Tracer (43 page)

“What’s going to happen now?”

“Nobody knows. I’m kind of hoping it stays like it is for a while. I can’t describe it, Ry, but I’ve never felt the station like this. It’s almost …” he searches for the right word: “Peaceful.”

“Yeah,” says Kev, speaking for the first time in a while. “No fighting. It’s weird.”

Someone behind me barks my name, and I smile
when I see who it is. Royo, limping up the corridor towards us. He’s as beaten up as Apogee itself, a mess of bruises and bandages. One covers his right eye, and his arm is bound up in some kind of complicated sling. He’s limping too, but still manages to look as if he could throw a punch at any moment.

I’m about to throw my arms around him, but stop just in time. He seems to catch the gesture,
though, and smiles. “Nice work, Hale,” he says.

“Thanks. How’re you holding up?”

“Flesh wounds, is all,” he says, the smile still on his face.

The moment passes, and he clears his throat gruffly, all business again. “If you’re going to the gallery, I hear they’re short of hands for shifting soil. She’s excused from duty, but you two” – he points at Carver and Kev – “you’re able-bodied. Get
in there.”

Carver rolls his eyes. We turn to leave, but then Royo says, “On second thoughts – give us a minute?”

He’s staring over my shoulder at Carver, who frowns. “She just got out the hospital, man. Leave her be.”

“It’s OK,” I say. “I’ll be right there.”

Royo puts an arm around my shoulders, turning me away from Carver and Kev. It’s an unexpectedly protective gesture.

“You need to be
ready,” Royo says.

“Oh yeah? For what?” It’s hard not to laugh at his words, at his overly serious tone. After everything I’ve been through, it’s hard to imagine something I wouldn’t be ready for.

Royo glances over his shoulder at the impatient Carver. “You
did the right thing. I wouldn’t have you change any part of it. But—”

“Even the part where you – you know.” I gesture to his wounds.

“
Listen to me
. That doesn’t matter. I could give you some bullshit about cause and effect, but you’re smart enough to figure that out on your own. It’s just … I’m going to give it to you anyway. You don’t just remove a council leader like Janice Okwembu, and expect things to go right back to normal.”

“I don’t care who takes her place.”

“Forget that. What I’m worried about are the things you won’t
see coming. The consequences you can’t plan for, no matter how hard you try.”

“And those are?”

“Stupid question, Hale.”

He lets me go, nodding towards Carver and Kev. “Keep ’em close. They’ll have your back.”

I look right into his eyes. “What about you, Royo? Do you have my back?”

He looks right back at me, and a ghost of a smile darts across his face. “Never stopped.”

We leave Royo behind,
and walk into the main gallery. The noise and movement is intense. People carrying huge sacks of soil, hefting the bags between them. Others yelling instructions, telling people to form lines. But even through the chaos, I see Prakesh immediately.

He’s standing with a white-coated tech, looking over a clipboard, his expression serious. The moment I see him, it’s as if the noise in the room drops
away.

I don’t know how he senses I’m there. All I know is that one moment he’s looking at the clipboard, and the next he’s staring straight at me. The expression on his face is a mix of relief, of sorrow, and of joy.

I’m running, my body sloughing off the pain like old clothes, my arms pumping, my feet in perfect rhythm, the rush building. Running towards him.

And then we’re in each other’s
arms, and we kiss, and the world disappears.

Riley has her crew. I have mine.

For scientific advice, I owe huge thanks to Dr Barnaby Osborne (University of New South Wales), Chris Warrick (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy), Professor Marcel Dicke (Wageningen University) and Dr Paul Goulart (Oxford University). Dane Grant and Shabnam Abdool-Haq filled the gaps in my parkour knowledge. Any errors are, very obviously, my fault.

To my friends who gave me good advice and better company: Chris Ellis, Dane Taylor, Rayne Taylor, Ida Horwitz and Rob Long. Extra thanks to George Kelly, who gave this book a kick in the backside when it needed it the most, and to Gary Gibson for his comments on an early draft.

My amazing agent, Ed Wilson, went to war for this book and came back bloody but victorious. Thanks, Ed. You’re the man.

My editor, Anna Jackson, is a hero. Her gentle, patient, persistent questions and her connoisseur’s eye for ultraviolence made this story what it is. By now, she knows Outer Earth better than I do. Thanks, Anna.

Thanks, too, to my guys at Orbit Books: Joanna Kramer, Felice Howden, Gemma Conley-Smith, James Long and Clara Diaz. And to Tim Holman, for saying yes. You guys did an insane job. Ditto
to Anne Clarke, as well as everybody at Orbit US.

Nick Fawcett did an impeccable job of copy-editing, and Nico Taylor designed a badass cover. Nice one, gentlemen.

To Mom, Dad and Cat – this was definitely Plan B, Paragraph 7, Subsection D. The fact that you don’t care, and love me anyway, means more than I can say. Thank you to all family, close and extended. Especially Claudi, who kept a secret.

And to Nix, who has all my best ideas before I do. I love you, babe.

The story continues in

by

Rob Boffard

The clock is ticking down again for Riley Hale
.

She may be the newest member of Outer Earth’s law enforcement team, but she feels less in control than ever. A twisted doctor bent on revenge is blackmailing her with a deadly threat. If Riley’s to survive, she must follow his orders, and break a dangerous prisoner out of jail.

But this isn’t just
any prisoner – it’s Janice Okwembu, the former council member who nearly brought the space station to its knees. To save her own skin, Riley must go against all her beliefs and break every law that she’s just sworn to protect.

Riley’s mission will get even tougher when all sectors are thrown into lockdown. A lethal virus has begun to spread through Outer Earth, and it seems little can stop it.
If Riley doesn’t live long enough to help to find a cure, then the last members of the human race will perish along with her.

The future of humanity hangs in the balance. And time is running out
.

Rob Boffard
is a South African author who splits his time between London, Vancouver and Johannesburg. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade, and has written articles for publications in more than a dozen countries, including the
Guardian
and
Wired
in the UK.
Tracer
is his first novel.

Find out more about Rob Boffard and other Orbit authors by registering for the free
monthly newsletter at
www.orbitbooks.net.

What was the inspiration behind
Tracer
?

I’ve always been obsessed with space, and what it’s like to live up there. I got to thinking about what it would be like if huge numbers of people lived on a giant, self-contained station. Obviously, that’s been done before, but what happens if those people have been there for hundreds of years, without any external contact?

The place would be
a mess. It’d be broken down, rusting, falling apart. Social order would be tenuous at best. Public transport would, in all probability, be non-existent, so couriers would emerge to ferry packages and messages from place to place.

The more I thought about the couriers, the more I couldn’t get them out of my head. They’d have to be fast and quick-witted, and they’d need to be good fighters – especially
since they probably carry sensitive packages from time to time. What would they be like? What was their story? From there, it was a short leap to writing some of it down.

The name “tracer” came a lot later. A
traceur
, in real life, is a practitioner of parkour – something Riley and her crew are very good at. I just mangled the word for my own purposes.

What was the most challenging thing about
writing this novel?

Tracer
has a really intricate plot. Keeping all the parts in my head at once, and making sure that there were no logical inconsistencies or plot holes, was an enormous task.

I also had absolutely no idea how to write a novel – seriously, up until
Tracer
, the longest thing I’d written was a long-form magazine story. I knew nothing about plot structure, character development
or any of the techniques that would-be novelists are supposed to know. I just went in cold, with nothing but a very loose plot outline to guide me.

How much research went into the novel?

Huge amounts. I’m a journalist, and as pompous as it sounds, I believe in accuracy.
Tracer
was always going to be set in the real world, so getting the science right was important to me. I love gravity guns
and portals and aliens and lasers, but they didn’t have a place in the world of
Tracer
.

My best source was a genuine rocket scientist, Dr Barnaby Osborne, who let me come down to his lab at Kingston University and ask him lots of questions. He’s the architect of Outer Earth – thanks to him, it works properly. I get a big rush from solving problems, always have, and figuring out a cool solution
to a complex science problem gets me buzzing.

I spoke to plenty of other scientists too: fusion experts and entomologists and orbital physics specialists. They helped set me straight on a few things.

Which was your favourite character to write?

You know that cliché, about bad guys being more fun? Totally true. Oren Darnell was a blast to write. He terrifies me, because in his mind, human beings
are absolutely worthless, and so he sees them as entirely expendable, whether they’re friendly to
him or not. Figuring out why he thinks the way he does took me to some deliciously dark places.

And while we’re on bad guys, the only one who terrifies me more than Darnell is Janice Okwembu. Darnell’s a nuclear weapon who will leave nothing standing, but Okwembu is a very precise surgical strike.
She’s going to be very important in the next few books …

What we can expect from the next Outer Earth novel
Zero-G
?

I don’t want to say too much. I will say that it takes place six months after the events of
Tracer
, and that Riley is going to face off against an enemy who makes Oren Darnell look like a kitten. This guy’s got a vendetta, and Riley is going to have to push herself further than
ever to survive. Everybody’s back: Royo, Carver, Prakesh, Kev, Okwembu, plus some new faces. I refuse to say who’ll make it out alive …

What do you get up to when you’re not writing novels?

Being a writer is a fairly sedentary activity, so the one thing I try to be as obsessed as possible with is snowboarding. As of yet, I’ve injured nobody but myself.

Despite being South African, I’m a diehard
fan of the Chicago Bulls basketball team, which is unfortunate as they’ve spent the past few years not being very good. I’m also a massive hip-hop fan, and spend a lot of time hunting down obscure music from around the world, then playing it on my podcast, 20/20.

look out for

by

Radio chatter filled my ears. Different voices, speaking over one another.

Is this it?
I asked myself.
Will I find her?