Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  Caswell closed his eyes and waited for the other shoe to drop. It was the nature of the job. Archon had obviously learned of this discovery early. Maybe Monique had been asked to eliminate whoever had spotted the thing. Perhaps she had a drone rifle for him to place, pointed at the front door of some astronomer’s flat in Cambridge. It couldn’t be much more than that. Caswell wasn’t used for trivial tasks. He was a hammer, and a hammer drove nails. In his entire career she’d sent him on only a few missions that didn’t rate the Integrity-Assured status his implant provided, and they’d almost always been gimmes. Right place, right time sort of stuff, never anything sensitive. And if the rumors were true, you couldn’t get much more sensitive than the Venturi. “Fuck,” he managed to say.

  “Indeed. Now listen, I might have figured out a way to get you a seat on the salvage boat.”

  “What do you mean? What salvage boat?”

  “The one that’s going to try to reach her before the wreck falls into the Sun.” She let that settle in for a few seconds. She always knew when to do that. “There’s a flight leaving for Mysore in one hour. Be on it. I’ll have papers waiting at our drop there. Full ident kit, plus a few other goodies the team is working on. Use the travel time to get familiar with the Venturi, because your cover requires you to know all about it.”

  “You realize I’ve just reverted, right? This is a lot of detail you’re giving me, Mo.” He felt uncomfortable knowing anything at all. It defeated the purpose.

  “It can’t wait five days, Peter,” she said. “That salvage boat is our only shot. And anyway it’s a long ride out there. I can activate your implant remotely before you reach the destination. This is, by the way, assuming they take you on as crew, which they had better, if you take my meaning.”

  So much for ritual, he thought bitterly. No posh flat above London, no comfortable bed, no silk sheets. No row of Sapporo in the fridge. He’d trigger somewhere off-planet on a damned spacecraft. And reversion? Who knew where the fuck he’d be. It was going to hurt.

  “Triple pay,” Monique added, as if reading his mind.

  He snorted. “Throw in four weeks off and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Done.”

  Caswell puffed his cheeks and let out the breath. He glanced at the gate where his flight to Santiago had started to board. “Hell. Okay, Mo. I’m on my way.”

  The money didn’t matter so much as the time to spend it. But it was the chance to remember, at least a little, that left his gut twisting with equal portions of excitement and trepidation.

  THE DEAD SHIP TUMBLED through space toward the fiery surface of the Sun.

  Peter Caswell studied the wreck that had been the Venturi. A spherical bulk constituted the largest piece, rolling end over end. Jutting from this was a severed portion of the truss that had once led out to the cargo bays and, behind those, the fuel and engines, all of which was now not much more than a cloud of debris trailing along like a comet’s tail. Mentally he reassembled the research craft from the schematics he’d reviewed on the flight out. Everything seemed to be here, just shattered.

  “Still holding air?” the mission commander, Angelina, asked, her deep, gritty voice thick with a Central African accent that left little doubt as to who was in charge.

  Her question was directed to the man she floated next to, who went by the name Iceberg. He pulled back from his scope and glanced at his superior. “There’s holes in it big enough to fly through.”

  Angelina smacked the back of his head. “Answer without being a jackass for once. What about power?”

  Iceberg shrugged and pressed his eyes against the black rubber hood. “No way to tell, Angel. But it’s not transmitting shit. Not even an SOS, and the lights are all off.”

  The captain hovered in silence. Caswell tried to imagine the mental deliberation going on behind her eyes.

  The stated goal was simple enough: recover the black box. Someone wanted the Venturi’s data and was willing to pay a fantastic sum for it. Angelina and her crappy little independent salvage boat, the Pawn Takes Bishop, had known—and possibly paid—the right person at the right time, and won the contract.

  Outside the Venturi grew larger.

  “How the fuck did they lose track of something that big?” Caswell had asked Monique, reviewing the mission dossier in his bunk on the first night out from Earth. The ship dwarfed most space stations.

  “My guess,” she’d replied, “is deliberate forgetfulness to hide a rather embarrassing cock-up.”

  He could appreciate that. “Deliberate Forgetfulness” could be the title of his life story.

  For the hundredth time he let his gaze casually flick across the other members of the salvage team. They were all older than his thirty-two years, rejects from the corporate asteroid mining operations that no doubt brought them off-planet in the first place. A tough and jaded bunch.

  Their ship, Pawn Takes Bishop, constituted a pretty typical salvage boat—a corporate discard deemed unfit for work in the Gefion asteroid fields.

  Another crewman, Klaus, cleared his throat. “Why’s it up here, anyway?” He was looking at Caswell.

  Angelina replied without turning her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Up here. Above the Sun. There’s nothing around, so what were they doing?”

  “Classified,” she replied with more than a little irony. She kept her gaze firmly on the display before her. “Ask the geek.”

  Caswell offered an apologetic smile, not really looking at any of them. “I was never privy to that—don’t have the clearance, I’m afraid. But feel free to speculate. I’m curious myself.”

  The crew shifted uncomfortably.

  Now the captain glared at him. “At some point it would be nice if you earned the air you’re breathing, Dr. Nells.”

  Caswell raised his hands in defense. “You wanted a subject matter expert, so here I am.”

  “Tell me this, then: What are we going to find in there?”

  “A black box,” Caswell said simply. Then he nodded toward the wreckage on the display. “If you’re lucky.”

  —

  Pawn Takes Bishop docked with Venturi three hours later.

  Everything had to be done manually given the lack of even backup power on the other side, but once the rings were secure a tap linked the two crafts’ grids and some emergency lighting came on. Faint red light spilled in from the porthole. Iceberg studied the readouts. “Vacuum. Told ya.”

  Expecting this, Angelina had made everyone suit up an hour ago, save for Iceberg and the mousy engineer, Bridgette, who would remain at the Pawn’s controls.

  To Caswell the suit felt like being wrapped in tape. The smart fabric allowed for a full range of movement, loosening just enough to let muscles flex, constricting again the instant they relaxed. It all added up to a sort of permanent state of evenly applied pressure, which his brain refused to translate as anything other than stiff-as-cardboard.

  The round hatch swung inward and Caswell fell in line just behind Angelina. The big son of a bitch Klaus drifted inside without preamble, headlamp sweeping across a chamber lined on all sides with labeled storage lockers. Two other Pawn crew members followed behind Caswell, carrying the tools of their trade.

  “IA6,” came a voice in his ear. Monique Pendleton, transmitting from Earth a good nine minutes away. “We’ve been studying the data from that scanner you’re carrying, and only six of the Venturi crew are accounted for. One is missing. It’s possible her transponder was damaged. Details inbound.” Seconds later a private message indicator blipped on the inside of his visor. “Once you’ve installed the tap, your next objective is accounting for this person.”

  Caswell turned off his local transmission option and sent a reply. “Understood. If she’s here, I’ll find her.”

  Monique’s message contained a brief dossier on a scientist named Alice Vale. He scanned it with practiced efficiency, absorbing the important details. The motion pic showed a thin woman with short, stylish brown hair
. Her eyes, close together, were large and brimming with intelligence. She hadn’t smiled during the ID scan. Her gaze had a mixture of both intensity and distance that suggested someone who lived to multitask.

  Caswell’s eyes flicked across the details as the portrait spun around. A tall woman at nearly 180 centimeters, and rail thin. She’d been twenty-eight years old at the time of the Venturi’s disappearance. Parents, deceased. No husband. No children. Born in Chicago, educated at Dartmouth, tested out early straight into a graduate program at Cambridge. Studied biology and cognitive science. Accepted into the ESA at twenty-six, joined the crew of the Venturi just one year later. And then, a year into the mission, it had all ended.

  “Sad,” he muttered. A promising scientist, lost in her prime.

  The team continued forward to the inner airlock door, which lay ajar and showed signs of fire damage around the lip and on the surrounding wall. Debris floated about. Angelina swatted aside a clump of charred fabric and moved up to help Klaus pry the damaged door aside. Together they wrestled its bent shape until a gap wide enough to pass through had opened.

  A junction waited within, each wall scorched black by the same explosion or impact that had blown open the airlock door. Compartments led off in all directions.

  Angelina and Klaus stopped in the center, letting the rest of the salvage team catch up. Caswell moved aside and steadied himself in the junction, letting the last two in behind him.

  “C-and-C is that way,” Caswell offered, pointing.

  “He’s useful after all!” Angelina cried. She turned to face the team. “Okay, the geek is with me. Klaus, you, too. Douglas, check the landers. Harai, see if any of the reactor vessels are intact.”

  “I thought you were just here for the black box?” Caswell asked.

  “You don’t know shit about salvage, so just keep quiet unless we ask you something, okay? Okay.” She turned and drifted toward the command room. Klaus followed her. The other two turned and went in the opposite direction. Caswell soon found himself alone.

  Exercise equipment adorned the surfaces of the room straight ahead. A treadmill. Some handles attached to pulleys embedded in the wall. A used water bulb floated lazily across his view. At the far end a hatch led to the medical bay. It appeared to be fully sealed. Looking at it triggered something in him: a sudden irrational unease, like a child staring down a basement stairwell into blackness. He shook the feeling away.

  Satisfied the others were gone, Caswell floated to a blackened panel on the wall. From a pack on his midsection he removed an orange torque wrench, then used one finger to wipe away soot on the locking nuts. The magnetized wrench connected easily, and despite sitting out here for a dozen years, each bolt turned easily. He nudged the panel away from the wall and let it float next to his head.

  “Captain?” one of the crew said. Douglas, it sounded like.

  “Go ahead,” came Angelina’s reply.

  “Lander zero-one is missing.”

  Silence. Caswell listened. He marked his audio recording minus ten seconds, just in case.

  “Missing as in ripped away in the explosion?”

  “Uh. Not sure. Zero-two is still here, looks intact.”

  “Copy that. Keep me posted.”

  The radio went silent. Caswell marked the exchange as interesting and sent it off to Monique, then returned his focus to the section of wall he’d just exposed. Within, neatly bundled cables in a variety of colors ran in every direction. In the center, a grid of gold indentations gleamed under the light from his headlamp. From another pocket on his torso he produced a small dark green plastic box with ridged edges. He powered the box on and waited a few seconds for the tiny LED on it to wink from red to a flashing green. Caswell flipped the device around and pressed it against the gold grid within the wall, then fetched the hovering panel.

  He activated his private Archon channel. “Mo, the keg is tapped. You should be receiving data now. IA6, out.”

  Around him, rows of white lights flickered on, so bright that his visor darkened to compensate. He switched back to the standard channel. “How’s it going in there, Captain?”

  “Thought you were with us,” Angelina replied, her voice curt in his ear.

  “Just, you know, soaking it in. Surreal to actually set foot in such a famous—”

  “Get the hell up here, Doctor. We’re on a schedule.”

  While she spoke he reinstalled the access panel. “Any…uh, any sign of the original crew?”

  “Negative.”

  “And the black box?”

  “I’m staring at it right now. Which means I need you here, right now.”

  “Sorry. On my way.”

  His gaze went to the exercise compartment again, however, and that round hatch beyond adorned with medical signage. The sight tickled something in his mind. Memories just beyond reach.

  A thought began to worm into his mind—the inevitable conclusion whenever something like this happened to him. Déjà vu, or an infuriatingly familiar face. His particular skill set, his augmentation, made all such phenomena candidates for something else entirely: the remnants of a reality forcibly removed.

  He willed the thought away. Down that path lay madness. Ignorance, he reminded himself, was bliss.

  Yet he couldn’t resist the pull. There was…something. Despite his better judgment he found himself floating in front of the round hatch marked MED BAY. He wheeled the lever to the open position and pulled. Something pushed against his suit. Air, rushing out. His visor fogged before sensors could compensate. Dry air hissed through fans in his helmet and then condensation retreated.

  A monster rushed toward him, arms flung wide as if to grapple. Caswell’s heart lurched before his brain fully understood: A male corpse was moving on the current of air that had just been sucked from the room. Caswell shoved the hatch back just in time to feel the limp body flop against it and repel away.

  With a deep breath he opened the door again, a few centimeters at a time.

  Six bodies floated about within. They were remarkably well preserved, considering the room had still held air. Air, he realized, that would have been stagnant for twelve years.

  None of the bodies looked like Alice Vale, so he slipped the hatch closed and sealed it again. If Monique needed to know cause of death he’d explore further, but for the time being he felt no desire to mingle with the dead. He fired off another report to Archon. “Found the six crew you mentioned. They’re all in the medical bay—no comments on the irony there, all right? I only glanced but given the room still held air, I’m going to guess sudden and very rapid acceleration did them in.” Then he added, “No sign of our missing seventh. Continuing my search.”

  Caswell drifted into the C&C to find Angelina in the pilot’s chair, tapping away at a foldout computer. Klaus knelt beside an open panel at the far end, fiddling with some gear he’d hauled in.

  The room had the basic size and shape of all mass-produced station compartments. Five meters on a side, fifteen long, studded with attach points to serve virtually any purpose.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Waiting for you,” Klaus replied.

  “Computers are up, huh?” he asked, more reproach in his voice than he’d intended.

  Angelina’s fingers paused for the briefest instant. “Nothing in the contract about not accessing them.”

  “If you say so. Find anything interesting?”

  “Just—”

  An urgent override from Monique clipped the captain’s response. “Agent IA6, this mission will continue under Integrity-Assured protocol. Sorry, Caswell, with the time delay there’s no chance to offer opt-in. This came from the very top.”

  His pulse swelled to a steady war drum on his temples. Integrity-Assured protocol, or IA, meant nasty business lay ahead.

  Monique went on. “Time critical, I’m afraid. I’m sending the remote command to enable your implant in exactly twenty seconds.”

  Peter Caswell swore. His ritual may
be impossible here, but she could at least wait for consent. She’d always given him that much. Time to be relaxed. Opted in. Having fucking agreed. Caswell glanced about, feeling the clock tick away like a time bomb. He did the only thing he could think to do and slipped his free hand and both feet into the nearest stabilizer handles on the Venturi’s wall.

  Ten seconds.

  What was so damn important that they couldn’t allow twenty minutes for him to opt in? Of course, Monique had answered that: time critical. If he were to decline it would take weeks to get someone else out here. By then the crippled station would have fallen into the Sun. He told himself not to worry. Monique had opted in, obviously. For him to be activated meant she had been, too. They were paired. Agent and handler, experts in their respective roles, recruited and linked because their bodies happened to be the rare sort that wouldn’t reject the IA-class implant.

  Caswell shut his eyes. He took two deep breaths and started to chant the lyric. He could do that much, at least. She couldn’t take that away.

  This mental anchor had not been part of the training. He’d simply thought it wise to have something familiar on the tip of his tongue when he eventually made the mental leap back across the reversion gap. Sometime, in the next four days or so, he would forget everything that happened from here to that moment. He wondered where he’d be when the time came. Could he get close to this exact set of circumstances? Unlikely in the extreme. But he could do one thing.

  Microphone in his suit safely off, he used the seconds left to recite the old song lyric over and over, aloud in case that would help. “Speak the word, the word is all of us. Speak the word, the word is all of us. Speak the word, the—”

  At the base of his neck an artificial gland received the specially crafted trigger message sent by Monique from more than 160 million kilometers away. The gland flooded his brain with a biochemical marker.

  He lost track of the song lyric, wincing as engineered chemicals sought out every last neuron like a creeping poison. A hot tingling sensation unfolded from somewhere in the back of his head, thorny pressure that started from the bottom of his skull and pushed up and out until his very scalp felt as if it were being prodded by a million tiny needles from the inside.