Читать книгу The Long Forever - Eugene Lambert - Страница 8

1

FEELING GRIM

‘Is your friend no better?’ one of the other prisoners asks.

‘What’s it look like?’ I say, real short.

I shouldn’t be bad-tempered. The girl was just asking. But Sky’s getting sicker so fast she’s scaring me. That, and I’m lightheaded with hunger and choking with thirst. My skin is sore too, horribly prickly, almost as if it’s trying to crawl off. It’s like that healing itch us nubloods get when we’re recovering from an injury, only loads worse.

Which is weird, because I’m not injured.

A dozen kids are stuck in this caged-off part of the star freighter’s hold with us. All idents, nubloods like myself. They’ve got the skin-crawling thing too, but you’d hardly know looking at them. They’re ident camp veterans, the toughest of the tough, and well used to suffering.

‘Why haul us off-world only to let us starve?’ I mutter.

Sky’s green eyes are sunk into her face. She stifles a cough. ‘Relax. They’ll feed us. We’re worth less dead.’

I hope she’s right. We haven’t seen our captors since we were loaded aboard. How long ago was that? At least three days, to be gnawed at by hunger so bad. One thing’s for sure, we’re not on Wrath any more. We’re off-world. In space. Tunnelling through the big cold empty.

Where to? Guess we’ll find out when we get there.

I lick my dry lips, imagining what I’d see if I could look back the way we’ve come. A scatter of stars, one of them the sun I squinted up at for sixteen years. Even if this freighter’s drive is as shagged as the rest of it looks, we’ll already be a good few light years on our way; too far to see the brown speck of Wrath, our barren little dump world.

Did I do right by coming with Sky? Don’t know.

All I know is that with every breath I take, I leave Colm further behind. If my twin’s still alive. By now he’ll have led the attack on the Slayer spaceport we found hidden in the heart of the No-Zone. Knowing him, he’d be fool enough to lead from the front and get himself wasted.

At the back of the cage a pipe drips water into a little plastic beaker. When it’s full the girl watching it so intently will drink it down. It’s her turn and fairer than passing it around. Some kids take bigger gulps than others. Must be getting close too, because she licks her lips and nods to the waiting youngsters to get ready. While she drinks, they get to cup their hands under the pipe so no drops are wasted. I’m after the redhead lad. Three more beaker-fills between me and a few mouthfuls of brackish water.

At the rate the pipe drips it’ll keep us alive . . . just.

Sky says it’s set like that on purpose, to keep us weak.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to forget how thirsty I am. Flashes of light spark on the back of my eyelids, in time with the vicious prickling of my skin. Somehow I end up thinking about that Peace Fair I went to, where this all began. Seeing idents for the first time. Wondering which one was evil. Missing the Cutting ceremony, but watching the Unwrapping in the middle of a baying crowd. Everyone straining to see as the bandages came off. Which twin would show the impossibly quick healing, the telltale sign of the nublood monster? The sickening executions that followed. Nooses around children’s necks. The bang of the trapdoor as it fell open. The drop. A bar-taut rope twitching as a young life kicked itself away. Never for one moment suspecting that I was an ident myself. Worse still, that I was the one with the monster nublood pumping in my veins.

Now we know the hangings were faked so the kids could be spirited away afterwards. Like the ones in here.

I open my eyes and the redhead lad is next for the cup.

For maybe the thousandth time I reach inside my jacket, making out like I’m having a scratch. Feel the cold and reassuring metal of my snub-nosed blaster. When we were loaded aboard, the freighter crew couldn’t be bothered searching us. They’ll have figured their Slayer buddies would’ve taken care of that. Didn’t even find Sky’s leg brace, which would have taken some explaining.

‘Don’t!’ she hisses. ‘What if they’re watching?’

‘I’m sick of this,’ I whisper. ‘I say we bust out now. If we wait any longer, you’ll be too sick to back me up.’

She shakes her head, sending her white dreads flying.

‘No. We wait. I’ll be fine.’

‘You keep saying that; what if you’re not ?’

That’s my big worry. All us nubloods feel like crap, but we’re not getting worse. Sky is though. I grew up with a healer for a mother, so I know ill when I see it. Sky won’t admit it, but whatever’s hurting us is hurting her much worse. See, she’s only pureblood and weak already from the darkblende poisoning that’s slowly killing her. And that boiled buzzweed she takes for her lung pain doesn’t seem to help with this, so how much more can she stand?

‘We stick to our plan,’ she snarls.

Our plan? Hers, more like. Sky’s betting that we’ll be taken to the same place they took her sister, Tarn. Her plan is to keep our heads down until the freighter lands and unloads us, before shooting our way clear. Yeah right. Me, I’m for busting out the first chance we get, jamming my blaster in the pilot’s ear and making him take us some place safe. And this way we could give these other nublood kids a chance too.

But Sky won’t have it. Says they aren’t our problem.

‘I don’t like the way you look,’ I whisper.

‘Find someone cuter then.’

‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You –’

A violent lurching sensation shuts me up. My seeing goes all strange. Everything around me streaks away, smeared out to an impossible distance. For one heart-stopping second I swear our star freighter has slammed into something. But a few frantic blinks later everything snaps back. Something has changed though. That awful prickly feeling scratching at my skin is gone.

Sky lets out a sob of relief . . . so it’s not just me.

‘What just happened?’ I gasp.

‘Whatever it was – I’ll take it,’ she says.

The other kids are swapping startled looks when a loud metallic snick jerks our heads round. It’s followed by a soft sucking sound and then a soft breeze that’s there one second and gone the next. Beyond the thick mesh caging off this part of the cargo hold, a rust-streaked hatch set into the forward bulkhead slides slowly open. Two men clamber inside through it, hauling a large dark something between them.

That something . . . is a man.

Slumped, unresisting, his head hangs down, hiding his face from me. But I see the matt-black uniform.

A Slayer!

Sky stays sprawled where she is, squirming to see past kids in the way. ‘Are they bringing us food?’

‘No, another prisoner. A Slayer. In a right state too.’

The black uniform is torn and filthy and he’s clearly taken a fierce beating. His legs kick feebly as the crewmen drag him closer before dropping him. His head hits the deck with a loud thwack. Slayer or not, I can’t help wincing.

One of the crewmen unslings a killstick and waves it at us. ‘Back up, away from the cage door.’

‘You heard him,’ the other growls. ‘Shift yourselves.’

Sky and me, we’re already at the back of the caged area. Kids nearer the door haul themselves slowly and grudgingly to their feet before shuffling back towards us. The unarmed crewman unlocks the cage door and swings it open.

‘Won’t get a better chance than this,’ I whisper to Sky, slipping the words out of the side of my mouth.

‘No!’ Her cold claw of a hand clamps round my wrist.

While the guy with the killstick covers him, his buddy grabs the Slayer by his heels and drags him inside the cage. The man’s head leaves an ugly red smear behind on the deck plates. I’m raging, but Sky’s still got hold of me. The crewman dumps the Slayer, retreats and clangs the cage door shut again. Gives it a tug to check it’s secure.

‘Some company for you,’ he jeers.

‘What we need is food,’ somebody calls out.

‘Eat this guy then,’ the crewman says, and laughs.

They both clear off, and the hatch shuts behind them.

Sky lets go of me at last.

‘Great!’ I thump my head into the hull behind me.

Meanwhile, the nublood kids gather round the face-down Slayer. I see clenched fists and angry looks. One mean-looking lad growls something about it being time for payback and kicks the guy in the ribs.

I hiss out a breath and clamber to my feet. ‘Hey! Quit that!’

Growler boy sneers. ‘What do you care?’

‘Yeah, back off,’ a tall girl with a pox-marked face snarls.

I don’t need this. Twelve of them, only one of me, and I’m supposed to be keeping my head down. But now I get my first good look at the Slayer. I see the way-too-long-for-a-Slayer blond hair, matted with blood.

‘Oh, no way. It can’t be!’

I barge past the kids, drop to my knees and roll him on to his back. Stare in disbelief at the battered face.

‘What the frag are you doing here?’ I hiss.