Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (2 page)

“In case you’re not reading between the lines, I’m telling you that you’re one of the wrong people to be standing around in my Atrium.”  The Redman’s eyes narrowed.  “You have exactly five seconds to get out of my face before I adopt measures that are less prone to misinterpretation.”

Knile got the message.  If there was one group of people in the Reach he knew not to mess with, it was the Redmen.

“I see.  Thanks for your time,” he said, and then he got moving toward the Stormgates.

As he moved away from the central column, the rest of the Atrium began to peel back and reveal itself to him.  It seemed that the place was indeed deserted, apart from the two Redmen at his back.  No Enforcers, no Duran, no thugs in suits.

He’d caught a break, it seemed.  A big one.

He no longer had the passkey in his possession, but that would not stop him leaving the Atrium.  The passkey was only required for those moving inward toward the elevator.  Knile stepped through the hazy blue energy field, feeling the hairs on his arms and neck stand to attention, and then there was a pushing sensation at his back as if a strong breeze had suddenly sprung up behind him.  As he came out the other side of the Stormgate, he couldn’t suppress the notion of the glowing blue portal giving him a gentle shove in the back to help him on his way.

Good riddance, Knile.

In the outer portion of the Atrium there were scorch marks on the floor, elliptical spots of blackened concrete where, Knile assumed, the Redmen’s pulse weapons had torn shallow divots.  He wondered if this was the direction in which Duran had fled.  There was a trail of the marks leading right up to the edge of the Atrium, and Knile half expected to see a charred human body tangled in the steel wires of the balustrade, but there was nothing.  Either the Redmen had completely vaporised Duran or he’d leapt over the edge in order to escape.

Either way, he wasn’t coming back.

Knile stepped to the balustrade and looked out across the evening sky.  Outside the Atrium’s arches
,
the world seemed black, the landscape of Earth far below featureless and indistinct.  In the distance he could see dim yellow lights, the last outposts of civilisation in the remote lowlands, clusters of desperate humanity suffocating under the pall of toxins and murk from which there was no escape.

The view was beautiful and tragic and mesmerising, but Knile did not stand around to savour it.

He had work to do.

2

Alec Duran was running, but he wasn’t sure why.

Some remote part of his brain was telling him that it was instinct, a deep-seated, animal urge to stay alive, a frenetic thing beyond his control that forced his arms and legs to pump as they carried him away from danger.

Around him, the pulse rounds from the Redmen’s weapons were exploding and kicking up dust and plumes of pulverised concrete.  He knew all too well what a pulse round would do to his skin, to his flesh and bones
,
should it hit him flush in the back.  There wouldn’t be much left of him, that was for sure.

So he kept running, finding himself moving toward the wire balustrade that marked
the edge of the Atrium.  It was getting closer with every stride.

But why was he running?  Why was he bothering to go on?  He should have just stood there at the Stormgates and let the Redmen take him, shouldn’t he?  It would have been the most appropriate fate for one who had failed as thoroughly and completely as he had.

Knile had escaped him.  Again.  He had slipped through Duran’s grasp at the last minute, even though Duran had been looking at
him down the sights of his .40-
cal.  Duran could have blown the guy’s head off.  The opportunity had been there.  The little kid, the blonde girl, had been behind Knile.  She wouldn’t have been hit.

You had the shot and you didn’t take it.  You let the scumbag go free.

By the time Duran had decided to pull the trigger, it had been too late.  Knile had already slipped into the Stormgate and the rounds from the .40 had been harmlessly absorbed into the energy field.  The opportunity to take him down had been lost.

I didn’t kill all those people, Duran
,
Knile had said.

Sure, Knile
, Duran thought caustically. 
You’re innocent, just like every other person in this place.  No one’s accountable anymore.

And then Duran had run, turned and fled like a frightened child.

What else would he expect from himself after the cowardice he had shown in that moment with Knile?

All of these thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, in a single stride.  Then the survival instinct took over again and his mind returned to the present.

The Redmen should have hit him by now, he thought as he ran wildly forward.  They were better shots than this.  Maybe they were trying to shepherd him back to one of the elevators like a couple of lumbering red sheepdogs trying to steer the last wayward lamb into the pen.  The problem was, Duran wasn’t heading that way.  In his mad flight he was moving without thought or direction, careening toward the perimeter with reckless abandon.

He took three more steps
, and now he’d run out of rope.  He was at the edge, the sheer drop into nothingness below him, the Redmen still advancing at his back.

He turned to face them, suddenly calm.  There were no options left, he realised.  He’d reached the end of the road.  Now there was nothing left for him but to
a
wait the inevitable.  The choices
had all been taken away from him, and now he was a mere spectator in the last few seconds of his own existence.

The two Redmen were slowing, steadying themselves as they realised the quarry had been cornered.  They were lining him up in their sights.

Replacing the .40 in its holster, Duran straightened his suit jacket and readied himself for the end.

He thought of his father and how he’d let him down, and that was the worst moment of all.  Forget Knile escaping, forget the cowardice of fleeing these demons in crimson.  Failing his father was the greatest defeat he could experience, and it filled him with despair.

Something dark flashed in his periphery and there was the sound of movement all around him.  Suddenly there were hands on his chest, his back, and a powerful grip was lifting him off his feet.

Duran cried out in terror.  Something was pulling him over the railing and out into the nothingness.

Then he was falling, the wall of the Reach rushing past him in a whir.  For an instant he saw the lights of Link far, far below, nestled in the deepening twilight at the base of the structure three kilometres below.  He tried to loose another scream but his voice caught in his throat, and the only sound that escaped his lips was a hoarse croak that was little more than a rasp.

Then an instant later his momentum came to an abrupt halt and he was shunted sideways.  He flailed and kicked, disorientated and terrified.  As he twisted and scraped along the wall
, he caught sight of a taut rope secured to the wall above, and then a hand clamped over his mouth.

“Stop squeaking, you idiot,” a muffled voice hissed in his ear, “unless you want those Redmen to come down here after you and finish the job.”

Duran had no idea who had grabbed him, but he saw the sense in their words and did as instructed.  The two of them reached equilibrium and he felt something solid under his feet.  Looking down he saw that they had landed on a strip of narrow steel mesh that served as a walkway.  His captor slid a hand up to his chest and pushed him flat against the wall, and Duran almost cried out again as the gunshot wound in his shoulder flared painfully.

“Stay still and shut up.”

Duran looked across at his captor, and through the pain he registered a moment of surprise – the one who had grabbed him was a woman.  She was dressed in black and her dark hair was tied in a ponytail.  A pair of amber-brown eyes regarded Duran coolly over a respirator before flicking upward again.

“Wait,” she said simply, staring up the wall, unblinking and still.

Duran reached up and grasped her wrist, easing it away in an attempt to reduce the pain in his shoulder.  It was no easy task.  Her slender limbs belied the strength and surety with which she’d handled him, and even now he wasn’t sure he could push her away.  The pressure on Duran’s chest eased somewhat, but the woman did not release him entirely.

“Stop wriggling,” she said, never lowering her eyes at him.

“My shoulder–”

“Shut up,” she said again.

Duran could hear voices above them, and with an effort he bit back on another moan of pain.  He followed the woman’s gaze up toward the Atrium, and he thought he could see at least one figure up there looking down.

The Redmen.  What are they doing?

Duran wondered whether they might pursue the woman and himself down the wall.  Surely their interest would not extend below the Atrium, even if they believed Duran had somehow survived going over the top of the balustrade.  Their job was to defend the Stormgates, not to chase stragglers half way down the Reach.  If he and the woman remained still, surely the Redmen would return to their posts.

As if to contradict him, a thick grey rope suddenly came arcing out from above and slapped against the wall not five metres away from them.

“Wow,” the woman said casually.  “You really pissed these guys off, huh?”

She was on her feet in an instant, unhooking and discarding her rope in two sharp movements.  Then she reached down and hauled Duran up and along the walkway at a rapid pace.  Duran cried out and stumbled, wincing again at the pain in his shoulder as he tried to keep his balance.  He felt as though he might pass out at any moment, and to make matters worse, he was suffer
ing from vertigo at the sight of
the calamitous drop beside them.  He did his best to ignore it, but the walkway was so thin and flimsy that he felt as though a fall was not just likely, but inevitable.  His eyes were inexorably drawn outward, where the world far below was beginning to disappear under the gloom of twilight, and he inadvertently overcompensated with his balance, jarring his shoulder painfully against the wall.

Pushing the fear and the agony aside, he glanced over his shoulder and saw someone climbing over the balcony.  They began to traverse down the rope at a rapid pace.

“Shit,” he said hoarsely.  “I hope you’ve got more rope.”

“As it turns out, no,” the woman said.  She stopped at a circular hatch and flicked on a flashlight, scanning some of the markings that had been stamped across its outer edge.  A moment later a holophone was in her hand.  She tapped in
a
series of digits and lifted it to her ear.  “Swit
ch,” she said a moment later, “t
his is Songbird.  I need an opening.”

There was a pause of several seconds, then a man answered.

“Switch here.  Gimme a sec.”

“I don’t have a sec,” the woman said, her voice urgent but amazingly composed as her eyes flicked to the figure moving down the wall.  “I need it open yesterday.”

Duran looked as well, and now he could now make out enough detail to confirm his worst fears – the Redmen were coming after them.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
the man drawled. 
“You got a serial?”

The woman ran the flashlight across the digits on the hatch again.

“Serial is SG9184-8,” she said.  “Or that last one might be a ‘B’.  It’s scratched, I can’t tell for sure.”

“That’s a ‘B’ for sure,”
the man said conversationally. 
“They never end in numbers.” 
There was a pause.
  “Actually, not true.  If you look hard enough you’ll find a few in the Infirmary–”

“Screw the guided tour!” the woman said, appearing to lose her cool for the first time.  “Open the fucking door, right now!”

The first
Redman had abseiled his way downward further and had now almost reached the walkway.  Duran had a horrible vision of what one of those pulse rounds would do to the steel under their feet if the Redman decided to open fire.  Needless to say both he and the woman w
ould find themselves with a one-way ticket to the ground far below even if they somehow avoided a direct hit.

“Keep your pants on, Songbird,”
the man said, maintaining that annoying casualness. 
“It’s coming.”

There was a thud and the walkway reverberated horribly, swaying and creaking amid the shriek of metal.  The Redman had alighted from the rope and was now reaching for the rifle on his back.

“Switch, if you’re going to–”

Suddenly the door clicked, and the woman reached out and pulled on the handle.  There was a low moaning noise as air rushed in through the gap, and then the woman’s hand was on Duran’s collar, pulling him through.  The two of them struggled and stumbled their way into the portal simultaneously and then landed on a heap on the floor inside.  The door slammed shut behind them, but the access panel beside it was still green, indicating that it had not yet returned to a locked state.