Against Gravity (47 page)

“Something’s happening,” he muttered.

The silver fibres beneath their feet rippled as if a sudden wind had whipped swiftly through the chamber. Except, of course, there was no discernible movement of air beyond a barely perceptible
breeze produced by the natural circulation of atmosphere through the huge chamber.

“Forget about it. We need to get moving.” Kendrick was trying not to let his fear show. They started forward again. As the facility moved slowly down the giant curving wall to meet
them, a great twisting column of threads rose high above them, rooted in the soil nearby. It stretched across the width of the cavern, joining itself to the opposite side of the hull.

Their gaze picked out glistening bulbous shapes on the silver column’s surface as they approached. Kendrick didn’t want to wait around and see what might emerge from them.

As they came closer they heard a high-pitched scream from the direction of the facility itself.

“Ken, that sounded like—” Gunshots now: several noisy detonations, one after the other, in rapid succession.

Something rumbled through the hull under their feet. Cold sweat sprang out on Kendrick’s skin as he imagined someone detonating a nuclear device – perhaps in the previous chamber,
perhaps somewhere outside the station. It was far too easy to speculate on the hull ripping apart beneath them, sending them both spinning out into the endless cold vacuum of space.

But the rumbling faded a few moments later. Kendrick glanced down at the read-out on his arm and found a message icon blinking up at him.

He lowered his arm and headed rapidly towards one of the buildings directly ahead. A sign mounted in front identified it as the primary section of the research facility. Draeger was in there
somewhere. He had to be.

“Kendrick, wait. Before we go further we should check back with the others and see if they have any idea what just happened.”

“Bad idea. Whatever they say won’t make any difference, so let’s just get this over with.”

The low-roofed buildings making up the facility had been tastefully designed from glass and wood. A wide balcony overlooked a pool fringed with pebbles, the water overgrown now with pond scum
and silver filaments. It looked like something from an eerily deserted university campus.

Kendrick slowed, wary of running straight into Draeger’s men. But there were no more screams and no more gunshots. Buddy kept pace with him, reluctantly.

“Listen, Kendrick, I’ve got an idea. We’re heavily outnumbered, right? We can’t just walk right in there among them.”

“I know that, but there isn’t time left to try anything else. We’ll just have to work it out as we go along.” He carried on towards the entrance.

“If you march in and they see you they’ll have no compunction about killing you. Look, let
me
talk to Draeger.”

Kendrick stopped and faced Buddy. “Talking to him isn’t on the agenda. He used us to get here and the instant we looked like showing him any resistance he ran – but only
because he couldn’t kill all of us.”

“Those men in there with him are professional soldiers, maybe Augments. You don’t stand a chance against them. Negotiation is the only way.”

“Someone is already dead, thanks to Max Draeger’s negotiating skills. All I’m saying is, if we don’t try and stop it now—”

“Maybe we
can
find a way to reason with him.”

“
Reason
with him?” Kendrick glared at Buddy. “What exactly is your problem? When he blew that guy’s head off, did that strike you as reasonable?”

Buddy’s mouth worked silently for a moment. “I suppose what it comes down to is that – I don’t trust you as much as I thought I did.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe I had you wrong. I thought that once you were up here with us you’d understand.”

“What, you’re worried I might jeopardize things for you?”

“Look, ever since we found those bombs I’ve been thinking that if Draeger
does
have one the last thing we want to do is give him any excuse to set it off. Right?”

“Well,” said Kendrick. “That depends.”

Buddy looked incredulous. “On what?”

“On whether or not that means we let him get away.”

Flinging his hands out in a gesture of despair, Buddy made a strangled sound. “You
see
? Can’t you hear yourself? How fucking monomaniacal do you have to
get
? One way or
another, if Draeger has one of those nukes, he’s also got us by the balls – or can’t you understand that?”

Kendrick spoke quietly and carefully. “Buddy, let me explain something. He’s got
you
by the balls. He’s got
Sabak
by the balls. But he hasn’t got
me
,
because I don’t care about his threats. I’m going to nail the fucker. I want the world to know what kind of man he is. Otherwise everything that happened to us down there in the Maze
isn’t going to mean a damn thing.

“And it’s not even that which really worries me. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but I’ll bet every last penny that he’s had a way out of here figured
for a long time. And if he does somehow manage to find something on those computers that he can take back down with him, then I don’t believe anyone back home is going to thank us for letting
him get away.”

Buddy’s face looked as though it was carved from stone. “Fuck
them
,” he said quietly.

They were standing almost face to face now, and Kendrick started to turn away. From out of the corner of his eye he saw Buddy move towards him, reaching out to grab his arm.

Kendrick swivelled rapidly, taking hold of Buddy’s wrist and punching him hard in the face as he did so. Buddy reeled back in surprise, then slipped and fell to the ground. Kendrick
stepped over and clouted him a second time – unable to halt the sudden terrible anger that threatened to overwhelm him.

He became distantly aware that the air around him felt chillier than it had only seconds earlier. A sudden wind rippled through his hair, becoming stronger. Something was happening to the
atmosphere in the station.

Buddy still lay flat on the ground, gasping and cursing.

“Don’t get in my way,” Kendrick yelled at him. “Don’t dare come after me.” He stepped away, panting. “I wish it didn’t have to work out this
way.”

Buddy stared up at him with angry pain-filled eyes. But he didn’t try to move from where he lay.

Kendrick retreated for a couple of metres, keeping Buddy well in sight. Then he turned and ran for the facility entrance. He turned a corner and stopped to make sure that his pistol was
loaded.

Buddy was right about one thing: just charging in after Draeger would be like committing suicide. Kendrick had felt sure that by now some plan would have come to mind, some way to thwart Draeger
without placing himself in such immediate danger. Unfortunately, his mind remained obstinately blank.

The screaming started again, a ragged and terrible animal sound, drifting from somewhere deeper within the building.

Kendrick was far from surprised to find more bodies inside, lying next to a pair of wide doors at the far end of a hallway. Kendrick gagged again at the stench of blood and
viscera until his senses could adjust to filter it out. He noticed that both doors had been partly blown off their hinges.

Stepping closer to the corpses, he recognized them as some of Draeger’s men. Marlin Smeby was not among them. At first Kendrick assumed they had been blown apart by the force of the
explosives after having made a dangerous error in trying to blast their way into the facility interior. But closer inspection revealed that their flesh had been torn and ripped as if by claws. He
nudged one body with his foot, trying very hard not to think about what these injuries signified.

The corpse cradled something in its arms. Another nuke, Kendrick realized, shuddering. It had almost certainly been retrieved from one of the dead Los Muertos whom he and Buddy had come across
earlier. Two nukes now located, but still with the possibility of another.

Kendrick passed through the ruined doors into a wide office space scattered with the mouldering corpses of yet more Los Muertos. One even appeared to have raked his own eyes out of his skull,
while another had clearly blown his own brains out with his rifle. The wall against which he had propped himself was still liberally smeared with the resulting gore.

Kendrick heard another sound, neither screaming nor gunshots this time. More like a bell gently tinkling, as if far away. He stood stock-still, trying to work out what this was, but it faded
away to nothing after several seconds.

As far as he could tell, most of the corpses around him had engaged in what looked like mutually assisted suicide. Some lay twisted together in a deadly embrace, knifes still clutched in their
fists. Kendrick could not imagine what demons had driven them to such deaths.

He moved on, through another door and into a room filled with racks of delicate-looking computer equipment. He halted, tensing up, at first thinking that something living was in there with him.
He relaxed again on seeing that it was another body, a woman’s.

He stepped closer and discovered, shocked, that it was his erstwhile interrogator. Leigh squatted in a corner, her combat rifle propped between her knees, its barrel placed under the shattered
remains of her jaw. Kendrick looked away quickly.

He glanced around the room and, though he was no expert, he was prepared to bet that she’d raked the banks of machinery around her with automatic fire before ending her life.

He froze on hearing movement nearby. Then, holding his gun out in front of him, he stepped through a further door into a darkened corridor.

“Hold it right there.”

The voice came from an adjoining doorway. Kendrick stopped dead, feeling cold metal press into the side of his neck.

“The gun. Drop it, kick it away.”

Kendrick reviewed his options and discovered that he had none. He let the pistol slip from his fingers, then pushed at it with his foot. It skidded across the floor and stopped near a wall.

“Turn around.”

He’d expected Draeger, or even Buddy. Instead it was Sabak, accompanied by two armed Labrats.

Kendrick was stunned. How had they got here so quickly? They must have gained access to the transport system. That was surely the only way.

“Whatever you’re intending, you’re not going to do it.” Sabak sounded calm, in control.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“I was at the door of the transport terminus. I saw you beat the fuck out of Buddy.”

“I can explain.”

Sabak shook his head. “Forget it. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. You’re working for Draeger, right?”

Kendrick blinked at Sabak, standing with two tough-looking types immediately behind him. He laughed.

“Me, working for Draeger? That’s rich.”

Sabak bristled. “You’ve been very vocal against our whole operation from the start. Did you kill those other men back there?”

Kendrick stared at him, incredulous. “Now you’re out of your mind. Most of them have been dead for days.”

“I still don’t feel convinced.”

“I’m
not
working for Draeger. For Christ’s sake, I—”

And there it was again: a sound like wine glasses tinkling gently together. Or moths beating against a light bulb.

They all turned as one. Light flickered at the far end of the darkened corridor, briefly illuminating the outline of a doorway that until now had been lost in shadows. The strange sound grew
louder before fading again.

And then they appeared: tiny, frail, dream-like bodies, all with the face of Robert Vincenzo and each of them wrapped in an eerie halo of light. At first just a few, then a dozen, then yet more
emerged from the darkness.

Kendrick turned to Sabak. “
Those
are the things that killed all these people.”

But Sabak wasn’t listening to him. “I didn’t think . . .” Clearly frightened, he turned to his men. “Get hold of him.”

Kendrick was gripped by both arms and dragged back the way he had come. Now he was hustled along a corridor he hadn’t yet explored, to a room at the far end. To Kendrick’s despair,
Sabak had meanwhile confiscated his pistol.

“What do you know about this?” Sabak was pointing to an untidy pile of electronic junk lying in the far corner of the room. Racks of equipment filled the surrounding walls,
stretching into unlit gloom.

As Kendrick looked closer, the junk resolved into something else altogether.

He recognized the tiny read-out and the oblong box it was attached to. Plastic explosives were carefully packed around it, and myriad wires linked it all like the serpent-hair of a cybernetic
Medusa.

The third and previously unaccounted-for nuke, which he’d been so sure that Draeger had in his possession.

Kendrick licked his lips. “It’s a nuclear bomb.”

A woman knelt by the device, lost in contemplation. She started gently probing it with some hand-held device. He just hoped she was an expert who knew what she was doing.

She spared Kendrick’s arrival the briefest glance before leaning over until the side of her head touched the floor, peering into the narrow space between the nuke itself and the wall
against which it was placed.

Sabak spoke to her. “Shirl, is that definitely what he says? No chance it’s a decoy or something else altogether?”

She shook her head without even looking at them. “It’s the real deal: a field nuke – backpack tactical weapon. Normally used for high-yield radiation effect, but still powerful
enough to blow at least a hole in the hull.” She paused, as if in contemplation. “No, make that rip the place to shit.”

“Okay, then, can you disarm it?”

“Most of these wires have nothing to do with the nuke itself,” Shirl explained. “It’s all to do with booby-trapping. If we so much as move this thing from where
it’s currently sitting, there’s no guarantee it isn’t just going to blow immediately.” She shook her head. “We need somebody who knows more about these things than I
do. I’m out of my depth.”

“Is it on any kind of timer?” Sabak demanded.

She shook her head. “Timer’s not working. I think maybe they were about to set it, but then . . .” She shuddered. “Something happened. You saw those other people back
there?”