We were obliged to wait for a Fugitives Retrieval shuttle at the Shen City docks. We could have transported our prisoner back ourselves but Sherry hadn’t wanted to take any chances. I couldn’t argue with her reasoning; it was a dead cert Mr Mac would have contingencies in place in the event of his capture.
“You’re late,” I told the two FR guards when they emerged from the airlock, both clad in body-armour and carrying stubby riot guns. One was a tall woman of Nordic appearance, the other stocky and Asian, sporting a pair of Raybans.
“We got diverted,” the tall woman said. “Priority pick-up on Minerva Station. I’m Vandeman, Prisoner Security.” She nodded to her partner. “He’s Kurota, the pilot.” Her gaze shifted to Mr Mac, sandwiched between Timor and Joe with his hands cuffed behind his back. Leyla stood behind him with weapon drawn, ready to put a taser dart in his neck at the first sign of trouble. “So, you really got him, huh?” Vandeman asked, looking Mr Mac up and down in critical appraisal. She struck me as the type who wasn’t easily impressed.
“We really did,” I said. “Just you two?”
“The other prisoner’s secured inside. Don’t worry. He’s no trouble.”
The shuttle interior consisted of a row of restraint chairs and a few benches for the guards to sit on. One chair was occupied by a spindly man in his fifties, all unkempt beard and unruly hair sprouting from a small, bird-like head.
“Jonas Blair,” Vandeman introduced the other prisoner. “Recidivist wicky-waver. Violated his terms by taking a stroll around a school-yard on Minerva Station. Unfortunately for him, Minerva’s Economics Minister sends her kids there. Pulled strings to get him sent to the Slab penn.”
Blair barely glanced up as Joe and Timor hustled Mr Mac into the opposite chair. Timor pressed a gun to his temple as Joe undid the cuffs. They stepped back as Vandeman locked the restraints in place, thick manacles closing over wrists and ankles with a satisfying clunk.
“I suppose a pillow’s out of the question?” Mr Mac asked, squirming a little.
“I can gag him if you like,” Vandeman offered.
“I’m not quite ready to inflict cruel and unusual punishment,” I said.
“Detach and burn in two minutes,” Kurota announced, making for the cockpit. “Meal-packs in the lockers if you want ‘em.” He paused at the ladder to favour Janet with an over-friendly grin. “No plasma, though. Sorry.”
“I had a big breakfast,” she replied. She stood close to the airlock, a faintly queasy look on her face.
“You OK?” I asked.
She nodded at Blair. “Can’t you smell him? It’s like he’s been eating garlic his whole life.”
“That really true?” Timor asked her. “Vamps and garlic, I mean.”
“No, I just personally can’t stand the stuff. And I forgive your racism, Inspector.”
“Smart, funny and too brave for her own good,” Mr Mac said, looking up at me. “Just your type.”
I stared down at him in silence as the shuttle came away from the airlock with a jerk, grabbing a hand-hold when the gravity vanished a few seconds later and my feet came free of the deck.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kurota’s voice came over the speaker. “This is your captain speaking. On behalf of the crew I’d like to welcome you to Incarceration Skyways. The temperature outside is a balmy -461 degrees celsius with zero percent chance of rain…”
“He do this every time?” Leyla asked Vandeman.
“Depends on how hot the passengers are,” she said, glancing at Janet.
“You really were going to do it,” Mr Mac said to me in a faintly wounded tone. “In front of my wife-to-be, no less.”
“I told you I would,” I said. “Anyway, she’d have gotten over it. Once she found out just what a piece of shit you are. Judging by the statement she gave to Shen City law, I’m guessing she has no idea where all the expensive love tokens come from. ”
He continued to stare at me, expression more curious than hurt. “Mind if I ask how you found me? I’m guessing the lovely Dr Vaughn had a lot to do with it.”
“You really don’t want to say her name again.”
“Relax. She’s well outside my profile, as I would hope you’d know by now.”
“Like that poor bastard who owned the laundry you totalled yesterday?”
“That poor bastard had been running Bliss for the Arturo Cartel for well over a decade, and he wasn’t discerning over who he sold it to.”
“Whereas you’re the enlightened face of drug dealing.”
“Dead customers make for lousy profit margins. Poor Old Don Arturo never really got that. Check the Slab’s health stats since his unfortunate disappearance, you’ll find a twenty percent reduction in fatal overdoses.”
“I stand in awe of your humanitarian efforts.”
He laughed, that old entirely genuine laugh I hated so much. “I’ve missed you, Alex. You had me seriously worried when you disappeared for so long. When all that shit went down at Ceres, though, I knew I’d be seeing you again, just not so soon.”
“DCI McLeod,” Kurota’s voice came over the speaker. “Priority call for you coming in via a military frequency… That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” I asked.
“It’s all in text.” The shuttle interior suddenly disappeared as the main lights blinked out. When it returned a half-second later everything was bathed in red emergency lighting.
“What the fuck!” Kurota cursed. “The main bus just went down. I’ve got no control here.”
The shuttle lurched, those of us not confined to restraint chairs reaching for new hand-holds as the port thrusters went to maximum.
“That’s really not good,” Kurota said in a strained whisper.
“Focus!” I said. “Give me a sit-rep.”
“Uh, OK. The main bus is off-line, my controls are dead and the port thrusters just pushed us into a rapidly descending high-angle orbit.”
I met Mr Mac’s gaze, finding it way more tense and serious than I’d seen before. We both knew what a high-angle descent into Earth’s atmosphere meant. Whatever this was, it wasn’t part of his contingency. “Run overrides,” I said. “Go analogue. Start ripping out some panels.”
“Won’t do any good,” Kurota’s voice was shrill now, panic rising with every word. “This tub is designed to resist a prisoner takeover and someone just put it into riot-mode. Nothing’s working, except the comms screen with this stupid fucking text message.”
“What message?”
“Doesn’t make sense… ‘From light we are born to light we return.’”
There was a loud snick and I swivelled about to see Blair’s arm and ankle restrains snapping open. He floated free of the chair, his previously blank face now a picture of serenity, eyes wide and mouth open in awe and wonder. “The light,” he said, voice scratchy and thin but nevertheless still full of fanatical zeal. “It’s within all of us.”
He spread his arms wide and I drew the Colt, ready to put a bullet between his eyes but he made no aggressive move, just floated there, his swirling hair like a coiling nest of bloodied snakes in the red light.
“Kill him,” Mr Mac said, voice flat and certain. “Right now, Alex!”
Wartime instinct made my finger tighten on the Colt’s trigger, but before I could fire Blair’s chest convulsed, a bone-cracking shudder filling the shuttle as it seemed to fold in on itself, then expand outward. I saw Blair die as his chest bulged way beyond human tolerance, head lolling and globs of blood trailing from his gaping mouth. But dead as he was, his body wasn’t done yet. His chest continued to convulse, contracting then expanding, growing larger with every squelching heave.
“He’s gonna blow!” Timor yelled, dragging Leyla into a corner.
Joe slammed into Blair’s spasming corpse, arms enfolding his torso, legs wrapped around his hips, smothering it with his bulk and forcing it against the bulkhead. I began to propel myself forward then jerked to a halt as something hard and unyielding latched onto my armour, pulling me back too fast and too strong for me to do anything about it.
“JOE!” I roared as Janet forced me behind the row of restraint chairs. “JO-”
The blast hammered my eardrums and left me flailing in Janet’s grasp as everything disappeared in an instantaneous fog. Janet held me close as I thrashed, still calling out Joe’s name and tasting blood and bone on my tongue.
“He’s gone.” It was barely a whisper in my ear, though I knew she was shouting. She held me until my struggles subsided, the cement that seemed to be clogging my ears gradually leeching away until she no longer had to shout. “He’s gone, Alex. I’m sorry.”
She let me go and I pushed away. Vandeman was dead, skewered through the forehead by what looked like a fragment of rib. Leyla was clutching at her leg and spouting profanities, red beads trickling through her fingers whilst Timor bit the wrapping from a field dressing. It took me a while to recognise what remained of Joe and Blair, just an entangled swirling mess of flesh and bone. No time for grief, I told myself, watching the obscene thing slide over the hard surfaces, coiling like some formless monster. The thought of Joe spending eternity entwined with some piece-of-shit paedo would have made me vomit, if not for the dominating urgency. We were still descending towards certain incineration.
A groan dragged my attention to the restraint chairs. Mr Mac coughed and blinked bleary eyes up at me, face pale and a gash on his forehead. His left leg and arm had also suffered some hits, though assessing the damage was difficult with all the blood floating about.
“Anyone alive back there?” Kurota called over the speaker, in full-on panic mode now. “Van? You there?”
“She’s dead,” I told him. “Your prisoner…” I shook my head. We really didn’t have time for this. “Do you have any comms at all?”
A long pause. When he spoke again the panic had receded, his voice taking on a dull note I had heard before. “Negative. Riot-mode kills all outgoing transmissions and the shuttle’s walls are shielded against smart signals. Intended to stop the prisoners demanding ransoms or speaking to the media in the event of a takeover. There’s supposed to be an emergency beacon screaming out our position to FR Central, but it’s dead.” Another pause. “There is something. A hard-wired manual switch on my dash. Last resort kinda thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“Emergency decomp. Blows the main hatch and flushes the prisoner compartment. You’ll find vac suits in the lockers. Van’s iris and palm scans will open them.”
“Can’t you do it?”
“Cockpit’s sealed during flight, Chief Inspector. No overrides.”
“Can you eject?”
“My seat’s evac system is off-line. Guess whoever did this really didn’t want any survivors. You better get moving. I estimate time to entry at less than ten minutes.”
Janet and I hauled Vandeman’s body to the locker security panel, me holding her hand to the scanner whilst Janet prised her eyelid open for the retinal optic. The locker doors slammed open and I began hauling out suits. “Know how to suit up?” I asked Janet.
“Learned it in kindergarten,” she said, hands moving faster than I could follow as she started prepping a suit.
I unhooked the restraint chair control unit from Vandeman’s belt and pushed myself towards Mr Mac. His face, bleached and blood-smeared, was rigid with pain though he retained enough composure to greet me with an arched eyebrow. “Well, this turned out to be a very interesting day.”
I hit the disengage button and his restraints snapped open. “You got time for this?” he asked as I hauled him out of the chair.
“If I didn’t need you, I’d leave you to burn.” I grabbed one of the suits, already prepped and powered up thanks to Janet, and began to push him into it.
“Minus six minutes,” Kurota reported. “The blast from the decompression will provide a hefty kick, but you’ll need the suits’ propellant to escape the well.”
“Got it,” I said, locking the final seal in place on Mr Mac’s helmet. I climbed into one of my own as Janet helped Timor seal up a barely conscious Leyla. She was even paler than Mr Mac and kept drifting in and out of consciousness to utter harsh obscenities. “Vamp slut-bitch,” she spat at Janet before promptly passing out.
“And I thought she liked me.” Janet hit the power button as Timor locked Leyla’s helmet in place.
“Hurry up,” I told him, thrusting the final suit at him.
“Minus three minutes,” Kurota said.
“You got a sidearm?” I asked him, none too gently shoving Timor’s legs into the suit.
“Yeah. Thinking maybe I’ll see how long I can hang around to watch the fireworks.”
“Your family..?”
“Details in the personnel file, Inspector. Stand-by, I’m hitting the switch in sixty seconds, ready or not.”
I did a quick visual inspection on all of their primary seals, finding Timor had forgotten to connect his CO2 supply. I slotted it into place with a punishing jerk and we lined up at the door, Janet holding onto Leyla and me with a tether fixed to Mr Mac’s suit. Like Leyla, he seemed to be unconscious now, his face a pale, slumped mask behind the helmet visor. I turned my attention to the door and felt something hard and cold clutch at my chest at the sight of the logo laser-etched into the bulkhead: Astravista Industries.
“Kurota,” I said. “I promise I’ll settle with who did this. And it won’t be pretty when I do.”
“Appreciated. Brace for decomp in five, four, three, two…”
Being forced out of a spacecraft by high pressure decompression is never something you get used to. Regardless of how physically strong you might be, you still end up spinning end-over-end like a rag doll whilst fighting down the potentially helmet-filling, and therefore fatal, upsurge of nausea. The tether attaching me to Mr Mac pulled tight then slackened as he came spinning back towards me, flailing limbs thrashing against my air-tank before I managed to steady him. I could see Janet about two hundred yards away, still holding onto Leyla whilst Timor had evidently lost his grip, spinning in a cloud of CO2 as he sought to stabilise himself.
A grating squeal in my headphones told of a melting microphone and I swivelled about in time to see the shuttle enter the atmosphere. It blazed up almost instantly, leaving a black-orange trail across the vast blue curve of the Earth before splitting into a dozen or more pieces, each one blinking out seconds later. I decided not to ponder if Kurota had used his sidearm or not.
I took a firm hold of Mr Mac and used a one second burst of CO2 to close up with the others. “Suit-to-suit comms only,” I said. “No distress calls.”
“Boss?” Timor asked.
“As far as anyone knows, we’re dead, and that’s the way I want it for now.”
“Then what do we do?” Janet enquired. “We have two hours of air and we’ll need all our CO2 to get clear of the well.”
I used the suit’s command gauntlet to access my smart and placed a call. The signal would be weak, but we were close enough to the Slab’s network for it to get through. “Then I guess I better call us a taxi.”