Proxima Read Free

‘You’re late,’ she said.
    ‘Sorry. Just out of medical.’ Liu gave their names.
    ‘Name tags?’
    Liu dug his out of a pocket and showed it to her; she scanned it with her slate. She turned to Yuri. ‘You?’
    Yuri just shrugged.
    Liu said, ‘Like I said, just out of medical.’
    ‘Just awake, huh.’ Jones shook her head and made a note on her slate. ‘Typical. Make sure you sort it out later.’ She had a thick Australian accent. ‘Sit,
you’re late.’
    Finding a seat in the semi-darkened little theatre turned out to be a problem. Three guys sat together on a row of a dozen otherwise empty seats. When Yuri went to sit down in the row Liu
prodded him in the back. ‘Move on,’ he whispered.
    Yuri had been quick to anger ever since he’d first woken up on Mars. ‘Why should I?’
    ‘Because that middle guy is Gustave Klein. Wait until you’re beefed up before you take him on.’
    But it was already too late, Yuri realised. Klein was white, maybe fifty years old, hefty if not overweight, head elaborately shaven. His fists, resting on his knees, were like steam hammers.
And Yuri had made eye contact with him. He barely noticed the two guys with Klein, typical attack dogs. Klein leered at Liu, taking in his injuries, and looked away, dismissive.
    They moved on, cautious in the dark. ‘What’s so special about him?’
    ‘He was the best Sabatier-furnace engineer in his colony,’ Liu whispered. ‘That’s part of the recycling system – you know that, right? And he fixed it so that
nobody else could touch those systems. He was a damn water king. No wonder they shipped him out. And it looks like he’s fixing to get the same hold here.’
    ‘A water king.’ Yuri grinned. ‘Until it rains, right?’
    Liu looked at him strangely.
    Somebody hissed. ‘Yuri! Hey, Yuri! Over here!’ A skinny, shambling form hustled along a row, clearing two spaces, to muttered complaints from the people behind.
    ‘Lemmy?’ It was the first familiar voice he’d heard since waking in the can. Yuri sat beside him, followed by Liu.
    ‘Awake at last, huh?’ Lemmy’s whisper was soft, practised. ‘That bastard Tollemache really shot you up, didn’t he? Well, he got what he deserved.’
    Yuri tried to figure it out. Lemmy Pink, nineteen years old, had been the nearest thing to a friend Yuri had made on Mars. Even if Lemmy was only looking for protection.
    The last Yuri remembered of Mars was that he and Lemmy had busted out of their dome. Yuri had had to get out. Every atom in his body longed to be out there on the Martian ground, frozen,
ultraviolet-blasted desert though it might be. He’d been taken through spacesuit and airlock drills for the sake of emergency training, but he’d never been outside. Mostly he never even
got to look through a window. So they’d stolen a rover, made a run for the hills, a local feature called the Chaos – flipped the truck, been picked up by the Peacekeepers. He remembered
Tollemache.
You’re the ice boy, right? Nothing but a pain in the butt since they defrosted you. Well, you won’t be my problem much longer
. And with a gloved fist he had jammed
a needle into Yuri’s neck, and the red-brown Martian light had folded away . . .
    And he’d woken up in this tank.
    ‘What do you mean, he got what he deserved?’
    ‘He’s here too. In the hull. Ha! He got what was coming to him, all right. But it was because he didn’t stop us pinching that rover in the first place, rather than what he did
to you.’
    Yuri mock-punched his arm. ‘Good to see they brought you home too, man.’
    Lemmy flinched back. ‘Don’t touch me. I’m full of the fucking sniffles that are going around this coffin, typical of me to get them all.’
    ‘What about Krafft?’ Lemmy’s pet rat, back in the dome.
    Lemmy’s face fell. ‘Well, they took him off me. What would you expect?’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    They were disturbing the astronaut type giving his lecture. Mardina Jones was right behind