by Lucas Bale
They pulled the ripcords to their chutes and made their way down.
C H A P T E R 4
THE LANDING beacons were small, delicate folding units. When deployed, they looked like bowed tripods, with a central cone and sensor array built into a dome at the top. Gant took two from his pack while Papin deployed the third. A single red mote in the centre of the dome pulsed as he activated each beacon. He twisted and hammered screws into the ground to secure them. They formed a wide triangle around fifty metres on each side—a large enough area for Fahad to put down in.
Gant walked to the tree line, dropped his pack next to a fallen trunk, and perched on it, knees drawn into his chest. Pulling a pre-packed log of some reconstituted protein and complex carbohydrate from a pocket, he unwrapped it and began to eat. It made him think of dried animal faeces, but he consoled himself with the fact it was at least easy calories. Papin stood next to him and drank from the mouthpiece at the end of a thin pipe on her shoulder.
‘How long?’ she asked.
He could guess what was coming and didn’t look at her as he answered. ‘Nothing from Fahad yet.’
‘We’ve got time.’
‘Look, Ines,’ Gant said. ‘It’s not a good idea. Isaacs warned me specifically—’
‘Yes, I bet he did,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘And I know why.’
‘What do you mean?’ He shook his head as his irritation grew. ‘What the hell’s been wrong with you? You’ve been acting weird since we left Assur Station.’
But she had turned away from him and was already moving through the jungle. Before he could react, she was at the canyon wall and climbing. He watched her for a few seconds, marvelling at how, in that short time, she had climbed almost all the way up to the first pitch. Her hands and feet moved in harmony: swift, effortless. Faultless. Every movement was perfect. And before he could stop himself, he was on the rock, following her.
When he eventually hauled himself up over the final ledge, Papin was sitting there, staring out across the valley. He clipped himself into her belay, then perched on a rock next to her. He followed her gaze, out there into the wide open space of the valley. He found himself longing to be on the faces of the mountains that stretched up either side of that powerful river and the jungle that surrounded it, and he suddenly felt the familiar loss inside him. That torturous dichotomy of his life now: the hunger for the freedom of the wilderness, and the acceptance of the darkness of his cell. Savouring beguiling landscapes like the one laid out before them, at once beautiful and wild, remote and dangerous, left him increasingly empty each time he returned. Listening to the calls of creatures that revelled in their freedom made the silence of his cell harder to endure—lying there, alone, not knowing when he might be deployed again and for how long. Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Perhaps that’s true once. But to relive that cycle of love and loss, time after time, was too much for him.
Yet what other choice is there?
Papin spoke quietly then, and what she said made Gant wonder if she knew his thoughts.
‘I’m not going back.’
But of course she knew what he was thinking, he told himself—it was nothing new. They had such thoughts every time, but they both knew the risks, and neither would ever truly consider trying to escape. Right? He grunted a sardonic acknowledgment, a resentful smile playing on his lips. ‘Sure. When do we leave?’ He tossed a stone over the edge of the ledge’s precipice.
‘I mean it. It’s not a joke.’
Gant turned and stared at her, and he immediately saw the seriousness in her eyes. There was utter belief in her path there, as though she had thought it through already. So I was wrong, he thought. This deployment is different. When did you decide this?
‘You think they’re just going to let you go?’ Gant asked. ‘That they haven’t considered we might try to escape? They’re anything but stupid.’
She turned to him, her eyes pleading. ‘Come with me. They won’t find us, I promise. This place is big enough to hide us both.’
‘What about our implants, you idiot? Have you forgotten those?’
‘We make them think we’re dead.’
Gant rolled his eyes. ‘It’s that easy, is it?’
‘We make it look like we fell. We’re good enough to fake that. Then we cut the damn things out.’
‘Cut them out?’ Gant hissed. She’s crazy. She’s finally lost it. Being out here, the illusion of being free, it had to happen. She thinks this is real, that a place like this actually wants us. ‘And of course, you know how to do that?’
To his amazement, she nodded. She reached into her backpack and pulled something from it. A tool he didn’t recognise. ‘We can use this.’
‘Where the hell did you get that? What is it?’
‘From Medical. They have manuals in there too. I read one. I know what we need to do.’ She began to explain, but he cut her off before she could finish.
‘You’ll get us both killed. What if one of the medical officers had seen you?’
Papin looked away, stared at the wilderness laid out before them. ‘It’s beautiful here. It would be so easy to make a home in the mountains.’
‘One of them did see you, didn’t they,’ he said quietly. She didn’t reply, and Gant understood. ‘How long were you sleeping with him?’
‘I did what was necessary for us to get away.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t have any claim over you.’
‘We climb together. We fly together. We die together.’
‘I’ve never liked the last part.’
‘You always were an optimist.’
‘Why now?’ he said quietly. ‘What makes this drop any different?’
‘Maybe it’s been building for a while,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. Don’t you hate going back?’
‘You know I do. But that’s not it. There something else…’
She hesitated, as though she didn’t want to tell him. Eventually she said, ‘I saw something on the ship.’
‘What? What did you see while you were sleeping with your doctor?’
She ignored that. ‘There are people on board. Peacekeepers—’
‘Of course there are, Ines,’ he said, exasperated by the fact that she seemed blind to the danger she was putting them in just by talking about this; by being up here and not down by the camp, waiting for the shuttle. He looked up and saw it coming down through the atmosphere—a single white star with a fine mist of vapour billowing behind it. ‘There are always Peacekeepers on board—’
‘Not like this. There were dozens of them. Whole squads, holed up in the loading bays.’
‘How could you possibly have seen that?’
‘While the doctor was sleeping, I took a walk.’
‘Shit, Ines, if you’d been caught…’
‘I know what I saw, Gant. Dozens of them. Why do they need squads of Peacekeepers on a survey ship like ours?’
Of course Gant had no answer. His chest felt suddenly tight, and all he wanted to do was run with her.
The shuttle was nearly down now. The grass flattened as the landing thrusters pressed down hard to settle the bulk of the heavy craft softly onto the ground. The noise carried up to them like barked commands, demanding they climb down to where Gant knew they should already be. This is it, he thought. This is days, maybe even weeks, on half-rations. Or a flogging. This is fucking bad, Ines. He stood and unclipped himself from her belay.
‘I can’t go with you,’ he said, shaking his head, suddenly angry with her. ‘I think you’re making a mistake.’
‘That’s your choice,’ she said, but she didn’t look at him. It stung him, and at that moment, he nearly gave in. He could see them running, finding somewhere to hide and doing what she said. Maybe we could, he tried to tell himself. It must be possible. I mean, what would they care if a couple of criminals died on the mountainside? Would they even come looking? But he knew he was lying to himself. They would come looking—the
y would never stop looking. That’s what they were like. Until they found two bodies, they wouldn’t believe it, and he and Papin would never be safe.
‘I don’t blame you,’ he offered, but Papin didn’t reply. He stared at her, saw their years of friendship in every worn crease of her face. The climbs they had completed together, every moment of the fleeting freedom they had shared. He understood utterly her craving to make that freedom real, to make it into something that might last, but he knew her hope was a false one. ‘As soon as I get back, they’ll know you’re gone—’
‘You tell them I left the pitch while you were climbing. That I was leading, and you didn’t know until it was too late to do anything about it.’
I’m not worried about me, you stupid woman, he thought, but he nodded anyway.
‘Take the emergency supplies,’ he said, handing his pack to her. The useless gesture hurt him to even say, but she took them and smiled at him. There was warmth behind the smile, more than he had seen from her in a long time. The light of the sun danced in her eyes, and her face lifted. ‘They’ll keep you going for a little while,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’ll do after that.’
‘I’ll live and I’ll be free,’ she said. She reached over to him, put her arms around him, and held him tightly. ‘That’s all that matters.’
‘I can’t stop them from looking.’ He could feel something hard in his throat and his eyes were wet.
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘If they hurt you—’
‘I’ll live,’ he said. ‘I’ll get through it. You do what you have to do.’
She released him and looked away—couldn’t look at him. Then she nodded and rose. She pulled her pack onto her back and moved lightly over the rock.
‘Ines,’ Gant said quickly. She turned slightly and glanced sideways at him. ‘I have to ask. What were you in for? Kolyma. What did you do?’
For a while she didn’t answer, and Gant watched her stare out at the valley again. Then, quietly, she said, ‘Stealing apples.’
He smiled and nodded, as if there could have been no other answer. ‘Me too.’
Then she was gone. He waited for a moment before going back, to give her a little time. He would tell them that, when he realised she had run, he had gone to look for her, but couldn’t find her. That would explain the delay in coming down off the canyon’s rim. It would put some distance between them, and it would maybe even give her a chance of making it.
He wondered if she thought him a coward. Maybe I am.
He felt the explosion before he heard it. A tremor in the air, followed a half second later by a crack that seared through sky and into his heart. He turned and began to run, toward the explosion, toward Papin, but he already knew it was too late. He sprinted over rock and grass, a thin plume of smoke rising ahead of him. Panic exploded inside him and he heard himself shouting no, no, no as he ran. Bile rose in his throat and he wanted to vomit.
The plume rose higher as he ran. Into thick scrub, which caught his ankles and tried to bring him down. He fought through it, stumbling like some crazed thing, flailing and screaming inside his head.
No. Please no.
When he saw her broken, charred body, he collapsed to his knees. His shoulders heaved and he couldn’t breathe. The explosion had torn her in two, so she no longer resembled anything human. No longer looked like the friend he had grown to love.
On the ground, in front of him, was the tool she would have used to remove the implant, blackened and twisted from the explosion. He picked it up. It was still warm. He thumbed a small switch on the side, and it began to vibrate in his hand. He lifted his gaze away from it and back to Papin’s lifeless form.
At first he didn’t understand. Was it something in her pack that had malfunctioned? Had she taken something else? She’d planned this, known she was leaving; maybe she’d taken a weapon from the ship.
It wasn’t until he heard the crack of gunfire coming from behind him, back at the shuttle, that he understood what she had seen back on the ship. Why Isaacs had been so nervous; why Fahad had been edgy over the comms line. Why someone had placed explosives in Papin’s pack and detonated them at the precise moment the shuttle had landed.
And why the crew of the shuttle were now dead.
Will Gant stood and ran.
C H A P T E R 5
IT TOOK Gant more than an hour to work out how to use the tool to remove his implant. Driven by terror, he pushed past the pain until the tiny unit was in his hand, sheathed in oily blood and tissue. It would take two weeks for the wound to heal.
In the months that followed, Gant found places to hide in the low massifs just above the steppes and grassland that seeped into the jungle. There he found shelter from the wind and rain, and respite from the wet heat of the rainforest. And from those mountains, he was able to observe what he had already known was coming. Star carriers brought the machinery of colonisation and, over the weeks and months, built a vast compound. Gunships flew over the mountains, but they never seemed to see him. He revelled in his freedom, slowly teaching himself to survive, but every day he wondered if it would be his last. If they would come for him. Fear kept him away, but it also made him watchful.
His suit kept him warm in the cool air—it had been designed for the frigid temperatures of high-altitude drops, so the cold of the mountains did little to test it. He foraged for food, snaring what might have been fish in the rivers and catching small animals in traps he had learned to make back on his home planet of Gerasa. He found that certain types of wood could kindle a fire that produced only a thin, wispy smoke. He kept those fires small, and lit them only inside caves in the mountains, so they would not be seen.
And he continued to watch.
The first runners came less than a month after the last star carrier left the planet. The jungle provided more food than the mountains—this he learned quickly—so he was forced to descend from the mountains frequently. He had also learned how to hide amidst the dense foliage when Peacekeepers were nearby. It was on one of these foraging runs that he first saw the runners.
And what he would later come to call the chukiri.
He had been kneeling beside a river, tending to a net he had made in order to catch small waterborne animals. Had it been one of the earlier runs, when he was less used to the sounds of the jungle, he might not have heard the now unmistakable indicators of movement nearby. Too big to be an animal, he thought. And moving too fast. Running.
Gant glanced around quickly, believing he had either been careless or unlucky, perhaps both, but knowing it was too late to run. Within the steep, root-carved banks of the river, he found a hollow into which he could crawl and hide. With his nose just above the water line, he waited. He didn’t feel the cold of the river through his suit, yet he still shivered. Silently, he watched.
The jungle quivered, and from it burst a man in ragged, torn clothing. His face was dirty, yet still, beneath the layer of grime, Gant saw Kolyma affiliation tattoos. The face betrayed panic too, riven by fear.
The man searched the bank feverishly, then dropped into the running water. He waded through it, trying to cross the fast-moving flow. But he stumbled and fell, deep into the water, face first. He emerged, spluttering, floundering. He found his feet and half waded, half swam.
For a moment, Gant considered calling out to him. He agonised over the decision, telling himself he knew nothing about this man except that he was a Kolyma inmate. In Kolyma, Gant had learned that trust took a long time to be earned. Affiliations were respected, but loyalty was a scarce resource in the loneliness of the desperation to survive. Besides, the Peacekeepers in the compound didn’t seem to know Gant existed, and he had survived too long to jeopardise that for one man.
So Gant remained still, watching, until the jungle on the other side of the river shook again. Gant felt his eyes widen as figures slipped through the trees. At first he mistook them for Peacekeepers—they were wearing Peacekeeper armour—yet he had never seen a Peacekeeper wi
thout their nightmarish helmet. And these men wore no helmets. Their hair was tied into tight, long coils that had been smothered with what looked like the ochre mud Gant had seen beside some hot springs within the jungle. Their faces were a mess of open, bleeding wounds—some more than others—but beneath them, he saw the remains of more fleet affiliation tattoos.
They spread out quickly over the roots and rock beside the bank, each of them aiming a heavy rifle into the river towards the flailing man. The man didn’t yet know they were there because they had arrived like whispers. But when one of them jumped into the water, the man jerked his head back. And when he saw them, he screamed.
He turned away and tried to run harder through the water, but the flow made it too difficult. His scarred pursuer wore a look of savage joy as the tiny servos and gears in his armour drove him through the water.
When he reached the man, he seized him by the throat and pushed him under. The man tried to fight, but the hunter was too strong. He kept him under the surface of the water, his eyes wide and his face smeared with pleasure. Finally, as the man weakened, he lifted him out. Almost dead, and exhausted from struggling, the man had nothing left to fight with.
The hunter shifted his grip to the man’s head, placing his hands around it. Then he pressed his thumbs against the man’s eyes. Something new kindled within his prey, a new pain perhaps, and the man began again to scream. But the hunter was too strong. Blood spurted from the man’s face, and Gant heard the sound of bone cracking.
Eventually the man no longer struggled.
More of the hunters came into the water. They dragged the man’s lifeless body out of the river.
Gant waited for an hour in that river, unmoving, his mind a bedlam of confused, terrified thoughts. Violence had always been a part of life in the fleet, even gruesome violence. Sects and affiliation gangs frequently sent messages to others through savagery. It was the way of the general population of the fleet. Yet these inmates had scars over their affiliation tattoos—something he had never seen before—and they were wearing Peacekeeper armour. What were they doing here? Why were they chasing another inmate through the jungle?