Impact (30 page)

Prakesh squeezes himself against the wall. He can't take his eyes off Jojo's body, sprawled across the floor in the corridor junction. Half of the boy's neck is torn away.

“Got him!” someone shouts, speaking over the noise of the fading gunshot. The voice is shockingly close.

“See any others?” says another voice.

Prakesh starts to edge away from the T-junction, moving as quickly and quietly as he can. He glances to his right–there's a turn ten feet behind him in the corridor, with a corner he can slip around.

Bam.

Another gunshot. Prakesh snaps his head around, half convinced that he's hit. But whoever shot Jojo is blind-firing, the barrel of the rifle pointed around the corner. Another shot comes, the report deafening in the cramped space.

It feels like all the blood in Prakesh's body is rushing to his head. But he keeps moving, sliding along the wall. The turn is three feet away. Two.

Prakesh slips around the corner. At the very last second, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. A head, poking round the edge of the junction.

They've seen me. There's no way they didn't.

Jojo's blood is still speckled across his face, slowly going tacky. It loosens the muscles in his legs, and he has to work very hard to stay upright, pushing himself against the wall. He realises he didn't know how old Jojo was, if he had a last name, anything about him except for the fact that he came from somewhere called Denali and he wanted to get off this ship more than anything else in the world.

He pauses, his knees bent, trying very hard not to breathe.

The voice comes again. “Nobody here. Guess he was the only one.”

“I don't buy it, man. Why come down here by yourself?”

“Doesn't matter now.” There's a muffled thump, and it takes Prakesh a second to realise that it's the sound of a boot colliding with Jojo's body. He has to fight down a wave of nausea. Could he keep moving? Slip away silently? He tells himself to move, but he's frozen to the spot.

Another pause. Then the sound of metal scraping on metal–Jojo's gun, being lifted off the floor. The sound is followed by footsteps, trailing off into nothingness.

Prakesh counts to ten. Then twenty. Silently mouthing the words, telling himself to move. It's only when he gets to thirty that his legs kick into gear.

He peeks around the corner.

Deserted.

In ten steps, he's crossed to the T-junction. He pauses, holding his breath. There's more distant gunfire, quick bursts of it, but the area around him is silent.

He glances down at Jojo's body, immediately looks away. There's nothing he can do. He can't even take the body with him–not if he wants to get out of here alive. And he has to make it out, otherwise Jojo died for nothing.

He should try and find the fuel hangar. Link up with the others. He keeps walking, listening hard for any footsteps coming his way, keenly aware that he doesn't have anything to defend himself with.

The corridor opens up into a wider hub area, with various passages leading off from it. There's a sign bolted to the wall, but the letters are rusted over, faded with age. Prakesh can just make out the words AIRCRAFT ELEVATORS, but the rest of the sign is illegible.

The boats must be on a lower level, surely, so all he has to do is—

What is that
?

There's a subsonic hum, almost inaudible. He has to focus to hear it, and focus even harder to work out where it's coming from. It's emanating from his left, down a corridor that's even narrower than the others.

Prakesh hasn't been on the
Ramona
long, but he's become familiar with the sounds of the ship, the rumbles and clanks and bangs that echo through its rusted body. This is different. This is something he hasn't heard before.

Jojo told him the Engine was below decks. He said they didn't let the workers get close to it. His curiosity overwhelms him, and before he can stop himself, he's walking down the corridor, treading as quietly as he can.

A light flickers in the ceiling as Prakesh makes his way down it, the buzzing and clicking accenting the machine hum. He's holding his breath, and has to force himself to exhale. There aren't any more guards that he can see, but he still proceeds carefully.

The passage turns right, then left, and then Prakesh is in a high-ceilinged, brightly lit storeroom. The walls are lined with racks, just like the one that nearly took him and Jojo out. The shelves are brimming with equipment, a hodgepodge of frayed wires and oversized batteries and rusted cutting torches, nestled up against machinery whose use Prakesh can only guess at.

He focuses. There's a set of double doors in front of him, shut tight, with two folding chairs off to one side. The two who killed Jojo must have been guarding it. For a few moments, Prakesh wonders why they abandoned their post. They must have decided to join the fighting on the upper levels.

The doors are twice his size, as if heavy equipment needs to be moved in and out. A metal plaque is bolted to the door, faded words picked out on it in black lettering.
HAARP MOBILE UNIT 2769X-B8 AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY
.

Prakesh takes in the letters. The split in the doors bisects the B in
MOBILE
, and the first C in
ACCESS
.

HAARP.

He knows what that is. He's sure of it. But it's like something glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, vanishing the moment you turn to look at it.

Prakesh knows he has to get to the boats, knows that it won't be long before the other workers escape. But it's as if his feet have stopped listening to his mind. He looks around, then walks towards the door. There's a chunky keypad on the wall by the door, but as he gets closer he sees that it's dead, its digital display blank. And the doors aren't sealed completely. There's the tiniest gap.

The hum rumbles in Prakesh's stomach.

He puts his fingers in the gap, braces his arms, and pulls.

The doors resist for a moment, then give way, moving so fast that they almost knock Prakesh off balance. The hum is even more powerful now. He steadies himself, then raises his head and looks inside.

Nothing but darkness. Prakesh is on a metal grate, and he can feel empty space below him. He moves along it, hands touching the wall. A line of switches slides under his fingers, plasticky to the touch. Taking a deep breath, he flicks them up.

Banks of lights begin to click on, one after the other. Huge spotlights in the ceiling spring to life, making Prakesh blink, chasing away the shadows.

He's standing above another hangar–this one slightly smaller than the others. Most of the space is taken up by four enormous cubes, at least fifty feet on all sides, their surfaces dull grey metal. There's a thin passage below him, running between the cubes. The floor is covered with thickly insulated cables, tangled up in each other, running up the walls of the cubes and into them via giant connectors. Some of the cables go higher, vanishing into the ceiling. Prakesh's nostrils haven't recovered from the chemicals he cooked up, but he can still pick out the sharp stench of ozone.

He puts a hand on the railing, trying to work out what he's seeing. Again the word tugs at his mind.
HAARP.

There's a ladder hanging off the end of the platform he's standing on. He swings himself onto it, climbing down, wincing as the noise of his feet on the rungs echoes across the hangar. He's more careful as he hops off onto the grated floor and walks between two of the cubes.

He keeps walking, running his hand along the side of the cube. It vibrates ever so slightly under his fingers. The hum is loud now, so loud that Prakesh wonders why the whole room isn't shaking. There must be some kind of inertial dampening, shock mounts built into the floor and ceiling…

He looks up as he comes round the corner of the cube. There's a rectangular, rusted metal plaque, mounted on the side of the next cube along. Prakesh moves closer, reaching out to touch it. At the top of plaque is a triangle with an exclamation point inside it, its bright yellow turned ochre with age. There's a litany of warnings underneath it–Prakesh's mouth moves as he scrolls down it. “Unauthorised personnel… risk of electric shock… safety equipment…”

He reaches the bottom. There's a set of barcodes, slightly raised off the metal surface. Underneath them are the words
Mobile High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program–Installation 2769X-B8.

HAARP.

Prakesh's heart starts beating faster. This is the Engine, he's sure of it, but why can't he remember what it does? He knows he's heard the word HAARP before, somewhere on Outer Earth–a lesson in a schoolroom, a snatched conversation somewhere, an archived article on a tab screen.

He starts walking faster down the passage. At the very end, near the wall, is a screen built into the side of the cube on his right. It's dusty, and as Prakesh wipes it off, it springs to life, flickering under his fingers.

The screen is old. Prakesh can see plenty of dead pixels, and there's a crack that extends almost all the way across it. But he can still read the information displayed. He flicks across it with his finger, scrolling faster and faster. It's data–complex scientific data. An analysis of radio frequencies, breaking them down by different values.

He moves further along. The second screen doesn't work–the touch function has degraded, and it's glitched out. But the third, which he finds at the back of the room, shows something different. It's displaying complicated electrical diagrams, each one showing the flow of current.

Prakesh taps one, and a new window appears, displaying a separate graph. The lettering at the top of the window reads,
Fluxgate Magnetometer Data File Reviewer
.

He frowns. A fluxgate magnetometer measures the Earth's magnetic field. But why would—

The puzzle pieces slot into place, and Prakesh's eyes go wide.

HAARP
. It's weather control. A way of altering the make-up of the ionosphere to control climate.

Before the war, Earth's governments tried to get various HAARP projects off the ground, but they didn't manage to do it before the missiles fell. Except this HAARP unit is here. And it's working. Prakesh puts his hand flat on the side of the cube, feeling the vibration travel up his arm.

This
is why the area has become habitable. Why humans have been able to establish themselves here. This is the sacred Engine, the life-giver, the reason Prophet and his followers have thrived. Prakesh can't believe something like this still exists, can't believe that Prophet worked out how to get it running. It's
beyond
belief.

And the workers are going to burn the fuel supplies. They're going to sink the ship. And when they do, whatever this HAARP unit is doing to the climate will stop. It'll be lost at the bottom of the ocean. This part of the planet will go back to the way it was before: a frozen wasteland. It'll never recover.

Prakesh turns, and runs.

I close my eyes a split second too late.

The flash jabs hot needles into my retinas. The bang finishes the job, slamming my ears closed, filling them with an awful, high-pitched whine. A spray of water splashes across my face.

It feels like a whole minute before I can open my eyes. When I do, the generator room is exploding around me. I see a worker go down, his head snapping backwards as he takes a bullet. A guard is out of ammo, using his gun like a club, swinging it back and forth as two workers dodge out of range. A generator tips over, sparks flying as it lands on top of a prone guard, pushing her under the surface of the water.

Carver helps me, pulling me to my feet. Somehow, he's got hold of one of the rifles, and is trying to load it, yanking at the bolt. The mechanism is jammed, stuck halfway. He gives up, swinging it at an approaching guard. The butt takes the man in the face, and he spits a thick gout of blood as he topples sideways, crashing against the wall.

The impact from the hit travels up Carver's arm, knocking the rifle out of his hands and into the water. I don't wait for him to retrieve it. I just grab him and go, heading for the corridor. He pulls me back at the last second, just as another volley of bullets explodes past the door.

“We'll never make it!” he screams. I can barely hear him. Koji appears behind him, hyperventilating, hardly able to stand upright.

He's right. That corridor is a death trap–a couple of guards hanging back will be able to cut down anyone coming out of here. I cast around for something to use, and that's when I see the man Carver took down. More importantly, I see what's on his belt.

A squat cylinder, just like the one that came through the door. What did Koji call it?
Flash-bang.

I sprint over to him, skidding onto my knees in the water, grabbing the cylinder. It crosses my mind that the water might have damaged it, but there's no time to check. We lose nothing by trying.

“Koji!” I shout. I can't tell how loud my own voice is. It hums in my ears, sounding as if it's coming through thick padding. He looks over to me, and I toss him the grenade.

He catches it with two hands, almost fumbling it, but then he reaches up and pulls a pin out of the cylinder. He spins around, hurling it underhand into the corridor.

The bang is just as loud, but this time we're prepared for it, hands over our ears, our eyes closed. And a second after it goes off, Carver and I rocket out of the door.

For a moment, it's almost like we're tracers again, running through Outer Earth. I can feel him behind me, hear his feet pounding the metal, like we're sprinting through a sector with me on point. The corridor is filled with thick smoke, stinking of gunpowder. A guard appears in front of me, on his feet but unsteady. I barely pause as I knock him aside, elbowing him in the ribcage.

“This way!”

It's Koji, pointing at a turn-off from the corridor. Somehow, he's managed to stay with us. I'm closest, and I skid to a halt alongside it, quickly peeking my head round. Deserted.

The surviving workers clamber out of the generator room, coughing and blinking. We can't leave them here–not after everything they've been through. I motion them to follow us, and they accept the order without comment. Two of them, I see, have managed to retrieve rifles. I almost ask them to test-fire the guns, check if they work, but decide not to. Last thing we need is someone getting hit with a ricochet in the tight corridors.

We keep moving. There's no telling how far this little worker rebellion has spread–not without a way to communicate with Prakesh's group. An alarm is blaring somewhere, harsh and guttural, but there's no more gunfire. I make Koji take the lead–the bowels of the ship are impossible to figure out, every corridor identical, with the same ribbed walls and recessed doors.

I'd give anything to have Harlan and Eric here. The seaplane could give us a way out. But thinking about them hurts too much, and I make myself stop. Even if they're alive, they have no way of knowing what's happening on the ship.

Ahead of us, the corridor opens up into a mezzanine level, with railings on the left. I can see a set of stairs leading down from the railings a few feet into the room, but it's only when we sprint through the entrance that we see what's in there.

It's some kind of storage hangar. Planes–the same as the ones on the ship's deck–are parked wingtip to wingtip, with their noses angled diagonally towards us. Close-up, they're enormous, at least fifty feet long, with cockpits like huge eyes. Puddles of old oil and grimy tyre tracks dot the floor beneath them. Huge rolling pallets rest up against the plane wheels.

There's an enormous roller door on the far wall of the hangar; it's hard to imagine these planes flying in here, so there must be an elevator platform beyond it, something to get them to the deck. The railing on my left has a thick coating of dust on it, and the whole place looks like it hasn't been touched in years.

“Over there,” says Koji, pointing. I can make out the opposite end of the hangar, six planes away. It's identical to ours, with its own mezzanine.

“That get us to the boats?” says one of the workers. It's the woman who was trying to lock the door–somehow, she survived the assault. Even scored herself a rifle.

“Quickest way,” Koji says, resting his hand on the railing. “Once we get there, we need to—”

The bullet ricochets off the railing next to his hand, burying itself in the wall. Another goes wide, pinging off the wall below us. The workers scatter. The woman with the rifle tries to fire back, then hurls it away when nothing happens.

I can see figures running across the floor, using the planes as cover. There's nowhere for us to hide–not up here, exposed, with nothing but railings between us and guards. Carver and I share a split-second glance, then in one movement, he and I hurdle the railing, bringing our legs up to our chests. We land on the closest wing with an enormous bang, hitting it so hard that the plane rocks in place, tilting on its three wheels.

They want to use the planes as cover? Then so will we.

The jump to the wing wasn't high enough to need a roll. I take a second to catch my balance, centring myself on the metal surface. Then I take off, sprinting up the plane's body. There was no time to explain what we were doing to Koji and the other workers. I look back over my shoulder, and, as I do so, I hear the voice in my mind again, speaking the same words it did when Harlan and I were hanging off that cliff near Whitehorse.
Leave them. They'll just slow you down.

But Koji has already jumped, crashing onto the wing, sending shock waves through the metal. Two of the others follow. I keep moving, pushing into a full sprint, leaping over the plane's body. The gap between the first and the second plane is no more than five feet, and I land easily, momentum carrying me forward. I see a guard, his face hidden by the body of his rifle, and only just leap across to the third plane when he fires.

The bullet passes above me, but I can't stop myself ducking. The movement pushes me off balance, and it happens right when I hurdle the plane's body. I land awkwardly, try to correct it, nearly manage, and then my feet tangle and I crash onto my side onto the third plane's wing.

At the last second, I turn my body so I'm sliding feet first. It's just enough. I tuck my body as I come off the wing, rolling, smacking my shoulder on the floor. But the momentum's on my side now, and I use it, angling my body forward as I come up to my feet, going from a roll to a sprint in half a second. Somewhere, deep inside me, my heart is pounding hard enough to shatter my ribcage.

Another gunshot. No telling where the round went, or where any of the others are. I start zigzagging–it slows me down, but that's better than a bullet in the back. There aren't any guards on the floor in front of me, and I don't dare risk looking over my shoulder.

I spread the zigzag, sprinting between cover on the floor, using the tool pallets and wheel struts as cover. I'm at the fifth plane when one of the guards, smarter than the others or maybe just more controlled, gets a real bead on me.

He must have been tracking my movements, looking for where I'm going to be instead of where I am. I dive, skidding on my stomach across the floor into cover, just as the space above me fills itself with gunfire.

“Riley!”

Carver has made it to the other end of the hangar. He's got hold of one of the wheeled pallets, and is pushing it towards me, using it as mobile cover. I flatten myself to the floor, crawling towards him. We meet at the edge of the fifth plane, and I squirm into position behind the box. There's no telling where Koji is–he could be on the planes, or he could be bleeding out somewhere.

“I'll go left, you go right,” I say to Carver. “Now!”

Open floor. Gunfire. Shouts. Stairs. Railings. Mezzanines. Stumbling. Almost falling. Running. Koji has made it–he's standing in the door, waving us in. I get there half a second before Carver, skidding into the passage, and then Koji slams the door shut. He and Carver spin the valve, locking it tight.

The noise from the plane hangar vanishes, replaced by the thrumming sound of the ship. Carver leans against the wall, breathing hard. Koji looks like he's about to throw up–his face is ash-grey.

“What about the others?” Carver asks.

He shakes his head, and Carver kicks the corridor wall in a fury.

The corridor we're in is wider than the others. It's a hub, with several other passages branching off from it. The choking smell of gunpowder has made it out here, and I can see dust motes caught in the light from the bulbs in the ceiling.

“We need to keep moving,” I say, turning to go. “We don't know if they can open the door from the other—”

The guard is fifteen feet away, calm and ready, squinting down the barrel of a rifle. It's pointing right at me, and I can see him starting to squeeze the trigger.

I can't close the distance between us. Not fifteen feet, not before he squeezes the trigger. I don't have a single thing I could use as a weapon.

Then I see Prakesh, sprinting out of one of the side passages.

He's wearing a ragged pair of overalls, identical to Carver's, and there's blood streaming down his face from a cut below his eye. He looks exhausted and terrified but in that instant I don't care because
he's alive
.

I see him look towards me, see the disbelief on his face, see his mouth start to form words.

I see the guard's surprise, see him swing his gun around, hunting for the movement.

I don't see him pull the trigger. But I hear the shot. And I see Prakesh stumble, his hands reaching out towards me. Then he's on the ground and I can see blood and all I can do is scream.