Suddenly, there came a deafening blast of noise from the radio. Lina jumped, jerking the small stick that controlled the gas torch, making it come away from the metal. The noise was gone again. It had sounded almost random, like white noise, but Lina didn’t think it had been. There had been something in there, below the hissing and crackling of the muddied radio signal. She thought it had been screaming.
‘Ella! What was that?’
‘Somebody’s trying to contact us!’ cried Ella. ‘Hurry, Lina!’
‘I’m trying, I’m trying!’ Lina called back, re-applying the torch. She was aware of what that noise had meant. They weren’t all dead inside, not yet. But they were in trouble. Was it already too late to save them? Would she, at best, manage merely to cut loose a tin can full of insane murderers and slaughtered personnel? How would they ever get Carver’s gang out of there if Si had failed to push them back? Maybe Fionne really would have to create some sort of poison gas. Lina just couldn’t imagine her being prepared to do that.
She realised that she had cut as far as she could without moving the ship itself, so she withdrew the gas torch and detached the clamp. She backed carefully away to survey the boarding tube better.
Another burst from the radio. This time the screaming was clearer, and there was another voice, too. Somebody must have worked their way close to the shuttle’s hull, and was trying to talk to them. Friend or foe? She couldn’t guess.
‘Lina!’ said Ella in a small, high voice. ‘You hear that?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lina distractedly, gently turning her ship to present the gas torch to a new section. Maybe she should try the rotary cutter — it might be faster after all.
‘I couldn’t make out the words!’ Ella shouted.
‘I know,’ Lina replied. ‘Just stay there and listen.’
She slowly drew the gas torch along the boarding tube’s armoured skin, inscribing a neat incision through which a milky glow emanated, as if it was bleeding light. Again she hit the limit of the tool arm’s reach and released the magnetic clamp. She drew a hand across her forehead and it came away slicked with sweat. Her heart was practically buzzing, its rhythm had become so fast.
‘Come on,’ she whispered to herself, backing away for a better view. She saw that the asteroid was blocking the way to where she needed to go next. A great, jagged protrusion of rock jutted above her, preventing her from continuing the cut from here. She would have to fly out of the canyon then return from the other side. More time. ‘Shit!’ she cursed, damning herself for her inability to go any faster.
She backed the ship up until she reached a point that was wide enough to turn in, then brought it about and dialled up the gas. She emerged from beneath the belly of the shuttle, seeing Ella’s vessel hanging in front of her. The other Kays were clustered roughly in the distance. Some of them still had their headlights showing, as if their pilots had just popped out for a minute. In reality, she knew that most, if not all of them, would never sit in those ships again.
‘Lina?’ asked Ella’s voice. ‘You done?’
‘No, I just have to hit it from the other side,’ Lina answered, already turning to fly across the top of the shuttle.
‘Well, when you–’ But Ella’s voice was cut off by a gasp. Lina’s nerves jangled like wind chimes. ‘Lina! Look!’ cried Ella, her voice shrill with excitement.
Lina spun her Kay around, expecting the worst, honestly terrified. The shuttle’s huge manoeuvring jets were sputtering to life. Serpent-tongues of incandescent gas licked the vacuum, stuttering then steadying. The shuttle wallowed, shivered, and began to move.
‘Lina, they’ve done it!’ cried Ella. ‘They’ve done it, Rocko’s done it!’
‘No. . .’ Lina shook her head, trying to deny that it was happening. ‘No, Ella, this could be bad. . .’
‘Bad?’ asked Ella. Lina could hear the joy drain from her voice. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not done! I’m not done!’
‘But what’s–’
‘Get away!’ Lina yelled, realising what was about to happen. ‘GO!’
She slammed the gas all the way to the stop and her Kay took off with enough gees to pin her uncomfortably into her seat. Her vision began to cloud, grey monochrome bleeding in from the edges. She struggled to remain conscious, feeling her suit clench around her legs, driving the blood to her brain.
The shuttle and its massive asteroid moved slowly at first. The great symbiotic construct of rock and metal ploughed into the field of abandoned Kays, narrowly missing Lina and Ella as they accelerated out of the way. The Kays piled up against the hull of the shuttle, then were spilled off into the void, scattering like nine-pins, spinning away into the night, broken tool-arms shattering off them. Lina brought her ship to a stop, Ella drifting nearby. As one, they turned to look.
‘It’s fine, Lina!’ said Ella. ‘Look — the course is good.’
And sure enough, Rocko had somehow got the bearing right. The shuttle was heading in the direction of Macao. But it looked far from fine.
The half-cut boarding tube, instead of forming a rigid link between the two objects, was now something more akin to a hinge. As the awkward conjoined mass began to pick up speed, the nose of the shuttle came down to meet the asteroid. There was a silent collision that dented the shielded hull of the ship and sent chunks of rock shattering off in all directions. The shuttle rebounded, twisting on the severing link of the boarding tube, and this time its back end hit the rock. The manoeuvring jets exploded, scattering debris and illuminating the glistening asteroid in a flash that lasted just the briefest instant.
Lina watched in silent horror as the shuttle was blown clear of the rock. The asteroid flew on, its course almost unaltered by the loss of its man-made parasite. A host of smaller rocks, its swarm of progeny, flew with it now. Lina maxed the gas again, giving chase. Shadows twined through the belt around her — imagined, real, both or neither of those things — ink and oil swirling on the canvas of the night.
The shuttle hit a smaller asteroid and rebounded, crashing into Eli’s rock for a last time as the pair flew towards the station. This time the whole asteroid shattered, breaking in half in a hideous slow-motion dance of destruction — chaos from order, entropy in action. The shuttle flew off on a tangent, up and port-wards. Half of the asteroid deflected to the other side, hitting one jagged iceberg, then another, disintegrating as it went, spreading boulders and gravel in all directions.
The remains of the other half flew onwards, ever onwards, towards the station. It smashed a smaller rock out of its way, setting off a chain of collisions that almost killed Lina. The ship’s computer swerved the Kay around one spinning rock and then another, as she struggled to keep the large chunk in her sight. Her mind was reciting the names of the dead as she went: Sal, Nik, Jayce, Tamzin, Eli, Liu, Rachelle, Waine, Theo, Halman, Alphe, Niya. . .
The shuttle was slowing down, ploughing through asteroids that shattered into dust against its deuterium shield. It would miss the station. But the rock might not. . .
Macao came into sight, rising through the haze of asteroids like a sailing ship appearing through sea-mist. Marco was in there.
‘No,’ Lina breathed. ‘No. . .’ She flew on, tailing the spinning chunk of stone as the shuttle slowed to a halt, gently rotating, with the ISL still clinging to its back.
Although Macao was dying, its kinetic defence systems were still working. The station fired once from the mass drivers on its hub, once more from its rim. The half-asteroid burst apart. Some small chunks continued on, colliding again and again, being whittled down to dust and finally petering safely out. Lina brought her Kay to a halt before the towering edifice of the station, that great dirty wheel. Macao remained untouched, inviolate, turning. Eli’s rock had become a cloud of sand and gravel.