‘Go!’ screamed Halman, scrambling to his feet.
Lina ran, her feet skidding on the icy floor in excruciating slow-motion. It was like a dream she’d used to have quite regularly back in the days when her marriage had been failing but she hadn’t had the sense to overtly acknowledge it — a dream in which she’d always found herself running from some faceless aggressor, but running without moving, as if caught in treacle, frozen in a single, hellish slice of time.
Her flight from the cover of the ship to the door of the hangar seemed to take minutes, though in fact it must have been closer to two or three seconds. Laser lights played around them, deceptively harmless-looking, miraculously touching neither of them. Suited enemies moved towards them from every angle, but too slowly.
They were out, away into the warehouse and running as fast as their suits would allow. One slip now, one tiny pause, one stumble, would mean death. Lina felt her heart beating in her head, compressive waves that made her vision fade and swim. The exhausted breath from her suit stretched out behind her in a long silky plume.
Halman seemed to keep pace with her effortlessly, and he ran beside her although she knew he could have just stormed away, leaving her easily behind. The warehouse was utterly dark after the relative brightness of the hangar, and their suit-lights bobbed and weaved crazily as they ran, slashing and slicing through the darkness. They didn’t pause to look behind them, and there was only silence from the radio. They ran beneath the crushing shadows, over the frosted metal, through the airless void of their hostile home, leaving more friends dead behind them.
Chapter Forty-Three
When they reached the next floor, Halman slowed Lina with a hand outstretched in front of her. At first, she didn’t think she could slow down, but gradually she managed to control her aching, pumping legs. They decelerated to a walk, checking behind them. There was no sign of any pursuit and nothing from the comm.
‘I think we’re clear,’ Halman said between heaving breaths. They were passing those empty living quarters again, and the area was even more desolate to Lina’s mind than the industrial coldness of the hangar had been. People should have been living here, and instead there was only this lifeless metal warren, frozen in the moment of desertion.
‘I think you’re right,’ she said, trying not to look through the doorways that they passed, keeping her light fixed on the wall at the end of the passage, where it took a turn to the left.
‘You heard anyone recently?’ asked Halman. He was still holding his laser pistol, cocked at an angle against his shoulder.
‘No,’ said Lina. ‘You?’
‘Not for a while, I don’t think, but to be honest I’ve had other things on my mind. I should have locked the hangar door. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Carver could just cut through it. If we’d paused we’d have been killed. Like Theo. And Waine.’ Two more. She couldn’t even remember how many that made now. And what had caused it all? How had her world degenerated into this? She couldn’t work it out. Something about dragons and psychoactive drugs and shuttles and prisoners. It was all a blur inside her mind.
‘Yeah,’ said Halman darkly. ‘I guess.’ He adjusted one of the dials on his suit’s chest unit. ‘Ella!’ he yelled into the comm, with such sudden volume that Lina physically jumped.
‘Damn it, Halman!’ she yelped, feeling her heart shudder inside her as adrenalin surged through her body. She only narrowly avoided peeing in her suit, a humiliation which, although private, she certainly didn’t need.
‘Sorry,’ he said more quietly. They reached the end of the passage and Halman peered round suspiciously, gun outstretched, before leading Lina round. ‘Ella!’ he yelled again. ‘Si! Somebody fucking copy me!’
Lina wondered how she would react if Carver copied, or maybe one of his escaped mental-case friends. She thought she might scream if that happened, but luckily it didn’t.
The next time Halman called Ella, she answered.
‘I’m here, Boss,’ said Ella’s voice. But it had lost its usual strong and confident tone. Ella sounded frightened and possibly out of breath.
‘Ella,’ said Halman with a sigh of relief. ‘Bad news.’
‘I know,’ she answered. Ella sounded as if she might be running. ‘We’re on our way towards the plaza. Carver’s freed the damn prisoners! And he murdered Rachelle. Where are you?’
‘We’re back on two now,’ Halman replied, coming to a halt. He turned in place, casting his light around. ‘In the refinery quarters corridor. Don’t go near the hangar, though, Ella. Carver’s circus of freaks just fucking rushed us there. They killed Theo and shot Waine — one of the bastards had a laser.’
Ella replied with a single word that, although shredded by interference, Lina understood to be fuck. ‘Is Lina with you?’ asked Ella, and Lina was touched to hear the note of concern in her friend’s voice.
‘I’m here,’ she said, but the words came out in a croak. She licked her lips and tried again: ‘I’m here, Ella. I’m okay.’
‘Good. That’s good. Hi, Lina.’ The relief was clear in Ella’s voice.
‘Hi,’ echoed Lina, feeling a little foolish. It seemed there were more important things to be said. ‘Have you seen Si’s team?’ she asked.
‘Look where you’re going!’ cried Ella, which seemed a pretty strange answer until Lina realised that she was talking to someone at her end. ‘No,’ said Ella in a more conversational tone. ‘But we last heard them only a minute ago. We could back-track and get a message to them, probably.’
‘Do it, please,’ said Halman, leaning his back against the wall of the passage and stuffing the pistol into a tool-loop on his suit. ‘I want them to head back to base and get me Alphe and Fionne. I know they’re fucking traumatised, but right now they can join the club. I want them, and your team, and Si’s team to meet us here soon-as. And tell them to bring every spare air cartridge they can find for these suits. I assume the prisoners have escaped back into the belt. But if they’re still in the hangar I want us to return in force. If they’ve left the station, then we’ll go ahead as planned, with the slight change that we’ll now take as many Kays as we can fly. Then we’ll cut our way into that shuttle and take it back.’
‘Sure,’ said Ella’s voice. She sounded pleased. Ella liked to have a plan. Even a plan that was, in Lina’s opinion, now one hell of a long shot. In fact, it was probably suicide.
‘I know the odds are sounding worse and worse,’ said Halman, as if reading her mind. ‘But what choice do we have?’
‘And Ella?’ asked Lina. ‘Will you give a message to Marco for me?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
Lina’s mind suddenly went blank. What could she possibly say to him that would make everything all right? How could any words even begin to do that? There had been more deaths. She was about to put herself right into the midst of a very grave danger. Hope was trickling away like sand through the waist of an hourglass. The assault on the shuttle now sounded like a death sentence. What could she possibly tell him?
‘Just tell him I’m okay,’ she said lamely.
‘Will do, then,’ said Ella. ‘We’re turning back. As soon as we can get a message to Si’s lot, we’ll come and meet you there. Stay put. Oh, and Boss. . .’