Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  “I brought you that water,” he says.

  I want to say something, but the words won’t quite come yet. The water is delicious – cold and clear. I nod thanks, wiping my mouth and passing the canteen back.

  “Frank Beck,” he says, thrusting out a meaty hand. His grip is dry and firm.

  “Riley Hale,” I say, amazed that I can get the words out.

  Frank steps past me, pointing to the picture. “I’d almost forgotten that was there. Used to it, I guess.”

  “Anna did that?”

  “She’s quite good, isn’t she?” he says. “She drew that after the whole Sons of Earth thing calmed down. She wouldn’t stop talking about how you ran the Core. Went on about it so much that Gemma – that’s her mother – she told her to use some of the old matt-black we had lying around and…”

  My voice feels like it’s made of old glass. “Matt-black?”

  “Oh – chemical residue stuff left over from water processing. I work down at the plant, you know. Anyway, she drew, er … well, this.”

  He raises his hand, sweeping along the length of the drawing.

  I’m transfixed by it. I expect it to stir old memories, bad ones, but it doesn’t. Instead, I find myself picking up the smaller details: the pattern on the bottom of my shoes, the way the figure at the end of the Core has the same hulking profile as Oren Darnell. She’s even drawn the gloves I had on, which I used to fight off the freezing temperatures in the Core.

  “I don’t understand,” I say to Frank Beck. “Anna and I – we don’t exactly get along most of the time.”

  “Really?” he says, his brow furrowed. “I’d never know it from the way she talks about you. There was a new story every day when she was growing up, even before that bastard Darnell. Riley Hale ran New Germany Level 3 faster than anyone ever. Riley Hale jumped all the way off a gallery catwalk and survived. Riley this, Riley that. Said one day she was going to be faster than you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not a bit of it.”

  I shake my head, still staring at the drawing, then sit down on the single cot. “But we don’t get along. At all. We never have.” I think back to the first time Anna and I met – how she got in my face, challenging me to a race then and there.

  Frank shrugs. “She’s always refused to be second best at anything. She was running with a crew of lads up here, but she jumped at the chance to go and work for the stompers – mostly because she’d finally get to run with you.”

  “Was it you who taught her to use the slingshot?”

  He gives a small smile. “Anna’s always wanted to be the fastest person on Outer Earth, but it doesn’t take much to see that her real talent is shooting. Drawing, too, but mainly shooting. I made that damn slingshot for her when she was a girl, and I don’t think there’s another sharpshooter in the six sectors who can aim like she can. I remember once when we…”

  “Dad, you in there?”

  Anna appears in the doorway. Frank Beck smiles. “Hey, sweetie,” he says. “I was just helping your friend Riley here.”

  Anna steps inside. She briefly hugs her father, then turns to me, not looking at the drawing (her drawing) on the wall behind us.

  “Carver’s machine won’t start,” she says. “He’s got one of the guys helping him on it, but it’ll be a while.”

  Frank Beck holds his hand out. I take it, and he pulls me up off the bed.

  “I’ve got some people together,” Anna says. “Safety in numbers, right?”

  I take a deep breath. “OK,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  65

  Riley

  We’re halfway across the Tzevya gallery when the lights go out. This time they don’t come back on.

  We all stop, just for a second, waiting. The Tzevyans have been pretty good at keeping their sector clear of Resin victims, but I can still smell the dead here, the sickly-sweet scent of decay sticking in my nostrils.

  “Any time now,” says one of the others – Walker. But the lights stay off.

  Syria clears his throat. “Let’s go,” he says, pointing to one of the corridors leading off the gallery floor. The lights are still on there, flickering gently.

  There are ten of us, walking slowly up towards Apex. Syria leads the way. He’s barely said a word to me. Every so often, I’ll catch him looking in my direction, but when my eyes find his, he looks away. I don’t mind. I’m not sure I know what to say to him. No one’s said a word about the Caves, but I only have to look at Syria’s drawn face, at the bags under his eyes, to know that the news isn’t good.

  It feels strange to be moving through Outer Earth in a big group. More than that, it feels strange to be moving so slowly. I’m used to taking the corridors and catwalks at a run, not at an infuriating trudge. I bite back the urge to shout at them, to tell them to hurry. It’ll just piss them off, and, right now, I need them on my side.

  “Hey, tell me something, Hale,” says Walker. “These people want to take the Shinso back to Earth, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’re they even planning to get on board? I mean, they take a tug, OK, but then what? The crew isn’t just gonna open up and say, come on in, right?”

  “They’re using Okwembu to do it,” I say. I’m thinking hard, trying to get my thoughts in order. “She knows something about the ship’s operating system. I think they’re going to use her to gain access.”

  Walker points to the floor. “What makes them think there’s anything down there? Whole planet is a wreck.”

  I shrug, thinking back to Okwembu and Mikhail, back to the facility that served as the Earthers’ base. “I don’t know. They didn’t exactly tell us their plans.”

  Walker is silent for a moment. Then she says, “Why don’t we let them?”

  “Why don’t we let them what?”

  “Take the ship.”

  “You’re full of shit, Walker,” says a man at the back. He’s Donovan, I think.

  “I’m serious,” she says over her shoulder. “There’s still the Tenshi Maru. Isn’t there?”

  “Way too far out,” Syria mutters.

  “And hang on,” Donovan says. “You’re proposing we let these people take one of our two remaining asteroid catchers, and just leave? What about the rest of us?”

  “I just—”

  “No. Not happening. Besides, we need that asteroid if we’re going to have any hope of surviving.”

  “I’m just saying. These people want to try dropping this thing into Earth’s atmosphere without heat shielding? Good luck and good riddance.”

  Donovan scoffs.

  “They’re going to use the asteroid as heat shielding,” Anna says.

  “Bullshit.”

  I shrug. “Actually, it makes sense. They’ll have to be damn careful, though.”

  Walker ponders that. “But you said they didn’t tell you anything about their plans.”

  “They didn’t,” I say. “Carver worked it out. He…”

  I trail off. Something is jogging my memory, something I saw when we were captured by the Earthers.

  It slips away, back into a mess of thoughts. There are still far too many loose ends, too many things we don’t know.

  “They’ve got weapons,” I say. “They’re ready to fight their way into the dock. The people in Apex need to know they’re coming.”

  Walker shrugs. “People in Apex need to find out what this Resin thing is. That’s what they need to do.”

  “Got that right,” says Donovan. Syria huffs, flicking an irritated glance in his direction.

  Anna falls into step alongside me. For once, her beanie is off, tucked in her jacket pocket. Her blonde hair is stuck to her forehead in untidy strands. Was she right about Mikhail? Is he the connection between us, the reason we aren’t sick?

  And if he is, does that mean that he and the Earthers cooked up Resin?

  That thought again, flickering at the back of my mind, vanishing before I get a fix on it.

  Wh
en we do reach Apex, it’s a relief to see that most of the lights are still on. Of course, the doors are shut – huge slabs of steel, blocking off the wide entrance corridor.

  Anna stops, resting her hand on the door.

  “Now what?” says Syria.

  “Why don’t you knock?” Walker says.

  “Wow. You’re a genius, Walker,” says Donovan.

  “And you’re an asshole.”

  “Yeah, well,” says Donovan, walking over to one side of the door and dropping to his haunches. “I’m an asshole who’s going to get us inside.”

  He’s pulling at a panel on the wall – trying, I realise, to get to the wires behind it. He thinks he can short-circuit the doors somehow. I want to tell him not to bother – this is Apex, where if they want you outside, you stay outside.

  At that moment, the doors give a massive mechanical whine and begin to slide open.

  Behind them is a stomper, stinger up, aimed right at us. Syria swears, dropping the stretcher and scrabbling for his own. Walker, Donovan and the others already have theirs out.

  The stomper is huge – a heavily muscled woman, not tall but built like a human version of the Boneshaker. Her name comes to me out of nowhere: Jordan. She was there when Royo sent Carver and me into the pipes outside the Recycler Plant.

  The eyes buried in the black beetle-mask of her respirator are cold. “Don’t move,” she says. “Not a damn step, you hear me?”

  “We’re not sick,” Anna says, raising his hands.

  There’s a second stomper now, coming up behind the first. I see his eyes widen. “It’s Hale,” he says to Jordan. He notices Donovan, still crouched by the side of the door, and trains his stinger on him.

  “Get her into a brig somewhere,” Jordan says. “Rest of them can go on their way.” She looks at Anna and the others. “Thanks for the delivery.”

  “Step aside, stomper,” says Syria.

  Jordan raises her stinger and fires. The bang is enormous, the bullet burying itself in the ceiling. We duck on instinct, and two of the people in our party take off, bolting away from Apex.

  “Next one won’t be a warning shot,” Jordan says. “Hale – come with us.”

  “Just listen to me,” I say. “Do you think I’d come back here if there wasn’t a damn good reason?”

  She doesn’t lower her stinger. I was wrong. I thought I could negotiate with them, get them to give us passage. But none of this is working out like I planned.

  “You’ve got one minute,” she says.

  I let out a shaky breath. “Is Royo—” I begin, but Jordan cuts me off.

  “Still alive, for now,” she says. “I’m in command. Now talk.”

  It takes less than that to tell them all about the Earthers. But when I’m finished, the stompers don’t put their guns away. “Crap,” Jordan says.

  “But…”

  “No. It’s crap. I don’t believe a word of it. Now you—”

  There’s an enormous roar, and then the Boneshaker bursts into view behind us. Carver is leaning back, as if trying to control a rampaging beast. Both the stompers are staring at the Boneshaker.

  In the next instant, two things happen.

  Donovan explodes off his haunches, moving faster than he has any right to. He shoulder-charges the nearest stomper, sending him sprawling.

  The move distracts Jordan for a split second. I use it. I dart forward, jabbing at her gun arm. The heel of my left hand smacks her on the back of her wrist. The heel of my right hits the stinger itself.

  It’s a move that could get me killed if I miscalculate it, but it works. Jordan’s stinger goes flying, ripped out of her hand before she can squeeze the trigger.

  The Boneshaker comes to a screeching halt, rocking from side to side. Carver cuts the engine. He looks at me, then at the stompers, then at Anna, then back at me.

  “What’d I miss?” he says.

  66

  Riley

  After the tangled mess of Tzevya, Apex feels sparkling clean. The brightly lit corridors and white surfaces are free of the smell of decay.

  Jordan and the other stomper are in the middle of our little group, their stingers confiscated, their arms held tight. Jordan’s colleague got hit by Donovan in the scuffle, and blood is caked on his upper lip. Both of them are silent. We all are – we wouldn’t really be able to hear each other anyway. Carver drives the Boneshaker behind us. He has the motor at just above idle, but in the tight corridors the noise is amplified. Every so often, Jordan looks back at it, a confused look on her face.

  Apex is smaller than the other sectors, but it’ll still take us a few minutes to reach the council chamber. I’m on the lookout for more stompers, and I can see Anna doing the same thing. Last thing we need is to run into an ambush. But there’s no one around. Even Apex, it seems, has drawn into itself, like a freezing body diverting all its blood back to the core organs.

  We’re starting to get into a part of the sector that I recognise. It takes me a moment to work out where we are. A couple of levels below us is the main control room, where everything happened with my dad. Thinking of it is like touching an open wound.

  Anna signals me to head down a corridor to our right, and that’s when the Boneshaker cuts out again. The engine gives a giant, choking splutter, replaced by a resigned hissing noise, spraying clouds of noxious steam. Carver groans in frustration, his voice rising to a high whine. “Come on, you bastard, come on.”

  “Just leave it,” says Syria.

  Carver looks up at him. “Screw you.”

  Suddenly, everybody is shouting at everybody else, long-held tensions spilling out. Even I’m raising my voice, yelling for calm. At this rate, we’re not going to get into an ambush – the stompers are going to come right down on top of us.

  Somehow, Jordan’s eyes find mine. I’ve walked into the fray, and I’ve ended up next to her. I can hear her voice clearly through the chaos “What are you doing, Hale?” she says.

  I ignore her, but she keeps talking. “Even if these Earthers did exist,” she says, building up steam. “Even if they actually managed to hijack the Shinso, they’re not making it back to Earth. That thing’s got no way to make it through the atmosphere without burning up.”

  I don’t bother to tell her about the asteroid heat shield, and she doesn’t give me a chance to. “Not to mention the fact that there are zero provisions left on that ship. They’ve been out there for nearly two years. I have to keep telling them that we can’t send a tug, which is pissing them off because they’re cooling their heels in Outer Earth orbit. So unless your Earthers have food of their own stashed away, they’re not going anywhere.”

  I turn my head to tell her to shut up, and stop.

  She stares at me. “What’s wrong, Hale? Run out of lies to tell?”

  But her voice sounds very far away. My mind is racing, connecting the dots faster than I keep track of it.

  Jordan’s words.

  What I saw in the Earthers’ camp.

  The idea, dancing on the edge of my mind, steps into the light. I see everything, like when Anna’s drawing suddenly snapped into focus.

  And I really, really don’t like what I see.

  “Hey!” Anna says, all but bellowing the word. Finally, everyone stops talking. I barely notice. I’m rolling the idea around in my mind, desperately trying to find a weak spot in it, something I missed that will puncture it and sink it.

  “Carver: leave it. We have to keep moving. Riley … Riley, what’s wrong?”

  Getting my tongue to form words is almost impossible. “You go on ahead,” I say.

  Anna narrows her eyes in confusion. “What?”

  “I just…” I’m moving away, turning, breaking into a run. “There’s something I have to do,” I say over my shoulder.

  “Riley!” Carver says. But I’ve already left them behind.

  67

  Riley

  Doctor Arroway is slumped across the table in his office, his head resting on his forearms
, slightly turned to one side. He’s discarded his face mask – it’s on the table in front of him, crumpled up. I can see the nail marks in its papery surface, as if he held it tight and scrunched it up before throwing it onto the table.

  His office is at the back of the hospital, a messy room that looks as if someone has been living in it for the past few days. He probably has. I can still hear the sounds of the hospital – the moans of the patients and the barked commands of the few nurses and doctors that still remain – but they’re muted here, and they’re cut off completely when I shut the door.

  Arroway jerks awake. He looks around him, and when he turns his face towards me I see that his eyes have sunk into his face, swallowed by huge black circles. He wavers for a moment, then realises who I am, and explodes out of his chair.

  “No, no, no. Get away,” he says, staggering backwards. His foot catches the chair leg as he does so, sending it crashing over. I can see him looking around for a weapon, something he can use against me.

  He must think I want revenge, for not examining me when I told him about the bombs, back when I was captured at the broken bridge.

  “Relax, Doc,” I say, raising my palms. “I just want to talk.”

  “Talk?” Sweat beads on his forehead, and his eyes won’t stop moving, still hunting for a weapon.

  I force a smile. “Calm down. I’m not here to hurt you, or anyone else. I promise.”

  It feels like I do a pretty good job of keeping the nervousness out of my voice, considering. It feels like I’m hanging over a giant pit, dangling from a frayed rope, with a new strand snapping every minute. My earlier realisation is like a monster waiting in the pit, skulking in the shadows. I don’t dare look at it, or even think too hard about it, or I’ll fall from the rope.

  I push on, using the words to strengthen my grip. “When you tested me – when you tested my blood. You didn’t find anything useful, right?”

  He’s still looking at me like I’m going to lunge forward and bite him. After a few seconds, he gives a tight nod.