Eugene Lambert - The Long Forever

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.