Adrift

by Rob Boffard

  The only time they cut away from the hospital is to show footage of the destroyed Victory, sticking up from the shattered mine dumps like an ancient monolith. Oh, and Tom Daniels, looking harassed, surrounded by secret service. Hannah doesn’t know if they’re arresting him, or protecting him. Right now, she doesn’t much care.

  The Belarus Treaty renegotiations, it appears, are on indefinite hold.

  Volkova, Seema and Lorinda were taken from the Panda – Hannah doesn’t really want to think about their funerals, especially Volkova’s.

  Brendan is in the hospital, too, under police guard. Hannah doesn’t know who told the cops about him – Anita, maybe. She heard one of the doctors talking about a special prosecutor coming in from Mars. Whoever that is, they’ll have their hands full. The soldiers from the Victory – Hayes included – are in the other wing of the hospital, under military protection.

  Hannah had a dream the night before, after she finally drifted off to sleep in her uncomfortable hospital bed, that the soldiers stormed the wards, taking care of the survivors from the Panda, moving in darkness, eliminating them with double-tap shots. She woke up sweating, the brace clammy against her neck.

  No one knows where Roman is. He wasn’t among the crash survivors, or the bodies.

  They may have to wait a little longer. There was a big argument about letting authorised visitors in to see people in the hospital, Anita and Everett going back and forth with the hospital administrators, standing side by side in the corridor. The last Hannah had heard, the panicked hospital CEO had been telling them he’d get it in motion.

  She hopes they figure it out before her parents and her sister get here.

  She spoke to them a few hours ago. They’d just come through the Lunar jump station, and were waiting for their transport planet-side. The transmission was glitchy, the station signal pixelating their faces.

  Hannah had told herself she wouldn’t cry, but of course she did, almost as much as her mom and dad. Callie had remained dry-eyed, but she looked like she’d aged ten years in ten hours.

  Seeing her family had made Hannah’s gut clench up – as if they were going to be taken away from her, as if she was still back on the Panda and this was just another dream. As if a metal sphere was going to come hurtling towards them, obliterating them where they stood. It didn’t, and Hannah can’t wait for them to get here. Can’t wait to hug Callie, and her mom, and feel her dad’s stubble rasp past her cheek as she wraps her arms around him.

  She doesn’t remember a lot of what they talked about. It was a mess of what-the-hell-happened and how-could-they-do-this and please-tell-us-you’re-OK. But she keeps coming back to one part of the conversation, when they’d all mostly calmed down.

  Callie still looked like she was forty years old, some of the life had come back into her. “So what are you going to do?” she’d asked Hannah. “’Cos I don’t think the tour guide thing worked out.”

  Hannah had smiled at that. And she’d been on the verge of answering, about to tell them that the plan was the same, that she was still going to go and get a job in a museum and work towards being a curator, somehow.

  The story was so familiar that she knew every beat of it without thinking. She’d even been bracing herself for the tight smiles, the neutral “Oh” from her mom, Callie’s indifference, her dad’s concern. But just before she started speaking, Hannah decided that she didn’t feel like dealing with it any more.

  “I don’t know,” she told them. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Callie had nodded, told her they’d see her soon. Whenever that would be. They’d have to find a place to stay in Austin, and she’d have to get their names onto the visitors’ list … would she be able to leave with them? Her neck didn’t hurt nearly as much now, and technically she wasn’t a prisoner, so –

  “OK if I join you?”

  Hannah looks up, squinting against the sunlight. It’s Jack. Like her, he’s dressed in one of those ridiculous hospital gowns, the sash around the waist cinched tight. She’d heard him griping to the nurse earlier, asking her why he couldn’t have some proper pants.

  Back on the Panda, she would have leapt at the chance to get as far away from him as she could. She still feels that way, a little. But the sun is warm, and her family is on the way, and she didn’t die a horrible death in the vacuum of space. All things considered, she’s in a pretty good mood. And he did help save them.

  “Sure,” she says.

  He nods thanks, lowering himself to the bench. His arm, she sees, is still in a cast, albeit a more flexible one. He must be healing, too, the bone-repair nanos doing their work.

  “I don’t know if you heard,” he says.

  “Heard what?”

  “About Brendan and Seema’s kid.”

  For a moment, she has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Then she remembers.

  “Brendan made a deal,” he says. “He’d talk about the Roses Cartel if they’d get his son back. Apparently they had him in an apartment block in Acedalia. Cops raided the place, managed to get him out OK.”

  “Oh.” She doesn’t quite know how to respond to that. She should be happy, but, right now, it all feels as remote as Sigma itself. “That’s good,” she says, after a long moment.

  “Got that right,” he mutters. He shifts on the bench, looking uncomfortable. “Well, maybe not good for the kid. Not when your mom and dad are … you know.”

  “Glad he’s OK.” Hannah can’t think of anything else to say.

  “Right. Right. You … ah, you healing up?”

  “I think so. The doc says I can get the brace off this afternoon. How about you?”

  “’Bout the same.”

  “That’s good.”

  They fall silent. It’s not a comfortable silence either. Jack, Hannah suspects, is the kind of person with whom silences would never be comfortable.

  “So what are you going to do next?” she says. She’s not sure if she really wants to know, but she hasn’t any idea what else to say.

  He puffs out his cheeks. “Write about what happened, I guess. Maybe a book. I dunno.”

  “Yeah, that’d probably be—”

  “I mean the whole story is pretty much out there already, so I need to find a new angle on it. One everybody doesn’t know already.”

  “Isn’t the angle that you were actually there? You saw it happen?”

  “Well, yeah.” He looks annoyed, as if he’s regretting telling her his plans.

  Before she can say anything, he turns on the bench, shifting towards her. “Listen, I wanted to ask you …”

  “Yes?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. He hasn’t shaved, Hannah realises, and his stubble is starting to go from a shadow to a beard.

  “The whole thing with the captain,” Jack says. “I shouldn’t have … I mean, I didn’t know it would get so—”

  “Seema killed the captain,” Hannah says. “Seema, and Brendan. They were the ones who brought the knife on board.”

  With this, she knows what to say. She’s spent plenty of time thinking about it. Jack was an idiot, but, in the end, he wasn’t the one who murdered Volkova. He’s been through enough, and she isn’t going to make his life hell. Not after they actually made it out.

  Jack opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. He looks down at the ground, unwilling to meet her eyes.

  “… Thank you,” he says.

  Hannah doesn’t respond. On the other side of the garden, a bird lands – a little brown one, the kind that you always see around Earth cities, pecking at a bright green cactus. Hannah can just hear the hubbub from the crowds outside the hospital, drifting in on the warm breeze.

  “What about you?” Jack asks her.

  “Huh?”

  “What are you going to do? When this is all over?”

  She’s about to tell him that she doesn’t know. But she’s had plenty of time to think about that, too, since she spoke to Callie and her parents. Th
ey’re probably not going to like her answer, but that’s just tough.

  “I think I might go to pilot’s school,” she says.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not really.” A smile spreads across her face. “Go into the Navy. Fly commercial. I don’t know yet.”

  “Wow.” He nods. “That’s … wow.” He looks up at the sky, eyes narrowed against the glare. “Well, I’d say you’ve passed the entry exam.”

  Hannah actually laughs. She didn’t know if she still could.

  “You know Corey wants to do that too, right?” Jack says.

  “Kind of hard to miss.”

  “You should tell him. He’ll get a kick out of—”

  He stops, interrupted by loud voices from the glass-walled passage across the courtyard, drifting through the open door. A man is shouting, trying to push his way past one of the nurses, who is loudly telling him that he’s not supposed to be there, and is he on the visitors’ list anyway?

  “Eu tenho um direito!” the man shouts. There’s something odd about the way he’s walking, his legs slightly too stiff.

  “Sir!”

  “Deixe-me passar. Fora do caminho!”

  She turns to Jack, intending to ask him if he’d heard anything about visitors being allowed in yet, but he’s no longer paying attention to her. He’s staring at the commotion, his mouth slightly open, a look of absolute confusion on his face.

  “Sir, I can’t understand you. If you would just—”

  “Get out the damn way,” the man says, switching to English. “I need to see him!”

  He glances into the courtyard as he pushes past the nurse, and Hannah gets a look at him for the first time. He’s around Jack’s age, with salt-and-pepper hair and a thin, bony body under a green shirt and jeans. The shirt hangs off him, slightly too big. And, again, Hannah notices his gait: jerky, limping.

  The man sees Jack, and comes to an abrupt halt.

  “Friend of yours?” Hannah says.

  Jack doesn’t respond. His mouth is still open. Slowly, he rises off the bench. The man steps through the door, suddenly hesitant, ignoring the angry nurse behind him, who is threatening to call security.

  Jack says something that is half a breath, half a word. No, not just a word. A name, one Hannah hasn’t heard before. Hec.

  “Jack?” Hannah asks.

  “Um. Yeah.” Jack doesn’t even look at her. “I’ll … I’ll call you.”

  As Hannah watches, he starts walking towards the strange man. They meet a few feet from the door. The man starts to say something, but, as Hannah watches, Jack puts his arms around him. They rock back and forth, holding onto each other tight, like there’s nothing else in the entire world but them.

  Soon, she’ll be able to do that. She can hug her family, hold them close. Everything after that …

  Well. She’ll figure it out.

  She tilts her head back again, letting the sun splash across her face.

  Chapter 72

  Corey’s hospital room is actually pretty sweet. It’s got its own flatscreen, embedded in one wall. He’s already linked it to his lens, which somehow survived everything that happened to him. There’s a big window, which can turn frosted or dark at the touch of a button. The room is on the tenth floor, and looks out onto the central courtyard.

  The young doctor with the brown hair moved him here after she was done with his leg, although she insisted on keeping the shield up for the time being. “Don’t want another infection setting in,” she told him, as she positioned his hovering bed. “I’ll take it off in the morning.”

  When he asked her how he was supposed to pee, she gave him an evil grin. “The shield’s taking care of that, too,” she said. He thought that was kind of gross, but he didn’t push it.

  He had other stuff to think about.

  They eventually let visitors in. Jamie and Allie wanted to know everything. Then they wanted him to tell it a second time. And then Allie told the story about how their arrival had knocked her flat, and both of them wanted to know when he was getting out. He wanted to tell them how scary it all was, how it wasn’t just some amazing adventure, but he couldn’t find the words.

  And then Mal came back, and his parents, and they talked until they couldn’t talk any more. His mom and dad told them that they might have to go to court, that there would probably be quite a few lawyers who wanted to talk to them.

  His mom had got real serious when she said this, real quiet, like she was expecting an argument. She didn’t get one. Corey and Malik, for what was maybe the first time ever, both said yes in unison. For Corey, it was enough that his dad was holding his mom’s hand tight. That he didn’t let go. That his mom wouldn’t let him.

  They watched a feed for a while on the big flatscreen, and he found he was too tired to make sense of any of it. His brain felt like it’s leaking out of his ears.

  At some point, he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun outside the window had almost set, the last of the light making him squint.

  The room is empty. Quiet. The flatscreen off, the lights turned low. There’s an old-fashioned paper notepad on the side table. Malik has written a message for him. HOPE YOU DON’T HAVE TO PEE IN THE NIGHT :-)

  He smiles, putting the pad back on the table. There’s another note, this one a folded piece of paper with his name on it. It’s from his mom, her neat handwriting telling him that they love him, and that they’ll get him some actual clothes soon. “Pants are gone,” she’s written. “They had to cut them off (sorry!) but we can get some new ones.”

  Now that he’s alone, without everyone around him, his brain has calmed down a little. Enough to wonder some more about what’s going to happen next.

  He knows he can’t just pick up where he left off. How is he going to be able to go back to school? Is he still going to be able to hang out with Jamie and Allie? He knows what they’ve done – what they found out – is big. Like, really big. Like the kind of thing that changes the world. The whole Frontier. Not to mention the Colonies. It’s like his mom said – there are going to be lawyers, and court people, and who knows what else.

  After a while, he puts the note back on the table. The clothes his mom mentioned are piled neatly on it, his T-shirt folded on top, his shoes poking out from underneath. He’s about to lie back on the bed when he stops, looks more closely.

  There’s something poking out from underneath his T-shirt. Something he doesn’t recognise. A piece of tattered grey fabric.

  Corey frowns. He picks up the touchpad, raising the top half of the bed as high as it will go. Then he leans over, wincing as his muscles take the strain. He can’t quite get to his T-shirt, his fingers just touching it, trying to pull it towards him. If only the shield wasn’t locked in place …

  He snags it between finger and thumb, gently pulls it towards him. A few moments later, he has the mysterious fabric in his hand. He lifts it out, eyes huge.

  It’s a patch, torn from an item of clothing. A red and black patch with crossed daggers, the details picked out in crude stitching.

  Roman’s patch.

  Startled, Corey looks around the room, as if expecting the soldier to be standing right there. Nothing. It’s empty. Silent, and dark. Somewhere distant, he can hear a voice making an announcement through a speaker, the words inaudible behind the closed door.

  Corey leans back, holding the patch against his chest, looking out of the window. He stays that way until sleep finally takes him again, and the sun is long gone behind the buildings.

  ADRIFT

  Writer: Rob Boffard Editors: Anna Jackson, James Long, Bradley Englert Agent: Ed Wilson

  Copy-editor: Richard Collins

  Cover design: Charlotte Stroomer

  Publisher: Tim Holman

  Managing editor: Joanna Kramer

  Marketing: Sophie Fegan

  Publicity: Nazia Khatun, Ellen Wright Russian translations: Kristine Kalnina Portuguese translations: Gennaro Indiveri Medical advice: Prof. Ken Boffard, Dr
Vee Boffard Early readers: Nicole Simpson, George Kelly, Chris Ellis, Dane Taylor, Rayne Taylor, Ida Horwitz, Ryan Beyer, Werner Schutz, Taryn Arentsen Schutz, Kristine Kalnina Thanks to our families and friends. Special thanks to booksellers and reviewers worldwide. Extra special thanks to you.

  For access to exclusive stories, artwork and deleted scenes (and to score a free audiobook), head to tiny.cc/boffard.

  Look out for

  OUTER EARTH

  by

  Rob Boffard

  Welcome to Outer Earth: a vivid, dangerous world where every day is a desperate struggle for survival …

  … and one wrong move could spell the end for humanity.

  Outer Earth is a huge space station orbiting the ruins of our planet. Dirty, overcrowded and inescapable, it’s humanity’s last refuge … and possibly its final resting place.

  For there are dark forces at work on the station: forces that seek to unleash chaos. If they succeed, there will be nowhere left to run.

  This omnibus edition contains all three of Rob Boffard’s adrenaline-fuelled Outer Earth novels: Tracer, Zero-G and Impact.

  www.orbitbooks.net

  extras

  www.orbitbooks.net

  about the author

  Rob Boffard is a South African author who splits his time between London, Vancouver and Johannesburg. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade, and has written articles for publications in more than a dozen countries, including the Guardian and Wired in the UK.

  Find out more about Rob Boffard and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  if you enjoyed

  ADRIFT

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  THE ETERNITY WAR: PARIAH

  by

  Jamie Sawyer

  The soldiers of the Simulant Operations Programme are mankind’s elite warriors. Veterans of a thousand battles across a hundred worlds, they undertake suicidal missions to protect humanity from the insidious Krell Empire and the mysterious machine race known as the Shard.