Against Gravity

by Gary Gibson

  Remember he’s crazy. Kendrick didn’t want to disabuse Draeger of his delusions, not while there might just be some chance of turning this to his advantage.

  He glanced at Smeby, who sat with one leg crossed over the other, his expression as non-committal as if they were sitting in a restaurant discussing the relative merits of the wine list.

  Kendrick sat back. “All right, what now?”

  “You can tell me now if you accept, on behalf of your friends, my offer of safe escort to the Archimedes.”

  “In return for which, they and I allow you to retrieve any scientific data you like from the Archimedes, along with whatever records still exist up there, without our interference.” Kendrick was careful to emphasize whatever records. He wanted Draeger to understand that he knew there were incriminating documents on board the space station.

  Draeger nodded carefully. “That would be correct.”

  Kendrick smiled back, reached over and clicked the car door open. “No.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Smeby said, a clear warning in his voice.

  “Am I?” Kendrick couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “The way I see it, you need us a hell of a lot more than we need you. You want something that’s on board the Archimedes, but you can’t get it without us. You should know by now that the others would never agree to anything if they knew it was coming from you.”

  He climbed out into the street and glanced back inside the car. “If we need you, we’ll let you know. But, frankly, don’t wait around.”

  He slammed the door shut on them. But Draeger just looked quietly serene, as if he held some precious secret that the rest of the world knew nothing about.

  Kendrick walked quickly back to the compound, feeling the skin between his shoulder blades burning every step of the way. But no shots rang out.

  Buddy stirred groggily from his cot. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Very sure.”

  Buddy pressed the palm of one hand against his forehead and swore softly, still half asleep.

  “I don’t know how rational Draeger is likely to be,” Kendrick told him. “He’s fighting for his survival.”

  Next he turned to Audrey, who stood, looking worried, in the doorway. “How long before we head off?”

  “Took most of the night to take care of refuelling and maintenance. You’ve come a long way in that ’copter, so it’s best to check everything twice so we don’t have any nasty surprises after we’re airborne.” Her eyes half closed as she became momentarily deep in thought. “But give me twenty minutes, tops, and she’ll be ready.”

  “Can you make it ten?”

  Audrey nodded hesitantly, then slipped away, looking pale.

  “Jesus. So Draeger really is here?” Buddy sounded more awake now. He started to pull on a pair of boots. “How long you think we got?”

  “Hard to say. He has a small army with him back there.”

  Several minutes later they heard the steady drone of choppers approaching, fast.

  Kendrick had stepped outside to see if anyone was trying to enter the compound. He turned in time to see Buddy emerge from the doorway, still zipping up his fly.

  “The tarpaulin,” Buddy urged him. “Help me get it off.”

  Kendrick nodded, and they unveiled the helicopter, its now-exposed skin gleaming black in the early-morning light. Kendrick saw Audrey staring off towards the east, and glanced in the same direction. Small shapes, rapidly growing larger, were heading towards them in a line across the sky.

  Time’s up.

  Kendrick was surprised that the attack came from the air. Draeger’s men, after all, had moved on foot. But then, he remembered, Draeger wasn’t the only hostile force they had to deal with. The approaching aircraft could also belong to Los Muertos.

  Buddy was now in the pilot’s seat. The helicopter’s rotors whined into life, producing a steady, deafening wail within seconds.

  Audrey was nowhere to be seen as Kendrick pulled himself on board, the rotors beating at the air inches above his head. Buddy mouthed her name and Kendrick jabbed a finger towards the nearest building.

  He saw Audrey emerge from a doorway. She was carrying some sort of weapon, a wicked-looking black thing with a snub nose. Kendrick started to climb back out of the ’copter, feeling that he should help her in some way.

  Buddy placed a gloved hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Kendrick hesitated, realizing what Buddy was saying: it wasn’t likely he’d be much use.

  Audrey had slung the weapon over her shoulder on a strap before leaping up in an augmented blur to grab the lower edge of the building’s roof with both hands. She pulled herself up effortlessly onto the sloping surface, running up to its apex just as out of nowhere a roar of rotors beat deafeningly down around them.

  Buddy pulled back on the ’copter’s stick until they were hovering several feet above the ground. There was a flash of light and the sound of gunfire. Buddy took the aircraft higher as bullets streaked through the air around them.

  “We have to get Audrey inside,” Kendrick yelled in Buddy’s ear. “She’ll get herself killed.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Buddy yelled back. “What am I supposed to do, jump out and get her?”

  Audrey was returning fire now, her weapon spitting bullets at an astonishing rate. An enemy helicopter jerked up and away, swerving and ducking as she aimed for it.

  Kendrick didn’t allow himself the luxury of thinking about what he did next. He slammed open the door next to him and fell for several metres, hitting the ground rolling. Keeping low, he ran towards the shelter of a nearby shed.

  Something hot zinged past his ear and he found himself taking cover behind a stack of concrete blocks, which looked like they’d been salvaged from nearby ruins. Puffs of dust suddenly spurted from the hard-packed dirt only inches away.

  The attack was coming, Kendrick could see now, as a new helicopter appeared from an entirely different direction. He pulled himself up onto the roof, as he’d seen Audrey do. He watched in amazement as she jumped up onto one of the struts of the attacking helicopter and ripped open the door on the pilot’s side.

  The helicopter rapidly spiralled upwards. He saw a body tumble out, arms and legs flailing. Not Audrey – the pilot.

  He saw her leap away from the craft as it spun end over end. Audrey landed back on the building roof, feet first, the movement almost ballet-like.

  Kendrick started to move towards her, seeing what she hadn’t yet spotted. As the helicopter twisted in the air above her, instinct made Kendrick roll away fast, dropping off the shed roof onto the ground.

  The ’copter ploughed down on top of the building, and Audrey vanished in a great plume of flames and smoke that swallowed the structure, turning it into a huge pyre.

  Kendrick turned, dumbstruck, just in time to see another helicopter sweeping over the burning roof towards him. He ducked away, ready to run, before he realized that it was Buddy.

  He could see the fear etched on Buddy’s face through the canopy. The aircraft dipped close enough to the ground to let Kendrick get on board.

  He hurled himself back into the co-pilot’s seat and, in the next instant, Buddy pulled back on the stick and they shot upwards.

  Below them the ground fell away with alarming speed. “Can we make it?” Kendrick yelled.

  “There’s six other choppers coming this way fast. That’s going to be a problem.” Streets of broken buildings flashed by below.

  To the east, the sun continued its slow climb into the sky, its rays reflecting off their pursuers and making them look like burning insects.

  “They’re keeping their distance,” Buddy announced, “I don’t know why. They could bring us down if they wanted to. We’re outnumbered, but they’re just following us.”

  “You know,” Kendrick said carefully, “that it’s me they want, not just you. They seem to think I’m important.”

  Buddy looked straight ahead and nodded. “Yeah, you could say
that.”

  “If I hadn’t come along, if Erik Whitsett hadn’t been able to find me – if I hadn’t come to Loch Awe that time. Is there any reason why you might not have been able to go ahead with all of this, your launch to the Archimedes?”

  Buddy sighed, his eyes flickering over the screens that displayed the pursuing helicopters. “Look, it was clear from the start that Los Muertos thought you were important. Maybe they knew something we didn’t, something we’d missed somehow when the Bright showed us what they could give us. Then you went to visit Draeger and that made us think, yeah, maybe you were vital to the whole operation in some way that we couldn’t figure.”

  “So really you were hedging your bets. That’s why you wanted me here.”

  “Ken, you’re one of us – that’s why I wanted you here. So please don’t write us off as a bunch of self-serving pricks like Draeger. Some of us are ‘more’ like the Bright than others, sure, but in the end I don’t know if it makes any damn difference. Ask the Bright – maybe they know.”

  So much had changed. In the beginning, Kendrick had wanted nothing to do with Buddy’s plans: now he understood that the only way to halt the plans of Draeger or Los Muertos lay on board the Archimedes space habitat.

  And then there was the question of the presumed evidence that could destroy Max Draeger. The thought that Peter McCowan was lying about such evidence – was engaged in some vast deception in which Kendrick had all too willingly played his part – had occurred to him more than a few times.

  Yet, despite all his worries and doubts, he found himself believing McCowan. Or is that just my own guilt talking?

  The landscape below revealed occasional oases of generator-powered activity where the post-Nuke reconstruction work had started. For the first time, Kendrick understood just how much he was prepared to sacrifice to bring Draeger down. More than he might ever have suspected, or admitted to anyone else.

  “They’re getting closer,” Buddy muttered, his face turning stiff and expressionless.

  A screen displayed the pursuing ’copters against a blue sky, most of the detail lost in the glare of the sun shining down on the Santa Monica hills. Kendrick studied the screen and saw tiny pulses of light appear from the helicopters, moving fast. Buddy dived suddenly, almost running their helicopter into the ground, and a missile streaked past them to plough into the soil in an explosive burst of flame and smoke.

  Buddy twisted the stick again so they were climbing, the ground falling away once more in a rush as more streaks of light came uncomfortably close.

  Kendrick’s head spun with vertigo. Buddy was pushing the aircraft to its limits.

  Buddy grunted in surprise and Kendrick looked up to see a string of tiny lights hanging in the air barely a klick ahead, directly in their path. Something about the way they hovered suggested balloons of some kind – they didn’t appear to be moving, so perhaps they were tethered to the ground.

  “This could be some kind of trap,” Kendrick said. “They might have set it up in advance, if they knew we’d be heading west.”

  Buddy shrugged. “Yeah, well. Maybe, maybe not. Can’t turn back now. Shit.”

  Bright sparks sailed past them again, and again the helicopter spun to one side. Kendrick hung on as if for dear life.

  “Fuck!” Buddy bellowed, gripping the stick with both hands and twisting hard. Kendrick felt his gorge rise and he choked as the aircraft wheeled over. “Okay,” he heard Buddy yell, his voice verging on outright panic. “Now that’s just too fucking close for comfort!”

  The points of light in their path had now resolved themselves into distinct yellowish and cylindrical-looking shapes. They started moving of their own volition, appearing to part in order to allow Buddy’s ’copter to pass between them. Tracer fire from one of the pursuing helicopters grazed one of the cylindrical shapes and it blossomed in a ball of flame and tumbled slowly downwards.

  Kendrick felt his throat start to close up once he saw just how close the other craft were. They were never going to get away from them.

  In an instant, though, they were through and past the hovering shapes. Kendrick caught a fleeting glimpse of one: an unmanned helicopter drone, several feet in diameter, shaped like a fat doughnut. It wobbled in the air and, because it was slightly below and to the side of them as they flew past, he could see that at its centre was a rotor device to keep it aloft.

  But what was it doing here? Was it Draeger or Los Muertos who had positioned them? It rapidly became clear that the drones were not floating idly: now they were moving with clear purpose towards their pursuers.

  “What the hell are those things?” yelled Buddy.

  “Absolutely no fucking idea,” Kendrick replied. “But – Jesus! – look what’s happening!”

  Behind them they could see a series of bright flashes, followed by a succession of long, distant booming sounds. Burning shapes tumbled to the earth, trailing streaks of liquid flame as they spiralled downward.

  Three of the pursuing helicopters were already down. The three survivors appeared to be playing a complicated game of tag with the remaining unmanned drones.

  Buddy’s expression was frenzied. “Somebody did that. Somebody helped us get away. Who the fuck was it? Who did that?”

  Kendrick couldn’t think of an appropriate reply.

  27 October 2096

  Over the Pacific

  Most of the next hour and a half was spent flying over water, hugging the coastline as they travelled northwest. Kendrick surprised himself by falling asleep, and found that he was actually getting used to airborne dozing despite the constant thundering drone of rotor blades.

  He woke – bleary-eyed, stiff-necked and with a bad headache – to gaze out on something very like an oil platform marooned in an infinity of bright blue water. Whether or not that had been its original role Kendrick didn’t know but it had clearly gained a new purpose.

  Its upper deck housed a gantry supporting a shuttle like those he had seen taking off from the Los Muertos base. The shuttle itself was painted pale blue, with wide strips of a darker blue angling across its body from the nose. Vapour was already emerging from its base in dense clouds before descending to meet the waves licking the platform’s supporting columns far below. A ship the size of a large frigate, its upper decks strewn with radar and comms towers, floated in the water only a short distance away. As Buddy circled in towards the ship’s landing pad, Kendrick recognized Veliz and some of the other Labrats from LA waiting below.

  Kendrick glanced down at his hands where they rested in his lap. They still didn’t look anywhere near normal, but at least they were no longer as nightmarish in appearance as when he had recently emerged from the Maze.

  Kendrick stepped down from the helicopter and onto the landing pad. The ship’s deck stretched out ahead of him, rising to a forest of communications dishes and radar equipment mounted just above the bridge. He enjoyed the sensation of the fresh wind against his face, the taste of salt on his tongue.

  When Buddy clapped him on his shoulder, Kendrick could see how much the past several days of stress had taken out of him. A man in a naval-style white uniform stepped up onto the landing platform, followed by several others similarly attired.

  “Captain Arnheim,” the leading man introduced himself. “Mr Juarez, it’s good to see you again. Mr Sabak would like to speak with you urgently.”

  “Thank you, captain.”

  Arnheim was a hawk-faced man in his fifties who had a look that Kendrick had come to recognize: of not being sure quite who or what to believe. He could almost read the naval officer’s thoughts as his gaze settled on Kendrick. Did he need to be placed in containment? Did he represent a danger not only to the other Labrats on board but also to his own crew and the scientists?

  “It looks a lot worse than it feels,” Kendrick said evenly. “I’m not infectious. I don’t represent any danger.”

  Arnheim studied him with bright, hard eyes. Kendrick knew that the man would have no hesitation in
flinging him overboard if he deemed it necessary to protect his crew and passengers. “You should know that we have a containment facility in case of extreme emergencies. If your condition worsens significantly prior to the launch, we may have to make use of it.”

  “I understand,” Kendrick replied.

  They let Arnheim’s officers guide them both down below, proceeding along clanging metal corridors where technicians and crewmen swarmed around them. Kendrick couldn’t help but notice how Arnheim’s men surrounded him at a safe distance, thus effectively isolating him from everyone they came in contact with.

  Someone stepped through a door and headed towards them. He shook Buddy’s hand with a strong grip. As he turned to Kendrick he faltered, then – in an impressively humane and generous gesture – reached out and shook his hand just as firmly.

  “Gerard,” Buddy greeted him. Gerard Sabak was one of the owners of the launch facility, and a Ward Seventeen Labrat himself.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Sabak began. He was a large, hearty man, the sides of his neck distended and scarred with rogue nanite growth. His accent sounded Austrian or German, via California.

  “Mr Gallmon, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, turning now to Kendrick. “Buddy radioed ahead that you’d need medical attention. Are you able to—?”

  “Even if your medical staff could do something about this, I really don’t think there’d be time before . . . you know.” Kendrick angled his gaze upward to the ceiling. “I think we need to talk about some other things first.”

  Sabak studied him uncertainly. “Are you . . . in pain? Or—?”

  “I know this may sound ridiculous but it’s really not as bad as it looks.”

  Buddy spoke up. “Gerry, this isn’t the result of rogue bio-augmentation. It’s a lot more like the kind of condition you pick up near the Maze – like the Los Muertos people I told you about.”