Angel Stations (5 page)

Now she was coming back in after a particularly fruitless haul and knew they’d be reviewing her contract. That knowledge just made her usual state of mind all the worse.

When she’d seen the inside of a Goblin for the first time, she’d thought she could maybe make sufficient cash by going out in it for a few days at a time, as the idea of living in it for weeks or months seemed hardly appealing. But she knew people did so – had been doing so, one way or another, for decades. Yet, after the first month or so on her own, travelling through the Kaspian system as captain and sole passenger on board her refitted Goblin, she had discovered the will to keep living.

To some degree, she had Bill to thank. In a sense, Bill had given her something she could have found without ever leaving the Angel Station, if only she had known. It was one of life’s ironies that she’d had to spend a while going quietly crazy in a flying hermit’s cave before she could discover that.

Kim had, so to speak, fallen asleep at the wheel – if only the Goblin had a wheel to guide it. She had passed out, entering one of those frequent waking dreams she’d long been suffering, a kind of relapse into the memories that the Books brought to her.

The Angel Station showed itself on two subsidiary screens as well as on the main viewscreen. One of these screens – nestled in a nook just above her left knee, glowing brightly from its niche between the co-pilot’s seat and hers – revealed the Station as a computer-generated torus with an empty centre. The other, smaller screen, situated at head height, displayed a star map. One of the thousands of dots represented there glowed a different colour than the rest. That was the Kasper Angel Station she was about to dock with. Another brightly glowing dot represented Earth and the home system, several thousand light years away. An arrow pointed in the opposite direction, towards the Galactic Centre – which might well have been the next stop from this system, if anyone had ever found an Angel Station that led that far in.

She glanced up. Only a few seconds having passed, she still felt groggy and confused. She’d already had an inkling this was going to be a really, really bad day.

First, Bill had stopped answering her calls. Kim had tried contacting him previously during her long weeks of approach, but nothing. She had checked in with some other people in the human-habitable portion of the Station, and they’d confirmed having seen him around. So she knew Bill hadn’t checked out and caught a shuttle back through the Station’s singularity to some other system – which begged the question, why was he ignoring her?

And the whole time, her air and rations were running lower and lower, and now if she got back and Bill wasn’t there . . . she wasn’t sure what she would do.

And then she noticed a red light was blinking at her. She’d never seen it blink red before, but then she’d never functionally passed out on an approach vector before, either. Kim reached out with an unsteady hand and hit a button. A stream of dialogue had been trickling along so quietly as to be almost subliminal. Hitting the button knocked the volume up and, with a cold rush of fear and horror, she wondered just how long she had been floating along effectively dead in space, with only the autopilot to keep her alive.

‘. . . Damn it, Goblin 4PX, do you read? I . . .’ The voice grew briefly fainter as another voice interjected. Kim couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but she recognized the tone: angry, worried, someone in charge. ‘No, I’m not in the habit of blowing anyone out of the sky. She’s on auto, okay? We’ll just bring her in. No, there’s no danger, I—’

‘This is Goblin 4PX,’ Kim said rapidly, the blood draining out of her face. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl! ‘I’m sorry, my comms system has been having problems. I don’t know what happened.’ She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. ‘I, uh – sorry about that.’

‘We hear you, but you know the rules. I’m afraid we may have to insist your ship undergoes a thorough overhaul before you can go out again.’ The voice was reproving, but not too harsh. Kim had met the man behind the voice, once, not long after she’d arrived there. A gentle bear of a man who confessed to her one drunken night that he’d had enough of civilization and living in crowded hives, while alien diseases killed off entire continents. He’d put on his official voice this time presumably for the benefit of whoever was standing next to him. One of the military guys, almost inevitably.

They called it the debriefing room, but it looked a lot like a cell.

‘Thing is, Miss Amoto, there are rules and procedures here.’ The Sergeant held out a clipboard in front of him. Every now and then, as he spoke, he’d let it drop down to his side and tap it against his thigh, so Kim could see a couple of shiny plastic sheets with a really bad photo of her attached. ‘You
must
be aware of this.’

‘I am, Sergeant.’

‘Hm.’ He nodded and looked over at Pierce, her lawyer – everybody’s lawyer here on the Kasper Angel Station. He was also Earth’s ambassador to Kasper, except of course the Kaspians didn’t know that fact. He was further, by virtue of a strange public relations sleight of hand, the Station’s Mayor. Apparently it had been decided that in order to foster a real sense of community amongst the Station’s non-military personnel, they should have their own Mayor. It was, by Pierce’s own admission, one of the stupidest ideas around. She knew he was also a pretty mean cook when it came to Mexican food, which came in handy because he really didn’t get much else to do out here. Kim had been to a couple of his barbecues.

‘Well, at the risk of telling you something you already know, this Station – this entire system, as a matter of fact – is under military jurisdiction until any possible further threat is checked or identified. Now, the man in the docking control room at the time you were coming in would have had every right to fire upon you after you failed to identify yourself.’

‘My ship was on autopilot, Sergeant. I’ve had a look at the ship myself, and there were some problems with the atmosphere control. My oxygen levels were too low, so I passed out. It happens, especially when you’re out solo for long periods of time.’

‘But you then carried out those repairs before an official inspection team could take a look at your craft.’

‘Yes, because they were necessary.’

The Sergeant pursed his lips until he almost looked like he was pouting. Kim had a feeling
he
didn’t have much to do with his days either. ‘Miss Amoto, there are specific clauses in your contract to do with our rules and procedures. There are ways of dealing with situations such as this, and you didn’t follow them.’

Pierce looked away from the blank wall he’d been gazing at for several minutes. ‘The contract is thirty pages in length, Sergeant, and in very small type. People don’t have time to read thirty pages of small type when they’re dealing with potentially life-threatening situations.’

Kim willed her cheeks not to burn; she had never considered herself a good liar. Before she had finally docked, she had deliberately damaged a small valve to the rear of the craft, and then fixed it with the repair kit. She had come up with a story and started telling it to Pierce as soon as she’d found him. Pierce had just looked at her with a weary expression; he wasn’t going to buy it.

‘Whatever you say, Kim,’ he’d sighed. ‘Just make sure you get your story straight before we go in, all right?’

The Sergeant glanced at Pierce. ‘She was right next to the Station then. How long would it have taken before we could pick her up from one of the navy ships?’

‘I don’t know, Sergeant. How long does it take someone to suffocate in a ship without a functioning oxygen supply?’ Pierce asked dryly. He leaned back in his seat. ‘There’s really no need for this, Sergeant. The only reason we have these procedures in the first place is because of what happened – whatever happened – to the original occupants of this Station. But you well know there’s no immediate threat to anybody here, and hasn’t been for a very long time. If there
was
ever anything here, the danger is gone. One lone prospector falling asleep doesn’t constitute a crisis.’

‘Mr Pierce, I follow the set procedures laid down by my superiors, otherwise I have to answer to them.’

‘Yeah, and this is a farce,’ said Pierce. ‘You don’t have the legislative power to make any decisions here. I move we adjourn this meeting until the Station Commander can actually be present.’

The Sergeant stared at Pierce like he wanted to rip his head off. Then he looked at Kim. ‘Miss Amoto, I’m not convinced you’re fit to pilot anything right now.’ Kim’s head was pounding, like needles were being worked into the backs of her eyeballs. ‘I’m impounding your ship pending the payment of a fine for endangering the lives of the people on board this Station.’ The Sergeant stared at her for a moment, then spun on his heel and left, an awkward expression on his face.

‘Here, knock these back, do you a world of good.’ Kim took the pills and swallowed them dry. Pierce tried to give her a glass of water but she waved it away.

‘Really, I’m fine. You shouldn’t concern yourself.’

‘I thought you were going to pass out all over again back there. You should have seen the look on that Sergeant’s face. He thinks everybody here is crazy, you know.’

‘We
are
all crazy. Why the hell else would anybody be out here?’

‘What?’ he said, his cheeks dimpling. ‘And turn down the chance to investigate the only extant civilization apart from humanity in the known universe?’ Kim rolled her eyes at him.

Pierce had been good enough to get this accommodation sorted out for her while the Goblin was moved to another dock, where it would be impounded until she could either appeal the fine or pay up. The room was a tiny cube whose facing walls were maybe only a couple of metres apart, but for all that it felt like luxurious roominess after the time she’d spent in the Goblin. She sat on the edge of the room’s tiny fold-down bunk, rubbing at her temples with the tips of her fingers. The Station’s Mayor sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

‘Listen, Pierce – I need to do some things. I need to get some things sorted out.’

‘Sure, I know. Try not to worry too much just yet about the review of your licence. To put it bluntly, a lot of these people aren’t too worried if any prospectors get themselves killed out in the middle of nowhere. Apart from the fact you screwed up in front of their noses, the only reason they’re kicking up a fuss is that nothing ever really happens out here – aside from the usual observations of life down on Kasper.’

Kasper, thought Kim: the planet and the system had been named by a Polish member of the first exploratory team to come through this particular Angel Station. He’d named it after one of the Three Wise Men, and the name apparently meant treasurer. She supposed he’d meant to suggest this planet was full of valuable things. It was the kind of hint that made you wonder if he’d come up with the name before or after they got around to investigating the Citadel.

‘Yeah, well, that asshole Sergeant seemed to think something was waiting to pounce,’ Kim said, glancing down at Pierce. Her headache seemed to be abating. ‘But listen, if they tell me I can’t do prospecting here any more, I’ll just – I don’t know – go somewhere else, you know? It’s a big universe.’ Bill? Bill would be around somewhere; the Station wasn’t that big. Once she found him, she could . . . get things sorted.

‘Kim. Cards on the table, you have Observer bio-ware, don’t you?’

She looked at him warily. ‘Sure, yeah,’ she said after a moment. ‘Yes, I do. You already know that. What about it?’

Pierce shook his head. ‘Take it easy. I’m not asking in any official capacity. The bioware – official or off-record?’

Kim surprised herself with her honesty, or perhaps she had been too long out amongst the asteroids of the Kaspian System with no one to talk to. ‘Off-record,’ she said.

‘No problems?’

She squinted at him. ‘No, no problems. Why?’

‘I know a little about how you came to the Kasper Angel Station – and I know Bill. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but your behaviour can sometimes be a little—’

‘It’s not like that,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘It works fine. It’s a fairly straightforward surgical procedure. The thing does most of the work itself once it’s inside your skull. After that, no problems.’

Kim could see the faintest hint of a grimace playing on his lips. Some people didn’t like to think of that, something alien and slimy living in their skull next to their brain, reaching into their flesh and entangling itself inextricably with their neurons, ultimately conjoining with their mind. ‘I had it done by someone reputable but, yes, off the record.’

‘Do you remember why you had it done?’

‘
Why?
’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘It . . . I had my reasons.’ She looked at him angrily. ‘I don’t like you prying, Pierce. There’s nothing I want to say to you about it. What happened out there was an accident, and nothing to do with it.’

‘Okay, okay,’ he said, raising his hands in placation. ‘I’ll keep you posted about what happens with the Goblin, all right? And maybe we can get some kind of an appeal sorted out.’

‘All right,’ she agreed.

Elias

When he got back to London, Elias dumped the taxi in a back street, sliding a knife under the cheap aluminium panel which hid the vehicle’s brain, thus damaging it beyond repair; if he could make it look like the vehicle had been vandalized, there was maybe a little less chance that anyone would analyse the onboard computer’s log and trace his journey from the Arcologies to this part of London.

He couldn’t have imagined the pain might get worse, but it had. He pressed the heel of his hand into his face, then forced himself to walk away, looking for the first subsurface entrance he could find. The city extended as far below the ground as it did above, and he needed to get himself out of sight. It was a part of town he knew, but he couldn’t go back to his cramped quarters in the Camden Maze; too dangerous until he figured out what was happening.

Which meant the only way to go was downwards.