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

by Felix R. Savage

  The eyes of the projection met the eyes of the man. Studd’s ravaged face twitched. “I’m an AI. My primary goal is to stay alive. My secondary goal is to keep you alive.”

  “You’re an AI,” Kiyoshi shouted, “but I am the fucking captain! Open the airlock!”

  The airlock opened.

  Kiyoshi fell in.

  Coughing.

  Hurting.

  Not everyone in Shackleton City was dying. He’d seen normal people in Wellsland, obliviously sharing the streets with the Dust devils. Nadia had been fine, until she pissed them off ,and became the exception that proved the rule.

  It was the same rule the PLAN always used, and it went like this: cmd.exe DIE PUREBLOODS DIE exit

  The PLAN’s definition of “pureblood” had been debated ad nauseam over the years. The latest thinking was that the PLAN used genetic markers as shorthand for distinctive mentalities, be those ethnically or religiously defined. What the PLAN really hated was unique cultural values. Unfortunately for Kiyoshi, he was ethnically 100% Japanese, steeped in Japanese culture, and a follower of a jealous God, so he matched the PLAN’s target profile in every way possible.

  He just hoped the cijiwu would keep him going until he’d done what he had to do.

  He bounded down the steps, and promptly fell into a crater.

  Tumbled head over heels. Fetched up against a rock etched with the words YE OLDE DUCKKE PONDE.

  He laughed. Tasted blood again.

  He staggered between abstract and realistic sculptures, through a maze of shadows. It was as if one of Earth’s famous museums had come to him.

  The dome of Bloomsbury loomed, its near side hidden in shadow. Kiyoshi enabled IR scanning. False-color heat whooshed from an airlock. Human forms, limned in flame.

  Kiyoshi ran into the shadow of the dome. People rolled on the ground, slapped at the flames licking over their suits, which were going out anyway. Things could burn in a vacuum, but you needed a better oxidizer than the outer garment of a designer spacesuit.

  Kiyoshi pushed through singed skirts and jokey alien costumes. Keyed his suit radio to the public channel. His helmet filled up with coughs and high-pitched sobs. These refugees were children, swimming in their parents’ EVA suits. “Lorna!” he bellowed. “Derek Lorna!”

  He eeled into the airlock just before it closed. As it cycled, it filled with smoke.

  The far end opened. Into hell.

  Kiyoshi stared down the length of a street lined with hemispherical bulges of fire that bubbled and wobbled as if they were made of jelly. Fire behaved differently in micro-gravity than it would on Earth: it appeared eerily tranquil—and was hard to put out. A thick pall of smoke hung over the burning buildings like a cloud. Fire-retardant foam fell like snow from the hidden roof, but it merely made the flames spit.

  Stretching back from the airlock, as far as Kiyoshi could see, people in EVA suits queued for their turn to escape. Their suits were continually catching fire, owing to the globules of flame that wafted down from the burning buildings. They put out the flames with handfuls of foam scooped off the street.

  A tall person in an EVA suit that mimicked evening wear, except for the iridescent bubble of helmet beneath his top hat, stood at the head of the queue. He tapped Kiyoshi’s arm. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  “I know,” Kiyoshi said.

  “Clear the airlock, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Kiyoshi stepped out of the way. The queue surged forward. “Women and children first,” the tall man said.

  The queue fell back. Smaller forms were manhandled to the front, every hand slapping at the flames that had caught the dinosaur spines of their suits, their unicorn horns and decorative donkey ears.

  Kiyoshi walked past the queue, through the slow blizzard of flames. Like a thousand little candles, falling from the sky. He shouted over the clamor on the public channel, “Mr. Lorna! Derek Lorna, where are you?”

  Bodies lay on the street, halfway out of burning doors. Not everyone had got into their EVA suits in time to avoid death by smoke inhalation.

  Or by Dust.

  Kiyoshi dashed down a side street where the flames seemed to be less. Gardens smouldered behind high walls. Smoke hung in striations.

  A group of people knelt in the street. Their butts poked up. Their heads were down like dogs. They were eating …

  Kiyoshi backed up, nausea roiling his stomach. “Jesus Christ, Studd, are you seeing this?”

  “Yes,” Studd answered hollowly. “It’s symbolic.”

  “Symbolic?”

  “The PLAN’s war on humanity isn’t just a hot war. It’s also an information war, and a propaganda war. So aesthetics matter. Symbolism matters.”

  “So they’re symbolically saying, ‘WE WILL EAT YOU ALIVE’? That’s not symbolism, that’s just the truth.”

  Coughing, choking on the lining of his own lungs, Kiyoshi bellowed defiance.

  “Hey, assholes! We’ve got your number! Enjoy your meal, because we’re going to smash you into oblivion, so help me God!”

  “Amen to that,” a voice on the public channel echoed.

  “Who’s that?” Kiyoshi stumbled into a pirouette. Flames blocked the way he’d come. He wouldn’t be getting back to that airlock.

  “Over here.”

  Four people came around the building on the corner. Only two of them were walking. They carried the other two: a child, and a person in a spacesuit with joke antennae dangling from his helmet. Neither of the two walkers had suits, just rebreather masks, so Kiyoshi recognized the younger one.

  The Dust devils rose and clawed at them.

  “Jesus, I wish I’d stayed in Manila,” gasped John Mendoza. His rebreather mask had a built-in radio. “I wish I’d never heard of the goddamn Department of Intrepid Exploits.”

  “Run!” Kiyoshi shouted, urging them towards the building on the corner. It turned out to be a school. It was pretty tall. It would do.

  They all crowded into the zipshaft. Mendoza put down the man he was carrying to help Kiyoshi operate the pulley. “Are you Derek Lorna?” Kiyoshi said to Mendoza’s middle-aged companion, who carried a little boy in a rebreather mask. He wouldn’t have expected Derek Lorna to go to the trouble of saving a child.

  “No,” Mendoza said. “That’s Lorna.” He toed the limp form of the man he’d put down on the platform. “He got a pretty bad dose before he got into his suit. He might be alive, or he might not.” Mendoza peered at Kiyoshi’s faceplate. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you recognize my voice?” Maybe not. He was so hoarse, he didn’t sound like himself any more. “It’s Kiyoshi.”

  “You really have a gift for turning up when things go to shit.”

  The top floor of the school was an enclosed gym, furnished with playground equipment. And filled with smoke. Kiyoshi had hoped for access to the roof, but this would do.

  “We’re no safer here!” yelled the man carrying the child.

  “Look for suits,” Kiyoshi said. “This is a school. The emergency lockers should be easy to find.”

  While he waited for them to do that, he watched the conflagration. From up here, he could see a vista of flame bubbles filling the dome, glowing through the smoke, forming a track that led from a point at the far edge of the dome, to the airlock.

  “Lorna set fire to every house we passed,” Mendoza said when he and the other man returned to the gym. “Then when we got to the airlock, he wanted to go back and do some more. But then he passed out. Or died, maybe. I don’t fucking care.”

  Yet you were carrying him, Kiyoshi thought. They were all in EVA suits now, including the little boy. “Stand back.”

  He dropped his rucksack. Fumbled out the weapon he had brought from the Wakizashi: a bunch of metal cylinders that screwed together, forming a long tube..

  “What are you doing?” Mendoza said.

  Kiyoshi did not answer. He fitted a rocket into the tube. It was a simple launching system, unimproved-upon for centuries. He open
ed a window and snuggled himself against the frame.

  Ron Studd had stolen these rockets from the Monster before they left Tiangong Erhao. During their journey to Luna, he had used the Superlifter’s repair and handling (R&H) bot to jury-rig a dorsal launcher for them. He had done all of this in secret, behind Kiyoshi’s back. Kiyoshi had only found out when he missed the R&H bot. He’d been furious, but it had struck him that he could repurpose one of the tubes from the dorsal launcher as a man-portable system.

  He pushed the button that ignited the fuse, and blew the dome away.

  ★

  Elfrida saw the explosion of fire on the horizon. The PLAN! she thought. They’ve come back to kick us when we’re down.

  She was running with hundreds of people. Something bad was happening in the domes. People had come outside to escape it. And yet now they were running towards the explosion, instead of away. Pity and admiration thrilled through her.

  The destroyed dome had been Bloomsbury, where Derek Lorna lived.

  Saw-edges of roof caught the low-angled sunlight. “Bloomsbury,” people said on the public channel. “Bloomsbury. Thought those one-percenters would be OK, no matter what. Ha ha; shit.”

  The confirmation robbed Elfrida of energy. She would never get her revenge now. Someone else had got there first. Houses and trees stood exposed to the vacuum, flame-blackened. The fire had gone out when the air went away.

  Hundreds of people had escaped from Bloomsbury. You could tell the escapees from the plebs by their custom spacesuits. They lay on the ground. They were dying, alone in this crowd.

  “It’s safe out here,” said other people.

  “The stuff can’t survive in vacuum.”

  “Oh yes, it can.”

  “You’re safe in a suit.”

  “Unless it got into your suit with you.”

  “Out here is safe.”

  This was the same babble Elfrida had been hearing all the way across the plateau. She couldn’t imagine what it meant.

  “Hey, you in the UNVRP suit!”

  She froze, startled.

  “Who are you?”

  She spun in a slow circle.

  A person in a BLOOMSBURY PRIMARY SCHOOL suit stood a short distance away. He was behaving oddly for a teacher. To wit, he was pointing a pistol at her.

  “Say something,” he begged. She shook her head. This made no sense. He was supposed to be in the Belt, millions of klicks from here.

  “… Mendoza?”

  His pistol wavered.

  “It’s me. Elfrida.”

  “Is it really you? Really?”

  “Yes, who else would it be?”

  “No one.” He caught his breath in a sound like a sob. “Never mind.”

  They embraced, faceplates bumping, servo-powered gloves gripping each other’s backs.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You first,” Elfrida said. Mendoza was here. Everything would be all right.

  “OK. Well, I didn’t go out to the Belt.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you. I didn’t want to drag you into … I’ve been working for D.I.E all along. We had the funding, the technology, everything, it could have worked. But our nanoprobes, the Dust, the PLAN copied the concept and turned it against us. That’s what this is.” He gestured at the destruction around them. “It infiltrated Shackleton City on 9/29. But it went undetected, because the Dust can camouflage itself. The probes have the ability to collectively replicate images they acquire in camera mode, by changing color. That was so they could carry out … the mission that was originally envisioned for them. But the PLAN used that functionality to make devils in the likeness of people it killed. That’s why I wasn’t sure you were …” He gripped her upper arms tightly, as if to convince himself that she was solid.

  “It impersonated me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it must have just grabbed my image off the Space Corps website. Because I’m not dead.”

  Mendoza bumped his faceplate against hers. She could just see his face in there, gleaming with sweat or tears. “I thought I’d lost you, like I lost Connie.”

  She remembered that Connie was the name of his sister, the one the PLAN had killed. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not that he had her in the same category as his sister. “Well, I came to kill Derek Lorna,” she said. “But I guess the PLAN did it for me. Dammit; foiled again.”

  Mendoza twitched.

  “What?”

  “Ellie …” He pulled away from her. Stooping, he gathered up a man in an EVA suit with antenna dangling from its helmet. She hadn’t even taken notice of the guy. Had assumed he was just another of the Bloomsbury victims. “This is Derek Lorna. I dunno, he might be dead, but if he’s alive, we have to keep him that way.”

  “What? No!”

  “He knows about the Dust. When it comes time to figure out how this happened, we’re going to need his expertise. Everyone else who was involved with D.I.E. is dead.”

  “Ah, crap! The guy is a genocidal monster!”

  “And how,” Mendoza muttered. But he shook his head, facing her, his faceplate reflecting the sunlight. “Ellie, is this who you are? You used to help people. Helping people was your life. What happened?”

  “I don’t know, John. I don’t know. I hate myself these days.”

  A quadrupedal bot bounced over their heads, in a big hurry to get somewhere. It looked like one of the multi-purpose R&H bots that came with spaceships. It was carrying a person—or maybe a corpse, judging by the lack of movement—in a black EVA suit.

  It headed for a Superlifter parked on the regolith, beyond the blast ring of destruction.

  “That’s not Kiyoshi Yonezawa’s Superlifter, is it?” Elfrida said.

  “Yeah, it is. Ellie, I have to go.”

  “No!”

  “Do you see anywhere else I can get medical attention for him?” He settled Lorna in his arms. “Come on.”

  It was too sudden. She hesitated. “There won’t be room …”

  “No, crap, you’re right, there wouldn’t be. Tell me you’ll come when you can. Promise.”

  “I promise,” she said, dazed. “I’ll come when I can. But where to?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll be in touch.” He leaned in to bump her faceplate once more—the closest they could get to a kiss. Then he leapt away, following the bot.

  Elfrida watched him go. When he had reached the Superlifter, she drew a deep breath and looked around her. Aid workers had arrived. They were triaging the victims, loading them into Grasshoppers and other flying cars. A couple of the workers wore EVA suits emblazoned with the Space Corps logo.

  She glanced self-consciously down at her own UNVRP suit. Then she scooped up a handful of moondust and ash and rubbed it on her chest, obscuring the logo.

  She bounded over to the Space Corps group. “Hey, guys. How can I help?”

  ★

  Kiyoshi dangled from the grippers of the Wakizashi’s R&H bot, half-alive, half-dead.

  The bot raced through the wreckage of the dome. It carried him out to the Superlifter and dumped him into the crew airlock.

  “The medibot will inject you with a high dose of anti-microbials,” Studd’s voice said in his helmet. ”Those will fight the Dust, and also give you a drug fever.”

  “Good. I like drugs.”

  “We have to get you as hot as possible, so about 41.5 degrees. Any higher, and you’d wind up with brain damage. Not that anyone would notice the difference.”

  Kiyoshi dragged himself to the lip of the airlock. The heights of Shackleton Crater wheeled. The sunlight hurt his eyes.

  “Did I do that?” he said, surveying the ruin of the dome. The roof was gone. Most of the buildings still stood, burned out.

  “I wanted to do it,” Studd complained, anger in his voice.

  And finally it clicked. From the haze of pain in Kiyoshi’s brain, a memory e
merged: Jun at the age of five, staring at the hole Kiyoshi had just dug with their father’s power drill. They’d been planting trees or some shit. Jun had raged at Kiyoshi: I wanted to do it!

  “Too fucking bad. I’m the eldest.”

  He surrendered to a coughing fit. He didn’t feel much like the eldest. Didn’t feel much like anything.

  Mendoza leapt up the steps, carrying Derek Lorna’s limp body in his arms. “Is there room for two more?”

  “Who?”

  On Mendoza’s heels, the R&H bot plonked two more people in the airlock. The same guy who’d been in Bloomsbury, and his kid. They were not purebloods. Not hurting. The father immediately started trying to cycle the airlock. “I’m an important person!” he shouted. “My name is Abdullah Hasselblatter! I’ve got a Ph.D!”

  Kiyoshi started to laugh. It hurt so much that he passed out.

  xxxviii.

  “I can’t walk any further.”

  “Yes, you can,” Elfrida said. “I’ll help you.”

  She shifted the two-year-old onto her hip and stretched out an arm for the baby. So light. She tied the arms of its adult-sized sharesuit around her neck like a sling. EVAs with babies were a nightmare. The poor little soul could hardly reach the rehydration nipple to suck on it.

  This whole journey had been a nightmare.

  Two thousand kilometers. All the way from Shackleton City, to Luna’s northern hemisphere.

  The Dust had made Shackleton City uninhabitable. The whole area would have to be sterilized. So the survivors—about a third of the population—were on the move, making for Luna’s other cities and settlements. Anywhere the Dust was not. Anywhere that had room to take them in.

  It was the biggest evacuation in the history of space colonization.

  Thousands of surface transport vehicles borrowed from He3 mining operations, flown out from Earth, and salvaged from the stricken cities, darted through this slow-moving river of humanity. They picked up the old, weak, and sick, roared off with them, and then came back for more. But the evacuees numbered well over one million. There simply was not enough transport.

  So those who could walk, had to.

  And Elfrida walked with them.