Angel Stations (33 page)

‘Come on.’ Someone tugged at the Mayor’s shoulder, as he stared through the reinforced glass in the door at the spot where the three men had last been seen. He’d never seen someone actually die before. He turned to see the other survivors boarding the shuttle. He followed, feeling numb.

Inside, he stood near the rear of the cockpit, watching the Station disintegrate from the outside. As they moved away from the docking link, the fat torus shape of the construction became visible. The human add-ons looked as if they had been shredded.

‘How could that happen in just a few hours?’ someone whispered.

Pierce knew what he meant. A few hours earlier, you could have harboured the notion that the bugs were a containable problem, that a solution still lay within reach. But they had won, he realized, whoever – or whatever – they were. Entire sections of the Hub and of Central Command were floating free now. To his surprise, Pierce realized that he missed the place already.

Elias

Elias had been watching Kim carefully as she worked the Goblin’s console. It looked easier to operate than any other Goblin he’d encountered, so he suspected this particular vessel was less versatile as a result, more limited in what it could do. She was standing up, facing away from him, studying some piece of information scrolling down a screen mounted high above the console panel.

He was still in the co-pilot’s seat. He studied the section of console before him until he found a set of controls for the viewscreens. Things had changed, he realized, but not that much.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, turning to Kim. ‘I need you to take a look at something.’

She glanced down at at him. ‘What is it?’

‘Before the
Jager
. . .’ He searched for the right word, but couldn’t find it. ‘Before it exploded, we were watching a high-magnification image on one of these screens. Is there any way I can see it again?’

She looked at him quizzically, shrugged. ‘Sure, here.’ She leaned over him, touched more panels on the console. The
Jager
magically reappeared on a view-screen, intact again. This time a date readout appeared in the lower right-hand corner. ‘Ten minutes before it came apart. What about it?’

Elias stared at the screen in fascination. ‘Can you fast-forward it, just a little?’

She touched the console again. The time on the screen shot forward, to just a couple of minutes before the ship finally dissolved. ‘There.’ He stood up out of the co-pilot’s seat and touched the screen with his finger. ‘Do you see that?’

Kim folded her arms and watched. It looked like a shuttle leaving the
Jager
seconds before her destruction. She grunted in surprise. ‘I do.’

‘Where did it go?’ he asked. She shrugged, her expression saying
I don’t know
. She then zoomed in so they could see the tiny vessel moving rapidly away from the
Jager
. Seconds later, the cargo ship again blossomed into spinning fragments.

‘Whoever’s on board that shuttle made it out by the skin of their teeth,’ she said. ‘It must have been very bad there in the last moments.’ She looked at Murray. ‘You think your friend might be on that shuttle?’

‘I’m sure of it,’ he said.

‘What makes you feel so sure?’ asked Vincent. ‘It could be anybody on that shuttle.’

‘I know things,’ Elias replied, ‘that you don’t. I was on board the
Jager
myself, and found people there you really wouldn’t like to meet.’
I’ve already told you more than I should have
, he thought. There was something too convenient about it all: Trencher being here, so far from home; then these bugs, the
Jager
exploding.

‘As I said before, I’m not interested in your reasons for visiting the
Jager
,’ snapped Kim. Elias noticed her lips were set in a thin line.

‘So what now?’ said Vincent. ‘Everybody either on the Angel Station or on the transports must have witnessed what happened to the
Jager
. Do we go back to the Station, if there’s anything left of it, or head for one of the transports?’

Kim, Elias could see, still had that tense expression on her face, and was deliberately trying not to catch his eye.
She’s wondering what I’m going to do
, he thought. And then he realized just what it was that he might need to do.

‘Mr Murray, I’ll be frank with you. The only reason I accepted this job was because I had to pay a fine to get my Goblin back. But whatever you’re involved in, I really don’t think I want a part in it. I don’t think you’re telling us enough,’ said Kim. ‘I’ve fulfilled half of the bargain. We came this far.’

She thinks I’m responsible for this in some way, thought Elias, seeing the look in her eyes. ‘The return journey is free,’ she continued. ‘I’ll reimburse the remainder of your money outside of the fine once we’re back under Station jurisdiction. I think that’s fair under the circumstances.’

She’s worried she’s in way over her head, Elias realized. An idea was forming in his mind. ‘Before we come to any conclusions, I want to trace the trajectory of that shuttle we just observed.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The shuttle. The one leaving the
Jager
. Every ship – even one as small as this – keeps a log of the trajectory and estimated departure and arrival points of every other ship its sensors pick up on.’ Kim blinked, looking upset. She hadn’t known that fact, he realized. How much training had she received before she’d been allowed to use the Goblin? How much training had any of the other miners wandering around this system?

‘Here.’ He leaned forward, tapped a code into the console. New images sprang up on the overhead screens, web-like lines of trajectory spinning out from the
Jager
’s former location. One line spun right back to the Station, the cargo ship’s own point of origin. Another line described the approach of their Goblin to the
Jager
. Yet another line described a gentle arc, moving away from the
Jager
– the shuttle Elias had noticed.

But it did not lead back to the Station, or even to the singularity. Instead it arced out in an entirely different direction altogether, towards some point deep in the Kaspian system. Elias heard Vincent swear softly behind him.

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Kim, sounding flustered. ‘The system is full of freelancers working the two main rock belts.’

‘That’s not where they’re headed,’ Elias said carefully. ‘Shuttles are only intended for very short trips. If they were only intent on escaping, they’d have headed for a transport. Nobody willingly takes short-range shuttles on long-term trips.’

‘If that shuttle can only travel so far, then it must have headed for somewhere nearby.’

Elias was thinking hard. ‘Maybe – unless it was unmanned. It could go a lot further without a crew or passengers on regular life-support. Just point it in the right direction, and off you go.’

Elias could see the other two were staring at him like he was crazy. ‘Remember what I told you, my friend was iced, in a sleepbox. Listen, I’m going to make you an offer. I’ll pay you twice as much again to take me deeper into the system. Along the same trajectory as that shuttle took.’

By way of reply, Kim slid back into her seat and tapped at the console. The Goblin had continued on the course intended to bring it to the
Jager
. Elias could see she was changing the course of the Goblin. But not to follow where the shuttle had gone. Back towards the Station.

‘You said you intended to go deep into the system once this job was concluded,’ reminded Elias.

‘On my own,’ she said. ‘Not with anybody else.
On my own
. I prefer it that way, Mr Murray. I’ll drop you off with one of the military escorts, and they’ll see you’re taken care of.’

Elias pulled out his credit chip and placed it on the console in front of Kim. It skidded slightly across the console’s smooth surface, its motion seeming liquid and slow in the zero gravity. Numbers blinked up at Kim as she looked down at the chip.

‘That’s not an option, not under any circumstances.’ His voice was calm but he could feel himself tensing.

Her voice trembled. ‘And what if
we
don’t want to follow your shuttle?’

‘That’s not an option either.’

He sensed Vincent’s hand reaching for his left shoulder, almost before he felt it. He turned, grasped Vincent’s arm just above the elbow with his right hand, pulling the man to one side. At the same time Elias turned in a motion almost balletic in the zero gravity. Elias snapped his left elbow up, impacting hard with Vincent’s nose. Vincent made a muffled sound, and crashed into the back of the co-pilot’s seat. Small globules of his blood span through the air of the cockpit.

Kim lunged at him, reaching for his face with her hands. Elias grabbed both her wrists before she could get to him, and pushed her down against her chair. She grunted, sliding back against the console as she tried to wrestle out of his grip.

‘I’m sorry about this.’ He meant it. ‘I have to find that shuttle. You don’t understand how much is at stake here.’

‘Bastard,’ she spat, ‘this is my ship. Get your own ship.’ She twisted, kicked at him.

‘I don’t have one,’ he said, evading her blows with ease. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m doing the right thing.’
I am
, he thought. Nonetheless, he could taste sour bile at the back of his throat.

Elias now sat at the controls of the Goblin, studying the data-streams coming in from a variety of sources: from the local Grid, updated constantly by packet bursts fired through the singularity; from the Station itself, where pressure-suited investigators were studying the wreck of the human-built sections of the Station; from the military escorts, but relatively uninformative and mainly brief statements updating what everybody already knew.

He did not feel good about taking Kim’s ship from her, but neither could he see any alternative. He especially did not want to come to the attention of the military. Yet he had remained in the designated co-pilot’s seat, out of a sense of deference to the Goblin’s owner.

Kim had taken the injured Vincent through to her cabin. They hadn’t appeared since, and Elias assumed they were discussing what to do next.

Meanwhile he busied himself at the ship’s onboard computer. A chill rushed through him as the ship estimated the long-range end of the shuttle’s trajectory; straight towards Kasper. The craft had an hour’s head start. Reorienting the Goblin, he aimed it deep into the heart of the Kaspian system. Around him, screens filled with computational analysis translated into diagrams, and the estimated fuel consumption of the Goblin’s Angel drive. Finally, Elias settled back in his chair. From here on in, the Goblin could fly itself. It was only when he arrived there that he would have to worry about his options.

Kim

‘Just keep the gauze in place till it stops bleeding,’ advised Kim.

Vincent mumbled something about that
bastard
. ‘Do you think he’s seriously dangerous?’ she asked.

Vincent stared at her until her face began to colour. ‘He wants something very badly, that’s what I think,’ replied Vincent. ‘I can’t judge his veracity, but the first thing I noticed was how edgy he was.’

‘I know what you mean.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But I needed the money.’

‘Your friend Bill passed him to you, as I recall. Can you still trust Bill’s judgement?’

Kim sat back and stared out into space. ‘I don’t know. I don’t really think Bill is such a great judge of character, and he certainly deals with some lowlifes, but I don’t think he’d have sent Murray to us if he thought there was any chance something like this might happen.’

‘The next question,’ said Vincent, ‘is what do we do about him?’

Kim looked him in the eyes. ‘Unless you’ve got any great ideas, I don’t think there’s very much we can do.’ She saw him start to protest. ‘Listen, let’s just ride this out – and see what happens when he finds that shuttle.’

‘And if he kills everyone on board it? And decides he doesn’t need any witnesses?’

‘Think, Vince, what happens when he catches up with the shuttle? He’s going to have to leave the ship then. At least this way, we can wait safely for an opportunity. We’re two to one; and that might count for something.’
Or it might just leave us both dead
, she added silently.

But it would take days still before the Goblin caught up with the shuttle, wherever the damn thing was headed. Which meant they were headed far from the environs of the Angel Station, deep into the Kaspian system.

‘Kim,’ Vincent spoke from somewhere behind her, ‘can you take a look at this, please?’

She turned around. He wasn’t looking at her, but staring at something else, out of sight. It had been two days now since Elias had taken control of the Goblin, and the weight of acceleration had grown rapidly during that time. Kim had enough experience to tell that Elias had set the Angel drive to maximum burn. That would carry them for a considerable distance across the Kaspian system in a relatively short time.

At one point she had found him sleeping, still sitting absurdly in the co-pilot’s seat. A tiny gun was held loosely in the hand resting on his thigh. She had emerged from the crawlspace as quietly as she could, intending to warn him that, at the kind of velocity they were moving at, the Angel drive would burn out all its fuel within hours. That would make the return journey a long and hard one, moving at a bare crawl.

She had studied him for a long moment, then one eye had slid open as he watched her, for just a few moments, then closed again. Unnerved, she had retreated back through the crawlspace, without saying anything to him.

Vincent and she had agreed to take turns at sleeping, since neither liked the idea of both being fast asleep while Elias was at the controls. The confined space they shared stirred old memories, but memories that carried pain with them, at least for Kim.

Now Kim was barely awake. The stress of the past several days had been building up on her.

She lifted herself from her bunk and looked round for Vincent. He was squatting with his back to her by the other crawlspace, to the rear of the cabin, that led back past the side of the engine core to a cargo bay little larger than the cockpit. She floated over until she was beside him as he peered along the crawlspace.