Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2)

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Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2) Page 16

by J. S. Collyer


  They hit another bridge running and their footsteps rattled the metal. When they reached the other side they all skidded to a halt together, panting. The beams of lenslights cut into the gloom ahead in the direction of the shuttle rails. The worker who had been sent to get the Enforcers rounded a corner, talking over his shoulder to people following.

  “This way,” Webb hissed and ran in the other direction. Hugo hated the gloom and darkness they stumbled through, once again on the run, fighting a tide of despair threatening to take him under. The second time Webb stopped at an empty intersection of streets, panting and looking lost, Hugo realised for the first time just how much trouble they were in.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “We need to get off the streets,” was all Webb could answer.

  “This way,” Dana said, checking their location on her wrist panel and ran down the street to the left.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Less talking more running,” Dana said, ducking down another alley and scrambling over piled-up trash boxes. The smell made Hugo’s eyes water. Unable to stop them, memories of sprinting through the alleys of Lunar 1 after the Splinters with Harvey and Webb ghosted through Hugo’s mind. Then there was darkness, fear and desperation also, but it was different then. There’d been a purpose. They were sure they would achieve something.

  And Harvey had been there. And the real Webb.

  Hugo choked the emotion down and took the hand Webb’s clone offered to get him over a crumbling wall. He risked a glance at his partner’s face but the younger man didn’t meet his eye.

  “There,” Dana suddenly called and pointed ahead. A small on-street parking pool was crowded with mopeds. She skidded to a halt next to one and pulled out some start keys.

  “I assume you can get one of your own?” Dana said, nodding towards the other mopeds whilst hers coughed to life.

  “Where are we going?” Webb demanded, bending over another moped and fiddling with the starter. Hugo stared at the little vehicles, starting to feel sick. There was still an hour until shift change but there were lights on in some of the buildings and the sound of voices where doors to dining and rec rooms were propped upon.

  “Far away and fast, just like he said,” Dana said. There was a grunt and a whine and the engine of the moped Webb had chosen spluttered to life.

  “Hugo,” Webb prompted. “You remember how to do this, right?”

  Hugo just nodded and bent over a moped. It took far longer than it should have to hot-wire it because his hands were shaking and vision blurry. Finally, it started and Dana wheeled her machine round and sped off down the street just as someone leaned from a door and shouted after them. Hugo and Webb followed, the angry worker’s yells dying away.

  Dana was going too fast. She ignored Hugo’s shouts of warning. Time was an unreal thing. It felt like he’d been trying to overtake Dana for hours, but she kept just ahead of him, taking corners stupidly fast and dodging the increasing street traffic by taking them through darker and narrower passes than he would have dared.

  Finally, she pulled around a corner and braked, wheeling her moped under a sheet-metal lean-to hidden between two storage units. Webb and Hugo’s brakes screeched as they careened in after her, avoiding piling up only by spinning their mopeds around each other. They cut their engines. The only sound was their breathing. Dana climbed off her bike and snapped at them to hurry as she pulled a clattering screen across the entrance and squeezed through a gap at the back.

  “Where are we?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Webb said, hurrying after Dana. “But she does.”

  “We’re getting under cover,” Dana murmured as they sprinted around a corner. “Now come on, will you? Someone might be able to track the stolen mopeds.”

  “Webb, wait,” Hugo said and grabbed his friend by the elbow. The man stopped but didn’t look at him. “You could have destroyed the sector. Hell, that close to the refinery… you could have breached the hull…”

  “It doesn’t matter any more,” Webb said, voice lifeless and face blank.

  Hugo shook his head, confusion reeling with fear. “I don’t understand.”

  The shift call boomed out and stopped Webb from replying. He turned and went after Dana. Hugo stared then hurried after them, a heaviness in his stomach.

  They caught up with her in a narrow space between two concrete walls. She slowed down, appeared to be searching about then crouched on the floor.

  “What the…?” Hugo leaned round Webb just as there was a faint click and Dana hauled open a grate set in the floor, almost hidden by the dark. She sat on the edge of the opening and then climbed onto a ladder in the shadows below. Webb went next and then Hugo took a breath and followed.

  “Shut the grate,” Dana hissed from somewhere beneath him and Hugo pulled it closed after him. The air was still and stale, with the faint odour of oil and refuse. The noise of the other two descending the ladder echoed off unseen walls.

  Hugo began to climb. The ladder was sturdy enough but they climbed until the light from the slatted grate had shrunk to almost nothing over them. It was pitch black.

  “Where the hell are we?” Webb asked once, only to be hissed into silence by Dana. At one point a humming sound grew and then faded again. When Hugo was afraid his strength was going to fail, there was a mumbled warning from Dana and muttered curses from Webb as they reached the bottom. Hugo’s arms were aching and he stumbled when his feet finally connected with solid ground. The grate was a pinprick like a single star overhead. There was no sound apart from the faint humming somewhere above and the smell was stronger than ever.

  When Dana clicked on a lenslight, both men swore at the sudden brightness. She didn’t pause and shouldered past them to follow the narrow passage.

  “Don’t talk until we get inside,” she whispered.

  “Inside where?” Hugo muttered only to be shushed again. The passage was so narrow they had to walk single file. Hugo felt like the air was thin. The passage narrowed and widened with no discernible pattern and at times the ceiling was so low they had to crawl. Dana didn’t walk them far but by the time she was kneeling and spinning an old-fashioned code-wheel on a hatch at ground level, Hugo felt like they’d been wandering around in the silence and the dark forever.

  There was a click and the hatch creaked inwards and Dana was crawling through the gap. The two men followed her, Webb cursing as he bent his tall frame through the tiny space and stood up in the small room just as she was powering up a free-standing lighting panel. Hugo blinked in the sudden light. The chamber was small, barely bigger than their room at the boarding house. There was a fan turning sluggishly in a vent in the ceiling but the air still smelled close and rusty. There was a pallet against the wall and a workstation in the corner, the connections hard-wired into the wall. Against the other wall was a stack of shelving made from different sized sheets of metal and breeze blocks which held a jumble of tools, med kits, wrist panels and boxes vacuum-sealed Nutripaks. There was also a bank of mismatched lockers shunted in beside them. One locker hung open on broken hinges and he could see more equipment, batteries and Nutripaks piled inside.

  Dana had gone straight to the workstation and plugged in her panel but Webb stood blinking around.

  “What is this place?” Hugo asked.

  “Bolthole,” Dana said, fingers flying over the keys. “There’s a few in the betweenways around here.”

  “Betweenways?” Hugo asked, still staring round.

  Dana made an impatient noise. “Marilyn really didn’t tell you anything, did she?”

  “I chose not to ask,” Hugo ground out, trying to convince himself it was true.

  Dana sighed, peering at data. “They’re from when Haven was just a bunch of long-range freighters welded together. The betweenways were made so people could get about. They run through the foundations of the whole colony. Mostly they’re abandoned now, or only used by maintenance or recycling level workers. But some
people use them when they’re running from something.”

  “And who keeps them so lovingly stocked?” Webb asked, pulling open another locker to reveal shelves of belt knives and nightsticks.

  “Haven has its own fugitives,” Dana muttered. “Some folk take advantage of them rather than reporting to the Elders. If you know who to talk to…and you’ve not done anything too bad…you can find somewhere to survive.”

  “Survival is big business,” Webb murmured, almost to himself, pulling one of the knives from its sheath and examining the keen edge.

  “So this is where you’ve been living?” Hugo looked at the rumpled palate with a raised eyebrow.

  “At least I don’t have to beat metal for it,” she muttered.

  “Will you two stow it, just stow it already?” Webb said, slamming the locker door shut.

  “Webb -”

  “We need to act quick,” Webb continued, ignoring him. “Shut off your wrist panel.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it,” Webb said tapping commands into his own. “Plenty of folk have the comm number for mine and if they have that they can get yours and they can track us. Shut it down.”

  Hugo watched the fevered way Webb powered his panel down and did as he was told.

  “Aren’t you being just the tiniest bit paranoid?” Dana said.

  “Paranoid?” Webb let out a bitter bark of laughter. “Don’t you get it? It’s over. It’s all over. We are officially screwed.”

  “No we’re not,” Dana said, face set as she worked through more data on the workstation.

  “You don’t even have the first damn clue how much trouble we’re in, do you?” Webb said. “Bryce will tell the Enforcers. Everyone will be out for our skin. We can’t go back to the boarding house, we can’t go back to the yard. All we can do is try and get to Nod and get the hell away.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hugo said, keeping his face blank though the sinking feeling inside him was as powerful as a vacuum.

  “You’ve never understood,” Webb said, rubbing his temples. “That’s the problem. Don’t you see? Your little stunt at the workshop? A crime. Me getting you out of it? Another crime. Walton Bryce now has a right to our necks. If we're lucky enough for him to aim at the neck first, that is.”

  “You’re scared of that creep?” Dana snorted.

  “Yes I am,” Webb said, exasperated. “He’s a citizen. He is owed justice and will fucking get it unless we run. Run fast and run now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Dana said.

  Webb threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. You two stay and get your asses handed to you if you want. I’m done.”

  “Webb,” Hugo said again, reaching to stop him heading for the hatch but the younger man shook him off.

  “I mean it, Hugo. It’s over. When I agreed to this whole poxy venture it was because I thought you were actually going to listen to me.”

  “I did -”

  “You did? When? Ok, I might have expected this sort of stunt from her,” Webb pointed at Dana. “She thinks she knows what she’s doing because she’s gal pals with Harvey. Though if Harvey really gave a shit about her she would have warned her off ever setting foot in this place.” Dana made an outraged noise but Webb wasn’t stopping. “But you?” he glowered at Hugo. “You heard everything I said, I know you did. You saw that User getting what he owed beaten out of him by Sol. You saw Ribble nearly taking my head off for welching on Jazz. This is Haven justice, Hugo, and it’s out for us now. All three of us. And there’s no getting away unless we escape the whole damn place.”

  “I’d heard enough about you to know you were reckless and short-sighted,” Dana said after a long pause. “But I’d never pegged you for a coward.”

  Webb went very still. “Little girl, the amount I care what you think of me would not fill a blask glass. I only wish I knew as little as you seem to, then I might actually think I stand a chance of getting the hell away in one piece.”

  “Dana.” She had opened her mouth to speak again but Hugo’s barked command stopped her. “Dana Hugo,” he continued in a low voice. “You don’t get to say anything more here. Webb is right. The mission is over and it’s our fault.”

  He could see his sister’s anger war with her doubt in her face. Her anger won. She span back to the workstation with a huff. “So the Enforcers will be on the watch for us. So what? Not like I was planning on introducing myself to them anyway.”

  Webb laughed again. “If you think you’re going to find anything on the Ghosts or Ariel now, you’re a spanner short of a toolkit. We’ll be blacklisted. Our faces will be reeling across all the comm and embargo boards right now. No one will talk to us or even see us without yelling for the Enforcers or trying to drag us to Bryce themselves.”

  “How does he know you?” Hugo asked.

  “Who?” Webb said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Bryce.”

  The younger man’s look slid to the wall. “Webb…the original Webb screwed him over good.”

  “How?”

  Webb’s expression softened. “Kinjo. Remember Kinjo?”

  Hugo blinked. He remembered the midshipman from the Zero. She was small but fierce, with earnest eyes, and a good heart despite everything she ended up doing. Devoted to the original Webb. Irrevocably crushed when they lost him. “She was from Haven…”

  Webb nodded. Hugo saw him glance at Dana who was pretending not to listen. “Her father worked in the yards. He died in debt. Bryce took Kinjo as payment.”

  “To work in the workshop?”

  Webb nodded. “She was five years old. Her family let him take her.”

  Dana’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. The only sound was the fan creaking in its vent.

  “I…he…” Webb shook himself, looking pained. “Webb stole her away when he was at the workshop trying to make a deal for an engine part.”

  “He rescued her,” Hugo murmured.

  The clone shrugged. “Not in Bryce’s eyes. Not in the colony’s eyes, either. When I first came here I made damn sure to stay out of his way. But now,” Webb straightened himself. His look was steady but grim. “Busting you guys out of his workshop has put the last nail in my coffin as far as Walton Bryce is concerned. I can never come back to this colony, do you understand? Never.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you, Commodore? Oh, well that’s alright then.”

  Hugo flinched.

  Webb made a dismissive gesture at them both. “Good luck, guys. I’m outta here.”

  “I don’t think you are,” Dana said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  She turned the display of the workstation round. Webb took a step closer to the screen, face falling. Hugo’s heart sank further. Dana had hacked into a camera feed from the docks. Nod was berthed in the left of the shot. Enforcers hung round her, conversing with some dock workers who were consulting panels and checking the ship’s reg-strip. There were two technicians working on the door lock.

  “They’re impounding her,” Webb muttered.

  “They’re what?” Hugo peered closer just as the technicians got the door open and the Enforcers pushed past them into the ship. “They can’t do that.”

  “Yes they can. You’ve violated your probation and I helped you. We’re officially blacklisted. I just didn’t think the word would get to the docks that quickly.”

  “What does that mean?” Hugo said.

  “We’re fucked.”

  “No we’re not,” Dana said coolly, going back to typing.

  Hugo could see Webb struggling to come up with a curse foul enough and stepped between them. “We are not arguing again. We need to think of a plan of escape.”

  “I told you, I’m not leaving without that blade,” Dana said. Hugo started to argue, but she talked over him. “When we have Ariel, I can get us out of here.”

  “Oh, everything’s ok,” Webb muttered. “Hugo Junior has a plan.”

  “How can you get us out?�
�� Hugo asked his sister.

  “On the Phoenix.”

  Hugo blinked. “You have Marilyn’s ship?”

  “Uh-huh,” Dana smiled over her shoulder. “And she’s not in any public dock either. She’s safe and won’t be found. I will be using her to get away, but only when I have that blade hog-tied in the brig. So you can either help or you can hang around this bolthole until I’m done. Your call. I honestly couldn’t care either way so long as you don’t get in my way.”

  “Dana,” Webb said. “Where’s that ship?”

  She looked at him calmly. “I’m not telling you. It will leave when I leave. That’s the end of it.”

  “Damnit,” Webb shouted. “I saved your life back there.”

  Something flickered in Dana’s eyes a second then they hardened again. “We’d’ve escaped somehow. It was your choice to come after us and antagonise someone Webb had already made an enemy of and then threaten to blow everyone up.”

  “Listen,” Hugo stepped up to his former commander before he could respond. “Webb, I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. The burning eyes swung to him. “I’m sorry we did this. You were right, I have been listening but I haven’t been thinking. Marilyn…I mean Harvey…I’ve been trying…but she’s all I can think of.”

  Webb’s face softened.

  “We’re going to find this man,” Hugo continued. “He’s hurt too many people I care about. Stay here if you want, I won’t think any less of you. Dana and I will -”

  Webb shook his head. “You idiots won’t last ten minutes now you’re blacklisted.”

  “We’ll manage,” Hugo said. “I’m sorry I got you involved. I may have been…short-sighted,” Webb rose his eyebrows but Hugo dogged on, “but I need to do this. We - ” he said, glancing at his sister whose jaw was set in a way he knew his was when he was determined, “- need to do this.”

  Webb looked defeated. The anger had evaporated from his eyes to leave an emptiness and something Hugo thought might be hurt. It cut Hugo like a knife but the fire of purpose was starting to burn inside him again and he clung to it.

 

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