by Patty Jansen
Melati hadn’t seen that.
They remained quiet while the guards trooped to the lift foyer. The sound of their voices drifted through the corridor. Then the sound of the lift doors closing.
“Quick,” Ari said.
They ran, gun in hand, through the dark corridor, trying to make as little noise as possible, but the equipment in Melati’s makeshift bag rattled.
They came back to the start of the passage where they had come in, past the cupboard where they had hung up their vacuum suits, helmets and tanks.
The airlock door was shut and nothing indicated that it had been used recently. But it was quite likely that the people in command had been warned that the door had been opened. They would connect the death of the two aggregates with the ISF ship. Would they have taken Jas and Nysa into custody? What about the rest of the crew?
That thought made her feel cold.
Ari led the way into the large storeroom where it was extremely dark and, as far as Melati could see, extremely empty. There were railings in the floor that once would have allowed the movement of heavy trolleys with pallets of supplies from the docking area to here. But Melati didn’t remember having seen those rails used, ever. Indeed, she thought they had been pulled out in the corresponding area in the BC block. The cargo door was still there, but had been bolted shut with numerous metal brackets.
A set of metal stairs led up to a very old office that had never been used as far as Melati knew. Ari led her up these stairs.
He was about to open the door when a male voice sounded in the darkness. A light went on in the hall, and it showed a row of temporary shacks against the side of the hall. A couple people had come out.
“Quick,” Ari whispered.
He darted into the office. Melati followed him, and shut the door behind her.
“Who are they?” she whispered.
“New Pyongyang refugees, I think,” Ari said. He had dimmed his light.
The office’s door had a little window, but it was too high up to see what was happening on the floor of the hall.
“What do we do now?” Melati asked. Her heart was thudding.
“There is a walkway from here across the hall to the emergency door that I think the young cousin was talking about.”
She didn’t like the I think bit.
“We need to wait until the people down there calm down a bit.”
“And hope no one comes up here.”
They waited and after what seemed like an impossibly long time, voices quietened.
Ari again opened the door. The hall had returned to darkness although Melati could still see the occasional pinprick of light. She guessed that power had returned.
The walkway seemed impossibly long, and it went straight over the top of the shacks. In places overhanging beams were so low that they had to be careful not to hit their heads, and walking bent over was awkward with a sarong full of uncomfortable items.
At the end, they came to a small door. It was closed, but Ari opened it with a little bit of fiddling.
It led into a chamber that looked like a disused airlock. Seventy years ago, when the station was built, it had been assembled as a series of modular compartments. This was obviously a long-defunct remnant of that process.
The chamber was long and narrow, not at all like a regular airlock.
Melati remembered seeing the multiple tubular connections between the B sector and the BC block in models of the station. She had thought those were just structures to increase stability. She had never considered that they were hollow or accessible from within the station.
The door at the far end was closed, and Ari couldn’t open it.
Great. What now? Melati looked over her shoulder, where she had closed the door that led back into the hall, where the New Pyongyang refugees would probably tell the guards that they’d heard something.
Ari knocked on the door.
“I think the den or the entrance to it is on the other side.”
There was no reply. They studied the lock and the hinges. Melati even contemplated that if they had a heavy-duty metal saw and their vacuum gear, they could reach the compartment from the outside.
If.
Ari knocked again.
“The scanner is showing that the other side is heated and pressurised,” he said. He put his ear to the door to listen. He frowned.
“Anything?” Melati asked.
“I don’t know.” He raised his voice. “Come on, people, we’re here to help you. We’ve got parts to help fix the recycling.”
He listened again.
“I think someone is listening,” he said in a low voice to Melati. “Yup. There are footsteps.”
He spoke up again. “We’ve come especially from the SS Felicity to help out. We’re Ari and Melati.”
He listened. “It’s gone quiet again. Maybe they’re waiting for a higher-ranked person to arrive.” And he added in a louder voice, “We don’t have all day. The guards are after us. If you want the completely clean chips that are free of worms or any other malicious software for your recycling plans, you have to open the door for us.”
Still nothing.
“What the hell are they doing?” He was getting frustrated now. “Since when don’t barang-barang trust other barang-barang?”
But no one had ever fully trusted the hypertechs, unless there was something—wait.
“Let me say something.”
Ari stepped aside, frowning.
“Moshi says that he wishes Fatima and Iman all the best with their wedding.”
Now there were definitely footsteps on the other side. Something clicked in the door.
Ari frowned at her.
There were a couple more clicks, and then the door opened a tiny slit, giving Melati a view of a part of a hypertech visor mask.
“Moshi?” the owner of the mask said. He or she used a voice modulator, but Melati guessed that it was a she, and guessed that this was Fatima.
“He made it to the ISF ship Felicity, where we are serving officers. He’s fine. He was pretty badly damaged by whatever Allion guards had done to him, but we’ve managed to repair a lot of the damage.” Only so that he could be put on death row, but she didn’t add that bit of detail. “He told us what was going on inside the station and I managed to convince the ship command to allow us to help you.”
Another hypertech came out of the darkness. “Let them come in,” said the distorted voice.
Chapter 25
* * *
THE DOOR OPENED further and Melati and Ari stepped into the place where few people had ever been: the inner sanctum of the hypertech den.
At this point, the fabled hideout was just another corridor, and a run-down one at that. The two hypertechs set off down this passage. The one in front was definitely a woman, judging by the way she walked. Melati resolved to call her Fatima until she either confirmed her identity or got so annoyed at being called the wrong name that she would give her real name.
The pair led her and Ari into a large room on the right hand side. It had probably been a storeroom of some kind, with metal rails across the ceiling that would have had hoists and pulleys for moving heavy things. It was now a busy technology hub, where at least twenty other hypertechs sat at computers. They all wore their headgear, so someone had clearly warned them that strangers were about to come through.
In the middle of the room, on a chair that must once have been part of some kind of vehicle, sat an old man. He was the only one in the room who didn’t wear black and didn’t wear a veil and visor. Of course it was Benjamun.
He squinted up, and because of the confused look on his face, Melati thought that his eyes were not the best.
“These people have come from one of the ISF ships and have news from Moshi,” Fatima said.
“Oh, poor, poor Moshi. Those people are the most horrible creatures. And then to think that he could so easily have become one of them.”
“He’s safe, Pak,” Fatima said, clearly
and loudly.
He frowned as if noticing her for the first time. His ears were probably not the best either.
Melati was shocked, because the Benjamun she had seen in Moshi’s memories had been a man who had looked healthy to her.
She dipped her head to him. One respected community elders, even if they belonged to the hypertechs.
Fatima invited them to sit down in a couple of mismatched chairs. She sat down as well, but her companion remained standing.
All around them, people returned to work. Melati had always wondered what the hypertechs did in that secret den of theirs. There were plenty of rumours in the station about secret factories of electronics and stockpiling of illegal weapons and other contraband. This looked nothing half as exciting as that.
The screen of one of the workers’ computers faced her. She wasn’t sure what was in the lines and columns that tracked over the screen. This is where the next dangerous worm is being developed, a little voice in her mind told her. Every now and then these programs infected some ISF systems despite all efforts undertaken to keep them out. It was easy to blame the hypertechs for these little snatches of code, but did anyone know for sure that they were being developed here?
Benjamun was looking at the knotted sarong that she had let slide off her shoulders when she sat down. The materials were all packed in boxes, not the most convenient item to carry in a thin piece of cloth. Ari put down his pack at his feet.
Melati said, “We heard from Moshi that you were trying to fix the recycling. We’ve brought all new computer components with all new software.”
None of the three reacted.
Melati tried again, “You were trying to buy components. We’ve brought everything.” It was awkward trying to address someone whose face she couldn’t see, so she kept talking to Benjamun although he clearly wasn’t listening.
Finally, the man who had remained standing said, “I don’t believe you. Moshi wouldn’t have told you all of this.”
“No he didn’t tell us any of this, but he was in quite a state when he arrived at the ship. He didn’t even know who he was and his mindbase was releasing worms into the ship’s systems. Our captain was going to send him to be executed, but I asked that he be given a chance. I read his mindbase. I’m sorry and I know that many people disapprove of this procedure, but he was almost dead. Allion inserted a routine that, when it broke free, takes with it a layer of code, in this case from the Base module. That’s the one that contains all the involuntary brain functions, like breathing and heartbeat. He’s only alive because of us.”
They still didn’t say anything. The companion who Melati decided was Iman stood with his arms crossed over his chest.
She was getting irritated. Why would these people let her in only to stand here like statues? “Now tell us if you’ve gone over to Allion, because if you have, we’re finished here. We’ll take all our things and walk out of here.”
Finally Iman spoke. “You’re assuming that anyone who speaks to Allion can only be evil. What do you know about good and bad if the people here have barely enough to eat? What right do you have to come in here in your flashy uniform telling them what to believe and who to be with?”
Not at all the type of answer she had hoped for.
“I don’t have that right, but I’d like to think that we’re on the same side before showing you what we’ve brought.”
“No, we’re not on the same side, because you’re wearing that uniform. You love to think that we betrayed the people, but in truth, you betrayed them.” He turned to Ari. “And I would never have suspected that you would do that. The girl, yeah, she was always a lost cause to us, but I expected you to have better judgement.”
With a jerk, Ari got up from the couch and went up to him. With all the training he did in the gym, he cut an impressive figure these days. She had never considered him very tall, but he was taller than Iman. He bent his head down until his nose almost touched the facemask. “Dare say that again about my cousin and you will regret it. Melati is the kindest person I know. This expedition, which might have been a really stupid idea because you’d clearly rather die than accept our help, was her idea. She not only convinced an ace Hasegawa pilot to fly us, but she managed to talk around the captain of the Felicity, who was going to solve everything by what they call ‘conservative warfare’, which means they’d shoot missiles from a great distance because the ones being conserved are her troops, not civilians or enemy troops. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, she was going to shoot at the station.” He had to take a breath, nostrils flaring.
“Come Ari, that’s not really necessary—”
“Yes, it is, because these people are too short-sighted and stubborn to see reality.”
They glared at each other.
Iman flicked his head toward Melati. “You talked around Polina Dolchova, huh?”
“She did,” Ari said. “And she has a reputation for being hardline.”
“We know about Polina Dolchova’s reputation. We have heard great tales about her shooting people in front of her crew.”
“You would have heard those stories if you were with Allion—”
“Who says that we’re with Allion?” Fatima said.
Iman snorted. “That’s the trouble with you lot. You think that if you’re not one thing, you have to be the opposite thing.”
He kept looking at Melati, and she glared back at her own reflection in the visor of his helmet. She wanted to see his face. She wanted to yell at him that they were stupid and oh, do you know that all Allion guards are looking for us because we shot two of theirs? “There isn’t much time. We have to stop playing games with each other.”
A lot of other hypertechs had abandoned their computers and had gathered around the chairs, a wall of black and reflective visors.
Fatima jerked her head.
“All right,” Benjamun said. His voice sounded more confident now. He rose from his seat. “Come.”
A couple of other hypertechs went with them, as if this were prearranged. There were three of them, and Melati was sure two were Fatima and Iman, but she didn’t know the third one. Benjamun took them into a smaller room that must once have been a small office. There was still a table with a scratched and discoloured surface, and you could see where shelves had been on the wall. Iman stood on the far side of the table. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Show us what you got, then.”
Ari set down his bag on the table and started to unpack the items. A couple of computers and storage devices. Little bags with tiny chips, a set of tweezers of various sizes for inserting them. A roll of wire, a new command module. The collection of items grew.
It was of course impossible to see their facial expressions, but there were little signs, little movements of the head and hands, that seemed to indicate that at least some of them were impressed.
“You did speak true. You brought everything,” Iman said when Ari folded up the bag.
“We always speak true.” Ari said.
An uncomfortable silence followed that might once have been filled by an insult, but there was no time for those now.
Iman’s stance relaxed. “It’s true that everything to do with the station’s systems has been in an increasing state of mess over the last two months or so, and that whatever we do only seems to make things worse. It is also true that we have no idea what’s causing this.”
“We think that the station has a problem with a sentient mindbase or fragments of a sentient mindbase,” Melati said.
“I wouldn’t know. Mindbases are your thing.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Melati gave Benjamun a stern look. “We also agreed with the new StatOp to provide two people who will help them stabilise the system.”
Iman raised his voice. “You’re helping them? And you accuse us of being untrustworthy?”
“It’s a cover to get us into the station. They were sending messages for help. They blame Bassanti for wrecking the system.”<
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“They’re probably right about that,” Fatima said. “A few days before the occupation, Bassanti even got one of us to come in to try to get rid of a piece of vicious malware that he picked up. We never completed the task, although we did contain the problem. When Allion came, he could just as easily have released that malware again.”
“I thought he smashed up the command room?”
“He did that as well.”
“Does this mean that you have information about the malware?”
“We got an imprint, but we don’t tend to touch the code, because it tends to marry and reproduce.”
Melati frowned at Ari.
He explained. “That’s hypertech jargon for saying that the code spreads.”
“It’s sentient,” Melati said.
And they all looked at each other, realising that they were using different words to describe the same thing, and probably this had been going on for some time. Melati realised something important: the problems in the station’s systems pre-dated the siege. Allion inherited a problem and probably made it worse.
“I’ll need an isolated system to look at it,” Melati said. “If it is what I think, then destroying the original code will get rid of all of it.”
“Don’t you think we haven’t tried that?” Fatima said impatiently.
“As soon as you touch the code, it auto-reproduces,” Iman explained.
“That doesn’t matter if you do it on an isolated system.”
“It does when it freezes your computers up and fills them with junk.”
“I only need to run a similarity test,” Melati said.
“There is no ‘only’ with this thing. If you touch it, it goes wild.”
“I’ll use my computer.”
“If you want it to be frozen up.”
“We must be talking about something different, because we don’t have any problems like that on the ship.”
“No, you wouldn’t have those problems yet. It took a while for the situation to get this bad.”
“How long?” Melati asked. She thought of the Felicity on its way to an armed conflict.
