Acid Sky (19 page)

As the air pressure around it fell, the air mass expanded, until it became a circular storm, rising, growing, fuelled by the titanic powers of the eruption far below. It rotated faster as it rose, fed by the wind shear at higher altitudes, and the winds around its centre increased in speed, until it was a gigantic vortex, flinging great arms of dark storm clouds around itself.

As it emerged from the upper layers of the cloud deck and encountered the change in temperature gradient at the tropopause, it flattened and spread out across the sky. Within hours, it had swelled to a hurricane hundreds of kilometres across, filled with black volcanic ash, a dark, spreading stain against the clouds.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Clare’s comlink beeped, and she stepped out of the noise of the ready room and into the corridor outside. The hum and throb of machinery seemed quiet after the shouting and drinking going on in there. Her heart swelled as she glanced down at the coveted aviator’s badge on her uniform; on her return from the hangar, they had pinned it onto her, and thrust a plastic cup filled with contraband whisky into her hand. She took another sip, and felt the warmth of the spirit inside her as she glanced at her comlink console.

There was no ID on the caller, so it must be something official. She pressed the answer key.

‘Lieutenant Foster.’

‘Next time you might not be so lucky.’
The distorted and resynthesized voice spoke slowly and clearly, and Clare felt a sudden chill descend on her.

‘Go and see Coombes and apologise for what you did. Do exactly as he asks, or there will be another accident.’
The voice clicked off, and Clare stood there in astonishment, her mouth half-open. Her comlink display had returned to the home screen, instead of showing the call details as it normally did. She checked the call history, but there was no record – it was as if the call had never happened. How could they do that? Unless they were in control of the ship’s communications systems.

Next time you might not be so lucky.

The words ran down her spine like ice. It could only mean one thing. The hangar airlock was almost in front of her, on the other side of the corridor to the ready room. She walked quickly into the airlock, and pulled on a facemask while she waited for the lock to cycle.

‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered as the lights slowly went through their sequence, then finally she could open the inner door and walk across the hangar deck to where the damaged Frigate had been parked, but it had gone.

‘Where’s Zero Four?’ she asked one of the deck handlers.

‘Been moved into the pressure hangar.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the rearmost hangar. ‘The chief wants to take a look at it. Hey, slow down!’ he shouted as Clare ran off, nearly tripping over a fuel hose in her haste.

She had to go back through the airlock section, and wait for the pressure to equalise again, before she could open another door and emerge in the pressure hangar. There were three Frigates inside, including Zero Four, and she forced herself to walk as casually as she could up to where the engineering chief was examining the left engine pylon.

Seen up close, the damage was far greater than she had realised. Parts of the metal skin of the pylon had peeled back, and the leading edge of the wing had been damaged in places. A technician was taking pictures of the damage, under the direction of the chief.

‘Ah, Foster, thought you might be along at some point,’ Neale said. He turned to the technician. ‘Can you take some more, from the rear, I want to show the buckling.’ He moved to one side, and looked carefully at Clare.

‘Found anything?’

‘Well, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it’s clear that the engine jettison system malfunctioned in some way. You didn’t fire it accidently, I take it?’ He spread his hands, an apologetic expression on his face. ‘I have to ask.’

Clare knew the question had been coming, but it still annoyed her. She shook her head firmly. ‘No, I didn’t. You know those switches are guarded, and you have to arm the system first – it’s not possible to fire it accidentally.’

‘No. Well, the arming switch is certainly in the safe position, and the flight recorder will back you up when we’ve analysed it. But however it fired, it didn’t separate cleanly. You see all this damage to the pylon structure? The jettison sequence is meant to close all the valves to the engine, separate all the couplings, and only then fire the explosive bolts to release the engine. What seems to have happened – at least from what we can see right now – is that the bolts fired on their own, and when the engine rotated up and away over the wing, it just tore out all the connections.’ He waved his hands to the mass of trailing cables. ‘That’s what caused your fuel leak – the fuel supply pipe was ripped off the mount, along with its valve. The internal tank pressure drove the fuel out very quickly. You’re lucky it wasn’t the LO2 supply.’

‘Hey, Chief,’ his assistant called, ‘take a look at this.’

The chief went back to the pylon and peered at whatever the technician was showing him. ‘What am I – oh, I see.’ There was a pause while he pushed at something with his fingers to get a better view. ‘Hand me the borescope, will you? Let’s take a pic of that before we disassemble it.’

The technician passed over the long rod of the borescope, and as Clare watched him manoeuvre the instrument into the pylon’s innards, she found herself wondering if she really had pressed the jettison button herself. But how could she? No – she frowned angrily. It was just the formless words of doubt whispering in her ear. She had done nothing wrong, and she certainly hadn’t switched the jettison system to
ARM
, lifted the safety cover on the left engine switch, and pressed
FIRE
. This thing had fired on its own. All the same, she wished that it had happened while Shaffer had been on board, then she would have had a witness.

‘Did you get any warning beforehand?’ The chief’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He was still staring into the eyepiece of the borescope.

‘Not that I noticed. It was running fine, I’d just turned onto the downwind leg. I made the call, and then it went bang. I thought it was a compressor stall at first, but then I saw the engine instruments.’

‘No warning tones or computer announcements?’

‘None.’

‘Umm. Well that certainly suggests that the jettison wasn’t commanded, as there’s an automatic warning tone and a voice warning before it fires.’ He looked thoughtful as he drew out the borescope and handed it back to the technician. ‘Well, we’ll need to do a complete stripdown, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. If it’s one of my team not doing their job, they’ll be cleaning jetpipes for the rest of their tour.’

Clare stared at the smoke marks where the bolts had fired to sever the engine from its pylon, and the damage to the wing. She wanted to ask if there any way this could have been done deliberately, but she couldn’t ask questions like that, not in front of the chief and his team.

Besides, she didn’t need to ask; she knew already.

She found Coombes in the hydroponics farm, below the galley. He was standing amongst a row of tall sweetcorn plants, almost hidden by the foliage and the blaze of reflected sunlight that filled the glasshouse.

She couldn’t trust herself to speak as she walked towards him. He turned as she approached, and he looked relaxed and confident, but she noticed he backed away slightly as she came up to him.

‘I hear you had a nasty accident a little while ago.’ He snapped off one of the cobs of corn and examined it casually. Clare stared back at him as he continued: ‘You were very lucky. Losing an engine like that, with an inexperienced pilot alone at the controls – it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘I should report you, and whoever’s protecting you, you worthless piece of shit.’

‘No, no, no.’ Coombes laughed. ‘That’s where you’re dead wrong, Foster. You report anybody, and you won’t even make it to a hearing. You think you’re
smart
–’ he spat out the word, and she could see the suppressed fury behind his eyes, ‘but you don’t know jack shit. We’re on an aircraft flying along over the surface of a planet, millions of miles from home. There’s nowhere to hide, and there’s nowhere to get off. You’ve seen what can happen now. You piss me off, you threaten me again …’ he stared at her, his eyes blazing.

Clare returned his stare as levelly as she could, determined not to be intimidated, but she was worried. Whoever was protecting him had been able to arrange the sabotage to the engine quickly and effectively. She wasn’t certain if it had been intended to kill her or just to scare her into silence, but who knew what else they could arrange, that would eliminate her completely?

‘I think you need to tell me something,’ he said softly.

‘Tell you what?’

‘You were told,’ he said simply, and looked expectantly at her.

‘Fuck you.’

‘I realise this may be hard for you take in, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he said quietly, his face hard. ‘You’ve got one more chance.’ He dwelt on the last three words, speaking them slowly.

‘You won’t get away with it. The chief’s already found what you did to the jettison mechanism. It’s only a matter of time before they find out it was deliberate. And then it’s you that’ll be saying sorry.’

Coombes laughed, a really unpleasant, knowing laugh. ‘You think we’re
stupid?
We’ve altered the flight data recorder. In about two hours’ time, when they’ve finished analysing the recording, you’ll be hauled before Shaffer and the chief, trying to explain why you fired the jettison switch. It’s all there – you armed the circuit, fired it, then set the switches back. We’ve even added the sounds on the voice recorder. Sure, you’ll deny it, but faced with that evidence, nobody’s going to look any further. You’re going home.

‘But – if you do as you’re told, poof.’ He spread a hand in mid-air. ‘The data recording’s back to normal. No Foster pressing switches when she shouldn’t. It’ll just look like some unexplained firing of the bolts. You choose.’

Anger and fear fought inside Clare’s head as she regarded Coombes and his growing smile. They had thought of everything. She just wanted to punch him in the mouth, to see him go down, and give him the kicking of his life, a kicking so bad that—

‘I’m still waiting, Foster.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. Coombes cocked his head on one side and raised an eyebrow.

‘I’m – very sorry,’ she said, staring at a spot between his eyes, and wondering what it would feel like to be crushing his testicles under her heel.

‘That’s better.’ Coombes looked at her, his eyes triumphant. ‘You touch me again and there’ll be no more warnings. You won’t know when it’s coming. Have you got that?’

Clare nodded, once.

‘I said,
have you got that!
’ His voice rose to a shout.

‘I’ve got it,’ she said, slowly.

‘Okay.’ He nodded, as if thinking.

Clare stood there, saying nothing, dreading what was coming next.

‘You need to do something for me now,’ he said, softly.

You’d better not ask me to put your dick in my mouth, because I might just bite it off, threats or no threats.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re going to take this over to the
Curtiss
, next time you go. Which is tomorrow,’ he added, tossing a small packet over to her.

‘I’m not scheduled on a ferry flight tomorrow.’

‘You are now,’ he said, and with those few words she realised that someone in the air wing must be helping him. She didn’t show anything on her face as she weighed the packet in her hand.

‘What is it?’

‘That doesn’t concern you. What does concern you is making sure it gets there, and leaving it where I tell you to tomorrow, and not speaking to anyone else about it. Believe me; I’ll know if you have.’

‘What—’

‘That’s all, Foster. You belong to me now. Run along and be a good girl.’ He nodded towards the stairs that led up and out of the farm. ‘Oh, and Foster, before I forget, you know the other night, when you said that I had my “nasty little way” with you? Well, let me tell you something you may not remember. I tied you up, I fucked you in the ass, and you
begged me to do it.
’ He stopped, his eyes glistening, watching her expression.

Clare could barely contain her hate. She breathed in through her clenched teeth, and the pulse hammered in her ears. She visualised stuffing the packet down Coombes’s throat, ramming it in hard with her fist. For a moment, nothing else mattered; she would have willingly taken any consequences, just to see him choke and struggle and die in front of her. Nothing would have given her greater satisfaction.

With a struggle, she controlled her hands from reaching out and grabbing him. He had her for the moment, until she figured out what to do. She turned and walked away, feeling his gloating eyes on her as she walked down the row of sweetcorn, and then the tangled vines of the tomatoes. She set her foot on the lowest step of the spiral stairs that wound upwards, back towards the lower deck. The steps clanged as she went up, and as she went round, she could see that the lines of tall plants hid her from Coombes’s view.

She desperately needed time to think. Who was helping him? He had to tell them somehow that she had come round. How was he going to make contact? Without conscious thought, impelled by a half-formed idea, she clumped on the stairs as if she was still going up, but reversed her steps instead and came down again, making her footsteps fade away, as if she had climbed out of sight. She reached the floor in silence, and stole furtively to one side, out and away from the stairs and Coombes’s hiding place, until she was behind the black plastic tanks of the water recycling plant where they had first kissed, although the memory was tainted now. A muted swirling noise came from the machinery and the tanks. She crouched down and waited.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed, and there was no sound from Coombes. So, he was waiting as well. Then came the metallic sound of tools being tidied up. Perhaps he was going to make contact some other way? She had just decided that it was a waste of time, and was about to make her way out, when she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.