Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  The vehicle seemed to be in working order, despite atmospheric scarring. The recessed docking port on the belly was closed, and he knew from his research that it could not be opened from the outside, not without special tools anyway. He’d have to go up top.

  Moving with great care, Caswell crept up the recessed access ladder. Now he had a problem. The tarp was draped over the top of the vessel, and he needed to crawl to that hatch just behind the top center. Anyone looking this way would see a human-size lump moving beneath the white blanket. He was hanging there, by hands and feet, contemplating this, when footsteps approached just beyond the curtain of the sheet.

  “From the mealhouse,” a voice said.

  “Gratitude,” the guards muttered in unison, followed by the sound of cutlery against tin plates or bowls.

  The distraction would have to do. Caswell pressed his body close against the fuselage and crawled up the last few steps. The outer airlock door, oddly, had black charring all around it as well as signs of vicious scraping along the hull. Something traumatic had happened here, and recently. Nevertheless it opened without any fuss and came without the usual hiss of pressure equalization. He opened it just wide enough and slithered inside.

  The round door clicked softly shut behind him. Now unconcerned about noise, he set to work yanking open the inner door and lowering himself into the cockpit proper.

  Food first. Caswell opened the storage bins on the galley wall and found them blissfully well stocked. Stocked, in fact, with food packets dated recently. Alice Vale had fled twelve years ago. Who had resupplied her? The temptation to interrogate his target before killing her suddenly coursed through him. He’d never before had the chance to learn of a mission he’d already been absolved of. In the end, sucking on a package of avocado and vitamin puree, he decided he would take that chance, but only if he thought he could do it without compromising the mission. Monique would understand, he thought. He’d had many long conversations with her over the years about the nature of their IA status. She didn’t seem to struggle as much as he did with the conflicting sensations. The lack of consequence versus the gaps in one’s self. “Holes in memory are a damned weird thing to live with, but the pay makes up for it, don’t you think?” she’d said.

  He’d agreed. He still wondered if he’d meant it.

  Like a junkie reunited with a hidden stash, Caswell rummaged through the medical bins until he found an ibuproxin inhaler. He stuffed the plastic end in his mouth, squeezed, and drew in a long breath. Within seconds the raging fever wrought by the use of his implant in the train escape began to abate.

  He grabbed another food packet. Dark chocolate and espresso pudding. Not as good as a cup of coffee, but close enough. Finally, he went to the personal storage locker and opened it, hoping to find some clue about Alice’s goals here. A copy of her summit speech, perhaps. Anything that might give him an edge.

  Instead he saw a carry-all bag. A familiar one. His own.

  “This isn’t Alice’s lander, it’s mine,” he said aloud. The room took on a whole new light, possible scenarios unfolding in his mind. How he’d come to be here. How Alice had come into possession of his ship.

  He’d packed two bags before boarding the Pawn on the Mysore Orbital. Only one was here, but he’d split his more important gear with an eye toward redundancy. Caswell plunged his hands into the bag and shoved aside his travel gear until his fingers brushed the hidden pocket concealed in the rigid false bottom.

  Inside he found the familiar tubelike shape of a vossen gun.

  PICKING HIS WAY THROUGH the maze of rubble outside proved easier the second time. At the front of the great depot building he stopped and peered around.

  Alice Vale’s group had moved quickly. He caught only the trailing members as they entered a door at the back of the palace. Two guards remained behind as the doors swung shut. He would need another way in. Cursing, Caswell wasted precious seconds moving carefully through the cover of debris in the streets and then along the side of the palace building. Like the depot, this building also had a servants’ entrance, only this one was not hidden behind garbage and was very much guarded.

  Two of them, both plain clothed, and perhaps because of that fact neither carried drawn weapons, a disadvantage Caswell could exploit. He searched around by his feet and found a clump of rock the size of an apple. He hefted it, content to use it, then saw a meter-long length of iron rebar laying flush with the side of the building. He picked that up as well, slipping his vossen gun back into a pocket. Then he set his sights on the two guards.

  He crept forward, keeping to the side of the building. The pair had angled themselves slightly toward the square, expecting trouble from that direction if it happened to come. The fact allowed Caswell to get within five meters before the guard nearest him, a tall woman, became subconsciously aware of something approaching. She started to turn. Caswell threw the clump of rock as hard as he could. Not at her, but at the shorter male guard just beyond. He knew instantly the toss was true. A work of art, really, unaided by his gland. The rock caught the unsuspecting guard on the side of his head. At the same instant Caswell moved within a meter of the woman, his length of iron coiled back. She fumbled for a weapon inside her jacket. Her mouth began to open, a cry of alarm forming on her lips. His bar struck the side of her head only a half second after the rock had struck the man, and then both guards were on the ground with almost no noise. Caswell checked both of them for pulses, found them both to be alive, and decided he would leave them that way. He’d glimpsed the version of himself that had spun 206 bottles of Sapporo to face the rear of the fridge in Kensington, and he’d even killed on that train after reversion, but at some point between then and now he knew that man had not been the real Peter Caswell. That man had an out. A knowledge that all would be forgotten, quite literally. Without that mental cushion, he simply did not know how much blood he could spill. He didn’t want to know. He would kill Alice Vale because he’d been sent here to do so, but no one else unless absolutely necessary. Caswell dragged their unconscious bodies three meters away from the door, into shadow, and left them there.

  Inside he found a building flush with architectural details that implied wealth and power but none of which was exactly familiar. Ornately carved pillars along the walls. An intricate, polished stone floor. Not marble, but something like it. The hall he stood in spanned three meters across, lined with doors on either side. Ten meters on the hall came to a wide intersection with a perpendicular passage, then continued on to the far side of the building. There were voices from the adjoining hall, off to the right toward the square and the crowd awaiting Alice’s speech. Shifting lights from lanterns made the hallway swim with shadows.

  This was his best chance. Do it now, before she entered the square. Before a thousand pairs of eyes were watching her, listening. He surged forward, drawing his weapon once again, hoping he could get close enough for it to be effective. At the intersection he curled himself around the corner.

  The crowd in the hallway were huddled in front of a massive pair of closed double doors. Most were focused on Vale, who stood at the center of the group in quiet conversation with a few of them. The rest stood idly by, chatting in pairs or simply waiting. Those waiting were the bodyguards, with the stance, the sweeping gaze, the hands held loosely at the waist, ready to draw should the need arise.

  Loping along the edge of the wall, Caswell decided not to give them a chance to do that. He accelerated into a sprint, and with each step he summoned a little more time for his brain to process. The gland in his neck, replenished, gave up the required chemical mix happily. Sweet elhydrine, and with enough ibuproxin already in his system to counter the side effects. The scene around him slowed.

  Instinct drove him. He watched those he’d marked as guards, saw the initial flickers of danger-sense triggered by the sound of running footfalls nearby. Heads began to swivel in his direction. Hands began to dive toward holsters worn at the small of the back. Caswell took all this
in. Okay then, they intended to kill him, so he must defend himself. Mentally he prioritized the targets. One through six, leaving Alice Vale out for now.

  He had ample time to analyze the situation, but his body could still only move as fast as any other. With agonizing slowness he raised the vossen gun and let his gland communicate to it the six targets he’d identified. Pinprick balls of light and hissing gas erupted from the barrel, like tiny rocket launches from his perspective, like little explosions to those around him. The needles sprayed out in an arc, one by one, each on a plume of flame vectored to fight the tug of gravity. Their sensors would detect atmosphere and shift tactics from the blinding, mask-filling foam he’d used on the Venturi to a more direct approach.

  The six were in various stages of slow-motion reaction when the needles arrived. They made perfect lines to the eye socket, right or left, whichever was closer, and exploded in brilliant white flashes. The tiny bullets at the tip of the needle, little wads of 1,500-degree slag now, launched through the eye and into the brain, melting everything they touched.

  Reflexively they dropped their weapons and brought their hands to the sides of their suddenly very warm heads. It would be a few seconds before they even realized something was wrong with one eye, but that information would come far too late to matter.

  Alice and the others were starting to react. Many had been temporarily blinded by the flashes of light. For the rest, in their reference frame the six guards were suddenly, simultaneously screaming.

  Caswell ignored all this. The dying and those helpless to stop it. It was as if he were of two minds: the one that dealt with threats around him in whatever way made sense, and the one that had less immediate goals to worry over. This part of him focused on Alice. He sprinted at full speed toward her. It felt like pushing through a pool of peanut butter.

  She’d started to turn, her mouth forming into a surprised O at the sudden burst of activity around her. The flashes of light had happened behind her. She’d be only slightly affected by that. Not so much, Caswell saw, to fail to see him. Her eyes began to widen at the sight of him. He aimed the vossen at her face and relayed the target—

  No.

  He held back. Something in those eyes. He spent a half second—three seconds to him—studying that. It was more than fear. More than surprise.

  This was recognition.

  Between that look, and the strangeness of this place, the whole bizarre situation, he shifted tactics, improvised. For the first time he was at the heart of an IA mission that he would actually remember. He had to know what was going on. What this place was. How he’d come to be here. Why it was so important to kill Alice Vale. He would still kill her. That’s what he did, after all. A hammer drives nails.

  Thumb pressed to his temple, he relayed a different message to the gun through the implant. Fatally wound with sufficient time to interrogate.

  Gas hissed in rocket-plume clouds from around the tip of the weapon. The needle lanced out on its tail of flame, zipped across the two meters that now separated them, fast even from Caswell’s perspective. The needle had been carefully designed. It knew exactly what to do in order to achieve Caswell’s order. The thing curved, arched downward, and plowed into her chest just left of the sternum, between the ribs.

  No molten slag this time. Cauterization was not desired. A rupturing, instead, of the critical veins around the heart. Alice would bleed out internally within several minutes. No amount of medical attention could save her, but the pain would not be so great as to prevent her from talking through it. Theoretically, anyway.

  She started to fall, the shock of the impact not driving her back but instead simply buckling her knees. Caswell shifted his momentum to account for this. He swooped in, his arm slipping under hers. He heaved, willing adrenaline to give him the strength required. With one arm he brought Alice up to lay across his shoulder. The closed door was right in front of him now. He jumped, planted one foot on the heavy surface, wondering if it would give. It did not. The door held, so he let himself compress toward it and then pushed against it with one hand and one foot. He vaulted backward, spinning around with the motion; Alice’s body flailed out in both directions, her limbs smacking into the confused heads of those nearby.

  Caswell let the motion guide him, adjusting himself expertly thanks to the benefit of time. His head began to feel warm from the overclocked state of his synaptic nerves. Soon the implant would kill the effect to save his brain. He had enough time to sprint four steps back toward the hallway intersection when time seemed to speed up.

  Two more steps and everything was back to normal. The familiar feeling of running through air instead of crystal-clear molasses. Alice, over his shoulder, was groaning. Those behind her, those still alive, were screaming. Caswell ignored it all. He powered around the corner and headed back for the door he’d come through.

  The door, still open, framed several people. People in uniforms that he recognized from the train.

  Four soldiers, a woman apparently in handcuffs whom he recognized as Melni, and then another who seemed to be leading the party. An older woman, stocky of build and with that same, short mannish haircut he’d seen on every woman here. She wore glasses, with round blue-tinted lenses. She held no weapon, but the four escorting her had the pistols with the elongated stock that rested on the forearm.

  Caswell aimed the vossen. Without the benefit of elhydrine he couldn’t prioritize targets or even designate the preferred level of damage. He tried to relay the four armed guards, hoped it was enough, and shifted his focus to a side door nearby as the needles flew.

  He turned his shoulder in and slammed into the wooden slab.

  —

  Melni saw him raise the small metallic tube and reacted out of sheer instinct. She dropped prone to the ground. Rasa Clune, standing beside her with a viselike grip around Melni’s wrist shackle, was pulled down with her.

  Something hissed through the air, a sound that abruptly ended with four muffled pops in rapid succession. The four guards around her toppled to the ground. Melni rolled to her side, lifting her knees to her chest as she did so. Beside her one of the guards lay, half his head missing. The smell of charred flesh hit her nostrils, reaping an instantaneous flood of nausea.

  She bit back her bile and focused on her hands, tugging with all her might to break Rasa Clune’s iron grasp. The woman let go but not without a fight. Ignoring the scraping grit of the stone platform beneath her, Melni pulled her arms around to be in front of her and shoved her feet through the loop. She rolled to her stomach, ignoring as best she could the spreading pool of blood she’d just splashed her elbow in. Melni shoved against the ground and rolled back onto her feet. She vaulted herself up into a ready stance. Clune was just coming up, on one hand and one knee.

  Melni kicked the leader of Riverswidth, the spymaster of the South, hard in the gut, so hard that Clune came off the ground several inches, her eyes bulging in their sockets, breath rushing from her cruel mouth. She gasped and collapsed back to the ground. Melni kicked again, aiming for the bandaged nose, but missed. Instead she heard the sickening sound of teeth skittering across the tiled floor of the hallway just inside the door. A puddle of blood spilled from Clune’s mouth. She lay in that red pool, writhing.

  Melni left her there and ran for the door that Caswell had stormed through.

  HE HAULED THE SQUIRMING body up three flights of stairs. He was short of breath and nauseous from the post-acceleration headache, and his legs began to buckle. Limp at first, Alice fought him now. Every step he took earned a barrage of fists against his side and back, then finally claws against his cheek.

  Caswell ducked into a random room off the third-floor hallway. The trail of blood she’d left would guide the enemy right to him, but he hadn’t heard any footsteps on the stairs behind him so he figured he had enough time to complete his task even after a few questions were answered.

  Alice bit his ear savagely. He clenched his jaw to hold a scream back and dumped her
unceremoniously to the floor in a corner of the room. A cloud of dust erupted from her impact and filled the air. The whole place reeked of mildew and earthy vegetation. Vines curled in around the space where a window had once been, looking like the fingers of some deformed giant trying to pull the very walls off.

  He took a quick glance outside. The city square was fifteen meters below. The crowd had grown some, and seemed to be jostling nervously along a wavy line down the middle. Confusion and fear were fueled by the sound of combat within the palace. Some had drawn weapons, and shouts of accusation and alarm rang out from both left and right.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Alice Vale hissed.

  He glanced at her curled form in the corner. She hadn’t moved. “I have orders and I intend to follow them.”

  To his surprise she pushed herself up to a sitting position against the wall, her face a mask of agony. She turned her head and spat blood in a stream along the wall beside her. A dark red trail ran down her chin and dripped onto her shirt. With a force of will she managed to fix a steady gaze on him. When she spoke her voice was barely more than a whisper, thick with wrath. “You failed once. And you’re hesitating even now. Why, you son of a bitch? Get it over with.”

  “I have questions first.”

  Her lips curled back from teeth immersed in blood. She spat weakly, not bothering to turn her head. The liquid just splashed down the front of her shirt. She coughed. A wet, ugly sound. “Fuck you,” she said.

  Behind him the door burst open. Caswell whirled and dove, lifting his weapon in the same motion, finger on the trigger.

  “No!” the person in the doorway shouted.

  He recognized her from the train, and held back. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up to a half stand, still pointing the vossen.

  “Oh no,” the woman said upon seeing Alice. She raced across the room to the wounded woman, ignoring Caswell. “Garta’s light, no. What have you done?”