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like this to help,’ he spoke softly, his voice heavily accented, ‘and I thank you for that, Carter—I really do. But they will kill us all. They will kill you, as well.’
    Carter stared at the old man’s wrinkled face, seeing the resolve that had finally been betrayed by the weakness of age.
    Something clicked inside Carter. He smiled.
    ‘What would you have done? In your Spiral days?’
    The old man smiled back. They both knew the answer.
    ‘Do you still have the Skoda?’
    ‘It’s behind the house.’
    ‘And there are three Nex?’
    Between the coughing and wheezing, the bright-eyed old man managed, ‘Three, yes, that I have seen. There are no others in the back of the truck.’
    ‘Tell me about the layout inside,’ said Carter again, pulling free an HPG and turning the timer dial with tiny metallic clicks. ‘I’m going to bring the girls out.’
    The stable housed six horses. There were six large stalls against the back wall, and the right-hand side of the stable housed a workshop for the working of wood; the old man had been a great carpenter in his day.
    Behind the barn at ground level, amidst a clump of low bushes, there was the mouth of a narrow tunnel, a sluice exhaust for when the stables were hosed down and swept out. It was beside this square-section portal that Carter now crouched, staring down through a galvanised grid into the deep pit which contained a slurry of ancient horse-manure in a deep grey slop.
    ‘Great. Just fucking great.’
    Carter climbed into the narrow confines of the sluice pipe, wrinkling his nose at the stench of years of accumulated excrement; immediately a thick slime coated his hands and knees, the back of his head and his shoulders. He pushed himself along the narrow tunnel, which travelled for perhaps fifteen feet on a gentle incline before taking a sharp upward turn. Carter eased round the bend, sliding a little and fighting for a grip. Then he pressed his face up against the grille recessed into the floor of the actual stable building—and listened.
    He could hear the Nex. One was pacing, one was toying with his TMP (Tactical Machine Pistol)—Carter could hear the rub of leather on alloy—and the girls were still sobbing into their grandmother’s protective embrace. There was also another sound—the clacking of heavy hooves on the concrete floor, the occasional whinny of the nervous, skittish geldings.
    Carter realised there was no talking between the old woman and the Nex; and this worried him. The time for talking was done ... which could only mean the time for slaughter was about to begin. He checked his watch. Fifteen seconds.
    Carter tried not to breathe, so bad was the stench in the narrow pipe.
    The sounds of the stamping horses seemed to increase. They were extremely nervous, one pawing at the concrete surface and making a curious whinnying growl like nothing Carter had ever heard before.
    Carter’s mind took on an ethereal calm.
    Five seconds, four, three ...
    Carter sensed rather than heard the ignition click of the HPG planted on the underside of the beautiful gloss-black Mercedes 8x8 FukTruk. There came a concussive crack followed by a scream of fire, a rush of igniting LVA, a screech of twisting, wrenching steel panels and chassis and then the sudden boom of detonation as the Merc was kicked up into the air, spinning slowly in a bubble of gas and fire, then stomping back against the earth as colourful streamers of fire and smoke billowed.
    Carter heard the Nex run outside. Slowly, he eased up the grid and peered into the stable. It was gloomy after the bright sunlight outside, but Carter had had time for his eyes to adjust. He was positioned in the far corner of the barn, by the workshop—which was divided from the main compartment of the stable by a low, three-foot-high wall made of wooden beams and rough-cut timber panelling—a waist-high divide. The stable stalls were to his right, set against the back wall of the barn and leading across dusty