| |
It took two more hours to put together everything Corina had asked for. There were ten of Newton’s men, Newton himself, and me. That was all she had requested. Then Ward and Tara decided they were coming too, despite Megan trying to argue them out of it. When Ward nodded to me, I put on the halo and waited for Corina.
‘We’re ready,’ I said, trying to keep things as simple as I could for her.
‘Place me against the hull and hold me there, as close to the edge as you can. I will iris an opening, if I can. Everybody must get inside as quickly as possible. The iris will only stay open for a hundred seconds.’
I passed the word back and slipped Corina out of her sheath, then everybody lined up behind me as I eased up to the hull. I ran my fingers across the surface, trying to understand why it felt wrong. How could something so not a part of this world feel so much like ordinary plastic? I shook my head once, shifted my balance, and held Corina against the wall.
Nothing happened, and enough time passed that I was wondering if I should have told her she was in place, then the wall rippled like water after a pebble had been tossed into it. The wave rolled out until it was about a yard across, then vanished. Another ripple flowed across the hull, and as it passed the material beneath it looked thinner, and less real. Three waves later the wall faded away and a gust of air swept down our tunnel. Behind me, people made gagging noises and complained about the stench, though I had no idea why. The air smelt more humid than ours, and there was a hint of plant life, but it was not unpleasant.
I didn’t wait for instructions. With our hundred seconds already counting down, I lifted Corina from the hull and hurried through the hole. Beyond was a wilderness of beams and struts, lit by a faint, sourceless glow that dropped away as far as I could see below and climbed out of sight above. I didn’t bother to call out and warn the others, I just got out of the way. The beams were so tightly interwoven that only the unluckiest person could fall more than ten feet.
I counted seven people through the hole when I heard the first groan from outside. Not a person, but stone grinding on stone. Newton shouted for the stragglers to hurry and three more made it through the hole before there was an ear-numbing crash from outside. A small avalanche of rubble fell into the ship, then the hole began to close. An arm still poked through, the hand limp. Newton, cursing, started to swing through the beams and back towards the hole. Ward grabbed his arm and stopped him.
‘You can’t help her, man. You can’t help any of them.’
Newton glared at him, tendons in his neck flexing as his anger and need to act flooded his face. Behind us, a wet hiss was followed by a snick, then the sound of a large, soft object bouncing off the beams. Newton grimaced, then visibly relaxed. Ward held him a moment longer, then took his hand away when Newton gave him a stiff, jerky nod. I looked back, and the only thing to show where the hole had been was a long smear of red. I swallowed hard and turned away.
‘We’re in,’ I told Corina. ‘Most of us.’
‘You need to move quickly. Climb the beams until you reach a platform. From there, follow the trace in front of your eyes. They will be aware of the hull breach, but not why. There are no detailed sensors in this area. Once you reach the point marked with a star, the majority of your team must break off and make as much disturbance as possible. This will help hide you and me, as we follow a different path to the communications node.’
And she was gone before I could answer. I passed the word on to Ward and Newton. Newton’s smile became feral.
‘You hit property, Newton,” said Ward. “Maybe push people around to get noticed. Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets killed. Clear?’
Newton nodded, but I didn’t trust him. I don’t think Ward did either.
We started climbing. I was grateful for the ambient glow. It wasn’t bright enough to make things easy, but it stopped them being impossible. The platform was fifty feet or so above us, and was six feet wide. I was last, my shoulder and rib still aching and slowing me down. When I reached the platform, Ward and Newton both held out a hand to pull me up the last few feet, and I really didn’t know which one I should take. If Newton really was trying to make up, refusing him could piss him off again. Ward, I hoped, wouldn’t care. I took Newton’s hand and he lifted me bodily onto the platform. As I landed I caught Ward’s eye, and he winked at me. Clever bugger, that one.
A green arrow floated in front of my eyes. ‘This way,’ I called, and set off at an easy trot. The platform bounced horribly as everybody followed me, making me giddy, but I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as I could. My chest burned, and I started to feel unsteady. Perhaps I hadn’t recovered as much as I thought I had, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I didn’t have a clue how quickly the Dags could be down to investigate the hole in their ship, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near it when they did.
The platform ended in a door, which slid out of our way when we approached it. I guess they didn’t expect anybody coming in from the hull would be a threat, which struck me as stupid. I soon figured it was because we were still not inside the ship proper. The walls were even rougher than the scruffy human zone I had walked through when I first visited the ship, and there were doors on the hull-side of the corridor every hundred feet.
We passed two doors before the arrow pointed at one on the opposite side of the corridor. I stopped, listening to the heavy breathing of the people around me and looking for some way to release the doors other than the thumb-pad. Corina whispered in my mind. ‘Hold me against the panel.’
I did, and the doors slid back into the walls. Two of Newton’s people jumped to stop them closing again, and we all filed through. I followed the arrow at a run now.
The map changed, stopping so suddenly I ran past and had to backtrack. It had swung sideways to point at a door, so I took Corina out and held her against the pad. The door slid back and one of Newton’s team held it open. I looked inside, and found a store room. What the hell did we want with a store room?
‘I think the map has made a wrong turn. We should carry on and see if it picks out a new route.’
The man holding the door had started to let it go when Newton held up a hand. ‘Metal bitch ain’t called it wrong so far. Why would she send you in here unless there was something we needed?’
‘It’s a good point, Jax,’ said Ward. ‘Why don’t you at least go in and have a look around?’
I shrugged, but did as he asked. I still hadn’t told him about what was going on in Corina’s mind, so maybe he didn’t have any doubts like I did. I wandered around for five minutes, or less, then drew breath to call out I’d found nothing —at exactly the same instant that a flashing arrow in my vision pointed me to a specific shelf I couldn’t remember if I had checked or not. I wandered over, and drowned in shame that I had ever doubted her. The shelf was full of breathing tubes. I’d forgotten all about them. I grabbed as many as I could carry and took them back to the door. Half way there I realised I had walked past a rack full of Aide uniforms and felt ten times worse.
‘We need these,’ I said. ‘You can’t breathe the air for long. It’s different to ours.’ I showed them how to put them on, then pointed to the rack of clothes. ‘That’s what they wear. Put them on too.’ I threw the tubes I didn’t need back into the room and wondered how long the uniforms would work. Most of these people were close to double the age of most Aides.
I ran while we could. We would soon start meeting people, if you wanted to call Dags people, and I didn’t know how far it was to the place where Newton was supposed to start his distraction. I wanted to make damn sure we got there before the Dag proctor’s did.
First we encountered Aides, but as soon as I saw the first Dag I slowed to a walk. As the corridors grew more crowded, Newton and two of his people stepped in front of me, elbowing people out of the way as we passed, making sure nobody could grab me but leaving behind us a growing disturbance. At first, I felt panic growing in my chest, but then realised this could work for us. If we were reported, they would be looking for a large group of people, not me.
We broke out into a box intersection with four corridors emptying into it, and a star flashed over one of the other exits. My guides had always been arrows, so I assumed this was where Newton turned aside.
‘Newton,’ I called, and made sure I had his attention before I pointed and yelled. ‘That one!’
Newton nodded and let out a piercing whistle. In seconds, he and his team were moving away from us, pushing people over and banging their clubs and proctor wands on anything and everything.
The green line led me in the opposite direction, and when I turned to follow it I realised Ward and Tara were still with me. Ward raised his hand as I drew breath to speak and beat me to it.
‘You can’t go solo, Jax, no matter what Corina thinks. You might still need someone to run interference for you, or to help you with a tech issue. We can do that, and we’re still a small enough group to stay under the radar. Which way?’
I nodded and set off, peripherally aware of the others falling in behind. It was good to have friends with me. Once, I would have trusted everything to Corina, but now I couldn’t, even if she had remembered the breathers. She was hurting, and couldn’t do everything for me. I hoped I wasn’t going to need their help, but it made a mountain of sense to have Ward and Tara there if I did.
I followed the green line through smaller corridors, then up a short ladder into a crawl-way. It might have been a ventilation duct, but there was no feeling of air blowing along it and no grilles. White tubes ran through the shaft, occasionally dropping a ‘branch’ downwards. Tara was able to duck-walk, but Ward and I were on our hands and knees and the floor of the crawl way was hard and rough. It was barely worth the advantage of not meeting anybody.
‘How far, Jax?’ Ward muttered. ‘This is killing me.’ I got the feeling he was beginning to wish he had gone with the others.
‘Sorry, not sure. The images guiding me don’t give me much idea of distance, or warning before turns.’
‘Well if we don’t get there soon we’re going to waste any advantage Newton bought us.’’
I crawled faster, wishing I could chat with Corina but not daring to. Minutes later the green arrow pointed downward; an exit at last. It was just a grille in the bottom of the duct, with a hinge on one side but no handle. It was only meant to be opened from below, not within, but a few minutes of fiddling showed me how I could beat the catch. I closed my fingers on a pair of levers and squeezed.
The sound of many feet pounding along the corridor drifted up through the grille just as I was about to let it fall open. As second later a squad of human proctors ran under the grille and stopped just past it. My fingers ached on the latch. I was fairly sure it was me, and not the mechanism, that was holding the hatch closed, and that if I let go, it would fall open.
“Jones, Carter, check the doors in this corridor, then double time to section four. The rest of you come with me.’
Many feet moved off. ‘Nice,’ said a whiny voice. ‘They get the fun and we get to rattle doors.’
‘Then stop complaining and get on with it. Maybe we can still catch up.’
A lock buzzed and a door rattled in its frame. ‘Let’s not and say we did?’
‘You want to piss off the Dags, go ahead. I’ll check my half of the doors.’
There was more buzzing of locks and pounding on doors, gradually getting quieter as they moved away. The arrow in my vision flashed faster. We were falling behind, yet I still couldn’t let go of the latch, couldn’t convince myself they were far enough away.
‘Time to go, son,’ said Ward, and Tara’s hand patted my calf. I let go of the latch, and the cover fell open with a screech. I froze.
‘Move,” said Ward. ‘Out, now.”
I looked down at the floor beneath and winced. This was going to hurt if I didn’t land just right. Hell, it was probably going to hurt anyway. I sat on the edge of the hole and dropped. The landing knocked the breath from my lungs, and sent sharp spikes of pain through my foot and my rib. I moved out of the way. All three of us stretched and groaned softly under our breath as we scanned up and down the corridor for people, or Dags.
‘Let’s go,’ Ward said softly, and I led them off again, favouring my left foot. This time, it was only a few seconds before we stopped at a door, but I was still grateful. I pulled Corina out of my bag and touched her against the plate. The door hissed open two inches, then slammed shut again.
‘Shit,’ said Tara. ‘They must be on to us.’
‘More than one way to crack a nut,’ Ward rumbled and pushed me aside. ‘Try again.’
The door cracked open, and Ward jammed his hands into the gap before it could close. ‘A little help here?’ he grunted. The door had not crushed his fingers into the jamb, but he couldn’t get it to move any farther. I got my fingers in above and below his, and Tara sat on the floor beneath us and jammed the toes of her boot into the crack. ‘After three,’ said Ward, and counted us down.
I wanted to help, but as soon as I tried to pull my ribs told me they were still too badly damaged. I had to look on, frustrated, as the other two fought with the door. It reluctantly slid farther open. Tara changed her position, got a better angle to shove with her foot, and we managed to get it wide enough for all three of us to slip through. Ward pushed me through first then, with Tara stopping it from closing, he scooted through himself. Once Tara was inside, we let go and the door slammed shut.
In some ways, the room reminded me of where I met Corina’s father. There were lots of flickering lights on the walls and slanted tables, and a false window with what I now knew was Dagashi script running across it. The main difference was that at her home there had been the one clip for Corina to sit in, here there were six, each with its own clear tube with golden ends.
‘Wish there was a way we could stop that from opening,’ Ward said, nodding at the door.
Tara grinned and unclipped two pouches from her belt. When she opened them they were full of shining tools. ‘Let me see what I can do.’
Ward chuckled and turned to me. ‘So what do we do next?’
What I had to do next was speak to Corina, but I was scared. If I got hit by all those horrible thoughts again, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle it, and if I went down, the whole mission was for nothing. I was still holding her in my hand, and I held her up to my eyes. That was when I noticed the difference. Although Corina’s sparkles were dim and lethargic, the other tubes had none. Was that what made her different? Or was it that she was different made the tube behave differently? I focused. Now wasn’t the time. Bracing myself, I called her name into my mind.
‘Corina. We made it. We’re here.’
‘You made it? So soon?’
I nodded, then wondered if she felt that. ‘What do I do now?’
‘There should be a construct like me, in a clip.’
‘There are six.’
‘Six?’ I heard a note of concern in her voice. ‘I hadn’t expected so many, but we have no time to go to another room. Jax, pull one of them out, and put me in its place.’
‘What?’ Something sounded wrong about the idea, especially after the verbal flinch when she had found out how many other tubes there were.
‘It’s the only way,’ she said, and I knew she wasn’t happy about the situation either. I hesitated for a moment, doubts chewing on me, then stepped forward to the wall of clips, jerked one out, and dropped it on the floor. Gently, I clipped Corina into place. Immediately, the sparkles of light in her tube got brighter and more active.
A clank behind me made me turn my head. Tara had taken a panel off the wall and dropped it to the floor. Now she was rooting around inside. ‘Looks like fibre-optic based tech,’ she muttered. ‘There’s an actuator arm here, feels like a hydraulic system to pull the door back...’ She twisted her arm, then pulled hard. Her hand came out, holding some cable, and there was a big grin on her face. ‘No guarantee, but I think that may have bought us some time.’
‘I have access,’ Corina said, and I turned my attention back to her. ‘They know I’m here, but I’m masking my insertion point. If I can get to the communications subroutines before the AI’s find me... Damn. They’ve seen me. They’re trying to block me out.’
I looked around. Corina’s lights were brighter than I had ever seen them, but there was still nothing from the other tubes. The lights on the walls around them, though, were going crazy. Were these other tubes the AI’s? I didn’t have a clue what an AI was, but I got the feeling that they were machines, almost like her, and they were getting in the way. I reached out for the one closest to me and pulled it out of its clip. When it dropped to the ground, there was a splintering noise, and a crack ran along its length. For a second, I worried I had killed it, then realised I didn’t care. If it helped us, helped Corina, I’d do it again.
I couldn’t reach the highest two, but Ward saw what I was doing and pulled them for me. Corina’s lights were still brighter, pulsing, more for me to worry about. ‘I’ve pulled them out,’ I said. ‘I’ve pulled them all out.’
‘Thank you, Jax. Wait, I think...’
And I was on my own again. Ward’s expression was as helpless as I felt, and when I turned to Tara, she gave me a wan smile and shrugged. And that was when the hammering started on the door.
‘I’m in,’ Corina cried, her voice both surprised and overjoyed. ‘It worked, Jax. One of the ones you pulled out must have been co-ordinating part of the defence. It was just enough for me to make a hole. I’m uploading the files and the message now. I need one more minute.’
The hammering on the door grew more frantic, and Corina’s light flickered around the room and made my eyes ache.
‘Message sent,’ she yelled, jubilant, triumphant. ‘Only one more thing to do.’
And then Corina was standing in front of me. She was the most beautiful I had ever seen her, with long hair and full lips, wearing a flowing gown, and smiling. ‘I don’t have long,’’ she said. ‘I wanted to do this one more time. The mission is a success, more than a success. I do not know how the Dagashi will react. Hopefully, if you offer them no resistance, you’ll come to no harm.’ Her eyes, bright and lively, looked deep into mine. ‘Thank you, Jax.’
‘For what?’ I was getting a really bad feeling, and was starting to wonder why she wasn’t trying to get herself out of the situation.
‘For being the best friend ever. For being my first love. We had fun, huh?’
And then I got it. ‘You can’t get out, can you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I have to stay here as long as I can, to stop them undoing what I’ve done, and it will consume me.’ She held her hands out, and I raised mine, wishing hopelessly that I could feel her touch me. ‘I wanted this last moment, and I want you to—’
And her image dissolved like mist. Her physical body was a white glare, pulsing so brightly I could barely look at it. Mission or not, I had to get her out of there, but as I reached out my hand there was a loud crack and everything went dark.