by Bruns, David
Elise Kisaan, Regent of Earth: dead. And not just dead, publicly beheaded by the golden-eyed half human calling herself—itself—Cassandra. That’s a question I didn’t seem anywhere nearer to having an answer for—a human body, born of her mother Elise, but with DNA integrated with artificial intelligence. Cassandra was once a baby named Cassie thirty years ago, when I’d missed my mark— and now she was a self-proclaimed savior of humanity. The rhetoric on CorpNet was pretty damned clear: Cassandra promoted the Soldiers as liberators, and she—it—was trying to convince everyone else of that, too.
Anybody tries that hard to hit a message home? They’ve got a pig agenda they’re putting lipstick on to make it look good. And while Cassandra seemed to have a personal grudge against momma—sawing Kisaan’s head off was my first clue—she’d taken Earth first. Earth, the most powerful jewel in the SynCorp crown, the source of all luxuries and still, despite local hydroponic efforts around the system, the breadbasket of Sol.
I felt my stomach grumbling already…
But that was a problem for a different day. My immediate concern was reaching Tony and the Qinlao kid. Although, I kept having to remind myself, Ruben Qinlao wasn’t a kid anymore. When you meet a person, that first impression tends to stick. Despite his title as Regent of Mars, Ruben Qinlao would always be a shy teenager to me, hiding behind his sister Ming’s skirts.
A big question mark hung over his new besties friendship with Tony Taulke, though. The Taulke and Qinlao Factions never much cared for each other. But Ruben had stepped up for some reason when Tony had needed him most.
Loyalty is everything to Tony. He never forgets a good turn.
The travel time alone in the Hearse had helped me figure out one thing, though—the clue in Qinlao’s last message. “Bravo, Stacks!” had sounded odd. After hours of searching the Hearse’s databanks, I’d finally put two and two together. They were headed for one of the old, pre-construction sounding shafts on the Moon—about as invisible a hiding place as you can find there, if you don’t count The Sewer, Darkside’s underbelly-of-the-underbelly. Only the poorest of Darkside’s poor live there, and all of them need money to live. They’d sell Tony out in half a heartbeat. Kudos to the kid for quick thinking and not taking him there.
Since figuring that out, I’d been able to rest easier. Or doze, at least. Even the soft hum of the engines through the hull couldn’t lull me to Sandman Land. When I can’t sleep but I’m not visiting Minnie the Mouth’s bordello in Darkside, I snuggle up with my second favorite pastime: reading. Sometimes that puts out the peepers, if the material’s dry enough. I’d even called up Hampton Fitzgerald’s Complete History of Medieval Warfare with its six appendices on siege engines and how to build them—usually a guaranteed snore starter.
Nothing. Wide awake.
This trip … this trip was different. That dawned like a black sun in the back of my thick head. The closer I got to the Belt littering the space between Jupiter and Mars, the closer I got to regret. I could feel it coming on like a cold in the back of my throat. I’d told myself I’d just shadow the Frater Lanes as usual, keep off the grid. Get back to Tony, and then we’d take the fight to Cassandra and her snaky minions.
I’d flown this same route just a few days earlier, headed to Rabh Regency Station with the intel Daisy Brace had died for. But this time was different—no Daisy.
I glanced for the thousandth time at my longcoat and fedora sitting on the seat where Daisy left them before springing me from Elaena Kisaan’s pirate cove on Pallas. I hadn’t touched them in all that time since. Leaving them there, like she’d placed them, felt like I was doing her a solid somehow, like I was honoring her sacrifice. I know it sounds stupid. They’re just clothes, and they weren’t even hers. But I’d met Daisy less than a week earlier and run the gamut from strong dislike to outright hate—when I thought she’d betrayed me—to a pretty goddamned high peg of respect at the end. That’s a lot of road to process with someone over a lifetime, much less in the too-short stretch I’d known her.
I felt goofy. I felt sentimental. I felt a little bit creepy, at my age, crushing on a woman who could’ve been a grand … a daughter. She’d died doing what she was paid to do—protect Adriana Rabh’s interests. She’d died helping me escape Pallas. She’d done it with style, fooling me enough to hoodwink Elaena Kisaan, aka the Dutchman aka the Pirate Queen of the Belt. Daisy had been a first-rate killer with a wicked sense of humor.
I respected all those things.
But Daisy Brace had chosen her profession and the dangers that came with it. She’d known the score. Maybe Mother Universe had shown up too early to settle up, but that’s just how it happens sometimes.
Them’s the breaks, kid , I thought, hating myself for thinking it. It felt icy and lacking, like words usually are. A way to distance myself from her loss because people die every day and why should she be any different? The universe is a cold place and doesn’t give two shits for your preference for living cuz whether you’re dead or alive, you’re just stardust to the void.
The Hearse’s proximity alarm shook me out of my sullen mood. I was entering the outer edge of the Belt. My girl was doing her due diligence letting me know, and she’d make course corrections automatically, steering around any potential dangers.
I muted the sound but let the red light blink, should I get distracted again. I took manual control of the engine and cut thrust. At the speed I was traveling, that wouldn’t have much immediate effect, and anyway, I wasn’t about to flip and decel burn to slow myself down. I needed to get to Tony. The Hearse used the maneuvering thrusters now and then to steer around debris.
Wait, debris ?
It was everywhere.
The battle between the pirate fleet and Admiral Galatz’s Company ships had been broad and deadly by the looks of things. Looking at all that scorched, twisted metal, I wondered how many ships either side had left. Dead hulls are dark, so I switched on the Hearse’s running lights to get a better look. I zoomed her camera in on pieces of the floating graveyard. Bodies, frozen in death, their limbs splayed out. Thousands of them. Some in Company navy blues, yellow stripes stretching across the shoulders of officers. Some in SSR green, lined in black, the uniforms I’d seen on Pallas. Dark until the Hearse passed over them to light death’s rictus on their faces.
Pallas blipped at the edge of sensor range. Its natural orbit around the sun had taken it beyond my flight path, and I wouldn’t be able to reach it without going far out of my way. I considered doing exactly that anyway to recover Daisy’s body. But Galatz was bombing the shit out of that place the last time I saw it, which meant it was likely breached to vacuum—that’d preserve her remains, if they hadn’t been sucked into space or atomized by the admiral’s bombardment. Daisy’s corpse might still be lying on that flight deck.
Maybe I could swing back and pick her up and take her home to Adriana, after this was all over. Right now, I didn’t have time for good deeds. Tony was my priority, and Daisy would understand that. She’d respect nothing less. I was having another moment when the comms pinged.
“Message received,” the Hearse said in her sweet voice. “Black star encryption.”
Black star! That was good news. Nobody but Tony uses that encrypted frequency. Or Ruben on his behalf, lately. Maybe Tony was still alive. I opened the message.
A man’s face appeared. Middle-aged, rings of gray hair that looked unwashed. Grave eyes.
Not Tony. Not Ruben Qinlao.
“Eugene Fischer,” the man said in half an accent that hadn’t been wholly Russian in at least a generation. “This is Gregor Erkennen. You must come to Titan. The survival of SynCorp depends on it. I hope the missus has weathered the storm. Adriana Rabh’s seal accompanies my own.”
The screen went dark. I stared at it, not quite sure I’d just heard what I’d just heard.
When I closed my mouth, my uppers and lowers clicked.
“Hey, honey,” I said, “replay the message.”
The
Hearse acknowledged. When it finished, I had her play it a third time.
Several questions competed for my attention. What did Gregor Erkennen need with me? Like all the faction leaders, he had his own stable of enforcers he could call on. As I recalled, he had a particularly soulless creature named Bruno Richter who could take care of business just fine. And how the hell had he co-opted Tony’s private … wait, of course Erkennen had access to the black star channel. His faction controlled the Company’s tech. I doubted there was a single secret in SynCorp that Gregor Erkennen didn’t have backed up on a server somewhere. Leverage, should he ever need it.
Okay, but the demand he’d made … I checked the stamp on the transmission. Sure enough, Adriana Rabh’s double-bar-R sat beside Erkennen’s brand. I tapped my middle finger on the armrest, thinking that through. He could have faked that, I guess. Maybe Gregor had teamed up with Cassandra. Maybe that’s why he’d gone dark. But I’d half convinced myself of the same thing about Adriana while a prisoner on Pallas, and that had proven to be dead wrong. Dead Daisy wrong. Maybe Erkennen was still loyal, too.
I hate not knowing what I don’t know.
“Message received,” the Hearse said.
Two within a few minutes? Too coincidental to be coincidence.
“Play it.”
Adriana Rabh’s ivory-carved face appeared. Her expression was flat, her skin drawn, like she’d missed her last meal or two.
“Stacks, Gregor’s message is legit,” she said. “Get to Titan. This is bigger than Tony. Gregor will explain when you arrive.”
The screen went black again.
I sat there, thinking. First, a demand from Gregor. Then—because she knew I’d need it—a personal endorsement from Adriana. Without it, I’d have likely ignored Erkennen. Faction loyalty comes first, and she knows my loyalty to Tony trumps all.
One thing I found curious about both—they’d been messages, not comm requests. Cassandra owned SynCorp’s comm system—she’d taken over CorpNet and filled it with her piggy-lipstick propaganda. If they’d connected to talk directly, they’d be giving away my location to anyone tracking the call. So they sent their messages into the ether, hoping I’d pick them up. But what if Cassandra had taken control of more than just the subspace network? Maybe she was aiming to seize everything else that was SynCorp in virtual form. Technologies, personal histories … every scrap of data SynCorp had ever captured. Huh—that gave me pause. And that, my friends, is why I never got the medical implant installed—in the wrong hands, the SCI’s data can lead the bad guys right to you. It’s also why the Hearse didn’t have a transponder. Forward thinking, that’s me.
The two remaining faction leaders had just asked—no, demanded —I forsake Tony and head to the opposite end of the solar system. Without explanation.
“This is bigger than Tony,” Adriana had said. That suggested SynCorp was at stake. Nothing was bigger, more important than Tony—other than the Company itself.
It was Tony who taught me that.
I turned off the Hearse’s running lights. The floating graveyard around me disappeared.
“Nav: plot a course for Titan,” I said. It was more or less five days away. I had a lot more me time ahead of me. Joy. “Start a hard decel burn ASAP.”
I prepped myself for the g’s. The Hearse fortified me with an injection to keep me from stroking out. The adaptive foam of my pilot’s chair began to soften, preparing to counter the force that was coming.
“Well, kid,” I said, picturing Ruben Qinlao in my head and having a hard time seeing anything older than that shy teen boy. “Take care of the boss. I’ll be along eventually.”
The Hearse flipped and started her decel burn. My old face started to stretch young again.
I didn’t dare send Qinlao a message, much less a comm request. I couldn’t be sure he’d be able to decode whatever cloudy language I came up with—spy stuff wasn’t his thing. But I was sure Cassandra’s people would intercept it, and they’d become pros at this business, damned near overnight. If they’d tapped the messages from Erkennen and Rabh, they could make a fifty-fifty bet I was headed to the outer system. No need to confirm it. Ruben and Blockhead Strunk would just have to make their own way.
As the g’s multiplied, I wondered what was so damned important on Titan to keep me from Tony. Pretty important, I figured, since the two SynCorp regents still in power had refused to even name it in the message. And that business from Erkennen about my missus making it through current events.
There is no Mrs. Eugene Fischer. Despite my resume, I’m too kind a soul to ever inflict marriage to me on the fairer sex. But even I could figure out Gregor’s meaning.
MRS.
Maintain radio silence.
Cassandra was listening.
Chapter 3
Rebekah Franklin • Masada Station, Orbiting Titan
Bekah Franklin wasn’t sure why she was here. She really needed to visit her grandfather today, and her work schedule was already overclocked. One more meeting was one more thing she didn’t need competing for her attention.
But Gregor Erkennen had asked that she attend, and so here she was. It was an unusual request for an unusual time. A frightening time, especially since Gregor had cut them off from the rest of the SynCorp network.
Bekah glanced around the conference table, gauging the temperature of the room. Rahim Zafar, her team leader, nodded reassuringly. She’d half-thought he might begrudge her being here, but he was open and generous to those who reported to him. No professional rivalry. No need to feel threatened by her presence.
Next to him sat Daniel Tripp, lead heuristics researcher and resident expert on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Just ask him, he’ll tell you. Brilliant and self-confident to the point of conceit.
Carrin Bohannon entered and sat across from Bekah, offering a how’s-it-going smile. They were old friends, though recently they’d spent less time together as their interests diverged. Carrin was now the Erkennen Faction’s cybersecurity team leader, while Bekah had kept her programming skillset more generalized.
One seat remained vacant at the round conference table. The first time she’d seen it, Bekah couldn’t help but think of King Arthur’s Round Table. In the spirit of that mythical ruler, Gregor Erkennen liked his department heads to see one another as colleagues on common ground. They were a group of forward thinkers co-equal in the realm of proffering ideas, he liked to say. But when Gregor attended meetings, there was little doubt who wielded the power at the table.
When he walked in, the small talk quieted.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming,” Gregor said in his slight Russian accent. He lowered his frumpy bulk into the fifth chair. “Ms. Franklin, good to see you here.”
“Thank you,” Bekah said. She’d almost called him Gregor. That wouldn’t do in a public setting, despite the longstanding ties between their two families.
“I called you all here to discuss our strategy for defense,” Gregor said. As usual, he wasted little time on polite conversation. “First thoughts?”
“We’re alone out here,” Daniel Tripp observed. His voice held concern, if not panic. “Cut off, helpless.”
“That is not exactly true,” Gregor answered, his cadence careful like a coder’s would be—attentive to syntax and its effect. “Our faction resides on Titan. We have the most advanced technology in the system. We are not helpless.”
Rahim Zafar inhaled a breath, then let it out. Bekah knew what that meant. He was about to politely, professionally disagree.
“You’re right, Regent, of course,” he began. “But we haven’t heard from the fleet since Pallas. Who won that battle? Reports are confused. We know the SSR worms are crawling CorpNet, boring holes in the Company’s virtual infrastructure. They’ve already secured the subspace satellite network and completely control interplanetary communications.”
“They’re winning,” Daniel whispered.
“At the moment,” Gregor acknowl
edged. “I grant you that.”
“It’s like Pearl Harbor. The First Gulf War. China’s annexation of Hong Kong after the Century Flood.” Rahim ticked off the short history of surprise attacks on his fingers. “Shock and awe that overwhelms.”
“And yet the Japanese did not prevail, despite their early victory at Pearl Harbor,” Gregor said. He offered them all a smile that required more work than it should have. “So there’s still hope. Which is why we have cut ourselves off from CorpNet—to insulate ourselves until Tony Taulke organizes a counteroffensive.”
“Being cut off won’t help us over the long term,” Carrin Bohannon suggested. “Every siege ends eventually, when the besieged starve. And Tony Taulke’s dead.”
Gregor Erkennen made a dangerous sound. “We don’t know that.”
“It’s a double-edged sword, being cut off.” The table turned to Daniel Tripp. “Passively monitoring CorpNet keeps us informed, but we can’t affect anything without actively engaging the network—and the moment we do that, we open ourselves to infiltration by Cassandra’s worms. Every technology, every dataset, every—”
“Cassandra might already have viruses trolling Masada,” Rahim said quietly.
“No,” Gregor said, raising a hand. He seemed very old to Bekah just then, slumped in his chair. Slumped in his confidence. “Our antivirals are patrolling the Masada mainframe now. They’re the most robust security protocols mankind—or womankind—has ever produced, thanks to Carrin. And so far, they’ve found nothing.”
“So far,” Rahim acknowledged. “But to assume we’re not already compromised is to invite disaster.”
The idea that the Syndicate Corporation’s central repository of technological knowledge might already be breached chilled the room. This eventuality was why Viktor Erkennen, Gregor’s father, had established the family faction’s research and development hub on Titan in the early days of SynCorp’s expansion—far beyond easy access, or easy meddling by the other factions. Saturn was the boonies of the solar system.
