Jupiter's Halo Book Two: The Fall

Chapter 25

The situation was quickly getting out of hand.

Tiny had cleared the second level of the primary station section more quickly than she’d expected and was already heading for the trans-terminal before she realised she had to move.

Now she could hear the robot wreaking havoc on the third level. From her place inside the link-stair, the sounds came muffled, as if from a distance. There could be no other cause for them though.

Iasa faced a decision: enter the level and take her chances avoiding Tiny long enough to reach the stair leading down into the secondary section, or wait for the robot to move on.

If she waited there was little to no risk it would find her, but she was already delayed by their encounter in the labs and by now Cross would be well on his way to the evac bay. Hornwood seemed unconcerned about the potential of being outnumbered two to one, but Iasa found she was less confident. If Cross and Blist believed he was still a friend they would lower their guard enough for him to take advantage. If they suspected at all that he wasn’t though, his chances of success dropped steeply.

Her only chance at preventing him from facing them alone was to get through Primary-three and back into close pursuit of Cross. But that meant facing Tiny first.

Damn Hornwood and his convoluted plans!

The emergency button in the bridge was meant to send a distress signal and issue a station lock-down. Hornwood had convinced her to let him re-route it and signal a start to Tiny’s new programming when pressed. It had seemed like a good plan; the crew and the rest of her team would be too busy dealing with the robot to intercept or even question her as she led the science team away to ‘safety’.

But bloody Cross had just had to bloody turn up in the wrong bloody place at just the wrong time. How very like the man that was.

Iasa spat, realising she would take a measure of satisfaction from his death that hitherto wouldn’t have happened. Unwittingly, he’d almost ruined everything and was on course to do so for sure if she didn’t act. Whether on purpose or not, she didn’t care. He’d interrupted her plans, put her life at risk and now left her trapped with this decision due to his dawdling approach to evacuating the scientists.

Damn! Damn! Damn, damn, damn!

There was really only one option.

Iasa steadied herself, testing her injured leg again to make sure it wouldn’t collapse on her in a critical moment. She was sturdy. Ready.

She took a breath of the suit’s stale air and pulled open the door. The noise of the level hit her like a wall. Screams, shouts, the mechanical whir of Tiny and the grisly sounds of the robot undertaking its task, filled the air.

Iasa came out of the link-stair at a brisk walk, surveying the c*****e of the corridor and trying to pinpoint the robot from the direction of the noises. It was far around the loop of the main corridor.

From this side, she had to traverse almost the entire circumference of the station to reach the next stair. She could cut it out and get ahead of both Tiny and Cross if she could get into the trans-terminal, but right now that was a big ‘if’.

She increased her speed, stepping lightly over the crushed bodies of crew unable to get out of Tiny’s way. The walls were splattered with signs of his violent passing and patches of the corridor dropped into darkness where the robot’s height had scraped the light fittings right out of the ceiling.

Iasa increased her speed again, wincing slightly as her foot came down heavily and pain flared in her ankle. It was manageable. It would have to be. She followed the bend in the corridor, passing open doorways that led into empty rooms. Their occupants had stepped out to see what was happening and for each one, it was the last mistake they would ever get to make.

The sounds of those desperately trying and doubtless failing, to flee were dying down. That was a bad sign. She'd hoped the people on this level would give Tiny more of a challenge. There were plenty of places to hide if you were thinking clearly enough to remember them. It was apparent as she moved on that few, if any of the crew here, had been thinking at all.

Up ahead she heard a clatter of thin metal and spitting sparks. A shadow reached into view and she knew Tiny had just taken out another light on his return journey. He was coming back too fast.

Iasa considered her options; straight on she'd have little chance. Tiny was too big, blocked too much of the space and left too little for her to realistically dodge through in the unwieldy bio-suit. That left the empty rooms. She glanced into one as she passed, her stride slowing to lengthen the time before all her options were taken away.

The space she looked on was small. With almost all of this level taken up by the expanse of the loading bay, there wasn't a lot left to spare. It was no hiding place. There wasn't a speck of it that couldn't be seen from the open door and Tiny would be eagerly looking as he passed by. If she was in there and it saw her, there would be nowhere to run.

The sound of tracks running against hard flooring grew louder. Damn Hornwood for making the thing so efficient!

Another noise drew her attention. A strange, quiet scratching that managed to seem loud through its sheer doggedness. She scanned the corridor, thinking she might see a survivor in among the mass of blood and abused flesh. Then she spotted the movement.

The double doors leading into the loading bay from this side were ahead and to her left. She could see from the angle that reaching them would put her directly in Tiny’s line of sight, but that wasn’t the aspect she focused on.

Behind those doors, moving cautiously against the slim, long window, was a human hand. The fingernails scratched at the reinforced glass again before the whole hand beckoned frantically. Someone was hiding inside. Someone who could see the intercept course she and Tiny were on and was offering her a way to avoid it. There was someone in there trying to save her life.

Iasa made her decision. Except for turning tail and waiting this whole thing out in the first link-stair, there didn’t seem to be much choice.

She bolted for the door, pushing herself through the pain that instantly burned in her leg and fighting the urge to look when she heard Tiny roar. It had seen her. It was coming.

The doors were closer to her than they were to it, but she would have to stop to get them open. The delay might be enough to see her crushed against them. It was too late now to change her course. Iasa ran.

As she neared they opened, swinging inward, terrified eyes peering around their edges. Iasa didn't even break her stride. She sailed through the space, hearing another metallic growl follow her. Inside the loading bay, about a dozen people huddled behind a makeshift barricade of crates and empty drums. They’d stacked them near, but not against the doors. She couldn’t think why they’d make such a foolish and damning decision, but it was lucky for her they had.

She lashed out to her right as the doors passed by. The strike wasn’t hard, but it didn’t need to be. All she wanted to do was surprise the person holding that door. It worked. The woman Iasa hit fell back slightly, bringing a hand to her face in shock. It was a terrible mistake on her part. She should have spent those precious seconds closing the door.

Iasa didn’t slow, but instead turned on an angle and started to head for the second set of doors. They led back out onto the same hallway, annoyingly past the entrance to the trans-terminal, but crucially behind Tiny.

“Hey wait—” Somebody started to shout after her, their voice was lost as shrieks of fear filled the cavernous space with bouncing echoes.

Iasa made a straight line for the doors. She leapt a set of thin barriers that had been stacked and left in the open, vaulted a line of crates with a hand pressed flat against their top to give her balance and keep her momentum going.

Just inside the doors she aimed for, was another man. He held his hands up, palms out and shaking in a gesture that she should stop. Iasa had no intention of doing so. She saw his eyes widen and guessed from the way he peered past her he’d just seen Tiny enter through the gap she had left.

Whether he had any intention of trying to stop her or not didn’t matter. She needed to get through those doors and he was in her way.

Iasa barreled into him without slowing. To the untrained eye it would look like a reckless, clumsy tackle, but she’d already planned the impact, the placing of each hand and foot, the weight distribution before she was within three metres.

Her collision served to send him bodily backwards. He folded at the middle where her expertly placed elbow took the wind from him before her lowered shoulder connected with his ribs to deliver the force of her momentum. He was down, out of action and more importantly, clear of the doors.

Iasa pulled them open without pausing to look back and ran into the corridor again. Ahead of her the bodies piled up, as if the majority of the crew on this level had made the effort to arrange themselves in a nice easy to crush group, for Tiny’s appreciation.

She slipped and skidded her way through the blood and body parts that covered floor, walls and parts of the ceiling. Iasa reached the link-stair door as the last sounds of people dying noisily in the loading bay reached her ears. It had been a choice of saving them or saving her. Given those options, she couldn’t think of a single situation where she would ever choose them.

Iasa opened the door and stepped into the second link-stair with only one thought in her mind; it was time to finish this.