Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

It wasn’t until the dinghy was almost past the Opera House that they had a good view into the rectangular notch of Sydney Cove, with the ferry docks and train station at its southern end. Noi, peering through the binoculars, murmured that there was no sign of anyone, but Fisher and Min still increased their pace as they approached Dawes Point and the sweep of well-lit bridge above. The Harbour Bridge was such a focal point, and at some angles the passage of even a low boat might be visible against the lights of the North Shore, so they’d planned to get through the area as quickly as possible. Madeleine found herself holding her breath, especially when she spotted Nash’s boat well ahead, tiny wake shattering golden reflections. Passing beneath the huge span, they were so small, and yet seemed so obvious.

Panting, Min and Fisher scudded after them, and Madeleine forced herself to strain for any glimpse of movement on the shoreline rather than gaze up and up at the bar across the sky. They turned directly after passing beneath, and drew the dinghy to a stop in the shadow of the first of the Walsh Bay piers.

The map had shown a hotel at this location, so they didn’t dare speak, simply waited till the two rowers had their breathing under control, then pushed back out of the bay and pressed on toward the turning point marked by Barangaroo’s northern park.

"Duk-duk! Duk-duk!"

Something had gone wrong. Min and Fisher stopped rowing, though they didn’t back paddle, allowing the dinghy to continue slowly onward. They could hear the dip and creak of oars ahead of them, coming closer, and after a long hesitation Noi responded, and the two dinghies found each other north of Walsh Bay’s central pier.

"What is it?"

Noi sounded as sick as Madeleine felt. They’d taken less time to cross the Harbour than expected, but they had few contingency plans, none of them ideal.

"There’s something in the water off Headland Park."

Nash’s whisper was calm, unhurried, and Emily better summed up the situation by adding: "Glowing eyes. There’s glowing eyes, looking."

"Did it spot you?" Noi gazed anxiously past them.

"Don’t think so," Pan replied. "We didn’t get close, saw it as we started around the curve. Scurried away like mice."

"It’s not visible from the near corner of the park?"

"We didn’t spot it till we were past the initial bump of the sea wall."

Noi lifted the binoculars and peered into the gold-striped dark. Barangaroo was broken into three sections grouped into a north-south rectangle. The north was covered in trees, sandstone blocks rising out of the sea to a grassy hill. The south was crowded with apartments and skyscrapers under construction. The middle, separated from the other sections by two small coves, was a mixture of garden and cultural sites – Madeleine had visited it the previous year to see an open-air sculpture exhibition – but several large buildings sat on its southern edge, including the enormous Southern Sky Hotel, a 6 Star extravagance which, before the Spires interrupted, had been in final preparations for a grandiose opening gala. The plan had been to row down to the cove nearest the Hotel, risking only the briefest amount of time travelling by foot.

After a tense wait, Noi lowered the glasses. "It doesn’t seem to be following you. Is it feasible at all to get into the park without going into its line of sight?"

"Yes. Easily." Nash paused, then added: "It is more a question of what we will encounter in the park, given that there is already one creature on guard."

"I’m for risking that," Noi said. "Anyone against?"

No-one spoke.

"Right. We’d better do this without any chatter. We unload, and push the boats out. Even with the path lights, it’s probably a bad idea to go stumbling through the trees, so walk along the inner path all the way down the east edge to the car park entrance. If the hotel looks like a no-go, we break into the nearest apartments and get keys, cars. If we’re split up, we’re split up, and will either meet in Plan B City or…we won’t. Nash, lead the way."

The nearest edge of the park was an inlet sheltered in all directions except north across the harbour, with more than enough room for both dinghies. They bumped against stepped blocks of stone, and Madeleine was not the only one to wet her feet in the process of getting out. A lamppost stood above them, marking the path’s location, and they took their time dumping their life jackets, pushing the boats out, and then climbing, a hands and knees progress, constantly reaching to confirm each other’s location, passing the food bags up, angling to avoid the light.

Moving at a pace just short of a trot along the path through the trees, they hesitated at the inlet at the southern edge of North Barangaroo, then darted from shadow to shadow in the more open Central section. The hotel loomed above, a monolith of glimmering blue glass, and they approached it at a tangent, following the road down to the gates of the underground car park.

Firmly sealed.

"Who takes the time to lock up in the middle of an alien invasion?" Pan deposited his food bag on the traffic island dividing the in and out lanes. "Want me to go try the front?"

"Not yet." Noi tugged experimentally at the service door to the right of the main gates. "Even if this isn’t wired with an alarm, punching it open will leave an obvious sign someone’s broken in."

"Shall I look down here?" Nash unslung his bags and headed down a branch of the entry drive, Pan at his heels.

Madeleine added her food bag to the growing pile, and peered through the mesh of the gate. This hurdle had not been unanticipated, but even though the garage entry was lower than street level, she felt painfully exposed beneath the cold fluorescent lighting. Not long till dawn. Just over six hours before the world would come hunting.

"We could try to finger punch just the lock," Emily suggested, peering over Noi’s shoulder.

"Because only breaking it a little would be less likely to set off any alarms?" Min asked. The sharper than usual edge in his voice brought a warning glance from Noi, and he made a gesture of apology, then sat down on the traffic island, examining reddened palms.

"In a hotel this size there will be a dozen entry points," Fisher said. "After the panic of the arrival day, the chances of every single one being firmly sealed is low." But he glanced toward the eastern sky.

"Guys, check this out."

Pan, beckoning from the junction of the drive. They followed him past a "Staff Only" sign, to another set of metal gates. Nash was peering through the one on the right, and pointed as they came up: "A solution."

Standing two metres inside the gate was a machine sporting a big green button, a gate release meant to be hit by departing drivers.

"All it needs is a finger punch, at just the right strength to push the button, but not so strong we smash the machine." Pan looked around. "Who thinks they have the best control?"

Knowing her limits, Madeleine opted to fetch the food bags, and returned just as the gate whirred upward. The elevator obliged them by not requiring any keys to access the ground floor, and then they were standing at a spacious junction directly before a door marked Reception .

"Kitchen," Pan said, and went right. By the time they followed him into an enormous rectangular room of shining stainless steel, he was pulling open a heavy-duty door. A wave of chill flowed over them. "Freezer. And this would be – damn, I’ve seen houses smaller than this refrigerator. We should all fit in here."

"No." Fisher walked into the rack-lined space and paced out an estimate of its boundaries, stepping around pallets of boxes set on the floor. "Four, no, three people at most. It’s not the oxygen; it’s the carbon dioxide build-up which is going to be the problem. Depending on the length of the challenge, we may need to risk even opening the doors at least once. Unless…" He glanced around the kitchen. "With big enough containers we could try to rig some kind of crude carbon sink. That may help a little."