“I wondered if you’d actually come.”
“Less talk,” Hugo said. “Let’s get going.”
“Don’t talk tough with me,” Dana said, pocketing her panel. “I’m only bringing you along because you know where to find this fence. And I know you’re only bringing me along because I’m the only one with a hope in hell of being able to hack into his systems quick enough to not get caught. So less of the tone.”
“Let’s go,” Hugo repeated, swallowing the flare of anger and striding off. Dana had to run to catch up with him. They walked in silence as Hugo steered them towards the nearest shuttle stop.
The shuttle, just like all the others, eventually turned onto the main bank of lines heading towards the shipyard. They got off at a stop just as the red stain of the refinery appeared ahead.
For a while all they did was stand on the platform and stare at the black outlines of the nearest buildings framed against the red light from the refinery. Hugo could smell it already. It clung to his throat like the smell of blood.
“This way,” Hugo eventually broke the silence and picked a way towards the light. They padded between dark buildings, barely daring to breathe it was so quiet. As they got closer, a red stain overlay everything like rust. They turned a corner and were faced with a rift in the floor, ten feet wide and dark as space. A thin rail stopped them stepping straight into it. On the other side was a high wall and beyond that there was nothing but shadows and the distant sound of heaving machinery. The hull overhead was glowing deep, dark red.
“Over there,” Dana said, pointing. Hugo wondered if he imagined the change in her voice or whether she really was as unnerved as him. He followed her gesture and saw a bridge spanning the fissure to a gate in the wall.
Hugo took the lead. The quiet was so complete that they both jumped when something rattled down in the fissure. When all was quiet again they moved on.
“Wait,” Dana whispered as reached the walkway.
Hugo saw the eyes of cameras set in wall over the gate. He tapped some commands into his wrist panel. It beeped then displayed an electronics scan of the glowing power lines that fed the cameras.
“They’re active,” Hugo mumbled, backing away from the bridge.
“Over here,” Dana murmured and stepped behind a lean-to, pulling out her panel. Hugo watched over her shoulder as she began to run scanning and infiltration programs. It showed the wireless signals going to the cameras as red threads on the schematic. Hugo couldn’t follow his sister’s fingers as they triggered queries and commands, gaining control of the stream.
“The Academy taught you that?”
“No,” she replied, clicking the last command that broke the cameras’ feeds. “Rami did, last summer.”
Hugo made a mental note, not entirely sure he was pleased, then crossed the bridge. The gate was fastened with a manual lock. Neither his wrist or Dana’s computer panel picked up any electronic alarms but Hugo left the handle alone anyway.
“Here,” he said, getting on one knee and making a stirrup with his hands. Dana gave him a dubious look. “When you get over, don’t move, understand? No arguments,” Hugo snapped as a frown gathered on her face. “Systems might be your area but infiltration is mine. Do as I say.”
Dana clamped her mouth shut and pocketed her panel. She braced herself on Hugo’s shoulders and stepped into his linked hands. He stood and boosted her up. She grabbed the top of the gate, scanning about for a minute then pulled herself over. Hugo jumped, grabbed hold and pulled himself over.
The smell was even stronger and the light even redder. There was still no sound apart from the clunking heartbeat of unseen machinery. Dana stood against the wall, staring. All Hugo could make out were the vague shapes of outbuildings, jagged heaps of abandoned machinery and a web of pipes of all sizes sprouting from the floor, the buildings and each other. They joined and split like metal veins for as far as he could see. They curled along the floor and climbed up into the air. They all ran into a structure that towered over the rest. Hugo had to crane his neck to see where the top was framed against the red light above. Sprouting from the apex were dozens of chimneys that fed into the colony hull far above.
It made no visual sense. It was like a nightmare jumbled with the industrial designs of a madman.
“Where now?”
Hugo shook his head to bring himself together and glanced around. “Foreman Michalski said Bryce’s workshop was somewhere along the boundary,” he said and set off along the wall. They had to clamber over pipes and hatches and skirt round unmarked pits. Some of the pipes were cold, others were scalding. He kept their pace up, scouring everything in the rusty light for any sign of a workshop, straining his hearing for anything other than the humming and creaking of the refinery.
An exhausting scramble later, Hugo spotted a different sort of light ahead. He could hear voices for the first time in what felt like hours. He gestured for Dana to get behind him and they eased along the wall, sticking to the darkest shadows.
When they came within sight of the source of light they slowed to a crawl and peered between a tangle of pipes. A two-storey building stood in a cleared square. Electric light poured from all the windows and a door at the front stood wide open, spilling more light onto the concrete. Through the doors they could see a wide workshop floor with workers moving about. There were shouts and the clank of tools.
There were two barrels propping the doors open and on each barrel lounged a man on watch. They chatted but their eyes were watchful and the knives at their belts clearly displayed. A third guard stood at another gate in the boundary wall, this one open, chewing and staring out into the sector.
“So what now, oh great infiltrator?” Dana muttered.
“Can’t your panel access his systems from here?”
Dana rolled her eyes. “I checked already. He’s on a closed, wired system. I need to get to a workstation or a terminal.”
“Quiet,” Hugo hissed as the gaze of the guard by the gate swung their way. He crouched out of sight, pulling Dana with him. “This way,” he said, after the guard had turned away again. He moved quietly, bent double, Dana at his heels. Ignoring Dana’s muttered protests about time, he swung them in a staggered arc around the workshop, keeping behind the scattered outbuildings and screens of tangled pipes.
He finally stopped when he spotted a side door propped open with a block of concrete. The glow of a computer display reflected off the walls inside. They kept motionless for five minutes before Hugo was satisfied there was no one around, then made a dash for the door.
The room was empty of people. Two interior doors were closed but there was a window overlooking the workshop. The glass was grimy, but he could still make out at least a dozen people at brightly-lit benches, clicking keyboards at workstations, sorting scrap or bent over broken equipment. Distaste surged through him when the small figure of a child, about Tag’s age, made his way across the room, pulling a heavy barrow of scrap.
He made himself step back from the window and take up post in the corner where he could watch all the doors. His fingers itched for his gun.
Dana was already at the workstation, plugging her panel into one of the ports. The room was small, with racks of machine parts in various states of disrepair filling the walls. Apart from the one Dana was trying to hack into, there was another display on the opposite wall displaying camera feeds of the workshop floor and corridors and other rooms.
“We need to hurry,” Hugo said. “This must be the foreman’s office. He could be back any minute.”
“Then shut up and stop distracting me.”
Hugo reigned in his temper and crossed to the camera feed display to see if he could make out anyone heading their way. He frowned. The larger windows showed angles of the workshop, the space in front of the building and the gate. Minimised down one side were a number of other feeds, all reeling footage so dark and grainy it was hard to make out. He checked the door again, and on Dana who was still typing feverishly on t
he main workstation, then tapped in commands and expanded the minimised windows.
He squinted at the dark footage. It was showing somewhere too large to be anywhere in the building. The camera was somewhere high up and the feed quality low. He could just make out great vats, spills, filters and fires, all shuddering, flashing and glowing red and black. The scale could only be guessed at since the darkness and the lumbering vats obscured the distance but swarming over everything were workers. They looked like ants scurrying amongst the straining machines. Men and women and smaller figures of children too, all either stripped to the waist or wearing nothing but worn vests and cargo trousers. The few that had hair long enough had it plastered to their scalps with sweat. Every one of them was filthy and moved like every inch of them ached.
“What the…?”
Dana’s muttered words pulled him from his trance and he turned away from the display with a shudder. “What is it? Have you found Ariel?”
Dana shook her head. “No,” she turned in her seat and caught sight of the other display. “What’s that?”
“I think it’s the refinery,” Hugo said. “What have you found?”
Dana opened her mouth but they heard voices approaching from outside.
Hugo cursed, looking around. “Quick,” he said hauling Dana from her chair by her coveralls. She grabbed her panel just in time then he was dragging her to a door, opening it a crack. It was dark and he ducked through, pulling Dana with him and clicking it shut.
Voices came through the door. His pulse thundered in his ears. He looked around for any clue as to where they were but it was too dark. They waited, blinking in the gloom and heard the sound of another door opening and then shutting again. Hugo put his hand out to hold Dana still for a further ten heartbeats before letting her open the door a crack. The office was deserted again.
“Time to go.”
“For once I agree,” she said and they made for the exit.
The man that stepped into the doorway just as they reached it was about twice as big as Hugo around the chest and had a knife the length of his thigh slung at his belt and a look of surprise on his face that was quickly melting into anger.
IX
“Who the hell are you?” the guard said after he, Hugo and Dana had stood blinking at each other for an excruciating second. Hugo glanced at his sister, waited for the man to shift his gaze to her then charged forward, shouldering him against the doorjamb.
“Dana, run.”
The big man’s splutters died away as they tore around the corner and scrambled over the first tangle of piping in their way. Hugo paused to help Dana climb over the top, then they were running blind, deeper into the clutter of the refinery yard.
“There,” Hugo called when they rounded a corner to see the boundary wall ahead. The pipes arched up almost to the top. Hugo skidded to a halt and got down on his knee to vault Dana up just as shouting and running footsteps got closer. Hugo was so busy watching out for pursuit that when Dana cursed and stumbled in his grip, he lost his balance and they crashed in a tangle on the concrete.
“What happened?”
“The pipe’s hot,” Dana panted, hissing between her teeth and clutching a scalded hand. They got to their knees just as three figures hurtled from around the nearest outbuilding, wielding industrial lenslights that blinded them. Dana and Hugo scrambled to their feet but the workshop guards were quick and seized them both. Hugo struggled and reached for Dana who was kicking and spitting curses at the woman holding her but the man holding him jerked him back by his collar, cutting off his air.
“Foreman wants a word with you,” he grated and then they were being hauled back toward the workshop.
They were dumped on the floor of the foreman’s office. Hugo got to his knees, rubbing his neck and blinking back dizziness from the stranglehold. The woman who had held Dana was closing a blind on the window that looked out over the workshop whilst someone was bellowing for Bryce.
Hugo got to his feet and looked around desperately but each of the three figures blocked all the doorways. Before he could begin to think of a plan, someone was slamming through the door from the workshop. He had large shoulders and had once been tall for a Havenite, but now his bent back made him shorter than the others in the room. He had some mean scarring up his neck and head. His left ear was a pale ruin of flesh and no hair grew on that side of his head. His jaw was large and he had it clenched tight and anger burned in his black eyes.
“What the hell is all this?” His voice was raspy, like soldiers Hugo had known who had survived gas blasts.
“Looks like these two hacked into the computer system, Foreman. Cowards tried to run.”
The scarred man’s heavy scowl landed on Hugo. “And who the fuck are they?”
The man who had spoken shrugged and Bryce’s eyes blazed still hotter. He shambled forward, bent close to Hugo’s face. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”
“What do you know about the Ghosts?”
“Dana,” Hugo hissed.
The foreman snapped his attention to Dana, jaw bulging. “You don’t ask me questions, little girl,” he grated. “You are in my workshop, at my workstation messing around with my systems. You are not asking anything. You are telling. And now. Who the fuck are you?”
The door from the workshop opened again and a worker in grimed overalls staggered in, panting. “Foreman?”
“What is it?”
“There’s someone here,” the newcomer said between breaths, taking in Dana and Hugo. “Says you have his probys. They’re trying to hold him…”
“Who is it?”
The worker shifted on his feet, looking uncertain. He opened his mouth, but turned when there was a commotion in the workshop and then Webb was elbowing his way past the worker with a drawn knife.
“You,” Bryce spat.
“Let them go, Foreman.”
“Webb,” Hugo began.
“Quiet,” Bryce thundered, scarred face twisting with fury. “You’ve just made the second biggest mistake of your miserable life,” he said to Webb. “You say these sneaks are…” he trailed off, blinking then peered back at Hugo. Hugo held himself tall and tried not to shift on his feet. Dana watched everything with narrowed eyes. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Bryce said. “You’re that Serviceman they’re all talking about?”
Something went through the room. The guards muttered. The worker by the door gaped. Webb stiffened.
“Bryce -”
“Shut it,” Bryce thundered. “You,” he snapped at the two guards closest to Dana and Hugo. “Get them into the workshop and lock them in. Use your sticks if you have to. You,” he yelled at the worker who jumped. “Go and get the Enforcers. And not on the comm, either. Go and physically get them. Now. Tell them I have thieves to punish and I want official witnesses.”
“Bryce,” Webb started again as he tried to shrug off the hold the nearest guard had taken on his jacket.
“Stow it,” Bryce said. “It’s finally time for you to pay, Webb. You have no pet Elder around to save you this time and no one is going to cry innocence for you when you’ve snuck a pet Service captain aboard to spy on innocent civilians.”
Hugo tried to pull away as a guard laid hands on him. Dana was shouting as another did the same to her and they started to wrestle them toward the door.
The hot, iron smell of bloodgrease was heavier in the workshop, along with the smells of oil and sweat. Men, women and children were straightening up from benches to gawp. The guards holding them shouted for everyone to get out and tools were dropped and machines abandoned in the mad scramble for the doors.
“That’s more lost work hours. As if you didn’t owe me enough already,” Bryce growled as he locked the door behind him. More doors were shut and locked around the room and more large guards came to help hold them whilst Bryce yammered orders into a wrist comm.
As yet another man got a grip on Hugo and forced him to hold still, Webb managed to tear free of the man h
olding him and stumbled to a stack of bloodgrease barrels in the corner, fumbling in his pockets.
“Bryce!” he yelled and everyone stilled. He was holding a cigarette lighter over the barrels. In the heavy silence the lighter clicked and everyone stared at the flame.
“You don’t have the spine,” Bryce hissed, but he’d gone pale under his scarring.
Hugo held his breath and searched Webb’s face to try and figure out if his friend was bluffing but he barely recognised the cold mask that Webb wore.
“Don’t I?” Webb didn’t speak loudly but as everyone around was stock still and silent he didn’t have to. “Getting blown up or letting you get even,” Webb gave a tired sort of shrug. “At least exploding would be quicker.”
“You’d take out a whole sector rather than take what’s owed you?” Bryce took a step toward Webb and the hands holding Hugo twitched. “You’re not only a thief but a coward too.”
Webb stiffened and lowered the lighter toward the barrel. A couple of the guards shouted but then Bryce bellowed for silence. His meaty fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“Get out,” he hissed after another swallowing silence. “All of you. But, Webb,” he took another step closer and Webb’s hand holding the lighter twitched though his pale eyes remained locked with Bryce’s. “I’d run bloody far bloody fast.”
The air crackled as Webb and Bryce glared at each other. Hugo almost saw the decision to drop the lighter flicker through Webb’s eyes but then he blinked.
“Hugo, go,” he said. Hugo didn’t think, grabbed his sister’s elbow and ran. A guard scrambled to unlock the door for them. They tore out through a cluttered entrance hall, one or two workers staring after them as they went. Webb caught up with them as they reached the door outside.
“I’ve locked them in but it won’t hold them,” Webb said as they skidded out into the yard. More workers stood around looking lost and confused but none moved to stop them as they ran for the gate.
Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2) Page 15