Macao Station

Chapter Thirty-Three

Lina looked around at the assembled group. Halman’s Council of War, she thought without amusement. Collectively, they looked intent and tired, like scientists who’d worked through the night on some desperate weapons project. Only Hobbes had retained his usual well-groomed veneer. Si had once accused him of being an experimental robot on the run from Platini, and looking at him now, Lina could have actually believed it.

Disbelief aboard Macao had gone from height to height: the news of Eli’s attempted framing of Nik, his sabotage of the station, his murder of Jayce and Tamzin. . . Surreal was really too weak a word for it. Now here they were, planning some insane deep-space commando mission in the bunker-like darkness of Halman’s office.

Alphe, now technically the senior member of the maintenance division, unfurled the sheet of plastic across Halman’s desk, weighting the corners down with metal coasters. Everyone craned to see as best they could.

‘More light!’ demanded Halman, squinting into the schematic and beckoning to Amy Stone, who passed him her own torch. Halman placed it on its base in the centre of the plastic sheet like a lantern. ‘Right!’ he said, turning his attention back to the diagram.

‘It isn’t easy,’ said Alphe after a while. Lina mentally awarded him the most-obvious-statement-of-the-day trophy. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot in his honest farmer’s face and his pale brow was smudged with machine-oil, as was so often the case with Alphe.

‘No,’ agreed Halman, whom Lina suspected was only managing to extract the basest level of information from the technical drawing. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him concentrate so intently before. ‘Why can’t we just float through the personnel hatch in suits?’

Alphe shook his head. ‘Because it’ll be locked from the inside. And if we did manage to pop it, then the airlock might not be closed properly behind it. It’s too risky.’

‘Hmm. . .’ went Halman. ‘I thought that might be too simple.’ He continued to frown into the schematic, the lines in his brow deepening. ‘If the only docking point is full, as Lina says, then. . . what? Can we cut our way in somewhere?’

‘How?’ asked Alphe, running one hand through his dark hair, sending up a small puff of dust. One of his fingers was wrapped in an unhygienic-looking bandage. He looked tired and out of his depth. He hadn’t taken the news of Nik’s death well at all. It had been bad enough when people had believed that Nik had been sabotaging the station. Now that Nik had been proven innocent of any wrongdoing, Alphe was clearly devastated. Usually, he was one of the calmest and most gentle people Lina had ever known, but now he was full of anger. She could see it beneath the features of his face like a subcutaneous shadow. ‘What could we cut with?’ he asked, shaking his head. His hands rested on the table at either side of the schematic — two clenched fists, knuckles white.

Ilse Reno stepped up to the table, elbowing her way in. She looked at the schematic a little disdainfully, her eye implant red in the red light. ‘How about the Kays?’ she asked, looking around the assembled faces: Lina, Liu, Alphe, Amy, Halman, Hobbes, Ella. ‘Aren’t they made for cutting?’ She waited and let them think about this. Lina tried to envision the process of latching onto the hull of the shuttle, mentally configuring the tool arms to apply enough force. She was pretty sure she could make it work, as long as the shuttle’s hull wasn’t too thick.

‘Hmmm. . .’ mused Alphe, one finger playing thoughtfully with his lower lip. ‘It’s possible. I mean, we could cut a hole, probably, as long as we could anchor on, but. . . It’s getting people in there that’s the thing, and getting the shuttle away. We’d compromise the pressure if we cut into it, cause a blow-out. . .’ His face furrowed. ‘There has to be a way. . .’ he said, seemingly to himself.

‘So it’d kill anyone inside?’ asked Amy coldly. She was famed more for her efficiency than her compassion. ‘That’s their problem.’ She looked solid and slab-like in the near-darkness, not someone to tangle with.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Lina, thinking of what had happened to Sal.

‘No, no, it’s not just that,’ said Alphe. ‘We’d likely blow the whole fucking works out of that shuttle, strew the lot across space. No good.’ He shook his head once, frowning, obviously displeased, and continued to study the diagram, tracing details with one finger.

‘Well what about the cargo hold?’ asked Lina, who was actually qualified to fly an inter-system supply shuttle, although she’d never done so for real. ‘The hold is unpressurised.’

‘It is?’ asked Alphe, squinting into the schematic. ‘It doesn’t say that here.’

Lina pushed the smaller Ilse out of the way and bent over the schematic. She, too, began to trace details on its surface. She noticed that there were still flecks of blood around her fingernails. Her hair was still full of the stuff, too. She wondered absently when she’d ever get the chance for a proper wash. She’d just had time to change her clothes after seeing Hobbes, before Halman had summoned her again.

‘Yeah, look here,’ she said, tapping at the diagram. ‘This is an airlock, into the shuttle’s hold. An internal airlock.’

Alphe peered closely at the indicated point, and Lina moved her bloody finger away self-consciously. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, sounding a little irritated as well as pleased. ‘So we can cut into the hold and go through the shuttle’s interior airlock.’

‘Good,’ said Halman. ‘Are you sure the Kays will do it? Lina? Ilse?’

The two miners exchanged noncommittal looks. ‘Well. . .’ they both said together.

Ilse made a you go gesture with one hand and Lina said, ‘It does kind of depend on how thick the hull is.’

‘Alphe?’ asked Halman.

‘Erm. . .’ said Alphe, staring into the sheet of plastic. ‘Of course, the deuterium shielding is all at the front of the ship. . . Here — barely two-hundred-mil. Even I’m surprised at how flimsy that sounds.’ He looked up, probably trying to smile. ‘Economy first, right?’

‘Then yes,’ said Ilse, stroking back her straggly grey hair and standing to her full five-foot-two. ‘If we put a bigger cutting disc on one of them.’

‘Right,’ said Halman. ‘So we do that. We do have a bigger disc, yes?’

‘Sure,’ said Liu, smiling whitely. ‘In the warehouse.’

Halman coughed laughter. ‘And can you find it in there before the power runs out?’ he asked.

Liu looked slightly offended, but his smile didn’t falter. ‘Charlie Stenning will know where it is,’ he said.

‘Good. Well, change the discs on two Kays if we have two larger ones.’ He glared around the room like a searchlight. ‘Backup,’ he explained ominously.

‘What I don’t get,’ began Liu, smiling that open, benevolent smile of his, as if they were just discussing what to have for lunch, ‘is why he’s attached the shuttle to that asteroid. Lina says he’s used the boarding and rescue tube, so maybe the rock is hollow. Right?’

Lina nodded, causing an errant and bloody lock of hair to swing down into her eye. She brushed it back impatiently and said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure of it. Looked like he’d plugged up holes in it with instawall.’

‘Why the hell would he do that?’ asked Ilse.

‘Who knows?’ replied Lina. ‘But I’m pretty sure of it. Instawall means he’s sealed the rock, probably to make it airtight. That means hollow, and that means. . . well, I’ve no idea what that means, really.’

‘What’s inside it?’ asked Liu.

‘Buggered if I know, old man,’ said Halman.

Dragon! cried Lina’s little interior voice. No, she told it, that’s ridiculous. The voice retorted, sounding too much like Eli for her liking, It’ll eat you up! She shook her head, trying to clear it.

‘Will Eli know that the hull is breached?’ asked Amy. ‘If we cut through it?’

‘Well, there’s supposed to be a warning system, yes,’ said Lina. ‘But that ship’s probably two-hundred years old, and knowing who built it and supposedly maintains it, it might well just not work.’

‘I don’t think we can rely on that,’ said Ella, who was leant against Halman’s desk. Lina turned to look at her. She seemed to have aged ten years overnight, and Lina’s heart went out to her despite the nightmare time she’d been having herself.

‘No,’ Lina agreed. ‘I suppose not.’

‘We have to assume he’ll know what we’re up to, and that he’ll try to stop us,’ Ella elaborated. ‘That means–’

‘A fight!’ Halman finished for her, with a touch too much relish for Lina’s liking. She looked up at him and saw that he was smiling beneath his bushy moustache, his huge arms folded across his chest.

‘Well, that’s great,’ said Ella. ‘But who are we going to send in there?’

‘I’ll go,’ said Lina. All eyes turned to her. ‘I have unfinished business with Eli,’ she continued, feeling that an explanation was required.

‘I should go,’ said Ella, but she didn’t sound too keen.

‘Can you fly a Kay?’ asked Lina.

‘I’m sure I told you before: I flew M4s at Platini Alpha,’ said Ella. ‘It was a long time ago, but Kays can’t be all that different.’

‘Well they kind of are,’ said Lina. ‘Firstly, the jets are arranged in a–’

‘Lina!’ yelled Halman, raising one hand to stop her. ‘How about if you both go?’ The two women stared at him, considering this. They looked to each other, then nodded together. ‘Lina, you’re pretty handy with the Kays and the cutting gear. And you know something about the shuttle. How to fly it back here, for starters. Ella, you’re my security controller, and you’re pretty handy at kicking ass. Also, I could use a break from you.’ Lina wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. ‘We will assume that there’s going to be a. . . hostile reaction. . . to your arrival. You can take laser pistols from security. But make sure they fucking work first. I know some of them don’t.’

‘If Lina’s going to cut,’ piped up Alphe, ‘then I’d like her with us when we modify and check over the Kays.’

‘I’ll pre-flight them with you,’ said Liu. ‘My department, my ships. You work under my supervision. No offence.’

‘Fine by me,’ said Alphe, nodding.

‘Sure,’ said Lina. She noticed that Ilse Reno was staring at her strangely, even for someone with a cybernetic eye. Was she jealous? Technically, Ilse was now the chief of the mining division. Had Lina stepped on her toes? She decided she didn’t really care. She had other things to worry about.

‘What if the prisoner is there too?’ asked Hobbes, pushing his glasses higher up onto the bridge of his nose. Why he had never had corrective surgery Lina didn’t know. Maybe the glasses were an affectation — supposed to make him look scholarly. ‘And maybe the pilot, too. They could be facing three people. I really think we need to consider this carefully before anyone else gets killed.’

‘This is Ella,’ said Halman slowly, as if talking to an idiot. He indicated the woman in question with a sweep of one arm. ‘Would you pick a fight with her? Even with two friends?’

Hobbes faltered. ‘Well, I wouldn’t, of course not,’ he replied. ‘But Eli would, I’m guessing.’

‘I think he has a point,’ said Liu. ‘It does sound pretty dangerous to me.’

‘What about this prisoner?’ asked Alphe, looking worried. ‘Do you think Eli has actually released him?’

‘Some degenerate fuck from Platini Jail,’ said Halman dismissively. ‘Ronnie Carver. I think we can expect him to be dead, judging by Eli’s record. The pilot, too. But I guess we can’t depend on that.’

‘I’d like to think of another way. . .’ said Alphe, shaking his head.

‘You are forgetting what’s at stake here!’ bellowed Halman with sudden, unnecessary volume. ‘If we don’t get that shuttle back, then we are all in very real danger. Everyone on board this station is going to die.’ He enunciated the last three words slowly, beginning to pace up and down the room with his hands laced behind his back. They watched him as one, cowed by his loudness. ‘Does anybody fail to understand that? Time is against us. The end is fucking nigh, boys and girls! We are going to get that shuttle back! Because we have to. If I need to do it myself, I will. I just don’t think I’m the best man for the job.’

‘No,’ agreed Ella quietly, stilling him with a look. ‘I’m the best man for the job.’

‘Maybe we can flood the shuttle with poison gas?’ suggested Liu, smiling graciously. Everyone turned towards him with expressions of identical shock. ‘What?’ asked Liu, eyebrows arched.

‘Fuck me, old man,’ said Halman in amazement. ‘I never knew you had it in you.’

‘He has a good point,’ said Ilse Reno. Her eye glowed evilly and her small face was set hard. ‘Gas ’em. Fuck it.’

‘Do we have any poison gas?’ asked Halman. Lina didn’t know if he was seriously considering it or not.

‘Refinery could make some,’ suggested Liu. ‘They use all sorts of stuff.’

‘Or Fionne,’ added Alphe. ‘She’s a dual chemistry and physics grad. Something of a genius, in fact. Don’t tell her I said that.’

‘Right,’ said Halman, nodding his grizzled head as he continued to stride about the room. ‘Young Fionne will fucking love that, won’t she? What d’you reckon, Liu? Cyanide? Mustard gas? Hmm?’

‘Mustard gas should be fairly easy to make,’ said Liu, utterly failing to catch the sarcasm. Lina almost laughed, although it really wasn’t funny when you thought about it.

‘Mustard gas,’ agreed Halman, still nodding. ‘Good. I’ll get her on it.’

‘They have suits anyway,’ said Ilse. ‘Those shuttles carry loads of them.’

‘Look,’ said Halman. ‘I’m no humanitarian, but I’m not just flooding that ship with poison. That’d be fucking murder. You want to end up in some Farsight prison?’

‘Technically,’ said Liu, ‘I think we live in one already. But I take your point.’

‘And as Ilse says,’ Halman continued, ‘it’s unlikely to help anyway. We’d only introduce another dangerous factor. If they go in armed, and find anyone there, then they can order them to surrender. Right, Ella?’

‘Right,’ she agreed uncertainly. Lina wondered if Ella hadn’t actually been in favour of the poison gas approach.

‘And if they don’t, then shoot them. But it would be wrong of us not to offer them a chance. A choice. And the pilot, or even the prisoner, might need rescuing from Eli if they’re still alive.’

‘I suppose so,’ conceded Liu. Although he was still smiling, he looked a little disappointed.

‘How long do we have?’ asked Lina. ‘Power, I mean.’

Alphe straightened, shrugging his broad shoulders. ‘Like this. . . maybe two days. Then we lose the lot — air, heat, kinetic defence, rotation. . . everything that matters.’ He swallowed heavily and breathed silently, tensely, for a moment. ‘And to think I’ve had aeroponics on my ass about the fucking plants this morning!’ He laughed bitterly, looking around for support. ‘The plants!’

‘We should condense our living space,’ suggested Hobbes.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Ella.

‘Shut off the quarters, the common areas, even medical, and set up a dorm somewhere in the offices, maybe centred here. Kill the power in the rest of the place and suck the air out. We’d use a fraction of the energy that way, buy ourselves a little time. We can re-compress the air and save it.’

Halman was nodding thoughtfully. ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘And as for aero — they can spin on it.’

Alphe laughed again, with slightly more feeling this time. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told them,’ he agreed.

‘Amy,’ said Halman, ‘We’ll do it — condense our space, I mean. Get the word round. I want everyone to pack a single bag of personal items. A single bag only, okay? Two hours, and I want the whole staff within these two corridors.’

‘Sure, Boss,’ said Amy, her eyes lighting up. She turned and practically ran out, looking like a bloodhound that had caught a scent.

‘Alphe, you guys get everything you’ll need out of maintenance and the warehouse. We’ll re-power the hangar when we need it, but maintenance will stay off.’

‘Of course,’ said Alphe, as if this should have gone without saying. ‘They’ll have most of what we need in the hangar anyway.’

‘Good,’ said Halman. ‘Now what’s the story with the gennies? Last thing I saw was you and Fionne wading around knee-deep in the floor down there.’

‘Ha!’ barked Alphe. ‘No joy, the last time I was there. Fionne’s next door with Rocko, on a well-earned break, and Win Ling is on the power relay. But the actual turbines were damaged too, and to be honest we probably aren’t going to be able to even get one of them running without the servicing kit from the shuttle.’ He cast his gaze about, defiant, as if someone might try to blame him personally for this disastrous situation. ‘Sorry,’ he added warily.

Lina found herself to be unsurprised by this. She didn’t think there was any bad news that could surprise her any more.

‘Right,’ Halman said. ‘And the air system? I think everyone has noticed that there’s something wrong with it by now.’

Alphe rubbed his chin with the back of one hand. He looked like he needed a shave. ‘Well, the last gases we took did show some traces of refinery contaminants. Nothing to worry about yet, and of course the refinery’s down now. But it might still get serious before long. And of course, when the battery goes, the air goes. Currently, it’s on about eighty percent. It’s also possible that something else is burning out in the system. We simply haven’t had a chance to investigate further. We’re sinking damn fast if I’m honest.’ Everybody nodded sympathetically. None of them envied Alphe his job right now, however hard their own tasks might be. ‘And if we’re pulling back to a few corridors, my guys’ll have to wear suits to even look at the scrubbers. Right now, we can still breathe, so we have higher priorities. Now there’s something I never imagined I’d say. Higher priorities than the air scrubbers.’ He shook his head in wonder.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Halman. ‘Power is everything. The cold’ll kill us first at this rate.’ Lina was suddenly aware that it was cold in here. She shivered, joggling the table and causing the torch to fall over. Halman replaced it without comment. ‘I wondered if we could put out some solar panels,’ he continued. ‘Don’t we keep spares for the laser-relay satellites?’

‘There are some panels stacked in storage,’ agreed Liu. ‘I can drag them out for you before we kill the power. Maybe we can–’

Alphe was shaking his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, overriding Liu. ‘It sounds great in theory, granted. But how are we going to fit them? The loader is the only thing that can even carry those solar panels, and in case you all forgot, we don’t have the loader any more. We’d have to place them by hand, in suits. I don’t honestly think it’s possible. And if we could, it would probably take us so long to set them up that we’d run out of battery before we even got them going.’

‘Mmm,’ grunted Halman. ‘When what we should be doing is getting that damn shuttle back.’

Alphe stretched out one hand to Halman, palm up, as if trying to physically hand over the decision. ‘Your call, but that’s my take on it, yeah. If we had the extra staff I asked for ten months ago. . .’ He trailed off pointedly.

‘I put it to Farsight Platini,’ said Halman, with irritation prickling in his voice. He was used to being harassed for more staff and more resources, and his default position had become defensive and somewhat pessimistic over the years. ‘Talk to them about it.’

‘Yeah, good idea,’ said Alphe, sounding irritated himself. ‘Oh wait — we can’t.’

‘I refuse to play this game, Alphe,’ said Halman, a little haughtily. ‘Just cut that shit out and put your helpful hat back on, please.’

Lina saw Alphe clench his teeth, drawing deep breaths between them. He looked like he might be counting to ten in his head. ‘Sure,’ he said at last. ‘Sorry, Boss.’

‘Don’t sweat it,’ said Halman, more diplomatically now. ‘Throw one of your guys the solar panel bone to chew on if there’s time. But first, I want you to get those Kays modified and checked over. I want them as clean as we can get them.’

‘Sure,’ said Alphe. ‘No problem.’

‘Next on the agenda,’ said Halman, stroking his balding pate. ‘Any news as to why this has happened? Motive, etcetera?’

‘Well, Hobbes has something for you there,’ answered Ella. ‘Hot off the press. Hobbes?’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Hobbes. ‘We took some blood tests from Eli when he came into medical. They showed positive for fader.’ He made a there-you-go gesture with his hands, palms spread.

Halman’s brow furrowed deeply. ‘Fader?’ he parroted. ‘Where the fuck did he get fader from?’

‘From Platini, of course,’ replied Hobbes. ‘Via shuttle.’

‘So those fucking dockyard drones have been crating up psychoactive drugs at Platini?’ asked Halman incredulously. ‘And sending them here to fuck up my happy little family? Those bastards!’

‘Must have been, I guess,’ agreed Ella. ‘My team do random checks on the incoming crates, but to be honest it’s a token gesture. So much crap comes off those shuttles — heavy plant equipment, sealed electronics, radioactive material — that we actually can’t check, that it wouldn’t be hard to slip something through. I suspect it’s been going on for ages.’

‘Maybe someone’s synthesizing it on board,’ suggested Liu. His smile had become small and tight. It was well known that Liu was vehemently anti-drugs — he didn’t even drink. Lina wondered if he knew about his ground crew’s moonshine.

‘I can’t believe I didn’t know,’ said Lina quietly. Fader? Eli? Really? This was a man she’d worked with every day for years. How could she not have known? She supposed there had been a few things she hadn’t known about him. She thumped the table, feeling a thrumming, numbing anger rise inside her. She couldn’t tell if that anger was centred on Eli or on herself. ‘Damn it!’ she cried.

‘Lina, chill,’ said Halman harshly, as if she could just be ordered to do so. ‘This ain’t your fault, or mine, or Ella’s, or anyone’s. It’s just one of those things, and at least it makes a little more sense now that we know. That stuff has a bad rep for sending people batshit, and I guess that’s just what happened here.’

‘He claimed to be the emissary,’ said Lina coldly. ‘He said the dragon wanted Marco dead.’

Suddenly, she wanted out of here, wanted her son. She had gone to see him on the way to check in with Hobbes. She’d told him everything that had happened — she saw no point in trying to shield him any more, not after what had already occurred with Eli. He had accepted it quietly enough, but she’d thought she sensed a deep, dark depression inside the boy that had concerned her greatly. Her own blood-covered appearance hadn’t helped matters, she supposed. She knew she should have waited until she’d cleaned herself up, but seeing Marco had been the overriding desire inside her at the time. He was currently waiting in Amy’s office next door, still with Rocko, the hero of the day as far as Lina was concerned. Fionne had also joined them, probably shirking some vital maintenance duty in order to be with her young love. Lina didn’t blame her at all.

‘Yeah, he’s authentically off his rocker, Li, we know that,’ said Halman. ‘I have to admit, I don’t like all this dragon shit. Why a dragon? Why here? Why on my fucking station?’ His shoulders slumped as he turned to Ella. ‘Was there anything in his quarters?’ he asked morosely.

‘Er, I need to talk to you later about that,’ she answered guardedly.

Halman looked a little puzzled, but he said, ‘Okay, yeah.’

Lina wondered what Ella might have found that the rest of them couldn’t hear. Normally, of course, she wouldn’t have been privy to security information, but as she seemed to have been included in some temporary inner circle, she actually felt somewhat offended by Ella’s cagey attitude. She looked at the other woman, but Ella seemed to be pointedly avoiding her gaze.

‘Anyone not clear on what they need to do?’ asked Halman.

‘I guess I need to relocate the whole medical department,’ answered Hobbes, sounding resigned but surprisingly upbeat about this idea.

‘Good. That’s right. Questions? No? Good. Now piss off, you lot,’ Halman said, indicating the door with a sweep of one huge, apish arm. ‘Not you, Officer Kown,’ he added ominously. Obediently, they filed out, mumbling parting pleasantries more out of habit than real feeling, leaving a worried-looking Ella behind. Lina glanced at her as she left, but Ella still wouldn’t look at her.