Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach (25 page)

“For a second,” Zeela said, “I thought it was a parting gift.”

“Well, if there’s no one at the station it’s all yours. To keep you warm on your voyage between the stars.”

She laughed. “Thank you, but I think I’ll stick to juice all the same.”

Bjorn glanced at his watch. “Five minutes. We’d better be crating you up.”

He lifted the empty crate onto the platform and wedged it between two others. Zeela jumped in first, nestling herself down in the bubble padding. Harper turned to Bjorn and they shook hands again. “Thank you for everything.”

The Vassattan smiled. “Good luck, and call at Vassatta again if you get the chance. You’ll always be welcome.”

“I’ll be in contact from my ship when we’re safe,” he promised.

He climbed into the crate beside Zeela, hunkering down and pulling the bubble-padding around him. Bjorn handed him more padding, then saluted farewell. Harper arranged the padding around his head as Bjorn closed the lid and darkness descended. In the warm, silent confines of the crate, Zeela worked a hand through the padding and found his leg. He reached out and took her hand, gripping the pistol in his right hand.

“Promise not to drink all the vodka by yourself,” he said.

“Promise, Den.”

The crate jerked as the platform rose and inserted itself into the container. Harper lifted his hand and peered at his wrist-com. The illuminated screen told him that Eklund was a minute away.

“Den.”

“Mmm?”

“Why are we crated up like animals in an ice-liner on a world a million miles from nowhere?”

He had to laugh. “Put like that, our situation does seem rather bizarre.
Hell!
”

It felt as if a runaway bulldozer had smashed into the crate. He expected it to disintegrate and smash them to a bloody pulp. He gripped Zeela’s hand as she yelled. They rattled like peas in a drum, despite the padding. Seconds later all was still.

“You okay?”

“Think so, Den. Just shocked, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting such an impact. You?”

“No broken bones. I’m fine.”

“And I managed to keep hold of your precious vodka.”

“Well done. I just hope there’s no one out there to share it with.”

“Shall we take a look?”

He pulled the padding away from above his head and reached up. He pushed, and the lid popped. Weak grey light filtered through the remaining padding, which he batted away and struggled to his feet. He looked around, expecting to see amused workers staring at his sudden jack-in-the-box appearance.

The crate and half dozen others stood in a building that looked like a grey metal box, a hundred metres by fifty. Slit windows on all four walls looked out over the plains and the ice-canal. Through the windows at the far end, Harper made out the lights of a small town.

There were no workers in evidence within the station.

“Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” he told Zeela as he helped her out.

She looked around and brrr’d her lips, her breath pluming in the icy air. “Wonder if there’s a heater in this place?”

He pulled up his hood and donned the face-mask.

“How long before
Judi
gets here, Den?”

He consulted his wrist-com. “If everything goes to plan, in around ten minutes.”

“What do we do? Stay put or make for where we’re meeting her?”

“No need going out there before we need to. We’ll give it five minutes, and set off then.”

He jumped down and walked around the ugly cradle mechanism that had caught the platform. He approached the closest slit window overlooking the ice-canal and peered out on a desolate, deserted scene: the cold stone canyon of the canal with a grey strip of frozen water in between.

He wondered why he was feeling jumpy, nervous. The bounty hunters would have raced by and would be kilometres south of here by now, and soon
Judi
would swoop down to carry them away. Nevertheless, the bounty hunters’ tenacity to date engendered apprehension. The sooner
Judi
arrived, the better.

“Den,” Zeela called from the far end of the chamber. “Slight problem.”

He hurried across to her. “What?”

She indicated a corrugated metal door. “It’s locked.”

“Good job Bjorn gave us this. Stand back.”

He set the gauge on the pistol to kill, backed off five metres, aimed at the locking mechanism and fired. The metal flared, popped, and dripped. He approached the door and kicked at it without ceremony. The corrugated rectangle swung open, admitting a freezing wind.

He peered out. Fifty metres away was a line of low granite buildings, and beyond them a gargantuan series of silver pipes. Half a kilometre beyond was where
Judi
would land in a matter of minutes.

He was about to suggest that they set off when he heard something – the sound of an engine above the soughing of the wind.

Zeela tensed. “What was that?”

Without replying he sprinted back to the slit window overlooking the ice-canal. He felt a surge of panic. “I don’t believe it...”

Zeela was beside him, standing on tiptoe to peer through the window. “What?” She sounded desperate.

A two person ice-sled had come to a halt on the canal twenty metres from the receiving station. “The sled,” he said.

“But is it theirs?” she cried.

He recognised the gold lightning blaze on the flank of the vehicle. “It’s theirs,” he said.

The sled was pointing back along the ice-canal, so evidently they had sped past the station in pursuit of the ice-liner, realised their mistake and doubled back.

But how the hell had they worked out that he and Zeela were here...?

A wing-hatch swung open and the woman eased herself out. The Vetch followed, towering over her. They were armed, and staring directly up at the station.

The ice-canal was perhaps five metres deep – so the bastards would have to climb out before they could approach the station. Metal ladders, stapled into the stone, dropped to the ice at intervals of two hundred metres. It would take them a minute to reach the nearest one.

He grabbed Zeela’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

They ran across the ringing concrete and slipped through the door.

“Which way?” she said.

He was already hauling her down a concrete ramp that fell towards the town. The problem with sprinting on Vassatta, he discovered to his regret seconds later, was that every outdoor surface was coated with treacherous ice.

Their feet shot out from under them and they tumbled painfully. Zeela cried out. Harper rolled, cursing the pain that shot up his spine. The same ice that had thwarted their sprint now aided their unceremonious slide on their backsides all the way down the ramp. At the bottom Harper dragged Zeela to her feet. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Never better.”

“This way. And this time we don’t run, okay?”

Hand in hand they moved cautiously along a darkened alley between the receiving station and a granite building. He looked quickly over his shoulder. There was no sign yet of Janaker and the Vetch.

If they could lose themselves in the township... or, better still, head out to the ice plain where there was no illumination to betray their presence...

“This way,” he panted, pulling her after him.

They darted down an alley between two squat, one-storey buildings, keeping their footing only with difficulty.

“Den.”

“Yes.”

“You... you’re going to be,” she gasped, “proud of me... if we survive.”

“How’s that?”

“Tell... tell you later.”

“I can’t wait.”

He raised his wrist-com and snapped the activation command. “
Judi
, where the hell are you?”

“Approaching Eklund,”
Judi
said. “Half a kilometre from rendezvous point and closing.”

At that second, all around them, the night lit up.

“Duck!” Harper yelled, dragging Zeela to the ground.

They hit the ice and a lapis lazuli laser beam bisected the air above their heads. He rolled and in the same motion returned the fire. A hundred metres away he saw the Vetch dodge into a doorway. Janaker was behind the alien, caught in the open. He aimed and fired, intent on nailing the bastard. The beam missed by centimetres but had the fortuitous effect of bringing her up short. She slipped and fell. Harper fired again. The woman rolled, and a hand shot from the doorway and dragged her to safety.

Harper grabbed Zeela, hauled her upright and sprinted towards the end of the building. The relief when they reached the corner and turned was such that he felt like whooping with elation. He restrained himself and kept on running.

Zeela gasped, “Where... where now?”

“Where the bastards don’t expect us to go – around the block so we end up where we started.”

“Is that wise?”

“Any better ideas?”

They came to the corner of the gable end and turned, running as fast as they were able along the ice-covered ground. The danger was that the bounty hunters might reach the end of the row and turn the corner before he and Zeela could reach the end of the street... in which case they’d be in plain sight again.

He looked over his shoulder. The street was deserted, eerie in the light of the stars.

“And... and what then?”

“We go round the back of the receiving station and call
Judi
.”

They came to the end of the building and flung themselves around the corner, pressing themselves against the ice-cold granite and hauling in lungfuls of freezing air. The station was a hundred metres away across open ground. To cross it would be dangerous... but Harper judged that it was the best possible option.

“Okay,” he said, “Let’s go!”

Expecting to feel a laser beam cauterize his backbone at any second, he gripped Zeela and ran across the ice towards the station, its dim interior light beckoning like a beacon. At one point the ice was so slick they began to skate and Harper went with it, releasing his grip on Zeela’s hand and holding out his arms to keep his balance.

Seconds later they came to the station. He was tempted to seek the immediate refuge of its interior – but doing that would succeed only in trapping them like rats in a barrel. They would be in view for longer as they scuttled along its façade, but the bounty hunters had yet to show themselves. Perhaps the fact that he was armed had given them second thoughts about pursuing?

They made their way along the front of the station and, seconds later, reached the corner. He slipped around it, pulling Zeela after him, and laughed aloud with relief.

He sank onto his haunches and got through to
Judi
. “Change of plan. Lock onto our position and land in the ice-canal. Got that?

“Affirmative.”

“And come down with the ramp extended and the hatch open. We might have to jump aboard. And as soon as we have, phase out. Understood?”

“Understood. Estimated rendezvous time, fifty-seven seconds.”

Less than a minute. He looked up. The canal was ten metres away. The bounty hunters would hear the ship’s arrival, of course, but if he and Zeela made a run for it before their pursuers got within laser range...

“As soon as the ship comes down,” he said, “we sprint for it and dive aboard. You can do that?”

She nodded.

It was the longest fifty-seven seconds of his life.

What seemed more like five minutes later he heard the deafening grumble of
Judi
’s maindrive as the ship streaked over the roof of the station and sank towards the canal. Her running lights sequencing like a calliope,
Judi
lowered herself towards the strip of ice, ramp lolling like a tongue beneath the dark arch of the hatch.

“Let’s go!” Harper yelled.

They pushed themselves from the wall and sprinted across the open area towards the canal.

The first laser beam missed him by a metre. The second was so close he felt its heat searing the air beside his head. He cried out and slipped, and only this saved the third beam from splitting his skull. He dropped his laser. It skittled away across the ice. He slid on his belly towards the pistol, gripped it, rolled onto his back and returned fire. He saw Janaker duck behind the station – but the Vetch was made of bolder stuff. It came out into the open, raised its rifle...

Harper fired, and more by luck than good marksmanship hit the bastard in the dead centre of its chest. The alien screamed, punched backwards by the impact.

Zeela grabbed his hand, pulled him to his feet and cried, “Look!”

Harper looked, and wished he hadn’t.
Judi
was settling on the canal, canted nose forward as her engines melted the ice beneath her stanchions – but two hundred metres away, and heading straight towards
Judi
, was a speeding ice-liner.

Zeela yelled again and pulled him towards the canal. When she reached the edge she took off, seemed to hang in the air, spread-eagled for an age, then landed with a sickening thump at the top of the ramp. She slid, almost lost her grip, then reached out and grabbed the hatch’s metal flange and pulled herself aboard.

A laser beam melted ice centimetres from Harper’s head. He rolled onto his back and fired three successive shots. All of them missed Janaker, but succeeded in sending her scuttling into the cover of the station.

Harper pushed himself to his feet and sprinted.

Zeela was standing now, exhorting him at the top of her lungs to jump.

He looked to his left. The ice-liner was screaming ever closer as it applied its brakes in a futile attempt to slow before it impacted with the starship. He reached the edge of the canal. The open hatch was four metres away. A laser beam lanced past him, pinged off
Judi
’s metalwork. Zeela bent herself double and screamed, “Jump!”

He dived, yelling, and impacted with the ramp. He slid. Something grabbed him, pulled him up the ramp. Zeela, crying in desperation. Another laser beam struck the ship as it lifted with a sudden, deafening whine of motors. He rolled aboard and peered down. The ice-liner screamed by underneath, its microwave antennae and a couple of fins excoriating
Judi
’s underbelly.

More laser beams criss-crossed through the night air. He peered down. The Vetch, impossibly, was on its feet and firing alongside Janaker. Harper glanced at his laser pistol. It had been set to kill, but now read
stun
. Of course... when he’d dropped it on the ice, the impact must have altered the setting.