by Rob Boffard
The suit’s radio is going insane: a dozen confused voices, all clamouring for attention. Dax cuts through them. “What’s happening?” he shouts. “We—”
The radio cuts off again, stays silent for a few seconds, then roars back.
“Some sort of impact. I can’t see it.”
“Hey, Dax,” Anna says, keying the transmit button. “How’s that heat shield looking?”
She doesn’t wait for him to respond. Moving as carefully as she can, she turns herself until she’s facing the mouth of the dock, then uses the thrusters to steer herself out. She keeps each burst short, aware that her supplies are limited. Still, it should be enough to get her back to the pod bay.
Dax is swearing at her over the suit radio. She turns it off, almost absentmindedly.
She feels drained. But it’s a good feeling. She survived. It didn’t matter how young she was–she made the right call. She saved the station, just like Riley did. That’s enough.
Anna doesn’t know if the people in Dax’s group will be able to make it back inside, but there’s nothing she can do about that. They don’t have a choice–if they don’t make it back, they’ll die.
She’s outside the dock now, moving along the curve of the station. She’s gone past most of the debris, gently spinning, letting herself drift. She sees the others start to make their way out of the dock, moving in short bursts, close to the station’s hull.
She’s drifting too far away. As she activates the thrusters to correct her course, Anna sees the curve of the Earth below her.
She stares for a moment, mesmerised. The planet is brightly lit, the clouds swirling, scraps of brown land only just visible. It looks alien, forbidding. And yet, somehow, it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
Riley is down there. Waiting for her.
Anna makes herself focus. She can see the pod bays now, just dimpling the hull at the point where it starts curving away from her. She angles herself towards it–she’s really got the hang of this now. The nausea is still there, but she feels it at a remove, as if it belongs to someone else. There’s a readout on her display–a vertical bar, decreasing every time she hits the thrusters. She’s still got a third of her fuel left: more than enough to take her right into the pod bay. Almost home.
Something smashes into her from behind.
In the half-second available to her, Anna thinks it must be a piece of debris–something she missed. But whatever it is is holding her, pulling her tight to itself. She’s spinning out of control, the station whirling away from her.
Dax’s face slides into view, inches from her own. Behind the transparent helmet, his face is contorted with hate.
83
Riley
The smoke sears the back of my throat, scratching my eyes. It gets thicker the higher I climb, and I have to pull the top of my shirt over my mouth and nose. It’s damp and sticky with sweat and dirt, but it’s better than nothing.
Most of the lights are dead. There’s an alarm blaring, and I can smell fire. A sprinkler springs to life above me, soaking me with a short spray of cold water before sputtering out.
As I get closer to the bridge, I see that part of the stairway has collapsed. There’s a gaping hole in the wall, the metal shredded and torn. The Phalanx gun’s barrage ripped the stairs away. I allow myself a small smile. Should have aimed a little more carefully.
I climb up, hauling myself onto the remaining steps. This time, getting up is harder, the muscles in my right side clenching in pain.
I’ve come up onto the bridge level in the same corridor that Ray and Iluk used to bring me in. The door to the bridge is firmly shut, although the wall to its right is pocked with bullet holes. I grip the valve lock hard, and wrench it down, pushing the door inwards.
I can barely see a thing. The smoke is a solid white wall, pushing me back. I hold my shirt fabric tight around my mouth, and step inside. The windows of the bridge have been blown away, and daylight is leaking in from the massive holes. Sparks from destroyed electronics shower the floor.
There are bodies everywhere.
They lie sprawled across the floor, collapsed across chairs. Some of them still have their rifles, their fingers locked around the triggers. The floor is a sticky mess of blood and bone fragments. Prophet is there, too. One of the bullets caught him in the shoulder, almost tearing his arm off.
All dead. Because of me.
I should feel something. Remorse, guilt, anything. But I’m done with that. I’ve felt all of those things before, and they didn’t help. They didn’t bring the dead back to life. All I’ve got is an emptiness, like I’ve given out all the emotion I have, and there’s nothing left inside. I just want to do what I came to do, and get out of here.
Movement. Behind me. Janice Okwembu. She has a metal pole, and before I can react, she smashes it into my side.
84
Okwembu
Riley Hale goes down in silence.
Okwembu can see her screaming, howling in pain as she clutches her side. But she can’t hear a thing. Even the ringing in her ears has disappeared.
It’s the strangest sensation, like she’s standing outside herself, watching her body lift the metal support over her head.
In that instant, she doesn’t even feel anger. She feels nothing but a quiet satisfaction.
And yet Hale is still alive. She rolls away across the floor, and for an instant Janice Okwembu loses her in the billowing smoke. But only for an instant–Hale is injured, struggling to get to her feet, and in two steps Okwembu is on her. She brings the support down. It’s more a diagonal hit than a vertical one, the weight robbing it of momentum. But it still hurts, crushing into the small of Hale’s back.
This time, Okwembu does hear her scream.
The girl is writhing on the ground, her legs kicking. She throws an arm out, tries to catch Okwembu in the ankle, misses. Okwembu didn’t hit her nearly as hard as she should have–she was hoping for a crushed vertebra, at the very least. It’s a cold, clean, satisfying thought.
Why is she bothering with trying to maim Hale? Why is she waiting? She should have aimed for Hale’s head, or better yet, retrieved a rifle from one of Prophet’s men. She’s not in her right mind, not thinking straight. It’s the same mistake Amira Al-Hassan made, when she was under orders to kill the girl. She talked, and stalled, and Hale made her pay for it. Okwembu made the same mistake, months ago, after Hale had destroyed her father’s ship. She should have killed her then–no talk, no waiting. Just a bullet in the head.
It’s not a mistake she will make again.
Hale is trying to crawl away, her legs useless. Her hair has fallen to one side, leaving the back of her neck exposed. Okwembu watches herself step forward, planting her feet just so, lifting the heavy metal support in a high arc.
85
Riley
I feel the pole coming before it hits.
I don’t know if it’s a change in air pressure, or the sound of the metal as it plunges downwards. But I know it’s coming.
I react, throwing myself to one side, only just managing to get out of the way. I feel the edge of the pole catch my shoulder–it’s a glancing blow, but it spasms up into my neck. I can barely feel my legs. My back and side are sending up shocks of frantic, agonised pain.
I get a momentary glimpse of Okwembu through the smoke. She’s a mess–her jumpsuit is sweat-stained, torn and ragged, and there’s a cut on her face, below her right eye. The blood looks like warpaint.
There’s no time to be angry with myself. I can’t stop moving. Not for a second. Okwembu brings the pole down again, smashing it into the floor. It’s heavy, far too heavy for her to use effectively, but it won’t be long before it hits me in a way I won’t be able to come back from.
I try to rise, trying to get my legs underneath me. Too late, I realise that I’ve pushed myself up against a body. I sprawl against it, then have to wrench myself out of the way as Okwembu attacks.
She screams in fury, lift
ing the pole for another strike. Could I stop it somehow? Grab it as she swings it towards me? No chance–the pole is heavy, almost too heavy for her to hold. If I try and stop it, it’ll crush my hands.
I lift my leg, lash out at her. No good. She starts moving sideways–this time, instead of lifting the pole, she lets it drag along the ground behind her, getting ready to line up an overhead strike.
My hands stretch out, hunting for anything I can use. A rifle? I’ll still have to aim it, still have to check the safety and bring it around…
My fingers close on metal–but not the textured metal of a rifle. It’s a fat tube, cool against my hand, familiar somehow. Behind me, I hear Okwembu lift the pole off the floor. I expect her to say something, to laugh, but she’s deathly silent. Intent on what she’s doing.
I focus on the object in my hand.
The bear spray.
The one Ray took when he frisked me, the one he placed on the table in front of Prophet.
My finger finds the trigger on the top of the canister. Putting every last shred of energy I have into the movement, I twist my body around, and empty the spray into Okwembu’s face.
86
Okwembu
At the very last second, Okwembu turns her head sideways.
Not fast enough.
It’s like a million needles, driving into her eyes and throat. She howls in pain, her hands flying to her face, dropping the metal support. The needles give way to a rolling wall of fire, stinging and burning, like a blowtorch held to her face.
And yet a part of her mind is still working. Hale might be down, but Okwembu isn’t her equal in a fight–and Hale just took away her ability to see. She can feel the pole resting against her foot, but reaching for it would mean taking her hands away from her face, and that’s almost too horrible to think about.
Get out. Get out now.
She hates herself for running, for leaving Hale where she is. But she doesn’t have a choice, not if she wants to live. She turns and runs, stumbling across the bridge. Something takes her in the knee, the edge of a bank of screens, and she almost falls. The pain has got even worse–her throat is swelling up, her nose clogged. Every breath feels like she’s forcing it through layers of gauze.
Her foot knocks into a body, and this time she does fall, sprawling across the floor. To get to her feet, she has to take her hands away from her eyes–it’s the only way. When she does, the needles come back, hammering through her skull directly into her brain. The pain blots out all other thoughts. She’s reduced to a simple set of instructions. Go. Run. Move.
Tears are streaming down her cheeks, and the world doubles and triples as she looks at it. She is at the opposite side of the bridge to where she first waited for Hale, coming up on one of the locked doors. She reaches for it, manages to get her hands around the valve lock, turns it with every ounce of strength she can muster. She’s coughing now, each breath shredding her chest.
But then she’s through, stumbling down the passage, moving with no thought but to get as far away as possible. A set of stairs appears in front of her, and she comes very close to falling right over the edge. She stops herself, gripping the railings, swaying in place.
One step. Two. Her throat still burning, but opening up a little more now, yes, she can feel it…
There’s a distant thud, like a mountain collapsing on the horizon, felt more than heard. Okwembu barely notices it until the ship lurches sideways, tilting down at a crazy angle. She cries out as she loses her balance, throwing out her hands. The stairs rush up towards her, doubled by the tears in her eyes. When she hits them, it feels like the end of the world.
87
Riley
The ship starts to tilt.
At first, I think it’s the smoke messing with my head. But I heard the bang, felt it rumble up from below me. Something deep in the ship has detonated.
I let the bear spray fall from my hand, and it rolls away across the floor. My eyes are streaming, itchy and sore, but I only caught a little of the spray. I have to get after Okwembu. I didn’t come this far, go through this much, to let her escape.
I try to get up. I make it all the way to one knee before the world starts shaking in front of me. I list sideways, unable to stop myself, then topple to the floor.
I could lie here for a while. Just close my eyes and just drift away. Everything hurts. My back, my shoulders, my throat, the palms of my hands. Smoke forces stinging tears out of my eyes.
Get up, says the voice. But it’s coming from a very long way away. I want to listen to it, want more than anything else in the world, but I’m drifting off into a warm darkness where it doesn’t seem important at all.
“Riley, get up.”
I’m imagining the voice. I have to be. It sounds like Carver. But I know he isn’t here. He’s with Prakesh.
There’s a pressure on my chest. I try to ignore it, but it doesn’t go away.
“Riley!”
My eyes open. The deck is tilting so much I can barely stay in one place. Objects and bodies are sliding everywhere, clattering to the floor and rolling away.
And Carver is there.
He doesn’t give me a choice about getting up. The second he sees I’m awake, he hauls me to my feet, pulling me into an embrace. I get the same feeling as before, when I first saw him in the generator room. A massive wave of relief and joy and fear, all blended into one.
“How did you find me?” I say. My voice sounds like it’s coming from someone else’s throat.
“Easy. I just followed the screams and explosions. Led me right to you.”
He’s a mess, bloody and sweat-soaked. We both are. “What the hell did you do?” he says as we pull apart.
“Long story. Prakesh–Carver, is he—”
He nods. “Last I checked. He’ll be fine.”
His eyes say otherwise. I want to push him, make him tell me more, but there isn’t time. As much as I desperately want to, I can’t go after Okwembu–not if we want to make it out of here alive.
“We have to get off the ship,” I say. “Right now.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Carver, there’s got to be a way. We’ll just jump off the side if we have—”
“No, I mean, we can’t get off the ship. We have to stop it from sinking.”
“What?”
“The fuel supplies have gone up. Prakesh’s friends did it. And my guess is there’s a big-ass hole in the side of the ship. If we can seal the bulkhead doors from the bridge—”
“What are you talking about?” It takes everything I have not to bolt, right then and there. He’s gone insane.
“You don’t understand,” Carver says, his eyes wide. “If this ship goes down, the Earth goes down with it.”
The deck beneath me gives a sudden shudder, nearly knocking me off my feet. I have to hold onto the bank of controls, my shredded palms screaming in pain.
“You have to trust me,” says Carver. “Normally I wouldn’t say this, but there’s really not enough time to explain it all.”
He looks around. “Is there a control for the ship bulkheads here?”
The world swims in front of me. “Bulkheads?”
“They’re doors that seal sections of the ship off in case of a leak. They’re supposed to work automatically, but my guess is that isn’t happening. You should be able to operate them from here.”
I look around the destroyed bridge. It’s hopeless. Most of the electronics here are completely destroyed, riddled with bullet holes. Even if we could figure out which one of these dozens of screens operates the bulkhead doors, there’s no guarantee it would still be working.
Carver sees it, too. “Ah, shit,” he says. “OK. We’ll need to do it manually. On-site. It’s the only way.”
“How would we even know which doors to close?” The floor gives another sickening lurch, and I have to scramble to stay where I am, planting my feet. My body is in agony.
“Door 6 on C deck should do the t
rick. It should be above the waterline, and it’ll seal the compartments below it. That should stop the ship from sinking. Any further along and there’ll be too many compartments flooded to hold the ship up.”
He sees my expression. “Riley, we have to do this.”
I don’t want to go down there. I want to get off this ship. I’m tired of running. Every muscle in my body is screaming for rest. I want to be with my friends, and get far away from here, and only stop when I’m in a place that is safe. I just want it all to be over.
And why shouldn’t I want that? How much have I sacrificed so that other people could live? I’ve lost so many friends. I sacrificed my own father so that Outer Earth could carry on. And all it brought me was more pain.
When my dad was on a collision course out of Earth, ready to drive his ship into us, to tear the station apart, I told him he had a choice. He could give me the override code that would let me destroy his ship, or he could kill me. He made his choice. And I can make mine. I don’t have to suffer any more. I can say no. I can let someone else do it.
“Ry?” Carver says. “I can’t do it alone. We don’t know if anyone’s still down there, and if I get taken out… Please tell me you understand what I’m saying.”
I don’t. Not even a little bit. I don’t understand why I have to do this.
But I also know that Carver would never lie to me. Not ever. He wouldn’t ask me to do this if there was another option. If he says that this ship is the key to humanity’s survival, if he says he’s sure, then I have to believe him.
“Is this really the only way?” I say.
He nods.
I take a deep breath. “Then let’s go.”
88
Anna
Dax’s mouth is moving, but the radio link is inactive. Anna can’t hear the words. They’re spinning out of control, away from the station, and it’s all happening in complete silence. There should be noise, shouts, raw anger. Instead, there’s nothing.