Matt had forgotten that Peter had claimed one of the penthouse suites; though penthouse was a little misleading. There was the obligatory better view, the rooms were larger, there were two bedrooms rather than the one, and the furnishings were more opulent.
Matt entered behind Tricia; besides Peter’s three thugs he was surprised to see Leeshia, Alishia, Tricia and Clive already there.
Peter barely gave him chance to enter the room. “I warned you.” He snapped. Everyone’s eyes turned to Matt.
“Was that a warning?” Matt said as calmly as adrenalin raced though his veins.
“Yes it was,” snarled Peter. “What do you intend to gain?”
“To make it clear to the little prick…” He felt he had the right to the insult. “To keep clear of her.”
Peter looked at him for a moment and then he began to laugh, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “You are a marked man do you know that?”
Matt moved to the lounge; Alicia shuffled closer to Clive to give him room to sit, but Matt sat casually on the arm. “He can have a re-match whenever he wants.”
“What did you do to the fuel?”
He wasn’t expecting Peter’s accusation. “Fuel… what about it?”
Peter stared at him harshly. “As you know, it’s gone.”
“Gone?” Mathew’s pretence at laid-back defiance was gone in a second. “What do you mean gone?” His mind was racing to comprehend the consequences.
“You vented it into space.”
Matt leaped to his feet. “No… I didn’t.”
Peter turned to Clive. “He said you did?”
Matt looked at Clive. “You said what?”
Clive remained seated. “I’m sorry Matt; I said I tried to stop you; but you did it before I could?”
Matt looked back at Peter. “The fuel… All of it?”
“Everything.” He looked at Tricia. “She said all the thrusters are useless.”
Matt looked at her: she nodded nervously back at him.
“That’s impossible; we didn’t have a lot, but we had enough to change course; it can’t all have gone?”
“It has Matt,” said Tricia. “We don’t have anything left to make any changes?”
“No?” he gasped. “That means were heading into interstellar space?”
“That’s exactly what we are doing.” Peters voice took on a strange tone. “Last night at nine-seventeen; when you were on duty you emptied the entire fuel supply into space.”
“No; I didn’t,” Matt, protested. “I swear I…” slowly his mind was calculating. “I wasn’t there…”
Peters voice had taken on a very strange tone. “Your on the roster?”
Matt’s mind visualized the time and he realized where he was. “I was in Vincent’s cabin.”
“I know.” The hardness returned to Peters voice as he turned to Clive. “But you didn’t did you?”
Clive suddenly became nervous. “He told me what to do?”
“I know when people are lying and I know when they are telling the truth, and your lying.”
“No; it’s the truth.”
“I’m not a patient man; tell me the truth or I’ll have it beaten out of you.”
Clive had begun to cry. “Don’t you realize the opportunity, we can be the first to reach out towards the stars?”
“Yea and you will be the first.” Peter looked at Ralph. “Get rid of him.”
Before Ralph and the others could move Matt stepped in front of the weeping man. “Leave him alone.” He said defiantly. “What’s done is done.”
“Yea and now we’ll have one less mouth to feed.”
Matt looked challengingly at Ralph and the other two; they looked at Peter.
“You are pushing your luck.” Peter muttered.
“You need me now more than ever; you need us all; including Andrew, and if you want us out of this mess you need to reinstate him as commander.”
Like everyone present Mathew left the meeting deeply troubled, all of them were. With Andrew or not it was a mess, and absolute mess and Andrew would be as incapable as any of them of cleaning it up. Doubt had crept into his mind and was overwhelming it. Andrew couldn’t help and even though Matt told himself that it was only right that Andrew was reinstated he couldn’t budge the reason he had suggested it was so that someone else could sort it out. Matt wandered through the corridors; he didn’t want to go back to his cabin; he didn’t want to tell her neither did he want to face her. He didn’t want to return to the command center; there was no point; there were no command decisions that anyone could make now: they were going where they were going and that was it.
He passed people who just stepped aside and: though he didn’t see them, they stared after him as he walked aimlessly along. At some point he was conscious that he had made his way to the abandoned part of the station. In a robotic way he took a re-breather and he found himself alone. At first he didn’t think of where he was beyond he was by himself. He wasn’t even sure how long he had been there, but slowly it began to dawn on him that the abandoned area had taken on yet another image. A long time ago it had been fresh and exciting; then it had become a workplace; later still it was a place of carnage and then dark and scary; now as he came to an abandoned observation deck it was something again. To one side was the sun, but mostly it was the stars; the same stars that had guided those pioneering pioneers. Suddenly he was in the wilderness; the outback of Australia and the Rocky Mountains all rolled into one. The same stars and the same sun were overhead wherever you went. Misguided, as Clive was they were pioneers, even before they began to explore the unknown. Those pioneers, the Magellan’s and Columbus’s had gone where others hadn’t and never given up hope. There were others who had died in the outback yet it was never a discouragement to more that would follow. They all: and the countless unknowns that pioneered their own boundaries had always had hope; it was what made people like him, and the people who shared his future. “We always have hope right up until the moment when we cease to hope.” He said softly before he turned to make his way back.
When he emerged into the working part of the station the first thing to strike Matt was that it was silent. He had never given it much thought before but there was always some noise, music, people talking or the sound of paging. Now there was nothing and it scared him as much as anything else had. He speeded up and soon heard music, but it wasn’t the soft background music that should have been it was loud pulsating and heavy with beat. He followed it to an open cabin door looking through he saw several of the guests drinking. Scattered around them were cases of alcohol: guests were never given alcohol in its packaging and certainly never that much. Immediately he knew someone had broken into the liquor store. There was other food too, people were helping themselves. He realized they were inviting him to join them. For a moment he thought he might but he knew he would not leave the room again, at least not standing.
A scream made him turn and he followed the sound to see three men, one held Georgi from behind while the others had Mai backed up against a wall. “Stop that,” Matt called out as he ran towards them. All eyes turned to him but his were on the chef’s knives that they held in their hands. “For gods sake; think what you are doing?” he said as he slowed.
“Piss off.” One said, “You’ve got yours we gunna get ours.” Matt lifted his fists but knew boxing and street fighting had different rules; mostly because street fighting had none, but his distraction gave Mai the chance she wanted. Suddenly one of the men was crumbling to the floor and as his knife-wielding companion became aware of the fact Mai was leaning down to rest her palms on the floor. It only took a seconded, or even less but once doubled up she raised her leg and bent it at the knee. In an instant of time she looked strange then she pushed up from the ground as her leg straightened up under the mans jaw. He rose into the air seemingly lifted by her foot then he was airborne and smashing into the wall, before he had crashed to the floor Mai was facing the third man, he gripped Georgi harder and pulled h
is knife up against her throat.
“Think what your doing man,” said matt commandingly. As the mans eyed darted around him. Suddenly he pushed Georgi at Matt and ran. Matt grabbed her and watched him go. “What's happening?” he said bewildered.
“Chaos.” Said Mai.
The news had swept through the station like a wildfire; causing equally as much fear: but no one could run to save themselves: they were all trapped. Morale plummeted and order collapsed. It was almost instantaneous as Arguments broke out, animosity found targets and the sexual tensions were released. Suddenly people were fighting and women were being threatened. Parties quickly began as the alcohol stores were raided and rationing forgotten
“Your leg?” Matt looked at Mai’s calf; blood was running down to her ankle.
She looked as surprised as him, as he pulled off his shirt and tore off a strip. “It’s not deep but we need to get you to the surgery.”
It wasn’t far and on they way the encountered Andrew, Peter and his followers. “It’s anarchy?” said Andrew, in answer to Matt’s unasked question.
“How did they find out so soon?”
Andrew spread his hands. “I don’t know; it doesn’t matter now; it’s expected it, they all think they’re going to die, but we don’t have to today…” he looked at Peter. “Peter is confident he can bring everything back under control?”
Matt looked at the man; he had a reassuring expression that Matt was immediately suspicious of. He looked back at Andrew. “The sooner the better considering what I saw.”
“I’m going to deputize him assistant commander.”
Matt looked at Peter again. It was a bad idea but matt didn’t know how to say it. “I thought only head office could do that?”
“Clive has done something that clearly fits into extreme circumstances; there’s a provision for the highest ranking officer to deputize whoever they see most capable to carry on.”
Matt thought that referred more to him.
Peter spoke. “If we do survive there may be questions; I could be facing legal even criminal charges of one sort or another. It could be asked under what authority I was acting. I need legal protection?”
It sounded like gobble-de-gook to Matt: from what he knew of the man he had unlikely ever-neededgs official sanction. At that moment a particularly piercing scream reached their ears.
Andrew spoke quickly. “Under section forty-eight… and whatever the rest is I deputize you assistant commander… we can do the formal stuff later; go, give me back my ship.”
“Commander.” Peter said curtly as he side glanced Matt with a smile. His newly formed gang followed him through the airlock.
Matt watched them go before he turned to Andrew. “Was that wise?”
“You would rather wait until they had eaten everything and raped all the women?”
“I can’t help feeling we’re giving him permission to do just those things?”
“We are, but if the devil walked through that door right now I’d make a deal with him.”
Matt couldn’t help thinking they already had.
They followed the way peter had gone and found the source of the scream in the next pod: the surgery. Emma was sat on the floor, back against the wall and legs tucked up under her; her clothes were torn and she was crying hysterically. Opposite her was a man; Matt recognized him as Franki Pollard. His trousers were around his knees and a scalpel was stuck in his chest. Even more disturbingly his genitals were a bloody mess.
Andrew dropped to his knees and comforted the woman while Matt pulled a sheet off a bed and covered the man. As he did he noticed the mans testicles were completely severed. Matt covered him fighting back a wave of nausea.
“We need to get the all women somewhere safe until Peter can calm things down?” said Andrew; He looked over at the medicine cabinet. “See what's been taken?”
Andrew looked in the cabinets but he was more interested in a dressing and bandage for Mai. He found what he needed and knelt beside her. “I don’t know what was there to tell what’s missing?” he admitted as he cleaned the blood from the wound. It wasn’t bad but would need stitches; he’d have to find Bethany: Emma didn’t look as if she was capable. “Maybe Bethany is up to date with inventory?”
“Maybe, but we can assume stuff has?”
Matt looked up at the cabinet as he smeared antiseptic onto Mai’s leg. “It’s been forced so at the very least somebody was looking for something?”
Andrew was looking around the room. “Well on the plus side if they’re spaced out they’ll be easy to round up?”
“Have you seen Franki?” Matt said softly as he pulled back the sheet enough to show Andrew without revealing too much to Leeshia and Georgi.
Andrew looked at him unbelievingly. “Emma?”
“I could believe she stabbed him, but I can’t see her doing that.”
“It was done after he was dead, maybe she could.”
“You think so?”
Andrew moved closer to take a better look. “It’s a clean cut?” He looked at Matt. “Would you stand still while somebody did that?”
Matt could see the wound, as Andrew had pointed out it was almost surgical. “You think she could have?”
Andrew shook his head. “No; I can picture her slashing, but this isn’t an act of hate…” He turned to Matt. “This is a cold blooded warning.”
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