Impact (2 page)

No matter how hard I shake Prakesh, I can't make him open his eyes.

Carver crouches down, shoving his head under Prakesh's left arm, hoisting him upwards. I do the same on the other side, heart pounding in my chest. Prakesh is amazingly heavy even in low gravity, his feet dragging on the ground between us as we try to keep our balance in the shaking passage.

There are shelves along the walls, with small plastic crates strapped onto them. One of them comes loose as we walk past it, slipping out of its fabric straps, and we have to pull to the side as it bounces off the walls and floor. The ship's jagged motion turns it into a pinball.

I pull Carver's head down as it flies towards us. Not fast enough. The crate just scrapes across his forehead, and he hisses in surprise, staggering into the wall. His hiss turns into a growl as his shoulder takes the hit.

Somehow, we manage to get moving again. I'm getting better at it now, bending my legs, anticipating the ship's movements. Carver is doing it, too. The screeching of the
Shinso
's hull has been replaced by a crunching, grinding noise, as if bits of the ship are being ripped off by the friction of re-entry. I don't even want to think how fast we're going. I don't want to think at all. If those escape pods leave without us…

Just keep going.

We pass a window in the corridor, looking into what appears to be a gym. The treadmills and weight machines are straining against their brackets, slowly working loose. I catch our reflection in the window. We're a mess. All of us are wearing badly fitting flight gear–grey jackets and T-shirts that are too big for us. Stray strands of hair stick to my face in greasy lines. Prakesh's face is ash-grey, blood still dripping from his head wound. Carver's arms are straining, his face contorted as we pull Prakesh along.

I tear my gaze away, focusing on the passage ahead. “How long do we have?” I ask.

“Not nearly long enough,” says Carver. I flash back to when we first came aboard the
Shinso
, when he asked me to use his first name: Aaron. I still haven't been able to shake the habit of using his last name.

We reach the junction. There's a sign on the wall, grubby with age:
Mining, Astronautics, Engines.
I jab a finger at the corridor on the left. “Astronautics. Let's go.”

Prakesh groans again. It's like he's trying to fight his way back. I put a hand on his chest to steady him—

—And trip.

I try to catch myself, but my legs get tangled underneath me. I go down on one knee, struggling with Prakesh, Carver grunting in surprise.

Fire rolls out from the back of my knee, travelling up my leg and down into my ankle. I wait for it to pass, gritting my teeth.

Back on the station, a psychotic doctor named Morgan Knox implanted explosive charges in the muscles behind my kneecaps, blackmailing me so I would break Janice Okwembu out of prison. I cut one of the explosives out of me when I tried to destroy the
Shinso
's fusion reactor, tried to stop the Earthers abandoning Outer Earth. It didn't work. And after we were captured, I had to beg the Earthers to take the second explosive out of me. It took a few days, but they finally did it, numbing my leg with anaesthetic and slicing me open. I'm slowly healing, but there are bandages on the backs of my knees. Both the wounds hurt like hell.

Everything that happened on Outer Earth feels like a distant dream. We still don't know if anybody on the station survived. Even if they're did, we're much too far away for them to reach us.

I push upwards, straining against Prakesh's weight. The corridor is even narrower here, and at one point Carver and I have to turn sideways to get him through a door.

The escape pods are right ahead, three sets of airlock doors built into the corridor, with big letters stencilled on either side in black. EMERGENCY USE ONLY.

While some Earthers worked on the asteroid, others worked on the escape pods. They turned them from space-going vessels into something that might actually be able to land on Earth, creating makeshift parachutes from material found on board the
Shinso
.

The pods themselves are too small to have their own fusion reactors, so they run off conventional liquid fuel. They're housed inside specially designed airlocks. There are Earthers everywhere, helping each other inside the first pod's open door, stumbling, panicked. An orange light above each airlock door blinks on-off, on-off. The floor of the airlock is slightly lower than the floor in the corridor, and I feel my knees jarring as we step through.

Carver and I pull Prakesh into the pod. There's a cockpit at the front with rows of seats along each side. Each one is a mess of thick straps, with a neck guard protruding from the seat back. Oxygen masks hang from the ceiling, swinging wildly as the
Shinso
bucks and writhes. I badly want to see outside, but the only thing visible through the cockpit glass is the outer airlock door.

The pods can take twelve people each, plus a pilot. All but three of the chairs are full. Mikhail Yeremin is there–he's checking his straps, his long hair hanging down over his face. There's lettering above his head: ESCAPE VESSEL 1. Underneath it, in smaller black letters, is a vessel name:
Furor
.

Carver perches on the edge of an empty seat, pulling Prakesh onto the one next to him. I lean in to help, yanking the straps down and buckling them tight. Carver does the same with his own straps, snapping himself in. We made it.

I stand up, intending to take the one remaining chair in the escape pod, opposite Prakesh. Any second now, they'll shut the door and we can—

Carver's eyes go wide.

Two hands grasp my shoulders, pulling me backwards. I cry out, my feet tangling up in each other, catching the edge of the pod's entrance. I land on my coccyx, cracking it against the floor plates in the airlock.

Janice Okwembu is looking down at me.

I haven't seen her since the day we came aboard. She's a former Outer Earth council leader who went rogue, joining up with the Earthers. The expression on her face is completely blank.

“No!” Carver shouts, fighting with the straps holding him to the chair. “Leave her alone!”

I scramble to my feet, moving as fast as I can. Not fast enough.

Okwembu looks down at me, reaching over to one side of the frame for the control panel. “Goodbye, Ms Hale,” she says.

And the door closes in front of me.

Aaron Carver finally gets loose.

He shoves Okwembu out of the way. She collides with one of the seats, almost falling on top of its occupant, a man with tangled black hair and an acne-speckled face. Okwembu ignores him. She lifts herself into a seat, grabbing the straps, concentrating on buckling herself in.

Carver hammers at the control pad, but the door doesn't open. Of course it doesn't. Okwembu made sure to twist the rotary to the
Eject
position. It shuts the pod down in preparation for launch, to ensure that the door has a good pressure seal. It can't be opened again. Behind it, the inner airlock doors will be closing.

She hopes that Riley Hale has the good sense to get out while she still can.

Mikhail Yeremin is staring at her, and she doesn't like the expression on his face. She turns away, ignoring him, busying herself with her straps. She's still looking down at her buckle, and so isn't prepared when Aaron Carver slams her back against the seat. His face is inches from hers.

“Open it up,” he says. When she doesn't respond, he barks the words in her face. “Do you hear me? Open it up.”

“You should sit down, Mr Carver,” Okwembu says.

He rips her straps away, lifts her up, throws her out of her seat. She hits the floor, wincing in pain as her right hand takes the impact, bending at the wrist.

Carver grabs the back of her jacket, dragging her to the door. Mikhail is almost out of his seat, huge fingers fighting with the catch on his chest. The other Earthers watch without saying a word.

Okwembu attempts to spin away, trying to get her arms out of her jacket. Carver sees the move, stops her, pulling her up so her face is level with the lock. “
Open the door
,” he yells, right in her ear.

When she doesn't move, he wrenches at the rotary switch alongside it, trying to get it back to
Doors Manual
. Okwembu wants to tell him not to bother. The most he'll be able to do is tear the switch itself off the control panel.

“We need to launch
now
,” shouts the pilot from the front of the craft. “Everybody better strap in.”

“We're not leaving,” Carver says. “Not until—”

Mikhail grabs him around the shoulders, shoving him backwards into his seat. Carver tries to get back up, but Mikhail won't let him, holding him in place as he clicks the catch shut.

“You don't strap in, you die,” he says.

Okwembu takes the gap. She staggers back to her seat, heart pounding, strapping herself in. She looks up to see that Carver has stopped fighting. He's gripping his straps tight, his fingers bloodless. Mikhail is making his way back to his own seat, grabbing at the straps.

“She'd better make it,” Carver says, looking Okwembu right in the eyes. “Or I'm going to
end
you.”

In the moment before the pilot launches the pod, she wonders about Carver. She shouldn't be surprised at his actions. He doesn't have any sort of vision or understanding of the wider consequences of what's happening here. What he has are mechanical skills, and Prakesh Kumar, sitting next to him, has agricultural ones. The moment she saw the make-up of this pod, she knew it was the one she needed to be in.

The people inside it–Carver, Kumar, the other Earthers–all have skills that can be used on the planet below. Hale doesn't. She can run, and she can fight, and as far as Okwembu is concerned neither one is particularly useful.

It's more than that
, she thinks.
You wanted to do it. You wanted to put her in her place.

Okwembu closes her eyes, and the pod explodes away from the ship.

I lose control.

If the pod's door wasn't made of metal, if it wasn't completely beyond human strength to do anything to it, then my fingers would be digging long channels in the surface. I kick and hit and hammer and try to wedge my fingers into the whisper-thin gap. I scream Okwembu's name, but the only thing that comes back at me are the waves of vibrations tearing through the
Shinso
.

“What are you doing?”

It comes from beyond the inner airlock door. Syria is standing there, staring at me like I've gone crazy.

He was a community leader from Outer Earth, from a place known as the Caves. He fought hard to stop the Earthers from taking the ship, but ended up here with them. Like Okwembu, I haven't seen him since the day we boarded the
Shinso
. He must have been locked up somewhere else–there's no way he would have helped Okwembu and Mikhail. He's tough and wiry, wearing a bright red flight jacket, and his dirty hair is thick with knots.

He works his way into the airlock and grabs me, then has to do it again when I tear my way out of his grip.

“Hey!” he says, grabbing my arm. “Are you crazy? There's a second pod.”

“My
friends
are in there,” I shout back. At that moment, the word doesn't seem adequate enough. Carver and Prakesh aren't just friends. They're everything. They're all I've got left.

Syria pulls me through the outer airlock door. It's starting to shut, the mechanisms sliding the door closed. “And we'll be right behind them,” he says. “Guaranteed.”

The second pod is twenty yards down the corridor. Before I can blink, Syria hustles us inside, shoving me into a seat and buckling me in. I don't have the energy left to fight back. The seat straps are tight around my chest and stomach. The shaking is getting very bad now.

“Release in ten seconds,” shouts the pilot from the front of our pod.

“We have to go now!” another voice says.

“Negative. We need to give the other pod time to get clear, or we'll smash into it,” the pilot says. I can't see his face, just the back of his head. A woman opposite me is muttering something that sounds like a prayer, her eyes shut tight. The name of the pod is above her on the wall:
Lyssa
.

I think back to Prakesh and Carver, tight on either side of me, our legs raised to kick down the locked door. All of us together, acting as one. I try to hold onto it, but it sends an unexpected spasm of anger through me–and this time I'm angry at myself.

I spent a week with them in that damn medical bay, a week where I could have talked to them, a week where we could have straightened out where we stood with each other. I wanted to be with Prakesh, told Carver as much, but it didn't stop the choice gnawing at me, making me wonder if I'd made the right decision. It didn't stop me thinking about how I kissed Carver while we were dealing with the last few hours of insanity on Outer Earth. I had all the time in the world to say something, and I didn't, and now I might never see them again.

And on the tail of that thought comes another. Janice Okwembu took them away from me. When I see her again, I'm going to make her pay.

I'll find you
, I say, willing the thought to reach Prakesh and Carver, knowing it won't and not caring.
I don't care what happens. I'll find you.

“Release!” says the pilot.

But there's no bang. No shuddering explosion. Nothing happens.

The pilot hammers on the control panel, each hit more and more frantic. But no matter what he does, our pod refuses to launch.

Prakesh is back in the Air Lab on Outer Earth.

He can see the ceiling lights through the canopies of the enormous oak trees towering above him. He can smell the damp scent of the algae pools, the thick musk of soil.

His parents are there, his father's arm around his mother. He can see every detail–his father's prosthetic leg, his mother's scarf, the earrings she wears. He tries to say their names, but when he moves his lips, no sound comes out. And they're not smiling–they're just looking at him, sadness lining their faces.

Then they're gone, and Riley Hale is there, standing before him. The woman he loves. He doesn't want her to speak. He knows what she's going to say.

Resin, Prakesh.
The words come in her voice, even though she hasn't opened her mouth.
Resin. It came from you.

He doesn't want it to be true. The virus that tore through Outer Earth can't have come from him. It's a dream, that's all. A bad dream. Any moment now, he's going to wake up in bed with Riley, in their hab in Chengshi.

The Air Lab is shaking. The tree branches are swinging back and forth, groaning, as if caught in a hurricane. Riley is gone.

There's a
bang
. It explodes through Prakesh's body, filling every cell, blotting out the world. His eyes snap open. For a moment, he doesn't know where he is. Then he sees Aaron Carver next to him, his eyes squeezed shut, G-forces rippling his cheeks.

Prakesh remembers everything. His gaze darts around the packed escape pod. Janice Okwembu is near the front, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. Mikhail is a few seats down from her.

They're in-flight. They have to be. That means the escape pod jettisoned from the
Shinso
. Prakesh tries to turn his head, pushing against the Gs, and gets a brief look out of the cockpit glass. It's a mess of black and red, matted with a dull grey.
Clouds
, he thinks.

The headache comes suddenly, flaring at the base of his skull. It's like a red-hot needle, jamming upwards into his brain. There's blood on his face–where did it come from? The last thing he remembers is kicking the door down, holding tight onto…

Riley. Where's Riley?

At that moment, the shaking stops. The escape pod stabilises, and the roaring from outside vanishes, replaced by the gentle hum of the engines. The G-forces holding Prakesh against his seat disappear, although the headache remains. An audible sigh of relief rises from the cabin and someone gives a weak cheer.

Carver still has his eyes closed, his head tilted back.

“Everybody sit tight,” says the pilot. “Parachute's out.”

“What's our location?” It comes from Janice Okwembu, her voice calm and controlled.

Prakesh doesn't hear the pilot's answer. “Where's Riley?” he says to Carver.

No answer. Prakesh licks his lips. “
Carver
. Why isn't Riley here?”

“Ask her,” Carver says, jerking his head at Okwembu, thunder on his face.

Prakesh's eyes find hers, surprised fury igniting inside him. “What did you do?”

Okwembu doesn't hear him, or, if she does, she doesn't say anything. Prakesh twists his head, looking back at Carver

“But they got off OK, right?” he says. “They're behind us?”

Carver doesn't get a chance to respond. There's a distant boom, almost too soft to hear, like thunder from an unseen storm.

“There goes the
Shinso
,” says the pilot.