The Long Forever. Eugene Lambert

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the off button?’

      ‘Flight deck.’

      ‘Show me.’ He drags him away, out of the hold.

      I head over to Sky, skirting around the foam-splattered crate. The fire is out, but a few wisps of smoke still curl up.

      And that reminds me – I’m angry with her. ‘What if the alarm didn’t go off ? Or the crewmen hadn’t got here so fast? We’d have burnt to death. You think of that?’

      ‘Worked out, didn’t it?’ she says.

      Sure. If you’re not one of the dead kids. But I bite my tongue, knowing there’s no point arguing. And I’m rewarded with one of her blink-and-you-miss-it smiles.

      ‘You should’ve seen your face,’ she says, poking me.

      ‘One day you’ll get us killed.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah. You worry too much.’

      The red lights quit flashing and the siren’s wail chokes off. The silence that follows is kind of shocking, but it’s a relief too. My ears adjust, my heart stops thumping. It’s not the crisp silence like you’d get outside our cabin on a calm night after the birds had settled. Instead I hear background hums, the hiss and sigh of air pumps doing their thing. Keeping us alive. We stare at each other. And I guess that’s when our heads catch up with what we’ve done.

      ‘We’ve busted out,’ Anuk says, her scarred face softening, her eyes shiny. ‘Can you believe it?’

      Next thing, everybody’s whooping and jumping up and down, pumping fists and trading hugs.

      ‘We’re free, we’re free at last!’ a freckled girl chants.

      Sky shrugs at me. ‘Their whole lives they’ve been caged.’

      I’m grabbed and hugged and have my back slapped. A tall girl spins me round gleefully, laughing as I stumble. All this with the dead bodies of their friends lying only metres away. Feels weird. Soon as I can, I slip away to rejoin Sky.

      ‘Leave them to it?’ I say.

      She nods. We make for the hatch out of the hold.

      But Murdo’s back, shoving skinny guy ahead of him. He’s holding the crowbar the dead guy tried to take my head off with and bashes it on the bulkhead.

       BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

      Everybody shuts up and looks around.

      ‘Save it for later,’ he calls out. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

      It goes deathly quiet in here. Delight fades from faces. Mouths lose smiles and pull down into harsh lines. My guess is that Murdo’s forgotten he’s wearing matt-black.

      ‘We’re done taking orders from Slayers,’ Cam snarls. He steps towards Murdo, fists clenched.

      ‘Stop!’ I call out, shoving between them. ‘He’s no Slayer, just wearing their gear. I told you, remember?’

      Cam slowly lowers his fists.

      ‘So you did,’ he says, and looks disgusted. ‘Pity. All my life I’ve wanted to rip a Slayer’s head off.’

      Murdo swallows so noisily I think we all hear him.

      We’re in the corridor, stripping the guy I killed so Murdo can wear his clothes. Murdo grunts and points. ‘Look.’

      Dead guy has no little finger on his left hand. Like me. And Sky. And the rest of the nublood kids. They all had them hacked off as soon as they were born. Mine, I traded to that sicko Answerman in the Blight, to find out I was the Saviour’s long-lost son.

      I shiver. ‘Do you reckon he’s an ident?’

      Murdo shrugs. ‘Could’ve lost it in an accident.’

      I try to picture the guy’s attack on me. How fast was he? Hard to say. Not fast enough.

      For sure, the dead guy doesn’t look like any nublood I’ve ever seen. He’s a big slab of fat. So much so that his work clothes hang off Murdo. They’re made from some material I’ve never seen before and look hard-wearing. Lots of pockets. Reinforced knees and elbows. I definitely need to find some for myself.

      ‘This guy’ll start stinking soon,’ I say. ‘So will the other bodies. What’ll we do with them?’

      ‘Stick ’em in the cage for now,’ Murdo says. ‘Space ’em later.’

      He yells for somebody to give us a hand. Two kids, Ravi and Pol, come out. They help us wrestle the dead guy inside the hold and into the cage. Skinny guy’s already there.

      He twitches big time. ‘Is he dead?’

      ‘What if he is?’ I snap.

      The guy sticks his head in his hands like it was his mother lying there, cold and stiff. And groans loudly.

      ‘What’s with him?’ Sky growls.

      The guy’s head snaps up. ‘Shank was our pilot!’

      The silence that follows is ugly. And so is Sky’s scowl.

4

       MURDO’S STORY

      ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ I protest. ‘I just lashed out.’

      Heads are shaken. I hear grim mutters.

      ‘Great. What do we do now?’ a youngster says.

      My heart sinks. Thanks to me, we’ve traded our small cage for a bigger one hurtling through space with nobody at the controls. I daren’t look at Sky, so I glance at Murdo. To my astonishment, I see his battered mouth twist into a grin.

      ‘You think this is funny ?’

      He shrugs. ‘Relax. It’s not a problem.’

      Cam curses. ‘Are you deaf, or stupid? Your mate killed the pilot. Without him to fly this thing, we’re screwed!’

      Murdo loses the grin, trading it for a wince as he pushes himself away from the bulkhead he’s leaning against. ‘Wind your neck in, kid. I’m a pilot too, so we’re not screwed.’

      Out of the corner of my eye I see Sky start.

      No kidding. We both know Murdo can soar a cobbled-together windjammer along Wrath’s ridges like a bird, but this is a shift-stuff-between-the-stars spacecraft. Can he fly it? Like hell he can.

      But I keep that doubt off my face. He’s saying this to calm things down. And it’s working. Sky’s face is scrunched-up and sceptical, but the nublood kids are letting out held breaths and swapping happy looks again. Banged up in ident camps СКАЧАТЬ