Zenith Point (The Sector Fleet, Book 4)

by Nicola Claire

  I glanced around the kitchen again, using the thin strip of light from the fridge to guide me, and spotted an apron. Swiping it up, I wrapped the knife inside and added the food and water. Buns, which would have been fresh this morning and were probably rock hard now, sat in a container ready for a table that had never been served. I shoved them and the container inside the apron and then bundled it all up.

  The fridge door shut again, I crept through the darkness to the front of the restaurant. I strained to hear any noise, but none sounded out. As I passed the front counter, I dipped a hand into my pocket and withdrew a fifty. The knife alone was worth that. I slipped it under a menu and crept out the front door, keeping to the shadows.

  Nothing moved. No sounds were made. I could hear the constant hum of the air filtration systems and the vibration of the main boost thrust through the gel floor at my feet. We were underway but to where? We hadn’t jumped. We were still in the gas giant system. So where would we go and why?

  I shook my head and kept creeping through the shadows. By now, Aquila should have spotted me and told my father. But as the ladder appeared beneath the once again open access way to the tunnel, still no armoured guard had found me.

  I clambered up the ladder and crawled inside. Then turned and watched as the hatch reformed behind me. I let out a breath of air and swiped at my stinging eyes. Crying, even tears of relief, was not an option.

  I turned ‘round and softly called out to Ratbag.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Ratbag?” I couldn’t see him. My heart leapt into my throat. The hatch had closed behind me. And even if it hadn’t, he couldn’t have jumped down or used the ladder. I shifted my purchases around, slipping the knife through the belt in my trousers and making a sling out of the apron, so the food and water would leave my hands free.

  And then I started down the tunnel after my dog. There was nowhere for him to go; except through a countless number of tunnels on this deck, I thought bitterly.

  “Ratbag!” I called a little louder, the deeper into the deck I got.

  I’d tan his hide when I got his furry little butt in my hands again.

  I rounded a corner, and there he was, staring at a green glow on the gel walls all around him.

  “What have you found, you little ratbag?” I hissed. We hadn’t been this far back in the tunnels yet. I’d been too keen to see what was happening out in the hub. Fat lot of good it did me.

  I came to rest beside him and peered up the tunnel directly over our heads. There was a ladder attached to the wall to climb. The tunnel went down a deck too, but there was no green glow there. The glow was above our heads and went on for what seemed miles.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.

  Ratbag yipped in reply.

  “Green means good, right?” I whispered, uncertainly.

  Ratbag didn’t have a clever reply for that one. So, I picked him up and shoved him in with the food. I’d worry about hygiene later; I had a puzzle to solve.

  And then I started up the ladder.

  I could hear Ratbag eating the ham as I put one hand in front of the other, making steady but slow progress. At least one of us was happy.

  I gripped the next rung with determination and kept climbing.

  Ten

  Every Action Has An Equal And Opposite Reaction

  Hugo

  If Nathan Price’s intention was to starve us into compliance, he was making progress. We’d not eaten a thing since we’d been locked in here. Thankfully, we had water in the faucet at the sink in each cell. But I was acutely aware that Aquila could simply suck that back into the gel wall at any time.

  As it was, he’d not provided any privacy for ablutions. We’d taken to announcing we were peeing - or worse - and everyone purposely turned their backs to that cell.

  Something had to give.

  “López,” I said, sidling up to her side of my cell. “They’re going to have to feed us eventually,” I offered. “When they do, we have to act.”

  “Act how, sir?” she whispered back. “If they do feed us, and it’s a big if at this juncture, they’ll just shove something through the access panel in each cell.”

  “Or have Aquila deliver it through the gel wall,” I added in agreement.

  I’d thought that by now, we would have been able to observe our captors. Maybe work out a routine we could use to our advantage. But there was no routine because we’d seen no one. The absence of interaction was as debilitating as if they were shooting at us.

  It chipped away at your psyche. I could see the slumped shoulders on some of the men from here.

  “We need to have some sort of plan, at the very least,” I said. “Even if we can’t enact it. Having a plan will help keep everyone focused.”

  Lieutenant López flicked a glance around the brig, no doubt seeing what I had seen as well.

  “OK,” she said. “How about a distraction down one end of the brig when they go to serve someone at the other? And the one being served, reaches through the access panel and…somehow disarms them?”

  She didn’t sound convinced at the end.

  “Better than what I’ve got,” I said. “I was thinking of calling them every name under the sun and getting them so riled they opened a cell to retaliate. Then I disarmed them.”

  López sniggered. “It has a certain style, sir,” she said.

  I grinned. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled back. It was good to see some colour in her face again. She’d started to look a little peaky.

  “They’ll feed Flux watch first,” she said. “They’re the closest to the door.”

  I nodded. “All right, we’re the distraction. They’ll be the quick draw.”

  “I’ll pass it on, sir,” she said, moving to the other side of her cell and garnering her neighbour’s attention. The whispered instructions went from cell to cell, until Lieutenant Commander Wilson looked up and made eye contact with me and nodded his head.

  I was glad it was him. If anyone could disarm an armoured guard through a one foot square access panel in a containment field, it was him.

  This was such a bad plan.

  The hours ticked by and the brief lift the men had received from having a plan, any plan at all, had worn off. Nova watch was sleeping. As much as you did when confined to a cell. Technically, Zenith was on duty, but with Flux knowing they would have to act first, it was more of a shared responsibility.

  I was just finishing up peeing, everyone’s back to me when the brig doors finally opened.

  Two guards walked in. A trolley between them. The door shut at their backs. We couldn’t have asked for more.

  “Finally!” I yelled, doing up my trousers and forgoing washing my hands for now. “This hotel sucks. Too busy kissing the leaseholder’s arse, are you?”

  “Quiet!” one guard ordered. “Or you get no dinner.”

  At least we knew it was nighttime now. The lights hadn’t dimmed in the past however many hours we’d been in here, and our wrist comms had all been removed.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that making your guests wait is rude?” I shouted.

  “I said quiet!”

  “Or are you calling Nathan Price ‘Momma’ now?”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” the guard spat.

  “Hey, Johnson,” I yelled. “This one’s a Momma's boy.”

  “Does he kiss his Momma with that foul mouth?” Johnson yelled back at me.

  “More like his Momma kisses his dick with hers,” López offered.

  “That’s it!” the guard shouted, taking a step towards us and away from the trolley.

  “Ooooh!” we all said in sing-song voices. “Momma’s boy is pissed,” I added.

  Behind him, the remaining guard activated Wilson’s access panel, shaking his head in disgust at us, or his partner, it was hard to tell. As he lifted the tray of food up, Lieutenant Commander Wilson stepped closer as if to take it from him.

  López was shout
ing something about “Kissing his booboo.”

  Johnson was adding his two cents worth, telling the guard some fucked up ‘yo momma’ joke.

  And Wilson was throwing a punch through the containment field.

  The tray went flying. Wilson’s hand wrapped around the guard’s LSU and slammed his helmeted head against the containment field. Our guard spun on his heel, reaching for his plasma rifle. But firing now would only end up shooting the other guard. Wilson was safe behind his own containment field.

  The guard and Wilson scrabbled for purchase. Wilson hindered by the small aperture of the opening. But he did manage to get the guard’s helmet released and knocked it off his head.

  The next punch met flesh and cartilage, and the guard’s nose crunched beneath a hard fist. Blood splattered and sizzled against the containment field. But no matter what Wilson did, he couldn’t reach the guard’s rifle. He couldn’t do more than just punch the fuck out of the guy’s head.

  Within seconds, the guard who’d been shouting at us was at his comrade’s side. And the butt of his rifle went sailing through the access panel and slammed into Wilson’s cheek.

  My stomach plummeted, even as Wilson reached out for the guard’s rifle and came within inches of making contact. And then a second hit with the rifle’s butt connected with Wilson’s temple. The lieutenant commander’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell backwards, hitting the gel flooring with a sickening bounce.

  The access panel closed. The guard whose nose was broken spat a wad of blood on the floor and gingerly pressed the damaged area, wincing.

  The other guard turned and glared at each of us, his helmet still on, but visor transparent.

  I made a point of cataloguing his features. Memorising his face. He’d be one of the first I hit when we got out of here.

  “Dinner’s over,” the guard said.

  Then spun on his heel, picked the other guard up off the floor, and dragged him out. He’d left the trolley, laden with our meals, behind on purpose. The representation of what we’d lost by choosing to rebel against them.

  “Wilson!” I called, moving to the side of my cell closest to that end of the brig. “Is he breathing?” I asked those nearest him.

  “Yes, sir,” a lieutenant answered. “But he’s out cold, and I can see a lump forming on his head.”

  “Keep trying to wake him,” I ordered. “And then watch for concussion.”

  “What if he doesn’t wake?” the lieutenant asked.

  I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what to do next. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That’s what we’d been taught back on Earth. We’d rebelled, on my instructions, and we’d lost our meal privileges.

  One guard had a broken nose. One of my men was unconscious.

  Getting out of here was going to take a lot of courage.

  Or a hell of a lot of good luck.

  “Just keep an eye on him, Lieutenant,” I said. “I want to know the moment he wakes up.”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer said and sat down at the edge of his cell, calling out softly to his commanding officer.

  “It was worth a try, Captain,” López said.

  I almost told her not to call me that. But none of us had any choices while locked away in here. And I was damned if I’d be the one to crack first.

  “We’ll think of something else,” I said to my first officer.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, not sounding convinced.

  Eleven

  This Was Wrong

  Adi

  Curfew was lifted the next day. Aquila announced it over the gel wall speakers. I was curled up on the floor, a few feet away from a dead end in the tunnel. The tube around us still glowed a soft green.

  Ratbag was snoring, while I stared at my datapad and wondered if switching it on was the best decision I’d ever make or the last. I chose to leave it for now. My stomach was growling again. The cheese and bread rolls were all gone. I nibbled on one of the last grapes and took a sip of the water.

  And stared at the dead end of the tunnel.

  Why had the green glow led us here?

  “What deck do you think we’re on?” I said softly. Ratbag’s ear twitched, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Must have climbed up about three or four,” I murmured. “So, that would mean Deck D or C.”

  I had no idea what was on Deck D, but I knew what was on Deck C. Was it a trap?

  Aquila was still not talking to me. But it had to be him who was opening all the hatches. Who’d used green to lure us up four freaking decks. It had to be.

  I sighed. Then stared at the screwdriver lying on the gel floor beside me. There were no screws in this one. No hatch. Just a blank gel wall. I left the screwdriver where it was and started crawling toward the wall with the filleting knife instead.

  I’d stab anything that moved including the damn wall.

  The moment I was within a foot of the dead end, the gel wall retracted. I lunged forward with the knife and rolled out of the end of the tunnel, landing hard on a gel floor.

  “Oomph,” I managed, quickly looking around my new location to get my bearings.

  No armoured guard stepped out, and my father or the mayor weren’t waiting. I slowly got to my feet, noting Ratbag had hopped out of the gel wall before it had shut again. I walked back up to it and watched it open.

  It wasn’t the screwdriver that did it. I looked around the room for cameras. I couldn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Reaching in, I grabbed all of our pitiful gear and then stepped away from the wall. The gel wall resealed, and the tunnel disappeared behind it.

  I huffed out a breath in confusion and frustration. That was one puzzle I couldn’t seem to solve.

  But, as I turned around to look at the enormous room I’d ended up in, I realised one other question was at least answered now. We were in the computer core. This was Aquila’s home.

  I tapped the knife against my thigh as Ratbag wandered off to sniff at tall banks of electronic equipment, which, I guessed, had to be hard drives or something. Aquila had told me I could hide here. That my biosignature had been keyed for entry. But that Aquila was not the Aquila I heard every now and then over the ship comms.

  But somehow I was here, led here by green walls, Old Aquila’s form of greeting. And no alarms had gone off unless they were silent.

  I gathered up the apron and container that had housed the bread rolls and attached them to my belt, and then I headed out to see what was here that I could use.

  I walked the circumference, but I still couldn’t see into the centre of the room. It was hotter in here too than in the tunnels. I stripped off my shirt, leaving me in a camisole, and kept searching for clues.

  I finally made it to the centre of the room, checking every nook and cranny on the way to get there. I stared down at the small depression in the gel floor. At the food synthesiser at one end and the cushions at the other.

  I stared for a very long time.

  Ratbag had no such qualms as me; he jumped down into the hollow and turned around a few times on what had to be the bed. Then sank to his belly, head on front paws, and yawned wide.

  I nibbled on what was left of my nail and then finally stepped down into the depression.

  Nothing happened. No containment field flashed up all around me. No voice telling me to freeze. Not even Aquila welcoming me to my new home. Because that’s what this had to be. Aquila had made me a home away from home, somewhere to hide in.

  He knew I’d come here eventually. He’d left the glowing green walls in the tunnels to help me find my way. I wouldn’t have looked at that dead end if it hadn’t have been for the glow leading me there. I wouldn’t have even found it, I thought.

  But here I was. In the middle of Aquila’s…brain.

  And there was the little nest waiting for me.

  “What are you playing at, Aquila?” I asked. “And why won’t you talk to me?”

  I let out a sigh and crossed to the food synth
esiser. A few pushes of buttons and I had Ratbag’s favourite meal in a recyclable dish. I placed it on the floor to one side. Then after a couple more commands to the synthesiser, I had a cup of coffee and a croissant coated in jam in my hands.

  I sat down and tasted nothing. Just fuel into my mouth.

  My hands were sticky afterwards. But the synthesiser provided wet-wipes and then took the discards and wicked them all away.

  For a long time, I just sat there, feeling disconnected from reality.

  And then I thought of Mandy and what could be happening back in the habitats.

  I didn’t know what my father was up to, but obviously, it was not good nor was it legal. I hadn’t spotted an AU crew member since before yesterday. The civilians had been released from confinement in quarters, but I had no illusions that the crewmen would have been. I needed to know if the passengers had seen anything and the best way to do that was by going to a hub.

  I reached up and touched my hair. The sloppy bun was lopsided, and it felt a little greasy. I would have given over half my savings to have a three-minute shower right then. Instead, I synthesised wet-wipes by the dozen and proceeded to wash up as best as I could.

  And then I pulled my filleting knife out of the belt at my hip and stared at it.

  For a moment, I tried to reason everything that was happening through. To give it some meaning. To justify what I’d heard and seen and knew.

  Bottom line. My father was evil. I’d kept my distance, as much as I could, and ignored the signs over the years. He’d changed, though, when my mother had died. It wasn’t mourning he’d been going through, I was sure of it. It was darker than that. Destructive. Although, I was pretty sure, mourning someone could be destructive in its own way. I know mourning my mother had thrown me into a pit of depression.

  But my father had become more and more of a stranger to me since then.

  Had I been scared of him? Not at first. The fear had simply increased over time until it was just there and I couldn’t remember when exactly it had started.