The Solar War (The Long Winter Book 2)

by A. G. Riddle

  “We won’t need to heat the whole building. Only a small fraction. I’ll explain soon.”

  Min nods. “Okay.”

  “Grigory, I do need you to make a bomb—using whatever you can find inside the warehouse and plant.”

  He leans forward in his chair, suddenly interested. “How big?”

  “Very big.”

  “Portable? Launchable?”

  “No. Stationary.”

  “How big is very big?” he asks.

  “Big enough to destroy the entire warehouse.”

  Grigory stares at the wall a moment. “We cannot make small, portable bombs, but a large bomb? Doable. It will be a chemical bomb. Take me a couple of days.”

  Fowler studies me. “We’re going to hide out in the plant? It’ll be pretty cramped in there.”

  “No. We’re going somewhere else. But we won’t get there if we can’t control the people inside this building. I need your help with that, Lawrence. They trust you and look to you in times of uncertainty. They’re going to be pretty spooked. Maybe even more than they were in the Citadel.”

  Fowler shakes his head. “Emma got them through that, not me.”

  “Well, this is your time.”

  “I’ll make it happen.”

  I scan the room. “There’s one other part of this. We can execute my plan alone. But our chances increase if we have Arthur’s help. I want to make him an offer. I need you all to trust me to do that.”

  There are no ringing calls of endorsement, only a few nods. Grigory and Brightwell glance down, hard looks on their faces. They don’t like it, but their silent assent is probably the best I could hope for.

  “Okay. That’s the plan. Time is our greatest enemy now. If any of you need help, come see me.”

  Brightwell lingers at the door as the others leave. “Sir, should I bring Arthur in?”

  “Yes. The meeting will be between only the three of us.”

  She opens her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. “No guards. What we discuss can’t leave this room.”

  Five minutes later, Arthur waltzes into the room, Brightwell behind him. She quickly closes the door and stands at attention, hand on her gun, eyes on Arthur.

  He smiles, first at her, then at me. “What’s all this?”

  “You know what this is.”

  “Yes. I do.” He glances around the situation room, as if savoring the moment. “Kind of a strange turn of events—you making me an offer this time around.”

  A land mine to the west detonates, the sound muffled, echoing like thunder.

  “We can win this war without you, Arthur. But your assistance would increase our chances.”

  His smile fades. “I’m listening.”

  When I’ve finished explaining my plan, Arthur studies my face for a long moment. For the first time since I’ve come into contact with him, he is silent, his expression blank, as if he’s processing the data, trying to solve a complex equation—and hide his own reaction. When he speaks, the playful, indifferent tone has returned.

  “I have to admit: I’m impressed. Haven’t been for a few million years. There were actually two solutions to your dilemma, and you’ve managed to select the one with the highest probability of success. Oh, and you’ve added two tactics that my simulations didn’t identify. Outside-the-box ideas. They marginally increase your chances.”

  “It’s called creativity.”

  His face goes slack, as if he’s reprocessing what he’s learned. “No. It’s called nearly impossible, James.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That you truly are a mind ahead of your time.” He stares at me, searching my face for something. For the first time, Arthur looks almost confused. His voice comes out flat and disembodied, as though his personality has slipped away, as though he can’t spare the processing power for it. For the first time, he sounds more like an emotionless computer. “No. There’s another variable at work here. An anomaly I can’t adequately factor.”

  “An anomaly the grid can’t factor?”

  He freezes. For a moment, I start to wonder if he’s gone offline, if whatever is happening has compromised his AI program. That would be bad for us. More than ever, we need him.

  Finally, his face reanimates, as if he’s waking up. The biting, arrogant tone is back. “Don’t flatter yourself, James. The grid possesses calculating capability your rudimentary math can’t even measure. This is a local processing limitation.”

  “Now there’s the evil AI overlord we’ve all come to know and love.”

  “This AI overlord wants to know what’s in it for me? It’s not like I get out of jail early for good behavior—which I think you’re familiar with.”

  “On the contrary, that’s exactly what I’m offering you. Consider this: some part of the human race is leaving this planet one way or another. You’re staying. What happens then? According to you, you’ll build an escape pod and blast into space to make your report to the grid. How long will that take?”

  Arthur shrugs. “What’s it to me? I’m immortal.”

  “True, but time is important to the grid. If you upload your report faster, it might yield an insight that makes another grid operation more efficient. Or perhaps it could even inform how you deal with us. In short, making your report sooner could benefit the grid. As does having me alive. You are familiar with me—you know I’ve chosen to leave peacefully. The people out there are unpredictable. Dealing with them might require you to expend more power than dealing with me.”

  “What exactly are you proposing?”

  “We’d take you up to the ship with us, launch you toward the asteroid belt as we pass. You upload your data as we leave, not days or weeks after.”

  Brightwell’s eyes snap toward me for an instant before returning her gaze to Arthur. She doesn’t like it.

  “Your people won’t like that,” Arthur says playfully.

  “My people have put their faith in me. I’m offering this deal. And there’s another benefit.”

  Arthur raises his eyebrows.

  “If those armies out there breach this building, they won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

  “I’m not easy to kill.”

  “I know. I built that body. But you’re not impossible to kill.”

  A silent moment, then I add, “You’re not just an AI, are you?”

  Arthur doesn’t respond.

  “All this attitude, the jokes. They’re not some mathematical formula designed to elicit a reaction from me. They’re your personality. You, Arthur, or whatever your name is, are something like an individual within the grid, aren’t you? A consciousness with your own experiences and specialty. A career. You’re like… a spy. A paratrooper they drop behind enemy lines to subvert or effect some outcome the grid wants. In a way, you’re stranded here, like a sailor left on a remote island with a hostile indigenous species. You want off this rock and away from us just as bad as we want rid of you.”

  “A crude analogy.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “You already know what I’m going to say.”

  “Good. One last thing. I need your assurance that Emma will survive the procedure.”

  “Are you asking for her, or for your unborn child?”

  “Both.”

  “Yes, James. She’ll survive.”

  “She’d better. If she dies, so do you. The deal is off.”

  Chapter 66

  Emma

  One by one soldiers come and move the patients out of the infirmary, rolling them on gurneys and pushing wheelchairs. I ask where they’re taking them, but none of the soldiers reply. And none of the patients return. What’s happening here?

  I drift in and out of sleep, the sedative overtaking me and then wearing off, as if I’m treading water, my head occasionally dunking below before popping back up to take a breath.

  I awake to find James sitting in a chair beside my bed. Allie is in his lap.

  “Mom!” she says brightly. “Going on trip.”


  Confusion crosses my face. James shakes his head sharply, too quickly for Allie to see. I force a smile. “Of course. I almost forgot. We’re going on a trip. Are you excited?”

  She nods.

  “Good. Do as your father says, all right?”

  James stands and holds her out to me, not letting her rest on my chest, but close enough for her to hug me. “Tell your mom bye.”

  “Bye, Mom. Love you.”

  “I love you too, sweetie.”

  As he walks away, I wonder where we’re going. Or if that’s just something he told her. Most of all, I wonder why he brought here to say goodbye.

  The answer occurs to me. Because this might be goodbye. He wanted me to see her just in case it was.

  A few minutes later, James returns with Sam. The boy has put on a brave face, but he hugs me just as tight as Allie, and I kiss his forehead and tell him I’ll see him soon, as if I’m sure of it.

  The machine beeps quietly as it administers the drug, but I’m too worked up to sleep now. I shift in bed, watching the entrance to the infirmary, my mind a mess of worry and confusion.

  Finally, James returns, alone this time. The medication is coming on strong now, trying to pull me under. He’s speaking softly to a few figures at the door. I can’t make out the words. The scene blurs. Suddenly, he’s at my bedside, leaning over to kiss me.

  My voice comes out scratchy from disuse. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re getting out of here.”

  “How?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I need you to take a leap of faith.”

  I shake my head, trying to bat the drug away. In his face, I see resolve. Buried deep beneath that mask, hidden from only those who know him as I do, I see fear.

  “I’m ready to leap.”

  He takes my hand and squeezes. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  He turns toward the door and motions to the people waiting. Izumi strides in, six soldiers behind her. Behind them is Arthur, his expression blank. Two more soldiers push a gurney into the room. A machine hangs from a pole connected to one side. I recognize that machine. The last time I saw it was at the launch facility, when it was used on three volunteers. Just like then, a stasis sleeve sits on the gurney. This time, it’s waiting for me.

  I feel my pulse quicken. Adrenaline flows through me. Focus returns as the adrenaline is flushed from my system.

  The blood pressure monitor blares an alarm. Izumi rushes to it, taps a button that silences it and then draws a syringe from her pocket and injects it into the line attached to my hand.

  “What is that?” I ask, reaching out to her.

  “Just something to help you relax.”

  Whatever it is, it’s working. My arm feels heavy. Too heavy to lift. When I move my head, my vision blurs. Everything turns to slow motion.

  I feel my words echoing in my head, the sound slow, like an audio track inching forward. “Why?”

  James leans closer to me. “We have to.”

  My voice sounds unnatural, a groan like iron bending. “Why?”

  “Not enough food. Not enough power to keep us warm.”

  I nod, the motion requiring effort to keep my head up, as if there’s a weight pushing me down. “Kids?”

  “They did great,” James responds. “They were very brave.”

  The sedative is dragging me under like weights pulling at my feet. Suddenly, a thought runs through my mind like an electric shock. A single word: kids. I glance down at my protruding belly. I try to speak, but the words won’t come. I stare at James, silently trying to communicate, to warn him, to ask him if our unborn child will survive.

  James cuts his eyes to Arthur, then back to me. “He’ll be fine. And so will you.”

  As if in a dream, I feel the soldiers lifting me, slipping my body into the stasis sleeve, the hard rubbery material cold and heavy on my skin, sticking like wet clothes.

  I hear zipping, far away and faint. Hissing. A face mask touching the bridge of my nose, my cheeks, my chin. I inhale deeply, but there’s no smell. Only darkness.

  Chapter 67

  James

  There is something extremely unnerving about seeing human bodies in bags, stacked upon each other in a room as if they were simply supplies stored out of the way. Yet that’s what we’ve done. We’ve put nearly half of our entire civilian population into stasis. The sleeves fill three flats, the bodies stacked in rows halfway to the ceiling.

  The reason is simple: soon we will be shutting down the heat and electricity to the vast majority of the warehouse. The stasis sleeves can survive the cold vacuum of space. They won’t have a problem here.

  The manufacturing plant is printing stasis sleeves one after another, as fast as it can. Within twenty-four hours, the last of the civilians will be in stasis.

  Seeing Emma, Allie, and Sam go into the sleeves has focused me. We win this battle, or they never wake up.

  I stop by the command post just long enough to scan the video feeds. It’s night now, and the enemy camps are still and quiet. The domed silver solar tents spread out around the vehicles like bugs burrowing in the snow.

  “Set off another one,” I order one of the soldiers sitting at a console.

  “Quadrant preference, sir?”

  “You call it, Corporal.”

  It doesn’t matter. They’ll all hear it.

  On the upper left screen, there’s a flash in the distance.

  The domed tents remain still. No one comes out to look. But I know it just woke a lot of them up, and they’re not happy about it.

  That never gets old.

  Dressed in my cold-weather gear, I barrel through the empty halls of the warehouse. There are a few troops milling about, hiding the speakers in the ceiling, and the heating ducts, and in every other nook and cranny they can find.

  When I’m alone in the hall, I turn the door handle to one of the flats. It’s unremarkable in every way. I selected it at random, but it’s where our final stand begins.

  In the living room, Brightwell stands at attention in the corner, her eyes on Arthur. He’s standing at a rolling terminal working a laptop, his fingers moving like a flash.

  “This would be easier if you allowed me to connect wirelessly,” he says.

  “You know we can’t do that,” I reply.

  I nod to Brightwell, and she paces out of the room, her shift over.

  I plop down on the couch and close my eyes, exhaustion seeping into me. I’d love to get a few hours’ sleep, but I don’t trust Arthur that much.

  “How’s it going?” I ask him.

  He motions to the massive hole in the ground. “It’s going.”

  At the end of my shift, I check on Grigory first, who’s muttering in Russian as he works on the massive bomb. He’s using one of the large water tanks from the habitat’s recycler as the container. The floor is strewn with parts, most of which I’m not familiar with.

  “Need anything?” I ask.

  He rolls his eyes. “Food, sleep, peace and quiet.”

  “Food and quiet are doable. Sleep will have to wait. Peace is off the table.”

  Harry and Min’s collection of faux bombs look like haphazardly made cube-shaped piñatas. They’ve used everything from children’s toys to habitat parts to air conditioning ducts to make the multicolored boxes.

  “They’re not pretty,” Harry says, “but they’ll get the job done.”

  “That’s all that counts.”

  Only a few sections of the warehouse are heated now: the command post, a few of the labs, several habitats we use as barracks, and the infirmary, which houses the leadership and their families. When I arrive at the infirmary, Alex, David, Madison, and Abby are waiting on me.

  “They’ve scheduled us to go into stasis sleeves tonight,” Alex says.

  “I know. We have to. Without the solar field, we can’t heat the building.”

  “Yes, but you have a larger plan, don�
��t you, James?” Before I can respond, he adds, “We want to help.”

  I shake my head. “Leave it to us. The soldiers are trained for this.”

  “I’m not going in that sleeve and leaving you out here to defend us. Give me something to do. Anything, James. Please.”

  I chew my lip for a moment. I know exactly how he feels. If I were in his position, I’d be saying the exact same thing.

  “All right.”

  One by one, the pieces of my plan fall into place.

  The days and nights drag on like an eternity.

  Chandler and I trade barbs over the radio.

  The land mines go off like a grandfather clock chiming at the top of the hour, both armies constantly on alert, watching each other across the snowy battlefield, both dug into our trenches, always ready to fight.

  Thankfully, the cans launched from the potato cannons stopped after the initial attack on the solar panels. That enabled us to uncover the panels on the roof and collect power. If not, I don’t know what we would’ve done. By a very small margin of safety, we have enough power to finish our preparations—and they will be done today. After sunset, we’ll make our final stand. In ten hours, we will live or die.

  Izumi has been hounding me to get some sleep, insisting I take a tablet for it. But I won’t. I need my mind to be clear tonight. Any mistake could doom us all.

  I stop by one of the stasis holding rooms and pace down the aisle, stopping at Emma’s sleeve. I reach out and touch it, wishing I could hold her hand one last time. More than that, I wish she were beside me for this battle, as she was in the last, at Ceres, when we put it all on the line, as we’re about to do once again tonight.