He picked his way through this industrial wasteland at a steady pace, trying not to linger, knowing that the asshole friends would be coming soon, looking for him, probably hoping to hinder his escape. Hopefully the sight of the little scaredy cat would slow them down a little, but he supposed it was also likely to make them angrier. And so he kept moving, not so quickly that he would miss something, get lost or even have an accident, but quickly enough.
His suit’s limited HUD continued to show vacuum outside its own protective confines, and a temperature so low that Carver wondered if it was even right. The station was obviously damaged, even crippled, and he wondered if it was the doing of the old, failed emissary. He suspected it probably was, and he grudgingly acknowledged to himself that the crazy bastard had apparently been good for something after all.
Through the refinery, out into another corridor so alike the last one that he felt a brief but powerful sense of disorientation, as if reality had skipped a beat.
‘Carry on,’ said the dragon, its voice a faint but fervent whisper. ‘Hurry.’
‘Hurry,’ repeated Carver, not even hearing himself. He moved onwards, passing a sign that read CLEARED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.
He emerged into a small chamber that was divided in two down its length by a screen of icy armoured glasspex. He reached out, swiped away an arc of frost and peered through the screen. There was a desk in there and a trio of monitors hanging from the ceiling. Some kind of security checkpoint, he thought. On the wall below the monitors was a shiny steel cabinet of a type that Carver thought he recognised. It was a weapon locker.
He laughed out loud, hefting the cutter. He fired a brief burst of plasma at the sheet of glass, expecting to inscribe a neat doorway through which he could pass. The glass, however, shattered explosively at the first touch of plasma, exposing Carver to a brief gale of shards. He flinched instinctively, turning his head away, praying that none of the pieces had cut his suit. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, until he was sure that he was actually all right.
‘Lucky,’ said the dragon. ‘Now hurry up!’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Carver. ‘I guess that was stupid.’
The dragon said nothing, which Carver took to be a sign of agreement. He stepped into the small room that had been closed off behind the glasspex. He approached the weapon locker and tried its doors. It was, of course, locked. No problem for me, he thought to himself. I have a universal key.
He carefully positioned the muzzle of the cutter on the side of the cabinet, fired it up, and neatly sliced the entire front off it. The piece fell away, revealing what was inside: a gun. A smallish laser pistol, simple and cheap-looking, as were often used on ships or habitats where a projectile weapon might pierce the hull. Not powerful enough to fire through armour, but probably good enough to burn through a space suit — certainly not something you’d want to be hit on exposed flesh with. Carver lifted the weapon down, surprised at how light it was. It had a plastic security tag through the trigger-guard to indicate that it was unused. He ripped the tag out and threw it away, then stepped cautiously back though the frame that had held the armoured glasspex, and continued.
The door out of the security room had a warning hand-painted onto it in large red letters: TEMPORARY AIRLOCK. SECURITY ONLY.
‘That’s it,’ hissed the dragon faintly. ‘The prison.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Carver, stuffing the laser pistol into his belt and hefting the cutter in both hands. Despite the new addition of the laser, he still preferred the cutter. It was so much more personal than any gun. He squeezed the trigger and it came alive in his hands, fizzing and spitting, making the glass of his visor darken to protect his eyesight. ‘This is it. The prison.’ Reluctantly, he let the cutter fizzle out again. He might need to be stealthy at first.
He stepped forwards and hit the pad beside the door. As it cracked and juddered open there was a rush of gas from the darkness on the other side, a whitish stream that rolled and twisted, then rapidly dissipated. Carver waited until the door was high enough and then he stepped inside.
Chapter Forty
‘Calm the fuck down!’ bellowed Halman, not very soothingly, rising from his chair. ‘And tell me what’s going on!’
Lina pressed herself into her own seat, unable to speak. She couldn’t even remember entering the room. She still had the visor down on her helmet, despite the fact that the damn thing felt like it was suffocating her. Her breath wreathed her body like smoke, as if something was burning out inside her, an effect which didn’t help her fragile sanity at all.
‘Boss?’ said a tentative voice from the doorway.
‘Fuck off, Theo!’ roared Halman. He cast his gaze across the terrified foursome who had been squeezed into the room with him. ‘What happened? And where is Liu?’
Lina looked around herself, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. Ella, Alphe, Fionne. . . She looked again, trying to count them. Halman was right. Liu wasn’t there.
‘He. . . he. . .’ she stammered. ‘He was with me,’ she managed to splutter. Her breathing was too fast, too shallow. She tried to slow it down. ‘He was with me,’ she said again, more steadily.
‘The bastard must have got him!’ exclaimed Ella, who was standing directly in front of Halman’s desk and as such was subjected to the full close-up glower.
‘What?’ Halman demanded. ‘Who got him?’
‘A giant,’ said Fionne in a whisper, slowly raising her head as if surfacing from a dream. She, at least, had managed to open her visor. ‘With a necklace of human fingers.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Halman asked, with more control this time. ‘What happened?’
Alphe’s jaw was visibly trembling as he spoke: ‘We. . . well, we. . . we were working on Lina’s Kay, I mean we’re almost done, but. . . then. . .’ He faltered, clenching his eyes shut. ‘Shit!’ he cried in frustration, clearly unable to continue.
‘He had Eli’s fingers round his neck,’ said Fionne quietly, looking up. Her pretty face — the face of a girl from a skincare advert more than that of a deep-space engineer — was glazed and stunned, her eyes unfocused. She looked around Halman’s office as if seeking something sane and real to latch onto.
‘Who did?’ growled Halman. ‘Who?’
‘A ship came in,’ continued Alphe flatly. ‘Cycled the hangar remotely. I guess the safety systems are still off-line after Eli’s escape. Anyway, we thought it was him. But it wasn’t. It was. . . I don’t know who it was. . .’
‘A giant,’ said Fionne wonderingly. ‘A giant with Eli’s fingers. Covered in blood.’ She stared blankly into Halman’s face. Lina pressed herself further and further back into her chair, trying to distance herself from this reality. Her mind was railing inside her, a desperate prisoner in her skull.
‘What happened?’
‘We thought we’d be able to bring him in,’ Alphe went on. ‘But it wasn’t Eli.’
‘Carver. . .’ breathed Halman, turning away to stare out of the window. ‘Ronnie Carver. Six foot eight, ugly bastard, last seen on a supply shuttle bound for here.’