More and more people boarded the shuttle. Soon they were crushed against the window. Hugo could smell the sweat and engine grease in the work clothes around him. The light inside the carriage reflected off the glass, making it next to impossible to see out into the dark.
“You know where we’re going, right?”
“All the shuttles go to the yards,” Webb said, gaze distant.
Hugo hunched deeper into his jacket and stared through his reflection. He blinked and frowned, leaning closer and shading the glass with his hand. The nearest buildings showed up as black silhouettes against a distant, red glow. He could make out the colony ceiling daubed with its rust-coloured stain far above. A break in the buildings revealed a jagged construction hulking against the false horizon. It was framed in a hot red that drowned out the green of the track lights. Even at this distance Hugo could make out chimneys as broad as walkways branching from it and disappearing into the workings of the hull. There were no lit windows and as structures passed in between the shuttle and the factory, he felt more than heard a low thrumming in the air fade and strengthen.
“Bloodgrease refinery,” Webb said in a low voice.
“There’s no shuttle stop,” Hugo said, peering into the murk.
“Refinery workers don’t leave.”
Hugo was glad when the shuttle rounded a bend and the refinery was blocked from sight. “We’ll have to investigate.”
“Not if I can help it,” Webb said. Hugo was trying to find the words to argue but the shuttle ground to a stop and the surge of traffic disembarking swept them along.
There were a dozen more sets of track, each with a shuttle just arrived disgorging workers. The booming shift-end call rattled out from the shadows making Hugo flinch. Webb followed the crowd as they wove between the parked shuttles and swarmed over the tracks toward the shipyard, and Hugo followed him, spirits sinking.
VI
It wasn’t until Webb plucked at Hugo’s sleeve to urge him on that he realised he had stopped at the shipyard gate to stare. He’d been to a yard in the Sunside Strip before and remembered how the heat and smell and noise had made him feel like he could reach out and take handfuls of the atmosphere, if he didn’t suffocate first. But that was nothing compared to this.
Craning his neck he could make out three towering scaffolds as tall as spacescrapers, supporting sections of unfinished spacecraft caught in webs of wires and metal. Around the scaffolds, the sprawling yard was a heaving mass of production lines, welding pits, storage enclosures and a million and one clusters of machinery and assembly points he couldn’t even begin to identify. Workers swarmed over every inch, carrying, shouting, pushing, pulling, wiring, driving and gesticulating. The noise was like a solid thing pressing into his ears. Mopeds, lifters and cranes whizzed or lumbered amongst the melee, skirting around the pits and frames and mounted displays. No one even glanced up from their work as they passed, even when they went by with mere inches to spare, laden and at speed.
But it was the backdrop of open space through the biggest vacuum shield he’d ever seen that made the bottom drop out of Hugo’s stomach. The vacuum shields on the larger docking bays at Service Command didn’t reach even a fraction of the size. It made his bones feel watery. Stretching into the nothingness were miles of grid-ways, airlock tunnels and construction platforms framing the disjointed carapace of what looked to be the beginnings a long-haul cargo freighter. The flashes of a thousand jetpacks and construction tools rippled over its surface. Still further out, with its hull gleaming in the starlight, a half-constructed Service flagship sat like a monstrous sleeping sea-creature.
“The Perseverance…”
“What?” Webb had to shout.
Hugo blinked, the flashes of the construction around him showing red inside his eyelids. “It’s the new flagship. The Special Commander commissioned her. I’d seen the specs but…”
Webb followed Hugo’s gaze through the shield to where the Perseverance was being laboured on at the end of a hundred airlock tunnels and construction webs. “She’s big,” he said.
Hugo stood gaping until Webb pulled him on again. The booming shift call ended and workers started climbing off machines and laying down tools. Goggles and gloves were shed only to be immediately claimed by someone else waiting to take the spot. There wasn’t even a lull in the noise.
“Now, Hugo…is your head fully out of your ass?” Webb said as they ventured further into the yard.
“What?”
“This is the part when the guy on probation would do anything short of cutting body parts off in order to get some work. I’m going to find a foreman. Get ready to act desperate. Think you can do that?”
Hugo clenched his jaw and nodded. Webb eyed him for a second before disappearing into the shambles. Hugo looked around for anything he might be able to do. Leaning to look at the controls of a nearby bolt cutter, he froze. The smell hit him just as he registered the thick, red liquid being syphoned into the engine of the cutter from a barrel held by two oil-grimed workers. They finished re-fuelling the machine and replaced the barrel of bloodgrease on a lifter, before waving at the driver who made an odd sign with his fingers and started up his machine.
Before the driver could leave, a wiry figure with thinning hair had sidled up to him and leant to talk in his ear. Hugo squinted at the lanky man. His eyes looked red and there were sores on his neck. He had a bruise over one eye.
Hugo realised with a start that it was the man he’d seen grappling with the Catiline Patch dealer. He stepped closer, keeping the bolt cutter between him and the lifter. The only person paying the man any attention was the driver. The worker nodded and the thin man took a seat next to the barrels. The driver started the lifter and steered them out of sight. Hugo swallowed. The metallic odour of bloodgrease was heavy in the back of his throat. He stepped around the cutter to follow them but then Webb was back and tugging on his elbow.
“Webb, over there -” Hugo began.
“Kaleb,” Webb shouted over the noise, and Hugo turned to see he had returned with a stern-faced woman Hugo recognised, even with goggles pushed up on her forehead, ear protectors around her neck and hands in heavy gloves.
“Kaleb, is it?”
Hugo nodded. “You’re Tag’s mother.”
“This is Foreman Michalski,” Webb said. “She’s in charge of the metal-beating lines.”
“Can you pilot a basic five-six applied control panel?” she said, pulling back a heavy glove to check a chrono on her wrist.
“I can.”
“Follow me.”
Hugo glanced at Webb who urged him on with a nod. “I’ll find you later.”
“Webb, wait…”
“Go with the foreman,” Webb hissed as she stopped to frown over her shoulder.
Hugo reigned in his temper, glanced once more between the production lines where the bloodgrease lifter had gone and followed Michalski.
“We’ve got no time to be training,” Michalski said as she strode across walkways and between the wide maintenance pits that flashed with welding torches and the workbenches where people sat hunched over wiring, circuit boards and a million and one unidentifiable sensitive ship components. “You’ve got the next shift to prove you can do what we need. Don’t screw up and I’ll expect you back again at the beginning of the shift after next, clear?”
“Clear,” Hugo said, hurrying to match her pace, one eye out for bloodgrease. Michalski led him towards a brace of holding frames. Workers climbed amongst ladders and gridways to get at every inch of the thirty-foot squares of unfinished bulkhead clamped in place. Some were running hand-held scanners over small sections, some were working on exposed wiring and connections. The air was filled with a deafening clanging from beating machines on risers that were pounding the raw bits of the metal into shape with blunted pistons.
Michalski paused to grab a pair of ear protectors off a workbench and thrust them at him. He put them on and she pointed to the next frame where there was only
one beater being operated. Then she turned away and left him.
Hugo blinked around but when people started removing their goggles to peer at him he made his way towards the holding frame she’d indicated. The workers watched as he sat in the cockpit of the monstrous beater, a few waving in an odd way. Hugo nodded in return then frowned at the controls. The foreman was right: it was a five-six control panel, more or less, but so old-fashioned that a lot of the commands were manual instead of touch-screen. The pilot of the other beater gave him a doubtful look. Hugo shifted himself on the hard seat and then powered the engine.
Apparently Haven beaters had no need for guidance control or suspension of any kind. The thing juddered and lurched through its course so roughly that within fifteen minutes Hugo felt like his teeth were being rattled out of his head. The other pilot showed no signs of discomfort however and Hugo let the machine run along its program, adjusting occasionally to keep it from shuddering off-course and watched the piston beat the sheet of bulkhead into the desired curvature. Foreman Michalski came by once on a moped and flashed a lens-flare twice, apparently a signal since all the activity on his frame stopped. Hugo powered down his machine with the rest as Michalski produced a heavy-duty scanner from a compartment under the seat of her moped, ran it along the edge of their bulkhead section, checked the reading then waved and the work resumed.
When the beater was at its apex he had a good view of the surrounding yard but still no sign of the lifter full of bloodgrease, its driver or the thin Patch User. The noise, movement and bone-aching monotony dragged on.
Just as Hugo was feeling like he might either faint or vomit from exhaustion, a thin whistle cut through the pounding in his ears. When it sounded a second time Hugo paused his beater. A worker in the frame was using his free hand to catch his attention. He signed something at him and when Hugo just stared blankly, he pointed below. Hugo leaned out and saw the pilot of the other beater as well as most of the workers on their frame clambering down and gathering on crates and boxes at the base of the frame. Nutripaks and bottles of water were being handed round.
Hugo lowered his beater into its stowed position and clambered out on shaking legs. He dropped onto a crate and someone handed him water and food with a wary glance. Hugo downed the water, not caring that it tasted like metal. The other workers chewed on the paste from the Nutripaks and signed at each other or leant into each others’ ears to shout their conversation. The few glances that came his way were guarded.
His shaking had almost subsided when the workers all stood as one as if on cue and went back to work. His fellow beater pilot gave him a smile that wasn’t entirely friendly as he passed.
“Try and keep up, proby,” he said as he started his engine. “We’re on a deadline, you know.”
Hugo held his tongue and climbed back into his machine.
The rations kept him alert for a while but soon the ceaseless noise and shuddering had his bones aching and his temper fizzling to a damp despair. The shift crawled on until he was pinching himself to stay focused.
Finally, the fifteen hour shift was done and the booming call, loud even through his ear protectors, rang out across the yard. Hugo climbed out of his beater and leant against it as the changing shift traffic swarmed past. It took almost more strength than he had left in him to raise an arm and pull off his ear protectors.
Webb appeared, scanning the crowds, hair swept back with sweat and goggle marks round his eyes. Hugo called out, voice croaking and Webb spotted him and gestured for him to follow.
“How you doing?” Webb asked once they’d left the beating lines far enough behind to be able to talk.
Hugo just nodded, wiping sweat off his face with his sleeve.
“Say it, I know you’re thinking it.”
Hugo glanced around at the incoming tide of workers as they left through the gate and approached the shuttle rails. “How do people live this way?”
“Like I said,” Webb shrugged. “It’s not about living. It’s about surviving. But look on the bright side.” He gave him a weak smile as they boarded a shuttle. “You have. Survived your first shift, I mean. It’s longer than some people on probation have managed.”
“I saw,” Hugo coughed, throat raw from the fumes and thirst. “I saw…bloodgrease.”
Webb gave him a tired look. “Of course there was bloodgrease. All these machines run on it.”
Hugo shook his head. “There’s something else. There was someone talking to the bloodgrease man. It was the worker from the street fight.”
Webb frowned. “Sol? Here?”
Hugo shook his head again. “No, the other one. The one you said was just a User. He was here, talking with the bloodgrease trader.”
Webb rubbed his eyes. “He probably works here, Hugo. Don’t read too much into it. Now stir yourself. There’s a faulty air filter waiting for us at Michalski’s that I promised we’d get online before our next shift.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We’ll get some food and sleep first.”
“And a shower?”
Webb patted him on the shoulder as the shuttle took off along the rails. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”
“There’s another thing,” Hugo said.
“What’s that?”
“People were signing at each other, with their hands…”
“Fingerspeech,” Webb said around a yawn. “Even workers who haven’t gone deaf can’t hear each other over the machines. They talk with signs. I’ll teach you. But not today.”
Hugo swayed where he stood, unable to think of anything but the fatigue. The shuttle ride went by in a daze and soon he was following Webb through the familiar streets to the boarding house. He never thought he’d be so pleased to see the concrete steps of Michalski’s building.
Webb trotted up to the door but Hugo paused, looking over to a darkened doorway opposite. A figure was standing in the shadows and he felt eyes turned his way. Hugo peered, trying to focus.
The figure stepped away from the doorway and into the light. He stood for a moment looking at him. It almost felt like a challenge. Or a warning. The man was small and slim, young-looking with striking features, but a cold expression. His sleek black hair was pulled back from his face in a tight tail. He wasn’t in coveralls but black zippered jacket and gloves. One hand was in his pocket. The other arm hung stiffly at his side. Hugo was just opening his mouth to call out, when the man turned and seemed to melt away into the darkness.
Webb shouted his name and Hugo rubbed his eyes, swamped with weariness. He told himself to stop reading sinister meaning into every Havenite looking his way and climbed the steps.
*
“Ok, Hugo. Go and get some sleep before you face-plant the table.”
Hugo blinked and pulled himself upright. He looked a little more like himself after washing off the sweat and oil but the tiredness etched into his face looked alien. Webb watched his former captain glance around the dining room like he was struggling to remember where he was before his shoulders sagged. Webb swallowing another mouthful of noodles as Tag appeared at his side.
“Did you like it?” he said to Hugo. “I made it.”
“Hey,” a girl a little older than Tag called from where she was collecting bowls at the next table.
“Well,” Tag muttered, frowning at her. “Emm helped. But I did most of it.”
“Yes,” Hugo muttered when Tag didn’t leave or look away. “Thanks.”
Tag grinned and added Hugo’s bowl to the stack he was carrying and disappeared through the kitchen door after his sister. Hugo’s bleary stare followed the boy.
“Hugo?” Webb prodded again. “Go sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I haven’t finished,” Webb said, pushing his food around his bowl.
Hugo gave him a baleful glance but then pushed his stool back and tramped between the tables to the door. A few of the residents clustered over their own meals watched him go. A couple more were watching Webb.
Webb sighed, making himself eat another mouthful. Weariness was like cement in his bones, but uncertainty had knotted his stomach and chased rest from his mind. He stared at the last of the noodles for another minute then pushed the bowl aside and left the dining room and passed through the hall and out the boarding house doors. He almost turned back twice before reaching the nearest shuttle bound for Sector 2 but made himself press on, forcefully unclenching his hands as he went.
He went over and over everything he could, should and wanted to say but when he found himself an hour later on a landing at the top of a large accommodation block, staring at a door with his hand hovering over the buzzer, everything was a tangled mess. He was so meshed in confusion that it was the familiar smell of disinfectant and orange oil and not the quiet footstep behind him that made him realise he was no longer alone.
“What are you doing here?”
Webb turned. Jazz stood with her keycard in her hand, blood on her medic tunic and a dark look on her face.
“Your doorman let me in.”
“You know that’s not what I was asking.”
Webb rubbed the back of his neck. “Can I come in?”
There was a second when he was certain Jazz was going to refuse. But then her hazel eyes softened and she sighed before moving past him to unlock the door. Webb’s chest tightened when he stepped into the apartment. Apart from another processor hooked up to the chaotic jumble of her heavy-duty workstation and some newer clutter overlaying the old, it was virtually unchanged from what he remembered. The familiarity of the battered but comfortable furniture, the worn rugs Jazz always kept clean and the broad view of the sector from the floor-to-ceiling windows set in one wall sent a shiver over his skin.
Jazz shrugged herself out of her tunic whilst Webb hovered by the door.
“Busy day at the clinic?” he asked, making himself make eye contact.
Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2) Page 9