by Rob Boffard
He shakes his head. “Lucky shot hit the engine.”
I point to Anna’s shooting nest. Carver nods, and we sprint towards it, keeping as many barriers as possible between us and the entrance to the dock. Even so, we have to hit the ground a few times as bullets slam into them. There are bodies back here; too many of them.
Anna is crouched down when we get there. Her beanie is pulled down low on her head, and the eyes visible underneath it are glowing white-hot. There’s no sign of Royo, or Syria, or anyone else we know. No Prakesh, either.
I lean up against the crates, breathing hard, feeling fury coursing through my veins.
“Are they still coming?” Carver shouts to Anna.
She nods, slamming the breech of the long gun shut.
“How many? I ask.
“Hard to tell,” she says through gritted teeth. “A lot.”
“Can we hold out?”
But even as I ask the question I know what the answer is. The dock is filling with smoke from the detonated rockets. Every breath burns, turning the back of my throat to acid. And everywhere I look, I see bodies. Stomper, Tzevyan and Earther, piled together. Even if we’ve taken down one of them for each of us, it’s still not enough.
Carver grabs two nearby stingers, checks them, then tosses them aside with a snarl. “Empty,” he says.
“Got anything else?”
Before he can answer, there’s the rough whistle of another rocket. It detonates above us, and I go deaf again, the afterimage of the explosion imprinted on my retinas. Anna fires, her eyes just visible over the long gun’s stock.
Right then, I get a glimpse of the back of the hangar, and my stomach goes into free fall.
Royo is sprawled out on the dock. The floor around him is slick with blood, gushing from a wound high on his right leg. His face is twisted with pain and fury.
Okwembu is walking towards Royo, a stinger of her own clutched in her hands.
But she’s not firing. Because between her and Royo is Walker, swinging an enormous chain, daring Okwembu to take another step. She swings so hard and so fast that Okwembu has to dodge back, the thick chain striking the metal floor.
But none of that is what causes my blood to freeze.
It’s Mikhail.
Royo hasn’t seen him. Neither has Walker. But he’s moving fast, coming up from behind them, his footfalls masked by the noise of battle. There’s something in his hand. Something that catches the light from a rocket detonation nearby and reflects it back, turning the burning orange glow into something sharp and bright.
I boost out of my crouch into a sprint. I can feel from my screaming muscles that I’m moving faster than I ever have before, but it’s like I’m running on the spot. The distance between me and the back of the hangar seems to grow, even as Mikhail closes it.
I try to shout a warning, but it comes out as little more than a husk of itself, thin and empty. My legs are still moving, and the sparks of pain shooting from them tell me how fast I’m going, but I’m not going to make it. I’m not even halfway there when Mikhail reaches Royo.
Walker is regrouping after her last swing, setting her shoulders to move the chain again, and Royo is almost catatonic, his hands dark with blood as they grip his leg.
At the very last instant, Royo sees Mikhail. He tries to raise himself up, an expression of astonished anger on his face. Okwembu is smiling, serene.
Walker whirls around, but it’s too late.
Moving casually, almost gently, Mikhail puts a knee on Royo’s chest. He hesitates, just for a second, and then he slides the blade into Royo’s throat.
84
Riley
Royo goes still.
Walker screams in anger, lifting the chain high over her head. Before she can bring it down, Okwembu steps forward, and puts the stinger against her neck. I see her lips moving, but her words are lost in the wash of battle. Walker’s shoulders slump, and she hurls the chain down, the links crashing to the ground.
Mikhail removes the blade, wiping it on the sleeve of his jacket.
The strength goes out of my legs, and I’m brought to a stop completely when Okwembu glances in my direction and pushes the barrel of her stinger harder into Walker’s neck.
Mikhail raises the blade over his head. It must have been some sort of signal, because the gunfire coming from the entrance lowers, then stops completely. There are a few isolated pops from the remaining stompers, and a boom from Anna’s gun, but then even those die away. Smoke drifts across the hangar floor. I can see Anna reloading. She hasn’t seen what’s happened to Royo.
“It’s over!” Okwembu shouts, her sharp voice cutting through the fading echoes of gunfire.
Carver and Anna spin around, aiming their guns at her.
Okwembu flicks me a glance. “Careful, Ms Hale,” she says, more quietly.
I realise I’m still moving towards her, and stop. I can’t take my eyes off the gun at Walker’s neck.
“No one else has to die,” Mikhail shouts. “Not if you surrender yourselves.”
There’s silence in the dock. I look back across the floor, and I see with dismay that there are only a few of us left. Me, Carver, Anna, two Tzevyans, two Stompers. No: there are two more. Prakesh is over by the right-hand wall, leaning up against one of the tugs, his expression grim. Syria is with him.
But there are still at least a dozen Earthers, walking through the entrance to the dock. Mikhail brings the blade down, pointing it right at us. His eyes flash above it, green and clear.
And at that moment, one of the tugs at the entrance springs to life.
The Earthers around it scatter, and surprised shouts reach us across the dock.
Tseng. I can just seem him behind the controls. What is he doing?
The tug starts to rise. I look back at Okwembu, but she and Mikhail are frozen in place. It’s only when Tseng tilts the tug towards them, its shadow growing on the ground as it rises, that they start to move, taking halting, panicked steps backwards, Okwembu pulling Walker with her.
One of the Earthers emerges from the entrance. It’s Hisako – I remember her from when Carver, Anna and I were captured. I can barely make her out through the smoke. There’s a tube on her shoulder. She points it at Tseng’s tug, which is gathering speed, flying right across the dock towards us.
Okwembu sees it, too. “No!” she shouts.
Hisako fires.
The rocket hisses through the air, and hits the back of Tseng’s tug with a bang that shakes my teeth. The tug lurches forward, propelled on a cone of fire. It starts spinning, whirling on its horizontal axis. Carver screams my name.
The roar of the tug becomes a tortured, metallic scream. I feel it pass overhead, and hurl myself to the ground. Its shadow passes on top of me. Mikhail and Okwembu bolt, sprinting towards the wall of the hangar, heading for the other tugs.
Walker runs, too. But not fast enough.
The tug hits the ground.
It’s bouncing, breaking up, shedding pieces of itself like torn clothing. The cockpit vanishes, engulfed in a wave of fire which explodes from the tug’s belly. Walker looks up, then the tug is on her. She vanishes in a whirlwind of torn, screaming metal.
Carver’s grip on my arm is iron-tight. The destroyed tug is still going. The wrecked body is tumbling across the floor, heading right for the …
For the airlock doors.
They loom at the far end of the hangar. Big enough to let a whole tug through. Surely they’ll withstand a hit – they’re too big, too solid.
But the destroyed tug is coming in too fast.
It hits hard enough to shake the ground. Above us, the roof struts keen and screech, knocking loose dust and metal shavings. The boom is subsonic, catching in my bones.
The only thing louder is the silence that follows it.
When I look up, I see that the tug has smashed through the first set of doors, ripping right through the metal, knocking one door right off its tracks, coming to rest up against the oute
r doors.
Slowly, Carver and I get to our feet.
At that moment, the outer doors give off a low, metallic grinding sound. It’s the sound of metal splitting. They’re not holding – and beyond them is nothing but the vacuum.
“Oh gods,” says Carver.
85
Prakesh
They used to tell stories about hull breaches when Prakesh was a kid.
They were scary stories – tales the grown-ups would weave while they gathered around, wrapped up in blankets while their parents sipped homebrew in the dim light. They would talk about the monsters lurking on the other side; how they would reach through the hole, open their giant mouths and inhale, sucking everything out in an instant.
Prakesh knows better now, and he wishes he didn’t. Every fact about rapid decompression is flashing to the front of his mind. When those doors split, anything not nailed down will be dragged right out into space – including people. If by some miracle they manage to hold on, they’ll have about ten seconds before the loss in air pressure rips consciousness away from them. Two minutes later, they’ll be dead. That’s if the whirlwind of flying debris doesn’t kill them first
In a hundred years, it’s never happened, not once. The solid steel skin of Outer Earth has never been cut.
They have to get away. They have to move now. But Prakesh is already running the equations in his head, doing it involuntarily, size of the hole versus air speed versus tension on the station hull.
They’ll never make it.
And, all at once, the idea is there, burning bright. Prakesh stands and runs, pushing past Syria, scanning the bottom of the tugs. Come on, come on, where are you …
There. The ramp access button, a bulbous red mushroom on the tug’s underside. He hammers on it, and the ramp begins to drop, lowering down from the back of the tug. It’s their only hope: get inside a sealed environment, away from the deadly effects of the decompression.
The ramp moves slowly, issuing a thin mechanical whine, and Prakesh has to suppress an urge to scream at it. Instead, he turns and cups his hands to his mouth. “Everybody! Get inside, now!”
Syria reacts first, his big feet hammering across the floor, his arms pumping. He gets there just as the ramp fully extends. He grabs Prakesh’s shoulder, trying to pull him up the ramp. Prakesh twists away. “You go,” he says. “I’ll get the others on board.”
Syria wavers, then bolts up the ramp, using the handholds on the inner walls to pull himself along. Prakesh turns, and sees Janice Okwembu sprinting towards him. There are Earthers with her, some of them still clutching their weapons.
He almost stops her, then shakes it off. He has to preserve life now, no matter whose life it is, no matter what they’ve done. He gestures them onwards, urging them to hurry, and they sprint past him, pounding up the ramp. It bends and creaks under their weight. There’s no time to open any of the other tugs’ ramps – he’ll have to get as many people into this one as he can.
Prakesh’s heart is pounding, every muscle tense, waiting for the airlock doors to give way. He tells himself not to hold his breath if it happens – his lungs will rupture if he does. Every instinct he has is to get into the body of the tug himself, but he stays at the bottom, looking for more people he can save.
Riley. Where’s Riley? Prakesh shouts her name, but he can’t see her.
86
Riley
The airlock doors give another grinding screech. An alarm blares in the distance. The smoke in the hangar clears for a moment, as if it wants to give us a full view of what’s coming.
The doors give off another keening groan. The hangar is a grey nightmare, glowing orange in places from dozens of tiny fires.
Anna is with us, appearing as if from nowhere, her eyes wide and panicked. And I can’t see Prakesh. I don’t know where he is any more. I’m pulled in a thousand different directions.
“Can we seal the hangar?” I say to Carver.
“It won’t work,” he says. “The doors, remember?”
I can’t even see the entrance to the hangar – it’s vanished behind a curtain of smoke. But then Carver’s words sink in: we can’t seal the place off. The doors don’t work – and the tugs won’t block the entrance completely.
I hear my name being shouted, and see Prakesh. There he is, through a gap in the smoke. He’s over on the other side, underneath one of the tugs. Somehow, he’s managed to get its ramp open, and he’s waving people on board. Okwembu and Mikhail move past him. They’re all getting onto one tug. The thought of him on board with her …
“Come on,” I say. Carver and I start running, and it’s only a moment later that I realise Anna isn’t following. I look back to see her still standing there, the long gun by her side. I don’t like the way her mouth is hanging open, or the distant look in her eyes.
Ignoring Carver’s protests, I run back to her, grabbing her by the arm. “Anna, we have to go.”
She pulls away from my grip. “I can’t leave.”
“What?”
“My family. They’re still here. They’re still in Tzevya.”
“You’ll never make it.”
She gives her arm a vicious shake and knocks my hand away, her eyes blazing, every moment of her sixteen years radiating out. “I said I’m not going.”
“Anna, please,” I say, and I’m startled to feel tears staining my cheeks. There’s another groan from the outer airlock doors.
Anna puts her hands on my shoulders, letting the long gun fall to the floor. She stops being sixteen, just for a second. The distant look in her eyes has vanished, replaced by an eerie calm.
“You never gave me that race,” she says, and then pulls me into an embrace, her small arms tight around my shoulders.
“You’d never have beaten me anyway,” I say, my words muffled as I hug her back.
I want more than anything to pull her along with us. Instead, I whisper words into her ear. Words Amira might have said to me, in another time and place.
“Run. Faster than you ever have before. Watch your take-off spots on the jumps, tuck your arms for the rolls. Make sure you’re always looking ahead.”
Anna nods, tears of her own touching my skin. She breaks away, gives Carver a brief hug, and is gone, sprinting towards the dock entrance. She moves fast, vanishing down the corridor.
“Time to go,” Carver says.
And at that moment, the airlock doors give way.
87
Riley
The rush of air knocks me off my feet.
I’m tumbling, my body slamming into the ground, skidding across it. The smoke turns into huge curls as it’s sucked towards the breach. The roar is enormous.
Carver grabs my hand. He’s got hold of one of the tugs, his feet planted on the floor and the fingers of his other hand gripping a handle on its underside. I swing my other hand up, gripping his wrist. He starts to pull, his eyes squeezed almost shut. The muscles in his arm stand out like power cables. He jabs at the tug’s body with his elbow, and then the ramp is coming down, the whining of its motor cutting through the roar.
With a horrifying clarity, I see the drops of sweat on Carver’s face wicking away, sucked off his skin by the force of the breach. One touches my own cheek, a tiny spot of wetness, gone almost instantly.
I don’t feel fear. I hardly feel anything – just a thin, burning need to survive. I can’t get any air into my lungs, and blackness starts to creep in at the edges of my vision. I catch a split-second glimpse of the airlock doors – or where they used to be. The space beyond them is endless.
Movement. Coming right at me. I duck just in time for a spinning crate to shoot past. If I hadn’t, it would have taken my head off.
The pull of the air is like an arm around my chest, refusing to let go. Someone – Earther, stomper, no way to tell – shoots by us, tumbling out of control, their scream fading as they’re sucked towards the breach. I want to look to the side, to find Prakesh, but I know that if I take my eyes off Carver
I’m done for.
Then one of my feet is on the ramp. I finally risk a glance over to the other side of the hangar. I can’t find Prakesh’s tug – they all look identical, lined up along the far wall, entrance ramps shut. With a sickening lurch in my stomach, I see that they’re rocking on their magrails.
I’m barely conscious now, with no oxygen in my body, moving by sheer force of will. I propel myself forward, dragging myself into the tug. There are handholds just above the ramp, and I wrap my fingers around them, the tendons in my arms screaming in protest. There’s a push from behind, Carver’s hands flat on my back, and then I’m sprawling across the floor. I hear Carver come in behind me, grunting with the effort. The ramp starts to close, its electronic whine louder inside.
The ramp shuts with a loud clack. I take a breath, but there’s no oxygen. Nothing at all. It was all sucked out the moment the ramp began to open.
The blackness closes in completely.
I don’t know how long I’m out. I know it can’t be more than two minutes, because if it were I’d be dead. An alarm is blaring, the speaker painfully close to my ear, and a calm, mechanical voice is saying, over and over again, “Danger. Pressure Loss. Emergency O2 activated.”
I roll over, trying to inhale as much air as I can. My lungs feel like they’re being burned away, and each breath stokes the fire. I concentrate on the motion of taking each breath, pushing back against the pain. The world has shrunk to the space around my lungs, blacking out everything else.
Slowly, the fire recedes, the oxygen trickling into my system, my lungs finally settling back into a rhythm. We’re in a small rectangular loading area in the middle of the tug. Readouts and storage lockers, some the size of a grown man, line the walls, and everything is bathed in a low red light. I get to my feet, struggling to hold myself upright. I’m trembling, but quickly realise it isn’t just me: the whole tug is shaking, straining at its coupling.
