Against Gravity

by Gary Gibson

  He glanced around the room and, though he was no expert, he was prepared to bet that she’d raked the banks of machinery around her with automatic fire before ending her life.

  He froze on hearing movement nearby. Then, holding his gun out in front of him, he stepped through a further door into a darkened corridor.

  “Hold it right there.”

  The voice came from an adjoining doorway. Kendrick stopped dead, feeling cold metal press into the side of his neck.

  “The gun. Drop it, kick it away.”

  Kendrick reviewed his options and discovered that he had none. He let the pistol slip from his fingers, then pushed at it with his foot. It skidded across the floor and stopped near a wall.

  “Turn around.”

  He’d expected Draeger, or even Buddy. Instead it was Sabak, accompanied by two armed Labrats.

  Kendrick was stunned. How had they got here so quickly? They must have gained access to the transport system. That was surely the only way.

  “Whatever you’re intending, you’re not going to do it.” Sabak sounded calm, in control.

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “I was at the door of the transport terminus. I saw you beat the fuck out of Buddy.”

  “I can explain.”

  Sabak shook his head. “Forget it. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. You’re working for Draeger, right?”

  Kendrick blinked at Sabak, standing with two tough-looking types immediately behind him. He laughed.

  “Me, working for Draeger? That’s rich.”

  Sabak bristled. “You’ve been very vocal against our whole operation from the start. Did you kill those other men back there?”

  Kendrick stared at him, incredulous. “Now you’re out of your mind. Most of them have been dead for days.”

  “I still don’t feel convinced.”

  “I’m not working for Draeger. For Christ’s sake, I—”

  And there it was again: a sound like wine glasses tinkling gently together. Or moths beating against a light bulb.

  They all turned as one. Light flickered at the far end of the darkened corridor, briefly illuminating the outline of a doorway that until now had been lost in shadows. The strange sound grew louder before fading again.

  And then they appeared: tiny, frail, dream-like bodies, all with the face of Robert Vincenzo and each of them wrapped in an eerie halo of light. At first just a few, then a dozen, then yet more emerged from the darkness.

  Kendrick turned to Sabak. “Those are the things that killed all these people.”

  But Sabak wasn’t listening to him. “I didn’t think . . .” Clearly frightened, he turned to his men. “Get hold of him.”

  Kendrick was gripped by both arms and dragged back the way he had come. Now he was hustled along a corridor he hadn’t yet explored, to a room at the far end. To Kendrick’s despair, Sabak had meanwhile confiscated his pistol.

  “What do you know about this?” Sabak was pointing to an untidy pile of electronic junk lying in the far corner of the room. Racks of equipment filled the surrounding walls, stretching into unlit gloom.

  As Kendrick looked closer, the junk resolved into something else altogether.

  He recognized the tiny read-out and the oblong box it was attached to. Plastic explosives were carefully packed around it, and myriad wires linked it all like the serpent-hair of a cybernetic Medusa.

  The third and previously unaccounted-for nuke, which he’d been so sure that Draeger had in his possession.

  Kendrick licked his lips. “It’s a nuclear bomb.”

  A woman knelt by the device, lost in contemplation. She started gently probing it with some hand-held device. He just hoped she was an expert who knew what she was doing.

  She spared Kendrick’s arrival the briefest glance before leaning over until the side of her head touched the floor, peering into the narrow space between the nuke itself and the wall against which it was placed.

  Sabak spoke to her. “Shirl, is that definitely what he says? No chance it’s a decoy or something else altogether?”

  She shook her head without even looking at them. “It’s the real deal: a field nuke – backpack tactical weapon. Normally used for high-yield radiation effect, but still powerful enough to blow at least a hole in the hull.” She paused, as if in contemplation. “No, make that rip the place to shit.”

  “Okay, then, can you disarm it?”

  “Most of these wires have nothing to do with the nuke itself,” Shirl explained. “It’s all to do with booby-trapping. If we so much as move this thing from where it’s currently sitting, there’s no guarantee it isn’t just going to blow immediately.” She shook her head. “We need somebody who knows more about these things than I do. I’m out of my depth.”

  “Is it on any kind of timer?” Sabak demanded.

  She shook her head. “Timer’s not working. I think maybe they were about to set it, but then . . .” She shuddered. “Something happened. You saw those other people back there?”

  Shirl stood up, wiping dusty hands on her suit. “These things always come with some kind of a remote detonator, a back-up in case the timer fails or you want to blow it ahead of schedule, or at a safe distance. Something hand-held – like, stick a nuke under a dam or someone’s presidential palace, drive a long way off, then hit the button.”

  Sabak started. “You mean there might still be some kind of trigger round here somewhere?”

  Leigh’s face sprang into Kendrick’s mind. He remembered Buddy telling him that she ranked pretty high in Los Muertos. If anyone had been in charge of their expedition here, it might well have been her. So, perhaps any such trigger would be on or near her body . . .?

  Of course, Sabak wasn’t necessarily aware of this. “We’re going to have to search all these corpses,” Sabak was even then saying with obvious distaste. “And carefully.”

  “Just listen to me,” Kendrick insisted. Sabak gave him an annoyed glance. “Draeger is around here somewhere, and I’ll bet you anything he’s looking for that detonator, if he hasn’t found it already.”

  “Bullshit,” Sabak sneered. “Los Muertos is one thing, but Draeger doesn’t have any reason to blow up the Archimedes. He’d be killing himself along with the rest of us.”

  The sound of screaming resumed, sounding closer now. Sabak stepped away, listening, his face suddenly pale.

  “Keep a hold on him.” Sabak nodded towards Kendrick. “And bring him along. Shirl, keep working on that thing and let me know if you can figure anything out. Just . . . be seriously fucking careful.”

  “Really? I thought maybe I’d just cut the blue wire and see what happened,” she deadpanned.

  Kendrick’s two guards pushed him along immediately behind Sabak as they made their way towards the source of the screaming. The sound, an unending ululation like nothing he had ever heard, raised the hairs on the back of Kendrick’s neck. He wondered how anyone could have the physical ability to scream so consistently, and for so long.

  They turned a corner and found two more of Sabak’s men waiting by an open doorway, their weapons at the ready. Kendrick couldn’t yet see what lay beyond.

  “They’re in there,” said one of the men. Kendrick could see how frightened he was. He felt a sudden tightening in his own chest, and didn’t want to see what was in there.

  As Sabak stepped forward the screaming stopped, to be replaced by a fit of coughing, then by the sound of someone gasping for breath.

  Sabak stood for a long time at the doorway, staring at whatever lay beyond.

  “Sabak.” No response. “Sabak,” Kendrick called to him again.

  The man finally turned to look at him. “Bring him forward,” he ordered, almost under his breath.

  Beyond the doorway lay an area that had clearly once served as a canteen. Plastic chairs and tables had long ago been neatly stacked in a corner.

  In the empty centre of the room two of Draeger’s men were in the gruesome process of killing themselves. One had to
rn off his spacesuit and was gouging deep gashes in his bare chest with a knife. His shirt hung around his waist in tatters. He appeared unaware of his audience.

  The other, however, untwisted himself from the foetus position he had assumed, staring back at Kendrick and Sabak. Then, as they watched, he crouched down on all fours and proceeded to slam his forehead repeatedly and violently against the gore-sticky tiled floor in an apparent attempt to bash his own brains out.

  Kendrick saw the bodies of two other of Draeger’s soldiers lying nearby, in the shadows. They looked like they’d been shot at point-blank range.

  “Listen to me,” Kendrick said. “Robert is doing this, do you understand me?”

  Sabak shook his head violently. “No, the Bright are – they’re just protecting themselves.”

  “Protecting themselves? Whatever the Bright may be, in essence they’re just machines. And machines don’t go out of their way to play sadistic games like that.” Kendrick could see the uncertainty in Sabak’s eyes. “Your mind’s been twisted so that you can’t see the truth any more.”

  The soldier smashing his head against the tiles finally slumped over and lay still. His companion sat exhausted, watching his own blood spread across the canteen floor in a widening pool.

  “Look,” said Kendrick. “Do you see that?”

  Sabak stared, mute, as more of the winged shapes emerged from the shadows. They darted here and there, their tiny mouths opening in a piercing ululation that sent spasms of pain shooting into the back of Kendrick’s skull.

  Suddenly Sabak’s henchmen weren’t paying so much attention to their prisoner.

  “Is this what you came here for, Sabak? Do you think they’re going to lead you into Heaven?”

  “Just shut up,” Sabak snapped back at him.

  The ear-splitting wails emerged again from the creatures’ throats. Now it felt as though someone had opened up Kendrick’s skull and was tossing burning coals inside. He felt the grip on his arms loosen and instantly took the opportunity to pull himself free and run for the shadows and the outline of a door there. Tiny shapes darted at him as he reached it and something soft brushed against his face, feeling like dry cotton sheets. He heard a faint whispering, the kind of sound young children might make when hiding from a playmate in the dark.

  Automatic fire thundered behind Kendrick as he pushed through the door and out into a connecting corridor. Angry voices reverberated behind him as he stumbled down a steep stairwell.

  When he’d first entered the facility he’d been at ground level. If he was now descending, then he was penetrating the very hull of the Archimedes. Even so, there might be quite a few floors to negotiate before he reached the hull’s exterior.

  At the bottom of the steps Kendrick found a vast room filled with row upon row of gleaming metal cabinets. He ran on past them to find a stairwell that took him even deeper. He could hear voices clamouring somewhere behind him. He kept going.

  Smeby came howling out of nowhere.

  Kendrick yelled in surprise as a blade slashed through the air towards his cheek and Smeby slammed into him with his full weight.

  Kendrick almost faltered when he saw the other man’s face. Smeby had sliced lines into his cheek and brow, turning his features into a demon’s mask.

  “It’s you!” he screamed into Kendrick’s face. Then he backed away, tears running down his cheeks, before folding up, his trembling hands pressed against the sides of his head. A high keening noise poured from his lips.

  Kendrick’s gaze flicked to the doorway from which Smeby had emerged. Dozens of the winged homunculi fluttered in the shadows beyond it.

  Now they came spilling through to surround both men, once more filling the air with their howling. Kendrick screamed too, gripping his head as they surrounded him in a vast, flapping storm. His skull was filled with unimaginable pain as incipient madness bubbled up somewhere deep inside his mind.

  He stumbled back into the room filled with cabinets, found another door to stagger through and slammed it shut behind him. He was now in a side office with a window overlooking the room where Smeby still crouched helplessly.

  More of the malignant creatures poured in from the stairwell till uncountable thousands muffled Smeby’s screams with the sheer density of their numbers.

  Kendrick stepped away from the glass, sickened. Not real, he reminded himself. Aural and visual hallucinations that burned the sanity out of their brains. Anyone without augments would see nothing.

  Of course, that didn’t explain the corpses he’d found. But it was easier not to think about that aspect.

  Kendrick watched in horror as some of the creatures swirled in the air like living smoke, then rushed forward to smack into the glass that separated them from Kendrick. As the glass began to star, he gaped numbly, unable to accept the reality of what he was seeing. Then he looked desperately around the office. There were other doors at the far end: a sign on the wall announced that one of them was an airlock leading out to the station’s exterior. The other door seemed to be an elevator, leading back up to the interior of the Archimedes.

  On a metal desk stood a computer terminal. It was active, with several windows of information displayed on the screen. Kendrick stepped towards it, noticing that the dust covering the table had been disturbed recently.

  He glimpsed a shadowy movement and heard the click almost too late. Draeger was crouching behind the desk, a gun gripped in both hands. He yelled when he saw Kendrick and fired at him wildly.

  Despite the close quarters, Draeger managed by some miracle to miss. Kendrick stumbled away while Draeger, shrieking like an animal, fired indiscriminately into the air before pulling himself upright and fixing Kendrick firmly in his sights.

  “What . . . what the fuck are those things out there?” Draeger shouted, wild-eyed and shaking. His spacesuit was smeared with blood, but somehow Kendrick didn’t think it was the man’s own.

  It was difficult for him to accept that the homunculi were physically real. But if Draeger could see them, and he had no augmentation biotechnology . . .

  “Robert Vincenzo,” Kendrick replied. “They’re all Robert Vincenzo.”

  “Who the hell’s he?”

  “He was down there in the Maze with the rest of us,” Kendrick told him. “That’s what your augmentations did to him.”

  Draeger stared at Kendrick with an expression like a floundering fish. “I want to make a deal,” he said finally. His voice was cracking.

  A deal? Did this man never give up? Kendrick let out a laugh that sounded halfway to a hysterical sob. “It’s far too late for that, you stupid bastard.”

  “I want you to understand something. You do not belong here.” Draeger waved the gun at Kendrick. “You do not belong here.”

  “If that’s the case, then neither do you.”

  Draeger shook his head defiantly. “Move over there and turn around. Put your hands against the wall. I don’t know what those damn things are, but nobody’s going to have to worry about them much longer.”

  Kendrick complied, having little choice. “Now stay there,” said Draeger.

  Kendrick heard Draeger step away behind him.

  He twisted his head around slowly and saw the other man move over to a wall panel set next to the airlock. Shadows fluttered beyond the window glass. Kendrick didn’t think it could hold for much longer.

  Draeger’s fingers danced across the panel and the door opened, sliding into the wall. He stepped through, the door immediately sliding shut behind him.

  As soon as he was gone, Kendrick went over and studied the same panel. He could try using his augmented abilities to get it open but that might take too much time, judging by the sound of scores of small bodies slamming into the glass just behind him. He tried hitting random buttons in the meantime, but – not surprisingly – that didn’t work.

  Perhaps there was another way to get out of the station . . .

  His wand crackled into life. “Kendrick? Kendrick, it’s Buddy he
re. I want an explanation.” The other man’s voice sounded harsh and brittle.

  Kendrick slammed open the door of the surface elevator. He could only pray that the thing would work. “There isn’t time,” he yelled into the wand.

  “Tell me now, Kendrick, before it’s too late. Tell me you aren’t going to—”

  Kendrick broke the connection and put the wand back in his pocket. Then he hit a button and the elevator began to crawl laboriously upwards.

  Another great shudder ran through the hull around him, much more violent this time. From somewhere not so far away, he could hear a rushing sound again. He glanced at the display on his spacesuit’s arm, which told him that the atmospheric pressure in the chamber above him was dropping rapidly. It seemed that the station was venting its air supply.

  The rumbling noise grew stronger, rattling the teeth inside his skull. Kendrick had no idea if he’d be able to survive once all the air had been voided.

  He pulled out his wand again and hit a switch. “Buddy, did you feel that?”

  “Of course I fucking felt it.” Buddy sounded distant, distracted. “Someone just blew one of the nukes.”

  “That’s not possible. If one of those nukes had been blown, we wouldn’t still be standing here.”

  “Not if there were other nukes, apart from those we saw.” Buddy’s voice became very thin, as if he was getting farther away. “Think about it. A station this size, if you wanted a real demolition job, you’d have to plant several of them externally at different points around the hull. You’d need more than one to be absolutely sure the station was fully destroyed, if you were relying on low-yield tactical nukes like those.”

  “Draeger must have figured that out and found one somewhere. If I can only find him—”

  Buddy laughed shakily. “For what? To blow the thing up yourself? It’s too late, Ken. It’s time you . . .”

  Kendrick stared down at the wand in his hands. Never too late, he told himself.

  The elevator ground to a halt with a barely audible electronic ping.

  He slammed the door open and stepped back out into the main facility building, immediately breaking into a run. His wand map would tell him where the other external airlocks were.