Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  Then I pull tight.

  54

  Prakesh

  Roger stands in the dim light, looking around him. Prakesh tries very hard not to move a single muscle.

  Seconds tick by. Prakesh becomes exquisitely aware of every part of his body, down to his fingertips, which are just touching the grimy floor. He stopped breathing some time ago, and his chest has begun to ache.

  Roger scratches his nose. Then he actually yawns. Prakesh has to suppress the urge to bolt from his hiding place and throttle him. He has to push it back, telling himself to stay put.

  Roger turns and walks away. “Nothing here, either,” he shouts, as if he’d spent the past few moments looking in a completely new area.

  He walks out of sight. Prakesh waits ten seconds, counting them off. It’s agony, and his mind can’t help racing ahead of him, constructing a scenario where Roger and Julian and the rest of them are watching the gap in silence, waiting for him to make a move.

  But he can’t stay here. Sooner or later, one of them is going to think about looking on the other side of the metal sheet, and then it’s all over. He has to get to the exit.

  He allows himself two quick breaths. Then, with his blood hammering through his veins, he takes the gap. He runs bent over, doing everything he can to keep his footsteps silent, not daring to look round. He keeps his eyes locked on the barrel.

  He’s almost there when Julian spots him.

  Prakesh hears him yell out from the other side of the hangar, quickly followed by the sound of running feet. His body doesn’t react fast enough, and slams shoulder first into the barrel. It’s empty, bonging as it bounces away from him. A shot from Julian’s stinger rings out, the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling above him. How many bullets does the man have left? No time to find out, no time to do anything except sprint for the exit.

  Prakesh can hear them behind him, all of them running, all of them coming straight towards him. They’ve got the advantage – with the plasma cutter, they’ll have all the light they need. He can see his shadow spread out, its arms blurring as he runs, but most of the way ahead of him is cloaked in darkness. If he hits another metal sheet, or runs into one of the pieces of scaffolding …

  “Get back here!” Julian sounds like he’s lost his mind. He tries to fire again, but this time there’s nothing but an audible click. He’s out of bullets. Not that it matters: he couldn’t hit anything anyway. And if Prakesh doesn’t get out of here soon, these people are going to catch him and beat him to death. He’s as sure of this as he is of his own heartbeat.

  A shadow, darker than the rest, looms in front of him. He doesn’t have time to see what is. He hurdles it, the toe of his right shoe just brushing its surface. If he were Riley, he’d probably tuck into a roll on the landing, preserving his momentum. But he’s not Riley, and he lands awkwardly, very nearly falling flat on his face. His throat is a parched desert, cracking under the searing wind of his breath. Come on, come on, come on.

  A figure lunges at him from a set of scaffolding on his right. Prakesh only just manages to duck under the man’s arms, lashing out blindly. He feels his fist hit an arm, hears a soft grunt of anger.

  There. The exit. Prakesh can just make it out, can just see the tiny green light on the keypad next to it. He sucks in another acid breath, and runs even faster. There’s a giant crash behind him, as if one of Julian’s men has run right into one of the stacks of metal pipes.

  And as Prakesh reaches the door, as his hand finds the keypad. Riley’s birthday. He punches in the numbers, 2104, fingers fumbling on the keys.

  The keypad gives a dull beep. Incorrect code.

  He wants to laugh. It’s absurd. He made the code so it would be easy to remember.

  The footsteps behind him fill the world, thundering closer. At the very last second, Prakesh realises what he’s done. He switches the code, punching in 0421, slamming his hand on the ENTER button.

  With a whining hiss, the door begins to slide back, letting in an intensely bright ray of light from the Air Lab.

  Prakesh doesn’t wait for it to open fully. He squeezes through the gap, blinking against the harsh light. He’s vaguely aware of people on the Air Lab side, but doesn’t have time to look. He reaches for the keypad on this side of the door, punches in the numbers, hits ENTER.

  Nothing happens.

  Prakesh’s already overstretched mind nearly snaps in two. The door continues to slide away, and it’s only after a second or two that he realises it has to go all the way before he can close it again.

  He looks up, without wanting to. Julian and Roger are sprinting for the door. Fifty feet away, closing fast.

  Prakesh can do nothing but watch them. As the door clicks into its fully open position, his hand is already on the keypad, his fingers jumping to the numbers. He hits ENTER, and the door begins to shut, closing agonisingly slowly. There’s no way it’s going to shut in time. Prakesh tells himself to move, but his feet have stopped listening to him. All he can do is watch.

  55

  Riley

  “Riley, what are you doing?” Carver says.

  I don’t know. I’m making it up as I go along. Anna is looking at me like I’ve gone insane, her eyes darting between me and the approaching Earthers.

  I can feel Ivy’s throat pulsing in the crook of my arm. She’s dead still.

  Anton comes to a juddering halt, the men and women behind him nearly knocking into him.

  “Stay back,” he says over his shoulder. His eyes are locked on me and the girl, shot through with fear and fury.

  “Gods, she’s got—”

  “Let her go.”

  I raise my chin, staring them down. “Listen up,” I say, raising my voice so that it fills the room. “Everybody back off. We’re walking out of here, and I don’t want to see anybody in our way.”

  Ivy is still frozen. I can’t tell if she’s scared solid, or just playing along.

  Mikhail arrives, pushing his way through the crowd, thunder on his face. He ignores the girl, focusing on me. “Put her down,” he says slowly.

  “You think I’m joking?” I say, hefting her higher, using the surface of my arm to lift her chin. “I’ll do it.” Somehow, I manage to keep the trembling out of my voice.

  A man falls out of the crowd. It’s Jamal. There’s anger on his face – anger, and a terror so raw it takes my breath away

  “Please,” he says. It’s the kind of whisper that stops everyone speaking. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  “She won’t.”

  Okwembu steps out behind Jamal – the latest arrival to our little game, calm and composed. Mikhail tries to speak, but she places a hand on his arm. Carver and Anna have drawn closer to me, almost touching on either side, their bodies tense.

  “Neither of them will,” Okwembu says. “They don’t have it in them.”

  She turns Jamal’s face towards her, and smiles gently. “Your little one is going to be fine.”

  Her words snap Carver out of his trance. He steps in front of me. “Only if everybody locks their feet to the floor,” he says. “We’re going to walk out of here. If anybody gets in our way, we’ll kill her.”

  A small part of me burns with revulsion at his words, but I ignore it. There’s no other way out of this.

  Okwembu’s smile gets even wider. “Two of the young people in front of you have never killed before,” she says to the crowd. “The other one, the one holding the girl, is Riley Hale. You probably know her. She has killed before – she murdered her tracer crew leader, and then own father. But she did it to save Outer Earth, and she feels so guilty that she’d rather die before taking another life.”

  She turns to face me. Her expression is completely neutral. “Did I miss anything, Ms Hale?”

  Right then, Ivy decides she’s had enough.

  Maybe she realises that it isn’t a game, or that it’s not fun to play-act any more. She screams. And it’s the kind of high-pitched scream that makes you want to put your hands ove
r your ears and scream back, just to shut out the noise.

  I let her go. I don’t put her down – I drop her, not meaning to, but watching it happen anyway, horror rising inside me. The girl’s face goes from surprise to terror in about a third of a second, and then she slams knees first into the ground. Jamal goes from standing to sprinting in the same amount of lime, running for his daughter.

  Mikhail steps in front of Okwembu and points at us. The anger on his face is like steam trapped in a broken vent.

  “Take them.”

  56

  Riley

  We run. Back down the line of kilns, ahead of the mob. A hunk of metal bounces off the ground in front of me, and another smacks me in the small of the back. I don’t dare look around.

  Carver is alongside me, his breathing hot and hard. Anna is just behind. We’re nearing the back of the hangar, which either means we’re going to have to double back or go all the way around, outpacing the mob.

  We come to the back wall, and hang a hard left. There’s an old slag container pushed up against the wall – big and clunky, open at the top, as tall as I am.

  “Over there,” I shout, pointing. Carver follows my gaze, then looks at me like I’ve gone mad.

  “We can’t hide in there!” he shouts back.

  “She means above it,” says Anna.

  He looks up. Hanging over the container is a claw-scoop, the kind that looks like a giant, stubby fingered hand. The arm attached to it extends upwards, a mess of thick cables and pneumatic sections. The arm reaches its apex about twenty feet up, before curving down and terminating in a control cab, bristling with levers and dials. But a few feet above the top of the arm is the metal frame of the gantry.

  Before Carver can argue, I scrabble up the side of the container. I take a split second to get my feet on the rim – the crowd is closer now, shouts coming from everywhere, Mikhail’s voice roaring above them – and then I jump.

  My fingers snag one of the cables on the crane’s arm. For a horrible moment I can’t get a good grip. Then I lock in, and the rounded part of the scoop slams into my torso. My legs swing in space, but I use the momentum as they come back to push myself higher, my shoes scrabbling for purchase on the metal. The joints above me groan in protest, like an ancient monster, woken from its sleep. I’m moving as fast as I can, trying to climb, trying to make space for Carver. He jumps, and there’s an enormous bang as he grabs the scoop. It lurches, swinging like a pendulum, the metal under my hands vibrating.

  Anna cries out in alarm. I look back and down over my shoulder – they’ve got her. Two of them, Hisako and a man. He’s holding her around the chest, pinning her arms to her sides, and Hisako is trying to capture her thrashing legs.

  I don’t know what to do. If I drop down now, the mob will be on me before I can get back on the crane arm. But I can’t just leave her there.

  Anna solves the problem for me. She twists her body to the side, slipping out of the man’s grip, lashing out with her foot. She connects with Hisako’s stomach, and I hear the woman’s breath leave her body in a pained whoop.

  Anna stumbles away, dropping into a fighting stance. Hisako and the man are between her and the crane arm. They’re trying to flank her, sidestepping, Hisako rolling her shoulders like she’s been waiting for a fight. And there are others coming up behind her.

  Anna looks around, then up at us. “Keep going!” she shouts. “I’ll find you.”

  With that, she launches herself at one of the nearby stacks of crates, scrambling onto the top of it. Then she’s jumping along them, the pallets rocking under her weight. Angry shouts follow her, trailing in her wake. She takes one last look back. Then she’s gone.

  I was never the best climber. That was always Amira. She could get up a sheer wall, given a little time and a good pair of shoes. But she did teach me a few things. Even as I start to climb, I’m spotting handholds, seeing parts of the arm I can slip my fingers over or jam a foot into. The route unfolds like a puzzle. Someone fires a stinger, and I hear the bullet ping off the wall. I’m less worried about being shot than I am of falling, but it still makes me jump.

  I hear someone yelling to go round the other side, to get the ladders.

  “There’s a ladder?” Carver says.

  “Shut up and climb!”

  My fingers nearly slip off one of ledges on the metal tube, the rust scraping across my skin. I hiss with pain, and my left leg swings out into space, threatening to take my body with it. I put everything I can into stopping the swing, pulling it back onto the arm. I’m breathing too fast, and I have to force myself to find the next hold, to keep going.

  The arm starts to curve as I climb, bending inward on its arc. It makes things easier. The gantry is almost within reach now, although I don’t dare to look further down it. If I see people running along it towards us …

  Carver is right behind me, climbing so close that he has to wait a half-second for me to lift my feet so he can use their positions as handholds. I’m at the apex of the arm, steadying myself, when I feel him slip.

  Time slows, then all but stops. He’s clear of the arm, holding onto nothing. He has the most indignant expression on his face, like he can’t believe the handhold betrayed him.

  Usually, when you’re climbing something, it’s just you and the wall. Nothing else matters. Every so often, when you’re high above the ground and balancing on a knife edge, it’s just you and the hold you’re reaching for. Everything else is blackness, and silence.

  Right now, right this second, there’s just my hand, and Carver’s.

  I reach for him. I put every ounce of power into it, but my hand is too far away and it’s stuck in its own gravity well, drained of momentum.

  His fingers touch mine. Move inch by inch up my hand. Every muscle in my arm is its own entity, hanging in space, burning with power.

  And then his hand is gripped in mine, and he’s swinging, transcribing an arc under the crane. The noise rushes back and his enormous weight pulls my stomach into the metal, knocking the air out of me. He’s screaming, a yell that is half adrenaline, half terror, so heavy he nearly pulls me right off the crane. Somehow, I manage to hold on, using my thighs and the tops of my feet to anchor myself to it.

  I swing him back, aiming for the downward part of the arm, and he snags a cable. His chest is rising and falling with jagged, jerky motions. When he lets go of my hand, my arm starts shaking uncontrollably. But he starts climbing straight away, and in moments we’re balanced on the gantry, our feet planted on the metal railing.

  I look up, and my heart sinks. The ladders weren’t tall enough to reach the gantry, but they’re tall enough to get to the top of a stack of slag containers, piled high in a corner of the hangar. There are already people on the top, and they’re pulling up one of the ladders – intending, no doubt, to use it to reach the gantry. The crane we climbed is at the back of the room, towards the centre, and the ladders are being positioned ahead of us. I spin round, nearly losing my balance, and put a hand on the metal to steady myself.

  “You OK?” I say to Carver, who looks more unsteady than I do.

  He nods. We start heading down the gantry, away from the ladders, moving in a weird half-jumping gait that keeps us on the struts. There’s no sign of Anna on the floor below us. Under our feet, I can feel the gantry vibrating as our pursuers finally climb onto it. We keep moving, and before long we’ve reached the wall closest to the entrance. But it’s a dead end – the gantry runs up against the wall, and there’s no way down, no handy claw-arm or ladder in sight.

  Real panic starts to build inside me. I think of Mikhail’s face again, of steam trapped in a vent, growing hotter and hotter.

  The miniature train car. The one on the gantry tracks that was hanging over us when we were brought in. It’s at ninety degrees to us. That part of the gantry is separate from ours, too far away to jump to, and the car itself is all the way down the other end.

  But that’s not what gets my attention. It’s th
e car’s power line: a single cable, thick as my wrist, sheathed in black rubber and connected to a power box, a foot or so above our heads.

  Carver sees where I’m looking. “If we climb along it, it’ll snap in two.”

  “Better idea.”

  I squeeze past him, nearly overbalancing, and put my hands on the power box. The cable goes right into it, into a slot bracketed by thick plastic. I grab the cable and pull, as hard as I can; he joins in, his muscles bulging.

  The gantry under our feet has started to sway slightly, bending as too many people converge on one spot. I hear Mikhail shout something, and realise that not only is he up there with them, but that they’re closer than I thought.

  “Riley, please tell me we’re not doing what I think we’re going to do,” Carver says. We’re both wiggling the cable, teasing it out of its socket.

  “I’ll hold onto you, OK?” I say. “You’re heavier.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  Another shot rings out. This one is closer, ricocheting off the power box itself. Slowly, ever so slowly, the cable gets looser, like a rotten tooth coming out of a gum. I can see the black edge of the rubber peeking over the white plastic.

  There’s a scream from behind us, and a second later there’s a sickening thud from below. Someone took a plunge.

  “Careful,” Mikhail shouts. He sounds like he’s right on top of us. This time, I do steal a glance over my shoulder. He’s a few feet away, his arms out, trying not to overbalance. There are three men behind him, all armed with stingers, all pointed at us.

  “You’ve got nowhere to go,” he says. The words are a growl.

  The cable snaps out of its plastic socket. Carver yanks on it twice, making sure his grip is steady. I wrap my arms around his waist. Mikhail’s eyes go wide, and he takes a wobbling step forward.

  I close my eyes. Carver jumps.