by Ken MacLeod
“I was designed,” Thom said. “Built to be his next body.”
There was a long pause on the line. “I didn’t know,” Lanoe said.
“He had to die,” Thom said. In his mind’s eye he saw it all over again. Saw himself pick up the ancient dueling pistol. Felt it jump in his hand. The old man hadn’t even had a chance to look surprised. “Do you understand now? I’m only twenty years old, and he was going to steal my body and throw my mind away. Kill me. So I had to kill him if I wanted to live. And now I have to keep moving. For another thirty-six hours.”
“Thirty-six hours?”
“His doctors will have stabilized his brain, even if the rest of him is dead. They can keep his consciousness viable that long. If they catch me before his brain really dies, they can still go ahead with the switch.”
“Let me help, then,” Lanoe said.
Thom closed his eyes again. Nobody could help him now.
He leaned forward on his stick. Brought the yacht’s nose down until it was pointed right at the core of the planet. Opened his throttle all the way.
The yacht dove into a dark cloud bank, a wall of smoke thick enough to block Lanoe’s transmission.
This would be over soon.
A rain of fine soot smashed against Lanoe’s canopy as he dove straight down into the pressure and heat of Geryon’s atmosphere. The clouds whipped past him and then they were gone and he stared down into the red glare of the neon layer.
He couldn’t see the yacht—it was hidden behind that shimmering wall of fire. He spared a moment to check some of his instruments and saw just how bad it was out there. Over 2,000 degrees Kelvin. Atmospheric pressure hard enough to crush the fighter in microseconds. The FA.2 possessed enough vector field strength to hold that killing air back, according to its technical specifications. Even so, he was sure he could hear his carbonglas canopy crackle under the stress, feel the entire ship closing in on him as the pressure warped its hull. His inertial sink held him tight in his seat as the ship rocked and trembled in the turbulent air.
If the fighter was in that much distress, could the kid hold up at all? Lanoe had no idea what kind of defensive fields the yacht carried. It was possible that the next time he saw Thom the kid would be a crumpled ball of carbon fiber, tumbling slowly as it fell toward the center of the planet.
Yet when his airfoils carried him rattling and hissing through the floor of the neon layer, he saw the yacht dead ahead, still intact, still hurtling downward on a course that went nowhere good. There was nothing but murk down there, pure hydrogen under so much pressure it stopped acting like a gas and turned into liquid metal. No ship ever built could handle this kind of strain for more than a few minutes.
Lanoe didn’t know if even comms lasers could cut through the dark, swirling mess but then the green pearl in the corner of his vision appeared and he opened the transmission immediately. “Thom,” he said. “Thom—is this what you want? Did we just come here so you could commit suicide?”
There was no reply.
All over Lanoe’s panels, red lights danced and flickered. Lanoe couldn’t do this much longer and still hope to get back to space in one piece.
He set his teeth and sped after the yacht.
Everything shook and strained and groaned. The wooden veneer on the console in front of Thom creaked and then split down the middle, a jagged fissure running across his instrument displays. So close now.
The carbon fiber hull of the yacht couldn’t take this pressure or this heat. The ship’s vector fields were the only thing keeping Thom alive. If they failed—or if he switched them off—it would be over before he even knew what had happened. The ship would collapse around him, crushing his flesh, his bones. His blood would boil and then vaporize. His eyes would—
A sudden loud pop behind him made Thom yelp in surprise and terror. Broken glass splattered across his viewports and yellow liquid dripped down the front of his helmet. Hellfire and ashes, was this how it happened? Was that cerebrospinal fluid? Was his head caving in?
No. No—the fizzy liquid running across his vision was champagne.
Behind the pilot’s seat was a tiny cargo cabinet. There had been a bottle of champagne back there, put there by the old man’s servants for when Thom won his next race. Wine made from grapes actually grown in the soil of Earth. That bottle had been almost as expensive as the yacht itself.
The bottle had been under pressure already—the added strain of Geryon’s crushing grip had been too much for it.
An uncontrollable laugh ripped its way up through Thom’s throat. He shook and bent over his controls and tears pooled in his eyes until his suit carefully wicked them away. He had been scared by a champagne bottle going off. That hadn’t happened since he was a child.
Scared.
Fear—now that was funny. He hadn’t expected to be afraid at this point. Thom was no coward. But now his heart raced—he could feel adrenaline throbbing through his veins.
He hadn’t expected to be scared.
He looked out through his viewports at the dark haze ahead, at the center of the planet, and it was so huge. So big beyond anything he could comprehend.
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
“Lanoe?” the kid said. “Lanoe, I think I made a mistake.”
Lanoe clamped his eyes shut. There was nothing to see, anyway, except the tail of the yacht. “Yeah? You’re just getting that now?”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Thom said. The transmission was full of noise, words compressed down until the kid’s voice sounded like a machine talking. “Something’s gone wrong. Lanoe—I thought I could do this. But now—”
“That’s your survival instinct kicking in. Self-preservation, right? Don’t fight that urge, Thom. It’s there for a reason.”
“I think maybe it’s too late. Oh, hellfire.”
Lanoe shook his head. The kid had some guts to have gotten this far, but what a damned idiot he was. “Pull up. Come on, Thom, just pull up and get out of here.”
“I can’t see anything—I don’t even know which way is up!”
“The Hexus. Look for the Hexus. Its beacons should be all over your nav display—latch on to them. Pull up, Thom. Come on! Don’t go any lower.”
“I’m trying.…My controls are so sluggish. Lanoe…I.”
The green pearl kept rotating, numbers streaming across its surface. The connection hadn’t been cut off. The kid had just stopped talking.
“Damn,” Lanoe said. He started easing back on his control stick. Fed fuel to all of his retros and positioning rockets, intending to swing around and punch for escape velocity.
But then the kid spoke again.
“I don’t want to die,” Thom said.
Lanoe saw the yacht ahead of him. Its nose had come around, a little. The kid was doing his best. All of his jets were firing in quick stuttering bursts as he tried to check his downward velocity. If he could get his tail pointed down he could fire his main thruster and head back toward space.
But the nose was swinging around way too slow.
Lanoe saw why right away—it was that broken airfoil, the one he’d smashed against a cargo container. Airfoils were deadweight in space but in an atmosphere like this they were vital, and Thom was running one short. That was going to kill him.
No. Lanoe wouldn’t accept that.
“Listen,” he said. “You can do this. Take it easy, don’t waste any burns.”
“I’m trying,” the kid told him.
“Get your nose up, that’s the main thing.”
“I know what to do!”
“I’m going to tell you anyway. Get your nose up. Come on, kid!”
The yacht had fallen so far down Lanoe could barely see it. How much longer would the kid’s fields hold out? They must be eating up all his power, just to keep the yacht from being crushed. That extra energy could make a real difference.
“Thom—transfer some power from your vector field to your thrusters.”
/> “I’ll be splattered,” the kid pointed out.
He was probably right. But if he didn’t get his nose up, he was going to die anyway.
“Do it!” Lanoe shouted. “Transfer five percent—”
One whole side of the yacht caved in. Lanoe felt sick as he watched the carbon fiber hull crumple and distort.
But in the same moment the yacht swung around all at once and got its nose pointed straight up. Its main thruster engaged in a burst of fire and it shot past Lanoe’s fighter, moving damned fast.
Lanoe’s own fields were complaining. He was used to the fighter’s alarms, its chimes and whistles and screaming Klaxons. He ignored them all. He sent the FA.2 into a tight spin until his own nose was pointing up, then punched for full burn.
Ahead of him the wall of buzzing red neon came and went. The clouds of soot and dark blue methane. For a split second he saw blue sky overhead, pure, thin air, and then it turned black and the stars came out.
Ahead of him the yacht burned straight out into the night, standing on its tail.
In the distance, past the kid’s nose, Lanoe could see the Hexus. If they could just make it there maybe this chase could end. Maybe they could both come out of this okay.
“Thom,” he called. “Thom, come in.”
There was no green pearl in the corner of his vision. Lanoe came up alongside the yacht and saw just how much of it had collapsed. The whole forward compartment had imploded, all of the viewports shattered down to empty frames.
“Oh, hellfire, Thom,” Lanoe whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.”
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE CORPORATION WARS: INSURGENCE,
look out for
TRACER
by Rob Boffard
A huge space station orbits the Earth, holding the last of humanity. It’s broken, rusted, falling apart. We’ve wrecked our planet, and now we have to live with the consequences: a new home that’s dirty, overcrowded, and inescapable.
What’s more, there’s a madman hiding on the station. He’s about to unleash chaos. And when he does, there’ll be nowhere left to turn.
Seven years ago
The ship is breaking up around them.
The hull is twisting and creaking, like it’s trying to tear away from the heat of re-entry. The outer panels are snapping off, hurtling past the cockpit viewports, black blurs against a dull orange glow.
The ship’s second-in-command, Singh, is tearing at her seat straps, as if getting loose will be enough to save her. She’s yelling at the captain, seated beside her, but he pays her no attention. The flight deck below them is a sea of flashing red, the crew spinning in their chairs, hunting for something, anything they can use.
They have checklists for these situations. But there’s no checklist for when a ship, plunging belly-down through Earth’s atmosphere to maximise the drag, gets flipped over by an explosion deep in the guts of the engine, sending it first into a spin and then into a screaming nosedive. Now it’s spearing through the atmosphere, the friction tearing it to pieces.
The captain doesn’t raise his voice. “We have to eject the rear module,” he says.
Singh’s eyes go wide. “Captain—”
He ignores her, reaching up to touch the communicator in his ear. “Officer Yamamoto,” he says, speaking as clearly as he can. “Cut the rear module loose.”
Koji Yamamoto stares up at him. His eyes are huge, his mouth slightly open. He’s the youngest crew member, barely eighteen. The captain has to say his name again before he turns and hammers on the touch-screens.
The loudest bang of all shudders through the ship as its entire rear third explodes away. Now the ship and its crew are tumbling end over end, the movement forcing them back in their seats. The captain’s stomach feels like it’s broken free of its moorings. He waits for the tumbling to stop, for the ship to right itself. Three seconds. Five.
He sees his wife’s face, his daughter’s. No, don’t think about them. Think about the ship.
“Guidance systems are gone,” McCallister shouts, her voice distorting over the comms. “The core’s down. I got nothing.”
“Command’s heard our mayday,” Dominguez says. “They—”
McCallister’s straps snap. She’s hurled out of her chair, thudding off the control panel, leaving a dark red spatter of blood across a screen. Yamamoto reaches for her, forgetting that he’s still strapped in. Singh is screaming.
“Dominguez,” says the captain. “Patch me through.”
Dominguez tears his eyes away from the injured McCallister. A second later, his hands are flying across the controls. A burst of static sounds in the captain’s comms unit, followed by two quick beeps.
He doesn’t bother with radio protocol. “Ship is on a collision path. We’re going to try to crash-land. If we—”
“John.”
Foster doesn’t have to identify himself. His voice is etched into the captain’s memory from dozens of flight briefings and planning sessions and quiet conversations in the pilots’ bar.
The captain doesn’t know if the rest of flight command are listening in, and he doesn’t care. “Marshall,” he says. “I think I can bring the ship down. We’ll activate our emergency beacon; sit tight until you can get to us.”
“I’m sorry, John. There’s nothing I can do.”
“What are you talking about?”
There’s another bang, and then a roar, as if the ship is caught in the jaws of an enormous beast. The captain turns to look at Singh, but she’s gone. So is the side of the ship. There’s nothing but a jagged gash, the edges a mess of torn metal and sputtering wires. The awful orange glow is coming in, its fingers reaching for him, and he can feel the heat baking on his skin.
“Marshall, listen to me,” the captain says, but Marshall is gone too. The captain can see the sky beyond the ship, beyond the flames. It’s blue, clearer than he could have ever imagined. It fades to black where it reaches the upper atmosphere, and the space beyond that is pinpricked with stars.
One of those stars is Outer Earth.
Maybe I can find it, the captain thinks, if I look hard enough. He can feel the anger, the disbelief at Marshall’s words, but he refuses to let it take hold. He tells himself that Outer Earth will send help. They have to. He tries to picture the faces of his family, tries to hold them uppermost in his mind, but the roaring and the heat are everywhere and he can’t—
Chapter One
Riley
My name is Riley Hale, and when I run, the world disappears.
Feet pounding. Heart thudding. Steel plates thundering under my feet as I run, high up on Level 6, keeping a good momentum as I move through the darkened corridors. I focus on the next step, on the in-out, push-pull of my breathing. Stride, land, cushion, spring, repeat. The station is a tight warren of crawl-spaces and vents around me, every surface metal etched with ancient graffiti.
“She’s over there!”
The shout comes from behind me, down the other end of the corridor. The skittering footsteps that follow it echo off the walls. I thought I’d lost these idiots back at the sector border–now I have to outrun them all over again. I got lost in the rhythm of running–always dangerous when someone’s trying to jack your cargo. I refuse to waste a breath on cursing, but one of my exhales turns into a growl of frustration.
The Lieren might not be as fast as I am, but they obviously don’t give up.
I go from a jog to a sprint, my pack juddering on my spine as I pump my arms even harder. A tiny bead of sweat touches my eye, sizzling and stinging. I ignore it. No tracer in my crew has ever failed to deliver their cargo, and I am not going to be the first.
I round the corner–and nearly slam into a crush of people. There are five of them, sauntering down the corridor, talking among themselves. But I’m already reacting, pushing off with my right foot, springing in the direction of the wall. I bring my other foot up to meet it, flattening it against the metal and tu
cking my left knee up to my chest. The momentum keeps me going forwards even as I’m pushing off, exhaling with a whoop as I squeeze through the space between the people and the wall. My right foot comes down, and I’m instantly in motion again. Full momentum. A perfect tic-tac.
The Lieren are close behind, colliding with the group, bowling them over in a mess of confused shouts. But I’ve got the edge now. Their cries fade into the distance.
There’s not a lot you can move between sectors without paying off the gangs. Not unless you know where and how to cross. Tracers do. And that’s why we exist. If you need to get something to someone, or if you’ve got a little package you don’t want any gangs knowing about, you come find us. We’ll get it there–for a price, of course–and if you come to my crew, the Devil Dancers, we’ll get it there fast.
The corridor exit looms, and then I’m out, into the gallery. After the corridors, the giant lights illuminating the massive open area are blinding. Corridor becomes catwalk, bordered with rusted metal railings, and the sound of my footfalls fades away, whirling off into the open space.
I catch a glimpse of the diagram on the far wall, still legible a hundred years after it was painted. A scale picture of the station. The Core at the centre, a giant sphere which houses the main fusion reactor. Shooting out from it on either side, two spokes, connected to an enormous ring, the main body. And under it, faded to almost nothing after over a century: Outer Earth Orbit Preservation Module, Founded AD 2234.
Ahead of me, more people emerge from the far entrance to the catwalk. A group of teenage girls, packed tight, talking loudly among themselves. I count ten, fifteen–no. They haven’t seen me. I’m heading full tilt towards them.
Without breaking stride, I grab the right-hand railing of the catwalk and launch myself up and over, into space.
For a second, there’s no noise but the air rushing past me. The sound of the girls’ conversation vanishes, like someone turned down a volume knob. I can see all the way down to the bottom of the gallery, a hundred feet below, picking out details snatched from the gaps in the web of criss-crossing catwalks.