Zero G

by Dan Wells

  “I can’t see anything in this darkness,” grumbled Jim.

  “That’s because you’re not prepared,” said Spider. She pulled a pair of goggles from a pocket by her waist, put them on, and pushed a button on the side. “Night vision,” she said wickedly. “I keep trying to tell you cavemen: paper, rock, and scissors are great, but nothing beats advanced technology.”

  Zero was still hidden behind his tower, but not for long. He needed some way to distract them, so he could flee the other way. Maybe he could throw something? The noise might get their attention, at least for a second. He searched for something in his pockets, only to realize he was wearing the one-piece coverall for the stasis pods and had no pockets to put things in. He had the communicator, but he didn’t want to lose that. Maybe the flashlight? He’d stuffed it down the neck of his coverall. It would work, but even getting it out of his clothes might attract too much attention. He looked instead at the space around him, hoping to find something loose, but there was nothing—wait. The tower he was hiding behind was made of metal bars and shelves, with the computers screwed down tight so they wouldn’t float away. He didn’t dare to mess with the computers, but what about the shelf itself? The metal was thin, and the screws were easily accessible. If he could only find one that was loose . . .

  He looked at the pirates again. Jim had almost reached him, with Mama on the other side. He felt each screw in the tower, and finally found one that was loose enough to turn. He turned it slowly, willing it to be silent, and right before Jim reached him Zero threw it to the side, tucking his arms in close to his body to stay hidden, using only the force he could generate with his wrist and fingers. The screw tumbled through the air, disappeared into the darkness, and clinked against a far bulkhead.

  All four pirates looked over in unison.

  “What was that?” asked Jim.

  “Raaaahhh!” roared Kratt, and pushed himself toward the sound with his arms spread wide, ready to tackle whatever he found.

  “Don’t hurt anything!” screamed Spider, and jumped after him. Jim hesitated, maybe trying to decide if he was brave enough to dive into the shadows, but finally he did, leaving no one on Zero’s left side. Zero pushed himself forward, crossing the stream of light pouring in from the open doorway, and reached for the hatch in the floor.

  “There he is!” shouted Nyx.

  Crap! Zero thought. I forgot about Nyx! He scrambled with the hatch, desperate to get it open.

  “I see him,” shouted Nyx. “It’s not a cat or an alien—it’s a person! It’s a boy!”

  “Get him!” yelled Mama, but Zero threw open the hatch and dove through it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HIDING

  ZERO DIDN’T STOP to look behind him—he jumped off the bulkhead straight into the nearest cross-hall and pulled himself into the maintenance tube. If he was fast enough, he might be able to find a hiding place before they saw him again. He pulled himself through the tube with both arms, down to Ring 298, then jumped through another cross-hall, hopping from stasis pod to stasis pod, until he reached another maintenance tube and leaped through it down to Ring 297. He kept going like this as far and as fast as he could, not going anywhere specific but simply trying to lose himself in the ship. The Pathfinder was enormous—a skyscraper with three hundred floors, each one filled with tubes and tunnels and corridors and hallways. The shouts behind him drove him forward, deep into the core of the ship, until even he didn’t know where he was. Finally the shouting grew so distant he couldn’t hear it anymore, and he paused for a breath. He was on Ring 218. He’d fled through eighty-two levels of the ship.

  He pulled himself down to the floor and crawled into a narrow gap between two stasis pods. How long could he hide here? How thoroughly would they search?

  And then he thought of something even worse: what if they’re searching and find my empty pod? They’ll know exactly who I am, and they could hold my family hostage to force me to surrender. But no, they’d have no way of knowing which ones are my family . . . Oh crap. Bonehead Boy and Captain Poopy Pants! All that paint and the big, empty pod are going to make it really obvious who I am. Why do my brothers have to ruin everything, even when they’re asleep?

  He needed a plan. Sneaking around had been kind of helpful, and he’d learned some good things about Tacita and the pirates’ plans, but if he was actually going to stop them, he needed to go further. He needed to fight back, actively and aggressively. He’d learned in the computer room that there was no way he could take on the whole group at once, so he’d have to split them up. But how?

  The first one he needed to take care of was Kratt. He wasn’t the smartest pirate on the ship, but he was definitely the most dangerous. So, what could Zero do to incapacitate Kratt? Tie him up? Maybe, but how could he get him to hold still long enough to tie him? Wait for him to sleep? He didn’t have enough time for that. Maybe he could force him to sleep. There might be some sedatives in the medical cargo somewhere, but even if Zero could find it there was no way he’d be able to get close enough to stick Kratt with it. He needed another plan.

  Zero tried to remember what his dad had always taught him: try to break down a problem into pieces, and solve them one by one. So the first problem was: how could he get Kratt alone somewhere? He needed bait, and he needed bait that only Kratt would follow. That meant it couldn’t be subtle—and it had to be dangerous. Kratt was the bruiser, the one everyone else would send into trouble instead of risking themselves. So, what was dangerous enough that the others wouldn’t follow him?

  Zero winced when he realized the answer: the outside of the ship. They had a mining suit back on the Drago—the one with all the hooks and loops on it. If Zero got back in his own space suit and went outside, and then did something flashy to get their attention, they’d put Kratt in the mining suit and send him out to deal with it. Especially if Zero was doing something harmful, like attacking their ship. Kratt would come out in a fury, and then all Zero would have to do was . . . what? Trap him outside? That wouldn’t work—there were way too many airlocks to get him back inside, and the rest of the pirates would help.

  But if he trapped him to something . . .

  The communicators crackled to life. “I don’t see him anywhere,” said Jim.

  “I told you he wasn’t an alien,” said Nyx.

  “Spider,” said Mama, “any luck on Ring 280?”

  “No,” Spider snapped, “and I shouldn’t be out here anyway. I’ve got a flight path to calculate!”

  “You’ve got twelve hours,” said Mama.

  “Ten,” said Jim.

  Only ten hours left? thought Zero. His stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten or slept in ages.

  “I can smell him,” growled Kratt.

  “No you can’t,” said Nyx.

  “Shut up, brat.”

  “Kratt!” yelled Mama. “Don’t you sass her, you hear? She’s the one that saw this boy while the rest of you were banging your heads into walls like a bunch of squawking chickens.”

  “Sorry, Mama.”

  “No other ships have docked with us,” said Jim, “so he has to be one of the colonists.”

  “One of the kids,” said Nyx. “He was small.”

  I’m not that small, thought Zero.

  “Spider,” sighed Mama, “come on back up and program your flight plan. Kratt and Jim can keep looking, and one kid isn’t a big threat anyway.”

  “Thanks,” said Spider.

  “I’m going to find him and kill him,” snarled Kratt. “I’m going to skin him alive!”

  “Why did we bring the psycho?” asked Jim.

  “He’s my boy,” said Mama. “Now: stop complaining, and find that kid!”

  I have to find a way to stop Kratt, thought Zero. What do I know about him? He’s violent, and he’s scary, but mostly he’s just angry. He jumps into things without thinking.

  And that gives me a plan . . .

  Zero made a list of the things he’d need—a chain, a space suit,
a second space suit, and some of those self-sealing bolts. Oh! And he’d need paint. Not the liquid stuff he’d used on his brothers; he needed spray paint. He’d seen some in that same cargo bay, closed tight in a stasis crate. Zero felt bad about opening another crate, but figured the colonists would understand.

  “I’m sorry you’re missing some spray paint,” he whispered, pretending he was talking to the colonists. “On the other hand, you’re not a slave in a mine on a secret evil pirate planet, so I think you can deal with it.”

  The communicator crackled again: “I’m going to search Section A,” said Jim. “You take E.”

  “Fine,” grumbled Kratt.

  “That means Section C is open for a few minutes,” whispered Zero, and slipped out of his hiding place.

  Time to fight some pirates.

  Chapter Twenty

  PLAN B

  ZERO STOOD IN the airlock again, the baggy space suit floating around him. He’d used a rope for a belt this time, cinching it tight so he could see and maneuver a little better. The outer pockets were filled with supplies: self-sealing bolts, a length of heavy chain, and two cans of spray paint—just in case. Tucked under his left arm was a second space suit, and under his right was a hammer.

  He took a breath, checked his seals again, and opened the airlock door.

  The empty hangar yawned open in front of him, and he walked across it slowly in his heavy magnetic boots. He reached the wall and thought about jumping up and out of the hangar, but that vast, empty nothingness above him freaked him out, so instead he just put his feet on the wall—first one boot, then the next—and walked straight up the side. It made him uncomfortable at first, but then he remembered what his mother had said—there was no true down in space, so why not make it whatever he wanted it to be? He started to think of the wall as the floor, and suddenly it was—he felt as if the whole ship had stood on its side suddenly, just to match his new orientation. He reached the top of the wall and stepped out onto the outer hull of the Pathfinder and reoriented himself again. If he always thought of his feet as down and his head as up, it made the walk much easier.

  Which was good, because he had half a skyscraper to walk up the side of.

  The hangar was on Ring 42, and the Drago was docked on 240. That was more than half a kilometer away, which would have been easy on Earth but was slow and exhausting in the magnetic boots. Every now and then the communicator crackled, with Jim or Kratt reporting that they still hadn’t found anybody, and Mama demanding that they try harder. When he finally reached the Drago, he stopped and took stock of it. Having already been inside of it, he found the outside less menacing than he’d expected—no skull and crossbones or anything like that, just a squat, boxy ship with a couple of round pods on the sides. It looked like it had landed on its belly, sitting on the Pathfinder like a toad on a log. Zero studied the ship as he approached, looking for the most important part of his plan: the Drago had its own outer airlock, on the side by one of the bedrooms. And that was almost certainly where Kratt would come out.

  Zero needed to get on top of the Drago, but the docking tube connecting the two ships was mostly plastic and rubber. So he couldn’t do his “walk up the wall” trick this time. He’d have to jump. The thought of it made him queasy—he’d be close to both ships, but he wouldn’t be touching either of them. He’d be alone in outer space, billions of kilometers from even an asteroid, floating free and untethered. Even if it was only for a second, it scared him to death.

  He put the hammer through his belt, made sure his glove was as firmly in place as he could get it, and looked up at the Drago above him. It had handholds here and there, or things that could be used as handholds. He picked one, focused on it, and turned off the magnets in his boots.

  He jumped.

  It felt like an eternity, hanging in space, drifting out and away from the Pathfinder, but it was really only a meter. Then the Drago came in reach, and he grabbed at the handhold on the side of it, clinging to it with all his strength. He gripped it tightly, brought his legs around, and reactivated the magnets. They clamped onto the hull of the Drago, and Zero stood up. He changed his perspective as he walked, moving around the outside the ship until he was standing on the top. He held up the extra space suit and positioned it carefully, facing away from the Drago’s airlock. When he was certain it was in the right place, he let go of it; with no gravity or air currents to move it, the suit simply floated there, motionless, just like someone was standing in it.

  Everything seemed so still and silent, Zero had to remind himself that they were currently traveling at four million kilometers an hour. But the motion was relative, like his father had said—he and the Drago and the empty space suit and everything else were also traveling at four million kilometers an hour, so without any air to provide resistance, there was nothing to slow them down. They may as well have been standing still.

  “Okay,” said Zero. “Now let’s get some pirates’ attention.” He walked across the ship, looking for a target sensitive enough to raise an alarm. He found a sensor panel and walked toward it. “May as well start here.” He pulled the hammer from his belt, held it firmly, and banged on the sensor panel until it cracked.

  It took a few seconds—long, agonizing seconds—but finally the communicator buzzed to life.

  “Hey guys,” said Spider, “I just got an alert from the Drago’s computer. Looks like one of the sensors failed?”

  “We can fix it later,” said Mama. “Keep working.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Zero. He sighed, looked for another target, and found it—an antenna. This one he didn’t even bother to hit; he just grabbed it in his hands and snapped it in half.

  “Weird,” said Spider. “I just got another alert. We lost an antenna.”

  “It’s probably just a computer failure,” said Jim. “If the internal diagnostic system broke, it would start sending us all kinds of false alarms.”

  Mama snarled. “You told me you fixed that system, Spider.”

  “I did,” said Spider. “It was working perfectly.”

  “Well things don’t just break for no reason,” said Mama.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Spider. “We need to at least look and see which system is broken.”

  Zero found another external sensor node, and smashed it to pieces.

  “We lost a camera,” said Spider. “This is definitely not normal. Somebody go see what’s going on!”

  “Fine,” said Mama. “I’m closest, so I’ll go look. But if it’s just that diagnostic system and you didn’t fix it right, I’m going to be hopping mad.”

  Zero smashed a few more things, then walked over to the Drago’s cockpit, waiting just out of view of the window. A few minutes later, Mama spoke over the communicator again.

  “I’m here,” she said. “Where’s that diagnostic terminal, girl? You left this place in such a mess.”

  Zero didn’t wait any longer. He raised the hammer, stood up, and walked right in front of the cockpit window.

  Mama was muttering. “Can’t find a thing in this—aaahhhhh!” She saw Zero and jumped back, waving her arms in terror. Zero waved, raised his hammer, and slammed it down on the window—there was no way he could break the special glass, but it looked super menacing, and Mama yelped again. “It’s that boy!” she shrieked. “He’s here, on the outside of the ship!” Zero banged on the glass again, and she shouted rage into the communicator. “He’s breaking everything! Somebody, get out there and stop him!”

  “I’ll tear him apart!” shouted Kratt.

  Zero looked at Mama, waggled his hammer, and walked out of view.

  “He’s moved onto the top of the ship!” Mama screamed. “Get him now!”

  Zero moved quickly. He walked to the empty floating space suit, threw the hammer away, and pulled out his next group of tools: a chain in one hand and a self-sealing bolt in another. He walked about two meters toward the back of the ship, and used the bolt to weld one end of the chain to a han
dhold on the hull. All he had to do was wrap the chain through the handle, sliding a bolt through the links, and hit the button. The bolt didn’t spark like before, because outside of the ship there was no oxygen to burn. But it glowed white-hot and welded itself and the chain to the hull of the Drago.

  “He’s getting away!” shouted Mama. “Hurry!”

  Kratt roared back, incoherent and furious. Zero kept his calm, and dragged the free end of the chain to his hiding place: the flared end of a rocket thruster on the back of the ship. It was just big enough to hold him and keep him hidden from view. As long as Kratt didn’t notice the chain—and Zero was desperately hoping that the big floating space suit would grab all of Kratt’s attention—he would never see Zero at all.

  Zero felt a faint hum through his feet. The Drago’s outer airlock sliding open.

  Kratt’s voice rumbled in Zero’s ears. “I’m outside.”

  “He’s up on top,” said Mama.

  Kratt started walking, and Zero held his breath.

  “I see him,” said Kratt, and laughed maliciously. Zero counted to five, waiting for the pirate to walk past his hiding place, and then turned off his magnetic boots and floated out into space. He held the edge of the thruster, watching Kratt charge across the hull and tackle the empty space suit. The pirate thrashed around, literally trying to tear the suit apart, while Zero pushed himself off of the thruster and floated up behind him, silent as a ghost. Kratt slowed, and then stopped.

  “There’s nobody in this suit,” said Kratt.

  Zero slipped the chain through one of the metal loops on the back of Kratt’s suit, stuck a self-sealing bolt through the middle of it, and hit the button.

  “What’s that?” shouted Kratt, and spun around. Zero saw him face-to-face, barely half a meter away, Kratt’s face twisted in fury. The pirate lunged to grab him, and Zero tried desperately to get away, pushing himself backward, fumbling in his pocket for a can of spray paint. Kratt almost grabbed him, but Zero dodged. Kratt swung his hand again, glove curled like a claw, and then Zero had the paint can—he pointed it at Kratt’s face, hit the button, and sprayed. The paint that came out froze almost instantly, hitting Kratt’s faceplate in sticky crystals instead of an even layer, but that didn’t matter. Zero wasn’t using the paint as paint, he was using it as propulsion. The force of the spray can wouldn’t have moved him a millimeter on Earth, but here in zero gravity it pushed him backward, just out of reach of Kratt’s hands. Kratt kept coming, and Zero kept spraying and then Kratt stopped, yanked back by the chain.