Macao Station

Chapter Eleven

The pilot came to his senses gradually, the silken layers of sleep slipping away like a series of shrouds, one by one. His mouth was dry and his eyes stung, even in the relative darkness of the shuttle’s bridge. He groaned aloud and tried to lie still, inwardly cursing the suspended-animation cask he had slumbered in. All his joints ached, his head ached, even his damn teeth ached.

There was a muted hiss as the cask injected him with a reinvigorating drug. The effect was almost immediate, though faint at first. He tensed his limbs against the close confines of the cask, yanked away the straps that crossed his chest and wincingly sat up.

He looked down at his own body. He was in the navigator’s seat, which was in sus-an mode with its plastic cocoon still half-formed around it. He always slept in the navigator’s seat because its life support system was newer and presumably more reliable than those of either the pilot’s or co-pilot’s places. He was reassured by the familiarity of his surroundings. He looked across towards the main screen and the flight console, unconsciously intending to check the HUD.

There was somebody sitting beside the cask, magnetted onto a metal floor-chest, watching him. At least, it was the shadow of a person, framed against the weak multicoloured light from the control console.

The pilot jumped, his heart kick-started into a hammering drumbeat in his throat. ‘What the fuck?’ he cried, but it came out in a hoarse and unintelligible croak: Whurrthafack? He tried to recoil, but his muscles were still unresponsive. The shadow-person was within arm’s reach, much too close and too unexpected for the pilot’s liking.

‘It’s okay,’ said the shadow. The voice was clearly male. ‘It’s okay. Take a minute.’

The structure of the shuttle groaned and creaked — a faint, whining chorus of metallic voices. They were the sounds of a hull recently subjected to sharp braking forces, but the pilot’s mind was currently unable to snag on this detail.

The pilot nodded dumbly, trying to control his own panic response, struggling to get a grip. There was surely a good reason for this unexpected awakening, and the stranger seemed benign so far. It couldn’t be the prisoner, could it? Who would have woken him? No, it wasn’t possible. But that greasy little ball of fear kept trying to block his gorge. He reached down and fumbled the IV-lines from his thigh. Their loose ends floated away like coiling snakes.

‘I have taken the liberty,’ said the shadow conversationally, ‘of waking you early. I do hope you can excuse my impertinence.’

‘I. . . need. . . water,’ croaked the pilot.

The shadow nodded slowly but made no attempt to fulfil this request. ‘All in good time,’ it said.

The pilot wanted desperately to rise from the cask now, put a little distance between himself and this unexpected stranger, but he knew that if he tried to get up he might tumble out of the cask and go cartwheeling away across the bridge, possibly hurting himself on some protruding piece of equipment. Also, he wanted very much to turn a light on. The shadow watched him impassively. It disturbed him to think that this man had sat here beside him, in silence, all the time he had been waking up. ‘What do you want?’ he managed to ask.

‘It’s not me,’ said the man. ‘It’s the dragon.’

The pilot felt his face take on a puzzled expression. Had the shadow said dragon? ‘What?’ he whispered. His head felt stuffed with stupefying cotton wool. This would probably all make sense in a minute. Wouldn’t it? He tried to push his fears away — the world always seemed a little random on waking from sus-an. But man, he needed a drink.

‘It’s not me who’s the problem,’ said the man slowly, clearly labouring to be patient. ‘It’s the dragon.’

‘Dragon?’ parroted the pilot. He knew, suddenly, that this man was not right in the head. There was something implacable in the tone of that voice, something robotic and unreasoning. The thought landed like a bomb in his mind. He could well be in trouble here after all. He’d have to play this carefully — not an easy task when he still felt badly befuddled by his years in the cask.

The shadow’s head nodded seriously. Behind the man, the pilot could just make out the shuttle’s large viewscreen, now that his eyes were beginning to work better. It showed the expected asteroid field, in its familiar oblique spread, but it looked somewhat thinner than it should have been. Macao Station was not visible. And the shuttle was at a standstill. This man, whoever he was, had intercepted the vessel en-route, somewhere very close to its destination. The pilot’s heart began to race anew, his breath coming in odd lumps that were hard to swallow and hurt his chest. He felt like crying.

‘You have a man on board. One Prisoner Carver, if I’m not mistaken.’ The pilot, transfixed, could only nod. ‘I have to get the code for his restraining device.’

Was that all? Was that really all this man wanted? He wanted to free the prisoner who right now lay strapped and trapped in his own cask down in the hold. Maybe that was all that would be required of him. He knew it was a mistake to capitulate, but in his current condition what else could he do? And in truth, he didn’t even pause to consider the consequences. He just wanted this situation to end.

‘It’s on the datasheet over there,’ the pilot said in a small and trembling voice. He raised one shaky hand to point towards the control console. The datasheet lay magnetted onto the main dashboard. He couldn’t see it from here, but he knew it was there.

‘Good,’ said the man brightly. He rose and swam to the console, weaving around hunks of equipment and items of baggage. To his amazement, the pilot heard that he was singing softly and cheerfully under his breath.

The man began to root around on the dashboard, discarding rejected items that floated this way and that dreamily, silhouetted against the main screen. The pilot began to realise sluggishly that this might be his chance. He made to rise, but was confounded to find that he couldn’t get up. Panic began to boil inside him. The shadow-man was still facing away from him, searching the dash, but surely he would return any second now.

And then he remembered that his legs were still strapped into the cask! With desperate, fumbling fingers he began to undo the straps. Why were there so damn many? And then there was a hand on his chest, pushing him back down onto the bed of the cask. He heard a frightened whimper escape his own lips, but he was too weak to resist. The man floated above him now like a dark angel, his face a shadowy blank, the datasheet clipped to his belt.

‘One more thing,’ said the man, pressing down on the pilot’s chest, pinning him in place even more tightly than he already was.

‘What?’ whispered the pilot. He felt his bladder let go and was dimly surprised that he had that much liquid left in him.

‘This,’ said the man. And he drew a lumpy shape from his belt. ‘It’s not me,’ reminded the shadow-man. ‘It’s the dragon.’ And then the pilot saw that the shape was in fact a large — a very large — spanner. Coloured telltales reflected off its silvery surface as it fell towards his unprotected face.