Tunnels 06 - Terminal

been blasted completely away, and the flesh underneath scorched black. Some of Drake’s hair was missing, and his head covered in angry red blisters from the crown and down one side of his face. Jiggs felt his neck for a pulse – he found one, but it was very weak. He must have been in close proximity to the bomb when it detonated, which explained why he’d been moving so fast. And it also probably meant that he’d been bathed in radiation.
    Then Jiggs moved on to the second person, twisting the head round so he could see their features.
    It was Rebecca One.
    Drake had obviously employed the same tactic as Jiggs and swept her over into the void to take her out of the running. Then they’d been involved in a struggle, which explained why she was tangled up in a coil of rope attached to the side of Drake’s Bergen.
    Jiggs didn’t bother to check her for a pulse. Her body was so charred that there was no question that the Rebecca twinwas dead. ‘Hah! Fashion victim!’ he observed, as part of her coat crumbled at his touch. ‘That’s what you get for wearing black round a nuclear explosion,’ he added without a shred of sympathy.
    He was correct – the non-reflective surface of her matt black Styx coat had done an admirable job of absorbing the pulse of heat and light. And, as Jiggs tried to disentangle her arm from the rope, it cracked as if it was made of charcoal. He could see that, of the two, she’d come off far worse than Drake. Indeed, she must have helped him by shielding much of his body from the blast.
    Jiggs quickly searched the twin’s body for anything useful, but other than a few items in the pouches on her belt, it was difficult to tell what was her and what were the remains of her incinerated clothing. Everything had been fused together by the heat.
    For a moment Jiggs simply regarded the slight body of Rebecca One. For someone so young, she had been responsible for so much suffering. ‘You don’t deserve any last words,’ he snarled, then unceremoniously heaved her away into the darkness.
    Jiggs was checking Drake’s pulse again when he heard him trying to say something, although it was little more than a murmur. ‘Take it easy there, old man. Just you hang on,’ Jiggs tried to comfort him, forced to shout over the din of the Crystal Belt. He unhitched his medical pack from his belt, fishing out a syrette of morphine. ‘Something for the pain,’ he said to Drake, as he jammed the syrette against the injured man’s thigh.
    It was only then that Jiggs felt the moisture on his face and looked up sharply. He had become so accustomed to bowlingalong at speed through this low-gravity environment that he’d completely forgotten he and Drake were still very much on the move.
    ‘No!’ Jiggs just had enough time to yell as they ploughed straight into a huge globule of water. Although Jiggs didn’t have much of an opportunity to gauge its size, it was around twenty feet in diameter. At least, it was until they hit it.
    Their momentum was such that it disintegrated into thousands of smaller droplets. And then there were more of these suspended mega-droplets of all sizes in Jiggs’ path. Coughing from the water he’d inhaled, he simultaneously tried to shield Drake’s face, dodge the larger droplets and fire up his booster, which had taken such a dousing that it had gone out.
    As he attempted to protect Drake from another soaking, Jiggs’ feet skimmed the circumference of a droplet the size of a house – this one didn’t break apart but wobbled like a giant jelly. ‘Space surfing!’ Jiggs exclaimed, as he managed to restart the booster, then frantically sought some unoccupied air space. He needed a safe place to stop and administer some urgent first aid to Drake.
    In a clearing of smaller droplets, he made out an angular and familiar shape.
    ‘What the …?’ he yelled. He really couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. He tried to use the booster to reach it, but overshot and had to backtrack. As he jetted them both closer, he was able to confirm his first impression.
    It was a Short Sunderland – a seaplane that had been out of regular service for nearly fifty years and was these days more likely to be found in an aviation museum. It was a sizeable aircraft, capable of carrying a good twenty-four passengers. One wing had been torn off and the cockpit was badly damaged,but the rest of the fuselage seemed to be intact apart from a few holes in the tail section.
    Still not