Adrift

by Rob Boffard

  Somehow, that’s even worse. They might be computer geeks and pilots and engineers, but he has no doubt that every single one of these people is just as deadly as Roman.

  “Everybody stay calm!” Jack says, his voice jumping a few octaves higher than normal. Around him, the bridge is quiet, nobody moving, nobody speaking, everybody focused on Roman and Hayes. It’s as if he isn’t even there.

  Hayes doesn’t raise his hands, doesn’t budge from his position. The expression of righteous indignation doesn’t leave his face.

  “Lower your weapon, soldier.”

  “Everybody out.” Roman presses the point of the gun a tiny bit harder into Hayes’ forehead. Jack’s right hand is aching, and he realises it’s because he’s clenching it, the nails digging into his palm. His left hand is on his shirt hem, twisting it tight.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Roman?” It’s the guy with the dagger patch, a thickset man with a chest-length beard. The hand holding his gun looks big enough to palm a watermelon.

  Another soldier – a slim woman with a tribal tattoo snaking up the neck of her jumpsuit – takes a step forward, her sidearm steady. “Say the word, sir.”

  Roman doesn’t look at her. “Better be careful,” he says. His voice is a low monotone, his words coming quick. “I’m on a hair trigger. Your aim’s off by even a little bit, the sympathetic muscular contraction of my finger will discharge my weapon.”

  “Yeah, I did Q Course, too, asshole.” The woman sounds somewhere north of furious now.

  “Hold.” Hayes’ eyes flick to Jack, then back to Roman. And that’s when Jack becomes aware of one or two of the guns swinging to face him. His bladder sends out a twinge, and it suddenly feels hot, too loose inside his gut.

  “Think very, very carefully about this, Roman.” Hayes starts to raise his hands, moving very slowly.

  Roman jerks his head. “I’m sorry, sir. No choice.” His next words are almost a shout. “I’ll say it again. Everybody out, right now.”

  Nobody moves. Not even the women with the tattoo.

  “Three count, then I pull the trigger,” Roman says.

  It’s like every soldier in the room winds themselves a little bit tighter, gripping their guns a little bit more firmly. Jack feels like he’s going to fall over. His bladder is throbbing now, sending up weak waves of pain. Maybe, if he can hold on long enough, they’ll shoot him before he pisses himself. At least then he can die with some dignity.

  “One.” Roman is dead still, eyes locked on the commander. “Tw—”

  “Wait,” Hayes says.

  He raises his voice. “Do what he says.” The female soldier snarls. Hayes’ eyes flick to her. “That’s a direct order, Mazzini. Lower your weapon.”

  Mazzini’s pistol wavers, then drops. One by one, the rest of them do the same.

  “Yeah.” Jack licks his lips. “All right.” He’s not sure if he says the words out loud, or just thinks them.

  “Put your AI into recovery mode,” Roman says. “I don’t want it interrupting.”

  Hayes’ eyes narrow in anger, but then he says, “Victory.”

  The AI’s voice comes over the speakers, crisp and efficient. “Yes, Commander Hayes.”

  “Hayes-DF789-dash-8901. Transfer ship control to manual. Recovery.”

  “Commander Hayes, I am detecting elevated stress levels in your voice, and the presence of drawn weapons on the bridge. Do you want me to—”

  “Do it.”

  “Commander, I cannot comply. I have concluded that you are under duress.”

  “Recovery mode, or I pull the trigger,” Roman says.

  “Victory. Hayes-DF789-dash-8901. My life is in danger if you do not enter recovery mode. Comply.”

  A long pause. Then: “Entering recovery mode, Commander. System offline.”

  The next few minutes are a blur. The soldiers finally leave, filing out of the same door Roman and Jack entered through. They stand in the corridor, huddled together, weapons still pointed into the room.

  Roman directs Jack to lock all the other doors, giving directions without taking his gaze or his gun from the commander. As Jack fumbles with the keypad next to a door on the top level, he sneaks a look back. Hayes is refusing to look away from Roman, his mouth set in a thin, defiant line.

  When the other three doors are locked off, Roman slowly walks the commander back towards the open one. The soldiers in the corridor don’t give way, and Roman has to bark at them to move.

  “Last chance,” Hayes tells him.

  Roman jerks his head at Jack, not looking at him. “Lock it down.”

  Jack does so, sweaty fingers slipping on the keypad. The door starts to close, and at the last second Roman plants a hand on Hayes’ chest, and shoves, pushing the commander through. Hayes cries out, losing his balance, the look on his face switching to one of murderous fury.

  “Get—” he yells. Then the door closes with a loud click, cutting off the rest of the sentence.

  “We should have kept him,” Jack says. “Hostage.” This time, he’s pretty sure that he spoke out loud, even if he’s forgotten that Roman told him not to ask questions.

  “Can’t hold a gun on him and operate the jump controls at the same time. Now let’s get moving. We’ve got about three minutes before they cut their way back in.” He considers. “Unless they blow the door.”

  “What happens if they blow the door?”

  Roman says nothing.

  Chapter 64

  “Something’s wrong,” Everett mutters.

  Hannah doesn’t reply. Her hands ache from holding the controls, but she doesn’t dare let go, doesn’t dare look away from the underside of the Victory, where the cargo bay is. Every time she blinks, it looks a little smaller.

  Everett shifts behind her. “It’s been twenty minutes. Can we contact them somehow? Radio, or—”

  “No, Dad.” Corey sounds breathless. “It’s like I told you.”

  “Just give them time,” Anita says.

  And still Hannah says nothing.

  She’s thinking about Rainmaker. And Blackbird, and Omen. She never got to see the end of the historical sim, never found out if they made it or not.

  She distracts herself by running through what she learned in the tutorial, remembering the AI’s instructions. And still she can’t pull herself away from that battlefield, the images invading her thoughts.

  “It’s open.” Anita’s voice is urgent.

  When Hannah doesn’t respond, she hits her in the shoulder. “Hey. It’s opening up!”

  Hannah blinks. A mile away, the Victory’s cargo doors are opening. A thin black line, growing wider by the second. And then, from inside the gap, a light flickers on, shining out of the ship’s belly.

  “They did it,” Malik says, his voice curiously high-pitched.

  “Go,” Everett says. “Go. Go.”

  Hannah doesn’t even wait for him to finish speaking. She punches the thrusters, and behind her the Panda’s engines rumble into life. Slowly, very slowly, the other ship starts to grow in the viewport.

  They aren’t moving nearly as fast as they did when Volkova was in the pilot’s seat. She must have known some tricks to coax more thrust out of the engines. All the same, the Panda is accelerating, its puny engines pushing it closer and closer to the Victory. Hannah reminds herself to breathe, flexes her fingers on the controls. She’s staring at the other ship so hard that she has to remind herself to blink.

  A minute ticks by. Another.

  “Easy,” Everett breathes. He’s right in her ear, and she jumps, only just managing not to knock them off course. “Sorry,” he tells her, backing away. Behind him, Anita lets out a long, shaky breath.

  Hannah returns her hands to the controls. They’re getting close, the gap in the Victory’s underside growing bigger by the second. It’s a little above them now, drifting towards the top of the viewport. OK. Not a problem. Exhaling, Hannah very gently tweaks the stick.

  And almost immediately real
ises she isn’t ready for this.

  From a distance, across a mile of open space, she could keep the Panda steady. But with the Victory on top of them, every movement she makes is suddenly too much. She’s trying to line up the slow, ungainly, oversteering Red Panda with a very narrow space, and she just can’t get it to do what she wants.

  The Victory drifts away from her, and she has to yank the stick back, too hard, the ship swinging in the other direction. She tries to calm herself, tries to think of her parents, of their house, of the museum job she’s going to have, of the life she’s going to lead. It’s all a blur. Terror has smudged her mind, the images mixing with the ones she saw in the VR sim.

  “Guide,” says Volkova. “Your movements are erratic. Do you wish the ship to return to autopilot?”

  “No,” Hannah hisses through gritted teeth.

  “Go left,” Malik says.

  Hannah tweaks the stick. But when the Panda doesn’t respond fast enough, she pushes too far, oversteers. The Victory drifts too far, the cargo bay sliding past, Hannah correcting again, fingers locked on the stick, hoping, praying the ship will do what she wants.

  Everett by her ear. “You’re too far over.”

  “Yeah,” Hannah says through gritted teeth.

  “Let me see!” Corey yells from behind her.

  “You gotta slow down,” Malik says. “You’re gonna hit the side. Pull up!”

  And then everyone is yelling the words. Hannah yanks the stick as hard as it’ll go, the wall of the larger ship looming in front of her. She squashes back into her seat, as if it’ll give her some extra protection from the impact. There’s no way they’re going to miss. They’re too close.

  Anita screams as the belly of the Panda scrapes the Victory’s hull. The tour ship shudders, an alarm blaring somewhere, but Hannah barely hears it. She’s still pulling the stick into her stomach, as if they’ll crash the second she eases up.

  They’ve lost sight of the Victory. The Neb glares at her. She’s breathing too fast, panic clawing at her throat.

  The Captain did this for twelve years. You’ve been doing it for twelve minutes. You’re never going to make it.

  When the Panda completes its loop, the Victory is just visible, down at their six o’clock. They’ll never get into the cargo bay from here – to do so, they’d have to fly alongside the ship’s hull, then hard-turn left into the tiny space. Not a chance.

  Willing the little ship to go faster, Hannah turns them around, tracking them away from the Victory, lining up another run. The attack ship hangs in front of them, daring her to try.

  The stick is juddering in her hands. It wasn’t doing that before. Is it her imagination, or is the Panda moving even more slowly than before? She flashes back to the grinding they felt when the ship tagged the Victory’s hull. What if something got damaged? What if – “Mal, I can’t see!” Corey shouts.

  Everett, far too loud. “Go again. It’s OK.”

  Anita: “Malik! Sit down!”

  Hannah finds the thrusters, trying with every atom in her body to line them up right. But the tiny dot of the cargo bay is swinging around, dancing across the viewport. The Victory gets bigger and bigger.

  They’re going too fast. Hannah tries to decelerate, and the Panda’s response is barely there, sluggish and lazy. If she’s off-target, they won’t be able to pull up in time.

  “Slow down.” Everett sounds even more panicked than she feels. “Slow down!”

  She pulls the thrusters back. The Panda refuses to slow down – the forward and aft thrusters have quit on them, either damaged by the scrape against the bigger ship’s hull, or not getting the power they need. Hannah tweaks the stick – they can still move left and right, but she can’t drop their speed.

  In her mind, she sees the missiles, arcing towards Rainmaker’s Scorpion fighter, the gap closing. Her eyes track to the tiny cargo bay opening, swinging wildly in the viewport as she tries to line them up.

  “Thread the needle,” she whispers. “Come on, baby, thread the needle. Thread the needle.”

  “What?” says Anita. “What are you—”

  “Shut up! I’m threading the needle!”

  She’s drifted too far down again, has to correct. They’re two hundred metres from the Victory, so close that Hannah can see inside the cargo bay. It’s a mess of strapped-down crates and loading machinery, a wide-open space that doesn’t look quite big enough to take the Panda. It’s not going to work. They’re going to get jammed in there, or bounce right off.

  And yet she keeps going. Something beyond her understanding keeps her in her seat, keeps her playing the ship. One hundred metres now, the door almost open, the entire cavernous cargo bay revealing itself.

  Anita abandons the viewport, dropping to her knees, pulling her sons and her husband in close.

  Hannah closes her eyes.

  Chapter 65

  The bang shatters the universe.

  It splits Hannah’s skull in two, knocks her out of her seat. She has half a second to wonder why she didn’t think to strap in when she slams shoulder-first into the control panel. Any second now, the Panda is going to rupture, and it’ll all be over.

  But then she hears another sound. A grinding, wrenching screech of tortured metal, as if the Panda’s very skin is being torn off. Before she can comprehend it, the sound vanishes, as abruptly as if someone turned off the light bulb, as if –

  We made it through.

  Before she can process this thought, she becomes aware of a frantic, urgent beeping. “Guide,” says Volkova, sounding maddeningly calm. “Pressure loss imminent.”

  Hannah doesn’t get a chance to react, because right then she looks up through the viewport.

  The gravity well has them. They’re skidding across the floor of the bay, heading for the far wall: a vertical slab of metal, covered with handholds and terminals. Big, spray-painted stencil letters run across it, words reading OPERATORS MUST MAINTAIN FULL SUIT PRESSURE AT ALL TIMES. There’s a loading exosuit in front of them. The Panda sweeps it aside, shuddering, screaming as the suit tears chunks out of its hide.

  “Everybody hold—” Hannah shouts. Before she can finish the sentence, the Panda collides with the wall of the cargo bay.

  For the second time in as many days, Hannah blacks out.

  It’s the beeping that brings her round again – the pressure loss warning. She’s hanging off the chair, legs twisted to one side, and her neck feels like someone has been hitting it with a claw hammer. She can’t turn her head. When she tries, the pain squeezes tears out of her eyes.

  The Panda is still moving, turning in a slow spin, the energy from its impact spent. Cracks have spread across the cockpit viewport. Beyond them, the cargo bay door is visible, sliding out of view as the ship spins. The door is just beginning to close.

  In a daze, she reaches for the control panel, trying to shut off the beeping sound. Her hand is a useless slab of meat, her fingers feeling ten times larger than they normally are.

  There’s nothing more they can do. They’re inside, the ship is still intact – for now – and the moment that door closes, Roman and Jack will activate the jump gate.

  Volkova’s voice reaches her ears. “Guide. Ship integrity has been compromised.”

  Hannah doesn’t have time to think about it. She twists round in her seat, moving her head without thinking. The pain this time nearly makes her black out again, so she forces herself to move her body instead, actually lifting her right leg to get it out from under the control panel.

  The Victory isn’t moving – if they jump, there won’t be any transfer of momentum. They’ll drop right in. But it’ll be a big bump when they land, and if they’re not strapped in, they’ll be smashed to pieces. If they don’t lose pressure and decompress first.

  The Livingstones are slowly picking themselves up. Everett is helping Anita with one hand, reaching out for his older son with the other. Corey Livingstone is unconscious, his eyes closed, his head twisted at a strange an
gle. It’s only when he shifts slightly, turning his head back, that Hannah realises she’s been holding her breath.

  “The escape pod,” she says.

  Anita stares at her through bleary, shocked eyes. “What?”

  “We have to get to the escape pod.” Unlike the seats on the main deck, the pod chairs have thick safety straps criss-crossing them, and angled head supports. “You guys take Corey, I’ll get Brendan.”

  “But it won’t help.” Hannah can barely hear Malik over the insane beeping. “We can’t launch it in here.”

  “We don’t need to launch it.” She propels herself to her feet, forcing her body to do what she tells it. Her hand lands on something hard and spiky – the Reptar figure, lying on its side on the floor. Moving her head more than half an inch in either direction is agony. “We just need the seats.”

  “The seats?”

  “We gotta strap in!” Hannah hurdles Corey, wanting to help, knowing that she needs to get Brendan. As she charges down the passage to the main deck, she can hear the beeping following her, the warning that, at any second, the hull might give way, turning the Panda inside out in under a tenth of a second.

  Hold on, little ship. Just hold on.

  Chapter 66

  “They’re in.” Jack smacks the heel of his palm against the control console. “They’re in!”

  Roman grunts. He’s at the opposite side of the bridge from Jack, entering the jump coordinates into one of the workstations. He’s already pointed out the one that Jack needs to look after, the one to do with matter shielding. He tried to make the instructions for Jack as simple as possible: Control the drift in the bubble using the two sticks below the display. Reticle in the centre. God knows if the bastard is going to be able to follow them. It’s a miracle he didn’t get them killed on the crossing.

  How long has it been since they took the bridge? A minute? Two? Hayes and the other soldiers haven’t blown the door, but there’s plenty of noise on the other side of it. Either they’re assembling the charges, or they’re going to cut the door off at the point where it slides into the wall.