Zero by J. S. Collyer Page A

the Zero needs a Service-trained captain.”
    “ You think so?”
    “ There's no medals, no credit. No thanks. But it’s dark out there. And messy. We need someone to lead us, even if it means dragging us onto the right course by our teeth. Without that... we're just another rudderless pirate ship, scraping an existence off the underside of humanity.”
    Hugo held the other man's look for a moment, feeling that chill creep once again along the underside of his stomach. More stood, paused, then moved past him and off the bridge. Hugo stood for a moment longer, gazing out into the darkness beyond the viewscreen before following.
    ɵ
    “ Okay, what do we have?”
    The whole crew were crowded into the galley, sat on the benches or leaning against the wall. Hugo did not miss the heavy look Webb was giving him, but he ignored it, turning first to Spinn and Rami who were stood either side of the wall display.
    “Lieutenant? What do we have?”
    “ AI's central command centre is in this range of mountains in Old Europe,” Rami began, queuing up visuals of the mountain range and the surrounding area. “There is nothing up there except some old battlegrounds, hiking trails and a couple of fuelling stations.”
    “ That's a strange place for a base.”
    Rami nodded. “Officially, it's because it has cheaper labour and licence taxes.”
    “ Any fallout?”
    “ Not here, sir,” Rami said. “The histories say there were munitions-only land battles in this area during the Whole World War.”
    “ Civilian habitation?”
    Rami pulled the map out wider. “The nearest town is forty miles away. Not large, but big enough to have local monitoring systems. AI have a lot of remote monitoring of their own spread out all through the area as well.” She keyed in a couple of commands, and a web of sensor-lines laid itself over the map.
    “ Christ, that's a lot of surveillance,” Webb said.
    Rami nodded. “This command centre houses their primary research labs, but even so. It doesn't look like they want anyone sneaking around. There's no harbour or docking port nearby, either.”
    “ How close can the Zero get?” Webb asked.
    Rami looked to Spinn. The doctor scratched his head with one hand and zoomed the map out further with the other. “There is a little less surveillance further west... in the foothills. There is a clearing in the woods not far from this groundway. Well, it's a road really. Old, but well maintained according to the scans. It should be possible to manoeuvre the Zero between the local long-range sensors long enough to drop a ground team, but we'd have to retreat to orbit immediately.”
    “ How far is that from the command centre?” Hugo asked.
    “ About twenty miles, Captain,” Spinn said. “The ground team will have to take land transports.”
    “ Any chance we could bullshit our way in at the front gate?” Webb asked.
    Rami shook her head. “It's a completely closed base. Shift rotas, worker profiles, maintenance schedules – everything is stored on their grounded system. We can't even hack you onto a shift, let alone set you up with fake swipe badges.”
    “ Guess we wouldn't want it to be too easy,” Webb mumbled. “Fine, in that case, we'll take the bikes. We can stay off-road and come up to the boundary wall under cover. Do we do this day or night?”
    “ Day,” said Spinn. “They lock the data systems down at night. We cannot afford the extra time it would take to get in.”
    “ How close can the bikes get to the base before being detected?” Hugo asked.
    “ Use your eyes, Captain,” Webb said, keying in some commands into the panel laid into the galley table. A contour grid laid itself over the command centre map and sensor-read plan. “We come in from the north. There's a dip in the land, there.” He pointed. “We can stash the bikes there.”
    “ That's two miles north of the wall.”
    “ So we'll hike.”
    “ Unacceptable,” Hugo shook his head, stepping up to the display. He