Zero World Read Online Free PDF

said.
“Fuck. Okay. Bridgette, meet at the airlock.”
    The waiflike engineer’s voice came through in a rasp.
“You believe that guy over Doug? Have you ever known the float to get to him?”
    Iceberg said,
“No, that’s why you’re meeting me there. Bring—”
    Caswell tuned out the rest. He floated back to the main junction. A quick glance at the airlock door that led to the
Pawn
showed no one on the other side, yet. Good. He whirled and propelled himself to the eerily familiar MED BAY door and whirled it open, killing the lights via a panel beside it.
    The
Venturi
’s mummified crew bobbed about inside. Caswell grabbed the collar of the nearest man’s suit and hauled him out. Corpse between him and the airlock door, Caswell braced his feet against the wall. He waited there, coiled, vossen gun in one hand and human shield in the other.
    Motion at the airlock. Iceberg’s sky-blue-tinted hair, then his beady eyes peering through the tiny window. If he saw Caswell or the corpse in the darkened room it didn’t slow his entrance.
    Good,
Caswell thought, and braced for the attack.
    The airlock door began to move. Caswell pushed off hard with both feet, propelling the limp body before him. Halfway to the door he shoved it ahead. The body lurched forward, arms flung wide. The effort slowed Caswell’s own progress. As the gap widened he raised his needler and waited, drifting in behind his shield.
    A blast of white fog hit the corpse at point-blank range. Fire extinguisher. It stalled the body and then pushed it backward, sending it cartwheeling. Caswell had streamlined himself to reduce his own target area and, somehow, managed to slide right past the flailing corpse. He flew past just as the extinguisher’s blast let up. The girl, Bridgette, held the device. She saw him an instant too late.The microscopic missile hit her face mask and instantly clouded it black from the inside. Her fingers squeezed on the extinguisher reflexively, sending another cone of white that arced across the tiny airlock. Unable to stop himself, Caswell barreled right into her as her body began the death throes. He caught a glimpse of Iceberg behind her. The man held a med kit in both hands, his eyes wide with terror.
    Caswell plugged him from a meter away and floated lamely in the middle of the room until both bodies grew still.
    His pulse raced. His whole body felt cool with sweat. He wanted to scream, “I’m a monster!” so loud that he’d hear it himself on the other end of this. But he did not scream. As he drifted between the dead and his pulse began to slow, Peter Caswell decided that he would mourn these people, just as soon as the job was done. Before Monique took the memory away. Did he always do this? Yes, he must. He had to believe that.
    He let a full minute pass before he signaled on the Archon channel. “The
Pawn
’s crew is retired. God damn, this vossen gun is a nasty bit of kit, Mo. Advise on next steps. IA6, out.”
    No handhold within reach, Caswell drifted for a while. He could do nothing but stare at his handiwork. “I’m a killer,” he muttered. “A heartless fucking killer.” For the length of the mission anyway. Then he’d go back to being a man merely trained to kill. The rookie.
    He could hardly wait.
    Finally a handhold came within reach. He secured himself to the wall and considered his situation. “Mo,” he said finally, “that missing lander. Might be that our absent crew member, Alice Vale, tried to flee this disaster all those years ago. I’m investigating.”
    He left the dead to drift. Back inside the
Venturi
he weaved his way around bodies and debris and kept on toward the rear of the smashed vessel.
    Inside he found a passage that bowed in from either side. Airlock doors faced one another at the center of the hourglass-shaped passage, one for each lander. He glanced through the porthole on thefirst and saw the white-blue ESA markings on the hull of the craft nestled within. Caswell spun to