by Майк Берри
‘The dragon will tell us what to do tomorrow,’ said the man with finality.
‘From one killer to another,’ said the distant Carver-voice, ‘you work in strange ways, man.’ He wondered if he should be saying this, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop the words from coming. They flew into the air like slow-motion artillery shells, blossoming in explosions of sound that shook the world, completely independent of his will. ‘But you get the job done, my friend.’ He was okay, really, the crazy dragon-man. But was he actually going to set Carver free in the morning? He sighed deeply, feeling the tension flood out of his body, draining from his toes into the warm air of the cockpit like a bad humor exorcised. Did it matter? Not right now — he felt good. He loosened the Velcro straps then closed his eyes and rolled onto his side. The guy had said the fader would help him sleep, and that seemed to be working out pretty well. He yawned hugely, with an interesting, pleasantly weary feeling.
‘I didn’t,’ replied the crazy dragon-man in a small, tired voice, ‘get the job done.’ And then he said no more.
Carver drifted on billowing sheets of darkness, borne on vacuous currents of whispering shadow, rocked by the gently wallowing shuttle, into the deepest slumber he had ever known.
He had no idea of the time when he awoke, feeling oddly disassociated from his own senses. At first, he thought that the light that flooded his eyes was part of a dream — it seemed too bright, too pure, to be real. But it dawned on him gradually, as he lay there staring at the grilled and panelled wall of the bridge, that he was genuinely awake, and still in the shuttle. The crazy dragon-man had given him some fader. He remembered now.
And then it spoke to him:
‘Prisoner Carver, listen to me. . .’
A bolt of shock went through his nervous system like a flash-fire, but a fire whose flames were ice-cold, chilling him to the bone. His spine seized solid, frozen into position. He felt suddenly tiny, vulnerable, and utterly alone, curled immobile on the chair, pinned by fear. Had he really heard that?
‘You’re not imagining it, Carver. You really can hear me.’
‘No,’ he whispered, his eyes so wide that they threatened to pop out of their sockets and onto his cheeks. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ said the voice matter-of-factly. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Carver’s chest was suddenly aquiver with fright, making it hard to speak at all. ‘You’re a fucking drug,’ he managed to spit, keeping his voice low so as not to awaken the crazy dragon-man sleeping in the next seat. ‘Fader.’
‘No,’ said the voice. ‘I am. . .’
Carver knew who it was, of course, or at least who his drug-addled mind wanted him to think it was. ‘. . . The dragon,’ he finished in a hoarse whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe it. No. That guy is fucking crazy. I’m not crazy. I don’t believe it!’
‘You raped and murdered a woman in front of her children,’ said the dragon calmly, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling the world with its cold implacability.
‘No. . .’
‘Then you raped and murdered those children. Children. You cooked and ate parts of their bodies. And you wish to discuss sanity with me? Grow up, Prisoner Carver, and know yourself for what you are.’
‘No. . . How do you know that?’ he demanded, his voice rising in pitch. He could see the blood, the scattered and degraded body-chunks, the tiny gnawed fingers and shredded clothes. He saw himself standing there terrified, revolted and elated in equal measure, a clump of golden hair in one hand. His breathing quickened as excitement and horror warred within him. It was true. He had done those things. And it was obvious, really, how the dragon knew: it was a product of his own imagination. In fact, why was he even speaking to it? Perhaps he had gone crazy. When in Rome, etcetera. . .
‘I know many things,’ said the dragon cryptically. ‘In the morning, your companion will release you.’
‘He already told me that,’ hissed Carver, squeezing his eyes closed and willing himself to sleep again. He didn’t want this, couldn’t fucking take this. . . He felt a pressure building inside his skull, as if somebody were squeezing it as hard as they could, one hand on each side of his head. It was the pressure he had felt that day, back on Aitama, that day when he’d first seen her at the spaceport bar, with one of those cherub-faced brats on the end of each arm. It hadn’t stopped that time until they were all dead, their perfect bodies lying in smashed and butchered pieces all around him. How would he stop it now? ‘No. . .’ he wheezed again, desperate for it to end, desperate for this fucking voice to stop.
‘I told him to wait until the morning,’ said the dragon insistently. ‘But I didn’t tell him why.’
The dragon paused, and Carver sensed that it required a response from him. In the vain hope that he could accelerate the end of this episode, he gave one: ‘Why?’ Ohhh. . . my head. . . stop talking to me. . .
‘Because I wanted to speak with you first,’ said the dragon. ‘About what comes next.’ It paused again, as if to make sure that he was listening. ‘My emissary has failed me,’ it continued.
‘Failed?’ asked Carver weakly.
‘That’s right,’ replied the dragon. ‘My old emissary,’ it added significantly. ‘He has shown that he is not as committed to me as he claimed. He has not carried out some of the more difficult tasks I have set him. He has, however, laid a fair foundation for our next phase. You, Prisoner Carver, are to be my new emissary.’
‘Me?’ breathed Carver, wishing he could close his ears against that pervasive, persuasive voice. There was something convincing about it, something beguiling. And worse than that, there was a hunger in it, too.
‘In the morning, as I have instructed, he will set you free. . .’
‘Yes?’
‘And you are to kill him.’
There was silence for a moment, a pregnant silence full of sinister potential. Carver’s aching, swelling brain began to churn furiously, rusty gears grinding and meshing, crunching and turning. ‘Yes. . .’ he breathed. He opened his eyes again, turning over on the chair so that he could see the slumbering form of the crazy dragon-man next to him. The crazy dragon-man wriggled in his sleep and started to snore softly. Carver began to smile — a slowly-spreading vulpine snarl of a grin. His head was fucking pulsing now. It felt like a fucking battery. It felt good.
‘I know you have been wanting to,’ explained the dragon. ‘And tomorrow I would like you to do so. Go to town, if you like. Fuck him up severely, as you might say yourself.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Carver, putting a hand to his mouth to stifle a giggle.
‘And then. . .’ said the dragon, ‘. . . then we can talk about what comes next. We have great works to do, you and I.’
‘Great works,’ said Carver, feeling darkly empowered yet somehow confused at the same time. He saw a twining, living darkness, a room of shattered flesh, the crazy dragon-man crying out and shielding his face, a hundred images of death and hell that bled together into one indiscernible whole.
‘Now sleep, my emissary,’ said the dragon soothingly. Carver felt his eyes close again at once. It was hard to resist that voice. Hell, he no longer wanted to resist that voice. It seemed to know what it was talking about. Dragon, he thought vaguely as he sank back towards sleep. My dragon. . .
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lina looked around at the assembled group. Halman’s Council of War, she thought without amusement. Collectively, they looked intent and tired, like scientists who’d worked through the night on some desperate weapons project. Only Hobbes had retained his usual well-groomed veneer. Si had once accused him of being an experimental robot on the run from Platini, and looking at him now, Lina could have actually believed it.
Disbelief aboard Macao had gone from height to height: the news of Eli’s attempted framing of Nik, his sabotage of the station, his murder of Jayce and Tamzin. . . Surreal was really too weak a word for it. Now here they were, plannin
g some insane deep-space commando mission in the bunker-like darkness of Halman’s office.
Alphe, now technically the senior member of the maintenance division, unfurled the sheet of plastic across Halman’s desk, weighting the corners down with metal coasters. Everyone craned to see as best they could.
‘More light!’ demanded Halman, squinting into the schematic and beckoning to Amy Stone, who passed him her own torch. Halman placed it on its base in the centre of the plastic sheet like a lantern. ‘Right!’ he said, turning his attention back to the diagram.
‘It isn’t easy,’ said Alphe after a while. Lina mentally awarded him the most-obvious-statement-of-the-day trophy. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot in his honest farmer’s face and his pale brow was smudged with machine-oil, as was so often the case with Alphe.
‘No,’ agreed Halman, whom Lina suspected was only managing to extract the basest level of information from the technical drawing. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him concentrate so intently before. ‘Why can’t we just float through the personnel hatch in suits?’
Alphe shook his head. ‘Because it’ll be locked from the inside. And if we did manage to pop it, then the airlock might not be closed properly behind it. It’s too risky.’
‘Hmm. . .’ went Halman. ‘I thought that might be too simple.’ He continued to frown into the schematic, the lines in his brow deepening. ‘If the only docking point is full, as Lina says, then. . . what? Can we cut our way in somewhere?’
‘How?’ asked Alphe, running one hand through his dark hair, sending up a small puff of dust. One of his fingers was wrapped in an unhygienic-looking bandage. He looked tired and out of his depth. He hadn’t taken the news of Nik’s death well at all. It had been bad enough when people had believed that Nik had been sabotaging the station. Now that Nik had been proven innocent of any wrongdoing, Alphe was clearly devastated. Usually, he was one of the calmest and most gentle people Lina had ever known, but now he was full of anger. She could see it beneath the features of his face like a subcutaneous shadow. ‘What could we cut with?’ he asked, shaking his head. His hands rested on the table at either side of the schematic — two clenched fists, knuckles white.
Ilse Reno stepped up to the table, elbowing her way in. She looked at the schematic a little disdainfully, her eye implant red in the red light. ‘How about the Kays?’ she asked, looking around the assembled faces: Lina, Liu, Alphe, Amy, Halman, Hobbes, Ella. ‘Aren’t they made for cutting?’ She waited and let them think about this. Lina tried to envision the process of latching onto the hull of the shuttle, mentally configuring the tool arms to apply enough force. She was pretty sure she could make it work, as long as the shuttle’s hull wasn’t too thick.
‘Hmmm. . .’ mused Alphe, one finger playing thoughtfully with his lower lip. ‘It’s possible. I mean, we could cut a hole, probably, as long as we could anchor on, but. . . It’s getting people in there that’s the thing, and getting the shuttle away. We’d compromise the pressure if we cut into it, cause a blow-out. . .’ His face furrowed. ‘There has to be a way. . .’ he said, seemingly to himself.
‘So it’d kill anyone inside?’ asked Amy coldly. She was famed more for her efficiency than her compassion. ‘That’s their problem.’ She looked solid and slab-like in the near-darkness, not someone to tangle with.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Lina, thinking of what had happened to Sal.
‘No, no, it’s not just that,’ said Alphe. ‘We’d likely blow the whole fucking works out of that shuttle, strew the lot across space. No good.’ He shook his head once, frowning, obviously displeased, and continued to study the diagram, tracing details with one finger.
‘Well what about the cargo hold?’ asked Lina, who was actually qualified to fly an inter-system supply shuttle, although she’d never done so for real. ‘The hold is unpressurised.’
‘It is?’ asked Alphe, squinting into the schematic. ‘It doesn’t say that here.’
Lina pushed the smaller Ilse out of the way and bent over the schematic. She, too, began to trace details on its surface. She noticed that there were still flecks of blood around her fingernails. Her hair was still full of the stuff, too. She wondered absently when she’d ever get the chance for a proper wash. She’d just had time to change her clothes after seeing Hobbes, before Halman had summoned her again.
‘Yeah, look here,’ she said, tapping at the diagram. ‘This is an airlock, into the shuttle’s hold. An internal airlock.’
Alphe peered closely at the indicated point, and Lina moved her bloody finger away self-consciously. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, sounding a little irritated as well as pleased. ‘So we can cut into the hold and go through the shuttle’s interior airlock.’
‘Good,’ said Halman. ‘Are you sure the Kays will do it? Lina? Ilse?’
The two miners exchanged noncommittal looks. ‘Well. . .’ they both said together.
Ilse made a you go gesture with one hand and Lina said, ‘It does kind of depend on how thick the hull is.’
‘Alphe?’ asked Halman.
‘Erm. . .’ said Alphe, staring into the sheet of plastic. ‘Of course, the deuterium shielding is all at the front of the ship. . . Here — barely two-hundred-mil. Even I’m surprised at how flimsy that sounds.’ He looked up, probably trying to smile. ‘Economy first, right?’
‘Then yes,’ said Ilse, stroking back her straggly grey hair and standing to her full five-foot-two. ‘If we put a bigger cutting disc on one of them.’
‘Right,’ said Halman. ‘So we do that. We do have a bigger disc, yes?’
‘Sure,’ said Liu, smiling whitely. ‘In the warehouse.’
Halman coughed laughter. ‘And can you find it in there before the power runs out?’ he asked.
Liu looked slightly offended, but his smile didn’t falter. ‘Charlie Stenning will know where it is,’ he said.
‘Good. Well, change the discs on two Kays if we have two larger ones.’ He glared around the room like a searchlight. ‘Backup,’ he explained ominously.
‘What I don’t get,’ began Liu, smiling that open, benevolent smile of his, as if they were just discussing what to have for lunch, ‘is why he’s attached the shuttle to that asteroid. Lina says he’s used the boarding and rescue tube, so maybe the rock is hollow. Right?’
Lina nodded, causing an errant and bloody lock of hair to swing down into her eye. She brushed it back impatiently and said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure of it. Looked like he’d plugged up holes in it with instawall.’
‘Why the hell would he do that?’ asked Ilse.
‘Who knows?’ replied Lina. ‘But I’m pretty sure of it. Instawall means he’s sealed the rock, probably to make it airtight. That means hollow, and that means. . . well, I’ve no idea what that means, really.’
‘What’s inside it?’ asked Liu.
‘Buggered if I know, old man,’ said Halman.
Dragon! cried Lina’s little interior voice. No, she told it, that’s ridiculous. The voice retorted, sounding too much like Eli for her liking, It’ll eat you up! She shook her head, trying to clear it.
‘Will Eli know that the hull is breached?’ asked Amy. ‘If we cut through it?’
‘Well, there’s supposed to be a warning system, yes,’ said Lina. ‘But that ship’s probably two-hundred years old, and knowing who built it and supposedly maintains it, it might well just not work.’
‘I don’t think we can rely on that,’ said Ella, who was leant against Halman’s desk. Lina turned to look at her. She seemed to have aged ten years overnight, and Lina’s heart went out to her despite the nightmare time she’d been having herself.
‘No,’ Lina agreed. ‘I suppose not.’
‘We have to assume he’ll know what we’re up to, and that he’ll try to stop us,’ Ella elaborated. ‘That means–’
‘A fight!’ Halman finished for her, with a touch too much relish for Lina’s liking. She looked up at him and saw that he was smiling beneath his bushy moustache, his huge arms folded across his ches
t.
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Ella. ‘But who are we going to send in there?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Lina. All eyes turned to her. ‘I have unfinished business with Eli,’ she continued, feeling that an explanation was required.
‘I should go,’ said Ella, but she didn’t sound too keen.
‘Can you fly a Kay?’ asked Lina.
‘I’m sure I told you before: I flew M4s at Platini Alpha,’ said Ella. ‘It was a long time ago, but Kays can’t be all that different.’
‘Well they kind of are,’ said Lina. ‘Firstly, the jets are arranged in a–’
‘Lina!’ yelled Halman, raising one hand to stop her. ‘How about if you both go?’ The two women stared at him, considering this. They looked to each other, then nodded together. ‘Lina, you’re pretty handy with the Kays and the cutting gear. And you know something about the shuttle. How to fly it back here, for starters. Ella, you’re my security controller, and you’re pretty handy at kicking ass. Also, I could use a break from you.’ Lina wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. ‘We will assume that there’s going to be a. . . hostile reaction. . . to your arrival. You can take laser pistols from security. But make sure they fucking work first. I know some of them don’t.’
‘If Lina’s going to cut,’ piped up Alphe, ‘then I’d like her with us when we modify and check over the Kays.’
‘I’ll pre-flight them with you,’ said Liu. ‘My department, my ships. You work under my supervision. No offence.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Alphe, nodding.
‘Sure,’ said Lina. She noticed that Ilse Reno was staring at her strangely, even for someone with a cybernetic eye. Was she jealous? Technically, Ilse was now the chief of the mining division. Had Lina stepped on her toes? She decided she didn’t really care. She had other things to worry about.
‘What if the prisoner is there too?’ asked Hobbes, pushing his glasses higher up onto the bridge of his nose. Why he had never had corrective surgery Lina didn’t know. Maybe the glasses were an affectation — supposed to make him look scholarly. ‘And maybe the pilot, too. They could be facing three people. I really think we need to consider this carefully before anyone else gets killed.’
