Providence - Max Barry Page 0,70

was an amazing concept. She would live or die because of Jackson and Anders. If she’d needed more evidence that somewhere along the way she had made some really poor life choices, here it was.

She got a hand on the back of Jackson’s harness. We’re breached, she shouted, but couldn’t hear herself. She grabbed Jackson’s braid and pulled.

Jackson jerked around. Her eyes roved over Talia. “What are you doing? Strap in!” Talia could barely hear her over the whirlwind of the equalization vents. She pointed to the rear of the jet but Jackson had already turned away. She shook Jackson’s shoulder again. “Get off me!” Jackson said. “Anders, bank!”

“Shut up!” Anders shouted. A tone sounded, harsh and insistent. A screen flared:

GRAVITY WELL

Anders gave an anguished roar. He fought the board. The jet kicked. Talia almost lost her handhold. Jackson shouted, “Strap in! We’re going down!”

Down? Talia wasn’t familiar with the concept of down. That wasn’t really a thing on board a jetpod with zero gravity. But a dull orange-purple curve passed across the left screen and was that a planet? It looked like a planet. Which would explain the down. But that couldn’t be right. They couldn’t land on a planet. She had been trained for every bullshit scenario she could imagine and some more besides, they had trained her in what to do if the ship were overrun by mice, but not how to survive ditching a jetpod on a planet. That was crazy.

The proximity tone rose in pitch and hysteria until it became an unbearable electric scream. “Get off me!” Jackson shouted, and began to pry Talia’s fingers off her seat. Jackson wanted Talia to return to the rear harness. But that was not happening, if Talia could help it, because back there the universe’s black lips were clamped to the jet and sucking the life from it. She would not go anywhere near that. She fought but Jackson was strong and Talia felt her fingers going. She seized a fistful of Jackson’s hair.

There’s a hole, she said.

Jackson didn’t hear or didn’t care. She seized Talia’s wrist and applied pain to it. Talia lost her grip and tumbled backward, or downward, or rearward, whichever it was, slowly, like a daisy in the wind. Eventually she stopped herself on a buckled locker door that shouldn’t even have been open and began to drag herself forward again. She was going to tell Jackson what she thought of her. This felt important. It was time to stop biting her tongue about the truth that Jackson was the worst person ever.

When she reached Jackson’s harness, the screens were yammering with information. There was something else now. Orange, like the planet, and round, but small. A hive. As she watched, it began to spit little black dots. Salamanders. The jet seemed to be heading directly for them, which struck Talia as a bad move. She would definitely have gone in the other direction.

“Get in your harness!” Jackson screamed.

There were salamanders behind them, too. Now Talia saw the problem. Hostiles on all sides. She decided not to be harsh with Jackson. Jackson was dealing with a lot. She’d come up here to say something, though. Not only to speak harsh truths to Jackson. She blinked, trying to recall. Jackson’s eyes went past her to the rear of the jet and widened. Oh, yes, Talia thought. The breach. That was it.

“Oh my God,” Jackson said, and unbuckled. “You sit here.”

That was fine. Talia climbed into the harness. With fat, numb sausage fingers, she pulled the straps around her. They felt amazing. She closed her eyes for a moment. She was halfway into a lovely dream when a new tone rose and she opened her eyes to see what it meant. The screen read:

COLLISION AVOIDANCE DISABLED

She looked at Anders. They were still running straight at the hive. It seemed now like they were going to smash into it. Anders, she said. Anders got a lot of crazy ideas and she had the suspicion that this was another. She turned to check whether Jackson was seeing this but Jackson was plugging the breach with the medbag. Talia blinked. That was really clever.

“Hold on!” Anders shouted.

The hive ballooned on the