Zero G by Dan Wells

Author:Dan Wells [Wells, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fearful Symmetry, LLC
Published: 2019-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

THE GHOST

ZERO WENT BACK through the airlock, took off the space suit, and stashed it in a nearby cargo bay, hidden inside the opened crate of self-sealing bolts. There were no other sounds in the area, and he guessed that the pirates were all still up in the control center, probably eating all of his cheeseburgers in the rec room. He looked longingly at the central column, then pushed away from the wall and floated back down the hall, into the narrow aisles of stasis pods and the even narrower maintenance tubes that ran the length of the ship. He had to go through 250 Rings to get to the control center, and in the cramped tube, he couldn’t just kick off once and travel fifty Rings in one jump. He would have to cover almost the entire distance in a crawl, handhold to handhold. He groaned and started crawling.

He had to stop and rest a few times, rubbing his sore arms. This was why they had the central column, he realized—walking was effectively impossible without gravity, so without the ability to jump around your arms wore out fast.

He slowed down as he got closer to the fore, pausing to listen at Ring 290, and again at 295. On Ring 297 he finally heard some low murmuring. The pirates were here, but they were behind a wall somewhere. Probably the rec room? Or possibly the pilot’s office. Maybe both, since neither was really designed for a group of five people. Zero crawled up to 298, and then to 299, and kept back behind the corners, trying to stay out of sight. He saw a door in one of the bulkheads, leading up into the back rooms of Ring 300, but he’d have to cross a hall to reach it. He held his breath, listening, and thought he could discern some of the words of their conversation:

“. . . seven degrees left . . .”

“. . . every other time . . .”

“. . . how much molybdenum . . .”

Zero tried to remember where he’d heard the word molybdenum before. Was it a metal? Did Tacita have a mine? He had to get closer so he could hear them better. He dared a quick peek around the corner, saw nothing, and risked a quick jump across the hall. He reached another corner to hide behind, and moved quickly to the door in the bulkhead. It was square, maybe half a meter wide, and opened easily when he pushed on it. He floated up and into the dark room, and replaced the door behind him. As his eyes adjusted, he found that he was in a maze of computer banks, dimly light by soft green and red and yellow lights on some of the hard drives. Cables snaked beneath raised grates in the floor, and all around him computer equipment blinked or hummed or simply sat and computed. It looked like nothing was happening, but Zero knew that this was

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