Zero-G (33 page)

I turn away, pushing myself tight into one of the walls, my cheek against the cool metal. It's at least a minute before I have the strength to look at the bodies again.

My gaze drifts along the wall. There are seats built into it, with heavy straps that would go across the chest. I guess if you're eating in zero gravity you need your hands free. There are lockers running along the wall opposite me, and there's debris floating around the room, too: half-empty, opaque pouches of liquid.

The bodies are clustered together in the centre of the room, their loose limbs bumping up against each other. Two men, two women. One of them is facing me, and I can see the gaping stinger wound in her chest.

There's nothing I can do for the crew now, but perhaps there's something in the lockers that would come in useful. I pull myself along to them, swimming across the bottom of the room to avoid the bodies. When I get upright again and spring the lockers, the items inside tumble out, joining the cloud of debris scattered across the room. More food pouches, bars, pressurised water canisters. An entire sealed plastic container of straws tumbles out of one and drifts away, its contents bouncing around inside it.

There's a knife inside the locker, velcroed to the back. For a moment, I'm confused – you don't use knives and forks to eat in zero gravity – but then I see that it's more like an old hunting knife. I've seen a few like it on Outer Earth – heirlooms, objects from the planet below us. This one has a wooden handle, worn smooth, but the blade has been kept good and sharp. It must have belonged to one of the crew. I reach out and grab it.

Now I have a weapon.

I tuck it into my belt, telling myself to make sure it doesn't drift loose. Then I take two deep breaths, and pull my way out of the mess hall.

I've nearly reached the spherical chamber leading to the reactor when there's a voice not ten feet away.

“You think they got aboard?”

I choke back a breath, not letting a single sound escape, and push myself against the wall. My hand just touches a slick of blood, and I have to force myself not to yank it away again.

In the chamber, the owner of the voice floats past, his back to me. He's with another women, moving slightly above him. Both of them are Earthers – I recognise them from the battle in the dock. How many made it on board? Those tugs aren't big enough to fit more than a dozen people – maybe twenty, at a push. Strange to think that of all the Earthers I saw, only a tiny fraction made it here.

“Of course they got on board,” says the woman. “You saw the airlock alert.”

“I'll push 'em back out if they're still there.”

“She wants them alive. You know that.”

They've headed back into the passage, moving towards the crew quarters. I can't risk following them. Even with the knife in my belt. I wait for a beat, two, three, until the voices are gone completely. Then I slip out into the chamber, and pull myself into the passage leading to the reactor. I go feet first, and the darkness swallows me.

There's a ladder running down the one side of the shaft. I fumble more than once, cursing under my breath as I lose my grip on the rungs. But there's a light at the bottom – a tiny, bright, yellow glare – and it keeps me centred. Before long, I'm pulling myself out of the shaft into the passage at the bottom.

It's at right angles to the drop, the ceiling low and cramped. The metal here is rusted in spots, coated with a kind of yellowish rime. The floor below me is a grate, laid on top of a tangled mess of pipes and wires. The sounds I heard earlier are muted – all except one. The buzzing noise. I'm closer to the machine now, and the sound has become a growl, so low it rattles my insides.

I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get to the reactor. I know it's a fusion core, like the one on Outer Earth, only much smaller. It'll have shielding, but there's got to be a way inside.

I have to disable it somehow – it'll stop the
Shinso
in its tracks, cut all power to the engines. Of course, I might blow it, and myself, into the next world. And it might cut power to everything else, too, including the life-support systems. But there should still be enough air to breathe for a while, and if I can get Carver and Prakesh, if we can then make it back to the tug …

I stop counting the ifs and the mights. Instead, I look around the cramped passage for a handhold, and pull myself along it, heading in the direction of the buzzing noise.

I'm expecting another airlock at the end of the passage. There is one – but it's been left open, the doors recessed into the wall. Good. That means there won't be any alarm triggered when I go through. I can see part of the reactor chamber on the other side, bathed in a clinical white light.

The room is laid out in a circle, like a rotunda, and the floor slopes away from me, with strips of light leading to the machine in the middle. It rises in a giant cone to the ceiling, twenty feet above me. Like its bigger brother at the centre of Outer Earth, its body is cocooned in cables.

I push myself off towards it, looking around the room for a control panel. I'm half hoping that it'll be as simple as telling a computer to shut the reactor down, but there are no controls anywhere. The only thing that disturbs the shape of the walls are several metal storage boxes, each one five feet long, held to the walls by more velcro.

As I get closer, I can see the body of the reactor underneath the tangle of cables. Thick steel plates, the joins between them sealed with thick, grey rubber. The same substance runs around the cables where they meet the body.

I circle it, running my hands along the plates and the seals, looking for a weak spot. Nothing. No panels, no screens, not a single thing that will let me get inside. I make my way over to the boxes, hauling them open. They're all empty. No tools, save for a small screwdriver, strapped down inside one of them. Useless.

And it doesn't help that I know almost nothing about fusion reactors. Assuming I do get inside, what would I see? I picture a glowing ball, hanging suspended in its own nest of cables, and curse myself for not knowing, for not asking Carver if he knew what to expect.

I pull the knife out of my belt, and jam it into one of the seals as hard as the low gravity will let me. It only just pierces the rubber-like material. I wiggle it back and forth, feeling the sweat pop out on my forehead, but I only manage to get a little bit deeper into the seal. It'll take hours to get through.

Could I cut into one of the cables, maybe? I throw the idea out almost as soon as it occurs. Which one? And how would I do it without frying myself?

I've left the knife caught in the seal. As I watch, it comes loose, spinning slowly in the space in front of the reactor. After a few moments, the blade is pointing right at me.

I freeze, unable to look away from it. Because, right then, I get another idea. But this one is like a poison of its own, seeping right through me, corroding everything it touches.

I can't cut through the steel plating, or the rubber seals.

But what if I could blow up the reactor?

I turn away from the knife, determined not to look at it again.

But I can't stop my mind from weighing up the possibilities. They stretch outwards in my mind, three steel cables stretching away from me in different directions, pulled taut, like the cables tethering the asteroid to the
Shinso
.

Along one, I fight my way through to the bridge. I manage to avoid being captured, or killed, somehow, and I take control of the ship. I turn it around, bring it home. The station gets the tungsten it needs to shore up the reactor. Outer Earth survives.

But that cable snaps in an instant. Getting past the Earthers by myself? Taking every single one of them out of commission with no backup, no gadgets from Carver, and no idea of the bridge layout? It's a possibility so remote as to be almost non-existent.

Cable two. I try to get to the bridge. I'm captured or killed, and the
Shinso
continues its journey. There's no asteroid slag, no tungsten for the station's reactor. Outer Earth dies. Anna, and everyone else, dies.

Along the final cable, I …

I cut into myself. Knox told me how to get the bombs out –
cut the left wire
. I somehow do it without dying from blood loss, or passing out from the pain, or blowing myself up. I get the bomb out – it'll have to be one; the thought of cutting more than once causes my gorge to jump – and use it to blow up the shielding around the ship's reactor. Knox said the bombs were sensitive to impact – I can use the storage boxes to detonate one of them.

The blast probably won't be enough to disable the reactor entirely, but it might let me get inside, assuming I'm still conscious or coherent enough to do something about it.

Let's say I do it. It'll be just like back in the Recycler Plant – I simply have to put the bomb in the right place. The
Shinso
's power dies. Those aboard it have no option but to make for the tug, and head back to Outer Earth. The chances that we can stop the
Shinso
from drifting too far and bring it and its cargo back into station orbit are slim, but still there.

No. I won't. I can't.

I'm already thinking about all I've been through. Everything I've survived. I'm thinking about Kev, and Royo, and everyone else who has died to stop this ship from leaving. I think about what I had to do to my own father to save my home. I'm thinking about Anna and her family. About Jamal, and his daughter Ivy. About everyone I know on Outer Earth.

A voice drifts up from a very dark place in my mind: a place I'd almost forgotten about. A little black box where I put the things I never want to think about again.

There's nothing you can do to save it
, Amira says.
It's finished. We were never supposed to live this long.

And somewhere else, a tiny thought crystallises. It glows like a star, full of immense power, but so far away that it's nothing more than a pinprick of light in a black void.

I'm not you, Amira. And I never will be.

I turn around, gripping one of the cables to spin my body. The knife is bumping off the body of the reactor. Slowly, I reach out for it, gripping its wooden handle.

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.