Impact (3 page)

The control panel of the
Lyssa
is a chaos of flashing lights. The pilot is panicking, shaking the stick back and forth.

This is what my father must have felt.

The thought is clear in my head. My father was on a mission to return to Earth, to establish humans on the planet again. His ship, the
Akua Maru
, suffered a catastrophic explosion during re-entry. He must have felt this, too. The same shaking. The same terror. My knuckles have gone white, my fingers gripping the seat.

“Gunther,” someone shouts. “Check the couplings.”

“Couplings are fine!” Gunther says over his shoulder.

“Then cycle the software. There must be—”

The bang feels like it shatters my eardrums. The G-forces rocket up, slamming me back into the seat and holding me there as the pod spins away from the main body of the
Shinso
. My eyes feel like they're going to drill out of the back of my skull.

A moment later, there's a second bang–the
Shinso
finally tearing itself apart. The sound reaches into the
Lyssa
, ripping through it, knocking us into a crazy spin. My head snaps to the side, then the other, at the mercy of the G-forces.

The other pod got off OK. I know it did. I heard it launch. I repeat the words in my mind, one after the other.

A hand grips mine. Syria. I want to look at him, but I can barely move. Everyone in the pod is screaming, held fast to their seats.

The G-force changes direction suddenly, knocking my head back the other way. I'm still squashed against the scratchy fabric of the seat, but I'm looking towards the cockpit now. I can see right out of the glass.

There are flecks of grey vapour spinning around us. The sky behind them is a dark blue, and at its bottom edge I can just see it turning to scarlet.

In a split second, the view changes. The grey vapour blocks out the sky–we must have fallen into a cloud bank. And there's burning debris, screaming past us–huge chunks of it, trailing fire. It's impossible to tell which chunks are asteroid and which were part of the
Shinso
.

There's a
thunk
as a piece hits us. I'm almost certain that the
Lyssa
is about to tear in two, but then our spin begins to slow.

“Drogue's out!” says Gunther from the cockpit. “Looking good. Everyone hold tight.”

The parachute deploys. Our wild movement doesn't just slow–it comes to a sudden halt, snapping us upwards against our straps. I'm holding onto one at my shoulder, and two of my fingers get caught underneath it, burning as the fabric bites into them.

The noise vanishes, draining away. The view outside the window is swinging, left to right. It's not just sky now–there's something in the distance, a jagged shape, brown, capped with white.

“Gods,” says Syria. It takes me a moment to see where he's looking.

Gunther's head is lolling onto his right shoulder. His eyes are dull and glassy, and I can see his right hand, drooping off the armrest of his seat. I've seen snapped necks before–it must have happened when the main parachute deployed. Maybe his straps came loose, or he hadn't secured them tight enough.

The air rushing around us is louder now. We must be getting closer to the ground. The pod gives a sickening lurch, and the side I'm on drops, sending my stomach into my throat. I'm looking up at the people strapped in opposite me, all of them tilted forwards.

The parachute.
Whatever construction the Earthers cobbled together from the
Shinso
's supplies isn't holding. It's all too easy to imagine a hole in it, the air rushing through, our drag decreasing as we plummet towards the ground, the hole getting wider with every second. And there's nothing I can do. Nothing
any
of us can do.

Through the cockpit window I see the ground. We're close enough to pick out every rock, every crack in the terrain. It's rushing towards us, way too fast.

“Everybody hang on!” Syria says. We're skimming over the ground now–it's moving too fast, the texture of the dirt blurring as I look at it. I try to picture Carver and Prakesh, holding them uppermost in my mind.

There's a grinding, wrenching crash. The pod flips over, and then everything goes away.

They should be drifting down slowly, held up by the billowing parachute. Instead, they're moving sideways, as if the wind has caught them, tossing them like a leaf.

“Too fast, too fast, too fast,” Carver says, as if that alone will be enough to slow them down. He speaks more to himself than to anyone else, but Prakesh can still hear him over the rushing air. The man opposite him is praying audibly now, invoking Shiva's name, Vishnu's, Buddha's.

It occurs to him that they might not make it. It's all too easy to see the pod slamming into the Earth at hundreds of miles an hour, vaporising on impact, turning everyone inside to burning dust.

“Listen up!” It's the pilot, shouting back over his shoulder. “We're coming in over the water, and we're coming in hot. There's going to be one hell of a bang, so everybody—”

Prakesh doesn't hear the rest, because that's when he sees the water. Whatever they're above–a lake, a river, the
ocean
for all he knows–fills the cockpit window, glittering in the distantly setting sun. It's rushing past at an impossible speed.

Okwembu turns her head away, tensing in her straps. Prakesh does the same, holding on tight, thinking of Riley, picturing her in his mind, but all he can hear is Carver screaming, “
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu
—”

The impact lifts Prakesh out of his seat, ripping his head back. The whiplash takes him, snapping his head forward. A bright stab of pain lances through his neck.

They're airborne again, moving above the water. He can hear the rushing air above the screams from the pod's passengers. How are they still in the air? He remembers video footage he saw once, archival stuff: a stone skipping across a pond. Get the angle and the velocity right, and that stone could skip for a hundred yards.

But the pod is no stone. Prakesh has half a second to realise that they've flipped upside down, that he's hanging awkwardly in his straps, and then they hit the water again.

The impact this time sounds muted. It's a whooshing thud, vibrating up through the pod. Prakesh fights to stay conscious, to not let the pain in his neck and head overwhelm him. He opens his eyes–it feels like it takes him days, but he does it.

The pod is still moving, but much more slowly now. It comes to a rocking halt, still upside down. Prakesh can hear rushing water. He raises his eyes to where the ceiling of the pod should be, down below him, and sees why.

The water is coming in. As Prakesh watches, one of the panels shears off and a fist of water hits the man opposite him. The man chokes and splutters, his eyes wide with shock.

We have to get out of here.

The thought comes to Prakesh from a great distance. He wants to shout it to everyone, but his vocal cords have stopped working. His fingers move on their own, finding the strap release buckle on his chest.

He has the presence of mind to take a single, deep breath. Then he clicks the catch open, and drops.

The water knocks the breath from Okwembu's lungs

For one terrible moment it shuts her body down completely. She is entirely submerged, hanging upside down in her seat. Her arms and legs won't move.

The need for air overpowers everything, short-circuiting every rational part of her mind. Okwembu throws her head forward, desperate to break the surface of the water, aware that she might not be able to. Her brain sends out a desperate signal to breathe, and she opens her mouth wide.

Air.
Beautiful, wonderful, air. She can't get enough of it, and she can't keep it inside her. Her lungs can't hold onto it, shocked into uselessness by the water. But she's above the surface, and awake, and
alive
. Electrical connections short out in bursts of sparks, lighting up the pod's interior.

A moment later, the water rises over her face. In a panic, Okwembu thrusts herself upwards, but she's strapped in tight and can't keep her head above the surface. The air vanishes, ripped away.

The other passengers are just like her, upside down, the water over their chests. They're thrashing in place, fingers fumbling at the straps, desperate to get loose. Okwembu keeps her eyes open, forcing her body to cooperate. Through the dark water, she can see a huge hole in the back of the pod, edged with jagged, torn metal.
That's
her way out.

She is going to survive this. It's insanity to think otherwise. She is going to find the source of that radio transmission, make contact with whoever is sending it and continue her life. That's all that matters.

Okwembu works quickly, unstrapping herself, pushing past the panic, working the buckles on the safety straps. They come loose, but she's tangled up in them, her left arm pinned in an awkward position. She wrenches to the side, popping it free.

She doesn't know how to swim. None of them do. Nobody in this pod has ever encountered this much water in one place. She has to work it out as she goes. The water makes fine motions impossible, the cold robbing her of control. But she can still move her arms and legs, and she propels herself towards the hole. She forces her eyes to stay open, even though it feels like they're going to freeze in their sockets.

A hand claws at Okwembu. The face behind it is upside down, eyes wide with terror, like something out of a nightmare. The fingers are in her hair. For a horrifying second, she's caught, stuck fast. Then she twists away, pushing through the jagged hole.

Her next stroke gets her clear. It takes every burning atom of energy she has to keep going, but she does it, breaking the surface.

And all she can see is fire.

It takes her a confused second to work out what's happening. The surface of the water is burning, the flames licking against a darkening sky.
The fuel.
It's draining from the pod, ignited somehow, burning hard. Smoke stings her eyes. Heat bakes the water off her face, but below her neck she's almost completely numb with cold. Her clothes are heavy with water, holding her in place.

Movement, off to her right. Coughing and spluttering. A shadow, pulling itself out of the water, heaving its way up onto—

The shore. It's visible through the smoke, close enough to get to. She can make it.

Okwembu starts swimming, winding a path through the burning fuel. But her movements are slower now. Underwater she could swim, but here it's almost impossible. Every stroke feels huge, but seems as if it propels her no more than a single inch. Her vision shrinks down to a small, burning circle.

It can't end like this. She won't let it. But the circle threatens to wink out, and she tastes the water in her mouth, cold and sour.

Then she's being lifted up. Hands under her arms, pulling her bodily out the water. She slams into the ground on the shoreline, mud spattering her face, tongue touching dirt. Her limbs twitch spasmodically. She rolls over, without really meaning to. Her clothing clings to her like a second skin, and her legs are still submerged in the water.

Mikhail Yeremin stands over her, breathing hard, his shoulders trembling.

What happens next comes in flashes.

The seat straps are digging into my shoulders, biting down through my jacket. They're digging in because I'm tilted forwards, all the way, on the edge of my seat. My left thigh hurts, but it's a distant pain, and it doesn't seem important right now.

The bottom of the
Lyssa
is gone. The space where it should be is filled with rocks and dirt, jagged and uneven, the shadows falling in strange shapes. The rocks are speckled with ice, painted in a dozen drab shades of white and grey and brown. Here and there is a flash of colour: dark purple, like a plant clinging to the surface.

When I open my eyes again, there's movement. Hands. Feet. Someone falls, their body plummeting past me.

I don't see them hit the ground. My eyes are already closed. All I hear is the hard thud, and the piercing scream that follows it, trailing off as I sink into darkness.

I come back when something grips my shoulder. A hand. Syria's hand. His face is taut with concentration. He's hanging off the side of the
Lyssa
–the pod has been torn to pieces, the metal shredded and pierced. Torn wires spit showers of sparks.

“Come on, Hale,” Syria says. His voice sounds like it's coming from another dimension. “You're the last one. Don't make me wait here any longer than I have to.”

I close my eyes again.

Just before I go away, I feel Syria fumbling at my chest. His fingers are caught on something.

The buckle
, I think.
It's connected to the straps, and the straps are—

My eyes fly open just as Syria pops the catch.

I drop, tumbling head first out of the seat. Syria grabs me around the wrist, holding tight. I can see the muscles in his arm straining, the drops of sweat pouring off his brow. I swing in place, clutching at him with my free hand, holding on with everything I've got.

The
Lyssa
is tilted at a sharp angle. What I thought was the floor was actually the wall opposite my seat, and there's a fifteen-foot drop from where we are to the ground below. The dark purple things on the rocks are the shredded fragments of our parachute.

There's a body on the ground. A woman, writhing in agony, clutching her leg, her blue jacket spread out around her like angel's wings. She's half lying in a pool of water. It stains the rocks, creeping up their sides.

“Just drop me,” I say to Syria.

“What?”

I don't wait for him to get the idea. I shake loose of his arm and drop, tucking my legs.

For an instant, I get a clear view past the edge of the
Lyssa
. More rocks, some the size of the pod itself, resting in a sea of dirt. The ground is steeply sloped. A giant gash has been ripped out of it, the
Lyssa
tearing up the hillside. We must have come in at an angle, crashing across it. I catch a glimpse of grey sky, the clouds low and dark.

I hit the ground. Hard.

My muscles aren't primed for it. It's uneven, nothing like the hard, flat surfaces on Outer Earth. I land at the edge of the pool of water, try to roll, channelling my vertical energy at an angle, twisting so the impact travels across my spine, but my feet sink into the dirt. It absorbs the energy, trapping it, and the precise roll I was planning turns into a clumsy tumble.

I somersault, landing face first, a dagger of rock jabbing into my cheek. My thigh is screaming at me, as if someone stuck a hot knife in there and is slowly twisting it back and forth.

I ignore it, forcing myself to get up, shouting for Syria before I'm on my feet. He's halfway down, clambering past the bottom edge of the
Lyssa
. The pod itself is almost torn in two, resting up against a boulder. There's a smell in the air I can't place, thick and pungent.

“Come on!” I shout at Syria. My words form puffs of white as I speak, and I suddenly realise how cold it is. The dry air scythes deep into my lungs. I'm aware of my fingers straying to my thigh, aware of them brushing something hard that sends little sparks of pain shooting through me. I look down, but my vision is blurry, unfocused. I can't see anything.

Whatever it is, it isn't slowing me down. It can wait.

The woman in the blue jacket is still on the ground. She's passed out, and two more Earthers are dragging her to safety. Their faces are smeared with dirt and blood.

I run in, intending to help, then stumble to a halt.

The ground on the side where the woman lies is churned up, with dozens of depressions formed by everybody dropping down. Depressions filled with liquid that I thought was water.

It isn't water.

It's fuel.

Highly volatile, flammable fuel. So unstable that it's not even supposed to be exposed to air.

There's a steady stream of it trickling down the large boulder. That's what the horrible smell is. And, above us, shredded wires are raining sparks.

“Get out of here!” I scream at the two Earthers dragging the unconscious woman. All I can think about are her clothes, soaked in fuel. There are two more Earthers beyond them, sprinting across the slope.

Syria is hanging, getting ready to drop. A thin stream of sparks rains down around him, and for the first time I see that he's wounded, blood running from a huge gash in his shoulder.

He lands awkwardly, stumbling. I sprint towards him, pulling him away from the crashed pod, my feet catching on the uneven ground. I can't seem to focus on any one object–the world is a mass of grey and brown, the freezing air slicing into my lungs. I almost fall, sliding down the slope a few feet, and have to use my hands to steady myself.

There's no telling how long we have, or how big the explosion is going to be. I don't even know if there'll
be
an explosion, but I've seen fuel before and I don't want to be around if it goes up.

“What about the others?” Syria shouts, looking over his shoulder.

“We don't–
watch out
!”

I grab Syria's shoulder, stopping him cold. What I thought was a pile of rocks concealed a short drop, the mucky ground sloping away at a steep angle. There are more rocks piled at the bottom of the slope, some as large as I am.

I hoist myself over, dropping down, telling myself to be careful. There's a crack behind us, a big one, like the boulder holding up the
Lyssa
is giving way.

Whoomp.

For a split second the world is completely silent. There's no air in my lungs–it's been sucked away, pulled towards the
Lyssa
.

There's no bang. No explosion. Just a sound that goes from a murmur to a
roar
in less than a second.

Syria screams. I'm looking up at him, and in that instant there's a halo of white fire around his body. His jacket is burning. With a kind of horrified fascination, I see his hair start to smoulder.

Then the shock wave knocks him off the ledge. He collides with me and sends both of us tumbling down the slope.

Sky and dirt whirl around me. I roll end over end, screaming, fingers scrabbling at the ground, legs kicking out as I try to stabilise myself, my thigh sending up frantic signals of pain.

The tips of the fingers on my right hand snag something–a plant, growing out between the rocks. I don't get a chance to make out the details–it snaps almost immediately, but it's enough to slow me down a fraction. I'm on my back, my legs facing downhill. I spread them wide, my heels bouncing off the uneven ground. It's crusted with ice, rock-hard, and I can't break through.

Syria is just below me, still tumbling. For an instant, I see his back, a terrifying mess of red and black. Parts of his jacket are still smoking. Before I can do anything, he smashes into the rocks below, howling in pain.

I'm coming in way too fast. I lift my legs, using every muscle I have to get them off the slope. It looks like I'm doing a complicated stretch. I slam them back down, and this time my heels catch, smashing through the crust just enough to slow my descent.

I come to a stop, bumping up against Syria. Even that light tap is enough to jerk a horrified moan from him. He's on his back, his face twisted in agony, breathing far too hard.

The fire has turned the top of the slope into hell. I don't know how hot rocket fuel burns, but the rocks are blistered and blackened.

I get to my feet. I'm unsteady, off balance, but I pull Syria to his feet with a strength I didn't know I had. He screams again, tries to push me away, but he's too weak.

I don't know if we can outrun the fire, but we have to try.

I wrap an arm around him. As I try to get a grip under his armpit, my hand brushes his shoulder. It's baking hot, and the surface feels wrong: crumbly and soft, all at once.

No time to check. Moving as fast as I can, I pull Syria across the slope, away from the burning pod.