Impact

by Rob Boffard

  “No!” Carver shouts, fighting with the straps holding him to the chair. “Leave her alone!”

  I scramble to my feet, moving as fast as I can. Not fast enough.

  Okwembu looks down at me, reaching over to one side of the frame for the control panel. “Goodbye, Ms Hale,” she says.

  And the door closes in front of me.

  4

  Okwembu

  Aaron Carver finally gets loose.

  He shoves Okwembu out of the way. She collides with one of the seats, almost falling on top of its occupant, a man with tangled black hair and an acne-speckled face. Okwembu ignores him. She lifts herself into a seat, grabbing the straps, concentrating on buckling herself in.

  Carver hammers at the control pad, but the door doesn’t open. Of course it doesn’t. Okwembu made sure to twist the rotary to the Eject position. It shuts the pod down in preparation for launch, to ensure that the door has a good pressure seal. It can’t be opened again. Behind it, the inner airlock doors will be closing.

  She hopes that Riley Hale has the good sense to get out while she still can.

  Mikhail Yeremin is staring at her, and she doesn’t like the expression on his face. She turns away, ignoring him, busying herself with her straps. She’s still looking down at her buckle, and so isn’t prepared when Aaron Carver slams her back against the seat. His face is inches from hers.

  “Open it up,” he says. When she doesn’t respond, he barks the words in her face. “Do you hear me? Open it up.”

  “You should sit down, Mr Carver,” Okwembu says.

  He rips her straps away, lifts her up, throws her out of her seat. She hits the floor, wincing in pain as her right hand takes the impact, bending at the wrist.

  Carver grabs the back of her jacket, dragging her to the door. Mikhail is almost out of his seat, huge fingers fighting with the catch on his chest. The other Earthers watch without saying a word.

  Okwembu attempts to spin away, trying to get her arms out of her jacket. Carver sees the move, stops her, pulling her up so her face is level with the lock. “Open the door,” he yells, right in her ear.

  When she doesn’t move, he wrenches at the rotary switch alongside it, trying to get it back to Doors Manual. Okwembu wants to tell him not to bother. The most he’ll be able to do is tear the switch itself off the control panel.

  “We need to launch now,” shouts the pilot from the front of the craft. “Everybody better strap in.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Carver says. “Not until—”

  Mikhail grabs him around the shoulders, shoving him backwards into his seat. Carver tries to get back up, but Mikhail won’t let him, holding him in place as he clicks the catch shut.

  “You don’t strap in, you die,” he says.

  Okwembu takes the gap. She staggers back to her seat, heart pounding, strapping herself in. She looks up to see that Carver has stopped fighting. He’s gripping his straps tight, his fingers bloodless. Mikhail is making his way back to his own seat, grabbing at the straps.

  “She’d better make it,” Carver says, looking Okwembu right in the eyes. “Or I’m going to end you.”

  In the moment before the pilot launches the pod, she wonders about Carver. She shouldn’t be surprised at his actions. He doesn’t have any sort of vision or understanding of the wider consequences of what’s happening here. What he has are mechanical skills, and Prakesh Kumar, sitting next to him, has agricultural ones. The moment she saw the make-up of this pod, she knew it was the one she needed to be in.

  The people inside it–Carver, Kumar, the other Earthers–all have skills that can be used on the planet below. Hale doesn’t. She can run, and she can fight, and as far as Okwembu is concerned neither one is particularly useful.

  It’s more than that, she thinks. You wanted to do it. You wanted to put her in her place.

  Okwembu closes her eyes, and the pod explodes away from the ship.

  5

  Riley

  I lose control.

  If the pod’s door wasn’t made of metal, if it wasn’t completely beyond human strength to do anything to it, then my fingers would be digging long channels in the surface. I kick and hit and hammer and try to wedge my fingers into the whisper-thin gap. I scream Okwembu’s name, but the only thing that comes back at me are the waves of vibrations tearing through the Shinso.

  “What are you doing?”

  It comes from beyond the inner airlock door. Syria is standing there, staring at me like I’ve gone crazy.

  He was a community leader from Outer Earth, from a place known as the Caves. He fought hard to stop the Earthers from taking the ship, but ended up here with them. Like Okwembu, I haven’t seen him since the day we boarded the Shinso. He must have been locked up somewhere else–there’s no way he would have helped Okwembu and Mikhail. He’s tough and wiry, wearing a bright red flight jacket, and his dirty hair is thick with knots.

  He works his way into the airlock and grabs me, then has to do it again when I tear my way out of his grip.

  “Hey!” he says, grabbing my arm. “Are you crazy? There’s a second pod.”

  “My friends are in there,” I shout back. At that moment, the word doesn’t seem adequate enough. Carver and Prakesh aren’t just friends. They’re everything. They’re all I’ve got left.

  Syria pulls me through the outer airlock door. It’s starting to shut, the mechanisms sliding the door closed. “And we’ll be right behind them,” he says. “Guaranteed.”

  The second pod is twenty yards down the corridor. Before I can blink, Syria hustles us inside, shoving me into a seat and buckling me in. I don’t have the energy left to fight back. The seat straps are tight around my chest and stomach. The shaking is getting very bad now.

  “Release in ten seconds,” shouts the pilot from the front of our pod.

  “We have to go now!” another voice says.

  “Negative. We need to give the other pod time to get clear, or we’ll smash into it,” the pilot says. I can’t see his face, just the back of his head. A woman opposite me is muttering something that sounds like a prayer, her eyes shut tight. The name of the pod is above her on the wall: Lyssa.

  I think back to Prakesh and Carver, tight on either side of me, our legs raised to kick down the locked door. All of us together, acting as one. I try to hold onto it, but it sends an unexpected spasm of anger through me–and this time I’m angry at myself.

  I spent a week with them in that damn medical bay, a week where I could have talked to them, a week where we could have straightened out where we stood with each other. I wanted to be with Prakesh, told Carver as much, but it didn’t stop the choice gnawing at me, making me wonder if I’d made the right decision. It didn’t stop me thinking about how I kissed Carver while we were dealing with the last few hours of insanity on Outer Earth. I had all the time in the world to say something, and I didn’t, and now I might never see them again.

  And on the tail of that thought comes another. Janice Okwembu took them away from me. When I see her again, I’m going to make her pay.

  I’ll find you, I say, willing the thought to reach Prakesh and Carver, knowing it won’t and not caring. I don’t care what happens. I’ll find you.

  “Release!” says the pilot.

  But there’s no bang. No shuddering explosion. Nothing happens.

  The pilot hammers on the control panel, each hit more and more frantic. But no matter what he does, our pod refuses to launch.

  6

  Prakesh

  Prakesh is back in the Air Lab on Outer Earth.

  He can see the ceiling lights through the canopies of the enormous oak trees towering above him. He can smell the damp scent of the algae pools, the thick musk of soil.

  His parents are there, his father’s arm around his mother. He can see every detail–his father’s prosthetic leg, his mother’s scarf, the earrings she wears. He tries to say their names, but when he moves his lips, no sound comes out. And they’re not smiling–they’re j
ust looking at him, sadness lining their faces.

  Then they’re gone, and Riley Hale is there, standing before him. The woman he loves. He doesn’t want her to speak. He knows what she’s going to say.

  Resin, Prakesh. The words come in her voice, even though she hasn’t opened her mouth. Resin. It came from you.

  He doesn’t want it to be true. The virus that tore through Outer Earth can’t have come from him. It’s a dream, that’s all. A bad dream. Any moment now, he’s going to wake up in bed with Riley, in their hab in Chengshi.

  The Air Lab is shaking. The tree branches are swinging back and forth, groaning, as if caught in a hurricane. Riley is gone.

  There’s a bang. It explodes through Prakesh’s body, filling every cell, blotting out the world. His eyes snap open. For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is. Then he sees Aaron Carver next to him, his eyes squeezed shut, G-forces rippling his cheeks.

  Prakesh remembers everything. His gaze darts around the packed escape pod. Janice Okwembu is near the front, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. Mikhail is a few seats down from her.

  They’re in-flight. They have to be. That means the escape pod jettisoned from the Shinso. Prakesh tries to turn his head, pushing against the Gs, and gets a brief look out of the cockpit glass. It’s a mess of black and red, matted with a dull grey. Clouds, he thinks.

  The headache comes suddenly, flaring at the base of his skull. It’s like a red-hot needle, jamming upwards into his brain. There’s blood on his face–where did it come from? The last thing he remembers is kicking the door down, holding tight onto…

  Riley. Where’s Riley?

  At that moment, the shaking stops. The escape pod stabilises, and the roaring from outside vanishes, replaced by the gentle hum of the engines. The G-forces holding Prakesh against his seat disappear, although the headache remains. An audible sigh of relief rises from the cabin and someone gives a weak cheer.

  Carver still has his eyes closed, his head tilted back.

  “Everybody sit tight,” says the pilot. “Parachute’s out.”

  “What’s our location?” It comes from Janice Okwembu, her voice calm and controlled.

  Prakesh doesn’t hear the pilot’s answer. “Where’s Riley?” he says to Carver.

  No answer. Prakesh licks his lips. “Carver. Why isn’t Riley here?”

  “Ask her,” Carver says, jerking his head at Okwembu, thunder on his face.

  Prakesh’s eyes find hers, surprised fury igniting inside him. “What did you do?”

  Okwembu doesn’t hear him, or, if she does, she doesn’t say anything. Prakesh twists his head, looking back at Carver

  “But they got off OK, right?” he says. “They’re behind us?”

  Carver doesn’t get a chance to respond. There’s a distant boom, almost too soft to hear, like thunder from an unseen storm.

  “There goes the Shinso,” says the pilot.

  7

  Riley

  The control panel of the Lyssa is a chaos of flashing lights. The pilot is panicking, shaking the stick back and forth.

  This is what my father must have felt.

  The thought is clear in my head. My father was on a mission to return to Earth, to establish humans on the planet again. His ship, the Akua Maru, suffered a catastrophic explosion during re-entry. He must have felt this, too. The same shaking. The same terror. My knuckles have gone white, my fingers gripping the seat.

  “Gunther,” someone shouts. “Check the couplings.”

  “Couplings are fine!” Gunther says over his shoulder.

  “Then cycle the software. There must be—”

  The bang feels like it shatters my eardrums. The G-forces rocket up, slamming me back into the seat and holding me there as the pod spins away from the main body of the Shinso. My eyes feel like they’re going to drill out of the back of my skull.

  A moment later, there’s a second bang–the Shinso finally tearing itself apart. The sound reaches into the Lyssa, ripping through it, knocking us into a crazy spin. My head snaps to the side, then the other, at the mercy of the G-forces.

  The other pod got off OK. I know it did. I heard it launch. I repeat the words in my mind, one after the other.

  A hand grips mine. Syria. I want to look at him, but I can barely move. Everyone in the pod is screaming, held fast to their seats.

  The G-force changes direction suddenly, knocking my head back the other way. I’m still squashed against the scratchy fabric of the seat, but I’m looking towards the cockpit now. I can see right out of the glass.

  There are flecks of grey vapour spinning around us. The sky behind them is a dark blue, and at its bottom edge I can just see it turning to scarlet.

  In a split second, the view changes. The grey vapour blocks out the sky–we must have fallen into a cloud bank. And there’s burning debris, screaming past us–huge chunks of it, trailing fire. It’s impossible to tell which chunks are asteroid and which were part of the Shinso.

  There’s a thunk as a piece hits us. I’m almost certain that the Lyssa is about to tear in two, but then our spin begins to slow.

  “Drogue’s out!” says Gunther from the cockpit. “Looking good. Everyone hold tight.”

  The parachute deploys. Our wild movement doesn’t just slow–it comes to a sudden halt, snapping us upwards against our straps. I’m holding onto one at my shoulder, and two of my fingers get caught underneath it, burning as the fabric bites into them.

  The noise vanishes, draining away. The view outside the window is swinging, left to right. It’s not just sky now–there’s something in the distance, a jagged shape, brown, capped with white.

  “Gods,” says Syria. It takes me a moment to see where he’s looking.

  Gunther’s head is lolling onto his right shoulder. His eyes are dull and glassy, and I can see his right hand, drooping off the armrest of his seat. I’ve seen snapped necks before–it must have happened when the main parachute deployed. Maybe his straps came loose, or he hadn’t secured them tight enough.

  The air rushing around us is louder now. We must be getting closer to the ground. The pod gives a sickening lurch, and the side I’m on drops, sending my stomach into my throat. I’m looking up at the people strapped in opposite me, all of them tilted forwards.

  The parachute. Whatever construction the Earthers cobbled together from the Shinso’s supplies isn’t holding. It’s all too easy to imagine a hole in it, the air rushing through, our drag decreasing as we plummet towards the ground, the hole getting wider with every second. And there’s nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do.

  Through the cockpit window I see the ground. We’re close enough to pick out every rock, every crack in the terrain. It’s rushing towards us, way too fast.

  “Everybody hang on!” Syria says. We’re skimming over the ground now–it’s moving too fast, the texture of the dirt blurring as I look at it. I try to picture Carver and Prakesh, holding them uppermost in my mind.

  There’s a grinding, wrenching crash. The pod flips over, and then everything goes away.

  8

  Prakesh

  They should be drifting down slowly, held up by the billowing parachute. Instead, they’re moving sideways, as if the wind has caught them, tossing them like a leaf.

  “Too fast, too fast, too fast,” Carver says, as if that alone will be enough to slow them down. He speaks more to himself than to anyone else, but Prakesh can still hear him over the rushing air. The man opposite him is praying audibly now, invoking Shiva’s name, Vishnu’s, Buddha’s.

  It occurs to him that they might not make it. It’s all too easy to see the pod slamming into the Earth at hundreds of miles an hour, vaporising on impact, turning everyone inside to burning dust.

  “Listen up!” It’s the pilot, shouting back over his shoulder. “We’re coming in over the water, and we’re coming in hot. There’s going to be one hell of a bang, so everybody—”

  Prakesh doesn’t hear the rest, because that’s when he see
s the water. Whatever they’re above–a lake, a river, the ocean for all he knows–fills the cockpit window, glittering in the distantly setting sun. It’s rushing past at an impossible speed.

  Okwembu turns her head away, tensing in her straps. Prakesh does the same, holding on tight, thinking of Riley, picturing her in his mind, but all he can hear is Carver screaming, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu—”

  The impact lifts Prakesh out of his seat, ripping his head back. The whiplash takes him, snapping his head forward. A bright stab of pain lances through his neck.

  They’re airborne again, moving above the water. He can hear the rushing air above the screams from the pod’s passengers. How are they still in the air? He remembers video footage he saw once, archival stuff: a stone skipping across a pond. Get the angle and the velocity right, and that stone could skip for a hundred yards.

  But the pod is no stone. Prakesh has half a second to realise that they’ve flipped upside down, that he’s hanging awkwardly in his straps, and then they hit the water again.

  The impact this time sounds muted. It’s a whooshing thud, vibrating up through the pod. Prakesh fights to stay conscious, to not let the pain in his neck and head overwhelm him. He opens his eyes–it feels like it takes him days, but he does it.

  The pod is still moving, but much more slowly now. It comes to a rocking halt, still upside down. Prakesh can hear rushing water. He raises his eyes to where the ceiling of the pod should be, down below him, and sees why.

  The water is coming in. As Prakesh watches, one of the panels shears off and a fist of water hits the man opposite him. The man chokes and splutters, his eyes wide with shock.

  We have to get out of here.

  The thought comes to Prakesh from a great distance. He wants to shout it to everyone, but his vocal cords have stopped working. His fingers move on their own, finding the strap release buckle on his chest.