The Space Corps, Médecins Sans Frontières, and other aid agencies dropped inflatable habs in the path of the evacuees, so they could rest, eat, and replenish their suits’ reservoirs of oxygen and fluids. But access to the inflatables had to be strictly controlled, to avoid contaminating them with Dust. It had come with the evacuation, in people’s suits. If they weren’t pureblooded, you might never know they were carrying it … until it built up in their lungs and doomed them to slow asphyxiation. Hundreds of people died like this every day.
One of Elfrida’s tasks was to gather up the dead.
Another was to staff the decontamination facilities.
She also helped to pass out emergency food aid.
But mostly she just walked with the evacuees, helping up the fallen, pep-talking the weary, and making sure no one got lost.
Spirits stayed high, in general. The evacuees said, “They attacked us because we have a culture. Shackleton culture.” This formerly recondite theory of the PLAN’s war aims had come to be accepted as fact. It united the pureblooded and ‘normal’ survivors of Shackleton City, instead of dividing them. “The bastards tried to kill what’s unique in us. But we’re still here!”
Shackleton values—resilience, stoicism, a tolerance for uncomfortable clothes, and above all, the spaceborn trait of making bad jokes about the unthinkable—kept the evacuees on the march, and Elfrida with them.
A month after they left the south pole, they entered the lava tube of Marius Hills.
Riders came out of the dark to greet them: men on camels. The animals wore their own spacesuits, equipped with directional time domain radar for navigating in the lava tube.
That evening, Elfrida sat with a group of evacuees in an oasis in the desert. The desert had a roof. It was a dome, six kilometers long. The House of Saud had thrown New Riyadh open, for the first time in history, to accommodate the evacuees. Exhausted people carpeted the floor of the habitat, stretching all the way to the walls of the citadel where the King lived.
Elfrida let a handful of sand trickle through her fingers. It felt so good to be out of her spacesuit. She was tireder than she’d ever been in her life.
Her last job had been helping to distribute the Meal Wizards that the House of Saud had donated. When she ran out, she’d sat down with the group who got the last one. It was now cooking up bowls of so-called lamb stew. The evacuees huddled around it as if it were a campfire.
“Feels great to be clean,” someone sighed.
Clean was an understatement. Before they were allowed into New Riyadh, they’d had to go through a decontamination process even more thorough than the fungicide showers at the waystations. It had left them smelling like freshly scrubbed toilets.
They’d also been warned to keep their shoes on, or the foxes would steal them. Elfrida had not seen any foxes yet. They were probably hiding in their dens, spooked by this invasion.
The man next to her flopped on his back. “Stars,” he said. “Ain’t never seen ‘em before.”
On the roof sparkled copies of the million and one stars you could not actually see from Luna’s tidally locked dayside.
“Look,” Elfrida said. “There’s Mars.”
“One day,” the man said flatly. Others murmured agreement. “One day.”
xxxix.
Kiyoshi floated above the pilot’s console of the Superlifter, curled in a fetal posture. It hurt to touch anything. The air was his bed. He slept, woke, slept, woke, as if the drug fever were a gravity well he struggled to escape, only to fall back in.
The third or fourth time he woke, Mendoza was shaking his shoulder.
“G’way,” Kiyoshi mumbled.
“Lorna.”
“Wha’ ‘bout him?”
“He looks bad. I think he’s dying.”
Kiyoshi clamped a weak hand on Mendoza’s shoulder and let himself be towed across the cockpit. Dr. Hasselblatter was self-googling, as usual. Junior Hasselblatter was taking the sushi machine apart. Oh well, if it kept him quiet.
Derek Lorna floated at the far end of the cockpit, outside the toilet. His feet bobbled against the cover of the recycling unit, as if he were ready to climb in. He did look bad. Ugly swellings had appeared on his face and hands.
“Studd,” Kiyoshi coughed. “Can you give him some more of whatever?”
“Anti-microbials,” Ron Studd’s disembodied voice said. “No. I’m almost out, and I’m saving the rest for you.”
“I’m not as sick as he is.”
“Maybe … maybe we should just let him die,” Mendoza said. “Elfrida wanted to kill him. I couldn’t let her do that. But would it be a sin to let nature take its course? How badly do we need his expertise? I’ve been thinking. Maybe we’re better off not knowing the things he knows.”
“Maybe. But I still need him alive.”
“Did you know that D.I.E. was planning to genocide everyone on Mars? His idea.”
“Huh?”
“Do you remember Little Sister?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kiyoshi said. In his fevered state, the memories came back vividly. “Sure. The human-like object we found in that fragment of a PLAN ship on 4 Vesta. Looked like a girl. Was some kind of biological construct. What ever happened to her? I guess the ISA took her away …”
“To Pallas. And Lorna’s research group were given access to her. Somehow, they got her to talk. And they learned that there are millions of human beings on Mars. Hidden away underground. Millions.”
“Not human beings, if they’re anything like she was.”
“You get to make that call, based on one encounter?”
“I can always tell.”
“But maybe you’re wrong. Lorna decided she was human, for what that’s worth. And he shared his findings with Trey Hope. And that’s how they came up with the concept of the Dust.”
“I’m sick,” Kiyoshi said. “Spell it out for me.”
“The Dust wasn’t just for surveying Mars. Oh sure, it had that functionality too, but it was over-engineered. They tried to pack too many functions into one tiny package … But its primary function was to do exactly what it did on Luna. To kill. It was a bio-weapon designed to wipe out the PLAN’s tame human population.”
“Damn. Wish I’d thought of that.”
“Oh, God,” Mendoza said. “This is what I’m talking about! The more we fight them, the worse we get! If we commit genocide, they really will have dragged us down to their level.”
“Some of us don’t need any dragging,” Kiyoshi said, touching Lorna’s shoulder with his foot.
“Ow,” Lorna said. His eyes opened, glazed with fever.
“Guess you’re not feeling that bad,” Kiyoshi said.
“I feel like utter and complete balls. It’s true, by the way. The PLAN has a tame human population, and we were going to waste them. Why else would we have based the Dust on Vibrio vulnificus?”
The fever sucked at Kiyoshi’s thoughts, swallowing his consciousness. He must have fallen asleep. Next thing he knew, he was back in the pilot’s couch, strapped in so he wouldn’t float away, and Junior Hasselblatter was trying to stuff the nipple of a drink pouch between his lips.
“Quit that!”
“You need to hydrate,” Junior insisted. Kiyoshi realized this must be terrifying for the child. He also realized that Junior was right. He needed to hydrate. Sweat glued his body to the couch cover. He peeled his shirt off. It was sodden. His fever had broken, and he felt much better.
“Is that gatorade? Thanks.”
“I feel slighted,” said Lorna. “Don’t I get to be nursed?”
Kiyoshi slewed his gaze around. Lorna sat cross-legged on the air. The swellings on his face had gone down so that they looked like a bad case of rosacea. He was recovering.
Kiyoshi met Mendoza’s eyes. Mendoza shrugged. Nature had taken its course.
“My dad says perverts like you are indestructible,” Junior informed Lorna.
“I’m a pervert! I’m a pervert? Let me tell you abou
t your father, squirt ...”
Yup; recovering.
“Studd, where are we?” Kiyoshi interrupted.
“Still cruising,” Studd said, in his now-customary sulky tone. “We can be there in a couple of hours if we burn.”
“There? Where’s there?” Lorna said. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Kiyoshi decided to reassure the nervous man. “I’m your friend, buddy. And luckily for you, I’ve got powerful friends of my own. We’re doing what you should have done six months ago.”
“What?”
“Defecting to the Chinese.”
★
“Oh, hell no, sir,” said Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter. “You are not taking me and my son to Tiangong Erhao.”
“You’re welcome to get off here,” Kiyoshi said.
That put a stop to any further objections from the Phony Dumbshit.
50,000 klicks out from Tiangong Erhao, the Superlifter decelerated at a sedate pace. At any moment, Kiyoshi expected to be hailed by the CTDF. He had his lies all lined up: I’ve brought Nadia (RIP); the cockpit cameras are bust (no, they aren’t); sorry, she doesn’t want to talk to you (she’s dead), but just let me dock, just let me dock …
He was still running a fever of 38°, but compared to the ravages of Vibrio vulnificus, that was nothing. He felt fluey, but functional. Three cheers for modern medicine.
The tragedy of Shackleton City was that no one had known what was happening until it was too late. They wouldn’t have had enough anti-microbials for all those people, anyway. So 5.5 million people had died in Shackleton City alone. The figure stunned Kiyoshi. That was one hundred and eighty 11073 Galapagoses. But he tried to put it out of his mind, to concentrate on the delicate negotiations that lay ahead.
“Ships approaching,” Studd said.
“A royal escort? Hell.”
“Kiyoshi Yonezawa?” said a French-accented voice.
Startled, Kiyoshi blocked the incoming vid link. “Who wants to know?”
“This is Star Force. You have been identified as the primary suspect in the attack on the Hope Center for Nanobiotics which occurred on the eighteenth of June. You are requested to return to Luna for questioning.”
“Wow. Do you always get results this fast?”
“You are not as funny as you think you are, Mr. Yonezawa. Reverse thrust immediately.”
“Enable the Ghost,” Kiyoshi said to Studd.
“This is your final warning,” the Star Force officer said.
“Take a long spacewalk,” Kiyoshi told him, grinning.
“Oui. Mange ma bite, motherfucker.”
The Superlifter hurled itself sideways. The human beings stayed floating in the same place for a split second until the wall of the cockpit hit them.
“Strap in,” Kiyoshi yelled. “They’re shooting at us.”
“Let’s shoot back!” Junior Hasselblatter screeched.
“Sorry, kid. No weapons on this truck.”
“I had weapons,” Studd said. His voice hissed into Kiyoshi’s cochlear implants, a poisonous jet of anger. “You took them away! Why’d you have to do that?”
Kiyoshi did not dignify the rage-filled accusation with a response. Those rockets wouldn’t have been any damn use in a combat scenario, anyway. It had been a childish, delusional gambit, serving only to prove that Studd could not be trusted with weapons.
~Enable the Ghost, was all he said. Aloud: “Everyone strapped in? Good.” He powered down the heat exchangers, the air circulation, the lights. “It might get a little hot in here.”
Deaf, blind, sweating, they glided towards Tiangong Erhao. Even Junior Hasselblatter was silent. The Star Force patrol raged behind them, prevented by diplomatic guidelines from approaching any closer to the Chinese space station. And in the onboard sim, Studd assaulted the Ghost, taking his rage out on its virtual toilet rolls. Rockets, nukes, nail-bombs, conventional warheads—in the sim, he had enough weapons to destroy the solar system.
xxxx.
The Wakizashi came out of stealth mode close enough to Tiangong Erhao that the enormous space station looked like a bone-shaped moon looming ahead. Kiyoshi tried to raise the Monster on comms, but failed. He then tried Tiangong Erhao’s Customs & Reception (Foreigners). “All operators are currently busy. Please call back …”
Shrugging, he took the Wakizashi into Docking Bay 14, a black divot in the side of Tiangong Erhao.
The Monster floated at the same old pier halfway down the bay. A gargantuan, Imperial-red crab crouched over the ship, poking it with its claws. Its headlights blazed like compound eyes. It looked like a D&S (demolition and salvage) bot, blown up to the scale of Tiangong Erhao itself.
“I’m going out.” Kiyoshi grabbed his HabSafe™ rifle and his laser pistol.
Lorna and the Hasselblatters stayed behind. Mendoza followed him into the vacuum. Kiyoshi wasn’t surprised. In fact, he’d come to expect that kind of courage from Mendoza.
They flew over the Huaihua, the colony ship presently taking up most of the bay. The D&S bot’s claws pried at the Monster’s cargo module. A laser cutter etched a fiery blue line on the hull. Rivets popped, and a section of hull sprang free.
Father Tom pinged him. “Kiyoshi? Is that you?”
“Father! Thank Christ, you’re alive. It looks like there’s a giant D&S bot out here, taking the ship apart.”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Father Tom said.
Kiyoshi and Mendoza flew towards the operations module. The D&S bot whirled its laser cutter at them. It passed so close that Kiyoshi saw the beam, a speckled streak of bue fire, igniting the dust and debris that floated in the bay. He slammed into the external valve of the command airlock. Mendoza hurtled out of the blackness and collided with the ship so hard he bounced. Kiyoshi grabbed his ankle, pulled him into the airlock.
“Father? Father!” Getting no response, Kiyoshi pulled his helmet off. The airlock cycled. The vestibule inside the ship stank of some unfamiliar chemical. “Father!”
“EXIT THE SHIP IMMEDIATELY,” said a mechanical voice.
“That was the tannoy,” Kiyoshi said in shock. “They’ve taken over our hub.”
Kiyoshi and Mendoza flew through the operations module. As they neared the bridge, Kiyoshi heard something else, which had been drowned out by the looped order to exit the ship. It sounded like a choir singing Deo gratias.
“Unh,” Mendoza grunted. “What language is that?”
“Chinese. They’re singing in Chinese. This is fucked. Stay behind me.”
Kiyoshi inched through the last room before the bridge. It had once been a conference room, and was now full of … duffel bags printed in Chinese characters with the name of the Huaihua. Weirder and weirder. He peeked through the hinges of the antique door.
People crowded the bridge. They were Chinese, and they were singing. Father Tom floated in front of them, holding a kendo sword—a shinai. At the near end of the bridge, several small titanium suitcases floated above the floor.
“Security droids,” Kiyoshi whispered.
“EXIT THE SHIP IMMEDIATELY.”
Kiyoshi poked the muzzle of his rifle through the hinges of the door and sighted on the nearest droid. His BCI, synced with the rifle, printed crosshairs on his vision.
The droid zipped away, shooting a plume of noxious fumes from its rear. That was what he’d smelt. The droid had some unfamiliar propulsion system for flying in an atmosphere. It butted one of the Chinese, trying to herd her away from the others.
Deo gratias broke up into shrieks.
“STOP THIS FUTILE RESISTANCE,” said the voice that had taken over the Monster’s hub. “USING HUMAN SHIELDS IS A BIG NOT. WE ARE MILDLY IRRITATED.”
If this was mildly irritated, Kiyoshi didn’t want to see mad. He picked one of the other droids and fired. His pulse hit it in the “lid.” It spun and fired a pulse of its own, which went through the door above his head, leaving a smoking, fist-sized hole.
Father Tom laid into the droids with
his shinai. Kiyoshi realized, too late, that the Jesuit had been desperately trying to prevent an escalation of the stand-off … which Kiyoshi had just caused by being the first to use lethal force.
He flew onto the bridge, firing. But both his rifle and his pistol were low-power weapons, designed not to damage machinery. All he achieved was to attract the droids’ wrath. He kicked off from the ceiling and flipped in mid-air, pulses sizzling around him.
Agony seared his left arm. His pistol fell from his fingers. A droid jinked to shoot him again—
—and fell into two unequal halves.
Mendoza hung from a grab handle, aiming his pistol at another droid. Pistol? The thing in his fist was more like a hand cannon.
“Saudi-made,” Mendoza shouted. “This much power’s got to be illegal. Oh, well.” He carved another droid up like a roast chicken.
Kiyoshi could hardly think past the pain in his arm, but he could still move. He flew through the crowd of Chinese convicts, who were setting upon the disabled droids, as if to shred them with their bare hands.
~Jun? JUN!
A door at the far end of the bridge led into the data center, where Jun lived in the literal, physical sense. Kiyoshi threw the door open. Foam spattered his face. He smelled smoke.
The processor stacks were slagged. The droids must have done it. The sprinklers rained foam on the smouldering, stinking mess.
Oh God.
Reeling back from the awful sight, he bumped into the fridge where the Ghost lived.
He’d taped a sheet of paper over the fridge’s display, so he wouldn’t have to look at the Ghost’s spam. Now the paper was ripped. The screen was no longer its usual death blue. It was white. He tore the rest of the paper away with his good hand.
I’m here. Jun’s face appeared on the screen, ‘speaking’ in text bubbles. Stay in front of the fridge’s camera so I can see you.
~You’re in THERE? With the GHOST?
They destroyed my processor stacks. It’s not that bad in here. There’s room for two, although it does smell a bit.
~There’s a D&S bot dismantling the ship. Chinese security droids are shooting up our bridge.
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 131
