by Gary Gibson
“We can’t rule out sabotage either,” said Buddy. “We don’t know what Los Muertos have managed to do while they’ve been up here ahead of us.”
Kendrick was unable to avoid a deep sense of dread about what they might actually find once inside the Archimedes. Everything they knew so far had been filtered through the lens of Robert’s fractured, dead mind. When it came down to it, none of them had any idea what they were up against.
They headed through to the passenger area, which had transformed from a vertical cylinder to a long, low-ceilinged room. Buddy, Sabak, and the flight crew checked everyone in turn, making sure they were fully suited up.
By some mutual unspoken decision they left Draeger and his men to take care of themselves. Within minutes, the external airlock opened to connect with a long, flexible tube linking to the Archimedes itself. The tube looked surprisingly flimsy and delicate.
Once Kendrick had his helmet on, the voices all around him were reduced to distant electronic squawks. He joined the queue and was guided by one of the pilots onto a platform with plenty of handgrips, obviously designed to carry them through the tube and into the station.
It took about twenty minutes to get everyone on board via the access tube. Kendrick and the rest found themselves in what had clearly been designed to be a reception area, full of desks and long, low couches. Kendrick studied some of the safety warnings and information posters still mounted on the pastel-coloured walls.
Sabak and his flight crew had gathered by another airlock door at the opposite end of the reception lobby. According to a nearby sign, this gave access to the interior of the main station proper.
Kendrick studied the screen built into the arm of his spacesuit. He played around with the menus, finding something that informed him that the atmospheric pressure outside his suit was currently zero. He wondered how this section of the station had come to lose its air, and if this meant that they were going to find the whole station depressurized.
He rejoined Sabak by the airlock door. One of the pilots had a panel open in the wall next to it and had attached a small device to some wires protruding from the interior. Kendrick wondered briefly why they didn’t ask him or some other Labrat to magic the door open. Then he remembered that no one had ever tried that while wearing a bulky spacesuit.
After a little more effort, the airlock slid open to reveal a series of corridors branching off into the distance. Immediately ahead of them lay a wide-open space furnished with low pastel-coloured couches.
“No air, but the lights still work,” Buddy observed through his spacesuit’s intercom.
“Power runs through solar arrays on the station’s exterior,” Sabak explained. “Means we don’t have to find our way through the dark.”
Buddy laughed shakily. “Don’t remind me of all that,” he said.
A small crowd of Labrats had gathered nearby and one of the flight crew was briefing them, trying to keep them from either wandering off or getting in the way.
Sabak approached Kendrick. “Do you know how to switch over to a private channel? No? Okay, you’re broadcasting on a general channel now. If you want to keep the conversation private, just do this.”
Kendrick watched as Sabak led him through the necessary sub-menus on his suit’s arm-mounted screen.
Draeger and his men were just arriving in the reception area behind them. Kendrick caught the attention of one of the pilots whose suit’s name tag read Roux.
“I need to ask you something,” Kendrick began over a private link.
“Wait a second,” said the pilot. “Okay, we can talk one-to-one now.”
“I’m heading back down with you,” Kendrick told him. “So when are you flying back – now or later?”
“We’re waiting long enough to know that everyone’s safe, then myself and one other will pilot the shuttle back home. We’re going back to wait on board in just a few moments. Care to join us now?”
Kendrick shook his head. “I’ve got some things to take care of first.”
Roux’s face betrayed his feelings: a touch of bewilderment at whatever was happening here, something he couldn’t understand even if he tried. Kendrick felt a brief stab of sympathy for the returning flight crew. They must have felt as if they were helping to orchestrate a mass assisted suicide.
“Okay,” Roux said. “If we don’t see you later you’re stuck here. Just remember, we’re not sticking around for more than a couple of hours at the most.”
“Thank you.” Kendrick smiled briefly and stepped away from him. He felt filled with a kind of numb desperation, finding it impossible to convince himself he wasn’t indeed committing suicide. There was a very good chance that he wasn’t going to get back home at all – and the thought terrified him, to the very core.
28 October 2096
On board the Archimedes
A map of the station was mounted on one wall. It showed several levels, or decks, interrupted by two enormous artificial caverns – one of which Kendrick had already seen, after a fashion, in his augment-induced visions. Near the map were a variety of panoramic photos of the interiors of the caverns. These showed technicians with the good looks of models taking soil samples or carrying out experimental procedures under the vast mirrors designed to reflect sunlight into the station’s interior.
This, thought Kendrick, would be what the station’s administrators wanted their prospective investors to see as soon as they arrived here. They would be brought to wait here before each tour started.
He began to wonder if the depressurization had been due to some kind of life-support failure. If that were the case, the electrical systems, at least in this part of the Archimedes, hadn’t been affected. Panels set along the ceiling and walls around them glowed softly with diffuse light.
Kendrick glanced over at Draeger and his men who had continued following behind everyone else at a careful distance. Smeby returned his inquiring look with a hostile glare.
Sabak moved to the centre of the large room and raised his hands for everybody’s attention. He swivelled around to look at all of them, while pointing a finger exaggeratedly at the panel on his spacesuit’s arm. He was asking them all to switch to the public channel. As Kendrick tapped at his own screen, his ears were filled by a tumult of voices from all around him.
“We made it,” Sabak was announcing, his grin just visible through his helmet visor. “We made it here, thanks to the Bright.” There were several whoops and a lot of cheering.
“If any of you have started to have doubts, if you’ve decided there’s too much for you to leave behind, then now is the time to say so,” Sabak continued. “Nobody will think the worse of you. This is something monumental, but we’re only human. If you want to go home, then do so with our blessing.”
He turned to scan all the faces around him, but no one spoke out, no one stepped forward. Even the ones Kendrick had seen earlier in floods of tears remained resolutely silent.
“What about him?” somebody called out, pointing at Draeger. Kendrick glanced over at the billionaire, whose face remained impassive behind his visor.
“Mr Draeger has helped us get here in one piece,” Sabak explained carefully. “If it wasn’t for him—”
“If it wasn’t for him,” somebody else shouted, in a voice crackling with static, “we would never have got into this shit in the first place! What the hell is he doing here, anyway? We didn’t invite him!”
In an instant the mood turned, with more shouting and accusations blending into a tumult. It was clear that Sabak was on the brink of losing control. Draeger and his men numbered barely more than half a dozen, and there were many more times that number of angry Labrats.
Someone suddenly ran at Draeger, their movements clumsy in the low-g environment. Kendrick watched in horror as Smeby reached into a deep pocket and produced a snub-nosed weapon that he then gripped tightly in both hands and aimed.
Kendrick began to move forward, seeing a way in which he might calm the situation. Throug
h the protester’s visor he caught a brief glimpse of a middle-aged male face, the marks of long-term rogue augmentation extending across the forehead.
As if by magic, holes appeared in the assailant’s space-suit. Kendrick watched as the Labrat spun around, almost in a parody of a ballet twirl. He collided with a nearby couch and fell into a lifeless heap.
Kendrick opened his mouth to yell something, but his words were lost even to himself as his ears filled with the distorted sound of people screaming.
“Stay back!” Smeby was yelling over the public channel. The rest of Draeger’s men now stood brandishing identical black weapons.
Kendrick stared in horror at the body of the dead Labrat. The man’s face had ceased to exist below the nose, and an ocean of red fountained from the ruin of his jaw, spilling out of the shattered remains of his helmet.
Kendrick turned away, sickened. They were heading for a massacre. He found his own weapon and gripped it in one hand, all too aware of the terrible special dangers of getting shot in a vacuum. Sabak’s men had produced their own weapons and now faced Smeby and the rest of Draeger’s men in a deadly stand-off.
“We’re going ahead,” Smeby announced tightly. “Anybody tries to follow, we’ll shoot to kill. All of you got that?”
Sabak stared past him, looking Draeger in the eyes. “The Bright will kill you all. You know that, don’t you?” he warned.
As Draeger gazed back with glittering eyes, Kendrick felt a tingling in his hand, as if a faint electric current was running through it. He felt an overwhelming urge to touch something: a wall, a floor, anything.
“We’re going to head through that door,” Smeby announced, his voice distorted with static. “Nobody else comes through it for at least another twenty minutes, do you understand me?” Draeger himself remained mute.
There were only four internal exits from the reception area they all stood in, three of them corridors winding out of sight as they followed the curvature of the space station’s hull. The fourth exit remained sealed by a pressure door beside which two of Draeger’s men were now huddled. The other three, along with Smeby, faced the Labrats, weapons at the ready.
An intensely bright flash briefly blinded Kendrick and the pressure door jerked open, revealing the corridor beyond. Draeger and the rest of his party hustled through, all the while keeping their weapons aimed at the Labrats. The door slid shut again, cutting off Draeger’s party from sight.
Sabak ran forward as soon as the door had closed. Others rushed up behind him, one reaching for the control panel. “Stay back!” Sabak yelled. “Don’t try anything until I tell you to. Give them time to get away. Everyone, stay back!”
Kendrick thumbed his suit panel until he was on a one-to-one channel with Sabak. “Nobody’s letting them get away.”
“We have priorities, do you understand me?” Sabak’s voice was angry. “At least this way we don’t have to watch them the whole time.”
Kendrick pushed closer. “What the hell do you think he’s going to do in there? Have you even thought about the damage he could do if he finds what he’s looking for?”
“Assuming he gets anywhere” Sabak replied. “The Bright haven’t shown any lack of aptitude where repelling boarding parties is concerned. And, besides, he can’t get back down to Earth without our help.”
“Unless he finds a way to reach that one intact Los Muertos shuttle. There’s no reason to assume it isn’t still functioning. I just don’t believe that Draeger would have come up here unless he was pretty sure of finding a way back down again.”
“The Bright will take care of him,” Sabak replied confidently.
“Or maybe we’ve all been seriously underestimating him for too long. He could have something planned that we haven’t been expecting. Don’t you understand yet what’s at stake here? Look, myself and a couple of others, we can go in and scout ahead. That’ll give the rest of you an opportunity to move somewhere more secure in the meantime.”
Sabak looked ready to explode behind his visor. “Jesus – fine, do whatever you think you have to do. But if anything happens I’m not sending anyone to look for you.”
Buddy stepped up and broke into their conversation. “Gerry, quit arguing. We need to find somewhere properly pressurized before people start running out of air.” He caught Kendrick’s eye. “Right now that’s our first priority, and we’re going to need every hand.”
Sabak made the decision to follow a passage leading directly to one of the main caverns, in the hope that they’d find somewhere along the way where they’d be able to breathe without depleting their tanks. Kendrick still felt that overwhelming urge to take off a glove and just touch something.
But that, of course, would result in a fatal loss of air. He’d found himself wondering if he could try repeating his experience in the airbase, when he’d found he had stopped breathing completely, but decided he’d rather not experiment. Not if it ended up with him writhing on the ground, desperately trying to get his helmet back on.
As they entered the wide passage Kendrick noted that wand-nodes were mounted along the walls every several metres. These old-fashioned devices dated the station, giving it an oddly quaint edge. He was suddenly glad he’d retained the wand that Buddy had given him back at the Maze.
As he pointed it at the nearest node, the wand’s little screen blinked rapidly, informing him that it had downloaded a station guide. This turned out to include a 3D version of the map he’d first noticed back in the reception area.
Here he was in the middle of a crowd of Labrats, most of whom looked fairly subdued following the death of one of their number. He glanced around, studying the faces visible behind the visors: nobody seemed particularly heroic or brave or adventurous. But the Archimedes had cowed almost all of them, and Kendrick could feel its vast bulk weighing on him too.
This was the place where microscopic monsters lived, a place where the messengers of gods walked in their dreams, a place of empty echoing corridors full of dark, inchoate mystery. Just the fact of being on board the Archimedes was enough to still anyone’s tongue, for a while at least.
Kendrick felt a sensation akin to jealousy. The people around him knew what they wanted, had given up everything for one last chance at survival. They had willingly boarded that shuttle, never expecting to see home again.
So what’s so different about me? Suddenly he not only wanted to believe too – he felt that he could believe. He’d witnessed the end of everything, and the beginning of something he couldn’t even start to comprehend. One tiny corner of something that might, just might, be Heaven.
And, almost in the same instant, Kendrick understood why he found it so hard to believe. He was scared, that was all. Now that he’d felt at least a part of what filled Buddy and the rest with such unwavering conviction, he was scared that it might not turn out to be true, that it was in fact a false dream born of technology. So it was easier, then, not to believe.
He studied further the map of the Archimedes displayed on his wand. They’d be reaching the first cavern soon, and the idea terrified him. Would tiny winged shapes come diving down at him, through air as thick as soup with them?
Buddy came up beside him again, jabbing a finger at the read-out screen on his own suit. Kendrick realized he had his own map displayed there.
“Pressurized area up ahead,” Buddy informed him over a private channel.
“How do you know?”
“Green means pressurized, red is depressurized.”
Kendrick glanced at his own map and saw the same colour-coding.
The corridor terminated in another airlock. He could see tiny sparkles of light flitting across the several metres of passageway just in front of it.
Tiny silver fibres? A chill gripped his spine. He looked around and saw that he wasn’t the only one to have noticed them. His skin crawled with horror as several others reached out with glove-encased hands to touch them. He imagined those threads finding their way through the material of spacesuit
s, invading the augment-riddled flesh beneath.
Sabak led the way, surrounded by the half-dozen Labrats he had armed on board the shuttle. From the way they huddled together Kendrick guessed they were communicating over a private conference band.
They stopped at the airlock and Sabak appeared to have a heated discussion with some of them. Then he reached forward and touched a panel. The airlock door swung open, revealing a high-ceilinged room beyond, big enough to hold them all. Kendrick trooped inside with the rest, noting a second pressure door on the opposite wall.
The first door closed, sealing them all inside. After several moments a faint but increasingly audible hiss became evident as the chamber began to pressurize. A light flashed above both doors, and Kendrick watched as Sabak took off his helmet to speak. His voice echoing dully in the chamber, he was urging them all to take off their helmets too.
As Kendrick removed his own, the other chamber door opened to reveal light seeping through.
Beyond it he could see trees, and grass.
They crowded through and found themselves in the rear of a very spacious low-ceilinged gallery, with panoramic glass windows overlooking a wooded area. The trees seemed a little too regularly spaced to be natural. The soil outside had been arranged carefully in little hillocks, again attempting to trick the eye into thinking it saw a natural environment. Further beyond the glass, the ground curved steeply upwards.
By now most of the people who’d entered behind Kendrick had removed their helmets.
Kendrick sucked the air deep into his lungs. It smelled so fresh – he’d more than half-expected to find it as polluted as in the Maze. Although the nanite threads had already made their presence known here, there wasn’t yet anywhere near the same degree of infestation. He stepped closer to the glass wall and gazed out at the greenery beyond.
Buddy soon joined him, helmet held loosely in one hand. He was positively glowing, his smile radiant, looking happier and more content than Kendrick recalled seeing him ever before.
