Chapter 5 HUNTER
HUNTER
IT’S SILENT AS DEATH in the command room. And unless someone answers my mayday, soon that’ll be literal.
This cannot be the way I end.
Was it this quiet before? Is this the silence that comes from machinery shutting down, or is it just that I’m alone? Is the venting about to begin?
I’m standing in the center of what they call the bridge, even though this isn’t a ship. It’s a big, circular space with banks of desks ringing the station commander’s place in the middle.
That’s where I’m busy shouting into a transmitter for help that isn’t coming.
The desk is so weirdly frozen in time, like the commander just stepped out for a moment, and she’ll be back through the door any second now; half a toasted sandwich still sits on a plate, and the free space around her compstation is decorated with little projectors broadcasting pics and vids of her kids.
There’s a Tokyo Disney snow globe sitting beside a tiny plant in a painted pot.
What I care about, though, is the emergency broadcast system – and I flip back the protective case to try another mayday. My heart is still thumping so loud in my chest that I can …
… No, wait.
That’s not my heart, that’s footsteps.
I whirl around just as someone – a girl, I think – in a bulky EVA pressure suit comes hurtling through the door. She has an oxygen tank gripped in one hand instead of strapped to her back, and it swings with momentum when she pulls up short.
‘What are you doing here?’ The words are out before I have time to choose them, and she immediately fixes me with a look that tells me it was just as stupid a question as I think it was.
‘You want to talk, or live?’ she snaps – and that’s when I realize her suit isn’t bulky. She has a second suit slung over her shoulder.
‘Live.’ I dump my backpack and practically vault the commander’s desk on my way to her. She’s already opening up the suit, ready to start helping me into it.
As I get closer, I can see her better inside her helmet. She has vividly red hair pulled back into a rough knot, the same rich color as the surface of the planet outside. A lock of it’s falling into her big dark brown eyes. They stand out against her pale skin, the only softness about her.
Everything else, from the firm line of her mouth to the set of her shoulders, screams businesslike competence. She moves gracefully in the low gravity, but she’s short enough that she’s clearly Earthborn, not Martian.
The part of my brain that regularly gets me into trouble registers that she’s exactly my type, from her looks to her attitude. Except for the bit where she thinks I’m an idiot.
‘Strip. Down to your underwear,’ she instructs me, her voice broadcast through a little speaker set into the base of her helmet. ‘Those clothes are too bulky to fit under a suit.’
I don’t even make a joke. That’s how much I don’t want to die.
I just haul off my shirt as I hustle the last few steps toward her.
I hop on first one foot and then the other as I pull off my boots, dropping them to the ground with twin thumps.
The lighter Martian gravity sends me off-balance, and I grab at a desk to stay upright.
‘Everything but your underwear,’ she says, underlining the words, her dark eyes daring me to get smart with her. This girl has edges so sharp, I could cut myself on them. Honestly, it’s kind of hot. ‘The suit’s Martian-sized, it’s for someone leaner than you.’
I unfasten my belt and drop my trousers, then step out of them. She crouches and holds the suit ready for me to step into one leg at a time, turning her head and absolutely refusing to look at anything below the belt, which, fair – we just met fifteen seconds ago.
‘I tried a mayday,’ I say, as if conversation is going to make this somehow less personal.
Once my feet are in, I reach down to take over, my fingers brushing hers for a moment before she understands and releases the suit.
Quickly I haul it up over my thighs. It’s tight, all right – everyone born on Mars is taller and slimmer, with the lighter gravity.
‘I heard,’ she replies, straightening up.
‘Nothing back, not even an acknowledgment ping. I thought that channel was meant to be continuously monitored by Orbital. I thought it was meant to go out to the nearest settlements.’
‘You should definitely get very mad at someone about that later,’ she replies. ‘Once you’re in the suit, we have to get an O2 tank and hook you up.’
‘Hurry up, in other words.’
‘Hey, not so stupid after all. You keep getting the suit sealed, I’ll try my luck with the mayday. Is there anything they can do, though, even if they do receive a transmission?’
‘They can override the venting procedure.’
‘Who can? The UN can override any system on Mars, but who can override the UN? Doesn’t that kind of miss the point of what they’re here for, if someone else can control them?’
‘There are UN staff on Orbital. They can help us remotely. If they know we’re here.’
She nods, and weaves her way through the rings of desks as I wrestle the suit over my hips and then jump up and down on the spot to try to coax it higher at the crotch. And yeah, I wait until her back’s turned for that bit of ridiculousness.
There was no need for me to bother, though – she’s not paying any attention to me.
‘I was just using the emergency channel. I couldn’t get the commander’s station to power up without her handprint,’ I call out, about two seconds before she hefts the Disney snow globe in one hand and then uses the edge of its base to smash open the casing around the display monitor.
Then, as I watch open-mouthed, she pulls off her gloves and flexes her fingers. Next she yanks out two wires and … hot-wires the station? The screen flickers to life, flickers again, and then I’m staring at the commander’s welcome screen.
‘How did …?’
She looks up, guarded. ‘I’m an engineering student. Any chance we can access the shutdown controls from here? The commander didn’t stop to log out before she left, so we have her authority, but I don’t know where to start looking. Why aren’t you getting your suit on?’
I’ve only got the suit up waist-high – it really is too small, and the second I get my arms into it, I don’t think I’m even going to be able to bend them. So I tie the arms around my waist for now as I jog over to join her. ‘I know my way around the system.’
‘You know how to impersonate the Pax Station commander?’ She sounds skeptical. ‘Are you sure? Should I put my gloves back on and seal my suit before you try this?’
‘This system wasn’t built for Pax – it’s a mod of the GravesUP systems. Ours was the first compound on Mars. Everyone uses a version of our software. Why reinvent it when you can’t do any better?’ I glance sideways at her, and she still doesn’t look convinced. ‘I’m Hunter Graves,’ I add.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, I caught that when you were squawking over the PA system.’ To underline the point, she flails her arms around in what I assume is an unflattering impression of me during that broadcast.
Huh. Mocking isn’t usually how this goes.
Usually, there’s a fairly predictable response, and though I don’t enjoy it, I’m used to it.
First the eyes widen slightly, then the lips part as if the person meeting me has seen the kind of dessert that makes you want to eat it all and lick the spoon.
Meanwhile, their internal algorithms start to run frantically as they try to figure out how they can make the most of being this close to the actual Hunter Graves.
Not this girl, though. Then again, she’s an engineering student on a crappy station. I’m guessing schmoozing isn’t her thing.
So I flip her off, which at least stops the Muppet impression she’s doing, and we turn to study the opening screen shoulder to shoulder, the smooth fabric of her suit pressing against my arm.
‘Do you have a name?’ I try.
‘Cleo,’ she replies, leaning in to stare at the screen. ‘So can you navigate this?’
‘The menus look pretty similar. One way to find out.’
I tap the slender cuff at my wrist to bring it to life, and swipe one hand toward the commander’s station, telling it to find a way in and connect. In the time it takes me to draw a breath, it does.
Quickly I lift a hand, throwing a larger version of the screen up in front of us, bright lines projected into the air.
I use both my hands to split it into two, and swipe through, running two searches at once.
Text and images go flying past, offering me access to all the different corners of the station.
I glide through them, not letting my mind hitch on any one thing, instead absorbing the flow, letting it wash over me.
I’ve been doing this since I was a kid – this kind of system is the earliest playground I remember – and there’s something almost relaxing about sinking into it. I know what I’m doing here. I’m in control.
I plunge deeper to find comms and life support – not out in the open where they’d be easy to mess with – and suddenly I find the process menus I’m looking for.
And that’s when I screech to a halt. And I blink. And then I grab at the virtual screen with both hands to zoom in on the section I want, fumbling as I try to move too quickly.
‘What did you find?’ Cleo smacks me in the bicep to get my attention.
‘It’s … this can’t be right.’
‘What can’t?’
I reload the displays, as though they’ll say something new this time.
‘Hunter.’ Cleo’s voice is a warning. ‘It would be such a pity if I had to kill you, after finding a suit to save you with and all.’
I give my head a shake. ‘The system is broadcasting all the emergency evacuation messages it’s supposed to. It’s running the alarms, making the announcements.’
‘We know this,’ Cleo points out.
‘But Cleo, there’s no prep underway to actually vent the station. It should be equalizing air pressure, it should—’
Cleo breaks in before I get too far down the list. ‘Are you saying it’s making the noise, but not doing the thing?’
I frown. ‘Sure looks that way.’
She peers at the list of unexecuted commands, though I don’t think she understands them. ‘I mean … that’s good, right? Does that mean the station’s not about to vent all our breathable air?’
‘Doesn’t seem so.’
‘What about the toxin that caused this? Where’s that? Are we in danger from it?’
‘I can’t see any evidence it even exists.’
‘Huh.’ She’s frowning at the screen too now. ‘Also good, I guess?’
‘I mean, better than the alternative, that’s for sure. But mostly what it is, is really, really weird.’