‘And then what?’ asked Lina in a small and far away voice. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to come up with a plan — a safe plan — to get our shuttle back. If Eli thinks he can just take it, he’s in for one big surprise.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Carver had gone beyond exhaustion now, but still he dug. He had struggled and cursed for hours, a parasitic insect in a body of stone, working robotically, driving his aching muscles by willpower alone. At one point he had torn his glove on a piece of rock that came spinning towards him unexpectedly and crunched into his left hand, almost causing him to drop the cutter. He had screamed aloud, a fan of blood-droplets spraying from his knuckle. He’d just managed to kill the cutter without it injuring him. He had inspected the wound with a feeling of detached misery, but hadn’t been able to do anything for it. For some time after that, the hand had leaked a weaving thread of blood into the air about him, that trailed from the tear in his glove like a streamer, occasionally spattering across his suit.
Once, the blood had managed to catch him in the eye, and this time he really had come close to a significant accident. He had reeled back, his feet slipping away from where they had been braced against the rock face, jerking against his harness line with a jolt that caused him to drop the cutter. For a critical second, the cutter had continued to gout incandescent plasma as it spun away, slicing a jagged lightning bolt into the rock beside him, melting one of his rock pins into bubbling slag and coming within a few centimetres of his own thigh before extinguishing.
He had dangled there from his remaining pin, the cutter hanging from his belt, weaving and snaking at the end of its line. He had reeled it in, all of his muscles a-tremble, and held it against his chest, eyes closed and teeth clenched. It had been some time before he’d been able to summon up the strength to continue. He had several spare pins in the little tool-loops of his space suit, and he’d used one of these to replace the melted one, burning the tattered end off the line with the cutter and knotting it clumsily with his damaged hands. Then he had got back to work. What else was there to do?
And so he continued like this for some measureless measure of time, a numb and senseless period of aching repetition. Was it even daytime, technically? How long had he been awake? He had no idea. His life had become a surreal blur of rocky darkness, echoing isolation and unceasing toil. After a while he didn’t even want to kill the crazy dragon-man any more — at least, not wholeheartedly. He just wanted the bastard to return, feed him, and allow him to sleep again. Even the thought of the ruined body in the navigator’s chair didn’t concern him after a while. He didn’t particularly care if his own fate was to join the shuttle’s pilot in death, as long as he could have a rest and something to eat first.
Then, suddenly, he felt a vibration tremble through the asteroid. He killed the cutter and cocked his head, listening. He heard, faintly, the fading rumble that indicated that a ship had either docked with the shuttle or undocked. Was it possible that the crazy dragon-man had actually been back already, without even coming to see his slave, and had now left again? A new, and even blacker, wave of misery washed through him at that thought. It was possible, he knew. It certainly was. He waited in a silence broken only by the high chinking noise of colliding rock-chunks behind him. He shot a baleful look at the restraining device that was adhered to its rock pin in the wall. Fucking little bastard, he thought at it. Was the crazy dragon-man back? Or gone for good?
He waited. . .
Silence. . .
And then, just as he was reaching a new fever-pitch of despair, he heard a voice coming towards him from the direction of the shuttle. He almost cried with joy, putting his head back and squeezing his eyes shut to stem the tears of relief that threatened to come.
‘I couldn’t do it!’ he heard the man exclaim from some distance up the docking tube. He was relieved to hear the voice, but a little disturbed as well. Because that voice did not sound happy, not at all. There was a note of desperate, unhinged misery in its tone, unmistakable even from here. ‘I know, I know!’ raved the voice, between grunts of exertion, as the man came wriggling down the tube towards Carver. ‘I’m sorry, I know. . . I will do, of course, anything. . .’ The voice stopped for a moment, and Carver had the sense that the man was listening for him, maybe suspicious that he couldn’t hear the plasma cutter.
‘Hey!’ called Carver, his relief tempered by new caution. The guy really had sounded pretty distressed, and Carver couldn’t imagine that that would be a positive development for himself. But fuck it — he had to eat and sleep. This lunatic was his only lifeline, desperately worrying though that thought was.
The little grunts and huffs resumed from inside the tube as the man came on again, but he didn’t answer Carver’s call. Carver waited nervously, his boots braced against the face and the cutter held with its muzzle safely upwards. The surface of the cave glinted exotically in his suit-light — a private night sky filled with stars.
The man emerged from the end of the tube as if born from a mother of stone and steel, tumbling out in a disorderly tangle of arms and legs. Carver noted with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay that he was dressed in what were clearly hospital pyjamas. Proof, if proof were needed that the fucker has escaped from a mental ward, thought Carver. The man pushed himself fully out of the tube and rotated to regard Carver, pivoting by a handle on the tube’s outer edge. His face was set in a sneer, the corners of his mouth pulled down so far that the expression was almost comical until one realised that it was the manifestation of a deep and burning hatred. He was covered in blood that had apparently poured from a wound on his head.
‘You,’ said the man accusingly. ‘Why aren’t you digging?’
‘Hey,’ said Carver, hefting the cutter warningly, a little spooked. ‘I heard you coming and shut it off.’ The man was studying him minutely, as if suspecting some deception. ‘Er, good to see you again,’ Carver added uncertainly. It was even true, in a sense.
The man pushed off and drifted across the cave towards Carver, swatting a pinwheeling cone of rock out of his path, and landed skilfully within arm’s reach of the restraining device.
‘Well, I almost didn’t make it,’ replied the man testily. His face had warmed slightly, but he still looked seriously pissed off, if not actually homicidal any more. ‘Thanks to some interfering fucks I’ve had to deal with.’
‘Didn’t go well, then?’ asked Carver, turning to face the crazy dragon-man, who was now removing the restraining device from the rock and inspecting its readout to ensure that it hadn’t been somehow tampered with.
‘What?’ asked the man sharply, fixing him with a freezing stare.
Carver felt his flesh creep a little in response. ‘Er, well, your problems are my problems, right?’ he said hopefully.
The crazy dragon-man sighed heavily, his features lit in high contrast under Carver’s suit-light, and his lip began to tremble. Don’t fucking cry, you freak, prayed Carver internally. I swear I’ll lose it if you start fucking blubbing. But the man didn’t start to cry. He seemed to steel himself, squeezing his eyes briefly shut and clipping the unit to his belt, then shrugged.