by Patty Jansen
“I can take you to the room where we do most of our off-station communication.”
“As long as we don’t bring anyone else into danger by being there.”
“Not any more than usual.”
“Good. Let’s go right away.” She wouldn’t be surprised if Allion had already been in contact with Dolchova and made their demands in return for the hostages.
Fatima and Iman led them through the corridors, a veritable maze of rooms and passages. Melati learned that this had been a food storage area where temperature and air quality could be varied from room to room.
As with all official facilities in the station, it had been planned with two entrances, and it had to be one of the few where both entrances were still in place. One at the front where she and Ari had entered, and one in the commercial sector that was the BC block. As such, it was a back way of getting in and out of the B sector that didn’t appear to have been closed off.
Melati asked, “How does Allion not realise that you’re in here?” They would have a map of the station. They would realise that there was more than one way to access the B sector.
“On the official maps, this passage is marked as having been closed. It was closed off after one of the early renovations to the station, but we’ve opened it again. StatOp knew, but didn’t particularly care. Bassanti destroyed all the records so this lot will have to have started from scratch. We don’t draw any resources, so there is no drain on water or power in the area. Frankly, if they were looking hard enough, they’d find us, but I think they have other priorities.”
They went down the stairs again and came out in a dank little room where there was only one door, marked with a sign: Caution. Pressure and temperature may vary.
Iman listened at the door and then opened it a crack. A breeze of air came through. Iman appeared satisfied with what he saw, and opened the door further.
They came out in a dark passage. By the faint glow of a bluish light in the ceiling, Melati could make out various items of broken furniture stacked against the walls. Even if there was far less rubbish than she remembered—whatever happened to all the mattresses? You could still see where they had lain for years—this looked like one of the alleys in the BC block. Really? Was it that easy to get past the blocked door?
“Of course you have to be a hypertech to use this back way,” Ari said as if he could read her thoughts.
That was true.
“Also, if you’re caught out here, you will be shot, hypertech or not,” Fatima said in a low voice. “So be quiet.”
Great.
The passages of the BC block came off the main thoroughfare like the teeth on a comb so in order to get to another part of the block, they needed to go to the main passage. The air here was stale with a cloying tang of decay. Perishable shop goods, Melati guessed, from the overpriced restaurants that had catered to travellers. The smell was really a bit much. Ari had his shirt pulled over his nose, but the collar of Melati’s jacket was too tight to allow her to do the same. She had to breathe through her mouth.
There had been fighting in this area. Doors had been kicked in, windows broken. Dark stains in the linoleum left Melati wondering what had happened here. They and the smell made her feel sick. She saw Rina’s lifeless eyes, and expected to come across dead bodies soon.
Iman turned into the next alley. It, too, seemed more empty than it had been when the illegals, the disenfranchised and destitute lived here.
The refugees had taken whatever furniture they could find, she realised.
At the very end of the passage, where it was dark and the air was even staler than before, they came to a door that said Maintenance Personnel Only. Iman opened it.
“Get your gloves on,” he said.
Ari and Melati went first.
It was so cold inside the passage that Ari’s breath formed a cloud around him. Iman shut the door and Fatima set off at a brisk pace. The path was slippery as condensing moisture had frozen onto the metal grate walkway underfoot. After a short distance, she turned into a narrow doorway and flicked on a light and a heater. She rubbed her gloved hands, and held them out to the stream of warm air that came from the fan.
Melati’s face stung from the cold.
The room was very small and appeared to be a control command centre of some description, although the equipment was so old that Melati had never seen anything like it.
“They used this when the station was built to manoeuvre the sections into place and increase the spin,” Fatima said. “There used to be engines attached to these controls, but they were taken off as soon as the structure was complete.” The station now used a couple of very small external jets to maintain the spin rate required for normal gravity in the habitat ring as the spin rate was slowed by docking vessels and the magnetic drag from the tethers.
In the middle of the control panel was a tiny desk and on it sat a much more modern-looking radio.
“Hey, you still use this thing?” Ari said.
“It’s indestructible,” Iman said. “We tried several other sets here, but they didn’t like the temperature.”
“I only build good stuff.” Ari ran his hand over the outer casing, made of a storage box. “This is one of the first I built. Amazing that it’s still going.”
“I guess this means I don’t have to explain to you how it works.” Iman switched on the power. Lights went on. “It’s all yours.”
Ari pulled out his PCD to check the frequency and passwords and sat down armed with this information. He pulled two earpieces off a hook behind the desk, put one on and gave one to Melati.
He selected the right frequency. “Eagle to Starship Felicity do you copy?” He used the code that they had agreed to use for his and Melati’s part of the mission.
After some strange beeping noises, a male voice cut through.
“We copy loud and clear. Come in Eagle.”
This had to be someone from Dixon’s team, not a voice she recognised, but she thought the man sounded relieved.
Melati said, “We’re in our intended position, but have become worried about the rest of the crew. Hawk sent a message of distress without further explanation. We’re not sure how we can help or how we should proceed.”
There was a moment’s silence as the sound travelled to the Felicity, as they formulated a reply and then sent it back again. Melati scrunched up the hem of her shirt. She hoped Jas was all right. She hoped the shuttle crew were not in trouble. This had been her idea. It might all be for nothing.
The operator replied, “We received the same message. We have not heard from Duck. We just tried to contact them but they seem to be offline.” That was the shuttle.
“Should we go to their aid?” Melati’s heart was thudding. Did anyone know what had happened?
“We are working on establishing a secure channel and will give more information when it has been established. At the moment, it’s too risky. Stay close to where you are now to wait for orders. If a situation develops, use your own judgement. This channel is not secure. Over and out.”
Ari put the earpiece down.
Well, that was not much good, and to be honest, it worried Melati even more. The Felicity was supposed to be their backup. This wasn’t in the script.
Ari muttered. “What do they mean stay close to where you are now? Do they even know that we could be killed for being here?”
“I don’t like this,” Melati said. “Setting up a secure link shouldn’t take very long. Communications has lots of ready-made scenario setups, each with their own code and software. They can just grab a disposable one, use it for a day and then grab another one. What’s the problem?”
Ari spread his hands. “You tell me.”
“I’m wondering if they have trouble with the ship’s systems as well. I wish I’d asked to speak with Moshi. If the mindbase fragment of his has proven resistant to Dixon’s firewalls, then I’m sure Dolchova will shoot him.”
“That won’t make any difference,”
Ari protested.
“No, but she likes making examples out of people.”
Iman crossed his arms over his chest. “And you still wonder why we’re not keen to fully trust you lot? Moshi is a good friend. He has done nothing.”
“No one knows what he has done. No, I don’t believe that there is any kind of deliberate action from him, but whatever this thing is, he’s definitely a carrier, and whether or not Allion put it in his mindbase with this intent, we don’t know, but the fact is, he did escape the station while the previous escapees were shot, so we’re siding on the side of caution and say that he didn’t escape as much as Allion let him go.” She glared at Iman and he glared back. These people were so infuriating with their secrecy. They knew so much and kept it all in their little community. And people would trust them and StatOp would give them well-paid jobs if only they didn’t hide their faces.
After a few moments of tense silence, Fatima said, “If this is the same contamination that inflicts the station, it will multiply each time another process or routine touches it, and its full effect will take at least a week to be felt.”
Melati said, “What are we actually fighting? Allion or this computer contamination?”
“Both,” Iman said. “Kerakis believes that the contamination is caused by something Bassanti did in the last desperate hour of his life when he was holed up in the command room on his own and Allion was cutting through the door.”
“What do you think? Having monitored all this data for months, where do you think it came from? I know no one knows for sure, but what is your gut feeling?”
Iman glared at her for a bit longer as if debating whether to be honest. He licked his lips. “It came when everyone in the station started chasing Ormerod. The possibilities are that Allion brought it to chase Ormerod for them, that ISF released it to search for Ormerod, or that Ormerod brought it to put up a smokescreen and hide himself. I really don’t know which is more likely.”
Melati said, “I’d like to add something else: it’s another entity looking for Ormerod. He escaped the Luminati.”
“Aren’t they scientists or something?” Fatima said.
“They are, but they’re said to have recreated the mindbases of humanity’s most brilliant scientists. They’re highly secretive, and there are strong suggestions that whatever is at the base of their knowledge is something alien. They’ve invested a lot of time and effort in Ormerod and they want him back, and most importantly, they don’t want him sharing their secrets, so I’m sure they don’t need such lowly things as weapons or actual bodies to hunt him down.”
“Whatever happened to Ormerod anyway?” Iman asked. “He was in the dockside guesthouse. Some of us were bickering over who we should sell him to and for how much, and he disappeared.”
“Did Moshi tell you the extent of what Ormerod knew?”
“A bit. He said he should never have alerted Allion people that he knew where Ormerod was.”
Melati nodded. “Moshi was right. Ormerod is safely tucked away and will not be sold or released to anyone.” The datastick burned against her skin.
She looked at Ari, who was watching the screen. No one except Cocaro and Dr Chee knew that she had Ormerod’s mindbase. “No news from the Felicity yet?”
Ari shook his head, still watching the screen. “We can’t wait here forever. I’m cold.”
“Yeah, me, too. But I’d like to help Jas as soon as possible. He wouldn’t have sent that message unless he was really in distress.” And knowing Jas, the situation had to be pretty bad for him to even think about this, let alone actually do it.
He nodded. “I wonder what happened.”
But no one knew, and the only thing they could do was go back. It was far too cold in this room to stay any longer.
Iman seemed keen to go. Something was up, he said and he was watching his PCD. Fatima asked what was going on, and from the conversation between them, carried out mostly in code, Melati guessed that the Allion guards had returned to look for the intruders.
“Do they know where the den is?” she asked.
“They know where it is, but they’ll turn over the entire rest of the station before they search us. They know the risks of doing so.”
Melati guessed that had something to do with the story told by Uncle about Allion’s assumptions that, because the hypertechs sold Allion’s products, they would freely sell information as well. The same assumption they’d made about Moshi. And Melati felt strangely proud that many people had more integrity than that.
On the way back, Melati walked next to Ari, or behind him when the passage wasn’t wide enough.
“What do we do now?” he asked her in a low voice. “Do we hang around and wait for orders from Cocaro or Dolchova?”
“Maybe for a little while. Meanwhile, I want you to complete the recycling replacements to make the sector independent, so that when word comes from the Felicity, we’re ready for what they want us to do. How were you going with those preparations?”
“I don’t understand why they had so much trouble with the recycling. I’ve looked at it, and it’s pretty simple.”
“That’s because the technology is simple. I’ve seen why they’ve had trouble, and that is not simple, but it has nothing to do with the hardware. But if the B sector’s system can be isolated and we install the new command chips, then they shouldn’t have any more problems.”
“You made me curious with your comment about something sent after Ormerod by the Luminati.”
“That was just speculation, but I don’t think that what we’re dealing with are fragments of Paul Ormerod’s mindbase, not even of a copy of his mindbase. This is something else.”
“You’ve seen the malicious code?”
“Stacks of it. I ran the imager and managed to get some images out of it and it gave me an idea. Did Paul Ormerod have a wife?”
“No idea. Why?”
“There were some images of him, seen through the eyes of another person. Unless he really likes looking in the mirror, they would have been someone else’s memories.”
Ari stopped walking for a bit. He turned to her and met her eyes. His breath was steaming by the glow of his PCD screen.
“That freaks me out, Melati. Does it mean we have a whole community of these crazy mindbases taking over our systems?”
“Possibly.”
“But it can’t all be my fault, can it?”
“Who says that it is?”
“Everyone. Because I was trading in this stuff that . . .” He shrugged. “The stuff that we used to stick on the geckos’ backs.”
“No, Ari. Nothing about this is your fault.”
“But I hid Ormerod.”
“You were trying to help out a human being in despair.”
“I hid him. I should have let you know, and none of this would have happened. Rina would still be alive. I miss her.”
“I miss her, too. Ari, you are a good person and you should not be saying any of these things.”
If Melati had dragged Rina home when she saw her in the station the night after she went missing from the office, she would still be alive, too. Many people could have done many things that would have changed the current outcome. None of those people were at fault. Except Paul Ormerod. Because he should have stayed where he belonged instead of inflicting this mess on people.
But then again, he fled because he didn’t want the wrong types of people to get their hands on his discoveries. Also, to live in a gilded prison for two hundred years had to be awful, and it was only fair that he should try to escape when he could.
* * *
When they came back to the den, Iman donned his black gear and went into the B sector with a good number of others, similarly attired. There was a search on, he explained.
Melati wondered why they didn’t simply stay in the den and shut the doors.
“Every time when they search, a decent number of us show up so that they think they’ve questioned all of us,” Fatima said. “It�
�s part of keeping them happy and stopping them searching this area. They don’t know how many of us there are. Any of us who had ID chips have had them removed. The children that are born here are never registered.”
“What would you do if the Allion soldiers came to the door?”
“It depends on how they came. If they forced their way in, we’d shoot. If they asked nicely and came to negotiate, not search us, we might ask them to take off their shoes and give them some tea. When you’re small and weak, you survive by keeping everyone happy.”
Ari added, “While asking for their money.”
“You ratbag. You have spent far too much time hanging out with the young boys.”
Ari grinned.
Melati sat down and searched various databases for information on Paul Ormerod. Her own articles that she had collected on her PCD didn’t mention a wife or any kind of relative, and neither did the copy of the station database that the hypertechs had copied.
Melati sat reading in a small room while Ari was talking to Fatima about preparing for the installation of the recycling control chips. They were poring over a map, and talking about what they had to install and pull out in which sections.
“Rerouting the tether feed to the B sector specifically is not going to be hard,” Fatima was saying. “But the problem we’ve always had with it is that they’ll notice, even if we do it in the most secure way possible.”
“I think the time to do this in secret is over,” Ari said. “We’ll cut here and here.” He pointed at the diagram of the station’s wiring. “Then we’ll install the new system and fire up the plants at full capacity. We better jam the fire doors shut.”
“What do we do in case Allion sends in the guards?”
“How many do they have on the station?”
Fatima shrugged. “No one knows, but those aggregates are the dangerous ones. They’re worth more than ten people in a fight.”
Didn’t they already know about that.
Chapter 28
* * *
THEY WERE GOING TO make the switch tonight.
