by Jamie Sawyer
Big globules of water bounced around me. In zero-G, the liquid had surface tension – coalescing into languid spheres, sometimes maintaining cohesion and bonding into larger shapes. The fact that the chamber had been half filled with liquid was beside the point: water was everywhere, moving with a life of its own.
Almost immediately, my lungs began to ache and I gasped for breath. Between the shifting waters were pockets of air: I bounced off of a wall and hit one. But those air cavities were no sure thing and the liquid around me was misleading. It threw off false surface reflections, became confusing. I sprang off of another wall – half swimming, half jumping – and thought that I’d found an air pocket, only to receive a mouthful of diseased water. I spat the fluid out, retching.
The entrance hatch slammed shut. I saw light spilling from behind my mother – felt a shockwave hit the tank. The sound was suppressed by the water, and the spheres around me caught the light, reflected fire in every direction. They separated, were scattered into smaller droplets as they moved—
I can’t breathe! I’m going to die in here!
I started to flail.
Things that I had tried so hard to forget struggled to get free: tearing at the thin tissue of my sanity.
“Get me out of here!”
Then my mother was beside me, yanking at my arm, pointing further down the tank. Her suit was bulky but she used her boots to shift the weight between the sides of the tank. We were moving fast – much faster than I could move on my own. There ahead were Daryl and Lucina. Daryl’s leg streamed blood into the water. He hit the side, Lucina fighting to steady his motion. We passed her by, her eyes wide –
– as wide as Kendra’s: pleading for release from the sinking car –
– and she reached out a hand, grazing my mother’s suit with her fingertips.
Daryl’s body was limp. His cheeks were swollen, bubbles escaping his pursed lips. Lucina pushed off from the wall again, trying to follow us. I saw the lamp that my mother had given her spinning from her hands.
Their shapes were becoming indistinct now. There was more water between us.
Another impact hit the tank, sent the water into agitated disarray.
My mother pushed off again. My lungs burnt like they were filled with nitrogen – and I resisted taking on another mouthful of water. I’m going to drown in here! Get me out! I looked back the way we had come – the entrance hatch now a dot of light at the roof of the tank. I was sure that I could see shapes down there, could see things in here with us.
Daryl and Lucina were dwindling. You’re going the wrong way! I wanted to scream. Follow us!
But then I was swallowing water, and I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it either.
I’d broken Rule Five: never think about what put you in here.
The city lights flew past in a blur, becoming ribbons of colour.
“Brace for impact,” the car computer repeated. “Take immediate evasive manoeuvre.”
Words flashed on the inside of the car window. At this speed, they were a threat more than a warning.
“We’re going over the edge!” I shouted. My voice was slowed, drunk, tinged with a hint of amusement, simply because this cannot really be happening to Kendra and me…
But it was.
The car plunged off the overpass. Moving faster and faster. Something hit the safety barrier, scraping hard against the underside of the car. That was enough to send the vehicle into a spin.
“Shit!” Kendra screamed.
Suddenly Kendra wasn’t drunk any more. Suddenly she was deathly sober, and what had started as a joyride in someone else’s car had become something much, much worse.
Nose-down, the air-car sailed off the highway. The gravitic motor whined like a hurt animal. Air-cars are supposed to stay upright, I told myself. The fleeting thought occurred to me that the anti-grav engine module should somehow keep us airborne.
Kendra was still screaming as the vehicle hit the water. It produced an enormous, percussive slap. Despite the safety belts, we were both thrown to the ceiling of the car. The collected detritus of someone else’s life hit the roof with us. Drinks bottles and empty cans bounced around inside the cabin, sailed past me. I hit my head hard enough that I had to fight off encroaching blackness.
Now, any sense of enjoyment was gone.
Now I knew that this was a life-changing moment. That unless Kendra and I acted, we were both dead.
“Get me out of here!” Kendra shouted. Shrill, piercing, achingly desperate. “Get me out!”
Inexplicably, she was speaking Standard. We never spoke Standard to each other. She was scrambling with her safety belt, jabbing a finger at the release button –
“Brace for impact. Take immediate evasive manoeuvre.”
The belts were supposed to be a safety measure – an automatic response by the car to an impending collision. Now they were a death sentence.
The car was a big, heavy vehicle: a Hyundai-Dashuti sedan model. As soon as it hit the water, it started to sink. The engine was roaring and our centre of gravity shifted as it tried to establish balance. Perhaps that made us go down faster or maybe it was just chance. The water outside was a filthy green – full of rotted plant matter and trash. I couldn’t see through it; couldn’t see how deep we were sinking. No stars. My ears were popping now, and with unresponsive fingers I too was grasping at my safety belt.
Why isn’t it opening?
The window next to Kendra began to noisily and dramatically crack. She was screaming so loudly that I could barely think. Not Kendra. Not my little sister. Water began to invade the car through the cracked glass – a fine spray, drenching the side of her face, plastering her short hair to her skull.
“Help me, Taniya! Get me out of here!”
The window cracked some more and the gates opened. A deluge of stinking, fetid river water flooded the car. Within seconds, we were both gasping for breath, panicking.
“I’m here, Ken! I’m here!”
What good would being here do? Nothing. I had to get us both out of the car to safety. It continued to wobble, shifting even as it sank. I tore at my safety belt, intent on ripping myself out of it if the release stud wouldn’t work.
Water was everywhere. To my chest now. Kendra had her face pushed to the ceiling. Against the roof, crying for me to get her out of there –
Finally! My safety strap came free with a victorious snap – recoiled across my body, the plug whipping my jaw.
I reached for Kendra. Grabbed at her harness as well. Yes! It soundlessly opened.
“We can do this!” I shouted.
Kendra was pulling at the safety harness. She was wailing, but intermittently now.
“Get me out! Get me…”
Her voice was watery, warbling. My eyes stung and I fought to keep them open. Kendra clutched for me, making claws of her hands – pulling at the fabric of my sweat top.
Before I knew it, I was gulping down mouthfuls – lungfuls – of water. I spluttered, repulsed by the taste. My lungs were bursting. Like being in vacuum, only so much worse.
Then the passenger window ruptured. Strong, mechanical manipulators grasped me, began to pull me from the dying vehicle. Had to be a police rescue bot.
I reached for Kendra with both hands. Brushed against her face – peered into those wide, open eyes.
I’d never seen eyes so wide, and I never wanted to again.
CHAPTER TEN
THE POINT
I woke in a corridor, lying on my back, throwing up filthy water and blood.
“Get it out of your system,” my mother said. She pumped on my stomach with her bare hands.
I pushed her away and rolled onto all fours. Inexplicably, this corridor seemed to have gravity. My clothes were stuck to me and I had dripped a trail of water across the passage.
“Jesus Christo,” I said. “I can’t go on.”
I shuddered against the cold. Cried and thumped a hand on the floor. Spewed some more.
> “We’re so close,” my mother said. Her armour was also wet and her rifle was missing. She had probably lost it in the tank. “Just the end of this corridor.”
“The captain is gone. Lucina is gone. Sheldon is gone!”
“And you are still here. You are going to live. You’re going to get off this station and leave this mess behind.”
She held me by the shoulders, crouched in front of me. Tried to make eye contact with me. I couldn’t look at her, and couldn’t stop it now – the tears pouring down my face. The water from the tank still clung in my throat and I wanted to be sick again.
“Kendra is gone!” I wailed. “I came here because I wanted to say sorry. For what I did.”
“I already know what happened.”
I knocked her hands off me and she stepped back, as though frightened by my reaction.
“That’s just it: you don’t know what happened. It wasn’t me driving the car that night. It was Kendra. I was in the car because I tried to stop her.”
Now she paused, chewing on the words. I looked into her face. Even bedraggled and filthy, she was an awesome woman. She was everything that I’d ever wanted to be, but at the same time nothing I ever could.
A profound sadness descended over her beautiful face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wouldn’t have changed anything. Because it wouldn’t have brought Kendra back.”
I thought for a moment that even she might cry. “It wouldn’t. But it would have been less for you to carry.”
“I didn’t need your pity. I needed a mother. Nothing has gone right today. You told me to go. You didn’t want to see me.”
“I was trying to protect you. It’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”
“By leaving me for years on end in the Pen?”
“I had a job to do. I never stopped thinking about you, not even for a day.”
She dragged me to my feet and hugged me.
“You’re going to make it,” she whispered.
Ahead of us, flashing on the wall in lights as bright as neon, were the words ESCAPE SHUTTLE BAY.
“We’re going to make it,” I said.
She smiled.
The first two shuttle docks were empty, had already been fired. I started to feel that sense of impending disappointment – of cosmic unfairness. To find that this place was empty, that despite everything we’d endured today there would be no salvation – it seemed too much for me to bear, too much for me to comprehend. But my mother kept checking. She bounded up to the last bay window.
“There’s a shuttle!” she said, peering inside the view-port. “And it looks operational.”
“Thank Gaia.”
“Maybe someone is looking out for us after all.”
She banged the access panel and the door opened with a low hiss. White mist – the product of atmospheric equalisation – crawled out from inside the shuttle. We both clambered aboard, my mother holding me up with a hand around my waist. I struggled to make every footstep.
“Welcome aboard the module,” a smooth masculine voice said: the shuttle’s AI. “This is a Class Three emergency escape shuttle. We advise that you use all available safety features, and carefully consider whether the nature of your emergency requires evacuation. The shuttle is equipped with an FTL drive for use in authorised circumstances. Enjoy your trip.”
The inside of the shuttle was sterile, dark and very cold. Four pristine hypersleep capsules sat in one corner and a meagre control-and-command console at the nose. It was bigger than a starship evacuation-pod, but not much – made for purpose, not comfort. The whole unit had that new vehicle smell about it.
I flopped into one of the two chairs at the command desk. The terminal in front of me sprang to life – shimmering with holographic and automated systems routines.
“Get strapped in,” my mother ordered. “I’m closing the door.”
I turned to look back at her. I half expected a Krell or Directorate soldier to pop up at the door view-port – to steal our victory, but the door shut without event. I fumbled with the safety harness and clicked it into place. The straps tightened automatically across my chest and the restraint seat moulded to my shape.
“How does this thing work?” I asked, glancing over the controls. They were nothing like the rows of diodes and monitors aboard the Edison.
“It’s a basic torchship,” my mother explained. “Point and click. Should fly itself.”
My mother punched controls on the panel. Graphics floated in front of me: an ignition sequence. The engines booted rapidly and dormant systems came online.
“Hold tight,” my mother said. She reached over, grabbed my hand in hers and clutched it. Her palm was warm and soft.
“I’ll try.”
The terminal in front of me flashed: LAUNCH.
There was no countdown, no delay at all. That made sense because the shuttle was for operation in a hurry. The engines simply fired up and we jettisoned from the Point. The G-force slammed me back into my seat and I closed my eyes, felt the skin of my face rippling as we moved off. My organs were deforming under the hard burn; the crash couch beneath me adapting to the intense velocity. Christo knew how many gravities we were being subjected to. Enough to probably break a bone if I hadn’t been restrained.
The shuttle jinked left and right, changing vector.
“Is there a malfunction?” I shouted over the roar of the firing thrusters. “Are we hit?”
“Automated!” my mother shouted back at me. Her image shook under the stress of so many Gs. “Safest course!”
I didn’t respond but for the first time that day, I believed the words. I thought of everyone that I’d left behind on the station: of Sheldon, Daryl, Lucina. All gone, all part of the cosmos now. I even thought of Nate. Not for who he was, but for who I’d believed that he was.
The shuttle’s engines whined. It began to vibrate, to shift course again. This wasn’t the same as before. It was more violent, more random. The holo in front of me flashed with warnings.
IMPACT. COURSE CORRECTION.
“What’s happening?” I screamed.
A graphic of the Point appeared between us – hovering, shaking, twisting. There was text – an explanation of why we were suddenly in danger again, but I couldn’t focus on the words.
My mother held my hand more firmly. “The station is going down. The shuttle is trying to evade the debris.”
The pictorial illustrated just that.
Liberty Point was a mess of twisted metal. Fresh explosions popped along the outer ring, and the whole station hung at an awkward angle, tilting from its gravitational axis. It was toppling in on itself. Beyond the remains of the base, dark things lurked around the station. Krell warships raked near-space with their terrible weapons. Debris streamed around us: flashing against the automated null-shields.
We were moving fast, outrunning the eruption. The shuttle’s engine was probably better than the Edison’s. Readings on the dashboard began to increase, but whether those were good readings, or whether the shuttle’s AI was trying to warn us of impending destruction, I couldn’t say. I closed my eyes but that didn’t stop the light. It was bright enough that my eyelids were no protection at all.
“Look at me!” my mother said. I suddenly realised that she had been talking for a while, repeating that same command.
I forced my eyes open and in her direction. Every muscle ached as I moved.
“I love you, Tan,” she said. “Whatever happens, I always will. You’re going to make it. You have to believe it.”
“We’re going to make it,” I feebly insisted.
She was smiling at me. There was something wrong with her response. She looked utterly at peace, resigned. It was a benevolent, caring reaction that reminded me of when I was a child back on the Arc.
“It was never about me. The Point is gone. I just wanted to make sure that you were off the station.”
More explosions coursed along the graphic of the Point. I felt
every one of them; felt the reciprocal impacts to the shuttle. But I couldn’t stop staring at my mother’s eyes. They were mesmerising.
“You said that nothing had gone right today. That’s not true. Something did go right: you came back to me. And whatever else has happened today, that has to be something.”
She began to spasm in the seat, to twist against the safety harness. It was a frightening and unusual reaction. Not born of the G-force, but something else.
“Mom! What’s happening?”
“This is my gift,” she said, struggling to speak. “It was only ever about you getting away. I hope that this makes us even.”
“Don’t leave me!”
I watched the light gutter and die in her eyes until they became utterly vacant. Life drifted from her. Her limbs grew weaker and she gradually disengaged from me, slumping back into the seat.
“No!” I screamed. “No! Not now! You’re supposed to come with me!”
I crushed her hand in mine – desperate for some reaction from her. Pulled myself nearer to her, which was difficult under thrust. I searched her body – looked for some obvious cause of injury, for something that I could do to help her. Her armour was immobile, no rise and fall to her chest.
“This isn’t fair! This isn’t right!”
I might’ve blacked out, or maybe the thruster module finished firing. Did it really matter? Either way, space had stopped moving. The stars outside were steady and space was quiet.
I unclipped my harness. The module was in zero-G, and I pulled myself beside my mother. I was crying uncontrollably. Shed tears floated around the cabin – splashed against my mother’s armour. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. She didn’t respond.
“Jesus and Gaia, Mom. I can’t do this alone. I wanted to make this good…”