Macao Station

by Майк Берри

  Suddenly, there came a deafening blast of noise from the radio. Lina jumped, jerking the small stick that controlled the gas torch, making it come away from the metal. The noise was gone again. It had sounded almost random, like white noise, but Lina didn’t think it had been. There had been something in there, below the hissing and crackling of the muddied radio signal. She thought it had been screaming.

  ‘Ella! What was that?’

  ‘Somebody’s trying to contact us!’ cried Ella. ‘Hurry, Lina!’

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying!’ Lina called back, re-applying the torch. She was aware of what that noise had meant. They weren’t all dead inside, not yet. But they were in trouble. Was it already too late to save them? Would she, at best, manage merely to cut loose a tin can full of insane murderers and slaughtered personnel? How would they ever get Carver’s gang out of there if Si had failed to push them back? Maybe Fionne really would have to create some sort of poison gas. Lina just couldn’t imagine her being prepared to do that.

  She realised that she had cut as far as she could without moving the ship itself, so she withdrew the gas torch and detached the clamp. She backed carefully away to survey the boarding tube better.

  Another burst from the radio. This time the screaming was clearer, and there was another voice, too. Somebody must have worked their way close to the shuttle’s hull, and was trying to talk to them. Friend or foe? She couldn’t guess.

  ‘Lina!’ said Ella in a small, high voice. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lina distractedly, gently turning her ship to present the gas torch to a new section. Maybe she should try the rotary cutter — it might be faster after all.

  ‘I couldn’t make out the words!’ Ella shouted.

  ‘I know,’ Lina replied. ‘Just stay there and listen.’

  She slowly drew the gas torch along the boarding tube’s armoured skin, inscribing a neat incision through which a milky glow emanated, as if it was bleeding light. Again she hit the limit of the tool arm’s reach and released the magnetic clamp. She drew a hand across her forehead and it came away slicked with sweat. Her heart was practically buzzing, its rhythm had become so fast.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered to herself, backing away for a better view. She saw that the asteroid was blocking the way to where she needed to go next. A great, jagged protrusion of rock jutted above her, preventing her from continuing the cut from here. She would have to fly out of the canyon then return from the other side. More time. ‘Shit!’ she cursed, damning herself for her inability to go any faster.

  She backed the ship up until she reached a point that was wide enough to turn in, then brought it about and dialled up the gas. She emerged from beneath the belly of the shuttle, seeing Ella’s vessel hanging in front of her. The other Kays were clustered roughly in the distance. Some of them still had their headlights showing, as if their pilots had just popped out for a minute. In reality, she knew that most, if not all of them, would never sit in those ships again.

  ‘Lina?’ asked Ella’s voice. ‘You done?’

  ‘No, I just have to hit it from the other side,’ Lina answered, already turning to fly across the top of the shuttle.

  ‘Well, when you–’ But Ella’s voice was cut off by a gasp. Lina’s nerves jangled like wind chimes. ‘Lina! Look!’ cried Ella, her voice shrill with excitement.

  Lina spun her Kay around, expecting the worst, honestly terrified. The shuttle’s huge manoeuvring jets were sputtering to life. Serpent-tongues of incandescent gas licked the vacuum, stuttering then steadying. The shuttle wallowed, shivered, and began to move.

  ‘Lina, they’ve done it!’ cried Ella. ‘They’ve done it, Rocko’s done it!’

  ‘No. . .’ Lina shook her head, trying to deny that it was happening. ‘No, Ella, this could be bad. . .’

  ‘Bad?’ asked Ella. Lina could hear the joy drain from her voice. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not done! I’m not done!’

  ‘But what’s–’

  ‘Get away!’ Lina yelled, realising what was about to happen. ‘GO!’

  She slammed the gas all the way to the stop and her Kay took off with enough gees to pin her uncomfortably into her seat. Her vision began to cloud, grey monochrome bleeding in from the edges. She struggled to remain conscious, feeling her suit clench around her legs, driving the blood to her brain.

  The shuttle and its massive asteroid moved slowly at first. The great symbiotic construct of rock and metal ploughed into the field of abandoned Kays, narrowly missing Lina and Ella as they accelerated out of the way. The Kays piled up against the hull of the shuttle, then were spilled off into the void, scattering like nine-pins, spinning away into the night, broken tool-arms shattering off them. Lina brought her ship to a stop, Ella drifting nearby. As one, they turned to look.

  ‘It’s fine, Lina!’ said Ella. ‘Look — the course is good.’

  And sure enough, Rocko had somehow got the bearing right. The shuttle was heading in the direction of Macao. But it looked far from fine.

  The half-cut boarding tube, instead of forming a rigid link between the two objects, was now something more akin to a hinge. As the awkward conjoined mass began to pick up speed, the nose of the shuttle came down to meet the asteroid. There was a silent collision that dented the shielded hull of the ship and sent chunks of rock shattering off in all directions. The shuttle rebounded, twisting on the severing link of the boarding tube, and this time its back end hit the rock. The manoeuvring jets exploded, scattering debris and illuminating the glistening asteroid in a flash that lasted just the briefest instant.

  Lina watched in silent horror as the shuttle was blown clear of the rock. The asteroid flew on, its course almost unaltered by the loss of its man-made parasite. A host of smaller rocks, its swarm of progeny, flew with it now. Lina maxed the gas again, giving chase. Shadows twined through the belt around her — imagined, real, both or neither of those things — ink and oil swirling on the canvas of the night.

  The shuttle hit a smaller asteroid and rebounded, crashing into Eli’s rock for a last time as the pair flew towards the station. This time the whole asteroid shattered, breaking in half in a hideous slow-motion dance of destruction — chaos from order, entropy in action. The shuttle flew off on a tangent, up and port-wards. Half of the asteroid deflected to the other side, hitting one jagged iceberg, then another, disintegrating as it went, spreading boulders and gravel in all directions.

  The remains of the other half flew onwards, ever onwards, towards the station. It smashed a smaller rock out of its way, setting off a chain of collisions that almost killed Lina. The ship’s computer swerved the Kay around one spinning rock and then another, as she struggled to keep the large chunk in her sight. Her mind was reciting the names of the dead as she went: Sal, Nik, Jayce, Tamzin, Eli, Liu, Rachelle, Waine, Theo, Halman, Alphe, Niya. . .

  The shuttle was slowing down, ploughing through asteroids that shattered into dust against its deuterium shield. It would miss the station. But the rock might not. . .

  Macao came into sight, rising through the haze of asteroids like a sailing ship appearing through sea-mist. Marco was in there.

  ‘No,’ Lina breathed. ‘No. . .’ She flew on, tailing the spinning chunk of stone as the shuttle slowed to a halt, gently rotating, with the ISL still clinging to its back.

  Although Macao was dying, its kinetic defence systems were still working. The station fired once from the mass drivers on its hub, once more from its rim. The half-asteroid burst apart. Some small chunks continued on, colliding again and again, being whittled down to dust and finally petering safely out. Lina brought her Kay to a halt before the towering edifice of the station, that great dirty wheel. Macao remained untouched, inviolate, turning. Eli’s rock had become a cloud of sand and gravel.

  The shuttle, however, was mostly intact. Lina floated in her Kay, dumbstruck, fearing the worst. They had the shuttle. But people had died. More family gone. She could not imagine that Rocko, Hobbes
and Si could be alive in there. Surely not. The jets had exploded. She realised that she had been conditioned to accept disaster, but she was unable to envisage any other outcome. The silken blackness of space pressed in on her — the raw material of loneliness, the base colour of defeat.

  ‘Oh no. . .’ she sighed. ‘No, no, no. . .’

  ‘Lina. . .’ began Ella. But she had nothing else to say.

  Suddenly, the radio blared with static, a hissing jumble of electromagnetic interference. But within that jumble there were words:

  ‘Lina! Ella! Are. . . there? We. . . the shuttle! Repeat: we have the shuttle!’

  Chapter Fifty

  Si clambered up into the ISL and pushed Lina bodily aside, shoving her into the middle seat, shoulder to shoulder with Hobbes.

  ‘I’ll fly,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I’m a better pilot than you.’

  Lina laughed and shoved him back, which barely affected him at all. ‘Screw you, Davis!’ she retorted.

  ‘Never,’ said Si, reaching down to flick the manual injector safeties. ‘Not in your wildest dreams.’

  ‘Believe me, Si, that would be a nightmare,’ she replied, wriggling her backside into the thin cushion of the bench in an effort to get comfortable.

  Si just laughed and turned around in his seat to look behind him into the crew compartment. The benches were filled with volunteers from Macao — as many as would fit in the ISL. ‘You ready, shift B?’ he called over his shoulder. There was a general noise of affirmation. ‘Then let’s fly!’

  He flooded the jets, bringing the loader rumbling round in a wide arc, skirting the stricken dead-lifter. The hangar was conspicuously devoid of functioning Kays apart from the two that Lina and Ella had managed to bring in, which sat nestled beside each other like frightened pack animals. Those damaged by the ISL had been shunted into a far corner, where they would remain isolated until someone could inspect them.

  The klaxon sounded and the ramp began to drop. The belt appeared before them, but this time the shuttle could be seen out there, off to the right, surrounded by a cloud of debris from its smashed manoeuvring jets. It was upside-down relative to Macao, slightly dented at the front, but essentially intact.

  ‘Wheee!’ cried Si childishly as the loader accelerated off the end of the ramp and curled away into space. He pinned the yoke, flying unnecessarily fast, clearly enjoying himself.

  The shuttle grew quickly to almost fill the screen. Lina could hear the crew chattering behind her. It wasn’t a happy chatter, as such. But it was a cautiously excited one. There was much work to be done — shifts had toiled around the clock, the ISL ferrying a continuous stream of volunteers out to the damaged ship — but there was hope. Real hope. Fionne was leading a team of the more technically-able members of the crew in the re-fitting of the air scrubbers. They still had to fix the power, but there were only so many people who were actually of use in such endeavours. Time was very much against them still. But there was hope. And that was a good starting point.

  ‘So, I guess we’re looking for the gennie parts today?’ asked Hobbes.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Si, tugging at the collar of his space suit. ‘And we’ll take as much food as we can. But generator parts first.’

  ‘I can’t imagine when Fionne will manage to actually fit them,’ said Hobbes, a little darkly.

  ‘I know,’ said Si, bringing the loader swooping along the upturned belly of the great shuttle. ‘Busy, busy. We could use another nine or ten of her.’

  ‘How long do think it’ll be until we can. . .’ began Hobbes, trailing off, not wanting to say it.

  ‘Fly the shuttle?’ asked Lina, turning to look into his face. Hobbes nodded. She thought she saw a little glimmer in his eye. ‘Why? You coming with us now?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought I might, actually.’

  ‘It’ll be a long ride, you know?’ said Si, peering into the screen, slowing the loader as it rolled over to fly along the top-side of the shuttle. ‘It looks like we’ll have to re-attach the loader and use its engines for propulsion. Might take ten years instead of five, sleeping shifts in sus-an.’

  ‘I don’t think many people will want to stay behind, Simon,’ said Hobbes, glancing back over his shoulder. The team back there were laughing now, and the sound was good to hear. It was kind-of infectious, actually. Lina felt herself beginning to grin too. ‘By the time we’ve made Macao safe in the short-term and checked the shuttle for flight-worthiness, I think we might have a full complement.’

  Si laughed. ‘I hope so, Doctor.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Lina. Faces scrolled before her mind’s eye — the faces of the dead. She still could hardly believe that Si had killed Carver, survived himself, and he and Rocko had actually pushed the prisoners back into the now-destroyed asteroid. So many comrades had died. It would be a disservice to them to stay here. And she thought Hobbes was right: once the immediate danger was dealt with, everyone would come with them to Platini. ‘To hell with Macao,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re coming, Hobbes.’ Hobbes smiled back at her and pushed his little glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Lina shoved Si on his powerful shoulder again, making him glance over at her. ‘But I’ll fly the shuttle until it goes auto, Si,’ she said. ‘I am, after all, a better pilot than you.’

  Si laughed — a deep, rumbling bass. ‘Screw you, McLough,’ he said.

  ‘Never,’ replied Lina, craning to see the shuttle’s docking point, which was coming into view beneath them now. ‘Not in your wildest dreams.’

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Murkhoff adjusted the grimy bandage that covered his ruined eye. There was nothing he could do to make it comfortable. He thought it was becoming infected. He hadn’t dared look for a day now. Nobody seemed to care. They were all too busy with their precious shuttle.

  His skull burned and ached inside, a vortex of perpetual agony which poured from his eye into the back of his head like sunlight focused through a lens. He was grinding his teeth. He’d found that he couldn’t stop it any more — the pain in his jaw almost served to distract from the pain in his head. But not quite. In fact, even the fader had ceased to really touch it. And, joy of joys, he didn’t have much left. There would be more on the shuttle. But the pilot had been his contact, and without the pilot he’d never find it. And they’d hardly allow him to search for it anyway, would they?

  He glanced around at the dorm, pulling his fleece jacket tighter around his shoulders. Look at them, he thought sullenly. Scurrying about like their asses were on fire, trying to save themselves. Nobody gives a shit about me, though, do they? Well, I’ve some news for you, people: I don’t give a shit about you, either.

  It was true. Nobody cared. He had been forgotten. Maybe he should have gone with Halman’s shuttle mission after all. Perhaps he could have found the bastard prisoner who’d stabbed him with the pen, maybe throttled the fucker before he died himself. What revenge was he ever going to get now?

  He knew he’d have to go with the others to Platini. He supposed they’d fix his eye if he ever made it there. But the possibility seemed so distant, so hypothetical, that it offered little hope.

  ‘Bastards,’ he muttered through his clenched teeth. He wasn’t sure exactly who he meant. All of them, he supposed.

  Outside the window, the belt hung suspended in silence. Yuwan, on a slightly lopsided orbit, had faded below the rotational plane and hence from sight, taking its Predecessor moon with it. Vagar was in ascendance instead — a bright, tiny pinprick of light. Darkness lay in wait out there, squeezed into every rocky crevice, spread as far as the eye could see, barely restrained by Soros’ distant glimmer. Eli’s rock had been smashed to dust, and that dust had clumped, forming a cloud that hung before the station like a veil. They’d been so busy with their shuttle that he didn’t think anyone else had noticed it.

  Fionne was attempting to fix the scrubbers, he knew. But she was hamstrung by a team of bumbling amateurs and they were having problems. It wouldn’t work.
He knew that, too. They’d see. They’d fucking see. The air was now so thin that he was short of breath even standing still. His head swam and ached and pulsed. His teeth squeaked as they ground together.

  It was fascinating, really. Even with only one good eye, he could see the patterns out there. It wasn’t truly random, was it? There was order within the chaos. He moved closer, placing the palm of one hand on the window. The belt was thrumming gently: alive. He could feel it through his skin. Order. Chaos. Darkness, frozen in a wave of pent-up energy. A force in its own right.

  That dust cloud. . . It was moving. Something was moving inside it — little eddies, little currents. . . order within the chaos. Patterns.

  And then it spoke to him.

  ‘My emissary. You have come to me. . . Listen. . .’

  ‘Yes. . .’ he breathed, pressing his face to the cold glasspex. ‘I’m listening.’

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