Adrift

by Rob Boffard

  It doesn’t make sense. How can it still be here? With the gate destroyed, it’s stuck, just like they are.

  Hannah can’t speak. Can’t even move. The metal spheres begin to appear: tiny white dots exiting the bigger ship. Jack has gone paper-white.

  “Can we talk to them?” Hannah says, her voice kicking back in. “Surrender? Something?”

  “No surrender,” Volkova says. “Never surrender.”

  Then she swings the Panda around so that the Colony ship vanishes. She slams the stick forward, the engines roaring to life. On the main deck, Malik Livingstone is shouting. Any second now, they’ll hear the thud-bang of a sphere impact, followed by the freezing, boiling darkness of decompression.

  “Projectile lock,” says the Scottish voice. “Projectile lllll—” The voice cuts off with a squashed, distorted yelp.

  They’re heading right for the debris field, banking in a slow arc towards it. Hannah finds her voice again. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” says Volkova.

  “I thought you said we couldn’t get too close!”

  The captain spits another barrage of angry Russian, one hand locked on the stick, the other dancing between the control panels. They’re very near the debris now – the nearest piece, what looks like a chunk of gate, looms in the viewport.

  “Do something!” Jack roars.

  “Shut up!” Volkova yells back. “Just shut up!”

  The debris is almost on them. Any second now, it’s going to smash through the cockpit glass. Hannah squeezes her eyes shut, turning her face away.

  The impact doesn’t come. She opens her eyes, then wishes she hadn’t. More debris looms, appearing from all directions.

  “What’s happening?” Brendan is in the doorway, holding on with both hands. Everett and Seema are behind him, their eyes wide.

  Volkova does something with the controls, something hard and wrenching which makes the ship drop, like it’s falling down an elevator shaft. The inertial dampeners whir into life, fighting against the movement, not quite managing to beat it. Hannah’s feet rise off the floor, and her stomach threatens to climb into her throat. Suddenly, she’s back on Sigma, watching that historical sim play out on the VR, watching Omen and Blackbird and Rainmaker curve and twist across the battlefield. Thread the needle.

  It looked almost impossible when Rainmaker did it, and she was in a Scorpion fighter, built to dance through the vacuum. How the hell are they going to do it in a tour ship?

  The ship’s voice returns. Now its voice is male Indian, the accent gentle and lilting. “Deploying countermeasures. Deploying countermeasures. Sorry, countermeasures are not installed on this ship class. Do you wish to contact customer service to order this feature?”

  “Jesus—” Seema gets out. But her words are cut off by a loud rumble, rattling through the ship, fading away to be replaced by even more alarms and Volkova’s furious swearing. One of the displays near Hannah’s head is flashing, showing a schematic of the ship with its back end blinking in an ugly red. The sight freezes the blood in her veins.

  “Did we get hit?” she shouts.

  “It hit the debris behind us,” Volkova says, spitting the words over her shoulder. She’s still fighting with the controls, slicing the ship through the closely packed debris. She’s trying to outmanoeuvre the spheres, getting the wreckage from the gate in between them and the Panda. Hannah stares at Volkova in stunned amazement – Jesus, this woman can fly.

  But it might not be enough. Another chunk of debris fills the cockpit glass. It’s not a big one, but they’re coming at it fast. Volkova snarls, twisting the stick, trying to bank the Red Panda away from it.

  Chapter 24

  Lorinda hangs in the debris field, watching with mute horror as the spheres close in on the Red Panda. There are two of them still chasing – there were three, but Volkova managed to fake one out, smashing it into a piece of debris. It’s one of the best pieces of flying Lorinda has ever seen, something she didn’t even think was possible in a ship like the Panda.

  “Red Panda, come in,” she says, forcing the words out. Her only reply is the same oblivious voice, thanking her for her attempt at contact. She cuts the connection, swearing. She hasn’t sworn in years, and it sounds far too loud in the cramped helmet.

  The air around her face is heavy with floating blobs of sweat – the suit’s cooling system has overloaded, refusing to suck in more moisture. The glass is a smeared nightmare, one she can only see through in patches. As she watches, the Panda passes below her, moving out of sight, the spheres trailing, closing fast.

  The worst part is the silence. It’s like the station all over again; all that destruction, and not a single sound.

  She can’t move fast enough to intercept the spheres – and, even if she could, what the hell would she do when she got there? She squeezes the thruster control anyway. She doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have anything close to a plan, but it’s better than doing nothing.

  Even then, there’s no telling how long she’ll be able to keep going. Spacewalking might be like riding a bike, but she’s never felt this tired. The aching numbness has spread from her fingertips to her forearms, leeching into her elbow joints, curling up to nestle in her knees.

  She spots the Panda below her, at her seven o’clock. The spheres are even closer now, but the ship is still winding its way through the debris, getting in so close that it’s a wonder it’s not being smashed to pieces. Not that it matters. Sooner or later, Volkova will make a mistake. The spheres won’t.

  Lorinda looks back at the Colony ship. It’s hanging off to one side, not moving, drifting in the blackness. An unexpected wave of anger rolls through her, fresh and sharp. Who the hell are these people? Why are they doing this?

  She turns her head, intending to find the Panda again, when she stops.

  They haven’t sent any spheres in her direction. They’re ignoring her completely: either they don’t know she’s there, or they don’t care. And why would they? Once the Red Panda is destroyed, they can just turn and leave.

  She’s never felt terror like this. It’s one thing to face death inside the Panda, but it’s something else entirely to face it out here, where a single wrong move could end her. It’s enough to freeze her in place for a few moments, the blood rushing in her ears. She makes herself think of the Red Panda, of Corey Livingstone and his family.

  She thinks of her sister’s grandson, her grandnephew or nephew twice removed or whatever the hell he is, the one she was going to give that lizard toy to. She’ll never be able to see his reaction, never be able to find out if he loves it, or reacts like Corey and Malik did. It’s that – that tiny little fact – that finally pushes past the fear. She can’t do anything about the spheres …

  But maybe she can do something about that damn ship.

  She bites her lip, focusing on the bright pain, using it to eclipse the ache in her arms and legs. Could she smash the ship’s cockpit? Decompress it? No chance. Even the glass on their Central mining module back in the Belt was reinforced: primary and secondary layers, pressure panes, scratch coating. The Colony ship probably has double that – she’ll just bounce right off.

  What about disabling the engines somehow? If she could get to one of their thrusters …

  … but that won’t stop the guidance systems or AI from working, and that means the spheres will keep on coming.

  Could use the ship’s spheres against it? She won’t be able to control them, or get them to turn on their controller. But perhaps she doesn’t need to.

  She interrogates the idea, trying to find problems with it. There are many, but not as many as the others, which means it’s the best idea she’s got.

  “All right, bucko,” she murmurs. “Here we go.”

  Lorinda Anna Maria Esteban summons every bit of energy she has left, and squeezes the control stick, propelling herself towards the ship. It’s upside down in relation to her, which makes it harder. Lorinda swallows, letting
muscle memory take over as she flies above the debris, looking for the openings releasing the spheres. It feels like an age before she finds them, two black holes on either side of the ship’s bulbous belly.

  She’s lost sight of the Panda entirely – for all she knows, it could be destroyed already. She doesn’t dare look. And she has no idea if this is even going to work. If they target her before she gets there …

  “Dios mio,” Lorinda says. She’s barely aware of the whispered prayer. “Don’t let them spot me. Let me be small. Lord, let me be a speck of dust out here. Just a little speck of dust.”

  She pushes the thrusters harder, burning her propellant, ignoring the warnings flashing up in her helmet. The ship is less than a mile away now. She can make out more detail in the bays the spheres are launching from. The spheres are arranged in a long line, locked to a railing running back down into the ship. From a distance, it makes the bay she’s approaching look like an eye, with the sphere as the pupil surrounded by a dark iris. She’s going to have to do this carefully, and she’s going to have to do it fast.

  The terror comes back. She makes herself think of Craig, imagines his voice in her ears, his soothing drawl crackly and amused. Got yourself into a bit of a pickle, darling. Don’t you fret, though. Nothing you can’t handle.

  A hundred yards now. She can just make out the details inside the launch bay, see more spheres lined up. Right now, her back is to the ship. She needs to come in feet first, bending her knees to absorb the impact. It’ll hurt like hell – it’s hard not to think of bones and joints shattering, like a dropped champagne flute – but it’s the only way.

  Carefully, oh so carefully, she works the thrusters, sending tiny jets out to the side. She tilts backwards in relation to the Colony ship. It’s then that Lorinda realises that if this works, everybody in that ship is going to die. There’s no way they’ll be able to seal themselves off in time. The thought almost stops her cold.

  Too late now. It’s them, or the Panda.

  Lorinda makes contact with the side of the Colony ship, her knees screaming, a stabbing pain shooting through the joints. But she’s still OK. For now. Her suit isn’t damaged, and her legs didn’t splinter into a thousand pieces. She works her thrusters, moving slowly towards the line of spheres.

  The bay they’re protruding from is larger than she first thought, a circular hole at least fifteen feet across, like the barrel of a gigantic gun, the muzzle flush against the ship’s hull. Inside the barrel, the spheres are attached to a thick rail in a long line, held in place by stout brackets. As she watches, the outermost bracket disengages, the sphere’s thrusters activating, sending it exploding away.

  The rail moves the line of spheres forward, another taking the first one’s place. At full clip, like back at Sigma, this thing must be able to launch spheres at an insane rate. No sooner has the thought occurred than two more fire, moving almost too fast for her to track.

  Do they know she’s here? Would they have cameras near the sphere bays? She pushes the thought aside – if she doesn’t work fast, it’s not going to matter one bit whether or not they catch her.

  Chapter 25

  There’s no room left in the Red Panda’s cockpit. Everyone on the ship has crowded in, the Livingstones pressed up against Brendan and Seema, Jack having to bend his head as he’s squashed into the cockpit wall next to a white-faced Hannah. Every second brings another glimpse of one of the spheres, another piece of debris coming right at them, another sickening lurch from the ship as Volkova yanks the stick back and forth.

  Everett is muttering. “Watch the left, watch the left.”

  “What if we—” says Brendan. He’s cut off by a yelp from Anita as a chunk of the gate nearly explodes through the viewport. Volkova turns aside at the last second, her knuckles bloodless against the control stick.

  The whole thing reminds Jack of the last football game he watched, a party at the house of someone he can’t remember, the kind of party where everyone’s drinking out of plastic cups and eating from bowls of sweaty chips. Everyone clustered around an old-school wall holo, yelling and thumping their armrests. He remembers thinking how stupid it was, how nothing they said or did would have any impact on the game.

  “Projectile lock,” says the Panda. “Projectile lll—” It switches back to its original male voice. “Activating playlist: Urban and R&B.”

  “No!” Volkova shouts. The muscles in her neck stand out, hard as iron. “Cancel command.”

  This time, the ship responds. “Playlist cancelled, Captain.”

  “What if we shoot back?” Corey Livingstone shouts.

  “With what?” yells his brother.

  “We could put something in the airlock and depressurise and—”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Malik looks like he’s about to throw up.

  “Well, it’s better than just standing here!”

  “Both of you.” Jack can’t tell if the expression on Anita Livingstone’s face is one of terror or anger. “Get to the escape pod.”

  “No, Mom! We’re not leaving!”

  The ship shudders, then lurches sideways. Ordinarily, the gravity well would keep them upright, but its inertial sinks are starting to struggle. They’re not meant to deal with the strain Volkova is putting them through. Jack finds himself hurled on top of Brendan and Anita, collapsing in a tangle of limbs. Someone’s fingers are in his mouth, one eye squashed against a shoulder. He struggles to his feet, pushing away, just in time to see a bloom of fire from somewhere above them.

  “Ha!” Volkova shouts. “Two down! Eto tebya tochno nauchit!”

  “What’s she saying?” Seema yells.

  Jack ignores her, reaching out a hand to help Brendan to his feet. Hannah is clinging onto the wall, like she’s standing on a ledge with the wind tugging at her. As Jack looks past her, he sees something that almost makes his heart stop.

  A third sphere is coming for them. It’s shot ahead, fully in view now, cruising around the debris field, avoiding the bigger chunks. It’s just starting to turn towards them, and there are very few pieces of debris in the space ahead. It occurs to Jack that the spheres might have some kind of machine learning – if one fails, the others may analyse the data, work out why so they can avoid doing the same. Either that, or they’re human-controlled, and the people on the Colony ship have got tired of this game.

  “OK, gondoni, I see you,” Volkova mutters. Her hands dart out, flicking switches faster than Jack can register. He can’t be sure, but it feels like the Red Panda shudders to a halt, the sphere coming right towards them now, a mile away, closing fast.

  “Captain, reverse thrust detected,” says the Panda. “Should error error command not understood.”

  “What are you doing?” Jack says. He has a sudden urge to reach over, push Volkova out of her chair, take over, get them out of here.

  “Full thrust. Put us back into the debris.”

  For a second, there’s nothing to prove they’re moving. Then pieces of debris begin to appear, slipping into view. The sphere is dead centre in the cockpit viewport.

  “Can anyone see Lorinda?” Hannah says.

  “Forget Lorinda,” says Seema. “Why haven’t we turned around?”

  “Wreckage is too close.” Volkova leans to the side, fingers darting across switches. “We turn now, we crash. We have to go straight backwards.”

  “How are you even steering?”

  Volkova taps the side of her head, not looking away from the approaching sphere.

  “Are you serious?” Jack says. “You’re doing this from memory?”

  “Isn’t there a camera?” says Anita. “A rear-view mirror? Something?”

  “No reverse camera,” Volkova says, hissing the words through gritted teeth. “Cameras side and bottom, but not on the back.”

  “Then how are we—”

  “I know where the wreckage is. I can steer us.”

  For the first time in forever, nobody says anything. Nobody can look away from th
e approaching sphere. It’s less than half a mile now, a white dot against the blackness, getting bigger every second. Volkova is muttering to herself, and with a dull thud of horror, Jack realises she has her eyes closed. She’s tweaking the stick, gently moving them from side to side.

  Hannah’s face is drained of blood. “Captain, it’s getting closer.”

  “We gotta turn,” says Brendan. “Can you go any faster?”

  “Not yet,” Volkova says.

  “But—”

  “Not. Yet.”

  Chapter 26

  Lorinda is a few feet away from the line of spheres when whoever is controlling them realises she’s there.

  Ahead of her, the bay doors begin to slide shut, the protruding rail with its cargo of spheres starting to retract. She doesn’t waste time looking for something on the outside to keep them open – there won’t be anything. With an economy of movement born from thousands of hours in space, she launches herself forward, firing the thrusters at just the right second to give her enough of a boost. She executes a long, languorous forward flip, grabbing the edge of one of the closing doors, using her momentum to spin herself inside the bay.

  A second later, she slams against the interior wall, her breath harsh and ragged, her aged body screaming at her. The doors aren’t closing at speed, but she’s got perhaps fifteen seconds before they lock her in here.

  Lorinda is still in zero-G, outside the reach of the ship’s gravity well. Now that she’s inside, she can see that what she thought was a simple launch bay is more like a long tube, stretching deep into the interior of the Colony ship, with the sphere rail vanishing into darkness.

  There’s got to be something she can use. She looks around, wincing at how much effort it takes to turn her head, and spots a recessed panel in the wall. She has no idea if it’s connected to the closing door, or if the electronics behind it are thermally shielded, and she doesn’t bother second-guessing herself. She grabs the grips on the panel – like all access ports on ship exteriors, they’re designed to accommodate suit gloves. Then she braces her feet against the wall, and pulls.