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– Chapter 7 –
Falling Angels
The blinding darkness of the globulus ended abruptly.
Loren screamed, ‘Look out,’ They were right on top of the Naga’s warship.
‘We’re going to crash,’ Tarun cried, being brief for once.
‘Dive!’ Aurora shouted, but Mervyn was already ahead of her. Both sleds skimmed under the stationary warship.
The proximity alarm blared out its warning, ‘Target lock! Take immediate avoiding action.’
‘Quarks, they’re powering up their guns,’ Loren said.
‘We’re done for,’ Tarun groaned.
‘Abandon ship!’ Mervyn instructed. ‘Set your pinions to fire on automatic as soon as you are clear.’
‘No. We need a way back,’ Tarun shouted, ‘only in the most extreme circumstances Cage said.’
‘This is extreme,’ Aurora snapped. ‘You wanted to do this. Executing now!’
‘Aurora. No!’
Mervyn grabbed his helmet, snapped it over his head, and lifted the cover off a red button. He stabbed his finger down hard. The mechanism would have worked just as well if he had applied a light stroke, but his adrenaline fuelled body seemed incapable of delicate actions. His seat embraced him in a vice-like grip; hugging him so tightly he could barely move his eyes. Flames filled the cockpit as the canopy above his head blew apart and his ejector seat ignited. He rocketed clear of the sled. Without propulsion he ripped back through the light barrier and passed under the hull of the warship. The force shield, thrown around him by the ejector seat, sparkled as microscopic dust particles slammed into it -- particles travelling so fast they would have killed him as surely as a speeding meteorite had the shield not protected him. Then his suit’s pinion bolt fired.
Nothing in Mervyn’s training had prepared him for the sudden deceleration as the pinion attached itself to the warship’s hull: the line snapped taught, the ejector seat snatched backwards, and the seat struggled desperately to retain its grip on its precious cargo. The seat restrains began to give. A sudden fear of drifting all alone space filled Mervyn’s mind. The immense forces at work on his body were too much and he felt his mind slipping away from him. There was nothing he could do but pray. Vaguely, two explosions registered in his mind before he passed out -- the sleds, he thought.
When Mervyn came round, pain exploded in every muscle of his body as though he had passed through a wringer. The ejector seat was gone. He glanced up quickly, terrified his pinion might have missed. With relief he saw it buried in the hull of the vast ship above, though the movement sent daggers shooting through his head.
The hard white light of the neutron star threw everything into stark relief. In front of him, he could see two pale figures attached by lines. Aurora and Tarun, he guessed. One disentangled itself from its ejector seat, and as he watched, the seat floated slowly away into space. The other was reeling in its umbilical chord towards the warship. Behind him, Mervyn could see Loren already sailing up towards the hull. He realised he should follow their example before someone started shooting at him, or worse: activated the defence shields. To have survived so long only to be locked out would be a disaster.
Gingerly, Mervyn ran through an integrity check of his spacesuit -- no damage, good. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed to no-one-in-particular, and fumbled for the winch control. Silently, his pinion line reeled him towards the warship. The hull loomed above like a vast grey cloud. He scoured the surface for entry points, but all he could see were smooth hull plates and grab handles. Loren reached the hull first and stated hauling herself towards him.
He waited for her, then they touched helmets to talk, ‘Nothing this way, Merv, have you seen anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I guess as we have no biolink the sleds are gone.’
‘I saw them explode just before I passed out.’ He could see Tarun, or maybe Aurora, waving a gloved arm for them to come over. He guesses it was Aurora because one leg looked much thicker than the other -- the inflated splint, ‘I think Aurora’s found something. We’d better move before someone turns on the defence shields.’
Mervyn grabbed a handle and released his pinion line -- if he let go now he would drift off into deep space forever. The though made his stomach churn. Making sure at least one hand was clasped around a grab handle at all times, he hauled himself off towards the others. He felt so small against the vastness of space, just a spec on a spec, in never ending blackness. Loren followed. It took an age to crawl along the line of grab handles, but eventually the four friends clustered round a service hatch with their helmets together.
Mervyn glanced at Aurora, she looked deathly pale through her visor, she must have lost more blood then she admitted. Now though was not the time for sympathy, they had more urgent matters to contend with, ‘Loren, how do we open this hatch?’ This was the first gamble, if Loren’s security override had been compromised they were trapped.
‘There’ll be a manual override under one of these flaps.’ She flipped flap. Nothing. Desperately, Mervyn searched for another flap, but Loren had already found it. Mervyn could feel butterflies in his stomach. Loren keyed in a code and a lever popped up. ‘I guess that means Squiggles is still good,’ she said breathlessly.
Mervyn grabbed the lever, ‘Once I pull this, every alarm on the ship will go off. Are we ready?’ He glanced at each of his friends is turn. They all gave a thumbs up. ‘Go.’
Mervyn popped the hatch and one by one they slid into an airlock. This time, for the comfort of his friends, Mervyn remembered to enter feet first. Loren brought up the rear and locked the hatch behind them. Then they waited for the chamber to pressurise and opened the inner door. Mervyn snapped his helmet off and poked his head into the corridor, ‘Someone’s going to come and investigate any moment now,’ he pointed to an air duct. ‘Come on, down the ventilation shaft.’ He yanked a strap off his helmet and attacked the bolts on the grating, just as Loren had taught him so long ago. Tarun and Loren followed suit. Aurora just propped herself weakly against the wall -- she was in a bad way. He shoved Aurora in the duct first, determined to travel at the pace of the slowest -- if they were going to get through this they would do it together.
The sound of pursuit echoed in the corridor outside as they rounded the first bend.
‘Keep going,’ Mervyn whispered, ‘follow the wind.’ They passed into progressively larger ducts, but crawling through a tunnel in a full spacesuit is far from easy, even without a gashed leg and a splint. Progress slowed to a crawl as Aurora struggled to keep going. They would have to rest soon. She made it to the central service well, then collapsed in a heap by a maintenance hatch. It was far enough.
They stripped off their spacesuits and air packs, and stuffed them in another duct, but not before retrieving all the useful tools. Aurora’s leg was a mess. The injected sealing gel, mixed with blood, had coated everything below her waist.
‘Sorry guys,’ Aurora sighed, ‘I’ve got to rest. What now, Mervyn?’
‘Now we contact Guthrik.’
Tarun opened the maintenance hatch, ‘I know you’ve got this figured out, but how do we patch Guthrik’s communicator into the ship’s transmitter without being spotted?’
‘We don’t. What we do is re-route their sensor array to send a message, like we did on the Silvin ship. Can you remember how we did that, Loren?’
‘Of course -- my finest hour until we biolinked the sleds,’ She tapped away on a small panel set into the maintenance hatch. ‘Hi, Squiggles. Fancy playing a game? Hey look at that, she’s got a level five security clearance.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘No idea, but it comes with administrative privileges so I should be able to... yes.’ Mervyn felt the familiar presence of a biolink.
‘They’ll overhear us,’ Mervyn hissed.
‘No they won’t, I’ve
created our own network -- encrypted of course.’
‘You can do that?’
‘Squiggles can. They’ll never find it.’ She tapped away some more, ‘Ok, so now Squiggles is showing us in a different location and heading some place else.’ She busied herself re-routing bio-circuits to patch the communicator into the ship’s sensor array.
While they waited, Tarun scooped away the bloody slime covering Aurora’s leg with his hands. He tore strips of insulation material from his spacesuit and used it to bind up the wound. Then he reapplied the splint and inflated it.
Loren tested her system, ‘I’ve bounced a beacon signal back from the relay station so it must be receiving us. What do we say.’
‘Here I’ll do it,’ Mervyn tapped in an address then a message into the communicator while Loren memorised a schematic of the ship. ‘Message for Guthrik:. mission failed... pre-emptive action only course left... inserted and attempting your miracle... watch for our signal, then earn your place.’ He turned to Aurora, ‘You stay here and send this message every...’
Aurora’s head lolled. Tarun caught her and shook her awake, ‘I’ll do it, Merv. Someone needs to stay with Aurora to keep her awake -- if she drops off she might not wake again.’
Aurora struggled to keep her eyes open, ‘What happens if Guthrik doesn’t come?’
Mervyn shrugged, ‘We still stop the Naga, and that’s worth doing for it’s own sake.’ At least their deaths would not be in vain. With that thought in his mind Mervyn turned back to Loren, ‘What’s our route?’
Loren pointed to the gaping central well, ‘Straight to the bottom of that, then along this passage,’ she pointed to a schematic of the ship, ‘and out this grill. It’s a long, long climb, Merv, and we’ll have a gale against us all the way.’
Mervyn stuck his head over the parapet and felt a gale blast his face ‘No problem. Follow me.’ He unzipped his jumpsuit to the waist, climbed onto the parapet wall, and leaped. Spread-eagled, he fell into the roaring torrent of the central well.
For a moment he though he would fall to the bottom, but then the gale tugged at his loose jumpsuit and took hold. A rush of exhilaration caught him by surprise: he was flying. The air column from below buoyed him up -- just like the airstream rider on Revlon. He swallowed hard and looked down. At the foot of the well, so far away he cloud barely make it out, turbine blade rotated forcing the air up the shaft. His whole body followed his head, just like swimming underwater, and he plunged downwards. He swept his arms back to his sides and accelerated; floors shot past, service hatches, lights, airducts; the ladder just a smudge. Every few minutes he spread his arms and legs to slow his descent and wait for Loren to catch up.
At last, he could see the blur of turbine blades below. Almost there. Was it his imagination or was it slowing down? He spread his arms and legs to brake his headlong fall. Nothing happened. He fell faster.
With a sick gut-wrenching feeling he realised the turbine was stopping -- without the air column for support he would fall like a stone.
‘Grab the ladder!’ he yelled in panic and snatched at the rungs set into the wall. The speed of his fall snatched the first from his grasp. He grabbed frantically at a second rung and held on long enough to smash into the wall. He fell again. A third rung caught him under the chin. He saw stars. But the impact slowed his descent enough to hook an arm over a fourth rung. He jerked to a halt. Dazed, he hung for a moment, then hooked his free arm over another rung, and scrambled to find a foothold. He was safe.
An orange blur shot past: Loren, terror etched into her face. ‘Mervyn, help! Squiggles!’ Her arms and legs wind-milled as she accelerated towards the chopping turbine blades. Mervyn watched helplessly wondering what she meant. Squiggles?
Then he caught on, ‘Tarun, log in to Squiggles and speed up the turbine in the central well.’
‘Just a sec, Merv, Aurora’s fainted again.’
‘Now Tarun. Now! It’s the only way to save Loren.’
‘I’m on it...central well? It must be here somewhere...’
The turbine continued to slow and Loren continued to fall. Her eyes made contact and she mouthed his name. He tried to swallow, but a great lump stuck in his throat.
‘...got it, Merv... Oh no, that’s the lift’
Loren screamed.
‘Now, Tarun, now!’
‘It’s gone.’
A thud echoed from the bottom of the well. Mervyn’s heart froze and he buried his head in his arms not wanting to look down. The image of a young child, playing in a sandpit, masses of curly red hair falling over her face, sprang into his mind: his earliest memory of Loren. The two of them playing hide-and-seek round the streets of Starlight, learning to play Swot; Loren breaking up a fight among their friends, Loren standing up for the little guy; how proud she was to win the Tivolli prize, trying on their Academy uniforms for the first time. Always the piles of red hair dominating everything -- Loren, ever loyal. Gone.
Mervyn took a deep breath, there was a job to do, even if he did have to complete it alone now -- other lives depended on him. Eventually he plucked up the courage to look -- he still had to climb to the bottom of the well. Other than a red smudge on the wall there was no sign of Loren. Had she fallen right through the slashing blades? Was her shattered body lying somewhere on the other side of the turbine?
Something splattered on his arm: blood.
‘Looking for me, Merv?’ He turned to see Loren’s pale bloodied face, framed by red curls, looking down at him. Blood poured from her crooked nose -- she must have broken it. She was floating on the air stream again, though this time he noted she held tightly to the ladder with a white knuckled hand. ‘I taut I was deab for tertain dere,’ she wiped the blood away with the back of her hand. ‘I was so close to the turbine it threw me into the wall when the vortex started up again,’ she tried to grin through bloodied lips, but her chima glowed a sickly green. The fall had scared her more than she would admit.
Mervyn laughed, though whether from joy, fear or dumb stupidity he could not tell.. He would have hugged her except she was bobbing around in the torrent of air above him and was clinging to a ladder. What a pair.
‘Didn’t see the engine room while you were loafing about down there, did you?’ He asked with forced casualness.
‘Two floors below. Do you mind if we take the steps the rest of the way?’