by Rob Boffard
Roman looks over at Jack’s screen, which is showing the inside of the Victory’s cargo bay. The Panda is a wreck, its hull smashed and scarred. The cargo bay doors are only just starting to close.
That’s when he hears it: a crackling sizzle, like a hot frying pan dumped into a sink of cold water. Hayes and his team are cutting their way in, the torch parting the door along one side, a thin line of hot metal spitting sparks.
“Almost there,” Jack shouts to Roman.
At that moment, a voice comes over the speakers in the ceiling. “Roman. This is Hayes.” The speakers give his voice a very slight echo, deepen it. “I am giving you a direct order to surrender – you and the civilian. This is the only warning you will get.”
“Whatever, fuckstick,” Jack mutters.
“You should know,” Hayes says, “I’ve sent my engineers down to astronautics. I’ve ordered them to manually restart the ship’s AI. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, son, but you are about ten seconds away from losing it all. You understand me?”
The cargo bay doors have closed, the light above them turning green. Jack yells in triumph, slapping the console, then turning and dashing over to the workstation that controls the matter shielding. “We’re good!” he shouts. “Do it Roman. Jump!”
Roman moves his hand towards the command option onscreen – and stops.
He can still finish the mission.
There’s nothing to say he can’t still have his revenge. He can work something out with Hayes; the civilians will be a problem, but they don’t need to be killed. They can be held prisoner, kept out of the way until it’s all over.
He can’t help but see Madhu, and Brigita, and everyone else on the outpost. The rage flares up inside him. What is he thinking? He is a soldier, and this is his mission, and he has to finish it.
No. You gave Corey your word.
“What are you waiting for?” Jack yells at him. The cutting line is almost halfway to the bottom of the door.
One way or another, he’s going to betray someone. He either lets Corey down – Corey and every other civilian on that ship – or he lets down the people who raised him. Madhu. Brigita. Everyone on Cassiopeia. Not to mention every one of his squadmates on the Resolute.
“Roman?” Jack says.
“I can’t.”
And, slowly, Roman lifts Mahmoud’s gun, and points it at Jack’s chest.
Chapter 67
Jack’s hands go up. It’s a reflex action. Out of his control. What he really wants to do is dive for cover, but his legs have stopped listening to him, and his bladder has started to send out another round of warning signals.
“I’m sorry,” Roman says, walking slowly towards Jack. The gun hardly shakes at all.
For the second time, Jack tries to speak, can’t do it. But there’s a stupid look on Roman’s face – determined and apologetic at the same time, and it’s that that finally makes him open his mouth.
“Come on. You. We don’t have to.” He can’t form sentences, can’t even form thoughts. He takes a step towards Roman, his legs moving on their own.
“You don’t understand. I can’t do this to them.”
“To who?” Jack almost screams the words, has to remind himself that Roman has a gun on him, and probably still has that hair trigger. Behind him, the cutting torch stops, a foot from the bottom of the door. The wielder adjusting his or her aim. They’ve got maybe twenty seconds.
“I have to finish it,” Roman says, looking at Jack but sounding as if he’s talking to himself. “I finish it, and everything will be fine.”
“No, it won’t. It won’t, Roman. Listen to me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Sure I do.” Jack is nodding furiously. They’re closer now, no more than five feet apart. He knows if he gets too close, Roman will pull the trigger, but he can’t think of anything else to do. “I know that there are people on that tour ship who’re depending on you. You told them you’d help them.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
The cutting torch starts up again, tracking towards the bottom edge of the door.
The jump coordinates Corey gave them are still up on screen. Below it is a touch box, displaying the words JUMP CORE READY. Either Roman forgot to disable it, or doesn’t think there’s any point. Not that it matters. There’s no way Roman is going to let him get close to the terminal.
“You gave him your word,” he says. “Corey. The kid. You promised you’d help him. We trusted you.”
“Don’t talk to me about—”
“You want to shoot me? Go ahead.” Jack is babbling now, not even sure of where he’s going with this, just knowing he has to do something. “If it’ll help you get right with your commander, then it’s OK. I know I deserve it.”
He swallows hard. “I let the captain die. Lorinda, too. She’s on me. I didn’t check to see if Seema was dead, and maybe I should have. So go right ahead and do it. But the people on the Panda?” He points to the screen, still showing the tourist ship. “They don’t. Don’t make them pay for our fuck-ups. They deserve to go home.”
Roman’s fingers flex on the gun’s grip. “That’s enough.”
“You know who didn’t keep their word? The goddamn Frontier. They were supposed to protect us. You want to be like them? These are the people you want to fight with?”
“They’re doing the right thing.” Roman all but snarls the words. “We’re doing the—”
“No, you’re not.” A word explodes into Jack’s mind – an old one, a familiar one, one he always thought he could depend on. “No ethics!” he roars at Roman. “You’ve got no ethics!”
Roman’s face creases in confused anger. “What are you talking ab—”
The bridge door is blown inwards into the room.
As it happens, Jack whips his still-raised hands forward, as if bringing them together in a clap. The heel of his right palm strikes the inside of Roman’s wrist; the other, the back of the hand holding the gun. Just like Hector taught him.
Roman pulls the trigger.
If Jack hadn’t yanked his head to the side, it would have come clean off. As it is, the gunshot occurs right by his ear, so loud that it’s as if his head really has exploded. He pushes through it, driving forward with his shoulder. Roman almost stops him – Jack hasn’t built up quite enough momentum – but he’s a little off balance, and Jack slides past his right side.
JUMP CORE READY.
As the soldiers charge into the room, guns up, Jack sprints towards the terminal, hand outstretched, fingers brushing the screen.
There’s a sound, like the world’s biggest engine hitting the redline, and then Jack’s vision blurs at the edges. His hand leaves an after-image in the air, hanging, ghost-like, over the console.
Before he even understands what he’s doing, Jack is turning, moving towards the screen he started at. If he doesn’t centre them inside the warp field, they’ll tear apart. He can’t count on Roman to do it, and there’s every chance the soldiers will cut him down before he gets there. It doesn’t matter. He’s done all he can.
No human has ever seen the space around the ship during a jump. Any camera on the hull, even ones designed to pick up light outside the visible spectrum, comes back with nothing but darkness. For the most part, jumps are as calm and uneventful as a drive across a deserted highway.
Not this one.
This one nearly shakes Jack’s bones out of his skin. The engine sound blocks out everything, so loud that it feels like his very eyeballs are vibrating.
The entire bridge is shaking, the shutters groaning. And yet every move he makes feels slow, like he’s mired in molasses. His vision is doubled, tripled, strange light flashing in and out at the corners of his eyes. He can see the screen, see the two control sticks. It’s all right in front of him, and a million miles away.
As he finally – finally – reaches the console, his vision quits on him. For two or three seconds, or what feels like two or three seconds, t
here’s nothing but darkness. Panic seizes him – but as soon as it does, he can see again, like nothing happened. He grabs the control sticks, holding on for dear life, trying to focus on the display.
Keep it in the centre. That’s what Roman told him. He can’t see the reticle. He knows it’s there, just in front of him, but the screen appears to stretch as he looks at it, expanding to the size of a city block.
Around him, the Victory bucks and writhes, a toy in the grip of a giant. He yells Roman’s name, but the only thing that answers him is static. He can’t see the soldier, or any of the others, doesn’t dare turn to look. What comes next is very simple. If Roman doesn’t uphold his end of the deal, they’ll never make it.
He spots the reticle, a tiny green circle. It’s way too close to the edge of the display, still moving, inching towards it. With a dim horror, he realises that he doesn’t know which stick to use. He didn’t think to ask. He doesn’t waste time debating it, pulling hard on both sticks.
The reticle slows, stops and starts to drift again. But before Jack can do anything, it’s gathering speed, zipping across the display, vanishing into the distance, coming back, the world bending in strange directions, the reticle appearing at the opposite end of the display, even closer to the edge than it was before.
There’s a tearing sound, the engine threatening to rip itself apart, the bridge around him coming to pieces. With what feels like every ounce of strength he has left, Jack pulls the sticks back. The reticle swings in a wide circle, doubling back on itself, tracking towards the centre. Jack gives a triumphant yell – only to have it turn into one of horror as a vibration rips him away from the screen, sending him hurtling across the bridge. As he stumbles away, he sees the reticle nearing the bottom edge of the screen.
The final vibration is the largest of all. Large enough to tear a hole in existence.
Chapter 68
The problem with living out near the edge of Austin is that there are only so many kids to be friends with.
If they aren’t around – if, for example, one was on a family trip to Sigma and the other one had got himself grounded for some dumb reason or another, Allie Sultan couldn’t remember what – there wasn’t a whole lot to do.
She’d already read every book in her room, flicked through the feeds of the people at school (boys, boys, girls, holiday shots, stupid little animation meme thing, boys), ridden her hoverboard up and down the dusty street.
Now, she’s sprawled in her front yard on her back, running her fingers through the dirt, looking up into the orange sky, watching the contrails of shuttles taking off from the downtown spaceport.
The house she lives in with her dad is a modest two-bedroom, a new-style lightbrick build, with its own recycler unit and a bottom floor entirely taken up with a large garage space. Other, identical houses close in tight on all sides, but round the back, open fields run all the way to the boundary fence of the vast mine dumps.
The creek bed, long since dried up, is just visible from her bedroom window if she really craned her neck. That was where she got the gnarly scar on her forehead, from that time she and Corey and Jamie built that ramp.
The scar peaks out from under her hairline, a jagged zigzag. She doesn’t mind it. She thinks it looks kind of cool, even if it did take ages for the swelling to go down.
Allie is a short girl, dark-skinned, with slightly pudgy upper arms that she says are muscle, but which Jamie refuses to stop calling wobble fat. Allie punches him on the shoulder every time he says it, and, by now, she’s convinced the bruise is more or less permanent.
She’s wearing a pair of skate shorts and an old tank top, her favourite. She doesn’t mind it getting messy. Without really thinking about it, she lifts a fistful of dirt, and chucks it into the air. It’s caught by the hot breeze, swirled away.
She watches it go, her boredom getting heavier by the second. She’s got to do something about this.
Maybe she can take the monorail over to Lagos Square. She’s not supposed to go there by herself, and even when she goes with Jamie and Corey, she has to beg her dad to let her, but maybe he’ll be nice about it this time. She could phone up Li from school, get her to come. They don’t hang out much, but if Allie paid for the mono passes …
As she sits up, her ears pop.
It’s a strange sensation, like the inside of her head is filling with water, changing the pressure. She put a finger in her right ear, trying to open it up, knowing it never works but not sure what else to do.
A second later, the sensation comes again, and this time it’s so intense it actually hurts. Allie winces, getting to her feet. The air feels too still, the wind gone. Is it a storm? They get those sometimes, and they have to hide in the basement shelter that every house in Austin has to have by law. But there are no clouds in the sky, no hint of moisture. Her ears pop for the third time, insistent, making her blink in surprise.
Allie doesn’t quite understand what happens next.
She’s looking towards the mine dumps, not really seeing them, more concerned with the strange feeling in her head, when the sky goes hazy. It looks like the air just above the surface of a road on a really hot day, only it’s everywhere. There’s another pop, this one much louder, and it’s coming from outside her head.
Then: boom.
The sound is one of the loudest she’s ever heard, louder than a bomb. Half a second later, she’s knocked head over heels by what feels like a tsunami of wind. There’s a huge, distant crash, and a hissing rush as staggering volumes of dirt are displaced.
She rolls, arms flailing, yelping in shock. Behind her, the houses shake and shudder, threatening to tear loose from their foundations. Allie comes to a halt, dust swirling around her, coating her hair and face.
There’s something suspended above the mine dumps, something that wasn’t there before. A black shape, dropping towards the ground. And, at the edges of the shape, a glowing green corona of energy, spreading out like ripples in a pond.
It hits the ground, knocking several of the hills flat, sending up a giant mushroom cloud of dust and almost blowing out Allie’s eardrums a second time with the impact. The air is suddenly filled with dust and dirt, the clear sky turning hazy.
Allie sits up, blinking. Her eyes are bright spots on a face caked with dirt. The house has turned red, the white lightbrick coated in thick dust. Allie sticks out her tongue, tastes dust in the air. By the time she gets to her feet, the sirens have started.
“Dad?” she calls. “I think you’d better come out here!”
Chapter 69
The first thing Corey Livingstone sees is a red star.
It drifts in front of him, lazy, too bright to look at directly. He tries to push away, knowing what it means, knowing what will happen if it gets too close to him. But when he tries to raise his arm, someone holds it down, the pressure gentle but firm.
“Easy,” a woman’s voice says. “Not quite done yet.”
The red star is still there. It coaxes up memories from the darkness of his mind. Sigma. The Red Panda. The gate. Captain Volkova. Jack. Hannah. Lorinda. Roman.
Corey tries to sit up, wanting to talk, unable to get the words out. His throat is parched. The red star is a tiny light, on a robotic arm. The arm is hovering over him, making small, precise moves. It’s as long as a man’s, with a boxy cutting laser at its head.
The arm turns towards him, and Corey flinches. “Easy,” the voice says again. “Take it slow. Your leg is going to be fine, but we’re not done yet, ’K?”
Slowly, the space resolves itself. He’s in what looks like a hospital room: clean white walls, neutral tile pattern on the floor, bright lights.
The robot arm is attached to a large, mobile control unit, parked by the bed, with two more arms hanging limp at its side. His lower half is covered with an opaque, curved shield, blocking his legs from view. There’s an opening in the shield, a little further down, and as Corey watches, the arm dips into it, the laser humming to life. He can’t fe
el a thing.
There’s a woman by the bed whom he doesn’t recognise. She’s young, maybe in her twenties, with long brown hair and clean blue hospital scrubs.
“Broken bones,” she says. As she does so, she looks over at something across the room, something that makes her crease her brow in a frown. “Plus you’d really done a number on your tibialis anterior,” she says, sounding distracted. “Nano’s’re fixing that right up.”
“Where am I?” Corey says.
She blinks at something on her lens. Corey feels the bed rise underneath him, lifting the top half of his body upwards. “Austin City General,” she says. “East Wing. Now, we’ve numbed everything below the waist, so you won’t feel anything for a little—”
“Thank you, nurse,” says a voice from across the room. “That’ll be all.”
From his position on the raised bed, Corey looks over. There’s a man sitting by the window – a man who looks familiar. He’s in his sixties, clean-shaven, with salt-and-pepper hair and a friendly face. He’s wearing a dark suit and a red tie, and as he meets Corey’s eyes he gives him a big, wide smile.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he says.
“Senator,” says the nurse. “I’m not sure this is best for—”
“Oh, Mr Livingstone here will be just fine.” The man raises a hand, as if taking an oath. “He’s a tough one. And I promise, if there’s any problem at all, I know where the call button is.” He winks at Corey. “Spent a day here last year. I was riding my bike and took a fall. Try the chocolate pudding, by the way – it looks nasty, but it’s really good.”
“Yeah,” Corey says, nodding in agreement, though he has no idea why. The man looks familiar, although he can’t place him yet.
The nurse wavers, then nods. “All right.” She puts a hand on Corey’s shoulder. “You’re sure you’re up to it?”
In a daze, Corey nods again. The nurse tells him she’ll be close by, and then makes her way out. The robot arm retracts from its position over his legs, whirring and clicking, and a section of the shield slides shut.