She also realized that she, too, could have been on the Hermes when it was attacked if she hadn’t accepted her stepfather’s offer of a trip back to Earth. What were the chances of that? she thought. It was a little disconcerting that the AI had decided not to inform her of the attack, choosing instead to ignore it. Something was going on—she could feel it in her gut. Either that, or she was becoming paranoid. Were the VanHeildings trying to hide something from her?
She went back to reading more reports, and began to notice they all used the term “presumed dead,” which was very different from being actually dead. A ray of hope welled up inside her; there was a chance they might still be alive. A very slim one, but a chance nonetheless.
“Max?”
“Yes, Miranda?”
“Can we change course and detour to the last location of the Hermes? I think we should investigate this.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to do that.” The response from the AI was, again, matter-of-fact.
“Why not?” Miranda snapped back.
“That request is outside my operating parameters.”
Miranda knew it was a bit of a long shot, trying to get an autonomous spaceship to change course. “You are aware of the laws governing autonomous spacecraft traveling through interplanetary space in receipt of a distress signal, Max?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“And you do realize you have a duty to respond to a distress signal from another ship while we are out here in deep space?”
“I am acutely aware of the laws in this regard. However, since there are now several ships from Ceres investigating the scene, we would be of little help. In fact, we might even be a hindrance. Therefore, we will continue to Earth as planned.”
Miranda slumped back on the sofa and scanned the newsfeeds as she tried to think of an argument that would convince the AI to alter course. But none came to mind. At least, none of any use to her. If she had the rank of commander, then System law would allow her to simply commandeer the ship. But she wasn’t—she had the rank of flight officer, which wasn’t good enough to make the AI do her bidding.
There was nothing else she could think of except to send a message to Frederick VanHeilding requesting authorization to take control of the ship and investigate the attack on the Hermes. But she already knew what the answer would be. She realized then that she was trapped—effectively a captive—and there was nothing she could do about it.
13
Solomon
So deep was Miranda’s despondency that she barely heard Max calling her, trying to get her attention.
“Miranda… Miranda?”
“Eh… yeah, what is it?”
“There is an interactive message for you from Europa.”
“What?” She was jolted back to the here and now. “Okay, sure. Can you play it for me?”
“Certainly.”
The central holo-table in the library blossomed to life, and a delicately illuminated ovoid hovered over its surface. She recognized it as Solomon’s avatar. It pulsated as it spoke. “Greetings, Miranda. Your ship’s AI has informed me that you are already aware of the incident with the Hermes. As you can imagine, we are all very concerned by these events. However, the Council of Europa is in need of your assistance.”
Miranda wondered how much help she could be, since she was effectively a captive on this ship.
“Before the Hermes was destroyed, Aria managed to send a data dump to me here on Europa, so we learned of some of the events leading up to the ship’s destruction. I understand you may have seen or read some of this information in the general broadcast feeds, as we have released a good deal of it to the public. That said, there is some information that we have not revealed. First, we have reason to believe that both Scott McNabb and Cyrus Sanato were attempting to evacuate the ship before it blew up.”
Miranda sat up. “They’re alive?”
The shimmering ovoid that was Solomon’s avatar flickered slightly as the message reacted to this question, searching its stored data for an appropriate response. “We are not sure if they are still alive, nor even if they managed to get off the Hermes in time. But—and I will be brutally honest with you, Miranda—the chances of their survival are slim. However, we do know that they had just finished moving the shuttle during that time, so they were back on the Hermes, near the auxiliary docking port. We also know, from the data that Aria managed to send, that Scott refused to evacuate until he’d retrieved Aria’s core. A noble gesture, I might add, as he risked his life—not to mention Cyrus’s—to save Aria. However, once Aria’s core had been extracted, it provided no further information on the activities within the ship.”
“So, they must have gotten off using the shuttle.”
Solomon’s avatar flickered again as it formulated a response. “This is a likely scenario, although not certain. What we find concerning is that ground stations on Ceres have not received any communications from the shuttle—not even a mayday. And there have been no sightings of the vessel, either.”
Miranda sank back into her seat. “I see.”
“Unfortunately, no one is currently looking for them, as all ships from Ceres are focused on the whereabouts of the attackers’ craft. Understandable, as their own chancellor is on board, not to mention our head of government here on Europa. This is why we need your assistance.”
Miranda sat up and gestured at the avatar. “I can’t see how I could help. This is an autonomous ship—I have no control over it.”
“Yes, I understand, and Max has explained its reasoning to me. However, since you are still legally under contract to the Council of Europa—who regards your current situation as compassionate leave—the council has decided to promote you to the rank of commander as reward for your outstanding contributions during the mission to survey the moons of Saturn.”
“Commander?” Miranda wasn’t sure if she’d heard it right.
“Yes. We feel it is justly deserved, and should enable Max to facilitate your requests from now on.”
Miranda stood up. “Take command?” She cocked her head toward the library’s ceiling, the source of Max’s disembodied voice. “Is this true, Max?”
“Yes… Commander.”
Miranda punched the air. “Yes… I don’t know how to thank you, Solomon. I felt like I was trapped on this ship.”
Solomon’s avatar flickered and rippled through the full visible light spectrum a few times before speaking again. “We need your assistance in finding Scott and Cyrus. I have attached some data to this message outlining several possible scenarios. The most likely, given the condition of the shuttle they were using, is a crash-landing somewhere in the vicinity of the Rongo Crater on Ceres. We want you to find them. But please bear in mind that they had very little air, so by the time you do locate the shuttle, it may already be too late.”
Miranda lowered her head a little. “I understand.”
“One more thing. Should you manage to locate the craft, we need you to retrieve Aria’s core. This is imperative. You must reacquire Aria. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. It is a matter of system-wide security that the QI be found and secured. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Don’t worry—if they’re out there, I’ll find them.”
“Very well, then. We wish you good luck.” The avatar extinguished.
She sat back down and took a deep breath. Okay, here goes, she thought. “Max, can you chart a course to the Hermes’ last known location?”
Miranda waited for the reply with trepidation. She would now find out if her newly acquired rank held any water with the ship’s AI.
“Certainly, Commander. We will be there in approximately eleven hours.”
Miranda breathed a long, slow sigh, then moved over to stand at the viewing window stretching the entire length of the library. She looked out into the infinity beyond. I’ll find you. I promise I will find you, Scott.
“Commander?”
Uh-oh, thought Miranda. H
ere we go. “Yes, Max? What is it?”
“There is a problem with the course adjustment.”
I knew it, thought Miranda. I knew it couldn’t be that easy. I knew that AI would find a way not to go to Ceres.
“I’m sorry to inform you, but the swimming pool will be off-limits while the ship performs the necessary maneuvers to put us on the correct vector for Ceres’ orbit. However, I will endeavor to bring it back into use as soon as possible. I must apologize for this inconvenience.”
Miranda relaxed. A smile broke across her face. “That’s okay, Max. I think I can manage without it for a while.”
14
Rongo Crater
Scott returned to find Cyrus studying a stream of data on the main monitor in the operations room of the research station. The engineer looked up when Scott entered. “Find anything?”
“They did a good job clearing the place out.” He gave a shrug. “I found some food rations in the canteen, enough for a few days. There’s plenty of water, but not much else. How are we doing on power?”
Cyrus sighed. “We’re running on stored energy, and we have no way of generating more.”
“How long have we got?”
“Hard to say.”
“Best guess, then.”
“If we shut down as much as we can, confine ourselves to one area, then maybe… two days.”
“Two days?”
Cyrus shrugged. “Two and a half, tops.”
Scott slumped down in one of the seats and looked around. “It’s gonna get cold, too.”
Cyrus nodded.
“No comms, I suppose?”
Cyrus shook his head.
Scott sighed, slapped his knees, and stood up. “Well, we’d better get started. Where do you think we should hole up?”
Cyrus gave a resigned gesture. “Here is as good a place as any.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get all the resources we can find in here, then shut down everything else.”
A few hours later, they had set up bunks in the operations room, shut down all unnecessary sectors, and were eating some of the rations that Scott had piled up on a bench in one corner of the room.
“Maybe they’re coming back. You know, like they just went on a delivery run and they’re planning on returning.” Cyrus bit off the corner of a protein bar.
“So why take the LENR,” Scott waved a hand, “and everything else?”
“Maybe they’ve contacted someone at Dantu to let them know we’re stranded here, and there’s a rescue mission heading out here as we speak.”
Scott shrugged. “I’d like to think so. I really would, Cyrus. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
But before Scott could answer, an alert sounded from the display console. They both stopped eating, stood up, and checked the monitors.
“What is it?” Scott asked.
Cyrus sat down at the console and started tapping icons. “I left the proximity systems on. You know… just in case.”
“And?”
Cyrus looked up at Scott. “Something’s just triggered it.”
Several grainy external camera feeds flickered to life as Cyrus’s fingers tapped icons on the controls. They showed a gray, dusty landscape thrown into sharp relief by the starkness of Ceres’ daylight.
“There, look.” Cyrus pointed to a smudge moving across the surface toward the research station. “They’re back. I told you they wouldn’t just leave us here to die.”
Scott leaned in, studying the figure. It had a gait he found familiar, but couldn’t place it. “There’s just one person, Cyrus. I don’t think it’s them.”
“Rescue party from Dantu, then?”
“Possibly. But I don’t think they would solo EVA, either.”
They remained silent a few moments, just watching the figure make its way toward the entrance.
“Looks like they’re coming in.” Scott glanced over at Cyrus. “I suppose we should go up to the airlock and see who’s coming to visit. Let’s hope they’re friendly.”
They stood at the inner door, waiting as the airlock cycled through its pressurization routine. Finally, the panel went green, and the door opened to reveal the solitary figure wearing the most sophisticated EVA suit Scott had ever seen. It was sleek and expensive, with a fit that clearly identified the wearer as female. The figure stepped out of the airlock and flipped open the visor.
“Miranda?” Scott could barely believe what he was seeing.
She unclipped her helmet and took it off. There was no mistaking her—it was Miranda. Scott rushed over and wrapped his arms around her, follow by an equally enthusiastic Cyrus. They danced around in a brief group hug.
“I can’t believe it. How…?” Scott tried to break away to look at her face, but she had it buried in his shoulder. And Cyrus wasn’t letting go, either.
Eventually, they all managed to pry themselves apart.
“I thought you would be halfway to Earth by now,” said Scott.
“I can’t believe you guys are still alive.” Miranda was shaking her head. “I half-expected to find a pair of bodies in that shuttle.”
“Well, here we are. How the hell did you find us?”
“It’s a long story. I heard about the attack on the Hermes, and then I was contacted by Europa. Aria managed to send a data dump just before the ship was destroyed, and Solomon had done some analysis on it. It calculated several possible survival scenarios. So, I started following them up, one by one. Seriously, though,” she shook her head, “none of them looked good. Not even Solomon reckoned you would still be alive.”
Scott opened his arms wide. “Well, looks like it was wrong.”
“Yeah.” She smiled and hugged them both again, breaking away to continue the story. “Solomon figured you could theoretically have made it here to this research station. And when I found your shuttle crash-landed, I knew there might be a slim chance.”
Scott was shaking his head. “You have no idea how glad we are to see you, Miranda.” He gave her another long hug. “I thought we were dead for sure. We’ve only got power here for another day or two. You found us just in time.”
Cyrus ran his hand down Miranda’s arm, examining the suit. “That is one very slick EVA suit. It must have cost a fortune.”
“Well, I’ve got a few more in my shuttle just like it, so you’ll get to try one.”
“The sooner the better,” said Cyrus.
Miranda snapped her helmet back on. “It’ll take me a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.” She closed her visor and stepped back into the airlock.
It didn’t take her long to return, and soon the three of them stepped out of the research station onto the dusty gray surface of the Rongo Crater. The area was blasted by the stark light of Ceres’ day, highlighting a harsh, unforgiving landscape. Miranda’s shuttle sat about two hundred meters ahead. It was sleek and elegant, and looked like it could move in a hurry. The outer hull had a glossy mirror’s sheen; it was by far the most luxurious craft Scott had ever set eyes on. “Is that yours?”
“Technically it belongs to the VanHeilding Corporation, but it’s mine for now.”
“It seems a shame to get it all dirty by actually using it to land on a dusty rock,” said Cyrus.
Scott pointed in the direction he and Cyrus had crash-landed a day or so earlier. “I need to check our shuttle and find out for certain if they’ve taken Aria’s core.”
“I’ve checked—I didn’t see it,” said Miranda.
“Damn. They took it, just as I suspected.” He turned back to Miranda. “You go ahead. I need to check the shuttle myself, just to be sure.”
“It’s not there, Scott. Take my word for it,” said Miranda.
“I’ll just be a few minutes.” He moved ahead of the others, determined to get to the shuttle and confirm his fear. When he eventually reached it, he was surprised to see just how banged up it was. How did we survive that? he thought. He cycled through the side airlock and finally stood inside the wrecked craft.
Aria was gone, just as he had feared.
By the time Scott returned to Miranda’s shuttle, he was in a strange mood. He had failed Aria, allowed it to be taken, even though he had given it a solemn promise to destroy it rather than let that happen. But he hadn’t known back then that it contained a superluminal comms unit. Now it was in the wild, so to speak, and no doubt being sold to the highest bidder. The only ray of hope was that the smugglers didn’t yet know what they had. But how long could Aria keep its secret once the new owners started poking around its innards?
Despite this setback, Scott was relieved to be alive, and very happy to see Miranda again. But their relationship had changed now, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that. It was also clear to him that she had her own story to tell. It seemed that she, too, had been duped, and she was seriously pissed about it.
Then there was Steph and Goodchild, and the others who had been kidnapped. Miranda had scant news on who the attackers were, or even where they might be hiding out. Nonetheless, Steph was probably alive, so there was that at least that. But what to do now? That was the question uppermost in Scott’s mind as he cycled through the airlock onto Miranda’s luxurious shuttle.
He was met on the inside by Cyrus oohing and aahing at how cool the ship was. Everywhere the engineer turned, a new shiny object fired up his excitement and he would go on and on about it until Scott simply shut up and let him have the floor.
It wasn’t until they were all seated and ready for liftoff that Scott finally got a chance to talk. “Miranda, how secure is this shuttle?”
She was bent over the cockpit console, checking stats, getting the craft ready. “What do you mean by secure?”
“Can your ship’s AI listen in on what we’re saying?”
Miranda paused, and a look of understanding slowly formed on her face. She reached over and tapped several icons. “There, that should do it. Nothing monitoring us now.”
Scott nodded. “There is a very good reason why Aria wanted to be destroyed.” He looked over at Cyrus. “While you were searching the research station, I booted up Aria and it told me it has a superluminal comms unit integrated into its core.”
The Belt: The Complete Trilogy Page 27
