Fracture - A Window Overlooking the Universe Read online

  Chapter Nine - Visors

  The world began again with a crack like a gunshot and a blast of freezing wind. He was gulping down air, snatching breath so quickly he almost choked on it, his shallow gasps soft moans of ecstasy. For a moment there was just the sound and bitterly cold, wonderful oxygen filling his lungs, then there were clouds of condensation billowing in front of him as the blackness resolved itself into the darkened vista of Javer and the ceiling.

  His heart was pumping. Blood was pounding in his brain. He was alive. That was the only thing that could possibly matter.

  Alizen.

  He was panting furiously, feverishly drawing in fabulous oxygen, the naked air brushing against his face, caressing his sweat soaked skin with its soothing icy fingers. He was coughing, laughing, sucking in breath.

  Alive!

  How?

  The suit had failed, totally. Movement, life support, everything had gone. Sudden and utter power loss. So how was he alive? The suit was dead. There was no infrared, no readout. It had locked solid, trapping him on his back, its weight crushing him. The vibro-system wasn't working, his limbs were numbing. But he was alive. The visor had opened, but how, without power, without instructions? It must have been the dying suit's final desperate act. It had cosseted him across the furious wastes of Hell, protected him from the bullets and now it had saved him again, expending its last feeble burst of energy to crack open the helmet.

  He blinked at the darkness in amazement.

  Javer's huge blackened bulk loomed over him, upside down, leaning crazily to the right, gun arm flung out, the left hand clawing desperately at the air.

  Clawing desperately at the air!

  The shiny black visor was still clamped shut, the hermetic seal intact.

  The suit had stopped working. So had Javer.

  Javer was dead.

  Fenton stared in dull horror at the hanging shape that had been Javer. He was staring at a sarcophagus, a glittering high tech coffin, the blank helmet a stylised death mask. As in life Javer's face gave nothing away. He should be grateful for that, what lay beneath the plate would not be pleasant.

  There was an ominous click. Fenton flinched as the spacesuit's visor jerked up a fraction then, with an almost imperceptible hum, it began to rise.

  For an instant Fenton dared to hope Javer might still be alive. That his oxygen supply had lasted longer than his, that it had only just run out signalling to the suit it was time to risk the outside atmosphere and lift the visor. Or that somehow Javer could have held his breath that long.

  Just for an instant. But then that instant was over and he knew it was hopeless.

  He had the grim confirmation as the visor completed its brief odyssey.

  Javer's head was hanging in the inverted helmet, lolling strangely forward, leaning against the grain of the suit, a bizarre trick of Fenton's view. Javer filled his vision, completely blocking his view of anything else.

  He could do nothing but stare at him.

  Javer's eyes bulged wide open, gazing unblinking at Mark Fenton, the black pupils frozen against the cold irises like splashed stains on a hazel carpet. His flesh was a deathly blue, his tongue insolently sticking out of his slack mouth.

  Fenton stared at the dead face of the dead man in numbed shock.

  He was alone.

  Trapped, locked in an impregnable suit.

  Alone and helpless.

  Alone and helpless in Pandemonium.