Cally shrank back against the locked metal hatchway, pressing close to Blake. The tempest swirled and howled around them. It pitched a flurry of stinging ice crystals at her face. She swiped at her goggles. The smeared view that this afforded her revealed that the storm had closed in. The curved horizon was now obscured by waves of sleet that washed inexorably towards them.
Despite the raging clamour of the fierce storm, Cally could hear the splintering sound of ice sundering all around the raised platform to which they clung. The fierce wind tugged at their clothing, threatening to drag them aside at any moment to pitch them into the icy water.
There was a sudden movement beside her. For a heart-stopping second, she thought that Blake had slipped and fallen. She struggled to turn, and saw that he had shuffled several steps away from the hatchway.
‘Get off the ice, Blake!’ she called out to him. ‘Hold on to the rock!’
He was fumbling with his suit, desperate to remove something from the thick folds of its material. ‘No, Cally! Just stand back!’
She couldn’t understand what he was doing, until she saw the handgun.
Blake beckoned to her with his free hand. ‘Stand away from the hatch!’
Cally hesitated before taking a few tentative steps out onto the ice. She was so cold that she could no longer feel her feet. Even so, the sensation of sinking into the melting ice was palpable. Her overriding instinct was to stay by the hatch. And her next was to slide over to Blake’s side, to check that he was all right. It only took a moment’s thought to conclude that this would put too much weight on the ice at the same point, and result in them both plunging through it. Besides, if she stayed away from him, it gave Blake more chance to aim his handgun.
She scuffed to a halt on the ice, looked across to Blake, and gave an exaggerated nod to indicate she was ready.
Blake braced his feet, aimed his gun, and fired.
The shot sliced through the storm, a fierce column of steam boiling in the air. The metal hatchway rattled. Chunks of rock splintered from around it, scattering across the ice towards them in hot sharp fragments.
Blake holstered his handgun, and gestured across to Cally. To avoid putting too much pressure on the ice, they sidled their way separately over to the hatch.
Blake grasped the hatch wheel and tried to turn it. His grunt of effort became a cry of pain. He flapped his gloved hands. ‘That’s still quite stiff. And very hot!’
‘Let me try.’ Cally reached over and twisted. Even through her heavy gloves, she could feel the heat of the hatch wheel. With a shriek of final resistance, it turned.
The hatch pulled up and out to reveal a pitch-black gap behind it.
‘Easy,’ smiled Cally.
Blake’s eyes were unreadable behind his frosted goggles. ‘I must have loosened the thing.’
‘Keep telling yourself that,’ said Cally.
There was an ominous cracking sound as the ice at their feet crumbled.
‘Quickly,’ she told him. ‘We must get inside.’
As she was closer, Cally swiftly clambered into the dark opening. She could see nothing beyond the hatch. Cally tested with her numbed feet for a firm surface. There seemed to be a hard, flat platform just inside, so she manoeuvred carefully until her whole body was through the hatchway.
She helped Blake through, and they stood together on a small landing. It was a metal square, at the side of which the looped handles of a ladder led down into darkness. The storm sounds were already starting to recede.
‘Blake? Are you all right?’
He had climbed in behind her. ‘I’m fine.’ She could hear him struggling with something. ‘Switch your torch on. I’m just pulling the hatch shut.’
Cally had a torch positioned in the hood of her suit. She switched it on, and a sharp cone of light spilled out into the dark chamber.
Above her, the storm sounds ceased abruptly as Blake pulled the metal hatch shut with a resounding clang. The echo spoke of depths beyond the platform on which they now stood. In the comparative quiet, the sound of air moving was like half-heard whispers from an unseen group of people. But she and Blake were alone in the darkness.
Blake exhaled a huge breath. She wasn’t sure if it was the effort, or simple relief to be out of the gale. ‘You should be more careful,’ Cally warned him. You could have reopened your wound.’
‘I think I’d prefer that to plunging into icy water.’ He clutched for a hand-hold as his feet slipped from under him.
‘Steady, Blake.’ She angled her torch to show where they were standing. Although the platform was made of corrugated metal, the storm had washed enough icy water over the lip of the hatch to make the surface treacherous. ‘You wouldn’t want to slip over the edge.’
Where it wasn’t covered in slush, the platform showed as heavily oxidised metal. There was no rust, but there were rock fragments and dust. The only marks that disturbed this powdery covering were their footprints. No-one else had been here for a very long time. The platform and the ladder suggested it had been designed by humans – or at the very least, designed for humans.
Blake tugged his hood down, and took off his goggles. Cally fumbled to remove her own goggles, hampered by the thick gloves and lack of feeling in her fingers. The goggles caught on the edge of her suit and jiggled out of her grasp. They bounced once on the platform, and then dropped over the edge.
Cally groaned in annoyance. She stood looking angrily in the direction they had vanished, as though that might make them reappear. Some seconds later, she heard the distant clatter as the goggles finally hit a lower surface.
‘Wow,’ said Blake. ‘That’s some drop.’ He nodded towards the ladder behind Cally. ‘How deep d’you reckon it is?’
Cally removed her gloves to adjust her torch. The cone of light splayed out wide to illuminate the whole platform. She edged towards the ladder, took a hold of the guide rail, and peered down cautiously.
It was a narrow shaft, dropping vertically straight through the rock in a roughly hewn passage. The ladder was thin, with no guide rails beyond the first half-dozen rungs. Far below, perhaps forty metres down, Cally thought she could make out another metal platform. She relayed this information to Blake, before swinging her legs out onto the ladder and beginning her descent.
Above her, she could hear Blake preparing to follow. ‘Hey, wait for me!’
Initially, Cally carefully tested each step. The platform above her had shown little sign of deterioration, but she didn’t trust that every rung in the ladder was sound, nor that any one of them might not be treacherously covered in dust from a rock fall. Not even that every section of ladder was securely fastened to the wall.
Sensation gradually returned to her feet. The thermal suit clearly coped better in here, away from the savagery of the ice storm. If anything, the effort of her descent meant it was getting uncomfortably hot. With both hands on the ladder, there was no safe moment to adjust the temperature level. Cally decided to persevere, anticipating her next opportunity would be at the next platform below.
Blake seemed to have had the same idea. His boots thumped onto the rungs above her, getting nearer and nearer.
‘Don’t rush!’ she called up to him. Away from the entrance hatch, now, the echo was deadened by the rock walls that surrounded them on all sides.
‘Don’t fuss!’ he called back at her.
Cally stopped for a moment. She reached up to his oncoming boot, and slapped the side of it with her palm to indicate how dangerously close to her he was getting. ‘Why do you insist on defying good advice?’
‘Oh, it’s advice, is it?’
Cally recognised a familiar, slightly indignant tone in Blake’s voice. He was used to being in command on Liberator. And it clearly aggravated him to think that he was being given instructions by a member of his own crew.
‘Is my advice not welcome?’
‘You’re full of questions me for me today, Cally.’
‘Am I?’
He chuckled at this. ‘Is that why you ignored Avon’s advice? Why you’re here on Megiddo?’
Cally stared up at him. Or as much of him as she could see from this angle. ‘I do not know what you mean.’
Blake twisted so that he could look down at her. The torch in his hood spilled onto the rock wall. The light from Cally’s torch softly illuminated his face. She could see he wasn’t chuckling any more.
‘What I mean is…’ he continued. ‘Well, everything you said before. Back on Liberator. In the medical unit. About destroying Star One.’
Cally gave a little sigh. This wouldn’t be the moment she’d have chosen for this conversation. She thought about how long it would take to complete the remaining few hundred rungs before they reached the next platform. Perhaps he’d have changed his mind in that time.
‘You were prepared to destroy the Federation,’ she began. ‘But you didn’t question whether that would cause the deaths of innocent people, too.’
Blake pondered this for a moment. ‘You’ve fought,’ he said. ‘And you’ve killed. Do you question that now?’
That didn’t seem fair to Cally. ‘I have always faced those to whom I brought death.’ She continued climbing downwards, foothold by foothold, hand after hand. It only reinforced her feeling that this conversation needed to happen later.
‘That’s never been a problem for the Federation,’ said Blake. ‘A faceless administration that exerts anonymous control over its citizens.’ He must have realised that she was moving away from him, because he raised his voice. ‘Only they weren’t citizens, were they, Cally? They were numbers. They were head count.’
Cally stopped again. She suddenly felt hotter, and it wasn’t just the thermal suit causing it. For a moment, she thought about climbing back up to Blake, to face him directly.
‘Is that how you see the people in those ships?’ she snapped. ‘The ones just arriving. What’s the difference now between their pilots, whether they are from the Federation or the frontier worlds?’
Blake didn’t reply at once. She hoped he was reflecting on what she’d said. Eventually, he said quietly: ‘I’m not sure any more, Cally.’
They clung to the ladder in silence for a moment.
‘Yesterday,’ said Blake eventually, ‘those people lived at the sufferance of the Federation. It enforced surveillance, military access… It even decided the weather!’
Cally shook her head. ‘You say surveillance and military access. But from another perspective, the Federation also monitored transport safety. Secured supply routes for food. It protected people from extreme climates…’
‘It’s not that simple!’ he snapped at her.
Cally started down the ladder again. ‘That is exactly what I mean about perspective.’
Their descent continued largely in silence. She thought she could hear Blake muttering to himself, but whether it was his grumbling or just stifled grunts of pain, she would have to wait to discover.
The shaft seemed to widen out. From the mental count she’d been making of the number of rungs, Cally decided it was worth risking a look down. Sure enough, another metal platform was about five metres below her. In the scattered light from her torch, she could just make out the cracked lenses of her lost goggles.
When she reached it, the platform was secure and dry, with the now-familiar covering of dust and scattered rocks. Cally checked for the platform edges. Was there a further ladder and another drop into pitch darkness? Instead, it appeared to lead through a rock archway.
She stepped carefully to one side, and allowed Blake to descend the remaining rungs. His boots thudded onto the metal surface, and Cally could now hear how the sound echoed. It was clearly a large space.
They angled their torches over the rock wall beside the ladder. The metal of the platform extended up one stretch of wall. A panel of old-fashioned switch-levers was set into it.
‘What do you think?’ Blake asked, walking over to the controls.
Cally wasn’t sure. ‘The lights?’
‘Or the self-destruct? Only one way to find out.’ He reached out, and pulled down every one of the levers.
Cally stumbled forward to stop him. ‘Blake!’
There was a crackle of electricity and a flash of light behind them. Blake tapped his finger on a notice next to the switches that read Main Lighting. His grinning face was lit by a growing illumination.
‘Interesting,’ said Cally. ‘The language of that label shows that this whole thing was constructed by humans.’
But she seemed to have lost Blake’s attention. Could he hear the same distant whispering that she could? ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
Blake wasn’t grinning any more. He stared over her shoulder, his jaw slack with amazement.
Cally turned to look. And found that she was lost for words, too.