“Behold!” boomed Harris, flinging his arm theatrically. “Behold the reason I asked you here.”
Toby walked forward and placed his hands on the transparent wall. They had emerged into another cylindrical chamber, this one maybe a kilometre in diameter and twice that in length. The walls were blank and smooth. Ahead, the air at the centre of the empty space had been curdled. There were clouds twisted into unlikely spirals, and at the centre, flickering with blue static discharge, something writhed. It looked like a ball of angry snakes. Strange symbols flickered across its surface and were lost from sight. It seemed to be drawing in all the light in the room, like a plug draining water from a sink.
In the glass elevator, Toby stepped back and shook his head.
“I don’t believe it.”
There couldn’t be another one. Could there? In all the years he’d spent studying the Gnarl at the heart of the Bubble Belt, he’d never supposed it to be anything other than unique.
He felt Harris’s heavy hand clap him on the shoulder.
“Believe it, my boy. This is the reason you were called here. You’ve spent your life studying one Gnarl. Now, we need your expertise with another.”
Toby turned to him.
“But what’s it doing here?”
The Professor’s brows drew together like wary caterpillars circling each other.
“Doing here?” He chuckled. “My dear boy, how else do you think you power an Ark of this size?”
Toby shook his head. His eyes were watering but he couldn’t look away. He was captivated by the ever-changing surface. It moved like oil on water.
“Power...?”
“Oh yes!” Harris rubbed his hands together. “My boy, that wonderful anomaly out there is the engine. It powers this vast, insane spaceship.”
He leaned forward and tapped Toby on the chest.
“And that’s where you come in, Mister Drake. We want you to tell us how it works.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FISSURE
First came the pain. Then, after a while, Ed realised he was conscious. He didn’t know what had happened to him, but time had passed, and his head hurt. He was lying on his side, and something heavy lay on his hip, pressing him down. For a chilling instant, he thought he was back on that table in Bethnal Green, with Pavle holding him down, waiting for Grigor to shatter his wrists with the flat side of a butcher’s cleaver.
“You must understand that this is a matter of honour.”
Cold water bubbled against the side of his face, and his eyes snapped open with a gasp. He twisted his neck, lifting his face clear. His cheek felt frozen. Flailing around in panic, his hands gripped the steering wheel, and he realised he was still in the Land Rover, which was on its side, and slowly filling with water.
The car had toppled into a rocky fissure and now lay wedged in the stream at its bottom. Just enough light came from above for him to make out its rough stone walls and the shallow, fast-moving water covering its gravelled floor. The driver’s side window had shattered on impact, and his cheek had been resting on gritty kernels of broken glass. Blood mixed with stream water. Kristin lay on top of him, dead or unconscious, her head and shoulder digging into his hip, her legs wedged in the foot well on the passenger side. Neither of them had been wearing seatbelts.
Ed flexed his back. He could smell petrol. His shoulder hurt where he’d slammed against the inside of the door. His clothes were wet from the water coming in through the broken window. Carefully, he twisted around in the confined space, hampered by Kristin’s weight pressing on him. He did his best to lower her gently to the floor, trying to keep her as dry as possible. She was heavier than he expected, and a red bruise discoloured the side of her right eye. She was starting to stir. Not dead, just stunned and groaning faintly, her eyelids fluttering like butterflies caught in a spider’s web.
When her legs touched the icy water, she jerked in his arms.
“Ed?”
“I’m here.”
“Ed, what happened?”
Ed stood upright, his head pressing against the unbroken passenger window, through which he could see the lip of the fissure, and a pink morning sky beyond. They’d fallen maybe three or four metres into the v-shaped crack, and were now wedged in its narrow base, with the Land Rover’s wheels jammed against one wall and its roof crumpled against the other.
He turned, careful to avoid treading on Kristin, and careful to avoid the gear lever. Broken glass crunched underfoot. His feet were getting wet, and his toes hurt with the cold. Something shone silver in the water. The St. Christopher medal had fallen from the rear-view mirror. He crouched and scooped it into his pocket, then stood and looked back over the body of the Land Rover. His eye caught the arch from which they’d emerged, perched on a ledge, its base overhanging the edge of the cleft into which they’d fallen.
“Alice?” He bent his head. “Alice, are you okay?”
No reply. Worried, he crouched awkwardly over Kristin, trying to see between the seats.
“Alice?”
He couldn’t bend far enough to see properly. The light wasn’t great, and there wasn’t room to manoeuvre. Instead, he braced one foot against the steering wheel and, with his hands over his head, pushed open the passenger door. It was heavy and difficult from this angle, but by pushing himself up on the wheel, he managed to get his head and shoulders out into the open air.
“Ed, where are you going?”
Kristin was on her knees. He looked down at her through his legs, and saw she was shivering.
“I’m trying to get in the back. I’m going to check on the others.”
Kirsten touched cautious fingers to the bruise on the side of her face.
“Well, be careful. Everything feels too heavy. I think the gravity’s stronger here than we’re used to. If you fall, you could really hurt yourself.”
The fresh air chilled his wet hair. The door wanted to fall closed, but he managed to hook a knee over the frame and heave himself out. He scraped his shin and whacked his elbow. Then he was clear, and lying on the side of the Land Rover, panting from the exertion. His body felt like a dead weight dragging him down. He let the door drop, and it slammed into place with a crash that shook the whole car.
Out here, he could smell the spilled petrol more strongly, and hear the babbling of the stream reflected from the narrow rock walls. The lip of the fissure stood maybe three metres above his head. If he got to his feet and jumped, he felt sure he could reach it. Instead, he slid along to the rear fender and, kneeling on the bodywork, prepared to heave the back passenger side door up and open. His heart hammered in his chest. Every movement was an effort, but all he could think was that Alice had been injured. His hands shook with fear and cold as he pulled the door open, and leant in, half expecting to see her lying dead, crushed beneath the weight of the burly soldier, Krous.
It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light in the back of the Land Rover. Then he recoiled in disbelief.
Stream water curled and eddied where the window had been, but there were no bodies where he had expected to see them.
Alice and Krous were gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VERTEBRAE BEACH
The watery moon spun in orbit around a brooding gas giant, just outside the habitable zone of a star eight light years from Strauli Quay. Tidal forces kept the interior of the moon warm, as the gas giant’s ferocious gravity alternately stretched and squeezed its rocky core, producing tectonic heat. A deep ocean covered its surface, and icebergs jostled at its poles like colliding continents. It had no dry land, and a thin atmosphere of poisonous volcanic gas, belched from hydrothermal vents on the sea floor. Once upon a time, giant whale-like creatures had cruised in these depths, feeding off clouds of algae in the warmer water above the vents. Now, their fossilised skeletons littered the sand.
The locals called the moon Vertebrae Beach.
When Katherine Abdulov arrived, she landed The Ameline in the sea, close
to the equator, much to the old ship’s disgust.
> Salt water’s corrosive. You know that, right?
In the pilot’s chair, Kat stretched like a hungry cat. They’d jumped from Strauli without incident, and cruised in from the Emergence Zone at normal speed. She’d been in the chair for six hours, brooding over the loss of Toby Drake, the inconclusive, half-resolved reconciliation with her father, and Victor’s ridiculous stunt. She felt lonely and tense, and needed to vent her frustration.
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “You just concentrate on recharging and refuelling, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
She slipped on her coat, and made her way to the aft airlock. The ship rocked on the swell, and the hull rang as automated tugs locked on and began hauling it toward a floating pontoon, where a submersible ferry waited to transport her down to New Barcelona, the largest of the dozen or so cities spread over the little moon’s eight-kilometre deep ocean floor like so many coral reefs, shielded by their depth from the gas giant’s savage radioactive output.
She’d already forwarded her credentials to the local Abdulov family representative, a middle-aged woman called Enid, who’d arranged the immediate refuelling of her ship—a process Kat expected to take somewhere between two and three hours, as she wasn’t carrying any cargo. Unlike Victor, who had to pay for his fuel from profits generated en route, she had no need to hunt for fresh cargo or passengers to finance the next leg of her journey. She had nothing to do but wait, and too much pent-up frustration to let her wait quietly.
> Going somewhere nice?
“I doubt it.”
As soon as they docked, she transferred to the sub, and rode it down into the darkness.
The sub was little more than a pressurised passenger cabin surrounded by spherical ballast tanks. Empty, the tanks provided enough buoyancy for it to float like a cork on the ocean swell. To descend, all the AI controlling the sub had to do was open the caps on the tanks and pump in sea water, and the whole thing sank like a stone: eight kilometres, straight down, to the city on the sea bed.
Coming in from above, the city glittered like a Christmas decoration. Lights twinkled everywhere. Agricultural domes shone in the gloom, lit up from within by powerful sunlamps. Consulting the local Grid, she learned that New Barcelona had maybe a hundred thousand inhabitants, and that the bulk of the city lay in artificial caverns below the sand. Another quick query informed her that the Tristero had already docked, at a floating pontoon a few kilometres from the Ameline’s mooring, and that Victor Luciano and his First Mate were somewhere in the city below, recruiting passengers.
As they got closer, the sub started to blow air into its ballast tanks from cylinders within the walls of the passenger cabin. As the air pressure in the tanks grew, it pushed out more and more water, increasing the sub’s buoyancy and slowing their descent, until by the time it reached its berth on the ocean floor, it was hardly moving at all.
She stepped off the sub as soon as it docked, and passed through Immigration without breaking stride. The little moon had a much lower gravity than she was used to, and she felt bouncy on her feet. She wanted to dance as she made her way to meet Enid at a restaurant on the edge of one of the larger agricultural domes.
The restaurant spread over four floors, hugging the inside of the dome. The walls were transparent, one looking out into the blackness of the ocean depths, the other over rows of crops on the brightly-lit floor of the dome. Ascending the stairs to the restaurant’s front desk, she saw maize and cabbages, grape vines, and other plants she couldn’t identify. In the centre of the dome, goats and chickens grazed a circular patch of grass.
It was mid-morning local time, and quiet in the restaurant. Her boots squeaked on the polished floor of the reception area. The air smelled of herbs. The walls displayed artfully-mounted fossils from the sea bed, and the sound of falling water came from a small fountain behind the front desk. As she approached, the head waiter eyed her warily, raising an eyebrow at her open coat and the figure-hugging flight suit beneath.
“Can I help you, madam?” His expression implied he thought she’d wandered into the building by mistake, lost and seeking directions. He didn’t even bother to ping her implant with a reservation query.
“Table for Abdulov,” she said.
“Abdulov...?” She saw his eyes flick to the captain’s glyph on her shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am. Please, right this way.”
Enid Abdulov stood as they approached her table. She was a short, slim woman, with red lipstick, pretty blue eyes and tied-back blonde hair. She wore a conservative business jacket over a knee-length floral dress, and calf-length leather boots with four-inch heels. She’d chosen a table overlooking the sea bed, from where the lights of the restaurant illuminated the half-buried skeleton of a long-dead behemoth: all spines and broken ribs.
“Welcome to Vertebrae Beach,” she said, holding out her hand. They shook, and she gestured for Kat to sit.
“Make yourself at home, Captain. Now tell me, what news of Strauli Quay? Your father remains well, I trust?”
“Very well, thank you.” Kat settled into the chair. She clocked the orange juice Enid had on the table before her.
“Would you like a drink, Captain?”
The older woman signalled the waiter, who leaned forward expectantly, proffering an old-fashioned, printed wine menu.
“I’ll have a beer,” Kat said, not bothering to look.
“Perhaps madam would like to sample a local wine?”
Kat smiled. “Beer will be fine. As long as it’s cold and wet, and comes in a bottle.”
The waiter took a deep breath through his nose.
“Very well.”
He turned on his heel, returning moments later with a frosted bottle of imported lager and a flute glass. Just to spite him, Kat snaked the bottle from the tray and took a swig before he could pour it. When she looked up, she found Enid watching her.
“You do realise that bottle costs more than most of the local dome workers earn in a day?”
Kat looked down at her drink. It was a standard Strauli brew, and must have been shipped across the intervening light years in the hold of a trading ship.
“You import all your beer?”
Enid shrugged. “I’m afraid agricultural space is at a premium. We have a few successful vineyards, but hops take up too much room and we have to prioritise food crops.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “But if you’ll forgive me for speaking bluntly, Captain, I believe we have far more serious matters to discuss.”
“You’re talking about Victor Luciano?”
Enid’s voice lowered conspiratorially. “Word around the port has it that he’s trying to beat you to Djatt, for the Pep harvest.”
Kat sat back. “News travels fast.”
“Also, his flight plan lists Djatt as his next port of call.” Enid looked Kat up and down, her gaze as cool and unhurried as the ice floating on the ocean’s surface, eight kilometres above their heads. “Weren’t you two an item, once upon a time?”
“We were, but all that’s changed. He’s changed. Did you know he jumped his way out of the Quay at Strauli?”
“Out of the Quay itself?”
“He activated his jump engines inside the docking bay. If the bay’s pressure seals hadn’t held, he could have killed a lot of people.”
For the first time, Enid looked nonplussed. She scratched at her eyebrow with a delicate fingernail.
“Forgive me if I seem a little flustered, Captain. It’s not that I’m displeased to see you, it’s just that I was expecting another ship. The Kilimanjaro, en route to the spice harvest, under Captain Ramiro Abdulov, my second cousin.”
Kat’s thumbnail scratched at the label of her beer bottle.
“The Kilimanjaro’s not coming,” she said.
Enid pursed her lips, unsurprised yet still gloomy to have her suspicions confirmed. “Accident or sabotage?”
“The latter. And I can’t prove
anything, but I’m sure Victor Luciano had something to do with it.”
Enid sat back in her chair, blue eyes narrowed. “Then this isn’t just bravado on his part? He seriously means to challenge our control of the Pep harvest?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Even at the risk he might trigger a trade war? Why would he take that chance?”
Kat shrugged. She didn’t much care why he was doing it, she just wanted to stop him, and make him pay for the things he’d already done.
She glanced through the transparent wall, at the bones of the dead whale-like creatures, and saw her own ghostly reflection in the glass: high cheekbones, dark eyes, and hair that hadn’t been brushed in a fortnight: a stark contrast to the other woman’s smart clothes and fair looks.
“Is there anything we can do to delay him?” she said.
Enid shook her head. “Nothing legal. At least, nothing that can be arranged in the time we have before he’s scheduled to leave.”
“Then we don’t have a lot of choice, do we?” Kat scraped back in her chair. “Where is he now?”
Enid’s eyes flicked up for a second, as she used her implant to consult the local Grid.
“He’s two domes across, in a hotel on the edge of the accommodation zone.” She stretched across to touch Kat’s wrist. “What are you planning to do?”
Kat stood. She pulled back her coat to reveal the pistol strapped to her thigh.
“What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to go down there and stop him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
SPLASHES
They had to abandon the Land Rover in the crevasse. It was wedged fast; nothing could be done to pull it free, even if they had had a crane capable of lifting it, which they didn’t. Instead, they had to content themselves with taking as much of its equipment as they could carry. Ed had his survival kit, and the stolen pistol from the glove compartment. Kristin had her own sidearm, and the first aid kit from Alice’s bag. Of Alice and her shotgun, no sign remained.
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