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

by Felix R. Savage

  “Oh.”

  “So they will assume I’ve sent you along the usual route.”

  “The usual route?”

  “Victoria line to Wellsland, change at Gingrich, and take the Spudis line out to the spaceport.”

  That wasn’t what Mendoza had been asking.

  “So they’ll concentrate on searching the visual surveillance logs from the trains.”

  “All they’ll have to do is run a facial recognition search. That takes about five seconds.”

  “Not necessarily. One of the other things I Cheong does is cosmetic surgery. A quick and dirty rhinoplasty here, a bit of filler there; just enough to throw the software off.”

  “Hey, at least she’s WHO-certifiied.”

  Fr. Lynch laughed. “It’s quite the underground industry, actually.”

  “I hope she doesn’t get in trouble.”

  “Oh, she’s not doing anything illegal. Cosmetic surgery falls into the category of therapy. To answer your question, we’re going to the spaceport.”

  “Uhhhm,” Mendoza grunted in shock. He reappraised his surroundings. Oates dome loomed ahead of them, like a curvaceous circus tent. Between its outbuildings, he glimpsed empty kilometers of sunlit terrain: the skirt of Shackleton Crater. A paved road crossed the slope. Tankerbots crawled down the road, transporting water from the mine in the crater. “Father, how far is it to the spaceport?”

  “About a hundred and twenty kilometers.”

  “Isn’t that kind of a long walk?”

  “Yes. That’s why we’re going to do it in two parts. You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you any more right now. There’s always the chance that we might get caught, in which case, the less information you have, the better.”

  “You sure know how to cheer a guy up, Father.”

  Fr. Lynch’s surprised laugh exploded into his helmet. “My family tried to dissuade me from my vocation. They said, ‘A gloomy Gus like you shouldn’t be a priest. You’ll get the parishioners down, Tom.’ But in today’s solar system, you need an outlook that is at least tinged with black.”

  Mendoza wondered where Fr. Lynch came from. The Jesuit appeared to have mixed African and European heritage, and he was definitely a native English speaker. Sometimes the expressions he used (‘gloomy Gus’) hinted at a regional dialect. Impossible to say more than that.

  Conversation ceased as they circled Oates dome. Now they could see the built-up heart of Shackleton City, a chaos of domes bounded by Malapert Mountain’s darkside. The spaceport wasn’t visible from here. It occupied the floor of Faustini Crater, whose walls functioned as natural berms to contain the radioactive backwash from the dozens of spacecraft that took off and landed every day. There went one now, flashing up and away from the horizon. A meteorite in reverse.

  As they trudged down into the valley, Mendoza kept trying to check his email, the news, his heart rate, other stress indicators, and coming up against a wall of nothing. This was more than blindness. It was blind-, deaf-, and dumbness.

  I was a kind of cyborg, he thought. I had an extra pair of eyes, ones that could see information, and now they’re gone. What remained? The moonscape, and him. Trudge, trudge, trudge. His feet were really hurting. Gotta keep up. Fr. Lynch showed no signs of pain, striding tirelessly from shadow to shadow, dome to dome.

  They were following the string of domes that marked the underground route of the Wiechert line. The further in they got, the older the domes were, and the slummier. Some weren’t actual domes but just boxes, like Nightingale Village, the exurb where Mendoza lived. Had lived. Outside, people meandered, conspicuous in their bright orange sharesuits. A gang of children—the legs of their sharesuits shortened with alligator clips—sledded on homemade toboggans down a slope built of glassbricks. A maintenance bot was helping to improve the slope. It was strange to see one of those eight-legged nightmares being helpful.

  “They know they have to let people go outside,” Fr. Lynch said. “We would all go mad if they didn’t.”

  Mendoza nodded. “I think some people would live outside if it weren’t for the radiation.”

  They passed two people in the shadow of a waste heat recycling plant, locked together, faceplates bumping. Lovers who could find nowhere else to be alone.

  “Yes, the radiation,” Fr. Lynch said. “Actually, these suits are much better shielded than the sharesuits. You needn’t worry about using up too much of your lifetime allowance.”

  Radiation was the least of Mendoza’s concerns right now. Two stinging aches in his skull warned him that the painkillers were wearing off. Before long, the aches had joined up and spread all the way around his head.

  At last he had to say, “Father, my head is kind of hurting. Is it much farther?”

  “Unfortunately, it is. Can you access your telemetry suite? The suits aren’t fully stocked, but there should be some meds in there.”

  “How do I access it?”

  “Voice command. With the MI assistant disabled, it’s a bit clunky. Give it a try.”

  Mendoza grappled with the interface and convinced the suit to inject him with a painkiller. That helped some with the headache, but didn’t do anything for his feet, or his legs. He had already walked further today than he usually did in a week, and walking on Luna was tiring to begin with, if you were Earthborn, your legs fundamentally maladapted to the bounding gait that was the most efficient means of lunar locomotion. His awareness constricted to the grimy shape of Fr. Lynch bounding ahead of him. Their journey across the city center, through the maze of support facilities around Wellsland and Verneland, felt like a trek across red-hot coals.

  On the verge of collapse, he rooted around in the medical suite again.

  “My MI is disabled,” the suit complained. “Please enable it.”

  “What’s this? Nicozan? What does it do?”

  “My MI is disabled. Please enable it.”

  “Oh, frag off.” Nicozan was the only drug on offer apart from the painkillers he’d already tried. Presumably it couldn’t do him any harm. “SUIT COMMAND: Inject me with a standard dose.”

  Moments later, his feet stopped hurting. Shadows gained coruscating halos. The Malapert ridge—much closer now—sparkled, clothed with a crystal forest of parabolic solar collectors. This Nicozan stuff was first-class.

  Mendoza caught up with Fr. Lynch as they skulked into the shadow of yet another big-box facility.

  “Here we are,” the Jesuit said.

  “Oh!” Mendoza now felt as if he could have kept walking forever.

  “Farm Eighty-One.”

  An airlock stuck out from the wall. Outside it stood an open-topped buggy.

  “Uh oh.” Fr. Lynch hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Well, we have to go in. Come on.”

  viii.

  In the airlock of Farm Eighty-One, an electrostatic scrubber blasted the moondust off their suits. Grey clouds filled the airlock. Mendoza laughed. “Guess we were pretty dirty.” Nozzles sprayed them with nanobeads to remove the last of the sticky dust. The smell of the detergent lingered after the airlock was pressurized: a fake floral scent like cheap air freshener.

  They peeled off their suits. Mendoza’s boots had stuck to the soles of his feet. He yanked, ignoring the twinges of pain that filtered through the Nicozan. Blood flowed afresh from innumerable cuts and blisters. “Dang.” His soles looked like raw hamburger.

  “God almighty, man. Your blisters have got blisters.”

  “I’m OK. My soles may be a mess, but my soul is more important! Geddit, Father? Sole, soul—”

  “Let me see.” Fr. Lynch bent the useless boots in half. “Did you not activate the boots?”

  “What?”

  “They stiffen up and inflate to cushion your feet. Look at mine. These are still in portage mode.”

  “Oh.” Mendoza laughed. “Now I feel stupid.”

  “It’s my fault. I should have told you.”

  “Honestly, I’m fine! It doesn’t hurt that
much.” Mendoza reached up to stuff his suit in the USED locker. There was one suit hanging in there already, a high-end custom job with a hoopskirt, sealed at the bottom, instead of legs.

  “No, take your suit. Put it in your pack. We won’t be coming back this way.”

  Fr. Lynch put on a shirt with a dog-collar, a baggy black jacket, and black trousers. Mendoza skinned into his own clothes, the lightweight tweeds he wore when he wasn’t going to the office, which were as comfortable as Victorian gear got. He struggled to get his shoes on. His feet had swollen so badly he could not squeeze them into his lace-ups, no matter how he tried.

  “Leave it. You’ll have to go in your sock feet for now. We’ll see if we can get you fixed up here. You can’t walk any further like that.”

  “Yes, I can!” Mendoza did not understand why Fr. Lynch was making such a song and dance about a few blisters.

  They stepped out of the airlock into a potato patch.

  “Welcome to Farm Eighty-One,” said an old man sitting on a folding chair, vaping a cigarette. He cackled at Mendoza’s amazement.

  What Mendoza was amazed at was the old’s man’s attire. Jeans and a t-shirt, grounds for a fine anywhere else in Shackleton City.

  But as he looked around, his astonishment increased.

  He had known, of course, that there were farms on Luna. But he’d never bothered to find out what they grew, or how.

  Spindly plants sprouted from troughs of black soil stacked ten deep. Catwalks provided access to the upper levels. The ceiling was low, flat, UV-bright. Mendoza could practically feel himself tanning. A smell of excrement thickened the oxygen-rich, humid air.

  “Simon,” Fr. Lynch said to the old man. “Is Dr. Miller here?”

  “Sure is. You musta saw her buggy outside.”

  “We need her help.” Fr. Lynch indicated Mendoza’s feet. “I’ll go talk to her now, if that’s all right with you.”

  The old man reached for a pair of smart crutches. As he rose, the crutches wrapped support bands around his waist. Old age for the spaceborn often meant crutches, mobility chairs, helper bots, exoskeletons, or nanotic skeletal reconstruction (in order from cheap to unaffordable).

  “You be the judge of that, Father. I wouldn’t let that woman help me if she paid cash for the privilege, but that’s just me.”

  The old man raised two fingers to his mouth and whistled. The catwalk overhead vibrated. A 190-centimeter teenage girl leapt to the floor. “Hello, Father!” She knelt in front of Fr. Lynch, who blessed her. “Um, Father, I don’t know if you know, but—”

  “Yes, I know Dr. Miller is here. I’m going to talk to her now.” Fr. Lynch turned to Mendoza. “Stay with Simon. I’ll be back shortly.” He strode off into the maze of planting troughs.

  The old man, Simon, hacked and spat on the floor (another violation of Shackleton City bylaws). “Can’t tell him anything. Well, I guess it’s a priest’s business to look for the good in everyone. You cover for me, Jade. I’m gonna give this guy the tour.” He squinted at Mendoza. “You wouldn’t believe what folks are capable of. If we didn’t post guards, they’d sneak in here and steal our produce. Risk jail for a tater. Well, if you’ve ever tasted a Farm Eighty-One tater, that’s understandable, heh.”

  They walked at the old man’s slow pace between the walls of leaves. Dirt-caked tubers pressed against the insides of the transparent troughs. Mendoza left bloody footprints on the floor.

  “Russets here, purple sweet p’taters that way, orange ‘uns over there. Spinach and kale on the other side. Those’re mulberry bushes. Let’s take a little stroll that way. I bet you don’t know about that side of our business.”

  “How do you know Father Lynch?” Mendoza asked.

  “He’s our pillar of strength, ain’t he? Our parish priest is diaspora Chinese. Can’t spikky the Eeeenglish. We’d be in th’ weeds if Father Tom didn’t come down from Cherry-Garrard every now an’ then to say Mass for us.” Simon was bouncing along on his crutches at a tremendous pace. Mendoza glanced back. He could not hear anything except the patter of sprinklers and the rattle of laborers’ footsteps on the catwalks.

  “Now, this is the heart an’ soul of Farm Eighty-One.”

  The old man stopped in a grove of aggressively coppiced bushes. Clusters of purple fruits, like dense little bunches of grapes, grew amidst their leaves. Simon plucked one and handed it to Mendoza.

  “You can eat mulberries raw. Yum! Full of anthocyanins, which is good for your eyes. I’m almost blind. Couldn’t tell, could ya? I know this farm like the back of my hand. This way.”

  A bot was harvesting the leaves from the bushes. Why the leaves and not the fruit? Mendoza wondered. Chickens clucked beyond the bushes. The birds were running around in a large pen beneath a maze of foamboard boxes on legs. The two men went into the pen. Simon laid his hand on one of the boxes. “Ever wonder what nutriblocks are made of?”

  “Soy? And potato flour?” Mendoza’s patience was wearing thin.

  “Heh. Soy isn’t a complete protein. Those li’l blocks that people throughout the solar system eat, hate, mock, and depend on, are mostly made of … ta dahh!” Simon opened the foamboard box. Thousands of grey worms crawled over a layer of gnawed leaves. “Silkworm pupae. The chickens eat their casts, and the pupae gets processed. Course, you don’t hafta process ‘em.” Simon popped one into his mouth, crunched, and grinned.

  Mendoza understood that he was expected to be disgusted. “Ever deep-fry ‘em?” he said.

  “How’d ya know?”

  “I’m from the Philippines. We eat fried caterpillars.”

  Simon snorted, disappointed that his prank had failed. “I’m a take you to the clinic now. You can wait for Father Lynch there. I guess you ain’t interested in seeing our cows.”

  They walked back through the green maze. A door labelled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY admitted them into a hab area. It was a plain prefab grid, but the people of Farm 81 had decorated the walls with gloss paint and smartpaper. The murals and lending-library vid shelves gave the corridors a cozy, lived-in feel.

  In contrast, the clinic looked as if no one ever used it. Fr. Lynch’s pack sat on one of the cots. Mendoza dumped his own beside it.

  “I’ll go look for Father,” Simon said. “You stay here. Don’t go nowhere.” He closed the door behind him.

  Left alone, Mendoza paced. He winced at the sight of the bloody smears he was leaving on the floor. Shouldn’t a bot be on top of that already, keeping the clinic sterile?

  “Whoa.”

  In the corner of the clinic, behind the operating table, stood two medibots. Vaguely dog-shaped, with four arms and T-shaped heads, they were just like the ones provided to every community in Shackleton City. But these had been immobilized with splart. Translucent blobs covered even their mouths and eyes.

  Dust dulled the glassy bubbles of splart.

  They’d been like this for a while.

  “Whoa shit.”

  Mendoza tapped one of them on the nose. It did not react. More bubbles of splart bulged from its joints. It was completely jarked.

  Well, after the experience he’d had with the maintenance bot outside Cherry-Garrard, Mendoza knew you couldn’t trust any city-owned bot. Presumably, the people of Farm Eighty-One had some reason for jarking their medibots, although he wondered how they coped when someone got sick.

  He sat on the cot where he’d dumped his pack. Kept trying to check the time, and coming up against the wall of nothing in his head. Get used to it.

  But it sucked to be cut off like this.

  He hadn’t checked his email in … hours.

  As soon as that thought occurred to him, it refused to go away.

  He glanced at Fr. Lynch’s pack. He had seen the Jesuit put his tablet in there. It was probably still in there.

  If they’d left him alone this long, they would probably leave him alone a bit longer.

  Fumbling in haste, he undid the seals of Fr. Lynch’s pack. Lifted aside the crucifix, and t
here was the tablet. As soon as he touched the screen, it automatically established a connection to the farm’s wifi network. Mendoza experienced a physical sense of relief when the familiar Shackleton City log-in screen appeared.

  And boom, he was in. The tablet had automatically logged in with its own ID, which turned out to be ‘St. Ignatius Parish Council.’ Unlike wearables, tablets often belonged to places rather than people. He’d gotten lucky. That ID wouldn’t set off any alarms, if Fr. Lynch often came here to say Mass.

  It was 9:36 local time. Susmaryosep! They had walked all through the night and into the morning. Weird that he wasn’t tireder …

  In his hyper-alert state, Mendoza needed only a few seconds to set up a transparent proxy and connect to a little-known redirect service that would channel his session through a privately owned dark pool. With that in place, he logged into his comms program. He now had 42 voice and text messages from Derek Lorna. He shook as he skimmed them. In the most recent message, Lorna threatened to “fucking bury you. Quidditch on Mercury! Give me a fucking break! Who designed that kiddie shit? Who are you really working for?”

  Mendoza decided to check the news. That would be calming. Mercury … UNVRP …

  Jesus!

  Riots on Mercury ‘Under Control,’ Says UNVRP

  Zazoë Heap Critically Injured in Mercury Shootout

  Ringleaders Claim They Acted in Response to Genetic Discrimination

  Zazoë Heap Fighting For Life

  24 Hours Before Election, Violence Overshadows Campaign

  Zazoë Heap Dies of Her Wounds, Was Shot During Mercury Riots

  Death Toll From Mercury Riots Reaches 117

  UNVRP Deputy Director Ulysses Seth Dies in Riots on Mercury; Was A Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist

  Zazoë Fans Stage Grief-Fests on Earth, Luna, Ganymede, Titan, Ceres, Eros

  Candidates for UNVRP Directorship Share Their Memories of Zazoë

  Candidate Mork Rapp Calls for Election to be Postponed in Honor of Zazoë …

  Mendoza’s mouth hung open. Clearly, a lot had happened while he was off the internet.

  He frantically typed on the tablet’s screen, trying to track down any mention of Elfrida. One hundred and seventeen dead. Was she among them?