Zero-G (4 page)

Knox strips naked, then washes his hands, holding them up so the water drips down his arms. It's scalding hot, and the industrial detergent he uses makes his skin feel as if it's been scoured.

He shakes the water off into the metal basin, then turns his attention to his chest. Two strips of tape, their edges peeling, form an X above his heart. He peels the tape off, wincing, using one finger to hold the tiny transmitter underneath it in place.

Two thin wires run off the transmitter, terminating under his skin, and he touches the entry wounds gingerly. No infection. Good.

He replaces the tape, smoothing it down, then washes his hands again. The skin on them is red and raw, peeling away on the ball of his left thumb. He bites down on a stray piece, tearing it off and spitting it into the basin, then gives his thumb and forefingers another quick scrub.

The cart, and his rags, lie behind him, pushed into a corner of the storage room, below the shelves that line the walls. He hates that he has to keep them here, but he doesn't have a choice. He's lucky to have this place: these tiny, forgotten rooms on the bottom level of Apogee. And he needs his cart, the rags that keep other people away from him. It's his protection, his shield. The only way he can pass through the rest of the station unnoticed.

He pulls a set of clean scrubs from a hanger next to the basin, and slips them on. His mind is racing ahead, checking and rechecking, making sure he hasn't forgotten anything, and the cool cotton soothes him.

His hand darts through the air, plucks an object from a shelf. He cobbled it together from scratch – his electronics knowledge is passable, at best, but he worked at it until he had it right. It's a misshapen metal box, a foot square, an antenna sprouting from it. He made sure that all the messy wires and circuit boards were packed away, out of sight.

He hits a switch on the front of the box. A light flickers on, and a dial leaps into life. The storage room fills with static, words pushing through it, barely audible.

“—Go left! On your left!—”

“Confirm we have the hostiles in custody, repeat, confirm we have—”

“—Drop your weapon!”

He snaps it off, satisfied.

He exits the storeroom, leaning on his good leg. The space beyond is in darkness, but his hand finds the bank of switches on the wall to his right. The lights flicker on, one after the other, illuminating a room so clean that the floor shines. Banks of medical equipment line the walls, their surfaces spotless, and his eyes land on the wheeled tray with his tools: the forceps, the clamps, the retractors, the syringes. His lone good scalpel, its edge still razor-sharp.

In the centre of the room is the operating table, its metal surface glaring under the lights. Knox limps towards it, running his hand across its cold surface. He should clean it again. It wouldn't do for his patient to get an infection.

Mikhail's breath explodes out of him. He stumbles, trying to right himself, but his feet get tangled up with each other and he crashes to the ground.

His backpack splits down the side, disgorging its contents. A stinger flies out, skittering across the metal plating. A canteen, its top popping open, paints the wall dark with water.

Mikhail tries to get up, but Anna is already there. She drops a knee into the small of his back, locking him to the floor. He tries to roll over, swinging his arms behind him, striking at Anna.

“Nice try,” Anna says, and drives a fist into the side of his neck. His body crumples. When I reach him, he's wheezing and clawing at the floor, his face a horrified grimace.

Anna flashes me a self-satisfied smile. She's sixteen years old, her blonde hair spilling out from under a green beanie, pulled down to just above her eyes. Her stomper jumpsuit is immaculate, with only the merest suggestion of dirt on the knees and elbows.

She waggles the slingshot in the air. It's a Y of welded metal, with a thick rubber strap hanging off the top end, bouncing off her wrist. One-Mile, she calls it.

“There,” she says. “Easy.”

Mikhail lashes out. Before I can yell a warning, he grabs Anna round the ankle and yanks her towards him. She topples backwards, howling in pain as her coccyx hits the deck.

Before Mikhail can rise, I'm on top of him, slamming my knee into his back. I reach for his arms, yanking them behind him. With my other hand, I reach into the pocket of my jumpsuit, then pull out a plastic zip tie and slip it around his wrists, cinching it tight. Mikhail's yelling is incoherent now, nothing more than cries of fury.

I keep my knee in the small of his back. Anna has risen onto her elbows. “I had him,” she says, speaking to me but staring angrily at Mikhail.

“No, you didn't,” I say.

“If I hadn't been here, you would've lost him.”

“If
I
hadn't been here, he would've got away.”

I grab Mikhail by the arms and pull. He groans as I yank him upwards, first to his knees, then to his feet.

“Mikhail, right?” I say. “You're under arrest. You don't have to say anything right now. You're entitled to a trial within three days. You're entitled to space in the brig until your trial. If you resist further, I'm authorised to subdue you. Have I made myself clear?” The words sound odd in my mouth. But I know I've done it right, just like Royo explained.

“Are we clear?” I say to Mikhail, when he doesn't answer. The look he gives me could turn a planet to ash, but he gives a terse nod.

I gesture to Anna. She rolls her eyes and grabs him by the other arm. As she holds him in place, I shove as much as I can back into his pack – may as well check for anything we could use as evidence. There's the canteen, plus a homemade stinger that looks like it would explode if you tried to fire it, and a broken tab screen. There's a small cloth bag, and when I shake it over my palm a tumble of seeds fall out. Bean seeds, from what I can tell.

Anna picks up one up, shrugs, then drops it back into my hand. I shove everything back into the pack, zipping it shut. We march Mikhail back towards the stairwell. I call Carver, let him know where we're taking our prisoner. He says he'll meet us there.

Anna and I don't speak, but, then, we've never really had a lot to say to each other. She was Royo's final recruit to the tracer unit. To hear him tell it, she made waves up in Tzevya, where she was running with her own crew –
fresh blood
, he called her. And right from the start, she made a point of getting in my face.

The first time we met, at the stomper headquarters in Apogee, she walked up and challenged me to a race, right in front of everybody. She wouldn't leave it alone, even when I told her no. Royo had to tell her to can it before she backed off. Even then, she's always been distinctly cool towards me, always quick with a snide comment.

We're at the top of the stairs when Mikhail makes a break for it.

Anna's holding his right arm, and I've got his left. He hurls himself forward, out of our grip. Of course, he happens to be at the top of a flight of stairs with his hands bound behind him, so all he does is lose his balance, crashing down the steps. He comes to a skidding halt on the landing below, groaning in pain.

Anna has collapsed against the wall, bent over with laughter. I'm about to head down to him when she puts a hand on my shoulder. “No, wait. I want to savour this,” she says between gasps for breath. “The worst escape attempt in history.”

Despite myself, I can't help smiling back. We walk down and haul Mikhail to his feet. Anna leans forward and sniffs the air delicately.

“You smell,” she says to me.

I reach up to rub my face without thinking. There's a streak of shit caked on my cheek, already dry and hard. I wipe it off, embarrassed, especially since Anna's skin is almost completely free of dirt. How she keeps herself clean in this place, I have no idea.

When we get to the brig, Mariana is on guard duty outside, leaning up against the wall. Carver's with her. He flashes me a thumbs-up when he sees Mikhail.

“Who's this?” Mariana asks. She's as squat as a turnip, with broad shoulders and piercing blue eyes. Unlike the other stompers, she doesn't carry a stinger, preferring an enormous iron bar strapped to her back in a homemade scabbard.

“He took a bunch of people hostage in the Recycler Plant,” I say, pushing Mikhail towards her. She and Carver grab him, and Mariana taps at the keypad by the door.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “A few of your friends are already inside,
hijo de puta
. Move.”

Mikhail says nothing. Mariana glances over her shoulder at us. “Nice job.”

“Nothing to it,” says Anna, her arms folded. She sees my look, and rolls her eyes, before handing Mikhail's pack to Carver. He roots around inside it, muttering to himself. He takes the homemade stinger, the canteen and the little cloth bag, dropping them into his own backpack.

“Are you
trying
to get me fired?”

It's Royo. I turn to see him and Kev walking up towards us, and I've never known him to look more like a stomper than he does at that moment. He points a thick finger at me. “I asked you to go in and observe, not blow things up. It's going to take
months
to repair the damage. And what the hell is that smell?”

“What do you think it is?” I say, too weary to argue. Anna smirks.

“Captain Royo,” a voice says from behind us.

Royo looks up, and his eyes narrow in disgust. I look round, and realise why.

Han Tseng is striding towards us, hands clasped behind him.

The acting council leader for Apogee wears a long brown coat, buttoned to the neck. His eyebrows are like beetles, close together, always moving. Acolytes trail in his wake.

“What's he even doing here?” Carver mutters, turning away.

“Acting councilman,” Royo says, as Tseng walks up.

If Tseng notices the tone, he doesn't say so. He doesn't even look at us. “That did not go well, Captain. I want a full briefing. Immediately.”

“I'll have one of my men take you through what happened,” Royo says, turning back to us. “Now, Hale—”

Tseng puts a hand on Royo's shoulder. The captain slowly turns around. His face is stone.

“What did they want?” Tseng says. “Food? Better accommodation? Whatever it is, this can't happen again. With the
Shinso Maru
coming back into our orbit, we're not going to have much chance to pander to these people.”

“What's the
Shinso Maru
?” Carver whispers to me.

“Asteroid catcher ship,” I whisper back. “Do you even
listen
in briefings?”

“They want Janice Okwembu,” Royo says to Tseng.

“Then we should have given her to them. It makes no difference in the end. If we could just…”

Royo's look pins him to the spot. “How many people are on the new station council at the moment, exactly?”

Tseng's mouth flattens into a thin line. “The representatives from Tzevya and Gardens should be chosen soon. Until then—”

“Until
then
,” Royo says, “there'll be no decision on any prisoners. You might want to read the station constitution sometime, acting councilman. Everybody's entitled to a fair trial by a full elected council. That includes her.”

Right then, the lights above us flicker, and die, plunging us into darkness. Everybody goes quiet for a moment.

A moment later the lights flicker back on.

“I were you, I'd stop getting involved in hostage situations, and start worrying about the lights,” Royo says to Tseng. He jabs a finger at the ceiling. “They're getting worse.”

Tseng seems about to interject, but Royo pointedly turns his back. The councilman's eyes fall on me, and after a moment he stalks off.

“See what I have to deal with, Hale?” Royo says, lowering his voice. “I've got Han Tseng crawling up my ass, along with a pissed-off crew of waste technicians who now have to put an entire plant back together. Care to explain?”

“I'd like to hear this, too, actually,” says Anna.

“Shut up, Beck,” says Royo.

“How many hostages died?” I ask him.

“Don't get smart with me, Hale.”

“How many?”

Royo gives a long sigh. “It's not just about getting the minimum amount done, Hale. You don't win just because everybody's still alive at the end of it.”

“I'm going home now,” I say, then turn and start walking, heading back towards one of the corridors.

“I'll come with you,” says Carver.

My first instinct is to tell him no. After the chase I've just been through, I could use a few moments by myself, a slow jog back to my hab to warm down my muscles and calm my mind. But he's going in the same direction I am anyway, and I don't have the energy to protest.

Carver flips Kev a salute, nods to Royo and Anna, and jogs to my side. Nobody tries to stop us.

We accelerate to a jog. Carver sticks close, saying little, letting his breathing match mine as we head back towards Chengshi. As we reach the sector border, he indicates a nearby water point, its lone light gleaming in the darkness of the corridor. The water is cold and crisp, much better than it should be.

“Sorry about earlier,” I say, wiping my mouth.

“Huh?”

“When I decided to climb on top of the vat in the plant. That was a really dumb idea.”

“Oh. That.” He gives a lopsided grin. His tugs at the goggles around his neck. “If I'd tried to stop you, you'd have just called me names and done it anyway.”

“True.”

“I have to admit I'm impressed. That was a very cool use for a sticky bomb.”

“Thanks.”

“Kind of genius, actually.”

I can feel myself blushing. “Well, I wouldn't say
that
.”

“Oh, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the bomb. Only a true genius could have constructed it.”

“Really?” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“And you should see what I'm working on now,” he says. “It's big. I mean, when this thing is done, it's going to change
everything
.”

“Like SPOCS?”

Carver grimaces. “Forget SPOCS,” he says. “It's not right yet. Too much static, and I can't figure out where it's coming from. No, this other thing is much cooler.”

I think of Carver's requisitioned workbench at Big 6, the stomper headquarters. “I haven't seen you building anything at HQ?”

His smile gets wider. “Who said I've been building it at HQ?”

“So what is it?”

He opens his mouth – and then stops. His eyes drop. “Not ready yet,” he says.

We fall silent as we walk away from the water point. When we cross the border, he turns to me. “Wanna go on an old-fashioned cargo run with me?” A small package appears in his hand as if by magic.

I look at him. “You serious? Being a stomper isn't good enough for you?”

“I—” He looks away. “I miss it. I didn't think I would, but I do. There's something about taking cargo jobs that's just
easier
.”

I don't have a response to that, and I don't like the way he's looking at me.

“Do you ever go back to the Nest?” he says.

I get a flash of memory just then: a room, hidden between levels in Apogee, where our crew, the Devil Dancers, lived. Carver's workbench, Yao's mural on the wall, the pile of mattresses and blankets where we slept.

I shake my head.

“Would it make you feel better?”

I squint at him. “What?”

“Ever since the thing with your dad…”

“Don't.”

He stops, aware that he's gone too far. Remembering what happened to my dad is still enough to stick a sour lump in my throat.

In order to save the station from Okwembu's insane scheme, I had to kill him, detonating his ship before it could collide with us. It's a memory I try to keep locked away, deep inside me.

He clears his throat. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

He turns and jogs away, not looking back.

That's when the fatigue really hits me. It's all I can do not to slump against the corridor wall. But I know if I do that I'll never get up again. Better to keep going, to make it all the way home, where there is Prakesh and food and soft, cool blankets.

My SPOCS unit bleeps once. “Hale, come back. Dispatch calling Riley Hale.”

It's a man's voice, one that I don't recognise. I toy with not answering, but that would mean pointed questions later. Royo's already pissed at me, and this wouldn't help matters.

I close my eyes and key the transmit button. “Copy, this is Hale.”

“We have a 415 with your name on it, confirm code.”

“A 415?”

The dispatcher pauses, as if he can't quite believe that I don't have all our call codes memorised. “Domestic disturbance. A woman's been hurt, keeps asking for you. Location is A1-B22.”

Of all the things I've had to get used to as a stomper, it's how they talk about locations on the station. As a tracer, I thought of places with pictures and memories, but stompers think of them in terms of letters and numbers. My mind whirls as I try to decode the dispatcher's words. A1 – that's Apogee, Level 1. And corridor B, junction 22 … that would be over by the heat exchangers, past where the silkworm merchant sets up. Not too far from here.

I really don't want to take this call. For a second, I nearly tell the dispatcher no. Then I see Royo's face in my mind again.

“Confirm code,” I say. “On my way.”

“Copy. Out.”

I avoid the gallery floor, not wanting to run into Royo again, or any of the crew who have to clean up the Recycler Plant. It takes me a little longer than I'd like, and by the time I reach the silkworm merchant, the fatigue has settled into my legs, intertwining my muscles with cords of lead.

“Get 'em hot,” the merchant intones, not looking up from the sizzling platter on his cart. “Hot silkworms, get 'em hot.” I ignore him, jogging past, turning left at what I'm pretty sure is junction 22.

I thought I knew the station well enough, and that goes double for my home sector of Apogee, but I'm in a corridor I've never seen before. The walls are covered in a mess of red graffiti, tag on tag on tag. There's an odd smell, too – at first I think it's the silkworms frying, but it's sharper somehow, more unpleasant.

There's no woman here. There's no one at all.

I frown, slowing to a walk. The corridor splits again at the far end, and there's a door set into the wall. As I get closer, I see it has a faded sign bolted to it. ROOM 18.

I tap my wristband, annoyed. “Dispatch, this is Hale, come back.”

Silence.

I look down at the wristband display – I'm on an open channel. I should be hearing sporadic stomper chatter, bad jokes, bursts of static.

Something's not right.

“Dispatch?” I say again. “Dispatch, I need a check on the location of that 415.”

Movement. Behind me. I feel it before I see it, feel the air shift. I spin round, dropping into a fighting stance, and see a dark shape looming over me, a man, his features in shadow.

Every muscle in my body explodes with pain.

I go rigid, trying to scream. There's static everywhere now, crackling in fury, and then I'm gone.