by Rob Boffard
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For Nix
Prologue
The meteor tears a hole in the sky.
The low-hanging clouds glow gold, as if the sun itself has dropped into the atmosphere. Then the white-hot rock rips them in two.
There’s a shape behind the flames, just visible past the corona. A long cylinder, black against the clouds, attached to the meteor by a shimmering cord. The cord breaks, and the crack is loud enough to knock frost off the trees below.
The man on the ground throws himself to the dirt, hands over his ears, as if the pieces were passing right above the tree line. Icy mud soaks his skin, but he barely notices.
His cheek is pressed to the ground, the world turned sideways, but he can still see the pieces. Their white heat has faded to a dark red. Most of them are vanishing over the eastern horizon, but at least one seems to be plummeting right towards him, screaming down through the air.
He scrambles to his feet, trying to run. But the piece is nowhere near him–how could he have thought it was? It’s going down in the east, the red metal fading to scorched black. His heart is pounding, and in the split second before it vanishes over the horizon, its shape leaps out at him.
That’s not just a meteor.
It’s a ship.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the roar begins to fade. There’s a final crackle, like fading thunder, and then it’s gone.
His legs are shaking, but none of his companions notice. They’re as stunned as he is, staring up at the sky.
One of them is moving, pushing through the brush, yelling at them to follow him.
“Think there’ll be survivors?” someone shouts.
“No one survives a crash like that,” comes the reply.
But the man isn’t so sure. A long time ago, he was in one just like it.
1
Riley
The alarm starts blaring a split second before the shaking starts.
Aaron Carver is floating in the centre of the ship’s medical bay, and Prakesh Kumar and I get thrown right into him. Everything else in the room is strapped down, but I can see the instruments and the bottles shaking, threatening to tear loose.
“What the hell?” Carver rolls away from us, putting his arms out to stop himself from crashing into the wall. The ship is rattling hard now, the metal bending and creaking, caught in the fist of an angry giant.
“It’s re-entry,” Prakesh says. He’s holding onto the ceiling, and his body is swinging back and forth as the pull of gravity increases.
“Can’t be,” I say, my words almost swallowed by the noise. “It’s too soon!”
But it isn’t. We’ve been in Earth orbit for a week. Normally the ship would be spinning to generate gravity, but we’ve spent the past day in zero-G as we prepare to plunge through the atmosphere. There was supposed to be plenty of warning before we actually started re-entry–enough time for everyone to get into the escape pods. It shouldn’t be happening this fast. The G-forces were supposed to come back gradually.
My stomach is doing sickening barrel rolls, and my hands feel heavy, like my fingers are weighed down with rings. “I thought this was supposed to be a smooth ride,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “The asteroid—”
“No good,” Carver says. He grabs hold of a strut on the ceiling, the muscles standing out on his powerful upper arms. His hair is almost as long as mine now, although he doesn’t bother to tie it back, letting the blond strands float freely.
“I told them,” he says. “You can shape the damn asteroid as much as you want but if you’re using it as a heat shield, things are going to get–shit!”
He spins sideways as the ship jerks and kicks, flinging him against one of the cots bolted to the floor.
“It’s OK,” says Prakesh, sweat pouring down his dark skin. Neither he nor Carver have shaved, and bristly stubble covers their faces. “We just sit tight. They’ll come get us.”
We all stare at the door. The alarm is still blaring, and the hull of the ship is screeching now, like it’s being torn in two.
“They’re not coming, are they?” says Carver.
“Just hang on,” says Prakesh. “Let’s not—”
“They would have been here by now,” says Carver, horror and anger flashing across his face. “They’re not coming, man.”
I close my eyes, trying not to let frustration overtake me. He’s right. The Earthers–the group who took control of this ship to get back to our planet–don’t trust us. Not surprising, given that I tried to destroy the ship’s reactor in an attempt to prevent them from leaving.
There’s no way of stopping the ship. It’ll be travelling at 18,000 miles an hour, even after it’s passed through the upper atmosphere and burned off the asteroid it’s tethered to, acting as its makeshift heat shield. Getting off the ship means being in one of the two escape pods, and it’s easy to picture the chaos as the Earthers rush to get inside them. They’ve either forgotten us, or decided that we aren’t worth saving.
I scan the walls and the ceiling, looking for an escape route that we missed the previous dozen times we tried to find one. Not that we tried that hard–after all, if we got out of the medical bay where else would we go?
Carver half swims, half crawls his way over to the door, pushing Prakesh aside and twisting the release catch up and down. When that doesn’t work, he kicks at it, but only succeeds in pushing himself away.
Prakesh stares at him. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” Carver makes his way back to the door, kicks it a second time. It shudders but stays firmly shut.
“It’s locked, Aaron.”
Carver swings round, staring daggers at Prakesh. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why are you still doing it?”
“Because it’s better than doing nothing, like some of us!”
“I’m trying to—”
“Both of you! Shut up!” I shout. I can’t afford to have them bickering now. They’ve been sniping at each other ever since we were locked in here–Carver has feelings for me, and he’s still furious that I turned down his advances to stay with Prakesh. It’s something I’ve tried not to think about, a problem I’ve pushed to the back of my mind again and again, not wanting to make a choice, not even knowing how to start.
“We kick together,” I say. “All at once.”
I don’t have to explain. I see Carver’s eyes light up. He moves next to me, bracing himself against the wall.
“Aim for just above the lock,” I say, as Prakesh gets into position on my left. “Hit it on zero. Three! Two! One! Zero!”
The door bangs as our feet slam into the space above the handle, but remains stubbornly shut. The force pushes us backwards, nearly knocking us over. Somehow we manage to stay upright.
“Again,” I say. There’s a hold on the wall, and I grab onto it with an outstretched arm, bracing us.
“Three! Two! One! Zero!”
The door explodes outwards, the lock ripping off the wall, and we tumble into the corridor. The alarm is piercing now, ear-splitting. Carver pumps the air in triumph.
2
Okwembu
The ship’s movement knocks Janice Okwembu onto all fours.
She staggers to her feet, leaning against the wall, trying to control the nausea. There’s a blur of movement on her right, and one of the Earthers shoves past her, pushing her out of the way.
Okwembu tries to stay calm, but she can’t stop her hands from shaking. She barely makes it to the corridor hub before she stumbles again. Her green flight jacket is bulky, but she can feel the frigid floor plates through the thin fabric of her pants.
The asteroid was supposed to have held up, dissipating the massive heat and shock wave of re-entry. Every calculation they did showed that the vibrations wouldn’t start until they were deep into the atmosphere. But they got it wrong–a missing variable, something they didn’t take into account. The asteroid is fracturing, leaving everyone on board the ship to scramble for the escape pods.
She looks up. Mikhail Yeremin, the leader of the Earthers, is at the other end of the corridor. His greasy hair frames a face locked into deep panic. In that moment, it’s as if he doesn’t even recognise her.
He vanishes, ducking out of sight. Okwembu curses, tries to get to her feet, but the ship lurches again. The back of her head smacks into the wall, and bright stars glimmer in her vision.
There’s a hand reaching for her. It’s another Earther, a young woman–one of those who went outside the ship, using plasma cutters to shape the asteroid. She’s wearing a ship jumpsuit two sizes too big for her, and her eyes are bright with fear. Okwembu grabs her hand, lets the woman haul her up.
The movement of the ship stops, just for moment, then becomes more violent than ever. Okwembu goes over backwards. The Earther reaches out for her, misses, her fingers brushing the front of the fleece she wears under her jacket.
They snag on the lanyard around her neck.
It pulls tight, the cord pinching against Okwembu’s spine. The hold keeps her upright–just–but it’s stretched to breaking point. The woman’s hand is wrapped around the green plastic data stick at the end of the lanyard, her knuckles white. Any second now, it’s going to snap right off.
With an effort of will, Okwembu balances herself, planting her back foot on the floor. The pressure on her neck drops, and the woman lets go of the data stick. It bounces against Okwembu’s chest.
“You OK?” the woman says, trying to hustle her along, holding her by the shoulder. She shakes loose. She’s got her balance back now, and she’s feeling calmer, more focused. “I’ll be fine. Just go.”
The woman wavers, then bolts. Okwembu’s hands find the data stick, holding it tight.
For the past week, while they prepared for re-entry, all Okwembu has done is scrape data, putting every scrap of information she could onto this one little stick. None of them know what’s down there, what it’s really like on the planet’s surface–all they have is a garbled radio message, talking about how part of the planet has somehow become habitable again. So Okwembu spent her time downloading everything off the ship’s antiquated operating system–water filtration methods, studies on the best soil for growing food in, atmospheric data, reactor blueprints. Maps and charts and graphs, petabytes of information. She doesn’t know if any of it will be useful, or if she’ll even be able to access it on the ground, but she’s not going down without it. The Shinso Maru is worth nothing now, but its data is a price beyond jewels.
The lights in the ceiling are flickering, and the few Earthers she does see are panicked, moving like mindless insects. Contempt boils inside her, but she tells herself to stay focused. Contempt can become anger, which can mutate into panic. She can’t afford that. Especially not now.
The escape pods are a short distance away, and Okwembu moves as fast as she can.
3
Riley
No matter how hard I shake Prakesh, I can’t make him open his eyes.
Carver crouches down, shoving his head under Prakesh’s left arm, hoisting him upwards. I do the same on the other side, heart pounding in my chest. Prakesh is amazingly heavy even in low gravity, his feet dragging on the ground between us as we try to keep our balance in the shaking passage.
There are shelves along the walls, with small plastic crates strapped onto them. One of them comes loose as we walk past it, slipping out of its fabric straps, and we have to pull to the side as it bounces off the walls and floor. The ship’s jagged motion turns it into a pinball.
I pull Carver’s head down as it flies towards us. Not fast enough. The crate just scrapes across his forehead, and he hisses in surprise, staggering into the wall. His hiss turns into a growl as his shoulder takes the hit.
Somehow, we manage to get moving again. I’m getting better at it now, bending my legs, anticipating the ship’s movements. Carver is doing it, too. The screeching of the Shinso’s hull has been replaced by a crunching, grinding noise, as if bits of the ship are being ripped off by the friction of re-entry. I don’t even want to think how fast we’re going. I don’t want to think at all. If those escape pods leave without us…
Just keep going.
We pass a window in the corridor, looking into what appears to be a gym. The treadmills and weight machines are straining against their brackets, slowly working loose. I catch our reflection in the window. We’re a mess. All of us are wearing badly fitting flight gear–grey jackets and T-shirts that are too big for us. Stray strands of hair stick to my face in greasy lines. Prakesh’s face is ash-grey, blood still dripping from his head wound. Carver’s arms are straining, his face contorted as we pull Prakesh along.
I tear my gaze away, focusing on the passage ahead. “How long do we have?” I ask.
“Not nearly long enough,” says Carver. I flash back to when we first came aboard the Shinso, when he asked me to use his first name: Aaron. I still haven’t been able to shake the habit of using his last name.
We reach the junction. There’s a sign on the wall, grubby with age: Mining, Astronautics, Engines. I jab a finger at the corridor on the left. “Astronautics. Let’s go.”
Prakesh groans again. It’s like he’s trying to fight his way back. I put a hand on his chest to steady him—
—And trip.
I try to catch myself, but my legs get tangled underneath me. I go down on one knee, struggling with Prakesh, Carver grunting in surprise.
Fire rolls out from the back of my knee, travelling up my leg and down into my ankle. I wait for it to pass, gritting my teeth.
Back on the station, a psychotic doctor named Morgan Knox implanted explosive charges in the muscles behind my kneecaps, blackmailing me so I would break Janice Okwembu out of prison. I cut one of the explosives out of me when I tried to destroy the Shinso’s fusion reactor, tried to stop the Earthers abandoning Outer Earth. It didn’t work. And after we were captured, I had to beg the Earthers to take the second explosive out of me. It took a few days, but they finally did it, numbing my leg with anaesthetic and slicing me open. I’m slowly healing, but there are bandages on the backs of my knees. Both the wounds hurt like hell.
Everything that happened on Outer Earth feels like a distant dream. We still don’t know if anybody on the station survived. Even if they’re did, we’re much too far away for them to reach us.
I push upwards, straining against Prakesh’s weight. The corridor is even narrower here, and at one point Carver and I have to turn sideways to get him through a door.
The escape pods are right ahead, three sets of airlock doors built into the corridor, with big letters stencilled on either side in black. EMERGENCY USE ONLY.
While some Earthers worked on the asteroid, others worked on the escape pods. They turned th
em from space-going vessels into something that might actually be able to land on Earth, creating makeshift parachutes from material found on board the Shinso.
The pods themselves are too small to have their own fusion reactors, so they run off conventional liquid fuel. They’re housed inside specially designed airlocks. There are Earthers everywhere, helping each other inside the first pod’s open door, stumbling, panicked. An orange light above each airlock door blinks on-off, on-off. The floor of the airlock is slightly lower than the floor in the corridor, and I feel my knees jarring as we step through.
Carver and I pull Prakesh into the pod. There’s a cockpit at the front with rows of seats along each side. Each one is a mess of thick straps, with a neck guard protruding from the seat back. Oxygen masks hang from the ceiling, swinging wildly as the Shinso bucks and writhes. I badly want to see outside, but the only thing visible through the cockpit glass is the outer airlock door.
The pods can take twelve people each, plus a pilot. All but three of the chairs are full. Mikhail Yeremin is there–he’s checking his straps, his long hair hanging down over his face. There’s lettering above his head: ESCAPE VESSEL 1. Underneath it, in smaller black letters, is a vessel name: Furor.
Carver perches on the edge of an empty seat, pulling Prakesh onto the one next to him. I lean in to help, yanking the straps down and buckling them tight. Carver does the same with his own straps, snapping himself in. We made it.
I stand up, intending to take the one remaining chair in the escape pod, opposite Prakesh. Any second now, they’ll shut the door and we can—
Carver’s eyes go wide.
Two hands grasp my shoulders, pulling me backwards. I cry out, my feet tangling up in each other, catching the edge of the pod’s entrance. I land on my coccyx, cracking it against the floor plates in the airlock.
Janice Okwembu is looking down at me.
I haven’t seen her since the day we came aboard. She’s a former Outer Earth council leader who went rogue, joining up with the Earthers. The expression on her face is completely blank.