Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  And then, quick as it had come on, the sensation subsided. Caswell fought to get his breathing under control and carefully opened his eyes. His vision swam, distorted by tears that would not fall away in the absence of gravity. He blinked rapidly to no avail and then gave up.

  “I’m sorry to do that to you in the field, Peter.”

  You’d better be. He desperately wanted to speak with her, to have a real conversation. He bit his lip instead and waited to hear what task he had to perform.

  “Your new mission is still being designed, I’m afraid. The reasons will become clear. For now, your new goal is as follows….”

  Caswell swallowed, waiting for the tears to dry and the pain in his head to abate. God, he missed the flat above Hyde Park. The ritual of it. “Never again, Mo.” He growled the words, made all the more bitter by the knowledge that he’d forget them. He’d forget all of this.

  “First,” Monique Pendleton said in a flat, all-business tone that told him things had gotten very grim indeed, “you are to eliminate the crew of the Pawn Takes Bishop. Immediately and with extreme prejudice.”

  AGENT PETER CASWELL BOBBED against the wall, flexing his free hand and staring at the form of Angelina Monroe, captain of the Pawn. She flicked a finger across the display in front of her, reading about what had happened here, no doubt. Her curiosity and greed, that had caused this. Her mission had been to recover the black box, nothing more.

  Nothing more.

  She’d done it to herself, really. Signed her own death warrant along with the rest of her crew.

  This was why Archon had inserted him on this mission. In case these people learned too much. Peter Caswell steeled himself to the task at hand. The murder he’d now perform. However much it might seem like the first, he reminded himself of the true tally: 206.

  He found little comfort in that. It was the fact that he would forget everything that served to wind his pulse back to something manageable.

  There was a dark red case about the size of a deck of cards on his left arm. Caswell opened the lid. Inside, nestled in a bed of custom-cut gray foam, was a gleaming black tube. He coaxed it free, taking care not to send the weapon floating away. With one quick shake of his left arm the case snapped closed.

  Caswell flipped the object around in his hands. A “vossen” gun: Vacuum-Optimized Smart Needler. He’d trained with one, months ago. If he’d ever used it in the field he had no idea.

  He gripped it and looked up.

  Angelina was staring at him, her lips moving, one hand raised in a “What the fuck is wrong with you?” gesture. He pointed toward his ear and gave a shrug. The woman rolled her eyes and turned back to her work. If she’d noticed the object in his hand, paid it any thought at all, she gave no indication. Probably thought it a flashlight or screwdriver.

  Caswell floated until he was beside her and aimed the vossen’s business end at the glass of her face mask. Through the gland in his neck he communicated his intent to the weapon: a quick, quiet death that would leave zero mess.

  One of the holes on the weapon puffed a tiny cloud of light gray smoke. Caswell caught the briefest hint of the missile’s flight. Tiny flashes of yellow as the microscopically small thrusters propelled the toothpick-size projectile through the vacuum.

  It hit her helmet and bored inside.

  Resin burped out the back end, sealing the hole. Angelina’s head snapped sideways. A puff of black sprayed across the inside of her visor, coating the surface from within. A blinded victim could hardly retaliate. Her body began to spasm.

  Caswell listened on the open channel. Not even a yelp of surprise had come through because the needle had shorted the electronics in the helmet. Angelina bucked in her chair, clawed uselessly at her now-opaque mask. In seconds her panic and terror turned into a thrashing as the needle’s payload went to work on stopping her heart.

  Finally she went still, her arms drifting out to either side.

  He felt almost nothing for her. It wasn’t a lack of compassion, either. That realization struck him as most peculiar. Caswell fully recognized that he’d just taken a life. Someone with friends, perhaps a family. A past and a future. But despite recognizing all that, he found he simply couldn’t see this floating, limp body as that person anymore. It was just a corpse now, not something to be mourned. Any grief or regret for those slain would be something he’d deal with…

  Later.

  A chill coursed through him. This is why he was successful. He knew with total certainty as he stared at the body of Angelina Monroe that he’d feel remorse for this later. Or he would, except his memory of this would be taken away, his conscience cleared.

  Movement caught his eye. Across the room, Klaus still faced the compartment where the black box waited. He hadn’t turned, hadn’t noticed anything going on behind him. He’d just stretched his arms, still waiting.

  Caswell drifted past the dead captain and plugged him, too.

  The big man took longer to die. He thrashed as she had, then suddenly kicked out from the wall and groped wildly in the emptiness for his assailant. Perhaps he’d heard of a vossen, or perhaps he’d just made assumptions. Either way, his fingers twitched and flailed for Caswell. But Caswell had moved to rest beside the black box. Klaus’s frantic motions eventually found the prone form of Angelina and he just managed to gather her in his arms before he, too, went still.

  The embraced pair drifted free in the room, faces hidden behind ink-stained glass.

  Caswell let out a breath. How can I feel nothing? Delayed mourning, was that really it? Really him?

  Another theory presented itself. His implant might be short-circuiting the emotional response automatically. It could do things like that, if he didn’t mind the fevers that would follow. Force him to focus, even fire his neurons faster, which made everything else seem to slow down. Maybe it could also dampen whatever part of his brain felt compassion. He wanted to believe that. The alternative was too horrifying.

  Monique had her reasons, he reminded himself again. This wasn’t in cold blood. These people, their captain at least, must have accessed highly sensitive information in the Venturi’s computer. She must have been about to transmit it to Earth when he’d plugged her. Monique had seen it coming. She’d employed him to prevent it. Maybe he’d just saved a million lives back on Earth. A fantasy, perhaps, but he had to believe it. Above all he trusted Monique, without reservation. This was just a job and he was the tool for it.

  And, he thought, I seem to be pretty good at this.

  Sliding into the rhythm of the task, he turned back toward the Pawn. He felt calm now, despite what his brain had been through only minutes earlier, despite the nasty business he’d just performed and the conclusions he’d drawn. He pushed back to the central junction, glanced at the Pawn—airlock still sealed—and drifted on toward the aft of the station.

  The one called Harai rounded a corner ahead, directly in Caswell’s path. Caswell ignored the man’s puzzled glare. He floated straight to him and fired the needler at point-blank range.

  Harai’s reaction was different. He all but ignored his sudden blindness and took a vicious swing at Caswell with his right arm. In zero-g the punch had little behind it, and served only to send them both careening off each other. Caswell flopped into the wall and whirled. His target hit the opposite wall, pushed hard with both legs, and came rocketing back. Midway across, his whole body spasmed, then again, more violently. Caswell uncoiled himself and moved aside, letting the now-limp body bounce off the surface next to him and drift.

  That’s three, he thought. Three more.

  He turned and stared straight into the wide, shocked eyes of Douglas. “What the fuck?” the man shouted. He had a toolbox in one hand and frantically groped through it with the other until he found what he wanted. A meaty, half-meter-long wrench.

  “What’s going on?” someone asked. Iceberg, back in the Pawn. “Report.”

  “That prick we brought on just killed Harai!” he shouted, swinging th
e wrench.

  Caswell ducked under the metal bar. It rebounded off the wall, sending a jolt up Douglas’s arm. Caswell fired the vossen gun at the same moment. He missed, the tiny missile rocketing into the distance. Caswell fired again, but Douglas was spinning now, his momentum all wrong. The second needle slid into his suit just under the left armpit, burrowing through the Kevlar fabric to worm in under the collarbone.

  Payload delivered so close to the heart, Douglas’s entire body jerked absolutely rigid. The man became a stick figure. His face contorted, eyes bulging outward. Blood burst from his nostrils and mouth as the man began to spasm uncontrollably.

  “Iceberg,” Caswell said. “I don’t know what Douglas is talking about. He’s acting…strange. Bring a med kit.”

  “Where’s Angelina?”

  “Unknown. She came back to inspect the lander bays with him, and went silent. Klaus followed, same thing, so I came to see what was wrong.”

  “I didn’t hear them discuss any of this.”

  “Neither did I,” Caswell said.

  A pause. “Then how do you know why the captain left C-and-C?”

  “Can we talk about it later? Douglas is curled in a ball here hitting the sides of his helmet with his fists, and I think I can see one of the others down in the cargo bay, drifting limp. Harai maybe. Bring a stretcher while you’re at it.”

  “Jesus,” Iceberg said. “Fuck. Okay. Bridgette, meet at the airlock.”

  The waiflike engineer’s voice came through in a rasp. “You believe that guy over Doug? Have you ever known the float to get to him?”

  Iceberg said, “No, that’s why you’re meeting me there. Bring—”

  Caswell tuned out the rest. He floated back to the main junction. A quick glance at the airlock door that led to the Pawn showed no one on the other side, yet. Good. He whirled and propelled himself to the eerily familiar MED BAY door and whirled it open, killing the lights via a panel beside it.

  The Venturi’s mummified crew bobbed about inside. Caswell grabbed the collar of the nearest man’s suit and hauled him out. Corpse between him and the airlock door, Caswell braced his feet against the wall. He waited there, coiled, vossen gun in one hand and human shield in the other.

  Motion at the airlock. Iceberg’s sky-blue-tinted hair, then his beady eyes peering through the tiny window. If he saw Caswell or the corpse in the darkened room it didn’t slow his entrance.

  Good, Caswell thought, and braced for the attack.

  The airlock door began to move. Caswell pushed off hard with both feet, propelling the limp body before him. Halfway to the door he shoved it ahead. The body lurched forward, arms flung wide. The effort slowed Caswell’s own progress. As the gap widened he raised his needler and waited, drifting in behind his shield.

  A blast of white fog hit the corpse at point-blank range. Fire extinguisher. It stalled the body and then pushed it backward, sending it cartwheeling. Caswell had streamlined himself to reduce his own target area and, somehow, managed to slide right past the flailing corpse. He flew past just as the extinguisher’s blast let up. The girl, Bridgette, held the device. She saw him an instant too late. The microscopic missile hit her face mask and instantly clouded it black from the inside. Her fingers squeezed on the extinguisher reflexively, sending another cone of white that arced across the tiny airlock. Unable to stop himself, Caswell barreled right into her as her body began the death throes. He caught a glimpse of Iceberg behind her. The man held a med kit in both hands, his eyes wide with terror.

  Caswell plugged him from a meter away and floated lamely in the middle of the room until both bodies grew still.

  His pulse raced. His whole body felt cool with sweat. He wanted to scream, “I’m a monster!” so loud that he’d hear it himself on the other end of this. But he did not scream. As he drifted between the dead and his pulse began to slow, Peter Caswell decided that he would mourn these people, just as soon as the job was done. Before Monique took the memory away. Did he always do this? Yes, he must. He had to believe that.

  He let a full minute pass before he signaled on the Archon channel. “The Pawn’s crew is retired. God damn, this vossen gun is a nasty bit of kit, Mo. Advise on next steps. IA6, out.”

  No handhold within reach, Caswell drifted for a while. He could do nothing but stare at his handiwork. “I’m a killer,” he muttered. “A heartless fucking killer.” For the length of the mission anyway. Then he’d go back to being a man merely trained to kill. The rookie.

  He could hardly wait.

  Finally a handhold came within reach. He secured himself to the wall and considered his situation. “Mo,” he said finally, “that missing lander. Might be that our absent crew member, Alice Vale, tried to flee this disaster all those years ago. I’m investigating.”

  He left the dead to drift. Back inside the Venturi he weaved his way around bodies and debris and kept on toward the rear of the smashed vessel.

  Inside he found a passage that bowed in from either side. Airlock doors faced one another at the center of the hourglass-shaped passage, one for each lander. He glanced through the porthole on the first and saw the white-blue ESA markings on the hull of the craft nestled within. Caswell spun to the opposite window.

  The other bay was indeed empty.

  “Right then,” he said. He bookmarked the video feed recorded by his helmet and filed the clip for priority upload home. “Confirmed, Monique. One of the landing craft is missing, and it’s too clean to have been ripped away in whatever calamity happened here. Nothing aft of this point save a debris cloud. Advise.”

  Had Alice Vale taken the boat? It would have been loaded with some supplies and fuel, though certainly not enough to survive a dozen years in the black. But then she wouldn’t have needed to survive so long. Perhaps she’d flown it home. Sold the weapons research that had gone on here and was safely back on Earth, living under a false ident on an island somewhere. Sitting on a beach in Mexico, perhaps. Biting into a fish taco and watching the glitter of sunlight on jade waves.

  More likely she’d simply been yanked out of one of these holes when the station was damaged, and even now her body tumbled through space toward the Sun. As for the missing lander…well, Monique and whoever was feeding her the mission parameters would know what to do about it. He waited.

  —

  “Well done, Caswell,” Monique sent after a lengthy delay.

  Her next set of orders was even more surprising than the first, and frustratingly vague.

  Preparation took several hours. As instructed, he left all the bodies in the C&C, moving them to one wall and fixing them in place with nylon straps to ensure they’d go down with the ship. “This station is a bloody mess, Monique,” he sent as he went about the grim business. A dozen bodies now rested in the doomed vessel. Six from the original crew, six fresh ones from the Pawn. The thirteenth, Alice Vale, probably drifted among the debris cloud that trailed the Venturi toward the Sun.

  The grim task complete, Caswell shifted focus to the Venturi’s black box. He moved the device into the salvage ship. Following Monique’s instructions he gathered all of the food and water he could find on the Pawn and transferred it into the Venturi’s lone remaining lander. Once done, Caswell boarded the supply-filled landing boat and sealed himself inside. He sent Monique another update, then waited. The cockpit was cramped, every seat save his holding packages of food and water. His own gear and clothing lay safely tucked within one of the storage compartments.

  The lander, guided by remote instruction from Earth, detached from the Venturi and drifted to the aft docking ring on the Pawn Takes Bishop. Caswell watched from his tiny porthole as the Pawn then detached itself from the doomed research vessel.

  This little ballet of spacecraft continued as the Pawn, with Caswell’s lander attached, floated out to a safe distance and then powered up its engines. The thrust pushed him back into his chair and kept him pinned there as the salvage craft served as booster for the comparably small lander, powering the tiny c
raft onto its new trajectory. After eight hours of one-g burn the Pawn unceremoniously let him go. She fell away and, a few minutes later, turned to begin a long spiraling trek to Earth, empty of crew but carrying one tiny, and very valuable, black box.

  In a few days Angelina and her salvage team would burn up with the Venturi. Weeks later the Pawn would arrive back at Earth. Monique had something else in mind for Caswell and his tiny lander, something Archon wanted both of them to forget about in due course.

  The operative sat back. He studied the three-dimensional map before him as the lander zipped along. Thanks to the Pawn’s boost he now drifted away from the Sun at a touch over 150 kilometers per second. A dotted arc marked his trajectory, stable now after eight hours of growth as the boat had gained velocity. To his surprise this path did not arc and spiral out toward Earth, like the faint blue line that marked the Pawn, but instead implied a journey to an empty swath of nothingness directly above the Sun.

  “You’re on a course to intercept the missing lander, where you will ascertain the fate of Alice Vale. This is all I can tell you for the moment.”

  He sent back, “Why not take the Pawn?” and waited twenty minutes for the reply.

  “You’ll find out,” his handler said vaguely.

  Caswell ate fried rice from a self-heating package, then napped for a few hours. When he woke another thought occurred to him. When Monique had ordered him to eliminate the Pawn’s crew she’d neglected to give him the regulation speech about thought-access orders. “What did you mean, ‘that’s all I can tell you for now’? We’re under IA already, so what the hell’s this about, Mo?”

  Twenty minutes later she replied. “All will become clear in due course, Peter. Trust me. This will be the most interesting mission you’ll ever forget. I guarantee it.”

  —

  To pass the time he played the craft’s computer in games of Go, chess, and several modern games that relied on stealth and patience. Between matches he studied Alice Vale’s dossier, but it had so little information he’d memorized it after only a few hours.