by Майк Берри
‘Hey. . .’ said Carver, intending to strongly defend his position, even make an impassioned plea for his life. It came out as the merest breath, and trailed away into nothing.
‘Come,’ said the man. ‘And we’ll find some digging equipment before I go. This shuttle will be rammed with mining kit.’ He sounded calmer, more reasonable again, and Carver tried to convince himself that he hadn’t been scared just then, that this was just some poor crazy fucker living out his schizoid fantasy on a blighted rock. But something had chilled him to his core. That frozen kernel still remained as he followed the man back through the tube and into the booming depths of the inter-system shuttle.
Chapter Eighteen
Eli came slinking into the plaza from the direction of the rec area, but the loud whine of the un-oiled automatic door betrayed him. Everyone turned to look, confounding any hopes he’d had of creeping in unnoticed. He gave an embarrassed little wave to Halman and called, ‘Sorry I’m late, Dan!’
Halman, standing facing the assembled crowd next to one of his senior admin staff, a greying and severe battleship of a woman named Amy Stone, showed him a slightly forced smile and answered over the general hubbub: ‘That’s okay, Eli, we’re still waiting for Sudowski anyway.’
Eli nodded and pushed his way through the mass of bodies towards where Lina and Marco stood near the front of the group, which was centred more or less on The Miner’s. The place was shut now, its grimy windows dark and shuttered. Eli gave her an enquiring look — How’re you doing? — and she gave him a wan little smile in return — Not too bad, thanks. And if her head would just stop pulsating, she even thought that might be true.
‘Hey, Eli,’ said Marco, looking up at him.
Eli ruffled Marco’s hair affectionately, a gesture that the boy wouldn’t tolerate from anybody else, then he leant in close to Lina and whispered in her ear, ‘Did you. . .’
‘Tell him?’ she asked equally quietly. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘Oh good–’ said Eli, but he was hushed by a chorus of cat-calls and jeers as a severely crumpled Nik Sudowski entered from the stairwell, trying ineffectually to wave the crowd into silence.
Some wag, probably Si Davis, yelled, ‘You crap the bed or something, Nik?’
Sudowski shook his head tiredly and pushed his way towards the back of the crowd, where Lina supposed he hoped to fade from the collective mind as soon as possible.
Halman cleared his throat, a noise as loud as a gunshot, making her jump, and puffed his chest out. ‘RIGHT!’ he bellowed, and silence fell immediately.
Here were all of the inhabitants of Macao Station, barring a couple of the sec-team who had stayed behind at the prison and, of course, the prisoners themselves — over a hundred disparate frontiers-people, around a dozen children among them. Many of them were lifelong associates, and all of them were members of the station’s extended family. Although they practically filled the grey and shadowy space of the plaza, the most open public area available on Macao, they looked a desperately small and tenuous pocket of life, a fragile bubble of humanity crammed into one little corner of this hurtling tin-can which spun mechanically on the isolated boundary of known space. And now we are one less, a little voice in Lina’s mind reminded her darkly. That voice, so often a nagging, negative little voice, sometimes sounded like Jaydenne. But now it sounded like Sal Newman. Lina wished she’d taken painkillers before coming out.
Halman looked around the assembled group, wearing his serious-business-face, catching the eye of each in turn. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, then paused, unsure of how to really begin. ‘Let’s not fuck arou–,’ he stumbled over the obscenity, before righting himself. ‘Let’s not beat around the bush here,’ he corrected himself. ‘We’ve had a few problems over the last couple of days. Most of you have probably heard what’s going on already, but I just wanted to make sure that you’ve got the right of it.’ He looked out at the earnest, enquiring faces that stared back at him. Lina felt for him a little — she knew he hated public speaking. He glanced to Amy Stone, who looked tiny next to him. She nodded seriously, and he seemed to rally again. ‘I’d like everyone to be equipped with the truth rather than second-hand gossip from The Miner’s.’
‘Hey!’ objected Gregor, raising a hand in protest. Lina turned to see him. He was standing at the back with an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth, the typically swarthy deep-space roughneck.
Halman grunted a brief laugh, but Lina thought it sounded purely dutiful. ‘No offence, Gregor,’ he said, raising his own hand in return. And then, more serious again, and to everyone: ‘There was an accident in the belt last night, on Eli’s shift. I’m sure everyone has already heard, but here’s how it actually happened: Sal’s mining ship, K6-8, having passed a thorough pre-flight, bumped a rock, which pierced the hull and caused an explosive decompression.’ He scanned the rapt faces before him. Silence reigned. ‘She was killed instantly.’
Lina remembered that cry for help, that small frightened voice saying, simply Eli! and then the scream, and she knew that it hadn’t been instant, not really. Quick, perhaps, but not instant. Sal had had long enough to be afraid, even to feel pain — to die in fear and pain. She felt her lip begin to tremble and bit down on it, hard. She had already cried in front of her boy once today and she was determined not to make it twice.
‘There is nothing I can say that will have any bearing on the depth of the loss that we feel, as a family, as crewmates and as friends of hers. We do not know how the safety systems of Sal Newman’s Kay came to fail, and all Kays are now grounded until the ground-crew, myself, and Nik’s people are satisfied that they are safe.’
‘Then how come,’ somebody asked from near the back, ‘they were flying again last night?’
There was a rumble of noise at this, a general hubbub of questions and contradictions. Halman held up one hand until it died away.
‘Ilse Reno’s shift took their Kays out last night to clear the wreckage from the crash, and to try and find out anything they could about what happened.’
‘That’s right,’ said Ilse loudly. She was leaning against one rust-stained wall, her arms folded across her small chest. She looked around defiantly, her hard face up-tilted, her brows drawn together. Her eye-implant glowed cherry-red in the shadows. ‘And if any of you has issue with that, be aware that my guys insisted, as did I. This is Sal Newman we’re talking about here! Any of you shitheads think we should have just left her remains drifting in the belt?’ She waited, inviting response, her chin jutting defiantly. Despite her generally fearsome appearance, she was beautiful in that moment, thought Lina — proud and fierce. Unsurprisingly, nobody answered her. ‘I thought not,’ she said, relaxing back.
Halman took a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Ilse,’ he said neutrally. ‘Yes, well, as of now all Kays are grounded until further notice.’ Halman nodded at Eli, who had his hand up. ‘Yes?’
Eli’s face was more creased than usual. He looked like a sheet that needed shaking out. ‘How, then, are we going to keep the station spinning, with no mineral income?’ he asked. ‘I thought we’d be stepping it up, if anything, because of. . . well. . .’ he trailed off, shaking his head.
‘Because they’ve lost the fucking shuttle!’ someone shouted from the crowd. Lina glanced back over her shoulder, but couldn’t tell who it was. Marco looked round nervously, too.
‘Yeah, and we have to pay for it, right?’ piped up the angry-sounding Jayce, one of Ella Kown’s sec-team.
‘As for the shuttle. . .’ shouted Halman, overriding the noise. ‘As for the shuttle, we simply don’t know where it’s got to. We still hope to receive it any day now, but we have to prepare for the possibility that we may not.’ These words, from the station controller himself, fell like bombs among the assembled listeners, but bombs that spread shockwaves of stunned silence. Everybody had known that this might be the case — most people had suggested as much, at least in private — but to hear it said aloud, and by Halman, somehow made it real. ‘We
have to prepare for the possibility that the next shuttle we receive will be a year from now, rather than a day or two. Personally, I still think it’ll turn up, but honestly that’s just a gut feeling. Supplies are going to be rationed, except for what we can grow here in the aeroponics lab. That means we’ll have to–’
‘Develop a fondness for salad!’ Si Davis interjected, somewhat inappropriately, Lina thought.
‘–we’ll have to collect all company-issued food supplies you have, centralise those supplies, inventorise everything, and ration it back out accordingly.’ There was an uproar of noise at this, part resigned groan and part open refusal, but Halman persisted. ‘Listen, if this seems a little Big Brother, I’m sorry, but we really have no choice. If the shuttle doesn’t come, we’re gonna starve if we don’t pool resources and share. And by the way, this is not a suggestion, it’s an order from my office. And it’s one that the sec-team will enforce if necessary.’
Lina felt Marco’s small frame tense against her. His cool, trembling hand found hers and held onto it tightly. She could feel the fear coming through his skin in icy waves. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered into his ear. Eli glanced at Lina. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him look the least bit scared before, but that was how he looked now. Just a bit, but it was there. She didn’t like it at all. Eli swallowed heavily and looked back to Halman.
‘Holy shit, Boss,’ said Rocko in a breathless voice. He still wore last night’s flight-suit, Lina saw. His dark face was slack and incredulous. ‘You saying we have to turn in all our food or, or. . . what? Ella Kown’s going to shoot us? Really? Ella?’ He turned from side to side, palms spread and face questioning, garnering support. ‘Really?’ he repeated in amazement. Ella didn’t appear to contradict him. Fionne, standing next to him, pulled him close to her, quietening him, whispering into his ear.
‘We’ll redistribute accordingly,’ said Halman calmly. ‘And fairly. And we’ll eat rations until either this year’s shuttle or next year’s shuttle arrives.’ A ventilation fan in the wall above the stairwell began to cycle up with a noise that rapidly grew to be intrusive, bringing Halman to a stumbling halt. ‘We. . . er, we. . .’ He turned and frowned at it. ‘Can somebody shut that off?’ he asked Amy Stone, leaning down to her level. Amy frowned, too, and gave an answer that Lina couldn’t hear, shaking her head. ‘Nik?’ Halman asked, looking for Sudowski and finding him at the back of the crowd. Faces turned expectantly to the chief of maintenance, who simply shook his head, too. He looked extremely pale, his eyes red-rimmed and his hair unkempt.
‘Whole air system’s screwed anyway!’ somebody shouted. Lina thought it was Jayce again, one of the sec-team Halman would be relying on to enforce his new rules.
This comment had a disturbing effect on the assembly: a cacophony of voices rose, some berating the speaker, some agreeing, others shouting questions. Marco’s hand tightened even further on Lina’s, painfully, his nails digging into her palm. She squeezed back nonetheless. Eli was silent beside her.
‘The air system,’ said Halman in a loud but steady voice, pitched to override the racket from the fan, ‘is working fine. Nik’s team had to change a processor, but it’s currently running at almost full capacity.’
‘Almost?!’ yelled a woman’s voice, high-pitched with indignation.
‘Yes, this is another thing I know a lot of you have been talking about,’ said Halman diplomatically. Lina, from her vantage point near the front, could see a small vein pulsing in his temple, contradicting the aura of calm that he was clearly trying to project. ‘We have had a problem with the scrubbers this last week. Nik’s team have found an ingenious workaround for the issue. But the smoking ban will continue for the foreseeable future, to reduce the load on the system. Maintenance replaced the dead component with a processor from the comms array.’ More uproar. Halman waved the crowd to silence again. ‘This means that we have lost the ability, for now, to talk to Platini, or the way stations.’
‘Like they were any fucking help anyway!’ shouted a deep male voice from somewhere on Lina’s left.
‘This has been a difficult time for us,’ said Halman, ignoring this comment. The fan was droning away louder than ever, now, and seemed to have settled on this new and deafening frequency. Lina thought that a bad smell was coming from it, but she couldn’t be sure. If it was, then nobody else seemed to have noticed. ‘It is going to be a difficult time for us, until we are resupplied. We are all going to behave in an adult manner, though. We will focus on the priorities. That means we’re going to operate — co-operate — as a family, as a team.’ Everybody was silent now, straining to hear him over the noise. ‘Number one: another tragedy like the one that affected Sal Newman must not happen. That means nobody flies until further notice. Number two: we’re going to centralise food resources, and ration them out, against the contingency that this year’s shuttle doesn’t make it. I want all food items delivered to the canteen by three this afternoon. Then the sec-team will check to make sure nothing has been forgotten. Number three: we’re going to remain calm. That’s the most important thing of all.’ He scanned the faces before him, daring any of them to resist this last directive. Nobody spoke. ‘And we will get through this. We’re no strangers to adversity here on Macao, and this is just the way it has to be. This is why we are well paid. We are bigger than this, we can get through this. As long as we work together. That is all.’ He didn’t offer to field any questions, as Lina had thought he might, and this was probably wise judging by the mood of the group. Instead, with one last emphatic glare around the crowd, he turned and strode to the stairwell, where he ascended out of sight, Amy Stone dragging behind him like a ship’s tender.
There was subdued murmuring all around her as Lina stood gripping Marco’s hand and wondering what to do next. Eli puffed out his cheeks, catching her eye. He arched one eyebrow. What needed to be said, really?
‘Let’s go,’ suggested Lina, looking from Marco to Eli. They made for the stairs. As she went, Lina noticed the gaunt and lanky figure of Murkhoff, the security man injured by a prisoner the week before. He was standing with Theo and Jayce, and he looked particularly glum. A white bandage covered his ruined eye and a large red welt, where his face had been glued back together, ran from under the bandage almost to his chin. Lina guessed he wasn’t going to get his trip to Platini system any time soon.
Lina, Marco and Eli pushed through the remaining crowd and out of the door that led into the rec area. Lina felt shell-shocked. Eli was talking to Marco in a kindly, almost fatherly way, but she couldn’t really hear him. She was lost in her own world, a world in which they sat and waited indefinitely for a shuttle that never came, as the air dried up and equipment fell into disrepair, slowly starving out here in the back of beyond.
She stopped at the large window in the rec area, falling behind the others, hypnotised by the cold monotony of the belt that filled the view like static-snow on a screen. There it is, she thought. The reason we are here. Is it worth it? She thought of what Marco had said about going to Platini, finding another line of work, another place, another life. She was biting her lip again, almost hard enough to draw blood, but she didn’t notice. She reached out one hand to touch the window, as if she could make contact that way with the mineral bloodstream of the Soros system, somehow come to understand it, understand what it was that Sal had really died for. She thought of Jaydenne, wishing that Sal had gone with him to Platini, but knowing that then, maybe, she would have been the one in K6-8, and Marco would have been left behind with no parents at all. She thought of the shadow from her dream — out there somewhere — something dark and hungry and incomprehensible. She knew it was just a metaphor for her own fears, but she couldn’t shake the image from her mind.
When she touched the window, the display suddenly flickered, changing to a zoomed-in view, and at that same moment Eli touched her on the shoulder. She jumped, uttering a little squeak of surprise. ‘Eli. . .’ she said, looking into his eyes. She was alarmed to see t
he concern there, and wondered how bad she looked. She wasn’t sure if she was hung-over or losing her mind, or maybe some interesting combination of the two.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he asked her quietly, checking over his shoulder to make certain that Marco was still waiting for them further up the corridor.
‘Yeah,’ she said, her mind running in ten directions at once. And then, slowly, accusingly, she said, ‘You seem to be doing okay.’
Eli stepped back, his thick brows knitting together. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked, puzzled.
He looked ancient in the dim light of the corridor, she realised, like an artefact from another age, the lines of his weathered face shadowed into sharp relief. She shook her head, unsure herself of what she had meant. ‘I don’t–’
‘You mean you don’t think I’m bothered enough by Sal?’ he asked, his eyes widening in disbelief.
She could see his body tensing, and wished that she could unsay it. But she could only shake her head. ‘Eli, I’m. . .’ she began, but she trailed off, unable to finish the thought, let alone voice it. Other people were passing them in an intermittent stream now, coming from the stairwell behind them. Some of them looked enquiringly at Lina and Eli as they went by, their expressions politely concerned.
‘You’re what?’ he demanded, and she could see the anger rising inside him in a way she had never witnessed before. ‘You’re what? Saying you don’t think I care?’ He cocked his head, looking right into her face. ‘Really? Huh?’ When she wouldn’t look at him, though, he threw up his hands in exasperation. Marco was coming slowly back down the corridor towards them, his expression wary. ‘Just because I’ve learned to smile on the outside, Lina, doesn’t mean I’m not fucking human!’ he spat, teeth clenched.