often enough.’
Of course, Kaskan was one of those who had been due to depart at the time Var and others arrived. He’d been here during the first blowouts, during the period when it was discovered that not all the regolith blocks were completely solid and impermeable. Var remembered Gisender telling her about the time after one blowout, when even oxygen had been rationed and they had been forced to live right on the brink of asphyxiation for nearly a month. Many had not made it. Many had simply died in their cabins. Some, like Kaskan and Gisender, had been very suspicious of Ricard’s activities during that period, because the political director had seized control of the atmosphere regulators.
They waited long minutes as the bar on the graph Kaskan had altered rose up to the marker he had set. Kaskan meanwhile kept utterly still. Var was tempted to peek through the window to see what was happening with the two enforcers, but she knew that just the slightest miscalculation now would leave them all dead. Then, as they waited, the intercom crackled into life.
‘It would seem that the usual suspects have gone missing,’ Ricard announced. ‘Lopomac Pearse, Kaskan Lane, Carol Eisen and, of course our Technical Director, Var Delex.’
For one spine-crawling moment Var feared Ricard had located them, but now she could hear that Ricard’s words were issued from the public-address system throughout the base.
‘Director Var has murdered Gisender Lane and caused a number of atmosphere breaches, murdering nine Inspectorate staff along with Miska Giannis. She has also destroyed valuable government property, so it is inevitable that she must be seized and duly tried. However, her guilt does not attach to the other three, who, if they return to the Community Room straight away, will be treated fairly. Surely all four of you must be aware that you have nowhere to run, and surely you understand that, unless you hand yourselves over, I will have to order my men to use deadly force against you.’
‘Bastard,’ Kaskan muttered.
‘He’s just playing to the crowd,’ Var observed.
‘Like anyone will believe him?’
‘They’ll pretend to believe him. What else can they do?’
‘Having now seen that broadcast from Delegate Margot Le Blanc, you must all understand that we face hard times, in which hard decisions will have to be made,’ Ricard continued, ‘but be assured that the Committee has provided me with a restructuring plan for our survival. Delegate Le Blanc mentioned those dissident elements back on Earth that have brought us to these straits and, as we are seeing, those same elements are here. We cannot allow them to threaten our survival. We must remain strong and firm in our purpose. There . . . there is much work still to do.’
As Ricard seemed to run out of steam, Kaskan checked his watch, nodded and carefully rose from his crouch to peer over the screen. At that very same moment, a series of shots slammed into the windows, a terrible racket of plastic bullets smashing against the glass. Kaskan ducked again as the glass finally broke, large laminated chunks of it falling inside the computer room.
‘What the fuck?’ Lopomac hissed from the door.
‘A whole fifty-round clip,’ said Kaskan. He glanced around. ‘Plastic ammo.’ He looked up at the atmosphere sensors in the ceiling, and just then a reverberating clang sounded from the corridor outside, as the nearest bulkhead door closed in Wing One.
‘I never thought of that,’ admitted Kaskan. ‘But it doesn’t do them any good – the pressure is higher in there.’
Var shook her head. One of the enforcers had shot out the internal window in an attempt to let in breathable air, but with the pressure differential all he had done was let some of the unbreathable stuff escape from Hydroponics. Further shots erupted, this time smacking against metal, followed by a clattering noise and gasping, someone falling and then something breaking, the sound of liquid spilling. Kaskan stood up, and Var stood too.
‘Best to close up our helmets,’ she advised.
They all complied, then Kaskan dialled down the CO2 and nitrogen on the screen graph. Var realized it would take some minutes before the air in there became breathable again, which would be too late for the two enforcers. Kaskan led the way over to the broken windows.
Greenery so crowded the hex troughs that they were difficult to discern. One trough had been holed, so that nutrient-laden fluid was spilling on to the floor. One enforcer lay curled up against the wall, while the other sprawled a few paces away, his machine pistol lying just outside of his reach. By now both men were utterly motionless.
‘The bulkhead door into the hex should open now,’ Kaskan reported over com, turning to gesture to the corridor behind where Lopomac stood. ‘The safety protocol cuts out once the mix is the same on each side of a door.’
Lopomac led the way out, followed closely by Carol and then Var. The short corridor, which terminated at the bulkhead door leading into the hex, was blocked by a similar square door at the other end. Lopomac approached the hex door, pulled down on the lever to disengage the seal, and a pendulum mechanism swung the door on its top pivot back up into the wall cavity. As she stepped into the hex behind him, Var peered up at the geodesic dome, considerably relieved to see it unharmed.
‘That was close, Kaskan,’ she remarked. ‘Too close.’
‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sorry.’
Now she felt a stab of guilt at berating someone who had so recently lost his wife – the kind of grief she herself understood so well – and who, despite the unacceptable risk, had now provided them with further weapons and dealt with a further two enforcers. But, when the public address system crackled into life again, it seemed that they had still not done enough, quickly enough.
Earth
Braddock swung his weapon hard – hard enough to crush the man’s skull – then caught hold of his shoulder and shoved him down to the floor, pinning him there. Saul stepped out from where he and Hannah had been hiding and headed over, his mind working at high speed as he assessed his current position here on Argus Station and calculated what he must do next.
It all seemed to make perfect sense to him now he had closely studied the results of Janus’s search for his sister. She had come up here, into space, because her speciality was in massive construction projects like those conducted up here, as well as synthesis, and other scientific disciplines besides. Yes, he himself had come here to
