Impact

by Rob Boffard

  Someone crouches down next to me. Koji. There’s dried blood on his face, crusted under his right eye. His hair hangs in lanky strands on his face, and his overalls are patchy with seawater.

  “I can go,” he says, “if you’d rather be alone.”

  I shake my head. I feel like I should want to be by myself right now, but I find I don’t care very much.

  Koji sits cross-legged on the sand, wincing as he does so. “They don’t like me very much,” he says, nodding to a group of workers. One of them scowls back at him. “I was hoping you could tell them… I mean, if…”

  He trails off, looking embarrassed.

  “I think I’d like to hear that story now,” I say.

  “Story?”

  “About my dad.”

  Koji looks out at the horizon. He’s silent for so long that I’m on the verge of prompting him, and then he says, “The Akua Maru didn’t make it through the atmosphere. There was… an explosion. Something in the reactor went wrong.”

  “I know,” I say.

  Koji continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “There’s no way we should have made it down. We were going thousands of miles an hour. But your dad did it. He pulled it off. Two of us died during the descent, but there were still eight of us who made it down.”

  He looks at me. “Your dad saved my life.”

  “What happened? After you landed?”

  He shrugs. “The ship was a wreck. Fusion reactor was still intact, just about, but it wasn’t working. Everything else was done for. And Kamchatka… we couldn’t have come down in a worse area. It was cold. Cold enough to freeze your bones inside you.”

  He attempts a smile. “Your dad kept us going. He organised us. He made sure we got enough to eat, that we stayed warm enough. We wouldn’t have lasted a week without him.”

  When I speak, my voice is as brittle as thin glass. “But you came here.”

  He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “Your dad was a hero, but he wasn’t a miracle worker. We were running out of supplies, so three of us decided to head east, see if there was anything out there. Your father and four others stayed behind. He kept trying to contact Outer Earth. He said they’d send another ship–that it was just a matter of time. Did they? Did Outer Earth ever send a rescue?”

  I don’t know what to tell him. He sees my dad as a hero, as the man who saved him. How do I tell him that he went insane? That he killed the rest of the crew? He was down there for seven years, and after he finally got the ship going again, he set it on a collision course for Outer Earth, determined to destroy the station he thought had left him there to rot. Even thinking about it is like touching a wound that’s only just started to scab over.

  “No,” I say. “They didn’t send anybody.”

  Koji shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Two of us made it across the Bering Strait, turned south. We were half dead when the people on the Ramona found us. Dominguez died on the way, but they brought me on board. Made me into a slave, like all the others. Until…”

  He trails off, as if not sure how to say it.

  “Until what?” I say.

  “They didn’t call it the Sacred Engine at first,” he says. “When they took us, it was broken. They had plenty of fuel stored in the ship, and a working fusion reactor, but they couldn’t get the Engine working again.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “Don’t you understand? I was the Akua Maru’s terraforming specialist. Our mission was to make the Earth habitable again. Or to start making it habitable, anyway. Our terraforming equipment was destroyed in the crash. The equipment we had on the Akua was a more advanced version of what the Engine was: something called a HAARP unit.

  “They developed the HAARP over a hundred years ago. It was supposed to fix the climate by effecting changes in the ionosphere, but they didn’t get it off the ground before the nukes came raining down. The one on the Ramona was a much smaller version of it. I guess the plan was to deploy a bunch of them around the planet.”

  I stare at him, my mouth open.

  “I knew how to fix it,” Koji says. “Took me a long time to convince them to let me try, but I did it. I got the HAARP working again. Even then, Prophet made out like it was all his doing.”

  He shrugs. “Still, they made me one of them. Problem was, the ship’s fusion reactor was dead, so I had to figure out how to run the HAARP using the fuel supplies–that took a lot of work. Almost couldn’t do it. It wasn’t nearly as efficient, and if it had gone on much longer… Where are you going?”

  I’m on my feet, arms tightly folded, walking away from him. I can’t stop shaking, and this time it has nothing to do with the cold.

  When I was in the Outer Earth control room, pleading with my father not to destroy the station, he told me that he had to finish the mission. He spent seven years in Kamchatka, freezing, desperately trying to stay alive so he could reunite with his family. When Janice Okwembu reached him, told him that my mom and I were dead, the only thing he wanted was to take revenge.

  But it doesn’t matter what he became. He landed his crew safely, and he made it possible for the Earth to recover. The chain of events led Koji here, to the one place where he could make a difference. What Okwembu did set in motion everything that happened to me, and what my father did–bringing that ship down intact–ended up saving the world.

  I can never see my dad again. But I’m standing here, on a planet everybody thought was dead and gone, because of what he did.

  He finished his mission.

  “Dad,” I say, and then I feel another wrench of emotion so powerful it doubles me over. My tears fall to the sand.

  I walk away, leaving everyone behind. I walk until their voices have faded to a dull murmur over the wind. After a while I stop, looking out at the ocean, at the horizon beyond it. I stand for a long time, doing nothing. My mind is as clear as an empty sky.

  Strangely, it’s a good feeling–like I can fill my body up with whatever I want. Like I’m finally free to choose what goes inside me.

  There’s a sound, off to my left. It takes me a second to realise what I’m seeing.

  Janice Okwembu is crawling up the beach. Her clothes are sodden, streams of water cascading off her. She’s coughing, her fingers clawing the dirt.

  And the empty space inside me fills with white-hot rage, expanding outwards at the speed of light.

  96

  Okwembu

  Okwembu focuses on putting one hand in front of the other. It’s the only thing she’s capable of doing.

  She doesn’t know how long she was out in the water. After a while, there was no feeling left in her hands and arms. The boat kept her above the surface, just. Half the time it felt like it was going to pull her down with it. When she got within a few feet of the shore, a swell finally capsized her. By then, she was so cold that it barely made a difference.

  But she’s alive.

  One hand, then the other, pulling herself along the sand. She forces herself to think ahead. It’s hard, as if the pathways between her synapses have frozen shut. She has to push the thoughts into being, mould them, concentrate to keep them in place.

  First, she’s going to get to her knees. Then her feet. Then she’s going to see if she can stay standing. After that, she’ll find a way to get warm. She doesn’t know how yet, but, right now, that’s all that matters.

  She stops, trembling, then gets a knee underneath her. The front of her shirt is caked with sand. She almost falls over, puts a hand out, and winces as her numb fingers take the weight.

  The ice in her mind is melting slowly. She’ll have to make fire somehow–she remembers a history lesson, in a distant Outer Earth schoolroom, where the instructors talked about their ancestors making fire. How did they do it? Doesn’t matter. She’ll figure it out. Then, after she’s got fire, she’ll find food, and water. She still has the data stick–no telling if the saltwater has damaged it, but it’s not important right now. The Ramona won’t be the only civilisation out there,
and she knows the remaining workers are somewhere on the shore–she caught a glimpse of them as she came in. Would they accept her? Did they know she was with Prophet? Maybe she could—

  Running footsteps, hissing on the sand. Okwembu looks up, and then Riley Hale kicks her in the stomach.

  97

  Riley

  The world disappears.

  Okwembu is struggling to get up, one arm clutching her stomach, gasping for air. I don’t let her get any. I step back, wind up another kick and drive it hard into her ribs.

  The kick overbalances me, and I crash to the ground. Right then, it’s as if my muscles just give up on me. The ones in my back constrict, locking in place. I lie next to Okwembu, breathing hard, desperate to get up but unable to do so, fingers clawing at the dirt.

  On your feet, says the voice. You’re not finished.

  I roll onto my side, coughing. Okwembu tries to push me away, but she’s as weak as I am.

  Finally, I struggle up to one knee. Okwembu puts a hand on my leg, trying to pull me down, so I grab her by the front of her shirt and lift her off the ground. My punch snaps her head back. She spits blood and fragments of tooth, cursing now, howling for help.

  My second punch shuts her up. My aim is off this time, and I just graze the side of her head. I can’t stop my momentum, and I slide forward, falling on top of her.

  For a moment, it’s as if we’re hugging each other, embracing in the dirt. She shoves me off, just managing to get an arm underneath me. I hold on, pulling her with me as I roll onto my back. Then I throw my head forward, smashing my forehead into her face, breaking her nose. She moans, long and low, but refuses to let go.

  Is that all? the voice says to me. Is that everything you have? After what she’s done? Pathetic. You can do much better than that. You can show her pain.

  My muscles wake up. I shove Okwembu off me, then stagger to my feet. The sky swims in front of me, and hot sweat trickles into my eyes. I barely notice. I’m going to kill her. I know this as sure as I know my own name. I’m going to send her into the next world with broken bones and torn flesh. I’m going to send her there screaming.

  I circle her, watching her try to crawl away. She surprised me before, back on the Ramona’s bridge. Almost finished me, too. Not this time. This time, she’s all mine.

  I rest my foot on her head. “Prakesh,” I say, pushing down hard. Okwembu’s cheek grinds into the dirt. “Amira,” I say, grinding down, until I can see the dirt entering her mouth, milling around her broken teeth. “Kevin. Yao. Royo.” Harder. “Carver.” I lean into it, putting all my weight on her head. “John Abraham Hale.”

  Just before the last name, I lift my foot off her and slam it into her ribs. This time, I swear I feel one of them break. I fall backwards, landing on my ass in the churned-up sand.

  “Please,” Okwembu says. The word is mushy, forced through swollen lips.

  Enough. Finish it.

  I get to my feet again, unsteady, my fine balance shot to pieces. I take one step towards Okwembu. Then another. She’s trying to crawl away again, and I almost laugh. Where are you going? Got somewhere to be?

  I flip her over, onto her back. Then I straddle her, my knees pinning her shoulders to the ground.

  I don’t know where I find the rock. It’s like I put my hand out and it’s right there, waiting for me. It’s stuck deep into the ground, and it’s too big for one hand anyway. I have to lean over to get it, ripping it out of the earth with both hands. It’s heavy, caked with clods of dirt.

  I lift the rock over my head, holding it high. It takes me a second to understand what I’m feeling. It’s not anger now. It’s joy. A kind of terrible joy. I look down at Okwembu, one last time. The disbelief and shock in her eyes only makes the joy burn brighter.

  “Will it help?”

  Eric is standing in front of me, a few feet away.

  I don’t know how long he’s been there, and there’s no one else with him. His arms are folded, his head tilted to one side. The expression on his face is completely blank.

  The voice is shouting now, a deafening roar that only I can hear. The rock is heavy in my hands.

  “Killing her.” Eric nods towards the thing on the ground. “Will it help?

  When I don’t answer, he says, “You know, I had a daughter. We did. Harlan and I.”

  As he speaks, he absently pulls the necklace out of his shirt–the bear’s tooth, hanging on a piece of tattered string. He rolls the tooth in his fingers.

  I lower the rock, holding it at my chest. I want more than anything to finish this, to drive that rock into Okwembu’s face, but I can’t take my eyes off Eric. It’s then that I realise that I’m crying, tears staining my cheeks.

  “She was killed,” Eric says. “Bear. I went and tracked it down myself, put eight bullets through its face.”

  He looks at me, a sad smile on her face.

  “It didn’t bring my Samantha back. And it didn’t help. I see her when I go to sleep. Asking me why I couldn’t save her.” He says this matter-of-factly, like it barely matters. “It was like I hadn’t just lost her. I’d lost something else, too. I could never get it back no matter how hard I looked.”

  “This is different,” I say, forcing each word out.

  Eric shrugs. “Maybe.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I won’t try. But you’ll still see them. Everybody you’ve lost will always be there, whether you do this or not. It won’t change a single thing.”

  Seconds go by. Eric watches me, his face still completely blank.

  It would be so easy. The work of a single movement.

  My arms give out. I let the rock drop to my waist, resting on Okwembu’s chest. I roll it off, and it thumps onto the ground.

  The world comes back. Slowly, one piece at a time. Ocean. Sky. The trees, climbing up from the shoreline. Okwembu coughs, blood dribbling down her cheek, staring up at me in disbelief.

  I get to my feet, and, with Eric watching, I walk over to one of the trees. It doesn’t have what I’m looking for, so I try a second, then a third. On the fourth tree, I find it: a clump of moss, wispy and threadlike, clinging to the trunk. I tear it off, rolling it in my hands.

  I walk back over to Okwembu, and drop it on her chest.

  “Old man’s beard,” I say. “It’s a fire starter. You can—” I swallow “—combine it with spruce sap, and it’ll burn forever. And there are lowbush cranberries you can eat. Little red berries, near tree roots. Burdock. Cattail. Ladyfern…”

  I trail off, my voice giving out.

  There’s something hanging round her neck. A data stick, on a thin lanyard. I reach down and pull, snapping the lanyard in two. Whatever’s on that stick, she doesn’t need it any more. I take a shaky breath, then turn and walk away.

  The voice inside me is gone. Like it never existed.

  “We can’t leave her here,” Eric says. “She’s injured.”

  “She gets some food,” I say. “Medical supplies. Water. Let her take what she needs.” I see him about to protest, and look him right in the eyes. “But she stays here.”

  I’ll let Okwembu live. But she’s going to have to survive out here, by herself. She’s never going to manipulate anybody ever again. From now on, everything she gets is going to come from her own two hands.

  Eric stares at me for what feels like a whole minute. Then he nods.

  I start walking, back towards the others.

  98

  Prakesh

  “You’re sure?” Eric says.

  Prakesh nods. “There are plenty of reactor schematics on that data stick. I mean, it’ll take time, and some of us’ll need to live on the Ramona for a while, but it’s definitely possible.”

  Eric grimaces. “I don’t like it. That ship’s barely afloat as it is.”

  “Yeah, but the HAARP’s fuel got destroyed in the explosion. If we want it to keep going, we need that reactor working.”

  “But you’re sure?” says Harlan.


  They’re in the hospital basement in Whitehorse, clustered around the table in Eric’s quarters. The space around them is full of noise: low conversations, laughter. The sound of life.

  He nods. “We can do it.”

  Eric leans over the map. The frown hasn’t left his face. “It’s a shame the other one isn’t here. Riley’s friend. From what I hear, he was pretty good with machines.”

  A little bomb goes off in Prakesh’s chest, like it always does when someone mentions Aaron Carver. He knows what Eric means–Carver would have had the best idea of how to get the fusion reactor working again, how to get it joined up to the HAARP. He saw things differently, especially machines. Prakesh misses him a lot more than he thought he would. Jojo, too–and he knew him for less than two days. His body, like those of so many others, is still on the Ramona.

  “We’ll make do,” he says. “We have to.” And they would. They have the astronauts from the Tenshi Maru, plenty of whom have technical knowledge. They’ll find a way.

  They’re never going to be able to get the Ramona upright. But despite the damage, the HAARP itself made it through. It hasn’t had fuel for a while, so it’s probably shut itself off, but they should be able to start it up again before any permanent damage is done to the climate.

  He doesn’t know if they’ll have to station people on the Ramona permanently, or if that’s even possible given the ship’s condition. That’s all still up in the air. Prakesh has heard Eric and Harlan and some of the others talking it over, late at night, occasionally raising their voices to argue a point. He hasn’t joined them yet. One thing at a time, he tells himself.

  Suddenly, Prakesh doesn’t want to be here. It’s been like that lately–an urge to move, to walk, no matter what he’s doing at the time. It comes out of nowhere, and he knows better than to fight it.

  He straightens up, smiles at them. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Where are you going?” Harlan says.

  “Just, you know.”

  He ducks out of Eric’s quarters, wincing as he does so. The bullet punched right through him, leaving an ugly scar–a round crater of painful, puckered flesh, right below his heart. He still doesn’t know how he survived. The first thing he remembers is waking up in Whitehorse, in more pain than he’d ever felt in his life.