Angelica Lin’s internet profile was unadorned, belying her unwilling fame. She projected a keep-away vibe. But the very fact she was here spoke terabytes.
Cydney itched to ask Lin about the rumor that she would be running for her late boyfriend’s position.
However, there was no way to broach that subject, so Cydney cleared her throat and said, “Doesn’t this lemon horseradish sauce go perfectly with the maguro steak?”
Angelica Lin turned to her. Her dark eyes were lively. “Apple?” she said, gesturing at Cydney’s dress.
Cydney nodded. “I know, I know, I’m overdressed. My girlfriend thought it was a formal event.”
“No, no, I love their stuff. Have you seen the new iTutu?”
“Oh my God, yes! With the built-in booty booster? Of course, it’s primarily targeted at the transgender market.”
“I know. So disappointing. When are they going to start making products for real women?”
★
From the background report on Angelica Lin put together by Cydney’s data-mining team:
Earthborn. Her heritage is Chinese, but the family has lived in America for centuries. Plenty of mixing going on there, so we figure she’s not a pureblood. No way to know for sure, of course. No one with two brain cells to rub together gives out that information. But look at her skin tone. East Asians don’t come that dark. Nor do they usually have porn-worthy bazookas. Ahem.
She grew up right here in L.A. Won all the human-rights prizes going, collected a Gloria Steinem Award for volunteer work when she was only fifteen. Oh, and she also played the violin. None of which can have been much comfort when her entire family bought it in the 2262 earthquake. They were living in one of those vertical slums in Hollywood. It came down on top of them.
After that, for reasons known only to herself, young Angelica turned away from the high-flying career in human rights that beckoned. She put her name down for Space Force. Two years later she was on her way to Callisto.
The date of her arrival: July 10th, 2265.
This chick has seriously bad timing.
23 Years Earlier. Callisto
Angelica Lin reviewed her suit telemetry for the twentieth time. Inside her EVA gloves, her palms sweated. Her heart pounded with apprehension.
After three months in space, she was about to set foot for the first time on Callisto.
The real thing, at last!
But in keeping with the Marine ethos, she couldn’t let her excitement show. She joined in mocking the humble little base that they could see on the viewport screen.
There were a handful of inflatable modules connected by flexitubes. A nuclear power plant. The drilling rig.
The Space Force landing craft descended almost vertically, soaking the Marines with three gees. Angelica was nineteen years old, in peak physical condition, centrifuge-certified up to eight gees, medded up with motion-sickness prophylactics. The brutal deceleration didn’t faze her.
Valhalla Crater was the largest multi-ring impact crater on Callisto, and actually, in the solar system, 1,900 klicks across. Its concentric rings surrounded a bright spot like a bullet hole in a windshield. The brightness was snow; it stood out clearly against the chocolate-brown surface. That was where they’d put Valhalla Base, because snow could be melted into water. One less thing to carry 630 million kilometers.
Angelica braced for landing.
Thump.
The Marines piled out in platoon order. They stood in a puddle on the surface of Callisto. The heat from the landing craft’s fusion drive had melted the snow, but it was already refreezing under their boots. The surface of the little moon was a dirty ice rink six kilometers thick.
Angelica formed up with the others. Eyes rigidly forward, she faced Sergeant McWhorter, but looked beyond her. Jupiter bulged over the horizon. It was so big!
People came out from the base to meet them. A couple of civilians, plus the Marines they’d be replacing here, 100 bods in blue and silver EVA suits identical to their own. While the civilians exchanged pleasantries with Captain Malouf, the Marines flashed covert hand signs and congregated on a different channel.
“So, give us the scoop.”
“Fuck, man, like, fuck, this posting is a fucking barfbag. We can’t wait to get home.”
“Head bloat, air rationing, nutriblocks three times a day, yeah, we know all about it.”
“Naw, man, fuck, it’s not that.”
“So what’s the catch?”
Angelica caught her own name amidst the babble. “Yo yo yo Private Lin. Motherfucker! I’m looking at your profile, and shit, I kind of wish we weren’t leaving so soon.”
It never ended. Even at a handover on the surface of Callisto. But Angelica had plenty of practise at deflecting lechery. “If that’s your idea of a pick-up line, Gunny, you’ve been out here too long.”
Laughter.
“Fuck, man, fuck, look at y’all. Only twenty of you?”
“One platoon, yeah, why?”
“Look at us. A whole fucking company. Where’s the rest of y’all?”
“Coming later. So we get to dog the best bunks and shit before they get here.”
“You’re a funny woman, Lin,” said the gunnery sergeant who’d spoken to her before. “Why’d you join up?”
What kind of a question was that? “To protect and defend humanity in space,” she deadpanned.
That was the semi-official motto of Star Force. Funny thing was, she meant it. She hadn’t been able to protect and defend her family from the earthquake. But maybe she could protect other vulnerable civilians, in places even more dangerous than Los Angeles, which humanity nevertheless occupied with the same insouciance that had flowered in the social housing developments atop the San Andreas Fault.
When she was shooting her Zero.5 in training, she often imagined that she was aiming at the PLAN.
“Then you came to the wrong fucking place,” said the gunnery sergeant.
“This base has been up for years, so what’s the catch?” C-Mutt was still trying to dig out an informational edge. “Radiation? Aliens? Are the civilians crazy or some shit?”
“Naw, uh-uh, fuck man.”
Top-heavy with gear, the other Marine company inched on board the landing craft. They were going to be crammed in balls-to-ass.
“The problem with fucking Callisto, man? The problem is nothing ever fucking happens here.”
viii.
Elfrida sat in a toilet stall in one of the women’s restrooms in the R&D village. The restroom was a freestanding prefab structure. Human waste caked the suction toilets. The tragedy of the commons. On the battered inside of the door, cutter-laser strokes spelled out Lydia hearts Greg.
I can’t do it.
Four days had passed since Dr. Hasselblatter broke the news that she had to evict the UNVRP community.
Her official orders had come through last night, quantum-encrypted, festooned with CLASSIFIED watermarks.
It was true.
Everyone had to go.
The Phase Five mining operation was to be 99.9% automated.
The only people to remain would be a skeleton crew of engineers and telepresence operators.
The rest? Well, that was up to her. They could go to Eros, maybe. Midway? Hygiea? Europa? Ceres?
“This is wrong,” she whispered. ”It isn’t fair.”
But she hadn’t thought twice, in the past, about uprooting people from their homes so that the Venus Project could have their asteroids.
She knew she was a hypocrite. But she liked these people. And she was more than half in love with the world they’d built. This was the closest she was likely to get to Venus in her lifetime, and she couldn’t bear the thought of its destruction.
“I want to stay here. I want to stay here.”
It’s not all about you, she told herself.
No. It was about cost-efficiency. She’d spent all day yesterday crunching the numbers. The community here was costing the UN taxpayer a bundle. T
hree-quarters of the people in the test hab were freeloaders and / or dependents who contributed nothing to the Venus Project. Why should UNVRP continue to support them?
“Because we’re the UN, doggone it,” Elfrida whispered into her hands. “We’re not in this to turn a profit.”
She remembered a former acquaintance of hers, Captain Martin Okoli of the Kharbage Can, saying, The UN’s just another corporation. Only difference is, it’s the biggest one.
Had he been right?
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I didn’t sign up to be the bad guy!”
But from the point of view of countless colonists, that’s what she always had been.
The door of the toilet stall rattled. “Ellie?”
“Sorry, Cyds, yeah, I’m in here.”
“This place stinks. Are you OK?”
“Fine!”
She inhaled and strained. She wasn’t just sitting in here for privacy; she had been constipated since they arrived on Mercury. Ahhhh! Better. She wiped. The smart toilet seat unsealed itself from her bottom and gulped down its contents with a whoosh.
Using the suction toilet made her remember 4 Vesta, the rover … and Mendoza. She tried not to let her thoughts go there. She had had an affair with John Mendoza on their way back from 4 Vesta. It had been totally out of character. She didn’t even like men—not like like them.
But she’d done it anyway. And Cydney had never forgiven her for it.
When she came out of the toilet cubicle, Cydney was gone. Elfrida padded back through the dark alleys to their sandcastle. Cydney was editing vid clips for her feed. “You’ll be late,” she said without looking up from her tablet.
“Mike will wait for me.” Elfrida climbed on the bed to get around Cydney to the clothes rail.
“Maybe you’d better call him and tell him you’re on your way.”
Elfrida turned around. “Are you jealous, Cyds?”
“Of course not.”
“Because if anyone has a right to be jealous, it’s me. You were all over that ancient bimbo, Angelica Lin, at the reception a couple of days ago.”
“That was for work.”
“Well, so is this. And can I just tell you how ridiculous it is for you to be jealous of Mike Vlajkovic?”
“I’m not—”
“He’s married. They have two kids. I’m spending all this time with him because we work together! I don’t even like him, let alone like like him. He’s a man!”
“That didn’t stop you fucking John Mendoza,” Cydney said.
“Oh, you had to go there.”
“You went there first.”
“I haven’t even thought about him in months.” Elfrida lied.
She got dressed. Thermals, jeans, an old Las Nerditas sweatshirt. Wear stuff you don’t mind getting dirty, Vlajkovic had said.
“See you later,” she said coldly.
“Oh, Ellie—” Cydney came to her, and they embraced. Elfrida rested her cheek on Cydney’s shoulder. How had she managed to screw up this relationship so badly?
★
“At freaking last, Sleeping Beauty,” Vlajkovic said. “Did you get lost?”
“Yeah,” Elfrida said. In my own emotional crap.
They went out to the parking lot. Cavernous, it held only a handful of three-wheeled surface rovers, and one large half-track that looked like military surplus. All the rovers bore faded Hotel Mercury decals. One flashed its headlights at them. They clambered in through the rear-opening airlock.
Vlajkovic drove across the parking lot, into a vehicular airlock. “This is one of two exits from the hab. The other one’s up top. You can exit directly from the old hotel lobby to the crater floor, but this is the only way out if you’re taking a vehicle.” He manually checked the rover’s pressurization, using a handheld gasometer. Then he put on some music. To the sound of ferocious guitar riffs, they drove along a tunnel, which forked after a hundred meters. One fork led under the wall of Tolkien Crater, back to the surface and the road to Goethe Spaceport. Vlajkovic took the other fork, which sloped up steeply. They emerged onto the floor of the crater.
The rim of Tolkien Crater varied from one to four kilometers high. The crater itself was 40-odd kilometers across. The peaks on the far side of the crater shone white, a row of snaggleteeth bleached by the sun’s light. Closer, another sunlit island floated in the blackness—the tip of the crater’s central peak. The rest of that massive mountain was invisible.
Down here, no sunlight had ever penetrated. Ever.
The rover’s headlights skated across a field of black ice.
“The whole bottom of the crater is covered with ice,” Vlajkovic shouted over the music. “It’s been here since the solar system was formed, and now we’re drinking it. And breathing it. Split a molecule of H20, you get hydrogen and oxygen, the building blocks of life.”
Elfrida glanced at the navigation screen. The rover seemed to be right on top of the UNVRP water mines.
“Going down,” Vlajkovic yelled. “Hold on.”
Abruptly, the ice field ended. The rover’s nose dropped, and they lurched onto a ramp winding around the inside of a vast pit. Elfrida clutched the edges of her seat so hard that her fingers ached. But the pit wasn’t that deep. They soon reached its floor, just a few tens of meters below the ice field.
Vlajkovic turned off the headlights and the interior lights. The music cut out.
“See that?” Vlajkovic said.
She saw tyre tracks in gravel. “What?”
“Nothing. You can see, is the point.”
“O-oh.” Now she got it. The darkness was not absolute. The sun-drenched peaks above them reflected a bit of light into the crater. “It’s like walking down the street between skyscrapers. The windows reflect sunlight down to the sidewalk.”
“Do they?” Vlajkovic had never seen a skyscraper or a street, and he never would, bar extensive surgery. “Well, I just thought you’d be interested to see that. Here we go.”
The rover bumped across the floor of the pit and into a lateral shaft. Glowstrips came on overhead, turning the walls of the shaft sodium-yellow. Vlajkovic explained that the ice field was thought to go down hundreds of meters, but it was stratified with rock. “We hit a rocky layer at 40 meters. We don’t have the equipment to drill deeper, so now we’re going sideways.”
“There’s what, 1018 kilograms of water in these craters? Has no one ever thought of exporting it?”
“Well, all the polar craters belong to Wrightstuff, Inc. And exporting water from Mercury wouldn’t be cost-effective. NEO water traders hop from rock to rock, extract H2O with thermal energy, export it to Luna, Midway, the Earth orbitals. They’ve priced the Belt out of the market. Razor-thin margins.”
Elfrida knew about the NEO water traders. They’d achieved every immigrant’s dream of de facto independence. Are there any unclaimed NEOs left? Could we find one for the UNVRP community?
The lateral shaft opened out into a cavern forested with square-sided pillars. Vlajkovic drove between them. “Room and pillar mining,” he shouted, as another frug-rock track came on the stereo. “Wide spaces between the pillars; one-third Earth’s gravity, you don’t need that much material to hold up the roof. But these pillars are made of ice, so they’re not that strong. One failure, everyone down here is dead.”
“Is there anyone down here?”
“No. Just these guys.”
Chrome flashed in the headlights. Mining bots attacked the ice face with cutter heads. Scrambling on six or eight legs, they loaded the rubble onto motorized trolleys, which were articulated to snake between the pillars.
“Suit up,” Vlajkovic told her.
Elfrida worked her legs into the EVA suit that had been stowed behind her seat. She strained to close it over her bulky sweatshirt, and put her helmet on. “Comms check,” Vlajkovic said.
“Copy.”
“We’re out of range of the wifi network, so we’re dependent on our suit radios. You have an emergency beacon, manually
triggered from your wrist display. See it?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go. Watch out for flying ice chunks.”
The warning was timely. As Elfrida jumped out of the rover’s airlock, a chunk the size of her head came skidding across the ice. “Sorry! Sorry!” squeaked a mining bot, crabbing past her to retrieve the chunk.
For hours they explored the mine. When you had seen one room full of ice pillars, you’d seen them all. Elfrida hid her boredom. She understood that Vlajkovic was showing her what they had here, how much work they’d put into developing this crater … how fickle it would be to just abandon everything. But she already agreed with him.
Tired out from walking, she sat down on a heap of rubble at the foot of yet another ice face. “Mike? I’m sorry, but it won’t do any good to appeal to my better nature. Not that I haven’t got one. Smile. But it’s out of my control, don’t you understand? It’s not my decision.”
She had told him about her orders. Of course she had. CLASSIFIED be damned. How was she expected to come up with a plan for resettling 1000-plus people without help?
“Laugh!” he said. “Get up. I know it’s a long walk, but we’re almost there.”
Huh? Elfrida got up and followed him.
They came to another lateral shaft. Half of its width was taken up by a conveyor belt. An articulated trolley arrived at the same time they did. It raised its rear end like a caterpillar and poured ice chunks onto the conveyor belt.
“Now we get to ride.” Vlajkovic hopped onto the belt. Elfrida scrambled after him. “This belt takes the mine’s output up to the water refinery on the surface. We’re not going all the way, though …”
Ten minutes later, he signalled her to get off.
The conveyor belt angled upwards. A smaller tunnel doglegged off. They walked that way for a couple of hundred meters, until they reached an airlock. Inside the chamber, Vlajkovic took off his helmet and gestured for her to do likewise.
The valve on the other end opened on a brightly lit passage.
Elfrida screamed.
A machine-gun was pointing at her face.
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 67
