Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn

Author:Stark Holborn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

GABI WAKES ME by kicking in the door to the storeroom. ‘Rise and shine, traitor,’ she says cheerfully. ‘We’ll be landing within the hour.’

Squinting, I lever myself from the bunk. My head throbs; every muscle feels as stiff as year-old snake jerky. There were dreams, I’m sure of it, but right now all I can think about is the smell of coffee coming from the galley kitchen. Slowly, I make my way outside.

The Charis feels alive, voices and footsteps echoing through her bones.

‘Haven’t you got anything to eat on this shitheap?’ I hear Rouf yell from the galley.

‘I wasn’t exactly expecting company,’ Silas shouts back, pipe in his mouth. Seeing me, he nods to a tin mug on the console. ‘Saved you some.’

‘Thanks.’ I lower myself into the pilot’s chair. ‘We’re going to Angel Share?’

He nods. ‘One of the only guaranteed non-Xoon places left. Falco’s been using it as a base since Landfall fell.’

‘It’s that bad out there?’

‘Worse than we know, probably. Every day there’s another story of a settlement burned up or bought out. Half the places I used to trade in don’t exist anymore.’

Rouf appears on the flight deck, a bag of sev in their hands. ‘This is stale,’ they say through a mouthful.

‘Hey, I was saving that.’ Silas snatches it from them. ‘You can’t get it anywhere out here.’

‘I’m not surprised—’

Leaving them to bicker it out, I take the coffee into the corridor and stand at the porthole window, watching the desert rush by below, shimmering pink-gold with dawn.

Angel Share. The name brings back memories of a blue house, the taste of pálinka, Esterházy’s inscrutable smile, good food, and comfort. But those memories soon burn up, replaced by others. Fire and panic, a face twisted in hatred. Blood on the sand. A bullet in my shoulder. Esterházy’s body in the rubble.

I blink stinging eyes.

Should have stayed hidden, Deathbringer, a voice whispers. Should have stayed alone.

Too late now.

Draining the coffee, I go to find the others.

The sun is fully up by the time I see Angel Share in the distance. A rusted docking platform in a maze of shipping containers, it stands on its own in the northern wastes of the U Zone; an illegal port, an oasis for smugglers and less-than-honest freighters to offload their more suspicious cargoes and get their landfall stamps, away from the eyes of the Accord.

But as we come in to land, I immediately see that something is wrong; the docking platforms and landing pens are full, crowded with ships from across Factus. Not just of drogers and water-haulers but gang birds of all kinds; ex-Accord fighters and huge, wallowing Albs and even – I see with a sick jolt – the grease-black forms of the Rooks. Hastily made habitats and hovels crowd what was once a patch of empty dust, cook smoke from dozens of campfires and stoves rising into the air.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask Gabi, as Silas brings the Charis down into the dust.

‘Refugees from Xoon Futures.’ She glances over at Rouf.

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