Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) (32 page)

Inside was a release lever with a black grip.

“Found it,” he gasped.  “Here goes nothing.”

He reached in and closed his hand around the grip, then tried to ease it toward him.

It didn’t budge.

He tried again, more firmly this time, but the result was the same.

Now he braced himself against the housing and tried to get more leverage on his target, grunting with exertion, but he couldn’t move it.

“Come
on!
”

“Knile, what’s going on?”

“Everything is seized up around here.  It’s a pain in the ass.”

“I guess that happens after a few decades of sitting around, not being used.”

Placing his feet on the housing, he reached in with both hands and pulled with all his might.

The handle shunted outward abruptly, and the locking mechanism shuddered and fell aside.  As the vibrations jarred Knile’s hands, he lost his grip.

“Shit!” he cried.  “Dammit!”

Suddenly he was cartwheeling through space, the railcar spinning in his visor.  The umbilical went taut, stopping his momentum abruptly, and he swung sideways and into another section of the habitat.

Then the unthinkable happened.  The umbilical connector
on his suit snapped off.

Knile cried out again, realising that he was now untethered, cut adrift from the habitat. 
Somewhere at the back of his mind he wondered if he’d secured the connector properly.

Probably not.  In too much of a hurry to be thorough.

If he didn’t find purchase, he’d float off into space with no chance of making it back inside again.

With a desperate flail of his arms, he somehow snagged the end of the umbilical in his fingers.  Ursie was screaming something in his ear, but he had no idea what it was.

The only thing that mattered was the umbilical.  It was his only way back to safety.

But it was slipping through his grasp.

He lunged forward, tried to get a better grip, but it felt as though his momentum were somehow taking him in the opposite direction, like someone had him by the ankles and was trying to haul him out into the void.  Try as he might, he could not seem to arrest his slide.

Little by little he was slipping away to a place from which there was no return.

He closed his eyes, tried to gather every ounce of strength in his arms, preparing himself for one last push.  He had to do it, there was simply no other option.  Just like he had all those times before, he had to find a way to survive.

He opened his eyes again, and,
miraculously, the airlock was right in front of him.  Moments later he was drawn back inside, and the door closed behind him.  He crashed to the floor as air gushed in around him.  He lay there for what might have been half a minute, wondering if perhaps he had already blacked out and was now dreaming this improbable rescue, but as the seconds ticked by, he realised that he wasn’t imagining this.

It was real.  He was back inside Sunspire.

The inner door opened and Lazarus appeared there, his bulky frame blotting out the light from behind him.

“The umbilical has a mechanical retraction system,” he said.  “A useful feature.”

38

The bodies were arranged in rows, lying flat on their backs in a precise grid that might have been admirable were it not so macabre.

“Oh, god,” Talia said, covering her mouth with her hand.  “What the hell is this?”

“Nothing left but skeletons,” Kolos said.  He crouched over the remains of what once might have been a woman, her blouse now a blackened and tattered rag clinging to her bones, and probed gently with the muzzle of his rifle.

“Whatever happened here,” Norrey said, “it happened a long time ago.  I’m guessing decades, by the state of these bodies.”

“Why are they lined up like that?” Roman said, a sickly look on his face.  “That’s not natural.”

“It’s ritualistic, that’s for certain,” Norrey said.  “But whether they died where they lay, or were killed and then arranged in this fashion, we’ll probably never know.”

“If they were killed, who did it?” Talia said.  “And where are they now?”

“We have to complete a sweep of the entire complex,” Norrey said.  “Make sure it’s safe.”

“This might have been a ceremonial tomb for the locals,” Kolos said, getting to his feet again and casting an eye over the dead.  “Each time someone died, they were brought here to be laid to rest with the others.”

“Perhaps,” Norrey said.  “Once we’ve searched the place, we might learn more.”  He turned to Talia and Roman.  “Stay close behind us.  We don’t want to get separated in here, just in case there’s someone lurking around looking to add to their collection of bodies.”

Talia reached out and took Roman by the hand, finding reassurance in his touch
.  Her sense of uneasiness certainly hadn’t lessened with the discovery of the bodies; it only added to the mystery of what had happened to Sunspire.

What had become of this place after it had shut down?  Why did the shroud of death hang so heavily upon it?

“This way,” Norrey said, and they continued on past the bodies and into the next corridor.  They made slow going over the next half an hour, systematically moving from room to room and searching thoroughly wherever they went.  There were more of the rigged explosives in several
locations, and they were careful to avoid inadvertently setting these off.

Nearing the end of their sweep, they found a long and narrow corridor with the telltale wiring threaded across the ceiling – another trap.

“Maybe we should avoid this one,” Kolos said.

“No,” Norrey said.  “We check every last room.”

At the other end of the corridor lay a room labelled ‘Transit Communications’, which housed a number of consoles and terminal screens, as well as a switch on the wall for the explosives.  Talia made her way around the room, trying to ascertain its function, and then saw a label above one of the consoles that read ‘Transport Module’.

Is this how we talk to the railcar?
she wondered to herself.  Reaching out, she activated the system and waited as it began to boot.  After about thirty seconds it came online.  She pressed the transmit button and spoke into the microphone.

“Hello?  Is anyone there?”

“What are you doing?” Norrey said.

She shrugged.  “Just seeing if there’s anyone listening, I guess.”

“We should continue our sweep,” Norrey said.

“Sure.  Which way?”

“There’s only one way out of this room,” Kolos said.  “Back down the corridor again.”

Their investigation of the premises ended soon after.  The final room they came to was perhaps the most important of all.  It was the control room for the space elevator, a broad, oval-shaped room with a bay window along one wall that looked out upon the space elevator
itself
.  Talia could see rain pattering against the glass, and as the lightning flared, the slender shape of the space elevator could be seen against the sky.

She was so preoccupied with the view outside that she didn’t see the man sitting in the high-backed chair, faced away from them, until she was almost upon him.

“Get back!” Norrey cried, catching sight of the man at the same time as Talia.  He brought up his rifle and began to strafe the target.  “You in the chair!  Get down on the floor, right now!”

The man in the chair made no effort to turn, continuing to stare out the window.  Only part of his face was visible.  As the lightning lit up the room, Talia saw the brown, desiccated skin of his cheek and a tuft of white hair on his scalp.

“Easy, brother,” Kolos said, his rifle also trained on the target.  “I doubt this one poses any threat to us.”

Norrey reached the man and nudged the chair with his boot, spinning it around, and Talia understood what Kolos had meant.

Like the others who resided in Sunspire, the man was dead.  Although not as decayed as those they had found on the floor earlier, he was still well and truly past his expiration date.  His
skin was shrivelled, mottled brown and black, and incredibly dry, as if it might crumble away at the slightest touch.

“The last of the ghosts, then,” Norrey said.

“Look,” Roman said, pointing over at the console near the chair.  “A camera.”

He edged past the dead man and activated the terminal.  After a few button presses, a video feed sprang to life.  The others crowded around.

“So,”
a man said into the camera. 
“This is the last log of Able, First Watcher of Heaven’s Light.”

“What is this?” Kolos said.

“I think this is the answer to what happened at Sunspire,” Talia said.

“The journey has been long,”
the man went on,
“but we have persevered.  We have struggled through the trials that were set before us, and not a single one among us doubted.  Not a single one fled the cause.”

He was a young man in his late twenties, with dark hair swept back over his ears and a fervent gleam in his eyes.  He was handsome in a way, Talia supposed, but something about the way he stared into the camera unnerved her.  Despite his calmness, he seemed unhinged.  On the verge of madness.

“As I told them the first day we arrived here, salvation is waiting above.  On the appointed date, the skies will open and the light of the heavens will shine down upon us.”
  He leaned forward eagerly. 
“We will be delivered from this putrid Earth and be welcomed into the arms of the heavens themselves.”

“Zealots,” Norrey grunted.  “I should have known.”

“Finally, the day is here,”
Able said. 
“The time is come.  The others have already prepared themselves.  They have
tasted the medicine and lain down in preparation for their souls to be lifted upward.”
  He picked something up off camera, then sat back down in his seat, the same high-backed chair in which the corpse now resided. 
“With gladness, I go to join them.  We are leaving here today.”
  He downed a cup of clear liquid, then smiled, tears in his eyes. 
“And we are never coming back.”

The video feed cut out, and the screen went black.

“What is this?” Roman said, looking around at the others.  “Some kind of cult?”

“That’s exactly what this is,” Talia said.

“Idiots.  I’ll guarantee that these pitiful souls never found the light,” Norrey said.  Talia wondered at the strange phrase, but Norrey continued on before she could dwell on it.  “And so, our duty is done, Talia.  We have seen you to your destination, safe and whole.  From what I can tell, there are no living inhabitants left here.”

“Thank you,” Talia said earnestly.  “You’ve been a great help to us.”

“I would suggest you find somewhere to bunk down for the night.  Await the arrival of your friends.”

“Yes.  That’s probably a good idea.  We could use the rest.”

Norrey glanced at Kolos.  “Would you mind if Kolos and I stayed a while longer, at least until the storm has passed?”

“No, of course not,” Talia said.  “I’d hardly expect you to go traipsing back out there in this weather.”

“Many thanks,” Norrey said, inclining his head politely.  “We promise not to snore too loudly.”

Talia found a small storage space not far from the control room and bedded down there, while Norrey and Kolos wandered off to find their own place to rest.  As she lay there with Roman, she took out her holophone and tried calling Knile, but once again there was no response.

“Piece of shit,” she muttered.

“Maybe you’re out of reach of the relay again,” Roman said.

“Yeah.  That’s probably it.”

“Do you think Knile’s going to make it?”

“He’ll make it,” she said without hesitation.  “He won’t leave us alone down here.”

Yet, somehow, at the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel that they
were
going to end up alone, and worse – there was nothing she could do about it.