We paused at the end of our landing pad to let another forklift go by. It was carrying a nest of old tubes and wires on a wooden pallet. The driver looked like an amphibian in a hard hat; she also looked too bored to notice us.
‘Okay, first step of the plan,’ whispered Pierre as we descended the steps connecting the landing pad to the rest of the facility. ‘We attract as little attention as possible, we find out the best way of getting into that crack thing, and then we do it. Hopefully all without having to move on to step two.’
‘God, I hope so. Where do we start?’
Pierre shrugged. ‘How about over there?’
He pointed to a domed structure at the far end of the station, half obscured by large excavation lights. Tankers were being carried back and forth along rails that linked it to the storage warehouses. Some sort of on-site processing facility, I assumed. The energy had been extracted; it needed to be bottled somewhere, too.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Good a place as any.’
We followed the open gangway in front of us. Each step on the metal grating rang out with enough gusto to give the game away, and likely would have if it hadn’t been for the incessant din of motors and drills emanating from everywhere else. Despite the air being artificial, nobody had discovered a way to remove from it the smell of oil and copper. It mixed poorly with the nervous bile rising in my throat. I fiddled with the hem of my jacket and tried to concentrate on how wonderfully clean it felt, rather than on the nagging dread of being caught.
Not that I needed to worry - not then, at least. The funny thing is, if you act like you’re supposed to be somewhere - even if you stand out like an orangutan in a snowstorm - most people assume you’re supposed to be there. It’s one of the few instances in life in which anyone is willing to acknowledge the possibility of their own ignorance. And the few remaining people are usually too busy to worry themselves about it. It’s someone else’s problem. It always is.
‘Mornin’,’ said another toad-faced worker as we passed, tipping his helmet and proving my point. Was it morning? I suppose it could have been.
‘Good morning to you too,’ replied Pierre, and the worker went right back to tightening a random bolt.
There was a whine and a crackle as a loudspeaker atop a tall pole to our right kicked into life. ‘Will Milty Bootka please report to the sanatorium for a code Three Dash Two,’ announced the nasally voice on the other end. ‘I repeat, Milty Bootka to report to the sanatorium for a code Three Dash Two. Thank you.’
‘Oops, that’s me,’ chuckled the bolt-tightener, picking up his toolbox. ‘Better run.’
‘Hey, before you go,’ said Pierre, hurrying round to the front of the poor engineer, ‘I don’t suppose you could tell us where we’d find the depot with all the syphoning equipment, could you? You know the hazmat suits, the maintenance crafts - that sort of thing?’
The engineer wrinkled his podgy green nose and eyed Pierre with a skeptical sort of confusion… and then broke into a smile.
‘Sure, you mean the equipment depot over by the energy silos,’ he said, nodding and carrying on down the path away from us. ‘It’s only a hop, skip and a jump from here but the gravity lifts can give people trouble. I can give you a ride, if you’d like?’
‘A ride?’ Pierre turned to me and grinned. ‘Why, that would be fantastic. If it doesn’t put you out too much, that is.’
‘Oh, not at all,’ replied Milty, beckoning us to follow. ‘I’m going past the depot anyway. No skin off my nose, right? Here it is. Best if you two climb in the back there.’
He’d brought us to a banged-up buggy parked behind some tarpaulin-covered boxes. It looked like one of NASA’s moon rovers. It also looked cramped. There was a seat up front for the driver and a shallow bay in the back, like the type you’d expect to find on a pickup truck, only much, much shorter. I guess it was usually used for ferrying tools from one job to another. I suppose not a lot was about to change.
‘Go on, in you get,’ said Milty, clambering into the driver’s seat. He set his toolbox down in the footwell between his legs. ‘It’s a bit of a squeeze I’m sure, but it’s not like you’re a pair of mastorhinos. And I cleaned all the grease off only yesterday.’
I don’t know what a mastorhino is, but Pierre and I wrestled our way into the back of his buggy all the same. I hoped Milty Bootka wasn’t lying about giving his vehicle a scrub-down. After days on the lam, I was still enjoying how clean all my clothes felt.
‘Hold onto something,’ Milty grumbled over his shoulder as he turned a key in the ignition. ‘This lady can’t go fast but she sure loves to put up a fight all the same.’
With a splutter the engine roared into life. It was the sort of roar that could only come from an old-fashioned Diesel engine, the sort of roar born from red cans of gasoline. All those years and all that technology, and yet the universe hadn’t moved on an inch. I guess oil was still cheap. It’s certainly easy.
The buggy rose into the air with a jerk, coughing out from its exhaust a few times, and then proceeded to fly about five or so metres above the floor of the station. Every now and then Milty would have to weave around a pylon or a forklift driver, but otherwise it was a pretty straight flight towards the silos.
‘Easy to get lost round here when you’re new,’ he said, shouting to be heard above the noise of the engine. ‘You guys are new, right?’
My stomach clenched. We were getting dangerously close to entering the second and preferably avoidable second stage of Pierre’s plan.
‘Yeah, you could say that,’ replied Pierre, glancing in my direction. ‘It’s our first day, that’s for sure. How do you find working here?’
Milty Bootka bobbed his head from side to side.
‘It’s decent enough, I guess,’ he replied. ‘Yeah, can’t complain. It’s regular work. The pay is pretty decent. And the healthcare plan covers my wife too, which she’s happy about. There you go, we’re here. Careful as you get out.’
The station must have had a surplus of crates covered in plastic sheets, because Milty brought the uncomfortable shuttle to a loud, belching stop behind yet another stack of them. Pierre and I wasted no time removing ourselves from the vehicle.
‘That’s the equipment depot right over there,’ said Milty as the engine continued to rumble along. He pointed towards a squat, square and wholly unremarkable metal structure that teetered on the absolute edge of the space station. ‘If it’s your first day you’ll probably want to report to Stephen at reception. That’s the door on your right. Okay, I’d best be off before they put out another call. See you around, guys.’
The buggy rose back up into the air with another guttural hiccup and blast, and soon enough the amphibious engineer was gone.
‘Well, he seemed nice,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t find him in the backroom of any Port Iridium opium den, that’s for sure,’ replied Pierre, already marching towards the depot. ‘Hurry up. Sooner or later someone will start asking questions if they see us standing out here like a couple of lost lemons.’
I caught up with him, but instead of approaching the reception doors Pierre veered off towards the side of the building. The alley down there was much too close to the edge of the facility for my liking. I started to feel a bit queasy. Stars should lie above me, not below.
There was a row of narrow windows lining the side of the depot’s ground floor. Pierre was standing on top of a pile of pallets and peering through their glass.
‘Dumpsters drowning in dirty uniforms, workbenches with silhouettes where the tools should be, cantankerous old administrators holding clipboards…’ muttered Pierre, squinting.
‘See anything useful?’ I whispered.
‘Ahem,’ came the loud and heavy sound of a throat being cleared behind us.
Pierre and I turned to face a cross-armed, leather-faced security guard whose torso appeared to eclipse the entirety of Ophenia Four.
‘What I see is a pair of unregistered intruders whom I oug
ht to throw into space,’ he added.
Pierre hopped down from the pile of pallets and stood beside me, arms raised.
‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered to me, trying to hide a confident smile. ‘Part two of the plan is going to work, I guarantee it.’
‘So you’re inspectors, then. Funny. Nobody called ahead to tell me about any inspectors.
We were sitting in a pair of uncomfortable, plastic chairs in front of an uncomfortable, plastic desk, listening to the man sitting opposite us talk. In some ways the foreman, a Mr. Percival Green, resembled the furniture of his office - not just uncomfortable and plastic, but thin and ready to fall apart as well. He reclined in his chair and stroked the point of his chin whilst the security guard who’d found us waited outside the office door.
‘Well, it’s not like Head Office to tell me much about anything these days,’ he laughed, shaking his head. He leaned forwards and the front two legs of his chair returned to the floor with a snap. ‘It’s not like I’m running a syphon mine for them here or anything!’
‘Oh, don’t get me started on the poor communication skills plaguing WeiKing-Co at the moment,’ replied Pierre, leaning forwards to mirror the foreman’s body language. He clasped his hands together in his lap. ‘The company didn’t even tell me and Mr. Webber that we had this job until last Tuesday. My oh my. It’s as if they want to make our jobs more difficult, am I right?’
I must say, I was impressed. When Pierre talked me through the plan, no part of me had thought that the second stage would work. But Pierre had been right, or just plain lucky - though with Pierre the two usually seemed to amount to much the same thing.
History does repeat itself, though considering the universe was undergoing something of a second draft, I suppose in this case history was happening for the first time. Pierre’s great plan was to do to this poor foreman exactly what Ms. Rundleford - sorry, Doxy the octowürm - had done to him: pose as an inspector. His logic? If it was good enough to fool him, it was good enough to fool everyone else too.
Not that I’m complaining, of course. Pierre being proven right once again was much better than being ejected out into space without a helmet.
‘So, what can I help the two of you with?’ asked Percival, as he typed away at his computer, rearranged his glasses and continued to stroke his chin. He looked quite human, if you overlooked the four arms. ‘Anything, erm, particular you wanted to check while you’re here? I can pull up some records, if you’d like?’
‘No, no,’ said Pierre, waving the suggestion away. ‘We were hoping to be in and out before you even realised we were here. It’s best that way with impromptu inspections, you see. No chance for anyone to sweep all the hazards under the industrial carpet. Everything’s looking great so far though,’ he added, noticing how pale the poor foreman’s face had become.
‘Oh thank goodness,’ Percival sighed. ‘Not that everything isn’t always great, of course,’ he hurriedly added, dabbing a handkerchief at his sweaty brow. ‘I run a tight ship here, I do.’
‘Oh, we’re sure,’ smiled Pierre, looking to me. I added some reassuring nodding. ‘Though I suppose while we’re here…’
‘Yes?’
‘The fissure, that one,’ Pierre said, pointing out the window as if there was any other fissure he could have meant. ‘Could you recap the safety protocols for me? I mean, nobody’s ever fallen into it, have they?’
Percival laughed and clutched one of his many hands to his chest. ‘Heavens, no. Nobody’s allowed near that thing without two dozen safety checks and a harness tethered to a supervisor’s security station. If an engineer gets within even a molecule’s width of that blinding monstrosity they get reeled back faster than you can pluck a moulting gnarleck. We haven’t had so much as a single accident in the sixty-two years I’ve been working here. Not regarding the crack, at least. Somebody stepped onto a gravity lift once, but that was an unfortunate accident. And the company knows that!’
‘Yes, yes, that’s fine,’ said Pierre, smiling through gritted teeth. I could almost see the metaphorical rope with which he was pulling the conversation along. ‘Of course, I know that nobody’s ever gone inside. That goes without saying. But tell me - has there never been a situation when a technician has needed to venture further in? How did you install all those clamps holding the syphoning equipment in place, for example?’
‘Oh! The clamps?’ Percival Green craned his neck to look out of the window behind him. ‘Nobody installed them. Well, that’s not true. Nobody had to go up there to put them in, is what I mean. We have a modified exploratory vessel that we pilot remotely. It’s got room for a couple of technicians, but there’s no way I’d be crazy enough to send it up there with anyone riding in it.’
My heart fell. That was hardly the news I’d been hoping for. I was going to end up in that fissure whether it was good for me or not. Couldn’t I at least be given some glimmer of hope beforehand? A reply something along the lines of, ‘Oh, one person went in. He came back in one piece, it was only his mind that got scrambled.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Pierre, not giving up. ‘But what about the vessel? That goes inside the fissure. How much repair work needs doing on it once it’s back out?’
‘Why, none,’ replied Percival, looking nonplussed. ‘It comes out in the exact same state as it goes in. We give it a scrubbing down as a precaution, but otherwise… No. Good as new each time. I guess it’s because it’s all metal and stuff, just like the syphon cables that suck up all the antimatter. Non-organic, you know what I mean?’
Pierre straightened his uniform and adopted as authoritative and snooty expression as he could muster. ‘We’d like to see this vehicle,’ he said, looking down his nose, ‘and see it up and running, if possible. Where would we find it?’
‘Oh, of course,’ replied Percival, jumping up from his seat. His face grew apologetic. ‘It’s back at the equipment depot, I’m afraid. I’ll have one of my security team take you over there right away. Again, I’m awfully sorry about the inconvenience, if there’s…’
An enormous horn rang out across the facility, deep and angry. It was so loud we could hear it even from inside the foreman’s office.
‘What was that?’ I asked, getting to my feet. ‘Please tell me it was just the whistle for lunch.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ replied Percival, his brow furrowing and the fingers of his four hands wringing together into a ball of worms. ‘Whatever it was, I don’t think it was us.’
‘Erm, George?’ said Pierre. He was standing beside the windows and trying his hardest to remain professional, but his eyes were too wide and his legs were starting to wobble. ‘Mr. Webber, I mean? Would you kindly come take a look at something for me?’
I hurried over whilst Percival Green tried contacting his receptionist through his intercom.
‘Do you recognise that?’ asked Pierre, pointing in the direction from which we’d first approached in our stolen spaceship. ‘You know, the big one?’
My eyes followed his finger and my stomach shrunk the way an apple does as it turns rotten.
‘Ah.’
‘I think,’ Pierre whispered under his breath, ‘that we might be in a bigger spot of trouble than we thought.’
Chapter Eleven
The Roaming Havoc floated above the mining facility, blocking what little of the sun’s light still shone from behind Ophenia Four. A great many searchlights beamed up in its direction. A great many artillery cannons were being pointed back in ours.
‘What in God’s name are they doing here?’ I snapped at Pierre. ‘You said they were probably just picking up supplies back at Port Iridium. Supplies with which to attack a mining facility?’
‘How am I supposed to know what they’re here for?’ hissed Pierre. ‘They might be here to steal the energy, sure. But maybe they’re here to buy it, you know? Save some money by cutting out the middle-man?’
I peered out of the window again. Some of the engineers had stopped
working and were staring up at the ship, bemused. Others were running for cover.
‘Something tells me they didn’t make an appointment,’ I groaned.
‘Hey, you know what?’ said Pierre, grabbing me lightly by the arm. ‘Doesn’t matter. None of it does. Maybe it’s even a good thing. Maybe with everyone distracted by those guys we can grab the vessel and head for the fissure without anyone trying to stop us.’
We were edging towards the door of the foreman’s office when the screen in the corner of the room burst into life… as did every screen and every speaker across the whole facility, apparently. The picture showed an angry alien with a bony skull mask for a face, whose teeth had been filed into points. I recognised his kind. He was one of the Skrelliks on board the Roaming Havoc.
‘Workers of this WeiKing-Co cosmic crack syphon mine,’ came the snarling voice of the man on the screen, ‘please stop what you are doing. It has come to our attention that you are harbouring a pair of thieves. Someone amongst you stole a ship belonging to our leader. We tracked it to this facility. Deliver the thieves to us within five minutes or we shall come down and take them by force. Consider this ultimatum quickly. The ship will be recovered regardless of your decision.’
The screens all around the facility switched off with a crackling whine.
‘Oh no,’ I whispered.
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