Zero-G (7 page)

After the situation with Okwembu and my father, the few interim council leaders made a big deal about giving me my own place. Prakesh and I now live in Chengshi, on Level 3, a few minutes from the mess.

We were there maybe two days when the tributes started arriving.

I can see them now, even as I jog down the corridor. A sea of flowers, bags of food, trinkets and tokens, pushed up against the wall and stacked around the door. People just keep bringing them, and no matter how often Prakesh and I ask them to stop, they won't. Some even hang around, wanting to speak to me, to thank me for saving the station. I try to be as polite as I can, hating myself for wanting to tell them to go away, feeling selfish and petty for wanting to be left alone.

Then I see it. Graffiti, sprayed on the wall next to our door. HONOUR HALE.

That's new.

It's not the hastily sprayed, ragged graffiti you see elsewhere on the station. The letters are carefully formed in blue ink, with minimal drips. I stare at it, a mess of feelings mixing in my stomach. My chest is heaving, though whether in exhaustion or anger I can't tell. There's a tightness in my chest, too, and an odd tickle in my throat. Like I'm getting sick. The stitches in my legs feel bigger than they are, throbbing with pain, despite the pills.

I wait until my breathing has calmed, then push open the door to our hab.

It's a tiny room, no more than a few yards across, with an even smaller washroom attached. We haven't got around to decorating the bare metal walls, but we've filled the room with plants. Every spare surface is covered with pots and sprouting greenery.

My eyes are drawn to the pot by the wall. It holds an orchid, with bright red flowers and leaves curling like old paper. A twenty-first-birthday present from Prakesh. Genetically engineered. He said it would last years before losing a single petal, but it's already shedding.

Prakesh is sitting on the double cot, propped up against the wall, flicking through a hand-held tab screen. The hab is hot, as it usually is at this time of day, and he has his shirt off. A couple of rivulets of sweat run down his dark chest, pooling in his abdominal muscles.

“Hey you,” he says, swinging his legs off the bed. I bury myself in his arms, resting my head on his chest. I can hear his heart pumping against my ear, and a bead of sweat tickles my cheek. I don't mind.

“Long day?” he asks.

“You have no idea.”

“Same here.”

The urge to tell him everything wells up again, and it takes me quite an effort not to say anything. Knox might be listening. Right now, just being close to him is enough.

I look up at Prakesh. “Don't kiss me, by the way. I think I might be getting sick.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Kiss you? When you smell like that? What happened?”

“I'll tell you while you feed me.”

“And if you're getting sick, you need to get checked out. You know how fast bugs spread in here.”

“…And when I get sick for real, I will.”

“I'm not kidding, Ry. You might even be infectious already. How many people did you come into contact with today?”

I rub my eyes. “I don't know. A lot.”

Truth is, he's right. Annoyingly so. Outer Earth is a million people packed closely together. You get so much as a cold spreading around, and whole sectors can get quarantined off.

“I promise I'll go get checked out,” I say. “But I really am starving.”

He rolls his eyes. “So demanding. Fine.”

We eat sitting cross-legged on the bed. Crisp green beans and tofu, slathered with salty, tangy beetle paste Prakesh managed to score. The normality of it, the routine, makes me breathe a little easier. I can forget the stitches, forget the devices behind them.

I tell him about the siege – he grimaces when he hears about how close I came to being discovered, but he's known me too long to get angry or anxious. He tells me about what happened to the tech, Benson. Halfway through, I put a hand on his leg, squeezing tight. He puts his over it.

After he's finished, we're silent for a few moments. “There's new graffiti,” I say.

“I saw. Maybe now they'll do an HONOUR KUMAR sign.”

“They should.” I'm not kidding, either. Before his breakthrough with the genetically modified plants, I barely saw him. There were times when he would come home, mutter two words to me and crash out for four hours before trudging back to the Air Lab. He and his team worked on the problem for months, struggling to get plants to grow fast enough to feed a million-plus people. For a while, the big joke was that prisoners in the brigs ate better than everyone else – they got the dud batches, the ones where the genes weren't quite right. Prakesh told me that it usually made them taste terrible.

After Prakesh cracked it, he was the centre of attention. For a while, I could slip into the background, which was just fine by me. But masterminding a new food supply isn't as flashy as saving the station from being smashed to pieces, and pretty soon the tributes started coming back.

“We sent out a new batch today,” he says, swallowing a lump of tofu. “The fruiting bodies are even better this time around. Did you know that they've now got as much energy in them as two protein bars?”

“Oh yeah?” My mind is drifting, drawn back to that graffiti.

“Right. And—”

“How long do you think it'll be before they find someone else?” I ask.

He frowns. “How do you mean?”

I nod towards the hab entrance.

“It's not so bad,” he says. “I get to live with a hero.”

“I don't feel like a hero.” I feel selfish admitting it, the words bitter in my mouth.

He sighs. “Riley, we keep going through this.
None
of what happened was your fault. You don't have a single thing to be guilty about.”

Suddenly, I want nothing more than to be under a blanket, with my arms wrapped around him. I reach out and stroke his cheek. “Come to bed.”

“Oh no,” he says. A little bit of the spark has come back into his eyes. “First, you need to clean up.”

“I hate air showers.”

“And I hate going to bed with someone who smells like shit. Literally. And then you're going to go and get a throat swab at the hospital.”

I know better than to argue. I slip the top of jumpsuit off, then pull my sticky tank top up over my head. It gets stuck, and Prakesh has to help me yank it over my arms. Before I can bring them down, he reaches in, his fingers brushing my face—

—And plucks my SPOCS unit from my ear.

I freeze, my eyes wide. Then I snatch the unit back, jamming it in. I can't describe the terror I feel at this moment. All I can think of are Knox's words:
Don't take it out. Not ever.
My legs are itching – I came this close to pulling off the bottom half of my jumpsuit. If Prakesh had seen the scars …

Prakesh gives me a weird look. “You're off duty, right?”

“Don't ever touch my SPOCS. Not
ever
.” It takes a moment before I realise that I'm shouting, mimicking Knox's words. I fumble in my jacket, yank open the bottle of pain pills, shove one into my mouth, not caring that Prakesh can see.

“Whoa,” he says. “What's going on? What's got you angry?”

“I'm on call,” I say, my mind scrambling for a reason. “I can't be out of touch. Gods, Prakesh, you should know that.”

I'm too embarrassed to look at him. My reaction came from the gut, a jagged bolt of animal fear that shot through me before I could stop it. What's worse is that Morgan Knox doesn't deserve that fear, especially since I'm still not completely convinced he'll really blow the bombs.

I lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, willing my legs to stop hurting.

“What are you not telling me?” Prakesh says.

“Nothing. I'm fine.”

“The last time you said that, I ended up getting kidnapped by Oren Darnell. Remember?”

It sounds like a joke, one of his snappy lines, but when I look over I see that there's no laughter on his face. There's another expression – one I don't like a bit.

“Don't keep secrets from me, Riley,” Prakesh says. “I don't keep any from you. What's going on?”

“Just stomper work. You know I can't tell you everything we do.”

“More like you can't tell me
anything
you do. And you've spent more time with Aaron Carver than anyone else. Even I know that, though of course you won't tell me.”

I stare at him. “The hell is that supposed to mean?”

He lies back, his eyes closed. “Nothing. Forget it. I just didn't like you yelling at me, is all.”

“Carver's a friend. We work together. You know that.”

I lie down, and put a hand on his chest. He wrinkles his nose at the smell, but says nothing.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper.

At that moment, the tiredness crashes down on me. I can feel Prakesh's chest rising and falling, and the rhythm calms me. It occurs to me that both of us forgot about me going to the hospital, but then I decide that I'm just too tired to care.

I try to sleep, and don't quite manage it. I get up, have an air shower, slip into clothes that aren't caked with dirt, then slide in next to him to try again.

You've got to be able to tune out to sleep on the station. It's never truly quiet here, and even now I can hear the vast metal hull groaning and clicking as Outer Earth continues its slow, spinning orbit. Let your mind drift to the edge of sleep, and it can sound like a living thing, breathing and hissing and stretching blackened metal limbs.

Just before I drift off, there's a whisper in my ear, horribly alive.

“Are you there, Hale? Answer me.”

Knox.

Moving as carefully as I can, I swing my legs off the side of the bed. My head is pounding, razor blades scraping across my throat. I stumble to the door, then slip out into the corridor. It's deserted, and I sink down against the wall.

“I'm here.”

Another burst of static. Then: “You need to respond faster next time. Something we're going to have to work on, aren't we?”

“I was asleep. That's all.”

“Sleeping? I do hope that means you've figured out a way to bring me what I want.”

I rub my eyes. “I need more time.”

“You're not getting it. Tell me your plan.” The eagerness in his voice makes my skin crawl.

“Working on that,” I say.

“Work faster.”

“Go to hell.”

“Go to hell,
Sir
.”

I shut my eyes.

“Say it.”

My hand has strayed to my right knee, touching the unbending end of the stitch. He won't blow them. He can't. They might not even be explosive. They might be dud pieces of metal, put there to trick you.

Keep telling yourself that.

“Go to hell, Sir,” I mutter.

“Better. You'll have to learn respect if we're going to work together. Go back to sleep, Riley Hale. You have a big day tomorrow.”

The line cuts off, leaving me in the black silence of the corridor.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the noise in Big 6.

That's what we call the stomper headquarters. It used to be the operations centre for all six station sectors, but now it's just a satellite office. A mess of fizzing lights and mouldy food containers, a place that nobody bothered to rename.

The stompers stand around desks, lean back on chairs, scream out orders and jokes and questions. The sound is like a forgotten engine, one which has spun up to a furious roar. Snatches of speech whiz past me as I cross the floor.

“Hey, Sanchez, you got any info on that pusher in—”

“—teenage girls up in Tzevya. He was whoring 'em out for tofu, if you can believe that.”

“We need six bodies to run a show-and-go in Gardens. Don't make me ask for volunteers.”

Anna's the first tracer I see. She's drinking from a canteen with her feet up on one of the desks, her ankles crossed and her shoes unstrapped. She ignores me, but Royo doesn't. He and Kev are standing on the other side of a battered desk. The wall behind it is so smudged with marker that it doesn't even reflect the glaring fluorescents any more.

“You're late, Hale,” he says.

“Sorry,” I say. Kev winks at me, a gentle smile on his face, then turns back to Royo. I grab the canteen out of Anna's hands and take a long slug of water.

“Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, did we?” she says.

“Bad dreams,” I reply, wiping my mouth and tossing back the canteen.

It's not even close to the truth. The dreams weren't bad at all. They didn't even exist. I just stared at the ceiling all night, running over the layout of Okwembu's prison again and again, looking for any possible way to break her out. Twice I had to get up to take another pain pill, and it was all I could do not to burst into tears.

When I woke up, Prakesh was gone. The other side of the bed was cold.

At least I don't feel sick any more. As I got out of bed, I noticed that the tickle in my throat was gone. The flesh on the back of my knees has swollen slightly – not enough to stop me running, but enough that I feel it every time I move.

“What's on the board today?” I ask Anna, more out of habit than anything else.

“Now she's talkative,” she says to herself. “No idea. I haven't talked to the Captain yet.”

“Wouldn't advise it on an empty stomach,” says Carver, sauntering in through the door with his jacket tied round his waist. He tosses me a protein bar, handing one to Kev as he walks past. I smile thanks. The slab is sickly sweet, but it fills me up.

Royo waves us over. “Everybody here? OK. We've got the
Shinso
coming back into orbit tomorrow, so I need everybody on high alert. You know what this place is like when there's a fresh asteroid. Now, the regular officers're taking care of most things today, but we've had a report of a disturbance up in Gardens.”

Gardens
. I feel a pang of concern for Prakesh, but it passes as quickly as it came. If the last year has taught me anything, it's that he can take care of himself.

“Why can't the stompers in that sector deal with it?” says Anna. “Why do we have to clean up their mess?”

“We already had officers go in, but they haven't reported back. Probably a glitch on the feed, but we're not taking chances here.”

“Any word on our Recycler Plant guys?” says Carver

Royo shrugs. “Not that I've heard. The one in charge, the one Beck and Hale took down. He hasn't said much. Anyway, we've got more pressing things to deal with.”

Royo turns back to the wall. “After you see what's going on in Gardens, I need you to…”

I'm not listening any more. An idea is slowly starting to take root in my mind – maybe the first good idea I've had since this all started.

“Captain?”

He doesn't look round. “What?”

“I was thinking. Why not let me stay on the hostage case?”

“I see I'm going to spend the day repeating myself,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “It's a waste of time.”

“What if they were just the start? There's a lot of hate for Janice Okwembu. Maybe this isn't the last hostage situation we'll see.”

“No way, Hale. You go where you're needed. And, right now, that's Gardens. I'll assign someone else to the hostage thing.”

“Just let me do a little digging. I'll head right up to Gardens afterwards, I swear. Surely three tracers'll be enough?”

I have never longed more to tear the SPOCS unit from my ear and smash it on the ground. I have to make this work. If I'm going to make it through the next twenty-four hours, I
need
to get away from regular stomper duties.

Royo sighs. “Fine. Do what you have to do. It's not like you idiots listen to me half the time anyway.”

“Now that isn't fair, Cap,” says Carver. “We listen to you at least three-quarters of the time. Maybe more.”

Royo points at me. “But when you're done, Hale, you get up to Gardens double-time.”

While Carver and Kev fill up the reservoirs in their packs from the Big 6 water point, I sit down in front of one of the tab screens. There's a bank of them on the wall – probably the largest number of working screens on the station, outside of the control room in Apex. I grab one of the battered chairs from a nearby desk. Its wheels have long since been cannibalised for other things, and its legs screech as I drag it across the floor. That's when I realise that I don't have my stinger with me – I must have left it back in the hab. I feel a guilty relief. I never liked the thing, never liked feeling it against my hip.

Carver puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “See you in a few?”

I put my hand on his. “You know it.”

They head out. Pulling the chair up to a screen, I call up our database.

Back when I was just a tracer, I thought I knew a lot about how the stompers worked – I'd tangled with them often enough. But I didn't know about their database. The official name for it is SCRD – Station Criminal Records Database, as the logo flashing up in front of me says – but you won't find a stomper on the station who calls it that. To us, it's just the Wall of Shame.

Aware of Royo hovering, I tap the name ‘Mikhail' into the system. It's not a lot to go on, but as the results pop up, blinking onto the screen one after another, it becomes clear that there are only a handful on the station. It takes me no more than a few seconds before I'm looking at the right one – that snide face framed with greasy hair is impossible to miss.

“Mikhail Yeremin,” says Royo from over my shoulder, making me jump. He scans the rest of the information – what little there is. “Forty-six years old, born Tzevya sector, no known kin. Dock worker. That's the thing about the Wall, Hale. It hardly gives you anything useful. He's only in the system because he's been arrested before.” He leans in closer. “Water racket.”

Royo taps his knuckle twice on Mikhail's picture, accidentally making it full-screen.

“Stop that,” I say, minimising the picture.

Royo clears his throat. “Sorry. I'll leave you to your detective work.”

I stay on Mikhail's entry until I can see that Royo is absorbed with what he's doing – giving another stomper hell, it looks like – and then I bring up the search bar. I tap KNOX, MORGAN into it and hit
Go
.

Until now I've been focused on doing what Knox says. What if I can find something on him? A weak spot I can use? Not that I'm holding out much hope. I'm almost certain that he won't be in the system.

But, to my surprise, there's an entry – and the Wall has far more on Knox than it did on Mikhail.

I scan the words. Knox, Morgan Joseph. Forty-two years old, born in New Germany. Qualified as a medic from the sector hospital at age twenty-two, specialising in musculoskeletal surgery. Assigned to work in Medical Unit 262, wherever that is. And he has a record: stole drugs from the same hospital he qualified at. It's recent – no more than a few months ago. Spent a few days in the brig, medical licence revoked. Last known habitation is a corridor code close to where his current surgery is. No known kin. Arresting officer: Royo, Samuel.

I glance over at Royo. He's talking with another stomper, bent over one of the desks. The only person I know who's had contact with my nemesis, and he may as well be a million light years away.

The idea unrolls itself slowly. What if I could take Knox out of action from afar? Once he's in the brig, he won't have that remote any more.

Putting out an arrest warrant for Morgan Knox is the work of a few taps. So is entering the last place I saw him, and the reason for the warrant – drug trafficking, of course. I punch in the corridor and level location, and sit back, exhaling deeply. There. At some point today, a dispatcher will get over SPOCS and ask a couple of stompers to swing by that room of his.

The question is whether he'll blow the bombs as soon as they do. I don't think he will, not if I'm still out there. That's
if
his threat is actually real in the first place, and he isn't playing me.

It's a gamble. But it doesn't feel like a reckless one.

I stare at the screen, thinking hard. The arrest warrant is a start, but I still need to work on breaking Okwembu out, just in case.

My eye lands on
Medical Unit 262
. Something about it kicks my mind into gear.

Working quickly, I pull up the location. It's in the Caves – the run-down, cramped, overcrowded part of the sector that anybody who wasn't born there tries to stay away from. Kev's parents live there, but his family aren't the only people I know in that part of the station. There's someone else.

He might not know how to take down Knox.

But if it comes to it, he might be able to help me break Okwembu out of prison.