Zero-G (35 page)

Thank
you
, for reading this book. I hope you stick with Riley for the next chapter. Her story is far from over.

And to everybody who ever got in touch about Riley and Outer Earth, who talked about the books online, who bought copies and mouthed off about the books to their friends … too many good people to name, but you all rock.

This book is dedicated to my mom and dad, Ken and Vee Boffard. I love them more than I can say, but that's not the only reason I'm singling them out. For this story, they went the extra mile, lending me their considerable medical expertise. Thanks, too, to my sister Cat, who was totally unfazed by our family WhatsApp group filling up with discussions about the best way to stab someone in the eye.

For further scientific and medical advice, I'm grateful to Professor Guy Richards (Wits University), Andrew Wyld, who advised me on radio and cell frequencies, and the incredible Dr Barnaby Osborne (University of New South Wales). That asteroid re-entry plan? Totally his idea. You don't think I come up with this stuff on my own, do you?

Errors are my fault, in all cases.

To my friends Rayne Taylor, Dane Taylor, Chris Ellis, Ida Horwitz and George Kelly, who gave me magnificent feedback.

Ed Wilson is a fantastic agent and a rock-solid drinking buddy. His early comments and encouragement made this happen.

Anna Jackson edited the hell out of this one. Nobody does it better.

To my Orbit Books crew: Tim Holman, Joanna Kramer, Felice Howden, Gemma Conley-Smith, James Long and Clara Diaz. Also Devi Pillai at Orbit US. We did it again.

Thanks, too, to Richard Collins for the copy-edit and Nico Taylor for the killer cover.

When
Tracer
was published, Nicole Simpson was still my fiancee. By the time you read this, she'll be my wife – and by some margin the best thing to ever happen to me. It behooves me to mention her family: James, Bettina, Trisha, Lotte and Hardy. Thanks for letting me stick around.

ROB BOFFARD
is a South African author who splits his time between London, Vancouver, and Johannesburg. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade, and has written articles for publications in more than a dozen countries, including the
Guardian
and
Wired
in the UK.
Tracer
is his first novel.

Tracer

Zero-G

Impact

by Rob Boffard

The meteor tears a hole in the sky.

The low-hanging clouds glow gold, as if the sun itself has dropped into the atmosphere. Then they split, ripped in two by the misshapen, white-hot rock.

There's a shape behind the flames, just visible past the corona. A long cylinder, black against the clouds, attached to the meteor by a shimmering cord. The cord breaks off, and the crack is loud enough to knock frost off the trees below.

The man on the ground throws himself to the dirt, hands over his ears, as if the pieces were passing right above the tree line. Icy mud soaks his skin, but he barely notices. There's nothing but that terrible
noise
.

His fingers dig up clods of dirt, rooting in the soil, as if it's the only way he can keep himself in this world.
The war,
he thinks.
It's happening again, just like Prophet said it would.

He gets one eye open, then the other. His cheek is pressed to the ground, the world turned sideways, but he can still see the pieces. Their white heat has faded to a dark red. Most of them are vanishing over the eastern horizon, but at least one seems to be plummeting right towards him, screaming down through the air.

He scrambles to his feet, trying to run. But the piece is nowhere near him – how could he have thought it was? It's going down in the north, the red metal fading to scorched black. His heart is pounding, and in the split second before it vanishes under the tree line, its shape leaps out at him.

That's not just a meteor.

It's a ship.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the roar begins to fade. There's a final crackle, like fading thunder, and then it's gone.

His legs are shaking, but none of his companions notice. They're as stunned as he is, staring up at the sky.

One of them is moving, pushing through the brush, yelling at them to follow him.

“Think there'll be survivors?” someone shouts.

“No-one survived that,” comes the reply.

But the man isn't so sure. A long time ago, he was in one just like it.

The alarm starts blaring a split-second before the shaking starts.

Aaron Carver is floating in the centre of the ship's medical bay, and Prakesh Kumar and I slam into him. Everything else in the room is strapped down, but I can see the instruments and the bottles shaking, threatening to tear loose.

“What the hell?” Carver rolls away from us, arms flailing. The ship is rattling hard now, the metal walls bending and creaking, as if a giant has it caught in a huge fist.

“It's re-entry,” Prakesh replies. He's holding onto the roof now, and his body is swinging back and forth as the pull of gravity increases.

“Can't be,” I say. “It's too soon!”

My words are almost obliterated by a metallic rumble. The gravity is coming back as we plummet through the atmosphere, and it sends my stomach into a nauseating roll. I bounce off the floor, barking my knees on the metal.

“I thought this was supposed to be a smooth ride,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, hunting for order in the chaos. “The asteroid—”

“No good,” Carver says. He's over by the door now, pulling on the release catch. Neither he nor Prakesh have shaved, and bristly stubble covers their faces. “I
told
them. You can shape the damn thing as much as you want but if you're using it as a heat shield, things are going to get –
shit!
”

He spins sideways as the ship jerks and kicks, flinging him against one of the cots bolted to the floor. The cot's Velcro straps float freely, as if they too are trying to escape.

“It's OK,” says Prakesh. Sweat is pouring down his face. “We just sit tight. They'll come and take us to the escape pods.”

We all stare at the door. The alarm is still blaring, and the hull of the ship is screeching now, like it's being torn in two.

“They're not coming, are they?” says Carver.

“Just hang on,” says Prakesh. “Let's not—”

“They would have been here by now,” says Carver, horror and anger flashing across his face. “They're not coming, man.”

I close my eyes, fury brimming inside me. He's right. If they were going to let us out of this prison, they would have done it already. The Earthers – the group who took control of this ship to get back to our planet – don't trust us. Not surprising, given that I tried to destroy the ship's reactor in an attempt to stop them.

There's no way of stopping the ship. It'll be travelling at 18,000 miles an hour, even after it's passed through the upper atmosphere and burned off its makeshift heat shield. Getting off the ship means being in one of the two escape pods, and it's easy to picture the chaos in the rest of the ship as the Earthers rush to get inside them. They've either forgotten us, or decided that we weren't worth saving.

I scan the walls and the ceiling, looking for an escape route that we missed the previous dozen times we tried to find one. Not that we tried that hard – after all, if we got out of the medical bay, where else would we go?

Carver reacts. He half-swims, half-crawls his way over to the door, pushing Prakesh aside and twisting the release catch up and down. When that doesn't work, he tries to kick the door, but just succeeds in knocking himself off balance.

Prakesh stares at him. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” Carver gets up, kicks the door again. It shudders but stays firmly shut.

“It's a locked metal door, Carver.”

Carver swings round, staring daggers at Prakesh. “You think I don't know that?”

“Then why are you still doing it?”

“Because it's better than doing nothing, like
some of us
!”

“I'm trying to—”

“Both of you! Shut up!” I shout. Another monster shake turns me upside down, but I manage to scramble my way over to the door. I can't afford to have them bickering now. They've been sniping at each other ever since we were locked in here – Carver has feelings for me, and he's still furious that I turned down his advances to stay with Prakesh.

“We kick together,” I say. “All at once.”

I don't have to explain. I see Carver's eyes light up. He moves next to me, bracing himself against the wall.

“Aim for just above the lock,” Carver says, as Prakesh gets into position on my left. “Hit it on zero. Three! Two! One!
Zero!
”

The door bangs as our feet slam into the space above the handle, but remains stubbornly shut. The force pushes us backwards, nearly knocking us over. Somehow, we manage to stay upright.

“Again,” I say. There's a hold on the wall, and I grab onto it with an outstretched arm, bracing us.

“Three! Two! One!
Zero!
”

The door explodes outwards, the lock ripping apart, and we tumble into the corridor. The alarm is piercing now, ear-splitting, no longer muffled by the door. It's all I can do not clap my hands over my ears.

“Ha!” Carver says. I can barely hear him over the noise. The gravity is coming back now, rolling my stomach end over end.

The ship jerks. For a second, the wall is the floor, and everything is a nightmare jumble of limbs and noise. Prakesh falls badly, his head slamming into the metal surface with a clang that I feel in my bones. In the moment before the ship flips back, I see his face. His blank, uncomprehending eyes. A trickle of blood runs down his forehead.

by James S. A. Corey

Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.

The
Scopuli
had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot.

It had taken all eight days trapped in a storage locker for her to get to that point. For the first two she'd remained motionless, sure that the armored men who'd put her there had been serious. For the first hours, the ship she'd been taken aboard wasn't under thrust, so she floated in the locker, using gentle touches to keep herself from bumping into the walls or the atmosphere suit she shared the space with. When the ship began to move, thrust giving her weight, she'd stood silently until her legs cramped, then sat down slowly into a fetal position. She'd peed in her jumpsuit, not caring about the warm itchy wetness, or the smell, worrying only that she might slip and fall in the wet spot it left on the floor. She couldn't make noise. They'd shoot her.

On the third day, thirst had forced her into action. The noise of the ship was all around her. The faint subsonic rumble of the reactor and drive. The constant hiss and thud of hydraulics and steel bolts as the pressure doors between decks opened and closed. The clump of heavy boots walking on metal decking. She waited until all the noise she could hear sounded distant, then pulled the environment suit off its hooks and onto the locker floor. Listening for any approaching sound, she slowly disassembled the suit and took out the water supply. It was old and stale; the suit obviously hadn't been used or serviced in ages. But she hadn't had a sip in days, and the warm loamy water in the suit's reservoir bag was the best thing she had ever tasted. She had to work hard not to gulp it down and make herself vomit.

When the urge to urinate returned, she pulled the catheter bag out of the suit and relieved herself into it. She sat on the floor, now cushioned by the padded suit and almost comfortable, and wondered who her captors were — Coalition Navy, pirates, something worse. Sometimes she slept.

On day four, isolation, hunger, boredom, and the diminishing number of places to store her piss finally pushed her to make contact with them. She'd heard muffled cries of pain. Somewhere nearby, her shipmates were being beaten or tortured. If she got the attention of the kidnappers, maybe they would just take her to the others. That was okay. Beatings, she could handle. It seemed like a small price to pay if it meant seeing people again.

The locker sat beside the inner airlock door. During flight, that usually wasn't a high-traffic area, though she didn't know anything about the layout of this particular ship. She thought about what to say, how to present herself. When she finally heard someone moving toward her, she just tried to yell that she wanted out. The dry rasp that came out of her throat surprised her. She swallowed, working her tongue to try to create some saliva, and tried again. Another faint rattle in the throat.

The people were right outside her locker door. A voice was talking quietly. Julie had pulled back a fist to bang on the door when she heard what it was saying.

No. Please no. Please don't.

Dave. Her ship's mechanic. Dave, who collected clips from old cartoons and knew a million jokes, begging in a small broken voice.

No, please no, please don't, he said.

Hydraulics and locking bolts clicked as the inner airlock door opened. A meaty thud as something was thrown inside. Another click as the airlock closed. A hiss of evacuating air.

When the airlock cycle had finished, the people outside her door walked away. She didn't bang to get their attention.

They'd scrubbed the ship. Detainment by the inner planet navies was a bad scenario, but they'd all trained on how to deal with it. Sensitive OPA data was scrubbed and overwritten with innocuous-looking logs with false time stamps. Anything too sensitive to trust to a computer, the captain destroyed. When the attackers came aboard, they could play innocent.

It hadn't mattered.

There weren't the questions about cargo or permits. The invaders had come in like they owned the place, and Captain Darren had rolled over like a dog. Everyone else — Mike, Dave, Wan Li — they'd all just thrown up their hands and gone along quietly. The pirates or slavers or whatever they were had dragged them off the little transport ship that had been her home, and down a docking tube without even minimal environment suits. The tube's thin layer of Mylar was the only thing between them and hard nothing: hope it didn't rip; goodbye lungs if it did.

Julie had gone along too, but then the bastards had tried to lay their hands on her, strip her clothes off.

Five years of low-gravity jiu jitsu training and them in a confined space with no gravity. She'd done a lot of damage. She'd almost started to think she might win when from nowhere a gauntleted fist smashed into her face. Things got fuzzy after that. Then the locker, and
Shoot her if she makes a noise.
Four days of not making noise while they beat her friends down below and then threw one of them out an airlock.

After six days, everything went quiet.

Shifting between bouts of consciousness and fragmented dreams, she was only vaguely aware as the sounds of walking, talking, and pressure doors and the subsonic rumble of the reactor and the drive faded away a little at a time. When the drive stopped, so did gravity, and Julie woke from a dream of racing her old pinnace to find herself floating while her muscles screamed in protest and then slowly relaxed.

She pulled herself to the door and pressed her ear to the cold metal. Panic shot through her until she caught the quiet sound of the air recyclers. The ship still had power and air, but the drive wasn't on and no one was opening a door or walking or talking. Maybe it was a crew meeting. Or a party on another deck. Or everyone was in engineering, fixing a serious problem.

She spent a day listening and waiting.

By day seven, her last sip of water was gone. No one on the ship had moved within range of her hearing for twenty-four hours. She sucked on a plastic tab she'd ripped off the environment suit until she worked up some saliva; then she started yelling. She yelled herself hoarse.

No one came.

By day eight, she was ready to be shot. She'd been out of water for two days, and her waste bag had been full for four. She put her shoulders against the back wall of the locker and planted her hands against the side walls. Then she kicked out with both legs as hard as she could. The cramps that followed the first kick almost made her pass out. She screamed instead.

Stupid girl,
she told herself. She was dehydrated. Eight days without activity was more than enough to start atrophy. At least she should have stretched out.

She massaged her stiff muscles until the knots were gone, then stretched, focusing her mind like she was back in dojo. When she was in control of her body, she kicked again. And again. And again, until light started to show through the edges of the locker. And again, until the door was so bent that the three hinges and the locking bolt were the only points of contact between it and the frame.

And one last time, so that it bent far enough that the bolt was no longer seated in the hasp and the door swung free.

Julie shot from the locker, hands half raised and ready to look either threatening or terrified, depending on which seemed more useful.

There was no one on the whole deck: the airlock, the suit storage room where she'd spent the last eight days, a half dozen other storage rooms. All empty. She plucked a magnetized pipe wrench of suitable size for skull cracking out of an EVA kit, then went down the crew ladder to the deck below.

And then the one below that, and then the one below that. Personnel cabins in crisp, almost military order. Commissary, where there were signs of a struggle. Medical bay, empty. Torpedo bay. No one. The comm station was unmanned, powered down, and locked. The few sensor logs that still streamed showed no sign of the
Scopuli.
A new dread knotted her gut. Deck after deck and room after room empty of life. Something had happened. A radiation leak. Poison in the air. Something that had forced an evacuation. She wondered if she'd be able to fly the ship by herself.

But if they'd evacuated, she'd have heard them going out the airlock, wouldn't she?

She reached the final deck hatch, the one that led into engineering, and stopped when the hatch didn't open automatically. A red light on the lock panel showed that the room had been sealed from the inside. She thought again about radiation and major failures. But if either of those was the case, why lock the door from the inside? And she had passed wall panel after wall panel. None of them had been flashing warnings of any kind. No, not radiation, something else.

There was more disruption here. Blood. Tools and containers in disarray. Whatever had happened, it had happened here. No, it had started here. And it had ended behind that locked door.

It took two hours with a torch and prying tools from the machine shop to cut through the hatch to engineering. With the hydraulics compromised, she had to crank it open by hand. A gust of warm wet air blew out, carrying a hospital scent without the antiseptic. A coppery, nauseating smell. The torture chamber, then. Her friends would be inside, beaten or cut to pieces. Julie hefted her wrench and prepared to bust open at least one head before they killed her. She floated down.

The engineering deck was huge, vaulted like a cathedral. The fusion reactor dominated the central space. Something was wrong with it. Where she expected to see readouts, shielding, and monitors, a layer of something like mud seemed to flow over the reactor core. Slowly, Julie floated toward it, one hand still on the ladder. The strange smell became overpowering.

The mud caked around the reactor had structure to it like nothing she'd seen before. Tubes ran through it like veins or airways. Parts of it pulsed. Not mud, then.

Flesh.

An outcropping of the thing shifted toward her. Compared to the whole, it seemed no larger than a toe, a little finger. It was Captain Darren's head.

“Help me,” it said.