Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) (38 page)

“Where’s Silvestri?” Duran called again.

“Silvestri’s gone,” Talia yelled as the clamour died down.  “He was killed by raiders.”

As the words left her mouth, the pieces began to fall into place.

She hadn’t seen the raiders who had supposedly killed
Silvestri, had she?  It was Norrey – or Nurzhan, or whatever his name was – who had told her as much.

What if these Redmen had decided Silvestri was too much of a threat, and had taken him out themselves, framing the raiders for his murder?

But why?  What do they want–?

The answer came to her immediately. 
They worked with Hanker.  They knew about Knile, about the plan to get off-world.  That’s been their endgame all along.

She thought of Nurzhan standing out there right now, the rifle in his hands, waiting for the railcar to dock.  Waiting for the doors to open.

Of course
.  He went out there as soon he found out that another Redman, Aron Lazarus, was on his way down.  They knew him, and he knew them.  Nurzhan must have realised that as soon as Lazarus laid eyes on them, their deception would be unmasked.  There was no point pretending to be bodyguards anymore.

Nurzhan was going to slaughter Knile and Lazarus as soon as those doors opened.

“Oh,
god
.  Knile.”

She got up and ran for the doorway, and bullets whizzed around her.  She imagined Kolos lining her up in his sights at that very moment, preparing to put a round in the back of her head.  Then more guns sounded – Zoe and Duran trying to give her cover – and then she was through the door and into the next corridor.  Behind her, all hell seemed to break loose.  She heard a table overturned, chairs scattering.  Someone cried out in pain, and as she looked back she saw Kolos limping after her, his hand clutched to his shoulder, blood on his chest.  With his good hand he raised the rifle again, and then she lost sight of him as she turned into the next corridor.

She had to keep going.  She had to make it to the comms room, where she could warn Knile.

She scampered past the control room, hearing shouts and more gunshots in the corridors behind her, but when she looked back, Kolos was still coming, a look of intense hatred and anger on his face.  He was in obvious pain, but he wasn’t slowing down – if anything, he looked even more determined than before.

The long corridor appeared in front of Talia.  The comms room was so close.

She ran as fast as she could.  As she neared the room she heard Kolos’ heavy boots echoing in her wake, and another flurry of bullets slapped into the wall beside her.  She stumbled through the doorway and turned to her left, where the transit module comms were located.

The terminal was dark.

Knile told me to turn it off to save power.  Goddammit.

“Fuckfuckfuck…”

She hit the power button and the boot sequence initiated.  Panicked, she
tapped at the screen again, but she
knew it wasn’t going to be ready in time.  Last time, it had taken around thirty seconds to fire up.

Kolos was only a matter of a few seconds away.

If Knile doesn’t get this message, he dies.

Instinctively, she moved across to the switch on the wall – the one linked to the explosives in the corridor – and ripped away the flaking gaffer tape.  Her hand trembled on the grip.

You do this, and there’s no way back.  You might save Knile and the others, but you’ll be trapped in here, alone.  They’ll have to go on without you.

The irony was not lost on her.  All this time, throughout her reunion with Knile and Roman, her journey up the Reach and her trek across the lowlands, she had fought to stay connected with those around her.  She had fought against the isolation that the world wanted to impose upon her.  Now here she was, condemning herself to the very fate she had sought to avoid.

There was no time for further thought.

“Some be it,” she said, setting her jaw in determination.  There were tears in her eyes. “So fuckin’
be
it.”

She threw the switch.

46

The railcar shook and rattled, and the noise it made as it plummeted downward was deafening.

Knile couldn’t help but feel like he’d been in this situation before, only this time he was heading in the opposite direction.

The final stages of his upward journey from the Reach had been utterly harrowing.  That day, with a bomb aboard and the railcar pushed to its limits, he had thought that he would almost certainly die.

Now was no different.  As they dropped toward the ground, the railcar showed no signs of slowing.  If anything, it was actually gaining speed, the noise and the vibrations inside his compartment becoming worse with every passing minute.

For someone who had spent his entire life trying to get himself aboard a railcar, Knile had to admit that he didn’t particularly enjoy the experience of travelling within them.

In fact, it downright sucked.

“How are you doing, Lazarus?” he said through his comms.  Although he couldn’t see inside Lazarus’ compartment from here, he could almost sense the scowl on the Redman’s face.

“I don’t believe that requires a response.”

“Don’t sweat it.  There’s probably some sort of safety mechanism that will kick in–”

“You need not attempt to make this scenario more appealing than it really is.  I have been listening to your conversations with the girl.  I know the situation.”

“I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Lazarus.”

“All is well.  At least I will not be subjected to the dishonour of setting foot upon Earth one more time.”

“That whole Landfall thing, right?”

“Indeed.”

“Yeah,” Knile said ironically.  “Death is a much better option.”

As lightning flickered around them, Knile saw that they had dropped below the clouds.  Now the Earth was practically rushing up at them, surely only a matter of minutes away, if that.  Time had run out.

He thought of everything that had happened, how they’d come so close to pulling off this insane plan.  His mind raced as he thought back over the events of the last couple of days, wondering how he could have done things differently, but he knew that was futile.

There was nothing left for him but to accept his fate.  It was over.

Then, unexpectedly, he began to feel the railcar’s momentum slow.  The noise around him lessened, and the shaking subsided.

“Wait a minute,” he said.  “Something’s going on–”

“Knile, good news.”
  Ursie’s voice on the comms.  Her face appeared on the console, cheeks flushed and eyes wide and full of excitement.

“Ursie, what’s going on?” Knile said cautiously.

“We’ve finally had some success up here.  We think we can get you down safely.”

Knile released a shaky breath.  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while.  How did you do it?”

“It wasn’t me, it was Tobias.”

“Tobias?”

“Yeah, he uh…”
  She shrugged. 
“He got himself together.  It’s a long story.”

“If you say so.”

Tobias nudged himself in front of the camera, and Knile had to admit that there was something different about the old man.  He looked sharper about the eyes, more focussed.

“Knile, I’m gonna touch you down nice and gentle,”
he said.  His eyes kept darting about as he manipulated the terminal in front of him.
“But we’re not out of the woods just yet.  We brought the Earthside terminal online, but the readings I’m seeing ain’t good.  Power is especially bad.”

“Yeah, I already told Talia to power down as much as she could.”

“Well
, we’re going to need those systems online to land the railcar, then to take off again.  But from the calculations on this here terminal, we’ve only got a window of thirty minutes.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“Once you get your butts on the ground, you have to get everyone back on
board and ready to leave within that time.  Once those power cells run out of juice, you ain’t gonna have a chance of makin’ the return trip.  If you get my meanin’.”

“Yeah, I get it.  That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I’m gonna keep messin’ with the system here, try to squeeze a bit more out of her, but don’t be surprised if nothin’ changes.  We’re already runnin’ on
empty.”

“Okay.  Once the doors on this railcar open, Lazarus and I will get moving.  We’ll get the others and bring them back in time.”

“Sounds good to me,”
Tobias said, then he moved away, his eyes darting to the next terminal.

Knile braced himself for the final leg of the trip.

Talia wasn’t dead.  She knew that much.

For a moment, she thought that she had surely been buried alive.  She could feel an oppressive weight upon her, one that seemed to not only push at her from above, but from the sides and beneath as well.  It was like she was caught in a vice.

She couldn’t breathe.  She felt as though she were suffocating under a mountain of grit and metallic-tasting dirt.

Then she realised that she had been thrown backward, had the wind knocked out of her.  It was only dust she could taste, but dust so thick that it seemed like a solid mass.  It got in her nose and throat, down into her lungs, and as she lay there retching, she felt certain that she would never be able to expel it from within her.

She gagged, threw up.  Her body heaved.

It helped – only a little, but enough for her to drag in a ragged breath, then another.  Her head was spinning, but at least now she didn’t feel as though she were suffocating.

She could see a blinking red light not far away through the haze.  It all came back to her – Duran, the Redmen.  Kolos chasing her down the corridor.

Knile.  I have to contact him.

She struggled forward, over some debris that had scattered across the room during the explosion, but found that the red light did not belong to the terminal she sought.  Moving sideways, she checked the next, then the next, fervently hoping that the system hadn’t been damaged in the blast.

She found the transit module comms.  The screen was shaking, glitching madly, and she couldn’t tell whether it was working or not.  It seemed to have booted, but whether it had subsequently crashed, she couldn't tell.

She hit the transmit button.

“Knile?  Knile are you there?”  She reeled, unable to even hear her own voice.  There was only a high-pitched whining sound in her head that seemed to block out everything else.

The explosion… must have damaged my hearing…

She spoke again, shouting, hoping she hadn’t lost her voice as well.  “Knile, can you hear this?”

She began to cough uncontrollably, wheezing and spitting out more dust, and by the time the fit had passed, there was still no indication of a response from Knile.

Here I am, probably talking to nothing but static again.  Business as usual.

She pressed on.  “Knile, something’s happened down here.  Those bodyguards that–”  Another cough wracked her body.  “The bodyguards are Redmen, Knile.  They tricked us.  I don’t know what they want… guessing they’re trying to… to get off-world.”  She shifted over and checked the corridor, which had been reduced to nothing but chunks of concrete and steel.  She moved back to the console.  “One’s dead, I think, but there’s another out there… he’s waiting for you.  He’s standing on the platform right now.  He’s going to kill you, Knile.  Do you hear me?”

Still there was no reply, and she thumped her fist down on the console in frustration, sobbing.

“Just take Roman,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.  “If you can hear me, just take Roman and get out of here.”