Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  101

  Riley

  I’m up near the ceiling, next to the cables that run from the reactor. I’ve got a cable around my right arm, hooked into the armpit. I’ve jammed my left ankle into a cable further along, tilting the back of my knee towards me.

  It’s an awkward position, and a tight fit – the cables push at the back of my neck and head. I’ve torn a strip off the bottom of my shirt, pulling it tight around my left leg, midway up my thigh. I have no idea if that’s the best place for a tourniquet, but I know it has to go on somewhere. I’ve already taken one of the storage boxes from where it was velcroed to the wall. If this works, I’m going to need to hit the bomb with something to detonate it. The box floats next to me, gently rotating.

  I’ve pulled up the leg of my jumpsuit. The air in the reactor is chilly, and I can feel it prickling my skin. I take a look at the stitches again, running a finger along them and fighting back the dry taste in my mouth. The stitches form a puckered line, running across the flesh at the back of the knee. Most of the stitch, save for the spiky ends, runs under the skin. I think back to the words Knox used: popliteal fossa. A gap in the muscles.

  I run my finger across the part above the stitch. The thought of cutting into it is enough to bring more cold sweat out across my body. It’s all too easy to imagine never being able to run again, miscalculating the cut, damaging the muscles themselves …

  I can’t do this. I can’t.

  Several deep breaths later, the blade is a few inches above the skin. If I can cut along the line of the stitch, it should open up a little. I should be able to see the bomb.

  And remove it without blowing myself up.

  Around me, the buzzing of the reactor feels softer, as if the machine is waiting to see what happens. I can hear my own heartbeat, and my breathing, exquisitely precise.

  The knife hovers, trembling.

  And before I can do anything, my hand acts on its own, jamming the knife into my flesh.

  I let out a shocked gasp, staring at the blade sticking out of my flesh, coming out at an angle. There’s no pain. There’s no—

  Blood wells up around the knife, floating in huge bubbles. And it’s then that the pain comes. A giant, searing bolt. I throw my head back and scream.

  Surely the bombs can’t be worse than this. It feels like someone is holding a red-hot brand to my leg: holding it and twisting it.

  Tears double and triple what I see, but I can still make out what I have to do. The knife has cut through the part of the stitch closest to the bone on the left. If I keep going, I can go right through the stitches, and open it all up.

  My right hand, gripping the handle of the knife, is trembling so hard that I have to use my left to steady it. I grit my teeth, and begin pushing it outwards, sawing gently up and down, cutting through the stitches.

  My back aches from having to twist my body, but I barely notice – compared to the pain from my knee it’s almost nothing. Every single movement brings a stab so intense that it greys out my vision. Every cut stitch brings such a wave of relief that I nearly cry out, and every one seems to be more painful than the last. By the time I sever the final stitch, my legs and the space around them are a red hell, and the grey at the edge of my vision has turned black.

  But I can see the bomb. I can see it.

  The wound is open now – a gaping purple-red mouth, with ragged edges. I can see the muscles and the gap between them, just visible under clouds of blood. And there: a metal casing. A flat, dark-green square, half an inch across, with a raised circular segment in the middle. It looks impossibly small – there’s no way something that tiny could do any damage.

  I think back to Kev, think back to the bloodstain spreading across his shirt.

  I need to see more. And I need both hands to do it. Somehow, I get the knife away from the wound, and put the handle between my teeth. The blood that stains it is still warm, coppery on my tongue, and that alone is almost enough to make me pass out. I bite down on the handle, and use my shaking fingers to gently pull the gaping mouth open some more.

  This time, I do pass out.

  When I come to, the knife has dropped out of my teeth and is floating in front of my face. I don’t remember what the pain was like; I just remember it being there, so enormous that I couldn’t even comprehend it.

  I snatch the knife out of the air and look back down at my destroyed knee. My head feels clearer now, as if it’s been wiped clean by the pain.

  I grip the bomb between thumb and forefinger, and begin to slide it out from the gap.

  Knox was wrong. Anyone could have removed it. It would have been better if it—

  Something pulls at my muscle, something between it and the bomb. I freeze.

  Working as gently as I can, trying not to touch the edges of the wound, I slip my finger underneath the bomb. Wires. Two of them, sheathed in rubber and slick with blood, running from the body of the bomb to the muscle itself. Attached to the muscle, wired into it. Had I kept pulling, I would have ripped them right out. In the haze of pain, I’d almost forgotten Knox’s words. Cut the left wire. My left.

  The knife is already back in my hand, and, working as slowly as I can, I slip it back under the metal casing. I feel it touch the wires, and the thought of cutting the wrong one is enough to make me gasp.

  I make sure the blade is right between the two wires, resting against the bomb casing. My hand is trembling so hard that I can hear the tapping of metal on metal. His left would be my right. So I have to cut the right-hand wire. I rest the blade against it, ready to cut. I need to do it in a single movement, yanking the blade across and cutting right through.

  What if Knox was lying?

  Out of nowhere, a memory surfaces. The memory of being ambushed by the Lieren, back when I was just a tracer. They had me pinned against the corridor wall, and one of them had a blade at my face. He was going to cut off one of my ears. He was flicking the blade left, right, left right, trying to decide which one.

  Each breath is shaking now, barely making it out of my lungs. I have to decide.

  I flip the knife, angling it towards the other wire.

  Then I flip it back, and cut the first one.

  102

  Riley

  I scream.

  It lasts for perhaps half a second, cut off as my throat slams shut. The knife is through. It skidded off the edge of the cut, but I barely felt it, the adrenaline knocking away the pain.

  I did it.

  I slice through the remaining wire, and then I’m holding the bomb in my hands.

  The entire casing fits into my palm. I’m laughing now. It’s a horrible sound, lumpy and angry. My entire body is drenched with sweat, and my knee … I can’t even look at my knee. When I lift my arms from around the cables, pulling myself out, the muscles in my upper body scream in protest.

  I swim towards the reactor as if in a dream. With every beat of my heart, darkness pulses at the edge of my vision.

  You will not pass out. Not now.

  Time skips forward again. I’m in front of the reactor. The bomb is suspended there, nudging one of the rubber seals. The storage box is positioned on my shoulder like a rocket launcher. I’m aiming it right at the bomb. One hit. That’s all it’ll take. I have enough presence of mind to throw the canister, rather than swing it – no telling how big the explosion will actually be.

  There’s a voice. The words hang in the air as if caught in the low gravity themselves, and it takes me a few moments to understand them.

  “Riley, what have you done?

  Very slowly, I turn my head.

  Prakesh is floating in the open door of the airlock, his eyes wide with confusion and horror.

  I try to say something, but the words won’t come. He puts a hand on either side of the door, and launches himself into the room, heading right for me.

  No – not for me. For the box I’m holding on my shoulder. I grip it tight, ready to launch it at the bomb.

  “Stay back, Pr
akesh,” I hear myself say.

  He’s grabbed hold of a cable, pulling himself to the stop. “Ry, you’re hurt – we need to get you some—”

  “I said, stay back.”

  “OK,” he says, raising a hand. “I’ll just talk then. All right? I’ll just talk.”

  He can’t keep his eyes off my knee, a thin stream of blood still trailing from it. When it touches the metal on the reactor, it spreads out, so dark it’s almost black.

  “We’re too far away now,” he says. “If you blow the reactor, we’ll never make it back.”

  I say nothing.

  “They know you’re here – I only just managed to get ahead of them. Come back with me. Please.”

  I don’t hear the rest. I’m looking past him. All the way to the reactor airlock.

  Okwembu is there, along with Mikhail.

  They’ve got Aaron. Mikhail has an arm around his throat, and a stinger pressed to the side of his head.

  103

  Riley

  I can’t move.

  I have to blow the bomb. But if I do that, Aaron dies.

  All I can see is the stinger, jammed up against his head. He’s barely conscious, and there are dark rings under his eyes, standing out against his pale skin.

  “Better put it down,” says Mikhail, pulling his arm tighter around Aaron’s throat.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” Okwembu says. She’s moved into the chamber, a few feet away from Prakesh. “But Ms Hale, you need to do what he says.”

  “I can’t.”

  I’m crying now, the tears spurred on by the waves of pain coming from my knee. They fall out of my eyes, drifting in front of me.

  Okwembu speaks slowly, as if carefully examining every word. “Outer Earth is lost. It’s finished. Even if we somehow repair the Core, we’ve lost too many people to Resin.”

  I think of Anna, her father, all the others left behind. “You’re wrong.”

  But it’s as if she doesn’t hear me. “The only thing that matters now is that humans survive. And the best chance of that is this ship.”

  “Don’t listen to them, Riley.” Aaron’s voice is almost inaudible under the noise of the reactor, but there’s still some strength in it. “Just…” His words are choked off as the arm pulls tighter around his neck.

  “Riley, please,” says Prakesh. “Just do what she says. Do it for me.”

  I stare at him, not understanding his words. When comprehension comes, it’s as if a bullet has gone through my own head. “You’re with them?”

  “You know I’d never want this. Any of it. But I can’t let anyone else die. Not you, not Aaron, not anyone else in this room or this ship. And if you blow that bomb, that’s what’ll happen.”

  “And Outer Earth?” I say. “What about them?”

  The regret on Prakesh’s face is infinite. “We can’t help them, Ry. I can’t help them. I never could. The only thing I can do is protect what we have now. I can help keep this ship safe.”

  “Prakesh—”

  “You have to let me do this,” he says.

  Is he telling the truth? Would Prakesh lie to me? It’s impossible to think. It feels as if there are more people in the room than the five of us. Kevin is there, and Yao, floating just out of sight. Royo, his dark eyes locked on mine. Amira, right behind me, whispering in my ear.

  My father is here, too, with my name in orange letters over his face. I can’t quite see his eyes.

  “I’ll give you three seconds,” says Mikhail.

  Okwembu glances at him. “No, Mikhail. I have this under control.”

  “Three!”

  “Riley, I love you, but you have to stop,” says Prakesh.

  “Two!”

  “Mikhail, stand down,” says Okwembu

  “One!”

  “Do it, Ry,” Aaron shouts. “Do it now!”

  I throw the box.

  104

  Riley

  But not at the bomb.

  Instead, I throw the box away from me, so hard that it bounces off the floor with a dull boom. The bomb floats in front of the reactor, its wires just touching the surface.

  Silence.

  Relief is written on Prakesh’s face. “Good. That’s good, Riley.”

  I look down at my hand. Somehow, the knife is back in it. I don’t know how – I can’t even remember seeing it since I used it on myself. And, right then, it’s as if all the voices, all the people crowding the reactor chamber, the buzzing of the reactor itself, just vanish. My mind is wiped clean. There’s just me, and the knife.

  And Janice Okwembu.

  She’s floating in front of me. Her eyes sparkle with triumph. Everything that’s happened, all of it, from my father to the Devil Dancers to Resin to the dock to Morgan Knox … all of it is because of her. The chain of events she set off, by bringing my father back, put us here: on a hijacked vessel, with the station in ruins behind us, and hundreds of thousands of people dead.

  She’s the origin point. She’s responsible. She wanted power, and control, and it tore Outer Earth apart.

  I’m barely aware of what I’m doing. I feel my hands grab hold of something, and use it to spin me around. I move my right leg, the undamaged one, swinging it around so that my foot is in contact with the surface of the reactor. The knife is pointed upwards, gripped tight in my hand. Its blade is crusted with dried blood.

  I push off the reactor in what feels like slow motion, but somehow I know that I’m moving faster than I ever have before. Everything I’ve gone through coalesces, simmers down into those two things. The triumph fades from her eyes, replaced by fear.

  And the sight of it, that naked terror in her eyes, is wonderful.

  Someone grabs me around the middle. The world comes rushing back – Aaron, Mikhail, the reactor, all of it. The knife is gone, flying away from me. Okwembu, too, pulled back by Mikhail. He throws Aaron aside as he does so, sending him flying.

  I’m shouting, hammering on the arms that grip me tight. It’s Prakesh. We slam into the wall of the chamber, and my knee flares with impossible pain. He just pulls his way up my body until he towers over me, pulls me into an embrace, locks me in it. My words turn to nothing, to incoherent screams.

  I fight to get away from Prakesh, but there’s no strength left in my arms. Eventually, all I can do is stare at him. Betrayal, hatred, love, pity – I feel every single one of them.

  “No more deaths, Riley,” he says. “No more. Not even her. It’s over.”

  105

  Riley

  There’s food, water and a room with very bright lights. The Shinso Maru’s medical bay – I don’t really remember how I got here, but Aaron is with me, strapped into one of the other beds.

  I can’t feel anything below my left knee – the man working on it puts a huge needle into my leg, and the pain simply melts away. I’m strapped down, held in place by wide velcro straps, but my arms float freely. I can barely move them.

  The man is muttering to himself as he works on the cut. “You did this to yourself?”

  “There was a bomb in me,” I say. “I took it out.”

  I hear him pause for a moment, as if waiting for more. When it doesn’t come, he goes back to work.

  “There’s another one,” I say. I barely recognise my own voice. “Other knee.”

  His eyes go wide. Then he shakes his head sadly. “I don’t…” he says, and trails off.

  “Please. You have to take it out.”

  “Dominguez was our medical officer,” he says. “I’m doing what I can, but I’m out of my depth here. I’m sorry.”

  He’s right. Better to leave it where it is, for now. As long as that transmitter in my ear stays charged, I’ll be OK.

  It’s then that I notice the patch on his chest, faded and frayed, but still legible. KHALIL, ASTRONAUTICS OFFICER.

  “The demon of the Asteroid Belt,” I say. I don’t know if he hears me. I’m drifting down a long, dark tunnel, shot through with flecks of fire. I expect
to see my dad, with my name obscuring his eyes, but I’m way too deep for that.

  When I wake up, Khalil is gone. In his place there’s one of the Earthers, floating by the door. I vaguely remember him from the attack on the dock – a giant man, with a face that looks as if he hasn’t smiled in years. “Are you here to make sure I don’t kill anybody?” I ask. My throat feels as if it’s filled with razor blades.

  He doesn’t say anything. Lifting my head, I get a look at my knee for the first time. It’s wrapped in bandages; a swollen ball of white fabric, dotted with blood.

  I rip off my velcro straps. Using the wall for control, I move over to Aaron’s bed. He’s flat on his back, his eyes closed. The glaring lights show up the purple circles underneath his eyes. There’s a drip stuck into his arm, hooked up to a bag of yellowish liquid.

  “They said not to wake him yet,” says the man by the door.

  I put a hand on Aaron’s shoulder, and squeeze. Instantly, the man is by my side, moving between me and the bed. I didn’t realise how big he was – my head barely reaches his shoulders.

  “Best do what you’re told,” he says, staring down at me.

  I return his gaze. “What are you, then? My bodyguard?”

  “Mikhail says to keep you in here. He’ll figure out what to do with you later. You and your friend.”

  I’m already working out how to take him down, working out the best way to disable him in low gravity. Then I realise I’ve only got the use of one leg, and that my other limbs feel like thin glass. I’ve as much chance of taking him down as I have of surviving in space without a suit. I turn and push myself back to my own bed, pulling myself down onto the edge of it, strapping myself back in.

  Sometime later, I look up to see Prakesh.

  His eyes are drawn, but he tries to smile as he moves towards the bed. The bodyguard floats between him and me, his hand raised.