Use of Emergency: The Si-Carb Chronicles Book 1

by Kate Kyle

  "As far as I know, not yet, mate. I've not heard of anything, even on the Academy grapevine. Of course, there is always that first time, and any stealth technology would have to be tested. So, let's say it's possible, particularly with the Chinese. But why the scrambled message? Maybe this was a ship in distress or some sort of flying probe with a broken transmitter."

  "Good thinking," he said.

  She waved her hand. "What point are you trying to make? How far are we from the Red Balloon?"

  He detected a note of impatience and sarcasm.

  "Yes, it's a bit convoluted," he agreed. "But hear me out. That's exactly what happened. As you said, this could of course have been a piece of rock with scrambled-up transmitter. And in that case, likely to be spyware. Or, as you rightly pointed out, an incredible stealth ship. Both would strongly indicate New China's involvement."

  "Or someone wanting us to assume it to be a Chinese contraption, because that's exactly what everyone would think."

  "Another great point," he admitted and rubbed his hands together.

  "I know it all sounds crazy, but I'm nearly there," he added, even though he actually wasn't even close to the point in case. "The PanAm ship contacted a Rebels' outpost, which happened to be the only manned station within touching distance. The Rebels burst a message aimed at the object and analyzed the response, which confirmed the PanAm ship's suspicions."

  "So, it was a Chinese stealth ship?"

  "Well, it's not that easy to say," Rutger said. "The Rebels received the same scrambled response but weren't keen to go as far as to assume it was a Chinese ship in case, as according to the records, the said spacecraft had been docked in a shipyard in the Moon's orbit, being repaired. Plus, all Rebels' measurements indicated again that this was nothing more than a piece of rock travelling through space, albeit at an unusual speed."

  "And?"

  "The PanAm ship sent another message, asking the travelling object's crew-"

  "Or its imaginary crew," Jax cut in.

  "Or its imaginary crew to identify themselves and provide their purpose of their trip. But the object didn't reply, just repeated the scrambled burst. In the meantime, the object left the Rebels' outpost's radars and seemed to have gained speed."

  Jax glanced at him through narrowed eyes.

  "I would have assumed a flying broken probe with an engine by now."

  "I see your point, but the PanAm ship assumed this was a secret project by our great un-friend from the East–new engine and some stealth tech," he said. "The crew issued a final warning: identify yourself and your business and or we shoot."

  Jax whistled.

  "A space war that fortunately didn't happen," she said, nodding slowly. "I think I know the incident you're talking about. One of the students overheard the trainers talking about that. But we weren't made officially aware. What happened? They shot it, didn't they?"

  "They did."

  "And?"

  "Nothing. The piece of rock exploded into a myriad smaller pieces."

  "So, it was just a piece of rock?"

  "Apparently so. Another automated piece of equipment that belongs to A-Belt Miners Ltd. reported a piece of debris from that object reaching its proximity. The debris was analyzed at a distance and reported to be mainly silica-based rock. The debris was still travelling at a considerable speed and so was destroyed to avoid collision and damage to the instruments in the area."

  "Pah, a small asteroid thrown out of their orbit. The space is full of them. Sometimes they have to be destroyed. I've done that, too. Much ado about nothing," Jax said, shrugging. "Interesting story, but how is this all related to Lulu and the girl with the balloon? Why hasn't this been all over the media? Sounds like we almost started a war with the AAPC and no one really talked about it."

  Rutger pressed his lips together.

  "The AAPC never claimed any missing spacecraft. They denied they had any ships in the area at the time. The suspected vessel was docked in their shipyard on the Moon. Given that, the PanAms were embarrassed that they couldn't tell a ship from a piece of rock, and the Rebels were simply not interested. Obviously, this could have been all covered up by the APPC," he added, seeing that Jax opened her mouth, probably to cast more doubt on his story. "A secret operation testing a new, stealth technology and-or a their own fusion drive."

  "Or simply a spy probe," Jax said. "Okay, believable, although only with this particular hypothesis in mind. But-" Jax said and paused watching him carefully. "But why does it matter so many months after the event?"

  "Because it didn't end there."

  Jax rolled her eyes.

  "Will you, please, hurry up?" she asked.

  There was more than a note of impatience in her voice. But there was more to come, for sure.

  "The problem is that there is no clear connection," he said. "As I said earlier, we suspect there may be a connection between the destroyed object and the virus."

  "Sorry, I might have missed something, but how can there be a link between the virus – if it indeed is a virus – and the piece of rock hurtling through space?"

  "One of the reports with the image of the girl came from the same group of machines which reported a piece of debris in their proximity and destroyed it."

  "You're stretching my imagination, mate."

  He nodded.

  "I'd be surprised if I wasn't. But this was where one of the scientists, xeno-scientists analyzing the data suggested that the rock was actually something of an alien provenance."

  Jax froze and then burst out laughing.

  "What? Little green men riding a comet?" she asked.

  Rutger sighed. Actually, he wasn't at all surprised by her reaction. He'd gone through the same process.

  "Something like that," he replied.

  "Okay, that's just crazy. Now, for the bat-shit-crazy part." She sat back, grabbing the armrests. "Tell me more about the girl with the balloon," she demanded, jerking her chin as if to encourage him to speak.

  "Ah, I knew you were smart enough to see past my ramblings," Rutger said and grinned. The worst thing was that it all seemed like rambling also to him, too. "As I said earlier, we've been working under the assumption that there is more here than meets the eye."

  "It looks to me like a giant eye of a cyclone that just sucks in every single thing that crosses its path."

  "Just like that. And that's why I'm casting my net wide. I was coming to Segedunum anyway, so the Seekers asked me to keep an eye on anything that could be related to the incident with the flying rock. I showed you the screenshot of that image on my tablet, didn't I?"

  Jax nodded.

  "It was the same as the one we saw on the screen of the ship's tablet," he said.

  "Sure, except for the "Free the Artifact!" slogan. And that makes sense to you?"

  "No, not to me. Not yet. But I think it makes sense to Lulu Zhou."

  Her eyebrows shoot up again.

  "How come?"

  "I've managed to read some of the top-secret documents provided to her by the Si-Carb. I think she's been brought in to investigate it."

  14

  Jax

  Jax crossed her legs and arms. She'd tried very, very hard to keep her comments to a minimum, and focus on asking questions.

  To truly understand something, she needed to be truly curious about it, but that was damn hard with Rutger's story.

  She'd considered just getting up and walking away, until he mentioned blooming Lulu Zhou again.

  "Okay, dear master conspiracy theorist," she said, letting the weary tiredness that filled her head seep into her voice. "What did you see in those top-secret documents?"

  She braced herself for yet more convoluted stories, but he reached into his pack, which he had put by his feet, and pulled out his tablet.

  "I think you'd better see for yourself."

  He passed her the tablet.

  She stared at a not-very-sharp photo of a screen with lines of text. She strained her eyes to read it, but
it wasn't easy. Reading text visually had never been her forte. She preferred information presented in graphs, drawings, flowcharts or read aloud. But the photos showed the worst of the worst: blocks of long lines of symbols. She ground her teeth and used her index finger to help her focus on the text.

  She managed a couple of lines, skipped a paragraph and read some more.

  "It says something about an incident at a research station, and that something bizarre happened," she said. "Sorry, can't read much more, " she added with as much apologetic note as she could muster. "Can you translate it into American for me?"

  Confusion crept onto Rutger's face.

  "It should be legible…" He paused. "Ah, you, PanAms, you don't really learn to read text anymore, do you?"

  "We do, but not too much. We tend to use the 'read aloud' options. And you?"

  "Reading's still a subject in primary school. But as part of cultural appropriation more than anything else, you may say."

  "Clinging on to as much of the past as you can…" Jax said and immediately regretted. There was little point in inflaming the conversation. "Sorry, we were talking about the screenshots. Tell me what's there," she added promptly.

  Rutger retrieved the tablet and nodded.

  "Yes, I can. But it involves another history lesson and more convoluted theories."

  More? Was that even possible? But she'd wasted so much time on listening to him already… What did they call it? Sunk cost thingamajig?

  "It'd better be worth it," she said.

  "I hope it is worth it. Okay, so … about seven months ago there was an incident at Vindolanda research station, which is a Rebels' outpost. The Vindolanda scientists have been brought here, all six of them appearing very sick. They were placed in a medically induced coma and are still being kept in the Si-Carb facility. Prior to becoming so unwell, they were exploring a piece of rock of an unknown provenance, likely alien-"

  "Aliens again," Jax cut in. Her patience was wearing really thin. "Can you hurry up and get to the point?"

  "I've already got to the point. I'm just expanding on it."

  "Then, sorry, but I've missed it. What is that point?"

  "That Lulu Zhou has been brought to Rebels' Republic to study the sick scientists."

  "Not the alien rock?"

  "That's likely as well."

  "And she is going to do that, because she's an … AI mastermind or because she is a Cricket Lady?"

  "Probably both."

  "Now, you're getting a little too creative in seeing the connections!"

  He leant forward.

  "I see you haven't read the whole thing. I agree, it's a tad difficult to read in places, but have you noticed the words: swarm and suspected alien intelligence that functions as code?"

  She blinked.

  "No. I must have missed that part," she admitted. That much was definitely true. She must have also missed the classes where they discussed the words Rutger had just used. Frigging Europeans and their old-fashion, impractical education.

  "Will you enlighten me what this all means in practice?" she said and braced for a condescending lecture.

  "Swarms are groups of insects or other organisms, biological or not, massive groups, which behave as if they were one, big, intelligent organism," he replied in a very matter-of-fact way.

  What a relief!

  Maybe he was right and those fancy words and moments of smartypantsery were expression of his upbringing and not aimed at humiliating her at all?

  Or maybe she needed to work on her self-esteem. She wasn't really stupid, just educated differently.

  "Any biological body, human, animal or plant is a combination of tiny cells," she said. "These cells work together in intricate ways and it all goes very smoothly and-"

  "True, but that's different, Jax. The organisms, individuals that form a swarm can function independently. And they function independently up and until certain conditions are met."

  "What are those conditions?"

  "No idea. But someone who studies locusts might. Locusts form swarms. The most important thing to know here is that as a single organism, a locust is pretty benign by itself, or even in a smaller group. But when it swarms, when its behavior changes, the group becomes much more powerful than a sum of its individual parts."

  Jax chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking through what Rutger just told her.

  "Okay. You still have the AI or code to include. Let me guess," she risked. After all she could think for herself, too. "The Rebels have found some sort of alien code, which acts like a swarm?"

  "That's my take on what I've been able to read."

  "And that's why they've brought Professor Zhou here?"

  "Makes sense, right?"

  "Now, it does. So, she's here at their invitation. Missing from her African-Chinese contract, yet not really missing? Do you think the New China government…" she let her voice trail off. The conclusion she had arrived at seemed too crazy. Like out of a spy movie.

  "Exactly my thinking," he replied, thoughtfully.

  "But if she's doing something for the Rebels, and her government knows what she's doing," Jax said, running systematically through the assumptions to make sure she didn't miss anything important. "And knowing that Rebels and China, or pardon me - APPC, stand so much at the opposite ends of the spectrum that Rebels won't even sell them their fusion engines…"

  "Now they do, but you're on the right track. Politically these two entities have never been able to collaborate properly."

  "That's my point. So, with all that in the mix, I can't help but assume that Ms. Zhou has been secretly allowed to do the job for the Rebels," Jax said.

  Rutger cocked his head.

  "I'll go further," he said. "I think she's a spy. I wouldn't be surprised if her job was to steal the blueprints for the Rebels' fusion engine. My bet is on the engine, since it's the only Rebels' invention the Chinese haven't yet managed to reverse-engineer?

  Jax chewed on her cheek even more.

  "Maybe you're right. But if she's here by special invitation of the Rebels, why is she doing all these bizarre things? Stealing my device? Fiddling with the controls in the medicargo bay?"

  "I don't know why she stole your device, but it seems that there is something or someone else she cares about a lot. My bet would be that it's someone in one of the stasis pods."

  He told her about the partial conversation he overheard between Lulu and the neurosurgeon.

  Jax leant back in her pilot chair.

  The story started off rambling and unbelievable. Now, it was still somewhat rambling and still unbelievable, but bits of it made sense.

  "So, to go back to the beginning of our conversation. Lulu-"

  "Or the argument, if I may go back even further."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your reluctance to accept my request to help you. Can you see why I want to go after Lulu Zhou? And since we're both after her, we'd be better off working together."

  Yeah… She knew that was coming. Whatever way she looked at it, there was no escape. This was one of those quests she should have kept totally to herself. Now, she had a financial debt, and her favor-debt was growing.

  She looked away. Her eye caught a pulsating dot on the screen, signaling an incoming message waiting to be accepted.

  She should have never allowed other people to join her quest. It was a job for one. And now it was threatening to become teamwork.

  Jax McCarthy didn't do teamwork. Jax McCarthy didn't do trusting and particularly entrusting all she had in her life to others.

  Could she do it?

  "Someone's trying to get hold of me," she said.

  No doubt, Rutger would come back to this conversation. But why didn't she jump in that cesspool of teamwork with both feet and hook, line and sinker?

  "Who is it?" he asked.

  "Hired help, I'd call him. Although, he'd probably describe it differently."

  She swiped the screen to allow the message to come in. />
  "Hey, SandCat, got some info for you. Waiting by the port HQ," the message read.

  "Come in," she typed back.

  A reply arrived almost instantly.

  "I'm at the gate. Couldn't wait."

  Reluctantly, Jax, brought up the feed from the outside camera.

  The familiar tall, slim figure stood by the lock.

  "How did you find me?" she typed back, her natural paranoia kicking in.

  "We don't get many visitors. Yours is the first ship to dock in days," he replied.

  That made sense. She could relax.

  She tapped to open the lock and went out to meet SingMa at the other end of the sluice.

  Annoyingly, Rutger followed her. She wanted to tell him to back off, but she swallowed the comment.

  It really wasn't anybody's fault that she felt so crappy.

  "Hey, you won't believe it," SingMa said as soon as he emerged from the lock, "but I've found your thief."

  "With or without my device?' Jax asked.

  "I'm chasing your device, and it's moving, therefore it must be moving with the person who has it."

  "Which may or may not be Lulu Zhou," Rutger joined in. "By the way, I'm Rutger. I'm also interested in this thief, but only as long as it's a certain Lulu Zhou, aka-"

  "Yeah, Yeah. That's my assumption. I'm SingMa. Short for Singularity Master," SingMa said and laughed. "Or Manish Sing, which is my real name. A full RR resident."

  Rutger blinked.

  Jax just pressed her lips into a thin line. Where was his sudden openness and high trust coming from? Players in AdAstra were very protective of their real identities.

  "Rutger Jansen, journalist, but why are we doing this whole introduction?" Rutger asked.

  "Because it's important to know who you're working with. And because here, in RR we don't really do secrets," SingMa said and glanced at Jax.

  Jax shrugged.

  "It looks like you can hack any system on the station. You should have checked me out."

  "I did. Jackie McCarthy, pilot. There isn't that much on you, though. You're an Earthian. "

  "So am I," she said and clasped her hands. "Are we done with pleasantries? Can we get straight to the point?"

  The sharing was making her uncomfortable, not only because there were things in her life that she'd rather keep dark, but also because the whole idea of disclosing real life information stank of hidden agendas.