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

Knile opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment there was a disconcerting shift in the Skywalk floor, and the distant sound of shrieking metal echoed eerily throughout the tunnel, sending shivers down Knile’s spine.  Immediately after there came a dull thudding noise, and the Skywalk seemed to shake.

“What the hell was that?” Knile said.

Tobias came to stand beside him.  “Could have been one of the bulkheads slamming shut.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Ursie said.

Tobias’ voiced dropped to little more than a whisper.  “Might be that one of the Skywalk segments just… broke off.  Back near the habitat.”  He glanced at Knile.  “I told you the ol’
bugger wasn’t built to hang out in space without no habitat.”

“So this tunnel is collapsing behind us,” Knile said grimly.

“Don’t know for sure, but–”

“Let’s get out of here,” Knile said.  He scooped up the water container and handed it to Tobias.  “I don’t want to be around when this tunnel becomes an impromptu reentry vehicle.”

Knile started to jog forward, and suddenly he felt as though there was still some strength in his legs yet.

4

Nurzhan stood watching the corridor, listening to the sound of the hoodlums receding in the distance.  The walkway
had now emptied, but for the cloying smoke that had drifted in from the fires that still raged elsewhere in Gaslight, a blue-grey haze that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the last forty-eight hours.

Nurzhan adjusted his full face gas mask and checked his oxygen supply.  Although the air here was still breathable, he wasn’t taking any chances.  If the fires got any worse, there was a chance he might succumb to the fumes
without his breathing apparatus.

He wasn’t about to let that happen.

Stowing the pulse rifle behind his back, Nurzhan lifted a crimson glove to his shoulder and tapped lightly.

“Kazimir,” he said to his Redman colleague through his comms.  “The threat has moved on.  This entrance is clear.”

For a few seconds, there was nothing but static in reply.  Then he heard Kazimir’s voice in his ear.

“Clear at this end, also.”

“Good.  Make one last sweep of the northern end, and then–”

There was a crashing noise from the office behind him, and Nurzhan heard the strangled voice of Consul Hanker as he loosed a cry of frustration.

“Redman!” came Hanker’s voice.  “I need you!”

“Dust and ashes,” Nurzhan muttered tiredly.  “Give me strength.”

He turned and wound his way back inside the complex, and in moments arrived at the room in which Consul Hanker had stationed himself after they’d fled from the consulate a couple of days prior.  The old man was still red-faced, irate, just as he’d been when Nurzhan had left him a few minutes ago.  Now, however, a stack of papers and pens lay strewn across the floor, which Nurzhan could only assume had been swept off the desk by the consul in his rage.

“Fucking prick!” Hanker shouted, pacing about angrily.  “Fucking little prick!”

Even though it had been several hours since Hanker’s plan to destroy the habitat – and Administrator Valen along with it – had been thwarted, the old man had not come close to regaining his composure.  He had spent the duration stomping around the makeshift office, cursing and muttering to himself as he’d tried to come to terms with the fact that his years of scheming had come to nothing.

Valen, and the rest of the Consortium staff on the habitat, had escaped.  Hanker’s carefully laid plans for revenge had been ruined by Knile Oberend
’s distress call to Valen.

The habitat had been evacuated.  Valen was, most likely, sitting comfortably at one of the moon bases right now, planning her retirement to the Outworlds.

“You think you’re so clever, Knile,” Hanker said, lost in his own thoughts.  “But old Hank hasn’t played his last hand.  Not yet.”

Nurzhan waited patiently for a few more moments, then cleared his throat noisily.

“You called for me, Consul Hanker?”

Hanker snapped his head around, as if surprised to see him standing there.  The consul’s eyes were feverish, intense.  He had the look of a man who had become unhinged.

“Redman,” Hanker snapped, “we need to make preparations to leave.”

In all the years Nurzhan had served him, Jon Hanker had never addressed him by his name.  It was always ‘Redman’ or ‘Guard’ or sometimes simply ‘You’.

Nurzhan suppressed his displeasure
, keeping his voice even.  “Where are we to go, Consul?”

Hanker dropped down into his chair again and began to shuffle through more papers, which were filled with untidy scribbles in his own handwriting.  He began to mutter to himself again as he flicked between them, and Nurzhan waited patiently once more.

“Where are we going, Consul Hanker?” Nurzhan prompted.

Hanker ceased his frenetic shuffling and glared at the Redman.  “They think they’ve won, but they haven’t,” he said.  “Not by a long shot.”

“Who?”

“Valen!” Hanker said.  “The Consortium.  They think they’ve found safety, but they haven’t.  Not by a long shot.”

Across the other side of the room, Kazimir appeared, having returned from his inspection of the perimeter.  He nodded to
his fellow Redman, then stood at attention.

“I don’t understand,” Nurzhan said to Hanker.  “How can you touch the Consortium now?  The Wire has been severed.  We’re trapped here forever.  All of us.”

Hanker grinned sardonically.  “Well, no one ever accused you of having a brain in your head, Redman.”  He lifted a small device from the edge of his desk.  It was a metallic grey colour, and
a silver antenna protruded
from one end.  “If you’d been listening, you might have figured it out.”

Nurzhan bristled at the insult.  “What do you have there?”

“This,” Hanker said, lifting the device and staring at it appreciatively, “is a custom built receiver.  It allows me to tap into
any channel used by a
longwave registered to the Consortium.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “You know what a longwave is, don’t you?”

Nurzhan nodded.  “A device used for off-world comms.”

“Correct.  And I happen to have had this receiver tuned to a specific longwave, ever since I got the call from that little
brat
Ursie up in the habitat.”  Hanker leaned forward.  “I know what they’re doing.  Knile and his friends.”

“And that is?”

“They’re taking the Skywalk over to the old Sunspire elevator.  They’re going to try to get it started again, get their friends off-world.  They even have a cruiser waiting out there to pick them up.”  He waggled the receiver at Nurzhan.  “That’s our ticket out of here.”

Nurzhan glanced at Kazimir, but the other Redman remained stoic, emotionless behind his gas mask.

“Then we would not be consigned to live on this forsaken wasteland,” Nur
zhan said, his spirits lifted.  “We would escape Landfall.”

Hank placed the receiver down again.  “All we need to do is keep an ear on what they’re doing.  We can journey across to Sunspire and take control of the elevator ourselves.”  He leaned back, a faraway look in his eyes.  “From there, we can go after Valen.  We can track her down, make her pay for what she’s done.  And why stop there?  Once we’ve escaped this shithole, we can go after the rest of the Consortium.  We could go after the hierarchy itself.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Nurzhan said.

Hanker broke from his reverie and glared contemptuously at him.  “Leave the thinking to me, Redman.  I’ll make the plans, you just do as I say.”  He jabbed a finger at the door.  “Now get out there and make sure we have a clear path out of Gaslight.  We need to locate Talia Anders and her companions before they can slip out of the Reach.”

Nurzhan reached over his shoulder plucked the pulse rifle from his back.  He took a moment to adjust a dial on the stock, then pointed it at Jon Hanker.

“I have a better idea, Consul.”

Nurzhan pulled the trigger once, and Hanker’s body slammed backward in his chair as the pulse round took him full in the chest.  He rebounded from the wal
l behind him, then flopped head
first into the desk.  He lay there motionless, his eyes unseeing, as wisps of smoke curled from the scorched hole in his torso.

Kazimir looked on impassively as Nurzhan dropped the pulse rifle unceremoniously on the desk next to the dead man.

“I thought he would never shut up,” Kazimir said.

“You and me both, brother.”

Kazimir began to walk forward slowly.  “What do you intend to do, Nurzhan?”

“Some of what he said made sense, but I couldn’t
care less about his desires to punish the Consortium.  His revenge has no meaning to me.”  He took a deep breath.  “In fact, Consul Hanker’s selfishness has all but left us stranded here in this forsaken place.”

“Do you believe we must suffer Landfall, then?”

Nurzhan glanced at his companion.  “In your years at the Citadel, did you ever hear the story of the red moon blossom?”

“Of course.  Every acolyte knows the fable.  They say that only a chosen few have ever seen it flower, that the first High Priest himself planted it in the Citadel grove.”

“And that those who find it in bloom are themselves destined to one day become the High Priest.”

Kazimir shrugged.  “A bedtime story for the young.  What of it?”

Nurzhan shook his head.  “It is no story, brother.”  He reached under his garments and pulled out a tattered cloth, then laid it reverently on the table.  Pinching the corners of the cloth delicately, he revealed a pressing of a stunning variegated flower, bone white on the tips and crimson in the centre.  “Here is the proof.”

Kazimir stared down at the flower, bewildered.  “Walk in the light,” he breathed.

“It is not my destiny to die here on Earth,” Nurzhan said, covering the flower once more.  “The day that I left the Citadel, the High Priest himself told me that I would one day return to Mars, to take my place on the Council.  He told me that this journey to Earth was merely a stepping stone along the path, not the final destination.  That one day I would succeed him as High Priest.”

“So what do we do?”

He turned to the radio.  “We have the receiver.  If we listen, we can trace the movements of this woman, Talia Anders, and her crew.  We stay close to them, allow them to organise the rendezvous at Sunspire.  Then we strike when the time is right.”

“You intend to kill them?”

“
Without question.  There is no other way
.”

“Should we gather more of our brothers from here in the Reach?  We could save more of them from Landfall.”

“No.  This pitiful creature,” Nurzhan said, nodding at Hanker, “has disgraced the two of us.  Our names have been smeared along with his.  I would not face our brothers after that.”  His mouth twisted sourly.  “This is something we must do alone.”

He tugged at his gloves, removing them both and slapping them down on the desk, then began to unclip his breastplate.

“Remove your armour, brother,” he instructed Kazimir.  “We must make ourselves less conspicuous if we are to watch over our targets undetected.”

Kazimir took his pulse rifle and dropped it on the table next to Nurzhan’s.

“Another disgrace, to shed the crimson,” he said distastefully.

“A means to an end, Kazimir,” Nurzhan said encouragingly.  “Thus begins the path to redemption.”

5

Silvestri reached out and snared Roman’s collar as the boy began to slip.  Roman cried out, and for a moment the two of them swung disconcertingly far from the wall, their feet dangling into nothingness, but then their momentum shifted and they went slamming back into the side of the Reach again.

“Gotcha!” Silvestri gasped, straining as he lifted Roman toward the next rope.  “Now, grab on!”

Roman struggled ungainly for a moment before righting his balance, then clutched gratefully at the lifeline that dangled beside him.  Silvestri glanced up to see Talia and the others clinging to their ropes uncertainly, their eyes fixed on the nauseating drop below their feet.  Further above, Silvestri could see the roof of the Reach splintering and shaking fearfully, shedding huge chunks of steel and concrete as it began to break apart.

The noise was fearsome, like a mountain being torn asunder by an earthquake.

“Drop!” Silvestri shouted over the din.  “Drop!  Go!”

Silvestri began to slide downward at a rapid clip, and the others were somewhat more reserved until, moments later, a wedge of reinforced concrete dropped down against the balustrade above and went spinning over their heads in close proximity.  After that, their urgency increased markedly, and they scrambled their way down the wall as fast as they could manage.

The drop was a blur.  At one point, a piece of metal clattered against Silvestri’s shoulder and almost knocked him off the wall.  Talia was screaming something, but it was lost in the roar of splintering steel from above.  He couldn’t be sure exactly how far they’d travelled, but by the time they hit the ledge at the bottom, he guessed that they’d descended at least twenty or thirty metres.