Breathing Space Read online

  If you don’t get something to eat soon, you’ll be as much use as a nun at an orgy.

  I was shocked to realise the morning had long gone – small wonder I was hungry enough to eat my left foot.

  Thanks, Jessica… I made my way to the Mess, guiltily aware that my personal guards had also missed lunch. Of course, I couldn’t just grab a plate of stew, sit alone at a table and eat in peace. Being Chief meant I had to circulate around the room, greeting the diners and checking they were solid. If they’d been injured, I’d enquire about their health and how they were getting on. For some reason, people like to reminisce about their time in the meat-suite.

  I debated whether to send food into the Ops Room, but held off doing so. I wasn’t running this Operation. That responsibility fell somewhere between Jasen and Captain Potter, who’d been working together as a team for the last two years. Indeed, I’d been surprised when The Council agreed to let me come along, as my requests to accompany a deployment were invariably refused. They’d probably decided it would be good PR if the P’s were seen to be responding with significant force to this outrage.

  “If you wish to see the next phase of Operation Boltcutter, Chief, we are now in a position to proceed.” A young runner relayed David’s message as I was finishing up a discussion with a group of engineers concerned about the turn-around service times for the shuttles. I made a note of their worries about the shuttles’ reliability, promising to look into it later.

  Chris handed me a plate of snacks as we walked along the corridor, back to the Ops Room, which was when I realised I’d left my meal cooling on the table.

  “Thanks for this. Don’t know what I’d do without you, that’s a fact.” My escort went more or less everywhere I did, so if I’d had a problem with them it would have made the whole ‘we must protect our Chief at all times’ business that fixated The Council unbearable. Whereas, these good people smoothed my path in dozens of ways, big and small.

  I crammed a slice of pie in my mouth and grimaced. The chemical aftertaste was all too familiar. I’d been raised on this stuff. Mum wasn’t much of a cook, being more interested in drinking wine than preparing food, so we got to eat a lot of processed meals as The Cap used to bring back all the ship’s packaged provender that exceeded its EatMe date. Our mealmaker’s StockSafe mode always had to be disabled to allow us to use out-of-date food.

  Back in the Ops Room, platefuls of food were congealing as all eyes were fixed on the vu-screens, where two fully suited volunteers carefully approached the thermal fuses secured to the pile of wrecked furniture and general rubbish blockading the corridor. There were also a couple of fuses attached to the surrounding bulkheads and I got the crawling notion, looking at the displayed plans, that if these charges blew there was a good chance that a whole section of Basement Level was liable to collapse, maybe even breach the hull.

  Jasen clearly thought so. Other than several mobile cam units providing images and a couple of medics and the suited volunteers, everyone else had been withdrawn back up to Maintenance Level and all access points were pressure-locked.

  “May your gods go with you, people. We salute your courage,” Jasen’s voice rumbled through the Basement Level, courtesy of the mobile cam units.

  I blinked rapidly when both suited figures straightened up and gave the P’s salute in acknowledgement.

  As they approached the fuses, I held my breath.

  David leaned towards me. “The medics have calculated they have no more than fifteen minutes before their body temp starts to rise sufficiently to put them at risk.”

  “Right.” Can they disarm all five devices in that time?

  Well of course they can! Or your highly paid advisers wouldn’t have put this plan in place, would they? Right now, I didn’t need Jessica crashing through my head, so I ignored her.

  Sweat trickled down my back while watching the suited figures fiddling with small tools in large gloves, slowing down every movement far too much. Meantime the clock display was ticking through the green fifteen-minute safe period at light-speed.

  “I’ve disarmed Device A,” came the welcome response.

  I looked across at the clock. Ten minutes remaining…

  Someone in the room started drumming fingers on the side of their seat, until Potter snapped, “Belay that fidgeting, whoever you are!”

  “Device B now safe,” the suited woman reported, immediately kneeling down to deal with the bomb near the floor.

  Eight minutes remaining… They can’t possibly do it in the time!

  Get a grip. You are the Chief. People will be looking to you to remain calm.

  Jessica was right. I couldn’t let my fears spiral out of control, so thought about other things. Anything else. Not Tomas, though…I took a breath and refocused on the screen, watching their unhurried deliberate movements as both experts now moved to disable the other fuses.

  I hadn’t expected a woman to be one of the chosen experts. Does she have a family back on Restormel? Parents and a husband who worry about her? I didn’t bother speculating as to whether she had children. It’s too expensive to care for small children should their mother die in action, so we don’t do it.

  “Device C now inactive and safe,” reported the suited man.

  Three minutes remaining…

  A sigh susurrated around the Ops Room.

  “Well done on securing the bulkheads. You can be proud to know that you’ve probably saved Space Station Hawking,” announced Jasen.

  Neither looked up from their task, as they were both working on the devices attached to the piled barricade blocking the corridor.

  “I have disarmed Device D,” the bloke said, and bent to assist his colleague.

  “Body temps still within safe parameters,” a medic reported. “Data suggests they have at least another five minutes safe working time left.”

  While the clock’s green slice magically expanded to eight minutes, relief rippled around the Ops Room. Surely they’d be able to get this last bomb disabled in the time? The medical team had withdrawn to shelter behind the blast screen erected a distance down the corridor.

  The woman stopped working and tilted her head. “Jer hear that?”

  Which was when we all heard it. A stuttering fusillade of cries, roars and screams for help just on the other side of the barricade.

  “Keep back!” yelled the man, straightening up and putting his head close to the heaped debris-wall. “There’s a bomb!”

  The noise continued.

  As a short skirling noise pealed out from the small yellow device near the ground, the woman flung herself backwards, away from it. But the man simply didn’t have time as he was standing almost on top of it.

  A white, blinding flash seared my eyes, followed by a blast that ripped apart the thick silence draping the Ops Room. An ugly tearing sound rumbled on and on as the mountain of broken furniture, smashed sections of bulkhead, remains of domestic appliances, water containers and countless other unrecognisable items of trash flew apart.

  Device E had exploded.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before the barrier finished tumbling, Jasen had ordered the troops standing by on Maintenance Level to immediately advance into Basement Level, ensuring that no one could escape. He also ordered all medical units to the area – judging by the terrible noises coming from the site there were a lot of casualties. It must have taken a couple of minutes for the chaff thrown up by the bomb to clear, though it felt like a long light year with the screams, groans and general mayhem breaking out behind the screenful of fluttering litter.

  After the debris and dust settled sufficiently to see what was going on, it was every bit as bad as it had sounded. A horde of people were caught in the blast, evidently having massed on the other side of the blocked corridor. Some were slumped on the ground amongst the filth. Others, shocked and bloody, were somehow still upright. One woman was stumbling over the mounded piles clutching a shattered stump where her hand should be. A small naked boy w
as running around screaming for his mama, a shard of modcrete sticking out of his thigh. Many had their clothes blown off, displaying their skeletal thinness – these people were starving. Arms and legs protruded from the piles, some waving feebly, some still. Everything and everyone was coated in a sandy-grey powder, highlighting their emaciation, so they looked like shadowy wraiths with the vivid scarlet leaking from torn skin all the more shocking.

  You hold it together – you hear me? You’re the Chief! Think you’re the only one in this Ops Room sickened by this?

  As Jessica wound down, I took a breath and ordered coffee, ensuring there was enough for everyone else in the Ops Room, should they want it. The good stuff from my private supply, along with my own stash of cane sugar and fresh cream, as I craved the comfort of that wonderful aroma and strong sweet taste. Something not grit-covered and bloody.

  Often sliming bilgecrud get away with far more than they should because they simply snatch what they want. But occasionally their habit of treating other folks with all the humanity of a basking lizard bites them in the bottom. So it was in this case. In amongst the panicked and injured milling around, others appeared. And while they were on the skinny side of slim, they weren’t as painfully thin as the rest. Neither were they coated in blast-dust. But what really marked them out from everyone else, was their indifference to the tragedy around them. These few slipped amongst the weeping and wounded without stopping to see if anyone was alright. I saw one rat-faced man grope a sobbing, half-naked girl, ensuring he came away with a bloody smear across his shirt. Those in the middle of the scene wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint these characters, but they stood out like a supernova on a moonless night across our vu-screens as they eeled through the crowd and out towards the exit points.

  “Well that makes our task a whole lot easier,” commented Jasen. “They’ll walk straight into our troops.”

  Which is exactly what happened. It was a sweet moment to see nearly twenty Dreggers scooped up in a matter of minutes as they scuttled from the carnage, only to find themselves confronted by our main advance.

  The character in the blood-smeared shirt immediately started limping and snivelling, while imploring the captain to help his wife. “Please, please, she’s bleeding something terrible…” he whined. “You gotta help. I need to find the children. Think they went down here. Ran away after the blast – scared outta their skulls, poor little nippers…” He started sidling down a corridor leading to the rat-runs.

  But fortunately the captain had already received our latest Intel on her heads-up and with a quick nod, the scumsac was overpowered, shackled and marched up to our Prisoner Processing Point, where he’d be stripped, scanned and searched, before being brought aboard Predominant for interrogation. Several Dreggers were stupid enough to draw weapons, giving our people an excuse to kill them.

  Our medical teams arrived and started emergency triage at the bombsite, while hover gurneys lined up to ferry the most seriously injured up to the field hospital we’d set up on Trader Level. But even the uninjured were desperate for water and food. Our troops found themselves sharing their field rations and water pacs with parched, starving survivors while a feeding station was being established. Jasen put out a general hail for any medics expert in dealing with dehydration and malnutrition.

  The other priority, of course, was to dig out those who had been buried in the blast.

  I’m lying on my back and every breath hurts… I’m numb with cold as the wind whistles endlessly through the shard-edged holes… I call for Wynn, my voice cracked and sore from having swallowed so much dust… No one comes near and the only sound I can hear is the stutter of enemy fire, as they search for our bodies… I gulped back the rest of my coffee, the hot liquid pulling me out of the flashback.

  Before Tomas moved in, I regularly woke up, shaking and whimpering with the knowledge that my life since then had been merely an imaginary refuge and that I was still buried in that farmhouse on Ceres after it was blown up… Still waiting for a rescue that would never come… Only occasionally was I pitched back into that nightmare while still awake and right here simply wasn’t the place to implode.

  Well, you’re right about that, girl! C’mon Lizzy, pull it together. There’s journos panting for an update and prisoners needing to be questioned – go and do your stuff. Or you planning on being a limp-wristed passenger throughout this Operation?

  I won’t repeat my reply to Jessica, but at least her nagging pulled me out of my flashback shakes and got me moving. I retreated to my own cabin and patching into the feeds, I spliced together a series of excerpts from the footage we’d run during Operation Boltcutter, then made for Conference Room One.

  There were advantages to being the Chief. One being that if I wanted someone at short notice, they didn’t naysay me even if they were up to their eyes in their own stuff. I didn’t know the Publicity Officer assigned to Predominant, other than she came highly recommended and seemed to be doing a solid job. When she turned up, she was older than I expected. Nearly the same age as Mum, I’d have said, but looking younger. Knocking back a bottle of wine every night tends to fray a body around the edges.

  She soon settled into the job when I started running my film for her. “Oh, this is good, Boss. Showing how our personnel are struggling to defuse the bombs, rather than simply remotely blowing them up.”

  What! “Surely no one has suggested that’s what we’ll do?”

  “Oh for sure. The P’s have a shoddy rep out in this corner of Sector Two,” she announced.

  I wondered if she really was as suitable as her assessments claimed. “In what way?”

  She looked up, evidently belatedly realising that I was less than happy at her offhand dismissal of our organisation – the organisation that put food on her table and a roof over her head. “The General was known to be – well – ruthless.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You do know you’re talking about my father, don’t you?”

  She sucked in a breath, but her chin went up as she locked looks with me. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but there’s no point my telling you only what you want to hear. My job is to make sure you know exactly how the P’s reputation is faring. And in this part of Sector Two, it frankly stinks.”

  I gave her my best stone-faced stare. Both Norman and The Cap regularly used this particular expression, so I had it nailed, having grown up on the wrong end of it. I’ll say this for her – she held up well. Until I grinned and held out my hand. “Congratulations, Miss Farmer. You’re a long way from home, with a surname like that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes Ma’am. My family were colonists on Elysian before the Eoughts came through and ordered us off.”

  Dregging Eaties! We really should’ve stood up to them. “My condolences. It must have been a terrible time.”

  “Thank you, Boss.” She managed a smile as her composure returned. “But in truth, Elysian wasn’t all that heavenly. We still weren’t self-sufficient and once Earthcorps stopped running the regular supply ships, all the colonists were going short. If the aliens hadn’t kicked us off the planet, I reckon we’d have starved to death anyhow.”

  I swallowed, wondering when she’d stop serving up unpleasant surprises. “That’s a different take on the version the journos gave us.” Said version being that those godless aliens levered all humanity out of their cosy terra-formed colonies, creating havoc and suffering in the process.

  “Many of the journos still operating out here are financed by Earth-based companies or newsprogs,” she replied, “so they’re hardly likely to admit that Earth decisions were responsible for condemning a whole colony to a slow, painful death, when they can blame the slavering, black-toothed aliens who blew up Mercury.”

  And that also makes sense. “So you don’t have a problem in the way the Eaties swept in and cleared humanity out of a zone we’d colonised?”

  “Oh, they made an utter mess of the whole business, Boss—”

  “Elizabeth,” I interrup
ted.

  “I’m sorry? I don’t—ˮ

  “Call me Elizabeth,” even as the words fell out of my mouth, I was surprised. Being half the size of the average merc; the wrong sex; looking younger than my twenty-four years; and being patently unequipped for leading anything more demanding than a Sunday school outing had made me touchy about the business of titles. So except for the select circle of folks who’d known me as Elizabeth Norman, the General’s latest offspring – he had a habit of breaking daughters – those I worked with were required to call me either Chief or Boss.

  Although she was old enough to be my mother, Miss Farmer hadn’t tried to patronise or talk down to me. But neither had she been intimidated into backpedalling from telling the truth as she saw it, even when I was patently unhappy with her input. People with those qualities are rarer than free-floating airpacks in deep space.

  “Then please call me Blayse, Elizabeth.” She had a good smile. It lit up her eyes and made her look younger.

  Between us, we had a comprehensive news story, complete with stills and vid footage in an impressively short time.

  “If you could ensure this gets out to all the journos. And let them know we’ll be updating them as soon as we have further info to share, please.” I nodded to Chris, who was sidling into the room, prepared to return it to its pristine tidiness.

  Blayse hesitated. “Would you be prepared to give a series of interviews and maybe personal appearances at some of our news conferences?”

  Only if you threaten to throw me out of an airlock when I say I won’t. “That won’t be necessary – I’ve watched you in action and you clearly know your job.” Whereas I have as much charisma in front of a camera as a housebot.

  She bit her lip, clearly itching to say something.

  I waved my hand. “Whatever it is, go ahead and say it. I promise not to start frothing at the mouth and screaming insults at you.” Like my father.