Ceres Rising (Cladespace Book 3)

by Corey Ostman

  “Thanks, Kyran,” Grace said.

  “Actually, that was—” Kyran began.

  “Not to worry,” Mhau interrupted.

  Kyran looked at her, frowning. Mhau winced. But the doctor just leaned closer, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’ll talk when this is over, Mhau,” he said. “I know you feel guilty. But it doesn’t hurt to let Grace know you’re assisting her now. It might even help.”

  Kyran’s encouragement and support mixed with her sadness, and her emotions spiraled. Mhau swallowed a burning lump in her throat, close to tears.

  “What’s all this stuff?” signaled Grace. “Like dust.”

  Mhau looked at Kyran’s display, quickly wiping the back of her hand against her eyes. Grace’s helmet reported increased external particulates. She recognized some of the compounds.

  “Looks like a slow circuit fire,” said Mhau. “Burned plastic.”

  “Oh, mango,” Grace said sarcastically.

  Mhau tapped her ptenda, wondering where the fire could be. No sensors were triggered. She knew one of the larger conduits in the tube came directly from the solar array, but the short circuit current of the solar panels was much lower than the carrying capacity of the conduits. And none of the other conduits carried enough electricity to cause damage like that.

  She jerked her head up as Grace’s positioning alarm went off.

  “Visual range,” Kyran said.

  “Confirming: in position,” Grace said.

  The protector crawled forward slowly. Airborne particulates had increased, and Mhau still didn’t see anything untoward that might indicate an electrical fire. No squeezes, either. Had they been destroyed?

  “Jacob, we need to know exactly where to find the squeezes. Ask Lee.”

  He nodded, detaching himself from the wall and heading to the isolation pod. After a moment, she heard him repeat the question to Lee.

  “Find ‘em yourself.”

  Lee’s voice. The roider’s cavalier attitude didn’t surprise her, but it did stir a nagging doubt. Why do we even care about the squeezes? This is Lee’s stash. It has nothing to do with the aposti.

  “Jacob—” she began.

  “Let’s try that again,” Jacob said.

  Mhau heard some kind of movement over Jacob’s link and then Lee’s voice rang loud and clear.

  “Ok—ok! I hid the squeezes and grafties under a metarm plate so they wouldn’t get moved around when the ventilation kicked in.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth now,” Jacob said.

  “Lee sounds afraid,” Kyran added. “He didn’t want to tell us that.”

  Mhau looked at Grace’s visual. It took a while to find the plate: it was well-hidden, pretending to be an access panel.

  “Grace, see that plate a meter ahead, to your right? Remove the panel.”

  Grace moved quickly, brushing particulate dust from the panel and pulling off its magnetic pins. She wrenched the panel to one side and trained her helmet light on the area beneath.

  “Bingo,” said Grace.

  There were four squeezes, each with an external neural cable connected to a grafty and a central powerpack. The wiring was sloppy and the pack itself was simply wedged between a conduit and the wall of the maintenance tube. All of the squeezes were backlit by pulsating purple light.

  That color.

  “Kyran…”

  “What is it?” asked Kyran.

  “Pawns,” Mhau said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “She’s right,” said Grace. “We’ve both seen them.”

  Mhau flinched.

  “Can you move the squeezes or grafties aside so we can get a better look?” Kyran asked Grace.

  “Carefully,” said Mhau. “There’s something burning near you, and the pawns might be involved.”

  The display flickered as Grace grabbed conduits and pried them apart. The signaling wire was heavy, but Grace managed to get enough separation to see behind. A narrow cloud of pawns stretched from the squeezes to a beefy conduit marked 1Z498. Mhau recognized that tag: it was the central conduit for the solar array.

  “Don’t touch them, Grace,” said Mhau. “They’re right next to the bode’s main power line.”

  “Are these the ones that killed Tim?” Grace’s voice was edged with anger.

  I killed Tim, Mhau thought.

  “Jacob,” said Kyran, reaching over and rubbing Mhau’s shoulder. “There are pawns with the squeezes.”

  “Pawns?”

  “Did Lee use pawns?” asked Mhau.

  “I don’t think so,” Jacob said, after a moment. “He doesn’t seem to know what you’re talking about.”

  Mhau watched the purple lights, fascinated. They weren’t hovering purposelessly: they were cycling to the solar conduit and back to the main cloud. Drawing power to remain active, perhaps. Where the pawns interfaced with the solar conduit, brief wisps of white smoke puffed. It happened intermittently, but clearly the pawns and the conduit insulation were not compatible.

  “They’ve tapped into our primary power source,” Kyran said.

  Mhau increased magnification from Grace’s helmet camera, trying to get a closer look.

  “I think this might be the source of our glitches,” she said.

  “Can you guys hear this?” Grace whispered.

  “Hear what?” Kyran squinted at the screen.

  “The pawns?” Mhau asked, but the protector had swiveled her helmet away from the nest.

  “Sstt. Trtt.”

  Harsh consonants. Someone was speaking nearby.

  “Is it coming from the conduit? Is someone else there?” asked Kyran.

  “Shhh.” Grace went very still. Mhau’s fingers flew, boosting the volume and adding filters.

  “You have twofer chaos on Mars, and you came all the way to Ceres to destroy a single PodPooch?” Renken’s voice. It was incredulous, angry, loud.

  Mhau called up the schematics of Bode-6. The green dot of Grace’s suit appeared on the display. She was three meters above Renken’s apartment. Of course. Lee would have kept his illegal stash as close to safe territory as he could.

  “The twofers are contained.” Panborn’s voice was partially distorted, a harsh whisper. “This AI was not. Do you realize it had already meshed with your bode’s systems?”

  Grace’s camera was not moving. Mhau turned to Kyran. “Grace won’t react, will she? Give herself away?”

  Kyran shook his head. “She’s upset, but she’s a protector first.”

  “Did you have to steal it? We could have taken it. Had it deactivated,” Renken said.

  “You made Donner your protector—”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You let your council do it,” hissed Panborn. “So then who exactly was going to confiscate the PodPooch? You can’t work with the law when it is corrupted by AI influence.”

  “Just tell me what you want, Panborn, and then get the hell off my bode.”

  “Simple,” Panborn said. “I need transport to Mars.”

  “Can Renken do that?” Kyran asked.

  Mhau called up transport inventory on her ptenda.

  “Not right now,” she said. “Three asteroid-only ships and the Waltz, which doesn’t have a captain. Nothing bound for Mars. And since we’re in lockdown, other bodes won’t accept passengers from Bode-6.”

  Kyran frowned. “I don’t think the aposti will accept a no.”

  Renken was still arguing with Panborn. “Even if I could drop the lockdown, which I can’t,” he said. “I would need—”

  Panborn laughed. The sound of it made Mhau shiver.

  “You’d better find a way,” Panborn said.

  “Or what? You’re going to kill me, too?” said Renken. Mhau felt a grudging respect for her crooked old associate. “You’ll just end up right back here, waiting. With Donner on the hunt.”

  Silence. Mhau saw Grace’s display shift. She was trying to get closer.

  Panborn’s next words we
re soft.

  “I paid a visit to your son’s Ink transmitter. Very quaint,” he said.

  An incoherent growl from Renken.

  “Oh, nothing. I upgraded it,” said Panborn. “And if you don’t help me get off Ceres, I’ll sever power to Bode-6.”

  Now it was Renken’s turn to laugh. Mhau knew the laugh wasn’t genuine. She’d heard it before when he was on the losing side at clash.

  “Are you stupid? That won’t get you off Ceres, either.” Renken said.

  “Tapang can confirm my ability to cut power.”

  Grace’s display twitched. Mhau sensed what she was thinking. Did Panborn know Grace was there? Were the pawns reporting to him? How would he know Mhau was listening? Or did Panborn still think the engineer of Bode-6 was on his side?

  “You would kill everyone. Including yourself,” said Renken. Slowly, as though realizing he was speaking to a murderer for the first time.

  “Confer with your councilmembers, Larchmont,” he replied. “You have until midrise.”

  Chapter 33

  “That’s your plan?” Grace said, bounding around Kyran’s apartment. “Tim’s dead. Captain Saltari’s dead. And all you want to do is grovel, cower, and hide? You want to let Panborn go?”

  “We don’t really have a choice,” said Kyran.

  “Of course we do!”

  “If he destroys the main power conduit, everyone in the bode is dead,” said Mhau.

  Grace threw up her hands. “He’d be dead, too! He’s bluffing, knowing you’ll scamper around and do what he says. Just like he scared you into killing Tim.”

  Grace’s throat tightened as she said the name. She clenched her jaw and swallowed before grief could overtake her.

  “He wasn’t bluffing,” Mhau said. She touched Grace on the shoulder. Surprising. Grace knew that she physically intimidated the smaller engineer, especially now. Touching her took guts. It was enough to keep Grace from pacing, enough to look Mhau in the face and listen.

  “Why not?” Grace asked.

  “He might use technology, but he’s aposti,” said Mhau. “And the way he spoke about the PodPooch—about Tim—was with loathing. Disgust. Fear. I believe he would destroy himself, if he thought he were removing even the remnants of an AI.”

  “He’s not getting Tim’s body,” Grace said.

  “But we have to protect the colony,” Kyran interjected. “At a minimum, we should have the colonists put on their pressure suits.”

  “Agreed,” Mhau said.

  “And what if you do everything he asks and he still doesn’t deliver?” Grace said. “You said he was willing to remove even the evidence of Tim’s existence. Pawns operate remotely. Panborn doesn’t have to be here to destroy this colony.”

  The other two went quiet for a moment.

  “You’re right,” Kyran said, lips barely moving. “Even if we gave him a ship, we’d need to keep him from contacting the pawns.”

  “Are they entangled?” Mhau asked.

  “What do you mean by entangled?” Grace said.

  “Quantum entangled, communicating without the need of electromagnetic radiation. If they aren’t,” Mhau said, “we might be able to shield them, so that they cannot receive commands.”

  “Then deactivate or destroy them,” Kyran added.

  “How would we do that?” asked Grace.

  “Raj sent me data on the pawns after you encountered them on Mars,” Kyran said. “We were considering them for our AI work.”

  “AI work?” Mhau turned to Kyran, surprised.

  “I helped build Tim.”

  “Oh.” Mhau looked intensely uncomfortable.

  “Anyway,” continued Kyran, “Raj speculated pawns would be disrupted by an intense electromagnetic burst. No guarantees, of course.”

  “Tim was the one with the LEMP,” said Grace, an edge in her voice. “My phasewave can make one, but it would be weak.”

  “It would be enough,” said Mhau, avoiding her eyes. “All we need is a pulse large enough to destroy the squeeze transmitter without affecting the power circuit.” She paced, considering. “Just to be safe, though, we’d want to temporarily shunt power away from the access tube.”

  “You’ll want to do that manually,” said Kyran. “Pawns might be able to intercept orders that would lead to a power loss.”

  “Then one of us needs to go topside and enter the power hub,” said Mhau. “I call it the Shack—it’s a mess, has some old repairs, hardly ever have a reason to physically go there. Inside, there’s an emergency solar array bypass.”

  “All right,” said Grace. “I’ll go blast the pawns—”

  “No, only blast them if things go wrong,” Kyran said.

  “What?” said Mhau.

  “I thought we just established that the pawns could cut off power to the bode,” said Grace.

  “Blast the sleep squeezes they’re using, by all means,” said Kyran. “Not the pawns.” His eyes flickered over to Tim, spread on the exam table. “They might be useful.”

  Grace felt her throat close. “Copy,” she managed.

  “It’s Midrise,” said Mhau. She nodded to the window, where the horizon glowed. “We’re out of time. I have to contact Panborn.”

  “Are we clear on what we’re doing?” said Kyran.

  The three looked at one another.

  “Right.” Mhau touched her ptenda and brought it to her mouth. “I’m including Renken, too, so—”

  “It’s what he wants anyway,” Grace interrupted.

  Mhau shushed them with a finger to her lips.

  “Tapang here,” she said into the ptenda. She paused, listening to the voice on the other end. It was soft: Grace couldn’t make it out.

  “You’ll have safe passage to,” Mhau moved her hand up to her eyes and studied the ptenda, then brought it back to her mouth. “Airlock G7. There will be a belt crawler waiting there to take you off Ceres. Thirty minutes,” Mhau said. A pause. Then, “Tapang out.”

  “What’d he say?” asked Grace.

  “He said Renken will escort him to the crawler. We just have to make sure he can proceed uninterrupted. ‘No Donner,’ he said.”

  Grace smirked. “Then no Donner it will be.” She pointed to Mhau. “He trusts you. Make sure the aposti arrives at his crawler without incident. If roiders find out what’s happening, they might decide to intercede.”

  Mhau nodded. “I’ll bring Jacob with me in case one of them does.”

  Grace turned to Kyran. “Stay here, monitor the blurp network. Contact your population and have them put on their suits. Tell ‘em it’s a medical drill. And be prepared to send a kill command to the conduit if the pawns get tricky.”

  Kyran started to reply, perhaps to protest, then stopped. He didn’t look relaxed—perhaps resigned was a better description—but she sensed he was relieved to be staying in his castle. He sat down at his workstation.

  Grace climbed back into her suit. She bounced over to the door and grabbed the roider hammer where she’d left it. She lifted the hammer, enjoying its heft.

  “You won’t need that,” Mhau said, motioning to the hammer.

  Grace looked at Mhau, then clipped it to her belt.

  Yes I will.

  Chapter 34

  Grace disappeared into the outer spiral and the door slid shut. Mhau stared at the door, thinking about Grace, thinking of their last few words. Maybe she won’t despise me forever.

  “Where’s Grace going?” said Jacob, pulling into the room.

  “The Shack,” said Mhau.

  “But she didn’t ask for directions,” Jacob said.

  “Usually doesn’t,” Kyran murmured.

  “She’ll have all the helmet data she needs,” Mhau said. “Let’s focus on our side of the operation. Kyran: as you coordinate suiting up the colonists, watch all airlocks. I fed my station sensors through your system: power, climate, recycling. Signal us if anything starts to go wrong.”

  “Will do.”

  She nodded, then
grabbed Jacob’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “We’ve got to deliver a crawler,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Well, I do. You get to run interference.” Mhau reached up to the ceiling straps and pulled herself out the door.

  After a moment of hesitation, Jacob followed, joining her in the outer spiral.

  “Why a crawler?” he asked. “They can’t get to Mars.”

  “One has an orbital drive, so it’s a decent enough decoy,” she said. “There’s no way I’d let him take the Waltz.”

  It was a short pull to Chamber Three. As they approached, Jacob tugged at her elbow.

  “There are three men inside,” he whispered.

  Mhau looked at Jacob. How would he know? She dropped just inside the door; Jacob followed. Inside were three techs, moving a large slush pump. It had been red-tagged, meaning roiders had left it behind for repair. It was strange to see something so mundane, knowing the danger the bode was in.

  “Taking out T15!” she yelled.

  “Can’t,” said a tech without looking up. “Lockdown.” He raised his head and saw her. “Oh, well, I guess you can.”

  “Damnit, Tapang. We’re behind already,” grumbled another of the techs, still bent over the slush pump.

  “How long?” asked the third tech. Mhau knew this one. Chng. A good worker, but she looked as tired as the others. The bode glitches had them all running on raw nerves and too little sleep.

  “Sorry for the late notice, Olivia,” she said.

  “Should be just an hour,” Jacob interjected, taking Mhau off-guard. “The three of you look hungry. Why not head to the mess for a meal?”

  Chng looked from one to the other, then nodded.

  “Sounds good. I don’t know what to do with this bugger of a slush pump anyway.” She slapped the other techs on the back. “Let’s eat!”

  “Have an extra puck on us,” Jacob said.

  Chng flashed a grin as she and the other techs bounced out of the chamber.

  Mhau looked askew at Jacob as they walked toward the crawler.