by Gary Gibson
Gabrielle shrieked, twisting to one side to try and protect her belly and the child within. Megan sideswiped the other vehicle, and they came to a sudden halt that propelled them both forward in their restraints. The other truck had jammed them up against the wall.
Gabrielle glanced at the driver of the other vehicle, now visible in his cabin. He looked in worse shape than either of them. The front of his vehicle had crumpled up from the impact, while blood oozed from his forehead. He slumped to one side even as she watched, and it looked as if he was having trouble breathing.
‘I need you to go through to the back and unstrap Bash,’ shouted Megan. ‘Leave the rifle with me. We’re going the rest of the way on foot.’
Gabrielle got herself free of her seat and climbed back through the hatch, dropping down into the rear compartment and quickly unbuckling Bash. If he’d suffered as a result of the impact, she had no way of telling. She got the side door open and guided him outside to where Megan was already waiting, staring back down the slope with the rifle in her hands.
‘Bash isn’t dressed for the cold,’ warned Gabrielle, as they guided him towards the containment field. ‘He could freeze to death in minutes.’
‘Once we’re through the field, we can get to the dropship in a minute flat,’ said Megan. ‘Maybe even less. So come on.’
The temperature indeed plummeted sharply the moment they passed through the containment field. It was snowing outside, great drifts of it building up beyond the cave entrance. Bash instantly tensed up, his eyes looking wide and startled above his disposable mask. They both tugged him onwards, one on either side, until he began to walk faster, his whole frame trembling from the terrible, debilitating cold.
They were halfway to the dropship when they heard shouts from behind them.
‘Keep him moving!’ yelled Megan. ‘We’re nearly there!’
Up ahead, a man appeared from around one of the dropship’s stanchions. He aimed a rifle at them, and immediately a shot echoed through the frozen air.
‘Get inside as fast as you can!’ yelled Megan, dropping to one knee and aiming her rifle. ‘And keep your goddamn head down!’
Gabrielle dragged Bash towards the already lowered ramp of the dropship, which was surrounded by pallets and lifting gear. Light flashed and she saw the Freeholder stagger back from the stanchion, bright flames erupting from his chest.
Something whined past Gabrielle’s ear just as she reached the ramp. She glanced back towards the tunnel entrance, and saw more Freeholders gathered there, some of them kneeling just inside the containment field.
‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ shouted Megan, running up beside her and tugging Bash into the craft. ‘Get him inside!’
Bash stumbled up the ramp between them, while more gunshots filled the air. Megan then hit something on a wall and the ramp began to close behind them.
‘Over here,’ barked Megan, before dragging Bash towards a door that hissed open at her approach. ‘Get him inside.’
On the other side of the door was an elevator that looked as if it doubled as an airlock. It rose quickly, depositing them at the entrance to the cockpit. The air felt furnace-hot after spending just a minute or so in the open. Bash’s hands felt as cold as ice, and he was shaking.
‘Get him strapped in,’ instructed Megan, while pulling herself into a couch. Primary-coloured virtual panels materialized all around her. ‘We need to get this thing off the ground as fast as we can.’
Gabrielle coaxed Bash into one of the other couches, which, like much of the rest of the cockpit, was stained and streaked with red. By the time she finished strapping him in, the floor beneath her feet had begun to vibrate.
‘Your turn,’ said Megan.
Gabrielle threw herself into another couch, and felt an invisible weight pressing down on her even before she had finished securing herself. A glance at the screens that had flickered into being all around Megan confirmed that they were already a good distance from the ground.
‘That’s not good,’ Megan muttered.
‘What isn’t?’
‘One of those idiots hit something vital. I’m not sure this thing is going to take us as far from here as I was hoping.’
Sour acid flooded into Gabrielle’s belly. ‘Then what do we do?’
‘Hope for the best,’ said Megan, as the dropship boosted upwards.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Reaching low orbit a little over ten minutes later, Megan wondered if she should have been more honest with the girl about just how much trouble they were in. High-priority alerts floated all around her and, based on what those were warning her of, there was a real risk they might simply fall out of the sky. And every minute they stayed up, the more certain that became.
They clearly weren’t going to make it to high orbit. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
‘There’s been a change of plan,’ she muttered grimly. ‘We’re going to have to put down, and soon.’
Gabrielle’s nose wrinkled in a frown. ‘Is it really that bad?’
‘Could be worse,’ Megan grunted.
Until we hit the ground, anyway.
More alerts appeared nearby, and she hoped to hell Gabrielle didn’t know what they meant. They were now arcing high over the Montos de Frenezo, with the coast of the Great Barren Sea clearly visible to the south.
The question now was, where could they land? The systems-failure estimates dashed any hopes of their reaching even Aguirre.
She pulled up a map that showed the locations of various settlements scattered all across the plains to the west of the Montos de Frenezo. They still had a chance of reaching one of those. One or two were apparently research outposts staffed by off-worlders from other parts of the Accord. One of them might offer some means whereby they could get back to something resembling civilization, if not actually off-world.
A glyph appeared directly before her, flashing an urgent red and accompanied by a message: MULTIPLE BREACH ALERTS. CONTAINMENT SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT.
‘Gabrielle?’ said Megan, her voice high and tight. ‘I want you to unbuckle and go to the rear of the cockpit. There’s an orange cabinet there. See it?’
Gabrielle twisted round in her restraints. ‘Yeah. I see it.’
‘There should be survival gear in there. Maybe even some rations if we’re lucky. Dig out anything and everything you can, because I think we’re going to need it.’
Gabrielle’s face was stiff with fright, but she undid her restraints and did as she was asked, without saying anything further. She dug out several breather masks and numerous items of cold-weather gear, along with some freeze-dried rations.
‘Maybe you’d better come straight with me,’ said Gabrielle, returning to her couch. ‘Are we going to make it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Megan admitted. ‘I can get us down, but I can’t guarantee it’s going to be a soft landing. At least there’s a settlement we can aim for.’ She twisted round to look over at her companion. ‘Look, I don’t want you to get worried or anything, but if it does come to the worst – and I hope that it won’t – I need you to take care of Bash for me and try and get him to safety. Can you do that?’
Gabrielle, in that moment, looked even younger than Megan knew her to be. ‘I guess,’ she said, sounding less than convincing.
Had Esté been anything like this girl, wondered Megan? So pale and thin and young? Had she herself?
‘I’m just talking outside contingencies here,’ she continued. ‘But I’m going to tell you what you need to do to get off Redstone. That’s what you most want, right?’
Gabrielle nodded. ‘More than you’d believe.’
Oh, I’d believe, all right. ‘You heard of Aguirre?’
‘Sure,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s a city in the River Concord States.’
‘I have a friend there,’ said Megan. ‘A man by the name of Sarbakshian. He owes me . . . a lot. Go to him and he’ll get you off-world. Can you remember that name?’
The
girl nodded. ‘No problem.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’ She nodded, then her expression grew more uncertain, her hands straying towards her belly. ‘Listen, Megan, there’s something I need to tell y—’
‘Later,’ said Megan, more abruptly than she meant to. ‘We’re on our way down again.’
The forward array indicated dense cloud layer below, and it looked like a storm was building up, north of their destination. By now the mountains had slid out of sight around Redstone’s curving horizon, and the craft had identified a number of potential landing spots close to the settlement.
Megan thought about how different everything was going to be for Gabrielle from now on. She’d need to get as far away from Redstone as she could – preferably after getting some major facial surgery in a body shop, as Megan herself once had, to reduce the chances of her being recognized. And then there was the question of finding her a new identity, and somewhere to call home.
Nothing that Megan hadn’t done herself.
She realized then that she wanted Gabrielle by her side when they did finally leave Redstone. She hardly knew the girl yet, but the fact remained that, in a sense, they were family. Her and Gabrielle, and Bash.
She laughed quietly to herself. One hell of a fucked-up family you’ve got there. A runaway and a walking vegetable.
‘We’re putting down in another couple of minutes,’ warned Megan. ‘Brace yourself, Gaby. Bad weather’s coming in before long, and I can’t make any promises about this being an easy landing.’
‘I’m pregnant,’ Gabrielle finally announced.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Megan stared at her, thunderstruck. ‘You’re pregnant? For how. . . ?’
‘Four months,’ said Gabrielle.
Four months? And they both came from short-birther stock, meaning that Gabrielle had perhaps no more than another two months before she’d give birth.
Not long at all, in other words.
‘Okay,’ said Megan, bringing up a series of menus and studying them with a feeling of hopelessness. ‘I guess that does change things.’
She wondered who the father was, and just prayed it wasn’t Tarrant.
The ship’s computers had recalculated their best options for landing before the anti-matter-containment systems overloaded, based on the changing weather conditions and the topology of the local landscape. It showed her an area of flat terrain adjoining a small body of water – a lake, although it was barely large enough to qualify as such.
The dropship shook again as it hit turbulence during the final minutes of their descent. The drive-fields were now barely keeping them aloft.
Megan kept her eyes on the feed from the external sensors, as white-dappled hills flashed by below, and she got a visual sighting of the lake-shore ahead. She manually tweaked their course slightly and then, before she was really ready, they were dropping towards the ground at a shallow angle.
The drive-fields flickered, then faded forever. Their angle of approach steepened, and Megan realized they weren’t going to make it all the way to the actual shore.
They slammed into the lake, sending a fountain of water high into the air. She heard Gabrielle scream as the cockpit lights died, to be replaced a moment later by red emergency overheads.
The dropship yawed and rolled to one side. For a heart-rending moment, Megan felt sure the craft might capsize altogether, but then it partly righted itself before listing back the other way.
She checked a screen and saw that part of the hull now rested on silty gravel beneath the water’s surface, just a few metres shy of the shore.
‘Gabrielle, you okay?’
‘I . . . I think so. Are we down?’
‘Yeah,’ said Megan, pulling her restraints off, ‘but I don’t think we’re in the clear yet. Not until we get the hell off this ship.’
She climbed out of her couch and struggled to stay upright on a deck sloping at thirty degrees. She held on to the back of the couch and lowered herself until she was positioned next to Bash. It was hard to see clearly in the dim light, but he looked as if he’d come through their crash-landing in one piece.
‘You’re going to have to help me get him out of here again,’ she called out to Gabrielle. Her eyes were adjusting now, and she could see the other woman climbing out of her couch. Given everything she’d been through, thought Megan, and not to mention her condition, the girl was holding up a lot better than might have been expected.
Then, staring down at Bash’s calm, unchanging features, she remembered her disbelief when Gabrielle claimed he had sent her to find him.
I know you’re in there, she thought. I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I’m more sure than ever there’s still some part of you that’s aware I’m here.
What truly hurt, however, was that after everything she had gone through to find him, Bash had instead chosen to speak to Gabrielle. Megan was surprised to experience a brief flurry of jealous resentment.
He should have spoken to her, dammit.
Gabrielle picked her way carefully down to Bash’s couch. ‘Come on,’ urged Megan. ‘We’ve got to get him off this tub before it blows.’
‘Blows?’ Gabrielle shook her head in puzzlement. ‘Where the hell are we?’
The dropship shuddered around them, only settling deeper into the soil of the lake bed. ‘We landed in the water, just short of the shore.’
‘So we’re still okay, right?’
‘No, we’re not.’ Megan shook her head. ‘Sifra obtained this dropship from the Freehold. It’s fuelled with anti-matter, held inside a containment system which is supposed to be just about indestructible, but in fact this thing’s a heap of junk.’ And damn Sifra for taking one of their dropships, she thought. We could all have been killed before we even got to Redstone. At least he hadn’t left his damn bead-zombies on board for her to have to deal with. ‘You saw how rundown and broken everything back there was, right?’
Gabrielle nodded.
‘I think that maybe some of that shooting at us pushed the core containment systems towards a possible breach,’ Megan continued. ‘We need to get off this ship as fast as we can, and as far away as we can, before it gives out entirely. Now, get a hold of Bash and be ready to move quickly, okay? There should be an emergency escape hatch just outside the cockpit, so we can climb out from there.’
Gabrielle nodded mutely, her expression still dazed.
It seemed to take them much too long to free Bash from his restraints and drag him out of his couch. The steep angle of the floor, plus the fact that the dropship rolled slightly from time to time, made the job far harder than it should have been. But they finally managed to half lift him over to the cockpit hatch.
After only a couple of minutes, both women were panting with exertion. ‘I’m pretty sure,’ said Gabrielle, in between gasps, ‘this isn’t the activity recommended for expectant mothers.’
With a lot of cursing and muttering, they managed to guide Bash out through the hatch and into the cramped passageway beyond. Megan next located the escape hatch just about where she’d expected to find it.
Gabrielle disappeared back inside, returning with a bag stuffed full of the rations and with some cold-weather gear for Bash. They both dressed hurriedly, then worked together to get him dressed suitably and a mask over his face. By the time they were done, Megan’s skin was slicked with perspiration.
She tapped a code into a panel next to the emergency hatch, and a small red light began to blink: slowly at first, then more rapidly.
‘Stand well back,’ warned Megan. ‘Cover your eyes – and his, too.’
Gabrielle did as she was told, tugging Bash back away from the hatch. They crouched a few metres back along down the passageway, feet braced expectantly against the sloping deck.
Explosive bolts blew the hatch loose, filling the air with acrid-smelling smoke and leaving their ears ringing. Freezing cold air rushed in even as the pressure equalized.
‘Get one of his arms up to me,’ she called down.
She heard the sound of cursing as Gabrielle shoved Bash directly beneath the hatch and then lifted one of his arms up towards her. Megan secured a good solid grip on his hand.
‘C’mon, Bash,’ she muttered, trying hard not to topple back through. ‘Climb the fuck up for mommy.’
Bash’s pupils contracted in the bright daylight, his other arm hanging uselessly by his side. Megan fought back a sudden wave of despair. What if they couldn’t get him out? What then?
‘Climb, damn you,’ she cried, finally losing her temper. ‘Get the fuck up here, you son of a bitch. You were able to talk to her, so don’t stand there pretending you don’t fucking understand me!’
She could feel now she was close to losing it. She’d had too little respite from a constant struggle for survival over the past several days. ‘Up, damn you!’ she yelled. ‘Climb up!’
In that same moment Bash blinked, then she saw him reach up with his spare hand, his fingers tightening around the hatch’s coaming.
Her heart began to thud. He heard me.
She held on to him, pulling and grunting with the sheer effort. Gabrielle was doing her best to help him climb up, but the space was too tight and the angle too difficult for her to be of any real use.
The muscles in Bash’s arm flexed, and he rose up and through the hatch. Megan grabbed hold of his shoulders as he emerged, and let out a cry of delight.
‘That’s my baby!’ she yelled, putting all her strength into hauling him the rest of the way out. It felt like delivering the world’s largest child. He was soon crouching on the hull, staring mindlessly off towards the horizon, while Gabrielle also climbed out.
‘Shouldn’t we get out of here?’ she said, her face shiny with perspiration.
Megan nodded, then carefully began to work her way down the smooth expanse of the hull to where it curved into the water below.
