by Майк Берри
‘NO!’ screamed Marco again — deafeningly loud this time– a sound that filled the room and made the walls vibrate like a struck drum.
And then Eli moved.
Several things happened at once. Lina, sensing that Eli would spring for Marco, attempting to simply bypass her, launched herself into his path. Caught against the bed-frame, she staggered and fell, right on top of her son. As went down, she saw somebody else in the room, a hulking shape behind Eli, moving in a swift and purposeful blur. Marco screamed. The sound drew out and stretched like chewing gum, hideous and tearing. Eli practically landed on her, the keystone in a veritable human pyramid. The scalpel, striking for Marco, who still cowered beneath his covers, caught Lina in the shoulder, opening it to the bone and tearing a jagged gash right down to her elbow. The breath that came from his mouth washed over her in a sickening wave. He smelled like something had died inside of him, and Lina supposed that was actually pretty close to the truth.
Whoever had entered the room behind Eli was now right on him, moving swiftly. For a terrified split-second, Lina thought it was the shadow from her dream, come to solid life and somehow inside the station itself. But the figure swung something at Eli’s head, which connected with a heavy clonk! As the light spilled across its face, Lina saw that it was Rocko, drawn by Marco’s scream.
Eli, who had until then been struggling like an enraged animal, the scalpel flitting past Lina’s face like a silver wind, trailing drops of her own blood from its edge, stiffened and went rigid. He uttered a sound of bestial pain and surprise and rolled off her onto the floor, coming up in a fighting crouch.
He moved fluidly, backing into the corner, a wild beast at bay, lips drawn back in a snarl. He seemed to have forgotten Marco, and went instead for Rocko, who backed away, alarmed at the ferocity on his face. Rocko held a length of metal pipe in one hand, but it hung uselessly by his side. Rocko had fought for the Unionists on Platini Alpha, but now he looked utterly lost. He had, after all, just hit his boss on the head with a metal pipe. And by way of reprimand, said boss clearly intended to kill him.
Lina didn’t waste any time. Rocko had staked his own life on saving Marco, a decision probably made in a moment — a genuine act of altruism. She couldn’t allow that act to be repaid with death. And so she moved, leaping up off the bed and kicking Eli in the back of his knee. He went down as smoothly as she could have wished, and she screamed Now! Hit him! at Rocko, not realising that no sound actually came from her mouth at all.
Rocko was still stepping away, though, staring at the stream of blood that was pumping out of Eli’s head where the pipe had hit him. Eli, however, recovered quickly — too quickly — and came up with the scalpel swishing. He turned to Lina, the blade held out before him, then back to Rocko, his head snapping frantically from side to side.
Lina backed away too, and Eli’s attention focused on her. He moved towards her, leering. ‘I am the emissary!’ he shrieked, his face trembling as if he might cry again, the blade pulled back for a killing blow. ‘The dragon will not take no for an answer!’
Emissary? thought Lina. Dragon? She saw none of the man she had known so long within that face — he had become a raving, hollowed-out shell. And then he simply stopped, momentarily frozen, head cocked as if listening for a faint sound, maybe a distant voice. A light seemed to go on inside him and his lips twitched in the simile of a smile. He turned, ducking low, then sprinted straight past Rocko and out of the door, raining spats of blood as he went.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Halman’s crazy,’ said Fionne, brushing her grease-slicked hair behind her ear. Her hand left another dark smear where it touched her face. She looked round at Patrick, who was an unappealingly dirty and unkempt individual at the best of times, and now looked as if some huge carnivorous machine had chewed him for a bit and then spat him out, possibly finding him too rank-tasting to swallow. Worse still, she could only view his rear aspect from here.
Patrick didn’t move from his position, on his knees with his upper body inserted into an open wall-panel, but he answered with his usual lack of humour: ‘Perhaps he wants to look for the shuttle. Or maybe he wants someone to try for Way Station One. I don’t think you are in any position to criticise his decisions. I’m nearly done here, by the way.’
Fionne sighed and rooted in her tool box, which was balanced on the square metal case of the electronic diagnostics unit. She found the item she was looking for — an insulation applicator — and crawled back into her own grimy workspace. ‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘But it seems like something of a gamble to me. And it’d take years to reach the way station in an in-sys vessel. They only carry enough gas for a short burn.’ She clamped the applicator over the cable she had spliced into the main hangar supply and dialled a setting into it, working mainly by touch in the weak light supplied by her lamp.
‘It’s none of our business, is it,’ said Patrick rhetorically, his voice muffled inside the wall.
Fionne wished she had Alphe to work with instead of this idiot. Or Nik. Well, maybe not Nik. She was still in a state of shock to think that her boss of years — and her friend, too — had been trying to kill them all. It was insane. Unthinkable. But there you were. Life was predictable in its unpredictability, if nothing else. She was just glad to have work to do.
‘It kind of is our business, Patrick,’ she answered, matching his haughty tone, aware that she should just ignore him, but unable to help herself. She needed somebody to talk to — it was just a shame it had to be him. Patrick could be a bully if he was allowed. Of course, Nik had usually kept him in line before. ‘If a half-day of hangar costs us a whole day of air and heat, I’d say that’s our business all right.’
Patrick’s voice was louder behind her now, and she realised he was out of the wall-space. There came a series of metallic clunks and bumps, indicating that he was stowing his tools again. ‘Halman,’ he said, ‘is paid to deal with those sorts of decisions. If you don’t trust him, you should have really done something about it before your life depended on those decisions. Bit late now.’
Fionne paused, a wave of irritation rippling through her. Arrogant, self-righteous bastard! she thought. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that he had a point. She did trust Halman, and always had. He was a good station controller. Okay, so he wasn’t strictly the brightest spark in the fire, but he was a decent man, and possessed of a certain practical, earthy wisdom. And she had to trust him now, accept her place as just another cog in the machine, a tool that he was using to try to correct their problems in the best way he saw fit. She locked the applicator shut and felt along the cable to examine the integrity of the insulation she had applied. It was impressively smooth and unbroken. ‘I think that’s it,’ she said when she was sure.
‘Good,’ replied Patrick, managing to make the word sound like some sort of curse.
Fionne backed out of the wall-space and stood achingly, her knees popping as they straightened. She had spent almost the entire time since Nik’s untimely death crammed into one uncomfortable space or another. At least the perpetual physical discomfort hadn’t left her with the clarity of mind to really dwell on what had happened. At least, not yet.
‘Let’s test,’ she said, stowing the insulation tool and humping the heavy tool box off the diagnostics machine. She wanted Rocko. Right now, she needed Rocko. She should be spending her time with him, not with this sweaty little rat of a man. Rocko always made everything okay. And now — just when she had finally got it together with him after years of unspoken, mutual attraction — now this shit storm had to blow in. Just when she was finally happy. She wondered where he was and what he was doing.
Fionne dragged the heavy machine over to Patrick, who watched with faint, detached amusement but didn’t offer to actually help. Overall, the amusement annoyed Fionne more than his failure to assist her. It didn’t seem like a time to be amused by a co-worker struggling with a heavy piece of equipment, or any other damn thing, fo
r that matter. Somebody screamed nearby, but neither of them looked in that direction. They were already starting to get used to the sounds of panic and chaos that had come to their fragile, lonely little world so quickly.
They wired the tester into the circuit at as many points as they could, checking earth, current, resistance, insulation and interference until they were both satisfied beyond any doubt. Patrick stood up, a cloud of mingled oil and body smells puffing out of his clothing. Fionne backed away, trying not to wrinkle her nose. Why didn’t he fucking wash?
‘Let’s go live,’ said Patrick, shooting her a sidelong look that she couldn’t decipher the meaning of, and moving to the twin ranks of switches that they had exposed in the floor.
‘Sure,’ said Fionne, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
‘You’re sure you didn’t go into the kitchen main?’ he asked her, a patronising smile forming on his face.
Fionne bit back the words that came instinctively to her lips — Fuck off, Patrick! — and simply nodded, turning away so as not to look at him. She heard him clambering down into the floor, his shadow stumbling drunkenly across the walls as he moved his lamp around, trying to cast some light on his work. He flicked the switch.
Click!
Fionne realised that she had been holding her breath. She let it out now, slowly, and turned around. Patrick was sitting on the lip created by the missing floor panel. He dragged the diagnostics machine over so that he could see its readout.
‘Well?’ prompted Fionne after a pause of only a second or so.
‘Ha!’ he said, his face splitting open in a broad grin. It was the first time she had ever seen a genuine smile from him. It actually transformed him into something approaching human.
‘It worked?’ she asked, moving closer to see for herself.
‘Yeah,’ he said, still grinning, turning the heavy box so she could see better. ‘Look!’
Fionne squinted into the non-backlit screen of the machine, squatting down beside Patrick. ‘Well, look at that!’ she exclaimed — and now she felt herself smiling, too. ‘It did work.’
‘Well,’ said Patrick, climbing up out of the pit. ‘At least we can launch the ships now. Whatever Halman has planned, that must be a good thing.’
Chapter Thirty
Lina didn’t waste a second. She pelted after Eli without thinking, right past Rocko, who reacted slowly, dazedly, and made to follow her. Marco cried out behind her, and she yelled at Rocko to stay with him, even though she knew he would be safe now. After all, the danger was in front of her and fleeing down the corridor into the gloom, spattering blood as it went.
Eli had taken a left out of her door, and now he disappeared out of view round the corner at the end of the passage, his feet almost skidding out from under him in his haste. Lina didn’t even think to cry for help. She just knew that she had to stop him before he hurt anybody else. She still hoped, in some desperately optimistic last refuge of her mind, that he could be helped, mended, made well again. But mainly she just wanted to stop him, kill him if she had to. Strangely, these two conflicting plans seemed to gel with perfect logic in her racing mind.
She rounded the corner, putting out one hand to stop herself crashing into the wall. Her life seemed to have become one long helter-skelter dash through the dying bowels of this space station, flying from one surreal disaster to the next.
This new length of passage, lined with more private quarters, was shorter than the previous one and ended in a T-junction. Lina ran to the end as quickly as she could, hoping to see Eli down one of the two branches. But he was gone.
‘Shit!’ she cried, spinning round in place, baffled as to what to do next. The red light seemed to pulse around her, as if she was caught in the beating heart of some immense monster. She stamped one foot in childish frustration. ‘Shit!’
Where had he gone? Which way? Right was the plaza, then the rec area and canteen. Left was more quarters, then stairs up to the machine rooms or down to the warehouse and hangar. She stopped, pinned by indecision.
She looked down, trying to see more blood droplets. To her left was a thumbnail-sized splash of glistening colour on the grimy grey of the floor. The hangar! It had to be. She had no idea what he hoped to achieve by going there — the power was off and he’d be pretty disappointed if he hoped to fly out of here — but suddenly she was sure of it. She started off running again, not noticing that the blood from her own wounded arm had now completely soaked her sleeve.
As she ran past Waine’s quarters, she saw Waine standing in the open doorway, fumbling with the lock. He jumped backwards, eyes wide with surprise, and yelped her name, but Lina was already gone without slowing.
‘Lina!’ Waine yelled again, his voice cracked and wavery, the result of his heavy smoking. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s. . . Eli!. . .’ she yelled back over her shoulder, quite badly out of breath now and already developing a stitch. ‘Get Halman!’ She didn’t think he’d heard her, but she didn’t care. All of her concentration was on her racing feet, her shaky legs, the madman who had tried to kill her son.
‘What?’ called Waine’s voice from behind her, but Lina was already away, rounding the next corner.
Eli was nowhere in sight, but she saw another splotch of blood. He was not only bigger than her, with a longer stride, but he was also fitter, being a regular at the gym. Lina wished she was a little more active herself. Her pace had slowed slightly by the time she reached the steps to the next level, but her determination remained undimmed.
She paused at the head of the stairs, straining to listen over the sound of her own breathing. The descent to the next level was matted with shadows, the stairway tapering off into darkness as if the world just faded away down there. She went down, feeling as if she was descending into a pit, maybe the lair of some unseen wild animal.
She stepped down onto the floor of the warehouse. The long central gangway stretched away in front of her, a red-washed chasm between the shelves. The ceiling was a dark interior sky. Something moved at the far end — a shifting in the shadows, perhaps inferred, perhaps real. She moved along the gangway in a tense half-crouch, feeling the fear piling up on top of her like an increasing weight.
As she went, she glanced from left to right, desperately trying to look down every side-branch, scan every shady alcove of the giant racking. The place was a library of hunched, alien shapes — large pieces of engines and mining equipment under plastic sheeting, piles of substandard flight suits still in their wrapping, disorderly heaps and coils of rope and cable, boxes of bolts and electrical components with their contents spilling out. An enemy could hide anywhere down here. And even though she was pretty certain that Eli had already entered the hangar, she was unable to still the racing of her heart as she moved through that eerie vault, feeling desperately small and alone.
As she neared the hangar door, she noticed for the first time the bright light that emanated from inside. It was a white light — a normal light — which meant that the power was on.
She approached cautiously, her body shuddering with fear, wishing that she had just run to get Ella or Halman, or someone — anyone — but compelled to continue. Why was the power on? Had Eli somehow known? Whether he had known or not, she was sure — sure — that he was here.
When she was almost within touching distance of the hangar door there was a sudden creak from inside its mechanism and it began to close. She’d been right — he was inside.
Without further thought, she ducked under the descending door and into the hangar. As she emerged, flinching and squinting beneath the glare, the door dropped into place behind her with a deep, percussive bang. Trapped! her mind shrieked. Trapped with Him!
She could make out the slumbering hulks of the Kays, lined up like soldiers, and the dead-lifter, parked askew near the central desk, its massive forks like the mandibles of a giant insect. But Eli was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where are you?’ she hissed, moving off down the near
est row of mining ships, past her own K6-12. She trailed the fingers of one hand across its pitted skin as she went by — a subconscious gesture of familiarity.
Steam hissed from a vent high in one wall, with a sudden rushing noise that made her jump. She spun around, her hands flying to her face protectively, but there was nobody there. The control room was incongruously dark behind its glasspex screen, like an empty socket. Something clanged — metal on metal — the sound echoing such that she couldn’t discern its origin.
She wished that she’d brought a weapon with her, and she moved towards the central desk in the hope of finding a hand tool or something. . . anything. But the desk was empty except for Liu’s distinctive bright green datasheet. It was showing a cheery screensaver of a cartoon dog that was so at odds with Lina’s state of mind that she stopped, unable to comprehend it. The dog bounded happily from one side of the screen to the other, its tongue waving and flapping from its mouth. Dead silence hung around her. The madman was in here with her. Somewhere.
That sound again — the sound of clanging metal. This time, she could tell where it had come from: the far end of the hangar, near the ISL and the space door.
Lina took off running, crying out Eli’s name, suddenly electrified by a rage so hot that it consumed her fear in an instant, immolating it in bright fire. She pelted up the central runway, her footsteps ringing on the metal floor, and leapt across the corner of the space door to land before the in-system loader, grabbing onto one of its antennae to steady herself. Something moved, glimpsed below the loader’s up-tilted nose, obscured by its heavy landing gear. Lina dropped to the deck, peering underneath the ship. Nothing. She jumped to her feet again and spun round just in time to avoid the scalpel that came whispering towards her face.
She staggered back, unbalanced, into the loader’s hull, kicking out, and the scalpel’s blade shattered against the ship’s armoured hide. Eli recoiled, shouting with pain, his leg going out from under him. His face, an exaggerated snapshot of horror and insanity, was slathered in blood from the wound that Rocko had given him. A small, vengeful thrill went through Lina at the sight of it.