Zero-G (32 page)

The next few moments are a confused blur.

I cut through the final edge and grab hold of Carver's suit, only just remembering to shut off my plasma cutter before I do. Carver has stopped screaming.

The chunk of metal that I cut out of the tug's body drifts away. Somehow, I manage to haul Carver through the opening. I'm fighting against the lack of gravity now, forgetting that I have to control my movements. But then we're inside the tug, drifting in the red-washed interior. I'm yelling Carver's name, and getting nothing, nothing but the crackle of the radio back.

I manage to get us over to the ramp, which leads down to the airlock. The thought occurs to me that there might be a welcoming party on the other side, but there's no way I'm staying in this vacuum a second longer than I have to. Not with Carver passed out, the pressure being sucked from his suit. I might be too late.

Don't you think that.

I hammer on the release, and pull Carver through into the airlock space – he feels light, like there's nothing inside the suit. The outer door closes. I hear the hiss of the airlock pressurising, and then the second one opens and we're moving through.

I grab at Carver's wrist panel, fumbling with it, and when his helmet shoots back into the suit I see that his face is almost drained of blood. His lips are a horrific shade of purple.

I shout his name, loud enough that it hurts my ears inside my own helmet.

I stab at my wrist, retracting the helmet, not caring about the change in pressure. It's like someone is jabbing hot needles into my ears. The familiar nausea is back. I groan with pain, but somehow I manage to keep my eyes locked on Carver.

I reach out, pushing past the pain, my suited hand finding Carver's face.

He doesn't move. Doesn't speak, or open his eyes.

I'm trying to form words, but they don't quite make it out of my throat. I try to slap him, but in the low gravity I can't get enough force. My hand just taps his cheek. I bite my lower lip hard enough to bring a trickle of blood, tasting the coppery tang of it, the sting taking attention from the horrible feeling in my ears and stomach.

“Carver,” I say through gritted teeth. “Wake up. Please, Carver, wake up.”

I take in a huge breath – the air tastes stale here, and dry – and scream into his face. “Carver,
don't leave me
!”

At first, I think I've imagined it. But then his lips move again, very slightly. I hold the movement in my mind as I would a very fragile piece of glass in my hand.

Carver coughs, then sucks in a huge
whoop
of air. He does it again and again.

“Riley…” he says, his voice barely a whisper. And then I'm burying my face in his chest, pushing us right into the wall.

“I think you can start calling me Aaron now,” he says.

I can feel my tears falling away from my face, drifting past us. His arms go around my body, and although they don't pull me close, I can feel them there.

Good enough.

After a few moments, he whispers, “You need to let go.”

“Not ever.”

“No, you really do.” He pushes me away, turns to the side and throws up.

I try not to look at the vomit; the slick globules hang in the air, splitting and turning, as if they're floating in a glass of water. The pain in my ears and stomach has dropped a little. Now that I have a chance to actually look at the surroundings, I can see we're at the end of a long passage. It's smaller and more cramped than the corridors on Outer Earth. There are banks of bright white lights in long lines across the ceiling. Somewhere, very faint, there's a buzzing sound, like a machine starting up.

“How you holding up?” I ask Carver, as I pull him along.

“Feels like someone hit me in the stomach with a steel pole,” he says. “Eyes, too.”

“Try swallowing. It helps a little.”

“I can barely talk, you want me to swallow?”

“Make an effort.”

He smiles a little, then groans in pain. I'm worried he's going to throw up again, but he gets it under control.

“Come on,” I say. “We've got an Earth trip to cancel.”

“You need to—” he stops, steeling himself. “You need to go on ahead.”

I stare at him, confused. “I'm not leaving you.”

“I can barely move two feet without wanting to spill my guts. I'll just slow you down.”

“Aaron…”

But I see his hand gripped tight to the wall hold, and I know he's serious. I swim back towards him and hug him again, resting my head on his shoulder. “Promise me you'll try to get somewhere safe?” I say.

“Not a chance. I'll be right behind you, soon as my stomach stops trying to crawl out of my mouth.”

I kiss his cheek – his skin is like ice. Then I'm gone, moving away before I have a chance to think about it.

Prakesh has never been on the bridge of an asteroid catcher.

It's enormous, far bigger than he would have expected for a crew of six. It's arranged like an amphitheatre, with three tiered levels. The captain's chair is right in the middle of the bridge, tilted slightly back. Workstations surround it, and there are dozens of other screens positioned around the walls, Prakesh can only guess at some of their readouts. He's floating near the back wall, doing what he can to keep the contents of his stomach in place.

What captures his attention is the front of the bridge. It's taken up by a huge viewport: a curving, rectangular sheet of toughened glass. Through it, Prakesh can just see the edge of the Earth.

What's down there? What have the Earthers found that makes them think they can survive?

The bridge is packed. The two remaining crew members have been pushed down into their seats, each of them surrounded by a group of Earthers. Okwembu is bent over one of them, her body twisting as she floats in mid-air, clutching her tab screen. Prakesh catches snippets of conversation, and realises they're trying to restart the ship's thrusters, get it spinning so that they can get the gravity back. He hears them talking about their course – they're going to put the ship into orbit around the Earth, plan their next move.

He feels someone slide in behind him, and then Mikhail is whispering in his ear. “Don't even think about it,” he says, his breath hot and dank on Prakesh's skin.

Anger floods through him, but it's a weary anger. He turns himself around to face Mikahil, putting his hand on the wall to steady his body. “Think about what?”

“Doing anything stupid.” Mikhail's eyes bore into his. “You think I don't know who you are?”

For a horrible moment, Prakesh is sure that Mikhail knows about Resin – that he'll tell everyone. But instead, the Earther leader says, “You fought against us, back in the dock. You try and get in the way here, and I'll break both your arms.”

Prakesh almost laughs. What is he possibly going to do? Take out a bridge full of armed Earthers by himself? Even if he enlists Syria – currently against the back wall, fighting against the nauseating effects of the lack of gravity – he'd end up dead.

“Get the hell away from me,” he says.

“You just—”

“
I said
, get away from me.” He shoves Mikhail in the chest. They fly apart, Prakesh bumping into the ceiling. A couple of the Earthers cry out in alarm. Before they can jump in, Prakesh raises his hands, meeting Mikhail's thunderous gaze. “I'm not going to do anything. Just leave me be.”

Mikhail looks as if he wants to break Prakesh's arms right there and then. Instead, he pushes himself off the wall and floats back onto the bridge. “One move,” he says, as he passes Prakesh.

But Prakesh doesn't respond. Because he's looking at something over Mikhail's shoulder.

It's on one of the screens at the back of the bridge. It's filled with fast-scrolling text, the background the same sickly green as Okwembu's tab screen. The text is too far away to read, but Prakesh can just make out the enlarged writing in the giant, blinking text box superimposed over it.

PRESSURE LOSS IN AIRLOCK 3A. OUTER DOOR COMPROMISED. DO NOT USE.

Prakesh stares at the screen, thinking hard.

It takes a hell of a lot for airlock doors to fail. Short of a speeding tug smashing through them, it's extremely rare to get something like an unplanned pressure loss. When they came in the airlock, it was a clean entry. The seal was good.

Could the tug have dislodged? Could there be a problem with the seals? It's always a possibility, but Prakesh doesn't think so. Someone else is trying to get through that airlock.

Riley.

It's impossible. His mind is playing tricks on him, letting him believe something is true when there's no possible way it could be. He's only setting himself up for a disappointment, and he's had about as much of that as he can handle.

And yet …

Prakesh looks around, taking in the bridge. No one is paying attention to him – not even Mikhail, who is talking with Okwembu.

There's no way he can take back the
Shinso
's bridge.

But that doesn't mean he can't go find out what's causing the pressure loss in airlock 3A.

Moving as quietly as he can, he swims over to the bridge doors, scraping his fingers against the floor. Halfway there, he looks up to see Syria's eyes on him, narrowed in confusion.

Prakesh shakes his head, very gently, side to side. Then with one last look back over his shoulder, he pushes his way out through the doors.

Moving down the corridor is easy. I shoot from one handhold to the next, ignoring the nausea still bubbling deep in my stomach.

There are no doors along the walls to break the monotony of the steel panelling. There aren't even any signs or power boxes – and certainly no graffiti, like you'd see on Outer Earth.

The corridor takes an abrupt left turn, heading deeper into the ship itself, and I push my way around it. The buzzing sound is still there, but now it's joined by others: the slow, creaking groan of the hull, louder and more insistent than Outer Earth's. The low rumble of the engines, felt more than heard. And somewhere deep in the
Shinso
's guts, there are voices. Almost impossibly distant, but there.

Guts. The word feels right; the corridor seems to go on for miles, like the intestines of some enormous creature. One that's spent its entire life in the deepest reaches of space.

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of this thing, is Okwembu. And with her: Prakesh.

I screw my eyes shut.
No.
He's not with her. He might have helped her and the other Earthers inside a tug, but that's just how he is. He wouldn't have let them die. There is no way that he'd have helped them beyond that. He would have tried to stop them. They could be holding him prisoner right now. They could be torturing him. They could—

I make myself stop.

I can't just run in without a plan. If I take off, if I try to save Prakesh, I could get myself captured. I have to be careful. I don't know what condition Outer Earth is in after the breach, but I
do
know that if anybody is still alive there, they need that asteroid.

More than anything else, I have to stop the ship. That might mean going in the opposite direction to Prakesh.

I have to trust him. Trust that he'll be OK.

After an age, the corridor opens up into a spherical chamber, with other passages leading off ahead of me, and to the left and right. The voices are louder now – ahead of me, I think – but I still can't hear the words.

There's a sign set into the wall at the entrance to each passage. I move around to the one on my left. The words are grimed over, their cleaning neglected by astronauts who know their way around the ship blindfolded.

I rub the dirt off to read them, and the granules hang suspended as I knock them off. Some of the fine particles drift up my nose, and I sneeze – the motion pushes me back, sending me into a fast tumble, and I have to grab a handhold on the floor to steady myself. I'm hyperventilating, the air coming and going so fast that I'm suddenly light-headed. The sign I was cleaning swims in front of me, upside down now. I'm angry at myself, furious that I'm not better in zero gravity.

It takes me a few minutes to get my head right. The sign indicates a corridor heading to
Mining, Astronautics, Engines
. Moving around as carefully as I can, I get my bearings. I can go straight ahead to
Ship Bridge
, or drop down the passage to the right, to
Crew Quarters, Mess, Gym, Reactor Access
.

Bridge is out. Sure, I could stop the ship from there, but not without fighting through Okwembu and her Earthers.

So what, then?

My eyes drift back to the other signs – and settle on
Reactor Access
.

At the very edges of my mind, a plan begins to form. Before I can poke holes in it, I'm pulling myself down the right-hand corridor.

If anything, the passage is even narrower here. I find myself drifting towards the ceiling, and more than once I get caught up against it, the impact jarring my stomach and sending little shocks of nausea up my throat.

It's not long before the passage opens up again – this time, into a dimly lit hallway lined with six closed doors, three on each side. In the middle of the hallway, there's an abandoned plastic food carton, slowly rotating as it hangs in the air. There's a tiny slick of something brown in one of its corners.

I move past it, glancing at the doors as I do so. Each one has a name stencilled onto the wall next to it, in block capitals: DOMINGUEZ, LEE, BARTON, OLAFSON, SHALHOUB. Right at the end, perched on top of KHALIL, someone has drawn a surprisingly detailed grinning cartoon devil, looking over its shoulder at me, pulling down black pants to flash a bare ass. Next to it, in black ink, someone has written:
Rashid, the demon of the Asteroid Belt
.

The passage gets narrower again, and this time the lights fade entirely, either dead or turned off. I can just see by the light of the crew quarters behind me, and, at the far end, there's another glimmer of white light. By the time I reach it, pulling myself out into another spherical chamber, a spiky fear has joined the nausea, jostling for space in my stomach.

There's a passage in the floor this time, dropping down into darkness. There's a big sign next to it, laid out in more stencilled letters:

REACTOR ACCESS

WARNING AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

I grapple towards it, steeling myself for the darkness, when I happen to look up and see something strange.

There's another passage, heading off to the right. According to its sign, it leads to the
Mess
. At first, I think that there's just a lot of grime covering the wall, but I stop myself, my body half in the lower passage, and take a closer look.

It's not grime. It's too thin, too wet looking.

Almost without realising it, I'm pulling myself out of the passage, heading towards the mess hall, wanting to know and desperate to get as far away as possible. The splatter I saw is blood. There's not a lot of it – it wasn't shed by anyone living.

And when I get through the passage – when I pull myself out the other side – I find them.

Four bodies. All
Shinso
crew. Suspended in mid-air, loose-limbed, with eyes that are glazed and dead.