Zero (53 page)

“
What, the bastard your precious McCullough fathered with some nameless Lunar 1 nobody didn't live up to your expectations?” Webb laughed, clicking back the gun hammer. “And you call me deluded.”

Pharos smiled. It was horrible.
“You lost, useless fool,” she said. “Even now you don't understand.”

“
I'm about done with your brand of understanding, Admiral.”

She shook her head and for a moment Hugo thought he saw sadness creep into the edges of her expression but then it iced over again.
“McCullough and I were to build a future. You, our child, were to be that future. But instead you’ve destroyed it all.”

Webb stiffened. His face twisted. Hugo stared at the pair of them. Stared at the way they stood, the same murderous determination in each of their faces.

“No... it's not true...” Webb's voice cracked.

Pharos's smile widened into a mockery of Webb's usual grin.
“Oh, my dear boy. If only that were so.” She put her head on one side. Tranquillity loomed closer. All the hail lights on the command panel were flashing and warnings scrawled manically across the displays but Pharos didn't even spare them a glance. “I'm still trying to decide whether it was Duran or I who made the biggest mistake. Me, for hiding you on Lunar 1 or Duran for insisting you were retrieved. He knew his chance was over but that our dream could live again, in you. If only he knew how you’d end up ruining everything.”

“
He had help,” Fitzroy growled in the corner, breathing shallow but face twisted in fury.

Pharos's weighted gaze slid from Fitzroy to Hugo.
“Yes. You. You who I thought had the flexibility of mind to understand what it was like to straddle opposing sides. To see all angles. To appreciate the necessity of making one's own rules. I'm not even sure which of you has been the biggest disappointment.”

“
Webb,” Hugo said, ignoring the admiral though it felt like her gaze was burning holes in him. “We have to go.”

“
Yes. Go,” Pharos waved a hand. “Go and accept your medals and then run away somewhere dark and spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself you did the right thing.”

“
Did you order it?” Webb snapped, taking a step closer to Pharos.

“
Order what?” she asked, in a tired voice.

“
His death? When you couldn't get him to join you, did Fitzroy put out the contract on his life, or was it you?” For the briefest of moments Hugo thought he saw the barest flicker in the admiral's eyes. “Did you order the death of your own son?” he shouted whilst the hand holding the gun trembled.

Pharos clenched her jaw and the flicker was gone.
“Yes,” she said, not breaking eye contact for a second. “Better dead than a life spent as less than nothing.”

Webb's whole body was shaking. Fitzroy was no longer smiling. Nor was he breathing. The ship shook. Hugo could make out the lines of the skyways and spacescrapers of Tranquillity.

“You took too many wrong turns,” Pharos whispered, looking out the viewscreen.

“
I guess I take after my mother,” Webb's voice shook and choked but he was grinning. The gun fired. Pharos went down. Webb kept firing until she stopped moving. She lay slumped on the deck, one leg bent under her, arms spread wide. Blood trickled in rivulets between the floor tiles. The one eye that remained stared up at the bulkhead. Webb stood over her, still shaking, gun still aimed.

Hugo shook himself and staggered forward, clutched at his commander's jacket.
“Webb,” he hissed “Help me redirect the ship.”

Webb turned his face to
Hugo but it didn't look like he was seeing him. His eyes were red. His mouth was open but he made no sound. Some of Pharos's blood was spattered across his face.

“
Zeek,” Hugo said, taking a grip of his commander’s shoulders. “Snap out of it.”

“
Tranquillity has to go,” he mumbled, gazing right through him.

“
No,” Hugo shook his head, looked right into his eyes. “No, Webb. There are innocent people down there.”

Webb's face screwed up into another twisted smile.
“All gotta go sometime. Better to die now than live as less than nothing.”

Hugo shook him.
“Fucking snap out of it. This isn't you.”

Webb blinked and tears cut tracks in the dirt and the blood. He looked surprised for a moment then seemed to finally focus. He looked very young. He pulled Hugo's hands off his shoulders.
“I'm done, Hugo. It's over.”

“
Webb...” The commander's jaw tightened. “Commander, we get through this we can find you a new name. A new start. Just... don't let this happen. Tranquillity may have been part of Pharos's game plan, but the people in it weren't.”

Webb swallowed a few times, still staring at Hugo. He felt the edges of desperation begin to claw at his insides and he put a hand behind Webb's head and pulled him forward so their foreheads were pressed together.
“Please,” he breathed. “Don't be like her.”

Webb shivered and pulled away. He wiped his eyes on his sleeves, hesitated
for the longest moment Hugo remembered experiencing, then went to the nearest control panel. Hugo, heart in his mouth, took a co pilot's chair. Sweat was soon pouring down his face as he wrestled with the controls. Tranquillity was wheeling closer and closer. He felt them gather speed as gravity took hold.

“
Re-route all power from the starboard reactor,” Hugo ordered. “Get everything,
everything
, into the thrusters.”

Webb shook his head.
“I don't think it will be enough.”

“
Do it anyway. Re-route gravity and life support if you have to.”

Webb's face was still blank but he nodded and keyed in the commands.

Second by painful second crept by and slowly the controls started to respond. The ship groaned and clanked but gradually and sickeningly slowly, she arced out of her course.

“
Ten degrees further,” Hugo said through clenched teeth. “Just get her ten degrees further to port. Then we run.”

“
Hugo -”

“
Do it.”

Webb pressed more commands and stared out of the viewscreen as Tranquillity fell out of view and the rocky
grey of the moon's waste spread before them.

“
Right. Run.”

They scrambled away from the control panel and ran
across the bridge. They skirted Pharos and Fitzroy's slumped forms and pelted through the doors and down the corridor.

“
Shit,” Hugo spat when he realised all the command-level escape pods had been jettisoned. “We'll have to chance the engineering levels...” Webb just nodded, looking drained and uncaring but Hugo growled and grabbed him by the jacket and shoved him ahead. “Run, damn you.”

They ran. The gravity warped and slipped, making his insides lurch and occasionally causing them to have to stumble along at an angle. It was becoming more difficult to catch his breath but he kept moving, keeping Webb ahead of him. They vaulted down service stairs and ladders, jumping over rubble and careening around corners as fast as their
overworked legs and the weakening gravity would take them. He spent precious seconds at a workstation to establish that there were some escape pods left on the next level below before ordering Webb onwards.

They got down a level then skidded to a halt in front of some locked blast doors.

“It's breached,” Webb mumbled. “You have a suit. Go.”

“
This isn't a negotiation,” Hugo snapped and shoved Webb towards a workstation. “Strap yourself in.”

“
Hugo -”

“
Fucking stop arguing with me and do it.”

Webb sighed and strapped himself into the workstation chair, eyeing Hugo as he pulled up his helmet and sealed it. He took deep breaths of the suit's air and felt his mind clear then set about overriding the breach protocol on the doors. He remembered a time when he didn't even know breach protocols could be overridden.
Burying the mixed feelings that thought produced, he slammed in the last code and the doors juddered open.

He stumbled over with the force of the
escaping air. He rolled over and over and heard Webb cry out but activated his magnets and his feet clamped to the bulkhead. He felt something in his leg go but didn't let himself acknowledge the pain. Debris flew past him and around the next bend in the corridor towards the breach. The emergency lights flickered off then on again and the ship shook.

He got himself upright and used his hand and foot magnets to crab his way down to the nearest pod and activated the doors. As soon as they were open he turned back and waved at Webb. Webb sat staring down the corridor at Hugo. For
a moment Hugo thought he wasn't going to move but then he shook his head and undid the restraints.

The commander tumbled and was pulled down the passage, heels digging into the floor in an attempt to slow his progress but he still collided into Hugo with enough force to knock the wind out of both of them. Hugo clung on and Webb got a hand out to grab the edge of the pod. Together they heaved themselves through and activated the door control.

Everything stilled as the pressure stabilised. Hugo swallowed down bile and scrambled to the pod’s launch controls. It shook as its thrusters pulled them away from the
Resolution
and then against the moon's gravity. Hugo clung to the controls until the shuddering steadied and there was nothing but swirling, star-pricked blackness out of the viewscreen. He unzipped his helmet and took great gasps of the pod's air just as the fireball of the
Resolution’s
impact with the moon erupted behind them. The force of the blast sent them spiralling away. The narrow rear viewscreen showed the great ship crumpling against the surface like tin. A mess of metal, flame and white moon dust was flung out past their pod then all was still.

Hugo closed his eyes and breathed. The pain from his leg overrode his senses. His throat and eyes stung and he coughed and wiped blood and dirt from his face and slowly felt his pulse begin to calm.

Webb was hunched on the tiny bit of floorspace with his arms wrapped around one knee, staring at nothing.

“
Are you okay?” Hugo said, wincing as he scrambled toward him. Webb didn't respond until Hugo put a hand on his arm then his feverish eyes snapped toward him.

“
It feels real,” Webb whispered. “I know none of it is mine…these feelings aren’t real... but it feels real.”

Hugo swallowed
. Without thinking he hunkered down next to the younger man who buried his face in his arms and shook. The adrenaline was ebbing, leaving a cold, empty nothingness behind. He wanted to cry too. And kick. And scream. But he just sat next to Webb as he trembled and stared at the bulkhead without seeing it.

ɵ

“Hugo. Hugo wake up.”

Hugo blinked.
The sweet blankness of oblivion fled. His vision blurred and then focused in with a snap that brought with it a crashing wave of pain. He coughed and doubled over, groaning.

“
Shit,” came a familiar voice somewhere close by then hands were on him, sitting him back up. “You fucking moron. Why didn't you say you were hurt?”

“
What's happening?” Hugo gritted. Webb was bent over him, face tight with concern. “Webb, I'm fine. What's going on?”

“
We're being hailed.” He tried for a ghost of his old smile but it came out looking tired and wretched. “Time to face the music?”

Hugo blinked at him.
“I suppose so.”

Webb nodded and crawled to the
escape pod’s control panel. There was a mumbled exchange whilst Hugo blinked at the shadows above him. The pod shuddered and changed course and the
Assertion
appeared in the viewscreen. Webb made a show of steering though the lock the flagship had on them wouldn't be something he could steer out of if he tried.

There was a clunk as the pod docked. Webb bent down and got Hugo's arm over his shoulders and they heaved themselves upright just as the doors hissed open. They held each other and staggered into the heaving docking bay.

“Kaleb,” Harvey rushed over to them. “Are you okay?”

“
What's happening?”

Harvey shook her head, taking his weight off Webb who she was eyeing warily.
“It's not over,” she said. “They're without their leaders now, but Pharos's fleet are Service-idiots born and bred. They'll die rather than be taken under arrest for mutiny. But the
Sincerity
has broken through the line, more ships are arriving and they're already planning the move into the strip for clean-up.”

“
What about Tranquillity?”

“
The
Resolution
missed it,” Harvey said. “Just. I heard that the impact took out some of the outlying environment controls, but nothing vital. They'll be able to stabilise.”