Zero World by Jason M. Hough Read Free Book Online

coherent thought. He paused Monique’s message manually this time and shoveled a spoonful of soba noodles into his mouth. The simple movement of his jaw as he chewed served to ground him somehow, and with a few more bites inside him his unease began to abate.
    Sipping a bulb of green tea he took stock of his situation.
    First and foremost, he told himself, listen to Monique. Really listen. Latch on to her voice and devour every word. Memorize it, even though he’d eventually forget. Ground himself in her as his ship had just done with the star below. He could only imagine how she’d maintained such a calm demeanor through this. Certainly it all must seem as amazing—God, not just amazing, but absurd—to her. He simply had to trust his handler. He put himself in her shoes. Sending her “other half” through, of all things, a wormhole or whatever the hell it was, unable to converse with him or even to know his fate.
    “This will be the most interesting mission you’ll ever forget,” he said aloud, echoing her words. He nodded at her picture. “You certainly had that bit right, Mo. Understatement of the century, more like.”
    Caswell put the drink bulb aside. He tuned out all distractions: the ship, rattling at maximum burn; the lingering warnings on his screens and the near-total lack of recognizable names. He let it all become just background noise and tapped PLAY.
    The similarities between this world and Earth are, in fact, astonishing. And they’re apparently why Alice Vale returned here.
    For reasons that will become imminently clear, the planet to which you now approach was dubbed “Duplica” by the crew of the
Venturi
. Here’s a picture taken from just a few thousand kilometers altitude.
    He drew an involuntary sharp breath as the image appeared.
    Because he was looking at Earth.
    The blue oceans and wispy white clouds, the familiar shorelines of her continents. It was all there. “Duplica,” he whispered. “Indeed.”
    From orbit the planet would fool anyone. And yet it was not Earth. The planet was second out from its star. It had two moons,both rocky and with darker complexions than Earth’s. One was larger and orbited slightly farther out. The other was barely more than an asteroid.
    According to the computer there was not a single artificial satellite in orbit.
    His astonishment gave way to confusion and then simple curiosity.
What is this place? How does a perfect copy of Earth even come to be?
The implications of that made him shake his head, embarrassed at how quickly he’d leapt to such a conclusion.
    I know what you’re thinking right now, and believe me, we’re as confused as you are. The folks in Sci have been working day and night since you sent the data. Those with enough clearance, anyway. I’m sure you can appreciate now the magnitude of this discovery.
    “You’re damn right I can,” he growled. He could appreciate it very fucking much. Enough in fact to understand why he’d been asked only days ago to slaughter six people in cold blood. Angelina Monroe had dipped into the station’s datastore, perhaps even tried to copy or transmit the information. News like this required careful handling, surely. If Archon could own it…
    His thoughts turned to the original crew of the
Venturi,
drifting lifeless in that medical bay. Had they met a similar fate? A remote command sent from some ESA boss to jar the station hard enough to kill all aboard?
    No. It had been Alice Vale. “She went back to play God,” Monique had said. Murdered the crew. Somehow that detail hadn’t quite registered when she’d first mentioned it. But now…
    We’ll know more soon enough, but these details are not the reason we sent you. They don’t activate people like you and me to do a geological survey, now do they?
    “No, they do not.” Caswell steeled himself.
Here it comes,
he thought.
The point.
He could guess what she wanted him to do, but gritted his teeth and waited all the same.
    Before Monique