Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  “I’ve got something for you,” I say. “I think—”

  My throat suddenly goes very dry, as if it doesn’t want to say the words. I force them out. “I think it might help you figure out where Resin came from.”

  Arroway’s eyes narrow. “How did you even get in here? They told me they sealed the sector.”

  “Never mind that. Here.”

  I dip my hand in my pocket. In the second before I pull it out, I pause. You could leave it alone, I think. Just turn and run. Pretend you don’t know anything.

  Then I take my hand out my pocket, and place what I’m carrying on the table.

  The beans are a drab green colour, thin and curled. They’re the ones that I took from the Earthers, thinking that I might need them as food further down the line.

  “I don’t understand,” Arroway says. “What is—”

  “Just test them.” I’ve already got one hand on the door, pulling it open. The noise from the hospital floods back in. “Then come and find me. I’ll probably be in the main council chamber.”

  Arroway stares at me, as if he still isn’t sure whether I’m a dream or not.

  “Come and find me,” I say again. Then I’m gone, pushing my way through the hospital, not looking back.

  I try to quieten my mind as I run through Apex. It’s just as well I don’t run into any other stompers – I’m so wired I’d probably try and take them head on. I try to sink into the movement, let the rhythm take me away, but dark thoughts tug at the edges of my mind.

  It’s not hard to find the council chamber. I can hear Syria bellowing from three corridors away, his voice ringing out, turned metallic by the corridor walls. “You’re cowards! All of you!”

  I step up my pace, breaking into a jog. Someone tries to answer Syria, but he cuts them off. “I don’t care. You’re just gonna let them take it? I swear to my gods, you walk out that door, and I’ll use it to take your head off.”

  I’ve never been in the council chamber before, but I’ve seen it plenty of times on the station comms screens – the council leader would occasionally broadcast messages to the station from here. Okwembu did it all the time. It’s smaller than I thought it would be, and, right now, it looks awful. The big centre table is strewn with detritus: discarded food containers, wrinkled jackets, tab screens. A glass of water has been knocked over, spreading a puddle across the middle of the table that nobody has bothered to mop up.

  Syria is still shouting, threatening violence if anybody leaves. He, Anna, Carver, Donovan and Han Tseng are on one side of the conference table. Walker is on the other side, along with the rest of the Tzevyans. Jordan and her colleague are seated in one corner, sullen and silent.

  Syria pauses for breath, and Walker cuts in, jabbing a finger at him. “We’ve been through plenty worse before. You think we can’t survive a couple more years without asteroid resources?”

  “I think you’re a coward, that’s what I think,” Syria says.

  Tseng looks as tired as Arroway was. There’s no sign of his functionaries. “I absolutely forbid you to leave,” he says to Walker. “If these people are really coming, then we can’t let them leave. They are not taking that asteroid catcher.”

  Anna tries to cut in. “Everybody just—”

  Tseng talks over her. “I order you to go down to the dock, and start fortifying it. You hear me?”

  That causes laughter from everyone on the other side of the table. Walker tilts her head, looking Tseng right in the eyes. “Not a chance.”

  I hover in the doorway, not sure whether to intervene or not. I guess Walker had more supporters than she thought. But as I stand there, I think how easy it would be to agree with her.

  It would be incredibly difficult to survive without the resources from the asteroid. That’s our building material, our soil nutrients, everything. With the Shinso and its cargo gone, we’d have to rely on the one last ship out there: the Tenshi Maru. It might be months, even years, before it finds a suitable asteroid to capture and bring home. But we could hold out – especially now that there are far fewer of us left.

  It’s an uncomfortable thought, and it brings another. If the Earthers really want to take the Shinso, why should we risk our lives trying to stop them? Let them take the damn ship. If they think they can survive on Earth, then Walker is right: good riddance.

  Anna sees me, and gestures me inside. Syria has started shouting again, and this time Walker has had enough. She and the others start picking their way across the room, heading for the door. One of them catches my eye, and half smiles, like we’re both in a private joke.

  Tseng has his hands flat on the table. For a tiny instant, I can see him as a council leader. It’s a strange sensation, and I’m brought back to reality when he shakes his head furiously, making his greasy hair flick from side to side.

  “They can’t take the Shinso,” he says. “We can’t let them. We need to fortify the dock right now.”

  Walker ignores him, pushing past me with a muttered apology. Syria is shaking his head, as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

  That’s when Tseng really loses it. He hammers the table, once, twice, three times. “Don’t you idiots understand? This isn’t just about holding out. If we don’t get that asteroid, this entire station is finished. It’s over.”

  Something in his voice stops all movement in the room. Walker and her companions turn to look at him. Tseng falls silent, a deep expression of worry crossing his face. Like he’s said too much.

  At that moment, the lights in the room flicker, plunging us into darkness. Another power failure, identical to the dozens I’ve seen over the past few weeks. After a moment, the lights kick back on again in sequence, click click click. All of us look up at them when they do.

  “What,” says Syria quietly, “is so important about that asteroid?”

  Han Tseng’s indignant exterior has cracked. What’s underneath is pink and tender, and he swallows, his Adam’s apple bouncing.

  “If we lose the Shinso’s asteroid,” he says, “we lose the fusion reactor. If we lose the reactor, everything stops working. No heat. No air. Nothing. Outer Earth dies.”

  68

  Riley

  The silence feels like it has weight, like it’s an actual presence in the room.

  It’s Anna who breaks it. “The tungsten,” she says, her eyes wide.

  Carver stares at her. “Holy shit. Of course.”

  His hands grip the top of a chair, and a deep growl of frustration rises in his throat.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “I second that,” says Walker.

  Han Tseng sighs. “It’s not the reactor per se. It’s the shielding. It’s made of tungsten alloy, which is ideal for absorbing the heat from the plasma core.”

  “This is just … perfect,” Carver says

  “The tungsten shields have degraded over time,” says Han Tseng. “We’ve been throttling the power grid to reduce the strain on the reactor, but it’s not enough. If we don’t get the tungsten out of the Shinso Maru’s asteroid and repair the shields, then the reactor fails.”

  “Fails how?” Anna says.

  “The second there’s a shielding breach, it’ll shut down. Just stop cold. Everything on the station that uses power is finished.”

  “What about backup systems?” Anna says. She’s taken her beanie out of her jacket pocket and is knotting it in her hands.

  Tseng gives a bitter laugh. “For an entire station? Maybe some of them are still working. Enough to power a sector or two, for a few days.”

  “Why didn’t you tell people?” I say. “Why keep it a secret?”

  Tseng notices me for the first time. “It would have caused a panic,” he says. “And up until a few minutes ago, none of us was aware that the Shinso shipment was in danger. If everything had gone to plan, we would have had those shields fixed before anybody even noticed the power failures were a problem.”

  The question comes to the front of my mind, as
if it was just waiting to be asked. “These people – the ones coming to take the Shinso. They think they can survive back on Earth.”

  Tseng shrugs, looking helpless.

  “We do monitor the Earth, right?” says Carver.

  Silence. Tseng won’t meet anyone’s eyes. After a long moment, he shakes his head.

  The groan is involuntary, uttered by everyone in the room, brimming with disgust. Tseng swallows. “There’s no point. Why spend time listening when we were never going to hear anything?”

  Carver stares at him. “But you must have had software listening out. A sub-routine that would ping us if … tell me you had something.”

  Tseng gives a helpless shrug. “You don’t understand. We listened for years. Decades. When we sent Earth Return down, we were monitoring non-stop.” A note of defiance creeps into his voice. “But we heard nothing. It’s dead down there, and we had to focus on surviving up here. There was no point hunting for transmission from a planet we were never going to go back to.”

  “So go and find out what changed,” Walker says.

  Donovan nods. “Yeah. Let’s go and take a look. See what has these people thinking they can run out on us.”

  “No,” says Syria. He looks thunderous. “Forget all that. It doesn’t matter what these people know, or what they think they can do. We’ve still got a reactor, we’ve still got people, and we’ve still got our home.”

  Syria glares at us. “They could have come forward. They could have told him—” he jabs a finger at Tseng “—what they found. But they didn’t. They wanted it for themselves. No way we’re letting that happen. If we can really survive down there, then everyone deserves a shot at it. We need time to figure all that out, and time is one thing we don’t have.”

  Tseng looks at me. “Is there any hope they’d listen to reason?”

  I think of Mikhail and the Earthers. Of Okwembu, and how quickly she fell in with their cause. I think of the atmosphere in the old facility: that nervous tension, electric in the air. The stacked supplies, the shouted orders.

  Slowly, I shake my head.

  Tseng takes a long breath, lets it out. “I’ll go and talk to the stompers. Maybe we can take these people down.”

  Syria shakes his head. “Not gonna work.”

  Tseng raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “We go on a hunting mission, we’re going into unfamiliar territory.”

  “It’s not unfamiliar,” I say, nodding to Carver and Anna. “We were there.”

  “Right. But the rest of us weren’t. And we know they’re going to the dock – they’ll need the tugs to get out the Shinso. They’ll have to come all the way across the station, and when they get here we’ll be ready. Why exhaust ourselves chasing them down when there’s no guarantee we’ll even find them?”

  The room is silent again. Tseng is shaking his head.

  Before anybody can say anything, there’s the sound of running footsteps from the corridor outside. A moment later, Arroway comes round the door, moving so fast that Tseng has to make a surprised leap to the side.

  At the sight of him, the fear that I pushed to the back of my mind scrambles into the light. I lick my suddenly dry lips, knowing what he’s going to say. In that moment, I wish I could take it all back. I wish I had never given him the beans.

  Arroway is out of breath, his shoulders trembling. He puts his hands on the conference table, tries to speak, doubles over with a cough.

  “Doctor Arroway,” says Tseng, his tone shocked, as if he can’t believe that Arroway would just barge in like this.

  “Resin,” Arroway says. It’s impossible not to hear the excitement in his voice – no, not excitement, more like joy. He coughs again, then straightens up. “We have the source. We know where it came from.”

  He points a shaking finger at me, a tired smile creeping across his face. “You were right. You are absolutely right. Those beans … how could we not see it?”

  Tseng looks as if he’s about to explode. “Doctor Arroway, explain yourself.”

  Anna laughs, like she doesn’t quite dare to believe it. “We can cure it, can’t we?”

  Arroway nods. “We’ve already isolated the components we need. It won’t take long to start producing a cure – maybe not even an hour. We’ve already got all our production machines running full speed, for the furosemide-nitrate. Hell, with enough time, we could produce a vaccine for it. And it’s all thanks to her.” He nods in my direction, still smiling.

  Everyone turns to look at me. I don’t let myself pay attention to them. I march over to Han Tseng, and grab him by the front of his tunic.

  “The Air Lab,” I say.

  “Let go of me.”

  “How do I unseal it?”

  When he doesn’t respond, I shake him so hard that his teeth clack together. “Tell me.”

  “18623,” he says. “The code is 18623. But I don’t—”

  I let go of him, already turning away, moving towards the door. I can feel a room full of shocked eyes on my back.

  At the last second, I turn and point a finger at Arroway. “I want the first cure that comes off the line. You find me, and you give it to me.”

  “Ry, hold up,” Carver says. “Ry!”

  I launch myself out the room and take off down the corridor. Fear and guilt match every step I take.

  69

  Prakesh

  The headache is cranked all the way up, and his throat still feels like it’s being squeezed by a thick steel ring. But the soil under Prakesh’s backside is cool. He digs his fingers into it, letting the grains collect in the fissures on the underside of his knuckles.

  Ordinarily, he’d never do anything to compress his good soil. But, right now, all he wants to do is be close to it. He has his back to a tree trunk – the rough bark is uncomfortable and knobbly, but in a way he needs that, too. He’s on one of the tree beds, a little way down from where he fought Julian Novak. The giant oaks tower over him, shade dappling his face.

  At some point, he’ll have to get up. Yoshiro’s body will need to be taken care of. He’s not relishing the task at all – every time he thinks of it, he feels a hot spike of anger towards Julian – but at least, he thinks, it’s a task he knows he can do.

  He feels a presence close to him, and opens his eyes. Suki is standing there, hands clasped in front of her. From this angle, she looks younger than she is. Her expression is slightly embarrassed, like she’s interrupted a private ritual.

  Prakesh smiles up at her, nods. “How are you doing?” he croaks.

  She lets out a shaky breath. “Fine. Forget that – what about you?”

  He waves the question away, nodding instead towards the part of the Air Lab where Julian almost choked the life out of him. “He under control?”

  Suki flashes a pained smile. “Some of the guys took him back to the control room. Locked him in one of the storage units.”

  Prakesh feels an unwelcome flash of guilt. “He doesn’t need to be looked at by a doctor, or…”

  “Nah. He’ll be okay. I don’t hit that hard, you know.”

  She sits down next to him, as if she’s had enough of waiting for an invitation. She crosses her legs underneath her, smoothing down her skirt.

  “So what do we do now?” she says.

  Prakesh shrugs. He starts to speak, but is interrupted by more cheering. A group of techs are crossing parallel to them, along one of the passages between the algae pools, and they’re shouting his name. He raises a weary hand, flashes a smile. It satisfies them, and they move on.

  “Carry on as normal,” he says to Suki. “Although we need to set up testing protocols for whatever this disease is. Can’t risk it spreading in here.” He’s already thinking ahead, thinking what needs to be done, of how best to isolate anybody who might be infected.

  Suki puts a hand on his knee. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well, as we’ve already established from the extinguisher incident,
you can’t do everything.”

  “The extinguisher incident? Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “You can call it whatever you want. I still saved you.”

  “Yes, you did.” He reaches over, squeezes her shoulder. His eyes find hers. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  Before she can reply, he hears the sound from the other end of the hangar. The hissing of the door to the outside world.

  Prakesh is on his feet before he can stop himself, stumbling towards it. The door is opening, and on the other side of it is—

  Riley.

  He breaks into a run. In moments, he’s on her, pulling her into his arms. A part of his mind registers that she looks awful – run ragged, stinking of sweat, her stomper jumpsuit torn in a dozen spots. She’s pale, her mouth a tight line. But he doesn’t care. She returns his embrace, holding him tight, and that’s all that matters.

  “Is it over?” he asks, when they pull apart.

  Riley looks up at him. And that’s when he sees the fear behind the exhaustion. Sees that she’s holding something in. Something bad.

  “Riley, what is it?” he asks. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  He grips her shoulders, pulls her close so they’re face-to-face. “Gods, Riley, talk to me.”

  “Resin,” she says. “It’s you, Prakesh. Resin came from you.”

  70

  Riley

  Prakesh’s eyes narrow in confusion. His head is tilted slightly to one side.

  “I don’t understand,” he says. His tone is light, like I’m fooling with him.

  I have to be the one to tell him. It’s the only way I can handle this – if I know the news is broken by someone he cares about. But when I try to speak again, I can’t find the words.

  “Riley, what is this?” he says.

  I force my voice to work. “You’re behind Resin. You created it. Not on purpose,” I say, when I see him about to interrupt, “but through what you were doing. It … it was an accident.”