“We have just landed the biggest manufacturing contract Haven’s had in a generation, August,” Simone said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring. “The Service wouldn’t send just anyone to do their snooping, would they?”
“Look, just listen a moment,” Webb said and Hugo watched his face closely for any sign that he was flustered. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not what you thinking.”
“It had better not be,” August said. “Come on then, Ezekiel. Explain what’s going on here.”
“He’s wrapped around this one’s finger, that’s what it is,” Simone growled, gesturing again at Hugo. “What’s this prig got on you anyway, Webb? Why is this the only Serviceman you’ve ever taken orders from?”
“Can we all just take a step back a second?” Webb said, this time looking close to actual anger. “Don’t you watch the newsfeeds out here?”
“Go on,” August said, though Simone looked like she was about to explode.
“Hugo’s been suspended.”
“Oh?”
“It’s true.” Hugo ventured, pleased he kept his voice steady. Three pairs of eyes swung back his way, August’s evaluating, Simone’s suspicious and Webb’s widening slightly with warning. “The Service is done with me. And I’m done with it.”
“Suspension?” August said. “That’s not like getting discharged.”
“No,” Hugo said. “They hope I’ll come round to wanting to work their way again. But I won’t.”
“He’s lying,” Simone said.
“Let’s listen to what he has to say,” August said. “Everyone gets a chance.”
“Even Erica Hugo’s son?”
“Yes,” August said, looking at Simone. “The Service has broken and cast aside as many souls as anywhere else, love. You know this.”
Simone took a step closer to August. “I trust Javi and Calle,” she said in a calmer voice. “They’ve never been wrong. And they said this man is Service to the bone.”
“Javi and Calle are very rich fences because they are excellent judges of character,” Hugo interjected. “But I was a different person when I knew them.”
“So what’s changed?” August said.
There was silence for a moment. Webb stood behind August’s shoulder, watching him. His face was pale. Simone had her arms crossed and her chin jutting out but she, too, waited. Hugo met August’s heavy, dark gaze.
“Nothing. That’s the trouble,” he said. “I’ve been promised over and over again that things would change. I have bled and fought and lost almost everything in the name of change, only to see none happen.”
August frowned. “You defeated Pharos’s Lunar Uprising,” he said, swinging a look over his shoulder at Webb. “And you, too. Except you left the Service behind the minute you could. You, however,” August looked back at Hugo. “Did not. You won them their war, you helped them strengthen their hold on the Lunar Strip. And now you stand there and tell me you did all that for something you didn’t believe in?”
“No,” Hugo murmured. “I used to believe. But not anymore.”
Simone was silent, though her eyes still flashed. A slight frown creased Webb’s brow but August’s swarthy face was still difficult to read.
“Something went wrong, huh?” the older man said.
Hugo’s eyes flicked towards Webb before he could stop them. Webb shook his head almost imperceptibly and Hugo looked back to August. “I lost a lot, now and then. And all for nothing.”
August let out a sigh and shook his head. “I can almost admire the fact that you had hope, Hugo. Almost. But I need to tell you: you won’t find any redemption here. Haven is not somewhere to sulk. And it’s not somewhere to make a point. It’s somewhere you come to survive. Those that do are grateful because it’s the only alternative they have. You, however,” August narrowed his eyes. “Let’s just say I can’t believe that this is your only way out.”
“I’ll vouch for him, August,” Webb said. “He wants out of the Service. Out of the Orbit. And he’ll work for it.”
“And what are you getting in return Webb?” Simone said. “What’s in this for you?”
Webb lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I owe him.”
Both the welders weighed them up for a long minute. Then August looked to Simone and she gave a tiny nod.
August sighed. “Very well, Ezekiel. You want to take this on, I wish you the best. But I’m warning both of you now, disaffected or not, he’s going to have a lot to prove. His probation may never be over.”
Hugo let out a shuddering breath whilst they looked the other way, a rushing in his ears slowly fading as August and Webb shook hands. Webb lowered the ramp again as August came over and shook his own hand and clapped his arm.
“Good luck, Hugo. I mean it.”
“Thank you.”
“Simone? Take him through the scanner and sort his brand. I’ll see what Webb’s brought us to make this worthwhile.”
“Your favourite, August,” Webb said, patting the nearest crate. “Nutripaks.”
“Brand?” Hugo asked.
“They don’t hurt much,” Webb said. “Now go and be good for Simone. I’ll meet you on the other side.”
Simone wasn’t smiling. She jerked her head in the direction of the cargo ramp and Hugo shouldered his pack and followed her. They wove across the noisy dry dock, a few spacers pausing in their work to glance at him. He pulled the cap down lower on his brow, kept his head down and trotted to keep up with Simone.
“This way,” she said as she ducked through some sliding doors. He followed her down a blinding white passageway with no windows and another set of doors ahead of them. “You go through.”
Hugo resisted throwing her a questioning glance and went up to the black doors. A light flashed above his head and they slid open. He stepped into a small room and the door hissed shut again. There was a beeping somewhere overhead. He frowned and stepped up to the other doors but they didn’t open. The beeping continued and the air began to warm.
He looked around at the blank walls and then at the dozens of small black domes bolted to the ceiling, red lights flashing in their innards in time with the beeping. He resisted the urge to fidget until finally the beeping stopped and the opposite doors slid open to admit a waft of cold and oily air. He shivered and stepped through and the doors snapped shut again behind him.
The metal bulkhead of the colony arched into darkness above. There was a set of tracking lights far, far above his head. They were a dull, underwater green instead of the white he remembered from the Lunar colonies’ night-cycles and nowhere near bright enough to lift the gloom around him. The lights stretched away into the distance where he could roughly make out the jagged outlines of buildings against the dim soupy-green backdrop. There was no crowded neon of the cities on the moon and no uniform street-level flood lighting like on the colonies of the Lunar and Sunside strips. Beyond the walls of the docking area where he stood, the only light he could see was the scatterings of the few lit windows in the nearest buildings, along with a grey wash lower down which seemed to be made by sporadically placed and ill-maintained street lamps on some of the broader avenues.
The air was heavy and smelt of oil. It was also cold enough to make him shiver.
Further down on his left were large gates through which the main bulk of the dry dock traffic seemed to be coming and going. A couple of guards, not tall but bulging frames barely contained by their dark coveralls, were looking over everyone, giving the occasional spacer a sweep with a hand-held scanner. One of the guards was watching him out the corner of his eye whilst his partner did a thorough sweep of a woman with a moped, including checking her neck for something.
Hugo stayed where he was, stock-still until the doors he had come through opened again and Simone stepped out eyeing him up and down.
“Well that’s the second expectation you’ve defied.”
“Huh?”
Simone jerked her thumb back at the door. “Industrial s
canner. If you’d been trying to sneak anything in, you’d be back on Nod already. This way.” She turned and paced towards a thin-walled building that was little more than a shed shouldered against the colony bulkhead. Hugo felt his heart speed up, grip tightening on the handles of his pack and sent up silent thanks to Rami and her scan-proof box. His knees were a little shaky as he hurried after Simone.
“What’s the contract?”
“Huh?”
“The biggest manufacturing contract in a generation?”
Simone narrowed her eyes. “Are you that dumb or just playing dumb?” Hugo clenched his jaw over his response. She watched his reaction and frowned. “Apollos Outreach?”
“The terraforming project?”
Simone nodded. “They’ve commissioned virtually everything from us.”
Hugo blinked at her. “You’re building everything they’re using to colonise Mars?”
“There are no other yards in the Orbit which could meet the specs. Or deadline, for that matter. You really didn’t know?”
“They didn’t exactly publicise it.”
“No,” Simone grated. “They wouldn’t.”
“Is it night-cycle?” Hugo said, changing the subject as her brow grew stormy.
“No cycles here, Service-boy. Only shifts.”
Hugo looked out over the dark gathered above him and felt something sink inside him. The door to the shed was open. They passed a couple of rooms crowded with workstations and people in headsets with charts on their displays, directing space traffic. The workstations were all mis-matched and wiring snaked between them and over the walls. Simone took them into a room smaller than the others, cluttered with dented locker banks and another workstation with a cracked display in the corner.
“Sit,” Simone directed as she keyed in a code to open one of the lockers. Hugo looked round and, seeing no other chair, sat at the workstation. Simone pulled out an instrument, examining its sharp end with a frown. She pressed a control and it started to hum, the narrow point glowing red.
“What’s that?”
“Lean forward,” she said and Hugo blinked at her solemn face and the needle a moment longer before obeying. She pulled down his shirt collar and then he felt something biting into the skin of his neck. He hissed between his teeth and heard Simone exhale sharply through her nose.
“I really hope you weren’t lying, Service-boy,” she said in a low voice. “That lad’s got friends here as well as enemies. If you get him lynched, you’ll have to answer to them. And to me.”
“I don’t intend to get Webb into trouble,” Hugo muttered as another line of fire was carved into his neck, hoping he wasn’t lying to himself.
Simone made a noncommittal noise and released him before returning the instrument to the locker. “Don’t rub it,” she snapped and Hugo dropped his hand. “Wait here.”
Hugo was left in the tiny room with the activity of the ramshackle building humming around him, feeling a chill of uncertainty ghosting around his innards. He shook it away and glanced around. He caught sight of a mirror propped on a cupboard across the room and went across and pulled down his collar. There were two slightly curved black bars lasered into his skin just below his shirt line. The skin around was red and angry-looking.
“You get the cross-bar after your probation is up.” Hugo jumped as Webb entered the room. He dumped his pack and pulled back the collar of his jacket. “See?”
Hugo saw the slightly stylised ‘H’ on the side of Webb’s neck just before he shrugged his jacket back up. “Come on. August says there’s a boarding house not far from here that might take us.”
“This is how Haven knows you’ve been through probation?” Hugo said, shouldering his pack and resisting the urge to rub the skin at his neck. “What’s to stop someone just getting it done at any old laser parlour?”
“Step out here and I’ll show you.”
Hugo kept his head down as he followed Webb back out into the gloom of Haven. “Here.”
Webb pulled down his collar again and Hugo saw the tattoo glowed a dull red against his skin.
“How does it do that?”
“I don’t know,” Webb said, striking out towards a series of ramshackle sheds across the cluttered concrete of the dock yard. “It’s something to do with the track lights and whatever treatment they put in the laser. It can’t be faked, either way. People have tried.”
Hugo followed Webb, finding himself breathing shallowly and through his mouth. The heavy metallic edge to the air caught in the back of his throat. They ducked under an arch in the wall of one of the sheds to join a line of people filtering through onto a shuttle platform on the other side. Small knots of Havenites were milling about with lifters and bags and trolleys. The ones that weren’t alone kept their heads close together when they talked. They all wore tough-wearing fabrics in grey and beige, many-pocketed trousers, sturdy boots and thick jackets with high collars. Most of them had oil or rust staining their clothing. What hands and faces he could see that weren’t hidden in thick gloves or dust-scarves were scarred. Hugo was half a head taller still than the tallest amongst them. Glances slid their way and Hugo moved his gaze to his friend, who stood easy, watching the numbers on a chrono on the wall counting down. Hugo could see the top of his brand glowing red over his collar.
“You had that before,” Hugo murmured, feeling his brow crease.
“Huh?”
“That tattoo,” Hugo said, pointing. “The brand. You…I mean the other you…the first Webb. He had that brand.”
“Yeah. He went through probation when he was seventeen, so the Zero could build connections here. I thought you knew that?”
“I did. I didn’t realise that that’s what it meant though.”
“So?”
“So, if it can’t be faked, how do you have it too?”
Webb shrugged. “I did it again.”
“You’ve been through probation twice?”
“Well, no, not technically,” Webb said, dark humour sparkling in his eyes. “He did it once and so did I.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t you glad I did?” Webb said, looking away to the shuttle rail. “Or else we wouldn’t be here.”
The countdown ticked to zero and an ancient shuttle lumbered to a stop at the platform. Hugo watched Webb closely as they boarded with the workers. There was nowhere to sit so they stood at the handholds by a window as the shuttle rattled away.
“You’re not going to tell me why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you put yourself through probation again?”
Webb looked him in the eye. Again, Hugo saw something different in this man’s face than the man he’d first met aboard Service Command. The murmur of the rocking shuttle carried on around them as he held his gaze for a long moment.
“It’s not important,” he said finally, and looked away.
Hugo bit his tongue with an effort and looked out the window. The shuttle clattered along its rail. Buildings interspersed with storage lots hunkered right up against the tracks. Hugo squinted but could barely see anything through the gloom. As they crossed an avenue broader than the rest he saw the single headlight of a moped cutting through the dark as it crossed from one side-street to another, laden trolley trailing behind it. The avenue curved slightly up, jumbled structures, badly lit, shouldering in on either side. The distance was just a dark green haze spreading to the false horizon. Just before the view was blocked again he caught the sight of towers in the distance, tall and glowing a brighter green, with lofty spires that reached high above everything surrounding it.
Then it was gone and it was just darkness again, broken by pools of uneven lamplight.
“There’s no skyways.”
“Folk round here don’t have much cause for wandering far. Those that do use the shuttles. Apart from people who have cobbled mopeds together.”
The shuttle stopped every so often and the carriage gradually emptied of the passengers from the docks to be
replaced with workers coming to and from shifts, all grimed work clothes and tired eyes.
Sometime later the shuttle stopped at a stop that, to Hugo, looked the same as all the others but Webb, still silent, signaled that they should get off. There was no platform. They stepped onto a shadowy street and the shuttle rumbled on its way. They were left alone in the dark with concrete buildings arching up either side and an eerie silence pressing in on them.
“Where are we?”
“Still in Sector 4, I think,” Webb said, voice broken with a yawn. “Been a while since I’ve been this far hubwards. But as August has given you permission to be here we should return the favour by sticking to his sector.”
“We need to find the nearest bloodgrease refinery,” Hugo said as he stepped over the shuttle rail after Webb and turned onto a virtually deserted side street.
“What for?”
“To try and track down some traders.”
“Hold your horses, Commodore,” Webb said as he scanned up and down the street. “You’re on probation remember?”
“So?”
Webb rolled his eyes. “So it’s got to look like you’re here to earn citizenship. If the first thing you do is start sticking your nose into bloodgrease business, people are gonna catch on.”
“So, what?”
“We’ve got to find some work.”
“We haven’t got time to work, Webb. The longer I’m here the bigger the chance of word getting to Ariel.”
“You agreed, Hugo,” Webb said, stopping in front of a building that, to Hugo, looked the same as all the others, except the doors were open and light spilled onto the concrete street. “Follow my lead, remember?”
“Webb - ”
“Hugo,” Webb cut him off, voice hardening. “You don’t know this place. I do. We won’t last five minutes the second anyone figures out what we’re really here for. We’ve got to play the game.”
Hugo reigned in his temper and unclenched his fists with an effort. “How long for?”
“As long as it takes.”
Webb climbed the steps into the building. Hugo glanced along the dark street. The light that gathered in muddy puddles from security lights wired into the concrete walls of the buildings only made the spaces between them darker. An engine whined nearby but then faded again and all was quiet apart from the steady throbbing hum of the colony’s life support.
Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2) Page 6