Impact

by Rob Boffard

  Okwembu tries to control her breathing. There’s no way Hale survived that. Nobody could. Not even a tracer would be able to outrun—

  The gun starts to move again.

  The barrel raises itself in short jerks, as if the operator isn’t quite sure of the equipment, still trying to get the hang of it. Prophet is muttering under his breath. “Engine’s gonna save us,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else. “The Engine will keep us safe.”

  Okwembu reaches out, gripping his arm. “You have to shut the gun down. Right now.”

  He stares at her blankly, as if he doesn’t know who she is.

  “The Phalanx gun,” she says. “How do we shut it off?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s manual control,” he says. “Only Curtis can do that.”

  Okwembu looks back out of the window. The Phalanx gun is turning in a slow circle, the barrel moving upwards.

  Aiming for the bridge.

  “Get out!” Okwembu shouts. She throws Prophet to the side, launching herself towards the doors. “We have to get out now!”

  And Riley Hale opens up.

  79

  Riley

  The bridge implodes.

  That’s the only word for it. The structure folds inwards, its struts bending and snapping under the barrage. Part of the roof caves in. In seconds, the entire bridge is wreathed in smoke, glitchy and pixelated on my screen. It’s like the bullets brought a black hole to the bridge.

  The whole gun shakes around me, the vibrations travelling up through my chair. I laugh, and my laughter vanishes under the roar of the gunfire.

  I keep my finger on the trigger until the ammo counter on the screen blinks a big fat zero.

  The only sound is my breathing, close in the cramped space. There’s a water canteen off to one side, balanced on the control panel. It’s half full. I drain most of it in one go, then tip the rest over my head, soaking my hair and neck. I take one last look at the smoking, sputtering wreck of the bridge, then step over the unconscious gunner and push my way out of the door.

  The harsh daylight makes me blink, the smoke worming its way into my lungs. My body chooses that moment to really wake up, my muscles burning, protesting against everything I put them through. A sudden wave of nausea rolls through me, and I drop to one knee on the deck, retching.

  My shoulder blades are twisted rods of red-hot steel, and there’s something wrong with the muscles on my right side. Every movement sends a sharp arc of pain up into my armpit. It’s like a stitch that’s got out of control, taking on a life of its own. I’m pushing my body to a level it hasn’t gone to before, and if I’m not careful I won’t make it out the other side.

  You’re not done yet, says the voice.

  I look over my shoulder at the bridge. It’s a smoking ruin. There’s no way anybody survived that. But I can’t walk away, not until I see Janice Okwembu’s body, not until I know she’s paid for everything she’s done.

  It’s hard to get moving again, but I do it. Each step hurts, and I have to grit my teeth to keep going, gripping my right side as if I can massage the pain away. I hear a bang, and look up. Something on the bridge has exploded, gushing even more fire and smoke.

  There’s a buzzing sound, growing by the second, and a shape explodes out of the smoke. No–not out of it. Above it. It takes me a moment to realise what I’m seeing.

  The seaplane.

  I stare at it, open-mouthed, as it soars above me. I can just see Harlan through the blown-off door, hanging on for dear life. The plane’s body is damaged in a hundred places, bullet holes standing out like acne scars. It banks, descending towards the sea, vanishing past the edge of the deck.

  How did they survive? Did they land somewhere? No way to tell–and they don’t dare land on the deck, not without wheels. It doesn’t matter. They’re alive. They made it.

  The knowledge makes me want to punch the air and throw up, all at once. I hadn’t realised how much it was weighing on me. Ever since I saw Finkler, lying broken on the rocks of Fire Island, I thought they were gone. I told myself that I didn’t know for sure, but I never really believed it.

  If I can get to them afterwards, we can get back to Whitehorse. Carver and Prakesh and I can…

  Prakesh. My good feeling vanishes. My stomach gives another sickening lurch, and I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them again, the buzz of the seaplane has faded, and I’m looking back up at the bridge.

  Later. That can all come later. You’ve got a job to do first.

  It takes me a few minutes to find an entrance. I have to go nearly all the way round the bridge structure, to the far side of the ship. I hesitate for a moment, not wanting to enter the pitch darkness of the interior again.

  But there’s no choice. Not this time. I take a deep breath of cold ocean air, then step inside.

  80

  Anna

  Anna can’t get control of the escape pod.

  She’s wrestling with the stick, willing it to do what she wants, but every time she tries to correct her course she overcompensates, sending the pod into a flat spin. The destroyed dock revolves around her, tugs and debris orbiting like miniature planets.

  With an enormous bang, Anna’s pod collides with the wall of the dock.

  It hits rear-first. Anna lurches forward in her seat, and that’s when she sees the crack.

  It’s spreading slowly across the cockpit viewport, moving in tiny jerks, growing larger and larger. She can’t take her eyes off it, can’t focus on anything else.

  She doesn’t know whether the crack came from the impact on the wall or when she collided with the astronaut. Doesn’t matter. Her fingers scrabble at her seat belt, digging into the catch. It snaps back, and she floats upwards, feeling a fresh wave of nausea roll through her. The crack is bigger now, almost to the other edge of the viewport.

  Space suit. I have to get to a space suit.

  She pulls herself to the back of the craft, hammering on the suit locker’s release button. She has no idea of the right way to put on one of these suits, and there’s no time to find out.

  An alarm starts beeping on the escape pod’s console. It’s not like the proximity alarm–this is the harsh cry of a machine that knows it’s dying. Anna ignores it, pulling the suit out of the locker. It’s made of tough, rubber-like material, with the seam running down the torso. She forces it open, then tries to spin her body so she can jam a leg inside it. She misses the first time, her foot grazing the outside of the suit. She’s breathing too hard, using up too much oxygen, unable to think of anything but zero gravity, of being lost in space, floating forever.

  One leg. Then the other. Then the arms. It’s like being entombed. The material holds her body fast, and she has to make an effort even to move her fingers inside the gloves. Anna knows enough about these suits to be aware that the helmet is integrated–all she has to do is activate it.

  There’s a control panel on her wrist. Slowly, she moves her other hand around, pushing at the large buttons. A second later, there’s a hiss, and the faceplate slides up and over her head, using the rigid arches on the suit’s shoulders to guide itself, locking into place with a heavy click. The heads-up display winks to life in front of her. Oxygen, power levels, a thousand other things she can only guess at.

  She doesn’t hear the cockpit viewport give way. The first she knows about it, she’s tumbling out the front of the escape pod, sucked out by the pressure loss, rolling end over end. The fear is potent now, like a toxic gas that she’s sucking deep into her lungs with every breath.

  A piece of debris heaves into view, a piece of a mechanical arm, and Anna smashes into it before she can stop herself. It knocks her sideways. Fingers fumble at her wrist controls, fat and useless.

  With a thud that jars her body inside the suit, Anna comes to a stop. It takes a confused few seconds to understand what happened. She’s ended up in one of the top corners of the dock–somehow, she’s wedged in it, as if the oxygen pack on the back of her suit is be
ing held by the walls as they join up.

  She can see the tug. The heat shield is hanging off the bottom of the vessel. It’s a thin sheet, dull gold in colour, wrinkled and malformed. It’s been joined to the main body by a series of ugly-looking welds.

  The rear ramp of the tug is open, surrounded by space-suited figures. A few of them are looking in her direction, although they’re too far away for her to see their faces. She has to get to them. She has to stop them.

  But how? What exactly is she supposed to do? Drag each one of them out of the tug? It’s absurd.

  What if she could talk to them? Persuade them not to do it? It’s a million-to-one shot, but it’s the only one she has. She prods at the wrist control. Seconds tick by before she works out which one turns on the radio–she hesitates half a dozen times, unsure about what each button does.

  Static swells in her helmet, and then voices penetrate, coming over the suit radio.

  “—anybody see that?” It’s Arroway, sounding more panicky than ever.

  “Jordan’s gone.”

  “We’ve got someone else in a suit out here. Who is that?”

  And then Dax: “Identify yourself.”

  Anna can’t help it. She screams Dax’s name, the sound reverberating inside her helmet. It’s only when he doesn’t respond, when the chatter continues, that she realises she doesn’t have her transmit button activated. It takes her another few seconds to find it.

  “Dax,” she says, quieter now, but still determined. “Don’t do this.”

  “Anna?” he says. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I can’t let you leave.” Her voice is husky, her throat tight with anger.

  “I don’t—”

  The words cut off. She has a horrible moment where she thinks her suit radio has died on her, but then the static returns, fizzing in her ear.

  “Say again?” she says.

  “I don’t see how you’re going to stop us.”

  Arroway cuts in. “Dax, maybe we should—”

  “No, Anna. You come with us. You’ve earned that much.”

  What would Riley do?

  Easy. She’d find something. She’d make it work.

  Anna makes herself stay calm. She lowers her breathing, pushes back against the fear, and starts looking around the dock.

  “Anna,” Dax says. “Come with us or stay, but we’re gone in three minutes.”

  She sees nothing but debris. Torn metal, bullet casings, strands of broken mag rail. The mechanical arm she smashed into. Bodies, too: frozen, twisted, curled in on themselves. Keep looking. There’s got to be something.

  Anna’s eyes track along the far wall of the dock, and come to a sudden halt.

  There’s no way. It’s not possible.

  But it is. It’s right there, caught on a ceiling support.

  The long gun.

  Her rifle. The one she used during the siege of the dock. She thought it was lost. She thought she’d never see it again. But there it is. Anna doesn’t know if guns work in space, if the gunpowder will even ignite, but she has to try.

  Slowly, she brings her wrist control to her face. The moment she pushes the THRUST button, her suit springs to life. She feels pressure in her shoulder blades and at the base of the spine, like she’s being punched from multiple angles, and the suit launches forward. The heads-up display changes, displaying a diagram of the suit with six thruster points highlighted. She senses mechanical movement at her stomach, and when she brings her right hand there, she finds a joystick has popped out from the suit’s midsection.

  “Anna, be reasonable,” says Dax. “We’re offering you a way out. It’s more than anyone else on this station will get.”

  It takes more than a few false starts to get the hang of it. Anna goes into a spin more than once, aware that she’s attracting more attention from the tug, aware that a couple of the suited figures are moving towards her. But she’s too far ahead of them, and within a minute she’s at the gun. She can pick out the details: the thin black barrel, the fake-wood-grain stock. The scope, perched on top. It’s wedged into the wall, at the bottom of the triangle formed by the roof support. She reaches out for it, fingers questing.

  Too fast. You’re coming in too fast—

  Anna slams into the wall, so hard that her head bounces off the back of the helmet. The gun is knocked away, spinning out into the void.

  Anna grips the joystick at her stomach, propels herself off the wall. She’s running out of time. The rest of Dax’s group have given up on her–they’re heading back to the tug. If she can’t grab that rifle soon, it’s over.

  She boosts herself towards it. Three yards. Two.

  “I’m sorry, Anna.” Dax sounds almost regretful.

  Her hand touches the barrel. She clenches her fingers, gritting her teeth as her skin scrapes against the inside of the suit glove. But she’s got hold of the rifle.

  She’s still moving, heading towards the gaping mouth of the dock. No time. She turns the rifle round, welding the stock to her shoulder and using her right hand to steady the barrel. She jams the finger of her left hand in the trigger guard. It is a tight fit, almost too tight, and her stomach lurches again when she realises that she didn’t even think about that. If she hadn’t been able to pull the trigger…

  The rifle is bolt-action, but the bolt itself is gone, sheared off. She won’t be able to load another round.

  Sighting down the barrel is impossible. She can’t move her head. She’s going to have to do this on instinct, trusting her arm to find the aim.

  She finds the tug, then the heat shield, glimmering in the light from the sun. Slowly, she brings the gun towards it.

  81

  Okwembu

  Janice Okwembu picks herself up off the floor of the bridge.

  As the bullets tore through the walls, she threw herself behind the thick map table, skidding across the floor. There was nothing she could do but put her hands over her ears, and wait for it to be over.

  Slowly, she gets to her feet. She’s unsteady, her ears ringing. She isn’t injured–the table was thick enough and low enough to protect her–but her face and the backs of her hands are scratched and bloody.

  The interior of the bridge is a sparking, smoking mess, as if what they saw on the cameras earlier has come through the screens, exploding into life around them. The windows are gone, smashed apart. Part of the roof has collapsed, opening the bridge up to the sky. The banks of screens have disappeared. There’s thick, white smoke everywhere, and the wall behind Okwembu is completely shredded.

  But not as shredded as the bodies.

  Mercifully, most of the men and women on the bridge are dead. But there are still a few moaning in pain, pulling themselves across the floor, their camouflage fatigues stained black with blood. Okwembu sees Prophet, lying face down. His left arm is almost gone, ripped off at the shoulder. As Okwembu watches, his body twitches slightly.

  She tells herself to help him. But there’s no point–he’s dead, whatever she does. Instead, she finds herself stumbling over to the space where the windows used to be, pushing her way past the destroyed screens. A part of her knows she should stay behind cover. Hale might have more bullets, might be waiting for her to show herself.

  She ignores the impulse, reaching the gap, looking out across the deck. The Phalanx gun is still shrouded with thick smoke, and several small fires have started among the ruins of the planes.

  There’s a flash of movement. Okwembu looks down, just in time to see Riley Hale sprinting towards the base of the bridge tower. In an instant, she’s gone.

  Anger, hot and bright, fills every space in Okwembu’s body.

  She turns, and almost immediately sees what she’s looking for. There’s a narrow metal support, up against the wall. It’s been blown in half: a four-foot segment has come loose, attached to the bottom part of the support by a tiny shred of metal. It reminds her of Prophet’s arm, but she doesn’t dwell on the thought.

  With a strength
she didn’t know she had, Okwembu grabs the displaced segment, trying to wrench it loose. But she can’t get it free from the strand connecting it to the main body. She casts around, finds another chunk of metal, something hot and misshapen, and hammers it against the support. It snaps free, the metal giving a tortured shriek.

  Okwembu discards the debris, then hefts the support, testing its weight. She strides over to the door, positioning herself along the wall to its left, and waits for Riley Hale to walk through.

  82

  Anna

  The long gun’s recoil knocks Anna sideways.

  There’s no sound, but she feels the kick, feels the butt slamming its way past her right side. It sends her spinning again. She fumbles with the joystick, tries to right herself, but every move makes the spin worse.

  The wall of the dock rushes towards her. She hits it faceplate first, the heads-up display shuddering and fracturing as the transparent material takes the impact. The material holds, and Anna finds herself moving away from the wall, still turning in that sickening spin. Somehow, she brings herself to a halt. Her fingers are trembling inside the gloves, holding the stick tight, but she’s not spinning any more.

  Slowly, Anna raises her head and looks for the tug. She doesn’t want to know. If she missed, then she won’t be able to stop them from leaving.

  The tug’s heat shield is torn in two.

  It may be strong enough to withstand the intense, even heat of re-entry, but the direct, shearing impact of the bullet sliced right through it. The two halves are still rigid, but there’s a gaping hole in the crinkly golden material, the edges bending slightly in the vacuum. It’s beyond repair–even if they managed to patch the two sides back together, the heat of re-entry would worm its way through.

  The tug itself is spinning slightly from the impact, and as the gold heat shield angles towards her, as it picks up the light from the sun, Anna can’t help smiling. Guess guns do work in space, after all.