Zero World (45 page)

She and Monique smashed into the far wall. Melni’s face pressed against the oddly soft surface, and for a moment she could see nothing at all. In Melni’s hand, the knife hummed, buried all the way to the hilt in Monique’s chest. The woman groaned and Melni, falling rapidly toward unconsciousness, twisted the blade with the last of her strength.

Monique tilted her head back and screamed, a shrill, agonized sound that tore through all the pain Melni felt. Melni kept twisting. She felt the sickening resistance as the blade wrenched through muscle or bone or both, the burning edge slicing through it all.

“You should be dead,” Monique managed to say through clenched teeth. “I shot you through the heart!”

Melni let go of the knife. She met the other woman’s dying eyes and spat the blood from her mouth. “I am of Gartien,” she said, “and our hearts are on the right.”

SHE WOKE
with the horrible feeling that it had all been a fever dream.

Melni lay back in the reclined pilot’s chair. Tubes snaked from her arms. Another had been taped under her nose, and there was a mask over her face. All these tentacles joined together at a machine that protruded from the wall. Pumps and other equipment whirred and hissed inside.

Sweat clung to her skin, chilling in the processed air. She glanced around. The lights were dim and set to a soft, comforting shade of blue like the depths of the ocean. Of Caswell there was no sign. Melni tried to move and found her hands and legs had been restrained. The effort brought a dull ache to her left shoulder. Dullness
achieved through medication, she had no doubt. Her head felt heavy from it, despite the continued lack of gravity.

“Cas?” she called out. At least she could talk again without spitting blood. But who, or what, had saved her? “Cas? Anyone?”

“I’m here,” his voice said. The sound came from all around her, through hidden speakers.

“Where? I cannot see you.”

“Be with you in a minute,” he said.

The minute felt like a month. One of Gartien’s hundred-day months, at that. Her mouth was dry as paper, her lips cracked. She turned her head and realized there was another tube that touched her lips when she looked that way. Her fears banished by the sound of his voice, Melni pursed her lips around the clear tube and sucked cool fluid through it. Water. Pure, cold as ice. It tasted wonderful. She tried for more but her efforts were rewarded by a soft chime from the little automatic doctor.

“Birdshit,” Melni said to it. “Give me more, you little monster.”

The machine did not reply, nor did it give her more water. Melni sighed and waited. She fell asleep before Caswell arrived.

She spent three days drifting in and out of sleep, floating from one fever-induced nightmare to the next, until the nightmares finally turned to simple dreams. Eventually she felt clearheaded and her stomach no longer roiled. When she was awake, she and Caswell talked. He showed her the artificial arm and hand the ship had grown for him. Attached just below his elbow, the limb looked waxy and pale but nonetheless real. The fingers moved like real ones, and he seemed completely at ease with the prosthetic.

“What of Monique?” Melni eventually asked.

“On her way into the Sun,” he said with more than a little hesitation.

His answer took a moment to register. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, eyes downcast. “She was the only friend I had, for
years. The only one who understood both me and the man I could never remember being.” He turned slightly then, and she could see a bandage across the back of his neck. “Losing memory is not going to be a problem for me anymore,” he said. “For better or worse, from now on I live with my actions.”

Melni rested a hand on his. Silence stretched.

He fed her. He told her how the ship they were in was a clever shell of Earth-based tech over a wholly alien vessel within. He could access the familiar components easily enough, but the rest he was still struggling to understand, much less control. Eventually he freed her from the bed, provided she agreed to wear a protective shell over her upper left arm, shoulder, and that side of her chest and back. “You took a needle through the lung,” he explained. “The healing is going very well, but a good bump against a wall in here and…”

“Gratitude,” Melni said. She offered him a reassuring smile, and wondered if he could see the pain behind it. It was better, but not as much as he seemed to think. Perhaps, she thought, he just had a higher tolerance for pain. Melni would deal with it, she decided, simply to get out of that damned couch and do something.

“What did your people think of our transmission?” she asked him. Together they had recorded an account, brief and to the point, of everything they had learned. Following Caswell’s instructions she had beamed it toward Earth, on a repeating schedule, even as their lander sped toward that world with a physical copy. The question was what his people would do. He had seemed convinced they would do nothing. Argue among themselves, a camp that believed and one that called hoax.

“I don’t know what they think.”

“They never replied?”

“Not before…we’re not there anymore, Melni,” he said, the words sharp as a knife. “She moved us.”

Silence opened like a chasm between them. “What do you mean?” she said finally, though she could guess.

“Come, let me show you.”

And so he took her to the bridge. The room where she’d buried a knife in the heart of the alien who had ordered Caswell’s throat sliced. All evidence of the violence had been cleared away.

“Before she died,” Caswell said, pointing to a map similar to what Laz had shown them, “I believe she set us on a course back to Prime. We’ve jumped four times already.”

“Four?” Melni wrestled with the information. “Four. I do not know if I should be impressed by the number or not. I suppose I imagined these Wardens skipping around like a stone across a pond, dashing off across dozens of worlds in the time it takes us to bathe. Yet it has been days, has it not?”

He nodded gravely. “Each ‘skip’ requires an exit into normal space, then a sort of recalibration. The local star begins to pull you in, so the engines have to fire to compensate for that drift. But there’s something else. It’s only a guess based on what I’ve seen, but I think the Conduit entrances are related to how far the target planet is from its own star. These can vary quite a bit. Earth and Gartien were very similar, but some of these worlds require hours’ worth of flight before you can enter the Conduit to reach them. Orbits are often elliptical, too, complicating things further. I imagine you need some pretty detailed stellar cartography to plot a course.”

“No wonder Laz said they had to map it.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“Kidding?”

“Joking.”

“Ah.”

He looked back to the display. He was exhausted, she realized, despite the days of rest. They stood in silence for a time, trying to make sense of the imagery in front of them.

After a minute Caswell sighed. “Laz told us much before he passed, and this ship will tell us quite a bit, too.”

“It better,” Melni said.

Caswell grinned at that, though there was little mirth in it. It was a patient smile.

“Why Prime?” Melni asked. “Why not steer us into the star?”

He nodded. “I thought about that, and the best answer is that she intended to transmit knowledge of Gartien, the Zero Worlds, to them.”

“Surely she did that already?”

“Communication through the Conduit is not possible, not without some kind of physical transmitter. They have a system during normal circumstances. Little automated pods that just jump back and forth, relaying information.”

“I see. Wait, how do you know this?”

“I’ll get to that,” he said, and returned to his thought. “Maybe Monique didn’t have time to transmit, so she did the next-best thing and laid in a course. Or, who knows, maybe she thought she’d won and was just anxious to get there and gloat.”

“Or,” Melni thought aloud, the idea descending on her like a deathbed drape, “maybe she is sending us back as some kind of proof.”

“Hmm. Also possible.”

“So…” Melni paused. “What do we do now?”

“What’s the plan, you mean?” he asked, with half a grin.

“Yes.”

“Two choices, I suppose. One is to try to stop this damned ship before it reaches its destination. Land, or hide, somewhere. Keep the secret from them as long as we can.”

On the screen she saw their current location, near a star much like Garta or Sol. At the orbital distance where Earth or Gartien would lay, however, there was nothing. No, not nothing, exactly, just a cloud of specks in a ring band around the star. A demolished world. The Warden had shown them this. He’d said Prime had done it. Destroyed an entire planet, just to preserve their monopoly on the Conduit. Apparently the destruction had not affected the Conduit’s entry point, however. She wondered idly if Prime had considered that before demolishing the world. Perhaps they had deemed it a necessary risk, given that, as far as they knew, there were only three other
worlds they would lose access to should it render Conduit travel here useless.

“One thing is for sure, we will not be landing here,” Melni observed.

“Indeed not,” he said.

She searched his face for some sign of his feelings. Those narrow, dark eyes, the tight, cruel mouth. “Could you do that? Could you just curl up in some mud hut on a planet somewhere and live the rest of your life knowing what you now know?”

He held her gaze for a long time before he finally shook his head.

“Good. Me neither. What is the other choice?”

“We don’t stop. We go to Prime.”

“To Prime,” she echoed.

Caswell nodded. “That’s right.”

“Why?”

“To do what they’ve been doing all along. Keep them from learning of Gartien’s existence as long as possible using our skill as spies. As assassins.”

The idea held a certain appeal, she could not deny that. But she also recognized a triteness to it, a lack of tactical reality. “We know nothing of that place. They would be onto us instantly,” Melni said.

To her surprise, Caswell shook his head. “Maybe not. There’s something I haven’t told you.”

The tone of his voice filled her with a sudden nervous dread. She shivered at the idea and waited for him to speak.

“Before you entered that room, Monique unlocked my memories. All of them.”

She blinked. “I thought they were—”

He gave a single, solemn shake of his head. “Not erased. Just, locked away.”

She gripped his good hand. “Tell me.”

“I’m from Prime, Melni. I’m one of them. Trained to enforce their rules, and I’ve done so. On many worlds. Earth was just my latest
assignment. Peter Caswell was simply a cover. An invented one, I think, or perhaps memories stolen from someone else, I don’t know.”

She shrank away from him, suddenly fearful. “You mean—”

“Relax,” he said. “I’m on your side. I see the wisdom of what Laz and Alice were doing. And the thing is, Melni, I think we can help.”

“How?”

“I’m a weapon they don’t expect. I have memories of Prime, and not just things like how they communicate through the Conduit, but more. Much more. Sensitive things. About Prime and many other places important to them.” He paused to let that settle. At her silence he went on. “And yet I also know of Gartien. The Zero Worlds. I know what we’re fighting for, and who we’re fighting against. Combine that with your ability to analyze and plan, and I think we make a formidable team.”

She swallowed, hard. “But can we really stop them? The two of us? Against an empire that spans hundreds, maybe thousands, of worlds?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Then what do you intend to do?”

A ruthless grin spread across his face, and his dark eyes glinted. “I intend to do some damage.”

First and foremost I must say “gratitude” to my wife for her constant support. And to my boys, who keep things in perspective.

Gratitude to my agent, Sara Megibow, as well as Jerry and Wayne (aka the “Hollywood Team”). They consistently amaze and humble me with their talent and support.

Much gratitude to everyone at Random House who helps bring my books to life, specifically (but not limited to) Mike, Sarah, Rachel, Joe, Greg, Beth, Keith, and Scott.

I’ve met a whole bunch of wonderful authors since first being published in 2013, and the welcoming arms within which they’ve enfolded me is something I am endlessly grateful for. There are far too many to name each, but I do want to call out my first and biggest fan, Kevin Hearne, for all the kind words both spoken to me and shouted to the world.

To all the fans I’ve met at cons, book signings, and electronically
from all over the world: You folks are amazing and I love every last one of you!

Gratitude is owed to the ever-patient Skyler, Sam, Prumble, and Tania. I’ll get to you, I swear! Now relax and enjoy your flight. The landing might be a bit bumpy….

Thank you, Jake “Oddjob” Gillen, my trusty beta-reader, bodyguard, and dear friend.
Slainte,
old man. Also, thanks are due to beta-readers Josh and Scott.

Saving the best for last…my gratitude to YOU, dear reader, for indulging me in this tale. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did in writing the blixxing thing. Cheers!

Jason Hough

Seattle, 2014