Angel Stations by Gary Gibson

babbled, as Elias knelt beside him. ‘I can see it,’ he said. ‘I can see it.’
    ‘What can you see?’
    ‘Blood, and pain and bodies,’ howled Pachenko. ‘I can see them, Elias. Can’t you see them?’
    ‘No, but I believe you.’
    Another voice came over the intercom. It was Farell. ‘Sir? Everything’s gone to shit, sir. A firefight has broken out between Company A and the miners. I can’t contact Command. What should we do?’
    Be anywhere but here , thought Elias. The miners had siphoned the atmosphere out of half the asteroid seconds after Elias and the other troop companies had boarded. Things were clearly not going the way Command wanted. Elias knew what Pachenko meant, what Pachenko was experiencing.
    The mining community had carved itself into one of the scattered boulders of the Asteroid Belt. It was a kilometre-long slab of nickel and iron, positioned somewhere on the route between Earth and the Oort Angel Station, which only merited a serial number in a catalogue. The miners made their living by supplying raw materials to huge-bellied cargo ships that plied their way between the Oort Station and Earth. The nature of the Belt, its disparate communities scattered in lengthy orbits around the Sun, made any attempt at control or policing impossible. Corruption and lawlessness were the way of life here. Political expediency meant the attempt at control was made, nonetheless.
    ‘Pachenko, Liam, listen to me. I’m going to have to leave you here. Make your way back if you can – do you understand me?’ Pachenko nodded, his eyes still staring in horror at something Elias couldn’t see, didn’t want to see.
    Pachenko was the one who’d made the scientists proud. We’re going to make special soldiers of you boys , they’d said, before beginning the gene-tweaking process. You’ll heal faster, live longer . They hadn’t mentioned any of the other stuff: being able to catch glimpses of the future, the nightmarish visions experienced. So many of the other men had gone insane within days. Scientists had then been replaced by smooth-talking men in civilian suits, reminding them of their duty, of the terms of the permissions they had signed.
    Elias had more than a good idea what Pachenko was going through, and would go through, slipping slowly into insanity. Elias could only pray he himself wouldn’t end up going the same way.
    Command had described the situation here to them during their briefing: a self-contained economic unit, a semi-socialistic enclave of God’s Pioneers who, it seemed, had been extorting neighbouring miner communities while themselves being in the pay of a corporation seeking a monopoly on mineral extraction rights.
    Later, Elias would find out that Command had been wrong – disastrously, terribly wrong. There was no extortion. Their sources had been wrong, misinformed.
    They came to a kind of crossroads, Farell and Eduardez both flanking Elias. Something drifted down from above, from out of the darkness. Elias looked up to see a young girl, perhaps seventeen or so, her young round face barely visible inside a several-times-patched pressure suit. She held a weapon. She raised it. She fired. Elias heard Eduardez yell, even as the three of them brought their weapons up simultaneously.
    A girl , thought Elias. A little girl? He took aim, but someone else fired first. The girl exploded.
    Heat and flames filled the cavern. They fell back, taking refuge in the same corridor from which they had just emerged. ‘Oh Jesus, what was that?’ yelled Farell.
    ‘Explosives,’ Elias heard himself say numbly. ‘They must have packed her with explosives.’ He was now finding out what Pachenko had meant. He knew now it was going to get worse.
    More miners in pressure suits came crawling out of the dark, firing as they moved. Elias and his men returned fire, their armoured suits protecting them, but there were just three of them, and scores of miners. It was only a matter of time before they