The Recollection (37 page)

She took a step forward. Then another.

Last time, The Recollection had almost had her. She knew she couldn’t hold out for long, knew she was close to losing the fight. This time, she couldn’t resist for long, not with its fingers already in her head, pulling her inward.

Snarling, she summoned the last scraps of her old determination.

“You don’t get me that easily,” she said. With shaking hands, she raised the guns, and with a drawn-out howl of pain, emptied them into the ranks of approaching figures. Then spent, she let herself sag. The pistols clattered onto the road at her feet.

“Mum?” she said.

Then Verne was there with her, pulling her roughly back towards the ship. She fought against him, kicking and swearing. Tears ran down her face.

“Let me go! We have to go back, we have to find a way to get her out!”

Verne held her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.

“It’s too late, Kat. It’s too late.”

He dragged her up the ramp. Her head reeled with unfamiliar voices, all of them pleading with her to turn around and join them. It took every gram of strength she had to keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other as she allowed herself to be herded into the ship.

Once inside, she dropped to her knees.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Dimly, she saw the cargo ramp hinge upwards, sealing the hull.

Mum!

And then the ship shook as it fired up its engines, ready to launch. Moving in a daze, she followed Verne to the bridge and strapped into her couch.

Ed Rico’s voice came through the speaker from the weapon on the ship’s bows.

“What’s happening? What do you want me to do?”

Kat closed her eyes.

“Kill it,” she told him. “Kill everything.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lightning flared. The superhot stellar hydrogen flashed the air it passed through to glowing plasma. It scoured the zombies from the street, punched molten holes in the bloody red slick of advancing nanomachinery.

Watching the destruction, Kat’s lips drew back in something that was half snarl and half grin.

“See how you like it,” she said.

Beside her, Verne reached out and tapped the console in front of him.

“Go,” he said to the ship.

Through her implant, Kat felt the jump engines come online. She tried to struggle against her harness. Although Verne had jumped his ship out of its bay in the Quay, no-one had ever jumped from the
surface
of a world before.

“No, not yet,” she protested, but already it was too late.

The power spiked.

And they were gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

SURVIVAL

Of the thousand freighters in the fleet, only four were lost: three on the surface and one on takeoff. The rest returned to the Ark in dribs and drabs, two or three at a time, over the course of the next few hours. Each carried upwards of eight hundred refugees from the surface: frightened, bewildered people struggling to understand the horrors befalling their world.

When the
Ameline
docked, Feliks Abdulov was the first person waiting to greet the crew. He stepped forward as the airlock slid open.

“Katherine!”

“Dad!”

She climbed down and ran to him. Saw him wince.

“Dad, are you okay? What happened to you?”

Feliks looked ruefully at his bandaged hands. “Frostbite,” he said. “The doc says I’m going to lose the ends of my fingers.”

She took him gently by the wrists and he looked her up and down. A frown crossed his face.

“But never mind me, what the hell happened to your arm?”

Kat raised her metal hand. The motors in the knuckles caught the light.

“It’s a long story,” she said, dropping it again. “But now’s not the time. There’s something else. Dad, it’s Mum.”

“I know.” He put his arms around her. “I already heard. The compound’s gone. We were too late.”

Kat felt her eyes grow hot.

“It’s worse than that,” she said.

Her father squeezed her.

“Don’t say it, please.”

“But, Dad—”

Feliks put a hand to the back of her head, smoothing her hair with his bandaged fingers.

“Katherine, I was adrift in a refrigerated crate for thirty hours, and I had time to review your footage from Djatt.” His voice wavered. “I know what’s happened to your mother.”

“But we can’t leave her trapped in there forever. There must be something we can do?”

“There’s nothing,” he said. Over his shoulder, Kat saw lines of confused, grief-stricken survivors disembarking from one of the freighters. They had all lost friends and loved ones. They’d left behind mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, husbands and wives. They had nothing but their misery and the clothes in which they stood. Tears running down her face, she felt a surge of kinship with them.

“For now, all we can do is survive,” Feliks said in her ear. He kissed her temple. “Survive, and remember.”

Ed clawed his way out of the slippery embrace of the Torch, emerging into the air above the deck like a newborn foal struggling to free itself from its mother’s womb. Tired and stiff, he let himself drop to the floor.

Alice stooped to help him up.

“Are you all right?” she asked. She brushed away the blood from his eyes and nostrils, and ducked beneath his arm, taking some of his weight on her shoulders.

“I’ll be okay,” he said. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with one hand. The lights in the hangar seemed harsh and bright. All he could see were afterimages of the tactical display.

“Wait,” he said. He turned to face her. She looked up at him, eyes wide, and a strand of auburn hair fell across her left eye. He smoothed it back.

“Alice, there’s something I have to tell you.”

She smiled and shook her head.

“I know, Ed.”

“What?”

“I
know
. And don’t worry. I love you too.”

“You do?”

“Of course, you fool.” She put a hand on his chest and stretched up to kiss him on the lips. She smelled of coffee and tasted of spearmint toothpaste. Ed closed his eyes. His back ached and he felt bone tired, ready to drop into bed. When he reopened them, he noticed Verne standing a little way off, watching them.

“Hello,” he said.

Verne ducked under the leading edge of the
Ameline
’s hull and hugged him.

“You did good, Ed,” he said. “We all did. We rescued a lot of people today.”

Ed shook his head.

“All I did was shoot what I was told to.”

Verne ruffled his hair.

“We couldn’t have done it without you.”

His eyes dropped to the St. Christopher that hung around Ed’s neck.

“Still got that, huh?”

Ed gripped the medal and glanced at Alice.

“It brought us luck, all the way here.”

Verne smiled.

“You make your own luck, Ed.”

He stepped back, glanced from Ed to Alice.

“Look, Verne—”

Verne held up his hands, palms out.

“Ed, don’t
worry
. I really am happy for the two of you. We’ve all moved on. We’re all leading different lives now.” He looked down and scratched the bridge of his nose. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to be a father.” His cheeks flushed. He didn’t know where to look. “I mean, me and Kat. Kat and I. We’re going to have a baby.”

Alice’s eyes open wide in surprise. For a moment, she seemed unable to process the information.

“Congratulations,” she said, her tone uncertain. She looked up at Ed. He took her hand and squeezed reassuringly.

Verne shuffled his feet.

“Thanks.” He looked at Ed. “Are you ready to be an uncle?”

“I guess so.”

“Good.” Verne turned to where Kat stood talking with her father. “Look, we’ll talk properly later,” he said. “Right now, I have to go.”

He made to leave.

“Hey,” Ed called after him. “We’re cool, right?”

Verne turned, walking backwards away from them. A smile creased his face.

“You’re my brother,” he said. “Of course we’re cool.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

UP AND OUT

Twenty-four hours later, refuelled and provisioned, the
Ameline
left the Ark again, dropping away into empty space. Alone on its bridge, Kat watched the crystal walls recede, feeling like a bug falling from a windshield.

Below her, down in the passenger lounge, Alice, Toby Drake, Professor Harris and half a dozen Acolytes sat strapped into acceleration couches. Below them, Ed lay wrapped in his cocoon under the bows.

Toby Drake hadn’t regained consciousness since being carried aboard by the Acolytes, and Kat had specific instructions to deliver him to the Bubble Belt as soon as humanely possible.

“He’s going to save us all,” Harris had told her, despite the fact that when she looked at Toby, he appeared half-dead and incapable of saving anything, including himself.

“What do you think?” she asked the ship. Through her implant, she felt it stir. Like her, it was glad to be underway again, and glad to be putting some distance between itself and Strauli, and the continuing risk of contamination.

> Shucks, don’t ask me, lady. I just work here.

It paused, its attention snagged by a signal from the Ark.

> Incoming message.

Kat smiled. She knew who it would be.

“Put it on screen.”

The star field dimmed, to be replaced by the faces of Verne Rico and Feliks Abdulov. The two former rivals stood in the human quarters of the Ark, both wearing stretchy black ship suits. Kat’s smile grew broader. She’d never expected to see the two men in the same room, let alone standing side-by-side.

“Hello,” she said. Her smile slipped a notch. “Or should that be goodbye?”

Feliks looked at her with undisguised affection.

“How about
au revoir
?”

Despite her protests, both men had elected to stay behind to help with the evacuation of Strauli. To Feliks, it was a matter of family honour; to Verne, a chance to redeem himself for past mistakes. Standing together, they made an unlikely pair.

Verne said, “By the time you reach Tiers Cross, we’ll only be a few months behind. We’ll see you soon enough.”

“You better make sure of it, because I’m not doing this alone.” Kat rubbed her belly. “This little one’s going to need her father, and her grandfather.”

Verne raised an eyebrow. “You’re still sure it’s a girl, then?”

Kat gave him a grin.

“Aren’t you?”

She signed off. Ahead, the screens showed only stars. Each one had a tiny name printed next to it. The ship had even superimposed their target—the system containing Tiers Cross and the Bubble Belt—with a golden crosshair. For a second, she closed her eyes, savouring the feeling of freedom. Everything else fell away, leaving just the ship and her, and the tiny speck growing inside her.

“Are you ready?” she asked the
Ameline
.

The ship fired its lateral thrusters, turning its nose in the direction of Tiers Cross. Deep in its bowels, she felt the two purple coils of the jump engines drawing power, building energy.

> Always.

She took one last, lingering look at her home planet, and the obscene red blooms now disfiguring almost a third of the visible land mass.

“We’ll be back one day,” she promised the little life growing within her. Then she shook herself. The future would have to wait. She pulled herself upright in her seat. Right now, she was a trader captain, an Abdulov, and she had a cargo to deliver.

The ship’s engines hit full power.

> Ready to jump?

Kat turned her face to the anaemic light of the distant stars. She felt like an arrow aimed at the sky, ready to fly.

“Up and out,” she said.

And vanished.

EPILOGUE

A SKIN YOU ONCE SHED

Who believes not only in our globe with

its sun and moon, but in other globes

with their suns and moons,

Who, constructing the house of himself or

herself, not for a day but for all time,

sees races, eras, dates, generations,

The past, the future, dwelling there, like space,

inseparable together.

– Walt Whitman,
Kosmos