Against Gravity (41 page)

The sky had begun to darken even as they spoke, revealing a great whirlpool of stars that stretched from horizon to horizon. The stars themselves rippled, as if invisible shapes were darting
through the atmosphere, distorting and refracting the starlight with their passage.

A vivid awareness crept into every cell of Kendrick’s being. Everything – the grass, trees, clouds, the stars and even the air – was alive, sentient. It was God, after a
fashion, but a God born of science and knowledge.

During his long journey here, Kendrick had seen flesh and silicon merge into an intelligence woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. He could sense it all around him. It enervated him,
overwhelmed him.

“The
Archimedes
,” he managed to say. “What are you going to do when we get there?”

“You’ll see,” Peter replied. “We won’t be speaking again before we arrive. I need to prepare.” He paused. “I’m sorry about Caroline.”

“Yeah,” Kendrick mumbled. “Me too.”

“You’ve not quite taken it in, have you?”

“Not really, no.” Kendrick looked back up. “I’ve seen too many people end up dead over the years.”

“Including me.”

Kendrick allowed himself a small smile. “Including you. Though it feels really weird to say it with you standing right there.”

“You mean you’re getting used to it.”

“Christ, I hope not.” Kendrick let out a bitter chuckle. “Numb to it, more like.” The image of Caroline lying dead in the containment room wouldn’t leave his
mind’s eye. He couldn’t stop himself imagining what it must have been like for her in her last moments. “Listen, I need to know something,” he went on quickly, hoping to
banish those thoughts. “Where do I go once we’re on board?”

“The main research facility,” said Peter, his voice fading. “In the second chamber.”

There was still more that Kendrick wanted to ask. But now he could almost sense the confines of the ship’s cabin around him again, the hillside fading like little more than a particularly
vivid dream.

He woke in the small cabin as klaxons filled the air with a loud whooping that sent dull vibrations through the frame of his bunk.

He glanced at the clock mounted on the wall, his mind still reeling from revelation and mystery. Only six hours to launch time.

Twenty minutes later, Kendrick found Sabak up on the ship’s bridge, conferring with Arnheim. Buddy and Veliz were there too. The sirens had finally shut off several
minutes before, but Kendrick hadn’t failed to notice the strained expressions on the crew members he’d passed in the narrow corridors or the way some of them glanced away at his
approach. He hadn’t had time to check in a mirror, but he reckoned he could assume that he still looked pretty gruesome.

Buddy glanced over when he arrived. “Looks like we’re under attack.” A look of concern crossed his face. “Look, you’ve just lost someone important to you. Are you
sure you—?”

“I’m fine. I’m not an invalid.” Kendrick glanced over at Sabak. “What sort of attack?”

Sabak looked at him as though he was about to tell him that he shouldn’t be there. “Hard to say,” he finally said, shrugging. “They’re holding off for now. But
it’s not looking good.” He turned to look back out towards the horizon.

Kendrick stepped up beside Sabak. From here he could see across the whole of the ship and a large expanse of the ocean beyond. At first he thought the dark line separating sea and sky was a
distant shore. Then he saw that it was in fact another ship, but one that apparently stretched across a daunting expanse of the horizon.

Next he glanced over at the launch platform, a hundred or so metres away. Four helicopters were hovering around the shuttle, keeping their distance but clearly presenting a considerable threat.
Kendrick could see the missile tubes bulging from their undercarriages.

“Draeger,” Sabak informed Kendrick sourly.

“How can you be sure?”

Sabak looked over at Arnheim, who nodded to a bank of screens displaying high-res images of the ship on the horizon. Kendrick could see it was an oil tanker, and it didn’t take much to
guess that this was where the ’copters had come from.

“We’ve checked the records,” Sabak explained. “The tanker is owned by one of Max Draeger’s subsidiary companies.”

“Okay, so do we know what he wants?”

Buddy stepped up beside Kendrick. “You were the last one to talk to him. If anybody knows the answer to that question, it’s you.”

“I told you, he says he wants us to take him or his men up there with us when we go.”

Arnheim stabbed a finger out at the four aircraft still buzzing around the shuttle. “Or what? He’s going to blow us up? Is that what he wants?”

“He offered us some kind of protection from Los Muertos.”

Arnheim turned to Sabak. “Is it worth considering?”

Kendrick stepped towards Arnheim. “No, it’s not. Not under any circumstances.”

“Sir.” A young man stepped over from a bank of terminals on the far side of the bridge. “We’ve got a message incoming.”

Arnheim turned to him. “Is it from the tanker?”

“Yes, sir, they want to talk to the, uh . . .” He glanced nervously at Kendrick and the other Labrats. “To the passengers.”

“That’s fine, Stan.” Sabak spoke to Arnheim. “Reroute the signal to the back-up comms room and we’ll take it in there.”

Sabak stepped over to join Kendrick, Buddy and Veliz while gesturing towards the exit.

“If you please,” he said quietly. “It’s just on the next deck down. No reason to get the crew or the launch staff any more worried than they need to be.”

A few minutes later they found themselves in a long low-ceilinged room furnished with office chairs and banks of terminals similar to the ones that Kendrick had seen on the bridge itself. A
crewman glanced over his shoulder as they entered, his gaze lingering on Kendrick for a little longer than might have been considered polite under normal circumstances. Kendrick watched as the
crewman finally remembered how to close his mouth. Sabak dismissed the man and slid into the vacated seat. He began rapidly tapping at a touchscreen.

As Kendrick and the rest stepped up behind him, a variety of views of the surrounding ocean sprang to life on the wall-mounted screens. Kendrick could see that the tanker had drawn nearer,
approaching the launch pad at an angle. It had probably been braking for some time.

Another screen sprang to life, fizzing with static before resolving into an image of Max Draeger talking to someone off-camera. He turned, his eyes looking slightly to one side as he focused on
the lens of his display screen.

Sabak addressed Draeger’s image. “Mr Draeger, we have you on a secure line. You’re speaking directly to me and some witnesses here aboard the launch-control vessel. I’m a
director of the company that owns this facility. Is that approaching tanker yours?”

“Yes, it is.” Draeger’s voice sounded calm. “I have a proposition to make to you.”

“Just a minute,” said Sabak, shooing Buddy away with a wave of his hand as he leant forward to speak. “I have to ask, are those helicopters around our launch pad also yours?
Because if they are, you’re currently in violation of enough internationally recognized regulations to bury you in a ton of shit from now till doomsday. Those ’copters are armed, and
that in itself is considered an act of piracy.”

“The helicopters are there for your own protection,” Draeger replied. “You have only a few hours left before your launch window closes. I’m offering my own security
services as a protection against interference.”

Kendrick bent forward towards the screen. “What do you want now, Draeger?”

Draeger smiled tightly. “Were you aware that a squadron of Los Muertos-piloted fighter jets is currently flying north-west from Panama to blow you out of the water?”

Kendrick blinked. “I don’t have any reason to believe you.”

Draeger shrugged. “In that case, maybe you should wait until they arrive.”

Sabak put a hand on Kendrick’s shoulder but he shrugged it off. “Stop fucking around,” he said to the screen, “and just tell us what you want.”

“If you agree to carry a selection of my own men on board the
Archimedes
, I will guarantee to use all my available resources to prevent any hostile attacks on your ship and facility
during and after the launch itself.”

Sabak motioned silently to Kendrick and they stepped away from the screen.

Sabak spoke in a low voice. “You’re supposed to know the guy inside out. That’s what Buddy told me. Is he telling the truth?”

“Probably, but no guarantees. He’s likely bluffing us at the same time.”

“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

“I don’t believe for one moment that he’d just stand by and let us be wiped out by those supposed jets if we refused his help. We’re his only ticket on board the
Archimedes
. If we wait long enough, I’m sure he’ll give us protection regardless of whether or not we accept his offer, even to have the slimmest chance of persuading us to help
him get on board.”

“What if we accept his offer anyway?”

“Remember who this is,” Kendrick said. “This is Max Draeger. We don’t have any proof that those fighter jets even exist – or, if they do, that they aren’t
his
.”

“Shit.” Sabak stared into space, thinking hard, then shook his head. “Look,
assuming
he’s telling the truth about those fighter jets, then turning him down still
means taking an enormous risk, whether or not he’s bluffing. If he really did stand by while we came under attack, then hundreds of lives that myself and Captain Arnheim are supposed to be
responsible for would be put at risk. No.” He shook his head again. “I’m not taking any more chances if I can possibly help it.”

Kendrick felt a wave of defeat wash over him. “If we come to any agreement with him, we’re going to be sucked into something we’re going to regret. We’re dealing with the
devil here.”

“Look, I need all the advice I can get, I admit. But if there’s any truth in what he’s saying I don’t have any choice but to agree to his terms.”

Kendrick shook his head angrily, fighting to keep his temper. “That’s your decision,” he said tightly. “Just remember, he’s as responsible for Caroline
Vincenzo’s death as if he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

“I know that,” Sabak said. “Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that I like this any more than you do.”

Sabak stepped back over to the monitor and addressed Draeger. “We’re going to need evidence before we accept anything whatsoever from you. Can you prove any of what you’ve told
us?”

An icon flashed on the screen below Draeger’s image. “I’m uploading the information you need right now,” Draeger stated.

Buddy leant over Sabak and tapped the icon. “This is a live satellite feed,” he explained. He nodded at Draeger’s image. “Can he hear us?”

Sabak tapped another icon. “Not now, he can’t.”

“Look, this is the same kind of sat-recon info and telemetry we used to get back in my army days. Live feeds of plane and ship movements and likely intercept points.”

“I know about these things just as well as you do,” said Sabak. “They can be faked.”

Buddy shook his head. “No, not these. Look at the satellite ident information. That’s coming straight from pre-war orbital platforms that can’t be hacked into. You’ll
never, ever get those idents on any kind of civilian GPS networks. At the most, Draeger might have hacked into a transmission from one of the sats in order to siphon off this information, but
it’s legit all the same.”

“So you’re saying we have to take this stuff seriously.”

Buddy nodded emphatically. “I am, yes.”

Numbers scrolled up on the screen as Kendrick watched. Latitudes and longitudes, air speed and distance. Buddy tapped a finger on a series of tabled figures. “And if this is anything to go by, those fighter jets will get here just about the time we’re due to launch.”

Sabak put out a finger, letting it hover over the voice icon for several moments before touching it. “Mr Draeger, you believe that you can’t get on board the
Archimedes
without us. Correct?”

“Every salvage expedition carried out by myself – or by others – has always ended in disaster. That’s a matter of public record.”

“What makes you so sure that you’ll succeed with our help, then?”

“I know about the Bright, Mr Sabak. Indeed, I know as much about what is happening here as you do, except I haven’t shared the . . .
experiences
that you and the other
Augments have. Besides, once I get on board the station I will require only a limited amount of time to extract the information that interests me. It’s my belief that I have a much greater
chance of success if I accompany those with whom the Bright clearly share a powerful affinity.”

“What’s on the
Archimedes
that you want so badly?”

“I created the Bright, therefore I should be the one to communicate with them. There is certain information on board the station that is wired to my direct command, meaning that it can
only be accessed by me in person. I wish to retrieve it.” Draeger paused. “The benefit to humanity of the knowledge harvested by the Bright may be immeasurable. That alone justifies my
participation in this expedition.”

Draeger turned his attention to Kendrick next. “Mr Gallmon, do you remember when you left Los Angeles and came under fire? Do you remember the aerial drones that attacked your
pursuers?”

“So that
was
you,” Kendrick heard Buddy behind him.

Draeger nodded. “Think of it as a goodwill gesture. If not for that, neither of you would be here today.”

“Is this true?” asked Sabak, addressing both of them.

“We did come under fire as we left LA,” Buddy confirmed. “Something got in the way of the ’copters chasing us.”

“Remember, without me you won’t get off the ground,” Draeger stated. “Will you accept my offer?”

“We’ll be back in touch,” Sabak replied. Then he looked around at the others. Nobody said anything, so he reached out and touched the screen. Draeger faded to black.

“Now that is one slippery bastard,” said Sabak. But he sounded impressed.