Zero (22 page)

“
You next, Harvey.”

Harvey shook her head.
“No, you get over there and be ready to catch the pack,” she said. “I don't much fancy rolling over on the cement.”

Hugo nodded, took a breath and jumped. His roll
made his head spin but he was up again just as Harvey was stepping to the edge.

“
What is she doing...oh crap - ” Webb said then took position next to Hugo, arms outstretched as she swung the pack back and flung it. Hugo managed to catch the straps and then Harvey jumped, tumbling onto hands and knees beside them. Webb was just helping her up when Hugo felt the lightness of the pack and the bottom drop out of his stomach. He unzipped it and looked inside.

“
Hugo, we've got, like, four minutes -”

“
Wait,” Hugo said, voice tight. “There’s only one cube in here.”

The two spacers froze.

“How many were missing?” Webb murmured.

“
Two...”

They spent a second rooted to the spot staring at each other but then the air around them was torn apart by gunfire. They threw themselves flat on the roof as the metal shook under them with the impact of the shots. Hugo cursed and started to shimmy
back towards the edge closest to the warehouse but Webb grabbed his jacket.

“
There's no time,” he said, voice tight and face strained. Hugo looked at the warehouse then the countdown on Webb's wrist panel and slammed his fist on the iron with a wordless snarl.

“
We gotta move,
now
,” Harvey hissed as the guns stopped and orders were bellowed out below.

Hugo took one last look at the warehouse, saw Webb doing the same, then turned and followed Harvey as she crawled to the back of the outbuilding and dropped off the edge into the darkness. Once they were down, they edged to the corner, paused for a painful second then ran across the open space, firing into the dark as they went before throwing themselves behind a stack of empty crates. Harvey knelt and continued to return fire over the barrier even as the metal crates and wall behind them burst in showers of dust and shards. Hugo took the gun Webb offered and joined Harvey as the commander knelt at their feet. There was the sound of metal scraping on tarmac as he hauled back a grid from a drain.

“Move,” he snapped, then dropped himself into the opening.

“
Harvey, go,” Hugo said and she fired off a few more rounds before lowering herself into the hole. Hugo kept firing until he heard a scream then shoved the gun into his belt and dropped through the opening. His boots splashed ankle-deep into water and then Webb was shoving him out the way and reaching to pull the grid back into place.

“
Run,” he called, splashing off into the darkness, Harvey close behind.

Hugo w
as aware of a ceiling just over his head and walls close on either side but it was black as space. He made himself trust his ears and Harvey and her night goggles ahead to lead the way. His heart and head pounded and his breath heaved. Just when he thought his lungs or legs would give out they were careening out into the gloom of the night cycle.

Webb was up ahead, vaulting over a low wall, Harvey scrambling up after him. Hugo got to the wall just as Harvey disappeared over the top. He pulled himself over and then they were dodging around heaps of scrap scattered around a shadowy yard. Webb and Harvey didn't slow their pace, but climbed up a pile of twisted metal stacked
against another wall and dropped over the other side. Part of Hugo wondered how Webb was doing all this on his injured ankle but then pushed the thought aside and concentrated on following as fast as he could.

He was down and running on the other side when the air was
shredded with a blast of heat, light and noise that rattled the teeth in his head and seared the skin on the back of his neck. He was flung to the floor and had just enough time to cover his head when debris pelted down on him. The bruising rain seemed to go on forever and then there was a horrible, black moment when all he knew was the ringing in his ears, the burning of his breath, the taste of smoke on his tongue and stillness so complete it was unnatural.

He twitched, testing his limbs. When he found they worked, he got to his hands and knees, chunks of brick and metal shifting and falling away as he did.

“Webb? Harvey?” he croaked, peering around. Everything was lit in flickering orange. His heart seemed to stop for a moment before two shapes shifted in the mess and Webb and Harvey levered themselves up out of the debris and onto their knees.

Webb shook his head, dust scattering from his hair then looked up and stilled. Harvey followed his gaze, slowly getting to her feet, face grim. Hugo swallowed, got to his feet and turned.

Scrap from the yard was scattered all around them. Everything beyond the wall of the yard was blown away. The skeleton of the obliterated warehouse finished falling in on itself in a rain of sparks as they watched. The remains of the apartment block beyond heaved, groaned and keeled over with a thunderous clamour of collapsing concrete that shook the ground under their feet.

When the smoke reached the detectors, rain started to fall. They could hear the hissing of its pitiful attempt to douse the flames. Even when the sound of screeching tyres and the shafts of headlights slicing holes in the orange darkness on the roads nearby filtered through to him, he couldn't make himself move. It took Webb shaking him and shouting in his ear to make his legs work.

He followed Harvey and Webb across an abandoned lot, over a wire fence then around the corner of a boarded up-building. Two bikes were parked in the shadows. Hugo got on behind Webb without even having to be told, put an arm around his waist and then just hung on. The bike roared and they tore away. Webb's cargo jacket smelt like engines and bloodgrease. He sunk himself into the feeling of the artificial rain trickling through his hair and down his neck, trying to bury himself away from the throbbing in his head, the buzzing in his ears and the stinging of burnt skin.

Webb twisted the bike around corners at a speed that some part of Hugo baulked at. Spray drenched his back and the air howled in his ears, but he didn't look up. He kept his head pressed into the commander's back and his eyes shut. Even when there was the sound of vehicles behind him and gun fire whining past his ears and Webb yelling at him to return fire, he didn't move.

There was more gut-wrenching speed, spray running down his collar and a spreading ache from his limbs clamouring for attention. Just as the arm holding him on started to pulse with fatigue, they slowed. He only straightened when Webb pulled away and the bike tilted under him. He stumbled off, came up against a wall, bent over and vomited.

When there was nothing left to heave and the world had stopped spinning, he looked up to see they were in a narrow alley, concrete towering up into the dark above them. A large set of doors were rumbling open in the wall opposite. Harvey was stood by the bikes and Webb was at the control panel for the doors but they were both looking at him. He straightened, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“Get in,” Webb muttered, wheeling his bike into the dark opening, Harvey following behind with hers. Hugo put one foot in front of the other and followed. He found another wall to lean against as the doors ground shut behind him. As soon as the lock clicked, they heard tyres screeching nearby. He held his breath but they faded away and all was silence.

An ancient strip light fizzed to life above his head and lit up a cluttered space, all shelves of dusty part
s. The floorspace was almost completely taken up by the bikes and the
Zero
's Jeep.

“
Captain?” Rami clambered out of the Jeep and came forward. “Are you okay?”

Hugo didn't reply and stepped back when she reached out.

“Anita,” Webb warned, shaking his head.

Rami threw Hugo another concerned glance but fell back.

“Come on,” Webb continued, squeezing his way past the Jeep to a door in the wall behind it.

“
Will it all be safe here?” Rami said, moving to follow.

“
Safer than on the
Zero
. Captain?”

Hugo gritted his teeth then pushed himself up off the wall and followed
the crew out. He felt Webb's eyes on him as he passed but didn't look up.

“
Follow me,” Webb said, pulling on one of his baseball caps then trotting down the narrow, dingy corridor. All the doors to the other storage lockers were locked and the controls rusty. Webb ran the length of the hallway and when they reached the end, drew his gun and peered out into the street for a long time before slinking out.

The streets, alleys, walls and fences they dodged around, under, and over, went by in a blur. The rain had stopped but the taste of wet metal and tarmac was heavy in the air. Twice Webb had to redirect them to avoid people in the streets heading to morning shifts. He stood and scanned a wide stretch of groundway for several minutes before apparently being satisfied it was clear and heading to a maintenance hatch in the middle, kneeling and levering it open.

“Quick,” he hissed. Bolt dropped down first, then Rami and Harvey. Hugo lowered himself down after them and then Webb clambered in and was securing the hatch behind them. He pushed through them again and led the way down the maintenance passage, lit so well that it made Hugo’s eyes ache and showed up the filth and blood on the crew's clothes and faces. They trotted single-file, turning corner after corner, descended and climbed ladders, twisted and turned until part of Hugo began to wonder if Webb actually knew where he was going or whether he was just trying to get them as lost as possible.

The steady light and unwavering pace of their pounding feet on the metal grid flooring dulled his senses. It was only by skidding that he stopped himself barrelling into Rami when Webb finally stopped under another hatch. He stretched to fiddle with the control panel, cursing, and Hugo could see his hands were shaking.
The commander pulled off his gloves, tried again and the hatch hissed and opened. He waved them all up the ladder.

Everything was lit with the dull grey of the activating day
-cycle. Hugo blinked around yet another deserted lot with cracks in the tarmac, surrounded by a high metal fence. Brick and concrete structures, some derelict, reared up beyond, all darkened windows, iron fire escapes and gurgling gutters.

Webb secured the hatch back into its place and waved at them to follow
him across the yard. Hugo squinted up at the colony 'sky' far above, trying to make out a sector number, but they were too close to the hub, and the roof was too high to make out. Webb peered out a gate in the metal fence then dashed out, across another alley and down a set of steps to a door below ground level. The rest followed. Even though they were miles from where they'd been, all the crew still peered around and fidgeted as Webb pressed the buzzer.

“
Where are we?” Rami mumbled. No one answered her. Webb pressed the buzzer again.

“
What?” a voice barked from the intercom.

“
Doll? It's Webb.”

“
Wanna narrow if down a bit for me, pal?”

“
Ezekiel.”

There was a pause and the door was pulled open by a stocky woman, hair cut close about her head, clad in a welder's tunic and heavy cargo pants.

“Ezekiel? What the...?” she started then her eyes took in the rest of them and her face fell. “Get in.”

Everyone filed in and the woman closed and locked the door behind them. They trudged down a dark corridor and through another heavy door into a room with only one frosted window high up in one wall. The floo
r was bare but the walls were full of shelves crowded with all sorts of junk from machine parts and fragments of stone to hard-copy pictures in gilt frames. There was a solitary table with a single chair pulled up to it and another three in a stack in the corner next to a low bench scattered with threadbare cushions. In the other corner there was an ancient workstation and a fan overhead moved the stuffy air around.

“
I'm sorry, Doll,” Webb said as they all filed in. “We just need somewhere to lay low a while.”

“
What happened?” she asked, but suddenly stiffened and her eyes flicked to a muted wall display under the window. It was tuned to a newsfeed showing footage of the burning and collapsing apartment building. Hugo's throat tightened. The woman moved across the room and shut it off. “Never mind. Look, I'm sorry to do this, lad, but I'm just on my way to a shift.”

“
No worries, Doll. Go. And thanks. I owe you.”

She looked round them all, lips a thin line, then nodded.
“You remember how to get into the bolthole?” Webb nodded. “Good. I'll be back at noon. And, Lord God, get washed up, the lot of you. You look like death.”

Then she left, locking the doors behind her.

“Rami,” Webb said. “Get a message to More. We need the
Zero
ready to launch...”

“
Belay that.”

“
Captain,” Webb began.