The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series

by Felix R. Savage

  She walked through the farm on the floor of the atrium. Children stood on stepladders, picking bugs off the kale by hand. Their eyes followed her. Their eyes, of course, were Vlajkovic’s eyes.

  Trying to look as if she knew where she was going, she trotted into Life Support. Here, too, people stared at her. But that was only because she was an outsider, and Life Support was cliquey.

  She sat down in the Life Support cafeteria, feeling shaky. Around her, people chatted about everyday topics. A big screen served up celebrity gossip.

  “Hi babe!” It was a text from Cydney. “Sorry I didn’t catch your ping! I’m super-busy, doing interviews with the candidates. See you back at the mud hut! Big sloppy kisses, C.”

  So Cydney was fine. Elfrida began to feel that she had overreacted.

  I’m being paranoid. Vlajkovic’s not crazy. He won’t murder me in my bed. And he certainly won’t hurt Cydney.

  No, he’ll just have me watched. He’ll try to stop me from getting to Dr. Hasselblatter.

  I should’ve pretended I was on board with his stupid plot. Then he wouldn’t suspect me.

  Too late now.

  I’ll have to act like they’ve scared me off.

  She debated simply emailing Dr. Hasselblatter, but decided against it. She had to tell him in person to convince him she hadn’t gone nuts.

  A bunch of UNVRP peacekeepers were sitting on the far side of the cafeteria. They were playing a game that involved trying to splart one another’s hands to the table. Their uproarious laughter washed through the cafeteria.

  Elfrida eyed the blue berets wistfully. Then she murmured, “No. Just, no.”

  She left the cafeteria, locked herself in the nearest toilet, and called her mother.

  ★

  “Well, this is very worrying, Ellie,” said Ingrid Haller, 90 million kilometers away. “If these people are serious about mounting an armed rebellion, you ought to tell someone immediately. If you feel, as you said, that you can’t tell anyone there, for fear of retaliation against yourself and Cydney, I’d be more than happy to get in touch with the authorities for you. I could make sure that the information gets to the right person.”

  Ingrid Haller worked at the UN prosecutor’s office in Rome. She knew people, and things, that others didn’t.

  “However, Ellie, isn’t it possible that they are just … I don’t want to say having fun, but … Do you think it’s possible that they wanted to impress you? To show you how serious they are, such big men? I think we have to be sure there’s a real risk of violence before we set in motion the machinery of justice.”

  Elfrida stared in outrage at the tiny screen of her phone. “Don’t you believe me, Mom?”

  Not yet having heard that, Elfrida’s mother went on in her German-inflected English: “I’m also thinking about your future. Not your career, your … You’ve already had contact with the ISA. You’re on their watch list. I’ve seen it. I was searching that database for another reason, and I saw my little girl’s face. Honestly, I wanted to punch someone in that moment. So if there is an investigation of these Dummkopfs, and they find you are in the middle of it, I’m afraid …”

  She sighed.

  “But of course, Ellie, the most important thing to me of all is your safety. Please don’t let me talk you out of doing the prudent thing. I wish I could be more help.”

  “So do I, Mom,” Elfrida sighed. She had just remembered why she did not often confide in her mother. Talking to Ingrid Haller was the mental equivalent of driving through a muddy puddle. Goodbye to any glimmers of clarity you might have had.

  Elfrida was also upset to find out that she was on the Information Security Agency’s dreaded watch list, and mad at her mother for not telling her before.

  A cherub buzzed into her field of vision, obscuring her view of her phone. You have a new message … Elfrida wrenched her head around to get her mother’s face out from behind the text, so she could read it properly. ... from Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter!

  She blurted, “I guess I’ll figure it out, Mom. I’ll let you know what I end up deciding. Don’t tell Dad,” she added. “He’d just worry.”

  She cut the connection and blinked open the message from Dr. Hasselblatter. It said simply, My office. ASAP.

  He must have figured out that she had tried to get in to see him. Well, she wouldn’t be turned away this time.

  Heart in her mouth, she hurried back up to L1. One of Dr. Hasselblatter’s strategists waited impatiently in the foyer. “Come on, he’s waiting for you.”

  They sailed past the receptionist. If looks could kill, Elfrida would have been eligible for recycling.

  3D wallpaper lined the radial corridor to the VIP hab block. They seemed to be walking past Alpine views, with doors disguised as chalets that loomed startlingly as they approached. The strategist walked jerkily, stabilizer braces constraining her gait. “God, I hate this gravity. Aren’t you worried about bone and muscle loss? I guess you’re exercising.” She made it sound like a bad thing. “Anyway. In here.”

  A chalet door opened into Dr. Hasselblatter’s campaign headquarters. This was the first time Elfrida had seen inside a VIP suite. She’d expected it to be luxurious, but it looked just like the HR office—with the original furniture, which was not an improvement. Satin flounces adorned fake antiques. Campaign staffers sprawled on the bed, absorbed in screens. Dr. Hasselblatter’s son was playing with Lego on the floor. Of Mrs. Hasselblatter there was no sign.

  Dr. Hasselblatter advanced on her. “Come here. Tell me what you think of this.” But he did not immediately explain what ‘this’ was. “How are you getting along, Goto? Have you completed your assessment?”

  “Sir?”

  Of course, he must think she was here to submit her community assessment.

  “Am I speaking Chinese? Your assessment. Of the community. Which I asked you to complete within one week.”

  “Well, actually, sir …”

  “Have you even started on it? ”

  “Sir, I’ve been, um, conducting interviews to ascertain the needs of the community.” As she spoke, she realized that she was doing just what Vlajkovic had told her to. Stalling for time. “I’m also analyzing potential resettlement options, and ….”

  “Resettlement? Resettlement? Who said anything about that?” Dr. Hasselblatter’s eyebrows flared. Then he grinned wryly. “I know, I did. But it was Charlie Pope’s idea. And after much consideration, I’ve concluded that it is a meatbrained one.”

  “Sir?” Elfrida was speechless.

  “Goto, Goto. These people have been living on Mercury for three generations. This is their home. Is it fair to uproot them? Why should they be tossed into the recycling bin, simply to shave a couple of percentage points off UNVRP’s overhead? Let them stay!”

  Elfrida felt dizzy. Dr. Hasselblatter was saying exactly what she had thought herself, before she found out that Vlajkovic’s people planned to take over the hab by force.

  “Consider the logistics. Where would we resettle them? Most of them are spaceborn, so they can’t be resettled on Earth. And where else is there? Luna doesn’t admit any new immigrants who haven’t got a spaceship full of cash. Ceres, you’ll say. Or Eunomia, Hebe, Cybele, Davida ...” Dr. Hasselblatter pulled a face. “Unimaginably bad optics. I’m amazed Charlie didn’t see that. It’s one thing to dump asteroid squatters on Ceres, but our own people?”

  “Sir, that’s exactly how I feel about it! I know it’s hypocritical, but …”

  “No, no. It’s not hypocritical at all! UNVRP is committed to human expansion through terraforming. People on other planets. That was the Project’s official slogan, until someone noticed that it didn’t make a very good acronym. Taking our own people off a planet, and dumping them on an asteroid … that would be hypocritical.”

  Elfrida thought, He’s seen a poll or something that changed his mind. As the President’s favored candidate for UNVRP director, Dr. Hasselblatter would have access to the best polling data. If
he had really changed his mind about resettling the community, it had to be because he thought it would help him get elected.

  “I’m trying to save UNVRP from blundering into a firestorm of criticism,” he said smoothly. “Too many people already see the Venus Project as a waste of money at best, anti-human at worst. We have to prove that we care.”

  “Yes, sir.” He was talking as if he had already won the election.

  “As a low-information voter, you’re an ideal test subject. Vid this.”

  “Sir, I’m not a voter …”

  “Yes, you are. Residency is the only qualification, and in another two weeks, you’ll technically be a resident.”

  Dr. Hasselblatter snapped his fingers.

  The illusion of velvet drapes covering one wall vanished. An instant’s glimpse of scabrous insulation tiles was replaced by a panorama of Mercury’s landscape. Across the grey rock strode Dr. Hasselblatter in a suit and tie. “This,” he intoned at deafening volume, “is the Caloris Planitia today.”

  “Papa,” shouted Dr. Hasselblatter’s offspring. “I can’t hear my Lego.”

  “Turn it down,” shouted his father.

  “And this,” said his vid image more quietly, “could be the Caloris Planitia in a few years.”

  The camera panned to an elevated railroad marching across the landscape. This railroad had not just one track, but a dozen. A pile of reflective metal slid along them, adorned with spires and flying bridges that connected its various bulges. Tiny gliders zipping around it provided scale.

  “A moving city,” Dr. Hasselblatter boomed in voiceover. “A work of art. An achievement to rival the Parthenon, the Pyramids, the spacescrapers of Astana!”

  The horizon behind the city-on-rails glowed with the gaseous searchlights that heralded sunrise.

  “These tracks run all the way around the planet. The intense heat of the sun causes them to expand, pushing the city along at a walking pace, keeping it within the safety of the twilight zone.”

  Legos bounced off the city, making it look as if bits were falling off it. Dr. Hasselblatter’s son had a future as an art critic.

  “Stop the vid,” the real Dr. Hasselblatter yelled. “I’m not happy with that phrasing. ‘The twilight zone’ … I think that may have been used before. Look it up.”

  “The whole concept’s been used before, sir,” said a staffer. “It was first put forward by the futurist Kim Stanley Robinson in the early 21st century.”

  “Ja, ja, but we’re promising to make it a reality. That’s the difference between science fiction and an election campaign.” Dr. Hasselblatter turned to Elfrida. “Well, what do you think?”

  She belatedly understood that they’d been looking at Dr. Hasselblatter’s election platform. “I think you should have a spacesuit on in the vid, sir. It kind of damages the believability quotient if you’re just … out there in the vacuum.”

  “You may be right. Trouble is, if I’ve got a spacesuit on, they can’t see my face.”

  Hasselblatter junior shouted, “Papa! Papa! Jimbo’s running for election, too!” He held up a Lego man. It squeaked, “Don’t tread on me.”

  “Frown,” said Dr. Hasselblatter. “This is what happens when you teach them about democracy.”

  Elfrida gazed at the image of the city on rails. This wasn’t terraforming. It wasn’t even paraterraforming. It was a planetary-scale boondoggle waiting to happen.

  “Was there anything else, Goto?”

  I won’t tell him about Vlajkovic’s plot, she impulsively decided. Not now.

  She didn’t grok the city on rails. But other people might. And if enough of them voted for Dr. Hasselblatter, he would win the election. And if he won the election, he would reverse Charles K. Pope’s decision to evacuate the community. Vlajkovic and his people would get to stay. And no one would ever have to know how close they’d come to taking a terrible, irreversible step.

  And the ISA won’t know that I almost got mixed up in another horrible carnage-y fiasco.

  Because there wouldn’t be a horrible carnage-y fiasco.

  Anyway, if I have to, I can always tell Dr. H. later.

  The decision lightened her heart, put a smile on her face.

  “No, sir. That was all.”

  On her way out of the suite, she trod on a Lego, which squeaked, “Watch it, you big moo!” Hasselblatter junior giggled.

  ★

  When she got back to their sandcastle, Cydney was home. Elfrida told her about Dr. Hasselblatter’s flip-flop. Cydney’s agitated reaction reassured her that she wasn’t reading this wrong. It was a big deal.

  “He must be conducting his own polling. Goddamn it!”

  Cydney gnawed her manicure, obviously upset. She always liked to have the hottest information before anyone else.

  Elfrida was too happy to wonder why the news seemed to upset Cydney. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she giggled.

  “No, what?”

  “It means I’ll have to campaign for my boss.”

  xii.

  Eyes gleamed red in the Cytherean darkness. Rats sidled towards the nutriblocks that Vlajkovic had mashed up and set out beneath the granddaddy of all the lamp trees. The light of the lampfruit flashed along their sleek sides.

  “All I want to know is did you snitch?” Vlajkovic said.

  Elfrida had forced herself to seek him out as soon as Cydney was asleep. It was now midnight, local time. The test hab slumbered. And Vlajkovic was out in the desert, testing a new rat poison.

  “No,” she said. “I did not snitch.”

  The warm wind from the the top of the shaft blew around them, scented with the musty smell of the lamp trees. The clonking of cow bells punctuated the peaceful silence. I want to stay here, she thought passionately. I want to stay.

  “Dr. Hasselblatter’s on your side,” she said. “He’s a better ally than Doug. He’s on the Presidential Advisory Council.”

  “He flip-flopped once, he could flip-flop again.”

  “He’s got it all worked out. He’s going to revive tourism to replace the jobs that will be lost with the Phase Five ramp. Then as regards the R&D division, there’ll be an initiative to identify commercial applications for these things—” she plucked the edge of the carpet Vlajkovic was sitting on. “And whatever else Richard is developing.”

  “Whenever someone offers me exactly what I want,” Vlajkovic said, “my response is, ‘Do you think I’m an Earthling?’ I was born on Mercury. On this planet, the sun is a lethal force. You learn pretty fast that the universe is not on your side. Zoom.”

  The last command was to his retinal implants. Elfrida’s contacts did not have a zoom function. She dimly made out the shapes of rats climbing the bole of the lamp tree. They had spurned the poisoned nutriblocks, and were going after their favorite food: lampfruits.

  “Curses,” Vlajkovic said. “The guys in the lab swore it was odor-free, hyper-palatable. Back to the drawing-board.”

  He got up and slung his carpet around his shoulders. Elfrida tried again. “You’re pinning your hopes on Patel, the NEO candidate. But she can’t win.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … because. She’s a doctor.”

  “Pediatrician.”

  “Pediatrician. From a tribe of semi-nomadic NEO water traders. She’s no one. She can’t be the director of UNVRP, OK? They wouldn’t let it happen.”

  “A vote is a vote.”

  “Doggone it, Mike, you can’t be this naïve! Or do you expect Patel to lose? Want her to? So you’ll have an excuse to start shooting people?”

  Vlajkovic started back towards the village, wearing his carpet around his shoulders.

  Elfrida leapt after him. She was too angry now to be frightened. “There are only two candidates who can win. Dr. Seth or Dr. Hasselblatter. Tell me that isn’t an easy choice.”

  “No,” Vlajkovic said. “Actually, it’s not.”

  “What, have you got some kind of atavistic loyalty thing going on? Or are
you just prejudiced against Dr. H because he’s from Earth?”

  The village came into sight around the bend in the shaft. Flashing light silhouetted the roofs of the sandcastles. Elfrida followed Vlajkovic into the central square.

  Everyone was watching Dr. Hasselblatter’s campaign spot on a big screen carried out from one of the labs.

  Dr. Hasselblatter had taken Elfrida’s advice about dressing his avatar in an EVA suit. But it was still a vid about a city on rails running around Mercury’s equator. Laughter rose from the crowd.

  Vlajkovic said, “It’s as if something about this planet makes people think of theme parks.”

  Elfrida sensed that he wasn’t talking to her. She saw Richard Gates coming towards them, carrying Bette in a snugglepack on his front. “Yes,” Gates said. “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards Disneyland.”

  Elfrida said, “Confused smile?”

  “Never mind,” Vlajkovic said. “Inside joke. You have to be an American.”

  If Elfrida’s confused smile had been real rather than an emoticode, she would have looked more confused than ever. Vlajkovic and Gates weren’t Americans … were they?

  She tried again, focusing on Gates this time. “Dr. H is on your side. Honestly, he is. He cares.”

  “And he just happens to be your boss,” Gates pointed out.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it!”

  Vlajkovic pulled her away from his husband and daughter. He dragged her over to the edge of the square, where the cynics were hanging out on the steps of the gengineering lab. Elfrida realized with a sickening lurch that she was once again surrounded by Vlajkovic’s friends.

  “I trusted you!” Vlajkovic hissed.

  He was still angry at her. He would probably be angry at her for the rest of their lives.

  “So you hate me!” Elfrida hissed back. “Fine! But these are my people, too! I won’t let you ruin their lives!”

  “You don’t understand. No one can stop the eviction! Not working from inside the system.”

  “And Patel’s an outsider, is that your point? Which is exactly why she can’t get elected, and Dr. Hasselblatter can!”