Zero

by J. S. Collyer

  “Webb,” Hugo croaked, though the whiteness was closing across his vision. “Commander Webb...” But then he was being hauled up into someone's arms like he was no more than a rag doll and whiteness washed over and swamped him.

  ɵ

  Pulling himself back took almost more than Hugo had. He could measure the length and breadth of his body with the aching. He felt the rise and fall of his breaths and there was a cool, minty taste in his mouth. One arm moved but one arm didn't. The one that didn't was throbbing. He took three deep breaths, using the pain to rope himself back into his flesh. At last, with an effort of will that almost had him sliding back under, he blinked his eyes open.

  He grunted as the lights of the medbay flooded his brain. He felt his heart hammer and heard a beeping close by increase at the same rate. He forced himself to stay calm. Opening his eyes more slowly, he managed to focus on the bulkhead above him. The sounds of the ship started filtering through, the beep and whirr of equipment as well as the steady bleeping of his heart monitor. His breaths echoed. He raised his good hand and found a mask covering his mouth and nose and pulled it off. He took a deep breath of the metallic air of the Zero and his mind cleared.

  Spinn's voice came from somewhere close by. “...they're too good to leave anything obvious.”

  “Well keep digging. Webb's never been wrong before.”

  There was a pause. “Any news?” the researcher asked, almost in a whisper.

  Hugo turned his head to the side and could make out More's grim face on the screen of the doctor's medbay workstation. “Nothing yet. We'll let you know when there is.” And the screen went blank.

  Hugo dragged another breath in, held it and pulled himself up. The wires and tubes attached to him tightened and he growled, shutting his eyes against the flashing lights in his head.

  “Captain!” When Hugo opened his eyes, Spinn was at his bedside, hands out as if he were thinking about pushing him him back down. “Captain, you need to lie down.”

  “Webb,” Hugo croaked, his dry throat cracking. “Webb's in trouble...”

  “Sir, Rami left strict orders -”

  Hugo used his good hand to pull off the lead for the heart monitor and detach his IV line. He blinked against a wave of dizziness. When he came back to himself he screwed his eyes up, trying to bring the chrono display on the wall into focus with a sinking feeling. “How long have I been under?”

  “Almost twenty four hours now, sir.”

  “Twenty four hours?” Hugo half-barked. “What's happened? Have we found him?”

  “Sir...” Spinn managed. “You must rest.”

  Hugo flung off the thin blanket and hauled himself to his feet. Spinn looked like he might object again but Hugo silenced him with a look. He took a second to lean against the bulkhead and wait for his head to stop spinning and the gnawing pain in his abdomen to calm, then left, hurrying toward the bridge. He was clad only in a pair of thin med-issue bottoms and shivered in the corridor, but kept moving. His left arm in its brace he kept clutched against his stomach, right arm out to steady himself against the bulkhead. The drugs were wearing off and the pain flashed stronger with every step. He pushed it down and kept moving, heaving himself up the stairway to the bridge.

  “Report,” he barked as he set foot on the deck, causing Kinjo and More to jump and look up from where they were bent over the control panel. The viewscreen showed a wide stretch of stars and the cloudy curve of the Earth far below.

  “Captain,” Kinjo exclaimed in horror. “You shouldn't be up. Rami said -”

  “Report. Now. Where the hell are we?”

  “In orbit, sir,” More responded, more calmly.

  “Get back down to that airfield immediately, Sub-Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, procedure dictates -”

  “Fuck procedure. We have a man down there.” He deliberately refused to think about the green light on his wrist panel blinking to nothing. “Get moving. That's an order.”

  “Sir,” More repeated, infuriatingly calm, raising a hand. “Let me explain. We received a transmission a few hours ago.”

  “What sort of transmission?” Hugo glowered, leaning against the command chair. Kinjo pursed her lips but didn't say anything.

  “It was pretty scrambled,” More said, turning and punching commands into the control panel. “But it looks like it was sent from a public comm booth, not far from the airfield where we found you.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Not much,” More said. “Took some decoding but it looks to be a set of co-ordinates.”

  Hugo blinked up at the display and saw More had pulled up a map of that twice-damned mountain range. “It's Webb. It's got to be. What's there?”

  More shook his head. “Nothing, sir.” A green cross flashed on the map. “There's nothing there. Older reports indicate there's a derelict church on the spot, but nothing else. It's miles from the main groundway.”

  “And miles from the local monitoring systems,” Hugo mumbled. He straightened. “Get us a heading -”

  More raised his hand again. “Rami and Bolt are already there, Captain.”

  “And?” Hugo asked, keeping his voice steady despite the coldness he felt welling up inside him.

  “There was no one there. They decided to wait, but nothing so far.” More said.

  “Well I bloody hope they've taken rations with them because they're staying there until he shows up,” Hugo said.

  More just nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Hugo clutched the command chair as another wave of dizziness caused him to sway. He jumped when he felt warm hands steady him.

  “Now sir, please. You must return to the medbay.” Hugo attempted to glower as Kinjo tried to lead him away. She frowned and put her hands on her hips, determination in every inch of her small frame. “Now, sir, with all due respect, it seems Webb went through a hell of a lot to get you back to the ship in one piece. I don't think he’d be happy if you died right here on the bridge from ruptured suturing.”

  Hugo glared a second more but then sagged. He blinked down at himself for the first time and realised how heavily bandaged he was and how blackened and bruised the skin around the bandages was. Every beat of his heart brought a dull thud of pain from his innards, arm and head and he closed his eyes and nodded. He felt Kinjo's hands on him again, marvelled a moment at the strength in them, and let her lead him back towards the corridor.

  “Don't worry sir,” she said in a softer voice, though Hugo could hear the tightness in it. “It's not the first time the commander's disappeared on us.”

  By the time they were back in the medbay, everything was throbbing so badly he was grateful to clamber back onto the bunk. He let Kinjo re-attach his heart monitor but held up a hand when she brought the IV line round. “No,” he mumbled. “I need to be able to wake up...”

  She pursed for a moment but then softened. “Very well, Captain,” she said, turning away. “On one condition.” She rifled in a nearby cupboard and produced a protein drink and a bottle of tablets. She shook two onto her hand and held them out to him along with the drink.

  Hugo eyed them suspiciously.

  “They're just painkillers, sir,” Kinjo insisted.

  He took the pills and swallowed them with the protein drink. She stood with her arms folded until he'd finished the drink, then nodded, though her frown didn't ease.

  “Rami's so gonna kill me,” she muttered as she took away the empty bottle.

  “Don't worry about the lieutenant, Midshipman,” Hugo mumbled, ignoring the roiling in his stomach as it attempted to hold in the protein drink. “You were following orders. I will talk to her.”

  Kinjo sighed, though some of the tension left her face. She leaned over him to try and pull the mask back over his mouth. “It's just oxygen sir,” she said, cutting off his protest before he could form it. “And something to encourage healing. Your body needs both right now.”

  He let her settle the mask back over his mouth and nose and the minty
coolness sweetened his mouth and filled his lungs again. He felt himself relax and the pain ebbed back to a dull thing at the back of his awareness.

  “Thank you,” Hugo heard his own voice from far away, but drifted off before he heard whether Kinjo replied or not.

  ɵ

  The part of Webb that was still capable of cognitive thought was glad that he could only measure time with the pulses of his heart that pushed the agony around his body. He thought that if he knew the actual amount of time it took to pull himself back to consciousness, blink open one working eye and haul himself to his feet, he would have probably given up on the whole thing and laid back down and died right there at the roadside. As it was, he took it one heartbeat at a time and concentrated on the memory of the captain's last order…

  “Webb! Come back, come back now, that's an order! Damn it, Webb!”

  He had to get back. He had to prove he knew what he was doing. He had survived worse. The other thought that kept him pulling his breath in and out was knowing that if he died, Rami would kill him.

  The pull of the grin that this thought brought him caused pain to lance through his face and he gave up on the idea of facial expressions and cognitive thought for a moment in order to lean against the rock and concentrate on not passing out or throwing up. He was upright, at least. That was a good thing and frankly more than he expected of himself. Only one leg would take his weight. He didn't look down to see the state of the other one. It seemed every inch of skin was raw and sticky with blood. He quickly found out deep breaths were impossible, but was relieved to discover that the blood in his mouth had come from his split lip and smashed teeth and not from his lungs.

  He spat the mess out and opened the one eye that would obey. The air was grey and chilled but whether it was early morning or late evening he couldn't tell. The road was deserted. There was scattered glass and scorch marks on the tarmac. Fluttering yellow tape roped off the gap in the barrier. He marvelled for a moment that the AI security force had failed to find him lying in the two-foot stretch of scrub and dirt between the side of the road and cliff, but then it probably never occurred to them that anyone would be stupid enough to fling themselves out of a vehicle going at that speed on a mountain road.

  He was reminded again that he couldn't grin and instead attempted putting one foot in front of the other. He found if he was slow and careful, he could just about move. He made it over to the other side of the road and peered down the mountain. The wreckage of the car was gone. Not even a tyre or twist of metal left behind. He turned away, not having the energy to follow the thoughts to any sort of conclusion, to be faced with the ugly reality that he was going to have to decide what to do next. His wrist panel was a shattered, unresponsive mess. Guilt nagged at him as he realised his heartbeat feed would have blinked out on the captain's panel.

  It had darkened since he'd come round which meant it was evening after all, which also meant he must have been lying by the road for a full day. He guessed he was still here because of one of the few Service statutes he agreed with: no crew member or vessel is to be risked for the retrieval of the dead. So in order to prove he knew what he was doing and had in fact survived, he needed to get another message to the Zero. Somehow.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to bring the maps of the area into his mind's eye. They were stubborn and refused to complete themselves in any detail. All he could remember was that down the mountain led towards the airfield, the town and the AI Command Centre. So up the mountain it was.

  It was easy when he looked at it that way. He shuffled back to the other side of the road so he had the cliff face to lean on and began following it uphill. Slowly. He stared straight ahead, concentrated on each breath, each step, each foot of progress gained. There was little traffic but he was glad that night was drawing in again, letting him see the headlights of any vehicle long before they came in sight. The sheer rock face on his right gave way to scrubby woodland and he was able to stumble into the shadows of the trees whenever anything passed.

  He carried on, not knowing how long he moved for, just occasionally noticing the view around him changing and night setting in. The clouds hid the stars and he was grateful for the cover but couldn't ignore the pang of isolation he felt without them. He'd also hoped he might have been able to see one bright speck creeping across the sky and fancy it the Zero, drifting dutifully, waiting for his call.

  He finally had to stop and lean against a tree, close his eye and will his lungs to keep breathing and his heart to keep beating. It would be so easy to just lie down in the soft leaf litter and let it all go. The world would carry on. The Zero would carry on. They could get another commander. It wouldn't be hard to find some other nameless colony orphan who knew how to sneak and steal and lie. Any one of them would put their necks on the line in exchange for regular meals. A couple of years training on the Endeavour training station and they could be shoved onto the Zero to pick up where Webb had left off. It would be like he'd never been.

  But if he lay down and gave up, that would prove Hugo right.

  “Well, we can't have that.”

  He wasn't sure if he'd said it out loud or just in his head, but the thought brought him swimming back to the surface and he pulled himself back up off the tree and kept moving. Almost as if he were being rewarded for his tenacity, light showed up ahead. Stationary light, not headlights. He moved off the road and approached from the shelter of the trees. His working eye screwed up as the light grew stronger and he felt his head begin to pound but he ignored it and stumbled on.

  It was a fuelling station. An honest-to-God, open and working civilian fuelling station, complete with public comm booth. A single car was just pulling away and he stepped back into the shadows until it was out of sight. Peering back round he saw the clerk in the store had his back to the window and was watching sport on a wall display. He waited ten heartbeats to make sure the clerk was thoroughly engrossed and then stepped out onto the tarmac and dragged himself into the comm booth.

  The blue screen flashed the minimum credit fee. He blinked a few times to try and stop his vision swimming and started typing in commands. Normally he could hack a civilian comm station blindfolded and it alarmed him how long it took him to get past its protocols. He was aware of the time with every beat of blood in his head and the fact that the comm booth was in full view of the public highway as well as the store.

  Finally the machine let him in but he didn't let himself pause, willing his focus not to waver, and pulled up a map of the area. The civilian net maps didn't quite have the same amount of detail as his wrist panel would have, but he saw enough to satisfy him that he had made the right decision. There was nothing this far up the mountain apart from hiking tracks and some more battle-scarred landscape. It bugged him that he couldn't be sure, but from the looks of things he'd left most of the heavy-duty monitoring and scanning ranges behind. He cast about for somewhere suitable to select for a pick-up point that was within staggering distance of the fuelling station. His heart sank when he saw there was nowhere near that had the space to let the Zero come herself and none of it was as remote as he would have liked.

  He settled for a spot further up the mountain and off the main road that would at least let a fighter land, took a note of the co-ordinates and then set about attempting to get them coded and sent to the ship. It wasn't his best encryption. Rami would have tutted and shook her head. But it was all he could manage. Even if he was capable of coding a secure visual link to the Zero, he was afraid how whoever answered might react when they saw the state of him.

  With one last push he wiped the memory on the comm unit and pushed the doors back open, wincing at the smears of blood he left on the glass, then dragged himself over the forecourt. The sight of the goods in the store made him realise how thirsty and hungry he was. But he was way beyond any stealth or slight of hand so he shuffled back into the trees and kept moving, putting his hunger and thirst back in his mental box with the pain.

  It could h
ave been an hour later or it could have been ten minutes when it started to rain. He paused his uphill shuffle and laughed, tilting his head back. He revelled in the feel of the cool water rinsing the dried blood and muck from his face, revelled in the stinging feel of it getting into his wounds. He heaved a great sigh and took a moment just to feel it soak into his hair and the tatters of his clothes. The colonies' artificial weather never came close to that of the Earth and he knew as long as he lived he would never tire of the feel of being in amongst something so real and wild.

  But it wasn't long before the pleasantness of the rain wore off and he began to shiver. His boiler suit was soaked and clung like dead skin. His legs seemed to be getting heavier. For a while he knew nothing except the cold making everything shudder and sting and the drag of his feet through the mud.

  It took a long time to pull himself back together and when he did he realised with a start that he was no longer on the main road but shambling up an overgrown dirt track. The rain had stopped at some point and the sky was pinpricked with stars. The sight of them made his heart lift and he kept moving forward, hoping that his autopilot had taken him down the right track.

  Some indefinable time later he saw a tall, dark shape blotting out some of the stars ahead. He ignored the pain in his jaw and lips and let himself grin when he saw it was a church spire. He had made it. Even if there was no one there, even if no one came, he had made it.

  The concrete steps that led up to the front door seemed like a cruel obstacle after everything else but he delved down deep and found the last shreds of his strength. It took him a moment to realise that the door stood ajar and there was the sound of familiar voices arguing within. Even if he'd wanted to stop his tattered smile he couldn't. He shouldered the door open and staggered in. Two figures were hunched in the shadowy pews and they fell silent when he entered.