Macao Station

Chapter Sixteen

Lina slept fitfully, fighting against layers of darkness that tangled around her like bodybags, smothering her, covering her. But however hard she fought, she kept finding herself back in the belt, where Sal was screaming through the comm — not the brief shriek that she had uttered in reality, but a protracted and wavering howl of agony and fear that warbled on and on into ever-higher registers as she was torn to pieces. Lina flew towards her — towards where her Kay should have been — through a dense cloud of blood and gore. Teeth ricocheted off the front of her ship in a virtual hailstorm. She wondered distantly how anyone could have so damn many of them.

And then she became aware that there was something else in the belt with her, something dark and shapeless that rode through the void like smoke; a surreal whisper of shadow; a greedy, hungry shade of death. She didn’t know how she sensed it, but the feeling was overpowering, and the truth of it seemed bleakly inescapable.

The pitter-patter of teeth against the window of her ship grew gradually louder and louder as she neared the area where Sal’s Kay had been, until it became a virtual fusillade: Bang! Bang! Bang! She wanted to flee, to escape before the shadow caught her, like it had caught Sal, and scatter her own insides across the rubble-strewn vacuum of the belt, but the noise was now so loud that she couldn’t even think.

It was catching up to her, she knew. It was right behind her. Panic-stricken, she forgot all about Sal and turned her Kay around, maxing the gas. She thought she was screaming aloud, but the noise was distant, so distant. The ship struggled, drive system howling, wallowing in space as if caught in thick mud. . . slowing, slowing, failing. . .

The lights of the dashboard suddenly went off, dousing Lina in darkness as thick as tar. A charnel stink — a stench of rotten and putrefying meat, hideously ripe and sweet — filled her head, making her gag. And then, somehow, impossibly, the shadow reached right through the hull of the ship and touched her. . .

She woke, screaming, bolt upright in bed. Somebody was hammering on the door of her quarters: Bang! Bang! Bang! She wiped one hand across her face and it came away slicked with sweat. The covers clung to her naked body like a pallid second skin. She breathed deeply, trying to calm her rattling heart, letting the knocking continue. Her head was pounding. Her tongue felt like something had died on it. The lighting was too bright.

‘Mum?’ said Marco’s sleep-blurry voice from the doorway.

Lina jumped, a little sound of shock escaping her throat, pulling the covers tight around herself as if they might armour her against harm.

‘Marco,’ she breathed.

‘There’s somebody at the door,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with the back of one hand. ‘Shall I let them in?’

Lina nodded, making her sweaty hair fall over her face. She brushed it behind her ear and saw that he was studying her intently. ‘Yeah,’ she managed to say. The insistent knocking continued.

Marco made no move towards the door, though. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, his young face suddenly aged by concern.

She shook her head, wanting to lie but unable to do so. ‘I’ve been better.’ She could feel tears beginning to well in her eyes. She looked away from him and said ‘Get the door. I’ll be out in a minute.’ She managed to control her treacherous face and dried her eyes on the sheet as subtly as she could. She turned back to Marco, who hadn’t budged, and attempted an encouraging smile. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect. He nodded obediently, but his look of concern condensed into one of outright worry. He paused for a moment longer, unsure, then turned and went to answer the door.

Lina jumped up to close the door of her room, but the blanket fell away and she stumbled, trying to gather it round her and right herself as she went. She realised that she felt like absolute crap and wondered how much she had had to drink last night. Marco was speaking to somebody in the other room now, but she couldn’t discern the words. What had happened to Eli? She supposed he must have let himself out when she’d got back, whenever that had been.

She managed to push her own door closed and crammed herself gracelessly into yesterday’s rumpled flight suit that she had apparently left lying in the middle of the floor. Her head reeled unpleasantly as she did this, making her want to throw up. The suit didn’t smell too great, truth be told, which didn’t help either.

Somebody knocked on the door of her room just as she was reaching for it, and when she opened it Marco was there again, in his plain grey, oversized pyjamas.

‘It was Rachelle, from the security team,’ said Marco, his expression a little puzzled. ‘She says there’s a meeting in the plaza today, outside The Miner’s. You’re supposed to be there.’

Lina struggled to process this information. For a moment, she couldn’t remember what The Miner’s was, but then she recalled that she had in fact spent most of the previous night there. She thought maybe Halman had been with her, but she wasn’t certain.

‘A meeting?’ she repeated. Marco nodded. ‘What time?’

‘Half-nine,’ he said. ‘Can I come with you?’

‘You’ve got school,’ she replied automatically, distracted.

Marco looked offended. ‘No, I haven’t,’ he said with a touch of irritation. ‘Not today.’

Lina nodded, trying to focus. ‘Er, okay then, I guess. Is Rachelle still here?’

‘No. She didn’t actually come in. Should I have asked her?’

‘No,’ Lina said, sitting back on the bed with an unintentional sigh. ‘No, that’s fine.’ She put her head in her hands, trying to massage her brain into some sort of working order. She sat this way for a while, forgetting that Marco was there, but when she looked up he was studying her analytically.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ he asked. He was holding out a battered datasheet in one hand. ‘Why was Eli here last night?’

‘Cos I was out,’ she admitted, with a touch of guilt that the more logical part of her mind assured her was undeserved. ‘What is that?’

‘A note,’ said Marco, handing it over. ‘From Eli. He says you had a hard night,’ he added, and Lina thought she heard a little judgemental note in that voice, although it could have been inferred. ‘At The Miner’s, were you, Mum?’

She felt the tears creeping up on her again, and fought to suppress them. She guessed that sooner or later they would have to come. But now, with her boy here, was not the time. ‘Yeah, I guess I was,’ she admitted. She patted the bed next to her and Marco sat there. He looked up into her face, his eyes innocently questioning. His hair was appealingly sleep-tangled. Lina put an arm around his small shoulders and pulled him close to her, aware that she stank of stale sweat and synthihol. She put her head against his and sat there in silence for a minute. Marco allowed this familiarity, but she could sense that he still wanted an explanation.

Eventually, he broke the silence: ‘Why weren’t you at work? Did you go after?’

‘Work finished early,’ she said wearily. ‘There was an accident in the belt last night, near the start of my shift.’

Marco’s eyes widened. ‘What?’ he gasped. ‘What? I mean who? Who?’

‘Sal,’ said Lina, a sudden lump in her throat. She gritted her teeth, trying to control herself. ‘She’s dead,’ she managed to add at last. ‘She bumped a rock, and her Kay decompressed.’

‘Mum. . .’ said Marco, and this time he embraced her. His body felt frail and bony against her own. Jaydenne had been tall and athletic, and Lina supposed that his son would one day assume a similar shape. But as yet, he was still a child.

Lina sighed deeply, not even noticing that tears were beginning to seep from her eyes and down her face, to drip onto Marco’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, but she didn’t know if she was talking to Marco or herself. ‘It’s okay, it was just an accident. We all know the dangers. Something just went wrong. It was just an accident.’

Marco was crying too, she realised. He released her and stood up angrily, startling her. His face was red and streaked with his own tears, now. ‘It could have been you!’ he shouted accusingly, his hands balled into fists. ‘It could have been you!’

And there it was again — that wave of love, but tinged with guilt this time. ‘Honey. . .’ she said, grasping for something. ‘Honey, no. . . It’s never going to be me.’ Marco shook his head, eyes streaming, but she stood and went to him, enfolding his reluctant body in her arms and pulling him close again. She stroked his hair and whispered, ‘I’m still here, Marco, I’m still here,’ until eventually he relaxed.

He stepped away from her and she saw by the new gleam of hardness in his eyes — a very adult look — that he was going to be all right. ‘Mum,’ he said with deliberate calm, drawing a deep breath. ‘I’ve been thinking lately, and, I mean this. . . this just makes me more sure. . . I. . .’ He visibly steeled himself and said, ‘I want to go to Platini Alpha. Or even Aitama.’ He spread his hands, as if to say There it is, and smiled thinly.

Lina shook her head. ‘Marco, is this about your father?’

Marco’s brows drew together for just the briefest instant, but when he answered his voice was steady and rational. ‘No. I don’t need him. I just want to go somewhere safer. Somewhere better. We shouldn’t be here, Mum. People shouldn’t live here. You could get another job. You said yourself that Farsight would take you at Platini Dockyard, and it has to be better than this.’ He smiled encouragingly, cajolingly, his eyes still shiny with tears. ‘Right?’

‘It was just an accident, honey. A one-off.’ But as she spoke, she suddenly recalled an image from her dream: alone in the belt, alone but for the hungry, greedy shadow that seemed to permeate the void with its reeking wolf-breath, its infinite tendrils of grasping darkness. ‘A one-off,’ she repeated, but this time it was just a whisper.

‘Mum?’ prompted Marco, making Lina snap back to reality.

‘Yes?’

‘Hadn’t we better get ready?’

‘What?’ she asked, her brain slow and muddy. ‘What for?’

‘The meeting, remember?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Lina, filled with fresh dread, her hangover swelling to new proportions.

Despite her pounding head, she managed to make cheese on toast for breakfast. She supplemented this with recon-juice from a can, rejecting the awful coffee she usually had in the morning as unlikely to actually improve her delicate condition. They talked about little, safe things: Marco’s school-work; films; station gossip. Once he’d finished, Marco excused himself to go to the toilet, and Lina sat sipping her juice alone.

She lifted the glass and looked into the liquid suspiciously. Something tasted a little off. Okay, she was quite hungover, and it could just be that. And the Farsight-branded recon-juice never tasted that great, but she had an inkling that it was neither of those things. She put the glass down amongst the crumbs of toast and sniffed the air, frowning.

‘What time is it?’ asked Marco, reappearing in the room.

‘Er, almost time to go, I reckon,’ said Lina, starting guiltily and turning in her seat to face him.

‘I wonder what they want,’ he said. She could see that he had washed and attempted to assert some sort of control over his hair. She guessed she should probably do the same.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. But she was sure of one thing: it wasn’t likely to be good news.