Skybreach (The Reach #3)

by Mark R. Healy

And they were coming in hot.

  “Brace, brace, brace!” he yelled into his comms, gripping his hands around the harness as he prepared for the worst.

  Surely this was it. This was the moment when the railcar would burst apart, sending the lot of them spinning into space.

  He looked back at Lazarus, but the Redman’s attempts to force his way into the cargo bay had already ended. Succumbing to the brutal environment of space, he now lay slumped against the hull, unmoving, his body cold and lifeless.

  Ursie waited at the airlock doors, peering out through the window as the OrbitPod loomed larger and larger in the roof of the dock. Although she’d never seen the vehicle approach from this angle, she couldn’t help but feel that it was moving too fast. It really did seem to be coming in at breakneck speed.

  Maybe there was simply no way for it to slow down in time, given the acceleration she and Heketoro had applied to it earlier.

  “Gonna be rough,” Tobias said at her side as he squinted through the window.

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced over at the old man. As the situation had escalated, Tobias had seemed to experience a few moments of lucidity. For a few moments here and there, he seemed sharper, more intense. Whether this was some kind of fight-or-flight instinct, or something else entirely, Ursie couldn’t be sure, but she welcomed it nonetheless. Although she had grown to love his carefree, harmless attitude, right now she needed someone who could help her get through this mess, and that was what he was giving her.

  Suddenly, the OrbitPod cast a shadow over the dock, and then it collided with the huge clamps at the end of the Wire. The entire habitat rocked, and both Ursie and Tobias fell away from the window. She waited for the walls around her to rip apart, to feel herself being sucked into the vacuum of space, but the structure held firm. After a moment she was able to climb back to her feet. As she reached the window she saw bits of metal and other detritus fall soundlessly from the OrbitPod onto the floor of the dock below. Both the OrbitPod and the clamps seemed to be wobbling madly, but they had not broken apart. They were holding firm.

  “They made it!” she exclaimed.

  “Don’t count yer chickens just yet,” Tobias said, picking himself up. “We don’t know if the hull ruptured, or somethin’ worse.”

  The clamps locked around the OrbitPod, and as the massive doors above started to slide together, the OrbitPod began its 180 degree transition in order to orientate itself with the gravity inside the habitat. More pieces of debris spun away from the vehicle, and as Ursie peered closer, she saw a horrible sight – at least half of the compartments designed for carrying people had sustained damage. One of them looked as though it had blown apart completely.

  “They’re dead,” she said, distraught. “They’re all dead.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  Despite her gloomy thoughts, she remained rooted to the spot. She had to wait until the docking procedure finished, and then she would know for sure.

  The doors came together, sealing the dock and shutting out the view of Earth above, and the OrbitPod completed its rotation a few moments later. Urise heard a hissing sound as the oxygen jets flooded the dock with breathable air.

  Moments later, the lock disengaged and Ursie swung the door open.

  She began to run forward, her eyes scanning the length of the OrbitPod as she sought for any sign of life.

  “Knile?” she called out. “Where are you?”

  So intent was she upon the OrbitPod that she did not notice the chunk of debris on the floor in front of her until she had tripped over it. She went sprawling awkwardly on her hands and knees, cursing, and as she looked back, she realised that it was not debris that had caused her to fall.

  It was a dead guy.

  She picked herself up and looked down at the man. His skin was raw and sickly red, as if he’d been dragged across coarse asphalt for a few blocks. Although his arms were bare, he wore a tattered breastplate that was all too familiar.

  The guy belonged to the Crimson Shield.

  She leaned down and turned his chin toward her to look at his face. She did not recognise him as one of the local Redmen, which meant he must have hitched a ride from Earth.

  “Ursie?”

  Her heart leapt, and as she spun back toward the OrbitPod, she saw Knile and three others climbing down shakily toward them.

  Four minutes, fifteen seconds.

  That was how long they had to live.

  Knile held his wristwatch steady for a moment longer, ensuring that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, then turned to Holger and the others.

  “Four minutes,” he told them. “Forget the cargo, just–”

  Holger wasn’t listening, however. He was bearing down on Aksel with a grim expression on his face.

  “You little turd,” he spat, gripping Aksel by his shirt front. “You lying sack of shit–”

  The shotgun appeared from his trench coat and lifted toward Aksel’s chest.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Knile said, yanking the weapon down again. “We don’t have time for this shit. We need to get out of here.”

  “Not this fucker,” Holger said, tightening his grip on Aksel’s shirt. The kid began to sob. “This little wank stain dies right here.”

  “He was tricked, okay?” Knile said. “We all were. You heard the conversation with Hank. He manipulated all of us, you and me included.”

  Holger pressed his lips together in disgust, staring down at Aksel menacingly, then relented and shoved him away.

  “Later,” he told Aksel. “There’ll be time for this later.”

  “Knile, c’mon!”

  Knile turned to see Ursie standing nearby with an old man in a weathered station cap at her side. She looked pale, more gaunt than when he’d last seen her. Sickly. But there was also an undeniable shine in her eyes, a glimpse of relief and happiness. She seemed glad to see him.

  Knile ran toward her, with Holger, Morgan and Aksel in close pursuit.

  “Looks like you bought us some time, Ursie,” he said, offering her a brief smile. “Now, please tell me you have a plan to get us the hell out of here.”

  “There’s an evacuation pod waiting for us, out this here door,” the old man said, gesturing with his worn fingers. “Just follow the red arrows on the floor.”

  “Wait a minute,” Holger said, turning back to the railcar. “Why don’t we put the goddamn bomb in the evac pod? Let it explode somewhere else?”

  “Too much risk,” Knile said. “What if the pod doesn’t reach safe distance in time? The shock wave from the explosion might still rip the habitat open, and then we’re screwed.”

  “Come on!” Ursie yelled. “Let’s go!”

  Holger hesitated for a moment longer, then they all broke into a run. Knile took a few steps, then faltered as he caught sight of Lazarus lying prone on the floor nearby. Ursie turned back to him.

  “Looks like one of the bad guys tried to hitch a ride,” she said. “Got what he deserved.”

  “No,” Knile said sadly. “He was one of ours.”

  “Huh?”

  “He was helping us. He was a… a friend.”

  “You two, get a move on!” Tobias barked at them as the others disappeared through the doorway.

  Ursie paused, torn between fleeing and staying behind. “He’s still alive,” she said. Knile glanced up at her sharply. “Just barely, but… deep down, there’s a flicker.”

  Knile hesitated a moment longer, then reached down and gripped the Redman’s arm.

  “We have to take him,” he said, straining under the weight as he tried to prop him up. “He tried to save us. I can’t just leave him here.”

  “The guy must weigh a tonne,” Ursie said. “There’s no way–”

  “I’ll bring a sweepdrone,” Tobias called out from the doorway. “There’s one in the maintenance supply next door.” He scowled. “At least, I think there is.”

  He disa
ppeared through the exit as Knile and Ursie grappled with the inert Redman, attempting to get him into a sitting position.

  “How long left?” she gasped.

  Knile checked his wristwatch out of the corner of his eye.

  “Three minutes, nine seconds. How long does it take to reach the evacuation area?”

  “Just a minute,” Ursie said. “We’ll make it.”

  Moments later, Tobias came barrelling back into the dock, white-knuckling the controls of a vehicle about the size of a fruit vendor’s cart back in Link, with circular brushes mounted on its undercarriage. He pulled up beside them and then dismounted, then assisted the others in hauling Lazarus up onto the rear of the vehicle.

  “Phew,” Tobias said as they finished, giving his own chest a little tap. “That ain’t much good for the ol’ ticker.”

  He slid behind the controls of the sweepdrone again and began to pull away.

  “Let’s go,” Ursie said, breaking into a run.

  The sweepdrone pottered along at an excruciatingly slow pace as it struggled under the added weight of the Redman, and Knile and Ursie were forced to jog alongside like a security detail. Knile had no time to take anything in, to experience the wonder of the habitat – a shame, he thought distantly, considering he had dedicated so many years of his life striving to set foot here. Instead of taking time to explore, to savour the accomplishment of leaving Earth behind, he was stuck in the same cycle he had always experienced before – running, trying to thwart death as it lunged at him from every corner, snapping at his heels like an insatiable beast.

  They moved up a ramp, and Knile put his shoulder behind the sweepdrone to help increase its momentum. His eyes caught sight of his watch again.

  A little over two minutes left.

  How long does it take to reach minimum safe distance? he wondered. If we get to the escape craft with ten seconds to go, is that going to be long enough to–

  “Oh, fuck. Look!” Ursie shouted suddenly in horror as they passed an observation window. Knile followed her gaze and saw a canvas of black space, against which a glinting white craft was gradually growing smaller.

  Knile glanced back at her, confused. “One of the escape modules?”

  “It has to be ours,” Ursie cried, distraught. “It was the last one left. The others left ages ago.”

  Knile turned back to the window, watching the small spherical hull of the pod drift away. His confusion turned to dread, and then anger.

  “Holger?” he said into his comms. “Holger!”

  “…sorry, man,” came Holger’s voice crackling over the comms. “…not dying… for that dumb wad of Redman… your funeral…”

  “Holger, you piece of shit!” Knile screamed, but all he heard in reply was static.

  Tobias had turned, and now sat watching them over his shoulder.

  “Did I just hear that right?” he said. “Did they cut us adrift?”

  “They left without us,” Ursie said, numb. Tears welled in her eyes. “After all that we’ve been through, this whole thing amounted to nothing.”

  Knile stared back at her, unable to offer any kind of solace. He felt the same way she did. He just shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Ursie. I…”

  He trailed off, and for a moment there was silence. Then Tobias noisily cleared his throat.

  “Pull yer fingers out,” he said, spurting forward on the sweepdrone. He veered away from the arrows on the floor and began to head in the opposite direction. “We’ll take the back door.”

  Knile glanced at Ursie. “What’s he talking about?” he said.

  Ursie began to run. “I have no damn idea. Just run!”

  They sprinted along the empty concourse as the warning lamps continued to throw waves of red across the floor and ceiling, and as they caught up to the sweepdrone, they dropped their shoulders behind it and began to push with all their might. Knile had no clue as to where they might be going, or what the old man had in mind, but he kept shoving all the same. Perhaps this was just some deep-seated survival instinct to put as much distance between himself and the explosion as possible, to remove himself from the danger area, but in truth he knew such an idea to be fundamentally flawed. If the habitat were to be ripped apart, there would be no place in which they could find safety. Death would flood into every corner of the fragile space bubble. Cold, unforgiving death, a horror from which there would be no refuge.

  Less than a minute left, now. Knile’s existence could now be numbered in the seconds.

  Tobias reached the end of the concourse and pulled the sweepdrone to a halt before an arched expanse of dark grey metal with a round window in the centre. He hobbled over to a keypad and swiped a card across it.

  “The Skywalk?” Ursie said, breathless. “Can we use that?”

  “What’s a goddamn Skywalk?” Knile said, but then the arch groaned and began to retract. A gust of stale air swept over them, and Tobias thrust himself back onto the sweepdrone.

  “Go, go!” he cried, driving forward. He bounced the sweepdrone over the join in the doorway, into the dim passageway beyond, ducking his head low to avoid the steadily rising door. Knile caught sight of a long, curved tunnel stretching out before them, and once he was safely through, turned back to look back along the concourse.

  “Less than thirty seconds,” he told them.

  Tobias swung his leg over the sweepdrone and climbed off, then hastened over to the keypad on this side of the door. He swiped, but the door of the Skywalk kept moving upward.

  “What’s going on?” Ursie said. “Are we going to be safe in here?”

  “Sure as hell not if I can’t get this stinkin’ door closed,” Tobias grunted. He swiped again, then bashed a wrinkled fist on the keypad, and the door began to reverse.

  It crept downward at a glacial pace. Knile looked along the tunnel, but there was no point running. Should the habitat decompress now, the four of them would be sucked out into space like motes of dust into a vacuum cleaner.

  “Move away,” Tobias said, edging back from the door. “Move!”

  The door reached waist-height and continued downward. By Knile’s calculation, their time was pretty much up.

  Knee-height. There was a distant grumble, and something flashed brightly out on the concourse.

  “Oh, fuck,” Ursie whispered.

  “Grab onto something,” Tobias said, clutching at a join in the wall. “Hang on like–”

  His words were torn from his mouth as a maelstrom whipped about them and on down the Skywalk. There was a horrendous groaning sound, and the entire tunnel seemed to pitch downward at one end, like a fishing line after the catch, and then it sprung back, sending them flying in all directions. The maelstrom reversed as air was sucked out through the narrow gap in the door. Knile slid uncontrollably toward it, flailing his arms for purchase, and then he caught the edge of the sweepdrone. Ursie lay wedged against the vehicle on the other side, and Knile reached out and snared Tobias as the old man slid past. Then, mercifully, the door groaned shut with a resounding thud, and the hurricane abated, leaving them to stare at each other breathlessly in the ensuing silence.

  45

  “She ain’t gonna last,” Tobias said. “I’ll tell you that much for sure.”

  Knile joined him at the window that looked out upon the ruin of the habitat. Outside, there was devastation as far as he could see. From the edge of the Skywalk, a thin, jagged protrusion of metal stretched out into empty space, arcing across the sky for several hundred metres, where it seemed to form a tenuous bridge to the Skywalk that appeared on the opposite side. Along its length, silver filaments and ruined metal struts jutted out haphazardly.

  To Knile, it looked more like the skeletal spine of some great metallic beast than part of the habitat in which they had been walking only a few minutes before.

  Elsewhere, chunks of metal and plastic drifted through the emptiness, a huge nebula of it, with pieces ranging in size from a matchbox to a small car. A constant bar
rage of fragments scraped and bumped disconcertingly against the exterior of the Skywalk, the largest pieces causing the entire structure to shake.

  Further afield, the Wire was nowhere to be seen. It had obviously been severed, and now Knile could only imagine that it must be plummeting downward, collapsing toward Earth like a taut piece of string suddenly clipped from the top.

  “What’s not going to last?” Knile said finally, his voice filled with weariness.

  Tobias pointed. “That last piece of the habitat. The bit that’s holdin’ everything together.”

  As if on cue, the skeletal length of alloy groaned, the shriek of metal echoing down the tunnel behind them like a wailing ghost.

  “And what happens then?”

  Tobias shrugged. “Don’t know, exactly, but it can’t be good. Doubt the Skywalk was built to deal with this kind of stress, to hang out in the middle of nowhere with nothin’ to hold it up.”

  “So what?” Ursie said behind them. She had not bothered to get up off the floor. “We’re screwed. We have no way out of this thing. We’re trapped. One way or the other, we’re going to die in here.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that, Ursalina Ballerina. There is one way we can go.” He looked over her shoulder into the gloom of the tunnel and pointed. “Thatta way.”

  “Wait, what is this thing?” Knile said. “What does it do?”

  “The Skywalks were built a long time ago, back in the glory days of Earth,” Tobias said. “Used to form a bridge between the space elevators. They’d ship parts and people and heck knows what else back and forth. That was in the good ol’ days, when everything was hummin’. Back before they shut it all down.”

  Knile considered that for a moment. “So what’s at the end of this tunnel?”

  Tobias took a moment to gather his bearings, then peered along the Skywalk.

  “Well, this here is east, so that’s got to be Sunspire out there.”

  “Sunspire?”

  “Yeah. The elevator that sits on top of Sunspire Mountain.”

  “Wait a minute,” Knile said, his excitement growing. “Are you telling me that we can get to another elevator through here?”