Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  “Whoa, hey,” Prakesh says, slamming his hand around the door frame. “What’s going on?”

  Tseng stumbles to a halt, staring daggers at Prakesh. Stompers are closing in behind him – there are more now, Prakesh sees, at least half a dozen.

  “Emergency situation,” Tseng says. “Step aside. We need to seal the lab.”

  “Not a chance,” Prakesh says. He knows he’s on shaky ground – technically, a station council member can make that particular call. But there’s no way he’s letting them seal the techs in. Not without knowing why.

  “Step aside, Kumar,” Tseng says, looking over his shoulder at the stompers. “This isn’t your concern.”

  “Yeah, don’t care,” says Prakesh. It’s then that he sees the tracer unit, running towards them from the far end of the corridor. Kev is in the lead, elbowing his way past the other stompers. Carver is trailing him, along with the other girl Riley works with – Anna, that’s her name.

  All three of them are wearing face masks. The masks are thin plastic, covering their mouths and noses and chins.

  “Sir,” says one of the other stompers – a thin man with an even thinner mouth. “We need you to step back, and secure your employees.”

  “Not until—”

  “Now.”

  Prakesh can feel the other technicians congregating behind him. He looks over his shoulder; they form a loose semicircle, dozens of them, staring in confusion at the standoff. They’ve seen the masks, too, and they’re whispering to each other, already nervous. He has to get control of this now.

  “Look,” he says, spreading his hands. “You need to tell me what’s going on. If you’re going to shut us in here, then we should at least know what’s happening.”

  “Virus.”

  Everyone turns to look at Anna Beck, jogging to a halt. She rests a hand on Kev’s shoulder, bent over, holding her other hand at her side.

  “Officer,” Tseng says, all but hissing the words. “You’re not authorised.”

  Anna ignores him. “It’s bad,” she says, looking at Prakesh. “People coughing up black gunk everywhere. It was in the mess first, but we’re getting reports from all over.”

  Prakesh hears gasps from behind him. He lets out a shaky breath. “Just in Gardens?”

  “Other sectors, too.”

  “Might not be a virus,” says Kev. He shrugs when everybody turns to look at him. “Just saying. Might be a bacterium.”

  Prakesh briefly closes his eyes. It’s a nightmare. Virus or not, even non-lethal diseases can spread like wildfire in Outer Earth. This one does not sound like a non-lethal disease. And if there are multiple infection sites, multiple vectors …

  He flashes back to the previous night, to Riley’s sore throat. He dismisses the thought immediately, refusing to entertain it. She’s OK. She has to be.

  “Listen,” he says. “No one’s infected here, right?” He looks around at his team, who shake their heads. “If you give us face masks, we can keep working.”

  “P-man,” says Carver, and Prakesh rankles at the nickname. “You shouldn’t have this door open. We can’t afford to have any techs coughing up black slime. They’re too important.”

  “We’re fine, Aaron.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “You’re not locking us in here.”

  Before Prakesh can blink, Carver is in his face. He crosses the floor in seconds, fists clenched.

  “Get inside. Now.” Carver says. His voice has gone deathly quiet.

  “Or what?” Prakesh says. Deep down, he can see Riley’s face.

  Tseng is almost apoplectic. “That’s enough!” he says.

  Anna steps between them, turning to Carver and putting a firm hand on his chest. “We do not have time to argue over something like this. Let them shut the doors, and we can get out of here.” The other stompers are crowding in, as if they trust Carver to handle things, but only to a point.

  “Stay out of this, Anna,” Carver says, trying to push her aside. She plants her feet, not moving. He pushes harder, and, this time, she shoves back, her hands balled into fists.

  Carver stares at her. “Are you insane? This should not be this big an issue. We need these people to keep us alive, so we have to get them locked down. It’s the most important thing we can do.”

  “Important?” Anna hisses. “More important than what’s happening in the rest of the station? In Tzevya? My family are up there, Carver…”

  Kev steps in. “And mine are in Caves. We all have people we need to take care of.”

  “You heard your friends, Aaron,” says Prakesh, pointing a finger at Carver over Anna’s shoulder. “Go find the ones who actually need your help. Don’t bother the ones who can handle themselves.”

  The impasse is broken by several sharp beeps. Tseng is at the door’s control pad, his finger hammering on it. There’s a longer beep, and then the door plummets towards Prakesh.

  Carver acts fast. He plants his hand on Prakesh’s chest and shoves. Prakesh flies backwards, his feet tangled, landing hard and skidding across the floor into the Air Lab, just as the massive door slams shut.

  25

  Knox

  Knox is spooning beans into his mouth when he hears his name over the hacked SPOCS line. When he does, he nearly spits them across the room.

  He drops the food container, grabbing his stick and limping across the floor of his surgery, turning up the volume on the transceiver.

  “Suspect last spotted in A1-B22. Richards, we have you and Olawole on duty in that area, confirm?”

  “Come on, dispatch,” says an irritated stomper. “It’s almost the end of my shift.”

  The dispatcher ignores him. “Repeat, your suspect is Morgan Knox, forty-two years old. Physical description is dark hair, Caucasian, six feet. Pronounced physical disability.”

  Knox grips the sides of the transceiver. This can’t be happening.

  “Copy that, dispatch,” the stomper says, resigned. There are a few seconds of silence. Then: “Dispatch, this is Richards. I’m getting a lot of chatter on the private channels about a situation in Gardens, and another in Caves. You sure you don’t want us to help?”

  “Negative. We need continued stomper presence in the other sectors. Go and do your job.”

  “Copy,” Richards mutters.

  For the first time in months, Knox doesn’t know what to do. Did he make a mistake somewhere? He’s committed plenty of crimes in the past, but the stompers never caught on – why is he being targeted now? He has to leave. He has to—

  Richards’ voice bursts through the SPOCS transceiver. “Sarah, you read me?”

  A crackle. Then: “Danny Richards. What’s up?”

  “You in Big 6?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Look up something for me on the Wall, would you?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “We just got an arrest request on a Morgan Knox. I want to find out who issued it.”

  Knox stiffens, turning his head back towards the transceiver.

  “OK … why?”

  “Because it’s keeping me from my homebrew. I’m at the end of my shift, and dispatch hits me with this. Whoever wants this son of a bitch arrested, I’m gonna—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. Morgan Knox. Warrant issued by Junior Officer Hale, R.”

  “Damn tracers don’t know how things work around here. I’ll have to show her.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Hey, you got anything on what’s going on up in Gardens?”

  It’s all Knox can do not to swipe the transceiver off its shelf. Hale. Did she think he’d go quietly? Did she think he wouldn’t fight back? His fingers caress the remote taped to his hand. One push, that’s all it would take.

  He should leave. He should get far away from here. If he’s arrested now, then he’ll never get near Okwembu. He can deal with Hale later.

  But as he looks around the room, Knox realises that he doesn’t want to leave. His sur
gery is perfect. It has everything he needs, everything he ever could need, and he worked very hard to make it this way. Out there is chaos, ruin, disaster. In here, he is fully in control.

  No, he’s not going to run. Hale isn’t going to chase him out. He’ll wait, and he’ll deal with the stompers she sent, and then he’s going to make her realise the exact consequences of failure.

  26

  Riley

  “Everybody get back,” Syria shouts.

  The man tries to stand, but his hands slip, sliding in the black gunk. He falls face down in it, shivering uncontrollably. A bubble of black slime expands in one corner of his mouth, popping gently.

  Syria turns away. His eyes pass across me, but it’s like I’m not even there. He points at two men standing nearby. “Bruno, Tamir,” he says. “Get everyone inside. I don’t want to see a single person in the corridors.”

  A yell comes from behind us – a man’s voice, thick with fear. “We got another one!” We all whirl to see a teenage girl stumbling down the far passage, her back to us. She half turns, and I see the shimmering black threads hanging off her face. Her eyes are rheumy, unfocused.

  Panic is starting to crackle through the Caves. There are shouts about something in the water. Doors are slamming shut, and running feet form a thundering undercurrent. Syria and his men take off, moving at a brisk walk, barking instructions.

  My thoughts race ahead of me. I’m thinking about what Prakesh said the night before, when I thought I was getting sick. No matter what Syria does, other stompers’ll be here soon. And if they close off the Caves with me still inside, then I’ll never meet Knox’s deadline.

  I don’t waste any more time thinking. I just run.

  The cramped corridors pulse with bodies as the word boils up the line. People come scrambling out of the habs, heading for the exits. They begin to push tighter around me, slowing me to a jog, then a twisting, stumbling push through the packed crowds. An elbow jabs into my neck, another into my stomach. The noise is horrific: a screaming roar that the corridor magnifies and turns into a huge blast of white noise. One exit. How could they design this place with a single exit?

  There are more people piling into us from behind, more hands raised, as if they can pull the exit towards them. The air is hot and sticky, and less and less of it is reaching my lungs every time I take a breath. Parts of the corridor are pitch-black under the burned-out lights. I have to look ahead, plan my angles, work out where each person is going to be two seconds from now. My legs move of their own accord, powering me forward as I dodge and weave through the corridor.

  I’m not moving fast enough. A man goes down, his arm raised in one final plea before he vanishes under a sea of stamping feet. There’s a hand in my face, pushing against my cheek and nose, a finger jamming into my mouth, arms against my back, too hard, way too hard …

  And then, all at once, the bottleneck breaks. The crush surges forward. The hand whips away from my face, and then we’re all running again, tripping and stumbling through the corridors.

  Ahead of me, someone falls – a tall man, with no shirt and a pair of ragged shorts. What little light there is is reflected on his bald head. In half a second, I’m going to crash right into him. It’ll send me sprawling across the floor, trampled underfoot.

  I jump, flying over his body even before he hits the floor. I stumble on the landing, pitch too far forward, and have to throw my hands out. My palms scrape metal. As I look up, an arm swings at my face, the elbow rocketing towards my forehead. I twist to the side, and the elbow rushes past me.

  There’s only room in my mind for one thought: Keep moving.

  The crowd has bunched up again, fighting for space. They’ve done it at a corner, where the passage narrows slightly. The door to the galleries is just ahead – I can see the light from it bathing the walls of the passage. Beyond it, two stompers are sprinting for the doors, guns up.

  Amira’s words whisper in my mind. Her presence is unwelcome. Her advice isn’t. Don’t just run on the floor. Run on the walls and the ceilings. You can use every surface on the station to get where you’re going.

  I look up at the roof. There’s a fluorescent light bar, running from wall to wall, the glass thick and dusty. The bulb itself is burned out, which means the bar will be cold to the touch. I tic-tac off the wall, jumping towards it, leading with my left foot and using it to push myself off it. In the same instant, I reach up, stretching as high as I can, and grab the light with both hands. The glass cracks under my fingers, a tiny splinter needling my skin.

  I exhale, and as my swing hits its apex I push my legs out so I’m parallel to the ground. Then I piston my arms, and let go.

  If I miscalculate this, if I’m off by even half a foot, then I’m going to hurt a lot of people. Including myself.

  The crowd is moving beneath me. The gap I’m trying to launch myself through, between the tops of their heads and the ceiling, is maybe a foot and a half. I feel their heads brush my back, raised hands across my legs.

  And then I’m through. There’s an absence, a feeling of space below me. I lean to one side, tuck my legs and hit the ground rolling.

  The world goes upside down for a split second, and then I’m up and running, my muscles twanging, the cold shock of impact spreading through me.

  At that instant, a transmission comes over my SPOCS, crystal clear through the static. “All points New Germany, quarantine Caves. Repeat, quarantine Caves.”

  No.

  But the stompers ahead have heard it, too. They’re already moving, guns up, and the few people still ahead of me come to a stumbling halt. I push past them, spinning around their bodies, keeping my balance as I hurl myself at the door. Not fast enough. It’s already closing, one of the stompers pushing against it.

  I’m ten feet away when it slams shut.

  27

  Riley

  I’m hammering on the door even before the rest of the crowd get there. It refuses to budge. Even when other hands join me, other voices pleading to be let out, it doesn’t move. Locked tight.

  I find a spot against the wall and collapse against it, chest heaving, vision blurred. I feel like I’ve got up too quickly from a chair – like all the blood is rushing around my body, unsure of where to settle. How many hours do I have left? Eighteen? Less?

  “Quiet!”

  Syria. I don’t know where he came from, but his presence shuts the crowd down instantly. He turns his glare on them, and they shrink away, forming another crush as the ones at the front try to back up.

  “Get back to your habs,” Syria bellows. “Get in there, stay in there.”

  They head back down the corridor in twos and threes, muttering among themselves.

  Syria turns, looking down at me. “You’re OK,” he says, reaching down and pulling me to my feet. His skin feels calloused and worn. Once I’m up, he strides away.

  “Hey.” The word barely makes it past my lips. I have to clear my throat to make it come out right. “Hey!”

  I jog up behind him. Syria doesn’t look in my direction, but when I put a hand on his arm, he stops, his shoulders heaving.

  “There has to be another way out of here,” I say. “There has to be.”

  Syria finally looks over his shoulder at me, firmly removes my hand from his arm. “My advice? Find somewhere to hunker down until this is all over.”

  I try to pull my thoughts into some kind of order. Prakesh would know what to say. He’d know how to convince someone like Syria.

  Then, inspiration. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d all be dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What I did…” I swallow. All at once, I’m back in the nightmare, seeing my father’s face, my name splashed across it in orange letters. “With the Akua Maru. I saved this station. You owe me. So get me out of here, and we’ll call it even.”

  It’s the first time I’ve used what happened to me to get something. It feels weird, like I’m breaking a rule.

  Seconds ti
ck by. Shouting echoes through the Caves corridors, along with more doors slamming shut. Somewhere, very distant, the station hull is creaking and groaning.

  “Follow me,” says Syria. Before I can say anything, he strides away, slipping into the shadows. I bolt after him, jogging right on his heels. In my ear, SPOCS hums with traffic, almost all of it about the Caves lockdown.

  He stops at one of the doors, nestled next to a giant 1-B spray-painted on the wall. He has to knock hard a few times before the door opens a crack.

  A voice comes from behind it. “You get out of here now or – Syria. You OK?”

  “Fine, Jamal,” Syria says. The door opens wide, revealing a skinny guy with no front teeth and a shorn head. Three children cower behind him, huddled on a battered single cot, wrapped in thick blankets. The hab is cloaked in shadows, lit by a lone electric light bulb, hanging off the end of the cot. The floor is covered with patches of wet grime.

  “Who’s she?” Jamal says, pointing to me. Syria ignores him, picking his way across the floor to the wall at the far end. I follow, nodding at Jamal, hoping against hope that there really is another way out of here.

  One of the kids slips from the bed and walks alongside me. She’s a tiny girl, no more than five, wearing a dirty pair of pants and a red sweater so huge that it hangs down to her knees. She stares up at me, her brow furrowed.

  Her eyes light up. “You’re the lady who blew up her dad.”

  “Ivy!” says Jamal.

  I’m too stunned to respond. Before either of us can say anything more, there’s a huge screech. Syria has lifted a panel from the wall. Grunting, he sets it down. “There,” he says. “It’s a tight fit, but it’ll pop you out by the power couplings on Level 2.”

  I look back once more at Jamal and Ivy, still not sure what to say. At that moment, the stitch in my left knee starts itching again, as if to hurry me along, and I step into the wall.

  “Thank you,” I say, as Syria lifts the panel again. Ivy has taken Jamal’s hand, staring at me in wonder.