Free Zero-G by Rob Boffard

control room in Apex, right after I had to kill my father. She looks, like she always does, as if she’s in complete control. As if she was in a council meeting, or broadcasting a message to the station, rather than locked away in a cell. She was a computer programmer before she became a councillor, and it’s easy to imagine her parsing real life like she did computer code, cool and logical and unhurried.
    “I hear they’re close to reforming the council,” she says. “I assume that means I’ll be on trial soon. I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to it, but perhaps I can show people what I was trying to do. Tell them that I was acting in their best interests.”
    I barely listen to her. I’m scanning her cell, looking for any weak spots. The plastic is sealed tight into the walls and ceiling – no cutting through. The door release mechanisms are by the entrance, but there’s no way I could spring them, and get her out, before the stompers outside gun me down.
    She sees where I’m looking. “I assure you, I’m most secure in here. Just as well.”
    I don’t look at her. “Shut up.”
    “Didn’t I give you a choice? Didn’t I acknowledge your sacrifice? Isn’t that worth more than hatred from you?”
    “It’s worth nothing to me,” I say, instantly furious at myself for letting her draw me in. The scar on my left wrist starts itching, and I have to force myself not to scratch it. Hell of a choice. Cut your wrists and be remembered as a hero, or take a bullet and go down in history as a traitor. Okwembu’s twisted way of making things right.
    Too bad I’d turned on the station’s main comms and unlocked the entrance to Apex. Everybody heard what she’d done, and they came for her.
    Just in time. I’d almost bled out.
    She folds her arms. “I can only tell you how sorry I am so many times before it becomes pointless. If it were up to me, you would never even have been involved. All I wanted was to bring peace to Outer Earth.”
    “With you in complete control.”
    She laughs. “Do you know how the moon was formed, Ms Hale?”
    I don’t respond. There’s got to be a weak link, something, anything I can use to get her out of there.
    “A long time ago,” she says, “another planet collided with the Earth. It shattered our newly formed crust. It turned every part of the Earth’s surface into magma. An ocean of lava. And it created an enormous body of material orbiting our planet – rock, dust, debris.”
    I want to tell her to stop. I can’t quite manage it. Okwembu seems to sense this, and takes a step towards the plastic barrier.
    “Over time, that debris came together as one object – a ball of rock known as the moon, orbiting Earth and changing the surface. The oceans, when they formed, had tides. The impact from that other planet knocked our own a little off its axis, angling it towards the sun. From chaos, Ms Hale, comes life. From adversity, comes strength.”
    “That’s a great story. I’ll tell it to the people you nearly wiped out.”
    “I was only—”
    “You can talk as much as you like. You’re still in there, and I’m out here. All you have to look forward to is a trial, and the firing squad.”
    Okwembu says nothing. My shoulders are too tense, and it takes me a moment to realise that I’ve got closer to the plastic. I’m almost right up against it.
    She raises her chin. “ That’s why you came to visit me.”
    “What?”
    “You want me to be evil. You want me to be insane, because it would absolve you. It would mean that killing Amira and Oren Darnell and your own father wasn’t your fault.”
    Okwembu puts a hand on the plastic. “Do you dream, Ms Hale? I do. And I’m sure my dreams are easier than yours.”
    My right hand twitches. Before I can stop myself, I slam a closed fist on the plastic barrier. The bang rockets around the cell block. Okwembu takes a step back, startled, a flash of fear appearing in her eyes. It vanishes an instant later,