by Rob Boffard
“We’d have heard from them by now. Or seen them.”
“No.” Jack shakes his head. “I mean, the odds … it was a big station. Someone had to survive. Why not us?”
“Right. Exactly.” Brendan puts his hand over Seema’s. “Babe, just think for a second.”
She rips her hand away. “Don’t you tell me that. I am thinking, all right, and none of this is square.” She looks at Jack, her eyes a little wild. He has to force himself not to flinch. “You know what I mean? Like … it doesn’t add up. Us being the only ones.”
Jack takes a deep breath, righting himself. This is absurd.
“Sorry. I’m with Brendan on this one,” he says. “I think it’s just shitty luck. Most things are.”
And yet, even as he speaks he’s turning the idea over in his mind. No, they have to be rational about this, and, right now, Seema is several miles from rational. But …
But.
It’s been a while since he was an actual reporter, since he actually had to ask questions of people who didn’t want to give him the answers. But you never lose the instinct. You might not have got on a bike in years, might have even sold it, but that doesn’t mean you forgot how to ride. Your feet would automatically find the pedals, even when there was nowhere to go.
At that moment there are shouts from the main deck. Shouts, and running feet. The three of them exchange a look, then abandon their drinks, heading for the stairs. Brendan gets there first, followed by Seema, but Jack has long legs and he and Brendan reach the top at the same time.
The first thing he sees is Hannah’s head. She’s been swallowed by the floor at the back of the main deck, a trapdoor sprung open next to her. Everett, Anita and their boys are on their feet, and Lorinda Esteban is staring at the tour guide in shock. Hannah is barking instructions, yelling at Everett to follow her as she vanishes into the floor. He complies, a stunned look on his face, closely followed by his wife.
“What’s going on?” Jack yells across the deck. He has to do it again before Lorinda turns to look at him, her eyes huge.
“Fire.”
Chapter 12
Corey is almost at the hatch when his mom grabs his arm. “Stay here,” she says.
“But—”
“No. Stay.”
Like he’s a dog being told not to crap on the carpet. Thanks, Mom. But his mom looks pale, and it’s that, more than her words, that makes him do what she says.
“I’ll look after them,” says Lorinda. “Go.”
Anita flashes her a smile of thanks, hustling to the hatch. Corey’s dad is just disappearing out of sight, and she climbs in after him. The other three adults – the ones who were in the bar – all head down after her.
“Bakwas,” Corey mutters.
“All right, boys,” Lorinda says, not appearing to have heard him. “Let’s just hang out here. They’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t get it,” Malik asks her. “Where’s the fire?”
“Engine,” Corey says, frowning at the hatch. “Like she said.”
“So why isn’t there an alarm?”
Corey shakes his head. Sometimes his brother can be a real chutiya. “Because people would get scared. The whole point is to get them to stay where they are. There’s probably an alert or something in the cockpit, and then the automatic systems deal with it.”
“OK, genius. If there’s automatic systems, then why’s everybody heading down there?”
Corey looks at the trapdoor. The automatic systems should have kicked in, shutting down the fire the second it started, drenching it with suppressant foam. Every ship had to have that, no matter how small – it was the law. That meant the Red Panda, too.
The engine is right at the back of the ship, on the lower level. When they were flying into the hotel, there was the ear-splitting scrape of something against the hull. Could that have started the fire in the engine? Maybe damaged the suppressant systems? It’s easy to see a couple of torn wires sparking, their insulation slowly burning, getting hotter and hotter …
“I’m going down,” says Malik, getting to his feet.
“Don’t be an asshole, Mal,” Corey says, forgetting for a second that there’s an adult in the room. A grandma, actually.
“Don’t swear, Cor.” His brother goes down on one knee by the hatch, transferring his holo controller to his other hand. Is he seriously going to film everything?
Of course he is. That’s Mal. The same Mal who’d made him jump into the warm and sticky pool at Southeast Towers in Austin, making him do it over and over for two whole hours because the shot wasn’t quite right. The Mal who spent most of last year bugging their parents for an expensive editing program, never shutting up about it, until Corey wanted to kill him. Who would never let Corey sit in the window seat on a shuttle, in case he got in the way of a shot. He won’t show Corey any of the movies he’s working on, won’t even let him in his room at home. He used to play soccer with Corey all the time, but they haven’t done that in forever.
Mal didn’t know anything. Worse: he didn’t want to know anything. If it wasn’t seen through a camera, he just didn’t care. Technically, Corey is sort of the same, with spaceships and stuff, but that’s different. He does other things, too. He hoverboards and plays basketball at school and hangs out with Jamie and Allie. And he doesn’t treat his brother like a movie prop.
“Stop right there, mister,” the old woman says, getting to her feet with a grimace. “I told your mother I’d look after you, so you’re gonna stay right where you are. Besides—” she digs in her fanny pack. “I’ve even got something to keep you both occupied.”
It’s a toy – a tiny action figure, a little dinosaur in red plastic armour, its teeth bared. A tiny, badly painted purple tongue pokes between them. It’s still in its plastic packaging.
Corey blinks in astonishment. “Is that … is that a Reptar?”
“I have no idea,” the old woman says, sounding a little desperate. She starts to tug at the packaging, grunting as she tears open the back panel. “I bought it for my sister’s grandson. Saw it in the gift shop this morning, on the way over here. Apparently, you can link it up with a lens and make it walk around and jump up on tables. I haven’t really looked at that yet. We could try if you—”
Malik tilts his head, looking at them like they’ve gone insane. Then, in one movement, he turns and vanishes into the trapdoor. With surprising speed, Lorinda goes after him, but stops when she reaches the edge, her face flushed red as she stares at the ladder. Corey thinks he hears her mutter under her breath, something that sounds like shit.
She’s still clutching the Reptar toy in one hand. Corey isn’t sure what she was thinking – even he’s getting a little old for shows like Quasar Lizards, never mind Malik.
He can’t help but look up through the viewport at the debris field. If the station was still around, there’d be a big, fat rescue ship rushing out to them, even if the suppression systems were working right. It’d scoop the Panda up in its belly, get it into a pressurised environment, get the passengers out. Not going to happen now. There’s nobody coming for them – nobody who even knows they’re here.
A cold line of ice water runs down Corey’s spine. He shivers, has to make himself stop.
“I’ll go get him.” Corey crouches down, lowering his legs over the edge – only to be brought up short when Lorinda grabs his arm, in almost the exact same place his mom had her fingers around before. He can smell something nasty: Jack’s puke, still puddled by the wall to his left. It’s just starting to crust over.
The old lady’s grip is a lot softer, but it stops him cold. “Uhuh,” she says. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Corey smiles at Lorinda. “I never said. Thanks for catching me before. That was really nice of you.”
She blinks, then smiles back, opening her mouth to reply. But as she does so, her grip on his arm loosens just a little.
Corey slips out of it. He hears Lorinda cry out, her hand brushing the
back of his T-shirt. She’s not nearly fast enough – in less than two seconds he’s through the trapdoor, dropping right down. The ladder whooshes past him, and he lands hard, almost falling. He never worried about making the drop – it was only ten feet, barely enough to need a ladder for – but the landing is awkward and he only just manages to stay up.
“I’m really sorry!” he shouts up at Lorinda, a hot flush of shame already creeping onto his cheeks. He is sorry, and he’s probably going to get in bad trouble later, but he meant what he said about her catching him. He can tell her that, and it’ll all be OK. And, anyway, all he wants is a look.
He takes a breath, and gets a mouthful of hot, acrid smoke. It’s not the smoke of a campfire, or even like the kind when his dad burned something in the kitchen. It’s got a taste to it, a nasty one. He coughs, bending over, feeling like the smoke is coating the inside of his throat.
Bending over brings him closer to the ground, where the air is a little clearer, so he drops to one knee. The Red Panda’s astronautics section is a tiny room, dimly lit, the walls lined with boxy modules festooned with wires and blinking lights. This is the ship’s brain: its navigation, its proximity sensors, its voice, its heating and air.
On a more expensive ship, they wouldn’t have this room – everything would be on a single quantum chip, in its own cryo-pod. But quantum chips are expensive to maintain, and rooms like this one aren’t. Something goes wrong, you can just pull out a module and replace it, which is a million times cheaper than sending a quantum chip into a lab.
Corey blinks against the smoke, trying to pull in enough fresh air to hold in his lungs. He can just see beyond astronautics to the engine compartment; the door is open, and Seema is hanging on the frame, staring at something just out of his line of sight.
His dad’s voice cuts through the noise. “Aim it round the corner—”
“It’s not long enough,” Hannah says.
And then his mom, furious. “Malik, get back upstairs! Now!”
Corey hesitates. If his mom sees him down here, she might do something a little worse than ground him for a few days. And, besides, he doesn’t want to get the old lady in trouble. Maybe he should …
But the old lady is already in trouble, no matter what happens, and so is he. Corey runs in a crouch, trying as hard as he can not to suck more smoke into his lungs.
He doesn’t bother to sneak past Seema. She makes a grab for him, misses completely, and then he’s inside.
The engine room is even more cramped than astronautics. Most of its floor space is taken up by a huge, shielded cylinder, covered with a hundred different warning labels. The miniature fusion core. The walls are a mishmash of touch screens and digital readouts, their glow shading the smoke strange colours. It’s much thicker in here, so thick that Corey has to go down on all fours just to get another breath.
A metal panel has been torn loose from the wall, lying off to one side, exposing a space less than two feet across. Hannah and Corey’s dad are crouched over by the wall, the red tube of a fire extinguisher between them. There’s an oxygen tank, too, with a thick plastic mask attached to it – his dad is holding it to his mouth whenever he leans into the vent, squeezing his eyes shut as he lets off another burst of spray. Jack and Brendan are behind them, shouting instructions. Off to one side, Mom and Malik are screaming at each other.
The smoke. It’s not just coming from the hole in the wall. It’s coming from everywhere, seeping out through gaps in the panels, harsh and hot. Whatever’s going on in there, the automatic systems either aren’t working or can’t handle it, which is probably why the grown-ups are trying to use the fire extinguisher.
An uncontrolled engine fire is about one of the worst things to happen to a ship. If they don’t kill it soon, they’re just … screwed. It won’t damage the fusion reactor – nothing short of a direct hit on the engine compartment would get through the shielding – but it’ll stop the thrusters working. They won’t be able to move, and if that Colony ship comes back, or a big chunk of debris crosses their path …
That’s if they don’t die from smoke inhalation first.
Corey’s dad is half in, half out of the vent, trying to squeeze the extinguisher cylinder between his body and the vent wall. His shoulder won’t fit – he tucks it in, pulling it close to his body, but there’s just not enough room. The vents are there so technicians can send in special drones, ones small enough to navigate the ship’s internal systems and conduct repairs. Corey’s seen video of them before. Almost guaranteed there won’t be any on the Panda. And the vents can’t take an adult, but –
The idea arrives fully-formed, bright and blazing as the midday sun. The entire sequence of events unfolds in an eye-blink, all the way to the rescue ships arriving, to the Red Panda’s captain explaining to a Fleet Commander how he, Corey, averted disaster …
And it’s gotta be him. No one else can do it. The grown-ups won’t fit, and neither will Malik, who’s probably just going to stand around and film the whole thing anyway.
OK, bro. Film this.
He sprints across the room, staying low, skidding to his knees in between Hannah and his dad, ignoring the startled shouts from Jack and Brendan. His dad is trying to tuck the extinguisher cylinder under his arm, winkling it in close so he can squeeze into the vent. His eyes are streaming, turned red by the smoke, the oxygen mask wrapped around his face. Corey fights to keep his eyes open against the sting as he reaches for the cylinder. He’ll grab it, then dive into the passage before anyone –
He’s brought up short by a vice-grip hand on his shoulder. His mom, eyes huge and wild, screaming at him to get back. Corey stares at her, one hand on the cylinder. Doesn’t she get it? Doesn’t she understand what’s happening?
Then it feels like every adult in the engine room is there, too, pulling him away, their angry voices blending into a single confused, buzzing roar. Not quite fast enough. Not even his mom can hold onto him. He surges out of their grasp, half falling towards the vent, hands questing for the extinguisher. His dad has it resting on the floor now, and Corey grabs it, pulling the short hose with him. There are hands on his back, fingers plucking at his shirt, but he barely notices. He feels like he weighs nothing, as if his body is made of air.
Corey sucks in a huge breath, then hurls himself forwards into the vent.
Chapter 13
He lands with a bang, the extinguisher wedged underneath him and his lower legs sticking out of the pipe. The heat wallops him in the face. It’s so dry that it sucks the moisture right off his lips, off the surface of his eyeballs. He doesn’t dare open his eyes, or take another breath – if he does, he’s sure his body will just burn right up.
He’s aware of bundles of wires, of more metal plates under his fingers. The vent is covered in slick, bubbling foam, slimy against his skin.
A hand wraps around his ankle, pulls him backwards. Then it’s gone, whoever it is letting go like he’s on fire – for all he knows, he might be. Angry voices pierce the smoke. Hannah, his mom, that guy Jack. All of them shouting. Corey pushes himself forwards again, trying to avoid the hot spots, but the tunnel is narrower than he thought it was. He’s not wedged tight, but the ceiling presses on the back of his head, the walls uncomfortably close to his shoulders. The cylinder underneath him pushes his body upwards, squashing him …
He has to take a breath. His lungs feel like they’re going to tear through his ribcage. But if he does, all he’ll get back is smoke. No, this wasn’t a good idea. This wasn’t a good idea at all.
Something bumps his shoulder. At first he thinks it’s someone trying to pull him out of there, but then he sees it. It’s not a hand. It’s the oxygen mask, the one that was around his dad’s neck. They’ve thrown it to him. They think he can do this.
He gropes for the mask, fighting the burn in his lungs and throat, telling himself to hold on for a few more seconds. There’s no way he’s getting the string on the mask around his head, so he settles for using his free h
and to jam it in place.
Oxygen, cold and sharp, floods his lungs. It smells like disinfectant, but it’s still the best breath he’s ever taken.
He wants to look back over his shoulder, see who passed him the mask. He can’t do it. Now that he’s in, there isn’t enough room to turn around. He forces his eyes open, doing his best to ignore the stinging smoke.
A suppressant nozzle juts from the top of the vent, dribbling bubbles of useless foam. There’s a second one further along, utterly dead, right where the vent turns ninety degrees to the right. Beyond the turn, glinting off the metal, there’s the orange glimmer of flames.
Another breath, then he squeezes himself further down the passage, using his right knee to push the cylinder along underneath him. He barely moves three inches. He tries again, carefully placing his free elbow, holding the mask tight to his face. No good. He needs to get free of this cylinder, or he’ll cook long before he reaches the fire.
The foam doesn’t come directly out of the cylinder – it comes from a thin hose, made of flame-resistant nylon, with a metal nozzle at the end. Corey grabs the hose, pushing his body sideways to take pressure off the cylinder. If he can get ahead of it, pull it along behind him, then he can get around the corner. As long as the hose doesn’t do something horrible, like coming loose from the extinguisher …
Six inches. A foot. Corey’s wrist and elbow are screaming at him as he worms forward. The extinguisher is heavy, and it’s almost more than he can handle to pull it along. He doesn’t know how far he is from the vent entrance; they might not be able to pull him back out. Terror swells through him, a freak wave a hundred times higher than the others. His eyes feel three times their size, gritty and dry in their sockets.
His head comes around the corner. Then his shoulders. The fire consumes the passage, the heat nearly knocking him out. It’s not crackling, like a regular fire – it’s spitting, the flames hissing like a wounded animal.
The hose. It’s still behind him, level with his chest, curling over his hip to the cylinder behind him. He teases it forward, inch by inch, trying to ignore the fact that the heat on his face is going from painful to excruciating. It’s like he’s opened the oven in their kitchen at home, and someone is holding his face to it, not letting him pull back from the surge of dry heat.