Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4)

by Mark R. Healy

  “Okay, okay,” the man said. He lowered his rifle. “Come on out of there and give us the elevator. We’ll let you leave.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  The man turned to those around him, his voice ringing out across the Atrium.

  “We’re letting them through. That’s on my authority. Anyone lifts a hand against them, they’ll answer to me.” He glanced back at Silvestri and made an exaggerated sweep of his hand. “After you.”

  “You don’t trust this guy, do you?” Duran muttered from behind Silvestri.

  “No. But I don’t see another way to get through here.”

  Silvestri waited a few moments longer, assessing the situation, then rapped his knuckles on the hull of the RECS.

  “Go for it, Roman.”

  “Yeah,” Roman said warily. The bullet magnet. “Thanks for that.”

  He pushed forward on the controls, and for several heartbeats there was no response. Then the RECS shuddered and grudgingly edged forward, moving in slow motion like a wind-up toy in need of a crank.

  “Good idea,” Silvestri said, moving in behind with his shield raised. “Keep it slow and steady.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll do that.”

  Roman could see Talia, Zoe, Yun and Duran following in his rearview camera, the group forming a tight cluster behind the RECS. They made achingly slow progress out into the Atrium, past the first line of barricades, where the man in the bandana stood watching them impassively. For the first time, Roman became aware of just how many people had gathered here. There must have been at least a hundred, a rag-tag bunch of weary militia toting weapons and supplies amongst their ramshackle fortifications. They watched the newcomers with bloodshot eyes, haggard expressions. Distrust.

  Further afield, Roman could see blackened mounds, like the remnants of colossal bonfires still smouldering in the early morning light. He wondered if perhaps the attackers had been burning something through the night to keep themselves warm, but then he understood.

  “It’s people,” he said, horrified. “Mounds of dead people.”

  These must have been the poor unfortunates who had been cooked in the explosion, he realised, hauled together from all parts of the Atrium and piled in great heaps. He began to see details – a blackened skull, a hand, a stack of charred boots – and was filled with revulsion.

  The stench that seeped into the cockpit made him want to retch.

  He looked away from the mounds and kept pushing the RECS forward, under the gnarled arches of the Stormgates. Then, just as he was beginning to hope that they’d escaped, the lights on the console before him suddenly went dark.

  The RECS rocked to an abrupt halt.

  “Keep going,” Silvestri hissed.

  “I’m trying,” he muttered, slamming at the controls, but there was no response. He tried hitting buttons and pushing levers desperately, but nothing helped. The RECS had taken its last step.

  He opened the door and climbed out.

  “What are you doing?” Silvestri said, incredulous.

  “The RECS is out of juice, man,” Roman said. “We’re on our own from here.”

  Over by the central elevator, the man in the bandana was helping the hostages out of their bonds. An intense discussion took place, and then the man turned to look at the motionless form of the RECS.

  “Okay,” Talia said urgently, “I think our time is up. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

  “How, exactly?” Yun said. He pointed to the perimeter. “None of the elevators are online.”

  There was gunfire behind them, and the RECS took a flurry of rounds across its hull. Roman took cover, and Zoe returned fire as the militia advanced.

  “I think they just reneged on the deal,” Silvestri said drily.

  “So with no elevators,” Talia said, “what do we do? Jump?”

  Roman pointed. “There, look!” They turned to see a series of grappling hooks that had been slung over the wire balustrade. “That must be how they’ve been climbing up.”

  “You’re not seriously considering that,” Yun said, aghast. “Do you know how high that is?”

  “No time for a committee meeting,” Silvestri said. He began to move in a crouch behind his riot shield. “Move it.”

  They kept together, keeping in a tight knot behind the riot shields as they scampered toward the perimeter. The attackers fanned out as they attempted to reach flanking positions. Roman kept his head low, wondering how in hell they were going to make it, but within a few seconds they had reached the balustrade. The drop to the darkened landscape below loomed close, vast and utterly sickening, but before he could think twice, Roman was being bundled over the edge by strong hands.

  “Grab on!” Silvestri was screaming. “Go!”

  Roman’s hands fumbled at the rope as the abyss opened up below him, and he cried out involuntarily at the sight of the sheer wall dropping away into nothingness at his feet. There were clouds down there, for fuck’s sake. He was dangling on a rope above the very roof of the world.

  Then there was a horrendous screech from far above, the sound of contorted metal grinding on metal, and Roman saw dark shapes in the sky.

  “Go, go go!” Silvestri yelled hoarsely, and then Roman began to slip and slide out of control. The world spun, and Roman plummeted down the smooth metal plating of the wall, the rope tearing at his hands like a razorblade.

  Above, it sounded as though the Atrium were being torn in two.

  3

  Knile stopped to catch his breath. Ahead, the dim confines of the Skywalk stretched on into the distance, eventually falling away into obscurity like an old railway tunnel; a seemingly endless pathway to nowhere. Nearby, a bulkhead jutted from the walls, marking the end of the segment on which they’d been travelling. He took the opportunity to lean against it, resting his weary legs.

  Behind him, Tobias came trundling along on the sweepdrone, the inert form of Aron Lazarus still slumped across the rear of the vehicle. Ursie also clung to its side, having run out of puff several hours ago. She was still fighting the effects of her recent illness, it seemed, for her skin was sallow, and she couldn’t walk for any length of time without becoming short of breath. There had been no option but to bundle her aboard the sweepdrone with the others, weighing the vehicle down even further.

  Knile knew that this solution wasn’t going to work in the longer term. The sweepdrone was evidently straining under the weight of its occupants, moving at barely walking pace and gradually becoming slower.

  Soon they would all be walking.

  “Time for a break, no?” Tobias said amiably, drawing to a halt nearby and dismounting arthritically from the driver’s seat. He stretched his arms out before him, wincing, then shook out his fingers. “Heh. Not used to these long drives.”

  “How far to go, do you think?” Ursie said, stepping off and making her way to the front of the sweepdrone, where she leaned against the nose wearily.

  Tobias lifted his station cap and scratched at his balding pate. “Aww, heck. Long way to go yet. We couldn’t have come more than fifteen, maybe twenty clicks.”

  “And you think it’s a couple of hundred kilometres to Sunspire?” Knile said.

  “’Bout that.”

  Knile shook his head, smacking his cracked lips together distastefully. The inside of his mouth felt as dry as a handful of dust.

  “We’re going to need water, real soon,” he said. He glanced at the old man. “Any ideas?”

  “Might be some at the next way station, I suppose.”

  “How far is that?”

  Tobias shrugged. “Maybe fifty clicks.”

  Knile winced. “That’s a long way.”

  Tobias pursed his lips, then seemed to think of something. He stooped to the side of the sweepdrone and pulled out a toolkit from one of the recesses in the chassis, then lugged it in a limping gait toward a panel by the bulkhead.

  “There was a time when I’d have had my ass handed to me for tryin’ something like th
is,” he said, taking a flathead screwdriver to the panel. He grunted as he wedged the shaft into the gap in the metal. “But now, I figure… who gives a crap?”

  The panel whined as it came free, and then Tobias lifted it aside. Within lay a system of narrow, rusted pipes, as well as several PVC conduits of varying widths. The pipes looked ancient, discoloured as they were, and Knile could only guess at how long they’d been left there unmaintained.

  “What are you doing?” Ursie said. “Don’t knock a hole in the wall or something.”

  Tobias gave her a little scowl. “I may be a bit forgetful, Urse the Nurse, but I still know how to turn a screwgie.”

  He scraped at the rust on several pipes, as if trying to identify the one he sought, then produced a small hacksaw and began to grind away at his target. After about a minute, he reached forward and gave it a vicious tug, and the ageing metal snapped.

  “There we are,” Tobias said, satisfied. He examined the jagged end of pipe carefully, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it under the break. “Come to papa.”

  Knile watched and saw a thin dribble of liquid spill out onto the cloth, and after a short while, Tobias lifted the handkerchief and squeezed a few droplets into his mouth. He swallowed, then rubbed at his sweaty face with the moist cloth.

  “Fresh as mountain snow,” he remarked, then offered the handkerchief to Knile. “Try some yourself.”

  Knile nodded in gratitude but did not take the handkerchief. Instead he knelt before the pipe and dropped his face beneath, capturing a few drops in his mouth.

  It tasted exactly as he would have expected water that had been sitting in rusted pipes for who knew how long to taste – bitingly metallic, acrid – but he wasn’t about to spit it out again. He let it dribble down his throat gratefully.

  “How is it?” Ursie said.

  “Fresh as mountain snow,” Knile said. He smacked his lips, then considered. “We probably shouldn’t be drinking too much of this, though. It must have been stagnating here for a long time.”

  “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” Tobias said. He got up and returned to the sweepdrone, and Knile gestured for Ursie to come forward to try the water. She did so, placing her mouth beneath the pipe as he had done, and as she tasted it she recoiled, her mouth twisting in disgust.

  “Oh, fuck me,” she gasped. “That tastes like battery acid.”

  Knile grinned. “I thought you’d have already known how it tasted with your…” He gestured vaguely to his head. “Your abilities. You weren’t looking inside my head?”

  Ursie gave him an awkward glance. “No, I…” She suddenly looked even more pale than before.

  “Ursie? You okay? Did I say something wrong?”

  She shook her head, obviously disconcerted. “No, it’s fine. I–”

  “Make way,” Tobias said, bustling his way forward. He’d brought with him a plastic container filled with replacement brush heads for the sweepdrone, and now he dumped them out unceremoniously on the floor and placed the container carefully under the dribble of water. “We park this here for a bit, and we can take some wet stuff with us.”

  “Good idea,” Knile said. “I guess if we don’t find anything better, we’re going to have no option but to drink it.”

  Ursie got up and edged away from them. “We’re going to get sick if we drink any more of that.”

  “They used to treat the water, get the nasties out of it,” Tobias said. “Back in the day.”

  “Yeah, fifty years ago,” Ursie muttered. “I think I’d prefer to die of thirst than drink any more of that shit.” She turned and walked to the end of the sweepdrone, glancing down curiously as she inspected Lazarus.

  “Look at that,” Tobias said suddenly, pointing toward the ceiling. Knile turned to see a small round window in the hull of the Skywalk, through which he could observe the glinting surface of Earth far above. “Must be a beautiful sunrise for somebody up there, no?”

  Knile grimaced. “I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a beautiful sunrise on Earth anymore.”

  “Oh, there is, I’m sure,” Tobias said. “You just have to know where to look.”

  Ursie chortled at Knile’s puzzled expression. “Tobias is a bit of an oddball,” she said. “He seems to think Earth is some kind of paradise, even though he hasn’t been there in about a hundred years.”

  “Now, now, I’m not quite that old.” Tobias turned back to Knile. “You have the look of a traveller, mister. A wayfarer. You must’ve seen a bunch of things in your time. I’d be happy to listen to you, if you had a mind to talk.”

  Knile thought of his journeys through the lowlands when he’d been exiled from the Reach. He remembered the barrenness of the lands, the gauntness of the people who had worked it. Children lifting hoes with purpled knuckles, their skin mottled and discoloured, while their elders lay inside their huts and shanties, toxin-riddled bodies too weak to help. He thought of stained teeth and yellow fingernails, of blackened fruit shrivelled on the vine. Desperate people, distrusting of their neighbours, afraid for their young. Despairing of their futures.

  Knile looked at the expectant face of the old man.

  “Sorry. Wish I had something to tell you, but I don’t.”

  Tobias’ half smile wilted away, and he nodded dejectedly. “I see. Well, maybe another time.” He took a small marble elephant from his pocket and began to turn it over in his hands, lost in his own thoughts.

  Knile got to his feet. As he began to walk away he noticed Ursie leaning over Lazarus, her fingers gently pressed to his cheek. She looked as though she were about to drift off to sleep.

  “Ursie?” Knile said. She recoiled at the sound of his voice, snatching her hand back and sticking it in her pocket. “What are you doing?”

  “Uh, nothing, I–”

  “The same thing she was doing to Heketoro,” Tobias said, turning his attention away from the elephant as he glanced back at her. “That’s it, ain’t it?”

  “Who’s Heketoro?” Knile said.

  “A guy back at the habitat,” Ursie said quickly. She shot a timid glance at Tobias. “I didn’t hurt him. I swear.”

  “Will someone explain what’s going on here?” Knile said.

  Ursie took a deep breath as she tried to compose herself. “Something happened to me, all right? When I fought off my Sponsor, van Asch, a part of me changed. I don’t know how, or why.”

  “What changed?” Knile said.

  “I can’t see people’s thoughts anymore, not unless I’m touching them.”

  “People’s thoughts?” Tobias said, perplexed. “So you’re some kind of mind reader, or somethin’?”

  “Something like that.” She gestured down at Lazarus. “I can see something inside this guy, way down. I mean way down. It’s like a candle flickering at the bottom of a well a mile deep.”

  “So he’s still alive,” Knile said.

  Ursie sighed, exasperated. “Knile, I’m trying to tell you that… this guy isn’t going to make it. He’s not going to wake up. There’s no point dragging him along for the ride.”

  “I already told you, I’m not leaving him behind. Lazarus tried to save us. He tried to get the explosives off the railcar.”

  “Well, that was smart of him–”

  “And I made a vow to myself on the rooftop of the Reach, when I handed you that passkey, that I was never going to leave one of my own behind again. Because that’s not who I am anymore, okay? I’m not the guy who climbs over everyone else to reach the top.”

  Ursie narrowed her eyes at him. “He’s a Redman. He’s the enemy.”

  “Ursie, you’re not listening. He’s a friend.”

  Ursie chewed over that for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, if you say so. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re still going to have to find a way to carry him when the sweepdrone gives out.”

  Knile opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment there was a disconcerting shift in the Skywalk floor, and the
distant sound of shrieking metal echoed eerily throughout the tunnel, sending shivers down Knile’s spine. Immediately after there came a dull thudding noise, and the Skywalk seemed to shake.

  “What the hell was that?” Knile said.

  Tobias came to stand beside him. “Could have been one of the bulkheads slamming shut.”

  “What does that mean exactly?” Ursie said.

  Tobias’ voiced dropped to little more than a whisper. “Might be that one of the Skywalk segments just… broke off. Back near the habitat.” He glanced at Knile. “I told you the ol’ bugger wasn’t built to hang out in space without no habitat.”

  “So this tunnel is collapsing behind us,” Knile said grimly.

  “Don’t know for sure, but–”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Knile said. He scooped up the water container and handed it to Tobias. “I don’t want to be around when this tunnel becomes an impromptu reentry vehicle.”

  Knile started to jog forward, and suddenly he felt as though there was still some strength in his legs yet.

  4

  Nurzhan stood watching the corridor, listening to the sound of the hoodlums receding in the distance. The walkway had now emptied, but for the cloying smoke that had drifted in from the fires that still raged elsewhere in Gaslight, a blue-grey haze that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the last forty-eight hours.

  Nurzhan adjusted his full face gas mask and checked his oxygen supply. Although the air here was still breathable, he wasn’t taking any chances. If the fires got any worse, there was a chance he might succumb to the fumes without his breathing apparatus.

  He wasn’t about to let that happen.

  Stowing the pulse rifle behind his back, Nurzhan lifted a crimson glove to his shoulder and tapped lightly.

  “Kazimir,” he said to his Redman colleague through his comms. “The threat has moved on. This entrance is clear.”

  For a few seconds, there was nothing but static in reply. Then he heard Kazimir’s voice in his ear.

  “Clear at this end, also.”

  “Good. Make one last sweep of the northern end, and then–”