by Brian Smith
“All right, I’ll do it. I’m going to go check on Diane again, and then I’ll meet you back at your security annex.”
“Better make it the garage. The work crew is probably just showing up now to get cracking on that blown-out wall. I’ll keep a lookout for you. I— What now?” he added, frowning slightly as he saw the light suddenly play across her oculars.
“Breaking news,” Ayers replied quietly. “Maria Vasquez was found dead in her quarters this morning. That’s four out of five Crandall board members dead, with Drayson still MIA.”
Harper scratched his head, clearly puzzled. “Even if it is the MIM behind all this, I still don’t see a motivation for it. Why?”
“It’s seems fairly obvious to me that the MIM is responsible. Their advanced technology, their weapons, their cyber capabilities, and, I suspect, these Omnisynths all tie together. If anyone has shown the ability to hack the synths and turn them into weapons, it’s the MIM. In any case, the Mars Independence Movement is the common thread connecting them all. I’ve been trying to penetrate the heart of that movement for weeks now, and getting nowhere. Now I’m starting to feel like I’m getting somewhere, even if I’m just inching along.”
“Okay, but why would they go after the Crandall Foundation?”
“That one’s tougher, but on the face of it I’d say the MIM is trying to protect its technological edge. Given the lack of a standing Mars military, that tech advantage has proven to be the MIM’s best weapon. Why else would they need something like that AI algorithm to fool people about the Omnisynths? Campbell obviously had something to do with those, since your company seemed to have the lion’s share of the ones we know about. Drayson was tied up with the UMF, wasn’t he? Don’t I remember reading something about that?”
Harper was at a loss. “I honestly don’t know. I usually watch sports—not the news.”
Ayers snorted. “Typical marine. Well, the Crandall Foundation has always been at the leading edge of technological expansion. Drayson is the one trustee we can’t account for—he’s also the one with ties to the UMF, and maybe even the MIM by extension. Now the other board members are dead and their companies and senior employees eliminated, and the only apparent loose ends are these data cores Campbell had stashed away.” She paused thoughtfully. “No offense, but knowing all that makes me wonder how safe it is to be caught standing next to you.”
Harper had to chuckle at that.
Ayers continued. “Okay, then. I can handle the meet with Ashburn or whoever shows up, go with him to retrieve the cores, and get them back home to the cavalry. How far am I going to have to go? Driving distance? Flying? Off planet?”
“Driving,” Harper replied. “I’ll get you set up with a rolligon and supplies. I’ll leave it to you to denetwork the damn thing and cybersafe it so it’s harder to track. I’ll send you the lat-long where the cores are buried—”
“No! Write it down on something.”
“Christ!” Harper breathed. “I almost bungled it already. . . . Not using the net, or your snoopers— It’s like trying to teach yourself not to breathe!”
Kasei Echigo (Kusaka Family Freehold)
Isara Valles Region, Mars
Kusaka Shiguro hadn’t said anything to his comrades, but privately he’d been terrified of what he might find when Banth One landed at his family’s habitat in the Isara Valles, just a little over thirty-five kilometers from Kuretashima Habitat. By keeping up with the newsfeeds for the past several hours, he had learned that the Federov Propulsion industrial park had been destroyed by fire and that Dmitri Federov had been found dead in his home in Nuevo Rio. No publicized news was available for professors Hyman or Tsong, but his inability to reach them boded very ill.
Given that Kusaka himself was of at least equal importance to Federov Propulsion as the other three, it was logical to assume that he was a target as well. He was relieved beyond belief to find his family’s freehold intact and his family unharmed; his best guess was that the only thing that had saved them was the fact that he’d been scheduled to fly to Earth aboard Thuvia, which itself was slated for either hijacking or sabotage. The enemy must have known that and counted on getting two birds with one stone if successful.
Given the current troubles on Mars, Kusaka learned that most of his family was either already at Kasei Echigo or on their way. Their emergency plan in the event of disaster or unrest was to “circle the wagons” at home and ride out the storm. There was some surprise and a little initial unease among the Kusaka clan when a large spaceplane set down unannounced outside the dome, but once they learned it was Shiguro, all was well. He introduced his companions Mike Ashburn, Carter Drayson, and Jen Hansen to the family, and they were made to feel welcome with warm but very formal Japanese hospitality.
Their respite was short; Ashburn wanted to keep things moving forward. He didn’t like being cut off from communications with Thuvia but had to maintain his self-imposed blackout at Kasei Echigo if he wanted Banth One’s location to remain covert.
They took the time to clean up a little and get some food into them, a lavish meal of sushi rolls made from fish that were farmed right at Kasei Echigo by Kusaka’s mother, an aquaculture specialist. The meal was served by her and the family’s youngest daughter, Hanako, whose scholastic trouble several months before had proven to be the catalyst for Kusaka’s breakthrough on Tsong transforms. Kusaka’s brother, Yoshi, ate with them, listening intently to the tale of their recent adventures and their impending plans. Drayson wasn’t in on this conversation; he was with Kusaka’s other sister, Mariko, in the holding’s tiny infirmary, getting his wound patched up properly by the freehold’s autodoc.
“Do you know what it is Harper wants your help with?” Kusaka asked.
“No, or how long it’s going to take,” Ashburn said. “I hope it’s nothing that necessitates sticking around Mars too long. I’m going to meet him at Lucky’s, which, happily, isn’t too far from here. I take it you have more than one rolligon about the place—can you run me over there, or at least to Kuretashima? Lone Star is the next stop up the maglev line from there.”
“Actually, there was something else I wanted to do while you’re away, if you’re willing,” Kusaka said somewhat hesitantly.
“If I’m willing? Willing about what?”
Kusaka looked a little sheepish. “It has to do with Banth One. I checked the cargo manifest for this load you were taking up to Thuvia. I’ve got all the components I need in order to modify her right here, sealed away in her hold.”
“Modify her how?” Hansen asked, looking at her captain with suddenly wide eyes.
“With a bit of work, I can integrate our new technology into her systems. I’m talking about the inertial dampers and the apparent mass-reduction field, specifically. I—”
“Tovarich, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Ashburn interrupted impatiently. “Plus, we’re going to need that ship to get back to Thuvia. Now is not the time to be tearing her to pieces and trying to turn her into some kind of prototype!”
Kusaka smiled and held up a hand. “Wait, Mike-san, hear me out for a minute. I can do this without tearing her apart. The only change I’d make to her drive system itself is to add a failsafe: a thrust cutoff for if the inertial dampers failed for some reason while she was under acceleration. Everything else I can wire up separately. I’d have to place some field projectors on her hull—”
“You do that, she won’t be able to morph,” Ashburn cut in.
“She won’t need to, and I can take care of that,” Kusaka went on insistently. “Listen, Mike-san, I can turn her into the fastest, most fuel-efficient ship in the solar system. You could send Thuvia ahead without us and get her out of any possible danger—I know that’s been eating at you. With my modifications, we could take off from Mars and fly Banth One all the way to Earth with the fuel she has on board right now and probably beat Thuvia there.”
“Banth One doesn’t have true interplanetary range,” Ashburn
protested, a little more feebly this time.
“She will when I’m finished. Her fuel efficiency will increase a thousandfold, and she’ll boost twenty or thirty times as fast.”
Ashburn was clearly intrigued. “This is the same technology that was going to move Daedalus to Rigil-K in half the time?”
“Well, the precursor to it, I hope,” Kusaka replied. “The beauty of this intermittent technology is that it’s an adjunct to what we already use—it’s not actually the gravity drive we’re ultimately shooting for. I’m not talking about tinkering with the spaceplane’s propulsion system itself, other than programming in the failsafe.”
“What if it doesn’t work? Or worse, fails midflight? What are the repercussions?”
“Then she essentially reverts to her current configuration, minus the ability to morph in atmo, which, as you well know, we don’t really need in the near term. My failsafe won’t kill propulsion entirely—it’ll just put us temporarily into freefall to prevent us from being jellied by, say, a 20-g burn. You’ll be able to throttle back up to survivable accelerations within moments of the failsafe’s cutting thrust.”
“Did you say a 20-g burn?” Hansen interrupted, literally turning a shade paler.
Kusaka playfully raised his eyebrows at her. “Federov Propulsion’s latest and greatest. The beauty of it comes from the inertial dampers: with those, you won’t even feel a thing.”
“What will we feel?” Ashburn asked.
“Without getting into the physics of it, you’ll feel whatever acceleration we’re under when the dampers are switched on. If we turn them on before lifting, we’ll be under Martian gravity. If we turn them on while in free fall, we stay that way inside the damping field. If we’re boosting at a half-g and switch them on, we feel a half-g no matter what we do after that, until we switch them off.”
“That sounds like artificial gravity!” Yoshi exclaimed.
“It’s as close as we can come yet,” Kusaka replied. “We can’t generate a g-field, just sort of trap the one we’re already in and take it with us, if that makes any sense.”
“That sounds like magic,” Hansen said dubiously.
“It’s just an engineering problem,” Kusaka winked at her. “One we’ve solved.”
I can’t believe I’m actually considering this, Ashburn thought to himself. Still, in a pinch those kinds of accelerations would translate to an active means of defense. He asked his friend how long it would take to do the work.
“A day, maybe a day and a half, if Jen-san here is willing to suspend her disbelief and lend me a hand. How are you with a tool kit?” he asked Hansen with his customary shy smile.
“I can hold my own,” she replied gamely. It would be something to do, anyway, other than sit around as a stranger in someone else’s home.
Ashburn bit his lip and then nodded slowly. “All right, go ahead and try it. Are you sure about this, Shiguro-san?”
Kusaka smiled. “We’ve been pretty close-mouthed about this as a company, for obvious reasons. It’ll be a game changer once it goes into mainstream production—the kind of thing that will reshape the economics of the entire solar system. I’d be, uh, less than truthful if I said we hadn’t already made it work here on Mars. I wouldn’t suggest this otherwise. I’d never gamble with your ship or our lives like that, my friend. I’ll need access to the flight control software,” he added.
“It’s not a state secret, tovarich. It’s right in the maintenance manuals. Have at it, I guess.”
“I can take you to Lone Star, Captain Ashburn,” Yoshi said. “Will Mr. Drayson be going with us?”
“No. He’s wounded, he’s probably being hunted, and he’s too high profile. He’s also the only surviving member of the Crandall Foundation Board of Trustees, as far as we know. He stays,” Ashburn said firmly. “If he gets bored, he can help out Shiguro-san with the modifications to Banth One. Okay, then,” he added, slapping the table with finality, “we have a plan of action. Let’s turn to, people.”
“‘Turn to’?” Yoshi asked.
“Sorry—I’m reverting to navyspeak in a crisis. It means let’s get to work.”
Lone Star Habitat
Amazonis Mensa Region, Mars
“I’ve never seen it like this before,” Kusaka Yoshi breathed as he and Ashburn stared out the viewport of the rolligon.
The paved road paralleling the maglev line was jammed with rover traffic, and even more seemed to be stopped, turning the area outside the two Lone Star garage locks into a virtual parking lot. As they approached, they were signaled by the Lone Star authorities, who warned them that the garages were all at capacity and that, due to temporary overcrowding and the strain on the habitat’s environmental systems, only U.S. citizens were being granted access. All other comers were encouraged to keep on moving, either toward New Arizona or back the way they came, toward Kuretashima Habitat or Magic Dragon Habitat.
“Me, either,” Ashburn replied, looking troubled. “A refugee stampede on Mars. I never thought I’d see anything like it. Where do they all think they’re running to, anyway? The Marsnet is reporting a MIM drone-swarm attack in New Arizona last night—I doubt anywhere is truly safe right now.”
“I don’t think they’re going to let me in here,” Yoshi said hesitantly. “Technically, speaking, I’m a Japanese citizen. How do you want to handle it? The rolligon has supplies and air for several days, but I sure don’t want to sit around out here in this mess. . . .”
“Nor should you have to,” Ashburn replied. “I’ll jump out and head in. Getting access shouldn’t be a problem for me. Do me a favor and stick around for a while, will you? Once I meet with Harper, I should have a better idea about what happens next. You willing to do that?”
“I guess so,” Yoshi replied.
“Good man. I’ll try to make it as fast as possible,” Ashburn replied, patting him on the shoulder as he got up. Ashburn put on his helmet and sealed up his exosuit, with Yoshi buddy-checking him before he locked out and made his way to the crowd of people waiting for access. He stood in line for almost two hours and listened to at least two dozen rumors about what had already happened and what was going to happen, before he made it inside the garage to the first checkpoint. When he locked in with a group of about twenty other people, he found that several rolligons had been strategically parked to form a single pathway between the inner and outer airlocks, restricting access and movement. A desk was set up just outside the inner airlock, inside the garage bay. Two deputy U.S. marshals completely sealed up in combat suits flanked the airlock. They carryied full-size particle-beam rifles, along with a host of other gadgets like marbles and screechers.
Ashburn hadn’t brought either of the newer, advanced particle-beam weapons his crew had taken off the Omnisynths. Instead, he’d left them with Kusaka and Hansen on Banth One because he hadn’t wanted to leave the family without a means of defending Kasei Echigo or the spaceplane itself if they wound up needing that.
Although Ashburn wanted to remain as anonymous as possible, he quickly realized that wasn’t going to be in the cards. He admonished himself that he should have known better, especially in this day and age. Cameras were everywhere, and all information was processed through cloud-based systems. People could place themselves under a privacy seal, preventing their ID from tagging in the AR displays of those around them, but government officials or law enforcement could normally bypass privacy lockouts on any pretext they wished, especially during a time of public emergency. He realized that he’d been already been identified, scrutinized, and verified even before he made it up to the desk. When he was asked to remove one of his gloves and place his hand on a DNA scanner, he did so and the box chirped cheerfully a moment later, verifying that he was indeed LTJG Michael Ashburn, USNR, and eligible for admission to Lone Star Habitat under the current restrictions.
“Are you activated? under orders?” the administrative clerk asked.
“No, sir,” Ashburn replied.
He was
then quoted the air fee he’d have to pay for admission to the habitat. It was exorbitant, more than four times the usual rate. Under different circumstances Ashburn might have raised a little hell about it, but he was anxious not to draw any unwanted attention and understood that today wasn’t the day to make waves. He authorized his account to be billed at half-day intervals, the best they could do at the moment, given the volume of human traffic through the habitat. It was highway robbery, pure and simple.
“Reserve military personnel are being called up just about as fast as they’re located and identified,” the clerk informed him, “although with Halsey Station gone it’s all happening from Earth and time-late, given the transmission delays. Don’t be surprised when it happens, though. If you’re still here when it does, let us know and we’ll start billing Uncle Sam for your air fees instead of you. Understood?”
“Got it,” Ashburn replied, adding that piece of information to his growing list of worries. Given the events of the past day, he hadn’t even stopped to think about some of the peripheral consequences of the first interplanetary war, or the destruction of a full one-third to one-half of the U.S. Navy right at the kickoff. He realized with a bit of shock that his soft, lucrative civil career would be getting put on indefinite hold in the very near future.
Once Ashburn was inside the dome proper, he strolled slowly down the main north-south promenade toward Lucky’s. Every public establishment that was open seemed filled to capacity; those people unable to find a spot in a public house or restaurant simply meandered about in the streets, looking somewhat transient and out of place in full exosuits with their helmets clipped to their fannies. The air smelled heavy and slightly stale, and it stank with the acrid tang of human sweat and ferrous Martian dust. Lone Star wasn’t the largest of Martian settlements to begin with—quite the contrary, it was more a way station between New Arizona and Nuevo Rio than it was a city-size settlement of its own. The whole situation was a little claustrophobic, even for Marsmen used to enclosed spaces.
