The Abyss Beyond Dreams (11 page)

‘Please open the EVA hangar door,’ Rojas said. ‘We need to get the exopod inside.’

‘Rojas, I can’t let you bring that globe into Fourteen,’ Ayanna said. ‘Please release it.’

‘We need to examine it,’ Rojas said. He still wasn’t looking up at the camera any more. His fingers were moving fast across the keypads in front of him.

‘Yes, we will, but after we’ve established it’s safe. You know the protocol.’

‘Open the door.’

‘Jettison the globe,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It won’t go anywhere. We can run tests on it out there.’

A set of graphics on the console turned from amber to blue. The EVA hangar lights flickered. Laura could feel a slight vibration through the handholds.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Ayanna exclaimed. ‘He’s overridden the airlock. It’s opening.’

‘Bollocks,’ Laura grunted.

They all turned to face the airlock’s inner door, just past the remaining exopod. Caution lights were shining purple.

‘What do we do?’ Laura asked.

‘Are there any weapons on board?’ Joey asked.

Ayanna gave him a startled glance. ‘Crap. There’s probably something in the emergency landing pack.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ Laura said, but it was more like a mantra than anything she believed. Nobody in this era needed weapons; biononics could be configured into quite
aggressive energy functions if anyone was seriously threatened.

‘You wouldn’t want to mess with some of the engineering tools,’ Joey said.

‘Are they real?’ Laura asked, mostly to herself. The screen showed her that the docking cradle had finished pulling the exopod inside the EVA hangar airlock. ‘Is that Ibu and
Rojas?’

‘What the hell else can they be?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Oh, fuck, what is happening?’ Her mental shielding was cracking open, flooding the EVA hangar with raw fright.

Laura found herself in the centre of swirling shadows. They were growing fangs and teeth, turning from phantom grey spectres to solid black figures. Thousands of people shrieking somewhere far
away were growing closer. She raised her hands in reflex to ward them off, worried that perhaps Ayanna’s telekinesis would give substance to her imagination. ‘Ayanna! For fuck’s
sake get a grip.’

‘I don’t want them in the shuttle,’ Ayanna wailed.

‘Nobody does! We can’t stop the bastards, now. We’ll just have to manage them when they do get in.’

Ayanna looked just as panicked as before, but the outpouring of emotion reduced slightly.

Joey spun round to face the other way. ‘Can we lock the hatch to the silo compartment?’

‘If we can lock it, Rojas can sure as shit unlock it,’ Laura said.

‘Then we break it,’ Joey said. ‘Use telekinesis, wreck the circuits behind the bulkhead.’

Laura glanced at the hatchway herself. It was incredibly tempting. The lights above the exopod airlock turned from purple to green. The malmetal door started to peel open.

‘Oh bollocks,’ Laura muttered. The hatchway to the silo compartment was barely four metres away. She was sure she could get through in a couple of seconds if she powerdived for it
– assuming she aimed right, no guarantee of that given her free-fall skill level. Her ESP started to pry around the bulkhead, reducing it to a translucent blue sheet in her mind. It was
threaded with dozens of cable conduits.
Which ones control the hatch?

The docking cradle trundled into the EVA hangar and placed the exopod on its lockdown clamps. All Laura could do was stare at the alien globe the electromuscle tentacles were clutching. Her ESP
revealed nothing; it was a blank zone inside her perceptive field. And yet . . . She smiled, knowing now that there was no reason to worry. Whatever it contained was absorbing Ayanna’s
malicious phantoms. A temperate sense of relief filled the EVA hangar. And her heart was racing away inside her chest.

‘Fight it!’ Joey’s mental voice told her, a jarring discord to the tranquillity Laura was feeling.

‘Oh no!’ Laura groaned. ‘No no no!’ Her own dread at the realization of what was happening was enough to damp down the emotional balm the alien globe was giving off. She
saw Ayanna had started to move towards the globe, and grabbed her arm. ‘Stop! Ayanna, for crap’s sake! It’s like a narcomeme.’

Ayanna’s head twisted back to stare at Laura, and now she really looked frightened.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Joey said.

Laura swung round on the handholds, and prepared to push off against the bulkhead. She heard the exopod’s hatch open. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization. And even though she
knew it was stupid, she paused to glance at what was coming out.

Ibu slid out smoothly, catching hold of a handhold on the EVA hangar’s wall. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, and his voice was still weird, as if there was fluid in his
throat.

‘You tell me,’ she barked. ‘What is that thing?’

‘Who knows? We brought it here to study.’ He was bending his knees, swinging round slightly so his feet were pressed against the exopod’s hull.

Ready to pounce
, Laura thought.

Rojas glided easily out of the hatch.

‘Get out of here!’ Joey’s mental voice shouted. He began scrambling along the bulkhead, hauling himself towards the hatch into the silo compartment. Shaking arms made him miss
the second handhold.

Ibu kicked off, flashing along the middle of the EVA hangar like a human missile. Rojas followed.

Laura screamed and jumped for the hatch. Her foot caught Joey’s shoulder and the collision flicked her sideways. She spun and slapped at the bulkhead, righting her trajectory. Ayanna was
right beside her.

Rojas caught Joey’s ankle. The squeal that came through Joey’s spasming throat was like a pig grunting. Then Rojas was clambering along the hyperspace theorist as if the two were
caught in some weird dance move. It quickly turned into a furious wrestling match as they squirmed against each other.

Again, Laura hesitated. Her hand grasped the hatch rim. Ibu was close, reaching forwards. And Ayanna was level with her. ‘Go!’ Laura yelped. Ayanna wriggled through the hatchway with
the agility of an eel.

Joey’s cries of dread were echoing round the hangar. Ibu’s hand clamped round Laura’s shin. She squealed, first at the shock, then the yell grew wilder as she realized just how
tight and painful his grip was. Stronger than any normal human. ‘What the—’

His other hand clamped round her right ankle. She tried to pull herself through the hatch into the silo compartment, but she couldn’t move. Now Ibu began to pull her the other way. She
felt her arms starting to straighten out as his unnatural strength over-powered her, tugging her back. Various ancient unarmed combat routines began to unfold from her storage lacuna, slipping into
the macrocellular clusters. But Laura didn’t wait; she instinctively lashed out with her free foot, catching Ibu on the side of his head.

It had all the impact of hitting him with a feather.

He snapped her ankle. She heard the bone break with a terrible
crack
, and her leg went numb for a glorious instant. Then the incredible pain fired into her brain. Secondary routines
damped down the impulse, reducing it to a manageable level. But Ibu slowly and deliberately rotated her foot. The fractured bone made a fearsome grating sound. Her macrocellular clusters cut the
nerve impulses altogether.

Laura felt sick. But manic strength allowed her to cling on to the hatchway. Through watering eyes she looked back at Ibu, whose face was impassive. He was simply waiting for her to let go, so
he could—

What?

Laura couldn’t understand any of this. Rojas had now subdued a frantic Joey, putting him in some kind of submission lock.

Ibu bent her ankle again. Laura knew she only had seconds before she lost her grip and was drawn back. Then Ayanna was back in the hatch, her telekinesis jabbing at Ibu’s face.

Now he grimaced, his own attention diverted, a counter telekinesis parrying her attack. But he didn’t let go of Laura.

Hanging on grimly to the hatch rim, Laura directed her telekinesis to her breast pocket. The Swiss army knife wriggled free, and she flicked the longest blade out. It rotated in mid-air to point
at Ibu. Laura shoved it forwards with all the power she had.

The blade sliced down Ibu’s cheek and stabbed into the gap between his suit’s helmet ring and his neck. He froze. Ayanna gasped.

Laura’s ESP perceived the blade penetrate a good six or seven centimetres into his flesh just behind the clavicle bone. A dark blue liquid began to pour out along the side of his neck. For
one confused moment, she thought her knife had cut through some kind of coolant tube in the suit. Then she finally acknowledged it was blood – or whatever the Ibu-copy used for circulatory
fluid.

With a yell, she twisted the blade, pouring all her savagery and determination into the thought.

The Ibu-copy snarled as the knife turned, scraping against his clavicle. Laura jerked her ruined foot free of his grasp and tugged herself up through the hatch, with Ayanna helping heave her
along. The pair of them tumbled into the silo compartment. Laura banged into one of the metal silo tubes, rebounded, and grabbed at the first handhold she could see, steadying herself.
‘Move!’ she bawled. And reached for another handhold.

Ayanna raced along the other side of the compartment, heading for the equipment lockers.

The Ibu-copy squirmed through the hatch, his collar still spitting out blue globules.

Laura was barely thinking. Survival instinct had cut in. She just had to get away. At the back of her gibbering mind was the notion of her and Ayanna barricading themselves inside the forward
cabin. Nothing else mattered apart from getting some kind of secure reassuringly physical barrier between herself and the alien
things
.

She swept past the lockers and dived up the ladder to the service compartment, slapping the rungs as she went, adding speed and stability to her flight. For once she performed the manoeuvre with
a decent amount of agility. Ayanna was right behind her.

A hysterical scream tore through the shuttle.

Laura turned in fright, and shock locked every muscle. Ayanna was halfway along the ladder. The Ibu-copy had caught up with her. One hand gripped her thigh, allowing him to bite her calf. Not
some angry streetfight snapping of jaws. He had sunk his teeth in, penetrating the shipsuit fabric, and closed his jaw around the calf muscle. As Laura watched, his head wrenched back so he tore
out a chunk of Ayanna’s flesh. He began chewing it.

Ayanna wailed in helpless dread. Blood was pumping fast out of her ragged wound, scarlet globules forming a sickly galaxy around her leg. The Ibu-thing lowered his head again and took another
bite.

Laura threw up.

The Rojas-copy arrived at the ladder. He swarmed over Ayanna, opening his jaw wide. His strength tugged her arm away from the ladder, and forced her fingers into his mouth.

Ayanna’s screaming was deafening, blotting out the sound of her knuckles breaking as they were bitten through. Her mental voice was an incoherent yell of pain and utter horror. It was like
an assault on Laura’s senses, battering her as violently as any physical blow. Yet still the survival instinct was strong enough to goad her into action. She grabbed her way along the service
compartment floor and into the forward cabin, her own piteous wailing like a soprano whistle, tears wrecking her vision. Her hand thumped down on the hatch button. The malmetal closed.

ESP showed her a dozen conduits and power lines around the hatch. Her telekinesis reached out and clawed at every one of them, shredding the insulation and the conductors, ripping them apart.
The lights went out. Alarms sounded as short circuits blew safety cutoffs. The background whining of several fans faded to silence. Red lights flared on the console.

Laura pushed herself away from the hatch. Ayanna’s screams had stopped before it was closed. Something hit the other side of the hatch. Another strike. Another and another. Then
silence.

She curled up into a foetal ball and began sobbing.

*

It was a feeling that took a long time to register. Not a compulsion, but a sensation akin to recognizing a smell.

Laura blinked in confusion. It was her gaiamotes gently apprising her that someone was wanting to talk to her. Joey – that was the mental scent.

Very cautiously, Laura opened up the gaiamotes’ sensitivity.

‘Laura?’

‘Joey?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know if it’s really you. They . . . Oh, bollocks. This can’t be happening. They ate her, Joey. They ate her! And I left her behind.’ The shame was so
overwhelming, she wanted to bodyloss – re-life herself free of all this.
Vermillion
would break out of the Void somehow, and everyone left behind would be re-lifed using memories in
the starship’s secure store. Her life would go on without any memory of Shuttle Fourteen or the Forest. No knowledge of what Ayanna had endured.

‘It’s me, I swear it.’ The surge of emotion that slipped through the gaiafield connection from him was profound, and utterly sincere.

Laura started crying again. ‘Oh, Joey, Joey. What are they?’

‘I don’t know. Some kind of copies.’

‘Where are you? What happened?’

‘I’m still in the EVA hangar – look.’

When she closed her eyes and accepted his vision through the gaiafield, she saw the EVA hangar from an off-kilter angle. She/Joey was looking at it from the airlock end. The emergency blue
lighting was on, and there was no sign of the alien human-copies.

‘They fastened me in place. But I did it, Laura. What I said – the same thing you did. While they were busy with Ayanna, I closed the hatch with telekinesis, then screwed up the
power cables, shorted everything out. They can’t get to me.’

‘Can you move?’

A wash of stoic regret came through the connection. ‘No. My telekinesis isn’t strong enough to break the bond. It’s some kind of tough polymer wrapped round my wrists and
ankles.’

‘Can you manipulate a tool? Cut through it?’

‘Laura, please. I’m not sure I’m that accurate. You have to get back here.’