The Long Forever. Eugene Lambert

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СКАЧАТЬ the food, so nobody notices as we stroll out after Murdo. At the far end of the main companionway, we catch up with him. He’s outside the hold’s closed hatch, by the big red warning sign about the lack of shielding.

      When Sky goes to say something, he shushes her.

      ‘Keep it down,’ he hisses. ‘There’s something I have to do, but I’ll need Kyle to help.’

      ‘What with?’ I whisper, suspicious.

      Murdo glances past us, but we can’t be seen back here because of a dog-leg in the corridor. His lived-in face is less battered by now, but he looks uneasy.

      ‘These dark-market contacts of mine,’ he says. ‘They’re all chancers. With promethium being so valuable, there’s a risk they’ll just try to take it off us.’

      ‘Let them try,’ Sky mutters.

      Murdo grins. ‘All the same, I’d feel better if we had insurance. We should stash some of the cargo. That way, if we have to run for it, we won’t have lost everything.’

      Sounds reasonable to me. ‘Where would we hide it?’

      ‘In that escape craft, with the prisoners.’

      Sky sniffs. ‘Oh yeah, nobody would look there.’

      But Murdo’s no fool. He tells us that after we’ve loaded a couple of crates aboard, he’ll launch the escape craft. It can float about until we come back to retrieve it.

      ‘But what about the guys in stasis?’ I ask.

      He shrugs. ‘What about them? Won’t do them no harm.’

      ‘And you’re sure we can find it again?’ Sky asks.

      ‘They have distress beacons, but you have to be close to pick up the signal. We know where to listen.’

      ‘What if somebody else hears it?’

      ‘They won’t. I’ve altered course. We’re in dead space now. No starship has any reason to be out here.’

      ‘So how come we’re sneaking off to do it?’ Sky asks.

      Murdo glances past us again. ‘The fewer who know, the better. So don’t go telling anyone.’

      About now, the warning sign behind him catches my eye.

      ‘Will you shut the drive off ? Or we’ll be zapped.’

      He grimaces. ‘Best not to. The others would feel it and wonder what’s going on. It’s not like it’ll kill us.’

      I look at Sky, unsure.

      She shrugs. ‘Makes sense, I guess.’

      Thankfully, Murdo knows his way around handling cargo, so we’re not in the hold too long being fried. Using an overhead hoist we lower two of the massively heavy crates into the airlock compartment. Using levers, rollers and wedges, we sweat them into the pod. It’s heavy work and even I’m shaking by the time Murdo slaps a push-panel with a red handprint on it and the access lock snaps shut. We scramble back up into the hold and Sky lets us out.

      When she closes the hatch behind us . . . it’s bliss!

      After a breather we return to the crew compartment. We haven’t been missed. Murdo carries on through to the flight deck. A minute later, the deck shifts under me.

      ‘Did you feel something?’ Anuk asks.

      I look at Sky. She looks at me. We shake our heads.

7

       SHANGLO BACKWATER

      I don’t have a problem with heights, but looking down at Shanglo makes my stomach squirm. Our freighter hangs nose-low over the moon, yet my feet stay planted on the deck behind Sky’s seat and I don’t fall forward. I know we make our own gravity, but it does my head in. We shifted back into real space an hour ago. Since then the freighter’s been decelerating and manoeuvring us into orbit, all on automatic, while Murdo watches and tries to chew his lip off. I’d been looking forward to see the storm-like nebula again, but this close it’s all spread out and too faint to see.

      That’s what Murdo says anyway.

      Sky was funny. She had a right go at him, sure he’d flown us to the wrong system. But the star map is on his side.

      We saw Shanglo’s planet on our way in, a lifeless-looking grey blob. That’s away to our right now. The system’s half-dead sun is somewhere behind us, a red giant.

      As we track over the moon’s day-side, most of the surface is hidden by yellow-white clouds towering above their dark shadows. But I catch glimpses of lush green land too. Towards the far horizon I see glittering blue. Murdo says this is an ocean, which is like a really big lake.

      Dodgy stomach or not, I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight. I could gaze at it forever.

      ‘Okay, I want everybody out of here,’ Murdo says. ‘Now!’

      He reckons our descent could get rough so we all need to be strapped in. With Sky being a jammer pilot too, she’s in the right-hand flight seat. I’ve a few hours’ flying time myself and have bagged the seat behind them.

      Anuk herds the other kids back to the crew compartment.

      I’m pulling my straps tight when Murdo summons up a graphic display of the star freighter.

      ‘Initiating separation, in three, two . . . go!’

      The flight deck shudders violently. On the graphic our freighter splits into two parts, our dropship front end shrugging off the larger dee-emm drive assembly.

      ‘Split complete,’ Sky says. ‘Everything’s in the green.’

      Anuk yells that they’re all strapped in.

      Murdo rest his hands on the controls for atmospheric flight, built into the armrests of his pilot seat. On the left are the throttles to control our speed. On the right a pistol grip controls pitch, roll and yaw. He swears it’s called a joystick, which is weird. These last few hours, I’ve never seen him so excited, and I’ve caught it off him. My heart thumps like it’s trying to punch its way out. If we manage to offload this darkblende he says we’ll be up to our necks in creds, so rich that we’d struggle to spend them all in our lifetimes.

      I’d settle for never being cold, hungry or scared again.

      Not for the first time I have to pinch myself that I’m not dreaming. Days ago I was Wrath’s most wanted. A hunted rebel, hiding out in holes in the ground, misery and suffering all I had to look forward to. Now this . . .

      ‘Right,’ Murdo says, giving us his most annoying grin. ‘Let’s see if I can remember how to fly a descent.’

      ‘Try real hard,’ Sky says.

      My СКАЧАТЬ