The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [143]
However, this isn’t your normal ejection scenario. I’ve got Billington’s Bond-field generator stuffed in the trunk, a glamorous female assassin with blood in her eye clutching a submachine gun in the passenger seat, and a date with a vodka martini in my very near future—just as soon as I make landfall alive. Which is why, as we swing wildly back and forth beneath the rectangular, steerable parachute (the control lines of which are fastened to handles dangling just above the sunroof), I realize that we’re drifting on a collision course with the forward deck of the Explorer. If we’re not lucky we’re going to wrap ourselves around the forward docking tower.
“Can you work the parachute?” I ask.
“Yes—” Ramona unfastens her seat belt, yanks at the sunroof release latch: “Come on! Help me!” We slide the roof back and she stands up, makes a grab for the handles, catches them, and does something that makes my eyes water and bile rise in the back of my throat. “Come on, baby,” she pleads, spilling air from one side of the parachute so that it side-slips away from the docking tower, “you can make it, can’t you?”
We swing back and forth like a plumb bob held by a drunken surveyor. I look down, trying to find a reference point to still my stomach: there’s a tiny boat down there beside the Explorer—it’s a speedboat, and from here it looks alarmingly similar to the boat I saw Mo loading stuff into. It can’t be, I think, then hastily suppress the thought. It’s best not to notice that kind of thing around Ramona.
We swing round and the deck rushes up towards us terrifyingly fast. “Brace!” calls Ramona, and grabs me. There’s a long-drawn-out metallic scraping crunching noise and the elephant makes a last baby-sized appearance in my lap, then we’re down on the foredeck. Not that I can see much of it—it’s shrouded beneath several dozen meters of collapsing nylon parachute fabric—but what I saw of it right before we landed wasn’t looking particularly hospitable. Something about the dozens of black berets racing towards us, guns at the ready, suggests that Billington isn’t too keen on the local skydiving club dropping in for tea.
“Get ready to run,” Ramona says breathily, just as there’s a metallic racking noise outside the parachute fabric that’s blocking our view.
“Come out with your hands up!” someone calls through a megaphone that distorts their voice so horribly that I can’t hope to identify them.
I glance at Ramona. She looks spooked.
“We have a Dragon dialed in on you,” the voice adds, conversationally. “You have five seconds.”
“Shit.” I see her shoulders droop in despair and disgust. “It’s been nice knowing you—”
“It’s not over yet.”
I flick the catch and push the door open, wincing, then swing my feet out onto the deck. It’s time to face the music.
16.
REFLEX DECISION
“SO,” SAYS BILLINGTON, PACING OUT A LAZY circle on the deck around me, “the rumors of your resourcefulness were not misplaced, Mr. Howard.”
He flashes a cold smile at me, then goes back to staring at the deck plates in front of his feet, inspecting the wards around us. After a few seconds he passes out of my field of vision. I can feel Ramona flexing her arms against the straps; a moment later she spots him coming into view. Two more of the dentist’s chairs are mounted side by side, facing in opposite directions, on the same pedestal in the control room: Billington probably gets a bulk discount on them at villain-supply. com. Unfortunately he’s also got Ramona and me strapped to them, and an audience of about fifty black berets who are either brandishing MP-5s