by Lucas Bale
‘We’re ready, sir,’ Gant said. ‘Of course.’
Isaacs tapped his forefinger against his thigh as he nodded slowly and gazed around the room. ‘Give us a minute, Papin,’ he said, and jerked his head towards the door without looking at her.
Papin glanced sideways at Gant, then picked up her pack and stepped through the doorway. She stared at the captain for what seemed to Gant to be a little too long, then said over her shoulder, ‘I’ll see you in the drop-bay.’
‘Sure, Ines. See you in a minute.’
Isaacs looked her up and down as she walked away, but waited until she was gone before he spoke again. ‘I can say this to you,’ he said. ‘You’ll understand what I’m getting at. Her…’ He shook his head. The captain and Papin had never really seen eye to eye. Gant, on the other hand, had always understood the value of tact. ‘All we need is a viable place to set the shuttle down and start deploying the compound.’
Gant nodded, unsure where Isaacs was going with this. He said nothing, so the captain continued. ‘If you can find what we need in one jump, do it. We don’t know what the conditions are like down there, so you might not get a second shot at this.’
Isaacs picked up Gant’s rebreather and handed it to him. As Gant took it, he noticed a tightness creep into the captain’s expression. First Papin, now you. What’s going on? A Black Dragon run, way out here, beyond the Wall and the charted star systems, was precarious work, sure. Yet every member of the crew knew the risks, and Isaacs had been doing it for years—decades, even. But here and now, he looked old and tired, and there was an edge to his eyes that Gant found disconcerting.
‘Like I said up there,’ Gant said evenly, ‘we’ll find you what you need.’
‘Look, Gant,’ Isaacs said. ‘This one is important to them.’ Them. The people they didn’t talk about. The specialists from the Core, the ones who made the decisions. Gant had never seen them of course—he wasn’t permitted to wander the ship unescorted—but neither had any of the rest of the crew. Only the captain ever spoke to them. They remained in their own, secure wing of the ship while the rest of the crew took all the risks.
And then there was the Peacekeeper security team. Gant wasn’t so naive as to think the Magistratus would allow Kolyma inmates on board a ship like the Tartarus without some sort of protection. The security team’s presence was a thinly veiled threat should he or Papin ever think of making a run for it, or do anything else which might be construed as seditious. He had no idea how many there were, nor did he want to know.
The captain’s eyes narrowed, and he held his breath before speaking again. ‘They need this one to work, okay? They’re not going to let you screw around. I let you spend more time on these jumps because I get where you’re coming from. But not this time, okay? Just do your job so we can go home. They’re watching you. And they’re impatient.’
Isaacs left without another word, and Gant noticed the man’s hands were shaking.
‘What was that about?’ Papin asked as he made his way across the drop-bay towards the shuttle.
Gant glanced at the drop-bay crew and shook his head. Papin rolled her eyes. Tact and discretion, Ines. Maybe you should learn some. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just Isaacs telling us not to screw around.’
The shuttle looked to Gant like a warthog—an ugly brute of a thing, with no smooth lines and great, bulbous protrusions across its throat. It appeared ungainly, and the first time Gant had laid eyes on it, he had wondered how it actually flew. But it was as tough as a warthog too, and it had protected them through risky drops too many times to start doubting it now. The domes around its hull were crammed full of instruments and hypersensitive scanning systems. Expensive machinery, hauled all the way from the Core—far more valuable than the two of them. If any of it were damaged, it would take months to get back to the Core, resupply, and get back out here. Much easier to drop a couple of criminals out of the belly of a shuttle and let them do the really dangerous work.
Gant pulled on his helmet and secured it. His suit was lightweight, not adequate for space, but good enough for the rigours of the middle to lower layers of an atmosphere on a planet in the habitable zone. A potential terrestrial.
‘Comms check,’ he said.
‘All good, Gant. Clear as a bell. Checking your implant and… it’s good. All systems in the green. Your vitals are fine. You’re ready to go, man.’
‘We’re boarding now.’ The ramp would shut when they lifted off, then open again at thirty klicks so they could run to the edge and throw themselves out into the blue. There was no need for a couple of criminals to go beyond the drop-bay, much less enter the crew area of the shuttle.
The engines began to spool up as Gant traipsed up the ramp, the vibrations kicking through the soles of his heavy boots. Monopropellant hydrogen thrusters were bolted to either side, weighing as much as a rifle and stretching up to his thigh. There wasn’t much fuel in them—just enough for a few short bursts to give them extra time in flight. They would be stowed before a climb and then refitted at a summit or ledge if they had to fly again.
Fahad’s voice came over the radio. ‘Strap in, boys and girls. We’re sorry to inform you there’s no cabin service today, but please do sit back and enjoy the ride. And thank you for flying with Where The Fuck Are We Now Spaceways.’ There was no laughter to follow—the joke was old and had long since worn thin. Its repetition was as much about superstition now as Gant’s ritual in his cell. Gant sat in the same seat he’d occupied too many times before to count and buckled in. He rolled his neck to get it comfortable in the suit and flexed his hands inside the gloves. Sweat gathered on his palms, and he breathed deeply.
Papin joined him, her expression tight. As the shuttle slowly heaved itself upward, the drop-bay floor beneath it split into two huge doors that swung open and fell away. Gant closed his eyes. The flight deck chatter in his ears faded away as he focused on the darkness of his cell. He imagined lying on his cot and feeling the wool of his blanket between his fingers. Above the roar of the shuttle’s drives, he could dimly hear the whine of the huge drop-bay doors, but even that receded into the background and was replaced by the gentle hum of the steel walls of his cell. The shuttle would be hovering now, until the doors were locked in place and the pilots were given the green light to go down. Gant knew this but heard none of it; the pilots’ chatter had all but gone.
All that was left was the silence of the dark.
C H A P T E R 3
GANT HEARD his name being called and opened his eyes. Papin was staring at him.
‘It’s time,’ she said. ‘You going to zone out all day, or should we go fly a little?’
He nodded and rolled his neck. As always, the rebreather mask felt too tight and claustrophobic. It pinched his skin. He looked forward to the moment when he could remove it and stow it.
He glanced down at the module on his wrist. The altimeter read 30,029 metres. Oxygen supply was constant and the small tank was full. His heart rate was a little high, but it always was about now. He felt lightheaded, but not to the point of concern for hypoxia. It was probably just the usual excitement tinged with nerves.
Time to get yourself moving, Will. He unbuckled himself and stood. The deck of the drop-bay was pitching beneath his feet, but he was used to it and made his way to the middle. A few seconds later, Papin joined him.
A familiar whine filled the bay and creases of white light appeared around the edge of the ramp. They grew in size and intensity, almost blinding him in the dirty orange drop-bay light. Gusts of wind buffeted him, tugging at his mask and the fabric of the wingsuit between his legs. He held his arms tight against his sides to keep the rest of the wingsuit from being flayed by the wind as it bloomed in strength and violence, surging into the drop-bay.
A vaguely mechanical voice echoed in his ears, and he heard Fahad’s heavy accent over the comms line that fed into his rebreather mask. ‘There’s a small weather system we’re navigating around. Nearly done, but you’ll sti
ll be dropping through the edge of it. Sorry about that. Time to deployment, fifteen seconds.’
The ramp was almost fully open now, and beyond it Gant could see bursts of cloud the colour of slate, swirling in tight eddies like a heavy winter storm. Above the clouds, the sky was a pristine sheet of deep vibrant blue that slowly eased into purple and then crimson as it feathered the penumbra of the atmosphere. It was beautiful. And, Gant knew, cold as hell.
‘Gant, ready for drop,’ Gant said.
‘Papin, ready for drop.’ Her voice was still deep and accented, even over the comms line.
‘Acknowledged. Good luck guys, and stay safe. Find us a sweet place to put this thing down. Ten seconds.’
‘Will do,’ Gant said. His muscles hummed and his chest felt heavy. He realised he hadn’t taken a breath for a long time. He wanted to be out there, but at the same time, the familiar fear bloomed in his heart. Fear that, eventually, he would have to go back.
‘Five seconds.’
His fists were bunched so tight they began to ache.
‘Green light. Deploy.’
Gant ran towards the ramp and jumped.
First came the heavy punch of the wind against his mask and chest. He fought the urge to twist in the air and levelled out, pinning his arms to his sides and facing the drop. Then came the deafening roar in his ears as he surged downwards through the frozen air. Falling fast. He didn’t feel the cold; the weave in the nanobyte fabric of his suit tightened around his muscles and the bones of his skull, as it had been designed to do, spreading an automated warmth to counter the cold. It was an alien sensation he had never gotten used to.
Sensors across the suit streamed data to his module—the composition of the air around him, the effects of the planet’s atmosphere on his physiology—all of it retained in case the critical initial data didn’t reach the shuttle’s sensor array through the interference caused by the charged solar wind.
Ines appeared beside him and gave him a thumbs-up. He nodded back at her.
‘Looking good, Ines,’ he said into the comms line. ‘Fahad, we’re heading down now. Everything looks good. Weather system coming up, but we’ll punch through it. Once we have visibility, we’ll deploy and see what we can see.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Fahad replied. ‘You’re looking good from up here, Gant. Scanners are all in the green. Weather system in five… four… three… two… one.
There was no need for the countdown; Gant could see it approaching. A billowing chaos of near black waiting to welcome them and suck them in. If this was the edge of it, he thought, what could the rest of it look like? He held his arms in tighter and felt his muscles stiffen. Five seconds and you’ll be through it, he told himself. Five seconds. Just keep it tight.
Before, right out of the drop-bay of the shuttle, the wind had been playing with him. Now it seemed furious at their invasion.
Five seconds. Hold it together.
It clawed at him, clutching for his arms and legs. It swirled around him, twisting and turning like some vast serpent, trying to flip him over and spin him around. It tugged at his arms, pulling them away so it could seep into the exposed fabric of the wingsuit, looking to rob him of his aerodynamic shape and turn him into a flailing cartwheel.
He fought against it, muscles aching with the effort of battling the unrelenting siege. Keep tight, dammit! Panic began to overwhelm him, and he forced it back, locking it away in his head. He focused on his technique, concentrated on keeping every movement of his body perfect, textbook.
No mistakes.
Flecks of moisture gathered on his visor, but he couldn’t risk wiping them away. They froze instantly, splintering into a tiny spider web of sparkling crystal, obscuring his vision. Just a few more seconds.
The wind seemed to sense that he was winning, beating it. It surged harder, as though desperate to send him flailing out of control. But, just as suddenly as he’d entered the weather system, he was through.
He searched for Papin through the blurred screen of his visor; he spotted her twenty metres to his left. She nodded to him. He wiped the visor quickly, smearing the ice across it but giving himself something approaching clarity, then glanced at his module. 9,675 metres. Time to deploy.
He opened his arms and legs into a star and let a thermal catch the fabric of the suit. He felt his limbs and pelvis buck as the wind pummelled him, and he flexed his muscles, fighting for control. The higher up they deployed, the more flying time they would have, the more distance they could cover, and the more they could survey the landscape. But now, as he cut through the air and really began to fly, all he wanted to do was stay up here—to never leave, to never again have to face the darkness of his cell.
As the wind equalised around his limbs and controlling his movements became easier and smoother, he felt himself smiling, laughing almost. His breathing came in heavy pants of relief and joy. He was free. The air around him felt limitless; there were no walls to close him in, no men in uniforms to control when he could eat or sleep or breathe or think. In that moment, he forgot the despair that would overwhelm him when he returned to the Tartarus, and instead he allowed the joy to flood his heart.
Too quickly, Fahad’s voice tore him away. ‘Alright, Gant, time to tell us what you can see.’
The smile faded a little and Gant told himself to focus. The planet’s surface lay spread out across a tapestry of jungle and canyons, cut with waterfalls and framed by mountains. Even from up here, it appeared wild and remote. He could see no sign of settlements, but there was no surprise in that: he had come to believe that there was no such thing as sentient, intelligent alien life. All anyone had ever found on the handful of planets in habitable zones—and there had been precious few of those, like finding a pearl among thousands of oysters—were animals. Humanity had been a divine mistake, Gant thought, an error in evolution that had not been replicated anywhere else in the universe. An infinite number of variables that had combined and met at the precise moment needed to create something which could only truly exist once. The Magistratus was right on that, Gant thought. We are alone in the universe.
‘Looks like we’ve got a functional ecosystem,’ Gant relayed over the comms link. ‘There’s some pretty dense jungle down here. Waterfalls, mountains, no sign of animal life yet. Not much so far where the shuttle can put down easily, or where we can set up the compound. We’ll keep looking.’
‘All received. Good hunting. We’re receiving atmospheric data now—it’s a much better signal than from Sawyer’s drone. Gravity is as we thought, maybe a little heavy. Air is fine—possibly a little light on oxygen, but good enough. We’ll probably need respirators at night to start. Tell me what it feels like when you get down on the ground and the masks are off.’
‘Are you relaying all of this back to the Tartarus?’ Gant asked.
The comms link was silent for a moment, then Fahad’s voice came back on. ‘Of course, why do you ask? Don’t we always?’
‘And the guys upstairs. They’re getting it too, right?’
The pause was longer this time. Fahad had always been nervous as hell every time ‘the guys upstairs’ were mentioned. He was probably squirming in his pants right about now. When his voice came back over the line, Gant thought it was a little shaky. ‘That’s right, Gant. There a problem?’
‘No,’ Gant said, trying to keep his voice even. ‘No problem. Just wondered.’
He glanced around and found Papin on his flank. With his hand, he indicated a valley carved by a wide river that ran along the plateau of the jungle. Gant checked his module—altitude was dropping rapidly now. He fanned his fingers in a starburst pattern, and Ines nodded. She reached for the controls to the monopropellant hydrogen thrusters on her calves. They would have around thirty seconds of thrust each in total, so the thrusters would engage only in short, controlled bursts. Papin nodded and then swooped down low and fast. Behind her, a thin vapour trail billowed from each of her legs.
Gant activated his own thrusters
. He felt the vibrations spooling up and then the vicious kick as they propelled him forward. Papin was cutting a route for them along the arc of the river, and he followed.
The river was a wide, raging torrent that surged through the jungle, occasionally obscured by the dense, leafy canopy. They followed its path like a trail and watched the canyon walls unfold on either side way ahead of them. Even with the wind growling in their ears, they could hear another noise above that—a constant, high-pitched roar—and Gant realised abruptly what it was.
He indicated to Papin to arc right, away from the river, and keep to the top of the canyon. She nodded. They had developed a rudimentary sign language in case of comms failure, but in truth it had become a way for them to keep the rest of the team on the shuttle—and those on the ship far above them—from knowing everything they were doing.
They came upon it quickly. A towering surge of foam and water where the river reached the edge of the canyon and dropped hundreds of metres into the valley below. A scintillating arc of colour rose from the depths of the mighty river beneath it, crowning the waterfall as though it might have been the jungle’s natural regent.
Gant smiled, but he knew he didn’t have long. He tore his eyes away from that breathtaking natural spectacle and searched the landscape for a reasonable place for the shuttle to put down and for the survey teams to set up their camp. Somewhere not too far from the river in the valley, so they’d have access to water and maybe set up a temporary hydro-electric generator, but far enough away that the ground would be solid. Through the dense foliage of the jungle, he spotted only a handful of places that might serve them, and they were all tight. Besides, the soup of charged particles streaming in from the solar wind fluctuated, and even his own module began to suffer some interference. Fahad would sure as hell need landing beacons to set the shuttle down.