by Майк Берри
‘This is Ella,’ said Halman slowly, as if talking to an idiot. He indicated the woman in question with a sweep of one arm. ‘Would you pick a fight with her? Even with two friends?’
Hobbes faltered. ‘Well, I wouldn’t, of course not,’ he replied. ‘But Eli would, I’m guessing.’
‘I think he has a point,’ said Liu. ‘It does sound pretty dangerous to me.’
‘What about this prisoner?’ asked Alphe, looking worried. ‘Do you think Eli has actually released him?’
‘Some degenerate fuck from Platini Jail,’ said Halman dismissively. ‘Ronnie Carver. I think we can expect him to be dead, judging by Eli’s record. The pilot, too. But I guess we can’t depend on that.’
‘I’d like to think of another way. . .’ said Alphe, shaking his head.
‘You are forgetting what’s at stake here!’ bellowed Halman with sudden, unnecessary volume. ‘If we don’t get that shuttle back, then we are all in very real danger. Everyone on board this station is going to die.’ He enunciated the last three words slowly, beginning to pace up and down the room with his hands laced behind his back. They watched him as one, cowed by his loudness. ‘Does anybody fail to understand that? Time is against us. The end is fucking nigh, boys and girls! We are going to get that shuttle back! Because we have to. If I need to do it myself, I will. I just don’t think I’m the best man for the job.’
‘No,’ agreed Ella quietly, stilling him with a look. ‘I’m the best man for the job.’
‘Maybe we can flood the shuttle with poison gas?’ suggested Liu, smiling graciously. Everyone turned towards him with expressions of identical shock. ‘What?’ asked Liu, eyebrows arched.
‘Fuck me, old man,’ said Halman in amazement. ‘I never knew you had it in you.’
‘He has a good point,’ said Ilse Reno. Her eye glowed evilly and her small face was set hard. ‘Gas ’em. Fuck it.’
‘Do we have any poison gas?’ asked Halman. Lina didn’t know if he was seriously considering it or not.
‘Refinery could make some,’ suggested Liu. ‘They use all sorts of stuff.’
‘Or Fionne,’ added Alphe. ‘She’s a dual chemistry and physics grad. Something of a genius, in fact. Don’t tell her I said that.’
‘Right,’ said Halman, nodding his grizzled head as he continued to stride about the room. ‘Young Fionne will fucking love that, won’t she? What d’you reckon, Liu? Cyanide? Mustard gas? Hmm?’
‘Mustard gas should be fairly easy to make,’ said Liu, utterly failing to catch the sarcasm. Lina almost laughed, although it really wasn’t funny when you thought about it.
‘Mustard gas,’ agreed Halman, still nodding. ‘Good. I’ll get her on it.’
‘They have suits anyway,’ said Ilse. ‘Those shuttles carry loads of them.’
‘Look,’ said Halman. ‘I’m no humanitarian, but I’m not just flooding that ship with poison. That’d be fucking murder. You want to end up in some Farsight prison?’
‘Technically,’ said Liu, ‘I think we live in one already. But I take your point.’
‘And as Ilse says,’ Halman continued, ‘it’s unlikely to help anyway. We’d only introduce another dangerous factor. If they go in armed, and find anyone there, then they can order them to surrender. Right, Ella?’
‘Right,’ she agreed uncertainly. Lina wondered if Ella hadn’t actually been in favour of the poison gas approach.
‘And if they don’t, then shoot them. But it would be wrong of us not to offer them a chance. A choice. And the pilot, or even the prisoner, might need rescuing from Eli if they’re still alive.’
‘I suppose so,’ conceded Liu. Although he was still smiling, he looked a little disappointed.
‘How long do we have?’ asked Lina. ‘Power, I mean.’
Alphe straightened, shrugging his broad shoulders. ‘Like this. . . maybe two days. Then we lose the lot — air, heat, kinetic defence, rotation. . . everything that matters.’ He swallowed heavily and breathed silently, tensely, for a moment. ‘And to think I’ve had aeroponics on my ass about the fucking plants this morning!’ He laughed bitterly, looking around for support. ‘The plants!’
‘We should condense our living space,’ suggested Hobbes.
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Ella.
‘Shut off the quarters, the common areas, even medical, and set up a dorm somewhere in the offices, maybe centred here. Kill the power in the rest of the place and suck the air out. We’d use a fraction of the energy that way, buy ourselves a little time. We can re-compress the air and save it.’
Halman was nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘And as for aero — they can spin on it.’
Alphe laughed again, with slightly more feeling this time. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told them,’ he agreed.
‘Amy,’ said Halman, ‘We’ll do it — condense our space, I mean. Get the word round. I want everyone to pack a single bag of personal items. A single bag only, okay? Two hours, and I want the whole staff within these two corridors.’
‘Sure, Boss,’ said Amy, her eyes lighting up. She turned and practically ran out, looking like a bloodhound that had caught a scent.
‘Alphe, you guys get everything you’ll need out of maintenance and the warehouse. We’ll re-power the hangar when we need it, but maintenance will stay off.’
‘Of course,’ said Alphe, as if this should have gone without saying. ‘They’ll have most of what we need in the hangar anyway.’
‘Good,’ said Halman. ‘Now what’s the story with the gennies? Last thing I saw was you and Fionne wading around knee-deep in the floor down there.’
‘Ha!’ barked Alphe. ‘No joy, the last time I was there. Fionne’s next door with Rocko, on a well-earned break, and Win Ling is on the power relay. But the actual turbines were damaged too, and to be honest we probably aren’t going to be able to even get one of them running without the servicing kit from the shuttle.’ He cast his gaze about, defiant, as if someone might try to blame him personally for this disastrous situation. ‘Sorry,’ he added warily.
Lina found herself to be unsurprised by this. She didn’t think there was any bad news that could surprise her any more.
‘Right,’ Halman said. ‘And the air system? I think everyone has noticed that there’s something wrong with it by now.’
Alphe rubbed his chin with the back of one hand. He looked like he needed a shave. ‘Well, the last gases we took did show some traces of refinery contaminants. Nothing to worry about yet, and of course the refinery’s down now. But it might still get serious before long. And of course, when the battery goes, the air goes. Currently, it’s on about eighty percent. It’s also possible that something else is burning out in the system. We simply haven’t had a chance to investigate further. We’re sinking damn fast if I’m honest.’ Everybody nodded sympathetically. None of them envied Alphe his job right now, however hard their own tasks might be. ‘And if we’re pulling back to a few corridors, my guys’ll have to wear suits to even look at the scrubbers. Right now, we can still breathe, so we have higher priorities. Now there’s something I never imagined I’d say. Higher priorities than the air scrubbers.’ He shook his head in wonder.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Halman. ‘Power is everything. The cold’ll kill us first at this rate.’ Lina was suddenly aware that it was cold in here. She shivered, joggling the table and causing the torch to fall over. Halman replaced it without comment. ‘I wondered if we could put out some solar panels,’ he continued. ‘Don’t we keep spares for the laser-relay satellites?’
‘There are some panels stacked in storage,’ agreed Liu. ‘I can drag them out for you before we kill the power. Maybe we can–’
Alphe was shaking his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, overriding Liu. ‘It sounds great in theory, granted. But how are we going to fit them? The loader is the only thing that can even carry those solar panels, and in case you all forgot, we don’t have the loader any more. We’d have to place them by hand, in suits. I don’t hone
stly think it’s possible. And if we could, it would probably take us so long to set them up that we’d run out of battery before we even got them going.’
‘Mmm,’ grunted Halman. ‘When what we should be doing is getting that damn shuttle back.’
Alphe stretched out one hand to Halman, palm up, as if trying to physically hand over the decision. ‘Your call, but that’s my take on it, yeah. If we had the extra staff I asked for ten months ago. . .’ He trailed off pointedly.
‘I put it to Farsight Platini,’ said Halman, with irritation prickling in his voice. He was used to being harassed for more staff and more resources, and his default position had become defensive and somewhat pessimistic over the years. ‘Talk to them about it.’
‘Yeah, good idea,’ said Alphe, sounding irritated himself. ‘Oh wait — we can’t.’
‘I refuse to play this game, Alphe,’ said Halman, a little haughtily. ‘Just cut that shit out and put your helpful hat back on, please.’
Lina saw Alphe clench his teeth, drawing deep breaths between them. He looked like he might be counting to ten in his head. ‘Sure,’ he said at last. ‘Sorry, Boss.’
‘Don’t sweat it,’ said Halman, more diplomatically now. ‘Throw one of your guys the solar panel bone to chew on if there’s time. But first, I want you to get those Kays modified and checked over. I want them as clean as we can get them.’
‘Sure,’ said Alphe. ‘No problem.’
‘Next on the agenda,’ said Halman, stroking his balding pate. ‘Any news as to why this has happened? Motive, etcetera?’
‘Well, Hobbes has something for you there,’ answered Ella. ‘Hot off the press. Hobbes?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Hobbes. ‘We took some blood tests from Eli when he came into medical. They showed positive for fader.’ He made a there-you-go gesture with his hands, palms spread.
Halman’s brow furrowed deeply. ‘Fader?’ he parroted. ‘Where the fuck did he get fader from?’
‘From Platini, of course,’ replied Hobbes. ‘Via shuttle.’
‘So those fucking dockyard drones have been crating up psychoactive drugs at Platini?’ asked Halman incredulously. ‘And sending them here to fuck up my happy little family? Those bastards!’
‘Must have been, I guess,’ agreed Ella. ‘My team do random checks on the incoming crates, but to be honest it’s a token gesture. So much crap comes off those shuttles — heavy plant equipment, sealed electronics, radioactive material — that we actually can’t check, that it wouldn’t be hard to slip something through. I suspect it’s been going on for ages.’
‘Maybe someone’s synthesizing it on board,’ suggested Liu. His smile had become small and tight. It was well known that Liu was vehemently anti-drugs — he didn’t even drink. Lina wondered if he knew about his ground crew’s moonshine.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t know,’ said Lina quietly. Fader? Eli? Really? This was a man she’d worked with every day for years. How could she not have known? She supposed there had been a few things she hadn’t known about him. She thumped the table, feeling a thrumming, numbing anger rise inside her. She couldn’t tell if that anger was centred on Eli or on herself. ‘Damn it!’ she cried.
‘Lina, chill,’ said Halman harshly, as if she could just be ordered to do so. ‘This ain’t your fault, or mine, or Ella’s, or anyone’s. It’s just one of those things, and at least it makes a little more sense now that we know. That stuff has a bad rep for sending people batshit, and I guess that’s just what happened here.’
‘He claimed to be the emissary,’ said Lina coldly. ‘He said the dragon wanted Marco dead.’
Suddenly, she wanted out of here, wanted her son. She had gone to see him on the way to check in with Hobbes. She’d told him everything that had happened — she saw no point in trying to shield him any more, not after what had already occurred with Eli. He had accepted it quietly enough, but she’d thought she sensed a deep, dark depression inside the boy that had concerned her greatly. Her own blood-covered appearance hadn’t helped matters, she supposed. She knew she should have waited until she’d cleaned herself up, but seeing Marco had been the overriding desire inside her at the time. He was currently waiting in Amy’s office next door, still with Rocko, the hero of the day as far as Lina was concerned. Fionne had also joined them, probably shirking some vital maintenance duty in order to be with her young love. Lina didn’t blame her at all.
‘Yeah, he’s authentically off his rocker, Li, we know that,’ said Halman. ‘I have to admit, I don’t like all this dragon shit. Why a dragon? Why here? Why on my fucking station?’ His shoulders slumped as he turned to Ella. ‘Was there anything in his quarters?’ he asked morosely.
‘Er, I need to talk to you later about that,’ she answered guardedly.
Halman looked a little puzzled, but he said, ‘Okay, yeah.’
Lina wondered what Ella might have found that the rest of them couldn’t hear. Normally, of course, she wouldn’t have been privy to security information, but as she seemed to have been included in some temporary inner circle, she actually felt somewhat offended by Ella’s cagey attitude. She looked at the other woman, but Ella seemed to be pointedly avoiding her gaze.
‘Anyone not clear on what they need to do?’ asked Halman.
‘I guess I need to relocate the whole medical department,’ answered Hobbes, sounding resigned but surprisingly upbeat about this idea.
‘Good. That’s right. Questions? No? Good. Now piss off, you lot,’ Halman said, indicating the door with a sweep of one huge, apish arm. ‘Not you, Officer Kown,’ he added ominously. Obediently, they filed out, mumbling parting pleasantries more out of habit than real feeling, leaving a worried-looking Ella behind. Lina glanced at her as she left, but Ella still wouldn’t look at her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘I thought I heard you talking to somebody last night,’ said the man, without looking up from the shuttle’s console.
Carver almost gagged on his water, struggling to hide it with a cough. He wasn’t sure if he’d got away with it or not. ‘Nah, man,’ he said, wiping his chin. ‘Maybe I was talking in my sleep.’ Silence from the man, who still stared intently into the screen of the console, tapping its touch-sensitive surface with one index finger. ‘I’ve been told I do that,’ Carver added. ‘Vivid dreams. You know.’
The man pinch-zoomed on a section of the screen, mirroring the display on the shuttle’s main window. The shuffling debris of the belt vanished behind a magnified view of a tan-coloured planet, slightly blurred. ‘I should think someone with your history may well have some disturbing dreams,’ said the man critically, peering up into the main screen now. There was a shuddering bang as the shuttle’s defensive mass drivers fired at some rock that had strayed too close. The sound reverberated through the walls and floor, fading away in diminishing waves.
You can fucking talk, thought Carver. He glanced towards the chair where the corpse had sat. The body itself was gone now, though blood had stained the floor and lockers around the chair in great spattered fans of dirty brown. Carver had noticed its absence when he’d gone to get the water from the locker, but the man hadn’t mentioned what he might have done with it. Neither had Carver thought it wise to ask. He looked up at the screen. A fuzzy shadow moved across the image, presumably an out-of-focus asteroid.
‘What’s the planet?’ asked Carver, trying to change the subject.
‘Yuwan,’ said the man distantly. ‘Our local gas giant — the nearest planet to us. A Predecessor world. They found the ruins on one of its moons, Safi-366.’ He didn’t sound hostile at all now, but thoughtful and introspective. ‘They certainly seemed to like gas-giant moons,’ he mused. He indicated the vastness of space with a sweep of one hand. ‘Beyond that, outwards: Vagar, an icy little rock. Then Platini system, just under five light years away. In the other direction, towards Soros: Lillias; CET-11; Viking; Pallos; Hantii. They move around, of course, so they’re not strictly lined up like that, but you get the idea.
All dead worlds, never colonised or terraformed. The sort of places no species would want.’ He looked round, his eyes distant and dreamy, twinkling with the reflected lights of the console, as if there were fireworks inside his head. Carver felt the sadness of the night before emanating from him still. He practically smelled of defeat. No wonder your dragon is finished with you.
‘Why not?’ asked Carver, trying to be polite. When was the bastard going to release him? Was the bastard going to release him? Neither man had mentioned the possibility yet this morning. Carver wondered if he had really heard the voice last night, or if it had just been a product of his own exhausted brain. It seemed unreal now, though he remembered feeling very different about it at the time. It had seemed real then, hadn’t it? But he’d taken fader last night, and fader was notorious for inducing hallucinations. Dream juice, it had been called on the streets of Aitama. He wished he’d refused it now.
His current state of uncertainty wasn’t helped by the fact that, regardless of whether he had heard the voice before, or just imagined it, it hadn’t spoken to him this morning. Part of him was immensely relieved by this. Maybe he wasn’t going insane after all. But another part of him wished it would speak again. That voice had seemed so sure, so calm, so soothing — balm to his racked and frightened mind. He remembered falling into a restful slumber, confident that the morning would bring release, relief and revenge. But now. . . now he was not so sure.
So he played the game, being polite and restrained with the crazy dragon-man, taking the crazy dragon-man’s insults, listening to the crazy dragon-man’s bullshit. He remembered the voice saying, You, Prisoner Carver, are to be my new emissary, and shuddered a little. Maybe, if it really was all real, Carver himself was the new crazy dragon-man, the latest edition. Fuck it — whatever, he thought. I just want out of this. I’ll play the crazy dragon-man for the rest of eternity if I can just be free again. His gaze stole to the restraining device stuck to the vertical face of the console. I hate you, he thought at it, lest it might forget.
