Engineman - Eric Brown [0]
Eric Brown
Solaris
For Rog Peyton, Birmingham's own Engineman, with thanks.
First published 2010 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN (.epub version): 978-1-84997-217-8
ISBN (.mobi version): 978-1-84997-216-1
Copyright © Eric Brown 2010
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Designed & typeset by Rebellion Publishing
Chapter One
It was another hot night out on the tarmac of the old Orly spaceport when Ralph Mirren saw what he thought was a KVI ghost.
He was tired and uncomfortable. The base of his skull throbbed painfully, a sure sign that he was due another flashback. The darkened cab of his grab-flier was like an oven. He couldn't win: with the sidescreens down, the breeze blowing across the 'port carried the alien spores which had drifted in through the interface two days ago from Chenowith. The spores caused respiratory complaints, and word had gone out to all 'port workers at the start of the shift to protect themselves. With the sidescreens sealed, the temperature inside the cab climbed into the high nineties. It was a basic design fault of these old Citroën grab-fliers that the cab was situated between the twin jet engines.
He killed the electro-magnet. The container he was carrying dropped into place beside the dozen others like the penultimate piece of a giant mosaic. He was turning to collect the last container when something flashed in the corner of his eye. He snapped his head around. The electric-blue spectre darted down an alley between the stacked containers. Shaken, Mirren lost control of his vehicle. It lurched for a second like a sea-borne vessel rocked by a wave. He gathered himself, righted the flier and brought it to rest on the tarmac. The dying whine of the jets gave way to a sudden silence. If his senses were to be trusted, then what he'd seen was the manifestation of what some Enginemen called a KVI ghost - hard though that was to believe. Mirren had always treated stories of the fleeting banshees, which came screaming from the nada-continuum via the portals of the Keilor-Vincicoff interfaces, with a healthy degree of scepticism.
He sat for seconds in the silence of the cab before cracking the hatch and climbing out. He knew he wouldn't find anything. The image he thought he'd seen was no more than a hallucination, the product of too much work and not enough sleep.
He stepped from the flier towards the containers, their corrugated flanks washed by the blue light of the interface across the spaceport. He turned sideways and edged into the gap down which he'd seen the spectre disappear. There was no sign of anything untoward. A hallucination - it could be nothing else.
He turned a corner in the maze of containers, and there it was again. The ghost stood ten metres from him, its human form giving off a dazzling electric-blue glow. Cautiously he stepped towards it and the ghost took flight, disappearing between two containers. Mirren gave chase. When he reached the corner he turned and stared. The ghost had passed down the length of the container and emerged on the tarmac beside the flier. It paused there, as if regarding him. He approached the shape, the sound of his heart loud in his ears. As he stepped from between the containers, the scene before him was transformed. At first he thought it was a trick of his eyes; then he realised that the out-fall of light from the Keilor-Vincicoff Interface, towering over the spaceport, had downshifted from the brilliant cobalt of its deactivated phase to pastel shades of blue