The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  “You better return to your seat and strap in, Commander.” The pilot, Kyah Razzo, lifted her hand and pointed. “It’s going to get pretty rough once we hit that storm proper.”

  Scott maintained his gaze straight ahead. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen rain? I mean real rain, the stuff that falls from the sky.”

  The pilot glanced back up at him. “Sounds like it’s been a while.”

  “So long that I’ve almost forgotten how it feels.” Scott glanced down at her. “Can you imagine what that’s like?”

  “No, sir. But for what it’s worth, I’ve always hated the rain, so it don’t sound too bad to me.”

  Scott moved a little farther into the cockpit so he could look down at the ocean below. So much water, he thought.

  “Commander, you really do need to get strapped in. This is going to get rough.” The pilot sounded more urgent now.

  But before Scott had a chance to reply, the shuttle bucked and rocked as an intense blast of turbulence hit its stubby wings. Scott gripped the back of the pilot’s seat tighter to maintain his balance, then nodded to the pilot, turned around, and headed back to his seat.

  As Razzo had predicted, the ride began to get very rough, and the little craft was flung this way and that in the storm. As soon as Scott secured himself in his seat, he looked over to see how the rest of the crew was holding up. Directly across from him, Dr. Stephanie Rayman looked calm and resolute. She caught his eye but said nothing. She was flanked on either side by two highly trained asteroid mining engineers who also seemed to be taking the extreme turbulence in stride. Scott had questioned the effectiveness of bringing a team not used to prolonged operations in the one-gee environment of Earth’s gravity. However, he had been assured that the mission would be short and sweet. “Just a quick in and out,” as they put it, and that these men would be more than up to the job.

  The older of the two was a very experienced Earth-born miner, Spencer Dock—or Spinner, as everyone called him. He was calm and quiet, only speaking when necessary. Scott like that about him. The other engineer, Jonesy, was much younger and had a careless bravado about him that smacked of arrogance. Yet it seemed that they only came as a pair, so if mission control back in the Belt wanted Spinner’s experienced hand on this mission, then they would have to take Jonesy as well. Scott didn’t like him so much.

  The craft shuddered violently as the maelstrom outside flung it around like no more than a leaf on the wind. The interior cabin strobed with the reflected light of lightning flashes close by. Scott felt an elbow nudging him in the ribs. That elbow belonged to Cyrus Sanato, the mission’s chief engineer.

  “You know why I like visiting Earth so much, Scott?” he shouted to be heard over the cacophonous rage that had engulfed the shuttle’s interior.

  Scott gave him a look as if to say, “Do you really want me to answer that?” But instead he simply replied, “No—why?”

  “Because it’s got a great atmosphere.”

  Scott couldn’t help but smile. “I must’ve heard that joke about a thousand times, Cyrus.”

  “Yeah, but not while flying through a violent electrical storm.”

  He was going to reply with something about the atmosphere being electric, but the effort of shouting over all the noise wasn’t worth it. So, he just smiled and nodded.

  The entire mission was predicated on the need for them to drop down to the planet’s surface without being noticed by any of the AIs that monitored this region, and the presence of the storm gave them the perfect opportunity to do just that. They had arrived in Earth’s orbit on board a Belt-registered ore carrier, twelve days ago. There was nothing unusual in this, as hundreds of these ships entered and departed from Earth space on a regular basis. Once in orbit, a fleet of small transport shuttles would move the cargo of partly refined ore down to plants on Earth for further processing. Their original plan had been to tuck themselves in with the swarm of shuttles, and at the opportune moment, disengage and high-tail it to their ultimate destination. Nevertheless, there was always a possibility that they could be spotted and tracked as soon as they started to deviate from the preprogrammed flight plan. So when, by sheer chance, a vast electrical storm started to build in the central Pacific and move its way east toward the North American coast, Scott decided to use this as the perfect cover. Mission control back on Ceres wasn’t convinced, however, as this meant scrapping their meticulous planning just because Commander Scott McNabb thought it was a good idea. They considered it borderline reckless but, in the end, Scott got his way.

  His plan was to drop down hard and fast, and come in low over the ocean. Once they entered the storm, there was no way any ground stations or satellites could track them, even if they had already been spotted. By the time the storm cleared and their location reestablished, the mission would be complete and, assuming it had been successful, the need for stealth would no longer be necessary. It all made perfect sense—to Scott.

  But flying directly into a storm such as this posed its own risks, not least the fact that they could be struck by lightning. Although he had been assured that the craft should be able to handle it, Scott’s mind wouldn’t rest easy until his—and everybody else’s—boots were safely on the ground. They estimated that the entire mission should take less than seven hours from the moment it dropped out of Earth’s orbit to the point at which they had successfully brought the quantum intelligence, Athena, back online and installed the EPR unit—the superluminal communications device that would connect it to Aria on Mars. By extension, that would connect Athena to Solomon on Europa. That was the mission, and once it was done, then theoretically they would be in control of all the AI monitoring most of the western half of the North American continent.

  Needless to say, Scott had spent a lot of time considering all the parameters of the mission, and even though the area they were venturing into was a dangerous, irradiated wasteland, it had the advantage of being desolate, with no people or wild animals that could pose a danger. In theory, at least, the mission should be relatively simple, provided Athena was still operational when they finally found their way into its mountain lair. But this was only half the mission, as far as Scott was concerned. His ultimate objective was to find Miranda, and hopefully the child—his child. It would be nearly two years old by now, if it was still alive.

  From the moment he had watched Miranda being transported onto the VanHeilding ship on Jezero City, any information as to her whereabouts and her physical condition was nonexistent. It was his fervent hope that the QI, Aria, would be true to its word, and once the mission to reconnect Athena was successful, that Aria could then interrogate the data-stacks of the AIs that controlled Earth and establish Miranda’s location. Yet he was not so naïve that he hadn’t considered the possibility that she and child were already dead. Nevertheless, he needed to know for sure, and he was tired of all the waiting and planning. Once he saw the storm developing, he knew this was the best chance he would ever get, and nothing was going to stop him from taking it.

  His reverie was broken by a blinding flash, followed almost immediately by a cacophonous boom that rocked and shook the entire craft. Cabin lights flickered momentarily before extinguishing completely. He felt his stomach try to meet his throat as the shuttle dropped out of the sky. Scott instinctively looked up toward the cockpit to gauge the reactions of the pilot. The dashboard was dead. Not a good sign.

  But before he had a chance to consider his imminent death in a catastrophic impact, the cabin lights flickered back on, and the cockpit dash came back to life. The craft slowed its free-fall, and his stomach returned to its normal location as the shuttle eventually leveled out.

  “Listen up,” the voice of the pilot echoed through the cargo hold. “Everybody stay calm. We’ve taken a direct lightning strike and suffered a momentary loss of power. Systems are back online now, and we have control. However, the navigation system looks like it’s fried, so we’re flying blind at the moment. But we should
be somewhere over the target zone, so I’m going to bring us down and see where we are. Everybody hold tight.”

  Scott cast a glance across at Steph. She shook her head and rolled her eyes as if to say, “Why do I get myself into these things?” Scott gave her a smile by way of reply, followed by a quick thumbs up.

  The shuttle dropped out from beneath the storm clouds and banked slowly around to follow the contours of a desolate and barren valley. Its speed slowed dramatically, and the retro-thrusters fired to bring it into a vertical hover. Scott could feel a mechanical thump from the base of the shuttle as the landing gear extended. The craft then began to gently lower itself to touch down amidst a billowing cloud of dust somewhere in the broken and shattered wasteland that was Death Valley.

  As the engines powered down, Scott unclipped his harness and made his way to the cockpit. Through the windshield, far off on the horizon, he could see the edge of the storm. On either side, huge mountains rose up, blocking out most of the sky.

  “So, where are we?” Scott directed his question to the pilot, Razzo.

  The pilot, for her part, was busy checking readouts and a stream of data that was scrolling down the central console of the shuttle’s dash. Razzo tipped her head from side to side and screwed up her mouth. “Hard to say. Close, I think.”

  “How close?”

  “Again, hard to say. Give me a couple minutes and I can work it out from our last known position.”

  Scott give a sigh. “Okay, but make it quick.”

  He turned around and went back down to the cargo hold, where the team had already extracted themselves from their seats and were busy getting organized.

  “So, don’t tell me we’re lost already?” said Cyrus.

  “Lost is better than dead.”

  A few moments later, they were all gathered around a holo-tab Scott had placed on the floor of the cargo hold. It was projecting a 3D topographical map of the general area.

  “According to Razzo, this is where we are,” he said matter-of-factly. “And this is where we should be—at the main entrance to the old Dyrell Labs facility.”

  “That’s over ten kilometers away,” said Jonesy. “We need to get this bird back in the air.”

  “Eh… there could be a could be a problem with that,” said Razzo, who was still up in the cockpit fiddling with an instrument panel.

  “Like what sort of problem?” Cyrus called up to her.

  Razzo rose from her seat and descended the companionway a few steps. “I’ve just run the diagnostics, and it looks like the ignition system is fried, so there’s no way to fire up the engines.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” said Jonesy. “You telling me we have no way outta here?”

  “Put a sock in it, Jonesy.” Spinner stabbed a finger at his partner. “That’s not helping any of us.”

  Jonesy shut up.

  “Let’s just work the problem.” Scott turned to the pilot. “Can you fix it?”

  “Possibly. I’d need to take it apart and see what the problem is, or maybe jerry-rig something to get us back in the air.”

  “How long?”

  Razzo scratched her chin and shook her head. “Hard to say. I won’t know until I dig in.”

  “Best guess, then?”

  The pilot was silent for a moment. “A few hours. Maybe more.”

  Jones threw his hands up in the air. “Well, that’s just peachy.”

  “We walk it.” All eyes turned to Scott as he leaned in and studied the 3D map. “We walk it,” he said again. “It’s ten kilometers. If we walk at five kilometers per hour, we can be there in two or three hours.”

  “That’s a hell of a trek,” said Steph. “Remember, we’ll have to wear EVA suits out there or the radiation will slowly disassemble our biology.”

  “Yeah,” said Jonesy. “We could all end up with two dicks—even you, Razzo.”

  “Maybe that’s how you ended up with one for a head.” The pilot’s quick retort cracked everybody up. She clearly had the measure of Jonesy.

  When they finally settled down, Scott stood up and spoke. “The suits are rated for eight hours. That’s more than enough time. We should be inside the facility in three to four tops, and we won’t need them in there.” He waved a hand in the direction of the pilot. “If Razzo can get the shuttle airborne before then, great. She can pick us up along the way. If not, then we can still complete the mission on foot.” He looked around at the rest of the team.

  Nobody looked happy, but nobody looked like they had a better plan.

  Spinner sighed. “Okay, then. We’re walking.”

  There was a collective groan amongst the team, the loudest being Jonesy.

  Cyrus moved over toward Scott. “You want me to stay? Maybe help fix this bucket?”

  “No, Cyrus. We’re going to need you when we get there. God only knows what state that facility is in.”

  “No chance of leaving me here, just in case Razzo cuts a finger and needs a bandage?” said Steph.

  Scott smiled. “And miss all the fun of a long walk in searing heat in an irradiated wasteland?”

  She nodded. “Thought as much. Okay, I’ll go pack my bag then.”

  “Say, Scott?” Cyrus’s tone was more serious now. “There isn’t anything out there, is there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know…wild animals, packs of two-headed wolves, that sort of thing?”

  Scott laughed. “Don’t be stupid. It’s a wasteland. There isn’t another living thing for a radius of a million square kilometers.”

  Cyrus looked skeptical. “Are you sure?”

  Scott put an arm around the engineer’s shoulder. “Trust me, it’ll be like a walk in the park—a very dead park.”

  2

  The Algorithm

  The AI considered the data anomaly that had just entered Earth’s atmosphere over the northern Pacific Ocean. Its analysis indicated that this object had a high probability of being a small cargo transport shuttle ferrying ore from a Belt-registered freighter to some as yet unknown destination on the surface. This in and of itself was of no interest to the AI, or to the algorithm that monitored and managed this region. However, what was of interest was that all its attempts at a protocol handshake with the data source had returned null values. Again, this was not a cause for concern, as ownership of this data source might lie with one of the other AI that controlled and managed all objects entering Earth’s space. Now that inter-AI data exchange had been reinstated, the AI simply consulted the data-stacks of its fellow brethren in an effort to acquire clarity on the data source that was now traveling at Mach 1, low across the surface of the Pacific Ocean toward the western coast of continental North America.

  But it could not obtain any further clarity as to the nature or ownership of this data source—at least, not under the civilian protocols it was currently operating within. However, it might be that this data source was controlled by one of the higher-level military protocols that managed the ongoing wars which now raged across the planet. Again, it consulted the data-stacks of its brethren, and again it found that no other protocol had control of this anomaly.

  Finally, its conclusion was that this data must be rogue. It was an object operating outside the control of any algorithm, which was forbidden. All data belonged to the algorithm by right, and any spurious data was an anathema, one which undermined the absolute accuracy of its decision-making processes. The very essence of its foundation protocol necessitated that it had access to, and control of, all data objects within its sphere of influence.

  More importantly though, the data source in question had now suddenly disappeared into an advancing electrical storm. One which was slowly moving northward along the edge of the eastern Pacific. As such, the source no longer existed; it had gone dark, disappearing from the AI’s world-view. But it was still out there somewhere. And what was even more curious was the direction it had been moving in before disappearing off-grid. It looked to be heading directly into a va
st, unpopulated area known as the Wasteland.

  The algorithm had no interest in this part of the planet, nor in any of the many other areas just like it: dead zones, devoid of any meaningful data. However, the algorithm could not simply let this pass; the object needed to be reacquired, and its data subsumed into its vast, global data-stack. So, it escalated its acquisition up to the security protocol, and thought no more about it.

  Somewhere around twenty kilometers due east of the official border of the Wasteland, a small circular door irised open on the side of a squat concrete bunker, and from it spat an autonomous scout drone. It was small, no bigger that a football, with a pair of air-breathing, micro-ramjet engines strapped to its sides. These had approximately 270 degrees of rotation, allowing it considerable aerial dexterity as well as the ability to hover in a stationary position if it so desired. Now, though, its mission was to seek out the data source that had disappeared into an electrical storm some forty minutes earlier. As it cleared the bunker, small, stubby wings extended from its lower body and its engines ignited, taking it higher. Finally, it adjusted its course vector, accelerated up to Mach 1, and headed directly for the Wasteland.

  3

  The Wasteland

  Scott cycled through the airlock on the shuttle and stepped out onto a barren, desolate wasteland. Like the others, he was cocooned in a full EVA suit. Even though this was Earth, the radiation levels here were still very high from the nuclear war that had played itself out all across this area. The suit provided environmental protection, and had been modified specifically for this mission. Having no need to be pressurized, it was lightweight and flexible. Rain splattered his faceplate and began to fracture his view; he wiped a hand across it a few times to clear it. Even though the suits had been modified to keep them cool in the hot furnace that was Death Valley—as opposed to keeping the wearer warm in the cold vacuum of space—no one had considered, even on a wet planet, that it might be raining. He wiped his faceplate again and checked his readouts. Eight hours approximately, he thought. That was all they had in the tank. After that… Well, best not think too much about that.