Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2)

by J. S. Collyer

  “I’ll tell you one thing that’s pretty clear: they won’t like you. They don’t much care for Orbit politics or developments, but they will know who you are. And who you’re related to. I want you to prepare yourself now for the possibility they won’t even let you in.”

  “Even with a Sponsor?”

  “A Sponsor only vouches for you. It’s still the colony’s decision whether you’re worth the hassle.”

  “Webb, we have to get on that colony.”

  “I’ll try, Hugo,” Webb said. “I just want to make sure you understand that even if we get on, don’t get deported and survive long enough to track down Ariel…I don’t see how you expect to just march him off his own colony with no back up, right under the population’s noses.”

  “We get him out alive or we don’t get him out at all,” Hugo said, watching Webb’s face closely. Webb’s only reaction was a slight tightening around the jaw. “How long until we hit the Service blockade?”

  Webb glanced at his instruments. “Seven hours. But we need to make a little stop somewhere first.”

  “Where?”

  “Just trust me.”

  Hugo muttered then silence resumed. Nod’s life support and engines thrummed around them and Hugo found himself lulled despite everything. He thought he would chafe at being buckled in the co-pilot seat without any co-piloting to do, but even that was oddly soothing. Webb’s presence was somehow putting him more at ease than he had been in months. He had a plan, a starting point and someone who, even with his talk, he knew would do his best to get the job done.

  *

  It was a pain in Hugo’s neck that woke him. He drifted back slowly, revelling in the feeling of waking from a deep and, for once, dreamless sleep. He rubbed the ache and blinked until Nod’s cockpit came into focus.

  The pilot seat was empty and the command panel was dark. The silver curve of a colony took up half the viewscreen and the words sit tight scrolled across the main display in red letters.

  “Webb?” he called as he scrabbled to undo his restraints. He grabbed onto the chair before crashing into the command panel, calling out Webb’s name again. When there was still no answer, he pushed off the bulkhead and floated across to the access corridor.

  He could see through the window in the exit hatch that the ship was docked at the end of a colony walkway, but the hatch was locked. He was just bringing up his wrist panel to buzz Webb when there was a clanking and heaving somewhere below him. He turned and pushed himself towards the ship’s hold. That door was locked as well but the sounds of banging metal and the rushing of air were getting louder.

  When the hatch slid open Webb was floating on the other side, frowning at a computer panel.

  “Shit, Hugo,” he swore when he looked up. “You scared the life outta me.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Lunar 5,” Webb said pushing past him and down the corridor with a kick off the bulkhead. Hugo just had time to see stacks of crates battened down against the deck before the hatch closed.

  “What are we doing here?” Hugo asked as he followed Webb down the corridor.

  “Cameron Bale was overtaken by an unbeatable urge to sample the famous local Murgh Makhanwala.”

  “What?”

  Webb let out a noisy sigh as he drifted back into the cockpit. “It’s a curry.”

  “I know it’s a curry,” Hugo said. “What are we doing taking three hours detour out of our journey for it?”

  Webb sighed. “We’re not. We’re making it look like you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Fake ID or not, you’re not getting through the blockade if we’re boarded.”

  “You think we’ll be boarded?” Hugo felt the blood drain from his face.

  “I know we will. The Service doesn’t trust me for some reason.”

  “I assumed they’d just hail you. Webb, I can’t be seen. If the Service find me trying to sneak onto Haven it won’t just be me done. Eclipse will be done.”

  “Relax. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “What did you do?”

  Webb grinned as he fastened himself back in the pilot seat. “Our friend Bale’s ID was swiped at the walkway entrance to Lunar 5 but he hasn’t swiped back out again. You, under whatever guise, are now officially no longer on my manifest.”

  “You took my ID?”

  “Well you just looked so peaceful,” Webb said, pulling the card out of his jacket and flicking it across the cockpit. Hugo scrambled and managed to grab it and tucked it in his own jacket.

  “Nice bit of work that, too. Rami’s handiwork?”

  “Yes,” Hugo said, watching Webb’s face as he manoeuvred himself back to the co-pilot chair.

  “How’s she doing?” Webb’s actions were smooth as ever as he started the engines but Hugo thought the words sounded a little raw.

  “She’s the captain of the cybernetics unit developing the systems for Apollos Outreach.”

  A corner of his mouth twitched up. “Bet she likes that.”

  “She is a very competent officer,” Hugo said as he buckled himself in.

  Webb sighed. “I can see why Harvey fell for you. That sensitive side of yours is almost overwhelming.”

  “Are we going now?”

  “Yes. Strap in. Next stop, Haven. God help us.”

  IV

  “I should report this,” Hugo muttered as he dragged himself into the scan-proof holding locker under the deck in Nod’s tiny cabin.

  “Let’s get the rest of our illegal activity done first shall we, Commodore Hugo, before your honest streak kicks back in? Comfy?”

  Hugo muttered as he hunched against the cold metal with his knees up to his chin, pushing against the hinge to stop himself floating out. Webb passed him his pack. He squashed it in by his feet and Webb closed the hatch, sealing him in complete darkness. His breathing sounded harsh in the close confines.

  He watched the minutes tick by on his wrist panel and told himself to stay calm when there was the clank of the exit hatch opening, followed by muffled voices. They grew louder, faded, then louder again until they were almost directly above him, but the baranium-lined metal was too thick to make out any words. He heard Webb’s laugh and prayed he wasn’t antagonising the blockade Servicemen.

  There was a series of bleeps and then the voices faded away. Again Hugo sat in the dark and prayed. The silence stretched on.

  He jumped and rubbed his eyes with a curse when the hatch was opened again.

  “Well done, Hugo,” Webb said, holding out his hand to pull Hugo out of the smuggling hole. “You’ve officially broken your first law. Come on. You can see Haven from the cockpit.”

  “Did they check your cargo?”

  “Of course they did,” Webb replied as he drifted back to the cockpit. “The Service might not have any legal right to prevent anyone coming or going from Haven, but they like to make it as difficult as possible. Look.” Hugo followed Webb’s finger out of the view screen. The scattered edges of the farmed asteroids drifted ahead but beyond the floating chucks of rock was one star much brighter than the rest. “Last chance to turn back.”

  Hugo pulled himself into his chair and harnessed himself in. “Let’s do it.”

  Webb’s crooked grin showed itself again but then he sunk himself into steering the little skiff through the asteroid farm. Hugo watched in silence as Webb piloted them between the uneven chunks of rock, the concentration chasing his smile from his face. The bright point in the distance grew. More than once Hugo noticed the flash of ship engines and heavy machinery amongst the asteroids and once they passed close enough to one of the satellites that they were able to see the suited miners working on the surface.

  “I never understood why they clustered them so closely together like this,” Hugo muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “The Haven miners. The long-range haulers bring the asteroids all the way back here just to bunch them so closely together to be mined?”

  “The asteroids can
’t be mined any closer to the moon or Earth because the gravity throws off their stability. Humanity needs the minerals, but I don’t think it would be all that pleased if chunks of rock the size of cities started raining down at random.”

  “Then why don’t they rig up them up with thrusters like the other mining companies to keep them controlled?”

  “They don’t have the resources to spare.”

  Hugo shook his head. “It’s dangerous. And illegal.”

  Webb shrugged as Nod peeled around another mountain of rock. “I’m sure they’d all be working for licensed mining companies with safety contracts if they had the choice.”

  The traffic increased as they left the rocks behind. Skiffs, cargo haulers and a myriad of unidentifiable craft sped to and from the satellites and the colony. Hugo dug his fingers into the arms of his chair as they swung round a lumbering freighter that was apparently going too slow for Webb, only to be faced with a runner ship coming around the other way.

  Webb didn’t flinch and both him and the pilot of the runner peeled away and smoothed over one another.

  Webb spared him a sidelong glance through his floating hair. “How do you think Webb learned to pilot so well?” he asked, the edge of that harsh smile creeping back on his face. Hugo didn’t reply.

  The clone’s face flattened out again when the hail light started blinking on the control panel. Hugo kept his tongue still as Webb took a moment just watching the light blink. Then he reached out and pressed a button.

  “Is it just me or did it take you a while to get through the blockade, Webb?” A voice growled.

  “No longer than usual, August,” Webb replied quickly and Hugo peered at him, trying to figure out if he was lying. “Good to hear you. Where do you want us?”

  “About 500,000 kilometres back the way you came.”

  Webb frowned and Hugo kept his mouth shut with an effort.

  “What’s wrong?” Webb asked. Silence filled the cockpit like a vacuum. “August?”

  “Just get yourself in dry dock, Webb. Sector 4, bay 4534. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Co-ordinates blinked across the display and the audio connection was gone.

  “What’s the problem?” Hugo asked.

  “Search me,” Webb said, adjusting his course again, movements just a little more tense than before.

  Webb slipped them out of the busy space lane heading to the main bulk of Haven. The colony hung like a great bloated insect against the star-specked blackness. Hugo frowned at it, leaning forward as they curved around the patchwork hull. All the pictures and vidfeeds hadn’t captured how ramshackle the colony was. Hugo felt his first flush of real apprehension as he took in the bristling forests of communication antennas, a technology he’d only seen in history feeds, and the different textures and colours of the miles and miles of mixed metalwork. When it was first built it may well have been the classic wheel shape that the later Sunside colonies adopted, but there had been so many extensions and branched links cobbled on over the years it was hard to decipher the shape underneath it all.

  The section that faced away from the sun blinked with a hundred different colour guidance and port lights, sprinkled like stars across the sky rather than the uniform grids of signal lights that even Lunar 1 used to guide its traffic and maintenance crews. The flat surfaces facing the sunlight were dark with clusters of thousands of solar panels in different shapes and sizes, like black eyes amongst the bruised and battered metal skin.

  When they were close enough that the pitted and scoured hull filled the viewscreen, Hugo was soon dizzy from trying to understand how Webb was navigating so well. Dozens of vessels zoomed back and forth across their path without any discernible order. Relief warred with his rapidly rising dread when Webb finally turned them into a wide entry way and through a vacuum shield. His stomach dropped as they came under the sway of artificial gravity. He leaned forward to take in the sight of the small dry dock through the viewscreen. There was the usual level of activity of any port or dock, spacers and cargo handlers with equipment and lifters milling out between the berths, but he’d never seen such a peculiar assortment of vessels. They were all small, all old and all much-repaired.

  “Do they remind you of anything?” Webb said as he lowered Nod into their numbered berth.

  “The Zero,” Hugo murmured.

  A fond smile softened Webb’s face for a moment. “I’ve wondered before if this is where they got the inspiration for the thing. May have even been built here, for all I know. I wouldn’t put a few off-the-books contracts past Admiral Pharos.”

  “Haven-made ships are the best in the Orbit,” Hugo said, rising from his chair to get a better look. “Why do their own craft look like this?”

  “They don’t need flagships,” Webb said, unbuckling his harness and going over to look over Hugo’s shoulder. “They only need something that does the job. And I don’t think I’ve ever known a Havenite to scrap anything that even still thinks about functioning.”

  Hugo took in the workers nearby that had paused to watch their arrival. They were leaning on their lifters, still talking, eyes not leaving Nod. Hugo stepped back out of sight.

  “August Sinclair will be here soon,” Webb said, moving to the cockpit lockers. “He’s an Elder and can decide if we get on or not in two seconds. I hope you’ve figured out what you’re going to say to convince him you belong here…” Webb paused as Hugo’s pack clinked as he hefted it out of the locker. “Hugo, did you bring guns?”

  Hugo frowned. “Of course.”

  “You’ll have to leave them here,” Webb said, unzipping the pack and taking out Hugo’s shoulder holster and semis.

  “What?” Hugo strode across the cockpit to pull his pack from Webb. “You think I’m walking onto this place unarmed?”

  “You won’t walk on at all if you try to take a gun with you,” Webb said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “No guns, Hugo. They’re illegal here. Don’t tell me that’s not in any of the Analysts’ files?”

  “I told you, there’s virtually nothing in the Analysts’ files.”

  Webb shook his head. “Even if you managed to get one through the gate, if anyone found you with a gun you’d be lynched.”

  Hugo frowned harder. “Haven has the highest violent crime rate in the Orbit.”

  “None of it gun crime,” Webb said, pulling the pack back off Hugo and rooting through it.

  “Explain, will you?”

  “You feel there’s something worth killing someone over on Haven, you’ve got to do it up-close and personal.” Webb shrugged. “It’s always been the way. Keeps the justice system in line.”

  “There’s a justice system?”

  Webb’s mouth turned up at the corner as he handed him his much-lighter pack. “Of a kind.”

  “Brilliant,” Hugo muttered. He waited until Webb had turned back before reaching in his pack to check the Newmarc Fourshot was still in its tiny scan-proof case in the inner pocket.

  “You’ve got knives though, right?” Webb asked, closing up the locker.

  “What, so they’re ok are they?”

  “I said no guns, not no weapons. We’re honourable, not suicidal.”

  “Yes, I’ve got knives.”

  “Good,” he said, holding out Hugo’s baseball cap that had been his pack. “Glad to see you came at least partially prepared.”

  “A habit I got from you,” Hugo said, pulling on the cap. He didn’t look up when he knew they must have both realised that the clone hadn’t been the one to make Hugo start wearing baseball caps.

  “Keep it on,” the younger man said smoothly. “And keep up with the whole not-shaving thing again. It might give us a chance. Let’s get the cargo ready to unload.”

  Webb pulled on his own cap, pulling his tail of hair out the back then Hugo followed him into the hold. They started unstrapping crates in silence.

&n
bsp; “Now remember,” Webb said when the crates were stacked ready and he was lowering the cargo bay ramp. “You’ve got to make August believe you’re a no-one down on his luck who has no other future except what’s here. There’s a small chance he might not know who you are, but either way, neither of us are getting into the colony, let alone anywhere near Ariel if they don’t believe….oh shit.”

  Hugo looked up. The ramp was clanking onto the deck and Webb was rigid, staring out across the hangar. Hugo craned his neck and saw a woman with the coveralls and shaved hair of a welder storming towards them.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Get out of sight,” Webb said. “Now.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Just…oh fuck. Too late.”

  The woman marched up the ramp, her thick-soled boots clanging on the metal. She stood in the entrance, big hands balled into fists at her sides and stared at Hugo with fury flushing her already ruddy face. She was small but every inch of her was stocky and bristling. “I knew it.”

  “Simone,” Webb started, but she cut him off with a finger pointed in his face.

  “What in the hell are you playing at, Webb?”

  “Simone,” a gruff voice snapped before a broad-shouldered man, not much taller than the woman, came up the ramp behind her. His face, dark-skinned and worn, was scarred all up one side and there was a finger missing on his left hand. “Not here.”

  “It’s him, August,” Simone hissed, stabbing her finger at Hugo this time. “I told you it would be.”

  August frowned hard at him. “Are you sure? Don’t look much like him to me.”

  “It’s him, I’m telling you,” Simone growled. “Webb’s ‘Old war buddy’. Kaleb Poxy Hugo. I knew it.”

  “Webb, shut the hold,” August said and Webb complied. The ramp coughed and groaned and all four of them stood staring at each other, Hugo channeling every effort into keeping his face neutral and his mouth shut.

  As soon as the hold was closed, Simone turned on Webb again. “What in the name of seven hells do you think you’re playing at, sneaking a Serviceman onto Haven?”

  “And not just any Serviceman,” August said calmly, arms folded and keeping his eyes on Hugo.