Against Gravity

"This isn't right," he said, for the benefit of all of them. "There are people down there who-Ah, the hell with it."

He turned from Sabak without another word and stepped back outside the building.

Kendrick wasn't sure how long he'd been out there in the open when he realized that Buddy was standing near him. No more than a couple of minutes, probably.

"I saw the way you were looking at these threads. I can see they're changing colour. You're going to tell me what's happening here, aren't you?"

"I don't know," Kendrick lied. How could he explain? He was far from sure that he could go out there and find Draeger on his own. He needed Buddy's support – even Sabak's.

Buddy shook his head slowly. "There's something you're not telling me. First that trip to the Maze, now this. It's not right to keep me in the dark."

Kendrick sighed and looked away. "I need to find Draeger. Are you going to help me?"

Buddy glanced back into the building where they could see Sabak in heated conference with several of the Labrat survivors. Things were not going nearly as well as most of them had hoped.

"I'm not sure," Buddy admitted. "We need to take care of things here. Sabak-"

"You heard what he said! This is as far as the rest of them are going. But this isn't the time to discuss or negotiate. We go now, and we find him. I need whatever help I can get."

Buddy rubbed at his face with both hands, gazing off into the middle distance. Meanwhile Kendrick studied his suit's read-out. Nearly an hour and a half had passed since they had disembarked from the shuttle, so his time was ru

But did you ever really believe you were going to be coming back home from this?

"See things from my point of view," Buddy pleaded. "There are injured people back there. I'm needed."

Kendrick shook his head in disgust and began to walk further away from the building and from Buddy. "You know why I'm here," he called over his shoulder. "You know what's at stake."

"Ken-"

Kendrick stopped and turned. "Doesn't what we went through matter to you any more? Or do you really want to stand by while Draeger gets away with everything?"

A few moments passed but Buddy still didn't answer. Kendrick turned and resumed walking.

"Wait!" Kendrick slowed his pace and Buddy fell into step beside him. "Okay. Look, we've come this far together, so fine. I'll come with you. Everyone's badly shaken, is all. Nobody was expecting to have to deal with any of this."

Kendrick merely nodded and glanced back over his shoulder. He could see the building behind them rising above their heads now as they moved further up the curve of the cylindrical chamber. He quickened his pace to a trot, and Buddy moved to keep up with him.

There were other buildings hanging above their heads now, open-air offices among gardens that had grown wild. None of it looked as though it had been really designed for people to live in. These vast chambers, with their artificial forests and machine-controlled environments, were really little more than a showcase not just for Draeger's technological achievements but for the sheer amount of money President Wilber had been happy to pump into constructing them.

Kendrick dug out his wand and studied the station map. It would have been a lot easier if they'd been able to use whatever the station's erstwhile occupants had used to move themselves around its interior. According to the map there was a transport system buried in the hull, but its nearest entrance was next to the place they were heading for anyway.

"Here." He jabbed his finger at the map display and turned to Buddy. "This is the research facility that's in the next chamber. It's where Draeger's heading because he can access the central AI memory core from there. We keep moving this way, we should reach an airlock leading to a co

"Just a couple," Buddy replied.

Kendrick had the illusion that, even as he walked, he was in fact staying rooted to the spot while the ground rotated under him. The building where Sabak and the others were still sheltering now hung way down behind them. He looked back and saw small figures milling around outside it, perhaps looking for them. All they needed to do was look up.

They found their first corpse by the airlock complex that led into the second chamber. The male victim appeared to have been flayed alive. The stink reached them long before they even set eyes on the ghastly remains. There were enough scraps of clothing left to identify him as one of Los Muertos.

Equipment lay scattered around the grass near the body and Kendrick stepped forward to find weapons or anything else they could use. He tried hard to ignore the overwhelming stench of death in his nostrils but failed completely.

"Jesus," Buddy muttered as he went to help him. Then he turned away, his hand clamped over his nose. Kendrick suddenly remembered the vision he'd had of Los Muertos soldiers torn apart by the creatures with Robert's face.

"He was in the middle of doing something when he died," Kendrick suggested, noticing a heavy backpack nearby that had some oblong metal object sticking half out of it. Fingers half-stripped of their meat reached towards a rifle that lay a few metres away. Buddy pulled the oblong thing free of the backpack before retreating out of range of the reek of putrefaction.

"What is it?"

Buddy didn't answer. He just stared at the box in his hands before lowering it to the grass, his face pale.

The metal casing featured an inset LED display on which a series of numbers appeared. It looked like a countdown, but the display was frozen. Kendrick imagined that the dead soldier had been configuring it in some way but had died before completing his task.

"What is that thing?" he asked. But Buddy simply closed his eyes and gave no answer.

"We don't have time for this shit. What the fuck is it?"

Buddy's eyes were full of pain as he opened them again. "It's a nuke. Those fucking idiots brought nukes on board." He stared down again at the oblong device and shook his head. At first Kendrick thought he might even be weeping. "I hadn't expected this," Buddy whispered.

Kendrick almost didn't catch these hushed words. But he sure felt the urge to say something – like So what exactly did you expect?

Instead he stepped on past the corpse towards the chamber airlock.

According to Kendrick's map, the other side of the airlock was pressurized. Ashen-faced and silent, Buddy followed his comrade into the pressure chamber.

Kendrick asked himself just why Los Muertos would have brought a nuke on board, the obvious conclusion being that they intended to destroy the station. Which led to the next question: why?

But even if that were the case, could just one nuke do the job? Kendrick couldn't begin to guess. Buddy muttered quietly from somewhere behind him, conferring with Sabak over his suit comm, telling him about the nuke.

"Buddy, tell him that the guy carrying the nuke died before he could set a detonation time. The bomb isn't going to go off."

"Yeah," said Buddy, "I already told them that. They're going to come and take a look at it."

He caught Kendrick's expression and shook his head. "Listen, they're not too wild about us heading off on our own like this, but right now they're more concerned about the nuke. We should get moving."

They passed through the far exit of the pressure chamber and into another series of interco