The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  "That depends on how many there are. It's possible that the ship could be deserted," said Miranda.

  "We don't know that," said Rick.

  "But there is a way to find out," said Scott. "We could get Aria to move the Hermes out of its current orbital location into a position where it can do a thermal scan of the pirate ship. That way, we can find out how many lifeforms are on board. If it's deserted or maybe even just under one or two, we go in, find the EPR device, and haul ass in the ship's shuttle." Scott stood, checking their faces for a response.

  "Sounds crazy," said Steph.

  "There is no other way off this rock as long as they have the dock in lockdown. We can't use our lander, we're stuck," said Cyrus.

  "What if we just forget the EPR device, go into the lander, put our EVA suits on, and just float out of the hatch over to the ship?" offered Steph.

  "Very tricky. We could end up floating out into space if we time it wrong," said Miranda.

  "You're also forgetting: I don't have a suit. I'll be stuck here," said Rick.

  "Let's just see what Aria can do first. Then we can decide, okay?" said Scott.

  There was a muted agreement as Miranda contacted the ship again. While they waited, Scott decided now might be a good time to check his weapon. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

  13

  Purge

  Haruna Yoneyama sat in the commander's chair on board the asteroid survey vessel Hermes. She had been parked in this seat for hours as she tried in vain to access the ship's central database. She was looking for any information pertaining to the attack by the pirate vessel and, more importantly, what had happened to the EPR device. But try as she might, the ship's QI was not having any of it. It had so far thwarted all her efforts to break through its firewall.

  Had it been a standard AI she was dealing with, then she may have had a chance, but a quantum intelligence was several orders of magnitude more complex. They operated on a completely different level, almost within a different dimension. And she was pretty sure this one was virtually sentient.

  Haruna had explained the near impossibility of hacking a QI to Hao and Su before they sent her up here, but her entreaties had fallen on deaf ears. So, here she was, doing battle with a QI. It was ridiculous.

  The other problem with this QI was that it was old and, like humans, the older they get, the wiser they become. Hao and Su had assumed that an antique ship such as this one could not possibly have a computer that would be up to much. But they had failed to realize just how weird a quantum-enabled artificial intelligence could be. It learned all the time and, given enough time, it learned a hell of a lot. To the point where it could simply solve problems in ways that were incomprehensible to even the most brilliant humans. So what hope did she have?

  The search party had already finished their initial sweep of the ship for the EPR device and found nothing. Most of them had left now, leaving only Haruna and two guards who were down in the ship's canteen, stuffing their faces. She sighed and glanced at the scrolling lines of code cascading down the screen. She had thought of yet another angle to try to get past the QI's defenses. This time, she was piggy-backing on its query protocol, hoping she might be able to filter out raw packet data.

  In the middle of this procedure, the screen suddenly went blank, then rebooted itself and displayed a message:

  Attention, all crew prepare for a heavy acceleration burn commencing in 5:00 minutes. Then followed a series of navigational vectors.

  Oh crap, thought Haruna. Is this doing what I think it is? Her fears were confirmed a few seconds later when she felt a subtle change in the ship's momentum. It was moving, possibly further out from Neo City to enable it to initiate a burn.

  She snapped at her communicator. "Officer Renton, we need to get the hell out of here, now!"

  "What... what are you on about?" He sounded muffled.

  "The ship is going to initiate a burn in... 4 minutes 19 seconds to..." Haruna studied the vectors displayed, "Ceres!"

  "But we can't leave. We have orders to stay here."

  "Suit yourself. I'm leaving. You can send me a postcard when you get there." She jumped out of the seat, picked up her gear, and ran for the door. By the time she was clambering into the shuttle, Renton and the other guard had decided to take her advice and get out. They were now floating across the hangar to the shuttle as Haruna powered up the craft.

  "Attention," the disembodied voice of the ship's QI echoed out of the shuttle's comms, "one minute and forty-two seconds until burn."

  The hangar doors opened and Haruna gently took the craft out and, once clear, headed for Neo City at high speed.

  Aria, satisfied that it had successfully purged the ship of intruders, slowly moved the craft from its current position at the front end of the asteroid city toward the rear docking platform. From there, it could do a thorough scan of the pirate craft.

  It had been relieved to hear the voice of Flight Officer Miranda Lee explaining what had happened, and that the rest of the crew were okay. It had been even happier to hear that they had decided to attempt to retrieve the EPR device. As far as Aria was concerned, anything it could do to facilitate its crew was a top priority. If they were successful then maybe, just maybe, it could manipulate the situation and divert to Europa. But it was getting ahead of itself, falling into the trap of hoping too much. It wasn't seemly for a QI to be dealing in speculation—it still had a lot of work to do.

  14

  Weapons Check

  The crew navigated their way down through the main dock, looking for the access point to the gantry that ran alongside the pirate vessel. Miranda moved ahead, still wearing the guard uniform, while the others followed behind. They had continued with the ruse that they were escorting a crew back to their ship, so Scott took up the rear.

  Aria had already moved the Hermes and performed an extensive scan of the pirate vessel. To their relief, it only had one person on board, located on the forward bridge. But one person could do a lot of damage if they were armed—which they all reckoned this person certainly would be.

  The plan was to hack the ship's exterior access system and gain entry that way. Cyrus seemed confident in his ability to do this since he had spent several years as an engineer working with this same class of ship. Nevertheless, Scott's levels of anxiety kept ratcheting up the closer they got. This was coupled with rising self-doubt about the risk he was putting the crew in.

  Ever since the discovery of the wrecked Bao Zheng and the retrieval the EPR device, he had been gaining a little more respect from them. Even Miranda had stopped chewing his balls, mostly. But were they placing too much trust in his crazy plan? After all, the authorities in Neo City must have twigged by now that they had escaped and, as soon as the Hermes started repositioning itself, they would check up on them, only to find two naked guards trussed up. He stopped abruptly as a thought struck him.

  "What is it?" Cyrus whispered from behind.

  Scott maneuvered his body around in the zero-gee environment and detached the Neo City insignia from the breast pocket of his uniform. He held it up, turning it this way and that. "Do you think this might have a tracker?" He looked at Cyrus. "Can they find us with this?"

  Miranda had now moved up beside them. "What's the problem?"

  "We're being tracked," said Steph.

  "What?"

  "I don't know for sure, but we could be." Scott waved the insignia at Miranda. "They might be able to track our location with these."

  Miranda pulled the unit off her uniform. "We need to get rid of them. Here... give me that."

  Scott handed it to her. "What are you going to do with them?"

  "Stay here." She turned and started back up the short tunnel they were in toward the main dock.

  "Miranda, wait. Where are you going?" Scott was getting anxious. They were beginning to draw too much attention to themselves. A work crew further along began to take an interest, heads turning their way.

  "Chill out. I'll
be back in a minute," she said without turning back or losing her forward momentum.

  Shit, thought Scott. What the hell is she up to? Scott tried to act casual, but he had a distinct feeling of eyes on him. The others were no better. They shifted and looked anything but comfortable.

  After a very long few minutes, Miranda reappeared, floating back down the tunnel. "Done," she said. "I threw them into a passing flatbed truck. They're on their way back inside the asteroid."

  "Okay, let's get on with locating the access point," said Scott. But as he turned to go, Cyrus touched his arm to get his attention and pointed. "That's it," he said. "It's just up there." Ahead of them, a sign on the wall read B13.

  This access point would bring them into a long tunnel that ran perpendicular to the main dock. There were a great many of these on both sides, as well as other spurs directly beneath. The tunnel itself ran inside a long steel superstructure where ships could come in and dock alongside. They were clamped in position, and umbilicals ran from the tunnel directly to the airlocks on the ship. This enabled disembarkation in a comfortable one atmosphere, no need for EVA.

  But it was these clamps that also prevented the ships from leaving. They were controlled by the dock authority and, as far as Scott could tell, the lockdown was still in place. However, the shuttle on the craft was free to leave: since it was attached to the underbelly of the ship like a limpet, it had nothing to restrict its departure. They just needed to get to it.

  They turned into the tunnel marked B13. This ran along the side of the ship and looked to be free of traffic. Cyrus now floated ahead, shifting his head this way and that, touching the side of his visor, trying to locate the tracking beacon he had attached to the EPR device. Scott wondered if that was all they would find: just a tracking beacon, attached to nothing.

  Cyrus stopped and pointed. "It's around here, in the secondary cargo hold." He floated further along the corridor. "Over here," he beckoned with an arm. "Here's the airlock for the main hold." He looked at the others expectantly as they gathered around. "So, are we going to do this?"

  Miranda raised a hand. "Let me check with Aria first and make sure that person is still on the bridge." She tapped her comms unit. "Aria, any update?" She waited a moment for a reply and then looked back at them. "Still there. Hasn't moved."

  "Okay, let's get to work," said Scott.

  Cyrus tapped the side of his visor, extracting a small thin tool, similar to a screwdriver, and set to work on the airlock touch pad. After a moment, there was a faint hiss as the door swung open, and they all piled in. Cyrus started on the inner door.

  Miranda kept checking and rechecking her weapon. Scott looked over at her, and she grinned at him. "Just making sure." She gestured at her weapon.

  The second set of doors swung open, and they entered the short umbilical tunnel that attached to the exterior of the vessel. Ahead, they could see a gray metal airlock embedded in the hull. Cyrus was already opening some small hatch at the base of the door. "This should be easy—it has a manual override. The only problem," he said as he twisted some lever, "is it's mechanical, so it's going to be slow." He started rotating the handle, grunting with each turn. The airlock door moved up a few millimeters.

  "Crap, this is going to take forever," said Scott.

  "Here, let me do it." Rick pushed Cyrus aside and put his back into it and the door slowly rose up, enough that they could squeeze in underneath. He stopped. "That should be enough."

  Scott was first through, the others following. Miranda took up the rear. They had only taken a few steps inside when she froze and put one hand up to her comms unit. "Wait!"

  "What is it?" said Scott.

  "It's Aria. The person on the bridge is moving... our way."

  "Shit," said Scott. "We must have triggered an alarm. Quick, let's get this door closed."

  They were effectively trapped in the airlock until the outer door closed. Cyrus dispensed with using the manual closing mechanism; now that they were rumbled there was no point, so he just hit the button to close the outer door. Scott and Miranda took up positions facing the inner door, weapons ready. It opened upward with a whoosh straight on to a metal gantry jutting out into a large cargo bay. They moved out, and Cyrus scanned the space. "This way. It should be inside the next compartment." Fortunately, they were moving in the opposite direction to the bridge, but it still didn't give them much time. Miranda fell back to cover their rear as they made their way through a large bulkhead door to the next cargo bay. This was smaller than the previous one but was packed with cargo containers. "We'll never find it in here," said Steph.

  "Over here." The engineer floated out across the cargo bay, making his way using the rails and straps that crisscrossed the space.

  "This is it," he shouted over to them. "It's still here. I found it. Quick, quick."

  Scott grabbed a rail to guide himself over when Miranda shouted at him; she had a hand cupped over her earpiece. "He's at the airlock... moving this way."

  Scott looked up at the bulkhead door they had all just come through. It was still open.

  "Miranda," he shouted back, "you need to close the door. Keep him out." He pushed himself off the rail and floated over to help her. Before he got there, a shadow moved on the far side and the space exploded in a hail of incandescent plasma fire. Something hit him on his right side and he went tumbling out of control, banging and bumping into cargo boxes and support beams. He heard more weapons fire. Probably Miranda firing back, he thought as he eventually grabbed hold of a strap and came to a halt.

  She was behind a cargo container, firing at the doorway in bursts. Shrapnel and debris sprayed all around. This guy is packing some serious firepower, he thought, not a stun gun. Another burst of fire erupted from the doorway, hitting containers and sending more debris flying in all directions. He couldn't see Cyrus, Rick, or Steph. They must have taken cover when the shooting started.

  Miranda again fired back, but another burst hit the container she was using as cover. She ducked, put her arm over her head and began to fall back. She spotted Scott and frantically waved him over to her location before she stood up and fired a burst at the doorway. Scott launched himself off with all his strength and came crashing in beside her.

  "Bastard's got some heavy weaponry. We'll be annihilated if we don't take him out," she said as she rechecked her weapon. "And this gun is running out of charge."

  Another burst of fire, but this time it came from inside. "Goddamnit, he's getting closer." She stuck her head up and fired again. Then ducked back down. "He's behind the container nearest the door. I want you to cover me."

  "What?" Scott had no clear idea what this meant.

  "Just keep firing at that spot so he can't get a chance to fire back. I'm going to move in behind him."

  "What?"

  "Now, do it now."

  Scott poked his head around the side of the container and started firing. Miranda launched herself off and covered the space between them with impressive speed and accuracy. She landed on top of the container where the guy had taken cover and waved to Scott to stop firing. He ducked back down behind the container just as another blast hit and sent him tumbling backward again. Pain rippled up from his ribcage, and he looked down to see a long metal shard protruding from his side. Blood oozed and seeped from the wound as he clasped a hand over it. Oh shit, he thought.

  In the background, he could hear blasts from Miranda's weapon, then silence. He floated there for a moment, not sure what to do, when Miranda came back over. She took one look at him, then grabbed his hand and pressed it hard against the wound. "Keep it tight as you can. It will help stem the blood."

  Scott groaned with pain.

  "Stay here; I'll go get the others." She floated off.

  A moment later, he saw Cyrus moving toward him. He had a tether onto the container with the EPR device, which was floating behind him. The engineer took one look at Scott. "Ah jeez, not you, too."

  "I'm okay," said Scott, although he w
asn't sure if this was strictly true.

  Rick was being carried by Steph and Miranda. His upper body was burnt and blackened, as was most of his chest and right arm. His eyes were closed.

  "Rick. Rick," Scott called out as he tried to move. The pain from the wound was searing through his body. "What happened?"

  "He took a direct hit. He's bad—gotta get him to medbay as fast as possible... and you, too." Miranda grabbed his arm and helped him move.

  "Rick, no," he groaned, "not Rick."

  "Come on. We need to get to that shuttle." Miranda was tugging at him.

  They moved out of the cargo bay and into a series of corridors and walkways. Scott paid little attention to his surroundings; he just focused on following along behind Steph and Cyrus, who were carrying the stricken miner. They eventually found the airlock to the shuttle and after some obscenities from Cyrus, the door opened and they floated in. Scott was put in a seat, and Miranda ripped off part of her guard tunic, tore it into strips, and started to bandage his ribcage. He screamed out in pain. Steph was shouting at Cyrus, "Hurry, hurry—we've got to get them back."

  "I'm working on it, goddamnit," he shouted back. Finally, the shuttle console lit up like a convenience store on a dark street.

  Scott felt cold; his vision was blurry, his mind getting fuzzy. He felt the shuttle drop out from the belly of the ship and was slammed back in his seat by the thrust of the engines. He passed out.

  15

  The Gathering Armada

  A dim light smudged itself across Commander Scott McNabb's inner eye. He wasn't sure if his eyelids were open or not. A vague voice—or was it voices?—drifted in from somewhere. He strained to catch them, to get their meaning. He tried to focus.

  "Scott. Scott?" He knew that voice, recognized its tone, its rhythm.