Immediately ahead of them lay a wide-open space furnished with low pastel-coloured couches.
'No air, but the lights still work,' Buddy observed through his spacesuit's intercom.
'Power runs through solar arrays on the station's exterior,' Sabak explained. 'Means we don't have to find our way through the dark.'
Buddy laughed shakily. 'Don't remind me of all that,' he said.
A small crowd of Labrats had gathered nearby and one of the flight crew was briefing them, trying to keep them from either wandering off or getting in the way.
Sabak approached Kendrick. 'Do you know how to switch over to a private channel? No? Okay, you're broadcasting on a general channel now. If you want to keep the conversation private, just do this.'
Kendrick watched as Sabak led him through the necessary sub-menus on his suit's arm-mounted screen.
Draeger and his men were just arriving in the reception area behind them. Kendrick caught the attention of one of the pilots whose suit's name tag read Roux.
'I need to ask you something,' Kendrick began over a private link.
'Wait a second,' said the pilot. 'Okay, we can talk one-to-one now.'
'I'm heading back down with you,' Kendrick told him. 'So when are you flying back – now or later?'
'We're waiting long enough to know that everyone's safe, then myself and one other will pilot the shuttle back home. We're going back to wait on board in just a few moments. Care to join us now?'
Kendrick shook his head. 'I've got some things to take care of first.'
Roux's face betrayed his feelings: a touch of bewilderment at whatever was happening here, something he couldn't understand even if he tried. Kendrick felt a brief stab of sympathy for the returning flight crew. They must have felt as if they were helping to orchestrate a mass assisted suicide.
'Okay,' Roux said. 'If we don't see you later you're stuck here. Just remember, we're not sticking around for more than a couple of hours at the most.'
'Thank you.' Kendrick smiled briefly and stepped away from him. He felt filled with a kind of numb desperation, finding it impossible to convince himself he wasn't indeed committing suicide. There was a very good chance that he wasn't going to get back home at all – and the thought terrified him, to the very core.
28 October 2096 On board the Archimedes
A map of the station was mounted on one wall. It showed several levels, or decks, interrupted by two enormous artificial caverns – one of which Kendrick had already seen, after a fashion, in his augment-induced visions. Near the map were a variety of panoramic photos of the interiors of the caverns. These showed technicians with the good looks of models taking soil samples or carrying out experimental procedures under the vast mirrors designed to reflect sunlight into the station's interior.
This, thought Kendrick, would be what the station's administrators wanted their prospective investors to see as soon as they arrived here. They would be brought to wait here before each tour started.
He began to wonder if the depressurization had been due to some kind of life-support failure. If that were the case, the electrical systems, at least in this part of the Archimedes, hadn't been affected. Panels set along the ceding and walls around them glowed softly with diffuse light.
Kendrick glanced over at Draeger and his men who had continued following behind everyone else at a careful distance. Smeby returned his inquiring look with a hostile glare.
Sabak moved to the centre of the large room and raised his hands for everybody's attention. He swivelled around to look at all of them, while pointing a finger exaggeratedly at the panel on his spacesuit's arm. He was asking them all to switch to the public channel. As Kendrick tapped at his own screen, his ears were filled by a tumult of voices from all around him.
'We made it,' Sabak was announcing, his grin just visible through his helmet visor. 'We made it here, thanks to the Bright.' There were several whoops and a lot of cheering.
'If any of you have started to have doubts, if you've decided there's too much for you to leave behind, then now is the time to say so,' Sabak continued. 'Nobody will think the worse of you. This is something monumental, but we're only human. If you want to go home, then do so with our blessing.'
He turned to scan all the faces around him, but no one spoke out, no one stepped forward. Even the ones Kendrick had seen earlier in floods of tears remained resolutely silent.
'What about him?' somebody called out, pointing at Draeger. Kendrick glanced over at the billionaire, whose face remained impassive behind his visor.
'Mr Draeger has helped us get here in one piece,' Sabak explained carefully. 'If it wasn't for him-'
'If it wasn't for him,' somebody else shouted, in a voice crackling with static, 'we would never have got into this shit in the first place! What the hell is he doing here, anyway? We didn't invite him!'
In an instant the mood turned, with more shouting and accusations blending into a tumult. It was clear that Sabak was on the brink of losing control. Draeger and his men numbered barely more than half a dozen, and there were many more times that number of angry Labrats.
Someone suddenly ran at Draeger, their movements clumsy in the low-g environment. Kendrick watched in horror as Smeby reached into a deep pocket and produced a snub nosed weapon that he then gripped tightly in both hands and aimed.
Kendrick began to move forward, seeing a way in which he might calm the situation. Through the protester's visor he caught a brief glimpse of a middle-aged male face, the marks of long-term rogue augmentation extending across the forehead.
As if by magic, holes appeared in the assailant's space-suit. Kendrick watched as the Labrat spun around, almost in a parody of a ballet twirl. He collided with a nearby couch and fell into a lifeless heap.
Kendrick opened his mouth to yell something, but his words were lost even to himself as his ears filled with the distorted sound of people screaming.
'Stay back!' Smeby was yelling over the public channel. The rest of Draeger's men now stood brandishing identical black weapons.
Kendrick stared in horror at the body of the dead Labrat. The man's face had ceased to exist below the nose, and an ocean of red fountained from the ruin of his jaw, spilling out of the shattered remains of his helmet.
Kendrick turned away, sickened. They were heading for a massacre. He found his own weapon and gripped it in one hand, all too aware of the terrible special dangers of getting shot in a vacuum. Sabak's men had produced their own weapons and now faced Smeby and the rest of Draeger's men in a deadly stand-off.
'We're going ahead,' Smeby announced tightly. 'Anybody tries to follow, we'll shoot to kill. All of you got that?'
Sabak stared past him, looking Draeger in the eyes. 'The Bright will kill you all. You know that, don't you?' he warned.
As Draeger gazed back with glittering eyes, Kendrick felt a tingling in his hand, as if a faint electric current was running through it. He felt an overwhelming urge to touch something: a wall, a floor, anything.
'We're going to head through that door,' Smeby announced, his voice distorted with static. 'Nobody else comes through it for at least another twenty minutes, do you understand me?' Draeger himself remained mute.
There were only four internal exits from the reception area they all stood in, three of them corridors winding out of sight as they followed the curvature of the space station's hull. The fourth exit remained sealed by a pressure door beside which two of Draeger's men were now huddled. The other three, along with Smeby, faced the Labrats, weapons at the ready.
An intensely bright flash briefly blinded Kendrick and the pressure door jerked open, revealing the corridor beyond. Draeger and the rest of his party hustled through, all the while keeping their weapons aimed at the Labrats. The door slid shut again, cutting off Draeger's party from sight.
Sabak ran forward as soon as the door had closed. Others rushed up behind him, one reaching for the control panel. 'Stay back!' Sabak yelled. 'Don't try anything until I tell you to. Give them time to get away. Everyone, stay back!'
Kendrick thumbed his suit panel until he was on a one-to-one channel with Sabak. 'Nobody's letting them get away.'
