forest at night was baffling. Simply avoiding collision required such concentration, I kept losing my bearings. A few forced turns to the left, say, pointed us east. Correcting that, and evading an oak to the right, and we were turned west. We were zig-zagging through the wild woodland, and a zig-zag is not the fastest route of escape.
At least four of the five speeders I had seen during the raid were after us. Two were following us directly through the trees, about five hundred metres behind us. The other two had gone up and over the tree cover, making much better time, chasing hard to pass over us and get ahead.
They were ex-military models; I'd seen that much from the glimpse I'd got of them parked on the lawns. Bigger power plants than this nimble Urdeshi turbofan; bigger, and better armoured. And their cannons, mounted on racks in the doorframes, meant they could, essentially, fire in any direction. They didn't have to be pointing at their target.
The auspex started to chime and I saw hard light flash down through the leaf cover above us, breaking through in shafts like a sun breaking through low cloud. One of the fliers above the forest was matching us for speed.
I jinked and evaded, not so much to lose him as to avoid instant obliteration against the bole of a tree. I saw the forest floor convulse and ripple as the door gunner fired down at us.
So I banked hard, one wing down, right around a colossal fanewood, and shot off in a westerly direction. The overhead lights disappeared for a moment, but then reappeared, travelling fast, parallel to us, to the left. A tree, flashing past to my right, lost its bark in a blitz of diagonal crossfire.
Damn them. I was fairly certain they had no heat or motion tracking instruments. They were following the glow of my lamps underlighting the canopy.
I killed the lights but unfortunately didn't kill my speed. The proximity alarm squealed, and though I yanked on the stick, we struck a trunk a grazing blow.
