Mr. Verus? I’m sorry to keep bothering you, but—
But there’s another problem, of course there is. Let’s hear it.
November didn’t use words this time. A three-dimensional diagram flashed into my head, combined with estimated times of arrival and blast radii.
Cinder threw another fireball at the helicopter; it bloomed against the shield, the helicopter emerging unscathed a second later. A burst of return fire was blocked by Cinder’s shield as well. “Waste of time,” Cinder muttered, and looked at me. “Stop this bloody train.”
“Bad idea,” I said tersely.
“Why?”
“Because Barrayar’s called in an airstrike,” I said. “In three minutes an RAF jet is going to hit this carriage with a laser-guided bomb.”
Cinder paused. His shield could hold off light machine gun fire, but military explosives were another story. And that was without the train crash that would follow.
A train crash that would also kill every single passenger in the carriages below. I’d known Barrayar wanted to stop me from stealing November. I hadn’t known how badly.
“So?” Cinder asked.
I looked around, searching for ideas. My eyes fell upon the helicopter. It had pulled back out of firing range but was still pacing the train. I could just barely see one of the men inside aiming some piece of equipment at us, probably a laser designator.
And the pilot was holding course and speed so they could draw a bead . . .
I pointed at the helicopter. “How far can you jump with those fire wings?”
Cinder looked at the helicopter, then back at me. “You’re fucking crazy.”
I grinned at him. “Chicken?”
“Never going to hit.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
Cinder hesitated.
“Two minutes,” I told him.
I felt the futures settle as Cinder made his decision. He stepped next to me and put a thick arm around me, grabbing me under one arm. I turned towards the helicopter, already thinning out the futures with the fateweaver, looking for the one where ours intersected at just the right angle.
“We miss this,” Cinder growled into my ear, “last thing I do before we hit the ground is blow your head off.”
“Oh, relax,” I told him, focusing on the helicopter. All of a sudden it looked very far away, a black-and-yellow wasp flitting above the trees. “Remember, falling doesn’t kill you, it’s the sudden stop when you—”
Cinder jumped.
Fire flared around us, and my stomach lurched as we kicked off the train and went speeding through the air. The wind roared in my ears, the helicopter growing bigger and bigger. Time seemed to slow down, and I had what felt like forever to see the eyes of the two men standing in the helicopter’s fuselage go wide behind their goggles. The gunner fired a burst but the bullets fell low and left. The helicopter grew bigger still, filling my sight, and the future of the next three-quarters of a second was a solid line as the open side of the helicopter grew closer and closer. I felt us go through the countermagic shield, which did nothing as we were just a pair of ballistic objects at this point, the blast of the wind mixing with the clatter of the rotors as we flew under them and into the men in the doorway—
—and time snapped back to full speed and suddenly everything was happening at once. I hit the man with the laser designator and we both went sprawling, slamming into the helicopter’s floor, my leg kicking out into empty space. The helicopter lurched, engine screaming. Someone was shouting and I fought with the man I’d landed on, elbows and weapons and teeth. Fire and heat bloomed and there was a horrible scream—
—and suddenly it was over. I hauled myself up on a handhold and saw that Cinder and I were the only ones standing. The machine gun was still there, mounted in the door. Through the gap between the seats I could see the pilot at the front of the helicopter; he seemed to be shouting. Cinder jerked a thumb towards him—it was too loud to speak—and I nodded and moved forward, grabbing a pistol from one of the bodies.
The pilot was talking fast into his microphone. He stopped short as I leant in next to him. His eyes rolled towards me fearfully.
I showed the pilot the pistol. “You have five seconds to use that parachute.”
The pilot didn’t need to be told twice. His harness flew open, he kicked open the side door, and he jumped into space.
The helicopter rocked, threatening to tip over. “Know how to fly this thing?” Cinder shouted from behind me.
I half fell into the pilot’s seat, reached over for the open door, and slammed it, cutting down the noise. “Not yet.”
Looking out, I saw that we’d gained height—the pilot must have climbed when we boarded—but the helicopter was lurching and swaying. The panels in the cockpit were an incomprehensible jumble of screens and dials, but the stick and pedals looked simple enough. I concentrated on the futures and a dozen Alexes tried a dozen combinations of movements: the futures that survived forked, forked again. I pulled the stick to one side, then flicked a switch and gently tilted it forward. The helicopter stabilised, its beating rotor holding it stationary, then angled forward, heading north.
November. Status.
The tactical net Barrayar has been using to direct your pursuit is . . . somewhat confused, November said. They seem to be under the impression that you boarded their helicopter in midair.
That’s because we did. How long until they get organised?
You . . . Yes, well. The fighter-bomber that had been tasked with the strike has aborted its attack run. Barrayar wants confirmation of the helicopter’s status and is attempting to order use of air-to-air missiles.
“Hey, Cinder,” I called over my shoulder. “You know how to make a gate from inside a helicopter?”
Without even looking back, I knew that Cinder was rolling his eyes. “Now?”
“Well, Deleo can make one from a train,” I said, looking through the futures to figure out how to work the autopilot. “But hey, maybe she’s better than you. I’m not an expert on this stuff.”
“How long we got?” Cinder growled.
“Ages. At least five minutes.”
* * *
—
Six minutes and forty-five seconds later, the police helicopter was struck by an infrared-homing ASRAAM missile fired from astern. The missile hit the aircraft high on its right side, the warhead’s fragments reaching the fuel tanks and causing a secondary explosion. The flaming wreckage crashed into a field somewhere west of Chelmsford, and the pieces were still burning when the emergency services pulled up. By the time that they—and Barrayar—determined that no one had been alive and on board at the time of impact, Cinder and I were long gone.