The Jovian Manifesto (The Formist Series Book 2)

by Matthew S Williams

  Gallego stood back and looked at it, as if she were appraising her creation. Cheboi circled around to her side to get a better look at it. Gallego noted the look on her face and was once again encouraged. Cheboi was sensing it too and wasn’t saying anything dismissive yet.

  “So... that was the path they followed, huh?”

  “Yes.” Gallego looked it over, then shrugged. “Not exactly a major revelation, is it?”

  “No, perhaps not,” Cheboi admitted. “But if we extend that further, accounting for multiple trajectories, we might be able to plot their path back to its source.”

  Gallego’s eyebrow cocked involuntarily. Cheboi had a point, and it was admittedly a valid next step. Going back into her mind and searching the contents of her loom, Gallego searched for a plan for the entire city. When she had downloaded the greeting brochure, she remembered there being a large-scale layout of Selket.

  Calling that up, she also began applying new filters. She assumed the same pace of travel and plotted all possible directions that would lead to an access point. From the blinking red point in Kēndarī, multiple lines began branching off, indicating different possible routes.

  Gallego and Cheboi began looking them all over. There were five in total, but only one looked promising. Of all the routes, it was the shortest and most direct. Cheboi was the one to say it aloud.

  “Aljiran plaza. Not too surprising really. It’s connected directly to the spaceport, it has transit lines that give it access to multiple districts at once, and there are airlocks that access the surface.”

  “Which means they could have flown in, or snuck in,” Gallego surmised. “I’m betting that if we look through the maintenance logs, we might just find some indication of an airlock opening in that sector.”

  “Maybe.”

  When Gallego turned to look at Cheboi, she saw her smiling again. This time, she wasn’t merely expressing pride in Gallego, though. She was feeling pleased with herself too. After being told flat out there was nothing to be found, and hours of fruitless searching, the two of them had managed to pull a possible theory out of the mess.

  “It’s still pretty thin,” Gallego acknowledged.

  “It’s that. But it gives us a place to start looking. And who knows? It might lead to something that we can use.”

  “And those ‘poor bastards’ might get a reprieve after all.” Gallego clapped her hands together. “I think it’s time we went back to Aljiran.”

  “Right now?”

  “Well, sure, it’s just -” Gallego consulted her overlay and noticed the time. They had been looking over the evidence and playing within their immersive environment for hours, and it was now 0300 local time. She was a bit surprised, but her sore muscles and aching back told her the chronometer wasn’t lying.

  Gallego deactivated the simulation. All around them, the walls disappeared, and a smaller, tighter set of walls replaced them. They were back in their hotel room, where the lights were low, and the room’s own chronometer indicated they were well into the morning hours. The sight of her bed tucked up against the wall made Gallego feel even more sore and tired.

  And then there was the small matter of curfew, which was in effect.

  “Perhaps this can wait until morning.”

  Cheboi nodded her agreement. “Yeah, it would be good to sleep off some of this fog. Cryosleep and the time difference are still getting to me.” She moved to the other side of the room where her bed was situated. Turning back to Gallego, she offered another suggestion. “It will also give us a chance to arrange something with the Constabulary.”

  “Arrange something?” Gallego turned from her bed, her hand wrapped in the top sheet she was yanking back. “Like what?”

  “An escort,” Cheboi replied plainly. “It’s bad enough we’ve got a potential threat out there, somewhere. But if we’re heading back out into the city during peak hours, I would prefer that the police be watching our back. That way, we’ll be less likely to be shot by them.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  THIS TIME, SHE FOUND herself looking up at a landscape that was slowly moving in front of her eyes. There were patches of green which even from a distance looked like parks. Small dots of brown indicated ponds and small lakes. Everywhere else, small buildings were arranged in extremely-precise configurations, small silver threads connecting shapes of every kind.

  Once again, she was struck by a momentary sensation of panic as she realized how high up she must have been. Wisps of clouds circled around her, and she saw no wings of an antigrav harness. She had no business floating above the surface she was looking down on, and yet she was.

  A quick check of what lay above and below her confirmed what she suspected. She was in a Gyro Hab again, Sawarakand from the look of things. Much like Cytherean cities, it was the little differences that set it apart from its peers. The color scheme of the buildings, for one, which was heavy on aubergine and gold. At key locations, the distinctively-shaped solar recesses were admitting daylight.

  Gallego had no idea why her dreams kept switching locations, or who the hell was orchestrating them. She knew only one thing at this point.

  The whole process was becoming mighty annoying.

  “Who’s there?” she said. “Who the hell keeps doing this?”

  There was a faint whisper on the wind. It felt more like a gust that came in on the clouds than words.

  “We’re here, Veronika. We’re getting closer.”

  As answers went, it was both vague and unsatisfying. Gallego grunted and upped her demands. She really didn’t feel like she was in a position of power, given that she was hovering in place thousands of meters above the slowly moving ground. And that pissed her off some!

  “Show yourselves, dammit!”

  Just like that, Gallego was standing on solid ground. Rather than floating inexplicably in the air, her feet were now firmly planted in a field of grass. She was still inside Sawarakand, but now she was looking up at a landscape rather than down on one. Things looked much fainter now, the wispy clouds and humidity obscuring things on the other side, but she could still make out the shapes of buildings and the patchwork of districts.

  It was always disorienting the first time around, to be standing in a self-contained world where the ground beneath your feet was the canopy to anyone on the other side. But after years of coming and going from the Reach, it was almost as familiar as living among the clouds.

  Gallego had to admit, the change in perspective had put her more at ease.

  “Okay, now how about showing yourself?”

  To her surprise, the wispy voice obliged her. Not more than a few meters way, in the same patch of grass, a lovely woman appeared. She was youthful-looking, dark in complexion, and with long hair arranged in thin braids. Her smile was broad and beaming, revealing two rows of pearlescent teeth.

  Gallego was at a loss for words. She had demanded that her “host” show themselves; and now that she was here, her tongue was caught in her mouth. Luckily, her beautiful counterpart was more than willing to take the lead.

  “Hello there,” she said. “Do you know who I’m?”

  Gallego still had trouble finding the words. A single syllable and a shake of the head was all she could manage. “No.”

  “Well, for the purposes of our meeting, you can call me Clio.”

  Gallego’s eyes widened. The name rang a bell, though it wasn’t one she concerned herself with much in the past. In the Jovian system, Clio was something of a local legend, the kind of personality that popped up in the fringes, where people lived hard and needed something to believe in. But Gallego had never imagined she existed. Then again, it was more than likely her counterpart was simply using the name as a cover.

  “All right. You already know my name. Now that I have you here, perhaps you could explain how you know that.”

  Clio smiled. “It’s all right, Veronika. We’ve been watching you, but only for a brief spell. Your presence here is more important than you know, and we nee
ded to reach out to you.”

  “We?” Gallego repeated. “So, you’re not alone in this.”

  It wasn’t a question, but a foregone conclusion. Their earlier encounters were coming back to her now, and Gallego had sensed that there was more than one presence during those times.

  “That’s right, Veronika. Only two of us can contact you like this. But you might say we represent a group of concerned citizens.”

  “Who’s the other?” Gallego demanded.

  “That’s not important right now. Soon enough, you’ll find your way to us. We can handle the introductions then. Right now, there are more important matters to cover.”

  Gallego waited for her to continue, but Clio said nothing for several seconds. Her eyes looked suddenly distant, peering through her to something far off. Gallego recognized the look easily enough: it was the same look someone got whenever they called up an overlay. But the expression on her face indicated that she was making a considerable effort. Whatever she was doing, it went far beyond consulting a readout.

  Sawarakand disappeared. What had been a self-contained world that circled with them in it was now a blazing star in the night. Its yellow disk was immediately recognizable, as were the many planets, moons, and belts that circled it. The system began to change, as if Gallego was looking at it with a layer of augment. No icons appeared, but the system became divided based on what appeared to be different colored bands.

  “I recognize this. You showed me this before.”

  Clio replied happily. “That’s right. It’s good that you’re remembering. The... let us call it bandwidth, was a bit problematic before. Making contact was difficult and I wasn’t sure you’d retain any memory of it. But you remember seeing this before? And you see it for what it is, don’t you?”

  Gallego squinted. She could see it all clearly enough, but instinct told her that this would somehow make it clearer to her. But what it was showing her, and the truth of it, wasn’t something that could be defined visually. It would have been more accurate to say that it was stirring something within her, something she already knew that simply needed to be coaxed to the surface.

  From Mercury’s tight orbit around Sol to Mars and the Belt, there was an interrupted zone of influence. The Jovians, Cronians, and Uranians all occupied their own bands of influence, and on the far side of that were the Neptunian and Trans-Neptunian region controlled by the Seedlings.

  The worst of it was taking place within the Jovian and Cronian systems, where multiple incursions had now taken place. Titan, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were the three major points of focus. Looking at each, Gallego felt a strange sense of urgency. Between Titan and Ganymede, she felt a strange current, consisting of blood, rage and fear. And Callisto, it was connected to it all somehow.

  “These places... they’re all connected in the same scheme, aren’t they?”

  “Exactly. Everything that has happened, that will happen, and that’s happening right now, is connecting these worlds together, and they’re merely ground zero. Everything reaches far beyond them, though, to greater extents of both space and time.”

  Gallego wasn’t sure why, but Clio’s words made perfect sense to her. She knew that between the incident on Titan and the more recent attack on Ganymede, there was plenty of speculation that outsiders were involved. Beyond Emile Chandrasekhar, no one had been named as a potential suspect, but the Solar Council clearly thought that some other person or faction was involved.

  “And this is far from the beginning,” Clio continued. “It’s been building up for centuries and will explode before long. Just look at the progression, Nika.”

  The image changed. The borders and zones of influence disappeared. Only the icons that represented the planets, major bodies and debris belts remained, separated by areas of empty, unmarked space. Then, bit by bit, the empty spaces began to fill again, advancing forward in what appeared to be an accelerated time frame.

  The activity was centered on Earth, with multiple glowing lines extending from this body, reaching towards Luna, Mars, Ceres, and beyond. The voice returned, as if to provide a narrative accompaniment.

  “The Great Acceleration takes place, ushering in an age where scarcity, disease, and death are no longer a part of existence. The Great Migration occurs as a result, which establishes a permanent human presence in the Jovian, Cronian, and Uranian systems. Before long, the Inner Worlds begin making lucrative deals to mine, extract and export the resources of the Outer Worlds. But soon, it’s not enough.

  “One of the greatest achievements of the early 22nd century was that after centuries of growth, the human population began to level off. But with off-world venues now open to them, our numbers began to increase again. In much the same way that we started shifting our heavy industry to Luna, Mars, and the Belt, our population growth was also shifted outwards. We didn’t so much clean up our act as transfer our burdens onto other locations.”

  “At first, we were slow and pragmatic. We established outposts on Luna, on Mars, and began to seed space with small-scale habitats. But that didn’t last. Eventually, Earth’s only satellite became populated by millions, the Martian colonies exceeded a billion souls, hundreds of millions began living in the floating cities above Venus’ clouds, and countless habitats filled the orbits of every planet in the inner Solar System.

  “The Jovians, Cronians and Uranians? These became the receptacles for all the displaced souls, the ones who didn’t want to partake in the tremendous force that had swept up the Inner Worlds. Here, people wanted to live simpler lives, lives not dominated by forces they couldn’t comprehend or keep track of.

  “Beyond them, the Neptunians and the Kuiper Belt were of concern to few, other than the Seedlings. Only they were interested in cultivating a permanent presence there. But between the Extros becoming uncomfortable in their dwellings and the Seedlings looking to convert the entire Trans-Neptunian region, there’s a problem of compression and density.”

  Gallego nodded. Clio’s point was clear, and she expressed it with a few simple words. “They’re being squeezed from both sides.”

  “Exactly,” said Clio. “The Formist plot was merely the latest and most overt attempt. Even if it fails and its architects are revealed, it will be the fulcrum. Slowly, but surely, the Inner Worlds are tilting towards the outer Solar System.”

  Gallego wanted to ask what this meant. The feeling of urgency was getting worse and she wanted answers. But Clio appeared suddenly anxious as well. Around them, Gallego was beginning to get the sensation of a strong wind.

  “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

  “Dammit, we have to go,” said Clio, her voice raised to be heard over the growing din. “I wish we had more time. I meant to tell you, watch your back, Veronika. They’ll try to get to you soon. You need to watch your -”

  GALLEGO’S EYES SNAPPED open yet again. On the other side of the room, Cheboi pushed herself up from her bed. Gallego looked at her to see the woman poised and ready to fight. Cheboi, meanwhile, scanning the room for danger, pausing only to look at her with obvious concern.

  “What’s happening?” Gallego cried.

  Cheboi slowly lowered her guard. “You screamed. I heard you cry out and it woke me up.”

  Gallego looked down at herself. A thin layer of sweat had soaked through her undershirt, and her forehead felt warm and wet. She noted that an overlay had come up and was alerting her to the status of her bio monitors. Between her blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and adrenalin levels, her bio monitors confirmed what was already obvious. Her vitals had spiked but were slowly returning to normal.

  “Ten piedad de mí,” Gallego muttered in her ancestral tongue. “I had the dream again.”

  Cheboi’s frown grew and a flurry of questions flowed in response. “The dream? What dream? And what do you mean by ‘again’?”

  Gallego contemplated which she should answer first. Eventually, she chuckled and shook her head. She was barely able to understand what she had
just experienced herself, and it was only now that she was able to recall that it was a recurring experience. It was hard to know where to start.

  “Someone’s reaching out to me,” Gallego said simply. “They say they’re... concerned citizens. She told me her name was... Clio.”

  Cheboi was no longer frowning, but the explanation wasn’t inspiring her confidence so far. Mainly, her expression conveyed deep skepticism and doubt. She also wasn’t voicing those yet, which was good. Gallego’s feeble words hadn’t yet begun to do her dreams justice.

  “She’s been trying to warn me about things. She said there’s more to this than just the attack in Selket, or the stuff that happened on Titan. She says it goes far deeper than that.” Gallego wiped at her face again, removing the last of the sweat from her forehead. “Oh, she also said that people are coming for us.”

  This was enough to make Cheboi reply. “Who? Who’s coming for us?”

  “She didn’t say,” Gallego sighed. “Whoever she is, she’s decidedly vague.”

  According to her bio monitors, Gallego’s heart rate and breathing were returning to normal. The cold sensation she felt inside was also diminishing, only to be replaced by burning anger. She was growing sick of waking up with a start, of barely-remembered dreams clawing at her mind. The thought of someone intruding on her dreams, uninvited, was also becoming extremely annoying. And despite multiple intrusions, all of which were coming back to her now, only a little had been conveyed.

  She was prepared to utter more expletives when something in the room chimed loudly. Cheboi stiffened again and directed her eyes at the source.

  “What’s that?” Gallego asked.

  “The hardline,” said Cheboi. “Someone’s trying to contact us.”