‘Where are you?’ she hissed, moving off down the nearest row of mining ships, past her own K6-12. She trailed the fingers of one hand across its pitted skin as she went by — a subconscious gesture of familiarity.
Steam hissed from a vent high in one wall, with a sudden rushing noise that made her jump. She spun around, her hands flying to her face protectively, but there was nobody there. The control room was incongruously dark behind its glasspex screen, like an empty socket. Something clanged — metal on metal — the sound echoing such that she couldn’t discern its origin.
She wished that she’d brought a weapon with her, and she moved towards the central desk in the hope of finding a hand tool or something. . . anything. But the desk was empty except for Liu’s distinctive bright green datasheet. It was showing a cheery screensaver of a cartoon dog that was so at odds with Lina’s state of mind that she stopped, unable to comprehend it. The dog bounded happily from one side of the screen to the other, its tongue waving and flapping from its mouth. Dead silence hung around her. The madman was in here with her. Somewhere.
That sound again — the sound of clanging metal. This time, she could tell where it had come from: the far end of the hangar, near the ISL and the space door.
Lina took off running, crying out Eli’s name, suddenly electrified by a rage so hot that it consumed her fear in an instant, immolating it in bright fire. She pelted up the central runway, her footsteps ringing on the metal floor, and leapt across the corner of the space door to land before the in-system loader, grabbing onto one of its antennae to steady herself. Something moved, glimpsed below the loader’s up-tilted nose, obscured by its heavy landing gear. Lina dropped to the deck, peering underneath the ship. Nothing. She jumped to her feet again and spun round just in time to avoid the scalpel that came whispering towards her face.
She staggered back, unbalanced, into the loader’s hull, kicking out, and the scalpel’s blade shattered against the ship’s armoured hide. Eli recoiled, shouting with pain, his leg going out from under him. His face, an exaggerated snapshot of horror and insanity, was slathered in blood from the wound that Rocko had given him. A small, vengeful thrill went through Lina at the sight of it.
She tried to turn, to dive under the loader and find some sort of weapon, but Eli was already on her, seizing her hair in one hand. She saw the deck rise towards her face as he smashed her head into it. Bright sunbursts bloomed in her vision, obscuring it, and a wave of compressive agony shot through her skull. She kicked out behind her, trying to rise, but felt only empty air. Eli drove a knee into her back, pinning her down. She felt his weight on top of her, crushing her, driving her breath from her lungs. He smashed her head into the deck again, and this time instead of light, there was a bloom of darkness.
‘I have to go!’ he hissed, right in her ear. ‘And you aren’t going to stop me!’ Was that his blood she felt dripping onto the back of her neck? Or her own? She thought she smelled the insanity baking off him in hot waves — something like sour sweat and burning wires intermingled.
Again: smash! The darkness swelled, making Lina think of the shadow in the belt: ink in water. Darkness superimposed on darkness. Darkness filled the world. She was spinning, gasping, fading. . .
She awoke to the deafening blast of the launch klaxon, a sound like the bellow of a dinosaur. Her eyes flickered open, filling her head with pain. The rough metal of the hangar floor felt sharp and abrasive against her cheek. The hangar was awash with red, strobing light. That’s odd, she thought. The power was on in here. White light. It was white.
She sat bolt upright like somebody awakening from a nightmare, her heart trip-hammering inside her, her skull throbbing. Eli had initiated the launch procedure! Somehow he’d overridden the security protocols. She glanced around and noticed that she was on the closed ramp of the space door itself. He’d dumped her body there like a piece of garbage, ready to jettison into the belt. It was about to open.
She struggled to her feet, having to push herself upright with one hand. She looked towards the ISL and saw Eli in the cockpit, working the controls, squinting into some readout. He didn’t notice her — he was too enraptured in what he was doing. Why was he trying to take the ISL? Why not a Kay?
‘It doesn’t matter!’ Lina berated herself. ‘Get to a ship! I have to get to a ship.’
She clambered off the space door, feeling clumsy and injured. Her head felt as if someone had filled it with broken glass and then kicked it like a football. Her wounded arm stung and burned fiercely. But she gained the flight deck and shambled down the row of Kays as quickly as she could. She was fully cleared to operate any of the ships on Macao, but she made for K6-12 without thinking, one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other to her head. The klaxon blatted again and the light changed to orange, supposedly to signify that everyone on the flight deck was safely inside a ship.
She clawed her way up the ladder of her Kay, falling into the cockpit with tears of pain running unnoticed from her eyes. She pulled her legs in and slammed the lid shut behind her, swivelling into an upright position in the seat. Was she going to follow him out there? She supposed she was.
‘I’ve come this far. . .’ she muttered to herself as she booted the ship’s computer up.
The HUD illuminated, stitching the cockpit canopy with neon stats and scales. It helpfully tagged the unseen vessel at the far end with the legend ELI SWAINE // IN-SYS LOADER // 50.2M // 0 KPH. She felt the cockpit pressurise and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘You could have killed me!’ screamed Eli’s voice suddenly, clipping as its volume threatened to overload the comm. Lina jolted as if she had been goosed. He must have seen her ship appear on his own HUD and realised that she was gone from where he’d left her. She supposed he was referring to the blow he had received to his head, and she put one hand to her own battered skull. It came away bloody, as she had expected. ‘I’m the emissary, Lina! The dragon wanted him dead, and now it’s going to be angry!’
‘Listen, Eli. . .’ she began, but she faded away as she realised she had nothing to follow this with.
‘I have to go!’ he cried. His voice, coming from the headrest speaker, was as loud in her ear as if he had been squatting behind her seat. It was a sound filled with murderous, boiling hatred, the guttural snarl of a monster. ‘Don’t think to follow me! It’ll eat you up! It’ll fucking eat you, Lina!’
What the hell was he talking about? And then a shudder went through her. It suddenly felt cold — icy cold, too cold — in the cockpit of her ship. She remembered the shadow from her dream, twining through the belt like molten obsidian — a hungry, living darkness. It’ll eat you up! she thought, suddenly sure that this was what he meant. The reality of what she was doing came crashing in on her. Hadn’t she vowed never to fly again? And yet here she was, preparing to pursue a madman into the belt where he’d already murdered Sal and dream-shadows flowed like dark blood amongst the rocks. It’ll fucking eat you, Lina! she heard again in her mind. She pulled the straps tight around her chest, cinching the buckle below her breasts. She took the yoke in sweat-slicked hands and steadied herself, bracing against her backrest.
‘Fuck you,’ she whispered between clenched teeth, wiping blood from her eyes with one sleeve.