Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) (36 page)

“We have friends off-world,” she explained.  “We were trying to travel up the Reach a few days ago, but… well, you know what happened there.”

Norrey smiled grimly.  “Yes.”

“So we came up with another plan, to move across to Sunspire and use the space elevator here.  It was a long shot.  I mean, we don’t even know if we’re going to be able to launch from this side.  Anyway, our friends are on their way down to us now.  We hope they’ll be here soon.”

“Fascinating,” Norrey said.  “Quite an achievement, if you manage to pull it off.”

Talia glanced between Norrey and Kolos uncertainly.  “Does that change anything between us?  Now that you know what we’re really doing here?”

“Not at all,” Norrey said.  “Kolos and I came here to repay our debt to you, and we’ve done that.  Once you’re gone, we’ll be on our way.  We have friends of our own we’d like to meet up with again, don’t we, Kolos?”

Kolos gave a little half smile.  “I’m sure they’ll be happy to see us again.”

“So,” Norrey said.  “No hard feelings.  Your business is you
r
own matter, and it was your prerogative to keep it to yourself.”  He seemed to think of something.  “Although, there
is
one thing.  I heard you say something about a…”  He paused uncertainly.  “A Redman, was it?  They’re not coming here, are they?  As experienced as we are, Kolos and I aren’t really trained to face up against enemies such as that.”

Talia thought back to her conversation with Knile.  “Oh,” she said suddenly.  “The Redman.  That’s nothing to worry about.  He’s one of ours.”

Norrey looked at her doubtfully.  “You’re friends with Redmen?  How did this happen?”

“He’s not my friend, exactly.  He’s more an acquaintance of my friend, Knile.  He was kicked out of the Reach at one point, cast out of the order.  He had a few scores to settle in the Reach, so he decided to help us.”

“A Redman turning against one of his own?” Norrey said.  He gave her a smile that did not touch his eyes.  “Who ever heard of a thing like that?”

“Lazarus is a one of a kind,” Roman smirked.  “You guys would probably like him.”

“Lazarus,” Kolos said slowly, as if he were turning the word over in his mouth.  “That’s his name?”

“Yeah.”

“To be in the presence of a real life member of the Crimson Shield,” Norrey said.  “That will be quite an honour.”

“Don’t celebrate yet,” Talia said.  “The truth is, he annoys the shit out of almost everyone he meets.”

Norrey and Kolos laughed raucously at that.  “Is that right?” Norrey said.  “I’m sure we’ll get on fine.”

“I hope so,” Talia said.

Norrey reached down and picked up his assault rifle, then ran an appraising eye across its length.  Satisfied, he turned and glanced out the window again.

“Well, if your friends are arriving soon, it’s probably best if I head outside and scout the area.  We don’t know if some of those raiders followed us up the mountain, and I certainly wouldn’t want your friends to step off the railcar and into a nasty situation.”

“Are you sure?” Talia said.

“Absolutely,” Norrey said.  “I’ll head out now and check the surrounds.  Kolos, you stay here and make sure Talia and Roman are safe.”

“Will do.”

Norrey paused on his way out the door, turning back to the two of them.  “Don’t worry about anything.  Nothing will get past Kolos and me again.  I can guarantee you that.”

“I appreciate that,” Talia said.

The bodyguards left the room, and Talia made a curt motion with her chin.  “Come on, we’ve got work to do as well.”

“Huh?  What like?”

“You and I didn’t survive on the streets all those years by allowing someone else to do our job for us.  I’m not going to sit here on my ass and do nothing.”

“I hear you,” Roman said, smiling.

“Come on.  We’re going to check the entrances to this place and make sure they’re secure.  Make sure no raiders have snuck in.  We still have time before Knile gets here.”

“And after that?”

She glanced at the window.  “After that, hopefully we’ll be collecting our boarding passes and catching a ride off this rock.”

44

The console beeped again, a sound with which Ursie was all too familiar, and then a warning flashed on the screen.  She dismissed it and reset the system back
to the first menu, then prepared to try all over again.

Her hand hovered over the console, trembling.  She didn’t know what to do.  She’d tried every option ten times at least, and no matter what she did, she always ended up with an error or a warning.  A dead end.

So what was the point of going through it all again?

There’s something you’re missing
, she told herself. 
If you keep searching, you’ll find it.

But at the same time, another part of her was saying the opposite.  It was telling her that the real reason she couldn’t save the railcar from smashing into the Earth was simply because she didn’t know the system.  She wasn’t an engineer, or a tech of any kind.  She was a layperson, and with only a matter of minutes to work with, the odds of her finding a solution were astronomically low.

Right now, it was the second voice that was loudest, the most compelling.  She felt herself slipping into despair.

She turned to Tobias.  “Can’t you do anything?”

“Me?” T
obias said, taken aback.  “Well
, I’m just a nobody, see–”

“You said you used to work here.  You should know something.”

“I know how to clean out the trash cans and solder up a capacitor on a sweepdrone, but I’m thinkin’ that ain’t gonna help us right now.”

Ursie turned from the console and slumped to the floor, burying her head in her hands.  She let out a sob that wracked her whole body, then fought to suppress another.

These emotions had been building up for some time, and now they threatened to overwhelm her, cascade out of her like a torrent.

“Why didn’t he check this shit before he left?” she said, distraught.  “Knile’s the expert.  It was his job to do this, not mine.”

Tobias lowered himself against the console and sat on the floor nearby.  “He was in a hurry.  Had to get things done fast.  Made some blunders.”  Tobias shrugged.  “He’s only human, y’know.  He can’t know everything.”

“He should’ve tested it or something.”  She flicked the tears angrily from her fingertips.  “I don’t know.  He shouldn’t have left me here with this goddamn mess to clean up.”

“You’re not angry with him,” Tobias said.  “Not really.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“Nope, you ain’t.  You’re just at the end of your tether, same as the rest of us.  Strung out like yesterday’s laundry, lookin’ for somethin’ to blame, somethin’ to vent your frustrations on.  But deep down you know the truth.  This ain’t nobody’s fault.  It’s just a big pile of shit we happened to fall into, and now we can’t get out.”

Ursie knew he was right, that she was simply lashing out in frustration at Knile, but for some reason that just made her angrier.  She wanted to scream, to take an axe to this room full of useless consoles and carve it up, leave it nothing but a pile of smoking, gashed machinery.

The thought of herself leaping about the room with an axe in hand suddenly made her choke with laughter, but it quickly gave way to another sob, and then more tears were falling down her cheeks.

Now she felt spent, utterly defeated.  Her rage was gone.

“I’m sorry, Tobias,” she said softly.

“You got nothin’ to be sorry about, kiddo.  You’re the bravest young thing I ever laid eyes on.  Heck, most of the ones your age that I’ve seen wouldn’t even try to do the things you’ve done.  So don’t you be sorry.  Don’t you dare.”

“We’re going to die here.”

“Well, that ain’t written in stone.  Not yet.”

“It might as well be.  Once that railcar smashes the elevator… this place is going to be ripped apart.  Knile tried to sugarcoat it, but I could see it in his eyes.  He’s afraid
.”

Tobias seemed to stew over that concept for a few moments as he tried to think of a
reply.  Finally, he said, “Well, whatever comes, we’ll face it together.  You and me.”

“Yeah,” Ursie said sadly.  “I guess we will.”

He stretched out a wrinkled hand toward her and held it there expectantly.

“Go on, take it,” he said.  “Let’s do this together.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.  Just reach out and take my hand.”

“I won’t touch you.  I told you that before.”

“Because you’re afraid of who you are?”

“Haven’t you been listening to Lazarus this whole time?  He’s right.  I’m a demon.  A
goddamn monster.”

“Like I told you before,
you can’t go through life never touchin’ anyone again. 
You can’t just shut everythin’ out.”

“I don’t have a choice.  That’s all there is to it.”

“You do have a choice
.  Now is the time to make it, before it’s too late.”  He held his hand steady.  “Don’t make me go alone.”

Ursie looked across at him, and as she stared into his eyes she realised something – he was just as scared as she was.  He wasn’t offering his hand purely as comfort to her.  In fact, he looked as though he needed her support more than she needed his.

He was begging her to give him solace, and something about that melted her heart.

What harm can it do now?  We’re going to die anyway.

She gave him a reassuring smile.  “You’re not alone, Tobias.”

She reached out and brushed her fingers against his.  At first she only felt the warmness of his fingers, his leathery callouses.  The dryness of his skin, like paper.  She’d never known a father, or a grandfather for that matter, but she imagined that this must be what it was like to feel the touch of one such as that; more than a mere physical act, there was something else conveyed in that simple contact, something that she couldn’t even begin to describe.  It was like the sensation of coming home, as strange as that seemed; that for the first time, she
was
home.

Then she slipped beneath, felt herself entering his mind as if she were dropping beneath the gentle swell of a wave in the ocean.

The first thing she encountered was
her own emotions reflected back at her.  That simple contact between them had elicited similar feelings from Tobias – that sense of belonging, of being home, surged through him with overwhelming potency.  She saw half-formed memories there as well, children without names or faces, laughing and running across a sandy beach.  There was the silhouette of a woman sitting at a cafe, a warm smile her only discernible feature.

Then it all melted into nothingness.

Ursie slipped deeper, drawn downward as if she had no control over her momentum.

The warmth and happiness began to slip away.  Now she saw darker memories – the destruction of the habitat, a woman lying in a pool of blood after some sort of industrial accident.  Tobias himself staring out of a window at the coldness of space, a forlorn expression marring his countenance.

Then came the clumps of cold, inky blackness she remembered from the last time she had looked inside his mind, on the first day they’d met.  The disease, or whatever affliction it was that had taken his memories from him.  They closed in around her as she descended, becoming thicker and thicker by the moment.

She knew with an awful certainty that they were going to suffocate her, trap her down here forever.

In her confusion, she lost her sense of self.  She wasn’t sure if she was Ursie anymore, or if she had somehow become Tobias, or was neither.  She felt as though she’d somehow become an amalgamation of the two, a hybrid that was simultaneously both of their minds, as strange as that seemed.

Around her, the gentle ocean had become a raging sea.

She flailed at the blackness, and it stuck to her like tar.  It was becoming so thick that there was nothing else to be seen anymore.  She was lost in some sort of void.

She tried to scream and couldn’t, swung her arms like a mad thing.

Then, something changed.  Her hands passed through the nebulous mass around her, and some small part of her realised that there was no substance to it after all.  It was not a physical entity, but merely the absence of everything, like a pocket of darkness that could be dispelled with the light.

She just had to find a way to bring the light.

Steeling herself, she pushed through the darkness, urging herself onward even though it felt as though she were entering a bottomless abyss.  She kept going, further and further, and just as she thought she would never see the end of it, suddenly there was light.  Glorious, golden light.

She seized it with all of her soul, took it within her and headed back into the darkness.

The nothingness shirked away from her like a vampire fleeing from the first rays of the morning sun.  The further she pushed, the more the darkness shrank.  Soon she came to another glowing orb of light, and instinctively she probed at its edges, finding what could only be described as an anchor point, and here she reattached the light that was within her, forming a kind of bridge through the darkness.