Impact

by Rob Boffard

  And I knew this, even before we came down here to try and save the ship. I knew it back on the bridge, when he was telling me about the bulkhead doors. He didn’t need me–I could have let him do it himself. He’s just as capable as I am.

  But that would have meant letting him go. It would have meant being apart from him. And I’m not going to let that happen again. Not ever.

  I look into his eyes. “You remember back on the Shinso? I told you I still loved Prakesh? You asked me who you had left.”

  “Riley, I don’t—”

  “I was wrong, Aaron,” I say, barely able to get the words out. “I love you. You have me, and you’ll always have me.”

  It doesn’t matter that always may only be a few minutes more. It’s the truth. No one should ever have to make this choice, but, right now, in the depths of this ship, I’m glad I’ve made mine.

  I don’t give him a chance to answer. I wrap my arms around him, and pull him close. Our lips touch, but we’re shivering so badly that we can’t hold the kiss.

  He’s got that weird smile on his face, like he can’t quite believe what’s happening. He runs a finger along my cheek, then leans close, his forehead against mine.

  And in that moment, it’s as if the water isn’t even there. There’s nothing but us.

  I try to hold it for as long as I can. But the water is almost at our necks. Carver kisses me once more, then says, “Let’s get out of here.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  He holds me tight. “On zero,” he says. “Three. Two. One.”

  “Zero,” I whisper, and we sink below the surface of the water.

  92

  Riley

  The cold is everywhere. It’s not like ice–it’s like fire, scorching me, making my skin bubble and spit.

  I feel Carver push away from me, and force my eyes to open. There’s still some light from the bulbs above the water, and it’s filtering down around us. I can just make out the walls of the passage. Debris floats in front of me, swirling in the current.

  I don’t know how long I have before the cold sucks my life away. I don’t care. I push myself through the water, pumping my arms and legs, not sure if I’m doing it right, not caring. I can feel Carver alongside me. I look down, and see that he’s using the ribbed metal on the walls to pull himself along. I try the same trick, and find that my fingertips are completely numb.

  Globs of fuel float in the water, and I manage to get one of them in my eyes. It forces me to squeeze them closed, blocking out the sting. When I open them, I’ve lost Carver.

  My lungs are already tight, but panic crushes them. I spin in place, hunting for him, but there’s hardly any light now. I’m in a black pit, and if I don’t get moving again, I’m going to run out of air long before I die from cold.

  There he is, just below me, beckoning me on. I thrash my arms–they feel like they’ve got lead weights tied to them. It’s hard to remember what I’m doing. I can’t keep my thoughts straight. I find myself thinking of Outer Earth, of the hab Prakesh and I shared. A moment later, I remember my father, right before he went on the Earth Return mission. Why am I thinking of him? I don’t want to think at all. I just want to sleep. I close my eyes, just for a second, but that second stretches out into eternity.

  Carver is pointing at something. A part of the corridor wall, darker than the rest. A hole. Why is there a hole? It’ll let the water in.

  Carver grabs me. His grip is incredibly tight. I want to shake him off, but he’s insistent, refusing to let go.

  His grip makes me focus. I snap back to life, thrashing in the water, then thrust myself towards the hole. There’s debris in front of me, floating metal, and I almost scream as I push it out of the way. My lungs are roaring in pain.

  There’s nothing but darkness beyond the hole. It’s as if we’re swimming out into deep space.

  I push and push and push, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. It feels as if my lungs are going to pop. There’s a crushing weight in my head, pulling everything down with it.

  I swear I feel Carver take my hand, but I’m so numb that I can’t tell if he’s there or not.

  93

  Riley

  Fragments.

  Each one is as sharp as a piece of broken glass, lancing into my mind. They only last a moment before vanishing, leaving no trace. No memory. Nothing.

  Carver is in front of me in the water. I can just make out his shape, see his arms and legs moving, his hand reaching out for me.

  The sky above us, the grey clouds hanging low. Air. Searing my lungs, burning a million time worse than the cold water.

  The ocean. How could there be this much water in one place? It’s unimaginable. Made up. It’s a dream I’m having, and any second now it’ll be gone.

  Something looming up from the water in front of us. The seaplane. Harlan reaching down from it, reaching towards me. How is it here? How did it know how to find us?

  I’m half in, half out of the plane. Harlan has me under the arms, and Carver is pushing me from below.

  We’re moving over the surface of the water, high above it. I can see the ship, dropping away behind us. And then we’re on the ground, surrounded by people. Hands and faces everywhere. Harlan is there, and Eric, but I can’t see Prakesh, or Carver. I want to find them so badly. But even keeping my eyes open is beyond me. It’s like trying to hold the entire world across my shoulders. I let my head drop, close my eyes.

  When I come back, there’s something wrapped around me. A blanket, or a coat. It doesn’t seem to matter. It’s thick and warm, slightly scratchy against my cheek.

  “Give her some water.”

  There’s a pressure, under my head. A hand lifts me up, and another one brings the lip of a water canteen to my mouth. The water is tepid, slightly salty, but I drink and drink.

  The canteen slips away. I want to tell whoever is holding it to keep it there, but at that moment pins and needles explode across my body. My muscles clench involuntarily, and that just makes it worse.

  The pressure on me increases. It’s someone lying on top of me.

  “Stay still,” Eric whispers in my ear, as he squeezes me tight, giving me as much heat as possible.

  It’s some time before I open my eyes again. Eric is gone. I’m wrapped in a thick, dark brown coat, curled up on the damp ground. My wet clothes have been removed–I’ve still got my underwear, but that’s all. I’m shivering uncontrollably, my teeth clacking together.

  There are people everywhere. Workers from the ship. There are dozens of them–they’re ragged and worn out, but it’s impossible not to see the relief on their faces. They’re moving in small groups, shouting orders, marshalling supplies: food and blankets and containers of fuel.

  The shore itself is made up of black dirt and jagged rocks. The seaplane floats in the water, a few yards away. There are the strangest things piercing the surface of the sea, and it takes me a minute to realise that they’re buildings. Or what used to be buildings, anyway. The hulking Ramona is beyond them, a distant black shape.

  “Hey.”

  It’s Harlan, crouching down next to me.

  I stare at him for the longest time. Then I crawl over, doing my best to keep the coat on my shoulders, and wrap my arms around him. I can’t stop shaking.

  “How?” I say. It’s all I can manage.

  He looks perplexed, but then his eyes light up. “Oh, the plane? We got hit, but not nearly as bad as we thought. Eric put her down upriver, up on the Knik Arm. Nearly went into the drink. He bossed me around some when we tried to fix her, but we got the bird up in the air again, no sweat. Eric always was good at that kind of shit. I told you how he read all those books, right? When we were kids?”

  “You came back.” The words are coming a little more easily now.

  He looks guilty. “Almost didn’t. We thought you and Finkler were done. But then we took off, and saw that gun tearing up the bridge on the ship. That’s… kind of not what we expected to see, so we thoug
ht we should get a closer look. And then we saw you running across the deck like your feet were on fire.”

  It takes me a minute to process his words. I’m still doing it when the memory of what happened to Prakesh broadsides me.

  I look round, and this time I find him almost immediately. He’s lying on his back, one arm flung out to the side. His face is so pale, his dark walnut skin gone bloodless. There are people on their knees around him, bent over him, and there’s too much blood. Way too much blood.

  I can’t describe the sound I make. It’s halfway between a moan and a scream. A memory surfaces: Prakesh, kidnapped by Oren Darnell, sprawled out on the floor of a disused storage facility off the Outer Earth monorail tracks. I was in the ventilation system in the ceiling, looking through a gap in the panels. But the panic I felt then is like a cup of water, and what I feel now is an ocean, stretching out in front of me to an endless horizon.

  I don’t remember getting up. The coat falls from my shoulders, leaving me almost naked, sprinting across the shore. Sharp rocks dig into my feet, slowing me down.

  Eric materialises at my elbow, his strong hands falling on my shoulders. I have to make myself pay attention to what he’s saying.

  “You need to stay warm,” he says. “Get back there, wrap yourself up.”

  I try to push past him, but I’m not strong enough, and he holds me in place.

  “We think he’ll be OK,” Eric says. “One of the people off that ship has some medical training.”

  He indicates a grey-haired man, his blood-soaked hands pressing down on Prakesh’s chest. “Right now, infection is the big worry. We’ve got supplies in Whitehorse, so we’ll get him back there.”

  I look back at Prakesh, at his blood soaking into the sand. Frustration and helplessness boil inside me, and I try to push past Eric again.

  “No,” Eric says, blocking me with an arm across my chest. “You’ll just be in the way. Let them work.”

  I can see the Ramona in the distance, over his shoulder. The ship is a black, smoking hulk, squatting on the horizon like a bad dream. But it’s still there. We saved it. Carver and I.

  Carver. I swing my head around, so suddenly that the muscles in my neck creak, sending a fresh wave of pins and needles down my back.

  “The man I was with,” I say. My throat is parched again, and I swallow, sending razor blades dancing across it. “Where is he?”

  Eric says nothing.

  “Eric?” I say.

  But then I catch sight of something over his shoulder.

  A tarpaulin, spread out across the filthy sand. There’s a shape underneath it. A person, lying on their back.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “He pushed you out of the water,” Eric says.

  “No.”

  “You were unconscious, and he was still swimming, and he made sure you were in the plane first. Riley, he was already hypothermic—”

  “No.”

  I’m running. Sprinting across the sand. I’m going to tear that tarpaulin off him, shake him, wake him up. He’s not dying on me. Not after he came back. Not after I told him that I’d made my choice. Not happening. No way. I won’t let it.

  But when I get there, my hands have stopped listening to me. The damp tarpaulin is too heavy, and I can’t move it. I try to grip the edge, but my fingers keep slipping. And then Eric has his arms around me and I’m trying to get away but I can’t, and all I can hear are my screams.

  94

  Anna

  Anna wraps the blanket tighter around herself. It’s all the way up to her chin, tucked in around her crossed legs, but she can’t stop shivering. She’s lost her beanie–she can’t even remember it coming off her head. She feels naked without it.

  The family’s hab is the only quiet space they could find–the only space where a thousand people weren’t trying to talk to her, where she wasn’t getting bombarded by a million questions on all sides. The door is shut, but she can still hear voices from the corridor. She tries to tune them out, closing her eyes. She knows she won’t sleep–she’s way too wired for that–but it helps.

  Dax and Arroway and the rest of their group are in the sector brig. They all came back into the escape pod airlocks, every one of them–it was either that, or drift in space for the rest of time. Anna doesn’t know what’ll happen to them. Dax was sobbing when they pulled him out of his suit. He tried to reach for her, but she got away as quickly as she could, not wanting to look at him, at any of them.

  She made it almost ten steps before collapsing.

  The door to the hab slides open. Voices snap into focus. “If we could just see her—”

  “No.” Frank Beck’s voice is thunderous. “She’s been through enough. Get out of here.”

  He doesn’t give them a chance to answer–just slams the door shut. Then he stands there for a moment, his shoulders heaving.

  Anna slides off the bed, letting the blanket fall to her feet. Cold air pricks the skin on her arms, but she barely notices. She walks over to her dad, wraps her arms around him and pulls him close.

  They hold each other for a long moment. “What were you thinking?” Frank says, his voice muffled by her hair.

  “I—”

  He pulls apart from her, thrusting her to arm’s length. “What were you thinking?” he bellows into her face, then almost immediately pulls her back into a hug. It’s such an absurd, theatrical performance that she wants to call him out on it, make a joke, say something clever. It’s his shoulders that stop her. They’re trembling, and she feels tears staining her scalp.

  So she says nothing. She just holds him.

  Eventually, her father gives her a squeeze and they pull apart. He wipes his face, not looking at her, and sits down heavily on the bed. Anna grabs the discarded blanket on the floor, and sits next to him, cross-legged, wrapping it around her legs.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  He actually laughs–or tries to. “Are you, now?”

  “Dad, come on.”

  He drops his head. “I know.”

  It’s then that she realises she never told him about Riley. About the radio conversation. She does so, and the more she talks, the wider his eyes get.

  “Anna, that’s…” He leaps up off the bed, pacing the floor. “That’s brilliant. And they told you where to come down?”

  She nods.

  “Brilliant,” he says again. “I’ve got to tell everyone. We’ve got to tell the crew on the Tenshi.”

  He’s moving towards the door when Anna says, “What’s going to happen?”

  “Hmmm?” He looks over his shoulder at her.

  “To–you know, to Dax and the rest of them?”

  “Oh,” her father says, as if it’s an irrelevance. “We don’t know yet.”

  “Are they going to be taken out of the lottery?” It’s the only outcome she can think of. How could they let any of them have a place on the Tenshi Maru?

  Her father comes to a halt, staring at the door. After a moment, he makes his way back to the bed, sitting down next to her.

  He sighs. “I don’t think they should.”

  “What?”

  “So do a few others. They’ll have to stay in the brig, to be sure, but—”

  She shakes her head. “They were going to leave us here. They were going to take the space suits and leave us.”

  “Well—”

  “No. Dad, you can’t be thinking about letting them go.”

  He puts a hand on her knee, and she subsides.

  “They thought they were better than us,” her father says. “That’s the whole reason they went in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah…”

  “So what better punishment than making them exactly the same as everyone else? By making them take the lottery just like all of us here?”

  She opens her mouth to reply–and finds she has nothing.

  That’s when the full realisation hits her. There’s still going to be a lottery. There’s stil
l going to be some who go, and some who get left behind. Nothing she did–working out what Dax was planning, contacting Riley, the insane trip through space–none of it changes that. She’s not going to be able to save her family, or Ravi and Achala Kumar, or Ivy, or Marcus, or anybody else. It’s all going to be left to chance.

  And that’s the worst thing of all. Because it’s only way to do it.

  She reaches over and pulls her dad into a fierce hug. She buries her face in his shoulder, and this time it’s her turn to cry.

  “It’s going to be OK,” he says, holding her tight.

  Anna wants to believe him. But she’s not sure that she can.

  95

  Riley

  I sit on the beach for a long time, staring out at the water.

  Someone found me clothes. A threadbare collared shirt made of a stiff, blue material. Black pants. There’s even a pair of shoes, scabbed with dirt. The clothes come from someone much larger than me. I don’t know who they belong to, but at least they’re dry.

  I’m dimly aware of the activity on the beach. Harlan is arguing with Eric, saying that they need to bring the workers with them. Eric is saying that they’ll never fit them all in the plane, and Harlan responds by telling him that they’ll make multiple trips if they have to. He sounds almost jubilant–not surprising. He survived Anchorage.

  The workers are talking in a big group. One of them protests loudly, saying that they should retake the ship, that all the guards are dead.

  I let it wash over me. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s too big a task, too many people to find homes for, too many loose ends to tie up. I can’t even do anything for Prakesh–he’s stable now, but unconscious, bundled up inside the plane and being tended to by the man with the grey hair. So I just sit.

  It’s all I can do.