Zero-G

by Rob Boffard

  “Let me see her,” Prakesh says.

  The man doesn’t move. Prakesh’s eyes flare with anger. “If I was going to try something, I would have done it by now. Let me see her.”

  After a long moment, the giant lets him past. Prakesh pushes himself around him towards the bed.

  I can’t look at him.

  I keep seeing Okwembu. I was so close. And he stopped me, pulled me away just before I could have my revenge. For Outer Earth, for my dad, for everything.

  I should hate him. I want to.

  But as he reaches the bed, as I see the pain in his eyes and feel his hand on my shoulder, that hatred cracks and crumbles.

  I can’t blame him for not wanting anyone else to die while he stands aside and does nothing. How can I turn him away, when he’s in so much pain? It would be the worst thing possible.

  I reach out for him, and we embrace. I bury my head in his shoulder.

  Neither of us speak. We don’t need to. We just hold each other tight. Both of us have made mistakes. Both of us are broken, in our own way.

  I don’t mention what happened with Aaron. I don’t know how.

  “What’s it like?” I say. “Up on the bridge?”

  He rests his forehead on my shoulder. “They’re working out how to shape the asteroid. It has to be structurally sound for re-entry. They’re going to need to go outside to do it.”

  “That’s enough,” says the guard, appearing behind Prakesh.

  I squeeze him tight. “Go,” I say. “I’ll be all right.”

  “You sure?”

  In answer, I squeeze even harder. I don’t tell him the real reason I want him to go. It’s because Aaron is awake, and watching us, and the confusion in his eyes is too much to bear.

  “I’ll come back, OK?” Prakesh says. “I’ll come and get you.”

  He looks back at me one last time.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you, too.”

  He leaves, and the door slips shut behind him. The guard doesn’t say anything as I unstrap and float over to Aaron’s bed. He’s sitting up, drinking from a pouch of water through a straw.

  “Guess we’re going to Earth then,” he says, pulling the straw from his mouth.

  “I guess.”

  He shrugs. “Gonna be interesting to see how they do it. Even after they get through the atmosphere, they’ll still be going a billion miles an hour. I’m thinking they’ll use the escape pods, bail out…”

  He trails off as I wrap my arms around him. It’s all I can do not to start crying again. He hugs me back, then lifts my head to his, his lips brushing mine.

  I pull away.

  Gods help me, I pull away.

  His eyes meet mine. “I just thought – after all we’ve been through, we could…”

  “Please don’t ask me this, Aaron. Not now.”

  I reach up to touch his cheek, but he pushes me away, anger blazing on his face. “I was there for you. This whole time, I’ve been right alongside you. Back at the hospital in Apex, the Boneshaker, the fight in the dock, the tug – all of it. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  His words echo my thoughts about Prakesh. My heart feels like it’s about to shatter, like a single tap on chest would kill me. I have to fight back the tears.

  “You really still love him?” Aaron says. “After all that he’s done?”

  It comes out as a whisper. “I don’t know.”

  “Then why did we kiss? You tell me that. Why?”

  When I speak, each word is like a weight being hung around my neck. “I wanted to be close to someone. I wanted something normal.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I shouldn’t have done it, Aaron. It was wrong. You’re my friend.”

  He’s crying too now. “You don’t understand,” he says. “You two have each other. Who do I have, Riley? Who do I have?”

  I can’t answer him. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I don’t know what I’m becoming, or what to think any more.

  The door opens behind us. I hear Prakesh’s voice. “You’re OK to come through to the bridge, if you want.”

  “Don’t go with him,” Aaron says in a whisper. “Stay with me. Please.”

  But I don’t.

  We leave the medical bay, Prakesh and I, the bodyguard floating along behind us. He hasn’t said a word. I take one last look back at Aaron – only for a second, because any longer and I’ll crack in two. He’s turned away from us, facing the wall.

  On the bridge, banks of glowing screens are lined up like soldiers. A giant screen hangs from the ceiling; it’s displaying what looks like a projected course, the Shinso a tiny dot in the top right corner. The Earthers are here – at least twenty of them, floating in small groups. Syria is there, too, huddled by the wall. He doesn’t look at me.

  The far wall is transparent. I can see the Earth. The sun is just peeking over the far horizon. A band of colour spreads out from it, dark blue becoming crimson and orange and white.

  That’s when I see Okwembu.

  She and Mikhail are floating just below the window, deep in discussion. Mikhail’s body has been caught by the sun, but the top half of Okwembu’s body is cloaked in shadow. She turns to look at me, and her face is a black hole, silhouetted against the light. It’s impossible to see her expression, and she doesn’t move – just stares at me, her chin slightly lowered. I get a ghost of the anger I felt in the reactor, when it was just me, her and the knife. Prakesh seems to sense it, and holds me tighter.

  We’re not done yet, I think, looking at Okwembu. You and me. Not even close.

  It’s Mikhail who comes forward, using the railings that buttress each level to pull himself towards us. I expect him to be angry, but as he comes towards us he actually smiles. “I’m glad to see you up,” he says.

  I flinch from him, doing it before I can tell myself not to. He stops, and raises his hands. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Not from us. You understand that we have to keep a watch on you—” he gestures to my guard, still floating behind me “—but I hope you will help us when we reach our destination.”

  I’m shaking my head, and when I speak I struggle to keep the rage out of my voice. “Destination?” I say, jabbing a finger at the window, at the black mass under the sun’s band. “There’s nothing there. Nothing and nobody. We destroyed it, remember?”

  “You haven’t told her?” Mikhail asks Prakesh. He shakes his head.

  “Told me what?”

  Mikhail gestures to the big man. My bodyguard. “Alexei. Bring the recording.”

  “What is this?” I ask Prakesh.

  “You need to hear it,” he says.

  As Alexei moves to the other side of the bridge, Mikhail turns back to us. “It’s true that most of the Earth is a wasteland. The nuclear bombs saw to that.”

  “Then what—”

  “Don’t interrupt. The climate on maybe ninety-eight per cent of the planet’s surface is completely destroyed. But we’ve discovered a part of the Earth where it’s starting to clear.”

  I’m shaking my head, not quite believing it. “OK, so what? Starting to clear isn’t the same as completely clear. You still don’t know what’s down there. If it’s even habitable.”

  Alexei comes back. He has an ancient recording unit, no bigger than my hand. Mikhail takes it, and presses play. Static hisses out of the tinny speaker. Around us, the room has gone silent.

  “I don’t see—” I start, and then a man’s voice is coming out of the speaker, so crackly I can barely make it out. I have to listen hard, but soon I hear the tonal vowels, the clipped words.

  “It’s Chinese,” I say.

  Mikhail nods. “The English message will come in a moment. We think they’re broadcasting in different languages to reach as many people as possible.”

  “We haven’t had any communication from Earth in fifty years. Not one.”

  “That is correct,” Mikhail says. “And so we stopped listening. That device in your ear—” he
points to my SPOCS unit, still there despite everything I’ve been through “—it runs off cell frequencies, as you know, which means it can’t pick up old radio transmissions.”

  And all at once, it clicks into place.

  The static. The bursts across the SPOCS line. The interference that Aaron could never fix, that hurt my ear whenever they came through.

  I remember the thing I saw in the old mining facility that the Earthers had taken over. The device with the old-fashioned screens, displaying the strange shapes.

  We weren’t listening. The Earthers were. They found something – something that convinced them that they could survive on Earth. They didn’t tell the council because they knew that only a few people would ever be able to return to the planet. They wanted it to be them.

  There’s a pause in the recording, and then it switches into English.

  “If anyone can hear us, we are broadcasting from a secure location in what used to be Anchorage, Alaska. There are at least a hundred of us here, and we have managed to establish a colony. We have food, water and shelter. The climate is cold, but survivable. If you can hear us, then know that you’re not the only ones out there. Our coordinates are—”

  Mikhail turns off the recorder.

  “Do you see now?” he says quietly.

  I can barely find the words. “It’s an old message. It has to be.”

  Alexei shakes his head. “At the end of it, he gives a date. One which was only two months ago.”

  “They live,” Mikhail says. “The broadcast was meant for survivors on Earth, but we heard it, too. And we’re going to find them.”

  It feels like everyone in the room is watching me. Okwembu hasn’t moved – her face is still cloaked in shadow. Slowly, I raise my head towards the window.

  The world looks back at me, dark and silent, with the sun coming up over the horizon.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you, for reading this book. I hope you stick with Riley for the next chapter. Her story is far from over.

  And to everybody who ever got in touch about Riley and Outer Earth, who talked about the books online, who bought copies and mouthed off about the books to their friends … too many good people to name, but you all rock.

  This book is dedicated to my mom and dad, Ken and Vee Boffard. I love them more than I can say, but that’s not the only reason I’m singling them out. For this story, they went the extra mile, lending me their considerable medical expertise. Thanks, too, to my sister Cat, who was totally unfazed by our family WhatsApp group filling up with discussions about the best way to stab someone in the eye.

  For further scientific and medical advice, I’m grateful to Professor Guy Richards (Wits University), Andrew Wyld, who advised me on radio and cell frequencies, and the incredible Dr Barnaby Osborne (University of New South Wales). That asteroid re-entry plan? Totally his idea. You don’t think I come up with this stuff on my own, do you?

  Errors are my fault, in all cases.

  To my friends Rayne Taylor, Dane Taylor, Chris Ellis, Ida Horwitz and George Kelly, who gave me magnificent feedback.

  Ed Wilson is a fantastic agent and a rock-solid drinking buddy. His early comments and encouragement made this happen.

  Anna Jackson edited the hell out of this one. Nobody does it better.

  To my Orbit Books crew: Tim Holman, Joanna Kramer, Felice Howden, Gemma Conley-Smith, James Long and Clara Diaz. Also Devi Pillai at Orbit US. We did it again.

  Thanks, too, to Richard Collins for the copy-edit and Nico Taylor for the killer cover.

  When Tracer was published, Nicole Simpson was still my fiancee. By the time you read this, she’ll be my wife – and by some margin the best thing to ever happen to me. It behooves me to mention her family: James, Bettina, Trisha, Lotte and Hardy. Thanks for letting me stick around.

  Meet the Author

  ROB BOFFARD is a South African author who splits his time between London, Vancouver, and Johannesburg. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade, and has written articles for publications in more than a dozen countries, including the Guardian and Wired in the UK. Tracer is his first novel.

  By Rob Boffard

  Tracer

  Zero-G

  Impact

  If you enjoyed

  ZERO-G,

  look out for

  IMPACT

  by Rob Boffard

  Now

  The meteor tears a hole in the sky.

  The low-hanging clouds glow gold, as if the sun itself has dropped into the atmosphere. Then they split, ripped in two by the misshapen, white-hot rock.

  There’s a shape behind the flames, just visible past the corona. A long cylinder, black against the clouds, attached to the meteor by a shimmering cord. The cord breaks off, and the crack is loud enough to knock frost off the trees below.

  The man on the ground throws himself to the dirt, hands over his ears, as if the pieces were passing right above the tree line. Icy mud soaks his skin, but he barely notices. There’s nothing but that terrible noise.

  His fingers dig up clods of dirt, rooting in the soil, as if it’s the only way he can keep himself in this world. The war, he thinks. It’s happening again, just like Prophet said it would.

  He gets one eye open, then the other. His cheek is pressed to the ground, the world turned sideways, but he can still see the pieces. Their white heat has faded to a dark red. Most of them are vanishing over the eastern horizon, but at least one seems to be plummeting right towards him, screaming down through the air.

  He scrambles to his feet, trying to run. But the piece is nowhere near him – how could he have thought it was? It’s going down in the north, the red metal fading to scorched black. His heart is pounding, and in the split second before it vanishes under the tree line, its shape leaps out at him.

  That’s not just a meteor.

  It’s a ship.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the roar begins to fade. There’s a final crackle, like fading thunder, and then it’s gone.

  His legs are shaking, but none of his companions notice. They’re as stunned as he is, staring up at the sky.

  One of them is moving, pushing through the brush, yelling at them to follow him.

  “Think there’ll be survivors?” someone shouts.

  “No-one survived that,” comes the reply.

  But the man isn’t so sure. A long time ago, he was in one just like it.

  Chapter 1

  Riley

  The alarm starts blaring a split-second before the shaking starts.

  Aaron Carver is floating in the centre of the ship’s medical bay, and Prakesh Kumar and I slam into him. Everything else in the room is strapped down, but I can see the instruments and the bottles shaking, threatening to tear loose.

  “What the hell?” Carver rolls away from us, arms flailing. The ship is rattling hard now, the metal walls bending and creaking, as if a giant has it caught in a huge fist.

  “It’s re-entry,” Prakesh replies. He’s holding onto the roof now, and his body is swinging back and forth as the pull of gravity increases.

  “Can’t be,” I say. “It’s too soon!”

  My words are almost obliterated by a metallic rumble. The gravity is coming back as we plummet through the atmosphere, and it sends my stomach into a nauseating roll. I bounce off the floor, barking my knees on the metal.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a smooth ride,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, hunting for order in the chaos. “The asteroid—”

  “No good,” Carver says. He’s over by the door now, pulling on the release catch. Neither he nor Prakesh have shaved, and bristly stubble covers their faces. “I told them. You can shape the damn thing as much as you want but if you’re using it as a heat shield, things are going to get – shit!”

  He spins sideways as the ship jerks and kicks, flinging him against one of the cots bolted to the floor. The cot’s Velcro straps float freely, as if they too are trying to escape.

  “It’s
OK,” says Prakesh. Sweat is pouring down his face. “We just sit tight. They’ll come and take us to the escape pods.”

  We all stare at the door. The alarm is still blaring, and the hull of the ship is screeching now, like it’s being torn in two.

  “They’re not coming, are they?” says Carver.

  “Just hang on,” says Prakesh. “Let’s not—”

  “They would have been here by now,” says Carver, horror and anger flashing across his face. “They’re not coming, man.”

  I close my eyes, fury brimming inside me. He’s right. If they were going to let us out of this prison, they would have done it already. The Earthers – the group who took control of this ship to get back to our planet – don’t trust us. Not surprising, given that I tried to destroy the ship’s reactor in an attempt to stop them.

  There’s no way of stopping the ship. It’ll be travelling at 18,000 miles an hour, even after it’s passed through the upper atmosphere and burned off its makeshift heat shield. Getting off the ship means being in one of the two escape pods, and it’s easy to picture the chaos in the rest of the ship as the Earthers rush to get inside them. They’ve either forgotten us, or decided that we weren’t worth saving.

  I scan the walls and the ceiling, looking for an escape route that we missed the previous dozen times we tried to find one. Not that we tried that hard – after all, if we got out of the medical bay, where else would we go?

  Carver reacts. He half-swims, half-crawls his way over to the door, pushing Prakesh aside and twisting the release catch up and down. When that doesn’t work, he tries to kick the door, but just succeeds in knocking himself off balance.

  Prakesh stares at him. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” Carver gets up, kicks the door again. It shudders but stays firmly shut.

  “It’s a locked metal door, Carver.”

  Carver swings round, staring daggers at Prakesh. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Then why are you still doing it?”