Against Gravity

He moved on, through another door and into a room filled with racks of delicate-looking computer equipment. He halted, tensing up, at first thinking that something living was in there with him. He relaxed again on seeing that it was another body, a woman's.

He stepped closer and discovered, shocked, that it was his erstwhile interrogator. Leigh squatted in a corner, her combat rifle propped between her knees, its barrel placed under the shattered remains of her jaw. Kendrick looked away quickly.

He glanced around the room and, though he was no expert, he was prepared to bet that she'd raked the banks of machinery around her with automatic fire before ending her life.

He froze on hearing movement nearby. Then, holding his gun out in front of him, he stepped through a further door into a darkened corridor.

"Hold it right there."

The voice came from an adjoining doorway. Kendrick stopped dead, feeling cold metal press into the side of his neck.

"The gun. Drop it, kick it away."

Kendrick reviewed his options and discovered that he had none. He let the pistol slip from his fingers, then pushed at it with his foot. It skidded across the floor and stopped near a wall.

"Turn around."

He'd expected Draeger, or even Buddy. Instead it was Sabak, accompanied by two armed Labrats.

Kendrick was stu

"Whatever you're intending, you're not going to do it." Sabak sounded calm, in control.

"I haven't done anything."

"I was at the door of the transport terminus. I saw you beat the fuck out of Buddy."

"I can explain."

Sabak shook his head. "Forget it. I wouldn't believe you anyway. You're working for Draeger, right?"

Kendrick blinked at Sabak, standing with two tough-looking types immediately behind him. He laughed.

"Me, working for Draeger? That's rich."

Sabak bristled. "You've been very vocal against our whole operation from the start. Did you kill those other men back there?"

Kendrick stared at him, incredulous. "Now you're out of your mind. Most of them have been dead for days."

"I still don't feel convinced."

"I'm not working for Draeger. For Christ's sake, I-"

And there it was again: a sound like wine glasses tinkling gently together. Or moths beating against a light bulb.

They all turned as one. Light flickered at the far end of the darkened corridor, briefly illuminating the outline of a doorway that until now had been lost in shadows. The strange sound grew louder before fading again.

And then they appeared: tiny, frail, dream-like bodies, all with the face of Robert Vincenzo and each of them wrapped in an eerie halo of light. At first just a few, then a dozen, then yet more emerged from the darkness.

Kendrick turned to Sabak. "Those are the things that killed all these people."

But Sabak wasn't listening to him. "I didn't think…" Clearly frightened, he turned to his men. "Get hold of him."

Kendrick was gripped by both arms and dragged back the way he had come. Now he was hustled along a corridor he hadn't yet explored, to a room at the far end. To Kendrick's despair, Sabak had meanwhile confiscated his pistol.

"What do you know about this?" Sabak was pointing to an untidy pile of electronic junk lying in the far corner of the room. Racks of equipment filled the surrounding walls, stretching into unlit gloom.

As Kendrick looked closer, the junk resolved into something else altogether.

He recognized the tiny read-out and the oblong box it was attached to. Plastic explosives were carefully packed around it, and myriad wires linked it all like the serpent-hair of a cybernetic Medusa.

The third and previously unaccounted-for nuke, which he'd been so sure that Draeger had in his possession.

Kendrick licked his lips. "It's a nuclear bomb."

A woman knelt by the device, lost in contemplation. She started gently probing it with some hand-held device. He just hoped she was an expert who knew what she was doing.

She spared Kendrick's arrival the briefest glance before leaning over until the side of her head touched the floor, peering into the narrow space between the nuke itself and the wall against which it was placed.

Sabak spoke to her. "Shirl, is that definitely what he says? No chance it's a decoy or something else altogether?"

She shook her head without even looking at them. "It's the real deal: a field nuke – backpack tactical weapon. Normally used for high-yield radiation effect, but still powerful enough to blow at least a hole in the hull." She paused, as if in contemplation. "No, make that rip the place to shit."

"Okay, then, can you disarm it?"

"Most of these wires have nothing to do with the nuke itself," Shirl explained. "It's all to do with booby-trapping. If we so much as move this thing from where it's currently sitting, there's no guarantee it isn't just going to blow immediately." She shook her head. "We need somebody who knows more about these things than I do. I'm out of my depth."

"Is it on any kind of timer?" Sabak demanded.

She shook her head. "Timer's not working. I think maybe they were about to set it, but then…" She shuddered. "Something happened. You saw those other people back there?"

Shirl stood up, wiping dusty hands on her suit. "These things always come with some kind of a remote detonator, a back-up in case the timer fails or you want to blow it ahead of schedule, or at a safe distance. Something hand-held – like, stick a nuke under a dam or someone's presidential palace, drive a long way off, then hit the button."

Sabak started. "You mean there might still be some kind of trigger round here somewhere?"

Leigh's face sprang into Kendrick's mind. He remembered Buddy telling him that she ranked pretty high in Los Muertos. If anyone had been in charge of their expedition here, it might well have been her. So, perhaps any such trigger would be on or near her body…?

Of course, Sabak wasn't necessarily aware of this. "We're going to have to search all these corpses," Sabak was even then saying with obvious distaste. "And carefully."

"Just listen to me," Kendrick insisted. Sabak gave him an a

"Bullshit," Sabak sneered. "Los Muertos is one thing, but Draeger doesn't have any reason to blow up the Archimedes. He'd be killing himself along with the rest of us."

The sound of screaming resumed, sounding closer now. Sabak stepped away, listening, his face suddenly pale.

"Keep a hold on him." Sabak nodded towards Kendrick. "And bring him along. Shirl, keep working on that thing and let me know if you can figure anything out. Just… be seriously fucking careful."

"Really? I thought maybe I'd just cut the blue wire and see what happened," she deadpa

Kendrick's two guards pushed him along immediately behind Sabak as they made their way towards the source of the screaming. The sound, an unending ululation like nothing he had ever heard, raised the hairs on the back of Kendrick's neck. He wondered how anyone could have the physical ability to scream so consistently, and for so long.

They turned a corner and found two more of Sabak's men waiting by an open doorway, their weapons at the ready. Kendrick couldn't yet see what lay beyond.

"They're in there," said one of the men. Kendrick could see how frightened he was. He felt a sudden tightening in his own chest, and didn't want to see what was in there.

As Sabak stepped forward the screaming stopped, to be replaced by a fit of coughing, then by the sound of someone gasping for breath.

Sabak stood for a long time at the doorway, staring at whatever lay beyond,