Skybreach (The Reach #3) (51 page)

Ursie paused, torn between fleeing and sta
ying behind.  “He’s still alive,
” she said.
  Knile glanced up at her sharply.  “Just barely, but… deep down, there’s a flicker.”

Knile hesitated a moment longer, then reached down and gripped the Redman’s arm.

“We have to take him,” he said, straining under the weight as he tried to prop him up.  “He tried to save us.  I can’t just leave him here.”

“The guy must weigh a tonne,” Ursie said.  “There’s no way–”

“I’ll bring a sweepdrone,” Tobias called out from the doorway.  “There’s one in the maintenance supply next door.”  He scowled.  “At least, I think there is.”

He disappeared through the exit as Knile and Ursie grappled with the inert Redman, attempting to get him into a sitting position.

“How long left?” she gasped.

Knile checked his wristwatch out of the corner of his eye.

“Three minutes, nine seconds.  How long does it take to reach the evacuation area?”

“Just a minute,” Ursie said.  “We’ll make it.”

Moments later, Tobias came barrelling back into the dock, white-knuckling the controls of a vehicle about the size of a
fruit vendor’s cart back in Link, with circular brushes mounted on its undercarriage.  He pulled up beside them and then dismounted, then assisted the others in hauling Lazarus up onto the rear of the vehicle.

“Phew,” Tobias said as they finished, giving his own chest a little tap.  “That ain’t much good for the ol’ ticker.”

He slid behind the controls of the sweepdrone again and began to pull away.

“Let’s go,” Ursie said, breaking into a run.

The sweepdrone pottered along at an excruciatingly slow pace as it struggled under the added weight of the Redman, and Knile and Ursie were forced to jog alongside like a security detail.  Knile had no time to take anything in, to experience the wonder of the habitat – a shame, he thought distantly, considering he had dedicated so many years of his life striving to set foot here.  Instead of taking time to explore, to savour the accomplishment of leaving Earth behind, he was stuck in the same cycle he had always experienced before – running, trying to thwart death as it lunged at him from every corner, snapping at his heels like an insatiable beast.

They moved up a ramp, and Knile put his shoulder behind the sweepdrone to help increase its momentum.  His eyes caught sight of his watch again.

A little over two minutes left.

How long does it take to reach minimum safe distance?
he wondered. 
If we get to the escape craft with ten seconds to go, is that going to be long enough to–

“Oh, fuck.  Look!” Ursie shouted suddenly in horror as they passed an observation window.  Knile followed her gaze and saw a canvas of black space, against which a glinting white craft was gradually growing smaller.

Knile glanced back at her, confused.  “One of the escape modules?”

“It has to be ours,” Ursie cried, distraught.  “It was the last one left.  The others left ages ago.
”

Knile turned back to the window, watching the small spherical hull of the pod drift away.  His confusion turned to dread, and then anger.

“Holger?” he said into his comms
.  “Holger!”

“…sorry, man,”
came Holger’s voice crackling over the comms.  
“…not dying… for that dumb wad of Redman… your funeral…”

“Holger, you piece of shit!” Knile screamed, but all he heard in reply was static.

Tobias had turned, and now sat watching them over his shoulder.

“Did I just hear that right?”  he said.  “Did they cut us adrift?”

“They left without us,” Ursie said, numb.  Tears welled in her eyes.  “After all that we’ve been through, this whole thing amounted to nothing.”

Knile stared back at her, unable to offer any kind of solace.  He felt the same way she did.  He just shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Ursie.  I…”

He trailed off, and for a moment there was silence.  Then
Tobias noisily cleared his throat.

“Pull yer fingers out,” he said, spurting forward on the sweepdrone.  He veered away from the arrows on the floor and began to head in the opposite direction.  “We’ll take the back door.”

Knile glanced at Ursie.  “What’s he talking about?” he said.

Ursie began to run.  “I have no damn idea.  Just run!
”

They sprinted along the empty concourse as the warning lamps continued to throw waves of red across the floor and ceiling, and as they caught up to the sweepdrone, they dropped their shoulders behind it and began to push with all their might.  Knile had no
clue as to where they might be
going, or what the old man had in mind, but he kept shoving all the same.  Perhaps this was just some deep-seated survival instinct to put as much distance between himself and the explosion as possible, to remove himself from the danger area, but in truth he knew such an idea to be fundamentally flawed.  If the habitat were to be ripped apart, there would be no place in which they could find safety.  Death would flood into every corner of the fragile space bubble.  Cold, unforgiving death, a horror from which there would be no refuge.

Less than a minute left, now.  Knile’s existence could now be numbered in the seconds.

Tobias reached the end of the concourse and pulled the sweepdrone to a halt before an arched expanse of dark grey metal with a round window in the centre.  He hobbled over to a keypad and swiped a card across it.

“The Skywalk?” Ursie said, breathless.  “Can we use that?”

“What’s a goddamn Skywalk?” Knile said, but then the arch groaned and began to retract.  A gust of stale air swept over them, and Tobias thrust himself back onto the sweepdrone.

“Go, go!” he cried, driving forward.  He bounced the sweepdrone over the join in the doorway, into the dim passageway beyond, ducking his head low to avoid the steadily rising door.  Knile caught sight of a long, curved tunnel stretching out before them, and once he was safely through, turned back to look back along the concourse.

“Less than thirty seconds,” he told them.

Tobias swung his leg over the sweepdrone and climbed off, then hastened over to the keypad on this side of the door.  He swiped, but the door of the Skywalk
kept moving upward.

“What’s going on?” Ursie said.  “Are we going to be safe in here?”

“Sure as hell not if I can’t get this stinkin’ door closed,” Tobias grunted.  He swiped again, then bashed a wrinkled fist on the keypad, and the door began to reverse.

It crept downward at a glacial pace.  Knile looked along the tunnel, but there was no point running.  Should the habitat decompress now, the four of them would be sucked out into space
like motes of dust into a vacuum cleaner.

“Move away,” Tobias said, edging back from the door.  “Move!”

The door reached waist-height and continued downward.  By Knile’s calculation, their time was pretty much up.

Knee-height.  There was a distant grumble, and something flashed brightly out on the concourse.

“Oh, fuck,” Ursie whispered.

“Grab onto something,” Tobias said, clutching at a join in the wall.  “Hang on like–”

His words were torn from his mouth as a maelstrom whipped about them and on
down the Skywalk.  There was a horrendous groaning sound, and the entire tunnel seemed to pitch downward at one end, like a fishing line after the catch, and then it sprung back, sending them flying in all directions.  The maelstrom reversed as air was sucked out through the narrow gap in the door.  Knile slid uncontrollably toward it, flailing his arms for purchase, and then he caught the edge of the sweepdrone.  Ursie lay wedged against the vehicle on the other side, and Knile reached out and snared Tobias as the old man slid past.  Then, mercifully, the door groaned shut with a resounding thud, and the hurricane abated, leaving them to stare at each other breathlessly in the ensuing silence.

45

“She ain’t gonna last,” Tobias said.  “I’ll tell you that much for sure.”

Knile joined him at the window that looked out upon the ruin
of the habitat.  Outside, there was devastation as far as he could see.  From the edge of the Skywalk, a thin, jagged protrusion of metal stretched out into empty space, arcing across the sky for several hundred metres, where it seemed to form a tenuous bridge to the Skywalk that appeared on the opposite side.  Along its length, silver filaments and ruined metal struts jutted out haphazardly.

To Knile, it looked more like the skeletal spine of some great metallic beast than part of the habitat in which they had been walking only a few minutes before.

Elsewhere, chunks of metal and plastic drifted through the emptiness, a huge nebula of it, with pieces ranging in size from a matchbox to a small car.  A constant barrage of fragments scraped and bumped disconcertingly against the exterior of the Skywalk, the largest pieces causing the entire structure to shake.

Further afield, the Wire was nowhere to be seen.  It had obviously been severed, and now Knile could only imagine
that it must be plummeting downward, collapsing toward Earth like a taut piece of string suddenly clipped from the top.

“What’s not going to last?” Knile said finally, his voice filled with weariness.

Tobias pointed.  “That last piece of the habitat.  The bit that’s holdin’ everything together.”

As if on cue, the skeletal length of alloy groaned, the shriek of metal echoing down the tunnel behind them like a wailing ghost.

“And what happens then?”

Tobias shrugged.  “Don’t know, exactly, but it can’t be good.  Doubt the Skywalk was built to deal with this kind of stress, to hang out in the middle of nowhere with nothin’ to hold it up.”

“So what?” Ursie said behind them.  She had not bothered to get up off the floor.  “We’re screwed.  We have no way out of
this
thing.  We’re trapped.  One way or the other, we’re going to die in here.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about that, Ursalina Ballerina.  There is one way we can go.”  He looked over her shoulder into the gloom of the tunnel and pointed.  “Thatta way.”

“Wait, what is this thing?” Knile said.  “What does it do?”

“The Skywalks were built a long time ago, back in the glory days of Earth
,” Tobias said.  “Used to form a bridge between the space elevators.  They’d ship parts and people and heck knows what else
back and forth
.  That was in the good ol’ days, when everything was hummin’.  Back before they shut it all down.”

Knile considered that for a moment.  “So what’s at the end of this tunnel?”

Tobias took a moment to gather his bearings, then peered along the Skywalk.

“Well, this here is east, so that’s got to be Sunspire out there.”

“Sunspire?”

“Yeah.  The elevator that sits on top of Sunspire Mountain.”

“Wait a minute,” Knile said, his excitement growing.  “Are you telling me that we can get to another elevator through here?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Mister.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“Heck, yeah.  I used to work there
myself before I got the transfer to this one, for P
ete’s sake.  I lived there for ten years or more.”

“Uh, just wait a minute,” Ursie said cautiously, clambering to her feet.  “Your memory isn’t the best, Tobias–”

“Sunspire is there,” the old man said adamantly, stabbing a finger to the east.  “And I’ll eat my hat if it ain’t.”

“This elevator,” Knile said.  “Could we get it working again?”

“Aww, don’t know about that.  It’s possible, I guess.  Last I saw, the railcar was docked topside.  You sure as shit can’t start it up from the ground, but from this side…”  He shrugged.  “Who knows?”

“How far away is it?” Knile said.

Tobias pursed his lips.  “Couple of hundred clicks, I’d guess.  Too far to drag your Redman friend, maybe.”

“How about we cart him on this sweepdrone of yours?” Knile said.

“She’ll carry him for a bit, maybe even to the next waypoint, but after that, your friend is gonna have to hoof it.  Assuming he wakes up, that is.  The sweeper won’t have the juice to take him all the way.”

“I guess we’ll figure out that part later,” Knile said.

There was another low groan of metal, and the Skywalk swayed and shuddered.

“Either way, we have to clear out,” Tobias said.  “I don’t want to be around when this place starts falling apart like a day-old cheesecake.”

“Yeah,” Knile said.  “Makes sense to me.”

Tobias stepped up to the sweepdrone and climbed aboard, then began to drive off.  Lazarus still lay mot
ionless, draped across the back, his massive frame bouncing as the vehicle skimmed across the joins in the Skywalk floor.

“Ursie,” Knile said as she turned to follow.