No air, no sound. I lie, waiting for the pain that I know will come, for the bullet to do its work and end my life. From a forgotten battlefield, I hear someone call for a medic.
My vision blurs. Across time, someone bends over me. A woman, wearing my face.
I open my eyes, my lungs convulsing, heaving in a breath. The world around looks different, clearer, sharper. Simpler. I roll onto my back. People are shooting at me. I have a pistol in my hand. Well, then. I raise the gun, sight, and fire. I don’t wait to see if I hit my target before moving to the second and the third, the fourth.
Six shots, six impacts. The air rings with the fizzing silence of the space between bullets.
I stand. The four people on the walkway in front of me stare in shock and disbelief. I gesture. They run.
I run with them, checking the pistol to see how many charges are left. Six down, six to go. The weapon is warm in my hand.
The moment I step onto the gantry, I hear the whine and throw myself back. The others are knocked off their feet by an energy blast. The air shakes, rock and dust raining down. I aim the pistol at the figure holding the blaster and fire twice. They fall into the crater.
The woman with the missing eye is staggering to her feet, cut and bruised and bleeding. I know her name, but I don’t care. ‘East gantry,’ she shouts. ‘We’ll take west.’
Above her, guards are already taking aim.
‘Go,’ I say.
She does, taking the others with her. Bullets follow them, but I drop the assailant before running in the opposite direction. When I hear footsteps clanging behind me I spin, ready to fire, three charges left.
But it is the child, the one they call the General. She holds a blaster, must have caught it as the man fell.
‘Go with the others.’
‘We have a better chance if we split up, divide their fire.’ She spits out rock dust. ‘What’s the target?’
‘Landing platform.’ There’s no doubt in my mind. ‘Top level, where the ships are.’
She nods. ‘I’ll cover the rear.’
I run, scanning for any movement. Footsteps rattle the gantry above us: I fire and hear a cry. If this place has been built to the same plan as a prison hulk, there should be lifts at four points around the perimeter. On the hulks, the lifts ended in dead metal – blank, impassable surfaces for the mind to batter itself against – but here, the former convicts have built the escape routes they only dreamed of while drifting through space: lifts that’ll take us up and out to freedom.
I see one up ahead, a clumsy-looking box made from scraps of metal with a winch beside it. A figure stands guard, raising a gun. Too slow. The child fires the blaster and they tumble over the railing.
‘Get on,’ I tell the child, leaning over to hammer the controls. She does, leaping onto the lift as the winch releases, sending us shooting up through the air. Gunfire follows, of course, but it can’t reach us, not now, and I let out a shout of laughter. The child beside me crouches, stony-faced, watching the highest platform approach.
I’m right. The guards, the pit fiends, whoever is shooting at us from below have not yet made it up here. It’s the highest point of the crater, right on the lip, and along a rusted platform, ships and birds are waiting. I kick the lift door open and see one at the far end – a cannibalised vehicle with an unwieldy cargo bay – that looks to be the smallest, the fastest. I stride towards it.
‘You’re going to take that heap of junk?’ the General says. ‘Let me choose, there’s a Hawk over there.’
‘Shut up.’
‘What about the others?’
‘You heard what she said. We get separated, we’re on our own.’
‘What’s happened to you?’ she demands. ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that?’ She hurries to keep up. ‘You said you didn’t fight, but that was military training.’
I ignore her as I reach the ship and scan it for a second. No telling what it had once been, but hopefully its controls would be simple enough. A fuel line hangs from the side. I unlatch it and thump on the button to open its hatch.
‘Answer me!’ the child demands. ‘What were you in the war? What aren’t you telling me?’
More than you can imagine.
With a rumble, the door creaks open. From the gloom inside, a shape comes stumbling forwards, a weapon in their hand.
I take aim, and see the figure clearly.
It’s a young man, wearing an ancient flight jacket and torn jeans, not a gun in his hand but a pipe. A crash of images floods my mind; countless futures dying with him. At the last second, I jerk the gun sideways, sending the bullet ricocheting above his head.
In the abrupt silence, the woman who was death, who had filled my skin, vanishes. In her place comes the crashing realisation of what I have just done, the smell of blood and the feel of the warm gun in my hand. I drop it in horror.
‘You?’ the General barks. ‘Is this your ship?’
‘What?’ The man seems confused. ‘Err, yes?’
She arms the blaster.
‘Then fly.’
* * *
‘You can stop pointing that at me, now,’ the pilot says to the General around the pipe in his mouth. ‘It’s not like I’m armed.’
I open my eyes. The desert blurs past fifty feet below, grey and gold in the afternoon light.
‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ the General snaps. ‘Where do you keep the guns?’
‘What guns?’
‘The guns you have hidden somewhere.’
Silence.
‘You tell me, or I will start blasting this deck open.’
The man sighs. ‘Under the nav panel.’
‘Get them.’
