From Darkest Skies by Sam Peters

Author:Sam Peters [Peters, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2017-04-19T23:00:00+00:00

12

Down Time

Fleet took us back to the Magentan orbital. We floated around in zero gravity for a while, waiting for news on the shuttle back to Firstfall, both of us mulling on what Svernoi had told us. I didn’t know how much of it I believed, but what mattered was that Gersh had been on Magenta. I needed to know more about who she was.

I pinged Liss a message telling her what Svernoi had said. I needed to talk to her, but not with Patterson floating in lazy circles around me.

‘Fuck it!’ Patterson made a sour face. ‘I told Jamie I’d be back by the time he was home from school.’

The storm had hit two hours early. New Hope was closed for the duration and the Firstfall shuttle was grounded. We were stuck here.

‘How long before it clears?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know how it goes. Two days, maybe three. They’ve put on an extra shuttle from Disappointment to get people off the station. It’s already on its way up. It leaves in three hours and I’m going to be on it. You want to take it too? We probably won’t make the evening mag-lev into Firstfall, but there’s another first thing in the morning. We could be back before midday.’

I nodded, and it was only after Patterson had reserved our seats that I realised what I’d done. The evening mag-lev into Firstfall. The train that had killed Alysha.

Patterson floated in ever more bad-tempered circles attempting to sort out childcare for Jamie while I spent the rest of our time in orbit going through what Svernoi had told us, trying to make sense of it. In the shuttle to Disappointment we went over it together. By the time we landed it was like banging my head against a wall. Worse, it was the same wall, over and over and over. I was heavy again too, back on the surface. The transgravity aches were remembering themselves.

‘I’m trying to get it straight in my head,’ I said. ‘A squad of Magentan agents are out on an alleged training exercise …’

‘Of which there’s next to no record.’ We had names for the dead now. From their service histories they’d been long past needing any sort of training.

‘And we don’t know who ordered it or why or what they were doing. Only that they were somewhere near Settlement 64 when something bad happened.’ Neither of us bought the story of six experienced MSDF soldiers dying in a storm, no matter how strong it was. ‘Then we have a search and rescue team sent—’

‘Maybe a search and rescue team.’

‘To find out—’

‘Fuck! I was right. We’re not going to make the evening train.’

‘But if they were only pretending to be Magenta Search and Rescue, why didn’t they pretend properly?’

‘I’m going to get a room in a really swanky hotel and charge it to expenses,’ Patterson said. ‘You OK with that?’

‘The only record of them is in the Settlement 64 logs. Which makes least sense of all.’

‘You want me to book one for you too, or shall we share?’

‘Sure.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.