Impact by Rob Boffard

a panicked shout from the fireside. He and Carver swing round. Okwembu and Mikhail are on all fours, leaning in close to the guttering flames. The smoke has grown thicker, swirling in huge curls around them.
    â€œOh shit,” Prakesh says.
    He starts jogging back towards the group, Carver on his heels. He’s desperately hoping that he’s wrong, but even before he gets halfway back, he can see that the fire–their one source of heat–is going out.

14
Anna
    The noise drags Anna Beck out of her sleep.
    For a moment, she can’t separate reality from the nightmare. She was lost in space, drifting, alone, unable to move no matter how hard she tried. Slowly, she convinces herself that she’s awake.
    The hab is dark. Her father is sitting up on the other cot, blinking in confusion. Her mother is curled up tight, still deeply asleep. There’s no alarm–they cut them off to save power days ago–but she can hear running feet, raised voices.
    Then the voices resolve, and Anna hears the word “Fire.”
    She stares into the darkness. A fire isn’t a reason to panic. The sector’s chemical suppression system should deal with it, stop it spreading. So why are people freaking out? Why the running feet and confused shouts?
    Something’s wrong.
    She kicks the covers off and runs, throwing open the hab door and rocketing into the corridor, sleep falling away like shed clothing. There’s a man in her way–she tries to dodge past, but she’s still not fully awake. It slows her reaction times: she smashes into him, and she goes flying, skidding on her ass down the corridor.
    â€œWhere’s the fire?” she shouts up at him.
    The man is middle-aged, stubbled, naked from the waist up. He’s holding a blanket around his shoulders, open at the front. Anna can see his ribs, gaunt and bony.
    She scrambles to her feet. “Did you hear what I said?”
    He blinks at her, and she wants to scream at him. Then he says, “Down in the gallery.” He has the voice of a man who is not entirely sure that this isn’t a vivid dream. He probably thinks he’s going to wake up, and that Outer Earth will be good and whole again.
    No point waiting to find out. She’s already running, going as fast as she can.
    At least it isn’t far. She’s in Apex sector: home to the station’s main control room, the council chambers, the technicians who kept the place running. Outer Earth suffered an explosive decompression, a breach in the dock that rendered most of it uninhabitable. Everyone still alive–a thousand people or so–is crammed into this one sector, the smallest on the station. She can be at the gallery in five minutes.
    Anna has no idea what she’s going to do. All she knows is that she has to be there. So she runs, barrelling through the white corridors of Apex.
    The last time she ran this fast was when the dock’s airlock doors gave way, after the Earthers’ attack. She almost didn’t make it. The rush of air when the doors gave out almost took her off her feet. But she was in one of the side corridors then, a little further away from the dock. Someone–she still doesn’t know who–grabbed her, pulled her along, got her across the border. It sealed shut behind her, leaving her sprawled across the floor, gasping for air.
    Just before she reaches the gallery, up in the Level 3 corridor, she runs into a group of people packing the passage. Two stompers are just beyond them, pushing the crowd back. Only one of the lights in the ceiling is working properly, but underneath it Anna can see lazy wisps of smoke curling through the air. She can smell it, too, hot and sharp.
    She pushes herself onto her toes, craning her neck, trying to see what’s going on. She can just see into the gallery. There are no visible flames, but the catwalk is flickering with orange light. But why haven’t the suppression systems kicked in?