Macao Station

by Майк Берри

  They sat in silence for several minutes, but it was a comfortable silence, and Halman found something oddly reassuring in it. He didn’t really want to talk, to be honest.

  After a while, Lina said, ‘Jaydenne had an affair with her, you know. Back in the day.’

  Halman, shocked, managed only to say, ‘What?’

  ‘Sal,’ explained Lina, looking up. Her bright eyes were a little watery around the edges. ‘Jaydenne had an affair with her, back in the day,’ she repeated.

  ‘Shit, Lina, really? I didn’t know that.’

  She nodded. ‘I never really told anybody,’ she admitted glumly. She sighed, tracing patterns in the spilled beer. ‘I think she loved him, Dan,’ she said at last, reflectively. ‘More than I did, by then.’

  ‘Lina, you don’t have to tell me this. . .’ Halman started, embarrassed by her sincerity. He took a large gulp from his beer — the situation seemed to warrant it. Some things were best left unsaid. Halman was a great believer in that theory.

  ‘And she left him. Or, more precisely, she told him to leave her. I told her she could take him — it would have been fine. We were really finished by then. I was all the time with Marco. Jaydenne was always a selfish bastard, when I look back at it. I should have seen it before then. I couldn’t devote enough time and attention to him, so he found it elsewhere.’ She shrugged. ‘Simple.’ After a while, she looked up into Halman’s face, her expression intent. ‘You know why she told him to go?’

  Halman shook his head. The beer, amazingly, seemed to be calming the burning in his stomach, but he still felt a little queasy. He wanted Lina to shut up, in all honesty. He liked Lina a lot — hell, if he’d been younger, better-looking and more her type, he might have tried his own luck — but he didn’t want her to tell him something she’d regret. ‘Why?’ he asked, sensing that this was required of him.

  ‘For me, Dan. And because she wanted to do right. She thought that I might regret being okay with it later. Regardless of what I’d said. She thought that I might grow to resent her. She hardly knew me back then — she was still working in the refinery. But she gave up the man she loved because she thought she was doing something wrong. For me, it was easy to give him up. For me, it just kinda happened. But for her. . . well. . .’ She shook her head, making an errant tangle of hair fall across her face. ‘I don’t know. . .’ she finished lamely.

  Halman felt tears well in his eyes, and turned away so that she wouldn’t see. He was not a man who usually wore his emotions openly, and he didn’t want to start now. He wiped his hands over his face, clearing his blurry vision, and turned back to her. He lifted his glass in salute. ‘She was a good woman, Lina. Whatever may have happened in the past. Family.’

  Lina lifted her own glass in return. ‘Yeah,’ she said, meeting his gaze. And then, by silent consensus, they drank.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eli awoke at around five in the morning, although as a long-time shift-worker, the artificial times imposed by the station clock were of little real meaning to him. His neck ached, and one of his arms had gone numb where he had lain on it. He looked around himself and saw that he was in Lina’s quarters, lying on the sofa, washed in the flickering witchlight of the holo.

  He knew, somehow, that Lina was back: something felt different, although he wasn’t sure what. Maybe some secretly-awake part of his brain had been alerted by some small noise that he hadn’t been consciously aware of. He sat up and swung his feet down onto the cold steel floor. He rolled his head in a gentle circle, trying to bring his neck back to life. There was a glass of water on the small table next to the sofa, and he took a drink from it. He had slept without a blanket, fully-clothed, and now he wanted a shower. Marco, of course, hadn’t stirred or caused any sort of concern whatsoever. Eli had known the kid would be fine, but Lina wouldn’t leave him alone all night. As she usually got back late from shift, this seemed a trifling distinction to Eli, but he had humoured her. She had needed to get away for a bit, and she had needed not to worry about her son.

  He stood up, trying to smooth some of the wrinkles from his flight suit, and went to Lina’s room. He gently pushed the door ajar and peeped in. She was asleep under a virtual mountain of duvet, snoring gently and almost-certainly drunk. He considered staying, making sure she was okay in the morning (Hey, it already is morning, a little voice protested in his head) but he decided she would probably rather not have to deal with him hung-over. He knew her well enough, he judged, to say that he’d be better off leaving her be.

  He stood and watched her for a minute, staring at the shock of blonde hair that spilled from beneath the covers, listening to her breathing. She was beautiful. But he knew that she was also damaged. It was hard sometimes to suppress his instinct to protect her, to somehow prevent further damage. But despite her delicate appearance, he knew that she could take care of herself. They had to, out here. Far-off in the bowels of the station, something groaned vastly in an almost inaudibly-low frequency.

  He went also to Marco’s room and checked on the boy. He was an undefined hump in the bed, breathing quietly in the darkness. Eli watched him for a moment. Marco was like the son he had never had, another member of Eli’s family-that-wasn’t-actually-family, and in truth he loved the boy greatly. How would Marco take the news of Sal’s accident? It would definitely be better to let Lina deal with it. Some things were a mother’s prerogative.

  Sal. Such a shame. Eli was not a native of Macao originally, but he had been here since before Sal had come aboard. That had made her a member of his family. Dead now. He shook his head, standing in the dark, envying the others their unconscious state. He would let himself out and come check on them later, when Lina had had a chance to talk to her son.

  He went back to the living room and found a datasheet by the light of the holo. He scrawled a note on its screen with one finger:

  MARCO — LET YOUR MOTHER SLEEP IN, OKAY?

  SHE’S HAD A HARD NIGHT.

  – ELI

  With that, he killed the holo, fumbled his way to the door in darkness, and let himself out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Carver came to with the typical grogginess of the sus-an transportee. Wherever he was, it was entirely dark. Maybe, he thought, this is the hell they always told me I was going to, but he didn’t really believe that. Hell? He wasn’t a bad person. Okay, so he’d killed that one woman pretty good, but anyone who had heard the bitch speaking would have sympathised. And there had been that thing with the kids, of course. But he wasn’t a bad person. Neither, for that matter, was he a religious person, so that kind of ruled that one out.

  Where, then, was he? He tried to rise but his muscles didn’t want to respond. Those fucking drones at Platini Dockyard had told him he’d feel like shit by the time he got to Macao Penitentiary, that such illness was normal in those awoken from sus-an, so he guessed it was just that.

  But if he was really at Macao, the genuine asshole of the universe, then why was it so dark?

  And then the darkness was suddenly lifted away like a blanket and the world was flooded by blinding light. Carver cried out, trying to shield his face, but his hands wouldn’t move properly. His arms just flailed weakly, flopping uselessly like dead things.

  ‘Put this on,’ said a voice from the light.

  Carver squinted into the brilliance, trying to see who had addressed him, but there was only the light. For one terrifying moment his reason failed him and he decided this was Hell after all, that the light must be either God or the Devil, come to pronounce judgement upon him. He shook his head, feeling sick, unable to think.

  ‘Oh, right,’ said the light-voice. ‘You’re still a little sleepy. Take a moment.’

  Carver moaned aloud and lay wincing in the unbearable brilliance for a minute or two, feeling like a piece of meat on a slab. Slowly, slowly, his surroundings began to congeal out of the pervading glow: low, metal-panelled ceiling; some rack of crates; a sign whose lettering he couldn’t read. He was still in t
he machine rooms of the shuttle, where the passengers’ casks were, so he guessed that meant he had arrived at the prison station after all. He wrenched the straps away from his body and tried to rise again. This time he made it to a sitting position.

  There was a man floating next to him, holding a space suit. Just one man? Thoughts began to crowd into Carver’s mind — dark and angry thoughts. One man. Just one man. Just. One.

  ‘Put this on,’ said the man again.

  ‘Why should I?’ asked Carver, his ugly pinkish face a picture of slyness, his hugely-muscled limbs shuddering as he tried to clench and unclench them, work them back to life.

  ‘Because I have this,’ said the man with the space suit, and held up an object that he carried in his other hand. It was a small rectangular device that looked a little like a datasheet, but even with his blurred vision Carver recognised it for what it was: the restraining device.

  ‘Why the fuck do I need a space suit?’ he demanded, filled with impotent rage. He began to clamber down from the cask, but he was still slippery with acceleration gel. His cramping hands couldn’t hold the edge properly, and he flipped out of the cask and went flying towards the other man, wrenching the IV-lines painfully from his arms and legs, releasing droplets of blood into the air like spores.

  The man shoved him back towards the cask and Carver banged his shaven head, sending bright stars shooting across his vision. ‘Unhh!’ he cried, flailing.

  The man laughed, and that made Carver even angrier. He struggled to get back up, but he couldn’t even stay still. He kept spinning uncontrollably in one direction and then the other, then back again. He guessed he probably did look pretty funny to the other man. Laugh it up while you can, fuckface! he thought savagely.

  ‘Just put the suit on, unless you like gulping vacuum,’ said the man. ‘And if you want to play silly-buggers, I’ll fry your already-squishy little brain.’ He wiggled the restraining device playfully.

  Carver had managed to grab onto the support frame of the cask now, and he clung to it like a man who might be sucked up into the sky by a tornado. He tried to give the other man his infamously intimidating stare, but he knew he looked too foolish for it to have the desired effect. Whoever you are, he vowed to himself, I intend to fuck you up badly as soon as I get a chance.

  ‘Why,’ snarled Carver, his throat full of either phlegm or acceleration gel, ‘do I need a space suit? What the fuck sort of a prison is this?’ He could feel the shuttle flexing and groaning around him, a living leviathan of cratered metal.

  ‘This is my own special prison, Carver. We’re not at Macao, but nearby, in the asteroid belt. We are quite alone out here, hidden from prying eyes. And here, we do what I say. And I,’ explained the man cheerfully, ‘do what the dragon says.’

  ‘What fucking dragon?’ demanded Carver, still hanging onto the frame, quaking with anger. Whoever this guy was, he was a proper fruitcake. Carver tried to pull himself upright, but was frustrated that his usually strong body was still almost as limp as cooked spaghetti.

  ‘The dragon,’ said the man, and just to make his point, he pressed a button on the restraining device and Carver’s entire body went rigid, racked by agony that blazed like liquid fire through every cell at once. He screamed and spasmed, his legs floating out from under him. ‘Again?’ asked the man when the spasms had subsided. Carver could only shake his head mutely, eyes squeezed shut. ‘Good. Now put this on,’ said the man again, throwing the space suit directly at Carver’s belly, making him flinch instinctively. ‘We have work to do.’

  ‘What work?’ Carver snarled, wiping gel from his short-shaven hair, hair that was so blond as to be almost white and contrasted starkly with the pinkness of his scalp. He flicked the gel from his fingers, but he didn’t dare flick it at the other man like he wanted to. He shook out the space suit he had been thrown, regarding it critically. Its arms and legs floated and flailed, billowing like pennants.

  ‘Lots of work,’ said the man. ‘I’m a bit behind, to be honest. I keep having to return to the station. I have. . . duties there.’ He said the word sourly, as if it tasted bad. ‘But I’ve come back to get you. Honestly, I’d have left you if I could do the work alone.’ He seemed to remember himself, and shook his head in a listen-to-me-rabbiting-on gesture. ‘Put the suit on,’ he said, a little more kindly this time.

  Carver managed to work his huge, muscular form into the skin-tight suit without actually letting go of the metal frame. He also kept one eye firmly on the man with the restraining device. The man seemed to notice him staring at the little box.

  ‘You know how this works, right?’ he asked conversationally.

  Carver nodded, scowling. ‘I can’t get too near to it, I can’t get too far from it, and it can’t be turned off without the code,’ he parroted, recalling exactly the words of the little rat bastard at Platini who had first explained the device to him. ‘It’s linked to an implant in my head.’

  ‘That’s it,’ agreed the man, nodding. He sounded pleased, as if Carver was a difficult student who was finally coming round.

  By the time Carver had fully suited up, barring the helmet which he assumed would be in the airlock, the man was looking impatient again.

  ‘What now?’ asked Carver suspiciously.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the man, magnetting onto the floor of the ship and stretching his back as if it ached. ‘There’s a manoeuvring jet in the sleeve of the suit, but I don’t suggest you use it. You might fly out of range of the restraining device too easily. Magnet onto the floor instead. I assume you know how. If not — learn.’ Then he turned and led the way from the cargo hold.

  Carver floated stupidly for a moment, wanting to make a break for it, knowing that he couldn’t. He considered throwing something at the man — that seemed like a good way to hurt or even kill the bastard without getting too close to the restraining device — but of course, he still wouldn’t have the code for the damn thing, and then he’d be trapped here, unable to approach the device or to leave its vicinity, possibly until he starved. It almost seemed worth it, but grudgingly he gave the idea up, clamped his boots to the floor and followed the retreating figure.

  They passed between stacks of supplies in identical, coded crates and industrial-looking machines that were bolted into the deck. Their boots rang on the worn wire-mesh tiles, filling the space with echoing noise. The man in front didn’t bother to check that Carver was following — what choice did he have? — he just calmly led the way through the darkness, splashed by the occasional gout of coloured light from some computer terminal or instrument panel that they passed.

  The man stopped before a huge snarl of pipes and cylinders, some jumbled heap of arcane machinery that stood almost ten feet high and bore a simple set of dials and a small electronic display on its front.

  ‘You know how to work this?’ he asked, turning to Carver, who stayed the requisite distance behind him.

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Carver contemptuously. ‘I don’t even know what it is.’

  The man sighed and tutted, as if he had expected no better. ‘It’s the air system,’ he explained slowly. ‘Tanks–’ he indicated the large cylinders, ‘–and scrubbers,’ he finished, indicating some random-looking tangle of pipework and machinery. ‘I was considering removing the whole thing from here and installing it on the rock. But I was hoping you’d be some help. I don’t honestly understand why the dragon has allowed you to live,’ he said.

  ‘Man, you are fucking crazy,’ said Carver wonderingly. He almost felt sorry for the freak, but it was only a fleeting emotion, immediately burned away by his red and blazing hatred. He thought maybe the man would fry him again in response to this observation, but he only nodded mutely, looking at the air unit closely.

  ‘We can still do it,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘We’ll just have to raise the temperature of the air-flow here. It’ll get hot in this shuttle.’

  ‘We can still do what?’ demanded Carver impatiently. He was not a man who li
ked to be kept out of the loop or made to feel foolish, and that was what this bastard was doing to him now.

  The man turned to Carver, a little smile on his lips. ‘Seal and pressurise the asteroid,’ he said in a voice pregnant with barely-constrained excitement. Carver could see that the freak was wired — actually having fun. He vowed again to make the bastard suffer just as soon as he had worked out how.

  ‘Why the fuck,’ asked Carver coldly, ‘would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because it’ll make it easier,’ said the man openly. He clearly wanted Carver to ask a follow up question, but Carver just shook his head and grunted. His huge hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. When the question didn’t materialise, the man continued anyway: ‘Easier to dig up the dragon.’ His smile broadened then, but it also became colder, as if an ice-sheet had advanced across his face. And people call me insane! thought Carver with some amazement. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘It’s all for the best, in the end. You’ll see,’ he said, running his hand across the worn-smooth surface of the machinery in front of them, his eyes becoming glazed and distant. ‘They’ll all see.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lina slept fitfully, fighting against layers of darkness that tangled around her like bodybags, smothering her, covering her. But however hard she fought, she kept finding herself back in the belt, where Sal was screaming through the comm — not the brief shriek that she had uttered in reality, but a protracted and wavering howl of agony and fear that warbled on and on into ever-higher registers as she was torn to pieces. Lina flew towards her — towards where her Kay should have been — through a dense cloud of blood and gore. Teeth ricocheted off the front of her ship in a virtual hailstorm. She wondered distantly how anyone could have so damn many of them.

  And then she became aware that there was something else in the belt with her, something dark and shapeless that rode through the void like smoke; a surreal whisper of shadow; a greedy, hungry shade of death. She didn’t know how she sensed it, but the feeling was overpowering, and the truth of it seemed bleakly inescapable.