by Gary Gibson
‘You have a job to do, and I’m paying you for it. That means you need to keep your head clear.’ Elias pointed at the crate. ‘Touch any more of that stuff before I go over there, and I swear I’ll kill you.’
Eduardez turned red and looked away. ‘Okay, okay. Jesus.’ Can I really trust him? Elias wondered. But maybe I don’t have any choice.
‘Let’s go over this again,’ said Elias, trying to keep his voice light and conversational. Every instinct in his head was yelling: Get out of here. You can’t trust this man. You don’t know anything about him anymore. Instead, he said, ‘I’m going over in some kind of shuttle, right?’
‘It’s a stripped-down Goblin. Gets used for hull repairs, moving stuff around between the Station and nearby ships. Unpressurized, which is why you need a suit. Remember, all the usual safety codes and routines have been stripped out of it, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get it anywhere near any ship without being automatically hailed. Okay, here we are.’ He opened another crate and pulled out a pair of spacesuits that, even to Elias’s untrained eye, looked like they had seen better days.
His reservations didn’t get any less. Elias stepped outside the airlock, trying to remember his military training. The Goblin was right there, only a few feet away. It had been reduced to a jumbled platform, with a series of cargo palettes arranged around its rear circumference. The palettes were currently empty, but he’d need to use at least one of them.
‘Secure yourself,’ said Eduardez, his voice crackling over the intercom. Elias found the console and the pilot’s seat. There were straps for his feet just below it.
A wave of pain washed over him and the universe seemed to spin for a moment. He tasted bile in the back of his throat, and knew it was the Slow Blight eating at him.
‘Remember, Murray, you can also run this thing by remote control, you got that?’
Elias nodded to himself.
‘Hey, Elias, wake up. You all ready for this, man?’
‘I’m ready,’ said Elias, feeling anything but.
‘Everything you need is on the smartsheet, man,’ came Eduardez’s voice. ‘You do like I said, you’ll be able to waltz in there and waltz right out. Nobody’ll even know the difference.’
Elias looked at the controls of the Goblin, remembering what he’d been told. Ignore them. Use the remotes built into the suit. All the suits and transport in use around the Kasper Station employed exactly the same protocols, designed for use by people possessing a minimum of skill or knowledge. Just tell it where to go, and it’ll take you.
Elias had already taped the co-ord code for the cargo ship onto the arm of his suit. He punched it into the screen in front of him. With a jerk, the stripped-down Goblin moved off, performing what looked like a series of complicated manoeuvres with a variety of tiny jets studded around its body. The cargo ship soon hovered into view on a console screen.
The Jager was of the same class as the ship that had brought Elias in, usually filled with travellers in the suspended animation of deepsleep. But there was at least one passenger not on the official manifest.
Minutes passed, and the Station shrank behind him. Then more minutes. As he got closer, the Jager just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it looked more like a great grey-white cliff extending from side to side of his vision. The universe seemed filled with the sound of Elias’s breathing.
There was a small lever just in front of Elias’s mouth. He reached out his tongue, and a tiny 3D image of a section of the ship ahead appeared on one side of his visor. A cargo-bay entrance in the side of the Jager was outlined in red and the Goblin guided itself in towards it with the minimum of fuss.
He could now see other figures, moving around the exterior of the Jager like minnows caught in the wake of a whale. A couple of other craft looked like the one Elias was riding in. He could see where patches of the hull had been peeled back, exposing the bare skeleton of the ship in parts. The Jager was clearly undergoing major maintenance work.
The radio crackled again. ‘Okay, Murray,’ said Eduardez’s voice. ‘I’m going offline now. Don’t want anybody to eavesdrop on you this close, right?’
Elias found the switch for the radio and tongued it off. Not that they’d get any clues from what you just said, he thought, asshole. He drifted forward in silence towards the enormous ship, and suddenly his perspective shifted so that he felt like he was falling slowly towards the ground.
There we go, he thought. He could now discern the hatch with his naked eyes.
A few moments later, he parked the Goblin a few metres from the exterior of the Jager, untied himself from all the straps, and pushed himself over gently to make a soft impact on the Jager’s hull, right next to the same hatch that, Eduardez assured him, would gain him entry.
Elias reached down and pulled some tools out of the hip pocket of his spacesuit. One of them was like a spanner crossed with a spatula, a stubby metal arm with one end vaguely resembling a geometric half-crescent. It fitted perfectly into a slot in the hatch door and, as Elias turned the metal arm anti-clockwise, the door rose up and open. A puff of air passed him, escaping into eternity, as Elias fell inside.
He found himself in a corridor with nobody else around. Eduardez had got him in. Now the rest was up to him.
Trencher was here somewhere. Over the past few days, Elias had felt a certain attitude on his part drop away like used skin: an ingrained feeling of grey hopelessness that had characterized his life for some years now. For a long time, he realized, he’d been merely existing, biding his time. No great purpose in life had revealed itself to him. Now he felt a new confidence, and for the first time in his life understood why some people weren’t afraid of death. As long as you went out fighting for something you actually cared about, it really was possible to die without fear. As long as it didn’t make you careless.
So far, there was no sign there was anyone else on board – anyone awake at least. According to Eduardez, there was a skeleton crew operating somewhere far away on the other side of the ship. Elias pulled out the smartsheet Eduardez had given him; it provided a deck-by-deck layout of the ship, acquired, according to Eduardez, at great cost. He flicked through the decks rapidly until he found the section he’d marked earlier.
There.
He glided along the zero-g corridors, braking himself frequently with his gloved hands against the walls in case he flew into someone who didn’t want him to be there. This had the advantage of allowing him to move quietly. He had peeled the security code off the arm of his suit, removing his helmet and putting it into the bag he carried over his shoulder.
The corridor branched into two, so he consulted the smartsheet, picked the one on the right. That one split into three. Again, the smartsheet. This time he picked the middle one. He heard voices coming towards him.
No sense in taking chances.
He found an open door, ducked in, looked around. He was in a toilet, the kind built for zero-g: a row of enclosed grey cubicles. He stood just inside the door, listening to the voices approach. He tried to make out what they were saying, but there were several voices speaking all at once. Fearing they were on their way to take a leak, he ducked inside one of the cubicles and discovered something.
Graffiti?
But not just any graffiti.
There were several scrawls on the inside of the door, and Elias studied them until he was sure the voices had passed on by. Mostly it was just names: people that had worked on the ship, presumably, or passengers out of deepsleep. A small, crude drawing of an engorged phallus and a list of things its owner would like to do with it, almost exclusively to the detriment of someone Elias was pretty sure was some kind of commanding officer. And then another cartoon – drawn by somebody who had a little talent – of a flaming sword.
The Primalist symbol.
Elias felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle with excitement. It was just graffiti, so seeing it here might just be coincidence.
Vaughn, he thought; Vaug
hn has something to do with this. Vaughn was the one loyal to the Primalist creed. It occurred to Elias that he still had no idea how many people on board had been responsible for placing Trencher there.
Two? Three? A hundred?
When the voices had faded completely, Elias sneaked back out once he was sure the corridor was empty again.
His smartsheet plans showed a series of vents running parallel through the ship: service shafts that provided easy access to sensors and something called shielded-exchange nodes. He found his way to one, a low grey door that came up to his knees, with a warning marked on it: DANGER. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY WILL BRING AUTOMATIC PENALTIES AND A POSSIBLE CUSTODIAL SENTENCE. Eduardez had told him that they linked different parts of the ship together. Elias reached out for the handle and the door swung open easily. He climbed inside.
He pulled/pushed himself along a series of rungs that lined the inside of the shaft. If the smartsheet was anything to go by, this ship was huge. All he need worry about now was whether getting Trencher back out of there would be as easy as getting himself in so far.
He pushed another entry hatch open, and peered out into a corridor that looked more or less identical to the one he’d left. Still no one around, but there was a sign on the far wall reading CRYOGENICS, with an arrow pointing to the right. Elias pulled himself through, thinking that this was almost too easy. Where was the crew?
He stood and listened. Nothing.
He then followed the sign, treading as quietly as he could. Maybe it really was this easy.
He heard his assailant before he even saw him.
Elias turned, ramming his right elbow backwards as he span around. There was a satisfying thud as it connected with somebody’s face, though tendrils of pain shot up his arm with the impact. A man with smooth skin and short-cropped hair staggered away, blood flowing from his suddenly ruined nose. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come alone, and Elias noticed the zap stick coming for him too late to evade it.
The zap stick was a modified taser shaped not unlike a mace, which delivered a powerful shock on impact. Assailant number two had thrown it at Elias’s head. He brought his other arm up, and the mace bounced off it, but the shock it delivered sent him flying backwards.
He was unconscious for only a few seconds, then coughed himself awake, tasting blood, and realized he’d bitten his tongue. Something hard impacted with his face. As he opened his eyes, he saw a blurred figure withdrawing his fist for another punch. Elias kneed him hard in the groin. The blur fell back, howling.
‘And screw you, too,’ Elias mumbled with a swollen tongue, through a mouthful of blood. His ears were singing. He managed to right himself after a few moments, grabbed a handhold jutting out from the corridor wall, and kicked his collapsed assailant hard in the guts, the force of the blow sending the man sailing away from him.
Which still left the other one.
The first assailant, whose nose Elias had broken, had drifted further along the corridor, leaving a trail of blood globules hanging in the air. Elias kicked off from a wall until he caught up with him, grabbing the other man’s arm and punching him on the face until his eyes rolled up in their sockets.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that somebody had known in advance that he was coming. He thought about Eduardez, but he also thought about the zap stick. He went back along the corridor, dragging his captive with the broken nose after him, shedding blood everywhere. As potential assassins went, these two hadn’t been too good. Unlike Elias, they hadn’t been trained for zero-gravity combat. And zap sticks were the kind of soft weapons favoured by the public-relations departments of police forces: non-lethal but good for immobilizing people. So maybe they’d wanted him alive . . .
He pressed a couple of fingers against his captive’s neck, found he was still breathing, then searched him. He found a couple more zap sticks and a more traditional taser, also some vials and needles. Either he was a junkie or he’d intended to shoot something into Elias. Make that definitely wanted him alive.
The one whose balls he’d kneed was muttering something, his eyes still glassy with pain. Elias would have to figure out what to do with them both. Elias floated back over to him and kicked him hard in the guts again for good measure.
Then his eyes fell on something shiny pinned on the inside of the man’s lapel: a tiny badge, barely larger than a fingernail. It looked like it was made of silver, and represented a flaming sword.
The sound of running feet. No time to do anything with them now. Elias left his assailants where they lay and ran into the cryogenics room, sliding the door shut. There he hauled a cabinet over from one side until it blocked the door, tipping it back so that its rear edge wedged a heavy bar lock halfway up. That would have to do until Elias could figure out what to do next. He looked around him.
The cryogenics chamber was vast, its ceiling curving high above his head, following the contours of the hull. Great racks rose around him, stacked high with body pods. He went over to one pod at eye level, and peered through its tiny round window. The pod was vacant, as expected. Whatever passengers had been kept in deep-sleep onboard would have been decanted some time ago, and these pods wouldn’t be filled again until the ship was ready to make its return journey.
As someone started hammering on the door behind him, he retrieved the smartsheet, studying it with shaking hands. His head still felt light, unfocused. He tapped the zoom panel until the section of deck he’d ringed previously sprang up, showing clearly the layout of the cryogenics chamber. The ring he’d marked shifted to outline a section of the vast chamber adjacent to one wall. Elias crumpled the ’sheet up in one hand and ran.
He encountered a blank wall, and stared again at the smartsheet, frustrated, then studied the pods stacked all around him. If Trencher was stored in one of these, it would take Elias hours to find him, and he didn’t have hours to spare. A hissing sound echoed distantly off the chamber’s metal wall, the kind of sound made by an oxyacetylene torch. Elias didn’t know how long it would take them to break through, but sensed it wouldn’t be long.
He smoothed out the smartsheet, moving his view of the deck outlay from side to side, ignoring the sheen of sweat growing on his upper lip, and the rising panic inside of him. Where was he now? Was Trencher here at all? The map made no sense to him, and he wished he’d taken the time to study it more carefully. So stupid of him. He zoomed in to maximum magnification.
When he’d received the diskette from Josh, it had contained precise information about where on the Jager Trencher was stored. Yet, according to the same information Elias had uploaded into the smartsheet, Trencher was just here. But here was a blank wall, a section of bulkhead.
A sudden thought occurred to him. He went over to the wall running alongside one of the tall stacks of body pods and spotted several service hatches. He felt a blossoming of hope.
Maybe they hadn’t wanted to take the risk of storing Trencher with the regular passengers. Perhaps they had opted for more traditional smuggling techniques instead.
A clang of metal rang through the cryogenics bay. They were through. He heard voices shouting to each other, as they spread out. Surely this was the first section they’d come to investigate?
Elias picked a hatch at random. It opened as easily as the first one had.
Several feet further in, all the service tunnels connected together via a single passageway running parallel to the chamber wall. He crawled along it, hoping his hunch was correct.
He found a panel that didn’t look quite right – or to be more precise, someone had glued a plastic panel over a steel hatch, but with apparent haste. It wasn’t difficult to pull it to one side and peer into a space beyond, which looked like it had once contained equipment of some kind.
Instead, there was a body pod, and Elias’s heart rejoiced. He wondered how much time he had left as he crawled inside. Then he remembered the ceramic pistols, and reached behind himself. To his relief he found they were still there safe in the pack over his shoulder, u
nderneath his loose helmet.
Looking through the pod’s tiny viewing window, he recognized the face of a man he’d given up for dead several years ago.
There was the sound of a hatch being opened behind him.
Shit, thought Elias, and scrabbled back. He saw shadows around the hatch he’d crawled through.
‘In here!’ someone yelled. Then the voice faded, as its owner stepped back from the hatch to give the alert. Elias clambered back and proceeded further along the service tunnel on all fours. There wasn’t time to study the ’sheet and see where else the passage might lead from here. He had to go deeper and hope they didn’t know the layout of the ship any better than he did.
Pushing himself along the tunnel as fast as he could go, after fifteen metres he came to a blank wall. Dead end.
Shit again. Elias was starting to feel desperate. The only way out was back the way he’d come, where they’d be waiting for him. He lay low on the tunnel floor, allowing just enough room to reach behind him and extract both of the pistols. Gripping one in each hand, he worked his way back towards the hatches leading into the main pod bay. He listened for the voices.
Then he remembered he was still wearing his space-suit, the helmet hanging loosely over his back. Eduardez had warned him that all the safety protocols on the Goblin had been disabled. What else did that mean?
Time to find out.
A head showed itself through one hatch, peered his way, and caught sight of him approaching. A hand reached in, gripping something shiny. Elias lifted one of the tiny ceramic pistols and fired. The figure fell back out of sight, howling.
Elias swiftly shifted around in the tightly confined space of the service corridor, and tapped into the control pad on the front of his suit. He tried to picture the current position of the Goblin but realized that was useless, as he’d proceeded through so many twisting tunnels.
He reached into a pocket for the smartsheet, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the open hatch ahead. They’d now dragged their comrade away, and Elias figured he had just a minute or two before they decided what to do next. Elias suspected they would try very hard to kill him, regardless of what orders they’d originally been given. Trapped in here as he was, Elias realized they had the upper hand, unless he could come up with something soon.