by Wil McCarthy
Bethy had stopped screaming.
Bethy had moved.
When Alice had launched herself toward the gun, she’d inadvertently launched Bethy back in the general direction of the (now open) red-and-white doorway. Which she had then grabbed and somehow pulled herself through. Alice watched Bethy disappearing inside, into a space lit with a bright blue-white LED glow.
“For fuck’s sake,” she said. “Seriously, Bethy?”
Alice jetted toward the open doorway, and through it, into a white-walled chamber filled to bursting with gray pipes and orange and green bundles of cable. She crashed into Bethy’s back again and grabbed for her again. But Bethy had caught sight of her in a rearview mirror, and even one-handed and twice-shot, she managed to anticipate and evade the octopus grab. Bethy squirmed like a snake—surprisingly flexible in her puffed-up spacesuit—and threw Alice hard against a conduit of some sort in a classic zedo move. No, not against a conduit; against the goddamn antimatter containment vessel. The gun went flying, again.
“Fuck!” Alice huffed, before Bethy threw a shoulder against her and drove the air out of her lungs.
Tactical error: Alice had the advantage in open vacuum, with nothing to push against and nothing to throw or pin against. In here, it was the same old story as at the Marriott Stars. Alice sucked at zedo, and Bethy did not. Period.
“You brought this on yourself,” Bethy said, finding a handhold with her left arm and pulling the shoulder of her right one deeper into Alice’s solar plexus. Beside Alice’s head, a slightly irregular, silvery-gray spherical object glittered and spun, inside a thing like a trash-can-sized gumball machine. Great. Thing was probably spraying gamma rays directly in her face. Also, where was Bethy getting the energy for all this? Her hand was shredded, practically blown right off.
She’d seen this kind of thing before among injured Cartel heavies, and it usually meant methamphetamine or cocaine, or something even nastier and more modern that offered boundless energy and made pain irrelevant. Had Bethy brought it with her, or snuck some time on the drug printer? Had she anticipated a struggle all along? What a depressing thought! So much for ever being friends, with anyone, ever.
Also, Alice couldn’t breathe. Fuck. Fuck! Alice couldn’t breathe.
“Brought it on yourself,” Bethy said again. “Sorry, I really woulda left you alone. Your choice to have it like this.”
But Alice still had a free hand. The angle wasn’t great, but if Bethy weren’t wearing a spacesuit, Alice could possibly have very awkwardly choked her with it, or slapped her on the side of the head. As it was, she had to settle for undoing the latch on Bethy’s helmet.
Would have left you alone, too, girl. Would have sent you back to Earth.
The latch was ridiculously easy to operate—yet another security issue RzVz had never thought to worry about. You had to pinch the two spring-loaded scissor arms of the latch together with your thumb and middle finger, and then twist counterclockwise. It was basically impossible to do by accident, but also pretty difficult to stop someone else from doing on purpose.
“What are you—” Bethy paused, then screamed. Her good (left) hand let go of the grab rail and pawed at Alice’s hand, but it was half a second too late. Her scream got louder and more shrill, then fell silent as her helmet popped off like a champagne cork.
Bethy’s eyes widened in shock, then dilated in terror, then seemed to bulge and glaze over in an unnatural way. Alice could see the air whooshing out of her open mouth, still apparently trying to scream. Bethy blinked several times and then let go of Alice, let go of her grab rail. Alice thought for a moment that that was it, but instead Bethy bunched up her legs and then launched herself in the direction the helmet had flown. It was back there somewhere, behind pipes and wires, rattling around silently in the vacuum of space.
Alice, though surprised, was used to dealing with unexpected shit, so she simply grabbed Bethy’s foot and messed up her trajectory.
The two of them spun together through the maze of machinery surrounding the antimatter core. Bethy thrashed and kicked, and then really kicked, and then fell still.
Alice waited to see if something else was going to happen.
She waited some more.
Their tangled bodies came to rest against one of the chamber’s white walls.
Nothing happened.
“Jesus,” she said.
She was actually a bit surprised to be alive, surprised to have beaten Bethy Powell in hand-to-hand combat. Surprised, really, to be in outer space at all, to have any of this happening to her at all. Life was funny, eh?
Then Derek’s voice came over the radio: “Alice? Are you okay? I’m in the maintenance pod now, prepping for launch.”
“I’m okay, yes,” she answered, in a crisp military tone. “No injuries, no need of rescue. Local threat has been neutralized.”
All of that was straight out of the Maroon Beret handbook. But then, as a mere human being, she added, “Bethy’s dead.” And for the first time since she was, like, twelve years old, Alice Kyeong began to cry.
1.14
26 April
✧
ESL1 Shade Station
Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1
Extracislunar Space
Having cycled through the airlock’s re-pressurization cycle fast enough to squeeze her eardrums and sinuses, Alice would have stomped her way into Igbal’s office if such a thing were even remotely possible in zero gee. As it was, she flung herself into the room with an angry glare, wearing Sandy Lincoln’s spacesuit minus the helmet. With her left hand she arrested her motion on a grab rail, while brandishing her leg shaver with the right one.
Igbal was belted into the seat behind his desk, like zero gravity wasn’t a thing.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, with what sounded like genuine concern.
“No,” she answered. “I just killed somebody I thought was my friend. Thanks to you, thanks to your crappy-joke security.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Thank you for saving us.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “This is a gun, and I’m not who you think I am, so stay in your fucking seat and listen to me.”
“Okay,” he said, surprised and a little unbalanced by that, but going with it. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’m a major in the . . . Fuck. I am who you think, but I’m still in the Air Force. I’m an officer. I mean, I . . .”
“Take a breath,” he said. “Take your time. You’ve been through a traumatic experience.”
“It’s not over yet. The trauma. I mean, fuck.”
“Take a breath,” he said again. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“No,” she admitted, looking at the gun and then stuffing it in her belly pouch. “Fuck. I thought she was my friend. I thought we were at least on the same side. It’s your fucking fault.”
Gently, he said, “We know each other, Alice. Just talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I was sent here to seize and secure this fucking place.” She waved her arms, indicating everything around them, and also indicating how crazy it was. The assignment. The place. Alice herself, who could barely string two words together.
“By whom?”
“The President.”
“Of the United States?”
“Yes. Tompkins. That one. They’re terrified of you. They’re right to be terrified! Jesus fuck, Igbal, you left a kilogram of antimatter behind an unlocked door.”
“It was locked,” he said. “It was. Locked.”
“Really? Nice job. Really well done on that.”
He spread his hands. “What do you want me to say? This is why I needed your help.”
“Yeah, you sure did. Jesus. Now listen, if things don’t go aces here, the next ship to hit your dock will be carrying a platoon of space marines. Or a nuke. Your fucking bullshit is over. Over.”
She gestured to show it was over.
“Okay,” he said, not arguing the point. “What are your orders?
”
“My orders are classified,” she told him.
“No, for us. What are your orders for us? You’re here to seize and secure the place, fine, consider us seized and secured. It’s the least we can do for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Igbal sighed. “Let’s start over. Why exactly were you sent here?”
“To prevent you from altering the Earth’s climate.”
“Really? Wow. Okay, I won’t do that.” He paused, then added, “I don’t mean that in a flippant way. I promise I won’t alter the Earth’s climate. Or weather. Or, you know, crop yields and stuff.”
Alice licked her lips and then spent a few seconds just breathing. She needed to get her shit together here. Funny, that she’d never once considered what to do once she was in control of the facility. Call the President and wait for instructions?
“You’re already doing it,” she said, “and you’re a weird scary drug-addict pervert. To them, I mean.”
“Not to you?”
“Jesus, Ig.”
Pam appeared in the far doorway, the one leading in here from Igbal’s apartment at the end of Alpha Corridor.
“What the hell is going on here?” she demanded.
“We’re surrendering,” Igbal told her.
“What?”
“We’re surrendering, Pam. The saboteur has been neutralized—thank you, Alice—and the U.S. Air Force is now commandeering this facility to prevent us meddling in the Earth’s climate. Alice was just about to issue us orders from the President. Is that about right? Alice?”
“That’s right,” she said, struggling to calm herself and think. “Except the threat is not neutralized. Think about it: there’s probably still a ship out there somewhere, and the antimatter core is wide open. I need you to send Delao and Ming over there to weld the door shut or something, just as a temporary measure. And I don’t think the superpowers are going to let you have an entangled radar installation here, but for fuck’s sake, set up some star sensors and quantum gravimeters, so you’ll at least know if there’s an object approaching. Burglar alarms. Strings and cans. Anything.”
“I can build an entangled radar,” Igbal said. “Pretty sure.”
“Then do it. And meanwhile, stop making the Shade bigger. Jesus, you’ve already got more power than you know what to do with, and they do not want your help with global warming. It’s the fucking . . . exponentialness of this place that really freaks them out. Every day bigger, every day more powerful. Just shut all the weavers down. Right now, right where they are.”
“Okay,” Igbal said, seeming to find that a reasonable request. He waved at his desk, pulling up a keyboard, then started tapping instructions into it. “This could take a few minutes, but I’m listening.”
“Do you have some proof?” Pam asked.
To which Alice replied, “We’ll call the President in a minute. Meanwhile, can we also shut down antimatter production? Just as a temporary measure? I don’t have any orders about that, but let’s just turn down the crazy a few notches and give people a chance to calm down.”
“Yeah, we can do that,” Igbal said.
“And knock off the drugs,” Alice said.
“What, really?”
“Yes, really. What are you, seventeen? Join AA or some shit. Have Pam design a rehab program. I don’t care what you do on your own time, but President Tompkins certainly seems to. Give her what she wants, and she’ll keep a leash on the space marines. Do we . . . do you understand what I’m saying, here? Dial way back on the crazy, in a visible way. It’s your only hope of retaining control.”
“I thought you were in control,” Igbal said.
Just then, Derek and Jeanette appeared behind Alice, swimming toward her through Beta Corridor. Maag was close behind them, along with someone else Alice knew only by sight.
“What’s happening?” Derek asked.
“Security matter,” Alice said. “Best if you stay out of it for right now.” She gestured at the hatch. “Can you . . . can we? Yeah, close the hatch, there. Right. Yup.”
With a confused look on his face, Derek did as he was asked. There was a whole station full of people here who wanted (and probably deserved) to know what was going on, but Jesus. One thing at a goddamn time.
To Igbal, Alice said, “I don’t know what the computer security situation looks like up here, but you’re going to need to do a full IT review with top security experts.”
“Our setup’s not bad,” he said. “It’s pretty decent, actually.”
Annoyed, she answered, “Imagine every bad actor on Earth, becoming aware of all the goodies up for grabs here. Right now you could be riddled with bugs and trapdoors and whatever the fuck. Deal with it.”
“I will,” Igbal promised.
“Regardless,” Alice continued, “the superpowers are probably going to want steering authority over the Shade. I need you to set something like that up. Make them feel important, even if the actual controls are here.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Whose side are you on?”
It was a good question. Wasn’t she the President’s asset? Should she give a damn about Igbal Renz and his plans? Why did she . . . why did she feel like helping him? Why did she feel like she was not only his only hope, but everyone’s? Some huge swath of the future seemed to depend on her specific actions, right here and now. So what was it going to be?
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” she told him. “They don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t, either, but it’s a different sort of . . . Just shut the fuck up, okay? Just play ball.”
“Okay. Playing ball.”
“Can you initiate a video phone call from here?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Call the White House.”
Soon, a giant video receptionist—animated but almost convincingly lifelike—appeared on the windows behind Igbal, blotting out the Earth. Female. Prim. Attractive but not sexy. Enthusiastic.
“Hello! This is the White House. How may I help you?”
Alice told the AI, “This is Brevet Major Alice Kyeong, on special assignment at Esley Shade Station. I need to speak with the President right away.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the receptionist told her happily. “What is the nature of your concern?”
“Let me speak with a human,” Alice said. “Immediately.”
That was a request that, in most cases, legally had to be honored, but of course the thing just dumped her off on the lowest public call center employee in Bumfuck, Iowa. It took another minute to get his supervisor, and then another several to get her supervisor, and then finally a human being at the actual White House who, after hearing the summary of who Alice was, put her on hold.
“Not exactly the hotline,” Igbal said.
“I have a private channel,” Alice told him, “but it’s text only. I think a video call is called for, is . . . I think now is the time for a face-to-face conversation.”
Apparently, President Tompkins felt the same way; when she finally appeared on the screen, she had Vice President Vick Chambers at her elbow, and some middle-aged people Alice didn’t recognize arranged behind them, photo-op-style.
Without even really thinking about it, Alice offered up a crisp salute.
“Major Kyeong,” Tompkins said, returning the salute after a light-lag delay of eleven seconds. “I take it this is good news?”
“Mostly good,” Alice confirmed, “although Sergeant Powell is dead.”
After a delay, the President looked appropriately concerned. “What happened?”
Ugh. This was going to be a long, annoying conversation. Alice was full of pent-up energy, and waiting this long between replies was like swimming through honey.
“Sergeant Powell was turned,” Alice said, “and she attempted to subvert the mission for the benefit of unknown parties. An altercation resulted.”
“In a spacesuit? That must have been dicey. I’ll expect a full report,
” Tompkins said.
“This is my report,” Alice answered, unfazed by Tompkins’ authority and really pretty fed up with the whole situation. “The station has been secured. Expansion of the Shade is being halted, and Mr. Renz here has agreed to cede control over its transparency functions. Its steering, I mean.”
“To the U.N. Climate Bureau,” Igbal added. “Or another qualified body designated by the U.N. I’m also going into drug rehab.”
Tompkins looked him over thoughtfully, then nodded. “All right. I’m sorry to hear that, but it sounds like the right thing. The U.N. piece of it we can talk about, but three senior members of the U.N. Security Council are responsible for Major Kyeong being there. So it’s a bit of a moot point. Major, what’s your security situation?”
“Unknown,” Alice said. “There may be a stealthed ship in our vicinity. Capabilities unknown. We’re circling the wagons and battening down some hatches. All hazardous materials are being secured, and we’re monitoring the sky around us.”
“Understood,” said Tompkins. “Are the Shade controls secured?”
“I believe so.”
“Well, that’s the news I’ve been waiting for.” Then, after a moment’s reflection: “I’m sorry to say, until the situation reaches some kind of steady state, I’m going to need you to remain on-site at Esley to ensure compliance.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alice replied. She didn’t ask for how long, because of course Tompkins didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on up here, and now that the crisis was maybe over she would simply take the credit and push the details off to functionaries. Same as any Air Force general, or really any leader Alice had ever heard of.
Tompkins asked, “What’s the status of Captain Hakkens?”
“Never activated,” Alice lied. “The whole thing blew up pretty quickly.”
