Macao Station

by Майк Берри

  She tried to turn, to dive under the loader and find some sort of weapon, but Eli was already on her, seizing her hair in one hand. She saw the deck rise towards her face as he smashed her head into it. Bright sunbursts bloomed in her vision, obscuring it, and a wave of compressive agony shot through her skull. She kicked out behind her, trying to rise, but felt only empty air. Eli drove a knee into her back, pinning her down. She felt his weight on top of her, crushing her, driving her breath from her lungs. He smashed her head into the deck again, and this time instead of light, there was a bloom of darkness.

  ‘I have to go!’ he hissed, right in her ear. ‘And you aren’t going to stop me!’ Was that his blood she felt dripping onto the back of her neck? Or her own? She thought she smelled the insanity baking off him in hot waves — something like sour sweat and burning wires intermingled.

  Again: smash! The darkness swelled, making Lina think of the shadow in the belt: ink in water. Darkness superimposed on darkness. Darkness filled the world. She was spinning, gasping, fading. . .

  She awoke to the deafening blast of the launch klaxon, a sound like the bellow of a dinosaur. Her eyes flickered open, filling her head with pain. The rough metal of the hangar floor felt sharp and abrasive against her cheek. The hangar was awash with red, strobing light. That’s odd, she thought. The power was on in here. White light. It was white.

  She sat bolt upright like somebody awakening from a nightmare, her heart trip-hammering inside her, her skull throbbing. Eli had initiated the launch procedure! Somehow he’d overridden the security protocols. She glanced around and noticed that she was on the closed ramp of the space door itself. He’d dumped her body there like a piece of garbage, ready to jettison into the belt. It was about to open.

  She struggled to her feet, having to push herself upright with one hand. She looked towards the ISL and saw Eli in the cockpit, working the controls, squinting into some readout. He didn’t notice her — he was too enraptured in what he was doing. Why was he trying to take the ISL? Why not a Kay?

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Lina berated herself. ‘Get to a ship! I have to get to a ship.’

  She clambered off the space door, feeling clumsy and injured. Her head felt as if someone had filled it with broken glass and then kicked it like a football. Her wounded arm stung and burned fiercely. But she gained the flight deck and shambled down the row of Kays as quickly as she could. She was fully cleared to operate any of the ships on Macao, but she made for K6-12 without thinking, one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other to her head. The klaxon blatted again and the light changed to orange, supposedly to signify that everyone on the flight deck was safely inside a ship.

  She clawed her way up the ladder of her Kay, falling into the cockpit with tears of pain running unnoticed from her eyes. She pulled her legs in and slammed the lid shut behind her, swivelling into an upright position in the seat. Was she going to follow him out there? She supposed she was.

  ‘I’ve come this far. . .’ she muttered to herself as she booted the ship’s computer up.

  The HUD illuminated, stitching the cockpit canopy with neon stats and scales. It helpfully tagged the unseen vessel at the far end with the legend ELI SWAINE // IN-SYS LOADER // 50.2M // 0 KPH. She felt the cockpit pressurise and breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘You could have killed me!’ screamed Eli’s voice suddenly, clipping as its volume threatened to overload the comm. Lina jolted as if she had been goosed. He must have seen her ship appear on his own HUD and realised that she was gone from where he’d left her. She supposed he was referring to the blow he had received to his head, and she put one hand to her own battered skull. It came away bloody, as she had expected. ‘I’m the emissary, Lina! The dragon wanted him dead, and now it’s going to be angry!’

  ‘Listen, Eli. . .’ she began, but she faded away as she realised she had nothing to follow this with.

  ‘I have to go!’ he cried. His voice, coming from the headrest speaker, was as loud in her ear as if he had been squatting behind her seat. It was a sound filled with murderous, boiling hatred, the guttural snarl of a monster. ‘Don’t think to follow me! It’ll eat you up! It’ll fucking eat you, Lina!’

  What the hell was he talking about? And then a shudder went through her. It suddenly felt cold — icy cold, too cold — in the cockpit of her ship. She remembered the shadow from her dream, twining through the belt like molten obsidian — a hungry, living darkness. It’ll eat you up! she thought, suddenly sure that this was what he meant. The reality of what she was doing came crashing in on her. Hadn’t she vowed never to fly again? And yet here she was, preparing to pursue a madman into the belt where he’d already murdered Sal and dream-shadows flowed like dark blood amongst the rocks. It’ll fucking eat you, Lina! she heard again in her mind. She pulled the straps tight around her chest, cinching the buckle below her breasts. She took the yoke in sweat-slicked hands and steadied herself, bracing against her backrest.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she whispered between clenched teeth, wiping blood from her eyes with one sleeve.

  There was a loud rush as the hangar cycled, fading away as vacuum replaced air. Lina felt her ship trembling around her as she leeched gas into the jets. It felt like a tense little animal, itching to run. One of its tool arms twitched like a palsied limb, the result of a dying servomotor, an intermittent fault that had plagued the vessel for months.

  And then the hangar was washed with emerald green as the final stage of the cycle kicked in. The space door shivered and began to drop. The belt rotated mutely out there, a carousel of broken shards. Yuwan, the neighbouring gas giant, was a creamy orange disc that soared above the plane of rubble like a rising sun.

  Eli’s loader was coming about, turning wide to align with the ramp, picking up speed already. Lina trundled out onto the main concourse, some fifty metres behind the ISL. She gave the dead-lifter a wide berth, her hands surprisingly steady on the controls.

  ‘You’re not getting away, you bastard!’ she said through gritted teeth, not caring if he heard or not.

  The loader was a ponderous and fat-bodied machine, a patchwork of black and grey, prickled with manoeuvring jets. It rode high on its suspension, only carrying empty crates, but it moved with a sort of deliberate sluggishness. Eli made a last tiny adjustment to its bearing, then dialled the gas up all the way, accelerating over the lip of the runway and out into space.

  Lina had been gaining on him until his wheels left the deck of the station, but then the loader quickly accelerated off, freed from friction, flung away by Macao’s rotation, banking sharply to port-side, leaving icy contrails of condensing gas behind it. Lina pushed the yoke all the way to the stop, still checking diags with one eye, feeling the vessel rattling around her as numerous loose bolts and electrical components chattered to each other. The Eli-tag on the HUD went off-screen to the left, tracked by a directional pointer. Her Kay flew from the end of the ramp and dropped away into space.

  She paused for a heartbeat, letting herself fully clear the station, then banked hard to follow Eli. The greater bulk of the loader was cancelled out by its more powerful drive system and, in fact, it was slightly faster than a Kay in space. Already Eli was some hundred-plus metres in front, turning around Macao counter-spinwards, angling down towards the heart of the belt. Lina kept the yoke pinned, but he was accelerating away from her, zipping between two massive asteroids with surprising agility. She tried to turn inside his arc, wrenching the Kay over as hard as she could, but she made up only a little distance, which she immediately began to lose again. She didn’t even pause to wonder what she would do if she actually caught up with him.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ screamed Eli through the speakers, making Lina’s head spike with fresh agony.

  No, she mouthed silently, intent on flying, her eyes checking between HUD and dashboard instruments, her knuckles white on the control stick. It’s a bit late for that, she thought grimly, as asteroids flitted past on both sides. She jagged left, Eli’s con
trails washing over her screen, partially blinding her, then right, pushing on, driven by sheer determination.

  ‘I’m warning you!’ shrieked Eli in an almost comically shrill voice.

  The belt thickened around her, pressing in. Macao had become invisible already. It might have been imagined — a mirage borne of wishful thinking. This endless textured space was the only reality left, and in it she might wander eternally, chasing this phantom madman who would remain always tantalisingly out of reach.

  Eli swerved around a vast iceberg, maybe eighty metres across, clinging tight to its dirty surface. Lina lost sight of him, although the HUD still tracked the loader in its bright orange reticule. As she rounded the iceberg, expecting to catch a glimpse of him, the Eli-tag on her HUD blinked out. He must have killed the ISL’s computer, which left him flying without safety systems. Lina thought how poetic it would be if Eli was to be killed in an accident with a belt object, as had happened to Sal. But Sal wasn’t killed in an accident with a belt object. We know better, don’t we Eli? she thought. Because you murdered her, didn’t you?

  As she rounded the large rock, she was confronted by a group of smaller asteroids which had been hidden from her sight. The loader was not visible. She dived her Kay into the mass of asteroids, gravel hissing off her canopy, the computer screaming proximity warnings and enforcing little corrective jolts of thrust, struggling to avoid the larger objects. She pressed on, though, basically guessing at which way he might have gone, blind beyond a hundred metres.

  She emerged into a clearer space and spun her ship around, washing the belt with radar. Echoes came from everywhere — shifting, overlapping, useless. She could make out dispersing contrails, but couldn’t tell what direction they led in. The gas trail had become a cloud already — a random organic shape.

  Suddenly, she shivered, her nerves jangling. It’ll eat you up! she thought again. That shadow. . . that living shadow. . . Whatever it was, she had voluntarily entered its lair. It would smell the blood that had soaked her flight suit and come for her. She thought she saw it — darker patches in the darkness, concentrations of nothing. . . patterns in the chaos. . .

  ‘No,’ she said aloud, alarmed at how her own voice trembled. ‘There’s nothing out here. He’s insane. Nothing but rock and ice.’

  And then she caught sight of the loader. Eli had turned sharply to starboard, almost doubling back, and she saw only the merest flash of expelled gas between the asteroids, and maybe a glint of sunlight on hull. Instantly, she was after him, half-looping and maxing the gas. She checked the HUD and saw that her Kay still had its last bolt of metal in the breech of its mass driver. The loader loomed large in her canopy as Eli slowed down to avoid a clutch of chaotically-jostling rocks the size of Kays. She targeted the wallowing ISL and hit the fire control.

  The ship jolted as the bolt was released. Lina watched in slow motion as it travelled towards the banking loader, flashing once in her vessel’s headlight.

  ‘Come on!’ she screamed, pushing the yoke almost through its stop, all her muscles tensed.

  Eli braked hard, sending out a bloom of gas in front of his ship, rolling away below her faster than she could follow. The bolt smashed into one of the Kay-sized rocks, shattering it into dust, missing him by metres. She burst through the cloud of debris, sightless, knowing she had lost him, and tried to roll around the clutch of asteroids to resume the chase. But when she hit clear space, the loader was gone again.

  Rocks hung all around her like a flock of silently-watching sheep, inviting her next move. She stopped the ship and hung there, breathing hard and inwardly cursing herself. In all directions, a total uniformity of stone and vacuum, a smokescreen of rubble.

  Lina kicked the underside of the dash in frustration, immediately wishing she hadn’t when a warped metal plate dropped off onto her boot with a subtle little clang. She had no idea what it was or what it might be for. She held her breath, pissed at herself, waiting to see if she had broken anything terminal. Please no! she wished. Not now! But no alarms went off and it seemed she’d got away with it.

  She shoved the metal plate into a corner with one foot, casting about herself. She turned her Kay in place — once, twice — but it looked the same in all directions. Nothingness, as far as the eye could see.

  Where did he go? she wondered. Where does he possibly hope to go out here? Is he thinking he can fly right out of the system? And then a gap opened between two asteroids, quite at random, and she saw it.

  The in-system loader was heading for a massive rock — one of the largest Lina had ever seen in the belt — and the missing shuttle was somehow attached to it, docked with it. The rock itself was shaped a bit like a figure-eight, with a large bulb at either end and a thinner waist in the middle. The stolen supply shuttle was adhered to one of these bulbs, and Lina could see where holes in the rock had been sealed with yellow instawall foam that had formed lurid scabs on its surface. Why would he have done that? Perhaps he had been living there.

  Eli closed in on the figure-eight asteroid, weaving through a cloud of smaller debris that orbited it, going much too quickly for safety. His loader hugged the asteroid’s surface closely and coasted along it, closing in on the shuttle. Lina could actually see the cockpit lights in the shuttle now, could see little hisses of vapour as it vented some waste product into space.

  ‘Go back, Lina!’ shouted Eli’s voice suddenly, making her ears ring. She turned the comm down to half.

  ‘You bastard!’ she yelled back, enraged, more angry than she had ever been before. She was closing in on him now as he neared the shuttle, slowing and lining himself up with it. ‘You tried to kill Marco, you bastard! You were playing football with him the other day!’ Somehow, this was the part that made her angriest of all: that he’d had the gall to take her son off and kick a ball around with him as if nothing was wrong in the world. Perhaps he had meant to kill Marco that day. Who knew? But whatever he had intended, it had been a lie, a pathetic deception. ‘You stole our shuttle, Eli! All this time, it was you!’ She felt tears sting her eyes, threatening to obscure her sight, and she swiped at her face angrily with one sleeve. ‘You killed all those people!’ she screamed. ‘You killed those people! What is wrong with you?’

  ‘I am the emissary!’ he shouted back, and he sounded as angry as she was now, as if she was the one in the wrong. ‘I do what I have to do!’ And then, in another, calmer tone that sounded as if he was reading from a script, or maybe quoting somebody else’s words: ‘You are my emissary, and I have your best interests at heart. Some of your tasks may be difficult at times.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘You see?’ as if that had proven something.

  ‘You’re a monster!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m going to. . . to. . .’

  His loader was coming smoothly together with the shuttle now, guided with obvious skill.

  ‘You’re going to what, Lina?’ he asked. He still sounded angry, but he also sounded tired now, as if she were an irritating child who had pestered him to breaking point. ‘Hmm? What?’

  His ship clamped firmly onto the docking platform of the shuttle, just as Lina flew overhead in her Kay. The loader, the shuttle and the asteroid scrolled past beneath her and she saw what he meant: the shuttle had only the one docking space, and the loader was in it. She swooped up and away, slowing, still jinking and jagging to avoid asteroids, not fully trusting the ship to take care of her. She turned to come around again. What was she going to do?

  ‘I’ll. . . I’ll. . . I’m gonna go and get Ella and Halman and the others. They’re gonna want that shuttle back, you thief! And I’m going to return with them, and Eli, there is going to be a reckoning between us.’

  ‘That’s your plan,’ he replied flatly.

  Lina’s Kay shivered under her, strained by gees, as she looped round to head back to Macao. ‘You killed all those people, Eli,’ she said again.

  ‘No, Lina, it wasn’t me,’ he said, but she knew it for what it was: a lie. ‘You have killed me, though,
’ he said, more quietly now. ‘You have killed me.’

  Lina didn’t have the slightest clue what he meant and she was too angry to consider it. She flicked the comm off and accelerated back towards the station, flying fast, but not as fast as she had when she’d been chasing Eli. She wondered how much of Sal Newman still drifted here. Maybe the shadow had devoured what was left like a whale vacuuming up plankton. ‘It’ll eat you up,’ she reminded herself.

  And as she flew, she felt that darkness breathing around her again — something within the nothing. Patterns. She felt as if the belt itself were a sinister, living thing, and she flew through its disseminated body like a germ.

  She no longer trusted the belt at all. Her friend had clearly gone insane out here. It had eaten Sal. And she felt, as she flew alone through its jagged depths, that it would eat her too, given the chance. She concentrated on staying alert, all her senses straining, perfectly in tune with the machine. She hardly breathed until the belt began to thin again and Macao came into sight. She had never been more glad to see the place in her life.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Halman was in the rec area alone, watching the belt when Ella found him. He had been staring out at it, thinking about Sal, thinking about Nik, bathed in that hateful red light, for half an hour or more. He could feel events slipping through his fingers faster than he could react. Nik had been killed, the saboteur was dead, and yet his mood was dark and retrospective. He could have done things better. Stopped it somehow.

  When Ella seized his shoulder from behind, half-spinning him around as she crashed into him, his mind just had time to scream What now? before she began to talk.

  ‘Shit Halman Jayce is dead Tamzin’s dead Eli’s gone he tried to attack Marco and Waine says they ran off towards the hangar I don’t know why but she’s fucking chased him Dan I’ve fucked up we’ve fucked up come on! Come on!’