by Майк Берри
‘What have you been doing to them?’ he demanded simply, coming to a stop, a little out of breath.
‘Us?’ replied Ella innocently, putting a hand to her chest.
‘Nobody with anything sticking out of their eye this time, I trust?’ Hobbes continued. It was hard to tell if he was joking or not.
‘Not yet, good Doctor, but the night is young,’ said Ella levelly. ‘Number twelve is lying naked on the floor of his cell.’
‘Naked,’ repeated Hobbes tonelessly. His white jacket was torn on one elbow, Ella noticed. This was a little at odds with his usual clean and dapper appearance, which was a good trait in a doctor, she thought.
‘Correct.’
‘Great. Does he look alive?’
‘You’re the doctor. You tell me.’
Chapter Nine
A voice was calling from the darkness, silken and sibilant, its words twining together like snakes, hypnotic, compelling, beckoning him onwards. He swam through a field of asteroids, following that voice like a shark homing in on the merest trace of blood in water. The blackness smothered him, enfolded him, threatened to ink him out of existence. And yet he knew no fear — that blackness was also blanketing, womb-like. He sensed the proximity of invisible rocks that tumbled and rolled around him, poising to crush him like unpredictable living things, masses of malcontent.
But the voice was calming, drug-like, a loaded needle leeching its soothing medicine into space. He tasted it, smelled it, felt it infuse his being and fill him, dissipating him smoothly into the matrix of the universe, melting and moulding him into a bodiless shade. He rode his own quantum probability wave, neither here nor there, yet everywhere.
Above him, the station hung like a festive decoration in hell — dark and sharp-pointed, turning disinterestedly about its axis. He could hear the people aboard it talking. Their words drifted to him on the solar wind — little scraps and breaths of poison vapour. They were planning. They didn’t — couldn’t — understand. He knew, with an ache of sadness, that they never would.
And then he was in a tunnel — the tunnel — and he knew that he was almost home. He braced himself against jagged walls of rock, feeling the now-familiar twists and outcrops as he threaded his way down that throat of stone. He was dimly aware that he should be wearing a suit, that he wasn’t really here. The dragon had reached out to him this time. It was getting stronger.
He continued, swallowed by shadows, breath steaming in the frozen vacuum. Somewhere nearby, something else was breathing, too. The voice called him onwards, but it didn’t call him by name. It called him Emissary, and he smiled with satisfaction at that.
And then he emerged into a vast cavern, inexplicably bright, whose walls crawled with scaled skin that pulsed and glistened and lived. He floated in that organic cave, at peace — happy. No harm could befall him here.
‘My emissary,’ said the voice from everywhere at once. ‘You have come to me. . . Listen. . .’
‘Yes. What do you need from me?’
‘Look. . .’
And the walls of the cave melted and dripped, scales bleeding away into space like oil dispersing across water. He saw a ship — a shuttle — sliding through the void on a plume of blood that seeped and blossomed behind it, globules breaking away and drifting through the vacuum like raining confetti, spattering grotesquely on asteroids. The shuttle was bad, he knew.
‘I see it,’ he breathed, repulsed, his stomach clenching. Who would build such a thing? Who could allow such a thing to exist? Its ugliness made him want to turn away, but the voice bade him look.
‘You must stop it,’ said the voice. ‘This is what I ask of you.’
‘I must stop it,’ he repeated. He thought for some time, trying to understand. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ he said at length. ‘I never saw anything so foul.’ The shuttle continued onwards, a mindless dead thing, a relentless pill of poison. It stank — even from here, it stank.
‘This is a little thing, a simple enough task,’ said the voice. ‘But. . . important,’ it added, enunciating the word carefully, its voice elongating into a protracted hiss, bleeding away into nothing.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you do this for me?’ The voice was fading now. Fading. . .
‘Yes,’ he whispered, awakening in front of his bedroom window. His face was pressed up tight against the pane, the palms of his hands also flat against it. The belt hung silently before him. He was wearing pyjamas, his feet bare on the cold metal floor. ‘Yes,’ he whispered again, his heart racing in his chest. ‘Yes. . .’
Chapter Ten
Deep in the hubward-most layer of Macao, in the station’s machine rooms, a frenzy of activity was taking place. The deep, shuddering crashes and bangs that came through the bulkhead from the refinery next door only served to increase the tension inside.
Sudowski’s team, everyone who could possibly be pulled from another job, were all in attendance. Some of them were wiring diagnostic terminals and datasheets into the main console of the air scrubbers. The unit that housed the scrubbers was a dense tangle of wires, pipework and humming electrical components. It stretched fully from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Cooling ducts and armoured cables stitched the whole assembly into a sort of technological cat’s cradle, taking away heat, bringing in coolant, shuttling data back and forth. A deep, bassy hum emanated from the machinery and the smell of frazzled ozone mingled sickeningly with synthetic oil and overcooked plastic. Unusually for a room on this floor, there was a single window in one wall, but it showed only the dark, convex hub of Macao itself.
Sudowski was talking to Alphe, who was holding a datasheet in one hand. They were discretely separated from the core of the activity, conversing in hushed voices. It was usually fairly dark in the room, but the team had flooded the space with harsh, blueish LED strings to compensate. Sudowski was squinting and shielding his eyes as he talked with Alphe, as if his head was hurting. He looked tired and somewhat slow.
Technicians were swapping data, taking readouts, rushing to get further equipment. Occasionally, one of them shot Sudowski and Alphe a suspicious glance. There was a definite atmosphere of worry, barely held in check. The nitro-jacketed circuit board was impaled with temperature probes, blindingly illuminated, its protective casing flayed away, and it was this around which most of the attention was focused.
This was the scene that Halman arrived to, and what he saw immediately confirmed his fears. So the chip was finally burning out. He felt a lump rise in his throat. It had been some time since Macao had faced an equipment failure this serious. Where in hell was his shuttle?
Sudowski spotted him and dashed over, tripping on a bunch of loose cables that snaked from the cabinet and away into an open floor hatch. He recovered, a little shakily, but dropped the datasheet he had been holding. A technician dashed past, almost stepping on it.
Halman stooped to retrieve the small, translucent device and offered it back to Sudowski, who took it with a slightly wan expression and pocketed it.
‘What’s going on, Nik?’
‘I wish the damn intercom worked,’ said Sudowski by way of answer. ‘I’ve been trying to get you for half an hour.’
‘Well you have me now.’ Halman bent to look into the smaller man’s face, his rugged features arranged into a picture of concern. ‘No offence, but you look like death, Nik.’
‘Er, yeah, thanks,’ muttered Sudowski, wilting. He looked to Halman as if he was wincing from the light — certainly his eyes were half shut. ‘I think I’m coming down with a bug. Typical, really, at a time when I need my shit firmly together.’
‘Take a moment, Nik, it’s okay.’
‘As you see, this is the death-knell for the FS-AS1.’
‘The control chip?’
‘Sorry, yeah.’ One of Sudowski’s hands, as if of its own volition, began to rub his forehead, pinching and kneading the skin there. ‘Any news from the shuttle?’
Halman led Sudowski by the elbow to a quieter corner
of the room. Alphe, he noticed, watched them anxiously for a moment before continuing with his work. A small tuft of Alphe’s dark hair was sticking up at an untidy angle, greased into place with machine oil.
When he was sure that nobody was actively eavesdropping, Halman continued. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Why it has yet to arrive is anybody’s guess, but if it isn’t today or tomorrow then we can assume something has gone wrong.’
‘Right, then I need the go-ahead to try the cannibal part I’ve found. If you enjoy breathing air, that is.’
Halman’s broad, slightly ugly face broke into a transforming grin. ‘Bloody hell, Nik, why didn’t you say so? I didn’t know you’d found a part! What are you waiting for? Do it!’ But when Sudowski didn’t return his grin, Halman’s face gradually fell again, his exultant expression crumbling away like an unstable cliff. ‘What?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘The closest match I can find for the FS-AS1 is a critical part of the communications array: the processor from a board whose purpose is to translate tracking data for the laser relay satellites and adjust the lensing of our lasers.’ Halman’s face took on a distant look as he considered the implications of this. Sudowski left him to it for a moment.
‘How critical?’ Halman asked at last.
Sudowski looked around clandestinely, and leant in closer to Halman so that he could speak in a stage whisper. ‘It’s a critical component,’ he repeated. ‘With the communications array working, we could scatter laser messages into space and hope to hit the shuttle, maybe find out if something has gone wrong with it. But without the comms. . . well. . .’
‘Shit. . .’ whispered Halman. His mind began to churn, incapacitating him. He stood that way, with his mouth slightly open, for some time before recovering. ‘No wonder you don’t feel so good,’ he said at last.
‘Do I do it? Because my team are waiting for the word.’
‘How long will the air stay breathable without it?’
‘Usually, we’d have a few days leeway. But we’ve been running the scrubbers at minimum power for days now to reduce data-flow through the chip.’
‘How long?’
‘Well, if the shuttle arrives tomorrow. . .’ Sudowski shook his head. Halman saw that his lower lip was a little raw, as if he had been biting on it. ‘Not long enough, I’m afraid. It could take us all day to patch in the replacement chip, maybe longer. We’re on the fine line between just in time and just too late right now. We can’t rush the job, because if somebody fries the chip accidentally then you can kiss Macao Station goodbye. When that shuttle finally gets here it could well find a tin can full of corpses.’
Halman exhaled heavily. He felt as if he had been gut-punched. ‘And if one of your guys frazzles the chip from the array, then we have no air and no communications, is that right?’
Sudowski nodded seriously. ‘Right,’ he said.
Halman had to clench his teeth to avoid a loud and obscene exclamation that could only serve to increase panic and distress amongst the scurrying techs. He breathed deeply for a moment, then finally said, ‘Let me send a last message to Way Station One, explaining what we’ve had to do. Hopefully the parts for the scrubbers and the comms are already en-route. But if not, I’ll ask them to flag the next shuttle down and load them. But with the extra acceleration time, the next shuttle will be delayed by almost a year if they have to do that. It isn’t much help, if that’s the case. But I’ll send the message.’
Sudowski was silent for a few seconds. His fingers massaged the flesh between his eyes. Halman could see the scars beneath Nik’s hair, standing out purple against his pale skin. ‘Do you think the way station might send a special transport just for the bits we need?’ Nik asked in a doubtful voice. ‘Like right away? I mean, if the part for the comm, or — even worse — the part for the scrubbers isn’t already en route for some reason?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Halman. ‘Remember last time we asked for a special transport? They told me we’d have to pay for it ourselves. But then, this time it’s really fucking urgent. They might. . . I don’t know. . .’ He trailed off. It seemed unlikely that the company would commit to such extra expense, even if lives were at stake. Perhaps this additional cost would be the final push they needed to just write the station off altogether. He felt a cold sweat on his brow. Could some company desk-jockey light years away really concede to kill him with the push of a pen? He’d worked for Farsight all his adult life, even fought for them. Could he really be of that little worth? He hoped he’d never have to find out for certain. He could pay for the shuttle, if he had to — and he would, if he had to. But the expense would virtually eradicate his savings, accrued over his years of service on Macao. My retirement fund, he remembered bitterly, aware that he was still, as always, getting older every minute.
‘Okay,’ Nik said softly, looking up into the Halman’s face. ‘I’ll have a team head up with you, then as soon as the message is sent they can begin removing the chip.’ He turned to go, but then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. ‘Good luck,’ he added.
‘Yeah,’ Halman said. ‘And you.’
Chapter Eleven
The pilot came to his senses gradually, the silken layers of sleep slipping away like a series of shrouds, one by one. His mouth was dry and his eyes stung, even in the relative darkness of the shuttle’s bridge. He groaned aloud and tried to lie still, inwardly cursing the suspended-animation cask he had slumbered in. All his joints ached, his head ached, even his damn teeth ached.
There was a muted hiss as the cask injected him with a reinvigorating drug. The effect was almost immediate, though faint at first. He tensed his limbs against the close confines of the cask, yanked away the straps that crossed his chest and wincingly sat up.
He looked down at his own body. He was in the navigator’s seat, which was in sus-an mode with its plastic cocoon still half-formed around it. He always slept in the navigator’s seat because its life support system was newer and presumably more reliable than those of either the pilot’s or co-pilot’s places. He was reassured by the familiarity of his surroundings. He looked across towards the main screen and the flight console, unconsciously intending to check the HUD.
There was somebody sitting beside the cask, magnetted onto a metal floor-chest, watching him. At least, it was the shadow of a person, framed against the weak multicoloured light from the control console.
The pilot jumped, his heart kick-started into a hammering drumbeat in his throat. ‘What the fuck?’ he cried, but it came out in a hoarse and unintelligible croak: Whurrthafack? He tried to recoil, but his muscles were still unresponsive. The shadow-person was within arm’s reach, much too close and too unexpected for the pilot’s liking.
‘It’s okay,’ said the shadow. The voice was clearly male. ‘It’s okay. Take a minute.’
The structure of the shuttle groaned and creaked — a faint, whining chorus of metallic voices. They were the sounds of a hull recently subjected to sharp braking forces, but the pilot’s mind was currently unable to snag on this detail.
The pilot nodded dumbly, trying to control his own panic response, struggling to get a grip. There was surely a good reason for this unexpected awakening, and the stranger seemed benign so far. It couldn’t be the prisoner, could it? Who would have woken him? No, it wasn’t possible. But that greasy little ball of fear kept trying to block his gorge. He reached down and fumbled the IV-lines from his thigh. Their loose ends floated away like coiling snakes.
‘I have taken the liberty,’ said the shadow conversationally, ‘of waking you early. I do hope you can excuse my impertinence.’
‘I. . . need. . . water,’ croaked the pilot.
The shadow nodded slowly but made no attempt to fulfil this request. ‘All in good time,’ it said.
The pilot wanted desperately to rise from the cask now, put a little distance between himself and this unexpected stranger, but he knew that if he tried to get up he might tumble out of the cask and go cartwheeling away
across the bridge, possibly hurting himself on some protruding piece of equipment. Also, he wanted very much to turn a light on. The shadow watched him impassively. It disturbed him to think that this man had sat here beside him, in silence, all the time he had been waking up. ‘What do you want?’ he managed to ask.
‘It’s not me,’ said the man. ‘It’s the dragon.’
The pilot felt his face take on a puzzled expression. Had the shadow said dragon? ‘What?’ he whispered. His head felt stuffed with stupefying cotton wool. This would probably all make sense in a minute. Wouldn’t it? He tried to push his fears away — the world always seemed a little random on waking from sus-an. But man, he needed a drink.
‘It’s not me who’s the problem,’ said the man slowly, clearly labouring to be patient. ‘It’s the dragon.’
‘Dragon?’ parroted the pilot. He knew, suddenly, that this man was not right in the head. There was something implacable in the tone of that voice, something robotic and unreasoning. The thought landed like a bomb in his mind. He could well be in trouble here after all. He’d have to play this carefully — not an easy task when he still felt badly befuddled by his years in the cask.
The shadow’s head nodded seriously. Behind the man, the pilot could just make out the shuttle’s large viewscreen, now that his eyes were beginning to work better. It showed the expected asteroid field, in its familiar oblique spread, but it looked somewhat thinner than it should have been. Macao Station was not visible. And the shuttle was at a standstill. This man, whoever he was, had intercepted the vessel en-route, somewhere very close to its destination. The pilot’s heart began to race anew, his breath coming in odd lumps that were hard to swallow and hurt his chest. He felt like crying.
‘You have a man on board. One Prisoner Carver, if I’m not mistaken.’ The pilot, transfixed, could only nod. ‘I have to get the code for his restraining device.’
