Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2)

by J. S. Collyer

  “Right, back to business,” Dana started, turning to Jazz. “You found something on that computer. What was it?”

  Jazz raised her eyebrows, glancing at Webb who was refusing to look at any of them. She sighed, seemed to make up her mind about something, took off her jacket, checked the gun in the pocket and shut it away in a cupboard.

  “Not much, exactly,” she said. “He didn’t seem to have any credit of his own hidden anywhere. But he did have some authorisation codes and passes in his software that are usually used to access the Elders’ inter-sector credit flow system. He wasn’t a broker, I don’t see why he needed that sort of software.”

  “Unless he was a fence for bloodgrease traders,” Hugo mumbled.

  Jazz shrugged and nodded. “It’s a possibility. His last log-in had him accessing the system used to manage the yards’ supply budgets.”

  “The shipyards?” Hugo asked and Jazz nodded. “Why would he be checking that?”

  Jazz shrugged again. “I can’t tell.”

  “Could it have something to do with Apollos Outreach?” Dana asked.

  Jazz shook her head again. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. All I can tell you is he was able to see where credit was going around the colony. No one except a broker or an Elder would have reason to do that.”

  “So we have no proof that he was a Ghost, or even if he had anything to do with…what are you doing?” Hugo growled as his sister, who had a panel out of her pocket and was tapping commands into it.

  “None of your business,” she said. “Webb, what was the name of that Catiline member that took the processor?”

  “Sol,” Webb said, staring at nothing.

  “And where does he live?”

  “Stop,” Hugo ordered. “Just stop, now, Dana.”

  “I’m not stopping,” she said coolly, pocketing the panel again. “Webb. Tell me where I can find that Sol.”

  Hugo stepped between her and the door. He was trying to decide what to say first when Webb slammed his hand down on a tabletop.

  “This all stops. Now,” the younger man said. “Whatever’s between you two, I frankly could not give less of a shit. But we’re all mixed up in this together now, whether we like it or not. We either finish the job or we all leave.”

  “I have every intention of finishing the job,” Dana said, jutting her chin. “Tell me what I need to know and I’ll be off to do it.”

  “Not a chance, Hugo Junior. It’s bad enough having one of you running amuck on this damn colony. We stick together.”

  Both Hugo and Dana started protesting and this time Webb kicked the table. Jazz pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

  “No brand, no say,” Webb said, pointing at Hugo then his sister. “I’m taking no more shit off either of you.”

  Dana’s face was flushed and she looked like she might explode. Hugo felt the same heat riding up his spine but his belly was knotted with guilt. Webb’s pale eyes were angry and slightly pained. He looked at him for a long second then stormed out of the room. The silence he left in his wake was thick. Jazz pursed her lips and moved to follow but Hugo held up a hand.

  “Let me go,” he said.

  He found Webb in a store room at the end of the apartment’s narrow hallway. He sat in the light from the single window which reduced the piled-up furniture and disused computer equipment to shapeless bundles in the dark. He sat with his feet up on a crate, staring out across the colony cityscape. His face wasn’t angry any more. He just looked tired.

  “I’m sorry,” Hugo said, stepping into the room.

  “Which screw up are you apologising for?” Webb mumbled, not looking up.

  “You’re angry with me. I understand that. But what Dana said, back at the Ghost’s apartment -”

  “She reminds me of you,” Webb said.

  Hugo clamped his mouth over his first response, shifting from one foot to another. “She’s always been…impetuous.”

  “She’s a lot younger than you,” Webb murmured, still not looking up at him.

  Hugo took a step closer. “There are six of us,” he said.

  “And she’s the only girl?”

  Hugo nodded. “Not counting Catherine.”

  “The oldest?”

  Hugo nodded. “She died during the McCullough’s Revolution. Dana never knew her.”

  “It’s tough to live up to a dead person,” Webb said, examining his fingernails.

  “Webb,” Hugo said, taking another step closer.

  “Was she telling the truth?” Webb said, finally looking at him.

  “Marilyn came to me. She had leads on Orbit traders buying bloodgrease. She wanted to find enough to shut them all down. I assigned her the mission.”

  “With no team or backup?”

  Hugo clenched his fists but then felt his strength rattle out of him and slumped onto a crate. He clutched his head in his hands and closed his eyes. “She didn’t want to work with anyone else in case she turned up evidence that the Service could use against Haven,” he whispered. “But I should have insisted.”

  There was a moment of silence then he heard Webb shifting. “Harvey was never one to be talked out of something,” he said quietly.

  Hugo clutched at his head tighter. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  Webb didn’t say anything.

  Hugo sat with his head in his hands, breathing heavily. After a while, he found the strength to sit up. He blinked at the wetness in the corners of his eyes then met the clone’s heavy gaze even though there was still a darkness in his expression that unsettled him.

  “And I’m going to make it right,” he finally said, voice low. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Whatever the cost?”

  “Yes. But not just for me. For both of us. Dana was wrong about that.”

  Webb nodded and looked away. “She doesn’t seem to like me much.”

  “She doesn’t like anyone much.”

  The shadow’s shifted around Webb’s face as he nearly smiled. He heaved a sigh and stretched and Hugo heard his joints click. “Well, won’t this be fun together? One big, happy, screwed-up family.”

  Hugo massaged his temples. “Great.”

  “Come on,” Webb said, standing. “Let’s see if Jazz will make us some coffee.”

  Hugo’s mouth started to water and he suddenly realised how tired he was. “I think we’ll need it.”

  He followed Webb back to the main room. Dana was standing at the window with her back straight and a stony expression on her face whilst Jazz moved around the kitchen unit. They both looked up as Hugo and Webb came back in.

  “Kale, tell this woman to let me go.”

  Hugo frowned.

  “I’ve locked the door,” Jazz said as she started a machine in the kitchen that whirred and released the deliciously rich smell of coffee.

  “I’m not working with you two - ” Dana started but Hugo cut in.

  “Dana,” he snapped. “You don’t know the first damn thing -”

  “It seems to me,” Jazz put in, raising her voice enough to quiet them all as she fetched mugs from a cupboard. “That none of you really has any idea what you’re doing.”

  Doubt dampened Hugo’s palms and he saw Webb’s jaw tighten, though Dana visibly bridled.

  “Who are you anyway?” she said. “Why is this anything to do with you?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Jazz said, pouring the coffee.

  “Let me out, already. I got this far on my own -”

  “Dana,” Hugo warned.

  “How did you manage that, anyway?” Webb asked.

  “None of your business,” she growled. “Marilyn trusted me with her secrets, just like she can trust me to get the bastard who hurt her.”

  “Can she? When you’re still going about this in all the wrong ways?” Jazz asked. She offered a mug to Dana.

  Dana was frowning heavily but inhaled and then took the coffee. “And how exactly are we going wrong?”

&nbs
p; “You won’t find what you need by talking to people,” Jazz said. “You need to listen.”

  “Jazz is right,” Webb said as he took his own mug. “It’s what I’ve been trying to say all along. If we want to track Ariel down, it’s going to take time. Time with open ears and eyes and with our heads down. We go questioning Sol or Bryce or anyone, word will get round fast that we’re up to something.”

  “Bryce?” Dana asked. “Who’s Bryce?”

  “A fence for the refineries,” Hugo muttered.

  “He must know all of their business,” Dana said, face brightening.

  “Only what they want him to know,” Webb put in. “And we can’t ask him, so don’t even think about it.”

  “Webb -”

  “I’m telling you, he’s dangerous, Hugo. Talking to him is the quickest way to get us all deported.”

  “Whoever that Black Cross victim was, he’s tied up in the yards and in bloodgrease.”

  “Maybe,” Webb said, tipping his head back and draining his mug. “But if he’s a Ghost, or even if he’s not, or even if they exist at all, we’re only going to find out by getting people to trust us and include us in the gossip. That goes for you too, Mrs AWOL.”

  Dana scowled and slammed down her mug. “This is bullshit. God knows how long that will take.”

  “We have to listen to them,” Hugo said, staring into his coffee. “This is their world, not ours.” The silence that followed was charged and he felt three pairs of eyes on him but all he did was drain his coffee and head to the door. “Webb, come on. We’ve got a shift.” Webb weighed him up a second before nodding and grabbing his jacket. “Jazz,” Hugo said. “Will you carry on listening for us too?”

  Jazz nodded. “If I hear anything that will help, I’ll be in touch.”

  Hugo clenched his teeth as the returning tide of futility threatened to sweep him under, but nodded. “Dana, do you having boarding?”

  She nodded. “I’m secure.”

  “Get to it, then. Keep out of sight. Let’s sync our communicators,” he tapped a few commands into his wrist panel and Webb and Dana did the same. “Keep in touch. And don’t do anything stupid.”

  Dana narrowed her eyes, sighed and shifted her glare to Jazz. “Can you let us go now?”

  Jazz spent another second looking between them all, looking vaguely pitying then moved to the door and unlocked it.

  “Webb,” she called after them as they left. Webb returned to the apartment door and a few quiet words were exchanged. What Hugo could see of Jazz’s face looked worried. What he could see of Webb’s looked resigned.

  “Kale,” Dana hissed in his ear.

  “What?”

  She glanced at Webb and Jazz to make sure they were still engrossed then pulled him further down the corridor. “You know where to find this Bryce guy?”

  “You heard what Webb said.”

  “I heard bullshit,” she said. “He’s afraid. This could be a real lead.”

  “What’s to say he’ll talk to us? I’m on probation and you’re an illegal alien.”

  “He doesn’t need to talk to us. One dig through his systems could give us everything we need. We could have Ariel in our hands by this time tomorrow.”

  A surge went through Hugo at the thought. He hesitated, looking back to Webb stood with his head bent close to his friend’s. “Webb can’t know,” he whispered and Dana nodded.

  “I’ll send you co-ordinates for a rendezvous,” she said. “Meet me on your next off-shift. Be there, or I’ll tell him everything.”

  Hugo ground his teeth but then Jazz was closing the apartment door and Webb was joining them again.

  “What was that about?” Hugo asked, quickly schooling his features as Webb glanced between them suspiciously.

  “She was just reminding me not to get myself killed.”

  *

  “No, you’re putting too much angle on the thumb,” Webb said wearily, showing Hugo the hand-sign for a greeting yet another time. “Try again.” Hugo attempted the sign again but Webb shook his head. “You just told me to bring you a spanner. Again.”

  “This is a waste of time.”

  “Coffee worn off?” Webb said with half a smile.

  Hugo grumbled as the shuttle rattled over another bump in the rails, causing him to stagger. He looped his arm tighter around a pole and attempted the hand-sign one more time.

  “Better,” Webb said, around a yawn. “Again.”

  “Remind me of the point of this,” Hugo said as he tried again.

  “Everyone will expect you to be picking it up,” Webb said, shifting as he was jostled by a worker attempting to get a better handhold next to him. Webb leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Besides, it’s easier to eavesdrop with your eyes than with your ears.”

  “What’s the sign for Ghost?”

  “Shh,” Webb hissed, glancing again at the worker closest but he was staring out the dark windows with a vacant look in his red-rimmed eyes. “I’ll teach you that later,” Webb said in a low voice. “Now, the greeting again. There’s still overtones of ‘spanner’ in your pinky.”

  Hugo did it again and again on the ride to the shift until Webb was happy, then he started him on practicing the sign for bloodgrease. Hugo tried to sink himself into it and didn’t meet Webb’s eyes once on the ride, afraid the clone might be able to read the guilt in his face.

  He pushed aside that feeling. No matter what he planned to tell their mother as soon as this was over, Dana was right. Bryce was their best bet and the possibility of tracking down Ariel direct without having to wait for crumbs of clues from potentially non-existent gangs burned fiercely enough in his mind to sear away his reservations. Webb was seemingly too tired to notice Hugo’s tension, but Hugo still got himself away from his friend as soon as they stepped off the shuttle before he could pick anything up.

  The shift was, again, like the last: nauseatingly exhausting, loud and long. He watched out for signs exchanged amongst the workers, picking up a few favoured expressions and the greeting he had learned, but a lot of it moved too fast for him to even be sure he was seeing anything. He let the hope that he would not be here long enough to need to learn any more grow inside him as his beater juddered again on another course.

  Foreman Michalski came by for her usual quality check just before the shift’s half-way break and Hugo had to tell himself that the look that she seemed to let linger on him was probably just his imagination. He earned himself a piece of dried fruit by being able to sign his thanks during the break and he gobbled it down, surprised to realise how much he’d missed food with flavour.

  He couldn’t quite pin down how he felt when the shift-end call finally boomed out. Tired, yes. More so than he could ever remember being. Sore, too, from the worn padding on his seat as well as the rusted suspension on the beater. But woven through his physical discomfort was a thread of anticipation.

  Webb looked worse than he felt when they boarded the shuttle and he remembered with a new stab of guilt that his friend had yet to sleep from the shift before. The taller man’s shoulders were slumped and his hair was slicked back from his forehead with dirt and sweat. He blended in almost completely with the other workers who stood around staring at nothing, bent and dirty.

  “They had me on an assembly line today,” Webb said as the shuttle pulled out and the yard noise died away. “Near the storage pits. I saw some guy deliver some bloodgrease but no one did or said anything unusual. You?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “What is it?” Webb muttered when he saw Hugo looking at him.

  Hugo took a breath. “Don’t get lost, Webb.”

  “Huh?”

  Hugo searched for words. “You’ve got your own reasons for being here. But I’m aware you’re still doing it because I asked you to. Don’t let it…I mean…”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Hugo paused then made himself say it. “I talked to Jazz…about how you met.”

  “You
did, huh?”

  “I needed to know.”

  “Yeah, well,” Webb said, not looking at him. “That’s just one side of the story, Hugo.”

  “You should tell me your side.”

  Webb looked back at him, tiredness gone from his eyes to be replaced by a sharpness Hugo wasn’t sure he preferred. “I’m not going to start Using again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It’s not.”

  Webb was tense the rest of the trip back to the boarding house and Hugo couldn’t think of anything to say to make it better.

  They ate their dinner in silence. Even Tag seemed to sense their mood and brought them their Nutripaks without a word. Webb went to the room ahead of Hugo and by the time he had showered off all the grime and returned to the room, Webb was already asleep. Even poking at his past apparently couldn’t keep the clone awake after that shift.

  He got into his cot, making sure it creaked as he did and made himself lie there for a full hour, Webb snoring away in the dark, before getting quietly up again, grabbing his remaining weapons, pulling on his cap and leaving. He didn’t like to think about how hard it had been to pull himself from those threadbare blankets. Fatigue weighted him like lead. But he spurred himself on with the thought that if they could get what they needed from Bryce, he could very well be on his way home by the end of next shift.

  Away from Haven, with Ariel in the brig ready to face tribunal. Heading home.

  Home to Harvey.

  He quickened his step, keying a message to Dana as he went. A set of co-ordinates came back in seconds and Hugo turned down another street to head vaguely towards the rec district.

  Dana was waiting in the shadows under a bridge which branched over another nameless, dark street. Hugo found himself having to reign in his temper again at the sight of her: she was too young to have done anything but field exercises, but here she was in Haven coveralls with the collar turned up to hide her lack of brand. She was too busy consulting her panel to notice and didn’t even look up as he arrived.