The Long Forever

3

BUSTING OUT

Red lights flash. Everybody jumps up, shouting. Not that I can hear them over the wail of the siren, but I see the fear in their wide eyes, their scared mouths working.

I pull my blaster, but Murdo snatches it off me.

‘I’ll sort the lock!’ he yells into my ear. ‘The alarm will bring the crew running. Get the kids ready.’

And then he’s gone, scrambling towards the cage door.

Cam’s nearest. I grab hold of him and shout into his ear, telling him to get his mates ready to bust out. And he might be sullen and hard work, but he’s no fool. He shoves me away and starts frantically passing the word on.

Sky tries to get up again, but slumps back down.

I go to help her, but she waves me away. So I run to see if Murdo needs a hand. He doesn’t. I see a flash, hear a bang. The cage door flies open. Murdo pulls it closed again, its rusty hinges screeching. A second later I feel that lurching sensation again and my skin stops crawling off me as the freighter’s drive shuts down. Cam’s got the kids ready. Too ready. They’re all eager and poised, eyes flashing.

I wave at them. ‘No, no! Act scared.’

Anuk gets it. She rattles the cage’s bars and starts yelling and screaming. ‘Help! There’s a fire in here!’

More kids join in. Just in time, as a man’s wide-eyed face appears at a porthole in the forward hatch. Next thing, it’s opening. A crewman wriggles inside; two more follow close behind. By now the crate is really blazing. The first guy curses and shouts orders. The other two pull red tube things off the bulkhead. They scuttle as close to the burning crate as they dare and start spraying the flames with a white foam.

Murdo shoves the cage door open. ‘Get them!’

Cam’s first out, Anuk right behind him. The guy giving the orders sees them coming. His hand dips for something at his belt. Too slow. Cam’s already on him, drops a shoulder and knocks him flat. More kids scramble out, getting in my way. They hurl themselves on to the backs of the crewmen battling the fire. I see a girl snatch a packing strap off a crate. One end is a big metal ratchet. I finally make it out of the cage and help myself to another, leaving an arm’s length to swing.

‘Kyle!’ Murdo shouts. ‘The hatch!’

It’s sliding closed again. I get there when there’s only a crescent left open. Without thinking, I throw myself into the gap, brace my back and shove as hard as I can.

No chance. Its hydraulics are way stronger than I am.

All I can do is make one last desperate effort, wriggle through and throw myself out the far side. The hatch slams shut behind me. I’m picking myself up when I smell sour sweat and hear a breath being sucked in.

‘No you don’t!’ a voice growls.

An iron bar cuts viciously through the air at me.

But I’m already ducking and somehow make it miss. The big crewman swinging it curses, off balance. And I don’t give him a second chance to brain me. I sweep my strap around, putting everything I’ve got into the swing. The buckle end catches him high on the right side of his head.

He grunts, and collapses at my feet in a boneless heap.

I poke him with a boot, but he doesn’t move. I make that four crewmen down, one to go.

And he doesn’t look much of a threat.

At the far end of this corridor is an open hatch. A skinny little guy rushes through it, sees me and stops in his tracks. Pulls a killstick from his belt. But he’s shaking so much that he fumbles and drops it.

I sneer. Can’t help it. The guy looks so frightened.

But there’s no point taking chances.

The closed hatch behind me has a flat plate on the bulkhead beside it that’s covered in greasy handprints. A dead giveaway. I slap my palm on to it, hard. It flickers and something hums. The hatch starts to slide open. When I look round, the crewman’s weapon is back in his hand. Much good it’ll do him. With the alarm still howling its head off and flashing lights bathing me in red, I walk towards him. I make sure to clatter the buckle end of the strap off the deck, once, twice, so he sees what he’s got coming. And it works. Before I’m halfway to him, his killstick hits the deck again. This time it’s no sweaty fumble. He chucks it away, rather than take me on.

‘I give up, okay? Please don’t hurt me!’ he whines.

Pitiful. But that’s that. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, we bust out and take over the star freighter. And Murdo was right. Five crew, that’s all. We hunt high and low, but find nobody else. Anuk waves a blade at skinny guy and he swears blind that’s all there were. Only three are left alive now. I didn’t mean to kill the guy who tried to brain me, but my blow must’ve caved his skull in. Nobody’s crying about it, least of all me. The guy that shouted orders zapped two of our kids who jumped him. Killed them both stone dead.

The guy who did the killing is dead too. His crewmates have been thrown into the cage. They might live, but they’re so messed up I doubt their mothers would know them.

‘Can somebody shut that siren down?’ Sky yells. She’s on her feet again, outside the cage, her back against the mesh.

Murdo grabs skinny guy off me.

‘You heard her. Where’s 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 all their lives, what do they know?

They shoot a few questions at Murdo, but he waves them away. ‘Later. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m so hungry I could eat a fourhorn, horns, tail and all. How about we find food and fill our bellies?’

That gets a massive cheer. My stomach, which doesn’t seem to care that we’re still doomed, rumbles loudly. Murdo suggests they haul skinny guy out of the cage to show us where the food is and how to prep it. He’s not keen, but Cam soon persuades him with a killstick.

All the nublood kids stream noisily out after them.

Anuk stops in the hatch. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

I say we will, but first we need to secure the prisoners.

Sky pokes Murdo in the chest. ‘So you’ll do the flying, huh?’

‘Quit that,’ he says, swatting her hand away.

‘You don’t really think you can fly it, do you?’ I say.

He looks me in the eye. ‘Just watch me.’

‘Look, how the frag are you even here?’ Sky growls.

Murdo’s grin widens. ‘I hid amongst some crates while they loaded them, ducked out of the hold and inside an escape craft off the crew compartment. Thought I’d stay there until you guys busted yourselves out. But time goes by and nothing happens. And the pod’s life support must be faulty. It gets so cold I can’t take it any more. In the end I figure I’ll bust you guys out instead.’ He winces and feels his battered jaw. ‘Only when I opened up the pod’s hatch, I ran straight into two of them. I could hardly walk, let alone fight. The rest you saw.’

I shake my head at him. ‘Okay, but why?’

‘Why not? The Slayer crackdown is making it damn near impossible on Wrath. Anyway, a life out there is only half a life. I belong out here. And –’ he struggles over to the nearest wooden crate and slaps his hand on it – ‘there’s this. No marks on it, but we know what’s inside, don’t we?’

He laughs, all his aches and pains seemingly forgotten.

‘Darkblende’s worth a fortune. Sell this load here and we’re not just sorted, Sky, we can go anywhere and do anything we like. Live so fine you won’t believe it. We’ll make the Saviour and his lot look like peasants.’

Sky’s scowl stays put. ‘You’re mad, you know that?’

‘Am I? We’ll see. Hey, Kyle, do you think you could secure that cage again?’

I give myself a shake. ‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Do it then. I’ll be on the flight deck, checking things out.’

With that, he lurches stiffly out of the hold.

Sky leans against a crate and sighs. ‘Well, either he’s mad, or he knows something we don’t.’

‘Seems awful sure of himself.’

‘Doesn’t he always?’

In cargo holds there’s always some rope lying around. I find a heavy-duty strap that’ll do. The cage’s lock was some fancy electronic thing. After Murdo blasted it, it’s melted slag. No problem. Growing up out in the Barrenlands, you learn to make do. I strap the cage door to its frame, lead the tails of the strap round a stanchion a few metres away, and use its built-in ratchet to cinch it as tight as I can.

Ugly. Effective. They’ll never undo that.

The two dead kids lie by the charred crate. Somebody’s thrown an old tarp over them, but their feet stick out. Inside the cage, one of the knocked-out crewmen stirs.

‘You’ve no idea who you’re messing with,’ he snarls.

‘Neither do you,’ Sky snarls back.

We clear off through the hatch and slam it behind us. Through its porthole I watch the guy struggle up to wrench at the cage door. It holds. He slumps back down.

‘If Murdo does get this ship’s drive going again, they’ll get a taste of their own medicine,’ I say.

Sky grins. ‘Hah. I hadn’t thought of that.’

I’d raced through the freighter’s crew compartment when we were hunting for crewmen. It looks much smaller now, with all the kids jammed inside. The lucky ones are curled up on two clusters of seats over by the walls. Others sprawl on the deck, or perch on anything they can find. Some stare around, their eyes big and curious. Most only have eyes for an alcove to the right. Cam, Anuk and skinny guy are pulling packets of crunchy-sounding stuff out of lockers that seem frosted up inside. Food, I reckon, from the eager looks on their faces. Light shines from a small clear hatch with something turning slowly inside it, and my mouth starts watering at the smell of warming food.

But I can’t help seeing how filthy and tired it is in here. Which is weird. All my life I’d heard off-world stuff is slick and shiny compared to Wrath’s rusty old crap.

Sky starts picking her way through the kids, heading for the hatch that leads forward to the flight deck.

‘What about the food?’ I say.

‘It can wait,’ she says.

My stomach growls, but what can I do but follow?

We’re almost at the hatch when she suddenly staggers like a drunk. I lunge and hold her up.

‘You need rest and food. Murdo can wait.’

‘Don’t be a gom. Help me.’

‘Okay, okay.’ I duck under Sky’s left arm so it’s over my shoulder, slip my arm round her waist and take her weight. She was never heavy, but now she’s scary light.

We carry on through the hatch, along a companionway and up a few steps on to the flight deck. As we lurch inside, another hatch hisses closed behind us. It’s brightly lit in here, and I have to squint. Two complicated-looking pilot chairs face forward, away from us. Murdo’s to our right, sitting in front of flickering lights and several powered-down screens. When he sees us he rotates his seat and struggles up.

Sky pulls free, limps over and collapses on to it.

‘What d’you think?’ Murdo says, grinning his fool head off, eyes shining as he gestures around.

We both stare at him.

‘You do know this is a spaceship,’ I say.

‘Not just some crappy old windjammer,’ Sky says.

‘Watch and learn, kids! It’s been a while all right, but it’s coming back fast.’ Murdo slides into the left-hand pilot seat and fiddles with stuff. The panels in front of him all light up together. He laughs triumphantly.

‘You can switch a screen on,’ Sky says. ‘Big deal.’

‘Check this out then!’ He taps at one screen confidently.

I’m in the middle of throwing myself into the seat beside him, but somehow I miss it.

And now I’m . . . floating in mid-air.

‘Murdo!’ I howl, flailing to grab on to something.

‘Sorry,’ he says, pawing frantically at his panel. ‘Switched off the synthetic gravity by mistake.’

I crash back down.

From somewhere behind me, Sky yells curses.

‘Been a while,’ Murdo says again, cool as you like. ‘Now then.’

The lights inside the flight deck dim to darkness. And suddenly I’m gazing out through forward canopy panels at a blizzard of stars. More than I’ve ever seen before, even on the clearest Wrath night. All of them scattered like sparks across a blackness so deep it sucks at my eyes. It’s a good job the seat’s there to catch me. I fall into it, amazed.

‘Beautiful, huh?’ he says quietly.

I have to force myself to breathe. ‘That’s . . . wow.’

We sit and stare, lapping up the view. When Murdo turns the lights back up to bright, I’m gutted.

‘We’ll have more time for stargazing later,’ he says. ‘Want to see where we were headed?’

‘What d’you mean, were ?’ Sky says.

But Murdo’s already playing with yet another panel. A column of green light shoots up in the space between the pilot chairs. It spreads out quickly to form a dimly glowing cube of green mist. Scattered throughout are thousands of white dots. A curved blue line arches between two of them. At its nearest end, a large red dot pulses. There’s a few chunks of text too, but the whole display flickers and shimmers so much that I can’t make them out.

He fiddles with the panel, can’t fix it, and curses.

‘Okay, so this is the star map for the Vulpes sector. Red dot’s where we are. Blue line’s our heading, so that’s Wrath’s system being left behind us and –’

Murdo reaches for the far end of the line in the mist, closes and opens his hand. The display zooms in to the line ending in a small cube, showing two suns inside it and some wriggling text. He leans closer and peers at it.

‘I reckon that says Enshi Four.’

Sky levers herself up from her seat and limps closer to lean on the back of mine. ‘What’s Enshi Four?’

‘A crappy little dust-bowl world, fourth out from a binary sun. They mine stuff there, but I forget what exactly. Only one settlement to speak of, up near its north pole.’

‘Why would we be going there ?’ I ask.

‘My guess is to sell the darkblende to the mining outfit based there. D’you remember Haggletown? Enshi’s polar settlement is like that, someplace you come to trade your goods for whatever you can get. Some is legit, but mostly it’s bootleg. Dark market. You can sell your contraband there and buy anything, with no questions asked.’ He smiles around at us. ‘It’s my kind of place.’

‘Do they deal in slaves?’ Sky croaks.

‘Absolutely. Big illegal market in slaves out here in frontier space, beyond the reach of the Core worlds. Mining worlds have loads of dirty and dangerous jobs no sane person would do. Slaves can’t argue and don’t need paying. Bigger profits that way. Nubloods like your sister would fetch a premium. Faster, stronger, quicker to heal. Already skilled miners. Yeah, they’d fetch big creds.’

Sky flinches visibly. ‘You sound like you approve.’

I jump in before this gets nasty. ‘How the hell do you know all this stuff, Murdo?’

Murdo stretches. ‘This is where I come from.’

We both stare at him.

‘Okay, real quick,’ he says. ‘When you guys were still sucking your thumbs, I was marooned on Wrath.’

‘Ma-whatted?’ Sky says, all incredulous.

He sighs. ‘Can’t this wait? I’ve got loads to do.’

‘No!’ Sky and me shout together.

‘Okay, okay. No need to make my ears bleed. Back then, I was second pilot on a transport like this. It was called the Never Again too, just like my old windjammer. Sometimes we carried freight, mostly we smuggled stuff. Anyway, me and the skipper had a bust-up. Bastard dumped me on Wrath, with nothing but the clothes I was standing up in.’

‘Why didn’t he just waste you?’ Sky asks, suspiciously.

‘The woman we fought over wouldn’t let him.’

‘Wasn’t Wrath off-limits?’ I ask.

‘That’s why he dumped me there. No visiting starships, so no way off again. If he couldn’t kill me, he wanted to be sure I was stuck there for the rest of my days. And before you ask, we knew nothing about the Slayers’ darkblende mining operation, or that they were shipping it off-world.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’ I say.

‘It’s none of your business. I’m only telling you now so you’ll stop whining about who’s going to fly this crate.’

‘So you can fly it?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you? Yes! Anyway, between the stars, this crate flies itself. It’s got an AI brain like your old robot pet, Squint, only way bigger and brighter. All I do is program our go-to, and when I fire up the drive it does the rest. Orbital merges, ascents and descents, in-space dockings, it can do all that too. Or give me assist if I fly it manually. But for surface take-offs and landings, that’s when you’ll need me hands-on. Especially the kind of hang-outs we’ll be dropping in on, off the beaten track.’

Sky’s face hardens. ‘So we don’t need the crew?’

Murdo shakes his head. ‘Nah, I say we space them, along with the bodies.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Hang on!’ I’m not sure I like the sound of this.

But Murdo’s not listening, busy playing with the controls on the panel again. The flickering star chart zooms out. The blue line that shows our freighter’s track starts blinking.

‘What you doin’?’ Sky asks, sharply.

‘Changing course,’ he says.

Sky pulls out her blaster. ‘The hell you are!’