The factotum was eager to get out and start poking about. McPhail was glad; their enthusiasm made him feel less guilty about sending them out into this wretched place where he wouldn’t go himself.

  At first he sat in the cockpit and gazed out of the windows, occasionally answering queries from the factors. After a while he moved away from the windows and went further into the ship because he kept seeing things outside.

  Some of the time he knew it was one of the factors zipping past as they flew about looking for valuables. Most of the time he knew it was just his imagination. He was gazing out at a mostly-flat grey plain, near featureless. McPhail didn’t look in the direction of the accommodation blocks. He also didn’t look towards the pit head. He had been keeping his gaze carefully on just the dark grey silt, staring out at it and seeing things moving towards the ship.

  He knew he was just doing the same thing humans had always done, traversing landscapes of endless gently-moving grasses or shifting snow fields. Seeing something moving out of the corner of your eye. Catching glimpses of something else out there that was always just a little out of sight. He knew there probably wasn’t anything there but- what was that? It was just something his brain was going to do, it was going to find things. Just giving himself the creeps. So he moved to where he couldn’t see a window and told the HasteMakesWaste that it wasn’t to open any door without his direct permission.

  Not even for a factor. Not without checking with McPhail first. He knew he was being daft but who cared? There were only machines around and they thought all humans were weird anyway.

  Outside, the factotum assessed the concrete plug at the top of the mine shaft. They identified all the worthwhile-taking vehicles and power sources and began to shift them. They started gathering explosives in a heap by the pit head. McPhail hadn’t even told them to do that last thing but sometimes his little machines were capable of getting a few steps further along than he’d think they would get by themselves. He was feeling quite proud of them- surprised, but proud. It wasn’t a leap he’d have thought them capable of making, and a demonstration of a little more autonomy than he thought he’d made them capable of but maybe they could learn-

  and then it hit him.

  “Ship?” said McPhail. “Ship, has the machine- the robot that says it’s trapped-”

  (The thing that says it’s a robot that says that it’s trapped)

  “...Has it been communicating since I told you to stop responding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it been communicating...frequently?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ship...do you know...could it have been communicating with the factotum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes it could or yes it has?”

  “It has.”

  McPhail felt as though he had just plunged into icy water. “You...didn’t tell me it was talking to them,” he said, already knowing why.

  “You said you didn’t want to know what it was saying,” said the ship and it was right, McPhail knew that that was exactly what he had said. He wasn’t angry with HasteMakesWaste. He wasn’t angry with the factors. They had all done exactly what they had been told to. If that was different to what you wanted them to do then that was on you, pal. That was classic human error being the problem, the human factor being the thing that made things go wrong, as it always was.

  He wasn’t angry with the robot, either. Unlike the ship and his factotum it was intelligent, from what he could tell. It was capable of making decisions for itself and self-directing its own actions and scheming and lying. That meant it was capable of being terribly lonely and frightened and desperate to not let go of maybe its only chance to be rescued.

  McPhail couldn’t blame it. He’d probably try anything to get out of that pit too.

  “Ship, tell the robot…” he paused, calming himself for a moment. “Tell it to stop talking to the factors. Tell it that if it talks to them again the rescue attempt is cancelled. Convey my seriousness.”

  “Yes,” said the HasteMakesWaste.

  “And-” McPhail screwed his eyes shut, “Ship, tell me immediately if it does try to talk to them. Immediately.”

  “Yes.”

  Honestly, though McPhail. What would he have told the factors to do, anyway? He would have asked the robot where the miners had stored the explosives and then sent the factors to collect it all up and put it at the entrance to the mineshaft. He was just mad because...why was he even mad?

  ‘The robot says it’s sorry,” the HasteMakesWaste told him. The ship must have conveyed his seriousness, thought McPhail. “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t tell it that. Tell it to wait patiently and not talk to anyone and not do anything. And I definitely do want to know anything that it says or does. Okay?”

  “Yes.” said the ship.

  Loading up the ship took longer than McPhail had expected because there was more stuff to load than he’d expected. The HasteMakesWaste and the factotum worked well together. Any vehicles that didn’t want to start, the factors would hook up one of the batteries they’d collected and give it a jolt. There were only a couple of things they didn’t manage to get running. McPhail had been planning to take even dead vehicles along with them- he thought he could work on them while they travelled. They ended up having so much stuff to load that anything they couldn’t drive onto the HMW was just going to be staying behind.

  The fuel they’d found went mostly into the ship. Anything the HMW could suck a little extra juice from for what was going to be a very heavy takeoff was better fuelling the ship than just adding to the weight it was carrying.

  Once everything was loaded the ship and the factors got all the doors closed and sealed. McPhail came down into the cargo hold to have a closer look at it all. He was pleased. He made a half-arsed inspection of how some of the stuff was stowed but he trusted the machines to have made a better job of securing everything than he was qualified to judge. The HasteMakesWaste had been in the haulage business for a lot longer than he had.

  (That didn’t stop McPhail getting the ship to check and check again that it was going to be able to lift off. It assured him and assured him again that it would.)

  ‘The robot is messaging again,” The HasteMakesWaste told McPhail as he made his way back up from the huge storage area to the small portion of the ship that was fitted out to accommodate crew. “Is that the first time since last time we told it to keep quiet?” asked McPhail.

  ‘Yes.’

  “Okay, it did quite well.” said McPhail generously. “What does it want?”

  ‘It wants to remind you that it is in the mine.’

  “As if I’d forget. It noticed that you were securing all your doors and started panicking, right?”

  ‘Do you want to respond?’

  McPhail sighed. “Yes. Tell it we’re coming to get it.” he said. “And ask it if it has a name,”

  “It does have a name,” said HasteMakesWaste. “Sorry. Did I not say it before?”

  “No, but I didn’t ask before,” said McPhail. “What’s it called?”

  “Its real name is just a serial number,” said the ship. “But it says that when the human workers were alive they used to call it Pallas,”

  ----------

  The lift seemed to take hours to get to the top of the building. It was almost as stressful as the morning express lift to work back on Dunbar. At one floor the lift paused for no apparent reason and Orson felt panic rise. He imagined being stuck in the lift and the AGMG scudding off without him. He started to wish he had taken the stairs: a feeling that passed the moment the lift started moving again.

  With about three floors to go Orson felt the building start to vibrate around him. It started quietly and got louder and louder until Orson could feel the left rattling in the shaft. It sounded like someone had arrived.

  The lift got to end of its line and stopped, still vibrating. Orson hesitated with his hand out towards the controls. He could keep the doors closed. He could just take the lift back down and not walk out into whatever howling nightmare he was about to become part of. His hand drifted closer to the keypad.

  Then he remembered that just a little earlier he had been filmed and broadcast without even knowing about it. He imagined someone watching him on the lift camera and seeing him run away. He imagined someone live-casting the camera feed and people everywhere watching him run away. He imagined PresidentPlugPuller watching the video of him chickening out of this fight and showing it to all his viewers and his cool mech flatmates. He tried to not imagine the things the President would say about him.

  The lift doors opened and he stepped out.

  Orson had expected that when the lift doors opened he would walk straight onto the roof but he found himself still inside. He was at the top of the stairwell, looking across at a fire-door that presumably did open out to the roof.

  He could hear engines outside.

  “Hey!” said Atesthas suddenly from beside him. “You ready for this?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get you ready,” said Atesthas. “Come here.” He extended his arms out to Orson.

  “Closer,” he said, beckoning.

  Too confused to do anything but comply, Orson walked over closer to the captain. To his surprise Atesthas grabbed him. Orson found himself pulled tightly to Atesthas’ chest, the captain’s strong arms wrapping around his soft body. “What-” yelped Orson.

  “Ssh!” said Atesthas. “I’m trying something!” He held Orson firmly, hands on Orson’s back. “Try to get me off,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I mean try to push me off you. Go on, try.” Atesthas clutched Orson to himself. Orson’s arms were pinned at the elbows. He got his hands against Atesthas’ flat belly and tried to push away. There was zero leverage and he couldn’t move at all so he was just straining helplessly.

  “Come on!” urged Atesthas. “Move me! You can do it,”

  Orson grunted. He relaxed his muscles for a second and then tried a quick movement, as explosive as he could manage. Orson was pretty sure he didn’t have a fast-twitch fibre in his entire body. There wasn’t even a millimetre of shift. “Good!” said Atesthas. He gripped Orson tighter. “Do that again,”

  Orson felt ridiculous. He suspected Atesthas was just playing with him. He’d never felt so feeble. He let his body go limp in Atesthas’ grasp and then tried for a fast push again. This time there was a feeling like static shock through his shoulders. He had a sense of something unlocking around his shoulder blades and his push broke Atesthas’ grip effortlessly. Orson’s shove was so forceful that the captain was thrust away from him hard enough to fall, hit the concrete floor and skid backwards a few feet when he landed. He ended up on his bum almost up against the opposite wall. Atesthas grinned triumphantly at Orson. “There you go!” he said. “Now your augments are working. Ow…”

  “How?” said Orson, flexing his arms.

  “Luck.” said Atesthas. “I thought my busted stumps of adjuncts might give yours a bit of a shock and what do you know? It reactivated them.”

  It was true- Orson could feel all the stuff moving in there for the first time in weeks. Maybe it was just his imagination or maybe the machinery had started to seize but he thought he could hear it moving. “Cool,” said Orson.

  “Yes.” said Atesthas. “You ready to go do some damage?”

  Orson clenched his fists. “I guess I am,”

  Atesthas nodded towards the fire door. “Go get ‘em, tiger,”

  Orson decided it was a good idea to make something of an entrance, so he kicked the door open and strode out onto the roof with his shoulders back. Unfortunately nobody saw his entrance (or was it technically an exit?) because all the Local Defence Volunteers who had turned out to confront them were staring at the AGMG and not looking over at the exit doors.

  “Hey!” yelled Atesthas, walking out behind Orson. “What are you doing?”

  All the Volunteer guys turned to look at him.

  “That’s them!” yelled one of the guys.

  “Is this your ship?” asked another one.

  “Yes,” said Atesthas. “Why?”

  The Home Guard came striding across the roof towards Atesthas and Orson. “We have reason to believe you’re transporting mechanical aberrations through this free zone.” said a guy with chevrons on his jacket. “We’d like to search your ship, gentlemen.”

  “What makes you think we’ve got...mechanical aberrations?” asked Atesthas.

  “’Cause you’re perverted commie foreigners!” yelled someone. There were a few sounds of agreement. The Guardsman with the chevrons, maybe some sort of leader, tutted. “Our suspicions were raised by a local young man when you went to his domicile to harass him and his mother,”

  “Murray attacked me!” said Orson.

  “We didn’t harass anybody.” said Atesthas. “The young man took my colleague’s property and we went to retrieve it. Everything was quite cordial. We left satisfied and on good terms, I thought,”

  “What was the property you went to claim?” asked someone else. Orson took the handheld out of his pocket. “This,” he said. “Handheld,”

  “There was something else, Murray said. A robot. Little flying ball thing.”

  “What?” said Atesthas. “A robot? It was just this simple handheld here,”

  “If we were to search you gents, would we find anything else?”

  Atesthas shrugged and Orson shook his head.”Be our guests,” said Atesthas. “Search us if you want. All we’ve got on us is that handheld.”

  “I think we’ll check that for ourselves,” said one of the Local Defence Volunteers.

  Orson immediately assumed the spreadeagle position he did when he got searched at work. Atesthas unzipped the flightsuit he was wearing, down to the crotch.

  “Look how well-behaved they are,” said someone.

  “They train them well in those commie-fascist states.” explained someone else. “Got to be obedient, to live under tyranny,”

  “We would never submit to such invasion of our privacy,”one of the guys informed them.

  “We quite like it.” said Atesthas.

  “Seems like the easiest way to prove we don’t have this...flying robot thing you’re talking about.”added Orson. One of the men was rummaging in his dressing-gown pockets. “Nothing,” he confirmed.

  “Check underneath,” said someone. “Take the dressing-gown off -actually, no, keep it on,”

  “What’s all this?” asked the guy who was patting down Atesthas.

  “All what?”

  “It feels like there’s...stuff all over you.”

  Atesthas pulled his flight-suit open and peeled it carefully off his body, one arm at a time. The men all stared.

  “I knew they were perverts!” said a guy with a ginger beard. “He’s one of those mech-queers, wants to turn himself into a machine,”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “No, those were military tech.” said the maybe-the-leader guy. “Are you a veteran, son?”

  Atesthas nodded.

  “Apologise!” someone told ginger beard. He mumbled something vaguely contrite sounding.

  “Looks like you saw some action,” said leader-type. Atesthas glanced at him. The three chevrons on his waxed-cotton jacket might indicate that he was sergeant of this crowd. They also might just be for fun.

  “Not really,” said Atesthas. “My plane went down. Most of this mess is from that.”

  “Did you get, ah, honourable discharge?”

  “No,” said Atesthas. He started carefully putting himself back into his flight-suit. “I deserted. I realised I didn’t want to fight for the communist tyrannical state so I picked up what was left of me and jetted. Went into business for myself.”

  The men seemed to like that. They made approving noises.

  “What about you, lad?” one of them asked Orson. “Were you in the military too?”

  “No, no,” said Orson. “I worked in a warehouse.”

  Nobody seemed very interested in that.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” asked someone. “Out in the streets looking like a pink furry...fairy or something?”

  “Well, you see,” said Atesthas. “This whole thing started because we couldn’t get our breakfast delivered. We parked up here to make a delivery and our crewmates went to drop off the package. Me and Orson here ordered some breakfast from a local business nearby but then? No-one to deliver it.”

  The men nodded and made sounds that indicated this was an irksome and common problem.

  “Since it was nearby, my colleague here though he’d just run down to pick it up and not waste time getting properly dressed, and then, of course, your young Murray saw an easy target.”

  Heads shook all round in disapproval.

  “Why the story about the mech, though?” asked someone. “Why did he think you had a robot with you?”

  “Eh...I don’t mean to disparage young Murray’s good name,” said Atesthas, zipping himself back up. “But it wouldn’t be the first time a teenage boy told a lie,”

  “Why, though? Why would he say that?”

  “Seems to me Murray was angry at us for turning up at his house and embarrassing him in front of his mum. He wanted to get us back so he told you gents that we had illegal machinery in our possession. He knew that, with us being foreigners, you’d be obliged to at least investigate.”

  The leader-type guy spread his arms. “That’s it.” he said. “You know, I bet that’s exactly what happened.”

  Nods all around, including Orson and Atesthas. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you gentlemen were impeded in trying to do your business here today.” said the sergeant.

  “Oh, no impediment, it’s fine,” said Atesthas. “Like I said, our colleagues were out taking care of business. We were just trying to get breakfast.”

  “Well, we can suggest a couple of places you might like to try if you still want to get breakfast,”

  “Oh, yeah, great,” said Orson. He was starving.

  “Can’t wait.” said Atesthas.

  “Of course! Well, we’ll leave you to it,” said the Volunteer sergeant. “Once we’ve searched your ship.”

  There was a long pause while Orson and Atesthas both waited for the Home Guardsman to crack a grin or give them a pally tap on the shoulder or something. He didn’t.

  “Are you serious?” asked Atesthas.

  “Mmhm, of course,” said the sergeant. “Like you said yourself, we’re obliged to investigate this claim made against you even if we’re quite sure that it’s entirely spurious.”

  He shrugged, smiling lop-sidedly. “You understand.”

  “Not really,” said Orson.

  “Everything you said makes perfect sense,” said . “It’s almost certainly the case that Murray made up the story about the mech. And it’s necessary that we search your ship just to be sure,”

  “But you just said that you wouldn’t let anyone...invade your privacy,” said Orson. “So I bet you wouldn’t let us go poking around your ship.”

  “That’s right, we wouldn’t,”

  “So why should we let you search ours?”

  Leader guy smiled at Orson with a snort of laughter. Some of the other guys laughed too. “You know why.”

  “No.” said Orson as defiantly as he could. “Why?”

  The sergeant stepped closer to Orson. He was maybe a foot and a half taller, helped by the fact that he was wearing boots and Orson was wearing fluffy slippers. “Because we’re us and you’re little sissy foreigners.”

  Orson knocked him out.

  It was sheer luck. Luck and Orson’s re-activated adjuncts. Orson did not know how to throw a punch properly but he got a good angle by accident and caught the guy under the chin. The sergeant’s knees buckled underneath him and he crumpled to the concrete. Before he even hit the ground half the guys had piled on top of Orson and started trying to take him to pieces.

  Atesthas groaned and jumped in to try to stop them.

  Orson seemed to have really pissed the Volunteers off. One of them was trying to strangle Orson. Orson made him stop. The guy screamed. Orson used that guy’s head to hit another guy in the head with. Atesthas pulled them both off of Orson and pulled Orson to his feet. “Thanks,” said Orson.

  “Left!” said Atesthas. Orson looked to his right and got knocked down heavily again by a guy in a vulture-patterned shirt who rugby-tackled him. Atesthas sighed.

  “You and I need to start sparring.” he said. Orson threw vulture shirt guy off of him and Atesthas hauled Orson back up off the ground. “What?” said Orson. He lunged past Atesthas into a balaclava-ed guy who was coming up behind Atesthas swinging a metal rod. Orson took the rod off of him and threw it off the roof.

  Atesthas was aghast. “Why?” he yelled. “We could’ve used that!”

  Orson was holding Balaclava’s arms to stop him moving, easily keeping the guy still while he struggled. “Oh, yeah,” said Orson. “Sorry. I didn’t think,”

  “You can throw him off the roof if you want,”said Atesthas. Balaclava tried to pull away from Orson, eyes bulging out of their knitted holes. “No!” he said.

  “No!” said Orson.

  A bald man wearing a green knitted jumper and baggy cargo shorts came running up, carrying some sort of electric prong thing. Atesthas caught one of his arms and swept the guy’s legs out from under him. Atesthas started dragging the guy over to the edge of the roof.

  “No!” yelled Orson. “Don’t!”

  Orson threw the guy he was holding at Atesthas. Balaclava wailed for a second and then collided with Atesthas and Green Knitted. The three of them ended up as a tangled heap on the ground, groaning.

  “What’s wrong with you?” shouted Orson at Atesthas. Another guy came running at Orson, again with a metal bat or something he was getting ready to hit Orson with.

  Orson was not going to make the same mistake again.

  “Give me that.” he told the guy. This one looked like a worse version of McPhail- greying, made of gristle, terrible tattoos. Orson took the metal bar from him and knocked him out with it. “Sorry,” he said, because the guy reminded him of McPhail. Ignoring Atesthas, Orson turned towards the AGMG.

  There were a lot of Local Defence Volunteers between him and the ship. Probably too many. He had his metal bar now, though, that would help. And he was really strong now that his arms were working. He could make it.

  Orson made sure his pink dressing-gown was securely tied and drew himself up to his full stature, rod in hand. The LDV guys were swarming towards him. “Hey!” he shouted. “This is just a waste of time. You can just let us get back on our ship and leave. You know the stuff about the robot was a lie,”

  At that moment one of the guys nearest to Orson jerked violently sideways and crashed straight onto the ground, poleaxed. A couple more of them followed suit. Everybody looked around, confused. Some of the guys glared at Orson as though he had done it. One of them started running at Orson. “Hell are you doing, mech-queer? Gimme that thing…”

  “This is just a metal bar!” said Orson. “I didn’t do anything to them,”

  It didn’t help Orson’s case for himself that the guy reaching for his weapon suddenly keeled over sideways, out sparko. “What?” said Orson, looking around. He couldn’t see what was happening other than Home Guardsmen passing out really aggressively. “Oh, no….”

  “What is it?”said Atesthas, coming up behind him holding the electric prod. Orson didn’t reply. He had caught sight of ‘it’ out of the corner of his eye, moving so fast you could only pick it up in peripheral vision. It wasn’t ‘it’, it was ‘them.’ Metallic spheres skiting through the air like they’d been sling-shot.

  Atesthas wondered where McPhail’s factors had picked up this behaviour from. Unless McPhail had taught them to do this for some reason. Maybe his factotum was a remodelled and repurposed military system. McPhail insisted they were devices of his own design but from what Atesthas knew of McPhail everything he had was scavenged or stolen. He’d ‘found’ Pallas somewhere according to him and he wouldn’t be any more specific than that.

  No matter right now. “Let’s go,” he said and set off running.

  Orson stepped forwards, holding up his bar as though he was ready to use it. The Home Guard were losing focus, starting to disperse as they milled around trying to defend themselves from something they couldn’t see. Some of them still had their eyes on the prize, though. Three of them converged on Orson and that was two more than he could tackle at a time, turned out. Getting punched in the face and the kidneys at the same time wasn’t really something being super strong helped much with. Orson staggered, almost dropping his rudimentary weapon. One of the guardsmen had the poleaxing thing happen to him and hit the ground, gone, but that only stopped the other two for maybe a second. They carried right on beating Orson while he tried desperately to land an effective blow.

  He was vaguely aware of a shadow overhead and a lot of noise. A large shape dropped from above, landing on one of the Volunteers. Orson looked up.

  “We leave you alone for three hours,” said Hesper, straightening up from her heavy landing. “And this is what we come back to.”

  The LDV guy she hadn’t landed on was staring up at McPhail riding Pallas’s little microlite, probably trying to suss out whether he was a robot or not. Hesper cracked him with her blackjack while he was distracted. “Where’s...oh, Captain’s okay. Well.”

  Atesthas was taking a more circuitous route to the AGMG, making pretty good progress clearing his path with his shock-stick. “Come on,” said Hesper. McPhail was halfway back to the AGMG, safely above the Volunteers. “We need to get out of here before any more of these tools turn up.”

  Hesper turned towards the AGMG and the guy who was almost on her, approaching with a broad flat-ended sort of sword thing that had big holes through the blade. Something flew quickly towards the guy but he was fast and he sliced into the air before it could touch him. One of McPhail’s factors clattered to the ground, cut in two.

  Orson took a second to register what it was.

  “NO!” he yelled. “No! No!” He ran at the guy in a blind fury.

  “Orson, stop!” shouted Hesper. She cracked the sword guy on the exposed side of his ribcage with her nightstick and he stumbled back. A factor coasted into the side of his head and left him twitching on the ground. “Hesper!” yelled Orson, wiping blood off his face with the back of his hand. “Tell McPhail to call the factors back! Tell him!”

  Hesper had the machete as well as her blackjack now. She was clearing their route through the Home Guard to the AGMG. It wasn’t as messy as you’d expect. She didn’t have to do very much cutting ‘cause the men mostly just got themselves out of her way. “They’re helping,” she yelled back at Orson. “Come on,”

  “They’re getting hurt,” said Orson, following her. He knew that the little machines were being very helpful but he didn’t think that was the point. He’d seen one of them get cut in half, two get smashed and one getting fried because it got too close to Atesthas. Orson wanted the ones that were left to go back into the ship where it was safe.

  They could probably manage without the factors, they were doing okay. He and Hesper were making decent progress across the roof and Atesthas was...where was Atesthas? He had been charging towards the Home Guard ship with his electric prod thing last time Orson noticed him.

  Atesthas was over towards the other side of the roof from Orson and Hesper. He was running, covering ground quickly because there weren’t as many LDV guys over that side. Most of them had positioned themselves between the AGMG and where he and Orson had walked out onto the roof. Orson was still moving along that straight line but Atesthas was taking a roundabout route. That was a pretty good idea that Orson he wished he had had. Less fighting. Some of the Home Guardsmen seemed to be noticing what Atesthas was up to and assessing Atesthas as a higher priority target than Orson. A few of them had elected to shift themselves out of Hesper’s way (maybe motivated by her new machete) and into Atesthas’ way instead.

  Orson realised that Atesthas wasn’t trying to get to the AGMG. He was trying to get to the Home Guard ship Night Watchman. The Home Guards had figured this out already which is why they were trying harder to kill Atesthas now. A guy in a lurid patterned bright blue shirt with a protective vest covered in pockets over it made a lunge for Atesthas, diving almost horizontally at him.

  Atesthas was going to make it to the Night Watchman. He was going to make it. They were all too busy guarding the AGMG and they had left their own ship unprotected. He was faster than any of them, he was stronger than most of them and he was armed now. He was- he was crashing to the ground. Someone had tackled him low, coming in from the side right into his legs. Atesthas was smashed down sideways, hitting his head on the concrete. The electric prod hit the ground and shattered with a blue flash. For Atesthas, all the lights went out.

  It was only for a second but by the time his wits were back with him Atesthas had what seemed like the entire Home Guard piling onto him. He managed to fight his way out of the mob and stagger to his feet but he barely got three steps before he was pulled down like an antelope and buried under the seething mass.

  Hesper wasn’t paying any mind to what Atesthas was doing on the other side of the roof. She wasn’t paying any attention to Orson, either. She had made it almost to the ramp and there were a couple of Volunteers up there banging at the door and shouting at it and kicking it, all of which seemed to Orson to be pretty silly things to do.

  Orson wondered what Hesper was going to do. Without a pause she kept right on running up the ramp at the guys. Orson was no expert but this was another not-great approach in his opinion. What would be most likely to happen in this situation was, he thought, that the Home Guardsmen trying to get onto the ship would grab you and turn it into some sort of hostage situation. That would be the best way for them to get onto the ship, he would think. But maybe- he tried to see things from the Volunteers’ viewpoint- if you had Hesper barrelling at you gripping a machete your first thought probably wouldn’t be to try to take her hostage.

  Hesper threw the machete and one of the guys fell off the ramp. The machete was in him and lots of his blood was coming out of him. Another move that didn’t, to Orson, seem like a good one. Sure, now there were fewer guys trying to stop her getting onto the ship but she didn’t have the machete any more and the other guy seemed really angry. Orson would still rate Hesper’s chances, though, so he kept pushing on towards the ramp. His current plan was to get the machete out of its new holster and get up the ramp to the AGMG. Hopefully Hesper would be inside when he got there, hopefully not with any of the Home Guard.

  Hopefully Hesper would let him on board the AGMG.

  Orson ran at a guy wearing what looked like a deflated lifejacket over a quarter-zip fleece, feeling his adrenaline prep him up for the strike. The guy just dodged him and headed off at a run towards the other side of the roof. Orson couldn’t help feeling a bit insulted but he wasn’t going to go running after the guy. He jogged towards the AGMG. The guy who had taken a flying machete to the chest was lying awkwardly on the ground with three factors circling above him. Hesper and the other guy had disappeared. Orson looked around as he approached the corpse. Another factor was pulling the machete out of the man with its little claw arms. “Can I have that?” Orson asked. The factor passed the machete to Orson handle-first, getting the guy’s blood all over its claws. “Thank you,” said Orson. He heard movement behind him and turned to see a Home Guardsman advancing on him. There were more coming up behind him. “You’re dead, fat boy,” said the first guy. He looked like he meant it.

  “That wasn’t me,” said Orson, using the blood-covered machete in his bloody hand to point over at the corpse with the massive machete wound across its chest. “Someone else did that,”

  That seemed to make the Guardsman even angrier. To Orson’s surprise he knocked the machete out of his hand before Orson could do anything. He dropped Orson to his knees with a swift strike to the backs of his legs. The other guys joined in and they all wrestled Orson down onto his front on the ground. With a bunch of them on him, twisting his arms up behind his back and forcing him down, Orson found himself as helpless as he’d been without his adjuncts working. The first guy sat down heavily on Orson’s back and started pulling something tightly around Orson’s wrists. “Got more zip-ties?” he asked his pals. “Don’t want him breaking them.”

  Orson struggled as much as he could with the Volunteers- there were maybe eight, nine of them, he didn’t know-pinning him. He felt the binding on his wrists get tighter and more and more painful. Then he was- shockingly- lifted off the ground. He yelled and thrashed but the guys had a good grip on him. A bunch of good grips. They all grabbed him and carried him between them, manhandling him swiftly over to the edge of the roof.

  “No!” yelled Orson. “No, don’t-”

  There was some laughter. “You seemed to like people getting thrown off roofs before,” said one of the men. Orson struggled. “No I didn’t!” he said. “I stopped him! I said don’t throw anyone off the roof.”

  “Too bad.” said someone.

  “Yeah, too bad we don’t give a toss about what some foreign jessie says,”

  “But I said-”

  “Shut up!” said one of the men, kicking Orson in the side. “You’re going off the roof,”

  Orson lost it at that point. He started thrashing and screaming, getting more laughter from the Home Guard. He was panicking beyond having any sense or rational thought but he was still aware of the building vibrating and the roar of the AGMG’s engines as the ship started to lift off from the roof.

  “NO! NO!”

  Atesthas screamed and cursed Hesper as he watched his ship take off without him.

  “NO! Don’t leave me!” yelled Atesthas. In desperation he tried to push himself up off the ground, thinking that maybe Hesper, McPhail, Pallas, couldn’t see him under all the Home Guard troops piling on top of him. If he could just get out from under, maybe the crew would see him and stop. Maybe they wouldn’t leave him. He screamed and clawed as even more of the Local Defence Volunteers piled onto him. A Good Man Gone lifted and left him behind.

  “Screw you then! I hope you crash!”

  Atesthas’ anger was evaporating immediately. He struggled feebly, his body starting to feel weak and heavy. Even the Home Guardsmen battering him felt the fight go out of him and started to ease off. It was done, he knew it was done. “Don’t leave me…” he pleaded hopelessly. He was tired and there were so many of them.

  “Looks like your comrades have abandoned you, captain,” said someone. Atesthas had just enough energy left to be annoyed. With the last of his strength he strained against his bonds just for the sake of it. They had all gone and left him all alone getting murdered. ‘Screw you. All of you.’

  The LDV- it was about half the remaining Home Guard pinning him down- jeered and laughed as his last struggles faded.

  One of the men pulled Atesthas’ head up and turned it so he could see what was going on over on the other side of the roof. They had Orson, they had him bound and they were hauling him over to the edge.

  Atesthas knew that his feeling of relief wasn’t the response he should be having, but that was his first thought. He was relieved that he wasn’t the only one who’d been left behind.

  “Say goodbye to your fat little boyfriend,” said someone.

  Atesthas didn’t really want to watch Orson being killed but he couldn’t look away, they were holding his head. He closed his eyes but not before he saw and heard enough to know what had happened.

  The Guardsmen were laughing. Well, thought Atesthas. joke was on them. He and Orson didn’t give a shit about each other.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going after the rest of your pals.” said one of the men.”So you get to come along. Doesn’t sit well with me, honestly. The way they abandoned you. Even commie scum should have more respect for a veteran. If they’re going to let you die they should have to watch while it happens,”

  Atesthas imagined how underwhelmed the crew of the AGMG would be by the spectacle of his passing. The only person who might show some emotion would have been Orson. Were he still alive. Maybe not even then.

  They had gotten his arms behind his back and he could feel them tying his wrists with plastic straps.

  Atesthas was far past fighting at this point. He gave some token struggles just to keep up appearances but he was too tired and sad to put any effort into it. Also, it seemed silly to resist being hauled aboard the Night Watchman when that was exactly where he’d been trying to get to.

  The Home Guard- what was left of them- piled onto the ship (bigger, newer, tidier than the AGMG, Atesthas had to admit.) There was a sort of seating area with benches and the guys dragging Atesthas along started to set him down there. “Not back here,” another guy who seemed to have some sort of authority told them. “Chief wants him up the front where he can keep an eye on him.”

  Atesthas remained limply un-cooperative and allowed himself to be hauled back up onto his feet. He was marched forwards to the flight deck. “Strap him down there,” said someone, maybe one of the pilots. ‘There’ was the cockpit jump seat.. Atesthas couldn’t imagine why you’d put a supposedly hostile alien threat right up at the console beside the guys flying your bus. He supposed he just wasn’t a free thinker like them.

  The guys shoved him down onto the jump seat with his hands still tied behind him and strapped him firmly into place. Atesthas sighed, hoping it sounded more resigned and dejected than he felt. Things were looking up right now from where he was sitting. Not for long, though.

  He just hoped they managed to take off and get a decent height off the ground before he did his thing.

  He hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  He hoped it would be quick.

  Atesthas probed around behind his back, feeling for any sort of switch or socket that he could get at. He wondered if he should let the Night Watchman take out the AGMG before he took care of the Home Guard ship. The thought physically pained him. He pushed it quickly aside. Just because he couldn’t be the AGMG’s captain didn’t mean he wanted it scrapped. He’d rather die and it wasn’t a tough choice.

  The Volunteers Atesthas figured must be the flight crew had all taken their seats at the console.

  “Everyone on board?” asked one of them, putting on a headset. He presumably received a reply from somewhere. “Closing her up,” he said. “Positions, gentlemen,”

  The flight crew started spinning the ship up to think about taking off. Atesthas felt the engines starting to pull. The Night Watchman seemed to want to go somewhere. Honestly, from a cold standing start Atesthas wouldn’t bet against this thing versus the AGMG. Over a short distance. He didn’t know much about ships but he felt like the Night Watchman could probably shift off the mark pretty fast. Over a longer distance? Knowing what he knew about the AGMG? AGMG all day. While acknowledging his obvious bias, of course.

  Not that any of that mattered anyway. This wasn’t going to be a race. If things worked out how Atesthas imagined, he wouldn’t even get to see the AGMG again. That was for the best, even if it would be nice to see it one last time.

  “Problem?” said one of the Home Guard pilots. Not to Atesthas, to the co-pilot sitting next to him. The co-pilot murmured and shook his head. He tapped at the console. “Don’t know. Something off.”

  “Enough to stop us lifting off?”

  “No, no,” said co-pilot. “We’re good to go. It’s picking up some peculiar inputs is all. All outputs are fine.”

  “Right. Well, we can start fannying about with it once we’re underway. Let’s just get off the ground. Your controls.”

  “My controls.”

  Whose controls? thought Atesthas, fingers finding a corner of a panel that was missing a screw.