by Rob Boffard
He has both feet on the ladder when someone grabs him by the collar, hauling him upright and hurling him across the deck. Brendan and Seema scramble to their feet, and, as Jack gets up on one elbow, he sees Volkova towering above him.
“What’s going on up there?” Everett shouts. Behind him, Jack can hear the rest of the family stirring. Lorinda sits up, blinking in confusion.
“You,” Volkova says, levelling a finger at him. She swings it round to take in Brendan and Seema. “You think I am stupid, da? You think I’m not watching what you are doing?”
“We just want to talk to him,” Jack says, his voice even.
“Oh, talk to him, I see, OK.” Volkova shakes her head in disgust, leaning over to grab the trapdoor. She stops when Seema puts a hand on her wrist. Volkova stares at her in amazement.
“He’s not going to tell us anything,” Seema says. “Not the way we’re going.”
“Hey!” shouts Everett, his voice made echoey by the trapdoor. “What’s going on?”
“It’s OK, honey,” Anita shouts back. Corey and Malik exchange a worried look, the older brother blinking back sleep.
“This is my ship,” Volkova says, through gritted teeth. “And on my ship, I say no torture. Not ever.”
“We’re not gonna torture him, for Christ’s sake,” says Brendan. “Just knock him about a bit.”
“It’s torture. You’re mistreating a prisoner of war. This is my ship, so no.”
“It’s your ship?” Jack gets to his feet. “Well, it’s our lives. So why don’t you go be a pilot and leave the rest to us?”
Volkova turns her blazing eyes on him. In the semi-darkness, with her dishevelled hair and her hunched shoulders, she looks like something out of a nightmare. “You wouldn’t even be alive if I wasn’t here. So you will go back to sleep, and leave this alone.”
Hannah’s high-pitched voice comes from behind Jack. “What are they doing?”
“They want to hurt the guy downstairs,” Corey says. Anita gives him a warning look.
“But we agreed,” Hannah says, sounding as if she’s not sure whether she’s still dreaming.
“We didn’t agree on a damn thing.” Seema still hasn’t let go of Volkova’s hand. They’re on the edge of the trapdoor, Everett half in, half out, staring up at them in confusion.
Jack’s had enough. He reaches the captain in two strides, gripping her shoulder. “We’re going in there, whether you like it or—”
Volkova rips away from him. In the process, she pulls Seema off balance. Instead of falling, the woman reacts violently, yanking Volkova’s arm hard. The captain loses her footing, finds it again, then swings a flat-handed strike at Seema’s face.
“Seema, no!” Brendan lunges forward, but before he gets there, his wife reacts.
She dodges Volkova’s blow, her feet planted, leaning back and letting the captain’s palm whistle past her face. Then she rocks forward, and in one snake-quick movement brings her hand up and across Volkova’s throat.
Volkova gives a strangled, agonised cough. She stumbles across the floor, away from Seema, then falls to one knee. Her hands move to her neck, fingers hooked into claws.
For the first time in what feels like forever, nobody moves. They’re all staring at Volkova, at the unmistakable slick of blood staining her shirt, just visible in the light from astronautics. Faintly, Jack can smell the blood: a distant, coppery tang.
Seema’s penknife. It’s buried up to the hilt in Volkova’s neck, right above the middle of her collarbone.
As Jack watches, her eyes find his. The look in them is one of complete surprise. A second later, they go dark.
Chapter 34
Corey doesn’t quite understand what happens next.
He’s staring at Volkova’s body, at her blank eyes and the big – no, the giant pool of blood around her neck. Seema is standing over her, an expression of startled fury on her face, ignoring Brendan, who keeps bellowing “What the fuck did you just do?” over and over again.
Then his dad launches himself out of the trapdoor, pushing Malik back, getting alongside his wife and grabbing Corey. Hannah shoves Jack. The edge of a chair takes him at the knees, and he sits down hard.
Everyone is screaming at each other, and all Corey can see are wide mouths and huge eyes.
Brendan tries to pull Hannah away. Corey doesn’t see it all – his mom and dad shuffle backwards, getting between them and the fight, the trapdoor just behind him. Corey still can’t look away from Volkova’s body. The knife must have hit an artery – or is it a vein? Corey can’t remember. She might not be dead yet, but it won’t be long before –
“Stay here,” Everett shouts over his shoulder.
“But Dad—” Malik says. Everett ignores him. He takes a step forward – only to trip over Volkova’s outstretched leg. Anita grabs him, and that’s when Jack shoves Hannah.
She stumbles, colliding with Everett. Corey has just enough time to think that maybe he should get out of the way when his dad slams into him, and he falls backwards.
Malik reaches for him, gripping the sleeve of his T-shirt. There’s a second when he has it, and then he doesn’t, and then Corey remembers that the trapdoor is just behind him.
As gravity takes him, as his body works out that the floor isn’t there to catch it, Corey gives a strangled yell. Then he’s falling, the trapdoor above him framing the scene. His dad, eyes wide with panic. His brother’s hands, still trying to catch him. The edge of his mom’s shoe.
Oh, Corey thinks. Then the impact wipes his mind clean.
He’s only out for a split second. Or, at least, it feels like a split second. He can’t see anything. The metal floor is cold against his cheek, and there are people talking, their voices loud and terrified.
His mom: “Shit, oh shit, oh God, Corey, talk to—”
Hannah: “—close it! Close the—”
Dad: “—told you we should’ve—”
Corey blinks, and goes away again for a while.
It’s Malik’s voice that brings him back. His brother is saying his name, over and over, and his voice sounds so small and scared that Corey almost laughs. What is Mal worried about? He’s fine. He just had a little nap. He didn’t –
He opens his eyes. He’s propped against a wall, in a strange room he doesn’t recognise. No, that’s wrong, he knows where he is. Astronautics. His mom and Malik are kneeling in front of him, eyes wide. Hannah behind them, pacing, looking up at the ceiling. His dad standing above them on the ladder, cheeks flushed and sweaty. The trapdoor is shut, his dad holding it closed, sweat shining on his forehead. From above, there are muffled thumps as someone hammers on the trapdoor, trying to wrench it back.
I gotta go help. The thought is the first clear one Corey’s had in a while, bright and sharp. He pulls his feet towards him to stand, only one of them won’t come. His knee bends, but the bottom half of his lower leg feels a thousand times heavier than it should.
He looks down at it, first annoyed, then confused. The shape is all wrong. The fabric of his jeans just under the knee is pulled taut, the denim tenting upwards. And is that … blood? Well, yeah, of course it’s blood, dumbass, it’s blood from what happened to the captain. Did that actually happen? It feels like a dream …
Only: if it’s the captain’s blood, why is the stain spreading? It’s creeping across his jeans, a dark, uneven splotch, growing by the second.
“Oog,” Corey says.
His mom puts a hand on his shoulder. “Corey? Corey, it’s going to be OK, honey, it’s just—”
“Oog!” He’s going to throw up. He’s going to scream. He’s going to do both, and he’s not going to be able to stop. How could he not have noticed the pain? It’s like the bottom half of his leg has been set on fire.
Could he push the bones back? Just click them together? But then he’d have to touch them, feel their sharp, brittle edges through the fabric, and that really makes him want to throw up.
His mom puts a hand on Mal�
��s shoulder, gripping it so hard that his brother winces in pain. Her voice is way too calm. “Malik, baby, find a tourniquet for me.”
“A … what?”
“A tourniquet, Malik.” She speaks patiently, her voice wavering just a little.
His brother wavers. “Mom, I don’t know what that—”
“A tourniquet!” she shouts. “Something to tie his leg off with! A rope or—” She reaches across, grabs her older son’s hands, forces them onto Corey’s leg above the knee, which turns the fire into an inferno.
“Just hold here,” Anita tells Malik. “Do not let go. Ev? Ev!”
“Hold on.” Everett is all but hanging off the trapdoor, holding it closed with one arm while the other hunts for wherever the locking mechanism is.
“Ev, I need you down here!”
“Mom.” Malik’s dark skin has gone grey. “Mom, he’s bleeding a lot.”
“Squeeze harder. Everett!”
“In a second!” Hannah yells over her shoulder. In the small space, her words are given a nasty metallic edge. She’s climbing up the ladder, just below Corey’s dad, pointing with a trembling finger. “You gotta slide that back,” she says.
Everett grunts. “This one?”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
“It’s not moving.”
“Push harder.”
“I said it’s not moving!”
Malik is squeezing so hard it feels to Corey as if his brother’s fingers are going to sink into his leg, tear the flesh from the bone. It’s an aching, furious band of pain, separate from the hellfire consuming his shin. His mom is pulling off her shirt, fighting with the buttons, giving up, wrenching it over her head with a frustrated snarl. Her tank top beneath it is soaked with sweat.
“Don’t use a tourniquet,” says the prisoner.
Anita either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t care. She starts to wrap the shirt around Corey’s leg, moving so fast she almost rips the sleeve from the body. The blood turns the green fabric a sickly brown.
“Mom,” Malik says, glancing at the prisoner. “Did you hear—”
“Not right now,” says Anita.
The soldier raises his voice. “If you use a tourniquet, he’ll lose the leg.”
Anita stops, her shoulders shaking. She doesn’t look at him. Corey gets another wave of pain, bad enough to turn the world grey at the edges.
“Why should we listen to you?” Anita says, still not turning her head.
“I don’t really care if you do. But a tourniquet’ll cause nerve damage. Dead skin. It’ll hurt, a lot. And if you loosen it after, he’ll bleed out for good. Just put pressure on either side of the wound. A lot of it.”
For a few seconds, neither Corey’s mom nor his brother move. Then, still without looking at the prisoner, his mom positions the shirt around the protruding bone, she and Malik leaning into the leg.
“Got it!” shouts his dad. There’s a clunk, then another. The thumps on the other side of the trapdoor continue, but Everett is making his way down the ladder, arms shaking. Hannah has fingers laced on top of her head, shaking it, muttering something furious under her breath.
The bottom half of Corey’s leg is on fire, but the top half is icy-numb, the two sensations fighting for control. Maybe they should get rid of the leg entirely. How bad would it be to have just the one leg? He’d get to use a robot prosthetic, and that would be sweet. Jamie and Allie could programme it, maybe, or open it up and give it secret compartments. He could be a droid fighter. Man versus machine.
Robot prosthetic. Brendan. Corey’s stomach gives another sickening lurch.
“Corey.” His mom’s fingers are gripping the back of his head. “Stay with me.”
His dad squats beside her. In the sickly yellow lights, his face looks like a ghost.
“Yeah.” His dad rubs a hand across his mouth, nodding, like he’s looking over a tricky engineering problem. “We gotta get nanomeds. Something. Hannah – can you …”
“Uh …” Hannah closes her eyes, digging in her pocket. She pulls out the small blister pack of pills, one of the four compartments already empty. The meds she gave to Lorinda, after her spacewalk.
She pops one out, and Anita snatches it from her, sliding it into Corey’s mouth. It takes him a long time to swallow it.
“That should help with the pain for a little bit,” Hannah says.
Anita doesn’t look at her. “How long?”
Hannah fingers the pack, eyeing the two remaining meds. “I don’t know … MicroNal’s what I’ve used before. I haven’t used these. A few hours? Maybe?”
“Goddammit,” Everett mutters. Corey doesn’t know what they’re freaking out about. A few hours? A few hours’ relief from his leg is a lifetime. His thoughts are blurry, like he’s looking at the world through a glitching lens.
“OK,” Anita says, her voice shaking. “What about the …” She points at the bone, still pushing up the jeans fabric.
“I don’t know,” Hannah says.
“Will they fix it?”
“I don’t know. This … I don’t think the bots’re strong enough for a break like that.”
“How can you not know? And there’s gotta be something stronger in the first aid kit. Or more meds, at least. This is a tour ship. The law says they have to carry.”
Hannah points to the wall, in the direction of the bar. “The kit’s in there.”
Corey’s mom ignores her, nodding to her older son. “Go check. There has to be something they put down here.”
“’Nita,” Ev says.
“No. No, Ev. Not this time. You will not do this. You won’t just … just give up and pretend everything’s OK.”
“This isn’t about us!” Everett rockets to his feet, so fast that his knee bumps against Corey’s leg. He has to stifle a howl of pain. “If she says the kit’s in the bar, it’s in the bar. Just listen, for once.”
“Oh, OK,” Anita spits back. “I’ll just listen while—”
Malik’s voice cuts through the noise. “Guys!”
For some reason it works. Their parents stare at him, blinking in astonishment. Behind them, Hannah slides down the wall, her head thunking back against it, eyes closed. There’s a tiny speck of dried blood on her cheek.
Movement to Corey’s left – a quiet shifting of clothing. He looks over, right into the cold, blue eyes of the captured Colony soldier. The soldier is staring at the blood-soaked shirt, and his expression is one Corey can’t place. Like he’s … pleased.
In less than a second, it’s gone. As Corey watches, the man looks over at Hannah, an amused smile spreading across his face.
“Things not going to plan?” he says.
Corey blinks, looks away. The ice is starting to win, pushing up against the searing fire in his lower leg. His head is starting to clear, just a little.
They’re trapped, the five of them, trapped in this tiny space with the enemy. They have no food, or water. Soon, those magic little pills will be gone, and the fire will come back. The Red Panda has no pilot. The only person who could fly the ship is gone.
They’re finished.
Chapter 35
Jack’s ears are ringing.
He blinks hard, gives his head a little shake. The tinnitus won’t go away. Was it the shouting? The bang of the trapdoor slamming shut? No way to tell. He’s collapsed against one of the seats, sprawled across it, watching Seema grapple with a furious Lorinda. It’s barely a fight. Seema has the old woman’s arm twisted behind her back, holding her in place. Jack looks across to Brendan, his eyes skating across Volkova’s body. The other man is over by the trapdoor, his fingers wedged into the gap, heaving with all his strength. No good. Even with his metal arm, he can’t quite lift the hatch.
For a few moments Jack can’t even remember why they were trying to get it open in the first place. When the answer comes, it feels small. Inadequate. They wanted to get answers from the soldier down below, find out why and how and who. But with the captain dead none of it see
ms to matter any more. It won’t make a tiny bit of difference – if it was ever going to. Why is Brendan still going at it? When Jack says his name, but the only sound that comes out is a papery croak.
Brendan shouts something at Seema. Jack can’t make out the words – they’re obliterated by the shrill whine in his ears. The sound is titanic, drilling into his brain. Something must have happened, a loss of pressure, maybe, a burst valve or a cracked seal. That’s the only explanation for this awful noise …
“Let me go!” Lorinda shouts, and all at once Jack’s tinnitus disappears. The old woman tries to kick at Seema, nearly toppling them both.
“Jesus, get her under control!” Brendan yells at his wife.
Jack pushes up from his seat, intending to help her hold Lorinda, but his hand slips on something warm and sticky, and he thumps back down. He lifts his hand, staring at it in wonder. His skin is slick with blood.
“Shut the fuck up!” Seema hisses at the sobbing Lorinda. She pulls her away, heading for the stairs. As Jack watches her go, his eyes slide over Volkova’s body again. It’s like something glimpsed out of the window of a car moving at high speed, gone before he can take in the details.
“You killed her,” Lorinda says, her voice a croak.
“Shut—” Seema doesn’t finish. Instead, she says: “You two, get the trapdoor. Get it open.”
Again, Jack gets that strange, unreal feeling: that there’s no good reason for them to get downstairs, and probably never was. As Seema pulls the protesting Lorinda across the main deck, Jack finally manages to get to his feet. He’s unsteady, the ringing coming in soft waves now. The right side of his jacket is wet with blood – no, not just wet, drenched. It can’t all be the captain’s. There’s no way. There can’t be that much blood in one person.
Brendan wipes his face. He crouches down again, glancing up at Jack as he approaches. “You take this end, I’ll take the other.”
As if in a dream, he does what he’s asked. As he walks over, he catches sight of Volkova’s body, and a wave of revulsion waterspout up from his stomach. You’ve seen dead bodies before. You work for a feed, for God’s sake. Plenty of video from the news desk, plenty of photos, crime, war zones …