CORDELIA PA
Sheesh, but it was cold. Despite the heaters in my coat, I started shivering as soon as I stepped off the Gigolo Aunt’s cargo ramp and my boot crunched into the dirty snow. The frigid air pressed intimately against the newly shaven side of my head. The earring felt like a hoop of ice.
Fucking weather.
I’d grown up on City Plate Two, shielded from the worst nature could throw our way. Why the hell had the Plate builders seen fit to include an icy wasteland in their cluster of flat, artificial worlds? I mean, why would including such a harsh environment ever seem like a good idea?
I trudged on. Spider sauntered along behind me, seemingly oblivious to the temperature. He wore tinted goggles and cradled a massive Hooper gun in his arms. Our breath came in clouds.
“Are you sure you’re going to need that?”
“I hope not, girlie.” He glanced down at the weapon’s four thick barrels. “But I’ve seen some freaky shit after quakes, and I’d rather have the gun and not need it than need it and not have it. You get me?”
We walked onwards. The orange buildings were bright against the monochrome landscape. Here, as far from the edge of the Plate as it was possible to be, we were like flies walking over the surface of a frozen pond. Only a few metres of rock and soil—and a paper-thin layer of alien base material—separated our feet from the emptiness beneath.
Overhead, the other Plates were where they should be. The sun still shone clean and bright, and the gas giant remained a crescent in the sky, about as large as a basketball held at arm’s length. And behind it all, the rippling rainbow colours of the Intrusion covered half the sky like a rip in an old coat. My heart beat hard in my chest. I was twenty years old. For my whole childhood, I’d dreamed of strange skies and exotic locales—and now here they were. Nothing could be weirder than the Intrusion. The Plate I’d grown up on had been at the other end of the swarm and had never been caught in a reality quake. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but feel excited.
“Are we going in through the main hatch?” Spider asked.
“Yes.” I glanced back. “Is that a problem?”
“Makes no difference to me.” He turned his head and hawked phlegm into the foot-churned snow. “You’re in charge. I’m just here in case something needs its ass blown off.”
We reached the hatch and I punched in the access code. Internal bolts drew back with deep clunks, and the hatch rose.
Spider pushed up his goggles and regarded the red-tinged gloom of the revealed corridor with disgust. “Emergency lighting. Their power must be out.”
“Maybe that’s why they haven’t signalled us?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Holding the Hooper gun at the ready, he stepped inside. I followed. I had been inside the base yesterday, while we were unloading the food and equipment supplies that had been the official reason for our visit. Then, it had been a bright, welcoming place—a warren of cosy nooks, fragrant houseplants, and well-lit corridors. Now, in the dull red glow of the overhead lights, it resembled the inside of an animal recently dead.
I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Burnt insulation. Something’s shorted out.”
“They really got hit hard.”
“Looks that way. Certainly harder than we did.”
“Where are all the people?”
“I don’t know.” Spider hunched his shoulders and took a firmer grip on the Hooper gun. “And I don’t like not knowing.”
We came to an intersection. One way led to the observatory, the other to the crew quarters and general habitation area.
“Should we split up?”
Spider shook his head. “Have you never seen a horror sim? The first rule of dealing with creepy shit is: you never split up.”
“Which way, then?”
“Crew quarters?”
“Okay, after you.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the one holding the big-ass gun.”
* * *
I had been given the tour earlier, so I already knew the observatory’s main living space consisted of a hexagonal common area furnished with sofas and tables. In the wall opposite the entrance, a door led through to the galley; another to the left led to a communal bathroom; and a third opened onto a corridor lined with curtained-off bunks. It was cramped, but the astronomers and physicists who called the place home had done what they could to make it comfortable. They had tacked photos and holograms onto the walls. Plants trailed from shelves. An expensive coffee-maker stood on the kitchen counter.
“Nobody here.” Spider lowered the barrels of the Hooper gun.
From where we stood, we could see into the kitchen. It was empty. “Let’s check the bathroom,” I said.
“Why? You think they’re all taking a shit?”
“They’ve got to be somewhere.” If I could only find Moriarty, I could let him take over. He’d know what to do. “First, we check the bathroom, and then we check their bunks. And if we still can’t find them, we’ll go back and check the observatory.” For all I knew, the whole crew could be busy trying to get the telescopes back online in order to observe the Intrusion in the aftermath of the reality quake.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I let Spider go first.
“Hey,” he said. “There’s somebody in here.”
The figure of a woman lay sprawled on the tiles in the communal shower. She was wearing an old-style spacesuit, with a bulky outer layer and heavy boots. The helmet lay upturned on the floor beside her.
“Is she alive?”
“How the hell would I know? I’m holding the gun. You go check her pulse or something.”
Cautiously, I knelt on the white tiles and brushed aside the long silver hair covering the woman’s face. It felt like brushing aside cobwebs.
“She’s breathing.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” Wrinkles marked the corners of her eyes and mouth. Where they emerged from the sleeves of the suit, the skin on the backs of her hands looked mottled and loose. I guessed she was in her sixties, although it was hard to tell in this light. “I don’t recognise her.”
“Are you sure?” Spider frowned. We had been introduced to all the base personnel upon arrival. Stuck out here for months at a time, they had welcomed us as honoured guests.
“Do you remember anyone with silver hair?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember there being anyone over fifty, either.”
“Go and check the rest of the place,” I told him. “Find the others. Find a stretcher. I’ll stay here with her.”
He hesitated. “What about the no-splitting-up rule?”
“We’ll risk it.”
* * *
Gant was waiting at the top of the Gigolo Aunt’s ramp, a shotgun clasped in his webbed fingers.
“Who the hell’s that?”
The woman we’d found lay on a cargo pallet. “We don’t know.” I braced my foot against one of the pallet’s rear wheels, to stop the whole thing rolling back down the ramp.
“What about the captain?”
“We looked,” Spider said. “But there weren’t no sign of him nor anyone else. They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah, gone. Now, this pallet’s heavy. Are you gonna let us in?”
Gant’s shotgun wasn’t pointing at us—at least, not directly. “I don’t fucking think so.”
“What?”
“You don’t know who that woman is or where she came from. You don’t know anything about her. She could be riddled with disease or carrying some horrible fucking alien parasite that’s going to rip its way out of her and devour the rest of us.”
Spider’s knuckles were tight on the pallet’s handle. If he let go, the full weight of the wheels would crush my foot.
Gant said, “I think if the captain were here—”
“Well he’s not.” I felt my cheeks flush. “Moriarty left me in charge, not you. And it’s been a really long, strange day. So, unless you want to be up on a charge of mutiny, you’ll let us in. Now!”
Gant’s twin sets of eyes blinked at me. This was the first time I’d raised my voice in his presence. “Okay, okay,” he said, lowering the shotgun. “Who rattled your cage?”
My heart raced, but I didn’t dare show any trace of the nervousness clawing at the base of my throat. This was the first real test of my authority, and I was determined not to be the first to flinch. Spider threw me a curious look; I couldn’t tell whether it was approval or surprise. “I think she means it, frog,” he said. “You’d better step aside.”
Gant glanced between us, then cursed in his own language and moved out of the way.
“Well,” he said grumpily, “I warned you. Don’t come running to me when you’ve got some hideous monster clawing its way out through your ribcage.”
Spider heaved the pallet up the last couple of metres of ramp and brought it to rest in the hold.
“You,” he told Gant somewhat hypocritically, “watch entirely too many movies.”