Against Gravity (45 page)

As Kendrick removed his own, the other chamber door opened to reveal light seeping through.

Beyond it he could see trees, and grass.

They crowded through and found themselves in the rear of a very spacious low-ceilinged gallery, with panoramic glass windows overlooking a wooded area. The trees seemed a little too regularly
spaced to be natural. The soil outside had been arranged carefully in little hillocks, again attempting to trick the eye into thinking it saw a natural environment. Further beyond the glass, the
ground curved steeply upwards.

By now most of the people who’d entered behind Kendrick had removed their helmets.

Kendrick sucked the air deep into his lungs. It smelled so fresh – he’d more than half-expected to find it as polluted as in the Maze. Although the nanite threads had already made
their presence known here, there wasn’t yet anywhere near the same degree of infestation. He stepped closer to the glass wall and gazed out at the greenery beyond.

Buddy soon joined him, helmet held loosely in one hand. He was positively glowing, his smile radiant, looking happier and more content than Kendrick recalled seeing him ever before.

A sudden, unexpected sound . . .

Kendrick glanced sideways along the front of the building where a path was visible, winding its way through the trees. “Did you hear that?”

“No, I—”

Something whirred – a machine sound that stirred up deep memories. Kendrick stepped away from the window and headed along until he was about halfway between the airlock exit and the
building’s entrance.

Out there, something glinted in among the trees. There was something hauntingly familiar about the noise he’d just heard.

Kendrick moved closer to the far end of the huge room, to look further between the building’s exterior and the trees beyond where gardens once carefully maintained had grown wild. He
cocked his head, listening hard, and heard a series of rapid staccato thumps. At the same instant he glanced over his left shoulder – in time to witness the main entrance of the building
explode inwards in a shower of glass.

Kendrick fell to the marbled floor, covering his head with his hands as the windows nearby shattered almost at the same instant. He half-crawled, half-scuttled towards the relative safety of an
expanse of wall that separated one large glass panel from the next. There he pressed himself flat against the floor while bullets whined through the air above him. They made a dull thudding sound
as they impacted with the inner walls opposite the windows.

Peering down, Kendrick saw a fine tracery of nanite threads rapidly spreading across the marbled tiles under him. The tingling in his hands became urgent, almost unbearable. He longed to scratch
his palms, to—

In an instant he understood what was required of him. Rolling slightly onto his side, he started to pull a glove off. Throwing it to one side, he gazed down at the palm of his uncovered left
hand, noticing the faintest pattern of gold still etched into his flesh.

Only a few days before, he had witnessed all-out war raging at the molecular level, deep underground. Perhaps this time things would be different.

Kendrick spread his fingers out wide and laid his bared palm flat against the tiles beneath him. He screamed as his flesh united with the cool stone. Searing pain shot into his brain while
bullets continued to zip through the air just inches above his head.

He could hear people shouting, and yet more screaming.

Through a haze of agony he became aware of the corpse lying several feet away from him, its head and shoulders reduced to a crimson pulp. He still couldn’t prise his hand away from the
tiles, so he twisted his head around, trying to see what was happening behind him. Most of the other Labrats, he saw, had retreated to the relative shelter of the pressure chamber.

The walls of the gallery were constructed from alternate panels of glass and columns of concrete: perhaps twenty Labrats had managed to find shelter behind the safety of the concrete. At least a
dozen more lay scattered in the stillness of death.

Kendrick gripped his wrist, still trying to pull his hand free. He felt a fresh stab of icy pain as the skin of his palm ripped. While he watched, golden threads crawled out from under the
flesh, seeking out the nearest silver filaments. The silver turned to gold within moments.

He finally realized that the firing outside had stopped. “It’s me – Kendrick!” he screamed into the sudden silence. “Can anyone hear me?”

“Ken!” It was Buddy. “I thought you were down!”

“Those things are gun turrets,” Kendrick yelled. “The same as back in the Maze.”

“Stay tight, Ken. We did notice that.”

Kendrick twisted his head around enough to catch sight of Buddy crouching low behind a long concrete bench near the centre of the gallery.

He managed to work his hand free at last, leaving a disturbing amount of blood and skin on the tiles. Keeping his injured hand cradled, he worked his way to the edge of a wall column and peeked
around it.

He saw a sliver of grassland, then spotted something shiny and man-made visible to one side of a tree ten or twelve metres away, deliberately positioned so that it covered as much of that side
of the building as possible. He slowly pulled his head back again.

They
had
to do something now. Draeger was still somewhere out there.

Moving very slowly again, Kendrick shifted closer to where the window had been, and lifted his head.

“Hey!” a voice yelled. “Hey, stay back!”

He saw Veliz peeking out from the door leading into the pressure chamber. One of the turrets whirred and Veliz dodged back out of range. Another volley of bullets spat into the building’s
interior.

Draeger could be downloading reams of lethal information and transmitting it back down to Earth while they were trapped here. Or else erasing the proof of his guilt for ever.

Kendrick allowed himself no more time to think. He stood and ran out through the shattered window, still cradling his injured left hand against his chest. He headed towards a copse only a few
metres distant. His movements were restricted by the suit he was wearing, making him feel clumsy and slow.

The turret whined again and dirt was kicked up in tiny spurts, tracking after Kendrick as he threw himself into the shelter of the trees. Bullets ripped through the branches above him. He
shielded his head as leaves and twigs rained down.

The gun whined into silence as its target disappeared from its sensors.

“Kendrick! Are you there?” Buddy again.

“I’m okay,” Kendrick shouted back. “I’m outside here. There’s a turret just ahead of me.”

He heard a muted argument from somewhere inside the building. “Stay where you are,” Buddy yelled back.

Then came the sounds of running feet and more bullets whining and ricocheting. Glancing back quickly towards the shattered window through which he’d exited, Kendrick saw Buddy take cover
in the same place he himself had. Buddy gave him a one-handed thumbs-up before ducking back out of sight.

The reality of what he had just done began to hit Kendrick with the force of shock. He could very easily have died. He rolled onto his back and gazed up through the copse’s branches.

Buddy called out to him again. “Kendrick, I’m throwing something over.”

A small brick-like object landed not too far away, compact enough to fit into the palm of Kendrick’s uninjured right hand. The turret whined briefly in response, spitting a few bullets
into the air near where the object had landed. Kendrick reached out for it with tentative fingers, ready to snatch them back behind his cover, but the turret didn’t respond this time. He
picked the object up and recognized it as one of the grenades that Sabak had taken on board the shuttle.

“Do you think you can hit that thing from where you are now?” Buddy yelled.

“I can
try
– but do we have any more of these if I miss?”

A pause. “Just try and get it first time, okay?”

Great.
“How does it work?”

“Touch the screen. Press where it says ‘arming’. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“When you’re ready to throw, press down hard on the plastic button on the reverse side, and then for God’s sake just throw the damn thing. You’ll have maybe seven seconds
before it detonates.”

Kendrick nodded. Then he dragged a branch from the soil and tossed it high into the open air. The turret whined, and the chunk of bullet-splintered wood jerked in the air before hitting the
ground.

“Listen,” said Buddy. “I’m going to draw its fire, then you throw. You got me?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. That thing’s got a much faster response rate than—”

Buddy moved in an augmented blur, heading for another tree several metres away from where Kendrick sheltered. The turret whirred in response, tracking Buddy’s path with fire as he ran.

Damn
. Again there was no time to think. Kendrick pressed down on the grenade’s activator and stepped out from behind his own tree, hurling the device as hard as he could in the
direction of the turret.

As he’d stood he’d glimpsed Buddy diving towards the meagre shelter of another tree. None of the trees on board the station could possibly be more than nine or ten years old but they
were already tall and gnarled, with thick trunks. It occurred to him that they’d have been altered genetically to grow much faster than nature intended. They also, he dimly recalled from some
documentary, served a vital function in the station’s complex artificial ecology.

Far more importantly, they at least provided more shelter than natural-grown saplings.

Buddy dropped down out of sight again and the turret rapidly swung back towards Kendrick. The grenade had landed just a foot from its base.

Kendrick threw himself back behind the tree and stumbled. As he started to pull himself up, he realized that he was still in the turret’s line of sight.

He could see the turret zeroing in on him. Desperately, he reached behind himself for the knapsack in which he had stored his helmet. As he flung it away from him the turret’s sensors
picked up the sudden movement. Kendrick caught a glimpse of the knapsack dancing in the air, giving him the opportunity to slide rapidly back behind the tree.

A moment later the air was filled by a noise like a giant hammer blow. Dirt and splinters rained down on Kendrick’s head. He lay exhausted, trembling from the adrenalin still pumping
through his veins.

But the turret was dead.

Over the next several minutes, similar blasts were audible from further along the side of the building as Sabak’s men managed to take out the remaining gun turrets. As
Kendrick lifted himself up and peered towards the one he’d managed to destroy he half-expected it to spring back to life.

He climbed up on unsteady feet and went to retrieve the knapsack. The helmet, he found, was ruined. If he wanted to escape from the station he’d have to find another.

Buddy looked haggard and pale, and Kendrick assumed that he himself probably looked just as bad. He glanced around at the grass and trees, shimmering here and there with familiar pale silver
threads.

Buddy followed the direction of his gaze. “Same as the Maze,” he muttered.

“Not quite, no.” The flesh of Kendrick’s hand was still torn and bleeding. The pain felt even greater now that he was less preoccupied with just staying alive.

Kendrick looked back to the building, where the survivors were only just beginning to emerge from hiding. Its walls sparkled here and there with silvery light, but the longer he watched the more
the silver took on a distinctly golden hue. He visualized the same change spreading through the entire station, through the soil under his feet, through all those circuits and corridors.

All around them a war was taking place – in absolute silence.

Fourteen people were dead. They were laid out in rows in the centre of the gallery. All around Kendrick the tiles were red with blood where the victims had been caught in a
massacre.

Kendrick spotted Sabak and approached him. “Look, time’s running out. I’m going after Draeger now and I need your help. I know I can’t manage this alone.”

Sabak shook his head firmly. “Nobody’s going anywhere. None of us are taking any more chances than we have to. So we stay right here. Not one more life is going to be wasted before
the wormhole opens.”

Kendrick stared at him, his expression revealing his sudden anger. “And Draeger? You’re going to let him get away with this?”

Sabak chuckled long and low, glaring back at Kendrick with something like hatred. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re not in charge of this operation. I know you think
we’re all crazy. Well then, fuck you. Fuck you and Draeger both.”

Kendrick stepped away, appalled. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re a Labrat, and you—”

“I’m a
human being
, Mr Gallmon. I want to be able to choose my own destiny – and this is what I choose. I’m not here to be a hero or to save the human race.”
Sabak jabbed a finger into his own chest. “The human race can take care of itself just fine.”

Kendrick licked his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He looked around and saw that other people had been listening. But none of them would meet his gaze.

“This isn’t right,” he said, for the benefit of all of them. “There are people down there who— Ah, the hell with it.”

He turned from Sabak without another word and stepped back outside the building.

Kendrick wasn’t sure how long he’d been out there in the open when he realized that Buddy was standing near him. No more than a couple of minutes, probably.

“I saw the way you were looking at these threads. I can see they’re changing colour. You’re going to tell me what’s happening here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Kendrick lied. How could he explain? He was far from sure that he could go out there and find Draeger on his own. He needed Buddy’s support – even
Sabak’s.

Buddy shook his head slowly. “There’s something you’re not telling me. First that trip to the Maze, now this. It’s not right to keep me in the dark.”