Against Gravity

You're already dead, Kendrick thought silently. You died a long time ago.

"The station will enter the wormhole in only a few more minutes," McCowan continued. Now Kendrick tore at his own eyes, feeling blood trickle down his wrists. It wasn't real, none of this was real, so what did it matter? "There won't be any technology for Los Muertos to steal, or anyone else either. Stopping Draeger is one thing, but what then?"

"If you thought I was so dangerous, then why did you bring me all the way to the Archimedes?" Kendrick shouted back.

"Unfortunately," said McCowan, from a thousand miles away, "I did not anticipate that someone would also bring a truckload of nuclear fucking bombs on board."

Kendrick began to smash his head against a rock, cool icebergs of agony crashing behind his eyes with each impact. There was a hard, unpleasant numbness behind his teeth. But what did it matter? What did it matter? What-?

– cheek pressed against the wall next to the airlock, and he was back, he was back. He tore himself away, pain still coursing through him.

It faded after a moment, like suddenly waking after re-experiencing a terrible accident in a dream. Like so much else, a lie, an illusion.

Breathless, his skin smooth and hard, eyes semi-opaque under their nictitating membranes, Kendrick stepped through the door. He pulled it closed behind him and ran the depressurization routine. There was no air to suck out, but still the outer airlock door wasn't going to open until the routine had run its course.

Then he pushed the outer airlock door open and stared off into empty space with naked eyes. He was now at the far end of the station, looking out across the exterior of the chamber's cap. The Earth slid past his view as the station spun on its axis.

Kendrick could see rails on which small platforms were mounted and rungs radiating out from the centre of the endcap. Also at the centre of the endcap was a raised area bristling with communications equipment. The airlock doorway in which he stood was positioned roughly equidistant between the endcap's centre and its rim. The station's spin made the endcap appear to his senses like a vertical cliff. He stepped quickly back from the lip of the airlock, feeling the sudden onset of nausea.

A terrible cold had begun to creep over him and he wondered just how much his body would be able to take of what he was about to put it through. Even though he knew he was ru

Kendrick reached for a handhold positioned just outside the airlock door and pulled himself further out onto the Archimedes' hull. Then he gazed upwards towards the comms array at the centre of the endcap. In the distance he saw a figure in a spacesuit.

It had to be Draeger.

Kendrick gripped on to the rungs and pulled himself slowly upwards, working against the station's spin. He imagined himself as a machine, an automaton incapable of feeling fear or any other emotion. All he had to do was hang on to those rungs and not let go.

All the while a painful numbness gnawed at the edge of his thoughts. There were limits to how long he could survive like this. He kept on climbing, concentrating solely on the rhythmic flexing of his muscles, ignoring the gathering pain as he pushed himself on. Chunks of metal and concrete became visible around him in the inky blackness, some of them spi

He glanced towards the comms array and saw that Draeger had almost reached it. Kendrick yelled soundlessly, his lungs empty and useless, then pulled himself along faster. Draeger appeared as yet unaware that he was being pursued.

When a shadow passed over Kendrick he almost lost his grip. He managed to hold on and stared up at the underbelly of a shuttle with unfamiliar markings. The craft moved on, disappearing from sight beyond the curved rim of the endcap as it performed a docking manoeuvre.

He'd been right. A man as cu

Draeger finally turned his way, perhaps catching sight of the shuttle as it passed overhead. His face was invisible behind the faceplate of his helmet, but it was clear he could see Kendrick.

Now Kendrick knew that he'd become everything Sieracki had intended for him to be: a man-machine built for killing. He felt a distant, almost inhuman sense of satisfaction as he clambered rapidly up towards the spacesuited figure ahead of him.

On the side of the communications tower Draeger had opened a panel behind which lay a display screen showing status lights. As Kendrick rushed towards him, he tried to scramble out of the way and, in doing so, something slipped from his gloved hand. Draeger reached out for it frantically.

Kendrick caught it easily with his uninjured hand and realized that it was a datachip. He could guess only too well what information was contained in it. Though his numb fingers held it clumsily, he continued squeezing it until the brittle plastic snapped and disintegrated.

Now Draeger was trying to get away from him. As he turned for a handhold, Kendrick let the fragments of the crushed datachip spin away. Then he reached out for his adversary.

When Draeger kicked out frantically with one boot Kendrick lost his grip for a moment before grabbing the other's leg and hauling himself on top of him. Draeger struggled and twisted beneath him, letting go of the rungs. He floated away for a moment before returning to hit the surface of the station with a thump after his safety cord had reeled out to its full length.

Kendrick ignored the gloved hands that beat frantically at his face as he reached for Draeger's helmet and released the clasps holding it in place. Draeger continued to struggle desperately for his life but was clearly finding it difficult to manoeuvre inside his bulky space-suit. Kendrick could see the man's mouth working uselessly behind the visor, his eyes wide and full of terror. Then Kendrick twisted Draeger's helmet off its retaining ring and wrenched it away, careful even so not to let go of it.

He watched Draeger's features become puffy, the man's mouth moving soundlessly, his limbs still flailing. After several seconds he grew limp, his lips ceasing to frame dying words that would never be heard. Draeger's face became frozen for eternity in an expression of shock and dread.

Watching an unaugmented human undergoing implosive decompression was far from pretty. Kendrick tried to register some kind of emotion. But he only felt empty, used up. Draeger was dead, but he himself didn't feel any different.

As blackness began to creep across his vision, a desperate, all-consuming need to survive now drove him on. He thought of his wife and daughter, disappearing from the world for ever; of Caroline and her slow, terrible death; then of Peter McCowan.

There were no guarantees that Draeger's spacesuit would fit Kendrick but the two men were of a similar height and body type. Kendrick pulled the suit open and manoeuvred Draeger's corpse out of it. It spun away from him slowly, tumbling end over end.

Carefully, he slotted himself into the suit, first wedging the helmet as best he could between two rungs and praying that it wouldn't work its way loose. The suit felt tight and uncomfortable, but Kendrick suspected that he only had seconds left before he lost consciousness. Then he gripped the helmet with both hands and pulled it on quickly.

With the last of his strength he tapped at the panel on the spacesuit's arm and was rewarded with the sound of hissing air. Overwhelming nausea filled him as his lungs shuddered back into life. He twisted helplessly on the end of the safety line as agonizing spasms racked his body-